Cancellable Beacons

G_Lock

I've seen a few recent cases of accidental beacons that put marines in a bad position. Is there a reason you can't cancel an active beacon or was it done that way intentionally? Doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to implement, like press it again to stop it. Fat fingering a beacon sucks, it can mean the difference between a win or loss.

*Edit* I read canceling it would be too OP in feinting a beacon at no cost, you can make it cost res to stop it or add a "beep" or some noise to the canceling so aliens realize it was canceled.

BeigeAlert

Personally I wouldn't be opposed to adding a cancel beacon feature as long as the marine commander is NOT refunded any rez. What do you guys think?

G_Lock

The only problem i see with this is you can pay 10 rez to feign a beacon whenever you wanted too. Only adding some sort of sound to distinguish between a real or canceled beacon would negate this completely.

Nintendows

I seem to remember there being a cancel button at some point...

.trixX.

NS1 beacon could be cancelled - i dont remember if res was refunded - but i do remember a lot of feigned beacons to deter an incoming base rush.

I dont think that's a mechanic we want to re-introduce, but i do agree that the beacon button needs special treatment, because i too sometimes accidentally beacon when im medding fast...

Ive seen ideas on the forums about it, one was you would have to press the beacon button twice to activate it.

Kasharic

If I recall correctly, we used to be able to cancel a beacon by recycling the obs and then cancelling the recycle... the recycle itself would stop the beacon.

Vman007

I oppose. Why if these accidental beacons occur would you change the nature of beacons. Why not instead just make it harder to beacon. By making it a double tap button or something along those lines. Initial problem is people are accidentally beaconing.

The permanent beacon is a bigger part of gameplay than you would think. Its significance signals aliens to rush into a room and take it. Being able to stop that process, especially with how loud a beacon is, would be confusing to aliens. Especially at this stage in NS2 lifespan. Taking away the significance of a beacon wouldn't be the direction i would go especially if the issue is accidental beaconing.

Also accidental beacons can be mitigated by having your whole team go thru the phase gates immediately. Actually that's a strategy to take down onos. Beacon everyone nonsensically and then have them immediately go thru phase gates to catch lifeforms(esp onos).

I very rarely see an accidental beacon.
I do however see comms who regret they beaconed because aliens were coordinated enough to rush two places at once and used the beacon to their advantage. I think this type of gameplay is what NS2 is about. I very rarely see it be a game decider too

So the question? Are we trying to change beacons? Or are we trying to stop people from accidentally beaconing? Because personally i believe beacons are fine. But i wouldn't oppose a solution that would help prevent accidental beacons. I do however am in the thought that beacon permanence is how it should be. For better more strategical ns2 gameplay.

Some other solutions. Other than double tap for beacon.

1. Change color of beacon icon.
2. Change positioning of the button in the obs box on the bottom left.
3. Change the beacon icon. (what is that a picture of).
4. Make beacon bind to another button such as "b".

Nordic

The better solution is to make the hotkey not so easy to press by accident. There have been a few threads that have had suggestions to fix this

MoFo1

I doubt people are accidentally "clicking" the beacon button on the observatory, most accidental beacons are likely due to the hotkey.

Just make the hotkey require a "double click" to beacon = sounds like the winner to me. (as long as that info is relayed to the player obviously - don't want a bunch of "why won't my beacon hotkey work anymore" threads lol)

pSyk0mAn

Lot of good points on both sides for or against cancellable beacons.
What I liked about the cancellable beacons in NS1 is the mindgames that went along with it.
Basicly aliens could call the bluff by the marine commander and keep hitting on a critical structure. Every good marine comm would think twice to actually cancel, because repeating an actually working beacon after a canceled one would delay reinforcements.
The only alien that has to be careful with delaying retreat is the Onos, because it needs the most time to leave base.

SantaClaws

Ixian and I had a discussion about this not too long ago. Sorry for the long read folks. And merry new years.

TL;DR - My suggestion is to put the beacon on the command chair. Ixian argues reasonably why he dislikes it.

Ixian wrote:

Speaking from experience, my accidental beacons happen 9/10 times because i was trying to medpack (e->s), and simply didn't press E before or hard enough, and so S, the beacon button, was the only one pressed. When medpacking, i would immidiately press e->s->m1->s

SantaClaws wrote:

I had a bit of trouble with accidental beacons. And it's like Ixian says, it's when you're trying to medpack. I did find the solution that works for me (I don't hotkey the obs at all anymore cus I found out it's actually not necessary but that's another discussion entirely).

What about moving the beacon key away from the observatory, and put it on the chair instead? This way, you can also put the hotkey away from the medpack key.

How often have you heard people confused that they made an observatory in system waypointing, but the observatory beaconed them to Control instead of System? Or maybe you have an OBS in nanogrid, a chair in sub and control, but you don't know which chair is closest to nanogrid?

Tieing it to the chair avoids these confusions intuitively. I would also make it so you only need one obs on the map, to beacon to which ever chair you want, to avoid further confusions like that. That is a balance change technically, but I don't think it's too concerning.

Ixian wrote:

SantaClaws wrote:

What about moving the beacon key away from the observatory, and put it on the chair instead? This way, you can also put the hotkey away from the medpack key."

Then how do you decide which observatory beacons, when thinking about which one aliens have to kill to cancel it? @SantaClaws

SantaClaws wrote:

Well. You'd have to kill all of the obs on the map to cancel the beacon.

But lets say there's two observatories next to each other - how do YOU know which to kill to cancel the beacon right now? This has never been communicated well in the first place.

For all you know, the commander could be beaconing from the proxy beacon in Hub, while you're biting away at the Shipping obs hoping to cancel. There's a bit of a chance element there that I dislike.

And honestly, canceling beacons seems like a really rare thing anyway. In order to cancel a beacon, that can't be a reactionary thing. You usually need to go for that as a team as the first thing when you enter the room, and then hope the commander beacons from it even though 5 aliens are already on it.

Ixian wrote:

So you would rather have it 0% chance to cancel the beacon? I can't say i agree, as the mechanic is quite central to marines defense and positioning, both comp and pub. I can't agree that it is a rare thing though. It also seems quite counter-intuitive that would need an obs to start a beacon on the CC.

SantaClaws wrote:

Ixian wrote:

So you would rather have it 0% chance to cancel the beacon?

There's still a chance. It just requires you to destory the last remaining obs on the map. It's not unheard of for marines to have a single obs.

If I have two observatories - the ONLY way you can cancel my beacon currently, is if I beacon from the wrong obs. That's the only scenario that is changed. It removes one odd and rare commanding mistake as far as I'm concerned.

Aeglos

Just move it to x or something. Anyway, I don't really get this fuss about accidental beacons. Why do you even have the obs selected if not to beacon or to research phase?

.trixX.

Aeglos wrote: »

Just move it to x or something. Anyway, I don't really get this fuss about accidental beacons. Why do you even have the obs selected if not to beacon or to research phase?

If you bind an obs to 3 or 4, then you can easily misfire a beacon by hotkeying 3/4+S instead of E+S when medding.

Aeglos

.trixX. wrote: »

Aeglos wrote: »

Just move it to x or something. Anyway, I don't really get this fuss about accidental beacons. Why do you even have the obs selected if not to beacon or to research phase?

If you bind an obs to 3 or 4, then you can easily misfire a beacon by hotkeying 3/4+S instead of E+S when medding.

What keyboard do you have? Wouldn't it be 3/4 + w/e instead of 3/4 + s/d when you make a typo?

.trixX.

It depends which one you miss If you make a mistake during the first press (3/4 instead of E), then by pressing the second button S you beacon instead of medding.

I use my middle finger for pressing E and the ring finger for pressing S when medding fast...

Nintendows

Most RTS games that have a "scuttle" or "kamikaze" function require pressing the command twice in quick succession to confirm you actually mean to make the decision. Maybe that's what's required here.

sweets

This could be interesting if it costs another 10-15 res to cancel. It's a huge advantage to give false information about your entire team's location.