Marine squads?
waxxan
Join Date: 2012-11-17 Member: 172047Members, NS2 Playtester
Join Date: 2012-11-17 Member: 172047Members, NS2 Playtester
I just watched some old dev videos, and heard Charlie mention marine squads as a feature, with an armor boost or something.
Have this been available in previous versions? Are we going to see it in the future?
I am experience alot of marines soloing in pub play.
And I must say, the dev videos are so inspiering! Thanks for making a great game
(damn iphone autocorrection in the thread title, changed from marken to marine now )
Have this been available in previous versions? Are we going to see it in the future?
I am experience alot of marines soloing in pub play.
And I must say, the dev videos are so inspiering! Thanks for making a great game
(damn iphone autocorrection in the thread title, changed from marken to marine now )
Comments
Said players have an AoE that increases damage done and/or damage taken and/or movement speed and/or attack speed.
I think the core benefits of a squad system could be a) making it easier to organize and manage large groups of players, b) distributing the burden of certain comm tasks to other players, and/or c) actively promoting and rewarding teamwork. My thoughts on what that might involve are:
- People can join specific squads of varying size
- One person is designated the squad leader
- Squad leader can give specific orders (attack, move, defend, built) to the squad as a whole
- Comm can give specific orders (attack, move, defend, built) to the squad as a whole
- Squad leader can do certain comm actions (e.g. drop meds, ammo, nanoshield, scan, etc) at the cost of PRes
- Being in proximity to other squad members gives a small buff (not set on any specific buff, but could include small health/armor boost, slightly faster movement speed, health/armor/ammo regen, etc)
- Ability to restrict voice or text chat to between just the comm and squad leaders (to help reduce the type of useless info overload that regularly occurs in public matches)
- Implementing an upgrade system that allows the comm to specialize the features of different squads (for example, you might want to give a RT harass squad faster movement and higher weapon damage, but a base building squad faster building/repairing speed and higher armor).
And as mentioned, could make life easier for the commander. Example: "alpha group take and hold Deposit" instead of trying to pronounce all the wierd nicknames players have :P
The problem there is that people dying changes the constituents of squads to much. If a marine dies it doesn't necessarily make sense for his task to stay the same. He might need to save an RT near base instead or pressure somewhere different. It means lot of changes to the members in squads - too much extra work for the commander to do on top of the normal work imo.
Better to just try to get to know people on your team individually as fast as you can and work from there. A challenge in pubs, to be sure, but the social aspect of the game is a big feature if you ask me.
That is also true, yes. I guess we have to trust the developers, that it was a good choice to remove it.
Basically, the RFK part gives pres equivalent to one tick with the current number of RTs to the player that makes the kill. Not a ton, but a nice bonus.
The squad part.
In a certain radius around the player, regardless of 'commander squad', other teammates get half a tick of pres.
This idea was inspired by the Panzer Elite's shared veterancy mechanic from Company of Heroes. It encourages squad play by rewarding supporting players.
Additional options.
No RFK if you aren't with a team mate. Then again, rambo's serve a pupose, maybe half RFK, or even full, just no one to share with.
Giant blobs farming pres? Maybe award 1 pres, count the killer as 2 players, and divide and share. Some kind of diminishing returns.
Don't take the numbers too seriously. If you see potential, take this idea and run!
Edit, retain squads made by commander as they are for command and control. This 'squad' is purely based on proximity. Or maybe LoS (for covering buddies down long corridors).
One implementation of squads that *might* work is for the commander to assign a few players as field commanders (Sergeant or something). Players can then associate themselves with their squad leader (only need to do this once and it stays until cancelled, or until they assign themselves to another squad leader).
This removes the administrative headache that would occur for the commander if he had to constantly reassign players (eg when you need to redeploy marines to support a push or defence in another location temporarily), but still allows to associate players in squads.
Of course, it's all development time and testing, which isn't something to be trivialised. I'd be interested to see some implementation in the workshop to see what sort of impact it can have on gameplay.
I don't think I agree with the idea of boosting health/armour/damage etc while in a squad, but I see the thinking behind it as an incentive for players to do so. Frankly, the incentive of winning should be enough to get players to organise in a helpful manner, though!
I'm mainly referring to the thin lines drawn to nearby squad members so you have a brief idea of where they are whilst in combat.
Would like the option to enable/disable the extra draw squad line feature though as I know some competitive players dislike a lot of visual clutter on their screen.
Mind you, based on 4 RTs and my original numbers, the RFK would give a grand total of 6.25 pres for 50 kills, congrats, buy a welder or drop a pair of hydra. If you personally get 50 kills, and are near players who net you 100 support kills (1/2 pres bonus) you can almost afford mines or go gorge and almost drop a hydra with your 12.50 bonus pres.
numbers: 4 RTs give 0.125 pres. soo 50*0.125=6.25 and 100*(0.125/2)=6.25
...might have screwed up the amount of pres 4 RTs gives per tick.... Still, you get the idea, its rather low. The numbers are just filler, they can be balanced.
Originally I was thinking shared score, but we already have that based on damage assists, and score isn't really something that matters. It jsut says good job.
I think Company of Heroes would be a good place to look if we want ideas to encourge squad play. Currently aliens and marines both use a form of the Whermact model for 'veterancy'. Commanders buy team wide upgrades for, armor, damage, speed, stealth using team resources just like the Whermact buys veterancy. But on a unit/player basis, NS2 could also adopt more methods that tie to the players more than the commander. Traditional RFK is like the American model for veterancy, you kill, you get pres/veterancy. My idea advocates Panzer Elite style veterancy, supporting units based on proximity (squads) get some veterancy (pres) too. Encourages grouping units. In NS2, this would encourage players to squad up. The idea of assigning squad leaders emulates the British veterancy method of using lieutenants and captains to aquire veterancy and providing bonuses to squads (in NS2, players) that are within their area of influence.
If you haven't played CoH I hope that description helps.
1. Commander selects the number of squads he wants, and this can be changed at any time.
2. Squads are auto assigned for players.
3. Players who are out of range of their current squad (remember the linking circles?) and in range of another squad start a timer that after X seconds moves them over to that squad.
If anyone remembers trying to select those crazy dynamic squads, they will remember how difficult it was. This way it gives players a choice without interrupting the commanders UI and doesn't automatically unlink them if they move slightly out of range. They also remain part of that squad after death.
Some sort of player freedom/commander system would work best.
In short how ns1 did it
What squads for the commander are really about is being able to quickly select groups of people to send to a location to complete a tasks as an effective force. As well as players being able to recognise that they are part of that group and hopefully make them feel like they belong to it throughout the entirety of the game.
But on public servers you have to give people a choice of who they want to run around with. So having a system that creates these groups along with giving a player freedom to leave and join based on who they are currently hanging around is important.
It is the only kind of system I could see working.
show a list of objectives / missions
let players subscribe to missions (multiple players can do the same mission and form a 'squad')
let commanders indicate which missions need fewer people & which missions need more people
let players see who is on a mission and where players are needed / not needed so they can choose their task
integrate with map / UI
best game ever, after NS2 ofc
I also find quite a few people in NS2 want to work together in squads, but lack direction because its extremely difficult to organize more than about five players as comm (and it typically only works in comp matches because you know everyone by voice). Saying "Squad 1 go defend comp labl" is so much better than "flayra, max, and squelslikeapig go defend comp lab!" or "I need someone to defend comp lab!"
Sounds like it will be too clunky and time consuming. NS2 is very fast and fluid.
I thought "Okay, sure, let's try it." Tons of bonus points to this guy for showing leadership and giving us direction. I went along with it, and so did everyone else. He split us into two squads, and assigned one to the left side and one to the right.
He gave up trying to assign people to squads and squads to tasks before we even got to the midgame. Situations were just too fluid to maintain that kind of structure.
Informal squad organization is possible with hotkeying people (CRTL and #) and accompanying voice orders. It works fine as-is.
most games that need organization aren't like that though. there just needs to be a way to get the campers in base to go do SOMETHING but not the SAME THING
in etqw it's just 1 button press that cycles through missions... it's just a way to say what you are doing
obviously the comm UI is trickier, but there has to be a better way than:
"someone go build transit" nobody builds transit
wait a bit
"someone go build transit" 5 people go to build transit
"Someone go build Transit" -> Nobody builds Transit -> "JohnnyBeefcake, go build Transit" -> JBC builds Transit.
"Someone go build Transit" -> Five people go to build Transit -> "JohnnyBeefcake, Fredzo, stay in Lava" -> JBC and Fredzo stop going to Transit, and so does one other guy -> Two guys build Transit.
Learn the names of your teammates and use them.
The size of a squad in BF3 is 4 people. I think having squads of 3-4 people could be done in NS2.
I just said the way they were, they were fancy colors on the screen, nothing more. there was no sense of 'squadmate' involved. just alot of annoyance for der commander.