MG protection & resupply

[Murphy]

Currently, we have two major problems with the mg-gunners:

1. The 5 points for resupplying are too much. Whenever someone cashes them in he is frowned upon as if he had stolen his points. Resupplying isn't nearly as hard as killing five enemies or capturing half a capzone.
However we need a reward or else no one would ever resupply a gunner in need, because no one would care.

2. No one watches out for him so he isn't nearly as deadly as he should be in a squad whichs tactical center should be him. A mg-gunner alone can easily be killed by a single (pop-up-) rifleman. However a mg-gunner with proper protection from one or two riflemen who cover his flanks and vulnerable points is as deadly as he should be.
Too bad no one cares for that in public play, because you don't get points for protecting gunners...





There have been a few suggestions to solve problem #1, such as reducing the reward to less points, and there have been a few suggestions to solve #2, such as inventing a "spotter" class, which has to spot targets for the gunner so he recieves an accuracy boost etc. Reducing points makes resupplying less desireable though, so it would be bad for gunners. A spotter class is a class no one likes to play and an "accuracy boost" belongs to role-playing games. Not into a realistic shooter.







My suggestion attempts to solve both problems (5 point whoring and lone-wolf mg-gunners who aren't protected by their squad as they should be).

As soon as someone resupplies an mg-gunner, the 5 points are stored in the gunner's immaginary inventory. As soon as the mg-gunner kills an enemy, the soldier who resupplied him recieves one of "his" points which are stored in the gunner's immaginary inventory.

This way, you don't simply get five "instant points", but you have to keep the gunner alive so he can kill at least five enemies.

If you simply run up to him, press the resupplying key and then you stroll away and he gets killed you don't get a point at all, and if he dies before killing five people you don't get as much as you could possibly get either.

So people are encouraged to stick to the mg-gunner, forming roups of two or more people, just as it should be.

The five points could even be increased to seven, or ten (they can't be reduced to three though, because then the chance that the gunner can do three kills on his own is too high! Five is the absolute minimum!). The devs have to sort that out in thousands of test games.

So, what do you think?







PS: Spare me the "I'm sooo good with the mg, I don't need protection at all" posts, because that's nice for you, but most people I know, including me, need this protection and even if they don't it helps them a lot. That's what protection is there for...

PS2: Before you ask: No. I don't have a proof in the shape of a black and white image that illustrates that real mg-gunners had immaginary inventories they used to store points in...

Xbox: Sorry. I just had to use this pun at least for once!

 

[Silky_Slim]

I like the idea.

As an MGer myself, i know whats it like to be unprotected, so i like to follow, and assist mgers. Too bad a lot of them stink at using it, and dont know the value of 50, 47, or 100 rounds, ready to go.

 

[SiC-Disaster]

sounds good to me
only problem i can see is to many people going after the MG-gunner, and since its mostly stationary no one will move. This could help intensity, but also kill the intensity ( both sides hanging back waiting for the other team to make a move and thus getting their points ) or if everyone is sticking to the mg this could create the problem of having not enough people on other flanks ( for example when you have to take 2 objectives at once to advance like Odessa, you could set up very nicely inside the apartments but if everybody keeps hanging back protecting 'their points' ( read, the mg-gunner ) this would leave not enough people left to attack the grecheskaya square.

ofcourse that doesnt necesarily have to happen but i could imagine it will. This could be taken into account for creating maps for example with adding and extra MG so you have 2 instead of 1, if you have to objectives you need to cap instantanious. Its all dependant on the players.

 

[Harry S. Truman]

and points mean nothing...really they don't. I don't see the need.

 

[Murphy]

@Desaster: Aren't there multiple mg-gunners in most maps? Also, not everyone can "re"supply the gunner, because he can't carry that much ammo. Anyhow, this would be canceled out anyway as the capzones a singing sirens, singing their song about 10 additional points.

Also, covering the gunner doesn't mean to sit on top of him.

@Harry: Those who don't care for the score, are either people who are bored or people who care about their team. If they care about their team, they don't need special encouragement to play team oriented anyway.
However statwhores who shall have their place in RO just as everyone else only care about their own good. That's why resupplying gives them 5 points in the first place. To strech their egoistics over the whole team. Doing something good for others gives you points.
My suggestion just makes those people do even more and hopefully this would help in public play, where pointwhores reside.

 

[mat69]

I don't think this would work out well.

1. Many people maybe would not know this feature and proceed as allways
2. Could increase resupply-spamming --> resupplying before a need arises, but now combined with a new attitude: "the guy who supplied him before should cover the mger's ass, I'm on my way"

I think this whole mg-problem could be solved if there was a special mg-resupply class carrying a lot of ammo, basically the same way it was in reality. Assign one guy to the MG and another as ammo/reserve-barrell -carrier who could also work as spotter that assists (warns) the MGer in finding targets and secures the flanks.
Combined with your point-award system the MG-supporter would have a motivation to stick with the MG.

To add value: Barrel changing should be slower if no MG-supporter is close to the MG, while reloading should be faster, even a system where the MG-supporter constantly connects the ammo belts (by beeing close to the MGer or pressing the use button for a certain ammount of time avoiding reloading would be possible.

 

[Murphy]

1. Many people maybe would not know this feature and proceed as allways
2. Could increase resupply-spamming --> resupplying before a need arises, but now combined with a new attitude: "the guy who supplied him before should cover the mger's ass, I'm on my way"

I agree with 1 but nothing is lost then.
Number 2 doesn't make sense to me, because even IF this would happen (and it WILL happen even if it were just the guys who don't know about this feature), it would still be better than now. Now you can cash in 5 points without doing anything but resupplying. With the feature, chances are high that you get less points and chances are VERY high that at least one poor soul decides to cover the mg-guy.

Right now, the reward can be abused. It can still be abused with "my" feature, but its a lot harder because in order to get the points the mg-guy has to kill!
Right now, the team can cash in the points if they swap out the mg. With "my" feature, the mg-dude still has to "earn" these points, so it can't make things worse than they are now! It can only make things better.


Oh, and no one wants to play the ammo carrier class. Also, if the ammo carrier is unarmed, he is useless for the team and it would be better if he just chose to be a rifleman. If he IS armed, people will simply take him, cash in the points for the resupplying (if there are any) and then proceed to use him as a rifleman/assaulttrooper/whatever weapon he has. If there are no points, they still use him as "class which has the weapon he has" and the mg-gunner is screwed.

I think my system is better.

 

[Solo4114]

Well, I'm definitely in the "I play for my team, not for my points" class, so I don't really need encouragement to supply AND cover my MGers.

But, I will say that I think this might be a good "stat whore" motivator, albeit one that will be heavily challenged by the "realism" crowd. It might make for a nice mutator, though, but not something for the core game.


I think the design theme of the core game has been to try to provide the TOOLS by which people can play realistically, but not to use the engine to create some perceived realistic end result when the means by which that happens would be unreal. The underlying goal of the game has, I think, always been that it's the PLAYER'S skill that counts, not the game engine. The classic example of the game engine mucking about with player skill is "cone of fire" that you find in games like the BF series.

In those games, a player who is otherwise a dead-on accurate shot can have his shot ruined because he has no idea where the "barrel" is going because his shot could go anywhere within the cone. With RO, however, the bullet goes where the barrel points (although the barrel itself wavers randomly). The main benefit here is that it's the player's ability to fire accurately DESPITE barrel waver that marks his skill, rather than just getting lucky because your "conefire" shot happened to land on the enemy's head hitbox.

That's why I'd be against any system where player accuracy is "improved" by virtue of the proximity of another player (IE: squad leader gives accuracy bonus, ammo carrier gives accuracy bonus to MG, etc.). But otherwise, I think this is a worthwhile suggestion albeit one that's a little complicated to implement.

How would you handle players dropping off ammo and then taking off but still getting points for the kill? Would you use a radius system to determine how close they were?

 

[Murphy]

How would you handle players dropping off ammo and then taking off but still getting points for the kill? Would you use a radius system to determine how close they were?

No, they would simply be lucky. Right now they get the points for free. If they get them for free with the new system too, nothing is lost.

However most of the time they won't and as they want to make sure that they get the additional points, they will cover him, because it doesn't matter anyway whether they stroll off to seek enemies on their own, and kill them before anyone else reaps the kill-points, or if they stay with the gunner, kill enemies for him AND get points whenever he kills one.

A radiussystem would be too complicated and it wouldn't work because different maps require different radi. Also, covering and protecting a gunner doesn't mean you have to stay close to him. E.g. you can cover his back by standing right behind him, or you can cover his back by covering the backentrance to his position, which is much farther away of course.
Too complicated. Not to mention the coding.

But why would my suggestion be challenged by the "realism" crowd? Those folks don't care for points most of the time so it wouldn't affect them at all. All they would notice, is that hopefully more people will work together with mg-gunners from time to time. And that can't be considered a bad thing for the "realism" crowd I would say.
Of course points are unrealistic, but that's the case with or without my suggested system.

That's why I'd be against any system where player accuracy is "improved" by virtue of the proximity of another player (IE: squad leader gives accuracy bonus, ammo carrier gives accuracy bonus to MG, etc.).

What I suggested is not like that. As I said, there were numerous of those suggestions and the common consens of most of the "regulars" in here was that those things belong to role playing games or pen and paper games, but not to a shooter.
That's not what my system does. It is only about the points. Nothing is altered with your combat abilities and if you want to ignore points, this has no effect on you what-so-ever (you might hopefully run into better entrenched hostile mg-gunners though ).

 

[mikitsubizunizu]

When I see MG's i resupply them, i don't know why. It's a habit i think.

 

[mat69]

@Solo4114
There allready is cone fire in RO, it is named differently and not so harsh compared with other games but it is there. Ask the devs about SS_Random ... if you do not believe me.

Where do you see the skill of resupply-abuse? The tool fails badly here...


@Ontopic
The ammo carrier class could be a very interesting class if your system would be used and the points I mentioned especially if the MG is more effective - a realistic way as I outlined before - by being supported.
And to avoid people who'd destroy the usefullness of any class, only half of the own kills get points. That way the class wouldn't be unfair (by having a lot of points of the MG and your own) but be also less interesting for people that avoid teamplay.

Yet still I think your idea would be an improvement to the situation now, but personally I'd prefery my idea.

 

[Rak]

I liked the idea. It really promotes MG protection.

 

[mcvittees]

I think your system is to complicated. i'd prefer a simple 3 point resupply award. Then, the best way to encourage players to resupply MGs is to make them a more effective weapon, and thus more in their interest to see it stays fed. In reality, one reason MGs are so effective is the volume of fire they put out forces everyone under cover - not so in RO. Therefore the suppresion effect of MGs should be bigger and last longer.

 

[BSE|Vietcong]

He doesn't want to increase resupplying, he wants that players protect their mgs. You would get no points for resupplying until the gunner kills enemies. So you will get your 5 resupply points only if you can keep the gunner alive.

i.e. the idea is to give the machinegunner more support by players, thus making it a more efficient weapon.

And the idea is great

 

[Murphy]

Thank you.

 

[slyder73]

I think the 5 points for re-supply are fine, in fact necessary. It goes with the basic "theme" in this game that teamwork and doing things for or helping your team is worth more in the long run that individual kills. The MG, if used well can be very powerful, but useless if not kept in constant supply of ammunition. Those who are team oriented will listen for and keep supplying that MG, whether for the win or the points, it doesn't matter.

I don't think as many people frown on the "stolen" points of the MG supply as the first poster thinks. Objective capping and teamwork win this game, and that MG can be one of the most efficient tools to help that happen or deny an area, set up a killzone....for those who know how to use it. I personally don't do well at all with the MG, but I appreciate the help and support of a good MG'er, and always resupply them.

I think it is a bad idea to have players HAVE to hang around the MG to get the points for protecting them. In fact, this is the opposite of what most players should be doing. Only the MG and the sniper really have ANY reason to lay down anywhere. All other players have to be defending inside the zone, moving around so as not to become a nade target and to keep from becomming a target while stationary. On the offensive side, all players, sometimes even the MG and the sniper have to me constantly moving into the capzones. It would be a mistake to encourage players to stop moving and lay down to get points. That would kill what little teamwork we get sometimes. I could imagine a crowd of players around the MG, doing nothing while the two or three players actually worried about capzones scream at them to get off their bellies and move up.

I think the system should be left as is.

 

[Murphy]

So running around, not looking out for one-another is teamwork in your eyes?
And inventing the need to protect the mg gunner for those who don't do it already kills teamwork?

If protecting someone really means to hold his hands (which it doesn't), so be it! It would be great. MG-gunners don't have to hang back for the whole round. If they have a good defensive point and they manage to kill the current wave of enemies they can move up to the next valuable defense point while the enemies wait to respawn and run back. This just never happens as of now because lone-wolf MGs are too weak.

 

[mat69]

Yes it's true, lone-wolf MGs are too weak and your system could improve that, but unless you fire "spot-me-I'm-here-rounds" only little will change.
Your position can be nearly perfect and well supported, but it is given away too fast imo.
If the tracers were really that way I guess one of the first things was to not use them, at least if you occupy a defending position.

The MG as a whole is a problem imo.

 

[Solo4114]

@Solo4114
There allready is cone fire in RO, it is named differently and not so harsh compared with other games but it is there. Ask the devs about SS_Random ... if you do not believe me.

Where do you see the skill of resupply-abuse? The tool fails badly here...

Actually, I wasn't challenging Murphy's idea specifically (although I still think the realism nuts might -- they seem to get irked by pretty much any change to the system), but rather was pointing out the problem of something he'd mentioned he was against (Which I'm against as well) -- that being the improvement of aim when in proximity to an ammo carrier or anything along those lines.

The resupply issue has nothing to do with skill, at least as far as the point awards go. In terms of resupplying, the "skill" involved is in doing it without getting your ass shot off under fire, but that's about it.


As for the conefire effect, you'll have to elaborate on that. I've always understood RO's system to be that the bullet goes where the barrel points, although I suppose they might add in some "cone fire" effect to illustrate different accuracies at longer range due to things like windage and such, but I'd expect that to be basically negligible at the ranges where we engage on most maps. For the most part though, my understanding is that the bullet goes where your barrel points, while the barrel itself may move randomly due to sway.

 

[18Bravo]

Too bad you can't be resupplied with new replacement barrels once in while.