v1.8.0 Public Testing of CnC Rework

[sweedensniiperr]

I'll post more when I've gathered my thoughts more but there's 3 points I think need addressing first.
• As far as I could tell there was no way of knowing of your bleed was heavier than the enemy's. It doesn't have to say how much just who bleeding more. Maybe this could be done by changing the "markers"
• I'm not sure if a circle straight in the middle will work on every single map since some maps are quite "off-centered" or there's terrain that favors one side considerably. I know you'll probably not put it on every map but something to think about.
• I think it's too early to tell if this is ready for public play. It worked well in the event though.

[[R-CON]​CAS_ual_TY]

Thank you to everyone for feedback. Here is what I am planning on adding next:
- Going to add a new marker showing the center of the map. This is in preperation for mapper placed objects which may change said center of the map to modify the area that is primarily being fought over.
- Add localization entries for announcement messages at the top. Something along the lines of:
- "enemy fob spotted"
- "enemy fob destroyed"
- "friendly fob has been revealed"
- "friendly fob is under attack" (when overrun)
- "friendly fob has been lost"

And finally, it needs to be debated whether or not it should be revealed which team is currently winning or losing (i.e. which team is bleeding more heavily). My idea would be to change the colour of the marker in the center of the map based on that (yellow, green, or red circle).

[[R-COM]bad_nade]

Originally Posted by CAS_ual_TY

Thank you to everyone for feedback. Here is what I am planning on adding next:
- Going to add a new marker showing the center of the map. This is in preperation for mapper placed objects which may change said center of the map to modify the area that is primarily being fought over.
- Add localization entries for announcement messages at the top. Something along the lines of:
- "enemy fob spotted"
- "enemy fob destroyed"
- "friendly fob has been revealed"
- "friendly fob is under attack" (when overrun)
- "friendly fob has been lost"

And finally, it needs to be debated whether or not it should be revealed which team is currently winning or losing (i.e. which team is bleeding more heavily). My idea would be to change the colour of the marker in the center of the map based on that (yellow, green, or red circle).

Disclaimer: No effort what-so-ever were spent on considering sanity, or lack thereof, of this suggestion.

What if the target is not map center but instead distances are measured using enemy main base as the origin? With some reasonable limits of course. If the whole idea of the game mode is to conquer without actually capturing flags, then surrounding enemy main with FOBs sounds like the way to do it.

[LFI]

1. The game mode might be consistent.
My team played pretty much like a pub game. It was also a weaker team. The ticket difference in both matches was comparable (100 something and 60, respectively).
How really consistent it is hard to tell since almost no data.
2. It was stressful seeing the bleed timer, as it felt like fast losing (which also happened). I tried convincing myself that the enemy team should be bleeding in some way to, but it still put me under stress.
3. The rules are not simple, are definitely more complicated than with original CNC. The initial description of bleed zones is a bit misleading in that you could interpret it as "all fobs within the 1st circle have the same bleed-power". As a matter of fact, I have a strong feeling that most SLs that took part in the event didn't completely understand the rules. I know I didn't (I missed the expansion of the first post which could have answered some of my questions, at the moment of my reading it wasn't there).
4. Under the stress, there was an itch to build fobs because intuitively you sought to decrease your own bleed by building more fobs
5. All the formulae and fob positioning ideally require a graphical calculator ingame. Which isn't there. Questions emerge that can only be answered by filling in and solving the formulae - e.g. if the bleed power of your team's fobs is the average, will an additional fob in M10 decrease it? Since there are no and probably will be no graphic user friendly tools ingame for that, it probably needs to go in the game mode description. Yes, it will further complicated it in terms of text size - but this complexity is already there within the actual mode.
6. I do welcome server messages and I think I was even suggesting that somewhere on discord. It was my thinking as well. In fact, that's about all we could do to make the game process more transparent to players... And I'm not sure it's enough!
7. Teams need more tickets. We played 40 vs 40, yet the first game lasted 35 minutes (if we cut out the 10 minutes deployment time during which no fighting at all took place), and the second lasted somewher in that very ballpark.
8. I have a suspicion that stronger teams don't necessarily get stronger wins. It may be that a team that would beat the other team 250:0 on AAS can only yield 80:0 on this game mode. This is more of an observation than a grudge.
9. The mode might be too metable, i.e. people potentially find out about some geometric fob shapes and stick to it repeatedly, making it more boring in the future.
10. Sabotage/spec ops FOBs in enemy's rear might be not viable at all since they are revealed 2 minutes after they are spawnable, and after reveal destroying them will cost you 30 tickets, whether you do it yourself or let enemy do it.
11. Some fobs are built and abandoned, and stay like that the whole game. It was kinda weird.
12. Then again fobs are not exactly defendable since people can block them from away, and also destroy them from distance. Essentially you have to control a circle area around your fob, that is it least 100m (preferably 150m). On some terrain like forests this is not feasible with 1sq at all -> the attackers have an advantage. It kinda feels a bit off, just a feeling though.

[LFI]

Originally Posted by bad_nade

What if the target is not map center but instead distances are measured using enemy main base as the origin? With some reasonable limits of course. If the whole idea of the game mode is to conquer without actually capturing flags, then surrounding enemy main with FOBs sounds like the way to do it.

It will hugely depend on the actual map.
I discussed a similar "polycentric" suggestion - making 3 circles on the map where bleed-making fobs can be built, depending on a specific map.

Attempting to FOB up each other's main bases sounds actually interesting, the bigger the team difference, the easier it would get. But what of DOD rules? It will come down to immense main camping.

[izmash]

Hey, in my opinion system which count ticket bleed is too much complicated and confusing (even part of my squad was arguing how it works ), there are too many fobs to defend, basically all of them, so at the end only one squad can really attack enemy fobs and there are no real benefits of attacking. CnC has lack of momentum (old version too), it should be more dynamic.

My ideas how to improve CnC overall:
-There should be new type of building (just like tow or foxhole, two big crates needed to be build) available when fob is up, let's name it HQ
-Team have limit of maximum 6 fobs (maybe less would be better) available to build at any time
-After round start HQ cooldown timer begins
-Team have to build HQ before cooldown ends otherwise ticket bleed starts
-Fob with HQ have to be as close to center of map to eficiently bleed out opposite team
-After some time HQ fob will be revealed on the enemy team map just like you did in rework
-If fob is destroyed short cooldown begins to allow team to rebuild HQ nearby any other fob, if HQ couldn't be rebuild in time ticket bleed will be stronger
-Area attack is available (it can help when HQ will be hidden underground), but i'm not sure what about mortars

[[R-CON]​CAS_ual_TY]

Originally Posted by izmash

snip

Thank you for the feedback.

So first of all, about the complicated bleed system: I have reiterated this multiple times in multiple places: You dont need to know the exact formula. If you have more FOBs than the enemy and your FOBs arent at the edge of the map, you are ahead in terms of bleed. You also dont know the exact formula used for cap/neutralize timings, do you? All you know is you need twice as many as your opponent. But the time it takes to cap varies depending on the ratio of attackers and defenders.

The reason why 6 FOBs are available is because thats the interesting part about the gamemode. The more FOBs you build, the more you have to defend and the thinner you have to stretch your lines. As a rule of thumb if they have less FOBs than you do, then you have to defend your Xth FOB for X*10min. So the first FOB for 10min, the 2nd for 20min, the 3rd for 30min, etc..

I believe a big part of the reason why the attacking was not much in the event is because
- it was INF layer. With APCs available, or tanks, etc, it might become more dynamic
- It was an event and people were more careful
- people havent read my "rule of thumb"

It is absolutely worth to have a couple dedicated squads who have quick attacks as their only purpose and to dedicate resources to them, like jeeps, dedicated heli, etc..

Now, to go into your suggestion: I need you to stop at the first point already, because CNC is and has always been about FOBs. I wanted to improve the idea of CNC and not introduce a whole new win condition. And the 2nd problem would be the model.

I hope you enjoyed the event and I hope you will enjoy the playtests to come

[Edi1314]

There is no reason to know who is winning or not before the game ends...
What are you all talking about? You know who won and who lost when the game ends.
Unlike in INS when you can compare Blufor Tickets to opfor number of caches...
Unlike in AAS when you can compare How many flags you lost/taken and how many kills the enemy team suffered.
That is the magic of CnC , you really don't need to know . You have 60 tickets? Well If you lose 2 FOBs you lost the game chief so better defend.

What CnC needs are maps that are made for CnC. Thats what CnC needs.

Only thing you need to change is make the shields and diamonds a little bit smaller in size or maybe transparent.

One more thing you can add if you feel like it is a HESCO emplacement that players can build a maximum of 4 around the FOB improving the chances for the FOB to survive an area attack.

I also believe both teams need to be balanced in terms of equipment. You can't have the classic opfor / blufor.
For example : Blufor has 1 tank but no APCs Opfor has 3 APCs but no Tank
Blufor has better choppers but Opfor has more transport vehicles/jeeps

CAS: Add CAS to CnC but make all of them non-respawnable delayed.

Other suggestions : Insurgency Vietnam , CnC Vietnam maybe a CnC Vietnam where the NVA only attacks with superior tickets and bleeds very little when the US have FOBs up but bleeds heavily when they have all 6 FOBs up paired with a superior ticket ammount and no need to defend, while the US have the same settings as in a normal CnC.

Also tweaking the command rally point in CnC since once a FOB gets overrun its easily lost. But if you buff the commander Rally for it for example not to despawn but also be able to get overrun or shot/knifed to get destroyed. It would give the team a spawn point besides the FOBs which would involve more strategic play , you can also make it to allow 40/45 spawns before it gets destroyed.

[Bonvi]

The playtest was a pretty cool experience. The gameplay felt very intensive and dynamic. Some details:

When the enemy had multiple fobs, choice of attack objectives made decision making more interesting.

Our team chose to gamble some tickets by building more fobs and stretching the defenses thin. This strategy had the defenders run around countering threats and "extinguishing fires", as opposed to being glued to one building or position, as typical in AAS.

The objectives were closer together, which made coming to each other's help and shifting between defense and offense more achievable. In AAS defending squads under pressure are usually left to their devices, because of distances involved.

To minimize the defended surface area, fobs can be surrounded by other fobs or built in restrictive terrain. It's an interesting strategic puzzle, that reminded me of the game go.

Also importantly, the rework addressed the biggest glaring holes in the old version that made it unplayable:

1. Inconsistent bleeding with infrequent checks made attacking almost completely pointless
2. Rules did not punish turtling in the corner of the map
3. Having just 1 spawn location meant a **lot** of walking or waiting for transport, and less choice in terms of approaching the enemy, cause flanking on foot just takes too long

One complaint that I have is that mid-game it is indeed hard to tell who's winning at any point in the game, which should ideally inform your strategy.
And just showing the current bleed won't quite cut it. You need to keep in mind the compound of the time each side's fobs were active to estimate the overall tickets bled. And if you joined mid-game, too bad.
Maybe updating the team on the approximate amount of enemy's tickets, or otherwise allowing them to keep tally would be beneficial.

The area attack is the weird one, it either forces you to build exclusively indoors, or accept that you'll lose 30 tickets every 30 minutes. I like Meunen's idea of it half-destroying the fob, instead of taking it completely down.

Also would be great to see the circles on the map for better clarity, and also to visually introduce the new players to the mechanics.

[Edi1314]

There is absolutely no reason implement ghosting into the game. You see your own tickets so you know how you are doing

Area Attack comes once per game in this mode , I doubt you are gonna manage to use it twice in CnC so you either drop it on an attack or on the enemy FOB which is reasonable since both teams have it

To see the circles is a good idea IMO