Xeon Wraith

Heads up, we've updated the crate chances following the new spy crate settings: Spy crates : Reintroduced at 5% chance after 10 minutes. SBH spies disabled. Scrin crate : Reduced from 8% to 3% chance.

Hey guys. Following on from the recent PUG poll on crates, we’re going to be adjusting the availability and values of the crates in the PUGs. We’re focusing on toning down the randomness and snowball effect, but still keeping some of the crates that produce interesting gameplay. Here’s the changes we’re going with currently and the reasons why: REMOVED: Nuke crates Occasionally hilarious, but often devastating in a competitive environment. This crate punishes everyone nearby a crate and offers no meaningful counterplay against it. Telling players to not pick up crates works for rushes that last for a minute or two, but not for battles on field that last the majority of the game. It’s far too punishing for something random. We still want to discourage picking up crates mid-rush though, so we’re shifting the responsibility over to the Radar Scan crate. BlazingYoshi died for this. Vanilla Renegade X vehicle crates Not to be confused with the Tiberian sun or Classic vehicle crates. This crate is far too random in what it provides and has too big of an impact when a player lucks into higher tier vehicles. A losing field can easily snowball into a solid baselock with a lucky Flame tank or Mammoth tank crate. Worse, it doesn’t actually provide any new gameplay and only clutters comms with “Who got out of their vehicle?!”. Epic character crates While not as impactful as some of the other crates being removed, epic characters are still quite difficult to kill. Combined with strong infantry players who are usually also hard to kill, this crate becomes a bit too strong in maintaining consistent infantry or anti-tank presence. ADJUSTMENTS: LOW-IMPACT CRATES (60%) These are the majority of the crates. They’ll provide a small personal bonus. As they’re low impact, we’ve spread the percentages out evenly. All of these are available at the start except for the Money crate, which becomes available after 5 minutes. This is to prevent immediate APC rushes. Speed upgrade crates : 10%, available immediately. Damage resistance crates : 10%, available immediately. Weapon crates : 10%, available immediately. Veterancy crates: 10%, available immediately. Refill crate : 10%, available immediately. Money crate : 10%, available after 5 minutes. HIGH-IMPACT CRATES (15%) These are the more powerful crates in the selection. These’ll provide a team benefit, either in the form of economy or field control. All of these crates are available after 10 minutes. Classic vehicle crate (7%), available after 10 minutes. This crate can either give the Recon bike or Bradley light tank. As they’re generally weaker than the Tiberian sun vehicles and aren’t as impactful as the super money crate, the percentage of getting this crate is a bit higher. Super money crate (5%), available after 10 minutes. This crate can provide a very large economic benefit, sometimes exceeding 8000 credits with top rolls. This in combination with a dedicated banker in the team can result in considerable additional infantry or vehicle presence. Still, there are quite a few times where additional credits don’t do anything. This is particularly true for winning teams and makes for a good anti-snowball crate. As a result, we’re keeping this crate’s probability higher than the Tiberian sun vehicle crate. Tiberian sun vehicle crate (3%), available after 10 minutes. All Tiberian sun vehicles are quite strong, as they possess good firepower combined with exceptional speed or range. Even the Wolverine can do good anti-infantry work when used in a supporting role. Due to the strength and consistency of this crate, this is the rarest crate in the selection. MIXED CRATES (10%) Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Depends on what you already have. All of these crates are available after 10 minutes. Spy crate would go here once when it’s readded. Random character crate (5%), available after 10 minutes. This changes your character to a random paid character, excluding Hotwires and Technicians. This crate is pretty inconsistent in what it offers. Sometimes it adds a sniper menace to the game. Other times it’s a quick trip back to the purchase terminal. We’re keeping this crate’s percentage intentionally low as a result. Spy crates (5%), available after 10 minutes. This changes your character to a random enemy character, excluding Hotwires, Technicians and SBH. Unlike the random character crate, you can also get free infantry as well. This crate is also super inconsistent with what it provides, but it can make for some interesting strategic plays if used well. NEGATIVE CRATES (15%) These are the bad crates and your incentive to let someone else pick up the crates. Radar scan crate (12%), available after 5 minutes. This crate doesn’t harm players directly, but it does give intel to the enemy. Intel can be a powerful tool, especially when used by players with good game sense. Of course, if no enemy uses the intel, then this crate does nothing. This is a particularly good crate for countering snowballs in PUGs as the winning team tends to pick up crates the most. This provides more intel to the losing team and potentially provides opportunities to exploit. This crate has been restricted to after 5 minutes so early game rushes are not affected. Abduction crate (3%), available after 10 minutes. A simple death crate to make up the remaining percentage. BUILDING DEATH INCREASES We’re using the same percentage increases to crates on building death as before the changes. The only change is that they’ll get applied to our new crate values. This is: If Power Plant dies: Money crate weight increased by 2%. Super money crate weight increased by 100%. If Refinery dies: Money crate weight increased by 109%. Super money crate weight increased by 300%. If Barracks / Hand of Nod dies: Random character crate weight increased by 150%. If Weapons Factory / Airstrip dies: Classic vehicle crate weight increased by 150%. Tiberium sun vehicle crate weight increased by 100%. INCREASES OVER TIME Same values as vanilla. This also works to provide more strategic options in the later phases of the game. This is: Spy crate weight increases by 10% for every minute after 20 minutes. Capped at 200%. DISCLAIMER Crates use “weights” internally to determine the likelihood of getting a particular crate. This means an increase for a particular crate’s weight doesn’t quite result in the same increase for their chance of appearing and also decreases the chance of other crates appearing. If you’ve got any concerns or suggestions, throw a post down below or let us know on Discord.

Hey @Luhrian, I've had a poke around the new 'X' version of the map. Here's a couple comments (though possibly not issues - I'll leave it to your judgement). Screenshots in spoilers. General thoughts: - I appreciate the additional cover and high ground for infantry on field. I'm a bit concerned the field might be a bit too small now though. One-way infantry high ground and small vehicle chokes pretty much makes it impossible to pick off enemy field repairs with AT or vehicles. I'd imagine there'll be a heavy reliance on EMPs, airstrikes and snipers to do the job instead. - The bridge on the northern path seems to be missing. I'm guessing that's not intentional..? - I'm kinda iffy on having double GTs on infantry path, especially with the outer GT range covering up until bridge. Pretty much makes the infantry path a no-go area during the early stages of the map. - I didn't spot any decent rocket rush positions on the infantry path that don't require walking pretty much to each team's silo. Such a long rush distance is pretty brutal especially if a team has to pull a desperation rush. The outer GT also hurts. I get that super-long range rocket rushes can kinda feel like a cheap strategy to use, but it's a much smaller issue if they can only target a single building. This makes it predictable and easy to counter if spotted. Still, having the options open is also pretty important for making a map fun to play when you're in a losing position. - Trying to avoid falling off the pipe by the tiberium fields is probably going to be a pretty unfun experience. GDI Advantages: - GDI's harvester is super safe in comparison to Nod's. GDI can use grenadiers to shoot over the laser fence to kill Nod's harvester while in cover. Nod has to commit to rocket soldiers for a similar effect. Nod's harvester is indeed less valuable than GDI's but it might be a bit too easy to kill Nod's. This is probably okay balance for PUGs but I don't know if public games will get organised enough to rocket GDI's harvester. - The one-way side entrance to the southern field provides PERFECT cover for MRLS to splash tanks/repairs on GDI side cover. This doesn't make use of extreme missile curves either. It is not possible to hit or splash the MRLS from field if positioned correctly. Out of everything, this is probably the most exploitable thing I could find. I'd suggest changing the terrain or adding a pillar to allow splash damage or just changing the side paths to infantry only. Nod Advantages: - Frequent high cover on both sides of the field will probably make Flame tanks super effective for base locking. The one-way infantry path to the top of the cover might mitigate this somewhat though. - Nod's building target options from field are on the whole, way better than GDI. Nod's Arties can quite safely poke at WF and BR while being mostly in cover. Refinery requires moving out of cover a bit to hit it, but it still should be possible for Technicians to repair the tanks for cover still. GDI by comparison only has a tiny window to hit Airstrip safely. The majority of it is blocked by cover. Hitting HoN or Ref with Mediums and Mammoths requires the tanks to move completely out of cover and will definitely expose Hotwires. Hitting Ref as GDI also requires aiming at the chimney which is also considerably harder to aim at than what Nod has to aim at. GDI would almost certainly have to defensive buff to stand any decent chance of getting to apply damage on those buildings. - Nod has a long range Arty spot on the northern path for shelling Barracks. GDI has no similar option. I'm personally okay with having this spot for Nod. It's super exposed and can't fit more than 2 or 3 Arties. GDI probably should get their own option though. Closing thoughts: I think the map is more balanced than before but I do think it probably has a bit of a Nod bias in the current iteration. Nod has a lot of quite safe options for building damage. GDI has to commit a lot more to get in position to hit more than the Airstrip and EMPs/Airstrikes/Flame tanks are all very good options for pushing GDI back to their side of the field. Take all of this with a grain of salt. GDI's safe income might means they just spam mammoths and Nod never keeps Arties alive for long enough to deal decent building damage. Who knows.

Casually: DECK is the only correct answer XMountain Crash Site Islands Snow Competitively probably: Field X Arctic Stronghold Crash Site Lakeside Islands

From my perspective, a lot of the draw of NvN games is the symmetry. No faction biases, only the stronger team wins. Trying to add in a couple team specific units into NvN just gives a half-assed asymmetrical game mode. It's neither as interesting as proper GDI vs Nod asymmetry and it isn't as competitive as the current Nod vs Nod mode. I'd avoid trying to change that aspect. That said, I can totally see why players don't enjoy the game mode. It'll probably help a lot if the map change selection was clearer about which maps are GvN or NvN. Just adding a "X" at the end of map's name isn't sufficient. Like "Walls X". Really?

We do this. See here:

For regular players in the PUGs, we are looking to expand the balancing team. We’re looking for individuals who regularly attend the PUGs and well versed with the game. If you’re interested and fit the bill, throw a Discord DM to either Xeon Wraith#1717 or Quinc3y#3635. For those interested, here's a trip down memory lane: The things we’ve tried before: What have we changed?: How it all works: [This is the bit you’re probably reading this post for.] We normally split players in pairs based on these roles: Anti-infantry (Infantry) Anti-tank (Infantry) Tankers Field repairs Defenders & Sneakers The stronger you are in a role and the more often you play in it, the better you are considered to be in that role. We usually try to split players one-for-one in dedicated roles first. If there is an imbalance among the dedicated role players, we would try to correct it with multi-role players. Not each role is equally easy to counter, so we usually balance these roles in a specific order. 1. Anti-infantry (Infantry) Players who can aim well. This is almost entirely a mechanical skill. There are little counter-play options for weaker players to use which puts this at the top of pick priority. Whenever possible, we usually try to split players based on their preferred character choice. Players who can snipe will be split with other players who can snipe. Similar process for players who mostly play Mendoza/Mobius. This isn’t always possible, so we may have to split players who prefer completely different characters. We also sometimes get exceptionally strong infantry players around who can’t be adequately split with anyone, so we have to do larger splits of 4 or 6 people. Any remaining infantry imbalances are compensated in the ”Anti-Tank” role. 2. Anti-tank (Infantry) Anti-tank players who support the main tank mass. Raveshaws, Sydneys, Gunners, LCGs. These players usually can’t aim as well as the dedicated anti-infantry players, but they’re still better than most. We normally split these players with the anti-infantry player balance in mind. Due to their field presence, we usually hold off splitting all AT players at once. It’s important that we balance them with the “Tanker” role in mind. 3. Tankers The players in vehicles that hold the frontline. Every team needs solid tankers. As mentioned previously, we do use "Anti-tank" players sometimes to balance out for Tanker skill levels. On the whole we do try to split this role as evenly as possible though. There is also a bit of flexibility with balancing this role with the “Field Repair” role but we try not to use this. 4. Field Repairs Hotwires and Technicians. The unsung heroes of the battlefield. Every teams needs solid repairs. We usually try to balance these guys out numerically even as possible. This doesn’t always work out. It’s not uncommon for Tankers to switch over to Field Repairs once their vehicle dies, so the numbers in-game vary quite a bit. 5. Defenders & Sneakers Not every PUG we have people willing to defend for both teams so this is a two role split. Both roles can sometimes be hugely impactful and other times they don’t do anything useful. Pretty much all players who do play in these two roles also play in different roles as well, so we normally do larger splits for this role. BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE: In addition to main roles, there’s a lot of other things we keep in mind when making teams. Audio balance: The amount communication clutter every player provides. This is things like consistently trying to be funny with crappy jokes, calling out unimportant things and moaning about how “X killed you”. We try really hard to avoid putting too many loud individuals on one team as it can seriously dampen the PUG. We actively balance for this every PUG and this is usually done with larger multi-role splits to make sure game balance isn’t affected too much. Player attitudes: Not every player can keep their cool when they’re losing. Not every team can keep winning (otherwise we’ve probably fucked up). It’s important to make sure we balance out the players who take losing poorly so team morale doesn’t instantly crumble on a loss. Leadership presence: For when we don’t have commanders or for newer commanders, we try balance out the players who have led in the past. We’ll actively put more experienced, vocal players on teams lacking in commander experience to help push them towards effective strategies. Playstyles: There’s a lot of ways to play a role. Occasionally we get players with similar playstyles, like players who like to spam tunnels with low tier infantry or players who ram vehicles at their enemies. We try to split same playstyles when possible. Friendship groups and synergies: People tend to have more fun when they’re with friends. People tend to play better too. We try to keep track of this and keep friendship groups together when possible. This isn’t always possible due to balancing concerns. Player names: We try not to place players with similar names on the same team. It’s extra communication confusion for no reason. This is why you’ll never see Havoc89 and NF-Havoc on the same team for example.

We won't be halting the PUG. That said, in the past we have tried to have "Open PUGs". This is pretty much the same as a regular PUG except the server is open for anyone to join in. Historically this hasn't gone too well due to low turnouts. We could look into trying it again. Funnily enough though, the recent high player turnout in PUGs may well mean we might not have enough spaces for random players to join at all.

This post is intended to guide new commanders through the process of stepping up to command in a PUG and to give some general tips on commanding effectively. More detailed information about typical gameplans can be found in the PUG Meta Report. Linky. IMPORTANT GENERAL TIPS >>PLEASE READ THIS<<: Use your map! Get it on a keybind you can easily press. This is BY FAR the best way to get information on the battlefield. I have mine on ‘Z’ for example. Building kills are not the only way to cripple the enemy. Economy and Veterancy are important snowballing advantages for your team. FOCUS THE FUCKING HARVESTER! This is often the most important early game objective which can on some maps literally determine which team wins. Cruise Missiles are trash against PUG players. You’ve got some 20 people in voice chat. At least one of them is gonna call it out. Use EMP strikes if you need to push enemy tanks back. Early game all-in meme rushes are all-in. No shit. One team is going to have a bad time. Don’t expect moderators to rebalance the teams if it does or doesn’t work out. There’s usually a moderator on each team. If you want a break from commanding, you can ask them to take over for you. PRE-PUG: Let a PUG moderator know that you want to command. We’ll usually then ask you to select a couple players to join you. This is normally between 1 to 4, depending on player count. You don’t need to worry about picking strong players – the moderators will try to ensure teams are equally as strong. For the same reason this means we might deny some choices however! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED : Before the matches start, assign a dedicated defender and someone to take the commander powers if not yourself. Defender is the person in charge of mines – they may or may not camp base. Player with commander powers should always be with the main tank force unless rushing. EARLY GAME ROLLOUT: Organise early game rollout plans as players load in. This is normally done by spawn locations, but sometimes individual players are called out for tasks. Try to repeat in chat if you have time. i.e: PP/REF -> DEF HARV, BAR/WF -> ATK HARV Your priority one objective for early game is to get economy advantages. Kill and defend the harvesters and try to capture the silo if one is present. Monitor the spread of the team on your overview map as you begin to move out. Make sure you have at least one player on every route. Call out if you need to shift more players from one area to another. This is the prevent early rushes and infiltration catching you by surprise. Early game rushes here can be VERY RISKY, especially if you don’t use free infantry. Have a solid game plan if you want to do this. Depending on the map and your economy, call out the types of Tanks/AT to rollout with to contest the field. The default is Medium tanks for GDI and Arty/Lights for Nod. GDI in particular might need to rollout with Gunners or donate for Mediums if they lose their harvester. MID-GAME: Focus on getting field control for veterancy and economy advantages. This will make your team stronger and reduce the risk of rushes. If you completely have field control, consider gathering vehicles/infantry together to buff and kill a building. Make sure that your team has enough of an economy/veterancy to retake the field afterwards. If you completely lose field control, consider breaking out with a buff or consider trying a low player count rush. Make sure you have enough players to defend when you rush – you will not win in a base race with enemy tanks right outside your base. LATE GAME: Farm VP for heroic and attempt rushes. Rushes vary a lot depending on the map and buildings remaining. Ask your team for suggestions if you need ideas. It’s probably some rocket soldier rush though. COMMANDING TIPS: REPETITION! Repeat your orders. Hearing a single order is hard in a loud channel. Hearing the same order repeated 10 times is a lot easier. “When you die, get X” is a great way to get people for a rush. It appears natural and you won’t disturb players on the field this way. Assign your targets before every rush or push. Announce commander buffs before you use them. Let your team know when to push. Don’t underestimate Defensive buffs. The EMP immunity is incredible for breaking past enemy anti-tank infantry.

LAST UPDATE: 03/07/2020 This post is intended for new commanders or players to better understand what tends to happen in PUG matches. This is: NOT THE ONLY STRATEGY NOT THE BEST STRATEGY NOT MY OPINION NOT WHAT HAPPENS IN PUBLIC GAMES …Probably not the worst strategy? After the “standard strategy”, the map goes by order of least “standard-like”. @Readers : Let me know if you guys want more detailed map-specific information. I’ve been intentionally sparse to avoid throwing my opinion here. THE STANDARD STRATEGY: Early game: Focus economy gains. Defend and attack harvesters at the start. GDI’s harvester is generally more valuable to save/kill than Nods'. Capture Silo. Then focus other tech buildings. Watch out for any early rushes. GDI rollouts with Medium tanks and Nod with Arties and a few Light tanks. Mid game: Focus on crippling enemy economy and gaining veterancy advantages. Kill enemy vehicles and their harvester. Try to secure enough field control to hit enemy buildings for VP. Poke around the enemy team’s defences and look for opportunities for rushes. Late game: Farm VP for Heroic and try rushes. Elite rocket soldiers are a classic option. WALLS: ISLANDS: WHITEOUT: ARCTIC STRONGHOLD: OUTPOSTS: EVERYTHING ELSE: For the most part, all other maps follow the standard strategy.

Definitely not a fan of the asymmetry. The primary draw of this game mode for me was symmetrical teams - everything focused on the teams and strategies, not units. I can just play regular RenX for proper asymmetry. Wouldn't mind additions provided they're added to both teams. Dynamic lightning seems to be causing some pretty substantial FPS drops for some players. Do we need this?

Huh. I was thinking about this the other day. I don't think Hotwires or Technicians should be available from crates if the Bar or HoN are destroyed. Allowing it to be obtained by crates breaks the late game strategies around hunting these characters to permanently remove mines. Unlike other infantry characters, Adv.engineers can also get full effectiveness from mining without leaving the base, encouraging a campy playstyle. HOWEVER: All of my problems are centred round mining. I think we could move the rest of the Adv.engineer's kit into weapon crates. Getting a second timed C4 (and only a second) or an advanced repair gun from a weapon crate isn't that gamebreaking. The latter case in particular might allow Bar/HoN-less teams to maintain a decent tank force - something that is extremely difficult to achieve currently.

As the guy who often ends up balancing the teams for the PUG, I think you're underestimating the skill gap between some players. Just a few skilled players more on one team than the other can very quickly turn a otherwise balanced game into a stomp. The Renegade X playerbase simply isn't large enough to support RNG-based balance. Probably the easiest way to think about the issue with player balance is with some numbers. Lets use CS;GO for instance. In CS;GO the highest rank attainable is Global Elite, which corresponds to about 0.7% of the playerbase. The percentage that are actual professionals is much much lower, but regardless, anyone with the Global Elite rank is really fucking good. CS;GO has a playerbase of about 600,000 players, so there's around 4,200 Global Elites around. Plenty to run a tournament with a decent amount of them on every team. Renegade X currently has 384 players on it's leaderboard. Working with the 0.7%, we have 2.69 Global Elite equivalents. Say we round up to 3 players. With 4 teams, we'll still have one team without a GE equivalent. Worse yet, with randomised sorting we are more likely to have 2 GE equivalents on one team than not. With such a small playerbase, that's easily enough to swing balance to one team than the rest. An unfortunate side effect of low sample sizes. That's just mathematics and statistics. Edit: I'm happy to help out with balancing teams for this if you need it.

Ah, the tried and tested traditional GDI tactic. Very convincing argument. A lot of what @isupreme posted here seems to be already in use, though less explicitly and under different names. "Rally"/"Zone Plan" are core benefits of taking Field Control which is what most PUG matches revolve around. Controlling areas of the field with vehicles and infantry provides intel on enemy movements, acts as a defensive line against enemy rushes (effectively allied "hot zones") and provides snowballing benefits such as veterancy and credit income. With enough field control, it becomes possible to rally just outside an enemies' base and avoid all of their hot zones. "Pressure pump" is sorta used in PUGs - but it isn't really conscious decision. A lot of times teams will push different parts of the field and infantry tunnels based on team reinforcement requests. Like if someone were to say "We're losing the outer path, can I get some infantry support here?", our infantry players might divert from the tunnels to the field. "Squad patrol" is the only one we don't use. The reason why is purely due to player efficiency. Spending 4 players to deal with 1 player is extremely inefficient and effectively puts your team 3 players less than the enemy. An 15 vs 15 game turns into a 12 vs 15 which can have a massive impact in other areas of the game. Incidentally, this is also the reason infantry tends to be a problem to balance in PUGs.

Somewhat undecided. Long EMP timers are kinda necessary for Nod, as Mammoth TTKs are impractically long to work with if they have repairs. You can sorta make a similar argument for Flame Tanks hugging walls. On the flipside, getting EMP'd as Arty/MRLs is basically a death sentence. Perhaps a slightly weaker EMP grenade for Gunners/LCGs might be worth dicussing? Dunno about this particular point. Its usually not too difficult to avoid EMPs from infantry that you have sight of since you can usually react before they throw their EMPs - seeing a AT player de-equip their primary weapon for example is a telltale sight of an imminent EMP. Its much harder to react against EMPs thrown out of vision and often this is done by throwing EMPs in a high arc, above player vision. I suspect increasing the EMP timer might increase the range of high-arc throws, inadvertently buffing them.