Fake Beacons

[Kriemhild Gretchen]

I'd like to ask why people place them so much. There's really very little point to it, except in the midst of a mass attack. All it does is make people search for 5-10 seconds before someone says "fake" in teamchat and they return to business as usual. All it does is waste $1000 that could go toward much, much better things. There's really no point to it.

[AkillerNXC]

Several reasons. If you lose barracks/hon and WF/Air then its all you really have for defense. It also helps distract the other team for 10-20 seconds. If you've been placing fakes every two - three minutes for about 15 minutes, they'll automatically assume fake, so when you place a real one, chances are, they wont look very hard. If they have the field, a fake can sometimes help them retreat a little bit, allowing your team to push forward.

[MajorLunaC]

Yes, as an evil decoy during real beacon placement.

To screw with you mainly, especially near the end of the game when everyone has excessive amounts of money during a stalemate. Futility breeds madness.

If only it only mentioned the beacons placed in your own base, like any reasonable warning system should.

[SFJake]

I hate fake beacons, particularily beacon spams. I would permanently ban people from spamming beacons end game. The game should have a system that at the very least prevents that. And if I had anything to do with it, I'd remove the ability to place beacons in your own base as well. Makes no sense, looks dumb, and is annoying as hell.

[Goku]

My server auto kicks after 3 beacons in under 2mins.

But fake beacons are a valid tactic, the amount of times on field that works if you fake ion half the front defenders rush to the back of the base before realising its a fake.

Also fake beacons help the spys out if say on field there has been 2 fakes, obi hasn't fired? or charged up? and you hear another beacon well half the time i think sod it its a fake and we end up almost loosing the air due to a spy is unreal.

[ARC_trooper]

I hate fake beacons, particularily beacon spams. I would permanently ban people from spamming beacons end game. The game should have a system that at the very least prevents that. And if I had anything to do with it, I'd remove the ability to place beacons in your own base as well. Makes no sense, looks dumb, and is annoying as hell.

It doesn't look dumb when the enemy is breaking into your base and they get a nuke/ion to their faces.

[R315r4z0r]

They should just make it so that one player can't place a second beacon until the first one goes off or is disarmed.

Or, they should make it that a single player can only have 1 active beacon at a time. So if they plant one beacon then buy another and place the second beacon, the first beacon should automatically disappear (along with the announcements that come with it.)

The biggest issue I have with fake beacons/beacon spamming isn't the explosions or the screen shaking... it's the audio spam. I can't hear a damn thing with EVA is saying 20 things at one time.

[JBV3737]

Beacon spam is a valid tactic to hide a real beacon. mutiple beacons is a must for sbh to successfully cooperatively take out multiple buildings or increase odds. Self beacon spam is also a valid tactic so kicking me when i HAVE a valid beacon is wrong, I place one ontop of wf, jump down and kill myself, respawn and place 4 more beacons, everyone assumes its fake because its all the same person...

Like you guys said, its the audio that is troubling. So a simple solution is the audio only plays for the earlest beacon of that type (one for nuke one for ion), all the other beacons after it is ignored. To counter the lack of information your bombarded with... Why not have onscreen display counters of each beacon? Top right corner every nuke and ion is listed and the timer of it counts down. you can visually see it. no audio to distract you besides the first audio cue. It would make the beacon spam only a visual show, not an annoying bug buzzing in your ears.

[DoctorB0NG]

In old Renegade each beacon has its own audio countdown regardless of how many beacons were placed. I really really like JBV3737's idea of a nuke timer countdown.

[R315r4z0r]

Beacon spam is a valid tactic to hide a real beacon. mutiple beacons is a must for sbh to successfully cooperatively take out multiple buildings or increase odds. Self beacon spam is also a valid tactic so kicking me when i HAVE a valid beacon is wrong, I place one ontop of wf, jump down and kill myself, respawn and place 4 more beacons, everyone assumes its fake because its all the same person...

That's the sort of tactic that should be coordinated with your team. Not something that should be possible by yourself.

[MajorLunaC]

But you can't hear the beeping from a real beacon with all the noise spam. Can easily lose a building by just not hearing the beacon over a ton of noise, even a heli nearby. There should be a better way to detect and announce a beacon.

[Kriemhild Gretchen]

But you can't hear the beeping from a real beacon with all the noise spam. Can easily lose a building by just not hearing the beacon over a ton of noise, even a heli nearby. There should be a better way to detect and announce a beacon.

You should be able to Q them, really. Maybe have it give a tooltip on other player's screens, like an objective marker in other games. Or would that be too easy?

[R315r4z0r]

Pressing Q on an enemy beacon should display it on your team's minimap.

[cncforever]

Last night on Field, someone placd a fake beacon and then a spy placed a real one. After searching for the fake one all over the place, even when you know it might be a real one, I think it has a psychological impact. People made less effort or half the effort to find the second beacon and lost the strip.