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You know that feeling when you just have too much sh*t? You're having a great wipe, but there's really no point in playing anymore. This usually hits us around Sunday night, sometimes Saturday night, the working week is about to start again, why raid when we don't even have space as it is? Why PVP when dying literally means nothing is really lost? Sure PVP is fun, but it's missing that element of 'YES MORE GEARSETS'.
Since we've started camping Oil Rig from the start of the wipe, I've been getting this feeling as early as Friday afternoon. The server we play on wipes BPs every other month, so we've had all the BPs since the first two weeks, with the map wiping every week. All of our wipes recently have gone the same, build near Large Oil Rig, rush T2, camp Rig until we have what we need to raid, go raid.
The Oil Rigs
Don't get me wrong, I don't find the Oil Rigs boring, it's actually really good fun, the Scientist's AI isn't terrible and it can be challenging at times. But the loot, granted we recycle most things, is way too OP. We'll recycle the following every run:
- Buckshot, Slugs, 40mm Shotgun, All HV and Incendiary Ammo
- All components except for Sewing Kits, Springs, Pipes, Gears, Rifle Bodies
- Any other deploy-able except for the first few Large Furnaces, Refineries and all Auto Turrets
A run takes about 5-10 minutes to get to the top, depending on how geared we are. Then it takes about 5 minutes to start and finish the event and then 10 minutes to get the shinook crate and gtfo. So let's say, on average an Oil Rig run takes 30 minutes, start to finish, no counters, no (or few) deaths.
From one Large Oil Rig run, that takes 30 minutes, you can expect the following in terms of loot:
- 250 - 400 HQM
- 1.2k - 1.8k Scrap
- 1k - 2k Gunpowder
- 3k - 6k Metal Fragments
- 4-10 of any of these items in any combination: C4, Chest Plate, Facemask, Rocket, Rocketlauncher, AK, Bolt, Grenade Launcher
Small Oil Rig is quite similar, since most loot comes from Puzzles, Heavy Scientists and Locked crate.
Comparison to other 'Tier 3' Monuments
Let's compare this to the previous king of Monuments, the Military Tunnels. I've always liked Military Tunnels, it can be a really intense experience. The scientists throw nades, use meds, are f*cking everywhere. Besides that it's quite dark, giving it that aerie feeling. You constantly have to watch over your shoulder to see if people are comming in behind you, once you finally done the puzzle and reached the Red Card room, good luck getting out. Everyone has heard that you're doing the whole thing, there's only two exits and both of them lead to the surface. Fighting your way out is hard, dangerous and you have so much loot, it's exciting.
Oil Rigs, not so much so. Sure everyone who's set the pager to the rig frequency will know you're doing it, but how often do you have one of those? But once you've made it to the top, you have to f*ck up massively to lose to anyone who comes to counter. The only way we've gotten countered is by a group of similar size using 3 Minicopters to in fly behind us while we were doing the Heavy Scientist event.
And I haven't even discussed the loot of Military Tunnels yet, frankly we've done it a few times a few weeks ago and I'd say the loot in Military Tunnels is about 30-40% of Oil Rig, if that. You get a good 400-600 Scrap, maybe some guns, but no where near as much HQM and other resources.
Launch Site is also pretty decent, comparable to Military Tunnels but a bit worse, less Elite Crates, Bradley is broken af and it's just kind of annoying to drink water all the time.
Both of these monuments have one major downside to them though and that's that they have a cooldown after it's been done. Meaning that you don't even know before you go there if it's been done or not, meanwhile both Rigs have no cooldown, once it's done and everyone leaves, everything instantly respawns.
Problems
After two Oil Rig runs, you don't really need anything anymore. You have enough to craft two tier 3 workbenches, if you wanted to. In our 4-6 man group, everyone has a decent gun, everyone has gear or we have enough components and resources to craft gear. We don't even need Crude Oil or Cloth, with the metric f*ck tonne of scrap the rigs give, you can just buy everything at Out Post. Fly out with a Minicopter, buy 6 Tactical Gloves for 240 Scrap, recycle, 1.2k Cloth. You can straight up buy Fuel at a 1:5 ratio. Buy a jackhammer, farm some sulphur, raid, snowball.
The Rig not having a respawn timer is honestly crazy, when we have 2-3 Minicopters, we just fly over, clear the top and have the bottom scientists cover us from the bottom. Once it's done, we first fly a few people back with loot, then we reset it by hovering just outside of it and repeat.
The loot table of Heavy Scientists is way too good. It's better than elite crates, because it has more rolls per kill than an elite crate, I think the Heavy Scientists roll 6 to 8 times on their drop-table, where-as elite crates only roll 4 to 6 times.
Problems TL;DR:
- Oil Rig gives too much scrap. Scrap = Resources in combination with Outpost
- Oil Rig gives too many raw resources
- Oil Rig gives too many tier 3 items
- Oil Rig is too easy to defend
- Oil Rig has no respawn cooldown
Proposed Solutions
- Introduce 30-60 minute cooldown after Oil Rig has been completed.
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Reduce the loot to bring it in line with other T3 monuments by:
- Nerf Heavy Scientist loot table significantly, make them drop only Grenade Launchers rarely (10%) and ammo more frequently (excluding HE), the reward should be the Chinook crate
- If the heavy scientist drop table remains unaffected, get rid of the puzzles/elite crates on the Rig instead.
Create more ways up to the Oil Rig, especially at the entry floor (Boat Entry) and create cover from top down. When a team with a boat arrives and they make it under the rig, they should at least be able to get on the bottom floor of the rig. Currently there's one way up and it's really easy to hold from the top floor.
Once the Oil Rig resets, delete all boats in a 250m radius, the amount of boats there, even with increased decay, is insane.
TL;DR
Oil Rig gives too much loot in comparison to other T3 monuments, so much so that there's no point in doing anything else. It needs to be brought back in line with other T3 monuments, as End-Game is achieved too quickly at the moment. Once you are on an Oil Rig it's almost impossible to lose to a counter.
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