Outpost mode?

[peglegswansoon]

I've made this thread for people to share thoughts and experiences about the new Outpost gamemode that's coming in 1.8. For those that didn't get the chance, it was available for a weekend on the CTE for anyone to try. It's similar to the mode of the same name from Insurgency 2014 but with a few significant differences.

So, what is Outpost? Essentially it's a wave-defense mode. Your team has to defend an objective from increasingly numerous and difficult AI. New to the Sandstorm version is instead of defending a single weapons cache, which was notoriously vulnerable to ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Molotovs) you hold onto capture points. In addition, instead of losing outright if you fail to defend an objective, your team will fall back to a new one. You're basically playing Checkpoint but in reverse! The goal is to hold off all waves of enemies (there are 10 by default) without losing your final objective.

Some other funfacts I noticed from playing:

• The mode is coming to Powerplant, Summit, Precinct, Refinery, Outskirts and the new map Tell. It can be played in both Day and Night

• You play as the Security team with all kits available, including fire support iirc

• At the start, everyone gets 2 supply. Your get 1 extra for every wave completed

• You get a grace period of 60 seconds between waves to resupply

• If you die, you'll respawn at the end of the wave

• You can steal enemy equipment during waves but at the wave end anything on the ground despawn, and you can't resupply enemy weapons with mags

• "Special" enemies will spawn for some waves - suicide-bombers only, sneaky snipers with suppressors, guys with RPGs, the MG3-toting Blaster, Ninjas with silenced Grease-guns to name a few. Some of them have more HP than usual which I didn't like very much.

• Sometimes, your team will be given 2 objectives to defend simultaneously. If you lose one it's gone forever, but you won't fall back unless you lose both.

• There appeared to be a bug with the fallback mechanic - if you're on the final wave and everyone dies you lose the round anyway, even if you weren't on the last objective. Unsure if this is intentional but I doubt it.

• Depending on the map, some players would try to spawn-camp the enemies. This was a bit weird and didn't play very well, perhaps that was just the culmination of "trying to get the most kills".

Overall I think this mode has some potential. You end up treating the whole match like counter-attacks from Checkpoint, personally I find them to be one of the more entertaining parts of the gameplay, especially when the team is working together to cover each other and employing a proper strategy. Particularly if we are able to adjust things like the numbers of bots/what special bots appear/how many waves we have to survive/how much supply we get etc, I think we can make the mode both challenging to our standards but also keeping it entertaining.

What do you guys think of this mode? Please leave any thoughts/feedback/other stuff I missed below!

[Spawnsy]

I didn't like it when I tried it, but then I was only there to try the 40mm shotgun. I wasn't really paying that much attention to the technics of the defence. I'm happy to play it and see what we can make of it if that's what people want.

[Cold Blood Nor]

This sounds really refreshing tbh. If we are to try it, maybe not have the server as a hardcore one?

[Chimp]

Sounds like fun to try. Think we should explore it in other servers first though.

[peglegswansoon]

Solid points. Perhaps if we want to try it when the update drops, I can spin up the temporary server for testing. We can jump on and play Outpost, and just as easily jump back to the main server if people aren't enjoying it

[Spawnsy]

A sound plan.

[Harrod200]

Sounds interesting to me. When's it due to drop?

[peglegswansoon]

Word from the devs is release on October 6th.

[Ghostie]

I must admit I wasn't really looking forward to Outpost mode but after playing it with the bots tweaked up a little its very very interesting can be manic but really fun we eventually got beaten but that was due to a lack of teamplay rather than the amount of bots attacking.

[WuMing]

Mode seems interesting. Had a nice time playing this evening.
I think the 250 points per supply should be removed as it promotes more frag hunting instead of working together for objective.