Topic: So, what now?
Well, the expansion was cool.. Added lots of new terrain to see which was fun to explore and it enabled some pretty epic battles. I can't fault it.
Explosion damage seemed pretty cool but it's certainly not solved blobbing or reduced engagement sizes. It's still completely possible to get a large 50 vs 50 fight and have explosion damage mean very little. I'd much rather see a mechanic that makes it beneficial to break up into smaller groups. What happens in a blob is simple. As soon as you target an enemy with more than three or four people that person falls back and lets someone else take their place. The only way to kill an enemy is to spread fire and switch primaries to a secondary locked target in smaller groups rather than all at once. For this to work you simply need superior numbers and be willing to lose at least half of them (But crushing the enemy is worth it, no?).
To all those out there that have fought in blobs, would you not prefer the game to favour smaller 10 to 20 man squads moving as separate entities yet operate as a whole?
Why doesn't break up work now? What's stopping us just doing it? That's simple. When fighting a blob if you break up into smaller gangs and attempt a entrap the enemy all the enemy blob needs to be is rush the smaller or weaker groups first and easily overpower them. The only time this doesn't work is when you have greater numbers and then strategy doesn't make a different. You'll some robots but as long as you don't run away you'll win.
This game does something most others can't. It supports large fights easily which is great but honestly after winning and losing a few large fights I feel like they're not as exciting or enjoyable as smaller gang fights. I'd really like to see interference rebalanced or a new mechanic that works along side it that supports smaller gangs from the rushing blob scenario. Just because the enemy has more numbers they should still have to fight in smaller groups and from different vectors. Perhaps decrease the damage but increase the fall off of robot explosions but I don't think that alone would do it.
This is posted in general discussion for a reason. I'd like to judge how other people, large and small, feel about this. There is nothing stopping NAPs and blobbing as long as you train everyone to understand where they need to be in a fight.
