Brainstorm to make NSO's more attractive.

That's what the playerbase is these days. Infantrysiding lone wolves. Everyone else got pushed out to cater to infantry lone wolves. They even just nerfed beacons cus lone wolves were crying about actually having to use their brains for once and not just zerg zerg.

I think that's a bug.

Since the "bugfix" I've never been able to spawn in a droppod. The timer is constantly between 2:20 and 2:50 whenever I die. I've got the feeling that either the total recharge time for the beacon has been set as the respawn timer instead, or that the squad beacon placement cooldown which is supposed to happen to the entire squad has been misplaced on the respawn timer instead, IE if one person spawns on the squad beacon the cooldown resets for everyone.

Robots more attractive?

Boobs and Buns.

At the moment the NSO are severely disadvantaged and can be not fun to play. Not only do we not have a light fighter or Max access, earning certs & exp when you're outnumbered is also harder. But the main thing is; being the underdog is fine, but being the underdog without friends in an unfamiliar faction & without guildmates just sucks. Even if you do manage to form a part of a Platoon after the continent locks you are reshuffled into the underpop'd faction and have to start again with a new group. A lot of the time you've filled in for a faction that is bleeding numbers not because they are just underpop'd but because they don't have leadership online and aren't being led strategically and are just demoralised.

So when we join there's usually 10 squads of 1 and/or maybe 1-2 full squads in a platoon of silence that are rightfully getting pushed hard because they just aren't working together. Adding numbers will work sometimes but other times it's more about adding meat for the grinder which just isn't fun especially when you're trying to level and don't have a large variety of weapons like normal.

In order to make the NSO more appealing, the appeal shouldn't just be about being a robot but about helping the underdog.

(tldr) So here's my list:

0/ Ensure the NSO allocation is based on population AFTER the factions fill a continent. (sometimes an NSO can end up on the most populated faction when joining after a continent is locked as the numbers are still settling in those faction)
1/ Platoon exp bonus, just like with squads but platoon-wide. (this will help underpop'd factions still gain exp that they miss out on by being outnumbered and help them to progress as well as encourage squads forming into platoons and working together)
2/ NSO's need access to faction weapons. (All of them; the incentive to be able to equip multiple faction weapons will draw a lot of new players to roll an NSO and as they are across all factions there isn't a balance issue)
3/ Give Engineers and Medics an extra implant slot. (These are the support classes that change the tide in close fights but are especially important in unbalanced fights)
4/ NSO specific faction voices and nameplates. (This will allow platoon/squad leaders to identify NS players in squads and players in proximity)

For me, the biggest hurdle with NSO is the lack of incentive to start all over again. Maybe they could implement a feature where, for every 750 certs you earn as an NSO, you get to claim the same amount of certs for free on one of your other characters. If they did that, I would play NSO.

As paying members helping to keep the game afloat, surely there needs to be more incentive than:

• We are helping to balance the population - Fine, but what am I getting out of it?
• We get to play as robots - The novelty has already worn off.

Until there is more incentive I will not touch it, especially while the boosts on my other characters count down while I play NSO.

NSOP should be somehow different to begin with.

Since they are robots, why don't play with some of their traits to introduce some interesting gameplay variation? Things like:

- they are robots (let's say cyborgs) so they are x% slower (or faster) compared to humans. To compensate, they are less (or more) vulnerable to weapons.

- engineers should be able to repair (aka heal) them, just like MAXes. Rezzed by Medics as usual to not make things more difficult to re-code

- Alter the shield/health composition to be 80/20 (built-in bionics) and give them accelerated shield recovery like Engies. To compensate, make them more vulnerable to EMP grenades and Orbital Strikes (longer effects).

- ...

Nothing OP or game breaking, just making them a little bit different, otherwise it is just a skin.