Offworld Industries introduces new FOB and Rally systems to promote team-wide coordination
Hot off the heels of Squad’s Beta 21 update, developers Offworld Industries have shifted the game’s meta from simple head-on assaults to a more considered approach emphasizing supply lines, team cohesion, or coordination between infantry and logistics.
According to a post from Offworld Industries, the old system allowed single Squads to operate autonomously for long periods without consideration to the rest of the team. Now Squad Leaders must resupply each Rally Point from Logistic Trucks. This means Squad Leaders will have to plan carefully with others to preserve consistent momentum in the likely event a Rally Point gets destroyed.
In previous builds, the Squad Rally Point was a nearly infinite source of respawns that could be reinstalled almost as soon as it got destroyed. Now, Rally Points are a physical inventory item that Squad Leaders will have to replenish just as they would any other equipment like explosives and ammunition.
Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) also got a rework to prevent them from being instantly wiped out after taking enough damage. FOBs operate in the same way as Rally Points but are accessible to a whole team instead of a single Squad.
Nobody likes staying behind and missing out on all the action and Offworld Industries knows this. In the post, they wrote,
We are aware that the FOB Radio in its current status is very vulnerable to enemy attacks. No matter the defenses setup, the FOB Radio is still the weak point in a Forward Base. The act of watching over the FOB Radio can often be a dull and tedious element to gameplay, yet is often necessary to keep that FOB operational.
Beta 21.1 now allows a 60 second grace period for teams to repair FOBs. This way, those about to be overrun can have a fighting chance and even mount a counterattack without fear of losing their forward position.
Offworld Industries hopes that with this change, players will be much more likely to defend FOBs from incoming attacks.
This is in stark contrast to the previous meta, which allowed for even a single combatant to completely cripple a team’s momentum by destroying a FOB’s radio. Now that FOBs take a full 60 seconds to “Bleed Out,” the initial assault must be followed by a sustained, coordinated attack to prevent the defending team from repairing their FOB.
Beta 21.1 also features many new optimizations. These include an upgrade to loading times by allowing for higher bandwidth, visual fidelity, collision polish and crashes. There’s even added support for testing 100 player servers – the current player cap per server is 80.
There wasn’t any new information on the upcoming “Fallujah” map, which has been in development for the past three years.
It’s nice to see Offworld Industries make good on their roadmap promises, especially when so many AAA titles can’t seem to follow through. Still, it’s hard to guess when Squad will finally reach a full release, seeing as it’s been in “Early Access” since 2015.
Squad is available now on Steam, solely for Microsoft Windows.
