Recently we tried not being able to anchor cades to fix Almayer hold. That really doesn’t work, because then all the content for Almayer hold- Lifeboats, escape pods, pumps- none of that is viable which throws the baby out with the bathwater.
Either:
Make it a very high chance for Almayer hold to not happen. This way when it does happen, it’s special- main problem with Almayer hold is, unlike the map, it’s never going to be different. It’d be like being forced to play the same map every time.
Or, make Almayer hold a voteable event when the DS gets hijacked.
The idea of everyone on the ship just freezing to death because of the cold is kind of hype, but I would also like AA to do something then. Pretty amazing to me that the xenomorph queen is able to pilot around the AA turrets direct fire.
(I’ve since refined this idea from “nothing happens” or “something happens” to instead introducing a system where there’s a ton of different “round endings” that get randomly picked, for example rarely predators may invade the almayer and blow it up or w/e.)
I think most of the dissatisfaction with hijack comes from the fact that for anyone who’s played a lot the tension, etc is inauthentic, you know exactly what is gonna happen ahead of time.
Unfortunately I’m pretty busy and I haven’t had time to nail my idea into a cohesive doc and bring it up for serious discussion/collaboration with the team or anything.
Just let the Queen decide whether she wants to hijack or not. Player control is cool. Queen is an important role with a lot of responsibilities, so Queen having the right to decide the outcome of the round (after winning the battle for the colony) is very much deserved.
RNG sucks because it’s random. A player can at least make a judgement whether hijack is going to be fun or not, depending on the circumstances (how many marines evacced, how easy it was to win the ground) etc. But for some unknown reason the current development team HATES player control and DOESN’T TRUST players.
I aim to to hope of adding ship tearing itself apart during hijack with usage of z level destruction to make it more cinematic with the ship explosions rapturing its floors. not saying it will solve your issues but might make it more cool
My main issue with hijack has always been how rote and trite it is. It’s not as fun as it could be when the sequence of events and the RP surrounding it run on autopilot to the point where commanders have pre-made announcements for the hijack. “The dropship has gone missing!” is pretty memetic at this point, to the point where it’s hardly acknowledged in comms. Having Xenos suddenly arrive in some fashion also skips the other half of that RP where everyone tries to explain why Xenos can fly.
Things that have always been fun are on your list there: not knowing you’ve been boarded until the shit hits the fan has a tension that’s exciting for boarders and observers, and shocking for its victims. Not knowing whether something is going to happen keeps things fresh. Not knowing how something is going to happen keeps things fresh. I think it could be worth the possible side-effect of people getting re-geared and resupplied at the end. It’s worth mentioning that it still happens now, or used to, if people aren’t checking out for hijack.
I think this particular line of thought is worth the exploration over removal, or voting, or an arbitrary death %.
Okay so what if we modified how collision works like this:
Set AA- it covers both upper and lower, only three sections to pick.
Queen picks route on 1 of 3 sections. Picks upper or lower, that doesn’t affect the AA.
If Almayer successfully AA’s the DS, hijack is averted; xenos blow up or sail off.
If Queen avoids AA, hijack happens.
Tactical paper rocks scissors basically to see if the round happens.
You are right that a lot of the dissatisfaction comes from knowing exactly what’s going down. I think a lot of that comes from fatigue. We play a different map every round, but hijack’s map is always the same, and the best way to alleviate that is to make the experience more novel.
I think if the ships hull took so much damage the coldness of space was an issue. I think you would die of no air first. Like space not cold in the we think of cold.
problem is unless it’s like a 1 percent chance people are still just gonna spend the time either cryo’ing or reloading because a good chunk of time there will be hijack so there’s no point taking off your gear and RP’ing, which doesn’t solve the problem of people just sitting around doing nothing.
