What if just like marine get extra requisition points and access to better gear/loadouts with rank, Xenos too should get this. Hear me out, we can tweak it. If you drone service you will have a chance to get strain specialized perks that would only be able to get a combination of them equal to 100*tier of xeno meaning 100, 200, 300 respectively. it could be simple perks like extra slashing damage, extra acid damage, special ability upgrades (for example Spitter Acid Spray can get two upgrades +10 acid damage 100evo each), health, regeneration, and armor. Giving a more tiered and more importantly specialized outload aspect to xeno life.
This would not only PUSH the whole entire player base towards learning how to support the hive effectively as a drone. Lastly imagine all abilities being available to all xenos for evo points, warriors that can weed, dancers that can turn invisible, maybe the obvious balancing being tier of xeno minus one or something meaning tier ones wouldn’t get access to that aspect of loadout or maybe reduced ability strength(i.e. runners that turn invisible if they stand still long enough or alternatively vampire lurker with reduce length ravager scissor attack). The variations and combos could be easy to test too.
please leave thoughts below
P.S I think strains that are deemed broken or hard to deal or ineffective in most scenarios with like Impaler or dare I say, Warden, to one per hive just like burrower carrier guranteed evolution.
P.P.S XENO MAJOR
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Hello mutators, it’s been a while!
In all seriousness though, the issue with this last time was - much like marines - min-maxing and visual translation. You would get runners with massively boosted speed who were effectively impossible to target. This was funny, but not fun to fight against.
I believe the Xeno economy should be strictly reserved to easy-to-identify strains and structures, with small changes that marines can’t read being reserved to only the pheromones.
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Good lord, i remember the mutations bit we had for a good month or more.
My argument is the same as arty’s.
I think you can still salvage it however by just bringing it back for queen to use the hive mutation but with different effects.
Making evolution rate faster by 1 or other subtle changes for the hive. Giving the individual an option to change their playstyle is what the strains do and would make them obsolete if brought back.
The other aspect of this topic that giving xenos better stats if they have evo points is just describing the age system xenomorphs had. Discouraging players from fighting until they waited to have stronger stats.
Its a good idea to bring back personally but also just sounds like balancing hell for devs
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I don’t know I think it could add much needed customizability for xenos even if its just like RTS-esque +1 +2 +3 attack, health, or defense upgrades. I was just thinking about the xeno tech tree too. The weed spread on certain maps until “its too early to spread the hive this far” is maybe a little bit silly of a mechanic. If a xeno tech tree was re-implemented maybe one of the tech tree options would be increasing the square tileage your weeds can spread from the hivecore or more importantly a hive cluster. This could help maps like New Varadero or Shiva’s Snowball where if you choose LZ1 you are pretty much leaving the LZ right into the start of hive weeds. I could see this incentivizing marines to push when the xeno hive tech tree is not that advanced and xenos have limited engagement. I could see this make xenos working in a more coordinated fashion especially if hive clusters were used to extend the distance from the core weeds could spread when low tech. Xenos can gain tech from captures based on rank, similar to how marines get tech from items they identify from documents, and maybe gain tech points at a standard (not super influencial) rate depending on tech level.
I believe the Xeno economy should be strictly reserved to easy-to-identify strains and structures, with small changes that marines can’t read being reserved to only the pheromones.
As for the concerns, I mean marines have tons of different outloads that a lot of xeno players are expected to recognize by sight not even without those little top left indicators marines get. Not to my surprise, a lot of xeno gameplay requires paying attention the marine sprites to identify weapons, armor, and a lot of other important information. This will not confuse marine players, it will just add a new dimension of gameplay if some dedicated spriter wanted to ever do all the minute changes to xenos to distinguish between, for example, a defender with +0 claw upgrades versus a defender with +3 claw upgrades.
Lastly, while I would like to code and do these things I’m a lazy lazy lazy gamer who just works and comes home to relax and game. a tech tree that just adds the ability for xenos to get extra health or armor even if its like at most 50 health or 5 armor at max level would go so far even how miniscule those amounts are will help xenos survive one more hit which is often times all it takes. I think ability upgrades would be the hardest to implement for sure. Something more than 4 workable strains would add a lot to xeno main life.
Its a good idea to bring back personally but also just sounds like balancing hell for devs
Yea
I got flashbanged with the mutator thing we had. I wouldnt mind queen picking certain strains for the entire hive to influence the focus of it, but giving players a mechanical advantage over newer ones will just lead to fewer and fewer people having fun and only the ultra old robustos being able to clown on people, against.
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