@Cabal enlightening, thanks!
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Because the game is about marines liberating the colony from xenos??? But again, there is no mechanical incentive. To win the game you can literally never leave FOB. The only reason marines attack is indeed boredom. This is very problematic. In fact one may call this ludo-narrative dissonance. The plot is about saving the colony, the gameplay is afking in FOB until xenos suicide out of boredom. This is not good.
“But marines are not always afking in FOB”. They are not. But afking in FOB is the most optimal strategy to win the game. And this is a big problem, made worse by stims getting more easy to obtain (you used to kinda require intel thus map control to get stims, now you can just as effectively get stims from xeno corpses).
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And making xenos stronger in time will somehow change it? What it will achive is forcing marines (and command) to metarush with big ungaball and if this fails, immediately cadehug.
Xenos have it the same. The most optimal strategy to win the game for xenos is to cavehug (with occasional ambush castes like lurker catching bored lone marines wandering around). There is no mechanical incentive to rush marines, you can sit in caves till enough of marines perma, that they decide to evac with just runners tickling their cades as they will never again have a chance to break cavehugging, so you then hijack and you won. With the only “balance” factor being player’s boredom, which causes them to venture away from caves and then die on cades and vice versa.
And then somebody proposes to add maturity on top of that.
Back to the “either it is a marine steamroll, or xeno major slog”.
They should be removed till proper rework is in place.
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It is an incentive to attack xenos, yes. It’s not perfect, but it is what used to work. Now it is broken.
False because nuke exists. In fact xenos got a lot more incentives to contest the colony than marines.
Not only this is false, but also your point contradicts the game design, where xenos are supposed to be the defensive faction.
Won’t happen under current leadership.
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I remember a old mechanic when marines could struggle out of hive so xenos had to keep someone at hive all the time to guard the caps, now its just unstruggleable ghosting fest if you get capped
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Just as King exists too.
It is not just “not perfect”. It was worse than it is already.
I wouldn’t consider xenos being a defensive faction. Melee faction always tends to be on the offensive. It is marines who have a lot of defensive options, while xenos can just spam walls.
Sure, they are on the defensive at the start of the game, but as soon as they stop marine momentum, they become prime agressors.
Damn shame.
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EPIC IDEA!!! : bring back xeno aging but also shrapnel perma removing health from xenos (until they resist to get it out or smth) !!! 
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Ancient Grug is a terror.
Once upon a time Ancient Empresses (The highest form of Queen age) was so rare that people didn’t realize that balance nerfs unintentionally powercrept her.
She was literally completely bulletproof. Like armor piercing rounds did zero damage to her. I remember after a particularly long match fighting my way into self destruct with a dozen marines mag dumping me and doing absolutely no damage. I could twoshot unarmored marines. I’m sure it was terrifying for them and very cinematic but still not good for gameplay.
Someone with access to the code (We were still closed source back then) noticed it then and before another Ancient Empress rose it was unfortunately fixed.
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Kinda soul though, unironically.
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It takes like 3 or so hours to get Ancient Empress, though. You had to survive 3 whole hours of marines doing nothing or just sucking for this to happen. And there was no King / Nuke to end a round so that was basically the way you ended long rounds back then; the old version of King.
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For King you need to control two towers which are placed on the marines’ side of the colony. You cannot cavehug for king. You can cadehug for nuke. Feel the difference?
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Only thing i remember back then when i was main crusher is that the armor if depleted it took 20-30 minutes resting to get it up to 100% again. Once you lost some armor you better relax on weed a short while. Rest is just a blur for me.
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Old aging was a mess, both in terms of how to balance it and just in general.
People are way too used to the current aging mechanics tied to playtime, but there are other ways to ramp up xenos overtime with how long they stay alive.
Instead of aging, give xenos a pointscore that fills with damage taken, damage delt, and marines capped (flat give it to the last two or three xenos who tackled a marine before being hugged or something idk).
You get say, three levels with a few different choices in each of them.
The buffs kinda small and inline with the classes abilities, drone castes get a choice between bit of additional armor, increased hugger placement speed and plasma regen.
Lurkers/runner/ get slash damage increase, lowered ability downtime, maybe small passive plasma/health regen off weeds to sustain the backline for longer etc.
Maybe even straying away completely from buffing armor/damage/movespeed is a solid choice, low balance impact but a few somewhat interesting choices that naturally go along with you playing the caste effectively, not enough to generally turn the tide in any fight, but enough to further incentivize capping so you get more points, and not rewarding anyone just sitting in the hive waiting.
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Yo xeno aging got removed? Since when? Shows how fuckin long its been since I’ve played lol. But yeah I remember it being absolute dooooooogshit, just waiting in a corner for a year so they could take more than two whole bullets. (I was also ass though so take that into consideration)
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sorry xenos arent allowed to win the attrition warfare
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What marines lose in time during combat trough the round: Materials like metal for cades, special restricted ammunition (AP), advanced healing stuff, numbers, ground, special roles (comtechs, corpsman, specs), restricted gear, limbs (replaced by inferior mechanical), explosives, long-range communication, etc.
What xenos lose in time during combat trough the round: Numbers, ground and big supply of eggs, lol, long-range communication (regain as soon as queen evolves from any drone).
But it is xenos who aren’t allowed to win the attirtion warfare, the side with literally limitless resources other than numbers, which marines also can’t replace (sure, defib exist, but marine who was just “killed” doesn’t really count as dead if he can be revived, latejoins give larvae so it even itselfs out).
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I overall disagree, but only just barely. I agree xenos overtime do not lose much. With T1s ready to be T2s and T2 to T3, queen has to be off ovi for a long time before the hive turns into T1s. Fortifications are lost but a good hivelord will replenish and keep a balance where the fight is currently. But as a xeno, it can be a 3 hour round and I am still being pelted by AP ammo and CAS. Latejoiners bring a fully supplied gear. Some gear is recycled off dead bodies. OT makes more shells over time, and req’s goodies trickle through the round. M56D has like 1400 ammo to burn without asking for extra ammo. If the xenos push to fob, a whole new set of marines who were waiting there have fresh AP to continue the pew pew. Sometimes then CO and SOs come down with their own MK1 AP pew pew. If the round goes to 1.5 hours, marines now have stims and white flames and greenos and xenos now have…what they started with.
Aging is not the answer though. Most of the points were made by others. In general though, win more mechanics, and afk awarding mechanics are bad. With win more mechanics, the gap between novice and expert players widens, and you shouldn’t have to afk as a novice just to have a reasonable chance at survival.
It really was essentially “sit in the caves for 30 minutes and then win”
Immature xenos were a little weaker than xenos currently, but that only lasted for - what? 10 minutes? They would all be matured or nearly so by the time fighting started, even when we had no restriction on drop time and regularly deployed people in the first 10-15 minutes, rather than 20-30 minutes. (and that early drop time was NECESSARY)
Mature adult xenos were about as strong as they are right now - but any xenos that survived past that stage started to get ridiculous. I already think a lot of xeno castes are ridiculous bullet sponges that need complete redesigns, and xenos had 2 maturation levels that were like +20% to hp and damage on top of what they are right now today. Imagine trying to kill a hedgehog ravager that has 1.5x more hp and kills/beheads/disarms you in 2 attacks.
I can’t overemphasize that I never ever want to go back to the gameplay we had when maturity was a thing. Either marines metarushed and won in the first 40 minutes or xenos survived the initial attack and were so buffed up after it was stupid and not worth playing.
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Was changed a while ago so might not be accurate, but at the time of change current t1s sit at a power level a little over elite. (aka t2s a little over mature, t3s a little over young)