My suggestion is this; a gamemode where players are not a rugged army of marines, but rather play a plucky colony, who is faced with an insurmountable Xeno threat. Akin to the environment of Alien: Isolation, the human players would be purposefully underpowered, and would have to play every trick they can just to survive.
How?
Map-wise, it’d really be a matter of cleaning up some colonies and ensuring everything functions (so it can all be destroyed later).
The way I envision this functioning is that, similar to Whiskey Outpost, this gamemode would have to be voted into play by the players. Once done, the roles available for marine selection would be swapped to civilian counterparts. The round begins, colonists spawn in their respective departments, and are given some time to fraternize and interact. Xenos would begin as a relatively small Hive, stealing away colonists one by one and gradually expanding their Hive until they could properly begin to conquer the colony.
Colonists would be focused primarily on surviving, dispatching a distress signal and awaiting the arrival of the Almayer to end the round. In a way, this would be a similar experience to Whiskey Outpost, but much more freeform in terms of player choice for both the colonists and Xenos. Do you form a gang and hold out in a warehouse? Do you attempt to follow the quarantine order put in by the Director? Do you go and try to hunt down the Xenos yourself?
To avoid the Xenos being hunted down immediately, measures could be put in place similar to LV’s fog. Several areas could have a fog barrier put up to ensure the marines don’t know where the Hive has spawned, allowing Xenos real time to build up during the initial phase of making colonists disappear.
Isn’t this just base SS13?
No. Base SS13 very clearly does not actually take place within the Aliens universe, and has a much more lighthearted atmosphere, ergo it is all much more difficult to take very seriously. Watching the clown draw a .357 magnum and gun down a Xeno is not very scary.
This seems unbalanced against the Colonists.
Perhaps so, but the fun of a gamemode like this wouldn’t necessarily be winning, but rather the experiences of a player during the round. Players would leave with memories of desperate last stands, paranoia, and getting to really experience the atmosphere of Aliens beyond pure TDM.
Of course, I’m open to criticism and further discussion on the idea, this is just a fledgling concept and I’d be fine with any changes necessary to make it more palatable for potential play in the future.