Currently Hijack is frustrating for both sides, what are ways to improve it?

General Discussion
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I want hijack to be enjoyable for both sides, and right now it’s pretty controversial. It’s to the point that we just had 7-8 xenos ghost on the dropship pre-hijack because they didn’t want to play it, which was like 1/3rd of the hive. I know quite a few marines cryo for it, as well.

Half the lobby preferring to leave over participating is terrible, and i don’t think the new hijack update really helped, although it did add some cool things. I think the rift opening in the middle of the ship and crashlanding are pretty cool, but i think overall it just made it go from xeno victory lap and survival rp for marines to a 50/50, if not more marine sided.

(Also the rift is straight up a boon to marines cause xenos have to crawl down and back up and can be freely shot from 2 zlevels above without much counterplay for the majority of them.)

I’ve got a few ideas, but i’d like to hear others as well.

  1. Allow xenos to use boons shipside. It would take some refactoring, and obviously certain ones like king aren’t feasible, but a lot of the others would work fine imo.

  2. Honestly, allow cades to be built again. It was kind of a snowflake change and it’s been circumvented so much that it’s more trouble dealing with windowsills and 4 layers of railings on cades to prop them up than it is to just have boilers to whittle down the cades. Not to mention that it’s hella immersion breaking to deal with people constantly circumventing it. Hell, we have despoilers now, too. If anything, maybe reduce the amount of people able to cade cause it’s basically everyone and their mother that can do it.

  3. Possibly lower the amount of gamer gear CIC get, but i don’t think that would go over well and it would affect non-hijack situations as well.

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I’ve got a really good idea that would solve all hijack related problems forever but I can’t do this again

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First off, people who don’t want to play Hijack should be able to pod off immediately if CIC calls evac instead of having to wait for the pods to fuel. Also will mitigate low amounts of aliens v entire marine warship we currently have. The non-hijacked dropship should allow an evac flight option on hijack because… it’s a dropship, not a tram, it can dynamically fly to a higher orbit to await pickup.

For hijack itself, I feel that it’s actually set up fairly well right now in theory, though it could do with better communication on how the FTL mechanics actually work [What exactly triggers a failure to keep FTL fueled? I’ve seen it fail with working pumps, but I’ve seen it not fail with some pumps not working]. However, I’ve played almost exclusivly as a Marine, so I cannot speak for the Alien experience.

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I am against the proper cading of Almayer again. In its sudo design currently those cade are really weak due to being able to sometimes hit the railing behind and pushing the cade after. When proper cading existed, marines would turn lifeboats into a 25 minute fob siege. Believe it or not, what we have now is better than those days.

As you said for 3, changing the gear changes groundside gameplay, which is currently in a good enough spot.

To be fair, I am not saying I have good solutions either. Xenos shouldn’t have to fight a second battle they know they are going to lose, or have a good chance to lose. Some of my thoughts are making pumps dead for good once killed, making infinite ERT always hostile, and allow queen to be able to skip hijack.

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is it removing it :eye:

I want to like hijack, i really enjoyed hijack when i first started playing, but then it’s just kind of been chipped away at again and again and I find myself disliking the current iteration.

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I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but I actually enjoy hijack now with the FTL evac update.

I do think that some cases (maybe only plasteel?) should be able to be wrenched down on Almayer to defend pumps and stuff. I also think xenos get enough of a boost with their larva surge during hijack, so I don’t think they need boons

Overall, hijack is much better than it used to be.

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FTL made hijack undeniably marinesided. Now marines get infinite ERTs for accomplishing their objective (fairly easy one, plus people meta the fuck out of it already), while xenos have to work against a ticking clock and even if they succeed they are rewarded with… nothing. There is a 50% chance there will be a rift across the Almayer (which is arguably still something that works in favor of marines, as OP mentioned) and that’s literally it.

I think FTL needs to be remade from scratch. Sword of Damocles hanging over your head is a BAD reward for winning groundside. If anything, it’s xenos who should get infinite ERTs after accomplishing some objective, and marines should only get the chance to evac. Or save the ship, but only after they defeated xenos. It literally needs to be the other way around than what we have now. Make it so xenos can crash the Almayer after breaking all the pumps and get forsakens to help them, while the marines need to hold the pumps to prevent that, without getting to the ERT station (at least until xenos are destroyed). Just prolonging the FTL timer WILL NOT solve the problem.

Or just make hijack optional. If you want hijack to be rigged against xenos so much, just let them opt out. If you want to dunk on marines, you take the risks of losing against really bad odds. If you don’t, you don’t.

Though we all know this is not happening. So FTL is gonna be another nail in the coffin of xeno enjoyment, as xeno role becomes more and more just a cartoon vilian that is supposed to lose no matter what by design, just something for marines to shoot at. I personally stopped playing xeno at all because well, it’s not fun to play knowing that you are set to lose in the end anyway.

I guess FTL is fun for marines, because it fulfills their power fantasy even more. You gonna get your payback on xenos, just hold the pumps for 5 minutes and you won. I can see how one siders enjoy this. And I guess the majority of the playerbase are one siders, so it makes sense to appeal them.

Before anyone jumps in and says that you can actually win hijack as xeno, yes, you can. It’s very hard though. You need to take full control of the ship in time, or it’s over. If marines didn’t get completely wiped groundside, it’s going to be a struggle. If you make one mistake, you lose. If you are too slow, you lose. If marines manage to drag the fight on, you lose. If marines get a good ERT, you lose. If marines get a competent synth or two, you lose. If marines metaevac (never a thing by the way, sure), you definitely lose. It’s a terrible design and I am honestly baffled no one thought how would it feel for xeno players.

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FTL would be nice if xenos get unlimited spawns too tbh just like old hijack

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I’m surprised nobody’s talked about this but if failing to break the FTL spawns infinite marines, maybe xenos killing the pumps and stopping it should continuously spawn infinite xenos? I don’t know that people would pick up the bodies the way they do marine ERTs but if you made xenos able to rejoin instantly after death as larva from the hive core instead of needing to wait 5 minutes ONLY DURING HIJACK, this would probably be a funny way to forcibly end the round.

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I don’t mind hijack, except when these stinking synths are rotating over all the pumps repairing them, with none but a poor xx runner to try to keep up with them!!!

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Problem is quite simple: Hijack at the moment is just planetside 2.0.

Solution: make it far more chaotic, disorganised possibly for both team. More disorganised Marines + Xenos leads to smaller fights and Xenos having the advantage typically (which is important if Hijack is the Xeno victory lap).

Solutions:

Result:

You get more people to shoot, the people are more likely to shoot you, you’re more likely to be all split up from the smokes and the lockdowns and explosions - Xenos are likely to be affected too. You get more fights where Xenos have the upper hand but are also available to get the kill. This also indirectly makes successful FTL a little harder but I’m still going with the notion that this is a Xeno victory lap.

Hijack solved, quite simply. Hijack is meant to be a Xeno victory lap with a chance for Marines to fight back, however it’s not fun and this all fixes the problems :smiley: .

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how about we make hijack actually fulfil the xeno major/minor role where it FEELS like a xeno victory no matter what by making marines evacuating the sole possibility for marines (there is no way to ‘take back the ship’ because there’s an infinite trickle of xeno larvae + fast evo)

anyone who doesn’t evac is guaranteed to die, the best ending for marines is to survive by escaping the ship, hence the game actually feels like xeno major/xeno minor versus xeno major/ marine major

marines lost the luxury of winning by eating shit planetside.
this would also very slightly disincentivise metavaccing a bit since marines are completely disqualified from feeling like they ‘win’ if they evacuate the FOB

If you’re a marine, you either evac and mope around depressed IC before ghosting and be sad OOC, or you stay knowing you’re 100% going to die, but at least you’ll die fighting and fragging a bit. If you’re xeno, you’re guaranteed to win either way.

probably some loopholes like stealthjacks with solo queen or some shit but it’s a nothingburger that would be fixed easily

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Loosen the rules for marines as soon as hijack happens. Rule 2 (besides netspeak), rule 4, rule 10 and rule 11 off to the garbage can the second ARES gives announcement about DS being about to impact Almayer. Let marines fight for drop pods as their life really depends on it, let them fuck eachother up. Give players a counter of “successfull evacs” where it grows +1 each time hijack happened, xenos won shipside too and they escaped on a pod/lifeboat. Make it so escape pod with 1 guy is almost guaranteed to always launch successfully, the more humans on board, the higher risk of crashing.

It is already end of the round, xenos already won, let marines help xenos by fucking each other over that. Only if they actually band together thanks to charismatic CO, or something, then it would be cool and unique.
Let marines get revenge on command without asking admemes, let marines be paranoid that somebody might be about to stab them in the back, let marines act completly insane.

Shorten the hijack to like 10 minutes tops, after that Almayer cracks exposing everyone to vaccum, marines die, xenos won. Marines can prevent that crack by welding something that appears in a random place/s across Almayer, requiring more than one guy welding it to actually finish. Then you can think about pumps.

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Lessers turn into larva when they spawn.

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As a dedicated hijack enjoyer I kinda halfway like the FTL. It still probably needs to be tweaked a bit like this:

  • Most importantly make the pumps themselves destroyable and not repairable at all. You don’t hold it? You don’t get to sneak in and fix that stuff later.
  • Allow cading on the Almayer again.
  • Compensate for xenos by giving them more larvae.
  • Tune the required pumping time, by requiring say 5 minutes more.
  • Maybe shave off 5-10 minutes from total hjiack time, they’ve made it too long.
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Time is a circle.

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I like this.

Should be a fun way to end things. Especially if it’s been a slog and folks have been watching the game for an hour and a half of cade hugging.

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What if? After Xenos definetly win ground side Queen gets to choose from different event options like below,

  • CLF Boarding
  • UPP Boarding
  • Possible Zombie Outbreak
  • or Classic Xeno boarding
  • etc etc ect

After queen chooses, the hive is teleported and they become what the event mob is and they invade Almayer that way. Xenos dont necessarly need to invade only.

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Maybe if xenos crash almayer, then xenos get infinite ERT?

Synths are crazy overtuned against backliners, so as long as they avoid the T3 ball they’re able to run around reviving marines and repairing pumps. I doubt synth cabal would tolerate a nerf though.

Marines can just huddle in one place before alamo crashes right? But in any case, breaking more lights/apcs would be helpful for xenos. It’s silly for most hallways to be perfectly lit even including maintenance.

While being allowed to shoot command would be cool. Throwing the rules out altogether will mean that m2c funny man will just FF every marine he sees for the lols.

Would probably fix the synth repairing thing.

It’s unreasonable for xenos to hold all 5 refueling locations at once. So this lets them focus one down at a time. Bodies being revived is probably less of an issue though.

It would actually make sense for CLF/UPP to attack the marines while they’re down.

Personally I would like more stuff to be broken on crashing.

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I understand the criticism from xeno players that hijack feels like a punishment. I feel that many players on both sides wish that the planetside result was basically the final result of the round. Personally, I’d like to see hijack reworked to where xenos have won and the only marine goal is evac. Xenos can have infinite larva as long as the hijacked dropship lands with xenos still alive onboard and all onboard marines nested or dead. FTL travel/fueling is easier as compensation, and if FTL succeeds, you can actually get to the other map (whatever that is - can reuse some existing maps) and xenos have to stay on Almayer (unless a marine ends up launching them via dropship/pod/lifeboat). Self-destruct almayer is just gone. Infinite human ERTs can stay but the ERTs are restricted to the FTL rescue map where xenos should normally not be able to get to, so it’s mostly for RP opportunities.

Hijack is a hot-button issue so I’m sure many people won’t like this idea, but I’m not planning on coding it and I doubt anyone else will either, so it doesn’t really matter.

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