I can’t emphasize enough how true this is. As someone that plays surv a lot the lifecycles of good holds are:
You will make the most resilient hold → Xenos won’t push that shit because they know they will die → the local robusto wannabe of the team goes out to harass xenos that are looking at the hold from afar → A concerned surv goes to babysit the robusto wannabe → An actual robusto leaves with them because it knows that it can abandon the other two baldasses if all goes wrong → They all get jumped by woys, sents and runners → They die. → The hold only has 1 or 2 survs so now it’s impossible to hold it.
5 Likes
Real soul survivor was back when surv was all skills and the meta strategy was running around in a huge kill team because xenos got runners 1 min in.
Whoever survived that era was the real survivor mains, the current survivors only disadvantage is not rolling a good role like engineer, otherwise you are literally set as a surv to survive if you know what you are doing which never used to be the case for survivors.
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Fighting against survivors is very different to fighting marines. The survivors will play sweaty and are more than happy to trade their life/perma for yours which makes fighting them so risky.
Typically, I would avoid survivors unless the queen demands it as the risk is far greater with a very small chance of capping. Except in CC map due to survivors being marine aligned who all have some sort of spec skills that you need to perma.
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I feel like the best way to better balance survs is to give them all skills again and keep nightmare inserts, but killing them gives you a guaranteed 1 larvae (make up some lore about it like QM’s favor being shown on the hive for completely eradicating any survivors that know about us, etc) and capturing one gives THREE larvae if they burst.
This would balance out survivors being sweaty tryhards (which they should be, your a SURVIVOR vs an entire Hive), and also balance out xenos missing larvae / evo for not fighting them.
Pretty controversial take, I know.
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I keep trying to discern what is the survivor-main vision of their role from the changes they keep making.
And it really seems to be that 5-minute cadehug, that’s mechanically made unbeatable? And now the main problem for them is that the hive still can do that T3-attack at 17 if it wanted to. So the survie dream now is gimping the xenos further, like reintroducing maturity, so that their cadehug could easily kill the T3s attacking them. Then, of course it would lead to the problem of xenos not attacking the survies at all, and I can’t really fathom how the survie contributors would try to tackle that problem? The entire hive gets instantly deleted if a single survivor is alive by 25?
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I mean xenos don’t get T3 until 20min, and by then it kinda feels too late to do anything. Best case you kill survs, and marines recover them (and they know that so they just start throwing their lives away to kill you or avoid capture), worst case you get caught by marines with your pants down and die instantly.
Fighting survs isn’t fun, engaging, or worth it; it almost always ends in a net loss for xenos and costs players the rest of their round.
Honestly I never knew survs had even been updated, old survs with skills who HAD to team up to survive was peak, bring that back
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I feel like the solution to Survivor/Xeno gameplay is creating objectives for the Survivors other than to just survive. These objective should be placed in non-meta spots to make holding harder even with the firebomb spam.
Objective Ideas for survivors only.
-
Hold Aerodrome shuttle for 15 minutes and it launches with the survivors.
-
Hold Boat ramp for 15 minutes for evac via the water on Trijent
Less time than waiting on the marines, but gives the survivors another option to escape that puts them at higher risk because of the non-meta location. Could even make it so the “escaped” survivors can respawn as PFCs.
if you wanted you could even tie some survivor objectives into the overall marine gameplay to create more effort in actually rescuing survivors.
Marine Incentive Ideas
- Hold “Broadcast Tower, Cryo Lab, T-Rex Statue, or whatever map specific location” for 25 minutes. If its not broken for the allotted time, then marines get a reward. I am thinking Req Budget, Sadar Rockets, or an early distress signal. (Could change to needing to be powered, or not melted instead of just broken)
- Hold “Chemical Storage Bunker 6” until the marines arrive. Inside are extra OT supplies. If not protected the xeno can melt these. (I know there is some concern about OT, but this is tied to a bigger idea I have to change up OTs)
Obviously not prefect ideas, just food for thought. Rewards, time limits, and even objectives are all subject to change/testing and better ideas.
TLDR: Objective based gameplay might drag the survivors from Meta holds into less desirable hold locations but provide benefits to the marines if pulled off.
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Survivors should get rewards for holding the survivor locations, though. Getting respawned as PFC is useless, should get a upgraded spawn, like being sent in as a PMC team or VAISO or something if you survive a non-meta hold for 15 mins.
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the sad truth about this is that xenos just aren’t as incompetent as they used to be in order to do this, drones will literally facetank 3+ buckshot PBs and click you twice in hordes of 5-6 at 00:07 in the round (speaking from actual LV-experience)
still works on other maps with actual guns though
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didnt know drones now have 600+ hp
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Do not fight them alone, and ive also seen rounds where survs kill entire groups of xenos, both as a death squad AND as fort masters on LV and other maps.
So it all depends on skill and a bit of luck (if you spawn near good loot).
2 Likes
playing as survivor is also honestly kinda weird, in my mind, as a player of roughly ~average skill, I’d like to be able to survive somewhere in the range of 40-60% of the rounds, getting the epic drone frags doesn’t really matter to me and I don’t care, for me the survival part of the game is mostly a fun little challenge that helps me get in character as a survivor of a horrible colony attack by aliens, I mostly enjoy going up to the ship to roleplay for a while, then once I’ve done that and the round is stagnating a bit I’ll deploy as (surv job)+ and goof around a little until marines evac or finish the fight and go back to RPing.
Keeping in mind that I tend to play during lower sub-100 pops;
the issue is that whether or not you actually survive as a surv is completely disconnected to your performance as a survivor, no amount of cheese strats can actually meaningfully effect whether you make it or not, NV island slop notwithstanding, it is 100% based on whether the hive feels like AFKing until marines or throws themselves at you and there’s not really much you can do to influence that, some rounds they really want you some rounds they can’t be bothered and you’ll get like one sent or spitter half-heartedly throwing acid at you. It’s not a matter of “oh their hold is really good” or “oh their hold is weak” because a lot of the time botched holds do fine and gigaforts get swarmed.
It really just feels like playing slots with your round as to whether you get to keep playing honestly.
The question then becomes, how do you make it so that survivors are strong/xeno resistant enough for players to meaningfully affect their outcome without making them too dominant of a force? how do you make it so that survivors are able to fend off t3s and such without being able to ruthlessly hunt down and execute lesser xenos?
There’s also the further question, should survivors actually survive? everyone seems to have their own answer to this question, many xeno players see them as really nothing more than a distraction for them to play with until the marines arrive, many survivors think that if they are skilled they should be able to survive every time, I personally believe that surviving should be plausible but not guaranteed, if you’re able to survive every round then there’s no longer any suspense, and similarly, if you’re playing to die by minute 20 there’s not much point in sitting out the rest of what will likely be a 2 hour round.
I think Tinker has a good suggestion with giving survivors an actual goal to evac somewhat independent of “marines dropping at :21 and meta molotov spam hold” Given currently t3s actually attempting to break a surv hold is almost guaranteed death, unless marines instantly drop off cooldown, make it such that survivor’s ‘win con’ resolves before that time, allowing survs to contend with more reasonable foes without nerfing xenos by pushing t3 evo timer back.
Think L4D2, filling up a generator to get a crane to lift them out of reach of the xenos(long enough for help to arrive), powering up the doors to a panic room to open it up and bunker down, holding the line while the engineer works to repair a damaged shuttlecraft.
Where I disagree with Tinker is that they should just be despawned and respawned as PFCs or some such, since that completely nukes the opportunity to play as a character who has survived the events preceeding the marines landing, I’d instead suggest sending the survivors up to the ship, or otherwise giving them a secured area to effectively wait for the marines to evacuate them.
The other potential option could be to give survs some asymetrical advantage that dissipates as the marines land, taking this pr as an example Adds Sunsets to Roundstart, adds Sunrises to Marine Victories, and Survs can hear Evo Announcement Screeches now by GrrrKitten · Pull Request #6400 · cmss13-devs/cmss13 · GitHub ; giving survs stuff like full neuro resist would obviously make them too strong as PFC+ in the later game, so you’d need to come up with bonuses that naturally taper off once marines land.
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Replace surv rolls with monkey rolls that xenos have to chase across the map. Then send em back to the menu when they get capped. Shrimple 
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I’ve seen it happen. I’ve had it happen to me.
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then you didnt actually land pbs because theres no way for a drone to survive three
Even if healed by queen, if you dont take your time killing it, it will always die in three
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Maybe I was wrong, I won’t refuse to admit that. Either way, drones can and will take 2, and with frenzy will most likely get you
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Drones can only take two before crit (260 damage vs 500 health body), unless they heal about 20 health while fighting you (Why would you be fighting on weeds as a surv?), and will be massivly slowed after the first hit so you can either finish it up with a second one, or just full auto MAC10 it or something.
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I genuinely fear drones, thats why I prefer automatic or any other surv weapons than the shotgun, not only does it have smaller capacity than the regular shotgun, its mostly unreliable, I’ve had my fair share of experience, and I ran out of buckshot during the WORST critical moments, thats why I prefer everything else other than the shotgun
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why wouldn’t you be fighting on weeds as a drone?
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Well they should and would, as its their prime enviroment for attacking anything. Don’t know what that has to do with what I said though.
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