Hijack needs fixing

Here are the problems with current hijack:

  1. Lifeboats just suck as a hold. Such closed position cade fight is always boring. Marines can’t maneuver and the only kills they score are the ones that xenos feed to them. Xenos can’t maneuver either and for them it’s just slash a cade, retreat, heal, repeat.
  2. Even if lifeboats were a good hold, doing the same thing every round is just boring. But see 1. In rare rounds an old CO would do a more interesting hold, but they don’t really have an IC justification for that.
  3. While larva surge is a good mechanic for punishing marines for doing bad faith evacs it’s currently too overtweaked leaving marines little hope. Hijack should be xeno favored, but it shouldn’t be impossible.

Here’s how I think all of this should be fixed:

  1. Lifeboats get removed outright.
  2. Marines get a shipside nuke, lets called it something like “emergency auxiliary generator”. They have to connect it into an APC to work. After it’s connected and turned on in 15 minutes the Almayer launches a nuke on the planet, thus making the round a draw, by cleansing the planet itself form the xenos.
  3. Larva surge is reworked to be proportional to the ratio of remaining marines vs xenos. E. g. if it’s less than 2 marine for 1 xeno it does not happen.
  4. Not strictly necessary, but using the auxiliary generator disables life pods, so noody gets to evac. This creates in round drama between people who want to survive against the commander who went for the nuclear option.

All of this should lead to command players having a variety of options for where to have their hold, just like in the old days, but with the ingame mechanic to support those holds and some extra RP drama as a bonus.

1 Like

This just sounds like self destruct holds, which were way more fun than lifeboats.

3 Likes

Bring back SD holds. Real men and legends were made. Make it so.

7 Likes

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

4 Likes

Self destruct holds were great at first, then SD got nerfed into a 1 tile corridor hell maze that was not fun AT ALL.

I think a good alternative to old self destruct is just spawning nuke out of ASRS and letting marines plant it almost wherever they want on the ship. That gives plenty of freedom for marines to shake things up and make things interesting.

I’d also like to see some deployable defenses available in critical parts of the ship so that it’s possible to actually have small forces dispersed around holding areas without getting overrun in 30 seconds, but that idea belongs in its own thread.

4 Likes

CHAPEL OR MEMORIAL SD HOLDS JUST LIKE GRAMPS ALWAYS WANTED *warcry

1 Like

The difference between SD hold and Evac hold is mostly thematic. It makes more logical sense for Marines to hold for an evacuation than to commit mass suicide.

Lore wise, it also makes no sense why a Military spacecraft would have an auto-destruct system that requires it to be defended to the literal last second, in addition to the fact the aliens can disarm said system.

It was a literal plot point in Alien how the self destruct system could not be deactivated once it reached the cut off point.

No matter what new mechanic you introduce I find people will get “bored” of it eventually. I support any system that ends the game quicker, as far as I am concerned the Almayer defence is merely the epilogue to the story.

Personally, I find the current iteration of end-game Almayer gameplay to be at its best iteration in CM’s history.

Improve, don’t remove. Just add alternative SD hold in lower engineering (overload reactor for the sake of BOOM) and we are good.

3 Likes

Good thinking. I would approve this.

1 Like

What I would like to see done is this.

  • Do away with PODS. CL gets one. CO maybe gets one. MP’s get one for prisoners.
  • Add in multiple lifeboats staggered from where the current ones are leading west into the ship’s upper decks.
  • Redo the current lifeboat dock to be a mixture of a dock and SD.
  • Whenever evac gets called. SD also kicks into play.
  • Have lifeboats depart on tiers. The final boat leaves right as SD goes off, denoting the ship.

I think it’d be a high-tension situation where you’d have to set up tiers of holding depending on your numbers and maybe even set a capacity limit for the boats.

3 Likes

So yeah it’s meant to be a high tense situation but it’s also meant to not drag out the round

A lot of people forget that hijack is after a whole ground side round ranging from 1-3 hours

While I’ve had some great hijack rounds holding req and wish it could be longer sometimes, you also gotta remember that it’s a conclusion

No one wants to fight for another hour on 3x3 hallways

Keep it hopeless so if you do win hijack, it’s something special that’s tooth and nail

The current change that’d be a start would be moving the apc in the engine room (for sd) towards the fusion engines. Xenos can just destroy two sets of walls to cancel the entire SD. Maybe move the ladder to stop the xeno acid for the hive spam.

2 Likes

This is a interesting thread. I must just add on to it. Every round MT get a mission to build a sd room with sieze rules. once completed you can put on the nuke. Once the room is finished you get intel points. Then you can place the room where ever your heart desire. And ce and mt get something to do shipside rather than be a bravo planetside. Sd should never lead to draw so marines dont evac early and with many marines. Xeno minor.