Almayer defence, as it stands, can be somewhat stale/static as the majority of the time Marines will defend lifeboats, or run to evac pods. Both of which create a stale situation in the long term.
My proposed idea is the reintroduction of nuclear self destruct defences, but with a twist.
IMPLEMENATION
After the queen hijacks the Dropship, the acting Commander must chose to initiate a self-destruct order. There are two ways I envision this occuring, either…
- The aCO selects a pre-determined area of the ship (upper engi, lower engi, briefing, req, etc, etc)
- A nuclear weapon appears in requisitions
Once this occurs, the weapon must be armed by the aCO. Once this occurs, a countdown begins (up to dev implementation, 15 to 20+ minutes?). The objective of the Marines is to defend the nuke until it arms, vice versa the Aliens must destroy the nuke.
Once the nuke arms, a second timer begins (60 seconds to 2 minutes) where it can not be disarmed and the ship will be destroyed when the time elapses.
At this time, an evac craft will dock with the Almayer, creating a set of ladders surrounding the nuke, the Marines will have the aforementioned amount of time to evacuate into the ladders before the nuke detonates. The ship can be ordered to depart at any time by anyone with access to the crafts console (CIC, pilot, SL, Synth, etc, etc).
Reasoning
My reasonings for this are that it’d give the aCO and Marines a far more unique way to approach hijack gameplay, they can now pick and chose anywhere on the ship to fight and defend, thus we would see far more unique and interesting end-game holdouts than the same static defence. Aliens would also be challenged as they would be presented with an unpredictable marine holdout requires a different strategy every time.
My idea to allow the Mariens to evacuate on successfully arming the nuke is so the concept does not feel completely suicidal and insane to suggest.
The option to use the escape pods would still be present, I’d even suggest allowing the lifeboat to launch like a escape pod.
Thank you.