There’s virtually no real guide or easy to read discussions regarding something that is ultimately critically important to the survival of the hive, that being the layout of its defences. The only proper ‘guide’ on the subject is an out-of-date one on TGMC’s wiki and a half-decade old guide on the ancient forums with broken image links.
I’ve mostly typed this since on the one hand I’ve read people state that any defence is better than no defence, yet others will note that haphazardly build defences are a hinderance to people who try to make “proper” defences.
The only theory I know is the basic 2x2 resin wall with 2 tile wide resin doors. Personally, I’d also dump sticky resin behind a door to discourage pushing.
Perhaps this can be offered as a chance for anyone to share their opinions or strategies in hive construction?
Avoid having more than 3 doors in a row, because marines will just ignore the 3rd door completely by meleeing every 2nd door to collapse it. You will slow marines down much more by limiting yourself to 2 doors in a row, tops. I don’t know why some people insist on building massive lines of doors, it’s just bizarre.
Hive clusters should be spammed way more often, hive weeds are sticky resin but better. Marines basically can’t push without killing pylons, so hiding them behind walls (better yet, unbreakable ones) can help by quite a bit. People need to stop putting them in easy to shoot locations.
Resin spikes are underrated imo- The sprites are rather hard to click, and half the time people don’t even realise they’re there. It’s really funny when someone fracs their feet on these. People generally take longer to clear spikes than sticky.
I don’t know why people keep building acid pillars as offensive weapons when they’re just automated fire extinguishers.
I dunno. I feel like 2x2s is just already pretty solid as hive defences go. I can’t think of any Cade-theory like ideas besides the “stop building lines of doors you sick bastards” thing.
“Stop building lines of walls you sick bastards” thing is applicable too.
I don’t think hive building needs it’s own guide tbh, basic principles are similar to muhrine CT ones. Link doors, cover flanks, leave some space to maneuver - and you’ll already be better than every second hivelord out there
I think that if you’re arguing xeno hive theory is similar to marine Cade theory, then you’d have to basically argue for a hive theory guide.
Marines are generally inept at building cades. Most non-veteran engineers fail some aspect of Cade theory in some way or another (people putting doors in the middle, not adjusting door cade numbers to fit traffic, not pulling cades back to avoid xenos using walls as cover to safely hit cades, not maintaining 3 tiles of spacing, etc.).
If people are this bad at learning Cade theory from the literal sea of comtech guides out there, they’re going to be much, much worse at extrapolating hive theory from cade theory guides.
I think a separate hive guide would be nice to have. I don’t think it’d be as in-depth as Cade theory, but it’d still be a good reference to point people to, at least.
The only thing i can realy say which is to build defenses from hive up to a certain point, not from a certain point to hive, you can make better connections and keep the layout consistent with itself which is generally better, also if marines try to push you will just keep failing at building actual defenses and obe CAS run leaves you out in the open
If you want to play hivelord i dont reccomend playing on hybrisa or varnadero as its actual suffering to build
And 3 tiles doors take the same amount of time to destroy as a 2 tile door
the best way I can summarize it is it should follow these points:
Should be hard to access and move through for marines and obstruct them, but easy to access and move through for xenos (specifically, make it cramped but not to the point of it being bad for xenos, use a lot of corners but not too many, etc; the 2x2 the people above talk about is a good example of this)
Should block sightlines (again, 2x2) but also provide some more angles of attack for xenos; not too many, else it becomes accessible for marines and provides no cover
I should hate dealing with this as marine (a sum of the points above plus deterrents such as sticky resin, hive weeds, spikes, morphers, traps, etc)
I think that if you follow this philosophy your builds should be pretty good. Obviously you’ll have an easier time with hivelord or queen eye due to mesons
If you wish to become based at hive design, look no further. If wall spamming was illegal, then why didn’t staff blow these up? The truth is, xenocord bribed everyone on the staff team to ignore wallspam 3 years ago!!! THE META IS TO BUILD 10x10 THICK WALLS INSTEAD OF 2x2! THE FUTURE IS NOW, OLD MAN!!!
This screenshot tells an entire fucking novel, like you see the progression of the burrower’s mental state. He starts out all happy in the hive, before his paranoia and dementia gradually eats away at his soul, eventually devolving him into… whatever makes these open fields of acid traps as the queen watches on in despair at what her child has become.
Well, nah. I’m saying that everyone who read and understood marine cade guide can build good xeno fortifications
People who are bad at cading haven’t read the guides. I mean, look at Steelpoint’s guide. One look at this 2 pictures is enough to get the proper cade placement engraved deep inside your head:
Yet people still insist on putting doors at the center and cades by the corners. Why? Because they never bothered to open the guides, obviously
If someone can’t be bothered to read a marine cadeline guide - why should he open the xeno one? And if someone read the marine guide - he doesn’t need some xeno analogue to be a good hivelord
Jokes aside, this is the exact formation that cost my prae his life yesterday. God damn walls from nowhere, serving no purpose but to halt our retreat. Especially the upper part of the pic
Ah, I phrased myself badly there. I was more trying to say that information, despite being plentiful (aka. guides)- Still results in a sizeable population of marines not taking up said info.
Thus, if information was less plentiful (as is the case for xeno hive theory), it would stand to reason that the problem would be even worse. You say that this isn’t really a problem, because Cade theory guides can be extrapolated by readers into xeno hive theory, but I disagree.
I don’t think the connection between Cade and hive theory is that clear cut. Marine cade theory relies heavily on resource scarcity, melee-based opponents, and heavily emphasises the maximisation of LoS (firing lines).
Xenos however, do not. They have ranged opponents who can break defences at any range, have infinite resources (and are therefore not constrained by an emphasis on rationing the use of expensive doors and cades), and instead have a heavy emphasis on the minimisation of LoS (as shown by the prevalence of 2x2 walls).
Xenomorphs are fewer in number, so do not have as big a need for consideration of traffic congestion (though friendly bodyblocks are still the #1 killer, it’s less due to hive design and more due to xenos fucking up). They also have an array of other defences they can build which marines generally lack (turrets and claymores are far less plentiful, most marine defences consist of cades and wire, while xenos tend to flood everything with sticky or something.)
For these reasons, I don’t really think you can say that someone who reads a guide on Cade theory will intuitively understand how to best build xeno defences. I still believe a seperate guide that specialises in this is better.
Playing hivelord to me looks like playing CT in creative mode where you have infinite resources. I’m still new to xeno tbf and I have much to learn, but my poor hivey had already dismantled some incomprehensible Minotaur labyrinths…
It looks like an “easy to learn, hard to master” type of gameplay. Half the tricks are too obvious to explain, and the other half is too hard to bother. The difference between young and mature hivelord is much more noticeable than the difference between mature and prime
Thus, I don’t know what can you write in the guide. Meta stuff? Nah, it’s meta for a reason, this info is not meant for tall’s eyes. Basic stuff? Ok, we figured out that 2x2 walls are better than the Great Wall of LV River, now what?
Where you spend your time might be a big determining factor in player skill.
Spending 30 mins making the great wall of 624 won’t mean much when the marines ignore 90% of it. But concentrating your defensive work where you know where the marines are going to be…
We don’t talk about meta chokes everyone holds each damn round
Figures, but again, this is something you’ll learn after a round or two, it’s not some sacred knowledge. Even if you’re clueless - your queen and sisters probably have the general idea of where they want to engage marines
