How do facehuggers get hugs without the assistance of another xenomorph?
As far as I can tell the only way a facehugger can safely get a hug is when several other xenos are stunning a marine.
Their stun isn’t exactly the longest which makes it hard for them to even get marines who are alone.
Is there something I don’t know or do facehuggers just have to stick with other xenomorphs?
You can use the ‘hide’ ability to get beneath stuff and wait for a marine to pass.
Things like doors, xeno corpses, tables etc. can completely hide your sprite. Then it’s just a matter of waiting for someone.
I’ve had the most luck just hiding beneath resin doors near the push and waiting for a marine to come knife it down.
Technically speaking huggers will auto-hug humans provided they are in within 1 tile of the hugger, otherwise the human will just be stunned for a short duration. Like sietchi said most huggers get hugs on their own by hiding underneath objects and waiting for a marine to pass it which usually leaves the marine with little reaction time. I’ve seen some huggers just run up to an SSD/Crit/AFK marine and hug them without hiding however that requires some luck.
On someone who’s not afk? On someone who is armed and actively paying attention? Reliably? Only by camping acid traps, though this may count as ‘help’ in your definition. Otherwise never.
Either ambush a clueless marine using hide ability (very funny, once I hugged an invis scout this way), or go for incapacitated marines (those being revived are perfect targets).
From what I’ve seen huggers have to click their host to hug them, does this also work with the leap function?
Yeah but in both cases you need to be adjacent. And click (LMB) only works on lying (horisontal) marines.
How do you ambush a marine then who isn’t lying down? Some people say they can ambush marines at doors but I figured that’d be hard to do if they aren’t laying down considering the facehugger stun is about a second long.
Just use leap ability if they are not lying. If used point-blank (i.e. target is adjacent), you will hug the marine after a short wind-up (granted they didn’t move away). Also you need to target the sprite with the leap ability.
Lurker pounce is enough time for you to come from off screen using your watcher strain and hug them
without help
Most do things like, they will use the hide function under a door that needs hacked and when the engie is in the menus you strike, same with defibs on a lone medic. Lying under an IOs needed loot “although i dislike this as a lil meta unless he’s actively beeping his lil beeper”. If you push boxes around to area like a door marines gotta open then you pounce onto the box you will land on top and can hide under it thats a funny hug always. Patience, creativity, timing and luck. Or you can be a sweaty metagamer and try cover your back.
My favorite hiding spot is under plasteel cades (north facing ones). Noone ever expects it, and it’s always an easy hug when it works. Especially so when it’s unfinished cadelines at hydro (very common for some reason)
Medics are to. Not all medics are paying attention and sometimes their windows for healing actively impede vision if the player is sloppy with it.
It’s not guaranteed. Some medics are decently quick in reacting to avoid and in drawing a weapon to prevent a hug on their patient
What about the medic themselves? They’d be a lot more valuable to take out of the ring than a regular marine?
After experimenting with hugger I found out you can just run up to marines and hug them even with the cooldown as long as they’re still
they never seem to react for some reason, no matter why they’re standing still
issue is, the medic usually sees you and runs off, whereas his patient lying prone you can take free of charge.
Learned that the hard way when a medic was in the middle of a defib, ran over and got big ironed by a medic with an exceptionally fast reflex time.
Coulda avoided it if I went under them and got the patient too lol.
I like to aim for people using zoom of some kind.
Snipers, people with binos, mortar guy.
Scurry up… gottem.
Also hugging the newly revived is always hilarious i love watching people scramble and FF
getting some friendly fire in is also a good way if you fail your hug
another fun thing to do is leap over a single tile of fire, land on some medic across the field and then explode acid directly on top of them due to you dying almost immediately to fire
i hugged a competent SL in the middle of a medical fight once by carefully timing my hiding, didnt need anyone else’s help or any other stuns, so it is definitely possible