I think that having Xenos slowly grow more powerful as they devour more biomass over the course of the round would be interesting.
Perhaps a system where T3s (T2s if both pylons are controlled) get more powerful over time after 1:20, on the condition that Xenos control at least one pylon for longer than 10 minutes at the time? Doesn’t have to be an isolated xeno buff though. Marines could use more “all or nothing” tools to compensate for this.
They already have weedkiller chemical weapons, why not extend that to late-game unlock gas OBs that Marines would get for holding their ground against primo T3s? Reward successful defences with counterattack opportunities. Punish defences that do not have any plans to push out and regain ground.
We did that, it sucked ass and caused xenos to camp until they reached a certain maturity. It also made fresh xenos basically idle around the hive with nothing to do as they were way too squishy to join combat.
Idk I feel like it’d be better to just add onto the queen bonuses she can buy instead. Having an independent maturity mechanic alongside the existing totally-not-xeno-techwebs thing seems kinda eh.
Being back acid claws for all but it’s all strong acid that paincrits you in 2 ticks
Re: intentionally delaying rounds- Not an issue imo, because the King is strong enough to automatically end the round with a xeno major. Power boost from King is far more significant than anything ‘maturity’ could buy, given it’s nigh unkillable with a competent player and attrits marines into oblivion with little counterplay due to screech + stomp gib combo (as it should, due to it being xeno nuke)
Xenos already camp pylons for King rather than wait for FOB siege in many cases where the balance of power is still roughly even (and it’s really the best play in many cases where FOB is too risky to push because one competent engineer with a nailgun + welder can single handedly keep half the FOB 100% repaired. Why play WO and die on cades when you can force marines to push you?)
Marines complain a lot about chokepoints, and xenos complain a lot about cades. I think something more interesting would be some kind of objective that destroys either all variety of xeno walls (maybe hive clusters too), or all varieties of marine cades, or both, and prevents them from being rebuilt for a set amount of time. Or even have it so that everything that was ‘destroyed’ actually returns after a set amount of time or something. I know we already have ‘some’ things to deal with those situations, but just judging by the amount of comments I see about it, maybe we could use more.
