I want to clarify something that I’ve seen people, including myself, do over the years.
When the queen forgets to lock the Alamo dropship computer, you can remotely launch it back to the Almayer. I’ve seen this tactic used over the years due to the fact that marines have an overwhelming advantage shipside when the DS lands normally in the hangar landing pad instead of hijack crashing.
I did that just yesterday. I saw that the Queen hadn’t locked the Alamo console and used the Dropship Computer to remote launch it to the Hangar. Sure enough, we killed every single Xeno onboard and turned a certain Xeno Major into a clutch Marine Major.
But after that in LRC, some people started saying that this is kind of iffy RP wise and could be considered LRP, especially for command roles.
It just hadn’t crossed my mind like that? This is something I’ve seen people do as long as I’ve been playing CM, and from what I can see there is no precedent report/ban or ruling about this not being allowed or considered LRP.
My suggestion is to advance the timeline to 2183 and allow marines metaknowledge of a xenomorph threat (that they have yet to personally encounter, hearsay from other vessels) and hijack.
The marines are here to fight, ready to fight, and their opponent has essentially created a trap for themselves, whereupon the marines can encircle, entrap and eliminate on their own terms.
Whether it succeeds or not, thats a different question - RP shouldn’t be a bunch of robots making the most logical and correct decisions all the time, humans aren’t like that. Without cocksurety and hubris Aliens would have been a much shorter and more boring film.
ergh, if we’re talking RP wise here, I can see a line of logic here.
If in the near future we have self driving aircraft or whatever and all of a sudden the enemy has boarded one, I don’t think the leap of logic is too great for whoevers in control of it to kidnap them. Perhaps lift them off then crash at high speed into the ground. Honestly if anything the RP line of logic is fuzziest most with bringing it to your safe ship more than the act of kidnapping xenos with the drop ship.
Anyho theres no such thing as a cheap tactic in war if it works.
I feel that in CM world that has post-game consequences and people care about those, nobody sane on marine side would do that. For all IC marines know they evacuated then something forced DS down and xenos boarded it for some reason despite it being empty. Recalling it risks losing Almayer and all marines on it, while it doesn’t guarantee all xenos from the entire colony/planet went with it. If marines knew IC that something is going to launch it with xenos onboard and it will crash into Almayer, then it makes perfect sense to do it.
But there shouldn’t be a rule against that, hell no. Simply autolock DS when it is called down by Queen. There is no reason for Queen to ever not lock it, there are no marines present planetside to capitalise on Queen’s mistake (being forgetfull) of not locking it up. Having to lock DS makes sense only before marines evacuated the planet as a way to deny them return to the ship.
in universe they would bait her in it lock the fucking thing and fly it into a sun, dont listen to xeno cope; they do not give a shit when they win due to marine fumbles.
I mean, you essentially broke quarantine on a Xenomorph threat, which no one in the Aliens universe would ever do, trust. Actually, when people say its weird the Alamo would just, autopilot the xenos to shipside, now we know the real reason why, its an overconfident SO.
That roundend was wild for sure though. We had a new Queen step up mid-round but lead well, and no one else caught she didn’t lock dropship. On landing, marines had caded every exit, but Queen still managed to push out the west side and move north into maintenance. I actually called out that we only lost one xeno, and could totally manage to win hijack, we just lost evo and some free larva. And then CLF landed ontop of us in north docks…
Honestly, if the CLF landed ANYWHERE else and started causing a little trouble, theres an alternate universe where you actively caused the Almayer to get infested. I’d just argue that kind of mess up by an overconfident command player making a rushed decision is GOOD RP for the round as a whole, however.
GG all, history goes to the victors, CLF major.
P.S. Shoutout to the CLF synth, who having lost every other CLF fighter, launched the shuttle back with Queen and a Rav inside. That one is arguably LRP, but hijack is for funny times ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I often wonder if it is simply just coding limitations and ensure that if the lock is not placed, players of SS13 can still do what players of SS13 do.
depends on how bad you got whalloped on the ground, and how ballsy your character is. Clearly, if the xenos haven’t torn through the hull of the dropship, it’s safe to assume that they can’t at all - or at least not easily, which leaves them completely trapped in an enclosed space. This would be (much as it is in-game) a shooting gallery for your men, where all they would have to do is post up on the doors and frag/flame/shoot the shit out of everything inside. This is like, the ideal scenario for a lot of CQC - you know there aren’t civilians or your men inside, all you have to do is throw in a few dozen frags and call it a day.
Now, if you don’t HAVE the frags, or the men, then you’re breaking a quarantine and putting the entire ship at risk- as well as risking destroying the very expensive dropship entirely by throwing tons of explosives in. As I said, weigh the reward. But you have the majority of the enemy confined to one space, where you know they will be, and you can set up a defense / offense incredibly easily. On top of that, you have the opportunity to wipe what you can reasonably believe is the entire enemy force out, and make things significantly easier for whoever is coming to relieve the Almayer. Tactically and strategically speaking, it doesn’t get much better than that.
Bringing a swarm of aliens onboard your ship just because you want to up your kill count is generally regarded as a “bad idea” and an “unbelievable amount of risk for no benefit whatsoever”.
It’s like 10% of the hive at best, there’s more down on the planet and you already admitted you lost it, it’s blatant kill hunting and doesn’t serve any actual purpose.
Also- that’s not the mission objective here, you’re just responding to a distress signal, just leaving once you recover the survs arguably makes more sense (on most maps) than trying to kill the xenos, the Almayer is NOT in any state to go do something like this.
Surely this dropship we just poured 500 gallons of acid in is going to be perfectly operational and completely worth the massive risk we took by bringing it up here.
No, I don’t think it’s LRP at all. Xenos have two points of failure here - forgetting to lock it, but also, not launching the ship before you do. You can’t be expected to just do nothing while xenos do whatever they want (like have a xeno briefing).
Eh I kinda disagree with you here on the definition of LRP. LRP is low roleplay. It’s not about if someone makes a mistake or not, it’s the story you spin out of it. Xenos forgetting to lock it has no bearing on the roleplay in question, since the marines aren’t even aware it’s possible.
Is it LRP? IMO it depends on the situation. If you’ve evac’d with a good number of marines and there’s a modest amount of xenos on the dropship, I’d say ehhh maybe. Otherwise, you’re breaching containment and risking the lives of everybody aboard trying to save some equipment and hopefully kill maaaaybe a few bugs that have already overrun all of your forces.
I have seen cases where recalling the alamo failed, as the xenos overran and slaughtered everyone (the four marines left alive and two doctors) in the hangar. Doesn’t matter much OOCly because hijack was gonna happen one way or another, but IC that would be disastrous. In character, you essentially got yourself and everybody else aboard killed for no good reason.
To sum it up: Is it LRP? In most cases, I think so. Is anybody gonna get punished for it? Probably not, but you’d want to ask an actual staff member.
Imagine what the ahelp ticket would look like if it’s considered LRP. Staff member: “Erm actually in my opinion there was a lot of xenos and not too many of you so I think it was LRP to recall your own dropship because it might’ve put you in a bad situation and I’m noting you for it. Next time just do nothing and xenos will hopefully finish their 15 minute predator battle and hijack soon. That definitely won’t put you in a bad situation. Duh.”
