Does anyone actually have formal documentation? I hear things about stuff like larva stages, embryo health, and anti parasitics and I begin to wonder how larva gestation actually works internally.
Some questions I’d like to have clarified:
Does nesting a hugged host increase the speed at which the larva gestates?
Does the larva have a separate “health” stat?
What happens to the larva’s health when the host is dead? Or when antiparasitic medicines are injected?
Does severing the larva’s pseudo roots halt the progression of gestation?
How are the stages of infection formally defined? At what point do certain symptoms appear?
Are larvae implanted instantly? Marines only get the infected status once the facehugger has been on them for a second or so. Is it possible to stop this somehow?
Do different species have different gestation times?
What determines if you’re allowed to take over the role of your chestbuster or not?
Semi related: what’s the deal with buried larva? How much do you earn by successfully bursting a host? How much do you earn by having that be a nested burst? What else generates larva?
I’m curious about how much of what is common knowledge about larva is hearsay and what is actually true. There doesn’t seem to be any official documentation on the wiki page, so it looks like to get credible information some code-diving is in order.
NOT BEFORE THEY ARE FULLY MATURE (i.e. larva is playable, host is super late stage and already burstable).
DEAD HOSTS CAN STILL BURST PROVIDED THEY ARE NOT PERMA’D INTO OBLIVION, ANTIPARASITIC CHEMICALS CAUSE LARVA DEATH AFTER A WHILE, LARVA DO NOT HAVE “HEALTH BARS”, TREAT BEING HUGGED AS A LITERAL DISEASE WITH DISTINCT “STAGES”, THE LARVA IS NOT REAL UNTIL THE HUMAN IS FUBAR (BURSTABLE)
SEVERING PSEUDO ROOTS IS ONE OF THE LAST SURGICAL STEPS WHEN PERFORMING LARVAL REMOVAL, AT THAT POINT THE LARVA ISN’T GONNA BURST (PROBABLY). IF THE LARVA IS ALREADY MATURE BY THE TIME SURGERY IS PERFORMED, IT WILL SURVIVE SURGERY AND BE FREE TO RUN AROUND, MEANING BOTH THE HOST AND LARVA SURVIVE (this means you can spare the human you’re bursting from by waiting for them to get surgery so you can escape without killing them)
IDK THE EXACT DETAILS, BUT IT’S GENERALLY DIVIDED INTO EARLY STAGE (no shakes), MID STAGE (shaking occasionally), LATE STAGE (going into crit, near constant shaking) AND “AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!”
ONCE YOU ARE HUGGED THERE IS NO WAY TO STOP YOU FROM BEING HUGGED, YOU ARE EFFECTIVELY PREGNANT THE SECOND THE HUGGER FACEFUCKS YOU
YES, THE HUMAN SPECIES GENERALLY HAS A GESTATION PERIOD OF APPROXIMATELY 9 MONTHS, WHICH IS ABOUT 9 MONTHS LONGER THAN THE GESTATION PERIOD OF THE XX-121 SPECIES
HUGGED HUMAN ALWAYS HAS FIRST DIBS ON THEIR OWN LARVA (you must have xeno preferences ON), FOLLOWED BY HUGGER PLAYERS WHO SUCCESSFULLY HUG A HUMAN (they get bumped to #1 in queue), FOLLOWED BY EVERY OTHER UNFORTUNATE POOR SOUL STUCK IN THE LARVA QUEUE
EACH SMALLHOST IS WORTH 1 LARVA, EACH HUMAN IS WORTH 1.5 LARVA. (excess is buried) BURIED LARVA ACCUMULATE PASSIVELY BASED OFF HUMAN LATEJOINS (iirc the ratio is 1 free buried larva per 4 human latejoins), LARVA CAN BE GAINED FROM THINGS SUCH AS THE LARVA SURGE FROM HIJACK, WHICH IIRC GRANTS ABOUT 5 LARVA
STAY STRONG ANT, YOU’LL BE A VALUABLE SISTER TO THE HIVE YET, XOORAH
Yes. A loose host bursts in 5 minutes, a bagged host bursts in 10 minutes, a nested host bursts in 2.5 minutes.
You either have larva or you don’t, it’s HP is effectively 1.
Severing the roots of a Larva will prevent it from killing the host while bursting. It will continue to grow regardless.
There are stages, similar to /TG/'s virus system if that’s any context. I don’t know them off the top of my head, but after Stage 3-4 your shakes start and now if you perma you will still burst.
Larvae are implanted instantly the moment the facehugger wraps around your face.
Monkeys and Humans gestate at the same time If that’s your question.
I think there’s six or seven stages for larva; way more than you’d expect.
If you’ve ever played xeno, think about how many different icon changes the little HUD infection icon goes through on an infected human. Each of those is connected to a stage. Some stages don’t look very different from others though, hence why marines only see three (teeeeechnically four) stages (yes, the moment you’re sitting there screaming and you have the red allcaps “IT HURTS!!!” text is its own stage).
To my understanding also, Antiparasitic works by reducing stages when above a certain level, but someone else can probably shed light on that all
IIRC corrosive liquids like CLF3 and sulph. acid can melt off facehuggers (alongside any other helmet gear) fast enough to prevent hugging (10~ seconds?)
but of course if it ever becomes a popular strat to the point that medics start carrying spray bottles of the stuff it will get removed.
If your xenopref is ON and you are NESTED then you have FIRST DIBS, followed by the FACEHUGGER PLAYER, and then XENO QUEUE
If you’re UNNESTED then you will never get your larva.
Predators will only have a 20%(iirc? might be diff) chance of taking their larva when nested if their pref is on for abomination.
Each ‘tick’ the APS chem will reverse the larva timer by a certain amount of time.
The amount of time is dictated by the property level, the higher the property, the more the time is reversed.
If the timer is reversed fully the embryo ‘dies’ and the marine vomits up the remains.
This is why APS is almost never used correctly, the doses needed to fully cure someone varies from one marine to another based on how late they are, and from one round to another based on what the ultimate prop level was. Medics need to dose someone, keep an eye on them, revisit after the dose has run out and ask the marine ‘did you throw up’ and if not redose them. The chem also does not process when a marine is dead or in a stasis bag. That means that if a marine is given APS, then put in a stasis bag, their timer will continue to progress and potentially burst. Cue the “:M Research the APS doesn’t fucking work!!!”