Lesser drones nerf

I propose we remove the ability for them to acid anything. This will reduce the amount of meta gaming of lesser drones rushing FOB and trying to melt all the supplies every 30 seconds

5 Likes

I propose we remove lesser drones. They are a super cool addition completely ruined by a bunch of people who can’t stop UAV’ing and metarushing leading to constant cope and new pull requests about nerfing them.

15 Likes

I agree, lesser drones were a cool idea ruined by constant and blatant UAVing and metagaming.

5 Likes

I propose we keep lesser drones as is. You can knife them very easily and they arent a real threat to players that keep a cool head. They punish players that panic. Its important to punish that, and not give in to the cope of players that got solod by a lesser.

Besides, a big part of the metagaming was dealt with by muting lessers and huggers for a short while after spawn. If the metagming of “looking what part of the FOB is weak, spawning as lesser, and then running to it” concerns you. You can do the same as normal xeno.
The fact that you can ghost and the respawn at all makes it impossible to fully get rid of the ability to metagame. If someone wants to metagame, they always can. No matter if there are lesser drones in the game or not.
The only true way to stop metagaming, is by rules.

So no -1

I much rather have a way to remove accid somehow.
So non of that “your gun disolves in your hands” because some xeno puked on it 10 minutes earlier for 5 seconds.

2 Likes

acid in general as a mechanic kinda sucks. if you get your 1 second timer ability on an item, it just instantly dooms it, no counterplay except having a magharn, which just kinda makes having a magharn even more basically required so you dont get your gun instant melted the exact millisecond you drop it.

TGMC handles acid a lot better, when you pick up an acided item, you will receive a burn amount relative to the strength of the acid, and if you pick it up before the ‘[item name] begins to crumple under the acid’ (which is like 10-45 seconds depending on the item and the acid strength), you can actually save your weapon

9 Likes

we could make them loose health when they aren’t on weed.?

But they can already plant weeds and that would probably add annoyance to the players playing it which isn’t something I’m fond with.

Face huggers tackled this problem by adding a caste which is the watcher where it doesn’t take damage but can’t hide either

3 Likes

I mean… why not do the same then?

Ad a strain for lessers.
Base they lose health off weeds.
Strain that stay healthy off weeds but lose accid goop and building.

1 Like

Lesser drones are cancer, main purpose is to UAV and it is cringy to see one purposely move in-between marines to cause friendly fire. They are surprisingly tanky can survive a burst of m4a1.

Reduce their health to 80 and remove tailstab things will be all good.

7 Likes

people who are against lesser drone removal - “NOOOOOOOO I NEED TO PLAY CONSTANTLY”

people for lesser drone removal - “The guy who made them went on to make a pure Human vs AI server”

3 Likes

The UAV metarushing still happens without comms. At times, you’ll be sneaking around, completely undetected, on a flank - and a lesser drone will pop out and beeline for you, forcing you to either retreat or kill it and get found by the rest of the hive

One thing I can pitch is adding a sort of wind-up to joining as a lesser drone that makes it so you have to wait somewhere at around 30 seconds to spawn in after picking the prompt

5 Likes

One thing I can pitch is adding a sort of wind-up to joining as a lesser drone that makes it so you have to wait somewhere at around 30 seconds to spawn in after picking the prompt

Hard agree. I have no gripe against Lessers, but as they currently stand they’re just a freed mob for any ghost to pick up if they see something they want to mess with.
I won’t forget rushing the hivecore alongside an SO during hijack, fighting off a runner, carrier and drone… Only for 10 lesser drones to constantly keep piling in because dchat saw fit to horde us both despite our efforts.

Was kinda annoying to get metarushed like that, but oh well.

2 Likes

allegedly good gameplay, according to urban myth and legend

soy drone

10 Likes

There is already a partial solution in the works for this issue from the devs.

What will happen is that to join as any kind of Xenomorph, including a lesser or facehugger, you must join the “hive”. What this will do is make you no longer a normal ghost, but a sort of hive ghost, meaning your ghost can only exist on weeds and you no longer get meta information such as what the marines are saying/doing.

There would also still be a delay between joining the hive and being able to spawn in so you can’t join the hive and then immediately go Lesser to rat out someone. Furthermore, if you die as any xenomorph you would still remain part of the hive.

Essentially if you want to play as a xeno you are now forced to commit to remaining within the hive and thus losing out on meta information that ghosts get.

8 Likes

I’d honestly want it the other way as well. Since xenoes cannot do a fake hive for example, since a marine will ghost, see the fake hive, then silently go “Hey look, i found where the actual hive is while wandering around!”.

2 Likes

By “hive” they mean the entire xenomorph faction. So Greenos would have their own “hive” with its own ghosted xenos. Its not based on where the physical hive is.

So if there are multiple xeno factions you get to pick which one to join

2 Likes

I meant in the way that marines shouldn’t really be able to ghost around until they perma, since they will either willingly or unwillingly use meta knowledge that they get from looking around the map while down.

And I gave the example of fake hive (where you put all your caps somewhere that isn’t the hive to fool marines to pushing towards it while the hive is safe) and how it will never truly work since marines who go down will just spectate over there and go there silently to break the masquerade.

2 Likes

I would much rather get metarushed than be trapped inside my body until perma, thankyouverymuch.

Isolating the chats feels like it could further engender an us-vs-them mentality and lead to more toxicity (and more overt meta-coordination on both sides since the other team can’t hear you). I think being able to commiserate is a good thing, and being able to follow someone’s ghost to see zany shit play out is one of the greatest joys in CM. And restricting one set of ghosts to fix this issue feels unfair – you’re punishing a lot of xeno players for the actions of some bad apples.

Really, making a hive deadchat feels like it’s laying bare an intentional design decision that’s been keeping a shared deadchat viable: the delay of having to wait to mature as a larva. If you try to do the same kind of rush tactics as a larva that many lessers do, that’s tanking the hive’s resources and is a quick ticket to bwoinktown.

Why not put lessers through a short larval stage? By the time they’re done cooking, they’d be in a similar position to any other T1 as far as meta knowledge and the ability to act on it. Could also open up potential design space down the road.

2 Likes

One thing i thought about, if we are truly seperating xenoes and marines deadchat and their ghosts, would be having marines be able to ghost around anywhere BUT planetside. That way, you won’t be stuck in your body, nor will you get meta knowledge of flying around as a ghost.

But just to reiterate, thats if we are truly seperating them.

Looking forward to this solution. If they can only stay in weeds to observe then I hope the silence wears off because it’s be like the weeds are sharing information.

Hope it’s being done reciprocally for Marines so they can’t ghost too far away from their body to get information as well.

Main issue that I hope is resolved is that if you can’t leave weeds, there’s certain areas you can’t observe or cross because of unweedable parts on the planet.