Okay this might seem like a bit of a nothing burger but hear me out here. I think that the hive core should block the marine tacmap from seeing anyone under the hive roof, for one main reason. The moment more than like two or three marines get capped and nested in the hive anyone paying attention to the tacmap should be able to figure out where the hive is. By making the hive core hide tacmap icons it would mean that the marines groundside would actually have to put in a little bit of effort to locate the hive, heck, maybe the scout could even scout out the location of the hive for once rather than everyone just immediately knowing where it is. A repaired sensor tower should also be able to see through the hive core, though I do concede that by the time sensors is active the general location of the hive will probably be known already. Sure hives will probably still continue to be in the meta spots nine times out of ten, but in that instance of the hive being somewhere else, it not being immediately located could be an interesting curve ball.
1000% behind removing information from marines, I think Xenos winning the information war is a key balance feature that has been forgotten and eroded over time!
That said, this is somewhat defeated by marines having 3 built in GPSes (SL beacon direction, SL beacon shift click, and Tacmap showing marine player local) and radios.
NGL I also forgot marines don’t HAVE to ghost on nesting until a massive Xeno flank was called out by a capture announcing Queen left ovi.
you cannot set hugged people to SL, nor dead people out in the wild.
Absence of information is information in and of itself: all CIC would have to do is wait for the capped marine to disappear on the tacmap to know the hive’s location.
No, but a rifleman’s leader tracker will tell them which way the SL and, presumably, the front is. That alone is enough to deduce say, west or east caves on LV
Additionally, now that xenos can’t tunnel with captives to disorient them, you can take a good guess at how far you were hauled. From there you can simply call out which meta spot they nested you in, and the jig is up.
Hear me out: Don’t put caps next to hive core. Crazy, right?
If xenos are too lazy to put caps in special designated “fake hives” away from the main one, then they deserve to have their hive location known. Enough with handholding xenos on tactical/strategic side.
Agreed.
Fake hives don’t work because when you die, you can just see where the real hive is. And when you do, you just push that direction instead of the fake one without anyway to prove this is what you did.
forbid ghosting out of body until you perma or dnr. not sure why we even can do it. only downside it’s gonna be boring
I can see where you are coming from but I am going to have to disagree. That would be incredibly boring.
This is already on the roadmap for xenos, where they will be locked to weeds while observing if they wanna play xeno
E: Marines doing it is fine though because ???
I do not think either side should be limited or locked to any tile while an observer or dead.
So a marine has to die, obtain that information, be revived and then relay that information to others/command so that they may act on it. This is where adememes step in to prevent metagaming. If random PFC after death suddently urges everyone to push into the direction of real hive instead of what command ordered, then it is clear metagaming target for investigation. Not that many people would listen to random PFC doing that.
But even if so, if fake hives don’t work because people can ghost after death and spot real and fake hives, how hivecore hiding tacmap icons is going to do work in a way to not have the same problem?
Hivecore hiding tacmap icons don’t work because when you die, you can just see where the hivecore is.
Its two fold, but i’ll explain how hard it would be to catch someone doing this without banning random people for metagaming.
Firstly, after you die and respawn, infront of ETA on solaris. You look around the map and see the hive is defending a fake hive in ETA while the real hive core is in lambda. You then can be revived and ask other marines if they want to flank the hive by going security. Then you would see more xeno structures and start removing shit before someone (not you) calls out on radio that theres xeno activity in the area, and suddenly xenoes start rushing you, letting you call out theres probably some important shit going on.
Now what do you do from the admin perspective. From what i gather you cannot view ghost movements without them activly following other players, and you can gain this insight from just looking at the tacmap while ghosted anyway. Being PFC John Marine makes you excempt from the rules of “Always follow command” like the limited slots have, so you can just ask people to flank with you. And now someone who was just asked to join this guy, not knowing where the hive actually was, calls it out on comms, and now its all busted. If you have any way to fix this metagaming issue without extensive admin intervension, or making marines bound to their bodies, please do share them as the admins would most likely want to know.
As for the hivecore stuff, it would be actually neat to have a blackzone around that area so queens can have some form of strategy with it. Either it being hiding the hive location, or using it as an “anti” ARC.
Like hell guys will listen to some random babble about a flank on xenos. It all hangs on the idea that forming a flank as marines is easy, command can barerly do it with announcements and OOC enforcements, some random dude who gets an idea for epic flank (that fails most of the time) surerly will be the one who consistently gets people to listen. Especially on flanks that require that much legwork and then conviniently even stop being a flank of the position you were assaulting and changing into charging straight into completly different part of the map.
And being PFC John Marine makes you excempt from being someone who is to “be always followed”. If you advertise your flank idea on comms, that is one big bread crumb for admemes to follow. If you don’t use comms and ask people directly, you will gather around 5 dudes who will get wiped on their way to the real hive.
There is no strategy with it, marine can just die, ghost it and then “flank it”. In a perfect world with no metagaming xenos deserve to have their main hive marked on marine tacmap if they gather hosts in there. In our flawed world with metagaming xenos still deserve that and obscuring tacmap icons does nothing to prevent marines seeing trough that immediately after first one dies.
I was talking about the hivecore with the above situation fixed, as even disgussing it without it does not do much. You also completely ignored me talking about a “frontline” hivecore acting as an “anti” ARC, but I guess you don’t wanna talk about those.
Anyhow:
Does not explain why 10 dudes suddenly show up where the queen is resting, or at the real hive whenever theres a fake hive. Usualy not seen since nobody is going to activly watch that area since xenoes expect marines to fall for the fake hive and fight around it. I have been in many a round of fake hive shenanigans, and every time a squad of marines just casualy walk up to the real hive core if they can.
Why not apply the same logic to me? I also was talking that with this metagaming situation fixed, xenos deserve to have their main hive location revealed to marines if they decide to put caps there.
Because why xenos need something to counter the only usefull information gained from ARC? Why even buy that stuff for a medicore 3x3 sentry that lets command know that there are backliners on the backline and nothing else.
If it is the same 10 guys who decided to follow eachother without talking much, then those are clear metagamers. That thing wouldn’t be fixed mechanicaly even if you restricted ghosting at all before going perma, because you can always have observer UAV relying info trough secret discord channel. Hive core hiding tacmap icons is just as useless as fake hives if we take metagaming into account. In any case it is just 10 dudes, take two T3s from the frontline and send them with Queen there to wipe them out in 3 minutes tops.
If this happens so reliably that you can spot it, then maybe it is enough of a hook to pull bad actors? Even if there is a gang of metagaming marines, putting caps into a fake hive and not a main one means only 10 metagaming guys show up at the real deal, instead of entire marine force, because metagamers to lay low can’t just scream on comms to go there. Simply wipe out the metagamers every single round.
You literally lead with this when talking about it. In any case, why do xenoes “desserve” what they have now? Other than saying “this is how it has been all the time”.
Then make the ARC counter it instead, but have the hive still have a radius of radar blackspot until then. Hell, now the ARC is more usefull at its actual job at the same time.
I don’t play 100 rounds and write down the name of every person i belive is a metagamer, to see if they do so again in the future. I can barely remember any marines names as it is, and like hell am I gonna remember 10 goobers that flanked a fake hive like that.
Thats just a logical fallacy. You are saying if we cannot catch them all, then we might as well not bother.
I love the “just win” approach you have to any situation. “If X happens, why don’t you just do Y instantly and win?”. Guessing you haven’t done much CIC or Queen?
It happens reliably on rounds which are rare to happen, because everyone knows the otherside metagames it. It had a big surge in I’d say 2024, where Yellows and such wanted to experiment with it a lot, but this stuff happened.
Anyway, while it won’t get the hardcore metagamers that have 10 alt accounts, with 20 LLM acting as players to metagame or whatever you can find, it will stop ALL casual metagaming from both sides. And with that gone, you can now bring forth communication disruption from both sides, this only being one of them.
If you are still gonna argue the perfection fallacy though, i’ll just ignore it.
Because I fail to understand the logic behind saying that fake hives with caps fail, but then tacmap icons hiding hivecore won’t.
Why they deserve what they have now? Because they can easly counter that by not placing caps in the main hive, thus rendering tacmap icons hiding hivecore completly useless for anyting but handholding. If xenos can’t just rub two braincells and not put their caps into actual hive where hivecore is, then it is on them for entire marine force knowing where it is located. They can literally not put caps into the main hive, it is that easy, giving hivecore the ability to hide tacmap icons is just handholding, it is more convinient to put caps into the main hive, so xenos do that and they get easly discovered, so now make hivecore hide everything so xenos can still be lazy and put all the caps next to their hivecore and not be punished for it, as it is now.
Yet you play enough rounds to notice a pattern of 10 marines appearing as soon as Queen rests, or knocking on real hive doors when entire marine force is occupied by fake hive defence.
I’m presenting your logic that you correctly recognise as fallacy. I propose using fake hives to store caps so that marines don’t know the location of hivecore from tacmap, you say that it is pointless as long as marines can die, ghost and scout it out, but then you propose that hivecore hiding tacmap icons will somehow be good if you also somehow prevent all metagamers from metagaming.
I have played enough PFC and Defender to know that 10 marine flanks fail most of the time and those especially big flanks going trough half of the map get wiped by Queen showing up.
I explained how it isn’t that big as you think it is. Marine dying, ghosting, scouting xeno positions, then getting revived and then organising a successful flank based on this information is very hard and because of that - rare. They can’t scream on comms to notify entire marine force about that, admemes would notice that, so the total pool of people who do and then act on that is small.
Then again, having this information and not acting on it is oftentimes better than rerouting everyone to the actual hive location. Killing few xenos on the way to the fake hive is worth more than just moving into direction of a real one.
I will do the same thing if you will still insist that using fake hives to store caps won’t work to prevent marines easly and immediately knowing main hive location, but hivecore hiding tacmap icons will. I argue both would work about just as good in the same conditions, but the latter method is just handholding for xenos, while former is a small, but smart play.
You don’t have to play 100 games to see a pattern. Just the fact that it happened EVERY time is enough to tell it. But if you wanna do me a solid by ghosting and watching marines the entire game to see if anyone is acting on it then be my guest.
Less logic and more of going on real life examples. You come up with the hypothetical of “Marines will metagame even with the fix”, where as how it is now, they are doing it weither they want to or not (as i called it casual metagaming). I came with an ongoing issue we are having and presented a solution, which you called inadequite since it wasn’t perfect and would be a waste of time. I can hardly see the comparisson.
Then you didn’t play it with the fake hives. Because 10 marines can absolutely kill a queen that is a bit too late to respond to them, since there isn’t vision on every part of the map on the xeno side. Again, going off actual experience on when it happend, instead of dissmissing it because you have a hypothetical. And no, not experience in playing x role, but experience with fake hives and what happens.
It is so rare that it happens every time the other rare thing happens. So not really rare at all when it happens every single time (when talking about rounds with fake hives). You can try to relate it to marines tryin to flank the FRONT of a xeno hive, where xenoes can very easily move from point A to point B in like, 10-12 seconds. But when you have a real hive in Lambda, and a fake hive in ETA while holding the locks there, then it suddenly becomes a much longer lag time between xenoes who listen and/or are willing to go to the real hive to defend it. Again, dissmissing it since you have a somewhat understanding since you have somewhat comparable cases does not actually dissmiss it when it cannot be applied 1 to 1.
Everything has handholding now a days, apparently to your comparrison. Alamo autopilot is just handholding for marines not wanting to drive their own dropship. FD is just handholding for marines who don’t wanna go shipside. REQ orbital launcher is just handholding for marines who doesn’t want to use Alamo as a transport of good. Hive CAS protection is just handholding xenoes for not picking a better place to put the hive. We have a lot of things that we are used to now, which can be applied with more effort, but same result.