For those who are unaware, lungecapping is warriors using their lunge ability to capture marines.
Typically, they’ll lunge at an unfortunate marine near resin, fling them further away, and then they’re a larva.
I think everyone agrees as marine it is incredibly unfun when a warrior lunges at you from resin and flings you instantly for a capture, especially for newer marines. At one moment you could be breaking resin with the rest of your squad, and the next second you’re being shoved into the ground and will become a larva.
Warrior should be what it’s name implies, a warrior. Lunge should be used as a way to throw someone against the wall and break bones, not instantly turn them into a larva with no counterplay.
That would make warrior way more fun to interact with. Warrior could focus on being a warrior caste and not a cap farm.
Here are some propositions to nerf lungecap.
Maybe let marines be harder to tackle when being dragged by a warrior. Maybe let them also shoot as they are being lunged by the warrior, this could help apply pressure to the warrior to do a quick fling to finish them off. I’ve seen a pr about being able to only slash and not shove when lunging, and that could help.
I actually don’t think it’s that bad. I take far far far more issue with queen screech + runner drags you to a permadeath while you are literally incapable of doing anything for 10 seconds. (IMO the fix for that is having grabs undo the stun on the player, same as friendly touching does. Problem pretty much resolves itself then.)
Even if you removed the warrior’s ability to fling a marine, I don’t think it’ll change lunge-capping much because it doesn’t explicitly rely on flinging, that’s just one of the options.
Really the issue with the lungecapping I see is when you hit indestructible terrain and your options to counter warrior lungecapping are effectively removed (that is, destroying the cover the warrior hides behind). It’s not the ability to do it that’s bad per se.
Rather than going after warrior lungecapping I think the better direction is removing indestructible terrain and maintaining a balance around that idea. IMO we’re getting closer to being able to do this - xeno wall building is fast, there’s very often multiple builders, and walls are strong enough now that a hivelord + queen combo can build their way right up to marine cadelines faster than marines can destroy the walls. Maybe only have the hive core construct indestructible walls for its coverage area?
I remember a round where I was trying to just recover my SADAR as loader. A warrior comes right up to me and flings me back, then another flings me back even further. Within ten seconds I go from perfectly fine, no injuries, not even overextending to round removed. They ended up killing me rather than capping me but it made no difference because I was never going to be recovered before I went perma. Warrior flinging is I think integral to many warriors playing styles, but it definitely needs a nerf.
You can realistically do the same thing using teamwork + any stun. The reason it’s bad with warrior is because they can do it solo and thus it’s ridiculously reliable and easy as it doesn’t require 2 teammates to be disabled in order to do it. Plus i mean… queen is meant to be ridiculously op because intentional design i guess. When facing the average marine, lungecap’s insane situational utility benefits warriors who face noobs, and thus punishes all marine players for the noobiness of your allies.
Situation A: Runner + Lurker: -1 teammate to stun (lurker now have no ability) -1 to drag + permatackle
Advtg - cant easily space out lurker lunge, easy to escape for lurker and they can use cripple slash on other target to make space for ally. Can be hard to counter when executed correctly.
Disadvtg - Requires higher degree of teamwork, thus much less likely to occur. Counterplayable by spacing, teamwork, good use of pressure (because low sustain), positioning. Can be hard to pull off (combination of two squishies) and may combine odds of failure due to two failure points. Requires usage of pounce on free ally (the lurker) and disabling of one ally (the one dragging). Lurker tackle can be dodged with good movement, info, and prediction - so you can make it unreliable outside of like 4 tiles and thus shake the person who got tackled as a counter. And because it encourages setup, to actually do any teamwork you have to work with the very limited attention span of your teammates and thus might have to play excessively risky and rely on their execution more.
instead
Situation B: -1 teammate to stun and drag, and in comparison +1 teammate to go use abilities on enemies who want to repel or alternatively no teammate needed at all in certain positions
Advtg - Depending on team comp, can be better. Very easy to pull off because it is both easy to execute and individually focused. Warrior has fling + punch incase of emergency. And also, very annoying to get hit by because, in a crowd its very unlikely in comparison to get hit by lurker + runner drag, but you only need ONE warrior to do this on a push to get a free cap of their choice within any range they can reach. Because it doesn’t require any form of setup, it’s super easy to utilize on anyone who makes obvious mistakes, or pushes without complete information, or fails a gamble!! It’s ridiculously punishing and op because it requires no setup and because it punishes with a round remove and adds another xeno to xeno side.
In comparison, it gives you a free ability usage on the free xeno. But it may be better for second xeno to drag + permatackle depending on how fast they are so that warrior can make use of fling + punch easier.
A noob won’t counterplay it and will feed to it anyway though. Or if a warrior keeps silent it can surprise and open with it without any setup/warning, which just sucks to fight with current marine playerbase’s inability to perform easy teamwork which SHOULD be the counterplay that stops this from capping because of warrior’s slow movespeed.
Unlike pounce, lunge is instant and almost impossible to dodge (but you dont have to let them hit you ofcourse). Meaning compared to lurker - it’s far more reliable depending on player skill without calculating prediction/dodge skill differential, but only 4 tiles is a limit that makes it somewhat fair.
Disadvtg - Fairly counterplayable to some degree by spacing, teamwork, positioning, awareness, and shooting the warrior. Warrior tackle can be dropped on even a single failure to tackle because of shorter stun of permatackle loop.
In practice? Lurker + Runner capping is better. Like, way WAY better then solo lungecapping. But solo lungecapping is solo, and thus doesn’t require specific team synergies/setup! In groups, lungecapping becomes much more effective and any gauranteed round remove is so important! Which is why it’s more valuable in most situations for a runner to grab the lungecap post-stun and take it instead and allow warrior to free-float positionally.
It’s often kinda difficult for a runner to work with warriors though. However warrior + warrior is still undeniably one of the best team synergies for any defensive structure because of the variety of things they can pull off (especially since marines are noobs and half of the time using the most effective execution possible for a tactic is NOT necessary) and 2 warriors doubles effectiveness of reposition abilities. Warrior has a lot of defensive wiggle room and zoning pressure which lurker cannot utilize as easily due to its lower sustain (which matters a lot in Group vs Group) and also warrior has the ability to reposition enemies which lurker does not (well, lurker DOES have the ability to reposition enemies on their stun, but its around 3-4 tiles and their low sustain can make it much more difficult then doing it with warrior since your enemy will get up and attack since your not slashing as much. Lurker solo-reposition you rely on allies to kill it and is not nearly as effective.). Warrior pressure serves to halt advances because of threat of perma, compared to lurker which can easily threaten kills and tons of fracs but not perma w/o synergistic teammates.
But yeah i think lungecap should get removed since pouncecap got removed. It’s not a necessary part of the kit, is really unfun to fight, and too reliable/solo-focused/setupless for the reward it gives.
Have a pal using slugs behind you. Have a pal with one free hand on help intent next to you.
To fling you like that Warrior is required to lunge you, then to move two tiles while slowed from said lunge and then fling.
As much as I hate RNG, you can put RNG if you want to that fling. Say it chooses random variable from bullet scatter code. So it is not always perfect straight line, but sometimes to the sides. It still achieves what it says on the tin, but is less likely to happen that warrior flings you trough 1x1 door to your doom, you might get stuck on a wall beforehand.
I think it would be the best solution to reduce ammount of “unfun” to fight warrior, but wouldn’t take away core aspect of it and it wouldn’t nerf it too much.
I really don’t get the sudden flavor of the month hate towards lunge caps lol. I’m not some 10 year vet of CM, but I’ve got 1000 hours at this point of equal xeno marine play and have never had an issue with it. Warriors are extremely easy to outplay with a variety of different weapons and tools. The main problem I see is marines want to do unga shit and don’t respect the threat of a resin door or chokepoint camping warrior, run directly into the kill zone, and get killed or capped.
Camping warriors are SUPPOSED to be extremely dangerous, I think people have forgotten that. I play VERY differently when I know a warrior is camping nearby for that reason. If I see one more marine facecheck a known warrior killbox with no backup and then clap emote as they get capped I swear man…. And btw if you do that shit, you DESERVE to be lunge capped for the misplay.
As for the xeno side of it, I am a good Xeno, not necessarily a great one. I have carried plenty of games but I am not a top frag legend like some of the usual suspects. I see a lot of experienced Xenos say ohhhh we don’t need or use lunge caps, and frankly I could get by without it as well. The issue I have is spreading it over the average. Lunge capping is a lower risk lower percentage way of securing caps for warriors.
Landing the lunge and stepping over to hit the fling exposes you to a lot more risk for a cap, but usually guarantees success if you get them through the resin door. Those 2 tiles you step may not seem like much, but that second and a half and 2 tiles you use to do it is easily the difference between a grenade or shotgun rush that kills you.
I think it’s an unnecessary nerf, and will just make capping more difficult for the average or lower skilled player while it remains unchanged for the experienced. People need to learn to play differently around warriors instead of pretending they don’t have a lunge ability, and act accordingly.
As much as I dislike lungecapping, warrior is unironically one of the most balanced castes to play against. They’re squishy and are really only a threat within the 4 tile lunge range, and their threat level massively decreases the second you have a battle buddy. They’re easily stunnable (and baitable especially with prefired buck and/or HEDP), and have a large sprite to click on.
The nerf to lunge range was enough, I think warrior is currently in the best spot it’s ever been.
Enough bald warriors die trying to lungecap because of shotgun heroes or HEDP UGL enthusiasts already, I think cucking it even further will just make warrior daunting for newbies.
people with many more hours then you have hated lungecap for years! It’s not some flavor of the month thing.
The reason you don’t see it often is because prime warrior mains with thousands of hours in the game don’t use this technique because its perceived as slime due to how op it is.
Lungecap just rewards a free cap (instant round remove) for doing the job warrior normally does. it should never have been in the game in the first place! Making it more like lurker pounce cap means it will require a teammate to do it which is a much better way to do it imo.
The problem is not lungeCAPPING, it is the cap system in general.
I know its “soul” but gameplay wise, the cap system is the worst thing ever. It permakills marine players who tend to not want to go xeno or are bald and waste the slot, the systems we used to have in place to facilitate caps made defensive play by marines favored over offensive unless marines were cracked out (hats off to the OG Delta Squad) which created hour long rounds of FOB sieges, and in general just do not promote fun gameplay.
There are so many better ways to give xenos more larvae OR buff up the existing xenos that survived as a reward for staying alive + making it more lethal to keep the round going longer and longer.
Instead we went the worst route; capping got nerfed but if you DO get capped, your game is completely over. You have ZERO recourse unless a suicidal scout or IO rushes hive to save you and no one is at hive. Thats why the few cap methods still there (oppressor, vanguard punch into stun, sentinel, warrior lunge cap) are so hated; since you know if you are capped your round is basically over unless you play xeno. I do not count FOXTROT since thats a gamble anyway.
Encouraged capped marines to stay in their bodies in the nest
Encouraged interesting hive and nest design
Encouraged RP
What it didn’t do well:
Forced xeno players to maintain the nest, repetitively stunning and nesting marines
Took 1-3 xenos off the frontline
Potentially huge disaster for xenos if one noob somehow failed to nest a marine
Common for someone to get out and arm a grenade/use a stim/PB to kill themselves
Mechanically, for those who weren’t there or need a refresh - Marines could resist out of a nest and potentially free other marines. You’d typically get 0-2 (maybe just 1?) breakout chances before you’d burst. If other marines were in line of sight with you, then everyone in line of sight would burst sooner. Nest designs were little square boxes with doors, and between capped marines were clear resin walls - this preventing quickly freeing/killing other caps and promoted faster larva burst. Xenos would typically get 2-3 larva per burst, instead of 1, and bursts took about 2-3x longer to happen than they do right now. Also I think huggers did (maybe still do) inject chemicals to heal/stabilize caps, and the resin nests themselves did the same.
It was typical for xenos to have a sentinel or warrior guarding the nest to make sure any marines who got free would be re-nested before they caused trouble. I think drones at the time also had 3-tap tackle instead of 2, but not sure. Anyway those two castes in particular worked well because they could instantly stun marines, preventing any possibility of fighting back before being nested again. If queen was in the nest she would screech to prevent any mass breakouts.
Now with all that said, there were problems leading up to the final removal of these mechanics:
Xeno players didn’t want to babysit the nest all the time, and there were always complaints when someone failed to nest a marine and all the caps escaped and the nest destroyed. The removal of a few xenos off the front lines also had a serious impact on fighting, as 1 xeno is worth ~3 marines, it’s essentially like having half or more of a marine squad out of the fight.
For quite a long while a marine could instantly wield his weapon after getting free, or arm a grenade, or use a stim, etc. even when being ‘spit out’ and dropped by a xeno (good players would drop you on a hugger/egg so you were instantly hugged and couldn’t try to PB or fight). Then eventually a short stun timer was added so that being spat out or un-nested prevented you from fighting back except against the baldest of xeno players, and then this timer got extended even further to help prevent xenos dying so much, and then un-nesting (which used to be an instant-click) and damage to resin with your knife, also got nerfed to make freeing people more time consuming and difficult.
Before we switched over to perma-nesting, it was in my opinion, already perma-nesting in practice thanks to the progressive changes and nerfs against marines breaking out. All the perma-nesting change really did was make it official and free up a few more xeno players for the front instead of the nest.
I think if we went back to breakouts being possible it’d result in the same thing: What people fondly remember of breaking out of nests is when you actually had a chance to fight back, rather than the tail-end period where the permanesting was pretty much in place in every way but the name.
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I think breaking free of nests was generally more fun as a marine, and still fun as a xeno (I personally did not struggle with getting people back into nests even with their instant PB bullshit, because I had instant lunge bullshit too), but it did cause problems for the xeno frontline numbers and bald players fumbling caps was a pain in the ass.
But I don’t think there’s a reason to bring back breaking out without also giving marines a fighting chance, and that was kind of the crux of the problem: A lot of xeno players didn’t want to have to fight someone twice to get their larva. You got nested, you shouldn’t be able to fight back anymore you lost, basically.
And that sentiment overpowered marines breaking out of nests to the point that it was removed in the practical sense, and then months later in the actual sense.
Mechanically, to have the true experience of breakouts again, you’d need to un-nerf the stun time when a marine is unnested or dropped by a xeno, such that he can actually act sooner than tackles will permatackle him. If you don’t make that change, then you wouldn’t actually be bringing breakouts back.
I didn’t even mean this, I meant exploring other mechanics.
Like holding comms giving larvae again but not at the ridiculous amounts they did before.
Or killing marines giving you a percentage of a larvae, so if you kill enough marines you get a lot of larvae.
There’s plenty of routes the game can go, but cap gaming is like the worst part of CM, right up there with queen screech, as its been crutch-ified to a point where its a gamey mechanic that exists because its needed and not because its a good mechanic.
Worst part of the problem, is that removing capping will just make half the Alien experience go away. It is essentially integral for xenomorphs to be xenomorphs, and how they actually stand out amongst the generic aliens.
But as of now, its almost imperative that you have some agency outside of queen to be able to perma marines who do stupid shit. Because outright removing capping (and giving them larva another way at the same rate), would also get rid of lots of permas who are indeed needed to be perma.
And for permaing. Just don’t die? Xenoes have to play with it in the back of their head that “Oh, my team might be absolute trash at capping so i only get one life” and then get to be 2 hours in larva queue at 4th place. As they say. Embrace the suck.
Finally. Capping in CM maybe “soul” but it’s just a stupid system. When I started playing I kept asking myself how in the hell people weren’t screaming at their computers with some of the downright stupid captures of otherwise fully healthy marines. I’m not saying I have a solution. I’m just saying the cap system is shit and I’m tired of pretending it’s not!
Expand upon Tcomms giving larvae. Make it more viable than a single surge so it enforces marines constantly being the offensive party lest they be buried under a constant avalanche of xenos. Surge to 2 royal resin and royal resin gain upped to be faster by 2-3x what it currently is. Balanced around the fact you only get royal resin around the 1:00 mark so marines have a maximum of 40 minutes (if they drop right at X:20) to gain map control. If they cannot gain or keep map control at that point, xenos SHOULD start snowballing regardless. It also gives an objective point to marines and xenos that both parties MUST focus down instead of holding for just a bit then running off.
Kills giving a % based amount to larvae. For example, killing 1 marine gives 25% to getting 1 larvae. So killing 4 marines (even if its the same marine [which would make reviver stim / being suicidal and constantly dying then getting defibbed a problem late game]) gives you 1 larvae. This removes cap gameplay and focuses on the xenomorphs main strength; their ability to kill. No more needing to disarm as a T3 because caps are important; you can now kill and get larvae if you kill enough. This further focuses on the design philosophy around xenos mostly having abilities centered around killing marines (Crusher all strains, Ravager all strains, Prae most strains, Boiler most strains, Lurker all strains, etc.).
Keep with the current cap mechanics but make them better than they currently are. Boost bursts to 2 again (1 marine = 2 larvae) but make them longer to burst so there’s a chance of hive diver operations working and a chance of marine forces doing kamikaze attacks to take back their men. Currently, hive diving / kamikaze rush to Hive to save marines is useless since you burst in like 5-8 mins or something after being captured unless bagged which is not enough time to rescue someone unless you got hugged right next to the marine offensive in hive.