New drone strand idea

Through discussing stuff in Tank rework thread, where there started to form a new kind of discussion, I had an idea. And that idea is for a new strand for drone called XOT (Name still pending).

It would be visually similar to a drone, but maybe its leaking some kind of liquid from its mouth more, and just be covered in some kind of liquid substance.

But to get into the meat of it, it loses its building powers (not special building though), loses pheros, and loses transfer plasma ability. But instead, it gets the power to create several different kinds of xeno chemicals. It will have about 5-6 where they all “Refill” alongside plasma when on weeds (or hive weeds), but one of them only has a starting pool, while only being able to be bought with royal plasma (Lets just call it Xhoron for now). And with all these xeno chemicals, the drone can mix and match them, which will create one of several finished chemicals that it can use to buff T3s (Be carefull while mixing said chemicals, because if you are careless (and because its all happening inside the drone) might explode, gibbing you, and generally acting with the same damage and range as an M40 grenade.

But for buffs, I have a few ideas. Its only for base T3s, for now, since doing it for every strain as well would just overheat my brain.


Ravager

  • Scissor Cut empowered: It will either get +1/2 range, +50% damage, or be able to be casted twice in a row during a 2 second “charge” (Imagine your berserker eviscerate, but it happens at the start of the charge and the end of it). But if you managed to use Xhoron in the chemical mix, it would randomly delimb either a hand or foot of ONE of the targets (debatable if it should be able to hit multiple
  • Empower: It would either get +1 range, +50% shield, or a third charge. If Xhoron is used, it will be able to slow all the ones targeted, and root them if they are hit again by the slow.
  • Charge: Again, just a simple +1/2 range, +50% toss range (the distance traveled by the ones hit by empowered charge, if not empowered, does nothing), or a CD reset once used. If Xhoron is used, then you will charge through all the marines, while also hitting each one with a basic attack.

Boiler

  • Bombard: Depending on the gas used, it either gets +1/2 AOE, Faster travel speed, or faster gas spread (The actual speed of the gas to spread from the center, to the outer edges). If Xhoron is used, then a direct hit from the Acid gas will melt away the marine, leaving only a skeleton behind (Argueable, but would look sick(Put in “Bad to the bone” guitar riff)), while the neurotoxin would leave the marine with max Brain damage, and heartbreak.
  • Acid Spray: Still pretty standard when it comes to common buffs. +1 range, +50% damage, or 50% speed to the spray. But with Xhoron, it will now act like a wave, where at tile 1, it will be 1 tile wide, then tile 2 will be 3 tile wide, tile 3 5 tile wide, and so on.
  • Acid Shroud: Ew, yukky ability. You don’t get buffs.

Crusher

  • Charge: Similar to the ravagers in terms of buffs. +1 range, faster charge up time, or +50% damage. But if buffed by Xhoron, it will launch a direct hitted marine 10 tiles, where if they hit a wall in HALF that range, they will splatter on it, being effectivly gibbed.
  • Stomp: +1 AOE range, +1 second stun time, or +50% damage (to the one underneath the crusher). If buffed by Xhoron, the stomp will reverberate, and will activate 2.5 seconds again after being used (If a marine is underneath the crusher twice, then they will recive 100 brute damage to chest, with 10 damage to each organ in said chest area).
  • Master of Defence: +50% shield amount, x2 duration, or doubles the damage reduction. If Xhoron is used, then the shield will make the crusher both CC immune (Slows, fire, Stuns, Silence, etc.) and damage immune for the standard duration (Did this even change the main ability?)

Preatorian (Gonna be real, don’t know how to buff this guy that much, as all of their abilites are kinda mid)

  • Acid Spit: Either it will deal double damage, leave acid remains on the marine, or get +1 range (this can be done 5x times per charge from the drone). If Xhoron is used, it will make the marine in question rack up “Corrosive Acid” (The passive ability of the base preatorian, where marines take 30 burn damage once they are hit by 5 acid abilites from said preatorian) until 5 charges, where they take 60 burn damage spread across the body (might get buffed to 90).
  • Acid Ball: Somewhat standard where it gets +1 range (not AOE range), +50% acid spits (the “shrapnel” of the nade), or 50% damage increase to the acid spits. With Xhoron, it will now be lobbed over objects (like high toss), and all the acid spits will pierce marines hit (does 50% less damage per marine hit).
  • Spray Acid: Almost same as boiler where they get +1 range, +50% acid speed, or no charge up (No 1 second charge up to do said ability). If buffed with Xhoron, it will apply its “Corrosive acid” (The ability to melt items and cades) to all items caught in the path (The items must be able to be melted, so stuff like spec gear, smartgunner gear, and other assorted items won’t be affected).

And this should be it for the drone strain. I hope it wasn’t TOO complicated, but its there to make it not OP. Albeit it should only be available to have one of this strain (or a number tied to how many xenoes there are. Like 1 every 20 xenoes or so, where its 1 between 20-39, 2 between 40-59, etc.

Looking for feedback, and maybe for more “Unique” solutions to the Xhoron abilites (Prea just ain’t easy man).

5 Likes

This is a fucking amazing idea.
Im 1000% for this.

Xenos need more stuff despratly. As long as both sides gets cool new things no harm after all.

One idea though. If it gets killed while being full of chems it goes boom.
That would be fucking hilarious.

1 Like

Sentinel mains are punching drywall with a 10th drone strain suggestion.

8 Likes

Sentinels don’t deserve anything.

he has a point though, it would make more sense to give senti. You know, them being part of the xeno chem line already.

Although, i admit it fits drone better gameplay wise. Drone being more backline support, and senti frontline.

1 Like

“(Be carefull while mixing said chemicals, because if you are careless (and because its all happening inside the drone) might explode, gibbing you, and generally acting with the same damage and range as an M40 grenade.”

babe wake up new acid runner dropped, no obvious tells or slowdown or other BS and all the upside of a “fuck you marines” bug explosion

2 Likes

It’s not a big explosion, nor does it do that much damage. You don’t need even get the free respawn the acid runner gets. It’s overall a downside, where the hive loses the one drone that can give our powerful buffs.

Edit: just to examplify the damage. If you lay down when it happens, you only take like 20-40 damage when being right next to it. Meanwhile, it will gib the drone, remove weeds, take away from the Xhoron pool, and destroy nearby walls.

1 Like

i mean, you would lose a xeno to that though. Acid runner can go suicide because they come back. That would be a trade to take marines out of the figth for about 5 minutes until the corpsmen revive them again.
But the drone would be permanently gone.
Im pretty sure that is a trade nobody will do for a M40.

(Be carefull while mixing said chemicals, because if you are careless (and because its all happening inside the drone) might explode, gibbing you, and generally acting with the same damage and range as an M40 grenade.

this just sounds like a noobtrap, no experienced player would ever make this mistake and if a newbie makes it then they’re out of the round for the next 30 mins to an hour because they didn’t read the wiki to see which chemicals cause you to get roundremoved. At least when OTs destroy their lab they’re not ROUND REMOVED and can still sorta act like an MT after they get revived.

True, but I want something risky about it, since all the buffs are that good. I’m open for ideas for change, especially from an experienced drone player as yourself.

In it’s state currently, even if you were to do nothing but pocket a single player, the drone strain would arguably be equivelant or stronger than a Warden Prae in terms of ability to support a player.
For example:

  • boiler lands a direct hit with neuro, that player is forced to medevac or get their heartbreak treated by a synth, you can repeat the buffing if there’s multiple boilers all going for direct hits when marines are pushing.
  • Praetorian acid spray applying corrosive acid to items is absolutely crazy the number of melted guns would be insane. Not to mention DOUBLE SPIT DAMAGE or forcing them to resist.
  • Crusher’s shield goes from 200 hp to 300 (idk what you mean by doubled Damage Reduction as shield already blocks all damage other than fire), stomp getting an extra tile and stun time makes it effectively a mini screech.
  • Rav getting empower range and extra shield… wow, and I’m P. sure that double scissor cut will have decent odds to frac marines through barricades (40x2 dmg).

Meanwhile Warden Praetorian (the dedicated support T3) gets a 150 hp heal, strong pheros, and a oppressor hook for allied xenos and is capable of pocketing ravs to make them near-unkillable.

Are you sure you want the strain to be specifically for buffing T3s? To the point where it offers nothing for T2 castes? I’d like the T3 buffs way weaker and instead have the ability to buff T2s and T1s, and making the buffs less “number bigger”. I’m not really sure how to do this though.

Yeah, I originally only had ideas for the mainline abilities of 3 T3s (prea too hard to buff), that being scissor cut cutting of hands and feet, acid/neuro glob, and crusher charge. The rest were more added on so it felt more modular, but could be easily reverted to one buff per ability (where Xhoron only affects the main damaging ability).

Cut the empowerment of abilities. Make it OT for xeno tails/claws, so that when they slash, or tailstab they inject some chemical based on what XOT brewed and armor, heavier armor getting less units injected.

It would be more of a Xesearcher, but that would be more balanced and easy to code in (I assume). Randomised chems each round, some sometimes even benefitting the rine injected in some way etc.
For example brewing a mixture that after slash/tail injection speeds up marine, but gives him a bit of liver damage, so that chem is balanced to be one hit and run with small chance for repeated injections, something like that.

Some brews (or maybe basically all, to balance it out) would reduce regular slash damage, change a bit of brute damage into more burn, so overall it deals more etc. There is a room for something like that.

Gameplay similar to marine researcher, but with live subjects, where xesearcher has to observe injected marines to deduce what concotion does what, mix and match it for something new, cool, potent, yet balanced. However I do think T3s shouldn’t benefit much from it, otherwise only they would hogg everything because their brewmaster drone girlfriend douses them with slowdown slashes.

Xesearcher (Brewmaster strain) would stop be an obvious troll/acid goop strain it clearly seems to be currently proposed.

1 Like

Was thinking something with the same type of power as OT stuff generally, but a xesearcher isn’t a bad idea as well. Albeit you could probably tone down the randomness and make it something standard.

I feel it would be more of a malanthrope from 40k, where it makes the hive stronger by assimilating or learning from the corpses of the ones it kills. Could tie in with Xenoes being a “late game” faction that is supposed to have an advantage for how long the game goes.

Example could be giving a flame resistance (not nullification) to the hive if it consumes a bursted pyro spec, or lurkers get better invis from a bursted scout. But also give the drone some generalist upgrades like “if the bursted corpse was an engineer, it can buff the plasma regen if a builder faste” or something similar.

Donno if you could get something consistent from riflemen, but maybe give it “research” point for melting weapons and ammo. So you could give that 50/50 burn/brute damage to claws. Or give it increasing AP buff for every hit if it melts an XM88. This would also inadvertently “buff” marine morale into taking care of other peoples guns and not leave them to melt.

as a xeno player, why would you ever want to swap brute damage for burn damage? brute damage gives bone breaks and fractures, burn damage doesn’t do anything permanent and so can be easily treated with kelo

Because it would have extra damage increase. So if you were a lurker with 35 brute damage normally, it would buff that damage to about 45-50, but split the damage 50/50. Didn’t make that clear throigh my message, so sorry about that.

But generally, its there to crit the marine faster, as burn damage paincrits marines a LOT faster then brute.