Hybrisa (the best map to date) is perfect for a new game mode: colonist survival. The round starts with everyone as a survivor. No marines (initially, at least), just a city full of people sitting atop a derelict ship full of Wey-Yu researchers and a sinister plot. While the pizza guy makes deliveries, the WeyMart checkouts roll their eyes over coupons, and the car mechanics break one thing while fixing another, the urns in the derelict ship contain a nasty surprise for the researchers who are all too ready to experiment. Naturally this would lead to a long round with lots of roleplay.
Being colonists you’re just survivors, people, low skill for combat, and the vast majority wouldn’t even have headsets. As the round unfolds and the Marshal’s security lazily file another missing person report, a hive builds in the caves, unbeknownst to the residents. Starting with just a handful of huggers and/or a single drone, and a small team of very naive researchers with their corporate overseer, the xenos will have to hide and connive while the research team tries to keep things under-wraps with their executive threatening worse than employment termination. Using the tunnels, sewers, and ducts they will have to kidnap colonists discreetly to grow the hive.
Alternatively it could be a greenos-gone-feral scenario where the researchers bit off more than they could chew with their green queen in the derelict. There’s potential for a Raccoon City style zombies as well because the urns could have a black, gooey mystery substance hidden inside.
Why this is good: it adds another game mode to break up the HvX round standard of wake up, drop, FOB, while Hive builds walls and caps a handful of survivors. It means more stealth gameplay for xenos, more coordination. Getting caught and could spell doom for a handful of xenos, but the vast majority of the city are average citizens with low-to-no combat training, and diverse skills. Barricades? You mean boarded up windows and wooden forts.
Pulse rifles? The Marshal’s Office has a few FNs, MP5, and shotguns at best, and some citizens may have a 1911 in their home for defense. They’ll have to scrounge and be creative if they want to survive, or maybe they can get a message out to a nearby military vessel. Maybe it’s the USCM, or maybe it’s UPP? Maybe it’s corporate security coming to clean up their mess before the greater public can find out.
I’d love this, not sure it’d shake out very well in round since folks get bored but it would be a blast to try it. Maybe it’d go in the same vein as WO where it’s played rarely with certain pop conditions to spice things up?
Not sure how you’d address late joins unless there just isn’t any for the survivors after a certain period of time.
I would imagine this would have to be an event sort of thing with admins keeping a close eye to ensure roleplay is the focus (at first) and people aren’t just rushing caves to pop larvae. It’s an unsuspecting city, so until shit hits the fan you’re gonna have to ensure people are playing as, well, people and not marines. For late joins I figure it will probably be just like the normal rounds with some cryo pods people wake from, or a “bus” stop people spawn in from, coming to the city for their work day or visiting family etc. What would be most effective is just having a hard stop on late joins for colonists after a certain amount of xenos are born, or say the Marshalls declare colony lockdown. Then ghosts/observers can wait in larva queue or to roll for the late game ERTs.
This is sorta already covered by Colony Fall in PvE (although colony fall is typically done on LV).
In main CM I doubr this would work out well (imagine 80% of the playerbase trying to survive the first 20-30 mins before the action starts without going AFK).
Currently I am thinking 5ish researchers and a CL role in the derelict ship unleash player huggers that infect them. The caves and ship would be sealed with only WY access (and ofc huggers can tunnel/crawl out). Either all or some WY would get infested with probably some huggers escaping into the colony. Larvae would hide, with colonists having to roleplay not knowing what’s happening nor what a xenomorph is (except maybe some admin selected roles?). This would ensure xenos don’t just get ganged up on. The researchers would have no way to remove the larva in their infected, and would be under strict quarantine ensured by the CL and WY to maintain secrecy. It’s a blacksite afterall. The CL role would also likely be instructed to monitor and document the progression of the outbreak once it happens. This, in essence, would be what Colony Fall is sounding like to me. The prelude to a normal round. The idea basically amounts to a green shift with huggers on board and nobody armed, prepared, nor knowing how to respond. Hopefully it could be an admin controlled event people would be able to elect joining and give feedback on, and if it all goes well and things are fleshed out, eventually become a pop-specific, voted game mode.