(No, the name is not related to The last of us)
The clicker is essentially a lurker strain that instead of focusing in IPM to whoop rine ass it prioritizes mind games and trickery to bait marines into wandering straight into traps and ambushes. The kit would be the following:
- Set sounds: Opens up a window that let’s you set up which sounds will be reproduced on “Mimic sound 1”, “Mimic sound 2” and “Mimic sound 3” (from now on “Emit sound” will be referred as ES). The sounds that can be mimicked are incredibly diverse, for example you could play the sound of placing a resin node; the sound of a burrower emerging from the ground or the sound of a marine screaming, among (a lot of) other things.
Be mindful that ES1, ES2, and ES3 share the same cooldown of 5 seconds, so you can’t use ES1, ES2 and ES3 in quick succession, there are 3 ES for the purpose of making the management of the array of sounds that you can mimic easier. - Mimic sound 1: Emits the 1st sound set up with “Set sounds”.
- Mimic sound 2: Emits the 2nd sound set up with “Set sounds”.
- Mimic sound 3: Emits the 3rd sound set up wuth “Set sounds”.
- Camouflage: Become invisible after 1.5 seconds, the invisibility is stopped only if you move, attack or use the ability again. So it works pretty much like a slightly nerfed sniper invisibility.
- Maim: Stab with your claws a specific area on a marine, the affected area will have it’s efficiency reduced for 3 seconds (for example: Aim at hands/arms = Reduced aiming accuracy, Aim at feet/legs = Reduce speed, Aim at eyes = Blind temporarily, etc.). Has an accuracy of 100% and a range of 2 like a tail stab and it deals the same damage as a regular slash.
- Tail stab: The usual tail stab that a big chunk of benos have.
Notes on the stats:
- Same health and armor as regular lurker.
- Slightly higher damage per slash than a lurker.
- Same speed as a non-cloaked lurker.
Intended gameplay
The clicker is a strain that like most castes that are NOT explicitly meant to fight on 1v1s can reliably pull off solo kills or caps if the player is skilled enough. You have Camouflage for letting you sit in a place undetected by both the rine eyes and MDs (preferably a turf full of junk that will make you harder to notice as well), you have the capability to mimic sounds to bait marines into coming in (a marine scream might do the trick) and you have 2 targetted attacks that will let you have marines 1 slash away from a broken limb, however, in terms of offense, that’s really all you have, there is no lunge, no tail swipe or neuro sting. This is slightly offset by the slightly bigger slash damage but you are very far from hitting as hard as a ravager.
How you use Maim will define how the fight will unfold, aiming at the legs WILL slow down marines, which will make them unable to run away, but they will still be able to aim and fire, making them a threat given that you have decent burst damage but nothing like a woyer or a vamp. Alternatively you can aim at the arms, making them temporarily unable to aim well but nothing will prevent them from running away (except the slowdown from pain). Maybe if you feel skilled enough for dodging bullets on CQC a Maim aimed at the legs will be the ideal for you, or maybe if the marine is far from any help aiming at the arms will be the wisest decision.
Or hell, if you are a sociopath you can aim at the eyes for Tail swipe and Maim just to cause permanent eye damage and before the marine can react you just leave and repeat until marines go fucking insane after looking for their 7th IA pill.
From the getgo, the clicker has a moderate skill ceiling because you don’t really have engage abilities, you have 2 utility abilities that can be used to engage and you have no real disengage abilities. Every single one of your abilities besides tail stab are for utility and they become offensive only with a good plan in mind.
However, that is one way of playing it, alternatively you can pair up with another backliner caste to offset most of your issues at the expense of having to coordinate with another xeno. Even a lesser drone can be a worthy backline-buddy if you are able to coordinate!
But even if you are bald as hell, there will be a real effect that you will
consistently have on marines: Prolonged and severe paranoia. Is the scream heard just east of north engi road on LV a marine? Is the lurker lunge sound that was heard near the medics on the backline real? Yes, a burrower is harassing FOB, but is that sound from a burrower emerging from the ground just south of FOB an actual burrower?
A discarded feature
This is a feature that I advice to NOT be added because it would probably be a pain in the ass to code, it could be severely unbalanced and it rewards going afk near humans:
Knowledge:
It’s essentially a value that is stacked over time like acid on an acider. The idea is that the clicker learns and memorizes new sounds by being exposed to them, it caps at 1000 and it can be passively raised up to 200 by being near xenos, the rest is built by being near humans and hearing them speak.
The relevance of the sounds that you can mimic is directly proportional to the ammount of knowledge that you have so if you have 0 you’d be able to do things like a weed node being placed, a marine scream, etc. While at near 800 you’d be able to do terrifying shit like an acider about to explode, 3 queen stomps, sound of a marine priming a grenade, etc., also at 1000 you learned so much about marine sounds that you become able to speak with hoomans, essentially allowing you to cloak near FOB and listen to rines talk about what is going on in the front or going full LRP by having a nice and pleasant conversation with them as you both drink some tea.
Notes about this... thing.
I really like trickery, creative skill expression and patience getting rewarded in PvP games, and because of that I found that the peak of trickery in the xeno side is going Burrower and making marines doubt where you will re-emerge and… That’s it. This is a strain that focuses on giving beno players a ton of freedom as how they actually fight rines in the backline, it lets you get creative if you are alone or if you are on a small team of backliners. I imagine that patient (but fun to spectate) psychopaths like AD-HD and PIG will have a field day with this strain if it ever becomes real.
I wanna make clear the fact that which specific sounds the strain will be able to produce is up to debate, some of them might make the marines shit their pants while some of them might be perfectly fine balance-wise.
But also something that I forgot to say is that I’m not a benomain, so I might say things like “the Clicker stats are like [Insert xeno]” while my knowledge of the xeno that I’m using to compare is straight up wrong. So please be mindful of that while reading up the specifics.