This idea consider a rework of the social mechanics surrounding the Yautja and his interactions with the rest of the game, first i’ll present some ways to change the Yautja - Predalien relation and then some other interesting ways to make the Yautja not only a more complete option without much of a hassle, but also make the play of the Yautja more interesting (imo) to the Yautja players themselfs.
First of all i think it’s obvious to anyone than the Yautja in this game are designed with the PVPers/ Power players PVPers in mind, and because of that this proposal will try to point to things than will probably make the game for them better, and at the same time will reduce the problems associated with them (Yautjas), lets go to the issue at hand then.
Yautja - Predalien relation
So far as i understand it, if a Yautja is hugged and the Predalien is born a party of Yautja is released to attack such predalien, this is a punishment over the faction of the Xenos for the extra steps of being not only as good as needed to put down a Yautja, but also to hug him and retain him, which requires more skill than just kill it, which is, in my humble opinion, a bad way to approach this because it punish good Xeno combat play and because of that makes the Yautja less of a target for the Xenos, which in time makes the Yautja not having all the fun they can have with Really Challenging PVP, because it gives the Xenos more of an incentive to disengage than to fight, and Yautja are all PVP therefore it makes the game less interesting for those players indirectly too.
Now for the proposed solution, let’s consider the Yautja and the Predalien who can born from him like a single unit which we call for practical purposes a “genetic union”, have this in mind meanwhile i explain the idea on how to obtain the predalien by both the marines and the Xenos alike before talking to an alternative to the hunting party.
Predalien and marines
Fair warning, I don’t know exactly the specific of how research works but is my understanding than you can create Predaliens with a huge load of points when you make the Greenos, well, if such were the case i propose to change that to also required a “genetic union” component to being able to cast at least one predalien, how that should work? let’s put an example.
So, let’s say the marines manage to kill a Yautja or found a body of one (bursted or not) and bring it back to the almayer, from that body they will obtain the points they normaly will from it AND a genetic union token which not necessarely is a phisical token of course, but a special mark than allows you to make 1 single Predalien for it assuming of course you have also the points for it, this will also work of course if instead they manage to get the body of a Predalien, BUT there is the catch, if the body from which the Predalien came is already scanned (or you scanned the Predalien and then, after, you tried to scan the Yautja from which it came), the Predalien (or Yautja body) in question will not give any extra genetic union tokens, the same happend if the body of the Yautja is somewhat mutilated, just the first piece scanned will give the genetic union token and all the rest will be “too decayed to be properly read by the machine” or some other excuse to avoid abuse.
This will limit the ammount of Greenos Predaliens to the ammount of genetic union tokens you can get as a team, and the marines will have an incentive to attack both, the Predalien and the Yautja more fiercely, which in turn generate more epic battles for the Yautja. Now will need a way to bring Yautja to the map and there is more on that later, first, lets see how the thing will work for Xenos.
Predalien and Xenos
Here it is what it is, the Xenos captured a Yautja and this guy was hugged and a chestbursted burst from him, in this proposal as said before do this will not trigger a Yautja hunt but instead will trigger a voting for the entire hive similar to the King voting, winner of the vote will manage to control the Predalien and his old body will be vacant and open for a ghost to take, which provoke a name change for the xeno name of the ghost in the now not-vacant-anymore xeno body. I may also suggest than in such list for the vote show some combat statistics next to the name of the Xenos so you can vote for them with more proper information, things than allow to make an idea of his combat potential, maybie also the gameplay time and other similar things.
Yautja and the world, including other Yautja
Ok, the hunting party of the Predalien is gone and there is incentive for everyone to kill Yautja, making combat them and combat for them, both, far more interesting and creates an incentive to risk more on it, with that we are making Yautja experience more intence but a question remain, how can we send Yautja to the main world to fight? how to justify it?
Introducing the clans:
Yautja Clans (or Tribes) are groups of no more than 6 Yautja which are asociated voluntarely, each Yautja in the tier of Proper Hunter or higher needs to be part of a clan, this can happend via RP or via Forum coordination, if there is no clan with openings for some Novice Hunters to be promoted, the mods can create a new clan, not a big deal there, clans can have a logo, a name, a description and maybie a phrase, why of this will become evident in the future.
Now the Yautja have clans and a “growing cycle” to make certain only the Yautja of certain skill can go to the main map and make certain they are up to the task to have fiercer combat, this growing cycle starts pretty much like in cannon and have 3 stages. You put on them the name you want but this names are here to present the idea on how they will work more than how the final names will be:
1.- Novice Hunters
2.- Proper Hunters
3.- Expert Hunters
Novice Hunters: Basically are confined to the Hunting grounds until they have some victorys and gameplay with the Yautja in order to learn how to properly use them, so they are there until they get the time and “heads” or similar to be consider proper hunters, this type of hunter are the guys who were just whitelisted to Yautja. There is some special events where they can participate tho, and needs to participate and have some wins at least once in this events to become a proper hunter:
1.- Trials by combat: Basically a group of clanless Novices have some sparing duels 1v1 in the hunting grounds, each victory give some tournament points, the objective of this trials is to see which ones can become proper hunters, it’s also allowed to have ritual sparing combats between proper hunters and novices if the novices allow. (to incentivice RP). sparing combats for Yautja are combats to the bitter end where the loser is resurected after the battle which happend in specially designated areas and are consider sacred, only if the Yautja died from wounds generated in the sparring duel AND in the area designated by it he would be bringed back.
2.- Trial Ritual Hunting grounds: As the name suggest, it’s a regular hunt in the hunting grounds but in this one if you are succesful you will have this test approved and as such it will give tournaments points depending of the preys you manage to hunt, you can consider the normal hunting ground usage as a way to prepare for this one, in this one an opening will be available in some random but predefined places in the hunting grounds so prey can escape, you need to hunt some of them succesfully and not dying in order to the trial to be consider sucessful and get the tournament points winned by the ones you manage to hunt.
On this trial you cannot change your equipment after it starts, and it doesn’t end until the Yautja and/or his prey are all dead/escaped, if you as a Yautja renounce to use some of your equipment before entering a succesful hunt will give you more tournament points, scores obtained in this specific event are shown in a leaderboard for bragging rights in CMSS13 page with a detail of how much and which equipement you had when you started the combat, the preys you hunt, the points you get from it, the time it took you to kill each one of your prey, the ammount of damage dealed to each.
3.- The Final Trial: This trial is a hunt in the main world map, for this one you need to get enough tournament points in the other two trials, this one is a hunt in the world where you are expected to hunt 3 preys, a marine, a xenos (both can be of any type) and another prey of any type from whichever faction is wining in that moment, only three preys, no more, no less, approving this Trial will give the Novice Hunter the Proper Hunter status and would become eligible to join a clan, tribe or however you preffer to call it.
After that trial a forum post should be done to search for a tribe or to a mod to assign one with other people, consider add some rule about how frequent you need to play in order to keep your position in the clan, the idea is than only active Yautja players can be on clans so to not have inactive tribes or so, that could be solved not only with the trials but also making a rule of 6 months, 3 months or similar, of course if a Proper Hunter (or superior) is not on a Clan he cannot participate in Clan events nor will be shown in the leaderbords, he wouldn’t lose his status as a Proper Hunter (or superior) tho so he can join a new tribe or rejoin a tribe in the future without the need to make the Novice Trials again.
If you are a Proper hunter this event will give you specific points for a scoreboard dedicated to this specific event in the CMSS13 page.
Proper Hunters: This guys can join a Hunting Tribe where they become able to participate in the events before too but with another name (Mainly not with the name “Trials” on it) and only with other Proper Hunters, it can also participate as a non-intervention witness to those events in the hunting grounds with novices for RP purposes, but also it will be able to join in group hunts and clan vs clan events, how this events will work?
There will be three events types than can be setted in series, all at the same time or one per map, all of them give score for scoreboards, the events are:
1.- Hunt competition: Some Yautja (2 per Tribe, max 2 tribes per versus), representing his clans are going to the world in a hunt to get the most points, how much points something gives is variable so to prevent abuse and make more trackeable who is not properly roleplaying the game and instead using the role as a Yautja to give an advantage to one side over the other.
The things than make one specific target give more or less points is a tier system where non-yautja players of the round are setted by how much damage and/or kills they have done during that round, everything gives points but not everything gives the same ammount of points and depending on which side is wining that side will give more points. Yautja on this event will count with a tracker or a eyewear which inform them of the value of potential prey so they can know where and how to track proper prey. Rules of honorable combat still apply and it’s set on a timer after which any remainin Yautja need to return to wherever they had, being the ship or the temple, if the Yautja sucesfully arrived to that place. It will get hunting points for this, which are shown in a scoreboard in the webpage of the CMSS13, only for bragging rights.
2.- Clan Duels: On a temple (in the map) or a ship, or other specifically designed place open for third partys to enter an interrupt two clans of Yautja up to his full might (6 each side) fight each other for a clan group sparring fight, similar to novice trials by combat, this duels are making them resurect after dying if they die during this event in the location of the event for causes related specifically to this the event. Clan duels give Clan points than set your clan in a scoreboard visible in the webpage of the CMSS13, only for bragging rights, it will show the name of the clan, description, logo, phrase and the participant of the duel.
3.- Clan Wars: This is a Full Open Conflict between two or more Yautja tribes which can bring his full contingent, this can be a gamemode on itself or just an event.
In this event the Yautja are PENALIZED to hunt anything else OTHER THAN ENEMY YAUTJA, this is in order to make certain this is not abused to give advantage to one faction over the other (marines or xenos), to be clear the Yautja in this event they can technically kill non Yautja but the thing is it shouldn’t be doing that too much, in any case the registers of killings will show evidence if the guy try to RP correctly or just went to do his own anti-RP thing.
The point of this event is pretty simple, last clan surviving wins, expect intervention from the Xenos or the Rines so it is expected they will be attacked from them and they will need to defend themselfs. This event can become a total CHAOS with maybie several Predaliens appearing from each side and in between the battles of the Yautja. That is the idea.
The Yautja can have little shuttles than leave them in places in the map, maybie random but valid places (similar to the droppod from the almayer but again, valid places, not breaking the planet map), this shuttles can be called by the clan members and take a while but will arrived to the designated place, think on the designation of the place with a similar system as the one of the tent. Remember each clan have a max of 6 members so the shuttle can be really small.
Winers of the Clan Wars will have the name, logo, phrase of his tribe shown as the winner of such event in the page of CMSS13 for a time, together with the name of the participants, for bragging rights of course.
Expert Hunters: Basically the same as Proper Hunters but they are considered (to be) the clan leaders, they can form clans and are basically the SL’s of his tribe, only one clan expert can be the SL of his clan, if there are two expert hunters in a clan, again, only one of them is gonna be the leader of the tribe, the promotion is basically based in statistics and/or time and it’s more of an RP thing, they are the ones who can be part of the councel if they are gonna RP one.
That are my ideas for reworking the Yautja, it may come ignored, i know its long but i this are my 5 cents, contructive criticism is accepted and welcome.
Have a nice day