A problem that I experience as xeno, is that when you’re a T1 that’s either fighting survivors or destroying APCs, there’s a decent chance you won’t be at full health (or be busy) when the T2 timer arrives, and you’ll miss out on T2 slot.
Xenos should not be punished for doing work instead of sitting in a corner waiting for T2 to unlock.
What he’s saying that xenos pre-20 minutes should able to evo even if they’re damaged due to fighting survivors or destroying APCs ( That based on if they’re charging or not give you a decent amount of shock damage ).
Stuff like that still kinda pushes a good chunk of the early xenos to just kinda afk in order for them to get their T2 evo.
Yeah, it’d be cool to have the full health to evo thing not apply until marines land. (or make it a timer, 22 minutes or whatever.) I also think queens should be a little more vigilant there. If you want your xenos to pay drone tax and/or get survivors you gotta devo the ones who don’t listen. Or at least threaten to.
Fighting survs is what is going to be causing you to get damaged, if you clock an APC at exactly 10 seconds before evo sure you might miss it but w/e its generally not relevant.
Survs are optional, or atleast should be, its an RP role, that gives xenos something too do while waiting for the real match, and at best will get you a few larva, or at worst a few deaths before queen calls you off.
Pre-game things you can do come with very little upside, comes with risk of dying if fighting, and building is not in some peoples tastes, the game is still in lobby basically so you hivesit, watch a youtube vid and chill/talk shit when the builders do some work, like how marines do very little early as well other then RP a bit, but REQ is working hard to deal with the lines etc.
The idea to be able to evo with lower health isnt bad, when you are at it throw out the ability for t2s to all be able to evo into any t3 pregame, or even lategame. It wont be relevant early since you have the queen there to throw you down, and lategame you would have less strain put on certain very high impact roles being bald, boiler for example, but thats just my two cents 
I don’t know why nobody has said the obvious yet, but this is a bad idea, because it’s extraordinarily meta-able. If somebody is fighting survs, at any point pre-drop, they can get shot and and just evo back to full health / to a different caste / reset cooldowns / who knows how many other caveats to make fighting against xenos as a surv much more difficult and painful. Like others said, the only way in which this would be used is against survs and to their extreme detriment so that xenos can have some extra ‘qol’ in being able to ignore evo timer while fighting survs.
defender suddenly turns into warrior
140 hours as xeno, and I only unlocked queen because of thunderdome/hunting grounds T3 playtime. Tiers are a highly competitive space within the xeno side, and that competition is waged against their own team mates. People have memorized the unlock times, and those who idle their cursor over their desired evolutions the millisecond its available - I can’t really judge either, its the only way to play those castes.
I suppose my fault is being a big time drone taxer, who by the time marine’s land, has been locked out of further evolution into not just T3 but T2 often times by tardiness and the lack of builders in the hive on average.
I’m an Elder Drone who evolves into a Young Lurker, that’s my playtime effectively. Queen is easier to get into than becoming a T3 xeno.
What would be nice, is to have a percent of the plasma you spend as a drone/hivelord constructing walls/doors to go towards your evolution points, and specifically evo points which carry over after you’ve evolved to T2 if they weren’t spent (similar to existing bonus evo). That way the drone who’s been building for 2 hours straight can more easily become a T3 when the slot opens.
That’s a non-issue imo. You just give the evo’d xeno the same percentage of health as the t1. So if they were evolving at 80/100 health to a caste with 200 health, they’d be at 160/200. And you give it a limit, so if you’re below, say, half health you can’t evo pre-drop.
And survs shouldn’t really be dominating the hive anyway. Every once in a while losing a kill because of unlucky timing would not be a bad thing.
Just keep track of the evo timer and back off when you need to so you’re full health when the time comes, you dont need to be on survs 100% of the time. Queen will probably heal you too if you ask for it so it shouldn’t be a huge hassle to be prepared.
Absolutely, good idea. Pre-drop xenos should be able to evolve at any health.