Surv needs to be a fun and playable role, and also not mind-numbingly boring to fight.

General Discussion
43

Before marines land, almost noone is in queue.

Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but if I don’t queue for xeno, it’s 10~20 minute spawn for round start if I select “join as xeno.” I assume it’s automatic spawn if enough marines de-cryo. I think Hug to burst time is like 10~20 minutes. So unless someone gets capped immediately after drop (minute 20~25) it’s still no spawn until like 30 minute mark.
Assuming survivors don’t get rocked.

I agree with about everything else you say though.
I only went to check out survivors once or twice and they were already barricaded in, and seemed to do decent damage so I couldn’t reach them to fight them as Drone.
I deemed it an unnecessary risk and to never engage unless I want to do lesser gaming.

1 Like
44

Something I’ve thought about.

What if we buffed the hell out of survs, they spawn with better guns, have much better guns available on the map, they all get engi skills and a slight boost to endurance(not 5/5 because ofc not, but maybe more like 3/5?). But the catch is that xenos no longer have a cap on Evo time (or at least lower the cap so that T3’s don’t evo just as marines arrive)

Mostly because, when I do play roundstart xeno, it’s boring as hell having to wait till the 20 minute mark to do anything against molotov spamming survs. As survivor, I hate having to spam molotovs, because any other strat on most maps, is just suicide, and I personally quite like living to RP.

Also bit of a side note here. The L42A (which is described as a “miltia” rifle), and other actual CM guns, should mostly replace all the 20th century guns. It’s always made no sense how so many weapons are straight from the 20th century, and are still in use 200 years later, with no updates, or even rival weapons from the future. Simply preserving an MP5 for 200 years would be a task on it’s own, let alone having it in constant use. Think the F44 from the new film as a new rifle to give to W-Y bodyguard/CLF, or some other cool designs like the HK SMG-II to replace the surv SMG’s.

Anyways, thoughts?

2 Likes
45

Okay so this is actually super interesting. I remember when the UPP nightmare was first added you had folks trying to roam rather than hold with mixed results. You had folks running around blasting and generally they’d get some kills until someone got pounced and gained a fracture, then that guy either got left behind or dragged the other survs into a big shitshow of trying to save them.

Now as for giving the survs better stats and gear it would probably make them engage with xenos more but it’s a real fine line. Give them a bit too much and they wipe the hive, too little and they all start hiding. It’s the mindset of not wanting to wait 3 hours to try again or that getting kills isn’t the main goal that stops people roaming and depending on who you ask the survs going all out for kills or holding out to be rescued is both the right and wrong way to play the role. I certainly prefer to hold than roam personally because I enjoy it more and have more success with it.

Balance wise you need some of the old survs to weigh in because back then they had the stats, spawned with shotguns and xenos evo’d into T1s in like 60 seconds. Not sure what the survival rate was but I don’t remember seeing any survs when I started playing until after they made the survs into specific roles and xenos got their evo timer changed. Maybe I missed them because I was bald but I can’t recall a single time.

46

Yeah, the main issue is that a lot of survivors now days often feel forced to use molotovs or they don’t have a chance.

The best way to make them more interesting to play and fight, is simple have more options available to them, since on Sorokyne survivors almost never use molotovs, because they simple have enough ammo (and actually decent guns) to last long enough.

Oh and also I’d 100% support the removal of molotov spamming, if survivors got buffed accordingly, and especially with additional guns and ammo on maps that really need it.

1 Like
47

Molotovs are mostly forced on survivors because they can close tight chokepoints, allowing for repairs, also they can serve as crowd control, keeping xenomorphs (atleast not ravs) away, allowing for a bit more time, unless they have a flamethrower, of course, it doesn’t have that wide spread but has considerably more ammo, yet it doesn’t spawn on most maps, so its a gamble

1 Like
48

I’ve given this set of ideas before, but basically, I trully belive that survivor gameplay would only be good if we turn it into a proper mini-round by doing this:

  • All survivors start with “extreme stress” disease that lowers your revive timer to 1 minute. It’s cured automatically in 25 minutes.
  • All defibrilators are effectively removed from the colony and no survivors start with them.
  • Xenos can evolve without having to wait those extra roundstart evo minutes, but until marines land there’s a balance limitation on the number of combat xenos. For example for 6 survis xenos only get 2-3 T1s, 2 T2s and 1 T3. If any of those xenos die, they cannot be replaced until 25 minutes mark. 25 minutes into the round all limitations on xeno evo are removed.
1 Like
49

Make it 20 minutes, and you might have something. Because marines can arrive as soon as 21 minutes, and they would essentially have a free 4 minutes of xeno stomping because there is no combat castes available. And this would also bring even more incentive to AFK in hive, since either you stay as a larva in hive for 20-25 minutes, or you take a slot from the ones who actually want to fight the survs. Its just a lose lose scenario of the one we currently have, where both xenoes AND survs get gimped for no other reason to get gimped.

And this is not touching on the fact that survs would be inclined to turtle up EVEN HARDER because of the “no revive” thing.

1 Like
50

I think we can even do a dynamic system where it’s either whatever set time like 25-30 or marine launch time + X minutes. How big X should be? Well we don’t want it to be too big to let marines use it to metarush the hive, like in the good old days, but maybe it’s worth to give them a couple of minutes to actually rescue the survivors if those are still alive by then.

No revive principle is there to prevent the whole LZ suicide thing, thus giving survivors more variety in terms of places they wanna hold up, but also giving them more gameplay time. And then we’ll balance the difficulty of that by that xeno number limit.

1 Like
51

The survial rate pre surv buff was %9.78

We got the data somewhere in the surv cord

Am to lazy to find it

1 Like
52

Yes, but this is only gonna make the AFKing at hive worse. You wanna play warrior? Gotta wait 30 minutes until marines land since they did a late brief. Same with all the combat castes.

Like, imagine you join a totaly new game as xeno, and you just get told that you can’t play the game until after 30 minutes have gone. Its absolutely misserable.

2 Likes
53
  • Xenos can evolve without having to wait those extra roundstart evo minutes, but until marines land there’s a balance limitation on the number of combat xenos. For example for 6 survis xenos only get 2-3 T1s, 2 T2s and 1 T3. If any of those xenos die, they cannot be replaced until 25 minutes mark. 25 minutes into the round all limitations on xeno evo are removed.

I’d rather go back to maturity than this, and maturity could double up on making late round xeno’s competitive against stims if we did maturity by round time rather than per a person.

Survivor wise though personally the changes I think are needed atm:

Remove wall slashing from T2’s: simple as:, Acid actually need a role in the siege gameplay.

Limit breaking gen’s to larger xeno’s:, this would promote more diverse holding locations due to power.

Return engineering skill to survivors: Point above + getting around in a powered colony

Re-mapping for better more holding locations: Doesn’t apply to all maps, but a lot of the newer maps are way too open and way to accessible, Kutjevo for example doesn’t really have any holding indoor locations that don’t have half a million ways in.

Increase stun time on tail stab on shocked door: It’s too short and too safe considering there really shouldn’t be much difference between clawing it and hitting it with your tail, and I an’t asking for much of a increase on this, just a don’t do it alone kind of duration.

What I think xeno’s should get:

Buffed Acid: reduce the time it takes to make holes on walls with acid for all acid levels, MAYBE allow spitter to melt reinforced walls so we can put a end to the wall of a section of the map meta.

Back to free evo times: Evo to T1 at any time again though I do think this should be added with MATURITY(for those who know, they know what this is) tied to round time instead, that way we can balance a section xeno power at a time to what the intended challenge to survivors should be.

Removal of “Super loot”: No more NVG, sentry’s or super guns, these detract from the survivor experience personally, and are ass to deal with at times for a xeno.

Experimental idea section:

To encourage xeno’s to try going for survivors or to actually weed/build in general, what if a respawn was given if xeno’s could recover a dead xeno corpse back to hive core?(would mean dragging xeno corpses would be enabled before marines land[Less useful on LV])

Escape objectives for survivors, Find parts repair shuttle escape kind of thing, shuttle location would be static and part locations random but out of normal hive locations aka no where near caves, shuttle requires a fuel process, to force a survivor hold until they can evac?(unsure about this stuff, a lot of mapping work as well)

Will edit if I think of anything else.

1 Like
54

I understand where you’re coming from, but in my experience playing as xeno under maturity, most xenos would rather sit in the hive than risk it, if maturity makes them weak enough to outright lose in the basic interactions. So it would be the same unenjoyable situation where the hive decides whether it’s gonna stomp the survies in that 5 minute window that it has. And both options are bad, because survs either get absolutely stomped or just outright ignored. Maturity’s just gonna make the “ignore” option more popular.

1 Like
55

I think the nerf for Molotovs is pretty straightforward; make them contain ethanol (or the snowflake equivalent).
I’m not the most frequent survivor player, but I do have some notes:
I actually like lockers and tarps. I try not to hide the whole time, but there have been occasions where the hold fails and I run and hide. I like the option, and I think it should stay to some extent. As previously discussed survivor usually involves a hold, but it’s often the chase that is my favorite part.
I think that nerfing the xeno’s thermal vision before drop and adding some sort of tracking mechanic would be really interesting. But I can’t even begin to imagine how much of a pain in the ass it would be.

56

Wow, I like being locked out of my preferred T2/T3 evo slots by an arbitrary mechanic that stops me from going Defender so that I may evo into a Warrior later. So cool!

57

I personally think that depends on how you tweak the stats at different ages, or we could have flat stats so survivablity remains the same and slowly amp up ability’s, other wise we could simply effect slash damage at younger ages so getting hit doesn’t has as large a effect, while amping it up at later ages,

And it an’t like ignoring an’t been a thing for a long time, either people don’t want to risk their slot/life or simply don’t like playing T1’s/T2’s, personally I an’t a fan of any combat T1, so I don’t really fight survivor’s until T2 if I can help it.

1 Like
58

Maturity is a shitty mechanic that is gone for a reason. Even if made that the current state is “young”, then xenos become OP for no reason, only justified by vague “marines maybe will get competent researcher and maybe will get competent IO’s and maybe will get competent marines survive long enough to take said stims and make a difference”.

Marines already lose power, they are at their peak when they first drop and since then they become weaker and weaker, with occasional OT/Stim spikes. Even if none dies they lose ammunition, equipment, medicine and such.
Xenos lose nothing over time alone and can regain all of their strenght with just a few caps.

This is yet again fucking up entire gameplay for the sake of making survivor crybabes cry a bit less. There should be no gameplay change to both marines and xenos after first 20-25 minutes just because survivors might exist and be robust.

Xenos already have all the incentive they need to go for survs. Caps and something to do before marines drop. The risk is great, but the reward is potentialy great either. Any sufficiently skilled surv would be a competent xenos and since he can no longer join the game in any other way, he probably will play as the larvae that comes out of him.
In any case xenos can just refuse to go for survivors. There is no severe punishment for that, marines mostly get few PFC+.

The only currently good idea is to nerf surv holdouts and nerf xeno vision before first drop. No more thermals, they even should have slightly reduced vision to 6 tiles, while survs should have it full and natural NVGs so let them have that “Alien: Isolation” kind of a gameplay instead of “Alien Colonial Marines”. They all should be Amanda Ripley equivalents making MDs and other gadgets out of shit they found in the colony, hiding and maybe engaging lone xenos if they were skillfull and luckey enough to get some gear.
Reduce overall loot (especially firearms), slightly redesign maps and here you go.
(To clarify, all of that stuff should apply to xenos and survs before first drop, then xenos get their thermals back etc).

Either this, or some another stupid shitty change that will make survs OP, or xenos OP, or won’t be enough and survs still will be shitty, or marines will get their ass whopped because of some change to xenos to combat survs.

Defence and roaming style of surv gameplay were given a chance and they suck. Now try with their thrid option, hiding, enhance that.

1 Like
59

so do xenos whats ur point again

neither do marines lose anything over time alone
do marines get dissapeared by cia if they arent engaged in combat?
Both xenos and marines take irrecoverable casualties during the round, and marines have numerous ways to deny caps as well. “Just a few caps” doesn’t scratch the surface as to how easy it is for marines to deny said caps if they know what they are doing.

i dont think i could make a more out of touch statement if i tried
have you played either game?
have you played surv with nvg/xeno against nvg? Survs buffed like this will shit on xenos so hard it’s not even funny. Just because current iteration of clown surv players mostly go for the meme meta holds doesn’t mean that survs can’t shit all over the hive while roaming in optimal conditions.

1 Like
60

What xenos lose over time? Do they lose their max plasma reserve? To they accumulate organ damage? Xenos lose only ground and numbers. Both of which can be regained fairly easy. Any ground that isn’t lit, populated with marines, or caded is a xeno teritory, with weeds being just their lawn. Any killed xeno can be replaced with caps.

Not true. Individal marines lose ammunition, because over time they shoot it at xenos who just sit on the weeds to heal it, weeds don’t lose their “HP pool”. Individual marines lose medication, they patch their own wounds, they pop their own pills and autoinjectors. Individual marines gain organ damage.
Marines lose materials, any cade destroyed, every bit of metal/plasteel lost is lost forever, with Req price for additional mats increasing. Marines lose heavy weapons, OB, mortar and CAS.

Do xenos lose boiler globs? Do xenos lose Queen Screech charges? Do xenos lose resin to make walls and doors out of it? No.

By being “just engaged in combat”, but not actually dying xenos lose nothing, marines lose their supplies. Sure, it can be replaced, but it takes time and coordination, something xenos don’t require.
When it is 0:25 and you as a marine first stepped out of DS you are fully prepared, all the AP mags you could carry, all the medicine is full, you have no organ damage, perfection.
Over time you lose that, every single marine loses that, thus overall strenght of marines trickles down, no such thing happening in xenos.

When it is 1:00 you no longer have all your AP mags, you might have a frac, or a bit of heart damage, you poped some of your pills, you used some of your bandages, you ate your MRE, you used your C4 to blow a wall, or a tunnel, you used your nades, your belt is no longer full of regular ammo, things like that. Xenos don’t have that.

I want to see those “numerus ways” to deny caps from Queen Screeches, or lone marines fucking around. You can see yourself salt thread about lurker solocapping.
If xenos know what they are doing, they can get a lot of caps. Works both ways, thus is fairly balanced.

What they will do with NVG when they will have at best a pistol with single mag loaded?
That is why I said:

Again, my idea is for survs to have “Alien: Isolation” experience, not “Alien Colonial Marines”. They should be hiding, not roaming. Something in the quote you clearly didn’t read, or couldn’t understand.

Do I have to list every single small change for an idea to be valid? Maybe make so xenos before first drop kill humans in like three slashes, or something, that stuff is not so hard to balance. But no, it is better to act like a buffoon and just pick the singular chunks from an idea and then say it is “outrageous” in a vaccum when applied currently in that state. WHAT? NVG FOR ALL SURVIVORS? WHEN THEY HAVE ACCESS TO SHOTGUNS? WHAT? NO THERMALS FOR XENOS? YOU KNOW HOW SURVIVORS WOULD DUNK ON XENOS? WHAT? KILLING SURVIVOR IN THREE SLASHES? YOU KNOW HOW XENOS WOULD DUNK ON SURVIVORS?

Every single idea that isn’t about one small change can shot down like that.
WHAT? FREE EVO POINTS FOR XENOS? YOU KNOW HOW THEY WOULD DUNK ON MARINES? WHAT? RESTRICTED T2 AND T3 SLOTS? YOU KNOW HOW MARINES WOULD DUNK ON XENOS?

Yup. For some fucking reason Xenomorph in Alien isolation can’t see you trough walls if you stay quiet, you can hide under a stupid bed with him meter away from you and he won’t know if you are there unless it checkes, or hears you.
Colonial marines is just very medicore FPS.

1 Like
61

not like you get literally half of marine population as bots designed to alleviate these problems
the only time anything you mentioned was a problem was during a soro round that i played as xo that lasted 4 hours and we still won because xenos die at a faster rate than marines run out of bullets

xenos keep dying to dumb shit all the time, youd know this if you had played a single xeno round in your entire life
post your xeno hours immediately

ok then go play runner or lurker and tell me how it goes for you after you inevitably draw the attention of nerds with flamers and binoculars who make it their job to put you in their frag compilation

litting your backlines is trivial as is securing them ESPECIALLY with this lame fucking ass sharps weapon that shits out infinite claymores that are also incendiary and cant be detonated by going around and slashing them

yea good luck capping if marines sit behind cades
xenos get 5 larva for free and thats it
king is impossible on many maps due to comms layout

bro actually bringing up how hes running out of mre or bandages as if there isnt practically infinite food in wrenchable shipside food vendors or food coming up off asrs
walls? we added shotguns that remove walls, tunnels removable by shovels
frac? bone gel is still infinite if you recharge it
bit of heart damage? 1 unit of brute kit fixes it for you
marines have practically infinite everything
if you cant defend your cades and you keep running out of metal after you get roughly 1k from shipside deconstruction maybe you should call it quits and fucking evac

Everything you mentioned had cope PRs being added to fix the problem. It’s only a matter of time until you get reliable free ammo supply added as well.

This is just you and other marines crying that even after all these PRs you are STILL not guaranteed to win by attrition against the faction that lost it’s infinite larva from pylons and 2 larva per cap. Get real.

shoot them you fucking idiot
denying caps is as easy as firing a hedp grenade into people being dragged as queen screeches
sniper spec with flak or just shooting the guy being dragged (amr penetrates everything LOL), gl spec, pyro spec, demospec with WP, even scout spec with impacts, tank with flak cannon that ffs marines as they are being dragged, m79 stun slugs and fucking shaking up the person being dragged after screech or neuro are all effective ways of denying caps

xenos are literally no longer guaranteed solo caps with anything but motherfucking warrior lunge tackle, you always have an opportunity to kill yourself before you get capped even if you are too lowskilled to kill the lurker and runner after you get pounced while alone
and warrior hardly excels at backline action as well, it works, but not as well especially if its hellrushed by adderall+m39 combo marines

The lurker thread is literally not factual. you are justifying marine drivel with more marine drivel

xenos in this case are still trivial to kill with even the worst guns

You can kill a drone with a single m4a3 or mod88 mag. CMB revolver kills a drone in six shots. You have no fucking idea how easy it is to frag xenos as surv with your starter weapons if they don’t have access to t2s because you barely have any hours playing as either.

yea because your ideas for changes suck
i will not accept more marine cope in this thread
this is a thread for survs and xenos not marinemains please go to your containment subforum [general:tgmc]

yea and guess what you also cant kill him under any circumstances because your guns deal no damage
in cm ss13 which is a game you allegedly play, a drone is dead in two buckshot pbs

2 Likes
62

Maturity is gone, because xeno player simply didn’t like waiting until mature.
Fact is we had to change up and powercreep everything because we set their power at somewhere around elder tier stats, and I an’t saying make “Young” what current stats are I’m saying the concept of maturity is a good BALANCING tool and I an’t seeing a reason why it an’t in your post.

Survivor’s used to be hiders years ago, If you want hiding I’m personally against that, but if your idea of hiding is more a sneak type gameplay then I’d agree that should be a option for those that don’t want to do combat, however coming up with stealth mechanics is a lot harder.

1 Like