Instead of overbalancing us all to hell for the sake of a shorter round, why not limit the time rounds can last, and have the final victory state be decided through whoever has the best control over the map during the designated end point.
A few ideas for a potential implementation:
Either an automatic vote to end the round or automatic end to the round could be possible.
Rounds could be around one hour and thirty minutes to two hours.
Map control can be dictated over designated control points, like multiple colony generators that can be powered on in favor of the marines or pylon’d in favor of the xenos.
Map control wins could be considered minors for whatever side wins them.
You could fit nuke gameplay in if the number of generators is even and nobody wants to continue the game/have the game end in a tie, but I’m really not so sure people are very big fans of nuke gameplay as it is.
Tbh im way more into just a hard cutoff instead of doing “stalemate breakers” that inevitably are going to justify scaling up on both sides and leading to…more prolonged stalemates…
Is it satisfying? No, not at all. Does it do the goal of trying to end the round at X time without putting another chip on the table that may end up causing the round to actually drag longer? Yea.
I think the problem with the current xeno stalemate breaker (NOT the one that is testmerged) is that it has this weird restriction. You gain larva over time EXCEPT if some hidden formula for hive strength is reached that isn’t visible except in github… why is it like that? Isn’t it SUPPOSED to end the round by continually making xenos more and more powerful? Why not just keep giving larva no matter what?
At least the marine stalemate breaker actually ends things.
Granted, the testmerged xeno endgame thing will probably go through and this won’t be an issue anymore, but yeah.
Edit: Well, might still be an issue depending how the PR ends up. It still doesn’t explicitly end the round or make xenos infinitely more and more powerful.
My concern with the test-merged Destroyer/King PR is that it does not go far enough in speeding up the end of the game.
The Marine nuke ends the game 1 minute after it is armed.
The Xeno nuke still forces us to play hijack which extends the round 20 to 30 minutes.
This is excluding if the Destroyer/King player is competent enough to wield the new xeno, or if the xeno is even strong enough to breach the Marine lines, as the last two times I’ve seen the Destroyer in play it either died on the barricades, or the Marines simply retreated after it spawned.
My concerns would be nullified if the spawning of the King removed the opportunity of the xenos to commence hijack. If the xenos need the crutch of the King to win the game, I see no reason to extend the game outwards.
Don’t forget that the Destroyer/King is allowed to go to the Almayer.
If a Admin made a event making 1 player super-overpowered and let them kill everyone of the enemy faction, it’d be called a terrible event. So why are we allowing this to occur as a gameplay mechanic?
I literally couldn’t agree more. I’d like it if CM had a system like TGMC where the queen could decide whether or not she wants to commence with a hijack.
On the other hand, I much prefer losing over losing but longer. Most modern games, if not all, already use a time-sensitive system and have been for the last 10-20 years, I’d say it’s pretty time-proven.