Would Passive Larva Work Better than Caps?

Development Ideaguys
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There has been a lot of discussion on the Xenomorph’s reliance on 1 player, i.e. the Queen - I think much of this has to do with a huge majority of caps coming from Queen screech. Plus cap gameplay isn’t particularly fun for either side (I think personally, but that’s my opinion).

Also: Marines have no incentive to push Xenos tactically, attrition is always on the Marine’s side. Removing caps in favor of passive Larva gen fixes that.

For those unaware, TGMC does not have caps for larva; they have huggers, and huggers can do a lot of things, but captures aren’t necessary.

Instead, they build silos to slowly develop larva points and can “psydrain” to speed this up.

Larva points are given each minute, as below:

PTS = ((1.75 + SILOS) * (marines * 0.035 * (marines_on_ship * 3 + marines_on_planet * 2)) / (1+1.75)) * (1+Hijacked*2) + BUFF

So, taking BUFF as 0, with 1 silo you have multiplier of 2.75.

With 2 silos, you have multiplier of 3.75, which translates to 36% increase in larvas.

Buff base is 0. Updates once every 5 minutes.

Changes according to:

Monitoring decides that balance is off.

There is a stalemate.

If live players are less than ghosts. Then there is BUFF = GHOSTS * 0.75

For distress, you must gain 8 points per larva. Also, at the start you gain 2 burrowed larva.

When somebody enters the game on marine side, xeno gain 3.25 larva points. Therefore stable ratio is 2 xeno to 5 marines.

Points for larva are also given via psydrain:

This ability is used on dead or dying Marines. For every Marine’s psyche drained, the Hive will gain between 30 and 90 psychic points, depending on the number of Marines spawned; and 1/8 of a larva.

Some critiques that I’ll cut off now:

1.) NOT being able to cap overextended marines removes some element of permadeath, TGMC instead lets Xenos cocoon dead marines on resin, visually disguising their body a bit and requiring marines to dig them out. Arguably even more powerful a marine-removal tool than caps, which require a facehugger on hand.

2.) Facehuggers are soul! That’s fine, we can still have Facehuggers, but they won’t serve as a mechanism for capture – more a mechanism to temporarily and (if unchecked) permanently remove marines. Impregnation still happens. They just won’t turn into a larva. Maybe hugging someone gives 1/8 of a larva, but once they’re hugged you can’t drag them UNTIL THE COMA WEARS OFF. Thats very up for discussion.

This post is more food for thought and something to mull over – maybe it’ll inspire some development, idk, maybe I’ll code a rework one day

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I’ll be dead in the ground before we remove the soul of hugging and capping. If we are to remove it, we remove half of what makes aliens unique. Because what the fuck becomes the main difference mechanically from a Xenomorph and a hydralisk at this point.

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Amen brother. Incredibly well said. We need to keep the soul. Soul and atmosphere is what distinguishes us from TGMC. Stop trying to make CM into TGMC.

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Capping is very soul and kinda needs to stay in CM IMO, its just such an integral part of combat and punishments.
I disagree with the cap gameplay not being fun for either part, for marine it serves as a greater punishment, generally for being alone, or getting significantly outplayed, for xenos it rewards teamwork and skill expression (runner tackling down a single marine, dodging PBs for example). Stuff like it and coordinated moves from either side is very sould and kinda defines CM in my eyes.

I do however agree with the part about queens having too strong, and that capping now adays instead has moved on too basically only being done with screech, or very specific situations, with changes to the gameplay loop slowly pushing us into a frontline defined game the backline kinda doesnt have a chance to cap anymore, tunnel changes makes it significantly harder, FOB turrets, faster games etc.

Capping as a concept is very soul, but the current meta is very stale and underwhelming in many ways, capping included.

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Double burst or rather 1.5 burst helped make the xeno queue move a lot faster, aside from that a major focus for xenos is to reduce marine numbers via the help of perma kills. So this wouldn’t really help in the slightest, besides TGCM is more so loosely based around the marine theme

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I wanted to comment something about the preposterous idea that it is marines who lose less as the time goes, but hey, it is not the main idea of the thread. All I say is that I disagree with it.

Now to the main point:

It could be more balanced, but as pointed out - capping is soul. If only xenos were forced to make frontline nests, it would be even more soul to rescue some marines. This also partialy solves the problem with marines having no incentive to push. If nested marines are in reach and not in the litterally the furthest corner of the map, directly in hive, in place where when you reach it, you already won anyway, then marines would have a reason to push something that isn’t motivated already by: “You will quickly if you do that”.

But with this facehugger on hand, you actually permanently remove that marine from the round because you transport him to the nest and nobody will save him, unless marines are already winning and they broke into hive. Also, facehugger is not necessary, you can just disarm spam and drag that marine to the hive, which always has facehuggers, which means you can actually permanently remove any marine, just requires a little bit effort.

Queens are too strong (in comparsion to the rest of the hive) but removing capping while leaving screech in won’t help in this case, it will actually buff it a bit, because instead of trying to cap and wasting time on one marine, you can just slash two.

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I hope this somehow gets in because it would be absolutely hilarious to me, every time CM diverges further from Aliens as a setting I just laugh.

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I’d be open to some kinda compromise where xenos passively gain larva in exchange for single burst or 1.5 burst.

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away_with_you_tgmc_player

Real talk

I agree with your greater motive, but I disagree with the methodology

I do think its not entiiirely impossible to capture without a queen. I’ve seen good setups with eggs, morphers, carriers and a good warrior flinger/oppressor (which i do think is a little bit too strong in that it can be hard to dodge (120 ping players anyone?)) can rack up good caps if they work together, backliner gangs can cap solo marines if they put their mind to it, and I’ve seen runners co ordinate t3s to not overslash marines and snatch those in soft crit. My experience in queening has shown me that a LOT more captures could be gotten if xenos had the right mindset, as I still regularly see a lot of easy caps being killed (primes cant cap is so fucking true).

On the marine side, yeah, screech capping feels fucking awful. Theres positioning solutions like staying in open ground, but then your never going to push and it stalemates and thats boring. And at the end of the day, when the queen screeches, theres always got to be someone whos at the very front and at risk of being capped. You could just stay back, but that’s just moving the problem elsewhere.

Runner screecap is particularly insidious as runners can get out of eyesight with dragging a scree’d marine before most marines wake up. Even in light armour with 1 fracture you’re already slower than a runner dragging a cap. Even if you were offscreen waiting for the queen to scree, in light armour, with no fracs, by the time your on screen the runner can easily be just at the very edge of your screen and short of slug shotguns they can just tank a few bursts of pulse rifle. I think a good solution to this would be something akin to pain dropping. If you get shot a bunch or with enough damage, depending on your tier and whatnot, you should have a chance to drop a grab. That way it makes it effective to m41 burst anyone dragging caps and make it feel less impossible to stop them from running away with a capture.

I’ve found a lot of success in getting marines to push with certain tatics as queen. In the critical moment between marine front collapsing and organising their own placement in siege, I find that this is a critical moment to swoop and take comms swiftly before they can group up. Nonetheless if this isnt possible, then getting them to flinch by bypassing comms and hitting fob directly has a lot of success in drawing numbers than most would expect. Of course none of these would be easy if comms and fob are both equally a fortress. But I do find a swift application of a trapper boiler makes commtechs cry and fortifications disappear. In situations where xenos dont have the numbers to push (or wont) and marines dont either (or wont), I don’t know. Personally I’d argue like for stalemates admins should GM it a little and give some encouragement, especially for extreme examples.

As for your solution. I don’t really like it. I like capture gameplay. Its skillful. It feels engaging to make those in situ decisions if its too dangerous to go for a capture and I should kill them, and it feels rewarding to sucessfully capture a marine (outside of queen screech, and other cheesy methods ive described). I think that reducing the reward or the skillfullness of capturing and reducing it to a system where your effectively eco’ing and expecting rewards feels empty and bland. Yeah, its tied into killing marines, but killing marines is easier than capturing, and you’re already doing that. Theres no skill tied to it. Outside of cheesiness I’ve described, there are times when I’m marine, I’ve gotten captured because I’ve made a mistake or I was geniunely outskilled.

Finally, TGMC has a lot of nice QOL changes that I wouldn’t mind being pushed over here, but I don’t think we should follow their style of gameplay. Theres a difference. And no, its not just about the immersion ruining “magic” (*cough KING) abilities, or the fact its LRP.

I’ll admit I dont have any solution to offer of my own, but this is just my thoughts.

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as others have said, this is a server in the aliens or aliens vs predator universe. We are not playing helldivers or starcraft or starship troopers

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It’s not capping existing that’s the problem, its how it happens. Being bitchslapped and stunlocked by xenos while they run to fetch a hugger :face_vomiting:

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this is a terrible way to implement it

  • Colonial Marines or Mobile Infantry?
  • what makes the Alien an Alien?
  • Easily circumventable

what if instead we did this but only during

  • fob sieges
  • hijacks

so xenomorphs arent horribly underpowered or overpowered