Xeno Artillery Roleplay & Other Things

Development Ideaguys
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New structures.

BIOMASS ONAGER

A… cannon? This biological artillery piece is crude, but effective enough. It uses specialized sinews and muscle to launch shells filled with acid, bone shrapnel, or corrosive gases. Drones are useful for operating this weapon, as the ammunition must be manually cycled. Ammunition is not produced here.

This weapon is mobile, but must be deployed on hive weeds to operate, and cannot be under a ceiling capable of withstanding a mortar strike, including Hive Cores and Caves. Once deployed, it fires semi-inaccurate shells with significant warning time and an audible whistling to all near and within the impact area. Only one can be active at a time, and production time is significant. Additionally, it is somewhat fragile and fairly slow, making it vulnerable to prompt counterbattery.

Acid Splash ammunition is essentially a large acid scatter that will savage anyone within a 3x3 of it, but falloff rapidly beyond that. If hit directly, death is near guaranteed.

Bone Shrapnel ammunition is just shrapnel hell. Deals Bullet damage. Will probably break at least one or two bones on a direct hit.

Corrosive Gas ammunition is uh… self explanatory.

BIO-EXTRUDER

A pod filled with primordial gelatin to extrude advanced hive devices. Absolutely essential for manufacturing advanced objects such as Onager ammunition and bonespitters. It can only operate while the Queen is on ovipositor.

HIVE CANOPY

Helpful shielding from mortar fire over an area with a thick layer of armor-chitin and flesh.

Less effective against airstrikes; some rockets will be defeated, others will punch through, burn through, or collapse the damn thing entirely.
Hive Canopies take time to deploy, and must be built on hive nodes. Doing so converts the weed node. Once built, the protection offered draws from an internal health pool, as well as a plasma pool to repair it. Plasma is used to automatically repair the roof, but must be manually topped up.

Additionally, the canopy is two parts; Canopy & Stalk. The Canopy and Stalk take damage separately, but the stalk is far more vulnerable and will destroy both canopy and stalk when destroyed. However, if the Stalk is not destroyed, the Canopy regenerates.

  • LAS/MRKT: Not effective. Minimal if any damage.
  • GAU: Moderately effective. Gatling gun does not penetrate but will deal lots of damage to the canopy, breaking it with two guns focusing on one Canopy and damaging the Stalk underneath.
  • Widowmaker deals heavy damage to a Canopy.
  • Keeper penetrates but has more falloff.
  • Banshee deals severe DoT and inhibits repairs, as well as providing light to the area under the canopy.
  • Thermobaric destroys the Canopy and deals mild fire damage to anyone below.
  • Napalm will destroy the canopy over a short duration and then fall down to light the area below on fire. * Harpoon ignores the canopy.
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I think the main issue with xenos arty is the fact that any form of gas or acid can stop entire pushes and make marines runaway from cades and now you are adding another reason for marines to act paranoid and not push or fallback to cades and cadehug.

I dont think this is a bad idea and even though xenos might not do it in canon, the fact that to make the artillery they are basically making a organism that only knows pure pain to kill marines is horrifying and is definitely fuckin cool. Killing it will add more ro the story of rounds thats for sure.

The canopy idea is nice especially with the fact different missiles have different effects against it which adds more to how a CAS PO must think about their job but also adds to the actual ability of marine artillery and air support and xeno defense.

The only thing that needs potential refinement so it dosen’t make it into a unfun mechanic that makes your average marine not stop pushing leading to further cadehugging and rounds repeating themselves. Everything else seems neat.

1 Like
3

wasnt in the movies

2 Likes
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re, issues:

This will actually make barricadehugging less effective. Because it requires the targets to be holding still instead of moving, an immobilized enemy is a dead enemy. Potentially:
ARES gives early warning of shots and overlays predicted impact area. There is significant warning time and therefore it serves to deny area or force movement, but correspondingly is less useful against assaulting marines, and entirely useless inside the caves as it cannot shoot there.
also
This is an excuse for me to suggest adding Air Defense Artillery to the FOB and other such things. ;)

INCOMING INCOMING INCOMING
And while I like the “grind em on the barricades” strat, I do see how its kinda boring. Therefore, I propose this to make FOB holds a race against time to break out of the encirclement and such, set against the backdrop of artillery intercepts by plasma weapons and missile launches.

ARES v3.2: CAUTION. HIGH CONFIDENCE ARTILLERY FIRE DETECTED.
ARES v3.2: ALERT. IMPACT TRAJECTORY, LANDING ZONE. CONFIDENCE HIGH.
ARES v3.2: INCOMING, INCOMING, INCOMING.
ARES v3.2: INTERCEPT SUCCESS. [weapon], [ammo]% REMAINING. ALL, CLEAR. ALL, CLEAR.

also it’s a nice mini objective for plucky IOs or Scouts to find and obliterate if they can. The Synth can pitch in too!!

on Canopy: yeah i guess. its not going to be something u can deploy on the front line w/o covering fire or a line of warriors ready to go. more for consolidating area yk? maybe make enemy actors coming into a given area nearby disrupt the Canopy while its being built because of their psychic interference?
as well, it also gives on the ball JTAC to bap poor xeno gamblers

apart from that, maybe make the canopy vulnerable to certain mortar shells??? idk. OT shells can get powerful.

oh also, this still isn’t proof against an orbital… Say. What if the Canopy blocked xenos from getting incoming shell warnings? Orbitals, Mortars, (you can still hear the bird going overhead), you don’t get warning of them incoming, only their impact. Kinda like this?

You hear a loud thump from the canopy roof. A bit of slime drips down. (Mortar)

The canopy above shudders as something hits it, the stalk groaning and creaking. (Widow)

You hear a muffled thump from the canopy roof. Orange light shines through as the smell of burning wafts down. (Napalm)

You hear crackling from the canopy roof as chunks fall off the ceiling. (GAU)

BONESPITTER

It’s akin to a sentry gun loaded with low damage/penetration slugs. Provides area denial, however it is vulnerable to explosives or firearms, and it has a limited vision cone. Deals bullet damage, but low and is more useful for knocking Marines back. Can still delimb, so wear those helmets and cuirasses.
Requires hive weeds to function, and will alert the hive when in contact.

Can only built with a Bio-Extruder active and by Drones or Hivelords.

ACID BONESPITTER

Alternative configuration of the Bonespitter. Trades knockback and knockdown for acid payload that coats a target, forcing them to stop drop and roll or suffer heavy damage. Still deals bullet damage for the initial projectile.

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If the attacks fired by it did not produce gas it might be less insane.

The issue is I feel you’ll struggle to make this thematic to fit into the game. Also if it had the abilility to fire over marine cades and into a FOB or akin would quickly turn the game into hell as no marine defensive position would be able to survive for an extended period of time.

If you had some kind of air defence system that marines could operate at the FOB or select areas it might be fine? You’d need to do a lot of balancing work.

If this is actually a idea with a coder to support making it I’d strongly suggest talking to the maintainers before doing any work

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Again my biggest issue is that it could make the game really unfun if it isn’t implemented right. The balance the marine CAS and motar is that it goes both ways. Ive seen supply drops filled with mats, spec ammo, SG drums and other important shit be destroyed because a rifleman that bought a engi pham and jtac key heard coords and fired INC round on them.

Now not only do we have to worry about CAS destroying cadelines because they are bald but we also have to worry about xeno artillery hitting us as xenos can attack cades and marines only having to worry about a m56d firing blindly into it and seeing how xenos will jump into fire and drag you into it because they know how much damage they can take i dont see them not doing exactly that and it simply wont be fun to play against.

Again i dont think its a bad idea i just think it simply needs to be looked at very carefully because if implemented wrong it can be just a unfun mechanic.

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I don’t like this idea, Cade hugging is part of the game along with tackle spam. Removing that makes the round end way too fast.

Xenos already have an artillery caste which is the boiler, it’s much better than the mortar in holding of the enemy.

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this just looks like tyranids but in alien and it doesn’t really fit

pylon was removed from standard gameplay for a reason and I don’t really think that adding shielding from mortar fire and airstrikes even if limited and capable of being destroyed is going to be a very good idea. while I do think that fire support needs a touch up and in some cases is a bit too strong it’s not really a solution.

the concept of more gas and such is also not a great idea and I don’t really think this would add anything enjoyable. how is the biomass onager going to be fired, how will it be aimed - is it going to be indirect fire or direct fire? what kind of warning are you going to get and how is it going to be any different from a globber boiler except for being more overpowered?

The sentries are also not a very good idea since it makes hive diving as scout - already a task that alerts xenomorphs and in 99% of cases is impossible because they will have an acid trap or two near doors if they put in any effort to defend - even more dangerous. Now it also has range, alerts the hive, and shoots at you.

The biggest issue overall I suppose is also the emphasis of long-ranged attacks. Most people will agree that your average long ranged xenomorph - namely, praes that solely spit and spitters, alongside boilers - are never going to die outside of fucking up. Boilers will usually die to CAS or overextending since the nature of how ranged attacks works puts them in relative safety. Making that even more emphasized is… not a good idea, especially not with another layer of safety.

1 Like
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real

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The onager is indirect fire. The gas rounds are more limited, and these do not obscure LOS, just provide a mild accuracy debuff. Alternatively, cut them I guess.
Sentries will not detect someone cloaked. Potentially, give Scout a decoy tool that lets them set off facehugger traps, acid wells, sentries, from a distance or on a delay? Might be good for baiting responses…

honestly all of this was “hey this sounds cool to fight”
muh cinematics