Xeno "balance" hottakes.

General Discussion
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I took a break and I have come back to absolute slop for balance. It’s kinda sad.

Xeno “balance”
-Can no longer use tunnels with caps. Why? Makes burrowers pointless.
-Can no longer melt a weapon with acid in one use, requires multiple acid baths.
-Egg morphers no longer melt dead marines, this makes hive locations obvious as hell when there is fourty capped dead marines in one spot and six in the other hive.
-Despoiler is so pointless, just add TGMC’s defiler honestly.

Marine “Balance”
-Multi z level ship that they can hide in.
-Brute. Fucks over xeno defences massively where as xenos get nothing similar. No, boilers dont get the same power.
-What ever the fuck the squad changes are???
-XOs deploying or SOs deploying.
-Holy fucking shit do not get me started on the VTOL, cool as it is, xenos cant counter it.
-Finally, “Oh no my fellow soldier is being dragged away, Ill mag dump him or chuck six nades at him” is so bullshit lmao

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Sir Acid goop is the next door over on the left.

Also, thank you providing more content for the Copy Pasta Mega Thread.

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First time coming back and being upset at the changes?

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Have you tried out trapper strain? They absolutely melt cades from screens away; ZED and I once melted through four layers of cades in 90 seconds during a FOB siege. They don’t even get the cool effects that BRUTE does.

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caste even more niche then it already was :patrice:

ehhhh its only two coats, not the worst thing ever

i mean you could tell where the hive was anyway by someone either using the radio or checking the tacmap of that guy in the hive

no opinion here

true we love zlop

ehhhh arguably better than the old XM51(?) but still kinda annoying if a bajillion CTs have it

no opinion

no opinion

apparently you can pounce on it, also if you follow it and it lands then you can easily dog it with the hive and its not like it has weapons so its kinda meh

trillions must shoot their friends being dragged by the evil alien parasite bugs

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-Can no longer use tunnels with caps. Why? Makes burrowers pointless.

Speaking from both sides, it makes supply lines pretty worthless when the most important thing you do as xeno is practically riskless. Tunneling with caps results in the map being fought in only two positions, the hive and the front. It’s been a lot healthier for the game now that xenos also have their own “backline” of sorts with forward nesting.

-Can no longer melt a weapon with acid in one use, requires multiple acid baths.

This only counts for drones. Strong acid melts weapons in one go, drones have to melt weapons twice. Most of the time this is hardly a balance change, since the places where it matters most for drones (against survivors), it usually denies access to the weapons entirely.

-Egg morphers no longer melt dead marines, this makes hive locations obvious as hell when there is fourty capped dead marines in one spot and six in the other hive.

This is mostly done to preserve the atmosphere of loss in a hive and cement that it is a place where people come to die. It functionally doesn’t make much of a balance change anyway, a competent CIC would have a good idea of where nests are anyway.

-Despoiler is so pointless, just add TGMC’s defiler honestly.

Sure.

Skipping marine balance cuz IDGAF

-Holy fucking shit do not get me started on the VTOL, cool as it is, xenos cant counter it.

look up and spit at it. Chase it, even. The moment you focus on VTOL it becomes a sitting duck.

-Finally, “Oh no my fellow soldier is being dragged away, Ill mag dump him or chuck six nades at him” is so bullshit lmao

The only true thing in this post, grenade retrieval needs rebalancing.

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So almost instant free teleport across entire colony to designated by burrower place is pointless?

It mainly started as something to prevent explosions deleting guns in one hit, but then it got changed into durability which added cancerous weapon jams.

Just simply don’t put caps in the main hive, lol.

It is only pointless because ravs is too overpowered in comparsion to other T3s.

Multi Z in general is shit, but this is on hijack and who cares about hijack?

Exchange for breaching shotgun that cheaply leveled whole buildings, so marine defence was exchanged for their offence. Thank Kane boilers don’t get the same power, marines can’t make 0 cost walls infinately.

Not a balance change.

As they did before.

I haven’t seen it in action, can’t tell much.

Shooting marines who are about to be capped is HRP, makes sense is soul, is kino etc. Tossing bodies back with nades is iffy indeed.

Despite all of that, the winrate is still close to 50-50 so… :woman_shrugging:

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I will address why the changes were made/positive sides for the ones I know of, but note I do not agree with all of them.

Runners were solo capping, getting a lucky disarm and capturing dumb privates near the fob and instant tunneling to the hive. Forcing the runner to go all the way back to hive gives that private a fighting chance. Now at least to help secure the cap backliners will work together, or have a player controlled facehugger, etc.

We have player controlled lesser drones that are practically free. They can acid, weed, and slowly build. Sometimes marines drop their guns with all the attachments the want and the lesser would run up, and suicide to melt it. At that point the gun is a goner, and they either pick up a trash gun or go shipside to get another. Double acid means the marines can collect it and fix if they are still close to it.

This change wasn’t as much of a balance as much as a style that was attempted. Many maps had multi z and eventually were reverted. Why? Probably because having to switch up caused many headaches. At the same time though, marines lost the ability to anchor barricades on the almayer. They only kinda can with a weird two barricades facing each other. Also the levels are separate enough that only inside cargo and hangar does the multi level really show. So all in all, taking away marines turtling but giving them more areas to run in, along with making hangar fights a bit more dynamic made the multi z stay in. That and some call it more soulful.

It fills a weird niche where xenos are in a cave, and the hivelord/drones are outbuilding pew pew and grenades. In those cases usually a slow fire push is the only thing that works. The CT trades having a turret for a small window where marines can properly push. The funny thing is that usually the rockets will leave just enough walls up that the xenos can yank behind cover when marines blindedly charge in, which is just enough of a blessing to keep it in check. I think CTs only get 2 shots unless req buys them their expensive rockets, but req usually spends it on actual specialist equipment.

The rest of the changes, I have words for them but they are not solid arguments.

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i didn’t care enough to read most of this post but i think complaining about the squad changes and vtol affecting how u play xeno invalidates all yo opinions :broken_heart::broken_heart::raised_fist::sob:

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unironically a Xeno buff, if you get frontline nests there’s net less time wasted on the cap + caps burst sooner.

You missed out on super peak.

I think this is cope, it’s a net nerf because hugger quantity is reduced overall but now it’s balanced throughout a round. You’ll always have 6 in a morpher even if your Hive is just killing caps all the time.

It’s definitely outshone by Prae and Ravager but Despoiler is up on the tier list of super cancer castes to play against.

Multi-Z is unironically a Marine nerf given many more Xeno abilities work across Z level compared to marine firepower

True

Only a result of CIC changes it has become more common, SO + XO deploying was always the theoretically best thing to do.

VTOL’s only use is a mobile sensor tower, any Marines flying in it will get wiped upon landing if any Xeno has eyeballs at all and just follows the VTOL

Source: wiped several squads by flying on the VTOL

Cope. Xenos can just bodyblock marines to stop them shooting, I do this all the time but most benos are kinda too bald to do it.

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No way you just said multi-z is a Marine nerf. It gives every marine free IFF and, unless you’re fighting a ranged caste, it’s completely free to run down the helpless xeno caught off guard because they didn’t look up.

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Climbing up a floor puts you into “fuck you die” range for: Woy Fling, Defender Headbutt, Every Ravager Caste, 2 Prae Castes, Queen, Lurker, Runner, Spitter Combo and a Drone-Carrier-Hivelord can shove you off the Z-Level. Top floors are super contestable by Xenos and Xeno abilities work across Z-Levels. Sure, Marines can shoot up but it’s not as one-way as it seems.

No, Trijent Dam is not a good example of a Z-Level map.

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Was too easy, made caps too easy. Now there’s 1.5 larva for every cap as well.

This was a good change, guns getting insta melted was very painful before, just not really a fun mechanic.

I mean you could argue it’s more lore accurate, having a location of the colonists in Aliens for example, they knew from the start their exact locations. Either way this change shouldn’t be a big deal at all, once again deleting bodies from the map sucks for loot, and it’s nice for marines to find their dead buddies and such if they make it to the hive, stuff like that, mostly just immersive reasons.

Haven’t had enough testing, but yeah it does need some more utility and changes. All can happen in time, nothing to really worry about right now.

Almayer multi-z is fine, other maps are gonna be a pain to play as and ruin the balance generally, I’ve always been against multi-z, but it does work if done right, the Almayer changes are a good example of what is done right, but yeah we don’t have any real examples of maps really being “Improved” with multi-z.

Yeah I mean I’m not for or against it generally, the old shotgun was actually worse then the current brute system, but it was implemented to replace it because it was too strong, which never made sense to me. It’s not bad though, I’m not against it generally.

Really no clue, you’d have to ask Thwomp about that, I still don’t really understand it - doesn’t seem like such a bad thing though, I can live with that.

Once again you’d have to ask Thwomp, the VTOL, A.S.S & Brute are all his ideas, a lot of changes like that are his babies.

Pretty sure this has always been a thing, not sure how long you’ve been playing but I remember doing this for years.

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Multi-Z is unironically a Marine nerf given many more Xeno abilities work across Z level compared to marine firepower

Unc…

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cant weed on roofs.

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that’s the shitty roof tile that was just spammed all over trijent once creativity ran out, it’s not an issue on good multi-z maps which you’ve missed out on playing

i will genuinely say that you should hold your opinion on multi-z until you try the other good steelpoint maps

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I played on multiz solaris,that new lowpop mutliz map (forgot the name sorry) and on oil rig map and i think multiz sucks just as much there because instead of almost free to take dam roofs for marines you get insanly crowded buldings when you gonna get tail stabbed,lunged,globed,pounced on every nanosecond and if you try to shoot them off you are leaving yourself extemly exposed to xenos on your z level (In most situation on maps above you physically cant watch two z levels at once.They will just overlay each other.)

And worst of all i dont even fucking now how to fix this.Maybe we can let xenos weed roof tiles or lower marines guns fire rate when they shotting someone above instead of just fully removing multiz iff (But left the same fire rate if they are shooting below them)

PS:Every time i think of things like this i cant escape “Was multiz even worth it?” qestion.Because lets be honest.Our server already have big and complex maps with major not used shunks of these maps.Yes,im looking at you chances claim and hybrisa. (Most players porably just forgot that because on most maps we use same routes all the time) And making them even bigger is well… Maybe not a good idea plus i bet, when most map get multiz it will be a pain in the ass to balance.Maybe make ungaball and xenocube meta less oppresive, make marines more sustainable in small groups,add more sorts of objectives randomly scattered around map for marines and xenos to fight for.The most basic exaple i can think of is some sort of database server with valuable info for W-Y so marines need to get there,power up terminal of the server, and then hold this point for some pereiod of time.Xenos mission in this situation is to break the source of power,usualy APC (in this case server will just stop working utill marines get power back up) or damage the server itself.(if xenos do that 40% of progress will be lost and marines will need a long and complex repair to get server back in working state.) In reward W-Y could give USCM intel points,cargo budget,or even some sort of special reward.

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acid melt is cancer tbh t. play xeno and marine

despoiler isnt pointless. Its just no one has mastered it. With the right hands its so cancer to fight against t. was wiping marines ass (full force lowpop) with a despoiler + gardener combo (every xeno was dead except us)

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