It seems like 70 percent of the rounds I play Xenos rush FOB on first drop with tier 3s preventing a FOB from being built and a push. It used to be against the rules to do this but now is it not being enforced or is it allowed? It’s not fun at all on the marine side for a FOB rush and I really doubt it must be fun on the Xeno side that is then locked into a constant fob siege. Genuinely what’s the point in playing if we will just be stomped? I’m wondering what your thoughts on this are, is this bad for the game or do you think it’s fine?
8 Likes
Xenos get a bunch of round start T3’s on highpop and they are replaced relatively quickly on death so there isnt much of a reason for them not too. I feel like this falls under game fault more than rule fault.
3 Likes
I think the unweedable radius needs to be extended, currently its too close to the LZ and in some maps it’s not even covering areas right next to the LZ (corp dome LV) . Especially since all it takes is one area with bad coverage to make the rest of the protection effectively useless…
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Yeah no idea why this was changed to be allowed, needs to be added back to being illegal.
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I mean one of the reason it sorta happens is due to the fact the survs tend to hold up in areas that are unweedable (or at least hard to get weeds in like Solaris garage). These areas also tend to be the LZ for obvious reasons. So survs unintentionally drag a bunch of T3s to be right at the doorstep of the LZ. Granted this isn’t always the case.
Player Pop also tends to play into this as Lichen pointed out as it’s far better of a strat on highpop to just kill and rush while you have so many T3s. It tends to not work at as well on the lower pops (not that it doesn’t happen).
On a different note, I thought we had a thread with a bunch of people complaining about this and arguing about whether it’s actually a debuff to be on or off weeds? I will agree, the speedrun rounds are real boring.
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This isn’t true in the slightest, survs held near or in LZs for almost a decade and this wasn’t an issue until the rule change.
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Fair. I do remember it being quite frequent to see the survs in secure dome (until it got changed). I’m not sure why it seems to be a fair bit worse now though. Can’t think of any recent changes that made it this bad.
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There don’t need to be recent changes, just the playerbase finally discovering and adapting to things that work. You can easily have very unbalanced things skating by for months or years in a game, until someone popularizes it and turns it into an actual consistent problem.
In regards to xenos fob rushing, I think it’s a combination of marine medical forcing the need for cadelines for marines to heal/revive under pressure, and xenos having heal-on-attack abilities that reduce their reliance on weeds and subsequent downtime.
Combined together you get a marine force that can’t recover from the ongoing attrition, and a xeno force that can cause and sustain attrition with a much greater uptime and tempo.
2 Likes
xenos having heal-on-attack abilities
there’s literally only three castes that have heal-on-attack that i’m aware of (Vamp Lurker, Warrior, Berz Rav). and only the vamp lurker is faster than marines off weeds. Berz rav and warrior 100% need weeds if they want to frontline against even mildly competent marines.
2 Likes
its just a new norm for CM, enjoy.
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Its not technically against the rules for T3 xenos to attack the fob on first drop. But I personally think its less exciting for the round.
Sure, you might win, but what fun is a sub-30 minute round?
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Wait its not? I got noted for it a few months ago. (Also yeah it is boring)
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The rule changed a few months less ago
The rule was quietly dropped a while ago, but its only recently people took notice of the change.
Xenos are free to attack the FOB before second drop, including up to T3s. But you still cannot stand next to the doors and run in as soon as it lands.
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Xenos T3 rush the LZ because the maps allow them too, if you land at about :20 on LV, or anytime on shivas there is not gonna be an LZ rush because the maps dont allow it, T3s on lV get hunted down because they cant retreat out of fog, shivas has snow making escape harder.
Solaris allows you to weed and hold viro/comms cave, medical, marshalls AND dorms/opperations all with easy to hold flanks and good escape options, just walk away to a tunnel or dip into filt and you are golden.
Having arbitrary rules to enforce meta strategies that are very effective because of bad map design is kinda trash as well, we would need a rework of some maps to help against this instead IMO, it should be a high risk/high reward kind of thing to hold that close, utilizing close hive position and an early queen to get caps/kills
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CM xenobias is back (it never left in first place)
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Its because marines need a buff from internal damages.
Do you know why the rule was changed? Now that more people are aware of the shadow change, it seems like it’s more common than before - At least, in the lowpop rounds I’ve seen.
Maybe it from all the admemes abombing xenos to enforce the old rules, and the immense salty SRs it generated 
2 Likes
I don’t think arbitrary meta rules are a good thing anyway. It just bandages over gameplay issues and if enforcement stops, e.g. there’s no admin around, then it becomes perfectly abusable as the actual issue hasn’t been addressed.
From the rushes I’ve seen, xenos are sustaining themselves without weeds near the LZ’s, and again it seems to be because a bunch of xenos are healing on attacks/kills, and marines lack cadelines to stall out pushes. Not every xeno has needed healing attacks - drones and praes heal on the front then run back to the nearest weeds to get plasma/fruits, castes that can’t heal on attack, like defenders, also run across the huge non-weeded areas to heal on weeds, but they’re able to come back and fight again because the castes that ARE frontline healing are able to prevent any lull for marines to recuperate and build.
Basically, getting rid of weeds no longer solves the problem and doesn’t prevent xenos rushing the LZ. If people want these rushing strategies to stop working, something else needs to be done.
1 Like