I assume this is not a shitpost since it’s in idea-guys. Firstly, you cannot afk for nuke, you have to actively look for intel, which means you need to control (or be able to move through) most part of the map. Ahelping for techpoints is a staff issue and should not be allowed. If xenos don’t control most part of the colony and backliners don’t hunt IOs then nuke is pretty much deserved. I’d rather have xenos to fight for colony instead of immediately retreating to caves.
Secondly, well, criting yourself to get closer to xeno-nuke is an awful mechanic on its own. It’s basically afking in hive. Try to come up with something else I guess. Also you basically just reinvented larva surge. Not really cool. And 1:30 is too soon. I agree that xenos are supposed to be on the defense tho. Still it doesn’t mean they should cavehug for the whole round, you don’t want xenos to be as passive, do you? We already have rounds when Chi forbids xenos to leave caves even while they have good numbers and marines pulled back. Maybe they should get something at 3 hours mark, when it’s becomes clear marines are cadehugging or cannot advance and cannot even use the nuke.
Thirdly, yes, in 2020 nuke was cancer. But it wasn’t in 2019! Because in 2019 nuke was extremely hard to obtain. It was ultimate reward for competent IO team and required a lot of work. I mained IO a lot and managed to reach nuke only twice in 2019. In 2020 yes, it was possible to get nuke every other round. So in the end it’s a balance issue. Just make nuke really hard to obtain. Maybe add some more objectives in caves, like nuclear disks that you have to find. Or maybe nuke should be placed in caves, although it wouldn’t work on Shiva. Anyway, it’s possible to balance nuke.
I think it’s fair you need to hold two comms tower. It’s not an easy task, xenos should be able to take out at least one of the towers. If they cannot do even that, especially at 2 hours mark, then it means they are losing and merely prolonging their defeat by cavehugging. Also you don’t have to give xenos similar tools in an asymmetric game, but that’s a minor point.
Upd: I like the idea of the “pool” in the middle of the map, not in the caves, it sounds definitely better. But again there are problems. Xenos would just stale until pool is available and won’t attack FOB.
Upd2: Also failing to arm the nuke should apply some kind of big cooldown or even outright permanently disarm the nuke (maybe you should be able to reset it for techpoints). So if you failed to arm the nuke, you cannot just try again. Either evac or push out.