Why isn't gut and psychic whisper used more often?

[Nyeshivuu]

They are probably the 2 most fun mechanics as a queen, and watching the marine squirm around as i pick them up and gib them is awesome.

[Bronimin]

Gutting costs plasma and psychic whisper doesn't do anything.

[Hulkamania]

The coolest use of psychic whisper I've ever seen: A queen nested a survivor but didn't infect them, used them as a pawn to lure marines toward ambushes.

Gut is used occasionally for flavor, but ultimately serves little purpose other than removing equipment from the round.

Psychic whisper would be used more if not for the fact that the marine can't respond in a way you can fully understand. I see it used every once in a while as an intimidation thing.

[Challenger]

They're mostly RP tools and who the fuck RPs as a xeno?

The plasma cost isn't the real reason no one guts, it's that it's either pointless or places you in too vulnerable a position. You have to grab a guy, (disarm spam him if he's not in paincrit), navigate to the button in the aliens tab, and then stand still for ten seconds until they're gibbed. If you try doing that in front of other marines you're just gonna get shot to death from standing still so long, and if there are no other marines you're just gibbing someone without a real RP motivation who you could be infecting or just killing the regular way instead.

Psychic whisper also suffers from two disadvantages, as a queen the only time you'll usually get to see marines on your screen is either at the very front lines or when nested and infected, you're too immobile and important to be in the quieter sections of the battle. Selecting someone to psychic whisper forces you through three annoying dialogs that make you stand still until you re-focus back on the BYOND window, along with marines often moving away before you manage to click their name (moving away AFTER is fine, they'll still hear it), along with the fact that trying to slide into a marine's DMs like that is usually completely ignored because it'll just be a line of light grey text amidst a sea of red flowing down the logs.

So then that pretty much leaves only the options of using gut on infected/infectable marines (dumb), dead marines (pointless/annoying for little benefit unless spec), in combat (standing still for 10 seconds surely has no bad effects), etc., generally theres no good use case for it gameplay wise. And psychic whisper you can only really use on infected marines but ya know outside of directly RPing with them there's no effect really. ";Hey I hear strange voices coming from the queen!". Though I suppose someone could try getting the marine to feed bad tactical information to other marines for a reward or something.

That said once you get competent enough at queen you'll find good times to gut and to psychic whisper and or include it in gimmicks. I like to gut the pilots of the dropship that I call down to assert dominance over the dropship, and to psychic whisper any marines who have been a persistent threat to me over the course of the round, usually specs. One good place to use psychic whisper lategame is just west of the SD room in the upper engineering reactor room, you'll have plenty of marines on the other side of the wall to talk to who aren't engaged in combat.

[Hulkamania]

along with the fact that trying to slide into a marine's DMs like that is usually completely ignored because it'll just be a line of light grey text amidst a sea of red flowing down the logs.

You bring up another excellent point here. I bet it could be improved in this aspect if it was more in line with command text size, and it could even be accompanied by the screeching sound you make when using the hive announcement feature.

It would then be less "psychic whisper" and more "maddening screams from beyond the stars" but still, pretty awesome.

[Heckenshutze]

Once a Queen spoke to me while infected, I asked her to give me a warrior's death so she released me and allow me to fight her with a boot knife until I burst

[manezinho]

Once a Queen spoke to me while infected, I asked her to give me a warrior's death so she released me and allow me to fight her with a boot knife until I burst

I want this.

[Nyeshivuu]

I let a marine eat the rest of his meal once when he escaped, even though i vomited on it and told him that.

[misto]

because people are usually trying to run away from you or kill you a lot. even if you have someone safely incapacitated there are most likely a dozen others breathing down your neck and the kids need you to give a screech or lay eggs somewhere

[misterjoper]

Why? Because look at me. I used psychic whisper to make survivors serve me and now I am jobbaned. Xeno specific rule 1 does not allow you to use psychic whisper for something serious. So yeah it's a jobban trap.

[GoliathTheDespoiler]

Gutting costs plasma and psychic whisper doesn't do anything.

Probably the only non-rulebreaking application of psychic whisper is to hurl insults at marines while you kill them.

Gut is a meta tool for perma killing specs and cant really be used for anything else.

[Reuben Owen]

only thing you should consider gutting that isn't just for fun is a predator

if you manage to trap one between you and a wall/surround it with (t3) xenos who spam disarm, you can gut it and that solves the problem of the pred quicker than anything else, with minimal risk

[MrJJJ]

Probably the only non-rulebreaking application of psychic whisper is to hurl insults at marines while you kill them.

Gut is a meta tool for perma killing specs and cant really be used for anything else.

[Anoonki]

Probably the only non-rulebreaking application of psychic whisper is to hurl insults at marines while you kill them.

Gut is a meta tool for perma killing specs and cant really be used for anything else.

Literally this. Psychic whisper's use is pretty regulated by the whole "XENOS AREN'T DIPLOMATIC THINGS" situation, and gut exists to meta SADARs, M92s, and Smartguns out of existence, or just generally be a munchkin and delete every body for larks.

[NoahKirchner]

you see, you're supposed to use gut on people who you know take the game decently seriously and who managed to roll spec on highpop and who know they are robust enough to escape. Then, before you even infected them, have them spam and spit tackled and gut them, the deadchat salt should be strong enough to ever keep crops from growing there again.

Psychic whisper is used to ERP with marines during lowpop when there are no non-afk mods or mins online.

(In all seriousness, gut is a great tool for decorating a hive to make it decently creepy and to add some flavour, or to disable things like B18s. Psychic whisper is nice to give survivors something to do while they wait to burst and sit in dchat.)

[Bath Salts Addict]

Once as Queen, a Predator captured both myself and a Marine and tried to make us fight each other to the death. Not wanting to steamroll a random Marine and definitely not wanting to be the Predator's bitch, I used psychic whisper to form a brief truce with the Marine. We then proceeded to kick the Predator's ass and escape the Pred ship, where we went our separate ways.

Another time, my Xenos had managed to capture a ton of Marines, but we were regularly losing Xenos to SADAR Specs (this was before the limitations). Hatching a clever idea, I managed to keep the Xenos from infecting most of the nested Marines and instead used psychic whisper to have one negotiate a deal. Their release in return for every SADAR. By some miracle, the Marines capitulated and they delivered all four SADARs to the hive, where they were melted by spitters. Amazed my plan actually worked, I upheld my end of the bargain and let the captured Marines go free.

Other than that, I used psychic whisper during quieter moments to assure nested humans that they won't be dying in vain, and that they'll be apart of something beautiful.

[Vispain]

Gut Gut Gut. Paint the walls in blood.

[conthegodoffire]

Once as Queen, a Predator captured both myself and a Marine and tried to make us fight each other to the death. Not wanting to steamroll a random Marine and definitely not wanting to be the Predator's bitch, I used psychic whisper to form a brief truce with the Marine. We then proceeded to kick the Predator's ass and escape the Pred ship, where we went our separate ways.

Another time, my Xenos had managed to capture a ton of Marines, but we were regularly losing Xenos to SADAR Specs (this was before the limitations). Hatching a clever idea, I managed to keep the Xenos from infecting most of the nested Marines and instead used psychic whisper to have one negotiate a deal. Their release in return for every SADAR. By some miracle, the Marines capitulated and they delivered all four SADARs to the hive, where they were melted by spitters. Amazed my plan actually worked, I upheld my end of the bargain and let the captured Marines go free.

Other than that, I used psychic whisper during quieter moments to assure nested humans that they won't be dying in vain, and that they'll be apart of something beautiful.

Something like this is cool, I enjoy this.