Strategy idea - drone rush into Carrier

[ThePiachu]

So I'm wondering whether this build/strategy idea would be good for the Xenos.

The idea is that weeds and Carrier traps should slow down marines enough to help the hive prepare a good counteroffensive.

You would start the round emphasising a larger amount of early drones. You would have your usual "Queen pocket drone" that stays around the hive, plants eggs, prepares nests, etc. Then you'd have one or two drones weeding the close / medium range away from hive - north of fog on LV, underground on Ice, etc. Finally, you would have about half of your drones pushing further from the hive to weed ahead - south of fog, above ground, etc. Queen gives recovery to drones. This way you should have roughly the entire map weeded before the marines land.

Meanwhile, you have runners grabbing smallhosts and sentinels melting everything (now that they have weeds to rest on everywhere they can melt more).

The first evolution you get should be Carrier. They take a long time to mature, and take awhile to lay traps. You want this Carrier have a pocket transfuse drone, and the two should lay traps everywhere. Mature Drone leader with Queen's Recovery should almost have enough to keep the Carrier fuelled up to lay a heck of a lot of traps. This is especially powerful on Ice, where you can go above ground straight away and don't have to wait for fog or blast doors to get to the other side of the map.

The point is to make marines paranoid of being on creep, and make sure they get punished if they don't clear everything. Decided to rush a runner down a corner? Here's a trap for you. Ran through a doorway? Trap. Stepped on a body? Trap. If you instil this fear into them early on, you can capitalise on it later.

After the hive has captured all smallhosts and some xenos are getting bored, they should be moving the dead bodies around and putting them on carrier traps. If there are no open traps left, just move the bodies where the traps should be to make Marines believe there are traps there. Having two dead monkeys in a corridor is an obvious trap, having an entire corridor of dead monkeys will make you not want to go there, or at least torch the entire place beforehand.

As a bonus, if you keep the Carrier alive, it will be your alarm system. It knows where the traps are being triggered, so hopefully some of the Marines sneaking around will be dumb enough to run into one as they try to flank the hive. This is why you need so many traps - to make sure at least some of them get triggered.

So yeah, that's my idea of a strategy that might be interesting - weed everywhere, trap everything, slow down marines by teaching them to fear the ever-present creep.

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

Try to persuade the runners and sentinels to stay as T1 so that you can rush this without the queen's help. Try persuading the starting Larva to become at least 3 drone.

It's viable sure, but you need a lot of teamwork that won't be there all the time.

Also, rines even though don't have the knowledge of Carrier traps, they're players as well (who can't really say no to their knowledge and experience even though their characters don't have it), and the vets would find your attempt to hide traps with furry host corpses funny.

You need to bait, and your victim must be bald and/or rushing literally right after you.

[ThePiachu]

> Try to persuade the runners and sentinels to stay as T1 so that you can rush this without the queen's help. Try persuading the starting Larva to become at least 3 drone.

Yeah, it would have to be a strategy the Queen would have to be all aboard - "Okay hive, we are doing drone rush today. I need X drones, and no T2s until we get a Carrier".

It would be nice to try starting to codify some strategies the Queen could reference so the hive as a whole could try developing. You might have to explain the plans over and over, perhaps copying them into orders at roundstart, but eventually it might pay off...

> and the vets would find your attempt to hide traps with furry host corpses funny

The idea would be to put some, perhaps not many, traps under furhosts to make marines think "okay, they are doing that, silly xenos". Then, you capitalise on what you tough the marines later on. So when they see a few furhosts in a corridor they will torch it first, even though there would be no traps there. A classic xeno Sun Tzu .

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

The idea would be to put some, perhaps not many, traps under furhosts to make marines think "okay, they are doing that, silly xenos". Then, you capitalise on what you tough the marines later on. So when they see a few furhosts in a corridor they will torch it first, even though there would be no traps there. A classic xeno Sun Tzu .

actually the vets can just right click to find the traps and shoot them from afar to pop the huggers, then kill the huggers.

> Try to persuade the runners and sentinels to stay as T1 so that you can rush this without the queen's help. Try persuading the starting Larva to become at least 3 drone.

Yeah, it would have to be a strategy the Queen would have to be all aboard - "Okay hive, we are doing drone rush today. I need X drones, and no T2s until we get a Carrier".

Do you think that the benos will take queen seriously after she tells them to not become T2s just for her own strat ? People think the worst out of each other and would assume that they're having a griefer/bald queen and disregard everything she says from then on

[ThePiachu]

actually the vets can just right click to find the traps and shoot them from afar to pop the huggers, then kill the huggers.

Man, that's lame :P .

[Potato Masher]

actually the vets can just right click to find the traps and shoot them from afar to pop the huggers, then kill the huggers.

The sad state of Carriers.

[MattAtlas]

> Try to persuade the runners and sentinels to stay as T1 so that you can rush this without the queen's help. Try persuading the starting Larva to become at least 3 drone.

This instantly makes the strategy a complete waste of time. You'd lose *300* evolution ticks just to get carriers, which is a VERY significant amount in earlygame. Moreover, you are rarely getting 3 drones, and if you do they'll probably ghost because one of them wanted to be a runner or sentinel.

Slowing down the marine offensive with traps doesn't matter. What matters is fighting on sticky resin and weeds and having a strong enough counteroffensive via Queen screech and T3s, or attrition with a good Hivelord.

[kroack]

I find carrier pretty useful in the early/mid game when marines are trying to push to win but as a round passes the two hour mark they become less effective when it comes to holding off the marine's last push or assaulting the FOB. Not that much capturing going on with boilers and crushers and ravs going up against barricades.

[SUPERMAN112]

The only issue I see with this strategy is then getting rushed by a squad of infected marines that are no longer infected by the traps, and essentially immune to your carrier dominant hive.

[Loco52]

Its not a really good strategy for two reasons.

1) Drone only transfers like 50 plasma
2) Carrier can't be the first one to evolve, drones take more time to evolve it would be a waste of time.
3) Xenos are retarded and will never get that level of coop

It can actually be done... if problem number 3 didn't exist but its highly unlikely.