When to and When Not to De-Ovi?

[ZaeCathe]

For me, the queen should only de-ovi if the hive is moving locations, if the FOB is in a stalemate so robust even the boilers can't break it, if the tallhosts are endangering the hive and screeches are needed, or if LZ1 is getting rushed and hijack is next on the ayy list of shit to fuck.

Queen should not de-ovi to rush the FOB if the Boilers have it on point and a push is being made.


When do you think the queen should de-ovi and, alternatively, when should the queen contain her inner baldie and stay in ovi?

[caleeb101]

I agree completely. These are the only times she should de-ovi. Attempting to swing the momentum in your favour early only gets you 40 AP bullets from multiple marines stuck in your ass and left as a dead queen.

It's also fairly safe to de-ovi at your own leisure when you reach Elite EMPRESS. But not Queen or Elite Queen. I guarantee that if you're a regular Queen and go to battle, you will die and if you're an Elite queen and go to battle, the chance of death is quite high.

[Lyiat]

Well, I've only been Queen once, so I have to say my experience was limited, but I de-ovi'd a total of three times my entire round. The first time was when the hive reached maximum saturation with t3's and we could make a heavy push to their second FoB (We only had one boiler at this point and they needed the extra firepower).

After a while, they pulled back from the forward position at the bar on big red to the FoB at LZ1, and I returned to ovi to try to replenish our ranks and replace the T3's we lost. The second time I de-ovi'd was to relocate to the bar and move the nest there to prepare an ambush. Tofu actually caught the ambush on cam. It was awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AOh15fluZs

The final de-ovi was to actually ride up on the Almayer. So outside of lending strength to a powerful, organized push on a hardened position, defending the hive itself, or taking the attack to the marines via the Alamo I don't really see a time when the Queen should be off her egg sack. Allowing people to build up those evolution counters and providing pheromones and emergency heals should be the queen's priority.

[Kerek]

Never de-ovi, even when the marines are shooting you.

[ZaeCathe]

Never de-ovi, even when the marines are shooting you.

Ultimate baldie queen strat.

[awan]

I kinda disagree. The queen is listed as a t4 alien for a reason. They are (one of) the strongest aliens.

If you are used to combat as xeno then the queen has a perfect moment to de-ovi.
I will not tell you the exact game mechanics but if you take the advantages from ovi.
1. Being able to see more and watch individual aliens.
2. All aliens advance to higher tiers.
3. larva unborrow.
4. You can set leaders.
5. You can give plasma or heal
6. You can give individual commands or de-evolute an alien.

There is a moment in the early game where most of these lose their power.

Now, once the last t3 slot is taken if you have been even a mediocre queen you should have many t1 and t2 at full evo progress towards a higher tier and all t2 and t3 slots maxed out. At this time evo progress is way less effective becuase a lot of aliens have reached the max. This means that you will lose advantage number 2. Or quite a chunk of it. And even for the aliens who do not reach it you should still have other t1 or t2 who can evo to t2 and t3.

Larva unborrow but if hosts burst with ghosts alive ghosts will still be put into those larva. So as long as you know that hosts that burst has larva that burrows you know you are not losing this advantage because if there were people there to fill the larva the new hosts would not borrow. And even if those larva are taken you would still get a reliable stream of fresh aliens.

You can set only a certain amount of leaders. Unless you remove one, upgrade or one dies you cannot set another one. It will be 100% clear when you have to use this.

Now the plasma and heal are for individual aliens. If you are on the second line with recovery pheromones then you give more healing or plasma then these 2 panic buttons will.

For the individual commands. Most of the time I only need to do this when I am actualy in ovi. All of the above things will be true at the same time in the early game. This is a perfect moment to de-ovi to do a few quick surgical strikes. And to ovi after you have crippled one squad a bit.

[Loco52]

When do you think the queen should de-ovi

Young Crusher has died at North Central Barrens!
Young Boiler has died at North Central Barrens!
Elite Spitter has died at Southeastern Jungle!
Mature Hunter has died at Weyland-Yutani Compound!
Queen Mother has died at North Central Barrens!

[GoliathTheDespoiler]

Do deovi when:

You are about to be/are under attack
You are assaulting LZ1

Don't deovi if:
You have unburrowing larvae
You have very few T2/T3s
You have Mackenzie 'Heretic' Kifer in a nest. *shudder

[FGRSentinel]

The number one example of when to de-ovi as queen:

(Note, I was 481 in this situation. Someone gave me the much cleaner log after the fact)

[Madventurer]

I personally hate combat queen, so I minimize the time I'm not Ovi'd.
De-ovi when:
1: LZ1 is ours, marines are dead or running like little girls.
2: I can hear shooting near me for more than a few seconds.
3: There's a stalemate NOT on Almayer and most if not all larvae unburrowed AND there is a good amount of T2s and T3s.