The Art of Psychological Warfare

[FGRSentinel]

So I was bored a while back and decided to start coming up with a few tactics meant to instill fear and anguish in the Marine ranks. Off the top of my head, I've come up with two such tactics, one of which I've already tested.

The Boiler Brigade

Everyone knows what Boilers are and how annoying they can be in pairs. What the Boiler Brigade is, simply put, is a defined weapon of pure psychological warfare that is proven to be able to trigger a Marine retreat at any point the Brigade's members want, even if the Marines have 100 people left. The core of the Brigade is simple: an Elite or Ancient Defender and two Boilers, preferably Mature or Elite. This is a tactic meant to shatter defenses. One boiler moves into position, calling out the moment the enemy cade line is within their zoomed-out line of sight. This Boiler then digs in while the other stands directly in front of it with the Defender in front of them both, forming a straight line. The Boiler in back fires a shot at the cade line, then the second boiler waits a bit before firing at the same spot. The Marines will see the smoke from the first shot start to clear and move up, only for the second to hit and force them to scurry back from the cade line.

What makes this so devious is the formation: In many places where Marines will set up a cade line, they will be firing from far enough away that any shots directed at the boilers will be intercepted by the nigh-invincible Defender, forcing the Marines to either allow the bombardment to continue and focus fire in the brief downtime or attempt to charge the formation, leaving them exposed to the acid spray of two Boilers and the attacks of a Defender. Add in a third Boiler and they'll be guaranteed to never get back to the cade line, allowing you to start a "stepping" advance: the Boiler in front fires, the defender moves one tile forward, the boiler in the rear steps to the side and walks into the gap between the boilers and defender, and then fires, slowly closing on the defenses under a constant barrage. If combined with 1-2 Crushers, this becomes a guaranteed defeat for the Marines as the Crushers smash through the defensive line under perfect cover.

This tactic was tested exactly once, but the result of this test was a marine rout with over 100 marines left alive.

"Tactical Hugger Combat"
This is probably something that people know in some form or another, but I'll explain what I mean anyways. There are, at present, three general ways to infect hosts as I define them: passive (pulling them over eggs/taking them to a nest to be infected), what I call "strategic" or stationary (the use of hugger traps and eggs hidden around corners), and "tactical," which is what we're talking about. The idea behind "Tactical Hugger Combat" is simple: you're a drone, the fastest caste able to transport eggs and huggers. You're also smaller than the other three castes able to do this and can emit pheromones. With Frenzy, you can move faster and become harder to hit. Combined together with a decent supply of eggs, a bit of luck, and some practice and you have a subtle, yet psychotic weapon: a Drone that's able to simply walk into a firefight slap a pair of huggers onto two marines' faces, even if they're standing, and run off without getting shot. I've managed to do this with one hugger on several occasions, but being able to get two in one charge is something that's escaped me. The true holy grail for this tactic, however, would be to do so with a Carrier. In theory, if a Carrier could get strong enough Frenzy pheromones, had decent support, and was good enough, they could crab an entire fireteam without too much difficulty. Note that this tactic only covers using huggers on hosts that are currently standing.

The value of this tactic is obvious: if you can slash or tackle a host, you're able to plant a hugger on them as a Drone. Not only that, but it makes marines nervous about going around corners and if they get crabbed and aren't dragged off they're doomed to spend the next 15 minutes or so out of action. Anyone hit with this tactic is also down for the count long enough to be devoured and nested, making it devastating to targets moving alone or in pairs.

What do you think of these tactics? Do you have any others that exist to inspire a fear factor in Marines or play mind games with them?

[ThePiachu]

I once saw a Hivelord pull out the second strategy to great effect. Has to be on weeds with Weedwalker though...

The strategy I'd like to see tried would be wave combat - https://cm-ss13.com/viewtopic.php?f=133&t=17976 . Push against Marines as you build up weed and traps, fall back and let them charge in, then flank them and destroy their empty FOB. Or lure them into Carrier traps. The problem here is coordinating with the rest of the hive and somehow convincing 30 xenos to pull back from the LZ1 FOB to lure Marines back into the colony.

[FGRSentinel]

To be honest, that sounds like a brutal strategy, but I think it'd involve a Queen with no issues with ahelping people who don't listen to get it to work.

[Build_R_]

The second strategy works great if you're a carrier and the queen screeches a small group of marines. With all of them downed for a few seconds you could get up to four or five marines hugged provided you're quick enough.

[FGRSentinel]

Yeah, but that's easy mode. Like I said, the true holy grail would be to do it while they're on their feet and able to move around.

[Sulaboy]

Stand behind a corner and talk to yourself as a Xeno. It creates an illusion of there being more than one Xeno.

[ThesoldierLLJK]

Stand behind a corner and talk to yourself as a Xeno. It creates an illusion of there being more than one Xeno.

Also use the different variations of *roar *roar1 *roar2 *roar3 etc...
It makes it sounds like there's multiple xenos.

[ThePiachu]

I mean, if you want to be truly devious, you take a page from EVE Online's Goonsquad and weaponise boredom. Marines want their pew pew action, and they can't stand sitting idle for 10 minutes. So you build up your cave system, put sticky resin everywhere and weed all of the map. The Marines will clear up the first minute worth of stuff, then be more sporadic leaving you with plenty of weeds for your lurkers. Eventually, they'll say "fuck it!" and run into your sticky resin tunnel just to get some pew pew, and that's when you kill them.

[FGRSentinel]

I've heard of Carriers that happily admit that they put hugger traps under items dropped by Marines or that spawn in some places. If a Marine sees a nice gun, they have to stop and wonder if there's a trap under it that'll make them spend 15+ minutes getting a worm removed. The best part is most marines will leave guns behind when killed, critically wounded, or hugged, so every assault just adds places to hide hugger holes.

[ThePiachu]

That's standard Carrier tactics. Now, if you want to get psychological, start leaving traps under corpses. Do it close to LZs. Make Marines think "corpse=trap". Then later on you will be able to leave corpses around the hallway and stop Marine advancement without using traps. At least that would be the case if Marines learned rather than just unga rush.

[GoliathTheDespoiler]

My favorite psychological move as queen is this:

Feign attacks.

Basically, imagine Big Red's FOB, you have 15 xenos left, two of which are T3s; a Boiler and Ravager. You order the vast majority of your children to attack via telecomms after an elongated siege at the front of the FOB.

Vast numbers of marines flock to the newly opening frontline, and some brave souls form a flanking party to attack the hive from LZ1. But you left some xenos watching the main FOB for these brave soldiers, and you know they're coming.

So what do you do? Turn your ENTIRE force around and hit the five or six marines who attacked, capture all of them, and repeat the process. Over, and over, and over. The marines will either wise up and stop coming from the main FOB, or they'll run out of marines. If either of those happen, attack the main FOB with melter castes or slash your way through the fucking TERRIBLE metal barricades and begin a pincer attack.

In the end, I had 30 xenos, almost ALL of them being tier one, and the marines eventually just ran out of soldiers to guard telecomms.

[Build_R_]

Even seeing a carrier can be enough to make a group of 5 marines turn tail and run, nobody wants to sit in the medbay waiting for an incompetent doctor to somehow give you internal bleeding and certainly nobody wants to risk adding to xeno numbers by bursting.

[FGRSentinel]

Even seeing a carrier can be enough to make a group of 5 marines turn tail and run, nobody wants to sit in the medbay waiting for an incompetent doctor to somehow give you internal bleeding and certainly nobody wants to risk adding to xeno numbers by bursting.

That, and you very rarely see a Carrier alone. If it is alone, it's either skilled/confident enough to take out small groups solo, stupid, or got cut off and is trying to find its way back.