What constitutes as "good" hive defenses??

[Garrison]

As a guy who mains Drone/HiveLord when playing Xenos. I've been taking note of posts that comment on how drones can't seem to build good defenses or spend too much time placing sticky resin and not much else. Even in game I'd get called out for making certain fortifications or building too many doors (which was indeed a valid complaint).

Thing is, what exactly does good hive defenses look like? from what others have said or told me, this seems to be what it looks like.

Keep Resin doors to a minimum, especially on the front lines

Why? - Although resin doors allow your sisters to navigate through your walls and stop pursuing marines in their tracks. Problem is you have to stop to open them, and when an engagement goes bad and you desperately need to get out of the marines sights, taking a moment to open a resin door can mean the difference between life or death. Resin doors that are deeper into the hive however, are generally more acceptable, just try to keep them spread out as to not to clog traffic.

Narrow down pathways or build large "chunks" of resin walls for cover.

Why? - Marines benefit a lot on open ground since their main method of attack is shooting guns. Building 2x2 or 3x3 chunks of resin walls not only acts as good cover for your recuperating sisters, but also blocks the marines line of sight and soaks up their ammunition. Narrowing down passages in the caves or colony can also be a good idea since it increases the likelihood of Friendly fire and makes them an easy target for boiler gas or Ravager/Crusher ambushes.

In the depths of the inner hive, build mazes

Why? - Generally, when marines get this far into the hive, the Xenos are struggling or on their last legs. Making mazes of walls, doors, eggs and sticky resin will not only slow the marines down, but also make them expend their resources as a quick means to clear the way. This also increases the likelihood that they'll split up or fall pray to a concealed egg. Making for easy captures or kills.


Does this sound correct? If not, what would a good hive defense look like?

[sappysalamander]

I like this alot, I started playing drone a little bit and I love trying to experiment and have fun playing Minecraft, but I've gotten deserved flak for my ability to congest and kill our own hive. I have trouble understanding how to create good structures without getting in the way of wayward crushers and boilers who heed room to roam.

[FGRSentinel]

The only thing I don't agree with is the maze building. While it's nice because of the fact Marines can get lost, it's bad in that 90% of your teammates won't know how to navigate it, which slows down all hive functions that require going from there to the front or from the front to the heart of the hive.

[xXen0zS1ay3rXx]

I've been playing a bit of drones, and one thing I find that is somewhat effective is placing eggs everywhere. Slap them down behind corners, in rooms, etc so that they might grab an unsuspecting dude with a bad connection.
Works well in connection with sticky resin that stops them for a split second.

Best you can do really now that the actual traps are locked behind the shit-tier burrower

[blingx3]

This is an excellent start-up or a guide for someone who wants to play drone or hivelord for most of there rounds. I like this alot, something I'd think you can add and will be of great benefit is adding priorities for drones on which is most important place to be defended first, hive or front lines ?, because I seem to struggle with this question. Thanks

[Garrison]

I like this alot, I started playing drone a little bit and I love trying to experiment and have fun playing Minecraft, but I've gotten deserved flak for my ability to congest and kill our own hive. I have trouble understanding how to create good structures without getting in the way of wayward crushers and boilers who heed room to roam.

You need to find a balancing act from my experience, like knowing which places boilers love to hang out at and leaving their line of sight mostly vacant so they can bombard unhindered. Crushers are harder to accommodate since they always need to be relocating or striking at different places.

This is an excellent start-up or a guide for someone who wants to play drone or hivelord for most of there rounds. I like this alot, something I'd think you can add and will be of great benefit is adding priorities for drones on which is most important place to be defended first, hive or front lines ?, because I seem to struggle with this question. Thanks

It depends on how many drones the hive has and what everyone's doing. Usually I start with fortifying and setting up the Queens chamber so the hive can start infecting and nesting the monkey's. There's usually another drone doing that though, so I try to guess where the marines are going to come from or what possible routes they can take to flank and just start building unless the Queen has a specific plan. There's no set in stone method though, so you just need to consult the hive or see where the fight is going to begin and plan accordingly.

The only thing I don't agree with is the maze building. While it's nice because of the fact Marines can get lost, it's bad in that 90% of your teammates won't know how to navigate it, which slows down all hive functions that require going from there to the front or from the front to the heart of the hive.

Your right, but I didn't initially mean like an actual elaborate maze, just things like a tank trap setup with sticky resin, or building various hallways to bottleneck marines (and maybe adding a resin doors through the walls for easy access for xenos or for someone to pop out and surprise em)

[kastion]

I would suggest to any people who want to understand how boilers and crushers and such work, and how you can make better defenses for them, to go ahead an play crusher and boiler a few times to get a feel for how their mechanics work and how defenses interact with them.

As for how to make better defenses one thing I would really like people to get out of the habit of is fortifying the river on lv426. CAS and OBs decimate river defenses so it makes it a huge waste of time. Its ok to throw down some 2x3 walls or whatever to soak hits but theres no point in focusing all your effort on it. The caves cant be hit by CAS and OB so the marines will have to spend time or resources to clear anything you do in there.

Another point I would like to make is marines guns 1on1 are not that strong. When you get into trouble is when you get shot by multiple marines. So anything you can do to make less marines beable to line up shoulder to shoulder to fire on your team means less firepower they have to kill your team. That means narrow caves down (not too much or xenos cant move around).

Sticky resin is amazing, spam that crap every where. If someone wants to make a trap or a wall or something they can clear your sticky resin easily. It takes marines like 5+ hits to break 1 sticky resin without flaming it or something. It slows marines sooooooooo much it isn't even funny.

Spread weeds everywhere.Weeds allow xenos to heal and they even slow marines a little bit. The most underrated fact about weeds is they make lurkers almost invisible. So everywhere there are weeds is a spot lurkers can ambush people. This means inside and outside of caves you need weeds everywhere you can get them. If marines clear the weeds do a run by and plant another weed (as long as it wont get you killed)

One final thing is boarding he almayer. Your job as drone is to weed. You will be almost useless on the almayer besides helping slash somebody who is down or whatever. You can combat hug people but don't bother capturing the game ends in 20 minutes so its pointless to try to get larva once on the ship. Combat hug people and target their head and kill them cause it knocks their helmet off. Stay out of the way of big xenos trying to break defenses. Tier 1s always bodyblock and kill queens and ravagers and stuff on the almayer. Don't, just run around weeding everything and give pheromones to your buddies.

[xXen0zS1ay3rXx]

Whats the general meta on placing eggs as traps? Around corners, two tiles behind a corner, right behind a door? Not sure what is the best option, although the vast majority of my egg traps get killed by grenade-spam that somehow can kill eggs through thick-resin walls.

[misto]

the only time i have seen eggs used as passive traps well is using xeno corpses to cover the egg sprite. otherwise, most marines are rarely caught by eggs. if you know of any other things that cover the egg sprite, please share

[Ketrai]

the only time i have seen eggs used as passive traps well is using xeno corpses to cover the egg sprite. otherwise, most marines are rarely caught by eggs. if you know of any other things that cover the egg sprite, please share

When the corpses don't get gibbed that is. Burrower has more leniency, use just about everything the marines leave behind, including corpses for traps. Honestly better to work together with someone who can make resin holes than to try and use eggs. Eggs are mainly useful for drones to quickly grab a hugger, and slap it on marines approaching the hive. Or around the frontlines. A cave skirmish site is an excellent place to set up a maze/trapped area to lure marines into later when they inevitably wish to run down what's left of the xenos. Making cool traps like this on the battlefield is a lot harder, mainly just ends up slowing the marines down and buying the hive some time.

[Nimiety]

One time on ice colony the xenos were losing badly and the hive was getting pushed in waves, one mastermind drone planted 5 eggs under 5 xeno corpses where the marines were pushing. Marines pushed, half of them got hugged as they got within 5 tiles of the egg traps, other half screeched down and murdered.
For resin defences, you need resin positioned for xenos to duck behind as they are dragging infected or wounded xenos away. I like this pattern even though it doesn't hold up to fire very well.

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[Grubstank]

One time on ice colony the xenos were losing badly and the hive was getting pushed in waves, one mastermind drone planted 5 eggs under 5 xeno corpses where the marines were pushing. Marines pushed, half of them got hugged as they got within 5 tiles of the egg traps, other half screeched down and murdered.
For resin defences, you need resin positioned for xenos to duck behind as they are dragging infected or wounded xenos away. I like this pattern even though it doesn't hold up to fire very well.

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I strongly dislike that pattern -- it doesn't achieve anything that parallel 2x2 resin blobs don't, and it blocks crushers/boilers

[Renomaki]

To me, a good hive defense is the proper utilization of both sticky resin and walls.

Whenever I see a drone/hivelord do nothing but puke vast fields of sticky resin, I can't help but sigh knowing the time wasted doing all that just to slightly slow down marines. Sticky resin is not designed to be a defense on its own, it is designed to COMPLIMENT existing defenses. And good defenses take a bit of planning when building, one does not simply rush a defense.

From xenomade choke-points to gatehouses, applying sticky resin around existing structures helps to improve their effectiveness and slow down marines evermore considerably. Even WITNESSING what appears to be a sturdy defense will cause marines to hesitate, because they'll be all the more nervous to attempt to breach it. Compare this to fields of sticky resin, and more often than not marines will just not give a shit and wade through it like nothing.

slowdown means shit if the marines are massed with a clear line of fire. Mix up the defense, use ALL your tools available, don't cheap out and take the easy way.

[kastion]

To me, a good hive defense is the proper utilization of both sticky resin and walls.

Whenever I see a drone/hivelord do nothing but puke vast fields of sticky resin, I can't help but sigh knowing the time wasted doing all that just to slightly slow down marines. Sticky resin is not designed to be a defense on its own, it is designed to COMPLIMENT existing defenses. And good defenses take a bit of planning when building, one does not simply rush a defense.

From xenomade choke-points to gatehouses, applying sticky resin around existing structures helps to improve their effectiveness and slow down marines evermore considerably. Even WITNESSING what appears to be a sturdy defense will cause marines to hesitate, because they'll be all the more nervous to attempt to breach it. Compare this to fields of sticky resin, and more often than not marines will just not give a shit and wade through it like nothing.

slowdown means shit if the marines are massed with a clear line of fire. Mix up the defense, use ALL your tools available, don't cheap out and take the easy way.

im just glad that most marines think like you and walk through fields of resin. Thank you and keep up the good (bad) job.

[Ketrai]

im just glad that most marines think like you and walk through fields of resin. Thank you and keep up the good (bad) job.

I rarely see anyone do that, it's usually just areas covered in resin they'll go through. But sticky resin? na

[simonset55]

Sticky, sticky sticky sticky everywhere. If marines don't take the time to clear it out they will lose a fight in it, it makes it easier for xenos to both engage and disengage from battles. Couple it with a couple of walls for xenos to take cover behind, and it will be hell for marines.

What Renomaki said, p much.

[Avalanchee]

All about that sticky