The Queen Mother dislikes infection...?

[SUPERMAN112]

I just found this kinda ludicrous while Queening last night. It was a high pop round, like 100 people on, which are the hardest rounds for xenos to win. We fortified a good hive, lots of eggs, my orders were essentially to pick off any lone hosts, avoid direct engagement, with slashing disabled. Then there was news of the hosts crossing the river and attacking, I said (since there were a lot of us) we would leave slashing off and if I sensed we were being pushes back I would allow it, since the more infections you get early round the better, late round infections don't do to much. However upon saying that I was greeted by the Hive Mother saying enable slashing or be removed, her reasoning was that the hosts would grow stronger while we waited, which doesn't even make sense, besides late joiners marines don't get too much stronger over time, xenos benefit the most from waiting. This was only around an hour in mind you.

► Show Spoiler

Elite Queen has laid an egg!
Queen Mother Psychic Directive




Enough with the incompetence.... the humans grow stronger the longer you wait... unless you apply pressure they will grow in numbers faster than you can.

Kill them and move together or I shall breed a new competent queen.


You clear the hatched egg.
You clear the hatched egg.
Hivemind, Young Spitter (618) hisses, 'You lack of patience'
Elite Queen has laid an egg!

Was I in the right? was I in the wrong? I'm curious what you think

[Feweh]

We get a fuck load of AHELPS complaining about Queens who disable Harming.

Generally disabling harming actually gets more xenos killed than it helps.

You werent wrong, but it was probably to get the round moving forward and to stop the xenos complaining about you.

[Sargeantmuffinman]

Attrition is the best stratagy the aliens have up their sleeves but with a good portion of the players that you've either infected or killed will be ghosts, we kinda want to end the round so everyone isn't waiting.

[Renomaki]

Sometimes, it is better to kill than to infect.

Killing, while only temporary in some cases, is a great way to whittle down enemy numbers in a short time. Hunters and Ravagers can REALLY turn the tide if they are permitted to kill, ripping arms off and mangling all in their path, and generally crushing morale of the marines as they watch their friends get slaughtered.

Infecting, on the other hand, is only good against lone marines or stragglers from a failed attack. Otherwise, those huggers are just going to do a mere 25 damage, with a chance to break a marine's skull upon being pulled off. And even if they DO get infected, the marine will still be in fighting shape, and worse off is now huggers WON'T work on them, so you can't use huggers to scare them off anymore.

Know when to kill/wound, and when to infect.

[Feweh]

Exactly.

Come to think of it, i remember this round now.

You wanted aliens to infect marines, but it was mid-game and all the marines were grouped together at the river. This is a terrible idea because...

1. Marines grouped together = hard to infect.
2. Hard to infected and drag marines back over the river
3. You had many aliens and larva to spare.

Basically, you wanting aliens to infect mid-game and disabling harming would actually have the opposite effect. Youd be more likely to lose xenos trying to infect than youd actually gain.

[SUPERMAN112]

Sometimes, it is better to kill than to infect.

Killing, while only temporary in some cases, is a great way to whittle down enemy numbers in a short time. Hunters and Ravagers can REALLY turn the tide if they are permitted to kill, ripping arms off and mangling all in their path, and generally crushing morale of the marines as they watch their friends get slaughtered.

Infecting, on the other hand, is only good against lone marines or stragglers from a failed attack. Otherwise, those huggers are just going to do a mere 25 damage, with a chance to break a marine's skull upon being pulled off. And even if they DO get infected, the marine will still be in fighting shape, and worse off is now huggers WON'T work on them, so you can't use huggers to scare them off anymore.

Know when to kill/wound, and when to infect.

I get what your saying, a lot of times a weak hive wil need to slash or else they will get curb-stomped by marines, but when you have a good number of xenos with slashing enabled sometimes the xenos go slash happy and kill marines that they easily could have infected, which late round isnt too much of a problem since a larva only really has time to become a T1 but early round one infection is a big deal since it can add that one ravager or crusher that can make a big difference late round

[SUPERMAN112]

Exactly.

Come to think of it, i remember this round now.

You wanted aliens to infect marines, but it was mid-game and all the marines were grouped together at the river. This is a terrible idea because...

1. Marines grouped together = hard to infect.
2. Hard to infected and drag marines back over the river
3. You had many aliens and larva to spare.

Basically, you wanting aliens to infect mid-game and disabling harming would actually have the opposite effect. Youd be more likely to lose xenos trying to infect than youd actually gain.

they were grouped up, but with the amount of defenses we had and the amount of eggs we had I think we could have broken them up. They were about to cross the river when this happened too so they wouldn't be super far from the hive. I get what your saying though, leaving slashing disabled when aliens are trying to push usually is a bad idea and can kill a lot of xenos. What I am more wondering is if I need to change my hive orders, I have them typed out to copy and paste when I queen, its set up for bulking up the hive with infections then pushing and ending it fast, and I dont wanna cause the staff to get a boat load of a-helps every round

[Renomaki]

I get what your saying, a lot of times a weak hive wil need to slash or else they will get curb-stomped by marines, but when you have a good number of xenos with slashing enabled sometimes the xenos go slash happy and kill marines that they easily could have infected, which late round isnt too much of a problem since a larva only really has time to become a T1 but early round one infection is a big deal since it can add that one ravager or crusher that can make a big difference late round

Trust me, you shouldn't worry too much about killing possible hosts. If you get too carried away with attempting infections, it'll only hinder you in the late game.

If anything, you should plan your swarm in advance if you want to get "that one ravager or crusher that can make a big difference late round", and keep a tight leash on them until the time is right. And if you can't evolve, then upgrade, because you'd only be holding the hive back if you remain young for too long as well (although that is just how I think).

Again, infect if you can, kill when needed, and in general ensure your higher ranking xenos are kept under control. Having an elite T2-T3 can really make a difference, and even an elder runner can be useful, provided you communicate often.

[Feweh]

they were grouped up, but with the amount of defenses we had and the amount of eggs we had I think we could have broken them up. They were about to cross the river when this happened too so they wouldn't be super far from the hive. I get what your saying though, leaving slashing disabled when aliens are trying to push usually is a bad idea and can kill a lot of xenos. What I am more wondering is if I need to change my hive orders, I have them typed out to copy and paste when I queen, its set up for bulking up the hive with infections then pushing and ending it fast, and I dont wanna cause the staff to get a boat load of a-helps every round

The problem is youre taking for granted that all your xeno players are competent, they arent.

Complicated orders get players killed because theyre not robust. Infecting is a lot harder to do when youre a new player than it is for them to kill.

So when you have enough numbers, dont order your xebos to do hard shit thatll put then at greater risk, disabling harming makes shit usually 10x worse.

[Toroic]

The infection-heavy meta has fallen out of favor, and for good reason.

The only time xenos will run out of larvae is if they're taking very heavy losses, which only happens when xenos are fighting in unfavorable conditions. Most games still have larvae at the 2 hour mark, making a focus on infection generally unnecessary.

The most important thing is to get your starting and first wave of xenos to survive to evolve and upgrade. A single robust elite T3 makes lategame much easier to win, 2 or 3 gives an advantage marines are unlikely to overcome.

[SUPERMAN112]

The infection-heavy meta has fallen out of favor, and for good reason.

The only time xenos will run out of larvae is if they're taking very heavy losses, which only happens when xenos are fighting in unfavorable conditions. Most games still have larvae at the 2 hour mark, making a focus on infection generally unnecessary.

The most important thing is to get your starting and first wave of xenos to survive to evolve and upgrade. A single robust elite T3 makes late-game much easier to win, 2 or 3 gives an advantage marines are unlikely to overcome.

On high pop rounds where a lot of xenos die when marines are competent and stay in groups and runners rambo charge you will need all the larva you can get, I dont get how focusing on infection is meta though, maybe stupid at times sure, but not meta

[wastedfate]

On high pop rounds where a lot of xenos die when marines are competent and stay in groups and runners rambo charge you will need all the larva you can get, I dont get how focusing on infection is meta though, maybe stupid at times sure, but not meta

Meta isn't used entirely to describe the act of meta-gaming it's used quite often in E-sports especially in reference to the development of the most efficient strategies to win the game.

[Recounted]

I don't see nothing wrong with keeping slashing forbidden as long as xenos isn't filling the chat logs with them dying constantly. I also tried to do that and got yelled at by my own hive

[Simo94]

its much much better to keep slashing on and order your hive to focus on infecting, that way xenos can finish off robust infected marines that run off and comeback with buckshots, since xenos MUST listen to your orders you can ahelp if someone is over killing

[Liran343]

Well... in my personal experience, xenos (the assault caste) will usually kill if they don't have huggers on them. Let's take the scenario of when the xenos break the FoB defenses and command was too incompetent to keep the pod on the ground for retreating. You have the xenos (including the queen) rushing in and just going on a killing spree, even downed marines who are basically just laying there on the floor are getting bamboozled... at best they get 2-3 marines infected out of the 12-16 that were there. And that's because 2-3 xenos remembered to go back and stock up... but potential to infect at least half of them was there.

Point is, that if you're going queen and want to infect as much as you can, lay eggs close to the front line and make sure all of your sisters know where the eggs at and have huggers on them.

[Abbysynth]

What the fuck? Why is an admin dictating xeno tactics for the queen? If the queen wants to infect you infect, directly saying 'you suck, do it my way' in the middle of a round with a Queen already there is incredibly bad form. There's a toggle for a reason, you should encourage the Queen to use it. If an admin wants to play xenos and make up xeno strategies, then play Queen like everyone else.

[Doc]

It was due to the nature of the round extending far too long. While I generally agree that game play and tactics should be left to the players doing them, it's no fun when a round is essentially ruined because of it- and it is the admins responsibility to keep rounds fun, above an individuals choices.

[apophis775]

On high pop rounds where a lot of xenos die when marines are competent and stay in groups and runners rambo charge you will need all the larva you can get, I dont get how focusing on infection is meta though, maybe stupid at times sure, but not meta

There's a difference between "focusing on hosts" and "Crippling you aliens abilities to respond".

its much much better to keep slashing on and order your hive to focus on infecting, that way xenos can finish off robust infected marines that run off and comeback with buckshots, since xenos MUST listen to your orders you can ahelp if someone is over killing

This, for DAYS. Nothing kills aliens faster than a robust marine in the hive who can't be killed because he got the queen before she enabled slashing and he's just started tearing his way through defenseless SSD larva.

What the fuck? Why is an admin dictating xeno tactics for the queen? If the queen wants to infect you infect, directly saying 'you suck, do it my way' in the middle of a round with a Queen already there is incredibly bad form. There's a toggle for a reason, you should encourage the Queen to use it. If an admin wants to play xenos and make up xeno strategies, then play Queen like everyone else.

Remember, that according to lore, the local queen is subservient to the queen month on Xeno Prime. If we get lots and lots of complaints or see a queen doing very poorly, we use the "queen mother" reports to try and hint to the queen to pick up the slack. A stupid queen can be DISABLING. Refering to slashing though, the toggle will probably get removed "soonish" as we are redoing Xeno combat to work a bit better and function differently (in an attempt to move away from hugger-based combat). More details on that soon.

[Joe4444]

This, for DAYS. Nothing kills aliens faster than a robust marine in the hive who can't be killed because he got the queen before she enabled slashing and he's just started tearing his way through defenseless SSD larva.

except slashing is auto enabled when the queen dies.

[Simo94]

except slashing is auto enabled when the queen dies.

still, theres nothing more robust than an infected hugger immune marine

[Jackie Estegado]

*cough There are usually still spare larva avaliable long into rounds is because some very competent xeno players like me tend to capture marines en mass, which often end up reducing spare larva usage atleast by 50%.
However there are rounds when we aren't on, and ayliens just get wrecked due to not having larva left.