What should cloning be replaced with?

[ParadoxalObserver]

With the fact that cloning is going to be removed, in a few months, when medical gets a rework I thought hearing some of what people think could take its place would be interesting. And even more so with the discussion on general already on what people think of it getting removed, I thought it even more suited.

Personally, I'm really keen on the idea a few people have suggested of the reinforcement shuttle. Maybe Command would slowly build up "reinforcement points" on which they could just waste on another batch of standard marines or maybe add in some snazy stuff like calling in another Specialist or even calling reinforcements from non-Marine soldiers like from the Army. Maybe locking anything besides more standard marines behind having to waste said points to argue with command that said increased strength of reinforcements is actually necessary.

What do people think should take its place then? Do share. And although people saying; "I like cloning, I want it to stay." are welcome, remember that the point of the thread is to discuss what you think should replace it and not if you want it gone. There's already a thread about that in general!

[Warnipple]

Its been said in another thread.

Either we're getting reinforcement shuttles or medical equipment that can bring the dead back to life. I remember Apop mentioning a syringe with a fancy chemical that will bring a marine back to life.

[ParadoxalObserver]

Its been said in another thread.

Either we're getting reinforcement shuttles or medical equipment that can bring the dead back to life. I remember Apop mentioning a syringe with a fancy chemical that will bring a marine back to life.

No, no, no. The question is if the players could have their way, what would they have take its place. Not what's likely to be inserted or already planned! ^^

So share with us your thoughts, Warnipple. What would you like for this anti-cloning Christmas?

[Warnipple]

I'm for no-cloning but I think reinforcement shuttles are silly because shuttles aren't supposed to be travelling long distances. Thats what the Sulaco, as a spaceship, is for. Also lots of issues arise with reinforcement shuttles. Each marine needs a new name, you can't have two of the same people on the map. Players might go straight to showers and change their hairstyle to their original characters hairstyle so the new name is irrelevant. Although it would be interesting to see players treat their first character more preciously since its the only one that has the name they choose.

I'm really excited for the chemical syringe that Apop has planned though.

[ParadoxalObserver]

I'm for no-cloning but I think reinforcement shuttles are silly because shuttles aren't supposed to be travelling long distances. Thats what the Sulaco, as a spaceship, is for. Also lots of issues arise with reinforcement shuttles. Each marine needs a new name, you can't have two of the same people on the map. Players might go straight to showers and change their hairstyle to their original characters hairstyle so the new name is irrelevant. Although it would be interesting to see players treat their first character more preciously since its the only one that has the name they choose.

I'm really excited for the chemical syringe that Apop has planned though.

Although some kind of hypo of like, adrenaline that if used below like 10 minutes would instantly revive a dead marine I still find there are issues with it that the aliens do not suffer. First of all, decapping is still a thing unless somehow you can replace the head on the field (and then the revive hypo would be a bit too fantastic for my taste). Then there's body gobbling or while that's not a thing, xenos pulling corpses off (unless they remove these two, as well, which I think they might've recently).

I prefer reinforcement shuttles since it gives Command more to do than just talk. Well, if the supply method would be as I said and make it a bit more RTS-y. But I can see why revive hypos might be best. I just think that marines will still get the short end of the stick since I assume the hypos would be sort of limited and you'd still be heavily relying on medics on dying early on (unless everyone can use them).

And maybe the supply shuttles come from nearby ships? Maybe the Sulaco can have a sister-ship that feeds the reinforcements. And the cargo shuttle is already weird. I mean, can't the reinforcements come where it comes from?

But I get what you mean, then again I have secondary characters so I wouldn't have as much issue with changing character to reinforce.

[Mech__Warrior]

Like I said before, I wish the defib timer could be increased to about a minute or a minute and a half. It would really mitigate a lot of the arrivals to cloning. Either that, or you could have something from Evolve, called the Lazarus device, where it can revive anybody no matter how long they've been dead provided they weren't decapped or something, effectively making them a zombie in a way. However, this should do permanent brain damage that cannot be fixed.

[Renomaki]

The idea of a chem that brings humans back to life is similar to what Paradise has, which is a very dangerous chem that could cause a body to gib if the target has too much damage points on them.

You'd have to make sure the body is within a certain threshold before attempting to revive the body with such a chem, otherwise you'd just end up wasting a perfectly good injection and losing a marine forever.

If such a thing is brought over, though.. Who WOULD be allowed to use it? If it is just a simple injector, would combat medics be able to revive the dead on the field, or would only doctors be allowed to use it?

As for the topic itself, if cloning was lost, I wouldn't mind an expanded medical wing in it's place. As is, there is never enough doctors and operating rooms to tend to the wounded, so increasing the cap and enlarging the medical wing with more ORs, as well as adding a few other medical goodies, would make it all the more worth it.

That, and Defib buffs so they aren't completely useless.

[NoahKirchner]

Well, I think it'd be cool to have to do surgery on dead bodies and give them inaprovaline and what-not before you can bring them back to life, either by injection or by some kinda fancy surgical stoff.

[JohnKilla56]

honestly there are a lotta good ways to replace cloning but perhaps whats best is just having all players get a certain amount of respawns, and they have to be differant characters. like for instance once you die you can respawn once or twice but if a character name is reused the second one is deleted, preventing reusing characters. that way xenos can do whatever the hell they wanna do with the dead, and marines can feel secure in knowing that they aren't stuck in dsay if they get rekt.

[username123]

Removing FF and making marines harder to kill, marines should be killed by aliens, not by other trained marined.

[TheSpoonyCroy]

Removing FF and making marines harder to kill, marines should be killed by aliens, not by other trained marined.

XD that is not going to happen since Apop is pretty clear on the subject of FF, it happens and it sucks but it should still happen, also want to add as someone who frequently plays in medical, death is very unlikely to FF victims ( I admit this is from my own limited perspective, would really love to see real hard statistics on such topic but that would require large amounts of log diving with a multitude of factors that aren't noticed by logs which can drastically change the % of deaths due to FF as well (ie the victim walking around with a ruptured lung for some time before heading to the ship, medics not properly stabilizing the patient, the skill level of a medical department during the round of the incident, and etc))

[username123]

XD that is not going to happen since Apop is pretty clear on the subject of FF, it happens and it sucks but it should still happen, also want to add as someone who frequently plays in medical, death is very unlikely to FF victims ( I admit this is from my own limited perspective, would really love to see real hard statistics on such topic but that would require large amounts of log diving with a multitude of factors that aren't noticed by logs which can drastically change the % of deaths due to FF as well (ie the victim walking around with a ruptured lung for some time before heading to the ship, medics not properly stabilizing the patient, the skill level of a medical department during the round of the incident, and etc))

FF is the #1 killer in the game, not because it kills you instantly, but becase it puts you in crit when your chest, head or groin is broken due to FF, making you a pile of uselessness that needs to be pulled to the pod/rasp for medevac. I think devs are just too lazy to figure out a way to "balance" the game by replacing FF with something else, for me, it's lazy design that devs balance the game by allowing marines to taken out of the round for 15-20 minutes because some baldie decided that it was a great idea to use ap rounds with quickfire, gyro and barrel charger on it's m41. Nobody likes FF, it doesn't add anything to the game, but annoying artificial difficulty that per example, makes some weapons of the game almost useless like the sniper rifle, or the rail scope.

[TheSpoonyCroy]

-snip-

That wouldn't make it a killer but FF is the number one cause for make healthy portion of troops combat ineffective on the marine side. FF is a part of most shooters and reality and its odd to try to make it be ignored and call it " artificial difficulty" when players interacting with each other is the basis of all multiplayer games. Yes it sucks when it occurs but if lets not act like several causes of FF aren't on the victim here, I have seen countless number times when I'm firing and some fool who has a death wished started walking infront of me when I'm firing then complains if I hit him/her. To be honest FF has actually be slightly nerfed some time ago, technically fixed since Noize stated that the armor protection was incorrect and FF injuries have gone down if the person is using standard rounds but AP (armor piercing) rounds will do what AP rounds do and it shouldn't be forced upon the devs to make such incidents not occur it should be up to players teaching clearly new players of where they are going wrong (like filling their belts with AP MAGS, seriously stop this...)

That is one of the most sickening things about this game/community, its how most players think each person should be perfect in their assigned role. People have to learn some time and they generally forget when they were scrubs as well and how lost they felt in this sea of information. Generally the best a new player gets is being told to head to the wiki, which I find is one of the laziest ways to teach new players. Hell this whole "baldie" hate thing really does scare new players to the point where they don't ask questions or they might stick out and enviably be called a "baldie". Hell whenever I'm a doctor in medical I always start my shift (after doing all the prework associated with medical before deployment ie making a cyromix, making perxi+ pills, and gearing up) I introduce myself and say if anyone needs help they can always ask, since there should no shame in asking for help, and I watch around medbay to see anyone struggles and if they do I will offer my assistance but its up to them to decide to accept it or not

[cheesebagel]

Replace it with cyborgs. Take the brains out of dead bodies and make them borgs loyal to the CL. It'd give the researcher something more to do.

[Recounted]

removing FF would solve plenty of problems

[FantasticFwoosh]

Cloning probably need a re-branding, i say we use raw vats filled to the brim with biomass that functionally work like cloners producing functional dead clones (fixing the gibbing problem as often marines have horrible injuries) that have to be revived using the apop chem so they can just get back to work with no memories of what they were doing.

Also open ended to research doing crazy stuff in genetically creating xenomorphs out of alien biomass specifically as the current cloning system is restrictive.

[Simo94]

#RemoveCloningAndFF

[NoahKirchner]

Cloning probably need a re-branding, i say we use raw vats filled to the brim with biomass that functionally work like cloners producing functional dead clones (fixing the gibbing problem as often marines have horrible injuries) that have to be revived using the apop chem so they can just get back to work with no memories of what they were doing.

Also open ended to research doing crazy stuff in genetically creating xenomorphs out of alien biomass specifically as the current cloning system is restrictive.

Have the dead bodies, implant the brain, then inject with the chemical?

[Szunti]

1) Don't lose helmet when hugged. I guess then you can't be pounce-decapped in a second even in the middle of the group.
2) Medics can halt or slow larva development with eg. overdose on spaceacillin.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Have the dead bodies, implant the brain, then inject with the chemical?

That requires surgery to remove the brain, while doctors might well be happy to do so and it'd be a good way to convert the C-key ghost over, we'd need to have a FAST way to do it. A robotic lobotmiser? Scooping those brains out grotesquely like ice cream?

1) Don't lose helmet when hugged. I guess then you can't be pounce-decapped in a second even in the middle of the group.
2) Medics can halt or slow larva development with eg. overdose on spaceacillin.

Yeah i somewhat agree on medics being able to overdose REAL HARD trying whatever works, (typically on bursting, there is significant toxicity damage), so a presciption of anti toxicity pills, something that severely malnourishes you (so that the larva can't speed up off you're m

Im not sure how this relates to cloning however, hugger pouncing is already difficult as it is, and there are items/mechanics centered around hugger protection/helmet repair (resin glue R&D item etc) in the past bio hoods and suits used to block huggers 100%

[ParadoxalObserver]

Im not sure how this relates to cloning however, hugger pouncing is already difficult as it is, and there are items/mechanics centered around hugger protection/helmet repair (resin glue R&D item etc) in the past bio hoods and suits used to block huggers 100%

>Hugger pounce
>Difficult

Pounce; have macro to almost instantly drop two huggers; 'what helmet?' - facehugger bros.

Or a much more annoying thing that has happened to me:

About to walk around a corner; aliens can see through walls; runner uses its drop macro to instantly drop two huggers; huggers jump at you from 1 tile away, so even though it had just dropped them and I was next to it I still get instantly hugged; decapped while the Xeno is in a position around the corner my marines can't shoot at AND a hugger is right under me so they have to fire first just to make it safe.

Pounce hugging and melee hugging, in general, is really easy by just having a macro. It's so easy that it makes helmets irrelevant unless it's ranged throws.

Anyhow, I don't know about something that requires doctors. Marines are already at such a huge disadvantage that, unless there are huge changes to make the two sides far more balanced, then I'd be against anything that requires you to pull bodies up. It's already so common that marines let corpses be taken by the Xenos when they're in a position to easily retrieve them, that I feel the same issue would spark. So if it were a magical drug, I'd prefer Medics having it.

[apophis775]

Guys, calm your tits.

This is MONTHS away, and we have several possibilities.

[NoahKirchner]

Guys, calm your tits.

This is MONTHS away, and we have several possibilities.

But my tits were having so much fun!

[ParadoxalObserver]

Guys, calm your tits.

This is MONTHS away, and we have several possibilities.

Uh. I said exactly that at the start. I also said that this wasn't about discussing what might be happening but simply what we as players would enjoy seeing if we got our every wish granted. This isn't a suggestion thread, it's just a coolio discussion thread. o.o"