The Lone Chestburster's Salvation.

[KEY]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):
- Larva would be able to "crawl" inside dead bodies and restore health and plasma inside of them. This would go away after evolution, but while inside and as a injured larva----they would be able to feast on the energy of the humans insides and organs as a substitute for weeds.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):
- This suggestion might help with newborn larva being slaughtered right away. It could also help those larva that burst, get shot but manage to slip away----and can't evolve due to not being at full health and plasma.
-It gives larva that are born into hostile territory a bit more of a fighting chance, and can lead to some exciting "hunt down the rogue alien" action, that we all love and enjoy.
-Adds a new RP element to the server for both Alien players and Marine players.
-Increased interaction with marine corpses besides cloning.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):
-After bursting and being shot at, larva is struck by bullet but manages to squeeze between doors.
-Losing the trail of gunfire, larva is able to locate a dead body laying around somewhere.
-Larva gets within 1 tile distance, and clicks on the body like Aliens do when they wish to pry a door open.
-An audible disgusting, slippery sound plays to cue any close marines---so they better be sneaky!
-After the same windup it takes to pry open a door, the larva slips inside where they are then treated as if they are standing on weeds.
-They have to move around a bit to squeeze out of the body, and it will play yet more slippery noises to cue marines as well as give the flavor text " Something crawls beneath the skin of X's body! "
-If the larva is still alive at this point and has not yet been shot at or caught, they may evolve as usual. Losing the ability to hide in and feast off bodies while doing so.

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):
-I'm not an expert on coding, but I imagine it would be transferring the mob of the larva into the dead corpse and giving it the healing weeds effect while active.

[NoahKirchner]

I have a sneaking suspicion that I will be in the minority here, but I really like this idea. Having an alien on the Sulaco can be intense and I hate joining as a xeno that just bursted only to have it be surrounded by marines and then have to wait another 5 minutes to play.

+1

[Damarik]

+1 the idea...seeing as how it may have come from the story intro I just posted in Art and Stories. :P Hopefully, it means people are reading.

But yeah. A Chestie should be able to hide inside of the body it just came out of. I mean...fuck, it fits in there to begin with. Why can it not re-hide inside the body?

[Sarah_U.]

I like the idea and will actually give it a +1. Gives a purpose for aliens to keep bodies around at times and also makes marines much more careful of laying around bodies unrespectfully (Think about cloning, the larva's new playground).

[KingKire]

+1, it is an interesting addition, i think it would be nice

[SUPERMAN112]

+1, cool idea, fits well into what we have seen chest bursters do in games and comics

[KingKire]

Alright alright, so, extra thought on this....Really cool idea i think:

-Having larva being able to go into dead bodies = aliens can "infiltrate" the sulaco via dead corpses being hauled up.

"marine sees his buddys corpse, sad that he past away... decides to grab a corpsebag, hauls his buddy into the rasp and closes his eyes. Short ride, the body arrives, a technician sees the bag. Opening up to make sure, yup, he's dead. zips it back up. He hauls it back to the morgue. somebody else will deal with it, back to work he goes. some time passes. the body sits still. suddenly, the body heaves. out pops a worm, it slithers into the vents. the body goes still once more."

[Thatnewguy01]

And how would we be able to get a larva out? Don't forget that part

[KingKire]

Probably just have medical HUD reveal a parasite again, and if you check a persons pulse, you would probably be told that the corpse has no pulse, but his chest is moving

Sound also cues when larva enters/leaves corpse and it takes time to reenter/exit

if you really want to get out a larva, i guess you can also pull out a knife and cut it out?

[nerocavalier]

It sounds interesting but will likely be a niche use. How many marines actually take up corpses instead of leaving it down there to lie? More often than not, any bodies on the Sulaco is in medbay or in the morgue trays.

Pre-cloning removal, I'd have +1 it without any hesitation. With no cloning, there's not as much corpses for larva to successfully use that aren't in obvious locations i.e medbay or hangar.

Neutral.

[Sneakyr]

I don't like this. Vents do this just fine, and I especially hate the idea of infiltrating via marine bodies. It's hard enough to get a single xeno out of the vents on the Sul once they're in there, not to mention the damage they can cause. Welding vents will just get you cut up if you don't have an escort, and if you do then the xeno can pop up into some other unguarded place like medbay and start killing the essential staff.
If it could only be done for a limited time (perhaps until you've eaten the majority of what's inside) and only have the healing factor, sure, as long as any damage to the human body does damage to the larva.
Moral of the story: No evolving/evolution progress while hiding in corpses, please. A xeno getting onto the Sul is easy for them to do and near impossible to remove if you're not lucky and they escape.
Sorry for weird sentencing, mobile.

[KingKire]

sneakys paragraph here

Well thats the thing:
-Larva cant open bodybags.

Marines who treat their dead properly, never have to worry about slug hitchhikers.
-Watching over the body leads to no way to get on
-Corpses stored properly, either locked in bags, or placed in morgue shelves, means larva cant get in, or at least cant get out and evolve.
-Making sure to properly check corpses, something that should be done reguardless, will always give you warning about any sneaky snakes.

All of these are some high risk scenarios for a larva. They are easily killed, and unable to attack. Dying causes a xeno lost with nothing gained.

This all culimates into a interesting depth added to the game. A chain of lazy players can cause a huge disruption. at any point, a good caring player can intervene to cut the chain, but if they fail to do so, the consequences can be dire, if albeit very very rare. This leads to a story gained that rivals and mimics the original alien movie itself, which i think is just gosh darn amazing!

[Sneakyr]

Snipsnipsnipsnip

-Watching over the body leads to no way to get on - Yes, take marines away from offensive/defensive/deployment operations to make them watch a/some corpse(s), taking away from both their experience as a player and marine operations.
- Corpses stored properly, either locked in bags, or placed in morgue shelves, means larva can't get in, or at least cant get out and evolve. - In theory, sure. In practice, everyone's either too busy or too lazy so this will happen often.
-Making sure to properly check corpses, something that should be done regardless, will always give you a warning about any sneaky snakes. - When should you check corpses besides to see if they're dead in any other scenario?

I doubt this will have the situation you desire. Instead, it'll likely lead to marine corpses being left planetside and those that ARE on the Sul will take time away from the already oft-overworked doctors, making the medbay wait times even longer.
Gotta remember that for every new update the marines will adapt unless rules are set in place to keep them from doing so, which I can't see being done. Granted, I'm not on staff.
Being on the Sul as a xeno SHOULD be hard - it allows a lot of power to kill many essential staff very easily if you're competent.
I see a way to fix the complaint of "waiting five more minutes" - if the player dies within 30 seconds to a minute of spawning in as a freshly born larva, the wait time is not put in place. Evolving cancels the grace period, so no runner spam.
Will it be metagaming to watch for larva crawling into corpses? No other reason to watch the dead, and you wouldn't immediately assume a larva would crawl in there. This is something of genuine curiosity more than a counter point, since it seems like bad RP.

[TheMaskedMan2]

+1 I love this idea, basically what everyone else say, I'll edit this more later when I'm not busy but had to get my + in. Really neat idea, cool flavor and RP moments too.

[KingKire]

Idk man, if this was real life, and i saw a snake burst out of someones body, i would be dang sure to always be checking bodies to make sure there wasnt any more snakes popping out.

If a snake can come out, it definitely can come back in imo.

[Rain7x]

This is actually a cool idea. Not sure how realistic it is but it's cool nonetheless. +1

[Aredal]

It did happen in the AVP game, Six hid in the body of its host after bursting to avoid being caught (still got caught). So it is lore friendly and cool.
+1

[Imperator_Titan]

Bump. Still quite relevant.

My personal take on this is a +1 because nobody wants to become the injured larva who can't evolve on the Sulaco. It should also prevent meta-relief that marines get upon hitting it once because everybody knows that larvae can't evolve while injured and not on weeds.

[Snypehunter007]

Going to run through this with BMC, tomorrow. Please do not post until after Monday (07/03/17).