Official Cloning Removal Update Discussion Thread

[caleeb101]

Yes, it is.

Before this, you only had a minute + plus a few seconds of grace period before you couldn't defib anymore. This is of course not mentioning the incredibly higher damage threshod. I don't know why you're bringing up husk and suicide since you could defib them before cloning removal. Heck, ask Ticker. I brought him back to life after a boiler turned him to a gray husk.

You couldn't defib chestbursters before this so it's pointless to bring it up. The heart damage is irrelevant, give them peridaxon or dexalin and inaprovaline and send them up to be treated.

The defib's condition before the update wasn't the point. He was saying the fact that this is what replaced Cloning is unfair. Marines now have to die an honorabru death (not getting: decapped, husked, badly damaged, bursted aka all the ways a marine will likely die) before they can be revived. And if they don't, well then they're screwed. It's a much more specific way of revival than cloning. Especially when Xeno's way of healing is: 'drag him onto the safety mat!'. Although, Xeno's can't revive so I'm not sure if those two things are up for comparison.

[Feweh]

The defib's condition before the update wasn't the point. He was saying the fact that this is what replaced Cloning is unfair. Marines now have to die an honorabru death (not getting: decapped, husked, badly damaged, bursted aka all the ways a marine will likely die) before they can be revived. And if they don't, well then they're screwed. It's a much more specific way of revival than cloning. Especially when Xeno's way of healing is: 'drag him onto the safety mat!'. Although, Xeno's can't revive so I'm not sure if those two things are up for comparison.

Cloning was never intended to be added and was a left over addition from vanilla, we made it clear from the very start that one day clong would be removed.

[nerocavalier]

40 seconds or a minute, still a same thing, really low time, does it matter?

It does. If I didn't have that 20 seconds, Ticker would have been dead. Not to mention that it's already been buffed to five minutes.

What you just described is what is gonna happen, crushers will constantly trample corpses, spitters and praets will constantly spit on them to get that limit, also said "adv trauma and burn kits" don't reduce damage by a megaton, its like 5-10 per each one, this is also assuming you can find said corpse, or have someone find it for you, which chances are aren't great, and you will probably be more busy and concerned trying to help the already injured marines instead of a possibly more dead than 5 minute marine.

Completely and utterly pointless. Crushers can just tackle, drag, and slash them to death. What marine would willingly chase down a Crusher into alien lines to save that one corpse? There's no point to wasting time overkilling a corpse when you can instead drag it behind your lines and kill anyone that tries to rescue them. Spitters would have more of an effect neurotoxing people trying to rescue a corpse than aciding it to a husk.

If you can't find a corpse, then so be it. The same thing happened with cloning, the same thing happens now. If you're more concerned with the injured marines, then treat them. Don't defib dead if you're not willing to use your supplies to bring them back from the dead. Don't defib dead marines if you're not certain how long it's been. Use it on the ones that can be saved.

This assumes
1. Doctors are competent and exist
2. You actually got back to Rasputin alive and well after being revived
3. They actually bothered to make peridaxon or made one when asked (Hint: They usually don't)
4. Gave peridaxon to medics

1. If they don't exist, you have more to worry about than mere heart damage.
2. Ask someone to take you back instead of hobbling back on your own. Your medic will gladly take you back if they care about you.
3. Correction: I see more rounds where medics get peridaxon than they don't. Usually 1 round out of 3 - 4. On lowpop, maybe they won't get any but no one counts lowpop.
4. See above, medics almost always ask for peridaxon and bicaridine and they usually get it.

Also, cloning was removed and now the defib is "new" cloning, and it can't do alot of stuff that cloning has actually done, like CLONE people who died from CHESTBURSTING, and it didin't matter how much damage was dealt either, and you could have been cloned even if you were dead for 4 hours or more, there was no real limit.

I am going to reiterate that it's pointless to argue about a feature defibs could never do.

Let's be very honest here, who would wait 4 hours to be cloned? Who would drag back a random corpse at that point to be cloned?

Yes, something changed, marines can rarely now get back their forces, which means no matter what they do, they will always lose people, and they will lose now a hell lot more than they used to lose before, and now, since there is a "extreme damage" limit, xenos don't even need to drag away corpses, since they can just spit at them or crush them 10 more times to make you unable to be revived.

Marines always lose people, they overextend, aliens punish, they get unlucky. Marines ALWAYS have casualties. Before this, a single screech was enough to guarantee someone was going to die and it's unlikely that someone would retrieve their corpse safely.

Let me be very blunt here when I say that the extreme damage range is rarely reached before and after a marine dies.

Also, "if a xeno wants you out of a round, thats too bad, suck it" is a shitty thing to say, if i want a xeno out of a round, it would take me the entire round to do so because xenos have around 100 respawns, yet this isin't allowed for marines, who already suffer poorly from incompetence, FF, and prone to having to deal with a lot of xeno fuckery, yet xenos are super powerful, have a few things that they can use to make their survival much greater (looking at you, moonwalking crushers) and abilities that marines could dream of and curse every day, and have almost always not just a second chance, not just a third chance, but a ridiclously huge amount of "second chances" that they can use.

Very kind of you to put words in my mouth. Xenos do not have 100 respawns, they'll be lucky to get 30.

You say this like xenos don't suffer from incompetence. They have to deal with xenos blocking each other, being too slow to drag each other from safety, a Queen messing up and dying so they can't upgrade or evolve until another one evolves.

The second chances aren't as game changing as you think they are. They come back as a young runner, drone, or heavens forbid a sentinel compared to when they were an elite crusher, mature boiler, or elite empress. As you can tell, the latter is much harder to kill than the former. Xenos get punished for dying since it takes them time to both respawn and to reach their former position of power again.

[NoahKirchner]

This is actually turning out really well and the general playerbase is enjoying it.

Seeing a lot more teamwork and squad mechanics going on.

This, honestly. I was worried at first that it was going to really slow down gameplay because of the new reliance on a squad medic for your squad to function, but instead it seems more like the squad medics unify the squad, so if you can get your medics to move with you your entire squad will follow you more.

The only problem that I can see from this is more possible salt, possible spit husking abuse where they husk dead marines with burn spit while they were previously not injured (can be fixed I assume), and faster ice colony rounds (can be bad or good though).

Oh yeah and now it means something when people die which is nice.

[Feweh]

We're gonna stop dead body dragging I think

[Aeleto]

We're gonna stop dead body dragging I think

As long xenos can slash light sources on a marine I am completely fine with this being added.

[Karmac]

As long xenos can slash light sources on a marine I am completely fine with this being added.

Breakable armour lights would balance that out pretty easily, and from what I'm seeing, there's been no downside to removing cloning so far.

[NoahKirchner]

We're gonna stop dead body dragging I think

I feel like that'd help the experience/salt in general cuz nobody likes being dragged off, dead, just so they can't be defibbed.

[Swagile]

Ive recently been playing Combat Medic and ive noticed that cloning as fucked over one group of people that is consistently there 90% of the time at Mid to Late game.

Decapped people.

Unless you have a doctor planetside, and the person got decapped nearby said doctor, then its a very big ordeal to get someone's head attached fast enough for you to be able to defib them. And the fact is, they have more important people to deal with; actual alive people that have broken bones that would be more useful on the field than trying to save that guy who just got elite + hunter RNJesus'd or Rav Mature rushed.

I believe there are suggestions up on making decaps much harder, but im just putting it here because cloning allowed you to clone someone after re-attaching the head without worry about a 5 minute deadline.

[Xurphorus]

Personally, I am salty about cloning being removed but who isn't? I'll take my bucket of salt and distribute it into the endless sea like everyone else. My issue mainly is hugger combat, the essential hugging/decapping. I have proposed away before about how it /could/ be handled without completely ripping into the Xeno gameplay entirely that most of the Pro-Xeno players have gotten used to.

Step One: When a marine is freshly hugged(Incapacitated), Xenos cannot slash them to death, rather they get a ''what are you doing, you cannot slash them'' message similar to what xenos get when they try to slash apart a dead body, this will make xenos take more care in handling hosts, and taking in more captured marines, however if they cannot get their hugged captive to a nest in time then they are free to kill when the /Infection/ settles in. What I mean is that once the hugger is done infecting a host, the lock that stop xenos from slashing them is gone and they have free game to kill them before they wake up.

Step Two: Please take in account that this should not be the case for Ravagers and Queen, they can kill whoever, however they please, hugged, infected, or not. I'm aware that this could probably be a lot of work to code in, but it is fair, and it doesn't involve slapping the current xeno gameplay in the face.

[Swagile]

Nah, they'll just tackle spam you / drag you back then kill other people until your hugger has infected you then kill you instead.

[Xurphorus]

Nah, they'll just tackle spam you / drag you back then kill other people until your hugger has infected you then kill you instead.

That's a given, they are gonna do that regardless, the basic definition of Hugger Combat is Hug/Decap, at least with this it gives a chance to either escape, or aliens take more care in who they infect, and take back to the hive.

EDIT:
Also to add to this response, if they manage to K'O one marine with a hugger in a group of others and kill them all in the process, GG to that Xeno.

[Simo94]

I suggest xenos being able to take only 1 hugger instead of 2, so that marines truly have 2 chances to get hugged, once with a fresh helmet and once again if you dont get a new one

what happens right now is you get pounced double hugged and decapped, helmet doesnt make much diffrence

[Aeleto]

Hugger combat needs to go and this update will fit perfectly.

[Harakoni warhawk]

I don't know about others but when I was in a few rounds on highpop I kept getting Squad Medics who seem to be useless.
There was one round where 3! Medics spent 6-7 minutes trying to revive someone with 300 toxin and 300 suffocation damage while infected marines suffocating were left on the ground to die.

I was only a PFC that round so I had no way of telling those Fuck wads how to be a Medic.
I was nearly brought to tears by the sight of three medics injecting a corpse with Dylovene to reduce the Toxin damage.
By the time my constant shouting had got their attention I was nearly ready to pop and suprise, suprise, none of them had Stasis bags so I popped on the Sulaco and died.

Got back as a Sentinel and ganking the useless bastards later.

TL;DR: Read the fucking medic guide or I'll deliberately go Xeno just to hunt you down.

[Swagile]

After playing as a hunter that has been able to get up to Elite and Ancient levels consistently by using hit and run tactics and huggers, I agree that hugger combat is completely cancerous. I can do without huggers as a hunter even at Mature levels, but being able to near instantly remove at least one marine out of the fight with them only getting in one burst of their gun at best is a really powerful strategy, especially since it costs almost nothing (good queens have at least a hundred eggs down by the hour mark).

Its also much safer to use combat hugging due to its OP nature, so until its removed, it will continue to be used by newbies and veterans alike. ESPECIALLY since you can decap via combat hugging, which removes a marine out of the round forever (since, lets face it, if they are away from the LZ1 where most field doctors are placed, they will never be dragged back in time to get their head reattached and defib'd).

[ReadyReactor]

I don't think defib can revive decapped people, can it?

[Karmac]

I don't think defib can revive decapped people, can it?

read the changelog.

It literally tells you what defibs can and cant do.

[apophis775]

We're gonna stop dead body dragging I think

Yeah, we are working on figuring this out.


We knew cloning would go away, and we decided to remove it sooner, rather than waiting for the hugger combat changes, so we can see how it affects overall gameplay.

In my experience, only around 10% of marines ever get cloned (many ghost and start observing or go xenon) and I think that with the increased robustness of the Defib this will be an overall good change to the gameplay paradigm.

[Houlihan]

As long xenos can slash light sources on a marine I am completely fine with this being added.

Yes pls. I never bothered to make a suggestion because I thought this was low priority but it would be very nice to remove any IC reason to drag bodies into the darkest nooks and crannies.

[Casgair]

Definitely seconding slashing lights on a marine, playing xeno back when cloning was a thing dragging dead bodies where they're not likely to ever be found in order to move the light away always felt kind of shitty, even if their odds of getting cloned were practically nothing to begin with.

[CraayyZ]

+1 the shit out of the idea that Aliens can slash Marine lights IF THEY ARE DEAD. The Marines' shoulder lights make life harder for Aliens so dragging a body (Even if decapped, oh well hope someone finds your head) is common practice. I play as Alien almost 60% of the time and I do pull a occasional cheeky hugger combat. And I've seen it abused far worse. (Which I know isn't against the rules, but holy shit some Aliens can't live without muh huggar cumbat)

When I DO play Marine, I play on my Medic main and seeing other medics using their defibs was a rare sight. Only time I've really had to defib someone was when they got nailed by a Boiler cloud, or died while in crit. Otherwise the dead were typically thrown near the Rasputin and Medevac'd back to the Sulaco for cloning. Which takes like 20+ mins itself, even with a dedicated doctor. (Pain in the ass IMO) This update looks promising and hopefully the next Major one will HOPEFULLY ABOLISH THE HELLSPAWN THAT IS HUGGER COMBAT, I will cry tears of joy. I haven't had a chance to try out the New "Cloning gone" update, hopefully soon

[Daman453]

You know what we need more of? Insta decaps. I think this would go hand in hand with defib... oh wait, thats right. Any buffed alien can decap easy. So nothing, you can't clone and can't decap. Don't away cloning please. There is too many ways to render a marine undefibbale it hurts.

[Dogar]

No defibbing or cloning chestbursted people seems pretty brutal, especially considering how prevalent huggers are. It used to be fun trying to escape the hive, since you knew you could be cloned if you burst in neutral friendly territory. Now it feels pointless to even try. Would be nice if infected marines were given more incentive to actually attempt escape, since I know people have had a lot of fun stories of daring extractions from the hive.

[Swagile]

No defibbing or cloning chestbursted people seems pretty brutal, especially considering how prevalent huggers are. It used to be fun trying to escape the hive, since you knew you could be cloned if you burst in neutral friendly territory. Now it feels pointless to even try. Would be nice if infected marines were given more incentive to actually attempt escape, since I know people have had a lot of fun stories of daring extractions from the hive.

Escape, get to friendly territory, shoot yourself a bunch of times.

Kills you and the larvae in you but allows you to be defib'd if medics are competent.

Pretty sure its a bug, but its the only way to survive since surgery takes way too long and bursting ends your round forever.