Are xenos obligated to fly up asap?

[misto]

Scenario: Xeno team has taken LZ1, groundside marine forces are nil, but xenos can estimate that there is an overwhelming number of humans left alive on the ship above.

Are xenos obligated to hijack the shuttle and fly up, even if theyre flying into their probable doom?

Are they allowed to wait and force marines to attempt to attack the planet again?

I've had times where, as a marine, xenos did wait, and admins in the form of uscm high command were screaming at us to land again and make pushes groundside despite us having been pushed off planet. we did proceed to make those pushes. sometimes they worked, sometimes we died. now people in round end ooc chat claim that xenos waiting isn't allowed? it was clearly allowed back during the rounds where i and other marines were shouted at to go down and attack more.

this issue doesnt seem to be addressed anywhere in the rules, or i'd ask in the rule clarification thread.

my own personal judgement says that, if there are overwhelming numbers of marines on the almayer, and as long as the queen doesnt touch the console to steal the DS, the endgame hijack has not begun and marines are still obligated to gather their forces and try to retake the ground. indeed, i'd say it's rather in-character for a xeno queen to choose to wait if they think the odds are bad on the almayer rather than rushing into their death.

note that this does NOT mean approval for the silly possibility of xenos wishing to wait when they are not up against bad odds if they hijack.

conidering what a pivotal moment the hijack is, you should probably consider codifying some expected standards of behavior, if not as rules, then at least as guidelines.

[Amitt0]

I think a lot of the time for the sake of preventing the round from stagnating further or otherwise delaying a new game the admins tend to nudge the aliens to board the ship.
It's pretty circumstancial but I've seen aliens get curbstomped on the Almayer enough times to lend reliability to my hypothesis.

[ThePiachu]

I think if Marines haven't taken many losses, they should attempt to land again. Only when they got properly curbstomped should the Aliens try to fly up.

I've seen a game where all Marines landed on Ice LZ2, got stomped a bit, and then Aliens had both the upper hand and in-game reason to fortify LZ1 (a ship landed there as well). It was a slaughter, with rows upon rows of hivelord rasin walls, sticky goop, eggs and so on...

[Gnorse]

If the queen called the alamo down and locked it already, then I'd say yes, they ARE obligated to attack the almayer.
If not, I don't see a reason why the aliens can't wait for the marines to come down.

[xXen0zS1ay3rXx]

In the few times I've been pushed back to the ship the aliens are normally hot on our heels. Jokes on them though, we have 30+ latejoins and the wounded are ready to blap them.

I feel waiting on the planet is normally better for them, but there is the 'obligation' (or outright admins telling them to sudoku themsleves on the ship) to move the rounds along.

[kroack]

If the 20something member hive see 80s marines on the ship, no. Although a good queen/commander will attack to keep the round moving.

[Grimcad]

They do not strictly have to go up. But a lot of times one side or the other will be pressured into either going back up or down in order to keep the round flowing. And more often than not, the aliens draw the short straw.

[Gut_TC]

As long the Queen didn't mess with the dropship console and locked them, Xeno can wait as much they able. But if she does, well, xeno still aren't force to go up anyway as the Marine can only guess that Xenos wreck and broke the Dropship. (Not unless both dropships are locked by xeno.) They can go back away from LZ and take rest to become stronger. There are many kind of Xeno that want to play that scenario out differently. Some goes directly, some backed away, some camp the LZ and etc.

As for the Marines. At the another hand. They are semi-forced to deploy if the situation are manageable. If Xeno still ain't flying then Murine gotta go down. They don't have the knowledge of Xeno capable of flying and must press on with their task to exterminate xenos.

Although it doesn't take that much for xeno to realise when it's a good time to go. When the round starts taking so long you might just want to get this done as soon you can. Like how both side, Marines and Xenos, always up for the push nonstop.