Update Discussion Thread (August 2018)

[Jeser]

Crushers can block the tank now. Marines needs something to scare them off and since that stupid "moonwalk" not being able to damage it from the front is unbalanced.
Charger is not defender, defender is "defender". It's defender job to defend boilers.

How many marines carry scopes? How many boilers stay in the light? Crushers won't be able to handle 1 vs What's left on the almayer becouse of charge "missuse" (escaping like queen before nerf). Nerf is pretty good and I guess it is rare for Pulse Rifle to penetrate crest on the same screen, not even talking about offscreen.

I literally don't understand what you mean.
Go play crusher to understand what I mean.
Defenders still get shot by M41A standard rounds in their crests. And crushers do. Crushers blocking tank is a meme, because I can now 90% guarantee kill crash who will try to block the tank, because their armor was nerfed. Moon walk doesn't work anymore, since, again M41A standard bullets penetrate crushers crest.
Did you ever tried to defend boilers as defender against tank/sniper/scout spec? Try it.

Also, marine with SMG is bane for crushers now, because you just follow on crusher wielding SMG and shooting it, since even with standard bullets SMG will deal damage to sides of crusher. Basically, aliens don't have "tank" caste anymore.

[Nickvr628]

I for one enjoy seeing some xeno salt when they lose their bullet sponginess. It is a welcome change of pace.

[CABAL]

I literally don't understand what you mean.
Go play crusher to understand what I mean.
Defenders still get shot by M41A standard rounds in their crests. And crushers do. Crushers blocking tank is a meme, because I can now 90% guarantee kill crash who will try to block the tank, because their armor was nerfed. Moon walk doesn't work anymore, since, again M41A standard bullets penetrate crushers crest.
Did you ever tried to defend boilers as defender against tank/sniper/scout spec? Try it.

Also, marine with SMG is bane for crushers now, because you just follow on crusher wielding SMG and shooting it, since even with standard bullets SMG will deal damage to sides of crusher. Basically, aliens don't have "tank" caste anymore.

No, I never even tried to play Xeno scum. Few times were accidental where I had "Xeno Preference" ON for some reason. But even then I was playing drone only.
Xenos are underpowered? I don't care!

What I mean is "Uggga Boogga Nerf for beno gracias muy bueno, Pulse Rifle is no longer water pistol Il devrait en être ainsi

Man up and deal with it

"

[WinterClould]

These are some strong new updates. Crusher might be a to weak if m41 is shredding them from the front like it sounds, and smgs shouldn't be viable agaisnt a crusher in my opinion. But ya know, bringing warriors and defenders in line with the rest of the xenos along with helping drones out feels like nice changes.

Smg might be a tiny bit better then it should be, pistols with qf sound like a lovely meme. I look forward to trying them sometime.

The new queen things should also be really cool. I hope it's really useful for her to help keep track of what's up!

[Sulaboy]

Added ability for queen in ovipositor showing the positions of her xenos and any humans they can see. The minimap updates every 10 second automatically, darker red is higher tier xenos, blue/green is hosts. Marine versions will come soon after performance profiling of queen version.
Morgue trays now show the name of their occupant.
Bodybags now scoop up detached limbs again.
Temporary fix for vents being disconnected, if you get the message about the vent being disconnected just give it 5-10 and try again.
Fixes cryocells not processing.

Spooky added the map, it'd be nice if some queens posted their experience with it.

[Nickvr628]

Damn that’s pretty darn cool. The bridge will have a lot of good uses now that the map tables will be able to show heat maps of map activity.

[spookydonut]

Damn that’s pretty darn cool. The bridge will have a lot of good uses now that the map tables will be able to show heat maps of map activity.

soon(tm)

[solidfury7]

Update is nice.

However I do feel like xenos are slightly squisher than I personally like.

Call me old school but i personally enjoy hard earned victories.

Oh and the mortar is still as fun as ever to use correctly.

[Gnorse]

now that we need tac binocs to call in OBs and SBs, can we get more of them ?
maybe make it so that REQ can order more and/or give SLs the ability to get more from their vendors ?

[ThePiachu]

Buff to Drone line evolution speed - very welcome! Playing Carrier and so on is now very fun!

Being able to drop the OB anywhere with the coordinates - this will probably be the bane of xenos. Having some scout scouting the coordinates to drop the OBs when xenos roll in, or heck - dropping the fire inferno on Alamo when xenos take it. Might be hard to counter that one...

[Frans_Feiffer]

Buff to Drone line evolution speed - very welcome! Playing Carrier and so on is now very fun!

Being able to drop the OB anywhere with the coordinates - this will probably be the bane of xenos. Having some scout scouting the coordinates to drop the OBs when xenos roll in, or heck - dropping the fire inferno on Alamo when xenos take it. Might be hard to counter that one...

Very welcome indeed as Carrier is my favorite caste to play when I am Xeno. Would you say now though with this and just how beautiful the Carrier is, that Carrier is a must have for a good hive, or just a REALLY nice one to have when you do? Or neither?

And being able to drop the OB anywhere that doesn't have a ceiling (I believe) is honestly awesome, but I feel if it becomes to big a problem it'll be fixed accordingly to dial it back. However, I still do prefer the new method of Coordinates to the Oribtal Beacons/offsets.

In any case, I find these new updates welcome and look forward to seeing just how exactly they effect gameplay as both sides get used to them. Also happy to see both sides getting new features, buffs, nerfs, etc. etc.

[Herac]

I'm not a fan of the OB change, as soon as I saw it in the changelog I knew how people were going to use it and in the first round I played it was confirmed.

As Gaius says, taking Alamo coords as soon as you land and then holding onto them and firing the OB once the xenos have locked it down is hard to counter. It will be countered but only by a cat and mouse game where xenos know OOC that someone has already taken down the coords and is going to OB them so they don't get on the DS until the last moment. This also seems to go against the whole 'we'll never randomly gib players out of nowhere' thing.

This wasn't such an issue when beacons existed because xenos knew where the OB would come from.

The other issue is now people will start to record coordinates for most main hive locations on maps and start calling down OBs on places they have never seen IC but know the xenos will be OOC.

No one will miss supply beacons though, good riddence to them.

[Steelpoint]

I'm not going to pretend I know how the code works, but if there is a issue of some people metagaming the coords of popular xeno hive locations, then perhaps the developers could look to randomise the coord numbers between different rounds? So the exact coord numbers on a specific tile will not be the same in two different games.

[starmute]

Having seen the OB in action I have to say it doesn't change anything. So far its a nice update.

[spookydonut]

Coords are already random round to round

[Steelpoint]

Then those concerns are dashed.

[Herac]

Coords are already random round to round

Good to know, that solves my main issue with the new OB's then.

Still, when you say the coords are randomized is that for each tile or does 0,0 just get moved around?

If it's just the case that 0,0 gets moved around I could still see this being a problem.

[Grubstank]

I strongly support the OB/SB changes.

To address the concerns about being gibbed out of nowhere using coordinates taken at the beginning of the round -- perhaps introduce some sort of deviation system that slowly reduces the accuracy of coordinates as time passes? Ie some sort of offset that determining requires either calculations on the SO's part, or for a recent set of coordinates to be taken via tactical binocs. This would simulate deviation/drift due to the Almayer's orbit

now that we need tac binocs to call in OBs and SBs, can we get more of them ?
maybe make it so that REQ can order more and/or give SLs the ability to get more from their vendors ?

I think tactical binocs themselves would be too powerful an item to hand out more of -- but I think it would be cool to see a version that gives the coordinates right on top of you, in the flavour of a GPS locator. That suggested version of the item wouldn't water down the strategic importance of the tactical binoculars, and would also restore some of the old flavour of sending off an expendable PFC to take coordinates while exposed to the line of fire. It also helps counteract the almost-RNG nature of whether or not your SL is bald/unlucky enough to get killed with their tactical binocs on them in the first twenty minutes of deployment... but it still punishes the SL's misfortune/bad play, and your subsequently not retrieving the corpse

[Sailor Dave]

The Queen map is pretty sick. It'd be nice if we could click on a spot on the map to watch the nearest xeno there, though, or at least be able to click on their blip to do so directly. As it is, there's no real way of knowing what xenos you're looking at, and if it looks like they're in a dangerous area, you have to jump through the hive status to figure out who it is.

It'd also be cool to have weeds show on the map for maximum satisfaction watching the hive grow, and also to know which areas are lacking to better direct drones. If that's not feasible for performance or aesthetic reasons though, that's understandable.

Aside from that, the recent changes to xenos seem to have affected their Xeno vs Xeno performance. I don't know if it applies to runners, to all xenos, or even melee combat in general; during a corrupted xeno event as a runner, I was doing very little damage to other xenos regardless of my age, all the way up to ancient.

[misto]

it makes good sense that certain heavily overperforming classes like defender would get nerfed

some t3s however also seem a bit worse, which isnt very good, because theyre t3s, the fact that theyre so limited in quantity and amount of time it takes to evo one means theyre supposed to be good at their jobs

[ThePiachu]

As for corpse dragging - it's a pity that you can't use those corpses to set up traps as a Carrier anymore, but I guess that's a fair trade for the lights going off. Only caveat I have against this change is that if you use the same nest for multiple hosts, you can accidentally nest a corpse instead of a living target. Not ideal. Perhaps xenos shouldn't be able to nest dead hosts?

[CABAL]

As for corpse dragging - it's a pity that you can't use those corpses to set up traps as a Carrier anymore, but I guess that's a fair trade for the lights going off. Only caveat I have against this change is that if you use the same nest for multiple hosts, you can accidentally nest a corpse instead of a living target. Not ideal. Perhaps xenos shouldn't be able to nest dead hosts?

Just slash the nest and build new. Besides: "Dragging of corpses by xenos disabled in the following situations: Uninfected defibbable, Uninfected braindead, Infected but braindead before bursting."

Dead undefibbable are good to drag I guess.

[misto]

"dead undefibbable" registers as "uninfrected braindead" and thus is undraggable

having these fucks clogging up the nest squares is a drag, aliens actually have completely solid ingame and in character reasons to want to move a corpse off of a nest square - to make room for someone new. needs some fine tuning!

[spookydonut]

The Queen map is pretty sick. It'd be nice if we could click on a spot on the map to watch the nearest xeno there, though, or at least be able to click on their blip to do so directly. As it is, there's no real way of knowing what xenos you're looking at, and if it looks like they're in a dangerous area, you have to jump through the hive status to figure out who it is.

It'd also be cool to have weeds show on the map for maximum satisfaction watching the hive grow, and also to know which areas are lacking to better direct drones. If that's not feasible for performance or aesthetic reasons though, that's understandable.

Aside from that, the recent changes to xenos seem to have affected their Xeno vs Xeno performance. I don't know if it applies to runners, to all xenos, or even melee combat in general; during a corrupted xeno event as a runner, I was doing very little damage to other xenos regardless of my age, all the way up to ancient.

The weeds show in a light purple shading of the tiles, but their status only updates every 5 minutes.

There might be a bug with how xeno on xeno damage is calculated i need to look into.

[ThePiachu]

The minimap is pretty neat. Could use something like "click to observe", but I'm not sure how feasible that is.

Hmm, could we use a similar, self-refreshing format for Hive Status? This would be a godsend for a Queen, to be able to see the hive changing, maturing, evolving, etc. without having to re-open the window.