Update Discussion Thread (September 2018)

[ThePiachu]

I somehow have a feeling the SD changes plus layout changes will result in a lot of xeno timeouts. My guess is people will reinforce CIC, then when that fails, reinforce the Brig, and then the timer will run out and xeno minor.

[kamenkuro]

Gathering from the last few posts, im going to be camping, about to jump on now.
Has the pendulum swung too far the other way, are the marines getting stomped?

I was playing not that long ago, hours ago, and now your saying bring the tank back, surely your exaggerating!

Xenos start with big numbers and grow faster. It's disgusting and I hate it.

[ThePiachu]

Multiple burst thing though - super fun!

[misto]

yes, resurrect the tank and let it help deal with the fury of these newly empowered xenos

[Mikotoba]

Multiple larva is dumb lore-wise and mechanically since xenos never hurt for numbers unless they're bad.

Xenos being megapowerful at the start is meh too.

Auto-SD is railroading and also dumb.

Bringing back the tank is just adding an unfun thing for xenos to fight to counter the unfun update to xenos.

2/10 update, not as bad as hugger combat but still pretty hecking bad.

I've now complained in every channel.

[kastion]

xenos are hitting mature t3 about 30 minutes into the round and the marine ungas havent realized they cant just charge in like morons like the last 3 weeks so they are getting massacred.

[kamenkuro]

Bringing back the tank is just adding an unfun thing for xenos to fight to counter the unfun update to xenos.

Need the tank to counter boiler

[kamenkuro]

xenos are hitting mature t3 about 30 minutes into the round and the marine ungas havent realized they cant just charge in like morons like the last 3 weeks so they are getting massacred.

That's not what's going on

The actual issue is that xenos can actually march over to marines and do whatever since we're fighting midgame xenos early on. Before real defenses and coordination is actually established. This is the point where scouting in 8-10 man squads is a bad idea because a couple t3's and a few more t2's will do some damage. It's pretty much impossible to establish smaller FOB's away from the LZ's. T3's make sure of that. You can ignore a lurker or runner, but a crusher or ravager will need to be focused down. Engineers can take a while, getting constantly attacked by opportunistic ravagers, lurkers, or spitters is the bane of an engineer's existence. And they do it. Whenever they see that little symbol above an engineers head they fuck with them. Then the worst of it is that the primary FOB won't be finished, or at least not adequate. Once the scouting parties are routed they move to the FOB and at this point it's probably been an hour and we're looking at older late game xenos. With the larva buff, they can pretty much push as much as they want and don't have to worry about capturing as many people.

Xenos whined too hard and now the other half of the player base has to endure until someone actually realizes this was a terrible idea.

This isn't like how xenos got nerfed and their winrate dropped to reasonable levels. This is a gross misstep that fails to actually address how to actually fix xenos.

[kastion]

That's not what's going on

The actual issue is that xenos can actually march over to marines and do whatever since we're fighting midgame xenos early on. Before real defenses and coordination is actually established. This is the point where scouting in 8-10 man squads is a bad idea because a couple t3's and a few more t2's will do some damage. It's pretty much impossible to establish smaller FOB's away from the LZ's. T3's make sure of that. You can ignore a lurker or runner, but a crusher or ravager will need to be focused down. Engineers can take a while, getting constantly attacked by opportunistic ravagers, lurkers, or spitters is the bane of an engineer's existence. And they do it. Whenever they see that little symbol above an engineers head they fuck with them. Then the worst of it is that the primary FOB won't be finished, or at least not adequate. Once the scouting parties are routed they move to the FOB and at this point it's probably been an hour and we're looking at older late game xenos. With the larva buff, they can pretty much push as much as they want and don't have to worry about capturing as many people.

Xenos whined too hard and now the other half of the player base has to endure until someone actually realizes this was a terrible idea.

This isn't like how xenos got nerfed and their winrate dropped to reasonable levels. This is a gross misstep that fails to actually address how to actually fix xenos.

exactly what i said, you can no longer charge into caves and set up a base because you get massacred. heres an idea, establish fob THEN scout and expand. You expect to just control the entire map instantly just like you have been for the last 3 weeks and it aint happening now. Learn to adapt.

[kamenkuro]

exactly what i said, you can no longer charge into caves and set up a base because you get massacred. heres an idea, establish fob THEN scout and expand. You expect to just control the entire map instantly just like you have been for the last 3 weeks and it aint happening now. Learn to adapt.

Setting up a secondary and tertiary base at other locations has been standard for ages, what are you talking about?

[misto]

probably should have observed triplets change and evo boost change in isolation of each other for a few more days rather than promptly combining them

[GoliathTheDespoiler]

I think at the moment, the xenos are slowly being pushed into becoming more of a swarm than an elite force.

But the issue with that is just there isn't enough players for there to be both swarms of marines AND swarms of xenos fighting each other. So in lowpop rounds with dozens upon dozens of burrowed larvae, you have maybe 10-15 players playing xeno constantly, dying over and over which can be pretty annoying.

In my opinion, this was not the correct change to improve the xenomorph experience, xenos themselves should be fun to play, not a drag since you have to die over and over, but can keep doing so now that there's an extremely large volume of them now.

What I believe it the right thing to do is to just buff xenos, statistically. Speed, health, tackle chance, all of it. Xenos are physically weak right now, and it's made them extremely unfun for most players that I've listened to. Marine wins are more common now than ever, and simply adding MORE xenos is not going to fix that problem.

As for the Almayer change, I think it's not been entirely thought out correctly. It bugs me that the ship's scum and villainy are being held captive RIGHT OUTSIDE of the primary command room. And the current '22 minutes until everyone explodes' update kinda disappoints me, as the slow crawl of surviving a ship full of xenos was quite thrilling to watch both as a ghost or to play. I can understand why it'd be done, but personally I don't see it as a priority, concern, or anything that needed to be changed anytime soon.

[misto]

it is very funny when people explode from having too many larva in them though, thats probably the best part of all this

[GoliathTheDespoiler]

it is very funny when people explode from having too many larva in them though, thats probably the best part of all this

Absolutely. This is reminding me so much of Bellybursters and I love it.

[Gnorse]

the whole 22-minute forced xeno minor's pretty bad imo. It forces marines to SD even if there's only one or two xenos left onboard as well as pretty much stomping the "Rush the fukkin dropship" tactic.

Can we also have the tank back ?
Edit : Perhaps make it so that killing the queen stops the 22 minute timer from ticking down until a new queen rises. Either that or lower the timer it takes for a marine minor to happen from 20 minutes to 10 after the DS crash since xenos can lose their queen and then delay and the xeno minor would kick in before the marine minor.

[Herac]

This update has made it very likely I'll get back into playing CM shortly, see you guys in game.

The SD change is something not eveyrone will be a fan of, I can tell, but it will also speed up rounds a lot. The only thing I'm seeing that will cause a lot of salt is xenos rushing to SD and camping there if there are no marines in it (though that's primarily a marine fuck up).

C4 changes will make LV survivor a lot harder, at least there will be a bit more variety now instead of just always settingup in sec storage. I feel like they could have been left with at least 1 C4 charge though.

Speeding up evolution timers for the first 30: I mean, no one is really a big fan of upgrade progress and evo timers, so I'm glad that's less of an issue at least for round start. I'll have to actually play a few rounds to get a feel for this but again it will speed things up a bit so there is that.

[BillyBoBBizWorth]

Well after a few rounds, i can definitely say rounds are speeding up even more, how quick do we want the average round to last? They are becoming quicker and quicker.

Marines being forced in a sense to always hold SD now, exactly how it used to be a year or two ago, isnt really the greatest thing.The alamo rushes that we were having whilst the tank was in and after it(and even before) were pretty entertaining i think that most enjoyed them from both marine and xeno sides more than any other round end.SD's holds arent that enjoyable anymore and being forced to kind of go back to that sucks.Back to caging ourselves up in a tiny box thats overcrowded usually and irritating with the nade FF and help intent dancing all because of one little switch and it being sadly the most logical way to win in most cases.Its not fun, its entrapment!

With xenoes evolving faster, its definitely noticeable and not such a bad thing overall, as it kind of gives the impression that the xenoes did truly take over the colony were responding to and also its squashing marines rushing straight to hives too quickly, even if being lured there by clown xenoes.So theres some good and bad with that.

Im not sure what to think of Lurkers anymore, they are more dangerous than when they were called a hunter, and they were killing machines back then.Then it gets changed to "Lurker" under the impression of it being abit more passive, and it turns out to be a even more dangerous murder machine than the hunter we had not long ago that was wiping marines on the Alamayer.The lurker can easily still do that with its almost invisible sprite and quick cooldown pounce.Ive seen some people calling that the cloak turning off on pounce should be removed, if that was to happen then lurker would be 10x more effective than the hunter ever was.It would be worse than the first introduction of the infamous "Warrior grab".

The Brig and CIC format looks and seems ok, but it feels unsecure.

Need to play plenty more rounds to get a better grip on the effects of these changes, but these points are hard to not notice.

[Build_R_]

The speeding-up of the timers at the first 30 minutes will probably deter rushes from marines straight into the hive and may make it actually possible to get some mature T3s out there soon enough.

The automatic SD is an annoying feature though, as has been discussed before.

Something that I'm worried about is the brig being next to the CIC, what if the commander orders the arrest of several marines and they break out? They could compromise the CIC very quickly and then the mission.

[Novus Luna]

Apologies for what will likely be the length of this post; I considered making a separate thread about it considering the wide berth of things it covers, but I was advised that such a thread would likely be locked. I will be speaking about the September 14 2018 update that changed quite a few things of the games status quo. Keep in mind that I am only going into such detail because, outside of bug fixes, I have a problem with quite literally every individual thing that was done with this update. This is not a comment I make lightly, and as such I will be going over the ramifications of this update, and possible alternatives means to the end they set out to accomplish.



-Remodelled front of the Almayer to move brig to upper deck and removed tank deck.
Now, I'm not entirely sure why this change was made. My assumption is that removing the tank deck decreases the size of the map significantly to do something good. That is fine. I am just as well fine with it now neighboring the hangar - that makes sense. It couldn't go far. I frankly like the new design of the hangar west area as a result. That isn't the problem I have with this part of the update, and I will admit right now that this is my second smallest gripe with the update.

I have two major issues with the way this change effected the upper deck specifically. The first and smaller issue, just to address it and get it out of the way, is the positioning of the Brig next to the Combat Information Center. From a realism standpoint that would never happen - the place where you put criminals would never be a stones throw away from the command center of a base or vessel. The main in-game ramification this will have pertains to prison breaks and mutinies. As said this is the more minor issue so I will not press into it much.

The second, more pressing issue, with this map update is the need for the access routes around the CIC to reach the Brig. The new layout of the area has made the CIC laughably undefendable, as any threat the USMC could expect (UPP/CLF) would be able to blast holes in the side walls, and the Xenos can melt out the entire perimeter ring far easier than on the old CIC.

The suggested course of action I have would be to move the Brig to the back of the vessel, where the Self-Destruct Room currently is, and have the SD Room be put at where the Brig currently is. This puts a very important command feature near to the command center, while moving the criminals far away. The access halls could be removed from the north and south as the SD could then be made accessible only through CIC. The west access hall could be adjusted in such a way that allows for the Staff Officer, Executive Officer, and Commanding Officer chambers to be between CIC and SD.



-Shuttle crashing into the Almayer now starts the 20 minute self destruct, if you don't trigger it 22 after the crash the round ends in a xeno minor.
From my least concerning issue to one of the biggest, this change rubs me the wrong way. My understanding of the motivation behind this change is that you wished to mitigate Almayer-side delay. To address this first and foremost, plenty of people that I've talked to about this exact issue have said Almayer delay is a non-issue. I myself agree with this - the combat on the Almayer, in the Self-Destruct area, both as a xeno and as a marine, is some of the most fun I've had in this game. The new system makes it feel unsatifying at the end, as it becomes rushed and tasteless overall.

The part of this that I can take or leave is the automatic system when the dropship crashes into the Almayer. It's nice to have, but at the same times feels relatively unnatural, especially in situations where we know the xenos have dwindled in number. I fully anticipate screenshots to circulate soon of something like ARES reporting 6 xenos on the ship right after the SD countdown has started. Speaking of which, that may be a nice touch: have the ARES system do an emergency Bioscan announcement whenever the SD is armed. I do think that if you're going to have it be automated, go whole hog and have it call the distress beacon as well. Otherwise, you're just damning one person to remain in CIC, where xenos inevitably check as one of the first locations, just to do that one thing.

Now to the flip side of this, the 22 minute limit. In my opinion, this, first and foremost, ruins the roleplay aspect of the fact that our men are dying to deal with this alien threat. It completely hammers it away. There could be only one Runner left, under which circumstance no sane crew would realistically blast the self-destuct, but we're compelled to because of the abstract concept of the Xenos winning...somehow. I have been told that a lot of the staff seems to think that if the Xenos have boarded the vessel it signals that the Marines have already more or less loss, and that's the attitude I get from this update. Another prime issue with this is that it has removed any sense of diverse strategic possibility from Almayer defense. No more concept of holding the Hangar, or medbay, or req, you have to hold SD, otherwise te xenos can just delay 22 minutes and instantly win, ironically encouraging the delay that this was meant to stop.

As to how I would handle this...put it to a vote, straight up, plain and simple. A community vote about if people think the Xenos should automatically win 22 minutes after crashing into the Almayer, or after the SD is armed in general. If it's kept then it's kept, but if not, and there is the occasional delay, the admins can do what they do with ground-side delay and abstractly speed it up.



-Removed C4 from ice colony and LV due to survivors abusing it to remove xeno tunnels.
Again, I can understand why this is done. My main concern is the ramifications this has had to the balance of the survivors, especially when combined with the rest of this update.

The main area of concern here is LV, as the C4 would commonly be used to breach into the more secure armory, which is difficult to get to otherwise without the, as I understand it, hard to find welding mask or goggles. Survivors on LV, and Ice as well, tend to not have the survivability chances that those of Solaris Ridge do, and Prison to a lesser extent. As this does not need much more detail to it, I will merely suggest giving a bit more equipment to LV, which is already the hardest map for survivors to live on. Put more gear in the main armory, maybe improve the starting loadouts for survivors on the map. Additional equipment for Ice may also prove beneficial to balancing the maps, considering how massive Ice in itself is.

A possible fix would be to code it that Survivors can't use the C4 charges on tunnels, especially since it's so utterly damning on LV if the tunnels are removed, rather than taking away what is an otherwise useful tool. The text for it may be that the survivor hears something in the tunnel and is compelled to move away, or can't find a way to fasten the charge to the slick tunnel side.



-Human hosts now have a chance of producing twins. Or triplets. Or worse.
Just to get the note here for those that don't know, 7 is the reported maximum number of larva that can come from a single host. I can only assume this was done to attempt to balance out the fact that the xenos have been comparatively weak recently. I was corrected in this by the Q&A which stated that the intention was to encourage xenos to capture hosts more. I will address these individually.

The idea that this was done to balance out the power of the two factions is problematic because it changes the nature of the game. The xenos have been intended to be stronger individually, but fewer in number, and vice versa for the marines. This closes the gap by a bit, without actually making the individual xenos worth any more. It doesn't address the actual issue, most xenos are still the cannon fodder that they were before. This also doesn't change the fact that there are only so many people that can even come out to play as the larva. Normal rounds already see the Queen housing 20 burrowed larva or more - if the method of xeno spawning was to change, I'd suggest making it so larvas can rise from being burrowed more frequently before...this.

In regards to the idea that this was done to encourage the capturing of hosts more, I can not understand that logic, as while in theory that may ake sense, it does not work in practice. Xenos rarely if ever go out of their way to capture hosts. Even if there is a host entirely alone with people including the Queen telling a Lurker to stop slashing it, that host is more than likely going to die. In making this change, you have in fact incentivized capturing fewer hosts. I am not aware of the exact numbers, but you have made it so in the minds of the Xenos, when they could've captured 5 hosts before, now they only have to capture 3. Their methods will not change ust because of this.

There is one other point to mention that I'm only going to glance off of, because Spookydonut himself refuses to confirm that it is in fact a feature, but I take his refusal to confirm as confirmation for the time being. It is rare to see a Predator impregnated, and even rarer for it to actually come to term. The concept of the chance of two Abominations, which in itself would absolutely ruin any round for the marines, is terrifying. The concept of seven in a single hive would be world-ending, in reality.

To the ends of making Xenos want to capture more marines...I would suggest stopping. There is no way to change player mindset about it, the players that kill lone marines will still kill. If you're wanting to increase Xeno numbers, tweak the unburrowing of larva timer slightly, but don't change it too much, as that defeats the point o how these creatures are supposed to be balanced.



-For the first 30 minutes of the round, alien evolution and upgrade speed is doubled. After this, the bonus tapers off over another 30 minutes.
I can only assume that this was done to make it so that the aliens were more powerful and able to match up to the marines individually more easily. This is the single part of this update that I may have the most issues with, sheerly because of the way it handles things, and the things that it causes problems for.

The first major issue is that this doesn't address that some castes, even once they reach Ancient, are bad. Defenders and Runners are the most well known issues with this currently, considering the Defenders unimpressive armor and the Runners lack-luster pounce (Note: For those who disagree about the Pounce being too weak, as I type this I just got out of a round where it took 2 Runners, a Lurker, a Sentinel, and a Drone about 2 minutes and 30 seconds to capture me when I was unarmed, surrounded by them, as a survivor). This update completely spits in the face of the issue by thinking that if they're easier to get and earlier to get, they may become more viable, when this really isn't the case except for against survivors.

That brings us to Survivors. The fact that Larva now evolve twice as fast as round start makes the already difficult idea of surviving to Marine deployment as a survivor practically a fantasy, as the runners, who in themselves are quickly aging to be even faster, are going to find you twice early. Survivors are already hurting in a bad way in terms of their titular survivability, and this has entirely damned them. In the aforementioned round, the runner that attacked us found us roughly 5 minutes in on Solaris Ridge, which is an incredibly massive map, and not even the earliest I've seen someone get found. On a map like Prison, where you could get found inside the first 5 minutes already, you're looking at discovery inside of 3 or 4 depending on luck.

The most glaring issue about this update is what it does to those who join late. By 30 minutes in, anyone that has been around since roundstart has gained 60 minutes worth of ticks. By an hour in, anyone that has been around since roundstart has gained around 100 minutes worth of ticks, if not more. This makes it so that Tier 1s are Ancient well before the first hour has passed, and Tier 2s and Boilers are Elder by the time the first hour ends. Anyone that joins after the first hour has to play up until 14:40, well after most rounds even end, just to catch up to where their sisters were when they started. The xeno horde is supposed to become more powerful as time passes, but this update practically makes them stagnate after a while as the age progression flatlines, potentially even dropping if the earlier sisters are lost before the late ones.

My suggested replacement for this is a combination of a few things, so bare with me. The first is an update to the Queen that allows for encouragement to remain attached to their Ovipositor without directly punishing them for removing it, and it also makes it so losing the queen can be felt far more easily. Whenever the Queen is attached to their Ovipositor, all Xenos that are not her would receive a slight buff to their progression. This would be a small 10 percent buff from a Queen, increasing to 25 percent from an Elder Queen, 50 percent from an Elder Empress, and whopping 100 percent increase to evolutionary and age progression from an Ancient Empress. This would allow the later joined xenos to catch up more easily, incentivize the Queen remaining attached, and make the loss of a Queen far more damning as the new one reverts. That covers the purpose of this in increasing tick-based progression.

The other half of fixing this is to repair the Xenos that currently just don't work. The following ones are the ones in need of some form of repair:
Runners need pounce fixed. It can't be as crazy as it was before, but it needs to be better than it is now. Remember, the Marines have the numerical advantage, a Runner, at least a mature one if not a young one, should be able to take a lone marine on by itself.

Defender needs his armor increased. It is meant to feel like a perfect wall by the time you're Ancient, and it frankly doesn't. I would recommend increasing the armor rating of the current Defenders to what their crest-lowered armor rating is, and increase the new crest-lowered armor rating accordingly. I would also suggest making a change to the fortify ability to make it more viable, such as making it able to be toggled on and off at will, but wit a slight movement delay after it's turned off, and bonus delay after it's turned on, with these delays slightly increasing as she ages.

Carrier is an important and useful caste for the hive, but could do with some balancing. The plasma cost for planting eggs needs to be removed, or at least heavily nerfed. In exchange, the aging time could be fixed for her, making it so that she no longer needs 800 ticks for every cycle as I've heard reported.

Warriors are currently notoriously useless, as their abilities do not compensate for their inability to take hits long enough to do real damage, with the Ravager being a better outright assault caste in every way. Consider making it so that while the Warrior does not have a Defenders armor rating, it has the health that it would inherit as a Praetorian, if that evolution remains.

Praetorians, out of all Tier 3s, most desperately need an update. I would advise making it so that a non-leader Praetor emits the pheromones of the Queen, but at a lower stage, potentially even keeping that trait when the Queen is unattached to her ovipositor, but at an even lower stage. It would also be logical to move them to be an alternative to the Boiler as a Spitter evolution, or being an evolution of the Drone - potentially even a proto-form of the Queen as such.

Boilers currently are arguably the most vital Tier 3. As such, they should be looked at with care. It is not their abilities that need tweaking, but how they age. As it stands, their aging gives no difference to their recharge times - I have tested this repeatedly. It gives a change to their armor and health, but a Boiler will likely die if under serious fire anyway, and the speed boost is neglible as it still makes the Boiler get left in the dust by her sisters. Make it so her Bombardment locks in faster and recharges faster, and her acid spray recharges faster, and an Elder Boiler would actually feel like an upgrade to a Young Boiler.


Once again, I'm very sorry for the long post, everyone.

[BobatNight]

I'd scrap the larva update entirely and just un-nerf Xeno tackles and some of their other stats, there will never be a massive xeno swarm, not enough interest in the faction.
The faster upgrade/evolve time just makes sense, its been necessary for a long time so it's good to see a step in the right direction that way.
Almayer SD update is bad, Larva update is bad. Pls fix

[spookydonut]

Thats a lot of words i only skimmed through.

"player votes on features" lol.

survivors on lv were using c4 to just delete useful pre generated tunnels, so now they lose access to c4, simple as that.

[TheMaskedMan2]

It was a bit meme-y to delete two tunnels, cade the last tunnel, and then spawn kill all the Xenos that come through. I think two-three more natural tunnels would've also worked on those maps but in my opinion survivors really had 0 need for C4.

If the argument is about survivors doing well on certain maps I think that's an entire separate issue from C4.

Also I put this elsewhere but here is my simply non-dev opinyot on the changes:
I don't know how I feel about SD starting automatically, don't get me wrong, I understand the meaning behind the changes, but I don't know if I agree gameplay wise. Maybe balance wise it will help, yeah, but this now means that Almayer fighting will once again always, 90% of the time be an autism SD defense. Which I just don't find fun.

Nobody will fight anywhere else on the ship and it's the return of it only ever being SD defense, and I kinda liked the variation of running around the ship and killing people, no reason to defend CIC, why even have lockdown, etc. That's just my humble opinyot. Xenos will always rush SD, Marines will always camp SD, that's the only fighting that will happen on the Almayer. This also rewards early evacuations on Marines part. They don't require the numbers to be sufficiently skewed to activate distress+SD. This means if Marines evacuate early with superior numbers, they still can easily survive until SD goes off. Hell, i'd argue just remove SD entirely but that's a lot more controversial.

As for Larvae changes i'm 100% Xeno biased but i'll still give my opinion on it. I think it's good and it will encourage capturing humans. Marines are a big hassle to infect, keep alive to burst, and not have them escape, cause trouble, and be nested for literally 20 minutes. So I think it will encourage Xenos to infect more, also it will allow easier comebacks if the first queen dies and loses all 30 burrowed larvae. Which maybe hurts balance? I don't know, I kinda think it's fun though. I believe you could make an argument for adjusting round-start monkeys though. As for the evolution changes, I feel like it's a buff, yeah, it makes the first wave of Xenos essentially big angry Alpha Xenos, but i'm still somewhat of a fan of it. In practice I have noticed the Mature/Elder Xenos were usually the same as they always were by the time Marines actually engaged them.

I don't have the numbers on my at the moment, but I can imagine the reason these changes went in is that the Marine winrate over Xenos must've been substantial. Things will be adjusted, the RNG changes for larva for example, how much of an evo boost, and I actually can imagine once the tank is back Marines may do well.

Anyways, Xeno-biased, it's true, but
tl;dr: I'm not a fan of SD and Almayer defense is a slog now and it used to be my favorite, Xeno changes I can imagine why they were done and might actually be decent over time once the tank is back and some little adjustments come in.

[Steelpoint]

SD change is a step in the right direction in cutting down the end game.

I feel it might work better if the 'SD Room' was removed or made into an aesthetic room that won't influence the detonation of the SD.

Then the SD being something that is guaranteed to occur. Perhaps rework it that the SD will go into standby if the Xeno population falls below a certain number to give the Marines a reason to fight back.

[BillyBoBBizWorth]

Marines are a big hassle to infect, keep alive to burst, and not have them escape, cause trouble, and be nested for literally 20 minutes.

Agreed with alot of what you said, found it abit puzzling how you could claim this though, i think alot of people just ghost.I do, especially if im in that pain crit stage and you cant even suicide.Im not laying there for 20 minutes, now with no light as well, going in and out of paincrit/consciousness, no thank you.I'd rather ghost and go watch something else or go AFK/logg off.

The only way i can see what your saying is in the example of highpop and theres alot of marines captured, hive under attack, then yeah ive seen how much of a handful it can be for xenoes to control them and possibly defend multiple flanks.

When its lowpop and its only a few marines around here and there captured, usually they are held until they burst almost effortlessly.The local spitter or drone will spam spit/tackle you and renest, thats pretty much how most of my escape attempts have been, even the times i thought i might actually have a chance and still couldnt.

Xenoes practically got a free buff just by the armor lights turning off and ensuring almost no light leads back to the hive, or anywhere else for that matter, artificially.Not because the xenoes are any good, and its amazing theres still people claiming nesting marines is tough, absurd.Its barely a chore and becoming even less of one with changes like this from how i see it, marines having to constantly flare all the time, thats a hassle.When youve been forced into the habit of turning it on at the start of each round for so long, then having your armor light mysteriously turn off because a lurker invisi-pounce-slash murdered you, is bullshit.

Its become apparent that with the xenoes evolving sooner, they are rushing and engaging sooner and its almost negated the armor light change anyhow because they are the ones doing most of the pushing and gaining ground right now.More rounds played with confirm or dismiss this.If it stays like this though, then that means marines are forced to live with a handicap the xenoes dont even need anymore.

[TheMaskedMan2]

SD change is a step in the right direction in cutting down the end game.

I feel it might work better if the 'SD Room' was removed or made into an aesthetic room that won't influence the detonation of the SD.

Then the SD being something that is guaranteed to occur. Perhaps rework it that the SD will go into standby if the Xeno population falls below a certain number to give the Marines a reason to fight back.

I think that's definitely a great idea, personally. My complaint is not that SD activates and makes Almayer go by quicker, it's that it feels very samey at the moment, I would also argue that it could go up to 30 minutes but that's an entirely seperate thing. Remove SD room in my opinion. Just make it so Xenos have to kill everyone or the ship explodes in 30 minutes?

Agreed with alot of what you said, found it abit puzzling how you could claim this though, i think alot of people just ghost.I do, especially if im in that pain crit stage and you cant even suicide.Im not laying there for 20 minutes, now with no light as well, going in and out of paincrit/consciousness, no thank you.I'd rather ghost and go watch something else or go AFK/logg off.

Here's a counter-argument though, 90% of infected die in the hive before they actually burst, especially when the player ghosts due to paincrit and they will bleed out in the nest and die. Dealing with a healthy marine for 20 minutes, while not impossible, is a huge hassle, that a lot of Xenos don't like to bother with, which they may begin bothering with now that there is a chance, even if small to get more larvae from it. Also with the RNG chances of double larvae+more being so low, most of the time Marines will still single burst. So the ideal result is I think: Xenos capture and infect more, not much chances besides a rare burst of more larvae. We could argue that the specific values, chances, and etc can be tweaked but that's really up for the devs to decide long term.