Prevalence Of Facehugger Based Combat

[Steelpoint]

I've been on a general break from SS13 and ACM in general, while I think there's been some good changes to ACM there's one thing that really still bothers me.

The prevalence of facehugger based combat. Outside of Ravagers it seems the monos operandi is for every Alien to tot around some Facehuggers and smash that all over any Marines forever until they run out of helmets until someone drags some down from the Sulaco.

There's a lot about playing as a Marine that frustrates me, how crippling minor injuries can be, waiting twenty minutes for surgery, etc etc but I can live with that. But I really get turned off by how I get slammed with 50 facehuggers just by turning the corner then I get to sit out the next two hours in deadchat simmering in my own juices.

I feel that outside of Carriers that Facehuggers should not be the main method of capturing a Marine, there should be fair mechanics in place for Aliens to disarm and capture a Marine in the field, though I know this is a conundrum.

What are your thoughts?

[Whistle]

Facehuggerless combat is much more enjoyable for both teams.

[ExGame]

@Whistles
I'm totally supporting this.
Considering that a facehugger attack also gets rid of the helmet protection entirely making your head unarmored and so prone to 2-hit decapping that it's not even funny anymore.
If you get pounced by a hunter with a facehugger, expect to die in a 1 to 2-hit decap after your helmet is removed, and your teammates probably will not be able to fire too many bullets at the time you get pounced to kill it before it runs off (cough cough pain slowdown for xenos when).

[MrJJJ]

The probably worst thing about huggers, and this is true, but if you deal enough damage to the head, a guy who removes the hugger from a guy MAY GET DECAPPED from simply the hugger doing damage as its removed, I personally have been victim of sometimes the huggers giving me brain damage after being taken off

[forwardslashN]

I've stated this in pretty much every thread about hugger carrying, and that is I don't find it fun as either side.

[Steelpoint]

In theory we could just disallow all Aliens sans the Carrier and perhaps the Queen from even picking up a facehugger. Eggs already automatically open when a Human is nearby.

[Ocnjak20]

How about making nests, eggs around and rule for aliens to carry hosts to the nests. But then again Marines and Survs should not be able to attack xenos or wake up as easy as before while being devoured inside or dragged to the nest.

[Monoo]

For sure. This is why we needed Abby's CQC update.

In the lore, aliens never carry facehuggers around, they just incapacitate people and bring them to the huggers. The mental image of a xeno lobbing a facehugger at a marine like a Frisbee is ridiculous.

The problem, therefore, is how to safely transport marines to the hive and the huggers. In the planned CQC update, alien's upper level grabs could not be broken out of. A hunter could easily tackle and carry away a single Rambo marine without using any huggers.

[Fritigern]

Made quite a few posts about this over the last 6 months. Glad people are starting to come around to the idea of toning down facehuggers.

They steal so much potential from the aliens just by the merit of their strength. You change them, and suddenly aliens have a power vacuum that can be filled with other fun and interesting mechanics.

[Peachy2912]

The problem is if you remove the aliens ability to use facehuggers as a weapon they'll have trouble taking on large groups of marines outside of just killing and maiming every marine they see. The thing that is most beneficial to the aliens (and most annoying to marines) is the long stun that getting hugged provides. Without it the aliens would have a very difficult time transporting live marines back to the hive and I suspect many marines would just be sooner killed by aliens than dragged and tackle spammed all the way back to the hive.

Hugger spam is very very annoying and i wish we could move away from it, but without it I feel it would probably turn into decap simulator 2016 (even more so than it could be argued that it already is) unless the facehuggers are replaced with a similar and equally annoying stun attack that will allow aliens to transport marines to the hive without them fighting them every step of the way. But then people would complain about that mechanic rather than huggers and we'd end up back in this very same position once again.

[Jalleo]

Snip

For sure. This is why we needed Abby's CQC update.

In the lore, aliens never carry facehuggers around, they just incapacitate people and bring them to the huggers. The mental image of a xeno lobbing a facehugger at a marine like a Frisbee is ridiculous.

The problem, therefore, is how to safely transport marines to the hive and the huggers. In the planned CQC update, alien's upper level grabs could not be broken out of. A hunter could easily tackle and carry away a single Rambo marine without using any huggers.

This is the solution that and well trying to get lag reduced on the server and such.

[Steelpoint]

If there's a planned update to address this issue them I'll be happy to hear it out. I just find that facehugger based combat to be unfun to deal with.

In any video game no one likes control being taken away from their character, while I submit that being captured by Aliens is a core mechanic of being a Marine, but I contest how powerful the usage of Facehuggers is to get to that point.

[Boltersam]

Facehugger based combat is...Frankly a bit boring. However, Aliens need to be able to bring marines to the huggers. I would suggest making the grab impossible for marines to break out of, but they can still stand up and fight back. Noize, you said you were working on introducing the CQC update yourself, no?

[Fritigern]

The problem is if you remove the aliens ability to use facehuggers as a weapon they'll have trouble taking on large groups of marines outside of just killing and maiming every marine they see. The thing that is most beneficial to the aliens (and most annoying to marines) is the long stun that getting hugged provides. Without it the aliens would have a very difficult time transporting live marines back to the hive and I suspect many marines would just be sooner killed by aliens than dragged and tackle spammed all the way back to the hive.

Hugger spam is very very annoying and i wish we could move away from it, but without it I feel it would probably turn into decap simulator 2016 (even more so than it could be argued that it already is) unless the facehuggers are replaced with a similar and equally annoying stun attack that will allow aliens to transport marines to the hive without them fighting them every step of the way. But then people would complain about that mechanic rather than huggers and we'd end up back in this very same position once again.

I understand that aliens need a way to subdue and control a marine for transport. I just want to stop facehuggers from being throwing weapons and landmines. Pounce a marine down, apply facehugger to forehead as needed. Lone marines are just as screwed as they once were, facehuggers are no longer a ranged, skull breaking weapon. Yes, this means basically removing an entire caste of aliens.. which I think is perfectly fine.

Alternatively, make it so that 'applying' a facehugger to a marine takes a few seconds of both targets being immobile. So when runners jump on someone, unless that marine is wounded, they won't have enough time to get the crab on their face. Takes less time if they're not wearing a helmet. Forces aliens to start working together more. Spitters and runners for that initial immobilization, hunters and larger for the final application. Yes it would be a direct nerf in this ONE area of alien combat, but in order to maintain balance you can then shift all that one click death power elsewhere. Make spitters who hit a marine in the head blind them for a 10 seconds or so, or less if they 'resist' and clean their eyes. Hunters get adjustments to their stealth so they're even harder to see, maybe with added damage on their tail attacks. Hivelords can place burning acid patches on the ground to burn a marine's feet instead of just having to use the sticky resin.

Point is, there are a whole lot of interesting things aliens could be doing that they can't do right now because adding those features would make them OP as fuck in a game where they can still insta-fuck marines with facehuggers.

[ParadoxSpace]

What we could do is have that thing in-lore where xenos are able to vomit resin on your mouth and you are then dragged back to the hive. The carrier would still retain her ability to throw huggers but nobody else would be able to pick them up?

[Whistle]

Hear me out.

An Egg stack.

A thin pillar of resin that holds a number of eggs that deploy when a marine is nearby.
It can be created by the queen and transported by the drone caste.
It would allow for eggs to be brought into a forward hive or combat line and therefore stop insta hugger fights, however a short distance scuffle and drag will result in a marine being hugged and incapped and there fore safe to transport.

This will allow for less hugger based combat and more use for drones.

Carrier would retain their ability to throw huggers as it's their thing and noone else needs it.

It would sorta act like a tower with a 2x2 hugger attack range.

Thoughts? Worth a suggestion thread?

[Pseudomaniac]

The reason huggers are used in combat is because they knock out marines non lethally. There are virtually no other ways for a xeno to knock out a marine non lethally (corrosive spit comes to mind, but that causes tox damage, and too much will cause the liver to fail, and then them to die from increasing tox damage), so they can drag them back to the nest (disarm spam won't work on non injured marines, they'll either get back up and run away back to their squad, or simply shoot you).

A quick bandaid fix would be to replace the xeno disarm attack with something that deals 15-20 holo/stamina damage to marines (I'm not sure if baycode has holo/stam damage, but basically it's nonlethal damage that slows you down and knocks you down at 100 for 5-6 seconds), and cause the tail attack to knock out a marine for about 20-30 secs with over 75 (ballpark figures) stam damage while on disarm, which then lets aliens actually drag marines out of a fight without killing them.

The main issue with this though is that aliens would be able to stunlock marines when they go down, but since they'd take 5-8 disarms to go down it might be fair. The other issue would be the rate that stamina damage recovers at, too fast and it'll be impossible to down a marine, too slow and marines will get whittled down from continued attacks.

Oh and for huggers, I'd only let the queen, drone and carrier to pick them up, making egg locations more tactical.

[Surrealistik]

Would love to see offensive hugger use replaced with other alien buffs/abilities that are more fun for both parties.

Halloss/stun damage on the Xeno disarm attack in addition to its current properties would also be welcome (more physically powerful castes dealing more stun damage).

[jalen earl]

Only way i can see is a boosted stun or some alternate stunning method (faster resincuffs?) Something to reduce tackle spam.
otherwise everyone too far from a nest would get shredded

[Steelpoint]

Perhaps looking into allowing a Alien to do a grab-pull on a Marine will lock them down, the Marine may be able to escape after a certain amount of time (akin to a resin nest). However only certain Aliens would be able to effectivly do a grab-pull, so some Aliens like Runners or Hunters would be very quick to do this yet other Aliens like Sentinals or Hivelords would take a lot longer to get a grab-pull going.

[apophis775]

The issue, is that without huggers, Xenos have no way to "grow" their numbers.

We've looked at several alternatives, and the Close-Combat system Abby was working on, seemed like it might work, but shortly before she left, she said she didn't think she'd be able to do it.

[Surrealistik]

?

What's stopping you from adding Halloss to their Disarm strikes, such that they can stunlock marines (after several hits) and drag them back to the Hive?

[Steelpoint]

Why not instead change how damage is dealt by Aliens?

Think of it like this, real predators and Humans that want to capture someone/thing won't attack them with intent to kill, but intent to capture. Right now when a Alien goes lethal they are attacking to kill but not to capture.

So what if we had a system like on other servers called stamina damage. Aliens can now do two kinds of melee attacks, stamina damage and lethal damage. Aliens attacking with stamina damage will still deal damage, but a little, but will do far more stamina damage on a marine (after armour and the max amount of damage the alien can do), after a certain threshould of stamina damage is dealt then the Marine should be stunned for ten to thirty seconds (balance wise and all).

This will accomplish several things.

First Aliens will have a realible method of capturing Humans, instead of going in with Facehuggers they instead need to attack and swipe a Human enough times to accrue stamina damage to stun them. This makes combat more skill based instead of throw Facehugger based and thus more fun. Finally its a reliable stun method for the Aliens and it gives them a good amount of time to capture and move a stunned Human way from combat.

On another note it also further helps make Humans want to stay in squads, since it'll be a lot easier to wear down a lone Human than one part of a squad.

[apophis775]

That might be possible.

[Surrealistik]

Why not instead change how damage is dealt by Aliens?

Think of it like this, real predators and Humans that want to capture someone/thing won't attack them with intent to kill, but intent to capture. Right now when a Alien goes lethal they are attacking to kill but not to capture.

So what if we had a system like on other servers called stamina damage. Aliens can now do two kinds of melee attacks, stamina damage and lethal damage. Aliens attacking with stamina damage will still deal damage, but a little, but will do far more stamina damage on a marine (after armour and the max amount of damage the alien can do), after a certain threshould of stamina damage is dealt then the Marine should be stunned for ten to thirty seconds (balance wise and all).

This will accomplish several things.

First Aliens will have a realible method of capturing Humans, instead of going in with Facehuggers they instead need to attack and swipe a Human enough times to accrue stamina damage to stun them. This makes combat more skill based instead of throw Facehugger based and thus more fun. Finally its a reliable stun method for the Aliens and it gives them a good amount of time to capture and move a stunned Human way from combat.

On another note it also further helps make Humans want to stay in squads, since it'll be a lot easier to wear down a lone Human than one part of a squad.

So Halloss damage (which is native to Baycode) on Disarm attacks as I suggested.