Third faction

[Kinrany]

Summary: New faction that represents random space beasts. Dead players can spawn as one anytime. Beasts can be infested.

Benefits:

• Lets dead players play again.
• Makes it less scary for aliens to die.
• Makes it easier for queen to order mass charge.
• Allows aliens to butcher marines more often.
• Increases importance of combat medicine.
• Makes it less boring for marines to guard camp important areas.
• Makes it harder to go rambo.
• Adds action without adding too many casualties.

Possible drawbacks:

• Infinite aliens.
  Should be balanced by making it harder to capture a beast and/or tweaking alien stats and high-tier limits.
• Too hard for aliens, since they lack ranged attacks.
  Glass cannon beasts will probably solve this. Aliens should kill beasts in one or two hits.
• Beasts breaking defences/hive.
  Beasts should be really weak (but not totally powerless) against both human- and alien-made defences. They shouldn't be able to break reinforced walls. They should spend a lot of time breaking metal and resin walls.

Details/implementation:
There are ~10 destroyable beast spawners randomly placed on Nostromo. There is a beast limit directly proportional to number of spawners left. As long as the number of beasts alive is lower that that, bot beasts spawn.
When a ghost player decides to become a beast, they double click a bot beast to possess it. They can also double click a spawner to spawn as a new beast.
Beast players can become a larva, and their last human body can be cloned (if they haven't played as an alien yet). In this case the player is replaced with a bot.
Beasts can't understand human or alien speech, neither can they communicate with each other.
Beasts can't be facehugged unless they are stunned with neurotoxin.

[Derpislav]

I've been really hoping for more marine-ish third faction, so combat would be full of flanking, dragging injured out of line of fire, covering each other and, generally speaking, tactical. With aliens and beasts it's just... either marines are getting raped by them coming from every direction and coming FAST, or the marines camping outside the hive, not really able to push it, but being a pain in the ass for xenos.

[Sargeantmuffinman]

Maybe as an event but not now. With this suggestion it would be hard to actually code as well as it WILL stall the game to a point where an admin HAS to restart the world in order to have a fresh start but not now...maybe a later date but just not now..

+1 for the dead player thing but this is not the time to do that.....needs ALOT of testing so -1 while we already have enough problems to take care of (bugs,tweaking,adding stuff and a ground map) but maybe in the future...where most people are mature enough to even LISTEN to the admins/commanders. Also just HOW on earth are the devs even going to implement that ((also not lore friendly)maybe)

[Violaceus]

Blob.

[Abbysynth]

My idea for a third faction was a rival corporation. We have PMCs (sort of) and USMC which are allied, but I think a rival corporation would have its own paramilitary organization, more like the space mercenaries from Alien: Resurrection. I'd like to see them fighting over artifacts on the ground map, taking the fight to their rival vessels, etc, while xenomorphs clean up the battlefield and grow stronger and stronger during the round.

[Kinrany]

The main goals are:
1) let dead players play again
2) make marines and aliens more cautious

Minimal version requires a new mob, a verb to spawn as one (like mouse) and a new marker for spawnpoints. That's not too hard, I think : )
Extencive balancing and testing is certainly required, though.

[SASoperative]

I.... No I do not see this becoming a thing... I truly don't it will just result in more problems than its worth. It makes marines and aliens more reckless than anything because than the threat of death means nothing as they can instantly come back to life as something else

[UnknownMurder]

[Kinrany]

I.... No I do not see this becoming a thing... I truly don't it will just result in more problems than its worth. It makes marines and aliens more reckless than anything because than the threat of death means nothing as they can instantly come back to life as something else

I doubt it will make marines more reckless. They still only have one life as marines. And they already have a 90% chance to become an alien after death.
I hope it would actually make them more cautious, since now they have a chance to be killed by beasts and feel stupid.

It will likely make aliens more reckless, since they get more lives, and I think that's a good thing. Currently aliens are too cautious and often ignore orders because of that. And I have never seen a proper mass charge.

[Hailstorm77]

I honestly think this is a pretty bad idea. Because then Aliens would have countless numbers and Marines would lose even more then they already do. Plus I believe it would make them more reckless because then Death wouldn't be a "Oh I'm now out of the game for a long time" type a thing.