Xeno caste overhaul.

[Abbysynth]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):

It's arbitrarily easy with the new Alpha code I wrote to add, change, swap, or otherwise mess around with new xeno castes. In fact if you have the sprites it's just a very simple copy-paste process, including adding or swapping around new or existing verbs. I propose an overhaul of the xeno evolutions so they make much more sense.

And yes, I know many of these ideas might not be canon. Tough shit, we're not exactly canon as it is.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):

Xeno evolutionary trees right now are all over the place. The niches don't match up, the evolutionary tree doesn't make sense, and the tree itself is more line that one in Charlie Brown Christmas that's sort of everywhere. If we standardize the evolutions into niches, players will have a much better idea of what they want to play, and how to play it.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):

Here's what I propose for castes and evolutionary branches:

* Larva - Top tier. The start of it all.

Larva can evolve into:
* Hunter - This is the "warrior" niche. They are meant to explore and attack, to gather intel on the enemy. They excel against SINGLE, lone targets but are poor against massed enemies.
* Sentinel - This is the "defender" niche. They are built for defense, and particularly for keeping the Queen (and to a lesser extent, the Hive) protected. They are equally good against large or small groups of enemies.
* Spitter - This is the "ranged" niche. They are made for long-range assaults, particularly against GROUPS of marines. Most of their high-cost abilities are wasted against lone targets.
* Drone - The "builder" niche. They require other xenos around to protect them.

Hunters can evolve into:
* Runner - This is the ambush and recon niche. They are much faster than Hunters and have excellent single-target verbs and damage, but lack health and their abilities tend to stun themselves, leaving them extremely vulnerable against multiple enemies. Runners can evolve into a single final stage: the Ultramorph, the basic design of which was later known as the Jockey-Xeno, and later still became the smaller Deacon in Prometheus. Think of them as crocodile xenos. They would get Charge, not Ravagers, and have significany stealth and hiding abilities to ambush prey.

* Warrior - This is the front-line fighter niche. They serve as the brute force attackers and are robust as hell all-around in combat, but lack the speed of Runners. They do however still get some ambush and stealth abilities, like warriors in all of the canon. Warriors evolve into the Ravager, which we all know and .. well, we know. They would get abilities that allow them to survive front-line combat, like projectile deflection or self-healing and enormous stores of Health.

Sentinels can evolve into:
* Guardian - The Guardian's niche is protecting the Queen. They gain serious bonuses when in a certain range of the Queen, such as high damage and plasma regen. Like Sentinels they are still capable of small amounts of spit and corrosive acid, but it has very high cost and low utility. When a Guardian is nearby, all nearby Xenos of any type gain a small amount of bonus plasma regen. Guardian's final evolution is the Praetorian, which is just bigger, meaner, and much nastier, with higher bonuses all-around.

* Lurkers - Lurkers are capable of sowing chaos among enemies by various means. They possess a gland that enables them to emit an EMP field in a short radius, disable all light sources temporarily, and other maladictive things. They lack the strong health and damaging claws of other xenomorph types but function extremely well in groups of other castes. Their final evolution is the Shadow, a hulking beast of a xenomorph that has ingested human (and other non-xeno alien) power sources into its body, giving it electro-shock attacks similar to an electric eel. The whole branch's niche is in essentially disabling some of the marine advantages for short periods and at close range.

Spitters can evolve into:
* Boiler - These are capable of doing extreme damage to large groups of enemies. They wield a very damaging "acid flamethrower" ability that not only costs plasma, but also slightly damages themselves in the process. When they die, they explode in a shower of corrosive acid at all nearby enemies. Their final evolution (should one of them somehow survive to this stage) is the Irradiator, who have been permanently glued together by resin with various toxic substances, such as plasma canisters or uranium containment boxes and leave a trail of toxic fog.

* Bombardier - These xenos resemble huge beetles, capable of spitting acid large distances. Their primary niche is as the main "ranged" attack line. Their spit can be toggled to not only stun, but also blind, deafen, weaken, or slow enemies. Their final evolution is the "Dragon" (mentioned in Alien3, yes yes we all know the movie sucked). They are capable of melting through r_walls like today's Praetorians, and have excellent, long-range spitting capabilities.

And finally, Drones.
* Worker - (In keeping with the hive theme). Workers are not exactly just that - while yes, they can technically build like Drones, their primary niche is in being a support class for other xenomorphs. In particular they are able to "buff" other xenos -- spewing resin on them to harden as armor, dropping various jellies that enable bursts of speed or healing, and so on. A group of xenomorphs with a Worker alongside them is far tougher and more dangerous than one without. Their final evolution is the Carrier we all know, who enhances the group-defensive niche with the ever-terrifying prospect of thrown huggers.

* Builder - The Builder caste is, you guessed it, a quick builder of hives. Not only can they quickly repair any damage to a hive, they can quickly lay down resin even in the heat of combat, where drones are now limited by a timer after they take damage, requiring them to stay far from the front lines to use most of their abilities. Builders can enhance resin and make it far tougher as well as morph existing weeds so that they can trap or damage marines who pass overtop of them. The Builder's final evolution is the Tyrant (which I think is a better name for the Hivelord) which unlocks some different, more powerful structures (perhaps more improved weeds that allow larva to evolve faster, that sort of thing).

* Queen - And of course, drones can evolve into Queens. Who can also evolve into Empresses..




Any thoughts or flames, go ahead. Think it's stupid? Well, maybe. But I am 100% sure I can pull off all the ideas presented here without a problem.

[crazyh206]

+1 but the empress means that there could maybe another queen under it like a subbordinate maybe?

[TopHatPenguin]

Loving it but how exactly would the acid flamethrower work when a marine is hit by it i mean will it melt the marines armour or will it just do burn damage ?

[Adjective]

+1 If you are willing to code it.

[Butterrobber202]

YOU HAVE ALL MY +1 this has been needed forever as marine get some new stuff, I would REALLY like this added, if you can buff BASE resin where it isnt made of pudding it would be fucking amazing. Then make it where the Hardened resin takes maybe a Welder Bomb or some type of fire (Welder) to destroy. And give the top tier aliens have slightly enlarged and COLORED text. This combined with the Queen's Killswitch/command tab will make aliens EPIC. Might be worth playing with the noobs on

[Lostmixup]

+1, I like the idea's here right not, even experienced marines may have a hard time for once.

[valzargaming]

+1 all the way!

[Evilkyle24]

+1, ALL OF THE YES!

[Davidchan]

+1, the buffs and synergy bonuses might be a bit over powered for the current build, but we can always remove nerfs and give marines their own buffs and better equipment.

[Abbysynth]

Here, I made a handy flow chart:



Glad you all like the ideas!

[Adjective]

Make this a thing! Queen Vrai demandeth it!

[Butterrobber202]

Give us ICON PREVIEWS and more details on the empresses

[mosshadow]

+1 this is great, however I think with this stuff added marines would need to get some more gear like deployable autoturrets and grenades for each marine instead of just the SL. Also combat mechs.

[Rahlzel]

I really like the ideas of new aliens you've come up with. Very thorough and interesting to read.

However, and I may be the only one, but I'm going with -1 on the immediate idea with a suggestion to set it up differently: Offense, Defense, and Support.

Having 3 main "categories" of aliens allows not only a simpler choice for players, but an easier direction for us to balance them, and a bonus of being less specific. What do I mean by that? The Lurker, for example, that emits an EMP pulse - this can potentially be useful, but it's very situational. I assume it won't disable weapons since marine weapons are projectile and not energy, so my guess is that it would disable mines or open doors? Compounded with its "lack the strong health and damaging claws", this ends up being an alien that would be fun with a group as support but not likely useful or fun when it's the last one to die.

If the castes are partially combined in the aforementioned 3 roles - offense, defense, and support, it ensures that they remain useful even when they are the last one standing because they won't lose a lot of utility from the need to balance them out and make them unique (because there are so many aliens that all need something different).

To be more specific, I strongly believe we should stay with the original 3 aliens and branch out from them: Hunter, Sentinel, Drone.

Something like this:



To recap, there are less aliens overall, but this means more for each alien, making them more useful than they would be if the abilities were spread out over more aliens.

[UnknownMurder]

Oh God... So much fancy graphs... We're all loving it.


+1

[Abbysynth]

Rahlz has a good point, the more consolidation there is the more each caste gets. If it's all well spread-out I think it's just a matter of finding the right balance between them all. I do however like the idea of having a range-focused caste, as Sentinels/Praetorians never were about that at all in any of the canon, they were always hive guardians. You should be able to know what the thing's about just by hearing the name, and "sentinel" doesn't exactly spring to mind a neurotoxin-spitting ranged attacker.

[Rahlzel]

One way to fix that is to split the Offensive tree between melee/stealthy offense and ranged offense.

[MrJJJ]

There is actually stats for empress, but they might need to be changed
http://gyazo.com/f9101f93a6476ca8c3a600db0ea437bb
http://gyazo.com/56e81515987b09bdeab0d6801dc66c09

[Adjective]

Empress as it is, is hella OP, she can spray Poly-Acid. Her shriek knocks marines unconscious.. In general change her Hehe

[Lostmixup]

Here, I made a handy flow chart:



Glad you all like the ideas!

How do I become the dead ian class?

[speedybst]

Wow, first thing i come back to read from my weekend, and it is so good, that i'm sorry rahlzel, but your shrine is being rededicated as i type...
This has my full support, this is most righteous!

[Felkvir]

Sure, why not.

[Helmut Schmacker]

+1

However, with that emp class type, if it were to be added then I suggest that marines being able to shoot into darkness be implemented also. It would be a tad too crippling if all the lights went out and marines couldn't panic friendly fire/spray in the general direction of the aliens.

[Lostmixup]

I really like the ideas of new aliens you've come up with. Very thorough and interesting to read.

However, and I may be the only one, but I'm going with -1 on the immediate idea with a suggestion to set it up differently: Offense, Defense, and Support.

Having 3 main "categories" of aliens allows not only a simpler choice for players, but an easier direction for us to balance them, and a bonus of being less specific. What do I mean by that? The Lurker, for example, that emits an EMP pulse - this can potentially be useful, but it's very situational. I assume it won't disable weapons since marine weapons are projectile and not energy, so my guess is that it would disable mines or open doors? Compounded with its "lack the strong health and damaging claws", this ends up being an alien that would be fun with a group as support but not likely useful or fun when it's the last one to die.

If the castes are partially combined in the aforementioned 3 roles - offense, defense, and support, it ensures that they remain useful even when they are the last one standing because they won't lose a lot of utility from the need to balance them out and make them unique (because there are so many aliens that all need something different).

To be more specific, I strongly believe we should stay with the original 3 aliens and branch out from them: Hunter, Sentinel, Drone.

Something like this:



To recap, there are less aliens overall, but this means more for each alien, making them more useful than they would be if the abilities were spread out over more aliens.

Less aliens, more usefulness. I like this, the original idea seems to have a bit to many classes to chose, but getting rid of the excess fat would be good.

[Maurelius]

Pretty cool.