[ALPHA] Muffle Speech or Headset for Hugged/Nested Marines

[aphotic]

CM Version (alpha or Regular): Alpha

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): As in the title; a way to stop a disabled dead-for-rights marine from broadcasting to preserve the secrecy of the hive.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): A large part of the Aliens 'feel' is the tension of creeping through the unknown and the dark in search of your fallen comrades. In a more practical sense, the only real defense aliens have against overwhelming numbers of marines sporting flamethrowers, smartguns and explosives is their ability to manipulate the dark and perform hit-and-run attacks. Having the first marine host they take give away the location of the nest opens them up to early-game multi-squad rushes, and eliminates the opportunity to pick off loners from scout squads. On the marine side of it, there are a fair few people that rush off despite SL orders, get captured, and spend the next 10 minutes yelling SAVE ME into the squad radio. I hate these people and want them to stop.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc): The hard-coded way would be to either have any radio equipped on the ear damaged so that it does not broadcast, or that it broadcasts in a garbled manner, when a facehugger successfully attaches to a client; the clench of its powerful legs could be the narrative reason. The damage should be easily repaired, requiring at the most a screwdriver and possibly no tools at all ("you bend the microphone support back into place", or something of the sort), so as to not unduly impact a rescued or otherwise combat capable marine. The idea is to only effect marines that are securely in alien hands. Additionally, and importantly, this would not affect a handheld radio, and if a marine broke free of a nest and fled to an isolated part of the hive they could enact communication with their squad for rescue or scouting. This would also be doable if the headset was repairable with no tools.

Alternatively, the presence of a facehugger could change the marine's speech to muffles due to the ovipositor in his throat, which would cease to be an issue once the facehugger fell off its host. This would still open up the marine to speech once the facehugger came off, but would not fully accomplish the intended goal of preventing defeated marines from acting as tracking beacons; that said, it's a possible compromise, and one that at least gives the aliens some time to disorient the marine before he's able to start broadcasting his position.

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it): I kind of rolled that into the above paragraph, but I will admit I don't know enough about the code to know how difficult it would be to enact such a damaged state to the headset, or turn a hugged marine's speech into a muffled or broken language for the duration of the hug.

[Dog_Days]

How about just allow radio as stripable by the aliens?

[aphotic]

How about just allow radio as stripable by the aliens?

I performed a search to see if this topic had been brought up before, and having the aliens strip a radio from a marine was vetoed by Apophis by reason that it's silly from a lore perspective to have a scythe-armed monster remove something so delicate and foreign.

Still, he didn't mention anything about the core rationale- Stopping captured marines from reliably broadcasting- being impossible to implement or balance, so I thought a more nuanced approach might be workable.

[UnknownMurder]

I'm sure this has been suggested before.

[Searif]

I came across this myself as a marine, I was taken to the hive and facehugged, when I could I started doing muffled speech over the radio to add some spoop for my squad. Not minutes later another marine was put beside me and gets facehugged, and he starts screaming in his radio to save him and where the hive is.

[aphotic]

I came across this myself as a marine, I was taken to the hive and facehugged, when I could I started doing muffled speech over the radio to add some spoop for my squad. Not minutes later another marine was put beside me and gets facehugged, and he starts screaming in his radio to save him and where the hive is.

Yeah. When I'm nested as a marine I try to do the occasional muffled cry or whatever, but try to avoid anything that'd ruin the atmosphere. Unfortunately I see a lot of people doing just what you said, screaming the location of the hive and demanding a raid.

[coroneljones]

Can i just point out a fault in this
Marines literaly cant escape nests before they burst,unless they use the adrenal implant...they could burst 4 or 5 times before escaping,so..if a marine got taken,he would be doomed
The facehugger one may make sense....or give it the "cant see things while you have one on your face"

[aphotic]

Can i just point out a fault in this
Marines literaly cant escape nests before they burst,unless they use the adrenal implant...they could burst 4 or 5 times before escaping,so..if a marine got taken,he would be doomed
The facehugger one may make sense....or give it the "cant see things while you have one on your face"

I've seen them get free before via struggling, though... I thought that's why nestspam was banned, to give them a chance?

In either case, even having the facehugger muffle them would help provide some atmosphere and give the aliens a bit more of a window before four heavily-armed marine teams march straight for the queen. Having the facehugger blind marines while attached would work only if the blindness was total- As it is now, blindness still shows you and the tile you're on, which means it's very easy to tell where you're being dragged just by how you're being moved.

[Evilkyle24]

Here is my response to that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tWyh48mI5A
There you go. Any questions on the alien's strength? It just tore your head off with one hand.
They can rend armor with little difficulty and are strong enough to pry an airlock open, something a human can't do even with the aid of a crowbar. They can cut your head off with their claws or tail with no difficulty. We've seen them cut through metal.

Also, BONUS CLIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwoLySqoEbM
Christ they're terrifying.