Queen Death Changes

[NoahKirchner]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): Since the aliens are a hivemind, their queen dying should be a little bit more dramatic than just a message calling for vengeance, no? If you've played AvP 2010 (I don't know if it's canon, but it's where I got the idea) the aliens seem physically hurt/ disabled at least temporarily due to their queen dying. I was thinking, why not have the queen's death in CM have some adverse effect on the aliens, like losing a small portion of health (not able to kill) or not regaining as much plasma while their queen is dead.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): It will make the queen dying a more traumatic event, and give the marines a time where they can really fight back against the aliens on a more even playing field. This would also give the aliens more of an incentive to protect the queen with their lives as animals in a hivemind would likely do.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):When the queen dies, all of the aliens are disabled in some way, either through their plasma regeneration or health, making them weaker and have to pull back, and giving the marines an opportunity to strike.

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):

[Neray]

+1.

Debuffs after queen's death won't hurt balance, imo, and will add a good reason for aliens to defend their leader.

[Toroic]

-1

While I don't deny the thematic appeal or lore appropiateness of the suggestion, there have been games where 3-4 queens have died entirely due to their own poor play.

Xenos already make significant efforts to protect and save a queen, and all this suggestion does is punish the xenos more if their queen makes a mistake.

Not every queen death is due to poor play, but the vast majority are.

[NoahKirchner]

-1

While I don't deny the thematic appeal or lore appropiateness of the suggestion, there have been games where 3-4 queens have died entirely due to their own poor play.

Xenos already make significant efforts to protect and save a queen, and all this suggestion does is punish the xenos more if their queen makes a mistake.

Not every queen death is due to poor play, but the vast majority are.

Well a queen dying should be a pretty big deal, right now it's a minor setback. The aliens have no "access a shuttle console" big oh shit moment that starts either the alien loss or a major comeback, if you get what I'm saying. I feel like having a queen die should be that sort of major event. Sorry, hard to explain my thoughts on this.

[ZDashe]

I feel that currently the queen dying is already a big deal. It is mitigated if the previous queen(s) were on point though. I.e. doing some of the following in advance.

1. No access to royal jelly
2. No access to new eggs/facehuggers
3. No screech tactics
4. No shuttle console access
5. No sense of direction? (losing the queen locator)
6. No orders? (Not an issue if other older Xenos are carrying and organizing the team instead of the queen)

These issues are worsened if it was a combat queen charging and screeching on the frontlines, because they would be crippling their own team and worsening points 1 to 4 after they die. It's frustrating that you can't get more hosts because there's no more facehuggers and newborns can't evolve after the 'bad' queen died. If it had been a decent queen, then yes it's only a minor setback.

[Warnipple]

Going to have to go with a -1 on this idea.

While the idea of a synapse effect would be very cool, similar to that of Tyranids or AVP2010 as you've quoted. It would be too harmful for aliens.

ZDashe in the post above made excellent points as to what happens when the Queen dies.

[Toroic]

The issue is that with xenos being anon, anyone can and does go queen, and unlike marines who can mutiny or ignore a shitty CO, xenos have to obey and rely on the queen for eggs and jelly.

So it is very easy to have someone as queen who is either trolling or incompetent, and there is nothing that the xeno team can do about it.

Generally a queen that dies has made a mistake, and more experienced and skilled queens rarely or ever die. Thus you're generally just having a xeno team already at a disadvantage due to a bad queen getting an additional punishment.

[NoahKirchner]

Alright, maybe not have it be that severe, but have some more stuff thrown in for flavour? Nothing that greatly effects the game, but more than "the queen is slain". Seems a bit weird to just have that when a queen dies, though I see your point on the current balance.

[Snypehunter007]

Pretty sure something like this was added.

Asking this to be locked.

[forwardslashN]

We did change the queen death to be more debilitating for the xenomorphs. Resolved for now, pending further tweaks.