Respawning monkeys

[RavingManiac]

Summary

Monkeys spawn at random points in the jungle if their population is below a certain level.

Benefits

Slow trickle of reinforcements for aliens. Marines discouraged from turtling, whether in the FOB or in the Sulaco. Encourages control of locations outside the FOB and alien nest.

Details

There are two big problems that can crop up over the course of a round.

The first is that the marines might turtle up in their heavilly-fortified FOB doing nothing, hoping for the aliens to willingly smash themselves against the defenses. If the aliens attack, they lose more than they gain. So the aliens don't attack, and the round drags on.

The second is that the aliens might find themselves with a low population and no way to replenish it even after winning a battle against the marines. The marines might be hiding in their fortified FOB, or might have evacuated to the Sulaco where an invading shuttle would be rapidly surrounded and crushed. At the same time, the marines gain reinforcements from players entering the server, while the aliens have no way to increase their numbers.

In either case, we get a stalemate. Neither the marines nor the aliens have a reason to attack, and the round may drag on for hours and hours. Staff intervention is frequently needed to get the marines to go back down after evacuating. The solution? Ensure that the aliens can slowly increase their population without having to attack the marines. By having monkeys respawn throughout the jungle, the aliens have a slow trickle of new hosts as long as they are not boxed into the caves. Not enough to completely supplant reproduction through capturing marines, but enough to ensure that the marines cannot hope defeat them through attrition alone. Instead, the marines must actively attack the aliens, or sweep the jungle to remove potential hosts. Turtling will no longer be an option.

Implementation

One potential issue is marines gaming the system by capturing monkeys alive. This could be resolved by having monkeys flee from humans which try to push, pull or grab them, or even making them automatically flee from humans entering a certain radius (if such would not cost too much processing power). Deliberately trapping monkeys will also be against the rules.

Monkeys will spawn on jungle tiles after checking that no human will see them.

[bruzok]

How often will the monkey spawn? Would they just spawn after it drops to a certain level?

[Joe4444]

neutral leaning on -1.The monkies are there to supply Xenos with hosts before the marines come. No matter what there's always gonna be 1 or 2 baldies wandering around on their own looking to kill a few. The only time this will never happen is when the marine force has a bunch of "veterans" who keep the baldies in check from straying too and even then 1 or 2 will slip through the cracks. The admins ALWAYS punish turtling when on with something like 5 IB teams or forcing them to go down. If marines win a battle, killing most of the hive the xenos shouldn't be able to replenish their numbers without taking lone marines.Also,9/10 times xenos have plenty of larva. Its not about giving them more. Its about getting more people to play them.

[tempchar]

-1 As Joe4444 said, xenos have plenty of larva, but not enough people to occupy all of them. You say that this change will discourage marines from turtling, but turtling is practically a death sentence for marines nowadays. The upgrade system makes it so that aliens get stronger over time, but marines remain the same in power because they have very few upgrades to their weapons and equipment. No matter where marines turtle, be it nexus or tcomms, aliens can gradually wear down marine defenses by melting walls and knocking down barricades.

[Eenkogneeto]

Xenos have /too many larva/ as is, So -1.
The first 2 hours of a round is reducing the amount of larva the ayys have so you can actually cause meaningful damage to the ayys.

[qDan]

Theres no way for marines to turtle game anymore because Elite Empress can solo yolo even dozen of well armed soldiers and with t2-t3 ancients its a matter of time to lose positions in passive defending. Another moment - free monkeys = double disbalance, because instead of capping tall hosts xenos will simply hide in caves while sending runners and hunters to bring more small hosts without risk they may die due to proposed lower limit for infinite monkey and subsequent infinite runner\hunter spawn. Second problem is that muhrinz wont get same thing to increase available numbers.

I like idea about running monkeys but its wont be really useful as well, because after marines will discover any hugged monkey it will become legit to kill them same as lore friendly suicide of infected muhrin, -1

[Snypehunter007]

Anyone still want this?

[Jroinc1]

-1.
I liked the idea, but I believe with the current boarding mechanics, it's no longer needed.

[Tisx]

-1

Would encourage marines to meta-rush to kill as many Xenos before they gain too many numbers.

[Snypehunter007]

Okay then.

Asking this to be locked.

[KingKire]

+1. Im personally a fan of having more aliens to fight, and this is honestly a great way to help keep the alien population up without harming the marines directly.

Having more aliens lives means aliens could:
- trade power for numbers. Less powerfull aliens overall at the boost of having more aliens
- alien lives matter less but players could find more enjoyment in trying new solutions. Ala Wiskey Outpost style. This also means ghosts have more chances of being in the game.
- Less of a need to harvest humans for respawning, so hugger/ nesting mechanics can be more balanced around a third generic element(monkeys) instead of a 1 to 1 trade off of either your losing aliens or your losing humans.

I am personally a big proponent of this game style/ theme, as i think it tends to match a little more with the ideas of the aliens series, as they are mindless waves of scary creatures that wear you down over time, slowly picking you off and theres not much you can do than watch that ammo counter tick down.

[Swagile]

Id +1 this if, in exchange, the tier system takes longer to take effect. For example, the more aliens there are, the harder it is to both upgrade and evolve into a greater tier (for example, tier 2 upgrade now taking 0/2000 instead of the 0/1000 we have now).

This would promote, as said above, more of a "wave" type gameplay similar to Whiskey Outpost. It would also make it so people are not as afraid of dying as a tier 1 runner or tier 2 hunter if it means they can easily just go back into a larvae and continue the charge.

This will also make it much more fun for marines, as they will have a constant amount of things to kill, instead of being bull dozed by the xenomorphs that have all waited till tier 2 ancient and tier 3 elite + just to do any major pushes / offences. It would also make turtling strategies more viable since going scouting out for the enemy is more likely to get you mobbed than sitting behind a barricade.

Sure you will have instances of aliens stalling, but why would they stall for HOURS just to do one fun thing? If ive learned anything from the marines side of things, no one wants to sit in a FOB for hours on end doing nothing. So this will encourage more exciting, low end combat instead of stalling strategies till aliens have gotten the big bad bois (T2 +) just to do one push.

[Toroic]

It's pretty false to think that xenos don't take damage as a team just because they have larva left.

Losing young runners is a very minor thing, losing a mature t3 or elite t2 is a big deal.

I personally don't enjoy or play WO, and frankly it seems like /only/ marine players like it. Given that xenos have a near 100% win rate on WO, it's definitely because xeno play has so much less depth on that map.

[Swagile]

It's pretty false to think that xenos don't take damage as a team just because they have larva left.

Losing young runners is a very minor thing, losing a mature t3 or elite t2 is a big deal.

I personally don't enjoy or play WO, and frankly it seems like /only/ marine players like it. Given that xenos have a near 100% win rate on WO, it's definitely because xeno play has so much less depth on that map.

My biggest gripe with WO is the lack of communication between xeno players.

Its more of a "rush as fast as possible" type deal and hope you kill and/or maim someone before you die while later waves are stupid easy because of low effort elite / ancient T2's and handfuls of T3's. While the marines are always talking in the early game and it becomes less talking and more frantic shooting / grenading in later waves due to the onslaught of high level xenos.

In a normal round your able to talk to your fellow hive and think up strategies / group up together, and rounds tend to last a lot longer than WO. You are also rewarded for teamwork unlike WO where you don't even have to hugger people or evolve; it will just auto spawn T2 + for you on later stages.

Basically WO is more of the pure deathmatch gamemo

[Toroic]

My biggest gripe with WO is the lack of communication between xeno players.

Its more of a "rush as fast as possible" type deal and hope you kill and/or maim someone before you die while later waves are stupid easy because of low effort elite / ancient T2's and handfuls of T3's. While the marines are always talking in the early game and it becomes less talking and more frantic shooting / grenading in later waves due to the onslaught of high level xenos.

In a normal round your able to talk to your fellow hive and think up strategies / group up together, and rounds tend to last a lot longer than WO. You are also rewarded for teamwork unlike WO where you don't even have to hugger people or evolve; it will just auto spawn T2 + for you on later stages.

Basically WO is more of the pure deathmatch gamemo

Like you said, there's no reward or arguably a need to coordInate, I actually wonder if xenos would have an easier time winning by simply not playing at all until round 7

[InterroLouis]

Like you said, there's no reward or arguably a need to coordInate, I actually wonder if xenos would have an easier time winning by simply not playing at all until round 7

Isn't the next wave delayed until they're all dead?

[KingKire]

Like you said, there's no reward or arguably a need to coordInate, I actually wonder if xenos would have an easier time winning by simply not playing at all until round 7

Before we get off topic, lets remember that WO has a large amount of fundamental gameplay differences compared to Regular Colony maps, and that there are a large amount of different items that make those differences then just spawn numbers.

-Rerails thought train.

[Wubs4Scrubs]

Pretty big -1

Aliens shouldn't be getting easy reinforcements like monkeys in the later game as that's what the marines are there for. If the aliens are losing and they aren't able to capture and infect marines they should lose the round. A change like this would essentially be the same as giving marines guaranteed reinforcements when they get pushed back to the Sulaco.

[Snypehunter007]

Old topic; lack of support.

Locking.