Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

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Challenger
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Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by Challenger » 07 Nov 2017, 03:17

Tired of the fact that the marine SD meta rewards just stacking a bunch of sentries in the SD instead of any actual tactics/strategy/skill involving shipwide defences? Well this will teach you a foolproof strategy to crack that bunker open or your plasma back. We'll start with looking at some maps.

This is the self destruct from the alien POV, you can't really know what happens in the backroom but you should be able to see everything on this image once you've started attacking the defences.
Image

Essentially 90% of the time marines are gonna pack into the SD and make some barricades facing the aliens and some sentry turrets behind them and take advantage of the five-tile-long chokepoint to destroy aliens that are on their way to attacking the line of barricades.

Image

This is effective because, well, there's no way around this chokepoint. They can't melt the outer hull at the sides, they have to charge down it and then back out, which will get them shredded by the autocannons as well as whatever grab bag of tricks the marines provide, whether fire, grenades, or just a regular old bullet storm.

So how do you defeat the turrets? Let's look at it caste by caste, from most useful to least useful.

Boiler

You're THE hard counter to marine entrenchment and fortification, if the xenos lack even a single boiler their job is much harder. Before sieging the SD defence head on, make sure you melt the walls and airlocks guarding its entrance to give the aliens as much mobility as possible when attacking. Once you're done, set yourself up at the back and begin nonstop launching globs of gas at the front lines. Gas has a shit ton of reasons why it's the single best tool the xeons have to offer.
  • It breaks line of sight between turrets and any xenos in the gas, making the turrets unable to shoot.
  • It directly damages barricades that it spreads to.
  • It forces marines away from the front barricades, preventing them from shooting back at the aliens or repairing the barricades.
These three benefits combined make it easy for xenos to go into the gas and attack/melt barricades, with each fallen barricade one step closer to the xenos overrunning the defence. You have the choice of using either neuro or acid, you will usually want to use neuro because that one extra tile of spread is invaluable for blocking LOS and forcing marines away, but if you can time it right, you can acid marines who have just been knocked over by the queen's screech. You can also walk through your own gas to melt the barricades and piss on marines if you really need to, but you're very fragile and really shouldn't.

Queen

As the queen, your main job is to coordinate the attack. There is one order that you HAVE to give:

Order the T1s and T2s (except carrier) to stay away from the siege, they do far more harm than good. This will be explained later in their own section but T1s/T2s are unironically the main reason why xenos fail to siege the SD 80% of the time.

You'll also want to order xenos to stop blocking the crusher's charges, tell them when you're going to screech, make sure the strongest xenos (including you) are emitting different pheromones, etc., Once you're done that, start screeching regularly; this knocks down marines, but not sentries, so you'll only have a few seconds before you become yellow paste. Take the precious few seconds you have, to melt or slash the defences. Give yourself breathing room to pull out early, or a runner will inevitably bodyblock you into your untimely death. Note that the marines have to SEE you to knock them down, if you're hidden in gas, screeching does NOTHING except alert the marines that they can hug the cades now without risking being knocked over and killed.

Crusher

Crush through the hull of the middle lane of the reactor room and just keep assaulting the barricades. You're not immune to the autocannons, but you're the most resilient xeno to them. Just keep crushing over and over, nothing to it, feel free to slash the barricade you're assaulting as well if you got the health to burn. If a xeno is in crit or being grenade stunlocked, it's your job to pull them to safety. Otherwise just keep crushing.

Ravager

You can destroy barricades the fastest of any xeno, but will absolutely melt to any concentrated armor piercing gunfire (autocannons, smartguns) so you need to only attack when there's good gas cover or another xeno is tanking shots, and charge away as quick as possible. You're also fast and somewhat resilient enough to quickly pull crit xenos back, so you'll want to do that as well. Otherwise, stay out of the fight. You also have a bit more reason to attack when the marines are using flame.

Praetorian

You're more armored than the ravager, but slower with really bad slash damage, and your spit is worthless against barricades. Keep your pheromones up, melt barricades when they're gassed, and pull back crit xenos, but otherwise STAY OUT OF THE WAY, at best you're only blocking more efficient xenos from attacking the barricades, at worst you're blocking them from retreating because you're a big T3 so they can't push you away, and you're SLOW so you can't move out of the way either.

Carrier: honorable T1/T2 mention

You're actually decently useful when there's gas cover or right after a screech, as you can throw huggers into the marine lines which usually don't die because of the sheer chaos, resulting in a multi minute stun / distracts marines shaking up the hugged marine. Other than that, once you've expended your huggers, you are just another T1/T2.

Why T1s/T2s do more harm than good:
  • You have no health
  • You have no slash damage (except hunters)
  • You have no speed (except runners/hunters)
  • You have no/weak acid (except spitters)
  • You have no useful abilities
which all combined means that you do practically 0 damage to barricades, but more importantly

YOU BODYBLOCK BETTER XENOS, WHICH KILLS THEM/MAKES THEM USELESS/WASTES THEIR TIME AND DELAYS OVERRUNNING THE SD

Every time a young runner, mature sentinel, even ancient hunter attacks the barricades they are fucking their team over. There's no other way for me to put it after watching dozens of SD defences. If I could hit a button when I reached the SD as a queen that exploded every T1/T2, I would hit it without question. So anyway:

At BEST, if you attack the lines AHEAD of the other xenos as a T1/T2 you simply wasted the gas/screech for this cycle by preventing the actual useful damage dealing/melting T3s from attacking the barricades so that you could feel good about getting those two hits into the barricades as a young drone. You'll often land into crit before reaching safety too, making other xenos retrieve and pull you to safety, which either makes them bodyblock even more xenos doing this, or if they're T3s themselves, makes them take damage delaying their next attack. Often the xeno pulling you lands into crit itself, which just cascades the problem even more that wouldn't exist if you just kept your claws to yourself and stayed behind the lines.

But usually you do even worse than that:

Far too often, if you arrive at the lines AFTER the T3s, you are PHYSICALLY BLOCKING THEM FROM MOVING (bodyblocking). T3s under fire from turrets sometimes have a margin of less than a second to pull back after they slash/melt/crush/etc, if they fall into crit while attacking they are pretty much guaranteed to die. Every bullshit young runner and mature hivelord going to the front because they want to feel useful, is one more xeno that needs to be pushed aside by a T3 that wants to leave before it gets popped, as well as one more xeno standing between a T3 in danger of crit and the rav/queen/prae/etc that can save it by pulling it back without dying itself.

So instead, what can you do to be useful?
  • Wait until there's a breach in the lines and, at an appropriate moment, rush into the back of the SD to distract and kill the defending marines and turrets that aren't on 360. This is actually where you're the most useful, and often starts a chain reaction of everyone piling in to slaughter the room that otherwise wouldn't happen because xenos are too scared of dying alone without effect.
  • Suicide charge the front lines to shower the marines in acid as you explode to the autocannons.
  • Expanding on the above, suicide charge them to tank the autocannon bursts before a bigger T3 comes along. IMPORTANT: do NOT retreat when you're low health, keep standing there so that you explode, because if you fall into crit you're going to waste other xenos' time/lives dragging you back when the whole point was for you to give the T3s extra time by tanking damage for them.
  • At APPROPRIATE moments, ie when the T3s aren't all scrambling over each other to escape, go up and weed the hall, or melt a barricade at the side, or pull back a crit xeno that's already out of visual range of the defenders.
  • Stay young as a runner/sent/spitter/hunter so that you can evolve when a T3 slot opens up. Stay alive as a drone for when the queen dies.
  • Just ghost and watch the SD defence instead.
Thanks for reading the guide, hopefully this makes just a bit more impact on how xenos decide to attack so that we can stop the meta of just camping the SD with endless turrets.
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by taketheshot56 » 07 Nov 2017, 03:24

fucking race traitor! Abandoning marines for xenos!!!!


Nice guide tbqh I wish some xenos knew how to assault the SD.
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by misterjoper » 07 Nov 2017, 03:36

I knew all of this.But this guide actually to inspire giving orders to tier 1 and tier 2 to stay back and Ahelp everyone doing it wrong unless they drag pain critted sister.Nah i think even that won't stap baldiness
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by Karmac » 07 Nov 2017, 03:44

Camping SD with turrets isnt a meta its literally the single most successful strategy marines have devised since over a year ago; "protect the area with automated guns that hit harder and are more accurate than any one of you shitty grunts"
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by Steelpoint » 07 Nov 2017, 04:02

Holding the SD room is the most 'fun' thing for the Marines to do.

Its the only task you can do that can result in a unique outcome, it has some In Universe justification (stop the xenos from spreading or something) and it's actually viable. There's is no real other holdout location that is safe, viable, or has a end goal that is not dying. Escaping on a escape pod is great until you realise you just get to sit out of the round for half an hour, I still prefer the Escape Pods but you can understand why a lot of people prefer the SD holdout.
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by WinterClould » 07 Nov 2017, 05:03

How could you wound marines like this you monster.

Hot tip for boilers (and kinda marines as well). Try and see where the sentries are shooting from. Sometimes marines will be smart and put a cheeky sentry above or bellow the SD rooms doors. If they do that sometimes your clouds won't block their line of sight and your T3's using your cloud as cover wont actually have full protection, which will cause them to run away like little cowards. Try and "aim" the best you can to land your shots in anyway that blocks those suckers. (plz don't actually listen to me I want muhreens to win plox)

Marines totally if you have more then one sentry, put one above or bellow the SD rooms doors. Plenty of boilers wont notice and won't try to block it with their clouds. Lots of Crushers/Rav's get super spooked when a turret opens up on them when they didn't think one could.
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by Butlerblock » 07 Nov 2017, 09:45

Elite/ancient hunters are actually amazing for sieges, at least personally. Along as the front barricade is broken, it's usually not hard to run behind the sentries and start slashing, and you'll usually get 1-2 sentries destroyed, which leads up to the extremely soon downfall of SD
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by Reuben Owen » 16 Nov 2017, 11:58

ok so this is all you have to do if you have a boiler and an okay queen

1. Queen puts up Guard Phermones
2. Boiler shoots
3. Queen goes into the cloud, screeches, and attacks 1 barricade enough to break it
4. Queen retreats back to heal up

repeat until you break enough barricades that you've broken through their line then you can either go ham or wait for the other xenos to rush in
I play Xeno 99% of the time. All castes.

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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by Blade2000Br » 02 Dec 2017, 19:18

I have played enough on holding the SD and I gotta say, even with one sentry, you can hold pretty well if you put the right row of barricades.

This forces the aliens to break row after row after row before reaching the sentries, which end up with enough time to activate all rods once the barricades fall.
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by Simo94 » 02 Dec 2017, 20:09

I wish they would remove that SD room trash, what reason is there to put a self destruct system on a ship? what the fuck? and its not fun anyways, get rid of it so people just fight xenos head on, for better or for worse, I personally get 500x more fun fighting xenos( or as a xeno) in briefing or medbay or hangar or ANYWHERE ELSE that isnt SD for 5 rounds in a row
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by WinterClould » 02 Dec 2017, 20:17

Simo94 wrote:
02 Dec 2017, 20:09
I wish they would remove that SD room trash, what reason is there to put a self destruct system on a ship? what the fuck?
Having an SD room on a military ship makes a TON of sense. Scuttling of ships to prevent capture by the enemy is a LONG historical tradition in navies everywhere.

Not having a dedicated self destruct system on the ship would naturally lead to the crew of the ship making their own no matter the cost. Like back on the Sulaco when people would blow up the engines taking half the ship with it.
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by Jroinc1 » 02 Dec 2017, 20:25

WinterClould wrote:
02 Dec 2017, 20:17
Not having a dedicated self destruct system on the ship would naturally lead to the crew of the ship making their own no matter the cost. Like back on the Sulaco when people would blow up the engines taking half the ship with it.
Can't do that anymore, anything engineering-related/massively destructive was removed.
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by Troika » 25 Mar 2018, 17:34

What stops the queen from just ordering everyone back off the ship and letting the idiot marines blow themselves up?
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by WinterClould » 25 Mar 2018, 18:40

Troika wrote:
25 Mar 2018, 17:34
What stops the queen from just ordering everyone back off the ship and letting the idiot marines blow themselves up?
Admins, meta, the fact marines would disable SD if the xenos left or atleast wouldn't trigger it.

A Queen that did that would get a Jobban though, so don't go doing that or suggesting it.
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by Weaselburg » 04 Apr 2018, 15:30

One question. Stay young to evolve? That is not a thing. You upgrade and can only evolve at Mature+.
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by Butlerblock » 04 Apr 2018, 15:39

Guide was made before queen changed, which came with the automatic upgrade. Not sure if you were here but upgrading used to be manual, and you couldn’t evolve after upgrading.
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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by JacksonDee » 03 May 2018, 04:05

I have to say, Ancient Hunters can break cades in three slashes, and high evolution queens can do it in a similar amount. Ancient hunters can make an SD attack go like butter if they just focus down barricades.

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Re: Guide to attacking the self-destruct as xeno.

Post by Chaznoodles » 04 May 2018, 18:14

As a note, acid spit is anything but useless against barricades. Just keep shooting it and it'll destroy the cade in no time.

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