although some of these things will carry over to alpha BUT SOME DONT SO TAKE READING THIS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT
LARVA - "AM BORN"
- you are a larva. a worm. you are lower then pond scum and probably smell worse.
- literally all you will do is wait to be one of the 3 big ol aliums, usually afking, this takes a little bit of time but can be twice as fast by being on some weeds
- make sure you use your hide in your alium tab, because wynaut I mean its there
- a cool little note is that if there are multiple nests next to each other you will basically be invisible moving between them (assuming your hide is on), a pity you still cant do anything
- if for some reason you spawn in the midst of a bunch of marines, run/flee/toggle hide and run between their feet into the nearest vent, you usually need lightning
reflexes to pull this off, but no one would blame you if you died, usually this can be pulled off on the sulaco if they didn't weld the vent
- really besides that, you shouldn't die as a larva. EVER.
- if you need a safe place to hide and wait to evolve away from the queen/hive area, go to chapel and hide under one of the chairs on the weeds or go into cargo bay (with the 2 monkeys), both places are safe enough and have weeds naturally so you can retain your faster growth... or just literally go anywhere under a chair or a table
RUNNER - marine:"GUYS I GOT ONE"
- you are a sonic. a hedgehog. you can approach speeds of mach 10 and GOTTA GO FAST
- you have a neat-o ability called pounce (25 plasma), this lets you insta-knock down one puny human
- your damage is /ok/ but your better off disarming 99.99% of the time unless its the inevitable endofthegame killingspree
- how2getmarines as a lowly runner:
-get 2 huggers (one in each hand or claw or whatever it is)
-run around
-find a human by themselves
-pounce
-apply both huggers to the face, if you do it fast enough you can get them before they shout the inevitable "HELP AT ___"
-grab intent them, upgrade it and click yourself to swallow em
-after you bring them to wherever nest and regurgitate, whisper "ayy lmao" repeatedly
-if for some reason you couldnt get the second hugger on them and they are running away, chase and clickspam pounce again and apply the second one, or the first one if you sucked, pounce recharges fast enough for you to multi pounce
-if they have a riot shield like the criminal scum they are, just ignore em and call your friends over (or go after easier targets first) to party, its pretty risky (read: dont do it) to pounce guys w/riot shield by yourself, it has a chance to instead stun you and you'll probably die because your shit
- back in the day, runners could actually plant weeds (gasp!) and could sneak onto the shuttle with humans and singlehandidly run around their station and make their life a living nightmare because THEY WILL NEVER FUCKING CATCH YOU EVER. you can still do it now, but its admittedly harder without bring able to plant a single weed which means you cant heal if you get hit which means you will inevitably die, still worth it if you can bring over a facehugger or two
- dont slash APCs/electrified grills as a runner EVER, you shouldn't be doing it anyway, but as a runner the shock will send you into crit =/= death
- you wanna be cool and get all the girls? see that pack of marines sitting together havin a tea party in arrivals? run straight through them, its almost guaranteed that one of the marines will shoot another one. watch and laugh from a safe distance as they rage at each other! classic! it also allows you to 'hurt' marines even if killing isnt allowed, neat
-one method of 'attack' for runners is to literally just run into marines and push them around, it really messes up ones trying to get a turret gun into position or pulling an injured man and pushing around a big group results in them screwing each other up as they panic to shoot you and its hilarious to watch them shoot each other :3
- remember you are the fastest thing in the game, THE FASTEST
- dont engage multiple marines by yourself, you can halt them by lurkin around a corner but dont be a hero, be a alium
- you CAN engage multiple if you know what your doing, just peak around long enough to hug one to knock off their helmets, one by one, don't actually bother to facehug them as others will just rip it right back off, but its always beneficial to helmet knock off for later assaults
- if you do this make sure you have at least 3 different escape routes cos they'll chase after you in a pack
- conversely, never get cornered as a runner its DEATH
- sometimes if the marines are being scrubs and hiding in bridge and actually not dying, consider running in there and just hugging one, even if you die (which you will) it'll speed up the game in the long run, as they shouldn't be able to get the larva out and it'll kill the guy in 20 mins or somthing
- without weeds you kinda suck in hit taking, way more then you did before, like 2 pistol shots send u into crit =/= death, one shotgun at close range off weeds will crit you too... so try to stay in weed areas, and be sneaky on non weed areas
WARRIOR - marine: "HELP"
- you are a samurai. a bushido. you have no swords and probably won't get to hurt any humans because you'll evolve again before the end game point (except ravagers
suck dick now, so DON'T EVOLVE) but whatever, you dont give a shit your a goddam ninja
-you can turn 'invisible' by switching from run to walk, be aware that this uses up plasma but it does pretty slow, esp if your already on weeds, and your only 90%
transparent which means if theres a squinting asian marine, you may be spotted
-if you face north (upwards) while invisible and are on weeds you are pretty much unseeable, even the asians have their limits!
-being invisible kinda sucks and has no value!
-but your still invisible, and can do certain things when invisible if you have some patience, and you CAN apply huggers while invisible, so if a group of marines walk by, invisibly apply a hugger, wait a second, toggle run and RUN (or go in a vent)
-you are not as fast as a runner, cry pitifully
-however, you are the next fastest thing in the game and still outspeed marines, plus you can actually NOT DIE, you have maybe 3 times as much health? i dunno exactly but its a lot more... see that one guys guide for numeric details > viewtopic.php?f=94&t=2147
-basically you can do the same thing as a runner for stratagy, but you can be less cautious and can pounce/facehug someone if theres only 1 other guy there, and then even pounce on him too! (maybe)
- DONT EVOLVE TO RAVAGER
- warriors are also the only one of their line that have enough plasma to unweld vents, so if you can you may as well
RAVAGER - "BLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDD"
- see below for new edited info
- you are a TREX. a k- BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD GRAWRRRRRR. you are pretty freaking sweet and WANT ALL THE BLOOD
- you have sacrificed everything. speed. invisiblity. ventcrawling. pouncing! all for the glory which is the glorious 2 hit box, yes your melee range is 2 squares! diagnolly, vertical, horizontal, the world is your oyst- OH FUCK ITS GONE
- so ok, you accidentally turned into a ravager, watdo
- you get a new ability called charge, it costs no plasma but it SUX DICKS and is more likely to get you killed dont use it
- what charge does is just makes you run at about runner speed towards a target and disarm them once, if there was a table or something in the way you'll disarm the table instead (it may break)
- such health. much damage. wow.-
-HOLY FUCK THEY JUST NERFED HIS MELEE RANGE TO 1 SQUARE GODDAMIT
-just use warrior from now on, theres no point to use this guy.
(for now)- even as a ravager tho, you still work as the best guard for a hive with a single point of entry (read: xeno) since marines can't spook you away with flamethrowers, your immune! yes its boring as fuck but that means the hive stays safe and boring, as it should be
SENTINEL - "fine ill guard"
- you are the beginning of the long road to the acid king. your kinda cool and do acid related stuff
- like a drone, you can spit weak acid on stuff (100 plasma), weapons, you name it
- unlike a drone, you cant plant weeds, instead you can spit acid (ew)
- it costs 75 plasma to spit 'weak acid' it has a cooldown time similar to runner/warriors pounce, it knocks down at a distance and aims automatically (if the option is toggled) to the closest person in a straight line, so make sure they are in your line of fire
- also like pounce it knocks them down for a bit, enough to apply huggers to the face
- now don't get me wrong, ranged attacks are neat but there are some downsides (and upsides) compared to poucing as a runner
- the biggest one is that it doesn't have a true garunteed success rate like runners does, you can 'miss' if they move quickly or may aim for the wrong thing like that dead monkey next to you
- the upside is this is way better for starting attacks on a group of marines, knocking one down from a distance will allow everyone else to more easily swarm in and take the maroons down
- however 1v1 against marines, you can generally do as good as a runner/warrior couldve
- the spit has one cool feature, YOU CAN KNOCK DOWN GUYS WITH RIOT SHIELDS. yeah fuk that sht
SPITTER - "ive seen some shit"
- you are the coolest tier to the acid king. your pretty cool and probably don't need to evolve until endgame when marines are being pussies and you need superacid asap but w/e
- you have the second highest plasma regen rate, and since you can't build or plant weeds, the main thing you'll be doing besides shootin marines with your acid is using acid to destroy everything, walls doors flares, its all your prey, especially useful at marine base things
- for some reason you even regen plasma faster than the queen, you are the second fastest next to hivelord (or third if you count empress), if there's no hivelord around consider yourself as one and give the queen your delicious gunk
PRAETORIAN - "git gud"
- you are the acid king. you are the undisputed master of acid related systems
- the main gimmick of praetorians is their SUPER MEGA ACID OF DOOM (cost 300 plasma) that burns through anything in around 10 seconds or so, including reinforced walls making that pretty special and useful as fuck, especially endgame when that time goes down and marines put down 200 walls between you and them
- for some reason they have a worse plasma regen rate then spitter, which sucks since they would like to spam super acid all day, but na
- otherwise they play the same as a spitter, gaining nothing else new but a bit more health/damage
- as a bonus they have a slightly smaller big form then hivelords, queens, and ravagers
- however, they still don't want to turn into praes from spitters until endgame, as ventcrawling is 2gud and spitters get more plasma
- generally praes stay away from the frontlines, spitting at scrubs, but their main thing is superacid, used on pussy marine forts to turn them into juice in seconds
DRONE - "HOSTS ESCAPING I NED BACKUP"
- you are a princess- i mean a potential queen -i mean w/e ur cool
- look ok, I know you wanna evolve right away to a hivelord/carrier but there are a bunch of fucking reasons why you shouldn't, especially if its a big game (think 40+ people)
-drones are still really fucking useful the whole game as they can ventcrawl unlike hivelords/quen who get fucked over when trying to plant in nonweed areas by batches of fresh marines eager for a alium kill
-carriers are the same, plus they kinda steal all the facehuggers
-basically don't have more then 2 (of each) carrier/hivelord at a time, the rest can be drones still
-if you don't have enough drones to be 2, you should have one drone, there should always be at least one drone around, consider drones the staples of the xeno diet, and hivelords/ carriers the dessert...and the rest are just spices
-this means that if there is only one drone, that drone should stay a drone (in most situations), not become a hivelord or god forbid a carrier, the queen does not have time to build forticifation thats your job, especially if you become a carrier while she has no drones, and beg her for eggs it'll just piss her off
- yes drones can 'hunt' too and should always carry 1 hugger around in off-hand for such an occasion (usually they aren't hunting, but weeding outside the nest and you see a lone marine), simply knock down a marine, walk on them and build a nest/nest em (has to be kinda quick), remove their hat though the menu and apply hugger, simple enough
- you could carry 2 huggers but 1 is more efficient, since then you don't have to drop 24/7 to get through one door every time or smash a light
-most importantly: (and the following goes for hivelords/queens too, I'm gonna but all building related stuff under drone unless it specifies to hivelord/queen)
-DONT BE A JEW WITH NESTS, this helps no one. if you have 5 marines caught and you have exactly 5 nests and one escapes and releases all the others your fucked, its like playing with a jigsaw trying to put them back in the one nest still unoccupied espeically if another runner comes over with a host and just lays it down, you don't want to give them time to use c4 or some shit AND its important to have your nests pre-up before the marines start comming over, you can't really afford to be spamming knock down to all of them while trying to make 6 nests while other xenos are pulling marines around to the other nests that they see far away, nests are the best deterrent to marines entering a hive PROVIDED they know theres a alien there, they'll stall marines for so long, especially compared to something like doorspam, it'll help you wait out the marines/warn the others if there are hosts nesting behind you. remember, the main point of defending is to KEEP THE MARINES OUT, you don't need to bother with them yet, wait until you got more fellows behind you and if you /do/ need to defend make a wall in front of them repeatedly, walls will slow them down for a good long while especially in bulk, that doesn't mean make every square between you and the marines a wall, make the key spot (usually a door or w/e) into a wall, and if they break it down remake it in that same spot, that way you don't waste any plasma or anything, the rest of the floor should be nests n' shit, plus walls fuck up their bullet usage
- really, your hive should have /at least/ 10 nests or so spread out, not including any defensive nests
-AND DONT DOOR SPAM, its annoying as fuck to walk though AND it doesn't hamper marines at all, they'll mow through it with time with no fear, because they're just doors. which means since you don't wanna be in the middle of all thoses doors you'll be at the far end just watching the marines as they come closer. a pattern of door/nest/door would be much more efficient (especially in those 1 square wide maitnence parts of the station), if you need to. nests are much scarier to marines then a door. walls actually 'block' them too since they have twice or so as much health, and thats before you even take a hivelords wall into consideration, so if you need to actually 'block' marines use a wall ITS WHAT THEY ARE FOR NOT A DOOR, lol and they have twice as much health or a hivelords door has 4x as much health as a drones door, which means marines have to waste 4x as much bullets on it
-drones are also the best at 'bothering' marines since they can acid, weed, and ventcrawl, a lone sneaky drone can really annoy marines at their base and make them waste time looking for the drone and weld and put more walls etc, which you'll just end up aciding away. try not to die while doing this and assist any other castes nearby by givin em weeds
- yes, drones are usually the best when it comes to unwelding vents, remember to be helpful to your fellow aliums
- oh... as a starting game drone... make sure to weed the hallways, jesus
- a starting drone should make sure that at least the main hallways (central, arrivals, and escape halls) are weeded, this should be what your doing while your waiting for the queens eggs to develop into huggers
HIVELORD - "I'm bored"
-you are a super drone. and a gas station. you have all the plasma and doesn't afraid of anything
-the 'unique' ability of the hivelord is too make doors and walls that have twice the ammount of health, meaning they are even better for not letting marines pass
through and shit LIKE HOLY FUCK MAKE INFINITE WALLS AND MAKE MARINES WASTE SHIT HAHAHAHA SCRUBS, best of all its not against the rules to wall spam, just make sure you don't get in other aliums way if you wanna do it
-while not unique, your plasma regeneration rate gets you all the bitches and makes the queens dick hard as diamonds, if plasma was currency you would be the richest nigga on the streetz buyin hoes
-anyway, stick near the queen and give her lots and lots of plasma erry minute so she stays happy and egg laying, you could literally cover the whole station in eggs
if you really wanted to
-give the queen bursts of around 300 plasma, you don't need to give her more, let alone 1000 since she can't even hold that much
-the most amount of hivelords you should have is 2, one for building near wherever the queens nest is and one for putting nests and weeds and doors all over the place, and dissolving shit too
-ideally, drones can do everything you can, walk faster than you AND ventcrawl, so if they just ventcrawled to you to get plasma, ventcrawl away to plant and return you'd never have to leave or risk yourself with your abysmal speed, but you would get bored like that so feel free to do it yourself (and die)
- generally, feed the queen plasma earlygame, use plasma yourself to build stuff midgame,
CARRIER - "MOTHER LAY EGGS PLEASE"
-you are the facehugger incarnate. you use all 10 facehuggers just to knock off a helmet. what a pro.
-yes carriers are neat and all
QUEEN - "THERES YOUR FUCKING JELLY NOW SHUTUP"
- you are a queen. a empress. you are that which all the other aliums look up to and need to survive.
-a good queen can make up for an abysmal everything else. a bad queen will ruin the game. a GREAT queen can solo lots of marines by themselves if they know what they're doing and the marines r semibad
- so you evolved into a queen. what do? START WITH U MAKE EGGS INFINITE EGGS. DONT TALK BACK WHEN U COULD BE EGG LAYING
- really, eggs should be the first thing you do, forget moving monkeys to the hive or building nests, eggs are first since they need time to actually take effect, once you put down some eggs then worry about making your hive... and make more eggs while working on the hive too
- your waifu is the hivelord, a good hivelord and queen will basically stick together4ever and the hivelord giving her all the plasma. all of them like a portable gas station
-your screech is goddam lethal, no little pussy bio-helmet riot-shield wielding faggot is gonna mess with you, stuns them and makes them drop whatevers in their hands, if you can have a bunch of nests nearby and other aliens to help knock them all down/ drag them to nests then remove all that shit and facehug at leisure
-for example if you had a bunch of nests in the hallway in front of xeno, and you screech the group of marines standing on top of them as they try to break in, you should nab a good number of them where they stand
-this is more of a general thing but its queen-specific so I'm putting it here, about allowing killing of marines, generally there are a few situations where queen should allow:
-if its endgame and aliens are plainly winning/have flown over to marine base and you have a fuckton of aliens (more then 10 generally)
-if the aliens at any point (generally early game) are getting their hivenests raped by huge numbers of marines and therefore, keep losing all their precious huggers, you'll need to kill some otherwise a: they'll fearlessly find your next nest and kill all the huggers there while b: re-resaving any hugged people you managed to save. If this sorta shit happens allowing killing and manage and hugged people in secluded small areas where the queen isn't
-using facehuggers is still decent since it knocks out marines/makes them unable to move talk i.e. easy ded, don't let them rage-bully you LOOC to stop killing them, keep at it its totally allowed (as long as killing is allowed)
-likewise, killing infected is also okay IF THE QUEEN SAYS, also as the queen you can slash whoever you feel like whenever you feel like... although you shouldnt do it unless one of the marines is somehow running around for tree fiddy minutes in your hive and pissing you off
General Alien tips -
- Depending on the amount of people on the server you'll need more or less nests to hold all of them in a secure area, so if 60 people are on you might need more than 4 nests in xeno. or 20.
- good places to put facehugged people if current nest isn't secure/ no one cba to watch/ don't trust drones to not suck
-kitchen (#2 vent) pretty decent spot, the hosts will be able to tell will they are and so will call for help, but no one will have access so they'll have to hack in or break down a wall, as a bonus, you don't need a nest to hold them in
-chapel office (#2 vent)
-AI areas
-the best place to put someone, if you are a drone/can pester a drone to help you find any out of the way spot and make a nest, surround it with walls on 4 sides so the marine can't tell where they are, or 3 walls and one door that doesn't lead the right way, so if they do break out of they waste time going the wrong way
-NESTS ARE GOD, imagine the possibilities of a nest on every tile! runners instant knockdown AND seal their escape! its so beautiful! although if you wanna have a chance in hell of pulling this off you need 2 starting round hivelords who know what they're doing
-technically the best xeno hive would be all drones, since they can do everything the other classes can and plant weeds n' shit, but not everyone is good at being a combat drone (lol) so this isn't a option
- if you are in critical, you can still commune with the hive (:a talk) even if you can't see your own chat, so tell them where you are/ try to not die
- if you are in critical and not on weeds, you will slowly lose health and die over time, so... hope someone helps you or something
WHAT TO DO IF YOU FIND YOURSELF ON THE MARINE SHIP ACCIDENTALLY (it happens to the best of us)
- first, look at your class, if you are a alien of the
-runner family
-sentinel family
- you are basically fucked, since you can't plant weeds AT ALL and have no way of getting to them (back in the day a runner could plant weeds =/= live forever solo harassing the marines)
- but still you can pounce/ facescratch them until you die
- anyway ask the queen to bring you back, unless you wanna ALLAHU SNACKBAR
- however if you are a drone, you're going to have a good time, provided you can get off the ship without getting caught, run to the nearest vent and either lie low somewhere or immediately start weeding all over the place, the main thing you'd wanna do first is acid some walls, since it'll allow you to get from one side of the station to the other if the vents are compromised, make sure to have fun breaking all those lights :3
WHAT TO DO IF YOU FIND YOURSELF BORED EARLYGAME
- so for some reason you don't wanna plant weeds around the station, or they have all been planted (lolyeaok) or dont wanna bother marines, here are some things you can do, all classes can do at least a few of these things, but more need drone or sentinel
- BREAK ALL THE LIGHTS
- make nests all over the place for infinite insta-nest opportunities
- head over to the singulo engine and push around/pull the pieces into one jigsaw the marines will LOVE :3
- if you have enough plasma capacity (120) find any welded vents and unweld em, its simple but really helpful later on, you never know if that was the one vent a runner was trying to reach only to find it sealed just like his fate with those marines chasing him
-break windows and grilles
-*roar at marines 2spooky
-acid any welded doors/ random (nonspace) walls that'll let you run around more
-move huggers from nest area to backup area, or just put them in random spots marines will run into. Its actually really good to spread out huggers into anywhere, remember that if you put a hugger on a square it means you won't see a marine in that same spot (at least until the hugger is destroyed) so they can act like motion sensors/walls/guards etc; in small numbers this isn't really noticeable, but if you do it with a looot of huggers you may find a couple a lone marines chilling on the floor with a hugger on their head
sorry for no proper sentences
feel free to comment and I might add or remove stuff
