My Badass Hive Guide (And something about being a decent alien)

[chaplin]

A young Hivelord named 134 in fact died during the making of this short guide.

I end up playing aliens quite a lot, many times I will play as the Queen. I love strategy games, especially city builders. So to no surprise my tastes and experiences reflect in my style of game-play. I love to build a big badass defensible hive like it is some kind of Dungeon Keeper game. Usually if the marines win it is in the early or mid stages of a round, as when a round is longer in play that usually coincides with the aliens attempting to uproot the marines from their big metal bird, thus the hive is irrelevant at that point. Certainly marines can still win at this last stand stage of the game, but what is a pivotal time frame for most rounds is that early to mid game transition phase when the aliens start trying to leave their hive and expand into the colony. (Having exhausted all the furry hosts, this becomes necessary to capture more hosts... if they aren't coming to you already that is).

So like the marine's own last stand situation on the Sulaco, the aliens essentially start off playing hide and go seek with the marines struggling to survive any large (and usually uncoordinated) attacks on their hive. Marines may establish the table fort and if they get a strong enough foothold this is where the meatiest game play takes place in my mind. The battle of Waterloo if you will. The marines are on the prime of their offensive and the aliens eagerly await their advances (usually) from the caves.

However a picture referencing my work in fortifying my hive as the hive lord for the round shows our hive to be centered out of the crashed shuttle. Which gives me the perfect grounds to explain my strategy since it is surrounded by open fields excluding the strange temple containing caves just to the east. (Which won't be pictured but I'll have you know I also fortified the duck out of, I say this because as I stated earlier, hive lord 134 did not survive til' end of this guide and I would have had a lot more to show you... ;_; rip... Also I died because I was getting pictures from the admins through imgur to bring this to you today... I am certainly robust... Definitely).

Now then...

Back tracking back to a usual hive in the NW caves. There are already a lot of walls and objects to hide behind, granted a few open spaces to fill with hivey goodness in the beginning. However, this is not just map design aesthetically, it is beneficial for the aliens to use tight and cramped spaces that promote close quarters combat to fight the marines! What sense does it make that a bunch of claws and jaws wielding bugs are going to run circles in a gigantic field trying to dodge a rain of metal seeds (hopefully at least in the darkness) from the marines when they could just... y'know... jump scare the shit outta them?

Now back to my game with the hive in the crashed shuttle...

We WERE surrounded by open fields, and as a strategy enthusiast this was just no good to me. I knew I had to become the hivelord, which the queen accepted thankfully as she started her crusade against individualism not too long afterwards... NONETHELESS. With caves to the east providing a decent amount of maze like walls to provide that nice advantageous CQC scene for our hive if it were in fact invaded through there, (unlikely since any salty non-suicidal marine would avoid going that route) I needed to provide the same advantages to the other side of our hive which at the beginning of the game was largely open like a giant ducking shooting range just waiting for marines to start spraying. And I did just that...
Kind of like an onion I layered walls some long, some short (usually 3-5 in length with but maybe even with some 1-2 size walls for variety or cover in a tight spot) while maintaining large enough spaces in between them to provide movement for the aliens since they're so fast. and generally rely on that movement to avoid gunfire. It is important for crushers to get some room for their charges and such as well. But at the same time you don't want your sisters to be without a piece of wall near by to duck behind (note why the walls are so jagged) in case they start getting shot at from afar, that right there is the real threat to an alien, a long distance engagement. All these walls and layers of walls do is give the aliens a way to approach armed ranged prey without being exposed, or better yet, seen... making it also easier to ambush an unsuspecting metal wielding monkey.

Finally, it is important to note while all this work you can put into a hive is nice and certainly effective it is useless if it isn't USED properly. Like I said, if it is not to be constructed in vain, aliens must play their approaches smartly. Hiding behind their walls when they can, or for as long as they can letting their prey get as close as possible and right before they're noticed they make their hug lunge. Better yet maybe try running around and through walls with other aliens like an episode from scooby-do to confuse or get them to waste their metal seeds on things they aren't going to hit. A patient hunter is a good hunter.

Thanks for reading!

TL;DR build lots of small walls for cover in open spaces when playing as the aliens and obey the queen.

[Joe4444]

good guide my friend just ONE BIG GLARING PROBLEM.The fact that east of you is a massive gaping hole which if enough marines go through you will lose and there's a even bigger chance if the marines attack both at the same time.The fact that in this round I was one of the marines who flanked you and there was about 5 of us.We Still held for about 5 minutes before the queen screeched and if she didn't do that we could have gone for maybe 20 minutes. if you put a few more defences over there this is a pretty solid defence

[Yacobpo157]

+1 for being a valid strat, use this all the time when playing hivelord. However you should also add two or three clear resin walls so you can still see while being hidden.

[chaplin]

good guide my friend just ONE BIG GLARING PROBLEM.The fact that east of you is a massive gaping hole which if enough marines go through you will lose and there's a even bigger chance if the marines attack both at the same time.The fact that in this round I was one of the marines who flanked you and there was about 5 of us.We Still held for about 5 minutes before the queen screeched and if she didn't do that we could have gone for maybe 20 minutes. if you put a few more defences over there this is a pretty solid defence

Yeah I never had a chance to finish my defences! I was the only one working on them as far as I was aware, and I died shortly after taking this screen shot. But yes, I totally planned on filling in all those gaps you see. I probably would have made a crusher tunnel on the hole to the east. But like I said I was a one man team, and I was first trying to make walls leading to the river and then I was in the process of expanding my walls outwards to close in the flanks.

[chaplin]

+1 for being a valid strat, use this all the time when playing hivelord. However you should also add two or three clear resin walls so you can still see while being hidden.

I actually used membrane windows that were doubled up on some of my walls in certain areas for that exact reason... But I'm not sure if you can see them in the screenshot.

[Joe4444]

Yeah I never had a chance to finish my defences! I was the only one working on them as far as I was aware, and I died shortly after taking this screen shot. But yes, I totally planned on filling in all those gaps you see. I probably would have made a crusher tunnel on the hole to the east. But like I said I was a one man team, and I was first trying to make walls leading to the river and then I was in the process of expanding my walls outwards to close in the flanks.

glad to know.If other xenos see this it could be one of the most used hives.Its one of the best hives I've ever seen(other than the fact the OB can hit most of it)

[Yacobpo157]

I actually used membrane windows that were doubled up on some of my walls in certain areas for that exact reason... But I'm not sure if you can see them in the screenshot.

I couldn't see them, which is half the reason I made a comment.

[Clayton_Kelly]

How do you take large pictures of the planet?

[chaplin]

How do you take large pictures of the planet?

admun took it for me

[outordinary]

Looks pretty good, the thing about a hive like this is also the ease of grabbing huggers, no long ass tunnel system that a hivelord probably won't make a tunnel to get past, just a battlefield with small CQC areas. This is where a robust crusher would thrive. It's where a Ancient spitter with 900 plasma would neurotoxin a guy in a group then continue to make him shit his pants with corrosive acid. Its where a hunter would camouflage in a corner and pounce once he sees that crusher and spitter waiting for his pounce. In short, with some other flanking areas covered by a xeno or two, truly a hive for hive defense. Just don't forget an area to retreat to!

[TheCubscout]

A Hygienic Hive is a Happy Hive

[Boltersam]

Here's some advice. Never, ever, ever use Membranes. You gain nothing from being able to see through them, but the marines do. Use walls or doors instead, at least they have more health and marines can't see through them.

[Clayton_Kelly]

Membranes do have a use but it's only for a very particular situation and one that's rarely encountered.

When I'm an Alien drone from the very start of the round, I stick with drone and Hivelord and use macros to quick build everything. This results in extremely large labyrinth hives that you usually don't see in regular games. I'll have nests three times larger than the one pictured above, and about twice as dense completed with random doors thrown through out it. I basically cover the entire cave complex in hive. What happens is your teammates have to travel through a very large Hive complex and only know of nests they been to before, which is usually either the starting nest or the next "mini-hive" which is inside the colony compound.

I'll create small forward operating nests when we don't have a hive in the colony compound, but even when I tell my teammates where they are, they pass it right up because of the countless walls you must bypass in the Hive. So a good strategy is behind several layers of your outside resin wall (those closest to the enemy and colony compound), you place a mini nest behind one of these walls. But instead of being walls on both side of it (the walls closest to the enemy, and the walls closest to your original nesting hive), you use membrane walls on the side that is closest to your original hive.

What happens is when approaching your massive hive, you cannot see the nest. But once you walk past the nest, you can see the nests behind you. This keeps the nests hidden, while easily showing team mates where to place hosts if they struggle to bring hosts all the way back to the main nesting ground.

[Lukey111]

That is actually a really good idea.

[Dumblike]

any tips on how to apply this on other maps, like Ice Colony/Big Red?