Why are Xenos Expected to Suicide Most Rounds?

[Radimir]

So I have noticed something, and admins are encouraging this:

Many close-ish rounds have xenos with 15 or less xenos, and marines retreating with 40-50 marines back to the Sulaco. Xenos go from 25 to 15 or less in the Nexus push and cleanup.

And 9/10 times, the following will happen:

Xenos get a Queen Mother update, showing how badly the marines outnumber the xenos hive.
Xenos go "Fucking hell, that's a lot, why not stay on the planet we just took?"

Marines meanwhile are turtling up, placing electrified grills over ladders, emitter traps in engineering, walls being built in the Sulaco, and tables flipped and the hangar turned into an autism fort, creating a firing line with grenades that will kill anything on the dropship or pod in an instant.

And then the following invariably happens:

Queen Mother orders the hive to expand. Thus admin forces the xenos to go up outnumbered and get slaughtered.
Admins begin spawning Dutch's Dozen and PMCs, giving the marines even further numerical superiority, as punishment for the xenos not wanting to step into a complete deathtrap.

Why is it Xenos are always forced to go up, and marines given the choice to turtle up, but if xenos make the same choice, they get heavilly punished to the point of being put into an unwinnable situation?

[Derpislav]

Marines meanwhile are turtling up, placing electrified grills over ladders, emitter traps in engineering, walls being built in the Sulaco, and tables flipped and the hangar turned into an autism fort, creating a firing line with grenades that will kill anything on the dropship or pod in an instant.

If marines are placing defenses before the queen has touched a console, that's metagaming. If there's staff online they will get their ass banned and xenos most likely will be revived.
If the queen touches the console and decides to wait, though, that's her own fault.

[YungCuz]

I kinda wanna state that Xenos have plenty of methods of getting around what is basically a Deathtrap though a variety of ways that you see every round.
So its not really a expected thing its just the case of too much cheese.
Besides if there are that many marines left more than xenos then clearly Xenos are doing something wrong.

[Radimir]

How can xenos prevent the marines going "we lost a squad, EVERYONE RETREAT?"

And no, marine firing squads using UGL, which stuns anything caught in the blast, including T3s, kinda stop and very quickly kills even elite T3s. You see xenos winning those assaults when they have 25+ still living and have played an almost perfect round.

[Derpislav]

Besides if there are that many marines left more than xenos then clearly Xenos are doing something wrong.

In 9/10 cases it's command exploiting the fact they can just retreat and lure xenos in. But again, if there's no shuttle console announcement, they can't prepare.

[InterroLouis]

That's funny. What I see a lot is that in this same situation, admins would quite often force marines to attack to the planet, which 9/10 times ends in complete failure and getting slaughtered by xenos that are camping the heavily fortified landing zone. Also, if marines DO turtle up before aliens touch the console, those defenses generally get deleted if there is staff on.
The issue here is that once marines lose the planet, they've lost the planet. Once they're gone, aliens will rush to LZ1 and drop down a metric ton of sticky resin and resin doors, and surround the entire landing zone with resin walls. This is another reason for marines to not go planetside after losing the planet, because as soon as they break even one of those resin walls, air pressure will toss them about until they die, or are too badly wounded and in too much pain to put up a fight. Atmos problems like this can and will decimate an attacking marine force, and they happen every time the dropship is deployed down with marines that end up breaking one of the spammed resin walls that are around the LZ.
Because of this, we end up with two choices. Marines go planetside, atmos wrecks them, and the server gets restarted. Or, aliens go up, no atmos issues, and they either win or lose there.

[Radimir]

There are no atmos problems because atmos on the entire planet is not simulated. Any tiles planetside is an unsimulated tile, and I have literally never seen that happen in playing on CM for 2 years. Not when playing on Lazarus Colony.

Big Red and Ice Colony may be different.

And no, those defenses only if staff are on AND a xenos player reports it. Which only happens if the dead go to look at Sully, or a xenos sneaks onto the ship.
Also marines abusing retreat is terrible. Start round with 60 marines, retreat, Queen mother tells "There are still 48 in metal hive." And then admins force xenos to go up into that 48 marine death trap.

[Derpislav]

There are no atmos problems because atmos on the entire planet is not simulated. Any tiles planetside is an unsimulated tile, and I have literally never seen that happen in playing on CM for 2 years. Not when playing on Lazarus Colony.

you what

[InterroLouis]

I haven't even been playing SS13 as long as you've been on this server's forums, Radimir, but I've seen the LZ1 atmos bug a lot. Sometimes it's caused by false walls built in the window spots of the Rasputin, but more often it's resin walls surrounding the LZ. Also, I've seen literally two xenos kill 20 marines shipside being the only xenos leftover from a pod led attack on LZ1 after they called the shuttle down. So, unless the marines DO spam the UGL, which I've seen that they DON'T always do, xenos can still win when outnumbered like that.

[Radimir]

you what

Turf on Lazarus is not simulated. Meaning there are no atmos calculations done.

[Toroic]

Atmos screws everyone, but on the planet generally marines more often.

Xenos aren't expected to suicide, but honestly unless marines retreat with 3+ sentry guns it's very easy for them to lose the ship even outnumbering the xenos.

Also, crushers aren't stunned or damaged by grenades

[Bigchilly]

It doesn't matter if atmos isn't simulated, if theres a hole leading to space the planet will still become fucked.

I've seen my few share of this, and if aliens just didn't camp the LZ then it would not happen.

Run away from grenades, if you are completely surrounded then find a weakness and abuse the fuck out of it and push through:

Blitzkrieg my friend.

[Radimir]

Cant run away when the 40 marines remaining surround the entire shuttle with barriers and fire grenades through every window. Each marine as is, without specs or RO, has four grenades too, two per rifle.

[Bigchilly]

Cant run away when the 40 marines remaining surround the entire shuttle with barriers and fire grenades through every window. Each marine as is, without specs or RO, has four grenades too, two per rifle.

I'd be surprised if marines are so organized as to get 20 marines on both sides of the shuttle:

Usually if +40 active marines are still up and marines call for help its gonna be XRT.

Not to mention if you let 40 marines escape from the aliens wraith then that's more or less the aliens fault for letting them get away. But its quite rare to see a actual marine defense, as how panicky they get during the end of the round.

[Radimir]

Well it just happened. Marines had 49 to the xenos 10-15. Marines called for ERT, got a Dutch's Dozen. They go down, got beat, though it was a very hard fought battle. They called another ERT, got a friendly W-Y PMC.

Again, I want to know how xenos can stop marines from retreating. Since marines run as fast or faster than all but Runner and matured out Hunters, and can mount a hell of a defense using the dropship turrets and firing out the windows, they can easily pile onto the dropship to make an escape as soon as they lose some numbers.

[Joe4444]

how to stop marines from retreating with 40+? simple.
just don't kills squads at a time.Kill them individually and don't slaughter 5+ marines at a time.Marines will never know the amount of men they have but they will know if ENTIRE squads get destroyed in one go.

[Feweh]

We usually force Marines back down when they're about 50+ Marines sitting on Sulaco.

There is a certain point where too many Marines in the hangar is insta death for xenos.

[TopHatPenguin]

Sometimes marines will retreat with a load of marines left and other times it's because the marines have suffered too much attrition on the planet, i.e injured taking ages to get fixed and a general lack of reinforcements on the planet due to command or just nobody paying attention to the shuttles so it leaves 5 marines on the planet to defend of which get steamrolled by the 20 xenos while the rest of the marines are on the Sulaco. Also there are suggestions to completely rework the hangar defences/attacks for example:
http://cm-ss13.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=9184

http://cm-ss13.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=5343

http://cm-ss13.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=6474

[Simo94]

what causes huge numbers of marines retreating is xenos rushing landing zones and camping them which becomes a deathtrap or even causes atmos shit, xenos should stop camping LZ and camp in nexus/tcomms instead, for that i suggest removing the ability to plant weeds on LZs, it helps xenos more than marines that way cuz marines will be able to land on the planet and xenos will contonue doing what they were doing up to that point in the round which is wrecking marines and also this could reduce Atmos Majors a lil bit

[Toroic]

what causes huge numbers of marines retreating is xenos rushing landing zones and camping them which becomes a deathtrap or even causes atmos shit, xenos should stop camping LZ and camp in nexus/tcomms instead, for that i suggest removing the ability to plant weeds on LZs, it helps xenos more than marines that way cuz marines will be able to land on the planet and xenos will contonue doing what they were doing up to that point in the round which is wrecking marines and also this could reduce Atmos Majors a lil bit

The issue is not marines retreating, it's that xenos don't cut off their escape routes enough.

If Xenos would cut off their access to the dropship and/or the pod marines wouldn't be able to effectively retreat in those numbers.

[Sailor Dave]

I had a queen mother report while I was queen in the middle of reinforcing tablefort. We were ordered to attack hydro, even though I felt we weren't prepared. Naturally I felt compelled to do so, and it was a complete disaster. The marines weren't even IN hydro itself besides a few and a sentry, and the rest of them were held back until we all attacked, where they then flanked us and held us off with almost no losses on their end, and many on ours.

I'm not very good at leading attacks, I went queen mostly because nobody wanted to, as usual. I don't appreciate being ordered to attack while we're still setting up defenses, and marines haven't even crossed the river yet.

[Heckenshutze]

From a RP view, xenos as the antagonists they need to make the first move all the times, even if marines wanted to move first the meta rush rule thingy kind of forces them to have a defensive stance.

[BalancedGeneral]

The space ship suicide has been in the game for ages, and the admins seem intent on keeping it that way despite many threads pointing out better options and more fun ways to win. It comes down to that it is a large benefit to the marines, thus it is kept in.