Big Red meta issue

[Simo94]

Hello fellow nerds, brace yourselves for a salty rant is ahead.

Can someone explain why is ordering squads to straight up scout lambda lab allowed? whats the difference between that and straight up scouting north caves on LV624 upon landing? isn't it only logical to scout and clear the west side first since both landing zones and power/Tcomms are there? just like we scout and fortify the south side of LV624 before heading north?

It is meta and it only serves for two things: if marines landed early, they easily wreck young xenos and SSD larvas, or if they landed late, that poor squad that was ordered to scout lambda lab/western caves gets instantly wiped out.

I suggest you either label that as meta, or add a dense fog variant to big red, maybe a sand storm? we could also use a clear separation of the east and west like the river on LV but that is optional, that is all.

[YungCuz]

Honestly another fogwall thing seems okay on paper but i get the feeling it'd be a repeat of the whole issue with it on LV624 so i dunno it'd feel like it'd do more damage than good

[Karmac]

I mean at the end of the day the reason the fog wall was put up was because nothing short of "you literally can't go here" was stopping them from rushing. Players create and further this problem themselves.

[OatzAndHoes]

I wouldn't really call it meta. Scouting caves immediately on LV is meta because they aren't on the colony maps, but pulling a squad or two aside to secure a valuable laboratory seems like an IC move, especially considering Wey Yu has liaisons onboard who would consider it a valuable asset.

[Renomaki]

I don't like metarushes as much as the next guy, and while I do like the fog of LV-624.. I don't want to see it repeated on other maps.

Mainly because it makes a special map element more generic and uninteresting. I'd rather something different for each map rather than just the same ol' thing being repeated every time.

[MrJJJ]

I don't think its really meta, LZ caves weren't on map, so you had no reason to assume anything was north of there

We still have yet to see a full offical big red map that isin't a placeholder tho, but still, LABS, everything typically goes wrong there.

[Diggman88]

The labs are on the map so it is a open choice as IC.

The thing I see is due to the design of the colony it is very easy to fortify the map for xenos. Most games I play anything past security and engineering is treated like no-mans-land. I have rarely been ordered to scout though, I seem to always get LZ1 duty.

[Symbiosis]

I thought this was going to be about the constant telecomms rush by the Ayys... Guess not!

[Steelpoint]

Problem with Tcomms is that its so out of the way that you kinda need to meta to guess its a vulnerable position to be attacked by xenos, that's a issue with the hanger bay.

Big Red seems designed with the idea that there's no real restriction on where the Marines go since the Aliens can have their side of the map well defended and fortified quickly.

[David Attenbruv]

Eh, I don't know.

>Everyone claims it's Xeno meta if they build a Hive anywhere else in the Colony that isn't Lambda.
>Marines proceed to use said knowledge to meta zerg Xenos in Lambda.

Start off to the left side of LZ-Two as Larvae. Or if you're lucky you'll spawn in the cave system to the East of Sec' or just directly South of Lambda. Setting up in the building next to LZ-Two you get everyone screaming Meta and I've had a admin PM me about it before. Set up in Lambda however, it's fine but they will eventually rock up Sadar on shoulder accompanied by copius amounts of explosives, because Sadars would be needed for a initial rescue mission of Colonists. Think it's all just a bit of cheeky meta really, Xenos tend to Cyka Blyat LZ's fairly quickly than they should and Marines Zerg Rush Lambda nest.

I don't really like the Fog concept though I do think that there should be a deffinent or diffinitive line or stated rule as to where is considered "Too close" to a LZ so that Queen and Xeno's can understand their range of where they can Nest and the randomness of it will probably flourish through it, if a Queen wants to go basic white bitch then she'll make a Hive at Lambda, if you know baldies are going to flock to you like bees to honey at Lambda but make a Nest at idk, security? Then you might stand a better chance. That was a example people people quote me, I'm just saying bouncing around a little around the map probably wouldn't hurt the Xenos.

Though then again my arguments always been that Xenos would just consider the Colony in its entirety its nest and wouldn't think "Best not touch that specific segment of the terrain, everything else is green light." Though then again that's gameplay over RP which I understand fully.

TL;DR I think there should be guidelines to where Xenos can build nests and subsequently that will make Queen have to be smart and dart their Hives around so that Marines can't just get use to zerg rushing Lambda.

[Artouris]

I'm writing this on my phone so excuse bad grammar and spelling.

If anything i'd suggest nesting in the southwen cave building or the office complexes. Those are pretty good. Hell anywhere in the caves is good. I might look into spreading out the spawns since I feel like the majority of the spawns got put in lambda more so as a accidental hold over than intentional.

However the map was designed so xenos could really nest anywhere but directly at a LZ, like on the pad and stuff. So if anything I don't know why queens always nest in the same spots. Might be the same psychological effect that makes you choose the same chair in a class that let's you sit anywhere.

[TheMaskedMan2]

I'm writing this on my phone so excuse bad grammar and spelling.

If anything i'd suggest nesting in the southwen cave building or the office complexes. Those are pretty good. Hell anywhere in the caves is good. I might look into spreading out the spawns since I feel like the majority of the spawns got put in lambda more so as a accidental hold over than intentional.

However the map was designed so xenos could really nest anywhere but directly at a LZ, like on the pad and stuff. So if anything I don't know why queens always nest in the same spots. Might be the same psychological effect that makes you choose the same chair in a class that let's you sit anywhere.

I think it might be the fact that Xenos find it more interesting to nest in a building over random caves, also that it is a big monkey spawn, as well as being basically the farthest point from the LZ's.

[Swagile]

And the fact that going near LZ's also incurs the admins wrath, as said above by another person.

If you want Queens to base anywhere but the Caves, get the fucking admins off our backs, holy shit.

[RedOktober12]

This is sort of where our understanding of terms like meta actually gets confusing. Because if the xenos create a metagame state by hiving Lambda every round, of course marine players will take notice, and start making it an active concern to scout. It's only meta in the sense that it's reflecting the state of the game's meta, which the xenos are setting with their hive placement. And when it comes to the question of whether it's meta-knowledge to assume something's in the secret Company facility...That sort of speaks for itself. I fail to see how this is more egregious than Aliens knowing where, for instance, Self Destruct or CIC is on the Almayer. Which is to say, not at all.

If Queens want to avoid getting their hive instantly scouted, they can very happily build it anywhere else on the map. It's just that more often than not, conservative inclinations to stay in the caves near the monkeys wins out. That's fine, but it's not really grounds to complain about being metagamed.

Also...

And the fact that going near LZ's also incurs the admins wrath, as said above by another person.

If you want Queens to base anywhere but the Caves, get the fucking admins off our backs, holy shit.

...is a bit facetious. You literally have the entire map aside from the immediate proximity of the two LZs to build the hive.

[Swagile]

This is sort of where our understanding of terms like meta actually gets confusing. Because if the xenos create a metagame state by hiving Lambda every round, of course marine players will take notice, and start making it an active concern to scout. It's only meta in the sense that it's reflecting the state of the game's meta, which the xenos are setting with their hive placement. And when it comes to the question of whether it's meta-knowledge to assume something's in the secret Company facility...That sort of speaks for itself. I fail to see how this is more egregious than Aliens knowing where, for instance, Self Destruct or CIC is on the Almayer. Which is to say, not at all.

If Queens want to avoid getting their hive instantly scouted, they can very happily build it anywhere else on the map. It's just that more often than not, conservative inclinations to stay in the caves near the monkeys wins out. That's fine, but it's not really grounds to complain about being metagamed.

Also...



...is a bit facetious. You literally have the entire map aside from the immediate proximity of the two LZs to build the hive.

Closer to the LZ's and Caves is closer to the monkeys, and most of the time you can't depend on your hive to capture them because they are too busy trying to capture the survivors. It would be better, and more encouraging, for Queens to base in other locations if monkey spawns were random and in every direction like in LV before devs made it so Queen couldn't fit through the tunnel with fog activated.

[Nick123q23]

Xenos nest in lambda because A. There's a lot of monkeys, and B. It's the easiest place to defend

If you want xenos to nest somewhere else, then you have to give them a similarly easy to defend location with a lot of monkeys.

[Simo94]

making a hive anywhere else means u will have to do the mind numbing grind of transferring the fuckton of furry hosts from lambda to that location, I convinced a Queen once to make a hive in South Compound, it was so frustrating that we just sent drones to lambda and infected those hosts and left them there, unguarded, luckily south compound is so close to engineering i broke into it (I was crusher) and we distracted marines, or else they would just send a sole marine there and he would just step on sneks

[Nick123q23]

no step on snek

[kazere]

The thing with lambda, south research compound and virology nests is that they have a viable source of hosts. That is the reason most of the queens nest there. Also the mechanics implemented from the hugger combat removal made it more important for the queen to establish a primary location of the hive to both infect the host and spawn more larva and fortify it against the incoming marine attack. Should the queen move its locations in any other place other than those three, their time spent infecting and fortifying positions will he spent actually just running around and dragging their host.

Of course it is also possible to establish some kind of fog-like mechanics like grounding the dropships for x minutes but I don't think it will fix the issue.