T3 Drone Caste: Apothecary

[Deanthelis]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):
'Apothecary' is a working title. I'm not amazingly creative for names.

The general idea: A Tier 3 Drone evolution focused on healing other xenos, and keeping captured humans alive long enough for them to chestburst, while maintaining the general theme that xenomorph evolutions have - trading versatility for power.


Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):

Overall, the Apothecary would fulfill a role that Marines have, but Xenos do not. Currently, the closest thing to a "healer" the xenos have is either a drone planting weeds everywhere, or a Praetorian staying on Recovery pheromones. Neither are particularly effective or, importantly, able to focus the healing on a single target. This would, incidentally, be a direct and unabashed xeno buff; however, with the recent(ish) changes that force xenomorphs into direct combat more often, rather than just running up and flinging facehuggers, something like this would add a new challenge for marines to face without simply adding yet another way the xenos can kill them. After all, not everyone wants to be a direct combatant - supporting is fun too.


Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):
The caste breaks down into the following general tasks:
-Providing healing in an area of effect
-Providing healing to individual targets
-Stabilizing, accurately diagnosing the condition of and, in a limited fashion, healing captured humans (and monkeys!)
-If at some point in the future xenomorphs are given limbs that can be shot off, this caste could be responsible for replacing them also

However, it loses the following abilities in the process:
-The ability to provide Warding or Frenzy pheromones
-The ability to carry facehuggers internally (if evolving from Carrier)
-The ability to dig tunnels, move faster on weeds, or build sticky resin or resin walls
-The ability to move quickly

Some of the things it would not lose:
-The ability to plant weeds
-The ability to pick up facehuggers in their hands and place them on captured hosts
-The ability to emit Recovery pheromones
-The ability to build resin nests and resin doors

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):
This idea isn't fully complete. I am not a professional programmer; at best, I can, very laboriously, read code. As such, not all of the ideas for implementation that I have are feasible or reasonable, and I ask that any criticism of the ideas explain why it is unreasonable or infeasible to program, so that I do not make such suggestions in the future.

That being said, the ideas for implementation are as follows.

Progress to reach Tier 3: 800, if not 1000. Reason: This is ultimately a support caste, and really shouldn't be something the xenos are capable of rushing for. Similarly, it's something that we probably want a give hive to have one of, or at the very most, two during very high-population rounds. Slowing down the evolution speed should help significantly with that.

Maximum Plasma/Plasma Regen: Probably between Hivelord and Carrier. It needs to be able to produce weeds, doors, nests, and its special abilities with relative frequency, but not so incredibly fast that it's possible to use it in the middle of a fight for very long.

Glow in the dark: Like Boilers, the Apothecary should grow, though not from high-energy acid, but from the source of its special abilities (outlined below).

Healing in an area of effect:
-Recovery pheromones better than Praetorian, but worse than Queen at equivalent evolution time, though unable to Ward or Frenzy. This makes it so that nearby xenomorphs, if they see an Apothecary, will know for certain they can use warding or frenzy at their leisure.
-Planting weeds. Also basic, and is a staple of the Drone caste. Removing this would probably be divorcing it from Drone too much.

Dealing with captured marines:
-Firstly, give Apothecaries the almighty Xeno MediHud, which shows a health bar for any Xenomorph, and for any Marine that is in a nest of some kind (but not running around freely; that'd be a bit too strong, and would encourage Apothecaries to run into warzones).
-Secondly, give Apothecaries scalpel-like, acid-edged claws. The claws deal burn damage, rather than brute damage, meaning they are incapable of severing limbs or causing bleeding. The Apothecary can also use their claws, under help intent, on a host that is nested. Doing so deals an insignificant amount of burn damage, takes about 5 or 10 seconds, to the host, but stops any bleeding on the limb that the Apothecary has targeted.
-Thirdly, allow Apothecaries (and only Apothecaries) to feed Healing Growths to nested hosts (see below).

These three things allow the Apothecary to diagnose, stabilize, and treat captured hosts, making them more likely to burst, and punishing xenomorphs slightly less for using harm intent to solve problems.

Healing Growths:
Healing Growth is a stand-in name. It could be a fungus, or a plant, or a fruit, or a resin container filled with strange plasma-based goo. Currently, we'll assume it's a mushroom, since my made-up fluff is fungus-themed.

The Apothecary converts the pods created when planting weeds into mushrooms by standing on them and using the verb, Convert-Healing-Growth. This should consume 250 plasma and have a separate cooldown similar to screeching, stomping, etc. Probably a cooldown of thirty seconds to a minute, to help cut down on massive fields of them. Healing growths cannot be created within 3 tiles of another healing growth. This also cuts down on massive fields of them, and encourages thoughtful placement. The cooldown should be reduced slightly for each upgrade stage.

Healing growths can only be picked and held in-hand by Drone castes, like facehuggers. Also like facehuggers, they decay if not eaten within a short amount of time (in this case, 10 or 15 seconds). Healing growths also emit a small amount of light, equivalent to a Glowshroom, until consumed. If dropped, healing growths immediately decompose, though if dropped on a weed pod, it will instead convert that pod, allowing healing growths to be moved around as the frontline of the battle does, to avoid waste. Healing growths have a throw distance of 1 like facehuggers do, so that they cannot be thrown long distances to weed pods from the back line; this makes moving the healing growths forward take a non-trivial amount of time.

Healing growths are consumed by clicking the intended target on any intent and waiting about five seconds, similar to applying a splint or feeding a pill. This is because it takes time to eat something, obviously. Additionally, clicking a healing growth that has not been picked with grab intent will allow a xenomorph (but not a host, obviously) to eat the growth directly. They must still stand still and wait five seconds of chewing time. Either method has the same result. Healing growths cannot be fed to xenomorphs in critical condition, nor dead xenomorphs; one cannot eat if one cannot move. This is to prevent drones from pretending to be combat medics - if a xeno is injured, it should have to retreat; we don't want to change that behavior, only reduce the time it takes to recover.

When a xeno consumes a healing growth, it is healed of 30% of its current damage. This way, they are most useful when severely injured, and mostly useless for topping-off - let the recovery pheromones and weeds do that (and, conversely, let incompetent or ignorant xenos ruin everything, just like they can kill huggers by releasing them and throwing them on the floor. A key component of balance is allowing idiocy to be a factor).

Healing growths cannot be spammed on a single xeno, either. There is a 30 second cooldown for digestion when a xenomorph eats a healing growth. This prevents xenos from getting greedy, or from intentionally eating every single healing growth (at least, not without getting caught). Similarly, healing growths taste bad; uninjured xenomorphs cannot eat healing growths, and will only eat them if injured.

Healing growths can be force-fed to hosts. This takes as much time to do as it does to feed one to a xenomorph, and requires the hosts to be in a resin nest. It also requires the host to be facehugged. Healing growths do the following for hosts:
-Heals internal organ damage, to a minimum remaining damage of 9, 10 at a time. This prevents organ failure from killing them, but does not stop it from being horrifically painful, nor does it stop a lack of blood or injured heart/lungs from causing up to 20 suffocation damage. It also prevents marines from drinking themselves to death to avoid capture, sort of.
-Heals brute damage, to a minimum remaining damage of 35, 40 at a time. This prevents the host from dying if it's been mangled horribly, but not so horribly that it dies before it can be properly nested and infected.
-Heals burn damage, to a minimum remaining damage of 60, 40 at a time; will only heal burn damage if brute damage is at 35, and any healing expended on brute beyond that threshold is wasted. This prevents the host from dying if it's been burnt horribly, but not so horribly that it dies before it can be properly nested and infected. If the host is at the threshold for both damage types, it also means they will probably be in paincrit, especially if they also have organ damage.
-Restores 10% capacity of blood. This helps remove edge cases where a host barely has too little blood to live.
-Causes 10 toxin damage. This prevents xenomorphs from simply breaking every single bone in a marine's body and fixing it over and over. For reference, bones only break if the damage they sustain causes them to reach a point at, or they are already beyond, about 25 brute damage (+/- 5, since CM does hide these things to an extent). Ergo, if you feed a host 5 growths but he's already at 35 brute and 60 burn, he'll be at 135, suffocate, and die. It also means you can't simply feed a marine with 30% of his blood seven growths and expect him to be fine. You can totally try, though - stupidity is a balance feature.


Fluff/Lore/Excuses For Mechanics:

Things shouldn't exist for no reason. Sadly, nothing like this, as far as my (admittedly somewhat limited) understanding of the Alien/Predator/Possibly Judge Dredd expanded universe goes, exists; as such, I will do my best to make up believable excuses for why it should anyway. This is the portion of my suggestion that I will need the most help with; I welcome any direct references to films, comics, video games, etc. that shows xenomorphs doing things even vaguely similar to the Apothecary. As it stands, I got nothin', other than what I've made up here.

Apothecaries are Xenomorphs that have developed a symbiotic relationship with a kind of fungus. This fungus, similar to the common glowshroom, is highly bioluminescent, and is filled with numerous compounds that are disturbingly similar to those used in Weyland-Yutani pharmaceutical products. By combining the spores of this fungus with their pheromone glands, the Apothecary caste can heal other xenomorphs far more efficiently than other castes. They can also cause an aggressive degree of concentrated growth, molding the fungus like clay into a form that is, while disgusting, edible by other xenomorphs.

Note: This is not a completed suggestion. It's something I came up with out of the blue, not something I've thought about at any length. I welcome any constructive criticism to mold it into something that might actually see gameplay, especially from staff members. I do worry that it's too much to ask for, though, since our developers are volunteers and it might not be interesting enough to code and sprite all of this. Thank you for taking the time to read this as well.

[SagaSword]

It is, to an extend good since hunter castes seem to slash the shit outta marines (downed ones especially) which will give xenomorphs some momentum but you forgot that the xenomorph players ALWAYS find a way to abuse any kind of healing. So for example, I thought of Apo/Prae/Crush combo to rescue a downed alien running away. The crusher runs to tank bullets while prae uses his warding pheromones and Apothecary healing them with area effect while dragging the downed alien.
Plus, once you reach mature upgrade your health pool regenerate too fast and this gives marines less time to prepare for the next push (Also there's an update which causes xenomorphs to regenerate even when not in weed but it's slower) which will cause xenomorphs to be
semi-tanky.

Now onto the stabilizing host thingy, you've made a great balance actually in terms of advantages and disadvantages of the healing growths. Sadly, I wish there was a way for marines to actually fight back after they're nested but this makes it a bit impossible for a marine to fight back (I know it isn't an actually doctor who could fix you 100% good to fight back and that's fair enough) but ugh the slow a marine get from being in the red or orange zone of health is still big. Don't take my word on this one i'm just a salty marine.

Overall, I'd like to see this change in the game which would actually make drone caste a VITAL caste in the hive but It will need time, effort and a lot of balancing to do that. +1

[Crab_Spider]

Like the idea for a couple of reasons, and it could just work for future reworks to xenos

[Biolock]

This is a very well written suggestion.

[Crab_Spider]

Oh yes. This definitely was well written and thought out. Zhou actually used certain details from LV and connected them to this caste. I love the idea of how the xenos are mutating further because of environmental conditions, gives me a that feel that they're adapting quickly like fruit flies.

[Renomaki]

I dunno, though...

While this isn't a GUN, it is still a whole new type of xeno, which in themselves are living weapons.. And the staff tend to get uppity at the idea of new weapon suggestions.

Balancing xenos is already hard enough as is, adding a whole new type of xeno would require buttloads of both private and live testing before it would find a decent spot in the balance where it wouldn't be TOO powerful, but still viable to play as. It took many MONTHS for the Praetorian to finally be useful, most of its life being spent being made fun of by xeno players for how it was just a bigger, slower spitter that died just as fast.

Meanwhile, Crushers were THE T3 to have, since most other T3s were rather underwhelming. Nowadays it seems that now all T3s are viable, and even then that can change drastically.

While it would be interesting to have a "medic" xeno, for the most part, I think we should just wait on that until we are certain everyone is comfortable with how xenos are balanced.

[misto]

if youre going to give the ability to heal hosts to anything, it should be handed to the already-lacking hivelord, since tending to hosts is a critical component of a healthy and functioning xeno hive

as for xeno-on-xeno healing potions

xenos already have fantastic advantages over marines in the health and healing departments, feeling no pain and having a functionally infinite supply of healing as long as a square of weeds exists behind some cover. the fire-and-forget form of weeds healing is a great strength, allowing even a humble little drone to provide healing and plasma regen support, without even needing to be personally present, so long as they have passed by and dropped some weeds at some point. thus, drones are already an incredibly vital caste, they just don't get the credit they deserve.

sensible xeno players already find a proper healing vs attack rhythm, moving out to make an attack, hurting or killing an enemy or two, and pulling back to heal on weeds and plan the next strike. this permits them to whittle down marines and keep themselves alive. this basic tactic frequently carries the xeno team to victory. to be good enough to be worth a t3 slot, this healer must be something quite special. this will speed up the pace of the attacks significantly. as a support class, this xeno will not necessarily even be putting itself at significant risk, able to stay a ways behind and serve as a fungus farmer and health battery. with the runners, hunters, and spitters returning to this player and healing up faster, making more frequent attack runs, and whittling down enemies faster, i cannot imagine marine attempts to assassinate this xeno healer would get very far.

hurm

maybe if this thing glowed all the time like a boiler and its magic healing fungus garden also emitted tiny patches of light, it would serve as a counterbalance, but otherwise it sounds a tad too good, while xeno castes such as the hivelord and carrier already languish with inferior utility to others of their tier

if you were to test this sort of thing, i would recommend it not be a new t3, but that the hivelord be shifted up to a t3 that evolves from the carrier and which has some of these powers

[Emeraldblood]

Very well written, but extremely hard to truly add. If something like this ever was going to be added it would be half a year at least. I think the design is thought out very well but I would personally add that the healing growths should probably give 2 tiles of light (in the + shape) to help balance how powerful they would be. Something, such as a Cusher can just walk up to something and heal 30% of their health, like this is a huge buff and as such, they would require at least a reasonable drawback. This could also let the Xeno make "Fungal caves" where they can go to heal once damaged. This would also help Marines if they push deeper into the hive as they'd get a little bonus light if they wish to keep them there.

[TheMaskedMan2]

+1 I really like these interesting ideas, to add a bit more nuance and skill to Xeno gameplay, I won't go into intense details on every little thing, but I can say I hope this general idea is looked upon. Definitely a lot of work, but it's well written and an interesting idea.

Edit: Also just the concept of having a proper T3 Drone evolution excites me, Drone caste best caste.

[Nick123q23]

Very good concept, and a well-made suggestion. +1.

From what I understand of the server's code, xenomorphs are a lot different to humans when it comes to damage. They don't have any limbs or organs mechanically to damage, it's just a flat 100 to 0 health bar.

[Tidomann]

They should be allowed to grab nested marines that they heal

[Liran343]

When a xeno consumes a healing growth, it is healed of 30% of its current damage. This way, they are most useful when severely injured, and mostly useless for topping-off - let the recovery pheromones and weeds do that (and, conversely, let incompetent or ignorant xenos ruin everything, just like they can kill huggers by releasing them and throwing them on the floor. A key component of balance is allowing idiocy to be a factor).

I think you mean missing health.

[Bmc777]

We will likely not be adding a whole new caste for this type of gameplay you've outlined. One thing that will absolutely not happen is the healing of humans. Xenos don't know the first thing about human biology and would never have that ability. More support-based abilities for Xenos has been discussed. It's not something that is happening now or probably anytime soon but it's something we may explore in the future, likely through Hivelords. Denied.