Improving Teamplay for Xenos : your thoughts

[Kesserline]

For the past year : buffs and nerfs followed the Hive. Giving periods of Roflstomping Marines, to periods of getting roflstomped.

But now, periods of Xenos being rolfstomped by Marines are more and more common.

Some will still argue that the issue is mechanics. I refuse.

I will claim this is a player issue.
After making round tests as Xenos, I understood why. Xeno players are unable to enforce large teamplay, not because they are mentally unable to do so, it's because they have not the tools to do so.

It is HARD to team up with a group of xenos to gank marines.
Unless you're metacomming, or very very very motivated to stick with a particular xeno or particular xenos, you can't do it efficiently.

We already, for those who participated in that huge discussions on Update thread, and discord, discussed about including Ckeys next to the Beno number, to allow the understanding of who the fuck are you talking to.

Now, why not, on the FT basics from Marines, allow a xeno to tag along with other xenos of his choice, or leader's choice, or Queen's choice.
The said xeno, let's call him Runner 6969, will ONLY SEE a HUD ICON next to the Xenos that are in the same group as him.
No spam.
He just sees the icons of the Lurker 1337 and Lurker 101.
Even if drowned in a 20 xeno, he'll be able to locate the 2 lurkers easily and follow them to gank marines and unleash salt.

Now, here are the possibilities :
- Queen enforce the group-binding
- Leaders enforce the group-binding
- Peer 2 peer : xenos can tag along with any other xenos, they just need to "invite" them in their group.

What'cha think ?

[FGRSentinel]

I'll admit that my times playing Xeno would have to confirm this, but there's another issue: a number of powerful tactics available to xenos require that a specific caste be used "out of position" relative to where they're usually found or where players want to use them, or even require an unconventional mix of T2s/T3s compared to normal, so they rarely crop up. For instance, a while back I had the "Boiler Brigade" that happened for a round where we had three Boilers standing in a line perpendicular to the FOB so they could all fire at the cade line while an ancient Defender sat at the front, soaking up bullets. Every time we fired off a cloud another caste would run up to acid/slash the cades and go to recover for a moment since the cloud would dissipate at about the same time that another boiler was firing the next cloud.

Small groups of xenos can suppress or kill larger groups of marines fairly easily, but the optimal groups can sometimes require a hive with a caste distribution you're unlikely to see in most games (ie, the Boiler Brigade requires two or three Boilers and a decently-strong Defender when it's unlikely for you to find that many Boilers half the time unless the queen requests it and people listen or a group of benos decide to form the brigade and other castes don't block them from doing so).

[Dolth]

-gay

Hold up old friend,

Right now xenos are starting with approx 5x less xeno than marines and they are barely capturing so unless you're on high high pop you have low chances to win.

Regardless it's not a matter of tool, this is the counterpart of 5 larvas per host and if aliens would capture more, the sheer number WILL make the difference AS ALWAYS.

Tho the idea overall is potent, totally vouching on it I'll check gitkab asap.

Edit fir FGR: Xenos have the strongest tools in term of combat right now, really. They just need solid leaders AND captures because your 2 crushers in prison hallways aren't hard to do. It's just never done.

[FGRSentinel]

What I was talking about is even when there's plenty of xenos for these more unique strategies to work: even if there's 20-30+ xenos, the odds of finding enough people willing to put together the team needed for a unique strat and actually evolving to the needed castes aren't that high because it requires fighting with other T1s and T2s that aren't interested in the strat for slots.

[Dolth]

Yeah that's exactly what I meant, marines are doing that all the time, marines have LESS TOOLS to be strong and requires WAY MORE teamplay to be efficient, and apparently now xenos are required ASWELL some teamplay.
Most of your players don't care at all and just chill out when play which isn't bad, but, if you're looking for a win, xeno player are gonna need a good Queen to force them into listenning or some good xeno leaders.

[blingx3]

I wish that the devs would look into making some type of organization mechanic for the xenos, it's only fair, the marines get squads and separate communication channels, chains of commands and so much. Perhaps we can expand on the leader feature and add xenos to this leader, with a number showing on the mob, similar to what marines have.

[FGRSentinel]

The problem is most xenos only listen to the queen when it suits them to do so. I remember one round I was queen and we lost ALL our T3s because they decided to charge into battle, ignored me telling them to get out of the fight because the marines were pushing into the hive, and then got completely cut off and killed. I've also seen rounds where the queen explicitly states "no Lurkers/ravagers without my approval" and people still ninja evolved to Ravagers. The main reason why marines have as good teamplay as they do is because trying to go alone generally gets them killed or captured, which means they sit the rest of the game out. If a beno player goes off alone/ignored the Queen and dies, there's no penalty for them since they have the same timer as anyone else and can respawn if there's burrowed larva left. Maybe having the Queen able to mark a beno as "defective" or a "deviant" when it comes to the hive's needs, which reduces the likelyhood of that player getting a new larva to play as, would encourage xenos to play smart instead of spamming only one caste or ignoring everyone else.

[Dolth]

You guys can devolve benos.
Stop hesitating and do it.

Also no you don't have special channels but neither do you have med, req, sec, eng.

[FGRSentinel]

Actually all of those do have their own channels.

Devolving benos doesn't work since it doesn't actually solve the overall problem: if you devolve a beno as punishment for going against your orders when it comes to evolution, there's nothing really stopping them from evolving later on to spite you and, in the case of the Lurker spam that occasionally crops up, the Queen has neither the time nor the resources to devolve every beno that ignores her and if she does, she's left with more than half the hive being T1s of a specific caste that she's artificially preventing from evolving rather than monitoring and assisting everyone else.

[Dolth]

Yeah no that's a statement xenos have less channels because they do not have ENGINEERING, neither MEDICAL, nor MILITARY XENOPOLICE, nor REQUISITION.

Although I confess they could use squad based channels.

Regarding disobeying;
Devolving a suicidal t3-t2 will save the slot for another xeno before they die and pushes the slot limit to the edge.

If a xeno keeps disobeying, do report them. As far as I know this server has rules and one of them involves this situation.

[kastion]

Ya if a xeno is not obeying you report them to the admins and they get job banned. I have warnings for not obeying the queen when she was telling me not to slash a host int he middle of a fight for my life when im not even looking at chat. So if I can get in trouble for that then you can surely report them for being complete douchebags.

[Pogo92]

I believe the Queen should be given more direct control over the composition of the hive beyond just ahelping. The ability to limit certain castes as well as the ability to deprioritize respawn of disobedient Xenos would prevent a lot of the runaway composition and organizational issues.

[lukismness]

For instance, a while back I had the "Boiler Brigade" that happened for a round where we had three Boilers standing in a line perpendicular to the FOB so they could all fire at the cade line while an ancient Defender sat at the front, soaking up bullets.

A few nights back this same thing happened, there were 3 of us boilers on big red and basically staggered our gas to effectively keep up a constant bombardment. Marines couldn't even get through lambda entrance and we had runners/lurkers just sneak up behind and pick off stragglers. Haven't been able to replicate this wrecking crew since

[Reuben Owen]

one reason they don't team up in huge groups is simply mechanics
a melee group in a big pile is a much easier target for a ranged group in a big pile
the only reason why big groups of marines dont stomp everytime is t3s as they're the only ones who can handle going against groups/being outnumbered (10 marines vs any 10 t1/2 will beat them, more likely than not)

whereas the ranged group (marines) provides defence and offense (and ff)
the melee group (xenos) provides less of both (and bodyblocking), as only the frontlines of the group really matter as much
in addition the melee group cannot take sustained damage

which is why when xenos are attacking they kinda spread out in 2s and 3s
the exception to this is queen screech but thats just an exception

most xeno teamplay right now either relies on queen or 1 or 2 because you cant really trust a big group to do strategy reliably besides basic nibbling group attacks

small attack groups have some use but they aren't reliable as well, the lurker you just paired with died, etc
mostly if you want to group up outside of the hive to attack marines as they travel around, you just latch onto any other xenos you see and hope for the best

[Bancrose]

We do take Xenos disobeying seriously.

If they don't listen to your orders. Ahelp.

And as for Teamplay, Some castes are built for it like Crushers, Praes, Boilers and Ravs. Spitters and Sentinels and what not.

But it doesn't work all that well for the Runners and Lurkers who kind of work on harassing the backline. Even though they can excel on the frontlines. They can just do so much more damage in the backline.

[misto]

squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders

implement this one simple trick

[Dolth]

Already implemented.
Also a couple of ancient spitter will meme a frontline if a lurker memes behind.

[misto]

Already implemented.

where on the screen is the arrow? i only see the queen locator. i mean more arrows for the starred leaders.

[Dolth]

where on the screen is the arrow? i only see the queen locator. i mean more arrows for the starred leaders.

Oh. My bad. Thought you meant green pointing arrows (CTRL MCLICK)

[blingx3]

squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders
squad leader type arrows that point to queen-selected leaders

implement this one simple trick

I very much agree with this, xenos NEED some kind of organization to work, not only queen says, queen does.

[Butterrobber202]

Max Teamplay

[Butterrobber202]

also https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/ColonialMarines/issues/4650

[Ketrai]

If only half the xenos follow orders, both groups get screwed, simple as that.

Also common no one follows up on crusher charges, boiler clouds. Often just a nuisance to marines.

[adrenalinetooth]

https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/ColonialMarines/issues/4937

[kastion]

https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/ColonialMarines/issues/4937

we were discussing that like a month ago and spooky said we could give it a shot but it hasn't happened yet. We need it badly though.