Suggestion to incubation and growth time of larvas

[Jalleo]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):
Have it scalable after a set time in the round so if there are many more marines than aliens new larva's pop out sooner and in reverse if there are a lot of aliens.
Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):
Make it a bit easier to balance by preventing aliens from just going into a zerg rush mode and vice versa with marines by causing more marines to burst from larva's if they become infected.
Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):
Essentially this sets up a scaling to exist with the current alien scaling of population to make it easier for aliens to expand after a failed attack but know when they should be attacking because their captured hosts are taking long to burst.

[apophis775]

HMMM
That's actually not a bad idea, and it's easy as balls to do...

[KingKire]

well lore wise, it doesnt make sense, but gameplay wise it is a great tool to act as a passive force on aliens, either helping them during the bad times, or holding them back during the great times
edit: to add onto that, this is another hidden gameply force, so its not seen by players. i dont know if thats a good or bad thing, but some way of aliens knowing that hosts are taking longer or shorter to pop would be i think a good thing. maybe a small hint that the larva's are more active or less active as the hive waxes or wanes.

double edit: this would also be a small tool to help queens know when the hive is powerful to the marines vs. when it is weaker. a small peice of info for sure.

[ShortTemperedLeprechaun]

I like it. Theres really no downside, and according to apop, it's easy to code.

[Machofish]

I would be interested in this, depending on how fast is 'faster'. If it gets to a point where a marine has no conceivable chance of making it to surgery if they get hugged, I imagine it would cause an influx of marines shooting themselves or suicide-charging the hive rather than trying to hold out for rescue/evac.

[vtipoman]

Do "braindead" (unused) larvae count as "aliens"?

[Tristan63]

many more marines than aliens new larva's pop out sooner and in reverse if there are a lot of aliens.

You killed me

[NoShamNoWow]

There is already enough marines from the start and aliens still seem to multiply fast as fuck before we even land. Dunno about it.

[Wickedtemp]

I'm not even sure if this is needed. Provided that:
A) Runners actually catch monkeys at the start.
and B) Queen lays eggs for huggers,
and C) T1's don't suicide rush ten times in a row

There's normally enough larvae to last the round. Until a marine gets into the hive and kills them all. I've had rounds where we had like 20 or so unused larvae.

[Sarah_U.]

I'd put a timer before this actually takes on. 15-20 min seems like a good balance since new aliens will be fresh out and just die if they're not culled into NOT DOING STUPID THINGS... Etc.
You get what I mean, it's to help survivors. They don't need to be swarmed further xD

[TeDGamer]

I don't think this is needed at all. -1

Here's why, you're punishing marines that are almost winning by making the xenos spawn more larva as well as eventually getting another Queen. It's already bad enough that I've only seen one major marine victory with the new patch, but this will guarentee that it's not possible to see it ever again unless most aliens are SSD/ inactive.

Here's why, marines are winning but they have a few infected....those chest bursters pop out, ensue friendly fire and them escaping to form a drone -> queen, cycle is repeated over and over.

[Jalleo]

I'd put a timer before this actually takes on. 15-20 min seems like a good balance since new aliens will be fresh out and just die if they're not culled into NOT DOING STUPID THINGS... Etc.
You get what I mean, it's to help survivors. They don't need to be swarmed further xD

I already did say suggest in the start of this topic of a set time after roundstart of when this goes into affect.

Also the reason why I was suggesting this was to make it harder for aliens to get too large and make it too easy for them to take on the marines and win for balance reasons.

I would be interested in this, depending on how fast is 'faster'. If it gets to a point where a marine has no conceivable chance of making it to surgery if they get hugged, I imagine it would cause an influx of marines shooting themselves or suicide-charging the hive rather than trying to hold out for rescue/evac.

That would be the point of which it becomes difficult due to balance and if people go down to really specific situations including lag and such. Balance is hard.

[Snypehunter007]

Have it scalable after a set time in the round so if there are many more marines than aliens new larva's pop out sooner and in reverse if there are a lot of aliens.

Question? How would you determine how many marines is the activation for the increase or decrease? Most times, the aliens are outnumbered unless the marines really mess up and a lot of ghost players join the xenos. If this doesn't happen, usually the marines outnumber the xenos until a fairly successful Sulaco assault by the xenos. Also, when you are saying "marines", do you mean the actual marine contingent or every human?

[oprayx73]

kinda gives the xenos ANOTHER tool that helps them survive not-completely-good raids against them. Further bolstering the
meta that ALL squads need to form one alien killing blob and murder everything all at once. -1

[genjufens]

I think this should be tested cause it could really be a good change. +1

[Steelpoint]

If we're concerned about the early, early game of alien expansion (before the Marines even arrive) then we could examine a concept of only triggering this scaling system when a Marine dropship or droppod lands on the planet.

Akin to if the Sulaco preps for evacuation you could imply that the arrival of these new ships has spurred the hive into action to bolster their numbers against a possible threat.

[apophis775]

See, the thing is, I want to ENCOURAGE T1 Suicide rushes. That's what they did in the movies/Games. They literally run directly AT the enemy into gunfire as distractions/to soak up bullets.

[Steelpoint]

To be fair in the movies very few Aliens actually died to the Marines overall. I think only four or five Aliens even died to the sentry guns in Aliens and that was just a probing action.

Lore arguments aside there's no incentive to rush the Marines as T1's, the entire Alien side of the game is built around conserving your life to slowly build up your jelly growth to evolve and upgrade, you HAVE no incentive to waste your precious life.

[Jalleo]

Some things are sacrificed for gameplay

[lcass123]

the downside I can see from this is that during end round situations with 4 -5 aliens the round may be extended hugely if you have more larvaes spawning.

[MrJJJ]

+1 For this
There is not many downsides for this, even in high pop, after all there is sometimes lack of players on xenos team

[monkeysfist101]

To be fair in the movies very few Aliens actually died to the Marines overall. I think only four or five Aliens even died to the sentry guns in Aliens and that was just a probing action.

Lore arguments aside there's no incentive to rush the Marines as T1's, the entire Alien side of the game is built around conserving your life to slowly build up your jelly growth to evolve and upgrade, you HAVE no incentive to waste your precious life.

Rewatch the movie and get back to me on that. The marines killed off about 108% of the hive BEFORE Ripley went to rescue Newt. Hadley's Hope had 158 colonists. Assuming that not a single colonist was killed by the xenos and that they were all hugged and bursted, that leaves us with 155 xenos (Newt plus the two they killed removing the facehuggers.) Now for you lore sticklers out there, you'll have to bear with me for the sake of the argument and ignore the unknown number of colonists killed by eachother in the comics. Hicks, Vasquez, and Drake alone killed well over 30 in the hive (again, I know the number including the ones killed by the other marines was larger, but you'll see my point soon.) now we fast forward to the turrets. Between the four turrets, they had 1200 rounds. Not including the rounds Hudson and Vasquez used testing them and the few rounds remaining, let's say they had 1180 rounds. Assuming it takes 10 rounds to kill a xeno and the turrets don't miss, that gives us 118 kills in the tunnels. During the subsequent attack on the control room and Vasquez's grenade, we can guesstimate another 20 xenos were killed. In the hive we see the queen and a half-dozen or so Honor Guards that are killed by Ripley. Finally, we get the Raven in A:CM that was "the last drone" of the original hive. This totals us up to the marines+Ripley killing 175 out of 155 xenos.

[KingKire]

I would bump up what monkeyfist said, there were ALOT of alien deaths in the movie, but the shear large waves of teir 1's really just kept pouring in to overwhelm the several thousand rounds the turrets were unleashing. I think the balance around marines v. young/mature aliens is just right for fighting, but when we start to see mature/ancient aliens come out, the marines tend to get slaughtered. I would like to see a larger increase in swarms of low level aliens pouring down and trying to kill marines ala Wiskey Outpost, but that would mean getting someway for aliens to feel good about sacrificing their lives for the greater good. Maybe a mechanic such as slowly respawning monkey fauna and increasing the time for maturity on aliens in exchange?

But besides the point, getting a stronger alien "force of nature wave" feel would do well but its important to keep it in check to prevent a full blown steam roll, which is why the OP suggestion works well.

[Steelpoint]

If you re watch the entire sentry gun scene then only about eight (8) Aliens are killed on screen by the sentry guns despite the massive ammo expenditure.

[monkeysfist101]

If you re watch the entire sentry gun scene then only about eight (8) Aliens are killed on screen by the sentry guns despite the massive ammo expenditure.

On screen, yeah, but watching the cams, Hicks refers to it as a shooting gallery. If we're going by on screen kills only, then only like ten colonists died.