Replace Huggerspam/Combat Facehugging With Halloss Disarming Strikes

[TeDGamer]

The other thing to keep in mind too, is that halloss spamming a captured marine is basically like rebuckling one to reset his escape timer which is against the rules.

Thing is that there's a feature for this that's in place. IF you unbuckle someone, it'll say that they were rebuckled too recently.

For this, there won't be a feature yet but probably after spamming it like 10 times for no reason, you can't spam it on that marine anymore for like 30 seconds and they can't be nested. (because then it'll just be a cycle of both.

[Surrealistik]

Thing is that there's a feature for this that's in place. IF you unbuckle someone, it'll say that they were rebuckled too recently.

For this, there won't be a feature yet but probably after spamming it like 10 times for no reason, you can't spam it on that marine anymore for like 30 seconds and they can't be nested. (because then it'll just be a cycle of both.

Yes, it helps, but an alien can easily just unbuckle you, drag you around in resin cuffs, then rebuckle you; it's a little more inconvenient but still possible.

Granted I'm all for solutions that make it harder to power game in violation of the rules, and disabling Halloss vs nested targets accomplishes that. Yes, you can still unbuckle and Halloss spam, but that's fundamentally the same thing as cuff dragging which already exists.

[Surrealistik]

Bump due to being buried on 2nd page.

[Steelpoint]

Facehuggers are seriously the number one reason I find myself not wanting to play this game as often.

For Aliens I find myself using them too much as a crutch, for Humans I find fighting the one two slap combo to be infuriating.

[oprayx73]

THIS, but now add a way ro reduce/heal halloss as a marine effectively and not insanely hard to do, and this seems pretty legit.

[Toroic]

Generally I find your ideas pretty exclusively xeno nerfs and marine buffs, despite neither of those being necessary currently.

I like the idea of halloss strikes instead of tackles, but I disagree with the stomp doing halloss instead of a short stun as currently. That short stun is an essential part of crusher function, as it gives time for other xenos to move in while not under fire, which your change would not accomplish.

I also think that halloss would be a fuckton stronger than tackling is currently because once you were knocked out there's no chance you'll get back up in time.

I hardly bother with huggers once I hit mature crusher, as I can do more continuously in combat than I can going all the way back to grab more huggers.

One concern I have is that it gives a marine a lot more time if they escape a nest not-handcuffed, meaning every marine will have mandatory handcuffing.

[Mech__Warrior]

After being hit with a mature ravanger's charge, they promptly facehugged me and then insta decapped me while I was already down because I was the commander and had zero head protection. I was already down, but lately I've been seeing a lot of unnecessary roughness from xenos. Perhaps when the hugger is on and busy trying to impregnate, xenos can't kill. That could be a bit excessive but it would give marines a bit of time to save their friend before watching the poor sap's head fly off. Seriously, that was pretty cheesy and I play on some of the more hardcore servers out there.

[Ocnjak20]

Facehugger combat right now is fine, it has been shown that marines can withstand it and stuff like that is getting boring. However, the counter you've made well can you tell me how it will work when Ravager Charges on someone and doesnt knock them down but instead they can shoot him back while he has delay, same goes for entire runner tree with their Pounce/Charge thing. Because you clearly have not thought about those classes.

Then we come to the point, wouldnt it be much easier to make huggers being able to be carried only by carrier and thrown around while all the other Aliens would have to drag or carry their prey to their nest? As in make grab intent upgradable for aliens so that marines cant really break off anytime they want. That would be even better, Xenos would have to actually drag Hosts into their nest, put them next to the egg and wait for hugger to jump on hosts face just like in the movie, or Queen/Drones would have to attach those manually.

[Steelpoint]

Just because something is fine does not mean we can't strive to do better.

Facehugger combat is serviceable but its not the best system we can use.

[Toroic]

After being hit with a mature ravanger's charge, they promptly facehugged me and then insta decapped me while I was already down because I was the commander and had zero head protection. I was already down, but lately I've been seeing a lot of unnecessary roughness from xenos. Perhaps when the hugger is on and busy trying to impregnate, xenos can't kill. That could be a bit excessive but it would give marines a bit of time to save their friend before watching the poor sap's head fly off. Seriously, that was pretty cheesy and I play on some of the more hardcore servers out there.

"Unnecessary roughness"

This is the sort of casual mentality that leads to a dozen terrible suggestions a month.

The purpose of each team is to kill the other. Xenos can't just murderbone the way marines do because they need to capture to create more larva.

You are not owed any gentleness, especially when xenos are already on the sulaco and you're 1v1 a mature ravager. If the ravager was any good, whether they had a hugger or not is irrelevant. You were going to be dead either way.

Xenos vs Marines is not antags vs protags. It's just team 1 vs team 2.

Both teams should be doing everything they can to win, and roleplaying as they do so.

[ExGame]

"Unnecessary roughness"

This is the sort of casual mentality that leads to a dozen terrible suggestions a month.

The purpose of each team is to kill the other. Xenos can't just murderbone the way marines do because they need to capture to create more larva.

You are not owed any gentleness, especially when xenos are already on the sulaco and you're 1v1 a mature ravager. If the ravager was any good, whether they had a hugger or not is irrelevant. You were going to be dead either way.

Xenos vs Marines is not antags vs protags. It's just team 1 vs team 2.

Both teams should be doing everything they can to win, and roleplaying as they do so.

Xenos don't need to capture Marines at all if the Marine pop is at maximum 50 or 60, that's the problem.
They got so many fucking farwa and stoks that it's not even funny anymore.
There was a mid-pop round once where Marines completely wiped xenos 2 times but they still managed to regrow their numbers through the SSD larva sitting around the caves from the animals.

[Toroic]

Xenos don't need to capture Marines at all if the Marine pop is at maximum 50 or 60, that's the problem.
They got so many fucking farwa and stoks that it's not even funny anymore.
There was a mid-pop round once where Marines completely wiped xenos 2 times but they still managed to regrow their numbers through the SSD larva sitting around the caves from the animals.

You definitely did not "completely wipe" the xenos because otherwise you would've won, and simply winning the ground war is not sufficient for victory for either side. Xenos need to assault the sulaco, marines need to clean out the caves. Destroying larva and egg supplies is an extremely effective way to cripple the xeno team.

Mature t3 xenos are exponentially more powerful than young t1, and both teams can continue to respawn indefinitely if they play incorrectly. Marines get late join and cloning, xenos get larva respawns.

[northcote4]

So, random throught regarding the whole 'Facebugger based combat' thing.

What if instead of carrying huggers, aliens (except the carrier) carried eggs instead? That way rather than being able to instantly KO marines with a double-fist of huggers to the face, aliens could instead strategically move the eggs containing the huggers closer to the marines, but they would still require the marines themselves to trigger them. Naturally, the eggs would need to be placed on weeds.

This could also work in conjunction with the tackle system mentioned in this thread, providing a means to quickly get the eggs to the disabled host, rather than the other way around, and would add in further possibilities for forward nests.

Thoughts? (Didn't think this was in-depth enough to warrant it's own suggestion page)

[Surrealistik]

Generally I find your ideas pretty exclusively xeno nerfs and marine buffs, despite neither of those being necessary currently.

I like the idea of halloss strikes instead of tackles, but I disagree with the stomp doing halloss instead of a short stun as currently. That short stun is an essential part of crusher function, as it gives time for other xenos to move in while not under fire, which your change would not accomplish.

I also think that halloss would be a fuckton stronger than tackling is currently because once you were knocked out there's no chance you'll get back up in time.

I hardly bother with huggers once I hit mature crusher, as I can do more continuously in combat than I can going all the way back to grab more huggers.

One concern I have is that it gives a marine a lot more time if they escape a nest not-handcuffed, meaning every marine will have mandatory handcuffing.

I've been accused of bias for both sides by Marine and Alien mains so I think that's a pretty good sign I'm hitting on good, balanced ideas.

Further, whether or not you use facehuggers as a Crusher is irrelevant in the larger scale of things, nor does it obviate the fact that alien combat is as a rule hugger based.

I wouldn't mind Stomp getting an increased AoE in exchange for losing its insta-stun, but its probably better for the game if they can't get a guaranteed chain from that into a Disable loop without support.

Personally I'd be willing to accept permanesting (not that I think it's a good idea) if that's the cost of getting rid of huggers.

Facehugger combat right now is fine, it has been shown that marines can withstand it and stuff like that is getting boring. However, the counter you've made well can you tell me how it will work when Ravager Charges on someone and doesnt knock them down but instead they can shoot him back while he has delay, same goes for entire runner tree with their Pounce/Charge thing. Because you clearly have not thought about those classes.

Then we come to the point, wouldnt it be much easier to make huggers being able to be carried only by carrier and thrown around while all the other Aliens would have to drag or carry their prey to their nest? As in make grab intent upgradable for aliens so that marines cant really break off anytime they want. That would be even better, Xenos would have to actually drag Hosts into their nest, put them next to the egg and wait for hugger to jump on hosts face just like in the movie, or Queen/Drones would have to attach those manually.

What's fine about it exactly? Facehugging combat requires little skill, and robs players of agency from start to finish. It is literally all about macroing your wombo combo of stun opener (pounce/charge/etc) + click + X + click. Marine has no chance to escape or retaliate if done properly no matter how robust.

Further, yes, I have thought about the stun-based classes: note that I explicitly omitted mention of replacing pounce stun with Halloss. Personally I think they should probably have an _extremely_ short stun duration and some Halloss damage which sets up disarm strikes. I don't think it should be possible however, for a Runner to get a guaranteed pounce stun on a Marine alone; that's more appropriate for Hunters (would be cool if their pounce did more Halloss damage the longer they were stationary, so they can Solid Snake Marines with well planned ambushes) and Ravagers.

[Heckenshutze]

+1 what's the point of playing a multiplayer game if it takes no skill at all?

[OatzAndHoes]

+1
I think this could make the combat (and muh immurshuns) a lot better if it is properly playtested and balanced first. The aliens in the movies usually disarm, drag off, or outright kill hosts, not run up with facehuggers in hand trying to place them on enemies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P3IOC30b0M

[Arachnidnexus]

+1

Anything to move away from the super binary hugger combat is great. Aliens hate being one-shot by SADAR and mines and this is considering there's a max of 4 SADARs a round. Lack of agency sucks for any player (cough remember when Predators got buffed so they could never be nested cough) and having halloss would allow for more skill matchups. I do think xenos will need a lot of buffs since currently huggers are a huge crutch until xenos can hit T2 Elite/Ancient or T3.

[Heckenshutze]

Bumping this shit up.

[forwardslashN]

This has been around for a while, and I'm not seeing an incentive to do this rather than changing the system from the ground up. Denied.