Block Queen accessing shuttle console when bad odds

[Warnipple]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):
Sometimes an early retreat happens. Block the Queen from using the shuttle console when xenos have bad odds.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):
Prevents the Aliens from dying on a valiant Sulaco assault because marines cheesed and retreated early for big numbers.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):
For every alien, if there is more than 2 marines per alien. Calling down the shuttle shouldn't be possible. This prevents aliens from going up when they have severely bad odds. Especially if marines cheesed and called a full retreat early.

You may be wondering: "But Warnipple, this doesn't force marines to go down to the planet and would delay the round!" Unfortunately this is an unavoidable issue with this suggestion. I would recommend to add something with conditionals along the lines of: pod/shuttle haven't been used for the last ~5 minutes and Queen has accessed the shuttle console. Do X to the Sulaco to force marines to attack. For example blowing up Cargo for their cowardice. This is only an example.

[Jumes]

Good idea! +1

[Toroic]

My concern with this is that as soon as the console is touched the alarm goes off and marines can build fortifications, so if the queen can't go up she's given up a lot.

2:1 isn't that scary of a ratio for xenos, so I'm hesistant to agree with that part as we had 5-6:1 and won last night.

Neutral for now.

[Sarah_U.]

I'd say 3:1 and if the console is touched while odds are unfair it completly disregard the code doing the alarm and popping up the window for the queen, saying "Your sences feel danger... Perhaps this decision is to be reconsidered."

If the queen REALLY WANTS TO GO, either a pop-up has shown up or the next time, it does, giving her access and setting off the alarm since she so much want to do so.
(AKA: Would you like to disregard your natural instincts and go? [Y/N] -> [Yes: Uses console and sound the alarm] // [No: The conditions stops, leaving the alarm and screen closed])

[Renomaki]

Honestly, I think it would be easier to leave it alone as is.

I wouldn't mind something in place to prevent queens from rushing, though.. But that would be more timer based rather than resorting to programming a mathematical calculation to determine if there are too many marines to board. What if the latter bugged? That would be pretty bad for xenos.

[Sarah_U.]

Marine rushed before first contact is great
I mean, if they hold onto the ship for an HOUR!

(Damn marines making me wait as survivor)

[Warnipple]

My concern with this is that as soon as the console is touched the alarm goes off and marines can build fortifications, so if the queen can't go up she's given up a lot.

2:1 isn't that scary of a ratio for xenos, so I'm hesistant to agree with that part as we had 5-6:1 and won last night.

Neutral for now.

I do agree that the alarm would need something done to it for this idea to work.

Also that round is an outlier and it should regarded it as such. How often do xenos win 5-6:1 odds? Not very often.

I'd say 3:1 and if the console is touched while odds are unfair it completly disregard the code doing the alarm and popping up the window for the queen, saying "Your sences feel danger... Perhaps this decision is to be reconsidered."

If the queen REALLY WANTS TO GO, either a pop-up has shown up or the next time, it does, giving her access and setting off the alarm since she so much want to do so.
(AKA: Would you like to disregard your natural instincts and go? [Y/N] -> [Yes: Uses console and sound the alarm] // [No: The conditions stops, leaving the alarm and screen closed])

This could work too.

[Toroic]

I do agree that the alarm would need something done to it for this idea to work.

Also that round is an outlier and it should regarded it as such. How often do xenos win 5-6:1 odds? Not very often.

Agree that it was an outlier, but it's pretty common for 10 xenos to win with 20 marines in the hanger, plus docs, mps, command staff, and wounded marines in medbay giving up to 40 total marine players, a ratio of 4:1.

If we give a warning without alarm to xenos if the ratio is more than 3:1, and allow the queen to bypass it, then you have a +1 from me.

[Kevinthezhang]

I strongly, strongly disagree with this. -1

This is an unnecessary amount of railroading that takes away player agency.

If this really is an issue then let the queen as the "Queen Mother" for psychic bio-scans or something.

[Sarah_U.]

Queen mother requires an admin to be present. The mechanic I proposed to implement works 24/7 while avoiding to heighten the workload of staff.

[Neray]

It's fine as it is, -1.

[Jroinc1]

+1. Let xenos know that turtlerines are lurking

[Jay Burns]

I remember a really bullshit round a couple of days ago, where after the first marine assault,keep in mind this was high pop, the marines lost around 10 men, which is fair enough fall them to retreat back to the FOB and regroup, but they retreated back to the sulaco for half an hour, then a clever bridge staff baited the xenos by sending down the drop ship with cameras on it, then they set up defences and completely rekt the xenos, the salt was real.

[Warnipple]

I remember a really bullshit round a couple of days ago, where after the first marine assault,keep in mind this was high pop, the marines lost around 10 men, which is fair enough fall them to retreat back to the FOB and regroup, but they retreated back to the sulaco for half an hour, then a clever bridge staff baited the xenos by sending down the drop ship with cameras on it, then they set up defences and completely rekt the xenos, the salt was real.

I remember that round. Research nades were abused too. Xenos had no chance even with 3 to 1 odds.

[Recounted]

I kinda support this but cmon

xenos have those time when queen tells them to upgrade and evolve to T3 or T2

[ParadoxalObserver]

So essentially remove any strategic thinking from the role of the Queen and make it so the game is even more heavily favoring the Aliens? There's no warning for when the Marines are pushing if the odds are bad. And it'd be silly if you have the same to the Aliens.

Queens will make bad decisions like trying to board the Sulaco, just like CO's will make bad decisions in order all out attacks against the hive in bad circumstances. If Aliens were warned or blocked from boarding the Sulaco due to 'bad odds' there should be something similar for the Marines. Not to mention you'd also be giving the Aliens intel they shouldn't have. Suddenly they can get an idea on how many marines there are and what they're facing.

The marines, of course, have zero intel on Xeno numbers. And appears pretty unbalanced.

[Jeser]

So essentially remove any strategic thinking from the role of the Queen and make it so the game is even more heavily favoring the Aliens? There's no warning for when the Marines are pushing if the odds are bad. And it'd be silly if you have the same to the Aliens.

Queens will make bad decisions like trying to board the Sulaco, just like CO's will make bad decisions in order all out attacks against the hive in bad circumstances. If Aliens were warned or blocked from boarding the Sulaco due to 'bad odds' there should be something similar for the Marines. Not to mention you'd also be giving the Aliens intel they shouldn't have. Suddenly they can get an idea on how many marines there are and what they're facing.

The marines, of course, have zero intel on Xeno numbers. And appears pretty unbalanced.

Agree, too OP solution.

[Warnipple]

Currently the only way of stopping marines from retreating are admin/mod MOTHER messages when the CO calls a retreat. I'm proposing a mechanic that doesn't require admin/mod intervention. It favours aliens so they don't die on a 3 to 1 or more odds on an assault on the Sulaco. If there are no admin/mods on then marines can cheese and just call a full retreat at the first possible moment and wait for the xenos to attack. Xenos don't get the luxury of having a bioscan to know if assaulting the Sulaco is going to be bad. Although if the Queen prayed, I would probably tell them.

Example 3 to 1 situation :

33 marines
11 xenos


1 queen and 10 xenos.
6 tier 2+
3 possible tier 3s.

So at best its 3x tier 3's, 3x tier 2s, 4x tier 1s and Queen vs 33 marines. Lets assume 6-8 are Sulaco support staff. 25 marines vs 11 xenos is still pretty bad odds to assault the hanger with. My math might be off for the xenos team but the point is, marines will win hanger defense 9 times out of 10 in these scenarios barring any other factors.

[Clarkeh]

+1 to this. The past week or so i have seen Command cheesing to victory by calling a full retreat after a failed assault. They then order in the big toys and wait for the Unknown Lifeform Klaxon and when the ayys do arrive they get blasted into oblivion. Despite intelligent ayy players blatently telling the Queen/Empress it wouldn't be a good idea, the power goes to their heads and they do it anyway.


Also apparently its ok for the researcher to cook up an OB in a can ready for when that Klaxon goes off. I feel its meta and there should be a process to use these nades (for example Researcher tasks a specialist with the grenade and asks the marine to use it on the enemy and then report back the effect) Right now those OB in a cans just magically appear and its not questioned and accepted when an entire alien force is wiped out due to 1 grenade with a firing power of an orbital cannon.

[ParadoxalObserver]

+1 to this. The past week or so i have seen Command cheesing to victory by calling a full retreat after a failed assault. They then order in the big toys and wait for the Unknown Lifeform Claxon and when the ayys do arrive they get blasted into oblivion. Despite intelligent ayy players blatently telling the Queen/Empress it wouldn't be a good idea, the power goes to their heads and they do it anyway.


Also apparently its ok for the researcher to cook up an OB in a can ready for when that Klaxon goes off. I feel its meta and there should be a process to use these nades (for example Researcher tasks a specialist with the grenade and asks the marine to use it on the enemy and then report back the effect) Right now those OB in a cans just magically appear and its not questioned and accepted when an entire alien force is wiped out due to 1 grenade with a firing power of an orbital cannon.

Then the issue should be punished as meta. Not the introduction of a clearly unbalanced mechanic that puts the marines always on the offensive. Lets say that the marines, rightfully, call a retreat after getting heavily wrecked but Xenos did so with surprisingly low numbers or lost a lot. Suddenly the Queen wants to progress the assault.

A. If this utterly blocks her it's ignoring a situation in which a lot of marines are injured and so this might actually be smart.
B. Even if it is a bad idea, Command on the Marines side can also screw up (and regularly does so). The players in these roles should do their best to do well, they shouldn't be fed what is OOC information to babysit them.
C. Even if it just warns you this is a bad idea and allows you to override, it's still giving the Xenos OOC information when they should have no idea how many marines there are. Along with having the Xenos stalling and just trying to grow in numbers every time they see this message forcing Marines to be on the offensive even when it doesn't make sense.

Essentially, with how much crap the marines get when it comes to meta'ing, early rushes, and so on. I think it'd be heavily ironic if suddenly there was a feature giving Xenos meta info. All this does is increasing Xeno stalling and just make things generally unfun.

[Karmac]

Also apparently its ok for the researcher to cook up an OB in a can ready for when that Klaxon goes off. I feel its meta and there should be a process to use these nades (for example Researcher tasks a specialist with the grenade and asks the marine to use it on the enemy and then report back the effect) Right now those OB in a cans just magically appear and its not questioned and accepted when an entire alien force is wiped out due to 1 grenade with a firing power of an orbital cannon.

I've been playing for a literal week straight, and in only two games have I seen research grenades, only one of them had OB-Inna-Can, because that's Suro's trademark. One of the two games had a researcher that handed out maybe 5 grenades for hangar defense, boot marines didn't know how to activate them though so none went off. The second game had literally two people gearing up to defend the hangar from a queen that decided to troll and rush her forces into the pod, one of those people was Suro the researcher, who'd made ONE OB-Inna-Can, and killed ONE alien as the pod made it onto the Sulaco, SO MUCH SALT WAS HAD FOR NO GOOD REASON, the other person defending was me the CO, who was drunk and almost immediately got killed after Suro did when they threw their grenade. No other research grenades were made that round, but people went on in chat as if Suro'd said god wasn't real.

[Clarkeh]

I've been playing for a literal week straight, and in only two games have I seen research grenades, only one of them had OB-Inna-Can, because that's Suro's trademark. One of the two games had a researcher that handed out maybe 5 grenades for hangar defense, boot marines didn't know how to activate them though so none went off. The second game had literally two people gearing up to defend the hangar from a queen that decided to troll and rush her forces into the pod, one of those people was Suro the researcher, who'd made ONE OB-Inna-Can, and killed ONE alien as the pod made it onto the Sulaco, SO MUCH SALT WAS HAD FOR NO GOOD REASON, the other person defending was me the CO, who was drunk and almost immediately got killed after Suro did when they threw their grenade. No other research grenades were made that round, but people went on in chat as if Suro'd said god wasn't real.

We must play at different times some of the times then because i would say i see OB in a can probably 1 out of 4 rounds i play, its either OB or Marines are given out tons of explosives via RO and secure armory the moment the klaxon sounds.

[Karmac]

I'll admit I miss a few rounds, especially the ones with Iron Bears ERT's, which makes me greatly sad cykablyat, but once again 1/4 ain't bad considering how OP they are, and admins have stated before that if the research grenades are rail-roading the game they'll take action, I recall this from the actual thread regarding the nerf to research grenades.

As for the explosives via RO, he must've been hoarding points if he can afford to shove out enough 50 point explosive crates to give some to every marine, and when it comes to the Armoury. I've recently noticed that some CO's will never open the Armoury, even in worst-case scenarios, which leads me to question if I should just get a Spec to blow into the damn thing sometimes.

[hawkshot86]

-1

This wouldn't make sense in game. What is blocking the queen? I don't like limiting player freedom, even if it's saving someone from a bad decision. Players should be free to make mistakes, it is part of learning the game and part of what makes the game interesting.

This would be the alien equivalent of removing FF. As much as I hate FF I'd be pissed if it was removed, it's what makes the game interesting and tactical, and what seperates good marines from boots. That same knowledge applies to queens, a good queen knows better a beginner doesn't. Let them learn and make mistakes, then improve. Putting a hard block just limits freedom.

[Clarkeh]

-1

This wouldn't make sense in game. What is blocking the queen? I don't like limiting player freedom, even if it's saving someone from a bad decision. Players should be free to make mistakes, it is part of learning the game and part of what makes the game interesting.

This would be the alien equivalent of removing FF. As much as I hate FF I'd be pissed if it was removed, it's what makes the game interesting and tactical, and what seperates good marines from boots. That same knowledge applies to queens, a good queen knows better a beginner doesn't. Let them learn and make mistakes, then improve. Putting a hard block just limits freedom.

The problem with your point of view is Marines are directly responsible for themselves and have relative free will this works for and against marines. Aliens on the other hand do not and its frustrating watching a massacre unfold in your own mind when an Queen /Elite Empress wants to assault the Sulaco 50 minutes into the game because they cba to wait for their subordinates to evolve or upgrade.