Marine retreats, and Alien assaults

[RadiantFlash]

I've heard quite a few complaints recently by aliens, that marines are always retreating too soon, and whenever the aliens attack, the marines outnumber the aliens!

Well, I want to argue that there might be an actual reason behind this, versus an intentional move to make the aliens salty and win in a cheap way.

Part 1: The marine planet defence;

As we all know, Aliens are super lethal. However, what most aliens don't realise, is easily over fifty percent of marine medivacs are from friendly fire.
This means broken bones, and organ damage, which requires surgery to fix. What aliens may not even realize further, is the more marines they kill, the more paniced marines will get.

When the FOB is being pushed hard, friendlyfire, /unfortantely/ tends to get rather frequent. This means more and more people are sent off to the sulaco, not to mention those who are infected, or mauled by xenos and getting medivaced.

The marine's logistics, whether due to incomptency, lack of personnel, chain of command breaking up, or just the inability to cope with the strain, eventually logistics break down. This leads to backlogs on supplies being sent down, corpses piling up outside the cloner in fairly large numbers, and a rather large amount of marines waiting on roller beds, to get operated on by the limited number of /competent/ doctors.
Why does all this wonder, you might ask? It's fairly simple. The marines can't hold, and win a war of attrition. Very so rarely, is the FOB impenetrable, or the marine logistics good enough, to support FOB defences indefinitely.

Eventually, Something breaks. Be it a defensive line, marine morale, the commander panicing becuase he can't figure out what in the hell is going on anymore, the marines running out of ammo or helmets... Something almost always gives.

And Thus, the marines retreat.

---

Part 2: The Alien Assault;

So, as an alien, You're now feeling victorious! You quite litterally kicked the marines asses, and sent what's left of their healthy marines running with their tail between their legs.
It's time for the assault. Unfortantely for you, this tends to take a bit. The queen first tends to place some eggs at the Drophip LZ, and has to call all the xenos to her. Then you may have to wait a bit for a xeno or two to upgrade, and evolve. Finally, It's time to call the dropship!

This whole process varies timewise. It can take anywhere from three minutes, to fifteen at the very latest. Then, once you've called the dropship, You've got a two minute wait for the rasputin to arrive, and then you have to clear it of the unfortante stragglers, weed and melt what has to be melted, prep the rasputin for your assasult. You also have to wait for the transport to actually charge, which takes a few minutes, and a queen who isn't paying enough attention can miss when the ships ready. Finally, you've got to wait for the straggler xeno's to board, and Now your off! Time for a victory lap!

Or not.

You see, in this whole time of prepping and waiting, the doctors are working tirelessly, to fix all the marines who are laid up in medical, and medics/researchers, cloning whoever can be cloned. Marine's are getting their much needed amunition, and replacement helmets. The /moment/ your queen touches the console, the sulaco engineering personnel will get to work (If they're competent) and start placing barricades, welding the lower engineering doors, etc.. etc..

This all leads to a defence, be it in the hangar, or elsewhere in the sulaco, with more marines then were manning the FOB. Because, by the time you FINALLY reach the sulaco, the majority of the marines are patched up by medical, some being cloned and not to mention the reinforcements from latejoins that are finally suited up and ready.

This in my opinion, is what makes the assault on the sulaco different from a cakewalk, and victory/loss only a screech or two away from deciding it.

[Toroic]

You make some really good points, and to be honest if xeno team pushes on the dropship shortly after pushing marines off the planet in the situation you describe, medbay is swamped and without hanger research grenades xenos shouldn't have much trouble taking the ship.

Research grenades and giving marines too much time to recover tend to be some of the major lategame mistakes xenos make.

[Sargeantmuffinman]

The more one teams waits, the more time the other team has to recover.

[SPACEpotato1]

I somehow managed to pull off a win as an Elite Empress after a previous Elite Empress had been killed.

How, you ask?

I didn't go up. I knew about this, and I told everyone to wait patiently, and so we did.

And surely enough...The marines came back, with their numbers, in their drop pod. So you know what I said?
...
Don't go to LZ2.

This was a clear attempt at a distraction (In my eyes), and so we killed a fair few of them in their assault on the nexus (This is where our new hive was), and so they left, RIGHT before I could initiate my plan, however that worked out better for us.

Some slightly-robust marines came down yet again, attacked, lost 2 or so, then retreated. I believe they were fortifying Tcomms at this point, and I knew there were plenty of hosts down there...So...

I called the dropship, knowing very well it would take 2-4 minutes for the marines to get back up to the Sulaco, and even then, they'd have less time to prepare. It was a plan I had thought up, and expected to fail...However, when I reached the Sulaco...

No research grenades, no fortifications, Hell, none of the doors East of the Dropship were welded, we strolled in and casually murdered everyone.

And we had 5 xenos left (Including me).

So, I've had my fair share of experiences like this. And it's important to keep this in mind when attempting to assault
The marines have more time to recover, yes. But you have to remember you always have the advantage planetside. As YOU are the side that gets time to plan.

[CommunistUser]

I remember this one time when I single handedly fucked the aliens because I chose to block off lower engineering with a couple sets of walls and a sentry gun. Ah the good old sentry

[Kevinthezhang]

I somehow managed to pull off a win as an Elite Empress after a previous Elite Empress had been killed.

How, you ask?

I didn't go up. I knew about this, and I told everyone to wait patiently, and so we did.

And surely enough...The marines came back, with their numbers, in their drop pod. So you know what I said?
...
Don't go to LZ2.

This was a clear attempt at a distraction (In my eyes), and so we killed a fair few of them in their assault on the nexus (This is where our new hive was), and so they left, RIGHT before I could initiate my plan, however that worked out better for us.

Some slightly-robust marines came down yet again, attacked, lost 2 or so, then retreated. I believe they were fortifying Tcomms at this point, and I knew there were plenty of hosts down there...So...

I called the dropship, knowing very well it would take 2-4 minutes for the marines to get back up to the Sulaco, and even then, they'd have less time to prepare. It was a plan I had thought up, and expected to fail...However, when I reached the Sulaco...

No research grenades, no fortifications, Hell, none of the doors East of the Dropship were welded, we strolled in and casually murdered everyone.

And we had 5 xenos left (Including me).

So, I've had my fair share of experiences like this. And it's important to keep this in mind when attempting to assault
The marines have more time to recover, yes. But you have to remember you always have the advantage planetside. As YOU are the side that gets time to plan.

You are those kinds of queens who delay the round for hours just to win.

[SPACEpotato1]

You are those kinds of queens who delay the round for hours just to win.

Far from it, actually. The round wasn't delayed for very long as it took the marines 10 minutes or so to get back on the ground. Another 10 minutes until we got to the Sulaco again.

[Recounted]

Hah


You are those kinds of queens who delay the round for hours just to win.

[SPACEpotato1]

Wow, what a very well thought out response.

If only A. It wasn't stolen

B. It wasn't a shit argument.

If you read the post that was ABOVE YOU. Literally ONE POST ABOVE you would've seen that I easily dismissed the shitty, piss poor 'argument'.

As the late Richard Dawkins once said, "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence". All you did was read me playing ONEEEE round and you (Not even you, actually, you just decided to quote like a lazy person) decided that "Oh obviously every single round they go queen, they do this, yes, yes, this is obvious because I read a few lines about a neat story that he had to share, that showed everyone why marines wreck aliens on high pop when they go up after retreating. I'm smart because I fucking failed highschool"

If all you can contribute is quoting someone's argument, then perhaps you should kindly rethink what you're doing, and leave, because it's really annoying refuting the same piss argument, which was LITERALLY copy pasted from another person

I guess they'll never learn, though.