And the fact you can evolve to royal-tier stuff without jelly is also not sensible. I made a chart here of a new evolutionary system that adds a fourth tier (minus queen) to the cycle, and adds some new xeno castes which I will go into detail.
So the larvaes evolve straight into drones, which in this model could upgrade to Ancient status if they chose too but could also evolve, they would loose their ancient status though. The drone would be the backbone of building and doing things for the queen, kinda like her worker bees.
From here the Drone will have three choices to evolve, be a carrier (which will have less armor than it does now because it has little hugs on it) be a Lurker, or be a Sentinel. The Lurker would be a new addition, and would replace the runner caste, its essentially a drone that runs on four legs, and has sharper claws and can pounce, much like the runner. The lurker would have black skin aswell, more or less a resprited runner. The Sentinel would be the same as it is now, nothing new. Those make up the T2 branch of xenos, the T3 and T2 branches do not require jelly. Say you go Sentinel, now you have two options. You can become a Spitter which would be the same, or a Defender caste, which is a blue-grey alien that moves very slowly but has really good armor, its attacks would do moderate to low damage. The defender also has a gold dome. The defenders job would be to actually guard hosts and make sure they cannot escape, they cannot spit or build but can absorb some damage before dying, think of them as B18s but for xenos. If you picked a spitter, you could evolve into a Boiler which would require jelly. If you were a defender, you can evolve into a Praetorian which requires alot of jelly. The praetorians main goal would not to be front-line units, but to guard important xenos that are normally helpless, say a hivelord making a forward hive, or the queen going to personally investigate something. The praetorian cap for the hive would be two, and each one would have a small bonus if in a 5 tile proximity to the queen.
Now say you went lurker, you could go hunter which would be the same as is now, or the warrior. The warrior xeno is a dark brownish xeno, with a role thats specifically for long duration combat. It would have the same armor stat as a lurker, but have a slight edge in battle with more HP all around. The warrior caste can charge like a ravager, but this wouldn't knock said person down, instead moving them back a few tiles and with some brute damage (15). From the warrior you could evolve into the crusher, which would be the same. And from hunter you could become a Ravager, which would be the same. All tier 4 xenos would have to have queen jelly, and here is the evolution timer for each one
Larva-T1 65
T1-T2 150
T2-T3 350
T3-T4 500+Jelly
T4-Queen 350+queen kill timer (If the queen died)
To avoid confusion, at the round-start a queen would be chosen and larvae players would be given the chance to opt in for it, like a vote. The vote would tally up who wanted it, and RNG would select someone to be queen.
Also players cannot play huggers, I just have it on there to represent the cycle.
Defender
Warrior (from aliens)
Lurker (Sketch is not mine)
Gahn'tha-cte Bhu'ja: Honorable duelist, beserker charger, jungle hunter.
