We recently had a Test Round with some new Xeno Structures. I analyzed them for a bit; for who didn't play in that round, here are the structures:
- Spawn Pool; respawns any dead xenos as bloody larvae without consuming burrowed. It appears that the Spawn Pool is prioritized over Burrowed Larva consumption when considering to respawn a xeno. Created by a Hivelord, only 1 can exist per hive.
- Evolution Pod; created by drone/hivelord/carrier(?), is a consumable which gives any non-larva xeno player full evo points. There's no need for an ovi'd Queen, or a Queen to exist altogether, but I might be wrong here. Max of 5 per hive.
- Egg Morpher; created by drone/hivelord/carrier(?), transforms dead xenos and bursted human corpses into face huggers. Acts as a turret, shooting face huggers at humans entering visual range. Max of 2 per hive.
In my opinion this change finally lets Xenos win the Attrition War once more. Once the Spawn Pool is created, the Hive population can ONLY INCREASE through captures, but, with the exception of de-logging xenos, it CANNOT DECREASE. No longer will hives be crippled by marine unga-rushes or robust survivors; even if you do lose some xenos they'll quickly respawn. The only true downtime they get is 1 minute to respawn, and 2-3 minutes to evo to Young T1.
In combination with the Evo Pod this makes it so that 1-2 drones can create Evo Pods and keep on respawning, letting fellow sisters access T3 way earlier, making the survs' day a living hell. Not only that, but dying T3's on the frontlines can wait 100 ticks as Larva, gobble up 2 Evo Pods and get back on the frontline as a Young T3. Good marine plays and pushes would be easily invalidated by Spawn Pool + Evo Pod plays. This is the *biggest issue* with the structures in my opinion; to fix it, maybe the Evo Pod number could be toned down to 2-3 pods...
...or perhaps there could be a tweak to the Spawn Pool. Either the Spawn Pool respawn could be bumped up a bit, or the Queen could choose to lose her ovipositor ability and create a Spawn Pool while "ovi'd" up. This would make the Hive Population practically stationary, and xenos would have to rely on EggSac Carriers and Egg Morphers to get facehuggers and thus captures. The Spawn Pool itself would become a Queen Strain, trading the Ovipositor for the Spawn Pool.