Some Bald Ideas for Colonial Marines

[Skullrazer]

I don't know if someone came up whit something similar before,
but.... i'm posting this so you tell me if this is even... viable?

Total War in 3 Stages!


Stage One - First Contact

The idea is to give more space for RP whit no need to change the maps at all
it's more like a change in the... Script?

By having Players start as Colonist in LV-624, Big Red, Ice Colony or Prisoners Rioting
against the Guards during a Lock-down in Prison Station, these facilities will be fully functional, just like the
Almayer, whit it's Doctors, Security, Engineers, Researchers...

Then all that change when the Xeno Nation attack...Here Players will RP the first contact
whit the xenos that will get out of control during some research on each map using the already
established scenarios like the Labs in Big Red, Research in Prison, the Underground Ship in Ice Colony
or even Sand Temple being discovered by the Colony, giving some more use/meaning for this places.

The Colonists Resistance led by the highest authority between the Survivors will fight for their homes...

Prisoners may even join forces whit the Guards for one Last Stand...

Players will experience all the chaos of this events, since is just the start there will be no Marines until the Survivors send
the distress signal asking for help and holding the line, maybe the survivors hold long enough to see The USS Almayer in action,
go to the extraction point and get some proper gear for the incoming War or The Colony end up razed by Xenos...

Victory in this early stage maybe biased toward those pesky Xenos because... Plot.

Anyway... the casualties from this event will come back as additional reinforcements from Cryogenics or Newborn Xenos.

Here start the...

Stage Two - Marines vs Xenos

This is the well known vanilla game, i don't think i need to explain it, Here either the Marines and Survivors purge this
new menace from the Colony/Prison or... they send a distress signal... again... asking for reinforcements and resisting the
hordes of Xenos until help arrives doing their best to avoid the tragedy in the Colony/Prison repeat it self or...

Get Wiped out...

What bring us to...

Stage Three - The Final Countdown

Here the Responder Team come in as usual, to help the Marines defeat the Enemy or if its a lost cause (These Baldies...) Charge through Marines and Xenos alike cleaning the ship on the way to destroy the engines and bring the Almayer down
or retaking control of the ship and start self-destruction sequence, in both ways, exterminating all life and ending the threat once for all, you know... TOTAL ANNIHILATION!

This may give more space for personal stories generated from game-play alone take place,
hopefully more opportunities for RP emerge from this.

So... Tell me what you think about it... Could it work... somehow?

[MasterShakeEZ]

snip

Would be awesome to have the game start at xeno infestation of the colony then have marines show up later. Would take fucking FOREVER to play though. Would have to be like a predetermined event on the weekend or people would just have to not care about not playing a whole round.

[Skullrazer]

Would be awesome to have the game start at xeno infestation of the colony then have marines show up later. Would take fucking FOREVER to play though. Would have to be like a predetermined event on the weekend or people would just have to not care about not playing a whole round.

If you get the usual ~2 hours game the first ~30m "Early-Game" can be the Colony Resistance
the other ~60m "Mid-Game" when the Marines join the fight then the last ~30m "Late-Game" where the round end

The length of each stage will change depending on players performance, colonists aren't supposed to last
long since most are civilians... easy prey.

[davidofmk771]

Would be awesome to have the game start at xeno infestation of the colony then have marines show up later. Would take fucking FOREVER to play though. Would have to be like a predetermined event on the weekend or people would just have to not care about not playing a whole round.

I feel like it would either take forever or hardly any time at all. With roundstart xeno numbers and the amount of guns present on all maps but prison (that would have to be changed), this would remove the need for xenos to be young at all. If larva just grew into mature-level T1s and T1s evolved into mature-level T2s the colonists would probably get decimated and the current roundtart marines vs survivors numbers probably wouldn't change much.

Only problem I can think of is character continuity, since it doesn't make sense to die and come back magically as a marine. Perhaps allow players to choose whether they start the colonist phase as a random character or their own. That way you could cheese the colony phase and still play your character, or risk dying and being forced to play a random character as marine.

One other thing I think this could add is real antags. Colonists starting as CLF or criminals (especially on prison) could be allowed more freedom to take advantage of the chaos caused by the xenos.

[FGRSentinel]

The issue is with current balance if Marines land at the 60 minute mark with that many civilians on the surface potentially captured, it's basically gg from the moment the game starts. Some people quote a so-called 12:50-13:20 rule: either the Marines are in the hive wiping out most of the surviving Xenos or, I think, the Xenos are attacking the Almayer by 13:20. If this idea was put into place, Marines would have to be balanced to be much more capable against mature/elder T3s and ancient T2s.

[Freedominspace]

The issue is with current balance if Marines land at the 60 minute mark with that many civilians on the surface potentially captured, it's basically gg from the moment the game starts. Some people quote a so-called 12:50-13:20 rule: either the Marines are in the hive wiping out most of the surviving Xenos or, I think, the Xenos are attacking the Almayer by 13:20. If this idea was put into place, Marines would have to be balanced to be much more capable against mature/elder T3s and ancient T2s.

You can already see the balance issues with a time delay when the marines drop at 12:30. When the xenos have that much time to evolve and weed the place, the marines take massive losses and get all their attachments melted. Scale this to 13:00 and add more survivors for the xenos to burst, it's just not a fun experience for the marines.

[Skullrazer]

When the Xeno infestation begin they are low on numbers, the Colony/Prison decide they can take care of the problem,
what turn out not being truth, the danger increase as Xenos start pushing and this can only be stopped whit the first wave of marines (the First Recon Team) limited by the number of seats in the drop-ship, they change places as they arrive
all Marines get out to make some sense of the chaos, all civilians get in filling the ship while marines give the survivors
cover.
Once they arrive on Almayer territory Survivors get equipment to fight back or join the Almayer, like...
Colony Doctors become Almayer Doctors and so on, this may increase the need of MP's for things such as make ID cards,
direct people to it's departments, arrest extracted prisoners, some prisoners of this high security space prison
may see this chaos as the only chance to escape in years, others may surrender just to get as far away from aliens
as possible.
Meanwhile in the ground, Marines have a better chance against Xenos, but they don't start pushing yet
they can try and rescue the captured or start building the defenses, whatever they see fit, marines should
only have a chance to push the xenos back whit the second wave, here they should be on the xenos level, if all
in the colony is just dead by the time marines arrive would change little from vanilla game where marines only
find dead bodies and silence, thing is finding the right numbers for each side,what may require some testing
to find the right balance and timing this events to keep things interesting for both sides.

[RuAlastor]

I believe, this is a bad idea in general because EITHER before the main part one side will gain sufficient advantage over the other side (survivors will kill a big part of the hive OR hive would capture a lot of hosts and produce lots of larva) and this is not considering beno maturity by the time marines come OR CM would need a complete overhaul of current stats and weaponry to fit new type of rounds.

Another problem is round would last for 4+ hours and anyone dying early would be punished hard and if you allow reinforcements for both sides that would change the flow of main part significantly.

Althouth I would like to see more of these rounds as an event and under control of admins.
Everyone would start as a colonist -> Infestation in research facility -> Lack of weaponry and defences -> Benos hunt innocent prey/people kill each other for weapon (this lasts till last 10 survivors) -> Everyone dead become marines (normal gameplay starts) -> Evac -> All survivors cryo/evac and also become marines -> main part with more reinforcements for marines as benos already have advantage in maturity/numbers

[ScreamingIdiot]

Alternatively, the xeno-infestation flashpoint could be its own condensed round rather than being smashed into a normal CM round. There'd have to be goals for the survivors, such as some form of escape from the colony, rallying and killing the hive before it can gain too much momentum, or surviving for a sufficient amount of time. Of course, and there would probably be a lot of salt around the survivors who inevitably die very early, but this shouldn't cause too many issues if they can respawn relatively quickly as xenos.

In the event this does become part of one whole round of CM, the potential for metagaming is undeniable. Still, there was one round a while back where marines arrived to the colony still being fully functional and staffed only for the infestation to start later on, so there is potential for some sort of synergy there between both gamemodes.

[Renomaki]

Still, there was one round a while back where marines arrived to the colony still being fully functional and staffed only for the infestation to start later on, so there is potential for some sort of synergy there between both gamemodes.

The one round I remember when marines arrived at a colony that was still populated by colonist, it resulted in utter CHAOS.

The marines ended up causing more trouble than was expected, breaking shit left and right, looting and causing a general fuss. I feel they had to rush out the zombies that round simply out of desperation to give the marines SOMETHING to keep them busy.

Marines don't handle stable colonies too well, even if there is supposed to be a violent situation in the near future they will need to handle and prepare for.

Now, if the population was MASSIVELY lower, then I could see a squad of marines visiting a colony to investigate a mystery to have a fair bit of potential, but that would only be possible during lowpop, and no staff got time to host an event THAT late.