Your opinion on infinite larva for hijack -- Vote!

[CABAL]

There's problems with the whole 'queen press button round ends'. It's just going to promote dumb flanks and really early FOB sieges, because the xenos don't have to care about preserving numbers, or lowering marine numbers. they just have to rush a undefended FOB flank and tunnel queen there.

And thats where you are wrong.

This would solve the problem you think it would create.
Benos don't care about preserving their numbers - Benos are allowed to be more suicidal - In spirit of the lore (if any loser cares) and fun for both sides as benos get to be mindless again and marines get to kill those few who truly go mindless.

Promoting dumb flanks - Larvae surge already does that, no post-evac fights = no larvae surge = no reason for dumb flanks. So at the end, its the same.

Lowering marine numbers - Benos don't have to care about that, which is fine, if they don't care about killing marines, they lose, simple.

They just have to rush a undefended FOB flank and tunnel queen there - I see this as win - win situation. Marines have to defend every side and there is finite number of such flanks on every map.

Overall, removing post-evac fight would solve most of the issues. No meta-evac, it would be simply impossible. If you do that, you just lose the chance to fight, so you might as well not deploy in the first place and benos win. Marines would fight groundside to death.
No "unfair" systems, no cancer larvae surges etc.

But we all know that Almayer fights will never be removed. For those who are afraid that their favourite meat grinder could be removed, I have great news. Council of Beetroot got your back.

Thats why somebody has to came up with alternative, patch, or fix to larvae surge.
I got an idea for something like that. Create a room in Almayer that is fairly difficult to hold (that DS can't crash into), but rewards it. For example, if marines are able to hold this spot for 7.5 minutes after DS crashes, crashed DS simply flies BACK planetside, turns off larvae surge and deletes rest of the burrowed/pooled laraves (the trick being that benos shouldn't be allowed to relocate spawn pool from that spot).
And here you got it. ARES core seems like a perfect candidate for such "room", because its fairly hard to hold (not much free space around to move like brieffing, away from Req, or medbay, makes sense in game that ARES could do something like that and can be sieged from every side, benos just need to destroy weak walls).
Makes that mariens have atleast 2 options, either rush DS ASAP, or hold for a while. More options is good, don't listen to the devs.
And bang, pretty good if I have to say so myself.
Also don't try to bullshit "muh lore/logic/sense" with crashed DS being able to fly again.
First: HEFA Order is canon.
Second: In game that is canon (Aliens: Colonial Marines), DS crashes into a ship and then flies back after a while.

For bonus meme points don't allow Queen to ovi anywhere on the ship but crashed DS cockpit.

[FrankTheMagicPotato]

To be fair lifeboats will be coming out soon TM and that'll probably affect larva and hijack balance and gameplay.

[FGRSentinel]

The fact that hijack is a xeno win by default should've told you ages ago that you're not SUPPOSED to win shipside.

You do not deserve to win shipside for meta evaccing and not even trying to hold the fob.

Again, as I've said the situations like what you're talking about are far rarer than you let on, especially when you look into the context. We've had rounds where Marines couldn't even leave the FOB for a full hour or more after first drop due to thick resin walls, hive pylons, a frontline hive core, and well-placed recovery nodes. This is when Marines are at their strongest mind you. It's not about if we chose to defend the FOB, it's about if it's even possible to defend the FOB and, generally, it isn't.

Depending on the hive, it's possible for Marines to completely lose the capacity to push out well before we hit the 2:1 Xeno-to-Marine ratio. In fact, I'd say that, realistically, around 26-28 is the "magic number" where, if there's still a decent number of T3s left, the hive's already won outside a very, very unusual circumstance that's, honestly a lot rarer now than it used to be. The reason I say it's the magic number is simple: the average Xeno might be designed to be as strong as 2-3 Marines, but remember that Marines have to worry about FF, have lower health, need to reload, can't see in the dark... The point is, if you have 100 Marines against 25-30 Xenos you're still likely to lose if the hive choses to concentrate most of their strength in one spot unless the specs are there. Why is this? Simple: Marines can't fight in groups of more than ten or so without many needing to worry about friendly fire or even being able to attack at all. This means if you have a cluster of 30 Marines against 20, the hive could, theoretically, crush them before reinforcements show up with little to no losses if Xenos are careful and plylons and recovery nodes are used religiously. Even if a T3 is nearly killed, they can just retreat behind cover of other Xenos to heal up. If more Marines show up, it's just more bodies for the meatgrinder unless they flank or happen to hit during an ebb in the Xeno attacks. When the Marines have more than thirty Xenos assaulting the FOB, they generally just give up because they simply cannot amass enough usable firepower on the attackers to prevent an FOB breach. Their only options are "push out and try to kill healing Xenos," "hold and hope for a miracle," or "start loading supplies to evac." If they pick the second, what usually happens without fail is the hive either presses the attack until Marines lose all hope of counterattacking and leave or the hive lets up a bit to bait the desperate Marines out.

To give an example of what I mean, we had a round on CORSAT a day or two ago where Marines were pushed back to the FOB and ARES gave us a scan: 37 Xenos. The moment everyone heard this, the dropship was ordered to stay down for a potential evac. Then one of those super rare "unusual circumstances" I mentioned before happened: someone called in a cluster OB and noticed a group of Xenos, six to eight, I think, take cover from it in a nearby room. They called in CAS to drop a fatty and, while that was happening, the APC, crewed by a lone VC, drove through the OB to block the only door out of the room. Fatty dropped, gibbed the entire group of Xenos to mark the start of a flight of retribution and fear from CAS that almost-singlehandedly brought the hive's numbers down to around 24. Then the Marines pushed out and a few more choice strikes killed the remaining T3s, turning a seemingly certain Xeno win into a triumphant, hard-earned Marine victory because the hive was too confident to use pylons and lost almost half their number to CAS strikes. Things like this almost never happen anymore because, well... People will tell you what I've said about the CAS situation in the current meta due to pylons. If the hive in that situation had used pylons and recovery nodes, the Marines would never have been able to call in the CAS strikes that devastated the hive and it'd have been an easy Xeno win with a boring, grueling Almayer defense that nobody likes.

There's problems with the whole 'queen press button round ends'. It's just going to promote dumb flanks and really early FOB sieges, because the xenos don't have to care about preserving numbers, or lowering marine numbers.

The thing is this has always been a thing Queens might randomly do. I remember one notorious round on Ice with a 75% PO death rate (and the last one cryoing out of protest against CIC's lack of response to the matter) because multiple queens decided to suicide rush the dropship in an attempt to lock it down or even hijack it. I've seen rounds where the Queen slips into the FOB and just quietly sits near the LZ waiting for the dropship to land just to kill the PO and lock down the dropship. I've even seen rounds where the queen blitzes the dropship in a losing situation to hijack it solely to get a win condition. Why do they do this? Well, three reasons.

First, locking down one dropship causes Marines to have to rely on reinforcements through an undefended LZ, which the hive can then pressure, kill everyone on the second dropship, and lock down. Once they do that, it doesn't matter if they're losing or not: Marines can't get any backup for ten minutes and there's no medevac or CAS. The hive can then just pick off the people groundside at their leisure or, if they know there's fewer people shipside, they can just rush to board one dropship and launch it, attacking the Almayer without actually having to even deal with 75% of the combat-capable surviving Marines ever. This has always been a viable and, in some cases, desirable tactical option for the hive when the FOB is left severely undefended since it's a quick in-and-out job when nobody's at the LZ. As a PO, I can honestly say it's never a fun time either.

Second, if the Queen doesn't think they can win at all, she can simply do this to get an instant "I win" condition and has always been part of the reason for why it's done: for people obsessed with winning, being able to rip a victory from the Marines even if you're one of the last Xenos alive can be a big thing. Though, honestly, so long as the hive has the ability to do this, I feel the "Marines don't deserve to win shipside" arguments have little-to-no merit: why should a lone Queen deserve to win by just outrunning the Marines while a few Runners do interference, but Marines who somehow manage to kill 30+ Xenos shipside be reminded they still lost or told that surge is there to make sure they can't win shipside ever?

Third, we have a map with only one LZ. This is a serious design oversight because it makes the first point all the more important: blitz the dropship and gib the PO and you now guarantee the Marines can't get any reinforcements for a full ten minutes.

The simple fact of the matter is removing the Almayer Defense won't make Dropship rushing any more of an issue than it already is because, simply put... the hive already has all the same incentives to blitz the hijack as it is. Perhaps making it that she can't hijack the ship if there's a certain number of Marines still groundside would prevent this since the Xenos still have to kill all the Marines and (naturally) have to fight off any counter attack if Marines chose to try one.

[Boersgard]

"reviewed by architects'
HAHAHAHAH
try 'denied immediately by architects'

It really is a joke, this little pretend play they do saying they'll take suggestions from outside their cliques seriously.

The entire point of moving suggestions to discord and off the git was expressly to deny the democratic nature of suggestions and allow the dev team to approve or disapprove anything they want regardless of the popularity or unpopularity. They've removed a platform for communicating - not to the devs themselves but the playerbase in general - ideas people would like to see and argue over.

It's a general slide into incompetence and bureaucracy and its already starting to rot away at the people running this. Further enhanced with fun "features" like "john titor" commits so nobody on the development team has to take any personal responsibility. Small negative systematic changes like the removal of git suggestions have compounding effects over time. I'm already seeing a repeat of the exact same shit I saw on servers like tgstation with the dev behaviour here.

[BIgboyyo]

It really is a joke, this little pretend play they do saying they'll take suggestions from outside their cliques seriously.

The entire point of moving suggestions to discord and off the git was expressly to deny the democratic nature of suggestions and allow the dev team to approve or disapprove anything they want regardless of the popularity or unpopularity. They've removed a platform for communicating - not to the devs themselves but the playerbase in general - ideas people would like to see and argue over.

you know this is real life and not some cyberpunk game where society is ruled by cartoonish villains right?

It's a general slide into incompetence and bureaucracy and its already starting to rot away at the people running this. Further enhanced with fun "features" like "john titor" commits so nobody on the development team has to take any personal responsibility. Small negative systematic changes like the removal of git suggestions have compounding effects over time. I'm already seeing a repeat of the exact same shit I saw on servers like tgstation with the dev behaviour here.

What the fuck are you talking about

[Boersgard]

To be fair lifeboats will be coming out soon TM and that'll probably affect larva and hijack balance and gameplay.

Hijack surge being implemented alongside lifeboats probably would've worked out. That's a nice dynamic that doesn't just result in "lmao here's your stacked 'fight' because our poor oppressed xeno players can't win on merit and need it handed to them on a platter instead"

But the design decisions, reasoning, and intent didn't even consider whether the players - on EITHER side - were going to enjoy it. It's astounding. It hath been decreed: Fuck marines for losing planetside. In the reverse situation all I hear from these people is, "get gud", but when its xenos who need to "get gud" well nooooow hold on a second there partner, we gotta /balance/ this. In their favor.

Now we're in a situation where 9/10 hijacks are just a stacked stomp, even for competitive players its not fun to play out because all the challenge got removed, you're almost always just mobbing some couple marines who are an order of magnitude more likely to accidentally kill themselves with a nade or FF than kill a xeno (and mind we had to baby our poor xenos from them anyway). For everyone else watching the end of round hijack its an eyeroller and case of "why are we going through the motions of this again?".

And god fucking forbid you brought this up and tried talking some sense into anyone on the dev team. Literally falls on deaf ears unless you're in their personal social circle. There's a handful of people on the server who can actually raise a complaint or concern and be listened to, the vast majority WILL be brushed off and ignored in bad faith until there is a solid wall of people doing it.

[Fortelian]

On MercDonalds (basically CM, but.... not) there is no sort of 'hijack' stage, and it feel soulless. As a marine, ICly, I fight to wipe the xenos off the planet, and OOCly to win and keep them off our ship. Now, you might think if there is no hijack stage, then marines will fight to the last man. But that isn't true. People on MercDonalds, a 0 Roleplay server, will evac to save their lives, and just end the round. What I don't like about that is that it's just kinda empty...you should never evacuate. I feel like having hijack gives you that closure. Of course I'm bad at wording things, so this probably makes no sense.

[CABAL]

snip

That doesn't solve the issue of players "saving their life" at all. You add hijack stage, they can just cryo, like many marines do on CM right now. Delete Cryo after hijack? Ghost. Delete ghosting after hijack? Turn off BYOND client.

[Misti Rockwell]

And god fucking forbid you brought this up and tried talking some sense into anyone on the dev team. Literally falls on deaf ears unless you're in their personal social circle. There's a handful of people on the server who can actually raise a complaint or concern and be listened to, the vast majority WILL be brushed off and ignored in bad faith until there is a solid wall of people doing it.

Ayup. Can confirm. People like Walter take out their get-out-of-jail-free-card and just tell you "fix it yourself then lmao we're open source. Learn how to code, idiot" and shrug you off. Either that, or they just outright tell you "That's not part of our V I S I O N for the game" so they flat out shoot your idea down from the start.

[Freshguac]

To me it's not that the xenos get infinite larvae that's the problem, it's that whenever a hijack occurs, command always tells everyone to get to CIC and "hold out". The conclusion to said hold out is either a marine victory, caused by an early attack from the marines, or the marines surviving for an extended period of time only to die in the holdout spot. Once a hijack occurs there really isn't an "objective" to speak of and it feels very empty. Had SD still been a thing the holdouts would be far more entertaining and would actually have a point, as opposed to just remaining in one place for no apparent reason. in fact SD with endless xeno pressure sounds like fun, the xenos would no longer have to play conservatively and let the T1s and even T2s go berserk on the marines.
I just want to stress that SD being removed wasn't an act of nature and someone removed it on purpose, which is the act of very very very silly game design. It wasn't broken and didn't have to go.