Awful game balance aside (yes marines are steamrolling atm, that's not what this is about) I'm sure devs will work out techwebs and the ground game balance.
I don't really care who wins or loses, I want to have fun. The current endgame is just a boring chore.
Specifically Xenos boarding the Almayer. Xenos last stand options could also use some improvement but that's for another thread.
Back in the old days, the dropship wouldn't crash. (I'm not suggesting going back to this) It just arrived like normal, and marines would be waiting. With walls already built. With radios, lights, power, everything.
And xenos still won. Because xenos are always the ones in control of the game. At any time they could siege the LZ and force the marines to retreat.
The penalty for that of course, was not getting captures, not having many mature/T3 xenos, and not having enough xenos to beat the marines with the defenders advantage.
That was fun.
Both as marines and xenos.
This current end game is terrible.
Adding unlimited free larva spawns for xenos is proof of how awful it has become.
Marines being forced to not organize a defense along with losing radio and power makes meta holds at briefing the only viable option.
And because this awful meta was created, unlimited spawning was added to speed up the marines inevitable defeat.
All of this is because at some point it was decided that xeno hijacking should result in a xeno victory and when that doesn't happen it became a sign that something needs to be changes.
Now we have seen the results of having hijacking = victory and it sucks.
For marines, I just go into cryo after evac. Because it's not fun.
For xenos, unless we are cripplingly low on sisters, I tab out and watch youtube until the next round because it's just a mop up.
At this current point I have 2 suggestions.
1. Allow xenos to optionally end the game after taking control of the LZ.
I don't like this but it would be better than having to wait another 10 minutes to play.
On the computer just give the queen the option to hijack or end the game with a xeno victory. Maybe give the CO/XO the ability to refuse to surrender on there computer as well.
2. Don't knock out marines telecoms or power, and only break all the lights on the Z level the ship crash lands on.
It's impossible for the marines to coordinate and do anything besides sit behind cades without radio.
I think we would see a lot better end game if marines could communicate.
Optionally I would also allow marines to start building a defense as soon as the queen wrestles control of the dropship but I doubt that would pass.
Thanks for reading, let me know what you think.