Things you don't like about current balance and what you'd do to fix it

[Chocolate_bickie]

Marine shouldn't be heavily rewarded for evacuating.

With SD being so defensible, Defcon bonuses, ERT and no intervention when it comes to metaevacing marines force xenos to come up and xenos can't do anything about it.

This is made worse by the lack of limit on marine numbers (compared to xenos larva cap/lack of willing players) and the fact xenos can do nothing to delay SD.

[CABAL]

Marine shouldn't be heavily rewarded for evacuating.

With SD being so defensible, Defcon bonuses, ERT and no intervention when it comes to metaevacing marines force xenos to come up and xenos can't do anything about it.

This is made worse by the lack of limit on marine numbers (compared to xenos larva cap/lack of willing players) and the fact xenos can do nothing to delay SD.

Isn't that the point? If benos steamroll marines, they can evac and get a bit stronger, so this balance things out. If benos are not steamrolling, then marines won't evacuate. It's perfectly balanced.

Benos can easly reach 50 units while 100 marines is still alive, so I don't see much "cap".
ERT is more often than not a hostile force, or even just additional benos.

[Chocolate_bickie]

Isn't that the point? If benos steamroll marines, they can evac and get a bit stronger, so this balance things out. If benos are not steamrolling, then marines won't evacuate. It's perfectly balanced.

Benos can easly reach 50 units while 100 marines is still alive, so I don't see much "cap".
ERT is more often than not a hostile force, or even just additional benos.

Xenos can't easily reach 50 players, on high pop you might reach that.

As for hostile force, most ERTs play like their marines, killing xenos instead of acting like UPP or worse, coming in as PMC and not even rescuing the CL.

Furthermore, most evacs are command realising they have a better chance of winning shipside and calling all the marines up, when xenos have barely scratched their numbers.

[Vispainius]

Neuro : Fine.

Tankiness: Fine

Queen screech: Perfectly fine
Strong queen abilities period: Fine

Weak cades : Buff
DefCon : Ill let the devs sort out, can't really give good input, still new, needs adjustement. Really depends on what angle we are working to.
Fire: It is rather shit isn't it. Tiny buff? Adjust by giving anti-fire mutator.

Nades: Sounds like a cool idea to give better throwing... Still....

[CABAL]

Xenos can't easily reach 50 players, on high pop you might reach that.

As for hostile force, most ERTs play like their marines, killing xenos instead of acting like UPP or worse, coming in as PMC and not even rescuing the CL.

Furthermore, most evacs are command realising they have a better chance of winning shipside and calling all the marines up, when xenos have barely scratched their numbers.

Nobody evacs if benos are not already storming FOB. It's nearly impossible to break xeno siege and take colony back, everyone who played more than few rounds should know that. Still, most DS hijack end up in xeno minor/major than marine major.

ERT's know that marines are not the biggest threat and they usually first spot xenos because they have to go to CIC so they have to walk trough all the ship. Even if they would want to go straight for marines that bunker up in Evac Pods, or DS, or CIC, they first have to go trough xenos storming those places. It's nearly impossible to meet marines first as ERT.

[Boersgard]

metaevacing marines.

Something massively overblown by bad xeno players. I've seen marines evac earlier than they've strictly needed to a few times, but I've never seen marines deploy and evac without suffering extensive losses of some kind.

9/10 times a marine "metaevac" is 100% the fault of the xeno players. If you don't want marines to evac quickly, you need to lay off the gas and draw them out.

[Cimo]

Queen should have either charge or screech, having both is a no no.

[WinterClould]

Early evac bad. More marines should die on the ground. Readding SD just makes people not evac again and makes it so everyone always holds SD and, for what? Some pointless nuking of both sides? A drawn out siege after what should have been a siege at the FOB? Oh wait there was no siege at the FOB because the marines just up and evac'd so they can SD.

I liked it better when evac was the end goal. When it was kill all the xenos personally, or get off the boat before it crashes into the planet. It was a better time. Should remodel the ship to be like the Sulaco again so it's a last stand for an evac count down, not an SD.

[Chocolate_bickie]

Something massively overblown by bad xeno players. I've seen marines evac earlier than they've strictly needed to a few times, but I've never seen marines deploy and evac without suffering extensive losses of some kind.

9/10 times a marine "metaevac" is 100% the fault of the xeno players. If you don't want marines to evac quickly, you need to lay off the gas and draw them out.

9/10, pretty creative numbering there. I have seen 4 survivors hold defences against the entire hive for 30+ minutes, killing mutiple T3s. But marines get one glob of gas chucked at them and it's ''welp time to nuke ourselves''.

Evacuating the planet should be a penalty to the marines, they should not be rewarded for doing so. Otherwise xenos are just being punished for being better than marines. When the opposite happens (marines stomping xenos planetside) xenos don't have a fallback, for xenos it's do or die, where as marines always know they can just go for SD instead.

It's a marine crutch that punishes xenos for doing well.

[Steelpoint]

Almayer defence is something I wish we moved away from, I feel the game would be better served if it was kept on planet outside of events or rare occasions. The evac stage of the game simply serves to (usually) draw out a game for over a hour longer, if not more, and the current Self Destruct mechanic, while appreciated, is poorly implemented in my opinion.

Every time we add the SD we eventually see major reworks or rebalances for the mechanic that make it harder or more stupid to defend. I still believe the SD mechanic would be better served as a background timer that just occured when activated automatically instead of a major DEFEND mechanic that makes no sense in hell (why anyone would defend something that will blow them up is beyond my understanding).

I feel we are only sticking to the inane idea of Almayer fight endgame due to it being a historical hand over from the origin days, where I see it as a handicap to a better gameplay experience that can end faster for us.

EDIT: On the subject of 'end games', we still have not gotten them right. As I described the Alien endgame is boring and tedious with hour long fights on the Almayer, but the Marine endgame is just as bad, with the Marines being forced to scour the operations area for the last handful of Xenos who just refuse to die.

Not to mention the xeno mechanics make it entirely possible for a xeno comeback which just serves to further extend the round another one to two hours as the Marines have no hope of stopping a second , or third, Hive.

Only way I can think of fixing these issues above is...

* Alien (almayer) endgame: Make it that when both Marine dropships retreat from the planet, and the LZ computer is interacted (or the area has more Xenos than marines after X seconds) the AO is overrun and the xenos win.
* Marine (hide n seek) endgame: Give the Marines some kind of objective to capture that will end the game if held, make it far enough that the only way they will reasonable do so if the Hive is badly weakened or destroyed.