Hive Design Discussion

[Toroic]

I'd like to open up a discussion about hive building design and techniques, and share what's worked for me.

First off, I feel that building north of the river for defense is an enormous waste of resources and the unfavorable terrian gets a lot of xenos killed.

My standard nest structure is checkerboard surrounded by a sticky resin moat, which makes it very hard for a marine to get anywhere even if they escape their nest.

My general hive defense structure is a long sticky resin "kill hall" meant for crusher/boiler defenses, and then stomp-screech sized rooms filled with sticky resin/eggs as you go further in. It has been highly effective in game.

On the rare occasion that I play hivelord, I make a 3x3 area with lots of doors where I have one end of all the tunnels I make, laid out to represent the map. A tunnel in the center goes to about hydro, for example. Bottom right on the 3x3 is to near LZ1. I'd like to see something like this utilized more often.

What do the rest of you see working well?

[DeadLantern]

Though it takes time, I usually make a maze with long hallways. This allows for ravager ambushes and runner pounces, and is generally unfavorable for marines. Plus, FF is high in long, maze hallways. And if one hallway is long enough, a Crusher can charge straight in with the marines just cowering. These mazes are very hard to make but it will throw the marines off. And if we have a lot of drones or just a good plasma trading hive, sticky resin + maze hallways is heaven on earth. Making random defenses and walls in an open area is a very good tactic and making a open spaced area closed is very good.

[Eenkogneeto]

For secure nests I always try to seal it off with a wall of doors and some resin, It wont slow the hunters/runners down too much but it will prevent how far they can run without gunning their way out.
For general hive building I incorporate a lot of 2x2 squares of walls to cut down on marine movement rather than big long walls they will only shoot through in one place if at all.
I prefer a checkerboard of Resin and Nests over solid walls of resin, Because it means a single hunter/runner can take an entire squad down if they choose not to clear them.
Through every door should be walls, Straight lines of doors get ayys killed and make the marines job easier.
For frontlines, Like around the river, A lot of diagonal walls for boilers/spitters to spit through. You can seal the back side with a door if you don't want marines to be able to spew bullets into the hive when they aren't in use. if you don't have a lot of spitters/boilers feel free to make the standard Wall-Space-Wall over and over works nicely to limit marines.
Bonus points if you leave a clear lane in the middle of each set of them for crusher/boiler sideswipes.
For actively in combat (Such as near tablefort and moving up) I just thrown down 2 walls then a wall in the center two tiles back and expand from there. Replacing as needed. Make sure you weed PLENTY in combat.

[Liran343]

Well. One tip I can give for young hive builders is to put membranes (xeno windows) if you decide to have a cluster of resin nests. So your sisters can see where they are and don't get confused to where they need to drag the marine if they capture one. Additionally, I recommend building hive clusters in the domes south from the river, mainly because you don't have much space to begin with and you're in a hurry because of the aggressive advance from the xeno side in that point in the game.

[Bob]

I have some screenshots of some small design sorts of things if that's okay. I joined late and the Queen was saying to fortify the entrances and didn't want to see "open spaces".

[Bob]

I haven't done this putting up pictures thing before. So I took two pictures and spliced them together. My focus for this was ease of navigation as well. Maybe there are things you could glean from this. I hope the picture comes out okay. [... man, that's a huge picture... sorry...] [How do you do this properly?]

[Nick123q23]

I like Bob's fortifications. Whenever I play drone, I try to stay away from checkerboard patterns as that's not only stale and predictable, but kind of metagamey
It's pretty hard to get away from though.

[Reuben Owen]

Too many doors in that.

[DrPng]

I like hives to have a mixture of mazes and enclosed spaces. For example, put mazes in the back and in enclosed areas away from the combat so if marines ever try to flank or enter the hive, this gives time to fight and spot them. And towards the area of combat and forward nests, it needs to needs to be a little bit open for boilers and crushers and for a quick retreat.

[Bob]

In my experience, there is a bit of time used when I am a new player, never seen the map before, and I find myself born in a hive alone and I have to try to find my way through a hive. And this time also takes from the time of getting to where the action is.

The "maze" can also work against the troops who don't know it. The layout of a hive can change throughout the game for different purposes. I tend to go for chambers and strategic doors with the idea that a door does slow down a character, xeno and marine alike, and it also signifies a direction to the eye with its purpose. So I want to usually make a hive that my fellows will enjoy most of all, because that seems quite important.

[If I would continue this design, I would then proceed adding a room extending north with the lower left door. The queen said "no open spaces".]

[Liran343]

I'm still waiting on the fancy prison nest design (the one that uses windows)/

[Toroic]

I'm still waiting on the fancy prison nest design (the one that uses windows)/

I would be legitimately irritated if I saw that in game because it is a huge waste of time and effort. Non-combat castes and sulaco marines often think that because they're not directly in the combat it's not an issue if they fuck around the whole round.

The worst thing a player can be is worse for the team than if they weren't playing. Drones that evolve to hivelord (wasting a level 2 slot) and then don't build tunnels and instead build elaborate and pointless structures are literally less valuable than if they weren't playing at all.

I mention that specific example because it is exactly the type of selfish player who will waste time on pointless fortifications who will take a slot and do nothing with it.

[Lucius Jones]

No idea if this can still be done with the current cave layout, but before as a crusher, I used to crush 1 square hallways down straight to the entrance over 30 squares long, took ages but always finished around mature level, so you shouldn't leave anyway. This led, if the marines pushed past the tunnel, a straight shot into their ass. And it was a paint to fortify and took manpower to secure, with almost no chance of going past it due to a crusher forward facing you the entire time, and no way to get past it unless it walks past you while stunned. One bad thing is that, very easy for a marine to get behind you and not being able to disarm them down fast enough to leave. Either never leave the tunnel and only charge down it, or save the stomp for the escape. Works pretty well, I think you've seen it a couple of times tor

[Casany]

No idea if this can still be done with the current cave layout, but before as a crusher, I used to crush 1 square hallways down straight to the entrance over 30 squares long, took ages but always finished around mature level, so you shouldn't leave anyway. This led, if the marines pushed past the tunnel, a straight shot into their ass. And it was a paint to fortify and took manpower to secure, with almost no chance of going past it due to a crusher forward facing you the entire time, and no way to get past it unless it walks past you while stunned. One bad thing is that, very easy for a marine to get behind you and not being able to disarm them down fast enough to leave. Either never leave the tunnel and only charge down it, or save the stomp for the escape. Works pretty well, I think you've seen it a couple of times tor

Well, with the changes to stomp it'd probably work but you could probably never escape if you did until the marines were pushed back

[Liran343]

I would be legitimately irritated if I saw that in game because it is a huge waste of time and effort. Non-combat castes and sulaco marines often think that because they're not directly in the combat it's not an issue if they fuck around the whole round.

The worst thing a player can be is worse for the team than if they weren't playing. Drones that evolve to hivelord (wasting a level 2 slot) and then don't build tunnels and instead build elaborate and pointless structures are literally less valuable than if they weren't playing at all.

I mention that specific example because it is exactly the type of selfish player who will waste time on pointless fortifications who will take a slot and do nothing with it.

I can see your point. However, those players (most of them at least) who "fuck around" in my point of view are just trying to find new and innovative ways to play the game differentially, thus not making it too repetitive and acually find different ways and stuff people can do to "fresh it out a bit". I don't now about you but I'm tired of seeing the chess patten used to build every single goddamn nesting area. I basically stopped playing drone/hivelord because whats the point in being one if you can't build different types of nesting areas if you know there's only one viable (nah just kidding with the hugger removal patch they made drones more spicy). It's like playing a MOBA, league for example, and you decide to try a new build for your champ, then all of a sudden one of your teamates shouts at chat that you threw the game because you went on a different build than the default one. Is it justified? Mabye... depends on the aftermath.

Just a side note: there's no such thing as useless fortifications. Every single wall is a bliss.

[TheMaskedMan2]

I actually love hivelords and drones that build huge elaborate fortifications because it looks cool and it's fun. It usually won't help win as Xenos rarely get pushed so far back, but it's fun, and I prioritize fun over winning, and if the Queen doesn't mind me when I ask "Can I help make the hive super fortified?" then yeah. Go for it. I find it extremely fun even as a marine when i'm clearing a proper hive and not just endless fields of sticky resin or honeycomb nests.

[misto]

heres what i find gives good ish results

hivefuckgrid.png

walls are undervalued and sticky resin is overvalued

wall - block enemy line of sight, block enemy movement, block enemy bullets

sticky - slightly slows enemy movement

praes who shit sticky everywhere make hivelords and drones have to break some their sticky in order to build walls, wasting time and resources. please only shit sticky onto already walled up zones

notice that there is generally no need for doors, an alien's natural speed should be enough to get them around a corner in time. doors are HEAVILY over-valued in hive design

these blocks represent large blocks of resin walls made of many tiles. if you rely on 1-thick walls the marines may have the patience to break them or just break them with incidental fire. making them many tiles thick will ensure that either they give up on breaking it all down, or they waste a ton of time clearing it all out

of course the free spaces should be 1 tile wide and stickied to slow enemy movement and encourage friendly fire

loops and places to double back and get behind marines are valuable for both ambush and escape

this pattern can be interrupted for nest/egg chambers, but generally not for much else

oh yeah, and encase landmarks in resin walls to encourage the marines to get lost

and for the love of god, crushers and boilers, stop smashing/melting every last metal wall in sight, those things can suck up a lot more bullets than resin walls can and make excellent cover

i heavily discourage creating dead ends or resin doors that lead to nowhere. it may seem like a clever trick to play on marines at first, but actually its a great way to encourage other aliens to get cornered and killed because they dont know which passage is a dead end or door to solid rock wall

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one last observation - telling your drones and hivelords to build crap at tablefort may seem cool at first, but theyre going to be spending more time repairing the damage done by cas strikes than actually building

[misto]

oh yeah, and since im here, does anyone know how to build stuff faster? if youre a hivelord or a drone of sufficient ancientness running recov you can shit out walls but rarely drop below full plasma. is there some macro for it?