Ayylamo changes

[apophis775]

THIS IS JUST A NOTEPAD, NOT GURANTEED.

And donors who share this will DIE.

1. Remove Resin Cuffs
2. Only Drone/queen/Hivelord can secure
3. Nests increase the speed Larva develop
4. Aliens use "pain/damage" in addition to tackling
5. Aliens can NOT carrier huggers (except Carrier/Queen)
6. Drones, Hiverlords, Queens can move eggs, but eggs not on Nest die quickly.

[Toroic]

1. 100% for, never thought xenos needed them.
2. This could create some problems if other castes can't secure in nests, as they would be unable to re-nest hosts. Potentially major ramifications for lowpop.
3. Sounds good.
4. So kind of similar to pinning?
5. I'm all for removal of hugger combat, though for balance reasons other things will likely need to be adjusted. Still, a hugely exciting change!
6. Cool to see hivelord getting more of an important role, and I think tunnels will be much more important once this is implemented.

[Warnipple]

Hot damn. Who else is excited?! I'm excited.

[Feweh]

2 and 5 really need to be rethought

[Rahlzel]

#5 is and has been a MAJOR part of gameplay since the very beginning. No single Xeno can subdue a human long enough to take them back to the hive otherwise, so there needs to be an alternative or this needs to be forgotten.

[SecretStamos (Joshuu)]

2 and 5 really need to be rethought

#5 is and has been a MAJOR part of gameplay since the very beginning. No single Xeno can subdue a human long enough to take them back to the hive otherwise, so there needs to be an alternative or this needs to be forgotten.

That was a big part that we talked about during the Dev-meeting. The general consensus is that we wanted to give aliens ways to subdue targets non-lethally to be brought back to the hive.

In short, the general consensus was that Xenomorphs would get all around improvements to their disarms and grapples and tackles. Xeno grabs would be a lot stronger, with the marine being disarmed (potentially stunned), and unable to utilize two-handed weapons. For as long as the grab is active, the marine is dealt pain damage, which each successive level increasing the rate of pain damage dealt to the marine and the difficulty to break out.

From here, the marine has a number of options:
A. Resist to try and break free of the grab.
B. Draw a 1-handed item (such as a boot knife, or a pistol) and try and deal physical damage to the attacker in the hopes of them disengaging/dying.
C. Counter-grap, in the attempt to gain control
D. Call for help from other marines and hope they can free him from the grab
E. Utilize a pain killer to buy themselves more time

The Xenomorph also has some options as well:
A. Reinforce the grab, to reduce the chance of the marine escaping
B. Strike the target with disarm (pain damage) attacks in the hope of subduing the target before they can try and break free
C. Use the marine as protection from enemy fire
D. Strike the marine with lethal blows in the hands to try and disable them
E. Focus on escaping with the grabbed marine with the hope of separating the marine from their squad
F. Reinforce the grab to the highest level and utilizing a finishing attack.

Should the marine succumb to pain damage during the struggle, the alien will have essentially subdued the prey. From there, they can attempt to bring the marine back to the hive. Once the marine is close enough to the eggs, they can be infected with a facehugger and nested as usual.

All in all, hugger combat isn't really that satisfying for either side. Some of us believe that a change to the way xenomorphs fight could add a lot more intensity rather than lobbing facehuggers at a busy crowd with the hopes that one of them sticks.

[forwardslashN]

In addition to what Joshuu posted, monkeyfist brought up an interesting point. We don't really see aliens kill potential hosts in the lore, emphasis on usually. They usually subdue them in a pain lock of some kind and then drag them to the hive. So the suggestion was to prevent aliens from actually harming hosts with slashing that are below are certain threshold of health, unless the alien is grabbing them. Perhaps we could adjust the queen restriction on slashing where restrict slashing would mean aliens can't outright kill without grabbing the host, but otherwise deal full damage. If the queen permits full slashing, such for a Sulaco assault or when fighting to the death, aliens would be able to slash hosts who are near death.

[Toroic]

In addition to what Joshuu posted, monkeyfist brought up an interesting point. We don't really see aliens kill potential hosts in the lore, emphasis on usually. They usually subdue them in a pain lock of some kind and then drag them to the hive. So the suggestion was to prevent aliens from actually harming hosts with slashing that are below are certain threshold of health, unless the alien is grabbing them. Perhaps we could adjust the queen restriction on slashing where restrict slashing would mean aliens can't outright kill without grabbing the host, but otherwise deal full damage. If the queen permits full slashing, such for a Sulaco assault or when fighting to the death, aliens would be able to slash hosts who are near death.

Aliens kill without infecting in every movie they appear in. They'll grab and drag in a situation that seems expedient, but headbites and tailstabs are equally or more common depending on the level yhe xeno is threatened.

Any decently competent queen will allow slashing neigh-immediately because it is better to lose larvae than losing xenos.

I love the idea of halloss/pain strikes, but xenos need their lethal options even more without hugger stuns.

[Edgelord]

It's a tad ambiguous in the movies, we do see xenos kill a lot of marines but sometimes you can't tell if they straight up killed a person/marine or if they inflicted just enough injury to capture them and have them survive until bursting. It seems that the aliens' strategy is to start by killing, then capture when there are only a few left.

[SecretStamos (Joshuu)]

If we look at Dallas, Dietrich and Hudson, and Weirzbowski, Xenomorphs seem to grab and squeeze their targets, usually getting them in a bear hug from behind. (From the front with Dallas) Stealth and suprise is heavily emphasized.

Hudson and Dietrich were able to struggle and put up a fight. Hudson actually fought physically which slowed his attacker, and Dietrich got off a shot with her weapon in the wrong direction. Weirzbowski was too wounded to really put up a fight (equivalent of being in pain crit) and we don't know how Dallas reacted.

[Rahlzel]

and we don't know how Dallas reacted.

In all seriousness, these are some excellent ideas and I'm glad there's more to it than "Aliens can NOT carrier huggers".

[forwardslashN]

Aliens kill without infecting in every movie they appear in. They'll grab and drag in a situation that seems expedient, but headbites and tailstabs are equally or more common depending on the level yhe xeno is threatened.

Aliens infect without killing in every movie they appear in. Along with the comics. Along with the games. Moreover, they are far more likely to drag someone away than to kill them, provided they have the means to do so. There are certain exceptions, like the AvP games or Isolation, but their main intent is to reproduce and create more aliens.

[SecretStamos (Joshuu)]

I'd also like to change the alternative pouncing sound from the frog noise. It's so hilariously underwhelming, I'm guessing it's a joke we forgot to remove.

[Edgelord]

I'd also like to change the alternative pouncing sound from the frog noise. It's so hilariously underwhelming, I'm guessing it's a joke we forgot to remove.

Actually it's a sound clip from AVP2010, but yeah it's funny

[SecretStamos (Joshuu)]

Should we start working on a design document for this? So we have something more concrete to work with?

[apophis775]

Joshuu, I'll get a design document ready if noone else has input.

#5 is and has been a MAJOR part of gameplay since the very beginning. No single Xeno can subdue a human long enough to take them back to the hive otherwise, so there needs to be an alternative or this needs to be forgotten.

We did rethink it.
The Xenos, when attacking with blue/tackle, will tackle their target, and deal a small amount of Halloss damage. The goal being, that if they have time to keep tackling someone, they'll eventually put that person into pain-crit and unconcious for transport to the hive.

[Rahlzel]

It needs to be part of the roadmap so that everything is in one place.

And yeah, Apop, Joshuu covered it: http://cm-ss13.com/viewtopic.p ... 687#p93371

[Warnipple]

Joshuu, I'll get a design document ready if noone else has input.

We did rethink it.
The Xenos, when attacking with blue/tackle, will tackle their target, and deal a small amount of Halloss damage. The goal being, that if they have time to keep tackling someone, they'll eventually put that person into pain-crit and unconcious for transport to the hive.

I feel like this could be abused with tackle spamming to take on multiple foes at once. You aren't necessarily forced to haul them back to the hive but once you have enough disarm spam, you can decap them easily. Is there anything going to put in place to prevent this? For example damage from the tackle spamming xenos will reset the halloss damage?