Carrier

XENOMORPH - TIER 2
Carrier	Evolves From: Drone Evolves To: N/A Role: Carry huggers around, allowing the Hive to impregnate new hosts on the move. Use pheromones to assist fellow Xenomorphs. Guides: Guide to Pheromones

General Information

The Carrier is one of the two evolved forms of the Drone. Whereas the Hivelord is focused even more on the Drone's original task of building and fortifying the Hive and sacrifices its mobility to do so, the Carrier takes a very niche role in the Hive. With its ability to store 8 facehuggers safely and carry them around, the Carrier becomes the Hive's main infection vector, able to carry facehuggers to the tallhosts instead of having to bring them to egg nests, and thus deploy them directly on the battlefield.

Carriers can place a trap for 200 plasma which constructs a resin hole on weeds. This hole can then store a facehugger, just like an egg, and lets the facehugger ambush humans. Highly useful for hive defences and all around a great ability to help the hive with ambushes.The carrier is one of the fastest big Xenomorphs in the game, besides the hivelord if it uses resin walker, allowing it to flank rather comfortably or perform hit and run tactics. While it loses the Drone's ability to build most resin structures, it is still capable of planting resin weeds. It also has access to Pheromones, a critical tool in its arsenal, especially if flanking.

The facehuggers you throw will behave like normal facehuggers, but after being flung a distance they will be stunned for a short bit, and they will not be able to land on humans on a throw. As such, it's recommended to aim ever so slightly off-target. The facehugger will have room to adjust with a pounce once its lights are back on.

Playing as a Carrier

As a Carrier, you will find yourself in a strong Support-oriented position, with your facehugger throw allowing you to add an extra threat to tallhosts facing you. While other castes deal damage or stuns, you are capable of using windows of opportunity to infect tallhosts with the facehuggers you throw. Once a tallhost is hugged, they will be impregnated and will only be able to remove the embryo with advanced surgical procedures. If they don't make it back in time, you can fully expect that they will eventually hatch a Larva.

Your ability to plant weeds should never be underestimated. While you're not a sturdy Xenomorph by far, you can still take more hits than a Drone, and tallhosts will certainly hesitate to engage you alone and head-on. In a pinch, you can simply fire facehuggers away to force them to deal with them while you make like the wind.

Carrier Tactics

• The Carrier thrives as an ambush caste, with a powerful ability to hold a chokepoint by chugging facehuggers into it. While Marines can simply shoot the facehuggers as they come in, they will probably reconsider simply rushing in.

• Facehuggers have a very short life expectancy once thrown, usually under thirty seconds. As a result, it is extremely hard to use them as traps, and they must be used directly against tallhosts to be viable.

• Facehuggers are capable of ripping off headgear on their own, and once viced to a Marine's face, nothing will pry them off. A facehugged Marine is as good as infected.

• The Carrier will usually heavily benefit from support, especially from castes that can easily stun a tallhost and drag them into the facehuggers you throw. Sentinels and Runners are two obvious candidates, but Spitters and Hunters can do in a pinch.

• You will need large amount of eggs to do your work, especially since you are bound to throw many more facehuggers than you get infections. Make sure the Queen is up to date with the latest engagements so eggs are always close to the front.

• Your facehuggers are useless against tallhosts that are already infected. As such, you should be careful when dealing with those hosts.

• As noted before, facehuggers will be stunned a second or two after landing, even if it hits a Marine directly. Only when this initial stun is over will the facehugger be ready to pounce. While throwing facehuggers at Marines is a simple and obvious way to get infections, it is less efficient than throwing your facehuggers in cover and tricking tallhosts into running in their range once the stun is done.

Carrier Evolution and Upgrades

Carrier Upgrades focus, unsurprisingly enough, on improving their unique ability to throw facehuggers, increasing both their range and storage amount. The Carrier can also expect general improvements of all its statistics, with no noteworthy increase. As they upgrade, Carriers will get better at what they do, and better overall.

Carriers can not Evolve any further, as there is no Tier 3 castes available in the Drone succession.