So you've just joined for the first time as a Xenomorph? No idea what you are doing? This Space station 13 guide is pretty good as an introduction to the interface! Otherwise, let this guide get you up to scratch!

As a foreword, rounds on this server usually last between two to three hours! Make sure you have the time commitment to sit a full round.

The Rules

While it's not fair to shove the rules down your throat, Colonial Marines is a roleplay focused server and as such has an extensive list of Rules. It's highly recommended you spend some time reading the rules to ensure you don't accidentally break any. Thank you.

How to join the Hive

Join at roundstart

In the lobby screen, select Setup Character click Be Xenomorph to Yes, then click Ready.

Late join

After the round has started, if there is no Xeno you can control in the Join the Hive, click Observe to spawn as a ghost. Once you are a ghost, click Toggle SpecialRole Candidacy in the Prefernces tab, then turn on Xeno preference, you will get this message: You will now be considered for Xenomorph events (where possible). You can also click Join as Xeno in the Ghost tab to see if there is any SSD (i.e. away from keyboard) Xeno you as take up.

Who Orders Who

There are four tiers of aliens. Not every player can evolve to the top, because there are only so many spots available at each tier. The Queen is at the top. She runs the Hive. The third tier (frequently called T3) are the Boiler, Crusher, Praetorian and Ravager. These are comparable to Marine officers. Look to them for leadership. The second tier (frequently called T2) are the Carrier, Hivelord, Hunter and Spitter. These are advanced versions of the bottom tier aliens. The Drones, Runners, and Sentinels are the first tier and make up the meat and potatoes of the Hive. If it's your first game, avoid evolving past the first tier unless it's necessary for the Hive. Allow more experienced players to take these more complicated roles.

You should obey any orders given to you by your Queen. It is a hive mind and you have no free will. The only exception is if you are given orders that violate the rules. (Should you be given orders that would violate the rules then you should contact the admins by ahelping.) If an alien that outranks you asks for something, try to do it. Assisting experienced players is a great way to learn the game.

Larva

As you spawn as a chestburster or Larva, you're very weak and should avoid conflict. Staying on weed to speed up your evolve progress. If you wake up inside the Hive, stay there! If you wake up outside the Hive, follow the circular indicator on the right side of your screen to find the Queen. If you join late in a round, you may wake up in strange places, don't panic and use your survival skills to escape from danger, clicking on doors to squeeze through them, crawl into vents (in the Alien tab) and hide under table, then ask the Queen for further commands.

Wait until the Progress in the Stats tab reaches 100%, then click the Evolve in the Alien tab. Since you are new, you may want to ask the Queen what you should evolve into (or just check Hive-Status and evolve into the fewest caste among Drone, Runner or Sentinel).

Evolve and upgrade

Drone are very important supporting players, but not in combat roles. It makes an excellent choice for your first game. Drones have two primary functions. The first is building walls, doors, nests, and resin to create and protect the Hive. The second is planting as many weeds as possible to expand the Hive. You can't go too wrong if you're planting weeds! All aliens are more robust on weeds. Read more about Hives.

Abilities:	Description:
Plant Purple Sac	Can't be planted if there is already a sac on the tile. Can be removed by one slash with harm intent for re-plant. Costs 75 plasma.
Choose Resin Structure	Click to choose what resin structure to make. The default structure is a Resin Wall.
Secrete Resin	Secrete the chosen Resin Structure on your tile. Costs 75 plasma.
Corrosive Acid	Vomit a glob of acid on item to dissolve it. Multiple items can be clicked at once as long as you are standing still. Costs 75 plasma.
Emit Pheromones	Emit one of the three Pheromones. It is advised to emit the pheromone that are not already being emitted, as pheromones don't stack.

Runner are the Hive's scouts. You're very weak at first, so don't rush out at any enemies. It's easy to tell inexperienced Runners because they tend to die quickly. Don't let that happen to you. Think of yourself as a ninja. Speed and cunning are your weapons, not brute strength. Your primary role is to scout around the Hive, identify any threats or possible hosts, and report back to the Hive. Stay in the dark. Communicate lots. At the beginning of the round, Runners are expected to quickly bring back hosts like monkeys, etc., to the Hive to be infected.

Abilities:	Description:
Hide	Hide under objects.
Pounce	Pounce at target, forcing the victim on the ground and drop their weapons. Though one can quickly get up from a Runner's pounce so some Runners tend to tackle the victim as follow up.

Sentinel are the primary defenders of the Hive. This includes defending the Queen. The other primary duty is making sure that no captured hosts escape to wreck the Hive. The ability to spit neurotoxin really helps. Unless the Queen says so, you should remain inside or around the Hive at all times. If live hosts are nested, you should remain close by to stop them from escaping. At the beginning of the round, you should be guarding the Hive and shepherding any hosts.

Abilities:	Description:
Corrosive Acid	Vomit a glob of acid on item to dissolve it. Multiple items can be clicked at once as long as you are standing still. Costs 75 plasma.
Xeno Spit	Use middle mouse button to spit globs of neurotoxin to stun hosts.

Upgrading

Upon evolving to any caste, you might notice that you are a Young Xenomorph of your selected caste. As time passes you will automatically Upgrade, causing your strength and abilities to grow in power significantly. You can Evolve to the next tier even if you've upgraded from young to mature, however doing so will revert you to being Young in your next tier. If you're new, please avoid the evolving and let more experienced players play the more advanced Xenos. Crawl before you run.

Alien Abilities

For All Aliens:

Abilities:	Description:
Rest	Used to rest and unrest. Xenos heal faster when resting on weeds.
Regurgitate	To devour, drag target with one hand then click yourself. Beware the devoured will be dissolved in 5 minutes and regurgitating them doesn't reset the timer. If the devoured is armed with a knife, they can cut their way out from the inside, leading to you being gibbed.
Toggle Xenomorph Vision	Clicking this will toggle on and off your ability to see in the dark as a xenomorph, useful when looking for light sources from marines.
Hive Status	Head to the alien tab then click on "Hive Status". It will provide you with a list of all alien, from which you can check the strength of the Hive and know which caste to evolve into.

Combat

Slashing forbidden/restricted/permitted

At the beginning of the round, the Hive is desperate for hosts to infect. The Queen may issue a standing order forbidding the slashing of hosts. While this order is in place, slashing is forbidden or restricted to only when you are hurt. You might want to avoid conflict, but you can still tackle and drag hosts with your Disarm and Grab intents to try and move them to the Hive. At some point, the Queen will allow the slashing of hosts and your combat power will improve significantly. Check this order in the Stats tab. As the Queen permitted slashing, use Harm intent to slash. You can target different body parts . In general, avoid armored areas to inflict more damage.

Capturing Hosts

While Xenos slash to wound and kill, the main goal is to weaken them enough without killing to enable capturing and infect, giving birth to new larvas and growing the hive.

Drag

There are primarily two ways of moving hosts, dragging them or devouring them. To drag, you can:

Ctrl + Click the host, you don't need to switch to the empty hand with this method.
Click with an empty hand using Grab intent (3 in hotkey mode)
Right Click -> Pull.

Though dragging is slow (except for Runner) and you can't drag hosts into tunnels and vents (to bypass fog wall/terrain/marine force), you need to have the host devoured to do that.

Devour

To devour, click the host with Grab intent then click yourself. To stop the host getting up and run away, you can switch to an empty hand (X in hotkey mode) and keep trackling them using Disarm intent (2 in hotkey mode) after you have started devouring them. While devouring a host to carry them is faster. A devoured tall host will die at some point between 15 and 30 seconds inside an alien (a small host can be alive up to 3 min), so be careful holding them too long. After you have arrived back at the hive, click to regurgitate the host.

Infecting Hosts

The Alien Life Cycle

Xenomorphs are essentially parasitic insects. A Hive has only one Queen. The Queen lays eggs. The eggs get planted and mature after a short delay. Mature eggs contain a larval facehugger. The facehugger stays in the egg until disturbed. Facehugger will attempt to attach itself to any host that gets close. The facehugger infects a host by implanting a larva inside its host. Because larvae require time to mature, the Xenomorph Hive will guard infected hosts and secure them into nests to prevent escape. Once mature, the young adults burst out of the host. They are colloquially called chestbursters and Larva may be a misnomer. This kills the host. Chestbursters are extremely weak at first, but given time can evolve and mature into several much stronger forms.

Eggs

When the Queen is in Ovipositor mode, she will lay eggs automatically. The eggs need to be planted (by Queen/Drone castes), and the planted eggs will mature after a short delay. Spread the eggs out around the hive to allow easier infecting.

Using Facehuggers

Note this is only applicable if you are a Drone, Hivelord, carrier or the queen: Hosts can get hugged actively or passively. Hosts walking through mature egg fields will get attacked by facehuggers and infected. Or, aliens can fling facehuggers at hosts to actively cause an infection. Some helmets can stop one or more facehugger attacks, so be careful when attacking some marines. Once attached, a facehugger will stun its host. Once a host is infected, the aliens will become aware of any baby sister inside through an icon. The icon gets bigger as it matures.

Nests and guards

A prison on a prison station

The final step is to find a and drag the host on it. Dangerous hosts (like Marines) should be secured into a nest. Otherwise, they'll run or shoot up the Hive. This is very bad. A Drone, Hivelord, or Queen should set up nests for dangerous hosts away from the center of the Hive, and away from any young chestbursters. At least one Sentinel or Spitter should guard these hosts until their usefulness ends. Their neurotoxin is very good at calming a enraged hosts. Alternatively, simply tackle them with Disarm intent (2 in hotkey mode) and re-nest them.

After Birth

Listen to the screams and celebrate the birth! Prepare the nest for another host. Move any unconscious chestbursters to a nursery. This should be located in the most secure part of the Hive.

Tips

When you are on fire, get on weeded tile and click RESIST to roll on floor to extinguish the flames. Disarm others (shove) does NOT help extinguishing fire, just drag them to weeds if they weren't already. Though dragging a critical alien will cause damage so avoid excessive dragging and drop them once it is safe.
Plant Weeds often to spread weeds as far as possible. Aliens only heal when being on weeds, heal much faster while resting, downed aliens will bleed out if not on weeds.
You regenerate plasma at its full rate when on weeds, much slower if not on weeds.
Live to fight again. Fall back to weeds when wounded. Heal up before re-joining a battle.
You can regenerate plasma while injured, and health, off weeds if you are affected by recovery pheromones. Don't try this if you are critical.
Aliens do not need to breathe. You can traverse open (and oxygenated) space without permanent damage.
As a Queen, there is no greater advantage you can give your brood than to lay as many eggs as possible. Not only is it an excellent defence, but a powerful weapon when your sisters have access to facehuggers to immobilize their prey.
Aliens are in a hivemind, you have NO free will.

Xeno Roleplaying Guide and Expectations

You are an extension of the will of the Queen. If there is a Queen, her will MUST be followed. No exceptions. If she orders you to run to your death, start running.
Remember that Queen's word is law unless it breaks a rule in which case you should ahelp it.
You are a hive-mind, information is shared - Because a hivemind works on the INSTANT transmission of information between all those connected, you CAN use words like "shuttle" or "hydro" to describe things. It's assumed that because you are a hive-mind, if you say "shuttle" your alien character is actually understanding what your are describing instantly (because, it shares a consciousness with you), but since we can't actually "emulate" this, using English to describe things is OK.
Killing a nested+infected host at ANY TIME is a bannable offense, and don't un-nest just to kill. It's counter-productive to your cause of growing the hive. If a marine escapes the nest and uses a weapon to resist, THEN you may kill them, but you should try to tackle and renest them. Remember: The more hosts you get and keep alive, the bigger your team. EXCEPTION: The queen MAY kill any marine she wants at any time, provided she has an RP justification (if asked by the admins). This power does NOT extend to aliens following the Queen's orders.
You do not know that Marines are coming to the planet. Furthermore you cannot prepare defences on or around the dropship landing zones prior to the Marines arrival.
When you die, you are a 100% NEW XENO. However, your previous life is part of the hive-mind, so you CAN use/pass on knowledge your previous "life" knew, as the hive "should" know it. (i.e. Dying to a mine near the Nexus means you can say "There are mines by the nexus, lookout", but you can't say "I WAS THE PREVIOUS QUEEN, I CLAIM QUEEN, OBEY MEH".
Refrain from saying "Ayylmao", "Ayyy", "Reeeeee" as there is a Stronger Enforcement for Xeno Roleplay.
Common Xeno metagamming behaviours to avoid
Roleplaying Guidelines

Additional Reading

The following are some good guides and examinations that go further into explaining other details of the game: