The final and ultimate xenomorph thread

General
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Today I saw a guy I won’t name, who, after seeing a glimpse of an alien drone, ran to an intercom to scream “XENOS!!” and then ran around the hallways to repeat the same phrase, never bothering to form a complete sentence or even literally just to type out “xenomorphs” instead. I ahelped for lack of RP, and this is the response I got:

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What kind of weird rule even is that? Who decided it and why? I couldn’t find it in the wiki, so apparently this is just something you’re allowed to do? Imagine the same thing happened but with cultists (and there are examples of people getting banned for screaming out cult). Why are xenos getting special treatment?

They spawn so annoyingly often. I think most of us can relate to sighing and considering just leaving when you hear them announced. It’s getting to a point where most rounds past the hour mark have them, which is because of their shockingly low threat level. I asked people why it is so low and apparently it’s because they win rarely, so it’s justified (?). Uh, but isn’t the threat more about how they can insta-red alert the station everytime they spawn and cause the crew to mobilize themselves with armory equipment? I don’t think their chance to greentext matters that much when speaking about threat levels.

The poll that was recently made about them has to be the most confusing one yet though. Back when it was first posted the amount of people voting they existed to end rounds quicker was about 50% IIRC. Now most people want them to be more like blobs. Still, they are the second strongest group. But why? Why do roundends need to be forced? Crew transfer votes apparently don’t mean anything anymore. Who cares if all people voted to continue because they liked the round, let’s just completely derail it with our funny larva.

Oh yeah, and they sure do help in ending rounds quicker, like when they delay the shuttle and keep shitting out new queens everytime they die, making both sides camp for 20 minutes until they’re finally allowed to leave. Sure is a lot more fun than just going to cryo when you get bored.

I have several suggestions how to potentially fix this:

  • Limit the amount of queens that can be spawned by xenos, which would make killing the queen actually matter.
  • Stop letting queens be able to delay shuttles, to prevent camping.
  • Add/Readd more midround antags to decrease their overall chance.

And no, before you ask, I wasn’t facehugged before writing this. What brought me over the edge was this ahelp which was denied for the strangest reasons. This isn’t a staff report, neiter is this a salt or bait thread or whatever. This is something that requires genuine discussion.

TLDR: beno bad pls make beno good

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One thing I forgot to add: Killing drones matters just as little as killing queens. It’s the same problem swarmers have: The very same user that got killed will just respawn as a new xeno in their nest to continue fighting, so unless that nest is destroyed (and if it is, a new one simply gets made) it’s utterly pointless to murder them.

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If the xeno queen is “camping” (like she’s supposed to be doing), then go find her and kill her. And no, don’t say it’s impossible. It’s really not all that difficult to run around the map if you know it well. I also disagree that they spawn “annoyingly often,” as I’d have to say I only witness them spawn every 5-10 rounds. Also, killing drones does, actually, matter, because xenomorphs are by far not as easy to make as swarmer shells. You actually need a live person rather than materials to get another xenomorph on your team. So, killing a xenomorph can and will significantly lower their strength and their chances of beating the crew, since one xenomorph is about as strong as five deputies.

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Xenos are supposed to hijack the shuttle. More specifically, the queen is needed to hijack it.

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Until then, the queen should be camping at a nest, doing direct combat is basically an instant loss for the xenos if the queen isn’t very careful

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Gotta admit though, crying about a round ending antag ending rounds is a major copium moment.

That said, yeah you shouldn’t be allowed to just be screaming xenos while running around the station.

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I mean sure, but thats not all that goes into hijacking. In order for xenos to successfully hijack, there cannot be anything alive on the shuttle except xenos. I’ve actually seen xenos redtext because a pAI was on the shuttle with them. So xenos need to have enough control that they can kill anyone who tries to get on the shuttle, or people go to pods instead of the shuttle. There are several ways to accomplish this, but all of them require some level of strength. you cant just have a lone queen walk onto the shuttle because she WILL die.

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So first of all, xenos actually don’t happen THAT often, and they also frequently get snuffed out early, depending on xenos skills, and how vigilant the AI is. A xeno run can end before any eggs are laid simple because the AI passed over virology, or saw the viro cam alert. Xenos certainly happen less now than they were say 2 or 3 weeks ago. There are several ways for xenos to happen, and thats the reason why they spawned so often for a bit. Careless Exploration crews, and Xenobiologists who didnt properly set up deterrents in the Xeno containment area.

If you consider leaving because of the “life forms” announcement, then thats meta as hell since xenos are not the only thing that announcement can mean, and spiderlings actually spawn more often than xenos.

On the “Xenos!” thing, I don’t think its a lack of RP. First of all, Xenomorphs aren’t an “unknown” threat. Exploration and mining come across them from time to time, and Xenobio can start with a specimen to experiment on. I assume NT knows about Xenomorphs. “Xenos” is a valid shorthand for xenomorphs, like saying sec, or med. I know RP is important, but this is ALSO a game where taking too long to type can directly lead to your death, especially since xenos have no intention of talking it out with you. If you see one, calling it out as fast as possible before you get facehugged is a valid concern. As for the Ahelp reply, I feel like thats pretty clear. The admins had a talk about this specific issue already, and they already decided on how they were going to handle it in the future. Xenos is not a bannable or notable offense.

As for this, I disagree with the first 2, and dont really see a problem with the third. killing the queen does matter, since it disrupts the xenos, disabling their hivemind, causing them to have poor movement, and preventing them from evolving into a queen. I dont know the exact duration, but if you kill the queen while the shuttle is docked, a new queen does not have the time to evolve before shuttle leaves.

The camping complaint is fairly lame, since you can just flood their nest with plasma, instantly forcing all xenos inside out, killing most of them. Use their tendency to sit in one place against them. Their ability to fight back against that is limited. On the other side of the argument, the queen NEEDS to that time. If the queen doesnt have the forces, she needs to make them, which means if its late into a round, and she has 2 drones and thats it, she isnt going to be able to take the shuttle. If there was no delay, then queen loses before she even got a chance

add/readd more midrounds is a good idea, but not because of this thread. I just think more midround variety is always nice. I know itsmeow worked on adding more midrounds to dynamic, which is good. I think the station could use more variety of midrounds in general, but thats a whole different thing honestly that would be a ton of work.

TLDR Benos are fine

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I don’t particulary recall queens “camping” lately most of them eventually order a shuttle swarm to, you know, try to hikack

In fact isn’t there like… 15-20 minutes of grace after "hostile and then “hostile enviroment resolved” pop up and crew can leave? Obviously the other alternative is to kill the Queen

I’d say the ahelp of the issue of the thread could vary depending on the admin handling the ticker, but consider the “we figured” they probably gave a talk to the admin team to enforce that idea

If we were on an ideal scenario an assistant would try to describe it like “Uhhh there was a black creature bigger than me moving quickly through maint”(A hunter) or different type of panics depending if they assaulted him, saw a queen, etc always trying to not go for “XENOS!”

I reckon the ones who could “get away with it” are the roles who have experience or knowledge of them, those being RD, CMO,CAP, HOS, Miners,Explorers in the end, if an assistant calls out XENOS it just cut out… three to five minutes that would take for an Assistant to do RP to a security officer/heads/etc to connect the simple dot of Xenos presence

It’s equally stinky as shouting REVS!!! But Xenos have a little more means to do a comeback than the rev leader once reported ultimately i don’t know what the admins talked between themselves but that’s their current ruling

I do agree random tider shouldn’t go around spamming coms with XENOS XENOS!!! And rather try to do a more RP scenario but that would take a lot of enforcing, a big announcement so NO ONE misses it(announcement section being used to inform about rules? Impossible) and pray community gets the idea in their brain and we reduce a NO-RP behaviour

Also keep in mind some players might do it on accident or reflex from the sudden jumpscare of seeing a mr round removal hugger and the tradition of shouting ; xeno carved on their skull

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Well i mean as soon as you see a real Xenomorph i dont see the issue for shouting them out, i mean yeah its maybe near to LRP but when he saw one its justified, for the wiki part : The wiki is rule related not ALWAYS on top since not all sites are moderator proofed, i agree though it can be annoying when people go crazy for xeno alert

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Why wouldn’t ordinary crew know about xenomorphs, there’s literally posters around the station of xenomorph maids

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It’s because dynamic threat values make absolutely no fucking sense.

Midround headrev costs than less a BB team btw.

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not to mention the xeno suit you can find from maints and buy from a vendor

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NGL I remeber at the very least some Old lore stating that NT is a company that arose AFTER humanity going about the galaxy in a golden age fucking shit up and Purging aliens while they had OP style pre-cataclysm type tech, along with Xenomorphs being one of Humanity’s old enemies.

Personally I love that premise and I’m not sure just how much of it is left in the current lore/premise, but It’s the one I run off of when advocating for expansions of lavaland and off station events/activities, those usually being stuff like Ancient lost research and industrial facilities with lost technology, or old supernatural/galactic threat containment sites.

Personally Xenomorphs being a thing folks are taught in ye-old spess history class and thus appearing more commonly off station sounds like alot of fun to me.

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Dynamic midrounds are always cheaper than roundstart rulesets because of the way threat splitting works.

You can’t compare roundstart and midround threat values.

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Still, 10 threat is a little low. I know it’s only one larva, but it’s very easy to spiral out of control.

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Xenos are the HIGHEST COSTING midround alongside wizard and malf AI at 10, where blob costs 8, nightmare costs 5, traitor costs 3, ayys cost 7, pirates cost 8

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Everytime a round ends with xenos weighed in or even going to discord people always go ‘‘why does xenos cost 10??’’ when they clearly don’t know the values of antags maybe if it was like

  • TRAITOR 300

  • XENOS 1000

they’ll understand lol

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4 traitors are preferable to 1 xeno spawn.

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4 psychos with an armory on their hip or 1 potential full stop round ender.

NGL, at least those psychos have more to them than the objectives of “parasitize everything via facefuck and hyjack the shuttle”