Is to force a round to end. They aren’t supposed to be fair a fair fight for crew to face, they are just an alternative way for rounds to conclude, similar to a deathsquad. Only extreme incompetence on the part of the Xenos should result in a loss for them.
Is to present an existential threat that is very difficult, but possible to overcome consistently with stationwide teamwork and coordination (similar to blob). 1v1 with a Xeno should almost always be a lost cause and the station crew is expected to be fighting in groups to stand a chance.
Is to be a powerful midround threat that can be handled primarily by security and command staff working together. Teamwork and coordination is required for both sides of the conflict and the side which is better coordinated is the one that wins. 1v1 with a Xeno should be a fair fight more often than not.
Is supposed to be a challenging antagonist role to play that requires stealth and strategy to get going, and then teamwork and coordination to succeed with. Only negligent or unaware crewmembers should be victims to xenomorphs, and xenomorphs are expected to move and fight as a group to take out the crew.
0voters
I want to sample what players think Xenomorphs should be balanced around, because the general response seems out of line with what I believe they are supposed to be doing when they roll.
From what I’ve played so far, xenos feel like a threat to all life that forces all members of the station, antag or otherwise, to band together to hope to make it out alive.
I’m between the two most extreme options: I think Xenomorphs are and are supposed to be an existential threat that crew isn’t supposed to be able to overcome consistently. Xenomorphs are a means to end a round in an interesting and interactive way, but aren’t quite on the same level as straight up adminbus round ending.
Players who expect a fair fight against Xenos are off their rocker.
“ Xenomorphs are incredibly hard to contain in Xenobiology. I am speaking from experience as a xenobiology xenomorph when I say, no amount of reinforcement is enough.
Yes, this even applies to plasma in the room. Just build a wall in a corner, acid the floor, and bada bing, spaced.
Yes, even with proper reinforced windows. Only hope for containment is incompetent xenos and a lot of las rifles.
If you absolutely are containing them, do not EVER let them breed. This is arguably the biggest failure with containment.
Even if you do fine, I have seen powerfailures from RNG events fuck over containment. Is it really worth the risk?”
We even had a sentient mind linked slime as an attack dog once and that wasn’t enough.
It isn’t meant to be a fair fight if they manage to increase their numbers. A robust whole crew response is needed.
They are meant to end a round directly or through attrition. Crew should not be recovering from any infestation that makes it beyond the initial spawns without admin interaction(IE: planned post xeno survival event or whatever).
Xenos can not be contained and are a persistent threat which must be consistently eradicated at initial time of breach if it is ever to be stopped.
As an assistant main with security being my secondary (about 500 hours total) it’s extremely difficult to ascertain xeno elimination if the initial breach of containment isn’t resolved immediately. Killing off the queen and most drones won’t help. There’s always going to be one larva that gets away and restarts the cycle.
That being said it’s not a hard round-end in the same way as deathsquad is. It’s more often than not about 30 minutes of death-match combat involving the whole station. To that end, I don’t think xenos’ core purpose is round end, but rather a station wide combat situation requiring coordination and teamwork across all players involved, seeing who can kill whom first. Either xenos overrun the crew, or crew keeps xenos in low populations long enough to kill the queen and shuttle.
Why do xenos need to force roundends in the first place? We have crew transfer votes, does it not matter when people want rounds to continue? Nevermind the fact that they usually drag out rounds instead of making them shorter, since both sides are encouraged to camp.
Xenos are an antag that easily steamrolls the entire crew but it‘s “balanced“ because half the time they die as larvae.
Thanks for the poll. Although I understand your point of view about them being a round-ending force, myself (and as it seems most others) saw them differently, and I’m sure a lot of balancing arguments came from that point of view. It’s good to have a better perspective of it.
I never saw them as being something that was supposed to be beaten because how they are currently balanced there is not any reliable path to victory at all aside from immediately calling shuttle and early launching it with some force barricading the xenos from entering. And even that is only possible because of a relatively recent change that allows the shuttle to leave when Xenos are present so long as they aren’t actually on the shuttle itself.
I do still think succumbing is a bitch move and metagaming, but I’ll be taking a different approach to them with this. Even with the small sample size of the forums that’s a pretty overwhelming majority.