A Look at Mid-Round Antags

[Indie-ana Jones]

This is an interesting topic I've been thinking about after seeing some PR that wanted to buff Slaughter Demon event spawns. Basically, after the antag freeze is over, I think it'd be worthwhile to take a look at our current midround antags and see which ones are lacking, and then bring them up to snuff. After some consideration, I've come up with some expectations and whatnot on how midround antags should be categorized, and how they can be determined as good or bad. This comes in the form of Major Midround Antagonists and Minor Midround Antagonists.

Major Midround Antagonists

Major midround antagonists are midrounds which pose a great threat themselves by existing. Major midround antagonists are generally noted for having more than capable kill power, and the ability to end the round or derail it so heavily the crew has to call the shuttle. Generally speaking, if the antag is capable of taking a player out of the round completely, they fall under this category. The midrounds I would classify under this would be:
- Lone Op
- Blob
- Xenomorph
- Nightmare
- Spider
- Space Ninja
- Slaughter Demon
- Space Dragon
- Swarmers

Minor Midround Antagonists

Minor midround antagonists are mid-rounds that exist to raise the current stakes on the station. These antagonists aren't able to directly end lives or harm crew to a great extent, nor able to end the round on their terms. They tend to be accentuate the current threats more so than being an outright threat themselves. Even if these antags do manage to kill someone, they generally don't kill many and don't take them out of the round permanently. The midrounds I would classify under this would be:
- Abductors
- Revenant
- Morph
- Pirates
- Sentient Disease
- Creep

Generally, I believe each of these follows most of the rules of the base categories I listed them under. The ones which tend to not follow the formula as much tend to be the ones which end up being bad. Now, the ones I believe have problems:

Xenomorphs: Xenomorphs are capable of taking people out of the round (though each death generally creates a new ghost role), but are incapable of ending a round even if they were to somehow decimate the station. When they don't get absolutely cucked by the station, which they generally do, they can lead to a long period where the shuttle never gets called, essentially keeping a round going that's already over. They're also heavily stun-based, with the scout tackling you and having extremely memey speed, the other forms having stunning spit, and the larger ones having a tail whip. They could probably use some end-game goal to fix this, and perhaps some touchups to their general gameplay, considering they're generally non-threatening until they gain the advantage, and then become extremely threatening, but they usually get murked due to their heavy reliance on setting up proper nests and how easy said nests are to invade and destroy.

Nightmare: Nightmare is essentially a Minor antag with the kill power of a major antag in the right situation, with no method to end the round. On a functioning station with lighting, staying out of maint will generally prevent you from ever being affected by this antag. If he comes into a lit area, he's going to come in with some sort of noise, giving any nearby crew enough time to vacate the area. However, on a station with dysfunctional lighting, the Nightmare essentially becomes as deadly as a Slaughter Demon, but with the ability to instantly phase in and out of reality without needing blood. I'm unsure how you'd really go about fixing him, considering he's in such an odd spot, but perhaps an overarching goal would help set him on a better path.

Spiders: The only midround antagonist generated from traitors, these guys have been a hot topic of controversy. They're essentially a better form of xenomorph, starting in xenobiology, they have all the monkeys they need to take over the station provided for them the moment they're sentient. Once the first set of eggs hatches, the station has already lost the battle, making the only counter to this antag being someone keeping an eye on the xenobiologist who makes them. With forms which boast great physical damage and toxin damage (which due to Cobbychems, is much harder to deal with now), spiders also boast insane numbers, and killing one spider will just mean another one of the endless hordes will be right there in a few seconds, piloted by the same ghost as the last one. As a bonus to this already great kit, any crew that dies to a spider will probably immediately start being one, meaning fighting them off ramps up heavily as they kill crew. While they have access to more tactful gameplay options such as web placement and smashing lights and APCS, they don't even have to use them because of how strong unga bungaing is. As odd as it sounds, they might be better off as their own natural antagonist than something any xenobiologist can pull off, or some rework to their overwhelming nature might be desirable. While some have suggested not allowing them to lay eggs from monkeys as a nerf, that would likely ruin them to the point of being useless, so some serious thinking would be needed to change them into something fun for both the spiders and the crew.

Space Ninja: As cool as they are, Space Ninjas just exist to ruin some people's days. They have a pretty loaded kit, and a robust ninja should have no problem with dispatching anyone in their way. They commonly come with objectives that take people out of the round, and most of the crew don't have the tools to really stop a Space Ninja from fucking them over. They're a cool concept, but their kill objectives aren't fun at all to be other on the side of. Could definitely use a more interesting overarching objective which makes the station as a whole concerned about them, instead of nobody caring because you're probably not his target, right?

Slaughter Demon: While slaughter demon is generally more acceptable during a wizard round, they can actually spawn extremely rarely past the hour mark. This rarity is well understood considering their entire gameplay is no fun for the crew at large. If you just happen to be near any blood source (which tends to be quite common in this game), the slaughter demon can pop out and fuck you up. No and, ifs, or buts about it, unless you're toting a shotty for the very second this fucker happens to be upon you. His speed coming out of a blood source and crazy damage-dealing guarantees death to most, and once he takes you under, your body is permanently destroyed, so you won't be playing again that round unless you take up a ghost role. Slaughter Demon at the very least should drop his victims on death like the Laughter Demon at the very least, though much, much more would need to change to make him acceptable enough not to spawn in once a year. I personally don't think it's impossible, but it would basically ask for a drastically different goal than murderboning everything.

Space Dragon: Space dragon is a guaranteed shuttle call, due to his destructive abilities. Being able to move decently fast, space walk, and smash r-walls allows him to destroy the station with ease and quickly bring a decent station to the point of no return. In combat, space dragon is 50% resistant to sec's most common weapon, lasers, and generally requires less common weaponry to take down. However, he's brought down quickly by any shotgun, and generally isn't a threat to anyone wearing a suit with fire resistance. But, if he does kill you, you'll be swiftly gibbed, leaving you dead for a round which is almost certain to not go for much longer. His main balancing factor is that he only rarely comes to fuck you up, and a clueless player controlling him is an easy slaughter. I'd say that Space Dragon needs to be less destructive, not gib people, have his stats adjusted, and then given an overarching goal which can end the round if he manages to win.

Morph: The morph is an extremely cool gimmick, but lacks much substance behind its cool power. All it ever has to do is eat people, and while it lacks the power to be a major midround antagonist, it's survival sort of dictates it eats people and then keeps them out of the round for as long as it can. The core elements of the morph are fun with disguising and whatnot, but it really needs something more to it than just that, as a fun design like this deserves something better than it currently has.

I mostly find it interesting that the only real problems I perceive lie mostly the major antags, and the majority of them too, with Blob and Lone Op being the only ones exempt, though it isn't that surprising. Being able to end players' rounds should cause some sort of end condition, and overall the major side antags could learn a thing or two from how the blob generally plays out. The blob is a threat to the station as a whole, not entirely too overwhelming and ends the round if he wins. The only thing about the blob which could be considered bad is that the blob might be a tad underpowered, though with any other threat present it ends to be much more threatening. I think the blob works as a good standard for the other midround antags to follow, and I think adjusting the other major midround antags to follow it's structure would help reduce salt and increase the enjoyability of these spawns, and maybe allow for their spawn rates to be bumped up when they get changed. However, I want know, what does everyone else think? Could be disagreeing with the points I make in the OP, or perhaps sharing an opinion about one of the midround antags I didn't cover.

[HommandoSA]

I'd say swarmers are a major midround antag since their existence almost always results in a shuttle call. Their ability to disassemble most of the station and the rate at which they reproduce makes doing your job impossible. Swarmers force you to pay attention to them, if you do not then they will become unmanageable. Pirates can be a major antag if the people controlling them are robust. If skeleton milk healing gets fixed for real pirates might be strong again.

[Sandshark808]

I'd say swarmers are a major midround antag since their existence almost always results in a shuttle call. Their ability to disassemble most of the station and the rate at which they reproduce makes doing your job impossible. Swarmers force you to pay attention to them, if you do not then they will become unmanageable. Pirates can be a major antag if the people controlling them are robust. If skeleton milk healing gets fixed for real pirates might be strong again.

Swarmers only cause that because they seem to appear when the station is already ruined, and people don't like reconstructing the minor stuff they delete. Remember that they can't delete: wiring, pipes, scrubbers, air alarms(I think), exterior walls, exterior airlocks, canisters of gas, or essential game-ending items like nuke disks, organic objects, or engine parts. They're a neutered nuisance that dies in a single hit.

[teepeepee]

I'd say swarmers are a major midround antag since their existence almost always results in a shuttle call. Their ability to disassemble most of the station and the rate at which they reproduce makes doing your job impossible. Swarmers force you to pay attention to them, if you do not then they will become unmanageable. Pirates can be a major antag if the people controlling them are robust. If skeleton milk healing gets fixed for real pirates might be strong again.

Swarmers only cause that because they seem to appear when the station is already ruined, and people don't like reconstructing the minor stuff they delete. Remember that they can't delete: wiring, pipes, scrubbers, air alarms(I think), exterior walls, exterior airlocks, canisters of gas, or essential game-ending items like nuke disks, organic objects, or engine parts. They're a neutered nuisance that dies in a single hit.

you don't really want to stay in a station that has power only to keep the air flowing inside one big metal room once they've ate all inside it
if swarmers are throrough, they can even eat all the lighting, you'll become a squatter in an empty building, living in the darkness and getting yeeted around by the pests

[Deepwoods]

The strategy for dealing with spiders is simple given coordination. Communicate. Build walls and gate them. Empty out vents. Weld them. Secure a perimeter of steel and then kill everything outside of that perimeter. Create a fortress with localized O2 and some ability to self-sustain and then space everything else. The spiders all die.

This means it'll be the AI and cyborgs doing all the work while the crew proper screams about whatever retardation is afoot, oblivious to the skittering demise approaching them even with warning. Basically, lock down departures, get as many people to safety as possible, wall off adjacent airlocks so you don't get any brave spiders coming through space to try and backcap, and come up with evac routes where borgs or well-equipped people can go through space and lead the trapped or stragglers to safety. Take the core of the station and to hell with everything else, and then carry out an extermination and/or evacuation.

Again, this is dependent on some coordination. Most often the AI will be subverted, Command will be incompetent, and Sec will be well into going mad with what little power they are afforded while actual traitors run rampant and the corpses are stacked like cordwood.

[ragevirus]

Ninjas in general are awesome but there are two things I dislike about them in ss13. One is that, in my experience, most crew members won't engage them so they have free reign to shit all over the place. I play on sybil where sec is often understaffed, maybe this doesn't happen on other servers. The other reason is that getting sent to ninja jail is basically round ending and also sucks balls.

I always thought it would be cool if deconstructing ninja gear would unlock tech that could let the crew bust people outta there. Maybe even unlock some other fun shit too. Might give some incentive for the crew to actually try and kill ninjas instead of just letting them fuck around. And the hope of eventual rescue would give people a reason to actually hang out in ninja jail instead of immediately ghosting.

[Sandshark808]

The strategy for dealing with spiders is simple given coordination. Communicate. Build walls and gate them. Empty out vents. Weld them. Secure a perimeter of steel and then kill everything outside of that perimeter. Create a fortress with localized O2 and some ability to self-sustain and then space everything else. The spiders all die.

This means it'll be the AI and cyborgs doing all the work while the crew proper screams about whatever retardation is afoot, oblivious to the skittering demise approaching them even with warning. Basically, lock down departures, get as many people to safety as possible, wall off adjacent airlocks so you don't get any brave spiders coming through space to try and backcap, and come up with evac routes where borgs or well-equipped people can go through space and lead the trapped or stragglers to safety. Take the core of the station and to hell with everything else, and then carry out an extermination and/or evacuation.

Again, this is dependent on some coordination. Most often the AI will be subverted, Command will be incompetent, and Sec will be well into going mad with what little power they are afforded while actual traitors run rampant and the corpses are stacked like cordwood.

The chad solution is to pump hot air into distro so anyone who ventcrawls is burnt alive in half a second. This is how competent atmos techs deal with aliens in a jiffy.

[Indie-ana Jones]

I'd say swarmers are a major midround antag since their existence almost always results in a shuttle call. Their ability to disassemble most of the station and the rate at which they reproduce makes doing your job impossible. Swarmers force you to pay attention to them, if you do not then they will become unmanageable. Pirates can be a major antag if the people controlling them are robust. If skeleton milk healing gets fixed for real pirates might be strong again.

Swarmers only cause that because they seem to appear when the station is already ruined, and people don't like reconstructing the minor stuff they delete. Remember that they can't delete: wiring, pipes, scrubbers, air alarms(I think), exterior walls, exterior airlocks, canisters of gas, or essential game-ending items like nuke disks, organic objects, or engine parts. They're a neutered nuisance that dies in a single hit.

you don't really want to stay in a station that has power only to keep the air flowing inside one big metal room once they've ate all inside it
if swarmers are throrough, they can even eat all the lighting, you'll become a squatter in an empty building, living in the darkness and getting yeeted around by the pests

Though swarmers don't kill, I guess they could be considered a major midround antagonist because they basically force a shuttle call. They probably wouldn't be so bad if they weren't able to vent crawl.

[Reyn]

Though swarmers don't kill, I guess they could be considered a major midround antagonist because they basically force a shuttle call. They probably wouldn't be so bad if they weren't able to vent crawl.

Wait, swarmers can ventcrawl?

Anyways, As of getting back on topic, I feel like the space ninja's suit runs out of power WAY too quickly to be effective at nonlethal stealth without putting the entire fucking station on alert at least once without it being a lucky comms message. Seriously, you run out of power at the WORST times usually.
On the flip side to your comment, people often validhunt the FUCK out of spess ninjas, ESPECIALLY sec.

However, More variety in space ninja objectives, possibly even including PROTECTING someone, might be nice.

[Anonmare]

Though swarmers don't kill, I guess they could be considered a major midround antagonist because they basically force a shuttle call. They probably wouldn't be so bad if they weren't able to vent crawl.

Wait, swarmers can ventcrawl?

Anyways, As of getting back on topic, I feel like the space ninja's suit runs out of power WAY too quickly to be effective at nonlethal stealth without putting the entire fucking station on alert at least once without it being a lucky comms message. Seriously, you run out of power at the WORST times usually.
On the flip side to your comment, people often validhunt the FUCK out of spess ninjas, ESPECIALLY sec.

However, More variety in space ninja objectives, possibly even including PROTECTING someone, might be nice.

Ninjas already get Protect objectives, it's just most of them murderbone because Ninja's a once-in-a-blue-moon. And I feel the opposite, Ninjas are extremely powerful by virtue of the fact they move at speeds you'd need a potentially fatal dose of stimulants to keep up with and have old-style adrenals with effectively no downsides (don't @ me, radium is basically harmless nowadays), not to mention it's trivial to reload the adrenals by simply pouring more radium into the suit. Add on an EMP (who the fuck gave them an EMP, they're supposed to be WEAK to EMPs) ability, teleportation, stun gloves and can even replace their suit power cells with infinite self-charging ones.

If anything, they need a nerf.

[Indie-ana Jones]

I've been thinking about what I would personally do to some of the antags, my currently collected thoughts:

- Xenomorphs - Add an endround condition. When x amount of concurrent xenomorphs are achieved, the queen can send out a signal to the Empress (or whatever it's called from CM). Attacking the queen during this will stop her and said ability on a cooldown. Should she succeed, the station will be swarmed by Xenos and the round ends with the Xenos successful. Small changes I would make:
- Nerf scout speed, improve durability and give the ability to fire-carry victims
- Buff classes' base-building aspects, making building a proper hive more worthwhile and faster.

- Nightmare - The nightmare now can encase corpses in a dark substance. The nightmare generates a system of points over time for each corpse currently encased, where more encased corpses generate more points. Such points could be used for abilities like a projectile which gives targets a temporary phobia of the nightmare, etc... When enough points are stored, the nightmare can begin a blackout, which disables all the lights on the station. The nightmare turns into something awful, but also stationary. The crew has x minutes to find and kill the nightmare before the x minutes are up, or the whole station plummets into the shadow realm or some shit. While the nightmare cannot move, it can create small minions to protect it during this process. If the nightmare dies, the station blackout ends and everything goes back to normal.

- Spiders - Spiders are no longer spawned from Broodmothers or green spiders, but instead come from a centralized nest structure. The nest does a spawn wave every x minutes, and ghosts que up in the nest. When spawn time occurs, all the spiders are released from the nest at the same time. Spiders are changed as follows:
- Spiders, in general, are less tanky/more susceptible to lasers
- The crew is warned after x minutes, and the warning message is the same as Xeno's, so you don't know which one you're facing until you find them.
- Green spiders and broodmothers lose their ability to lay eggs and their 1 unit of toxin, but instead gain the ability to lay web twice as fast and can reinforce webs to prevent the passage of any mob or projectile except spiders.
- Spiders can transport corpses on their back, but using the vents to move will drop the corpse the spider is currently carrying.
- Spiders can heal by standing near the nest/can be healed by green-eyed spiders, perhaps?
- Spiders would have a custom hud, mainly for seeing their health and how many corpses are amassed in the nest.
- Spiders can bring corpses back to the nest to add a special spawn (Tarantula, Viper, Broodmother) to the next wave. The number of corpses in the nest could also shorten the time between spawn waves. The total amount of corpse is also counted for:
- If the spiders can manage to stockpile enough corpses into the nest, they will trigger a round-ending event of them taking over the station.
- The nest drops all its corpses when destroyed.

- Slaughter Demon - Base gameplay is similar, though the animation for Slaughter Demon coming out of the blood would be added, along with a proper HUD. Slaughter demons still have the objective to kill people and drag them into the blood, but this mechanic works differently. The demon drags a person down to "corrupt" them, a state which has a number of nasty side-effects, most of which are triggerable by the Demon for their benefit, however, said person is also revived during this process. The effects could be things like making everyone see the corrupted as a slaughter demon, having them leave a trail of blood for a while, etc... For each human infested, you gain a point, and the more points you have, you get access to more abilities. Humans cannot be infested more than once, and corruption cannot be fixed without either the slaughter demon dying or the person being killed and cloned. Eventually, the slaughter demon would continuously ramp up until it amasses enough power to summon/become Bubblegum, which then the remaining crew would have to defeat under a time limit before Bubblegum ends the station's existence.

[Sandshark808]

What if the xeno end condition was to call the shuttle and have the queen reach centcomm? Then they would be encouraged to leave people alive to do so, and it would force them into a battle over the escape shuttle.

[Indie-ana Jones]

What if the xeno end condition was to call the shuttle and have the queen reach centcomm? Then they would be encouraged to leave people alive to do so, and it would force them into a battle over the escape shuttle.

That could work, but in order to solve the issue of the theoretical "xeno win", they'd need a way to force a shuttle call by themselves. Could change the "Empress Call" from my post to one that calls the shuttle and it'd probably work.

[knacker48]

What if the xeno end condition was to call the shuttle and have the queen reach centcomm? Then they would be encouraged to leave people alive to do so, and it would force them into a battle over the escape shuttle.

That could work, but in order to solve the issue of the theoretical "xeno win", they'd need a way to force a shuttle call by themselves. Could change the "Empress Call" from my post to one that calls the shuttle and it'd probably work.

Can't you force a shuttle call by destroying all the comms consoles? I'm pretty sure when both are destroyed a 25 minute ETA starts for the shuttle

[NoxVS]

My personal opinions

- Lone Op

In a good position, no change needed

- Blob

In a good position, no change needed

- Xenomorph

Kinda lame. Either gets stomped or ends the round. Usually no in between. Fast speed and instant stuns should be removed/reworked or something

- Nightmare

Also lame. Not fun to fight, might as well call the shuttle because all APCs are broken and it takes too fucking long to fix them

- Spider

Scientist TC version needs a major nerf (Maybe make it 30 TC?), normal event one is fine

- Space Ninja

Way too fucking fast, can just spam shurikens, remove free meth speed. It can teleport already, it doesn't need to be sonic to escape

- Slaughter Demon

Never seen it happen naturally, its an OP antag that isn't fun to fight and just ruins the round. Fits well with wizard.

- Space Dragon

Megafauna on station, not much of a reward for killing it, can just yakety sax in space. Kinda lame but whatever, should just remove the tailspin or force it to stay on the station somehow

- Swarmers

Boring grief antag, ends the round upon spawning unless you kill it, remove.

- Abductors

Gives fun objectives, doesn't directly remove people from the round, no changes needed

- Revenant

Boring grief antag, you either smoke machine all halls with salt or every window breaks. Lame

- Morph

Boring grief antag, remove. Its just there for miners to self antag with

- Pirates

Kinda boring since theres like 3 different ways to access the ore silo all bordering space. Wish they would go for money rather than the materials

- Sentient Disease

Seems fine

- Creep

Pretty sure this is the obsessed antag. Not really much of an opinion

[NecromancerAnne]

Personally I think most of our midrounds are pretty solid. What we need more of is actually roundstart antags similae to the traitor that we can put along traitors, like how lings work. This is mostly for the sake of dynamic working more effectively and providing more variety for possibilities. Even then, ling ain't very good at that and really, desperately needs an identity change.

[NecromancerAnne]

That said, I personally think some of our midround antags are in some serious need of an objective or an objective overhaul. Nightmares, xenomorphs and ninja all stand out as really, really bad offenders for this.

Nightmare is just a murder monster in maint. It has no engaging mechanics. It is just incredibly boring. Definitely in need of some love to give it a more unique feeling.

Xenomorphs are so catastrophic if they get out of hand they absolutely need a win condition. More importantly they need a rework, since most of then are stun immune stunlockers with a ton of fairly ridiculous immunities on the side. The main offender being space immuniy, which to me makes absolutely fucking no sense whatsoever.

Ninjas just need to have their allegiance canned. It is absolutely and completely not fair to have a ninja just swoop in on you with meta info and murder you because they're an NT ninja and know you are an antag. There is nothing worse than having to fight a ninja that is competent and they are genuinely fucking cheeky gits who can circumvent a lot of powerful offensive weaponry and spam their powers out the arse.

[Sandshark808]

That said, I personally think some of our midround antags are in some serious need of an objective or an objective overhaul. Nightmares, xenomorphs and ninja all stand out as really, really bad offenders for this.

Nightmare is just a murder monster in maint. It has no engaging mechanics. It is just incredibly boring. Definitely in need of some love to give it a more unique feeling.

Xenomorphs are so catastrophic if they get out of hand they absolutely need a win condition. More importantly they need a rework, since most of then are stun immune stunlockers with a ton of fairly ridiculous immunities on the side. The main offender being space immuniy, which to me makes absolutely fucking no sense whatsoever.

Ninjas just need to have their allegiance canned. It is absolutely and completely not fair to have a ninja just swoop in on you with meta info and murder you because they're an NT ninja and know you are an antag. There is nothing worse than having to fight a ninja that is competent and they are genuinely fucking cheeky gits who can circumvent a lot of powerful offensive weaponry and spam their powers out the arse.

I second this almost 100%. The only thing I wonder about is the meta knowledge thing. I've gotten what's basically a "hired nanotrasen assassin" as a traitor objective before, which means I knew one person was a syndie and had to kill them as my objective. I think more than one role may have this problem, but they happen so rarely people don't notice.

[Indie-ana Jones]

Since this topic came up in Discord fairly recently, what would be the ideal way to rework xenos into something "fun"? I've seen some suggestions about possibly pulling from TGMC, though I'm curious as to what others think.

[Shadowflame909]

You dont, they're a race thats supposed to be the ultimate predator that uses the DNA of other races to make more of itself.

You could just go full "thematic" and have Human born Xenos be the "Drone" types, more artistic, more base-building, but weaker in combat due to not being an inbuilt brawling machine. More health though.

Moth born Xenos being the speedy Jet-pack Xenos. Inbuilt ultimate wings making them as fast as such, No arms but a killer mouth that rips through both clothes, all items, and flesh alike. You'd set up automatic flashers to stop them though. With the slower Human-Born Xenos being the one to disable this.

Plasma-Men born Xenos would be the sad sad wild-card. How do you make a being of pure plasma and bones into the ultimate form of itself? You just dont. You get something like a human Xeno that takes double burn damage, but instead of being more artisian. They can go commit plasma bomb onto targets.

Ethereal born xenos are lol tier

TLDR; one hour in, a space faring race taking the genes of the stations population, murderizing for them and adding to their own collection has arrived. Good thing an Hour has passed, and now you have a bunch of OP shit to help that not be so easy for them. Like Mechs, Genetics, Xenobiology, Virology, Nanites, End-Game security guns and Shaft-Mining.

Edit 2: "Wtf shadows xeno's are just regular xenos no matter who they're born from." Well I guess you haven't seen Aliens versus Predator. Well neither have I.

[Indie-ana Jones]

You dont, they're a race thats supposed to be the ultimate predator that uses the DNA of other races to make more of itself.

You could just go full "thematic" and have Human born Xenos be the "Drone" types, more artistic, more base-building, but weaker in combat due to not being an inbuilt brawling machine. More health though.

Moth born Xenos being the speedy Jet-pack Xenos. Inbuilt ultimate wings making them as fast as such, No arms but a killer mouth that rips through both clothes, all items, and flesh alike. You'd set up automatic flashers to stop them though. With the slower Human-Born Xenos being the one to disable this.

Plasma-Men born Xenos would be the sad sad wild-card. How do you make a being of pure plasma and bones into the ultimate form of itself? You just dont. You get something like a human Xeno that takes double burn damage, but instead of being more artisian. They can go commit plasma bomb onto targets.

Ethereal born xenos are lol tier

TLDR; one hour in, a space faring race taking the genes of the stations population, murderizing for them and adding to their own collection has arrived. Good thing an Hour has passed, and now you have a bunch of OP shit to help that not be so easy for them. Like Mechs, Genetics, Xenobiology, Virology, Nanites, End-Game security guns and Shaft-Mining.

Edit 2: "Wtf shadows xeno's are just regular xenos no matter who they're born from." Well I guess you haven't seen Aliens versus Predator. Well neither have I.

The idea of ditching castes in favor of different xenos coming from different races is an interesting one. I've actually binge-read wiki stuff on Xenos, so I know this is actually something in their canon, but not an idea I've considered. It'd need a few questions answered (What do monkeys give? Felinids? etc...), but it could be a neat way to make them more interesting, also assuming we go through and fix up some of the complaints like xeno stuns and such while it happens.

[nianjiilical]

making xenos that bust from monkeys inferior to ones that burst from humans is both a good nerf and makes sense lorewise

but youd have players not wanting to play as the larva that burst from monkeys

[ragevirus]

Couldn't you not show the ghost what species the larva will burst from?

like
"Do you want to be considered for the special role of alien larva?"

[Indie-ana Jones]

Couldn't you not show the ghost what species the larva will burst from?

like
"Do you want to be considered for the special role of alien larva?"

Entirely possible, and very easily done as well. If we don't tell people what genetics they'll get though, then we should probably avoid "joke xenos" and give them all a little something which helps the group as a whole.

[deedubya]

Couldn't you not show the ghost what species the larva will burst from?

like
"Do you want to be considered for the special role of alien larva?"

You say that like people don't immediately mass orbit the initial larva that comes into existence. They'd see a shitton of impregnated monkeys and just pass on the role. It'll basically just be a noob trap.

[PepperPrepper]

I think that monkeys would be better suited at being saboteur xenos rather then just weaker ones. So monkey xenos would have less health and deal less damage then your average xeno, but would have the ability to pick objects up (not use them just pick them up so they could hide them), rip out wires, destroy APC's, scout areas and group mob players for more hosts. That way monkeys would be more of a viable option and not just a new player trap.