TGMC:Shrike

This page is a part of the TGMC wiki. TGMC is a project based on the CM-SS13 codebase.

UNDEFINED XENO
Shrike	Difficulty: Hard Rank: Hatchling (Starting), Young (10hrs), Mature (25hrs), Elder (70 hrs), Ancient (175 hrs) Duties: Be the psychic support of the hive, become queen when the previous one runs headfirst into a missile. Guides: N/A Quote: "Oh boy, here I go flinging nades back to marines again."

Statistics and Evolution Path

The Shrike is a Tier 4, a unique tier that does not take up any slots other than its own, and can evolve into a Queen if there are more than 8 active xenomorphs in the hive.

• Slash is the melee damage when the xenomorph is in harm intent and slashing the marine. In the code, it's melee_damage.
• Melee, bullet, laser, energy, bomb, bio, rad, fire, and acid are soft armor values, not hard armor, which means that they reduce damage by a percentage rather than a flat value.
• Speed is calculated inversely, meaning the lower speed value you have, the faster you are. Xenomorphs are always running, meaning they have a -1.0 boost added to their base speed. (Chart displays running speed)
• Pheromone Strength determines how powerful some activities will be, such as pheromones themselves, as well as using abilities that heal.

	Health	Plasma	Slash	Speed	Melee	Bullet	Laser	Energy	Bomb	Bio	Fire	Acid	Pheromone Strength
Base	400	925	23	-1.6	45	45	45	45	20	25	45	20	3.0x

The Shrike

THE BETA. The Shrike is one of the few xenomorphs that have harnessed telekinesis to defeat the marines, but with this great power comes with great responsibility. With such psychic abilities, you are also tasked to lead the hive with and without a queen. Since you are not the Queen, you are not as heavy as the Queen, so you cannot withstand much damage from marines; in fact, you can get stunned outright by shotguns and similar weapons. You are a support caste and should not be spearheading the xeno charge. However, your fling does provide a good stun against one marine, making you an excellent duelist, and like the Queen you can build everything the hive needs and have high-power pheromones, though you can't melt reinforced walls. If there are less than 8 active xenomorphs, you are the sole possible leader for the hive.

If the Queen and Shrike die, then the hive will be orphaned and collapse within 5 minutes, with evolution point gain being disabled while this timer is active (except for Larva). If there is no Queen or Shrike in that time period, the marines will win by default.

Using the Force for Offense

So, seems that you have become the shrike, but what do you do now?

First steps:

• Turn on your pheromones to either recovery, a typically non-combat pheromone, or the warding and frenzy pheromones which increase combat performance of you and your fellow xenos.
• Use your Call Burrowed ability regularly, as it prompts dead players to respawn at your feet as burrowed larva. Use only while you are safe as larva can easily die - if there's an active silo they can just spawn there anyway.

Now that that's done, what should I be doing? Go help support your fellow xenos at the front line with healing and through the use of your abilities "Fling" and "Devastating Force". As you are fairly fragile, valuable (or critical, without the Queen) for your team alive, and valuable for the marines dead, you're going to be a high-priority target. Do note you should not try to take on marines on your own, as you do not do much damage and your abilities are perfect for opening opportunities for your allies.

Shrike Abilities

Ability	Description	Plasma Cost	Cooldown
Toggle Bump Attacks	Allows you to toggle bump attacks on and off. This allows you to slash any enemy creature by running into them. The red arrow means it's on, you attack when on HARM intent; the green arrow means it's off, you push when on HARM intent.	N/A	N/A
Rest	Used to rest and get up. You heal faster when resting on weeds.	N/A	2 seconds
Psy Drain	This ability is used on dead Marines. For every Marine's psyche drained, the Hive will gain between 30 and 90 psychic points, depending on the number of Marines spawned; and 1/8 of a larva.	50	N/A
Cocoon	Devour your victim to cocoon it, then expel the contents of your stomach onto your tile after 3 seconds. Any Marine in a cocoon is still able to be revived, but the cocoon will give psychic points for 5 minutes. Yields between 1 and 5 psychic points per 5 seconds, depending on the number of spawned Marines.	100	N/A
Corrosive Acid	Expels acid onto an object or wall, destroying it after a while. If used on wall, a hole will appear after some time. Small xenos can climb through, large xenos can break the wall with the hole on it open. CTRL + click to interact with the acid hole. During the prep phase, all xenomorphs with this ability get strong acid. [Acid Strength by Caste] Drone and Sentinel, and Scorpion have the weakest acid. Takes 8 minutes to melt a hole in a regular wall. Cannot be used on reinforced walls. Hivelord, Shrike, Spitter, and Praetorian have common acid. Takes 3 minutes to melt a hole in a regular wall. Cannot be used on reinforced walls. Boiler, Primordial Hivelord, Queen, and King have the strongest acid. Takes 1.5 minutes to melt a hole in any type of wall.	75 if caste has weak acid; 100 for medium and strong acid	N/A
Plant Weeds	Plants a resin weed node, which will start growing resin weeds in a 3-tile radius that allows xenomorphs to heal and restore plasma while on top of the tile. Right-clicking the ability icon will allow you to select different types of weeds to plant. Placing a weed node on top of another will replace that weed node with the new type. During the prep phase, plasma cost to place a weed node is halved. [Weed Types] Default, does nothing extraordinary. Costs 75 plasma. Boosts health and plasma regeneration by 20%, and doubles sunder recovery for any xenos resting on them. Costs 150 plasma. Slows humans and vehicles a small amount, can stack with sticky resin. Costs 225 plasma.	75-225	N/A
Secrete Resin	Builds structures, which can be chosen by clicking on the ability while it's active. More in Guide to resin construction Resin Buildings: Resin Walls regenerate their own health. Starting at 150 HP, they restore 3 HP every 5 seconds, with a maximum of 300. Also reduces incoming bullet damage by 60%. 75 Plasma Sticky Resin slows down human and vehicle movement drastically, while also slightly blocking flamethrower flames. Has 36 HP. Slowness can stack with sticky weeds. 50 Plasma Resin Doors block movement for non-xenomorph mobs. Has 100 HP. 150 Plasma	50-150	N/A
Emit Pheromones	Toggles your pheromones, allowing you to select Recovery, Warding, or Frenzy. You only emit one at a time, and you can see which pheromones you are effected by in the Status tab. Emitting pheromones uses 5 plasma every regeneration tick. Strength of pheromones is tied to caste and increases the effects. More at Xenomorph Mechanics. [Pheromone Types] Recovery: Accelerates healing and sunder regeneration for resting xenos, increases the amount healed from healing abilities, and increases plasma regeneration. Allows for healing after taking damage without having to wait 10 seconds. Warding: Increases soft armor in all areas for each level. Frenzy: Decreases movement slowdown by 0.6 for each level. [Pheromone Strength by Caste] and Drone - 2.0 Carrier - 2.5 Defiler - 2.6, Hivelord - 3.0, Shrike - 3.0, Hivemind - 4.0, Praetorian - 4.5, King - 4.5 Queen and Pheromone Towers - 5.0	N/A	N/A
Place acid well	Place an acid well that can put out fires when a xenomorph steps on the acid well. You can refill it by clicking on the well. Careful, because they emit light, and even more as it's filled.	500	20 seconds
Lay Egg	Makes you lay a hugger egg.	200	12 seconds
Call of the Burrowed	Sends a ping to all ghosts allowing them to join the xeno team as burrowed larva that will spawn on you. Do not use near combat or the new larva can easily die	400	2 minutes
Ozelomelyn Sting	Injects a host with Ozelomelyn, which purges chemicals at a rate of 5u per tick and deals 0.75 toxin damage per tick up to a cap of 40 points.	100	25 sec
Open Blessings Menu	Opens the Queen Mothers Blessings menu, where hive buildings and upgrades are bought.	N/A	N/A
Psychic Cure	A powerful heal that heals an adjacent target for 10 damage + 37.5% max health while regenerating 10% sunder. Healing scales with regeneration pheromones.	200	60 sec
Psychic Whisper	Allows you to demoralize marines telepathically; truly the peak of psyops	N/A	N/A
Psychic Fling	Use on a human or item on the floor to use psychic powers to launch it 5 tiles away from you	100	12 seconds
Unrelenting Force	Launches all humans and items in a 3x3 square in front of you away from you. Works only in the cardinal directions, not diagonally.	300	50 seconds
Rally Hive	Rallies the player xeno to you, along with an arrow pointer for other xeno. Gives the Hive your current health status. 60 second cooldown.	0	60 seconds
Rally Minions	Command minions, ordering them to converge on this location. You must be next to minions in order for them to follow you. When you activate rally minion, you will *roar, which will in turn make the minions *roar as well. If you hear minions *roar, it means they are following you. Note that minions are stupid and WILL get stuck , help me step xeno	100	60 seconds
Command Minions	Order the minions escorting you to be either aggressive or passive.	N/A	N/A

Primordial Evolution

Once the hive has enough psychic points, your queen has the option to unlock powerful primordial evolutions for each strain. Primordial evolutions grant additional abilities for the relevant class.
For the Shrike, this primordial ability is Gravity Grenade.

Ability	Description	Plasma Cost	Cooldown
Gravity Grenade	Throw a gravity grenade that sucks everyone and everything in a radius inward.	500	60

Queen Mother's Blessing

Through the Queen Mother's Blessings menu , advanced construction castes have the ability to make powerful static structures which provide either defense, passive support, or offensive power to the hive. These require Psionic Points to construct, which can be gathered from dead marines, or from corrupting the generators on every ground map (these start corrupted by default but can be decorrupted by marines, only a Tier 4 caste such as the Queen, King or Shrike can corrupt generators, and you cannot corrupt the generators on the Marine's ship). There are two pools of Psy points, Strategic and Tactical, with different structures requiring a different pool of points. Any source of Psy points will give 1x as Strategic, and 0.25x as Tactical

StrategicTactical

Structure	Description	Psy Point Cost
Silo	A writhing spawning pod that slowly generates larva over time. Silos serve as anchor points for the xenomorph hivemind; without them, the network begins to collapse under strain. The hive will require a silo 15 minutes after the shutters drop, and will suffer an orphan hivemind failure if there is no silo for 5 minutes after this point.	800
Evolution Tower	A complex nerve tower that preemptively simulates evolution paths, preparing xenomorphs for their next evolution stage at an accelerated rate. Each tower increases the rate of evolution point gain by 1.25 times per tower, and can be repeated with multiple towers.	300
Psychic Relay	A complex biological tower that strengthens the psychic capacity of the hivemind, increasing the amount of Tier 2 and Tier 3 slots by 2 and 1 respectively. Multiple towers can be constructed.	300
Primo Tier X	Buy primordial abilities for a tier. Any xeno of selected tier now or in the future now can grow past ancient to primordial, gaining access to powerful abilities. Available for each tier 1-4.	600

Structure	Description	Psy Point Cost
Acid Turret	An independently targeting turret that fires highly caustic acid globs. Cannot be placed within 6 tiles of another turret, near shutters or fog.	100
Resin Turret	An independently targeting turret that fires sticky resin globs. Deals stamina damage to targets, as well as leaving sticky resin beneath their feet. Cannot be placed within 6 tiles of another turret, near shutters or fog.	50
Spawner	A spawning pod for the weak but numerous minion strains. The spawners will generate minions up to a point of half the total number of detected minds in local space. Each produces one minion every between 45 seconds and 3 minutes until this capacity is met.	400
Pheromone Tower	An odious tower that emits valuable xenomorph pheromones over a 32 tile radius. Only can emit one type of pheromone at a time, and emits at strength 5. (Queen level). Click on the tower to change the type of pheromone that is emitted. Pheromones: Accelerates healing for health and sunder. Increases armor and accelerates sunder recovery. Increases movement speed. More about pheromones in Xenomorph Mechanics.	150
Gargoyle	A vigilant monument that alerts the hive to any tresspassers over a 10 tile radius. Has a 30 second cooldown inbetween alerts	25
Acid Pool	A pool of weak yet viscous acid that helps xenomorphs repair broken chitin. Any xenomorph which rests in the pool will reduce their sunder by -1 per tick. Does not speed up normal healing, and xenomorphs that do not rest will not reduce their sunder.	200

Tips & Tricks

• Don't tank shots, you are meant as a support caste and you're more fragile than most Tier 3s.
• Open up duels with a fling instead of screech. If you fling first, you can further stun them with a screech, and when screech is used, your fling is ready to go to further stunlock the marine.
• Combo screech and fling with warrior to truly send a marine to Brazil.
• Aim for arms in duels. You can easily decrease the marine's capability to duel you when they have a fractured arm. Marines can't use shotgun if not wielded. If they have a pistol or submachine gun, then you will have to break both arms to prevent them from using the weapons.
• Use your screech or psychic fling to fling marines' grenades back at them; you are the dedicated xenomorph that can do this and the results can be devastating. You can also simply fling marines currently holding an active grenade, but someone else might pick it up and throw it at you before it goes off.
• Fling expensive weapons further from enemy hands before applying acid to them, or fling random materials around into chokepoints to help a Carrier hide traps.
• Your psychic screech can work through walls; this is mostly useful on Crash, where you can interrupt marines running the disk program in some spots, or just give the CMO a really bad day whenever they try to do surgery.
• Fling marines into fire and lava! It's significant damage if they don't have a fire extinguisher, and potentially death if they also don't have friends or snow nearby.
• Use help intent to help shuffle behind marines, turn around to face marines' back, and screech. Watch as they get pushed to a group of xenomorphs. Don't try to do this against multiple people with shotguns or you'll probably die.
• Superior to changing face to use unrelenting force is Select unrelenting force in keybinds. Use this for cheese!
• Psychic heal is very powerful for saving downed xenomorphs in the line of fire, but the amount it heals is based off of a xeno's current heal rate, so it's significantly stronger out of combat. This also means recovery pheromones make the heal stronger. It doesn't recover any sundering, so if someone has no armor left, don't waste it on them, they'll be resting for a long time regardless.

TGMC Roles
	TerraGov Marines Ranks	Command	Captain, Field Commander, Staff Officer, Pilot Officer, Transport Officer, Mech Pilot
		Vehicle Crew	Assault Crewman, Transport Crewman
		Engineering and Supply	Chief Ship Engineer, Requisitions Officer, Ship Technician
		Medical	Chief Medical Officer, Medical Doctor, Researcher
		Marines	Squad Leader, Squad Smartgunner, Squad Engineer, Squad Corpsman, Squad Marine
		Civilians	Corporate Liaison
		Silicon	Combat robots, Synthetic, AI
	Xenomorphs Playtime	Tier 0	Larva, Minions
		Tier 1	Drone, Runner, Defender, Sentinel
		Tier 2	Hivelord, Carrier, Hunter, Wraith, Bull, Warrior, Puppeteer, Spitter
		Tier 3	Gorger, Defiler, Widow, Ravager, Warlock, Behemoth, Crusher, Praetorian, Boiler
		Tier 4	Shrike, Queen, King, Hivemind
	Others		Zombie, Emergency Response Teams, Sons of Mars, Survivor