TGMC:Carrier

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

UNDEFINED XENO
Carrier	Difficulty: Hard Rank: Hatchling (Starting), Young (10hrs), Mature (25hrs), Elder (70 hrs), Ancient (175 hrs) Duties: Facehug as much marines as possible, spread weeds on the front lines, be the ultimate marine salt miner Guides: no separate guides Quote: "I love it when marines get stuffed by my facehuggers."

The Babysitter of Facehuggers

As the hive grew, the demand for a specialized xenomorph that mass produce facehuggers and adminster them onto new hosts. Before the arrival of this caste, all xenomorphs grabbed as much facehuggers as possible to reproduce more sisters and to induce psychogenic shock upon marines (or for that matter, any humans). This primitive state of facehuggers requires to be carried out in a more intricate and personal manner.

However, after xenomorphs realized that capturing marines were not meeting reproduction quotas and decided to grow the hive with psychic means, the carrier was almost out of the job if it weren't for its baseball ability to throw facehuggers. Such dexterity did not come unnoticed by the queen mother and her research, and with great efforts they have expanded the carrier from more than just stuffing marines.

Playing the Carrier

Not going to lie, this caste is pretty hard. You are expected to:

• Throw facehuggers at marines
• Infect or hurt marines in the process
• Keep a distance between you and marines
• Throw near the marines so that they don't shoot facehuggers but at the same not too far so that facehuggers can't do their job
• Make resin traps
• Hide resin traps like the Viet Congs would do against the US Marine Corps
• Weed the unweeded
• Emit Pheromones for your sisters

The Carrier's main role is as a "grenadier," infecting, hindering, and damaging marines with various types of facehuggers, both in traps and by throwing them directly. You can store up to 7 facehuggers that are used for this purpose. The Carrier excels at supporting other xenomorphs in pushes, especially those with stuns or that demand a lot of attention from marines. They can be dangerous in close quarters and can infect or damage many marines in a heated firefight when supported by other castes, but you are a support class and should never engage marines directly. Carriers are relatively slow and lack a reliable escape or self-defense ability outside of their huggers, so you can easily be chased down and killed if you're caught out of position.

Do note that you're a main source of marine infestation, and that larva takes 5 minutes to fully grow in a marine.

You should always focus on keeping your hugger stores full when possible. To store facehuggers, create one from plasma using the spawn hugger ability or click on a full-grown egg with an empty hand to open it. The hugger will appear. Click on it to pick it up, and then click it while it's in your hand to store it. You will get a message that it's been stored along with how many huggers you have, and you can see the number of your stored huggers in the stats tab. Keep in mind that huggers outside of eggs will die after a short time, so do this quickly.

To throw a hugger, select retrieve/throw hugger by clicking on the button. This will not put a hugger into your hand, but leave it as your active ability. Using right click or middle click, activate the ability and a hugger will be thrown automatically to where your mouse is pointing. Do not throw huggers using the throw UI button or R hotkey as they will only be thrown one tile.

After a larval facehugger is thrown, it has a brief cooldown before it will attach itself to a nearby host. If you hit a marine directly, this cooldown is 1.5 seconds. If it lands on a tile, the cooldown is 2 seconds, so remember that a direct hit on a marine will have a much higher chance of the hugger attaching. Most attacking huggers instead have a hit cooldown of 1 second and a tile cooldown of 1.5 seconds, and the clawed hugger has a hit cooldown of 0.5 seconds and a tile cooldown of 1.2 seconds. Note that a direct hit also allows a marine to simply click the hugger to instantly kill it with melee instead of having to fire their weapon, so this might not always be the most effective option, especially if they're reloading.

If you aren't actively infesting, you should be making traps. To create a hugger trap, activate the create resin trap ability and then shift or middle-click where you want the trap to go. It will create an empty hole on the tile that you must fill with a hugger. Traps can be covered by trash and other detritus to trick marines into moving into them.

Carriers can also plant weeds and transport eggs using the retrieve egg ability. You can carry up to three eggs at a time. Do not forget about these useful abilities.

You are a Support caste and should not put yourself directly in harms way, though you are often most effective on or near the front lines due to your ability to spread weeds and create facehuggers from plasma. If you don't have anything better to do, place traps in random high-traffic areas. A hugger can stop a marine push dead in its tracks as they will think twice about pushing further so quickly. Carriers are also great at serving as a distraction while other xenos flank a group. If you facehug a marine, you'll likely have forced them to relieve themselves from combat to go get surgery. This can take them out of combat longer than outright killing them. Remember, it's no longer expected for any larva to actually burst during the round, so if that happens it's just a bonus.

Maturity Statistics and Evolution Paths

Carriers only have one path for evolution, the Defiler. Evolving to one can be good if you know how to play it well, but if the hive already has one or two, you would be better served staying as a carrier.

Maturity increases stats as follows.

• Slash is the melee damage when the xenomorph is in harm intent and slashing 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.
• Hugger Delay determines the delay before huggers will automatically latch onto a face.
• Phero. Strength determines how powerful some activities will be, such as pheromones themselves, as well as using abilities that heal.

Age	Health	Plasma	Slash	Melee	Bullet	Laser	Energy	Bomb	Bio	Rad	Fire	Acid	Hugger Delay	Hugger Storage	Egg Storage	Phero. Strength
Young	250	500	17	15	15	15	15	0	5	5	15	5	2.5	4	3	1.5x
Mature	275	600	17	20	20	20	20	0	5	5	20	5	2.5	5	4	2x
Elder	300	700	20	25	25	25	25	0	7	7	25	7	2	6	5	2.3x
Ancient	325	800	20	30	30	30	30	0	10	10	30	10	1.5	7	6	2.5x

Carrier 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
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
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
Create Resin Trap	This allows you to turn any regular "Weeds" tile into a "Resin Hole" tile, in which you can then place a facehugger in by clicking on the hole with a hugger in your hand.	400	N/A
Retrieve/Throw Hugger	This allows you to retrieve a hugger from your storage if you don't have one in hand, or throw the hugger currently in your hand at a targeted area. Huggers reset more quickly if you hit the marine directly.	N/A	3 seconds
Spawn Hugger	Creates a hugger using excess plasma stored in your body, placing it directly into your storage.	200	N/A
Choose Hugger Type	Selects which hugger type you will throw with the Throw Hugger ability. All huggers thrown will always be the currently selected type, regardless of what this was set to when Spawn Hugger was used. Clicking this ability opens up a radius up to six choices. Huggers: Your classic hugger. Will remove all of a marine's stamina, and infect them if left on. Significantly slower (by 0.5 seconds) than other types. Useless against combat robots and already-infected marines. A hugger that will slash marines' ankles. Inflicts 25 brute. Significantly faster (by 0.3 seconds) than other types. First attack is nearly instant if the initial throw hits a marine. Up to three hits. A hugger that stings neurotoxin into marines, damaging stamina. Injects 10 neurotoxin per attack. Useless against combat robots. Up to three hits. Explodes into resin! Leaves a 3x3 grid of sticky resin. Great for getaways! Explodes into acid! Leaves a 3x3 pool, sadly does not slip like acid sprays. Inflicts 16 burn, pool lasts 6 seconds. A hugger that stings ozelomelyn into marines, purging chems and dealing toxin 0.75 damage per tick (up to a max of 40). Injects 10u per attack. Useless against combat robots. Up to three hits.	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 XENOMORPH, this primordial ability is Facehugger Turret.

Ability	Description	Plasma Cost	Cooldown
Facehugger Turret	Once every 5 minutes, place a turret that fires one facehugger every 10 seconds, at a range of 5 tiles. Thrown hugger type is selected based on what type the carrier had equipped while constructing.	800	300

Carrier tips & tricks

• Larva takes 5 minutes to hatch.
• You can hit a host directly with a thrown facehugger to make the hugger activate half a second faster than normal.
• If a marine steps onto the same tile as a hugger, it'll attack almost instantly (0.5 seconds). Try to throw huggers one tile ahead of rushing marines for a nasty surprise. Shuffling them onto the same tile as your own hugger with help intent will also work.
• Huggers will die when standing on fire, but can be thrown over it safely.
• Resin holes can be placed under trash for sneakier traps.
• Don't leave un-planted eggs lying around! The last thing you want is to get killed by a squad of corrupted xenos because you left an egg where a marine could get their hands on it.
• Pay attention to the hive's attacks, especially the Queen's screech, for the best opportunities to throw huggers.
• If an unconscious marine is dragged back, you can take a neurotoxin hugger in one of your hands and repeatedly inject them with it to make them very annoying to revive. Larval huggers are a great option as well, obviously.
• Facehuggers will knock off all the face gear, meaning masks. This can cause additional problems for marines on ice maps.
• SWAT masks will block one larval facehugger, and B18 helmets will block five. If the marines have amassed a high budget, it might be best to use other types.
• Robots are immune to being infected (they don't even have a mouth) and neurotoxin (they don't have blood either). Go figure. If the robot population seems high, or you're fighting one specific robot, adjust accordingly.

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, Pyrogen
		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