Larva surge is limited by marines/xenos ratio

[ihatethisengine]

About the pull request

Xenos after hijack now get larva based on marines/xenos ratio. Instead of infinite larva, larva surge will try to increase the initial amount of xenos on hijack to 50% of marines forces over time (with a minimum of 5 larvas, if xenos already have good numbers).

Explain why it's good for the game

Initially, if I remember correctly, larva surge was brought into the game to discourage marines from early meta-evacuations, which is fair. But consequently, it really hurt the hijack sequence. Even if marines evac fair and square, larva surge still comes in action and makes situation for marines even worse, utterly discouraging everything but either boomrushing the Alamo or holding lifeboats to evac.

This resulted in hijacks being very repetitive and boring. More than that, larva surge is extremely busted on lowpop due to the fact you can get around 20 xenos from nothing, making lowpop hijack even less interesting. So with this change marines will still get punished for evaccing with good numbers, but won't be penalized as much for honest evacuations.

So hopefully, we will see more variety of hijacks and more interesting stories!

P.S. if you have a better formula, let me know.

Testing Photographs and Procedure

My friend @Diegoflores31 tested this for me, thanks!

Screenshots & Videos

Put screenshots and videos here with an empty line between the screenshots and the <details> tags.

Changelog

🆑 ihatethisengine
balance: larva surge is limited by marines/xenos ratio
fix: xenos no longer get free larva from abandoned facehuggers during hijack
/:cl:

[fira]

Also i second 1:5 doesn't sound like a good ratio, but i'm no balanss person

[ihatethisengine]

I mean, before there was no larva surge at all. This has never been a big issue. If you hijack, usually it means you have already won and have enough xenos to deal with the rest of marines. So 1 per 5 over hive count sounds pretty fair for me.

For example, we have 30 xenos against 90 marines. This is pretty winnable ratio on its own. 60/5 = 12. After twelve minutes we would have 42 xenos (if no one dies of course). If we have 20 xenos against 100 marines (probably evac was not really justified), larva surge would grant 80/5=16 xenos. If anything, this is still too many, not too few. On low pop we can get situation like 10 xenos vs 30 marines. 20/5=4. A huge number for lowpop, but at least not as overwhelming as infinite amount.

[Huffie56]

Redoing my argument.
1-You also need to consider that those new xeno probably won't be able to evolve to T2 since queen will be off ovi.
2-each time a marine will die it will reduce the maximum of xeno hive can get.
3- let's say their is 50 marines left shispide when you hijack.
with 1:5 ratio that would mean you will gain only up to 10 xeno to assault their position.
in my opinion this is to much of a nerf and would be close to removing the larva surge...

[ihatethisengine]

2. Marines dying won't reduce the number, the number is being generated only once, when queen hijacks.
3. This is not quite how it works, I might need to rephrase it. But anyway, you get xenos for free. And 10 xenos is more than enough and anyway hijack rarely takes more than 10 minutes. More than that, okay, we got xenos POV, they need more xenos to assault marines' position. But what about marines? Are they just bound to fail anyway? Or maybe they should have a chance to hold out?

[Huffie56]

2. Marines dying won't reduce the number, the number is being generated only once, when queen hijacks.

   3. This is not quite how it works, I might need to rephrase it. But anyway, you get xenos for free. And 10 xenos is more than enough and anyway hijack rarely takes more than 10 minutes. More than that, okay, we got xenos POV, they need more xenos to assault marines' position. But what about marines? Are they just bound to fail anyway? Or maybe they should have a chance to hold out?

i didn't understood what you where doing at first it seem so i just took a look at the math in your code.
hijack_burrowed_left = max(n_ceil((ship side_humans_count - xenos_count) / 5), 1)

1-wouldn't it be more clear if you calculate the ratio you desire first?
desired number of xeno depending on ratio = ship-side_humans_count/5
2-then you calculate if the xeno have enough numbers.
if(xenos_count<desired xeno number
3-then you fill the larva surge pool as intended to respect the ratio.
surge pool max number = desired number of xeno - xeno_count

i don't know if it's clear.... just ignore if it's not.

[ihatethisengine]

Hmm, interesting suggestion, but I am not quite sure what number or ratio should be desirable. 1/5 is not enough for sure, 1/3 sounds better, but then hives with better ratio won't get larva at all. Which is not bad on its own (they already have numbers), but is probably too much of a nerf. My idea would at least give some larva even if hive is strong enough, without giving too many.

[Huffie56]

Hmm, interesting suggestion, but I am not quite sure what number or ratio should be desirable. 1/5 is not enough for sure, 1/3 sounds better, but then hives with better ratio won't get larva at all. Which is not bad on its own (they already have numbers), but is probably too much of a nerf. My idea would at least give some larva even if hive is strong enough, without giving too many.

you could calculate the number you give them differently if they have more than the ratio you aim for?
if(xenos_count=>desired xeno number
maybe a fix number?
surge pool max number = 5

[ihatethisengine]

Fixed number won't work because we have lowpop and highpop. Although 5 seems to be fine. I'll think about this. And let's see what balance dev has to say.

Alternative formula:
hijack_burrowed_left = max(n_ceil(shipside_humans_count / 3) - xenos_count, 5)

[ihatethisengine]

Good points, changed formula to hijack_burrowed_left = max(n_ceil(shipside_humans_count * 0.4) - xenos_count, 5) (* 0.4 and / 2.5 is the same)

[morrowwolf]

Make it go to 50% of shipside population. Thanks.

[ihatethisengine]

And done!

[github-actions]

This PR has been inactive for long enough to be automatically marked as stale. This means it is at risk of being auto closed in ~ 7 days, please address any outstanding review items and ensure your PR is finished, if these are all true and you are auto-staled anyway, you need to actively ask maintainers if your PR will be merged. Once you have done any of the previous actions then you should request a maintainer remove the stale label on your PR, to reset the stale timer. If you feel no maintainer will respond in that time, you may wish to close this PR youself, while you seek maintainer comment, as you will then be able to reopen the PR yourself

[Drulikar]

This is not something that can be tested well locally and must be test merged once ready to get a feel for what needs tweaking (e.g. surge_cooldown, surge_incremental_reduction, and hijack_burrowed_left).

[Drulikar]

Changes look fine in code - I'm sure Morrow will be on top of how it feels in practice.