Alter Xeno Evolution: Larva -> Drone Mandatory

[Venuska1117]

About the pull request

This PR focus on making Drone as universal evolving caste, and add new evolution system based on how much evolution points each caste cost, now drone caste cost 30 evolution points, and other T1 castes cost 30 evolution points too. (default 60 evo points needed to evolve to T1, same cost as pre-add)

De-evolving as any T1 caste will bring you back to larva stage.

P.S. person behind this idea was @Steelpoint , i just made this to reality, just work slightly different for balance:
https://forum.cm-ss13.com/t/alter-xeno-evolution-larva-drone-mandatory/8075

Explain why it's good for the game

Allow xenos to evolve quicker to T1 drone caste, this change make new players get used to playing as Xenos (new XX players), additionally it prevent people from missing out on evolution, you got too immersed in building as drone (doing drone tax) and you missed your evolution to T2 at 14 minute? now this will not be issue anymore, now you don't need to de-evolve and evolve again to become other branch of xeno to just get that Warrior or other castes.

Testing Photographs and Procedure

Fully unlocked Evolution choices:

Changelog

🆑 Venuska1117
balance: Larva evolve only to Drone, Now Drones are "Basic" Caste, they now can evolve to: Runner, Sentiel, Defender, Queen, Burrower and Carrier.
balance: Evolving from: Larva to drone and drone to other T1 castes cost 30 evolution.
/:cl:

[Red-byte3D]

this is a balance change not a code improvement change

[Venuska1117]

this is a balance change not a code improvement change

woops, sorry let me fix that (in cl)

[Red-byte3D]

1.) Just because people evolve into drones doesnt mean people will go around weeding.
2.) This effects late game balance as you're still required evo points to evolve from drone....to anything? i dont know how you coded this. so later rounds would get gimped
3.) Bonus evo was already added so people can become a drone and then go any caste they want.

[HeresKozmos]

Finally, a good PR.

[cuberound]

based on the Ideaguys Page you are trying to implement the drone should gain evo when queen is not in oviposition or (better) have separete points for evolving from drone to other t1 and from drone to t2 and make it so that you gain the t1 evo points even with queen out of oviposition

[Red-byte3D]

If you make it so its 60 evolution to larva -> to drone, how are you planning on solving the issue of drone to any other tier 1? is it going to be free evolution? That'd be causing time issues on how fast you can join the front if it isnt.

From a marine prespective, you'd be allowing newly born alrvas to make weeds walls and more reinforcements while they wait for the allocated x free evolution (before freely evolving to any other "combat" caste.) which would double the efficiency of any new larva born into the hive, taking away the importance factor of your choice. how do you intend to solve this?

The whole larva > drone > tier 1 > tier 2 > tier 3 time gets way longer considering all this, AND the fact that tier 3's are unlocked at minute 20 which would mean in some cases you wouldnt even be getting tier 3 despite marines having landed, due to some late queen spawns, or maybe when a queen isnt chosen round start so one has to evolve then get on ovi how do you plan on solving that?

The biggest issue with this pr is the fact that its un-required, we already have a perfectly working caste-system that saves evo for people who play drone in the sense of locked evo timers and reserve evolution points

[ihatethisengine]

I'd like to keep my free will to play or not to play drone.

[Steelpoint]

The addition of a forced drone evo should not prevent xenos getting t3s before marines arrive, especially if Drone to T1 combat caste has a lower evo time

[Drulikar]

For this to be approved, I do not want the timing to ultimately change for any caste. So that is to say, the speed to become drone should be the same as it was, and T1s that evolved from T0 are compensated for having to go through T1 twice.

[Steelpoint]

I sincearly believe now that the best way to make this change work smoothly, is to make it that once you have evolved past Drone, you can not de-evolve back into a Drone (with exception for support xenos). Basically you have to become a Drone, from Larva, but once you are past being a Drone you return back to being a Larva if you de-evolve.

This very much eliminates all possible forms of abuse that I can think of, and is the most elegant solution to said issues without requiring a massive host of further code changes.

[Venuska1117]

I will type list of change here, later i will update PR description (i need go to work soon and don't want to forget):
larva -> drone (cost 30 evo points, recommended wait for 60evo threshold)
drone -> runner, defender and sentinel (require 30 evo points, can be carried from larva to drone stage (if you hit 60 evo threshold))

• Can evolve to other T1 as drone when queen die, but you cannot evolve to T2
• De-evolve as runner, defender and sentinel make you larva instead of drone (to prevent abuse)
• You can now choose how much evolution points evolving to specific caste consume (default is 30), just need type them in [caste].dm as "evolution_cost = (number)"
• Early evolution give you different warning.

[github-actions]

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[cm13-github]

This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.

[cm13-github]

Conflicts have been resolved. A maintainer will review the pull request shortly.

[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