Right now hives are really, really important. Two things will make or break an alien team midgame - whether or not they have a fade and a hive.

I'm suggesting this because once hive 2 goes up, aliens jump up in power. Why?

Abilities
*Skulk leap - skulks can close distance suddenly! And they're hard to hit! They become much more effective.
*Fade metabolize - he doesn't have to worry about energy, doesn't have to go back to the hive for a heal
*Gorge bilebomb - the best way to take out eleced structures

Armor
Alien armor gets more powerful at second hive. Kind of like armor upgrades

Chambers
Another set of upgrades!

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My idea: the alien equivalent of an arms lab. Don't know what to call it yet.

It would be a structure that upgrades alien armor, maybe damage if the devs so choose. The hive would no longer affect alien armor; that responsibility would go to this chamber. Don't know how many you would build... 3 for each hive? Or 1 for each hive? But they'd be restricted by hive - couldn't build them any earlier or later than you can now.

Everything else would stay the same. Build time and res cost would be tweaked to make it the same cost as a hive. It wouldn't change the timing or quality of the upgrades aliens get. It would just split one thing off from the hive.

The reason for this tweak would be to reduce the slippery slope effect of a hive rush. Because hives are so important, second hive rushes are often make-or-break for the marines. This would reduce hive importantance by splitting it up.

Instead of the binary you killed the hive or you didn't, we get a new level in between.

might work

i actually kinda like this idea...

but whether it is feasible or not depends on the new sounds, modelling, texturing, coding etc that has to be done. and since one of these chambers can only be built per hive, what if one of them is wrongly placed or something?

Interesting idea, however my counterpoints to this:

1) Having a common armor or tech tree on the alien side (apart from choosing which chamber to drop) would take away the independence of each alien, and make them less versatile as a whole.

You would be taking away the teamwork involved in choosing which chamber needs to be dropped, effectively eliminating some of the teamwork that goes into deciding what is dropped per hive or not. And to add another set of upgrades to the armor, as an example... unless marines get an armor that does better against ranged attacks (oc chambers, spit), this is going to be very unbalancing.

New chambers are always welcome ideas in my eyes, but this one needs tweaking. Now that I have thrown my two cents out there, let's see what other people think. I will with hold my vote.

This is not another chamber that brings the count to 4. Movement, defense, and sensory chambers would work the same as they do now.

NOTHING in fact, would change, except that you now have two targets (hive and this chamber) instead of one - the hive. Res cost and build time would be tweaked so that there's be no real difference in the arrival of the armor bonus.

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For the misplacement issue... How about this. The effect of these chambers you can have depends on how many COMPLETED hives you have ever had in the game. In other words, if you build more of these chambers than you have hives, then you get no additional bonus (kind of how if you build 4 mcs, the fourth doesn't add anything).

Best explained by an example:
Hive two goes up, gorge #1 drops an upgrade chamber. All aliens get the armor boost. Gorge #2 decides that gorge #1 put the chamber in a vulnerable spot and decides to build another one in the rafters. The aliens in the field get no additional armor boost.

Marines march in and tear down hive two. The aliens STILL have the 2-hive armor bonus because of the upgrade chambers. The marines then tear down one upgrade chamber. No effect on the aliens. The marines hunt down and destroy the other one. Now all aliens are back to 1-hive armor.

Then a gorge #3 builds another upgrade chamber. This brings it back to the 2-hive effect.

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Can anyone follow that? And anyone have a snazzy name idea?

Actually, why don't we expand on this? Since you don't want the loss of customizability, how about the new chamber gives the option of three upgrades to everyone, increased armour, increased energy regen and increased damage. All to lesser extent than cara, adren and focus, respectively.

Combo chambar!

Very interesting idea I must say. It really decreases the importance of the marines taking down that second hive to win the match or it's gg. Also it makes it more possible for aliens to come back from a 1 hive lockdown given that they could have more armor with this upgrade dropped. All around a very well thought out idea with even better results, in theory. I like. A lot.