Alien princess

[velvet ruin]

Without the queen the alien hive cannot work. So the idea is simple, allow the hive to give birth to a new queen.
This will require an empty nest into which the queen places an egg and shrimps to take care of the "larva". After a massive chunk of time elapses (something like building construction) the nest becomes occupied with a chrysalis/pupa/pod, which will reveal a new queen if the original was destroyed. When the pupa is completed the other factions are notified.
Only one princess may be present on the map and the princess cannot multiply further (perhaps can't even move), but this can give the hive a comeback. At the cost of occupying their queen with setting up a secondary base midgame.

[languid torrent]

there will probably be the option of birthing new queens just because the humans can place redundant hqs

[sacred tinsel]

you can already spawn new nests

[round lantern]

King crab sounds delish right now.

[languid torrent]

yeah I know, I mean in the context of when the queen becomes the lynchpin of the aliens

[runic abyss]

Killing the Queen will be the winning condition, replacing nests. That means that no matter how many nests you have, if you lose the Queen you lose the game.

[runic abyss]

Immersion wise, there are ant queens that produce other queens in nature. Not sure DRAM would go for it though as Queens are mobile. But its a cool idea.

[velvet ruin]

But those are produced to reproduce more hives, not as a backup. I don't think having two queens without any drawbacks is optimal or fair to the other factions, as taking down the queen should still be close to the killing blow even with this feature. Killing the queen would then cause the hive to effectively have only one functional nest.

[pearl hatch]

lobster queen

[mild socket]

Not necessarily there are species that have multiple queens. Also species of ants that don't have queens and instead have gamergates which are just female ants that can lay eggs but usually fight for dominance.

*woker ants are all female, in species with gamergates they can all lay eggs but one usually take dominance and will eat/destroy the other eggs.

There are some mega ant colonies that have crazy amounts of queens.

Ants are fascinating in there diversity. Slaving ants (which steal brood because they don't produce workers only soldiers) , Ants that can produce genetic duplicates "clones". Honeypot ants.

Some have one queen. Others will accept just a couple. A few species don't seem to have a limit and grow literally continent wide colonies.

[abstract gust]

guys u know on queen death the alien team is meant to get defeated right?

[mild socket]

Yeah literally written in the first sentence of the thread

Guy is suggesting a alternative as in a idea. In the idea forum

[velvet ruin]

the secondary "queen" is meant to be a trade off for performing quite a risky maneuver, where the queen leaves her nest (which disables all structures) and finds a new nest where she lays an egg. The queen will likely have to move nests at some point anyway, so there will be a few nests around the map. Additionally a nest with a princess may look similar to a nest with a queen, so it could lead to humans false targeting the other nest, like a decoy.

[abstract gust]

Regarding the risky maneuver bit, I believe the moving to a new nest to simply meant to be that

I do like the idea of a decoy to decieve the human players on the queens true where-abouts

[languid torrent]

I just imagine it to be something like a lot of larger ant colonies, where there can be multiple queens

[round lantern]

What about drag queens?

[abstract gust]

wym?

[runic abyss]

A decoy queen idea might be interesting

but adding additional queens would defeat the "hive mind" purpose... maybe