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In Alien RPG, the health and exoskeletal armor of the xenomorphs makes it hard to recreate the combat scenes of Aliens, while still staying true to its intimidating presence. This rule suggestions is an attempt to make both movies valid rule-wise.

I decided to make a difference between natural armor, like the exoskeletons of xenomorphs, and man-made modern armor.
I also made shotguns more effective against armor. Since their damage already lowers concideratebly with distance, further nerfing it by doubling armor protection seemed unneccesary (Hicks used it with good effect against xenomorphs in Aliens). Acid splashes at close range further limits its use.

With the rule suggestions listed below, explosive ammo doubles the amount of damage that goes through the armor. I also made Full Auto increase a weapon's base damage by +1. This specifically affects military firearms like the pulse rifle and the smartgun, who uses armor piercing and explosive ammo as standard, since, for example, pulse rifle base damage goes up from 2 to 3 at Full Auto, which doubles if it penetrates armor. Because the xenomorph exoskeleton armor doesn't protect against armor piercing ammo, a regular hit without extra hit dices inflicts 6 damage, and while this STILL isn't enough to kill a drone or soldier xenomorph, one or two extra hit dices does make short work of them.

Sure, some Game Mothers and players might be worried about game balance when the colonial marines now can act as ultimate badasses, but GM always have the power to change how many aliens there are, and the marines are only effective as long as:

- they have ammo left
- or can use their guns unrestricted (no need to stay quit, no sensitive volatile nuclear powerplant structures,
- no risk for explosive decompression in space due to hull breaches by firearms or alien acid etc.).

Armor piercing and explosive ammo and weapons are also generally hard to come by and probably illegal to use for non-military PCs.
Panic-induced ammo loss is probably the most effective general balance tool, but if players want to play androids (who doesn't need to worry about ammo loss in the core rules), game mothers can enforce a cap of three Full Auto spreads per ammo mag for pulse rifles and five for smart guns.

While the rule suggestions above might be nice for handling drones and soldier xenomorphs en masse, an alien queen might need a doubling of health points and/or armor that is treated like man-made armor OR make the alien queens armor always soak the first 3 damage (IMO a queen should always be terrifying enough that, if given a choice, escaping is always preferable!). This is just a suggestion. Feel free to use all, some, none of it, or your own variants of experiment to find the feeling the most satisfying effect. Have "fun"!

Armor/Protection
Melee weapon & shotgun ammo
Armor & natural armor protects normally

Regular ammo
Armor protects normally, natural armor is halved

Armor Piercing
Armor has halved protection
Natural armor does not protect

Explosive ammo
Penetrating damage is doubled

Firearms
Single shot (pistol, revolver, rifle)
Normal base damage

Short burst (automatic weapon)
Normal base damage (included in weapon performance)

Full auto (automatic weapon)
Hit Chance increases by +2 dice, Stress Level increases by +1 (add the stress die to the skill roll).
The base damage of the weapon increases by +1.

Each additional successful die roll beyond the first allows you to:
- hit another target within Short Range of the base target with the weapon's base damage as effect.
- increase the firegun damage of the weapon by another multiple (Base damage 1 and two extra hit successes means base damage 3, while base damage 2 with two extra hit successes means base damage 6).

Thanks for the information..