Alien Commander Concept
Sirot
Join Date: 2006-12-03 Member: 58851Members
Join Date: 2006-12-03 Member: 58851Members
Over the past few days, I have been designing a viable commander for the aliens. There were a lot of things I had to consider. He had to different from the marine commander to keep asymmetry on the two sides. He also had to properly represent the alien play style, which made applying the usual RTS themes hard. Finally, I had to fit the gorge in there somewhere as well.
The result of this reiteration is the wayfarer. The reason for the name is because the alien commander is designed similar to the normal aliens on the ground and centered primarily around managing the mobility of the alien forces.
Responsibilities of the Alien Commander
- Manage the defenses of the hives.
- Manage the respawning of the aliens.
- Provide mobility for the aliens.
- Directly assist the gorges.
- Construct hives and resource towers
The alien commander does very little building construction. The only buildings he can place are hives and resource towers (to remove that burden from normal players), both actions require that a gorge is nearby. The wayfarer can interact with anything within the infestation or around the gorges. Gorges have the responsibility of placing fortifications but they can be assisted by their commander. The wayfarer can directly feed resources from his own pool to a gorge to help him with construction. This simplifies the resource system since gorges no longer require to be given a larger share of resources and instead can request some from the commander. These resources if not used, return to the commander and they cannot be used to evolve into different forums.
The alien commander is completely ability based and has an extremely simplified tech tree. Evolutionary upgrades can be researched at hives and they’re all initially all available for research. The catch is that higher rank evolutions require multiple hives to simultaneously researching them. For example, carapace rank 1 only needs a single hive to be researched while carapace rank 2 requires that two hives become occupied. I am not going to delve into what these evolutions are because that is for another thread.
Yes, I mentioned abilities earlier. The wayfarer begins with access to four abilities and gains more as additional hives are controlled. For the sake of convenience, I’ll just make a list. To note, an alien is within the commander’s influence if he is on the infestation or near a gorge.
1. Bolster– Transfers an amount of resources from your own pool to a gorge. These resources can only be used for the construction of buildings.
2. Summon – The commander has the capability to recall any alien that is within his influence to a hive. The target of this ability is given a notification to accept or decline the recall. The inclusion of this ability removes the Redemption evolutionary upgrade.
3. Enrage – Target alien within the influence of the wayfarer benefits from increased adrenaline regeneration and speed for 5 seconds.
4. Spawn – An egg clutch is created at a location on the infestation.
5. Tunnel [Two Hives] – Select two points on infested ground. A tunnel is created between these points that allow for extremely quick travel. There is a limit of the amount of tunnels that can exist at any given time.
6. Regensis [Three Hives] – Target alien is given a notification that he evolve into an Onoes. He can accept or decline this offer. This ability is cheaper than having a player evolve by themselves.
Each of these abilities will have a certain resource and energy cost (which I assume is “commander mana†to prevent spamming). The only ability that I think is not up to snuff is Enrage. But I think it is important that the alien commander can have as much of a role in an encounter as his marine counterpart.
I might add more to this later, but I think this is pretty much an overview of what I think he should be like.
The result of this reiteration is the wayfarer. The reason for the name is because the alien commander is designed similar to the normal aliens on the ground and centered primarily around managing the mobility of the alien forces.
Responsibilities of the Alien Commander
- Manage the defenses of the hives.
- Manage the respawning of the aliens.
- Provide mobility for the aliens.
- Directly assist the gorges.
- Construct hives and resource towers
The alien commander does very little building construction. The only buildings he can place are hives and resource towers (to remove that burden from normal players), both actions require that a gorge is nearby. The wayfarer can interact with anything within the infestation or around the gorges. Gorges have the responsibility of placing fortifications but they can be assisted by their commander. The wayfarer can directly feed resources from his own pool to a gorge to help him with construction. This simplifies the resource system since gorges no longer require to be given a larger share of resources and instead can request some from the commander. These resources if not used, return to the commander and they cannot be used to evolve into different forums.
The alien commander is completely ability based and has an extremely simplified tech tree. Evolutionary upgrades can be researched at hives and they’re all initially all available for research. The catch is that higher rank evolutions require multiple hives to simultaneously researching them. For example, carapace rank 1 only needs a single hive to be researched while carapace rank 2 requires that two hives become occupied. I am not going to delve into what these evolutions are because that is for another thread.
Yes, I mentioned abilities earlier. The wayfarer begins with access to four abilities and gains more as additional hives are controlled. For the sake of convenience, I’ll just make a list. To note, an alien is within the commander’s influence if he is on the infestation or near a gorge.
1. Bolster– Transfers an amount of resources from your own pool to a gorge. These resources can only be used for the construction of buildings.
2. Summon – The commander has the capability to recall any alien that is within his influence to a hive. The target of this ability is given a notification to accept or decline the recall. The inclusion of this ability removes the Redemption evolutionary upgrade.
3. Enrage – Target alien within the influence of the wayfarer benefits from increased adrenaline regeneration and speed for 5 seconds.
4. Spawn – An egg clutch is created at a location on the infestation.
5. Tunnel [Two Hives] – Select two points on infested ground. A tunnel is created between these points that allow for extremely quick travel. There is a limit of the amount of tunnels that can exist at any given time.
6. Regensis [Three Hives] – Target alien is given a notification that he evolve into an Onoes. He can accept or decline this offer. This ability is cheaper than having a player evolve by themselves.
Each of these abilities will have a certain resource and energy cost (which I assume is “commander mana†to prevent spamming). The only ability that I think is not up to snuff is Enrage. But I think it is important that the alien commander can have as much of a role in an encounter as his marine counterpart.
I might add more to this later, but I think this is pretty much an overview of what I think he should be like.
Comments
How will you choose the 'wayfarer'? Like marines, who ever gets in the hive first, get's spewed out as a 'wayfarer' skulk. This skulk can turn into any of the normal aliens, and stay 'wayfarer', all that's different with him is his texture, all the alien forms he turns into have simular textures. That way, he can fight, then drop some stuff, and continue to fight, using a key like the map to do the dropping.
As how a commander is elected, first skulk that gets to the hive?
just an idea to make the gameplay asymmetric!
The alien players and the alien commander should have a significant amount of independence from each other, since that is a theme for the faction. Only feature that I think is important regarding the commander-player interaction is the ability to set waypoints.
now he is part of the hive and only commander as long as hes grown in, he can manipulate DI and he CANT build RT and HIVE (this should stay on the goerge!!! ) but he has some abilities like setting waypoints, top down view, and he can choose wich chambers are free to build (so he sets MC free to build a round start and georges could only build this)
in the other hand to integrate him in battle he should have some features (NO RESEARCH!!) with cooldown like make all marine visible trough SoF for 10 seconds or he could send out a swarm of alien bees (or what aver is small and flies) wich is IA and controlled bsy him for intel can only be killed with Flamethrower (and the swarm is intel only no damage attack possibilities)
Each com would have a different influence represented by a different shade or color or DI. They need to work together to move the aliens forward and give them a boost.
Just a thought.
Each com would have a different influence represented by a different shade or color or DI. They need to work together to move the aliens forward and give them a boost.
Just a thought.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Only in BIG games (losing 3 aliens from battlefield?). But this would only really be necessary if they throw stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, and more stuff into alien commander's hands to take care (just like the marine commander).
You guys are too used to thinking of a queen bee sort of thing. You forget that the hive sort of <i>is</i> the queen bee. So a hive would act like a comm chair for aliens for one small detail. When you become alien commander, technically you aren't just inside like a comm chair. You *are* the hive, which means while you could leave the alien commander position, if the hive dies with you inside, you die as well (and get respawned of course).
I think the hive commander should play a more passive role in that instead of actively deciding where to build, he'd give incentive to attack specific positions on the map. Unlike the marines, this suggestion can even be ignored, but for the most part, most aliens would go to the waypoint specified by the alien commander.
The alien commander can pay the resources to upgrade an alien (if alien approves too of course) to any class. Though aliens can upgrade themselves without the alien commander given enough time or kills (since resources are pooled).
In addition, he could provide random temporary buffs to players to help them in battle. Instead of dropping health packs, he could directly select the alien (or aliens) and click on one of several boosts, which would subtract resources from the pool (like 2 resources per buff).
Average length of time would be something between 20 seconds to 40 seconds (20 seconds for hive 1, 30 seconds for hive 2, and 40 seconds for hive 3).
Buffs can't be assigned if the alien already has one in place, and they usually provide some benefit and some drawback (again, the alien commander decides what would be useful in which situation).
<b>Reinforced Carpace</b> - Alien's armor is quadrupled, but moves 50% slower. (Good for onos for playing the role of the tank)
<b>Hibernation</b> - Aliens gain a new weapon which when used will cause them to go into egg form and gain 10 times the life and 10 times the armor that that class would normally have. (good perhaps for keeping gorge alive until other aliens can help). When this effect ends, life and armor will be restored to full.
<b>Frenzy</b> - Alien moves 33% faster and attacks 33% faster but takes 50% more damage.
<b>Infestation </b>- (Only applicable to skulks) Alien gains a new weapon which when used, alien turns himself inside out and throws himself at a marine at high speed. The alien dies as a consequence, but if it hits a marine, for a 20 to 40 seconds becomes controlled by that alien (whatever gun that is currently being held will do friendly damage), at the end of which, the marine dies. The model skin would have to be adjusted of course to be able to easily tell if they've been infested.
<b>Kamikazi</b> - When alien dies, alien has a random chance of dealing an area of effect damage to all nearby structures and players.
Having three alien commanders, if put in, would be nice, one per hive, but now look, since they aren't taken away from the game, you don't have that worry of having those three not fighting. Each can manipulate ALL DI.
Hmm? Mum that over and discuss.
Asymmetrical teams are what we need, SC did it(for example) perfectly, NS1 did it perfectly, now they say they'll get a commander(Which I'm against), so making it asymmetrical to the marines is what we need, true, 2 avenues are useful, but a simple training server, or hell, the Dev team can throw a perfessional single player trainer in, to show basics.
totally agree
giving more depth to what I have proposed before:
- to become an alien comm skulk would need to evolve (on DI) into an queen-like alien (NO FPS view, see below)
- 1 per team, no res requirement(?)
- long evolving time, so for some time at the beginning of a game aliens would basically run around with no control of the comm as it is in NS1, also the death of the queen would be a powerful blow for the alien team, since for some time it would leave them without control/help of a comm
- alien comm would have a RTS perspective,
- queen model on the ground would be controlled in a point'n'click manner like in all RTS games (no more work needed, pathfinding will be required for MASCs anyway)
- moves fast on DI, but slow without it
- no attacks
- only close range area of effect skills which costs res (maybe skills similar to umbra / primal scream which boosts up allies useful only during hive defense)
- building a Hive skill, if it is not reserved to gorges anymore (btw. the "laying a hive" could make the queen vulnerable, for instance: if the queen would have a segmented structure (like ants, bees and other insects), it could actually detach one of its body parts from which the hive would evolve, that would cut queen HP by half, which would be slowly regenerated together with the sacrificed body part)
- capable of respawning aliens (?) - maybe a skill: for small amount of res alien queen produces a pack of 10 glowies from which skulks can respawn like in a hive room (although DI around would be required), so queen could be used for some advanced tactics (like finishing off the marines base, by acting like a portable respawn zone just around the corner, DI would need to be be pushed that far though to make it happen, thus map control would need to be significant in favour of aliens)
In short:
> basically alien queen would be staying most of the time protected in the hive room, since it's death causes inactivity of the alien comm, and would need to be looked after only when looking for another hive location or when marines are closing down on the original hive,
> would grant some abilities (mostly defensive) but not necessarily all of them
> don't want to propose anything else about building (apart from Hive) since I don't have a idea how gorges will be handled now
> goes along the whole idea of asymmetric gameplay maintaining RTS view
I think this is interesting. If hives work kind of like a command chair, then maybe there could be more than 1 alien commander at a time.
It is possible that having more than 1 commander at a time may be necessary in some situations. What if the alien commander at a certain hive can only use his abilities on areas connected by infestation? This would require another commander to manage the 2nd hive area when the 2nd hive gets put up. The commanders would work to direct the infestation to connect the 2 hives and then only 1 commander would be needed to control both areas since the infestation has linked them. Some commander skills may only work on infestated areas that are connected to the hive. Connecting hives together could also enable features like the alien tunnels.
So while it is possible to have 3 players as alien commanders at once, it is not required once hives are linked.
The question still remains whether the gorge would be the only alien class able to enter the hives to command or not?
Marines also gain a new offensive strategy from this. They can destroy infestation links between hives to hinder alien movement and force aliens to devote extra players/resources to commanding hives.
Sounds like some fun gameplay to me. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
also wouldn't it be hard to organise team tactics with 3 different comms?
Have you ever played Battlefield 2 ?
Well in bf2 there was a comm on the ground as a player.
Every experienced bf2 player ignored the comm and did what they thought was good for the team, and usualy it was.
The 'com' spent the whole game as a support, balancing his score and helping his team.
When things go south the commander tells people were they are needed and should go.
Do NS2 aliens want a comm in a chair - ordering them around and organizing them
or
A comm that helps them and occasionally sends warning of an impending assault.
or even more
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->Organized strategic play
vs.
Lose "do something useful" get some kills <!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
personal I go for the on the ground comm:
- As an alien, I have my money and thus not Dependant on a comm.
- Aliens are a custom to self rule
- The people with initiative (and microphones) take charge anyways
- I don't like change <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wow.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":0" border="0" alt="wow.gif" />
It should be possible to make it easier for aliens to organize themselves by enchancing the UI and make it easier to use and understand, so we can get rid of the idea of a 2nd - marine-like Commander ...
So make each gorge a field commander with limited abilities and probably the first gorge (alpha gorge <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> ) is the field comm with a connection to the hive mind or whatever so he isn't able to build but use those nice special abilities to help out the skulks and he can upgrade some special abilities and so on ...
Having him just a gorge, *barfs*
Having him do little to nothing, *heaves out a gun and shoots him*
Here's my ideals:
1)To be the alien 'commander', you must enter the hive. First guy in gets it, just like marines. You can vote to 'eject' him, this makes him respawn uncommander and with everything he previously had. In the hive, he is mentally linked with that 1 hive. If the hive is shot, he is hurt. EX: hive has 100 HP, he has 10, for every 10 dmg to hive, he takes 1 dmg. If the hive is killed, he loses commander and respawns at the other hive, but if the hive is rebuilt, he has to get in it first to reclaim it. That's the only way the alien comm can lose his commanding to the marines, is if they kill his hive.
2)He pops out the hive 10 seconds later as a skulk, with a different skin, and a key is activated that is chosen in the options menu, under "Alien Commander Overview". You act, play, and are the same to any other player, other than the fact you got a different skin, you can get 2 of the 3 upgrades of your hive type, and get 2 maps, one is just a map any player, marine or alien, gets, then the other comes with a HUD, with abilities. Also, he gets alot more voice commands.
3)Your abilities are linked to that of what chamber your hive commands. DC? You get alot of defencive type abilities to pass out. MC? Movement and speed abilities. SC? Stealth and sensing sh**. As said above, you can choose 2 of the 3 upgrades of what hive type you are. If your first hive is DC, and you also got a 2nd MC hive, you can only get 2 of what hive you entered, the DC.
4)There can be up to three 'commanders'. Each 'ease' DI a way they want, now, for example, if DI hits a fork in a hallway, and you tell it to go left, it will still grow the right way, but not as fast as if you told it not to choose a way, or the left way(5 feet a minute both ways if you didn't command it one way, 7 feet a minute left, but only 3 feet a minute right, see what i'm saying?). To get these other commanders, you have to do the same thing as the first one did, jumpin the new hive. Now, in the corner with the hives names and what chamber they are, is a box telling who's that aliens mental link.
- Manage the defenses of the hives.
- Manage the respawning of the aliens.
- Provide mobility for the aliens.
- Directly assist the gorges.
- Construct hives and resource towers<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
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this structure is almost same like the rine's commander <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
i remember the KKnD, All the Units on either side is DIFFERENT, but only the name is different, the HP, and DMG (etc.) is same <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
I'm rly againts making an alien commander with an RTS overview of the map.
So ultimately, the Commander would have influence over all the Kharaa, but would not have control over any of the lifeforms.