Alien Concept for Future Content Pack: Saur
Slatox
Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17895Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17895Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Siege Support Role Alien Class</div><b>VERSION 2</b>
<img src="http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y207/slatox/saur1.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<img src="http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y207/slatox/saur2.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<b>Name:</b> Saur (or whatever else you like more)
<b>Role:</b> Siege Support/Base Disruption
<b>Would it be useful?:</b> Early on in the game it's common for marines to try and push out an expansion. It's also common for a teammate to lerk to support an assault on the expansion, but could there be something that works better at disrupting and destroying bases? Mid-to-late game marines will often have a large fortification set up, perhaps sieging a hive. Aliens will send in the fades to pick off the marines, and fades are great as anti-marine aliens, but could they not use an alien whos role is focused on base destruction and disruption? (Without waiting for 75 res that is.)
<b>Imagery:</b> It's roughly based on an Ankylosaurus with a bit of gecko thrown in
<b>Resource Cost:</b> ~35 Res
<b>Speed:</b> 230 units/sec (Skulk is 290 u/s) Also a wall walker
<b>Health/Armour:</b> 130/100 (very subject to change)
Reasoning: I decided to redesign it based on a friend's input to be cheaper/faster/more focused. It is an alternative to lerk that can be evolved early on to counter marine expansions. It's slower than a skulk, lacks maneuvering abilities but is more focused on base disruption and destruction. You could use it destroy bases quickly or briefly shutdown phasegates or turret factories. You could even run around in loops harassing the marine commander but continually shutting down a bunch of RTs near each other. This version definitely sounds more to me like something I'd invest my res in.
<b>Ability 1</b>
Swing: Damage 95 (slow attack speed, x2 to buildings)
Energy: 11% (high cost but slow speed means more time to recover between attacks, might need to be higher cost depending on how fast the attack turns out to be)
Swings your tail across to damage marines/buildings on one side. Does double damage to buildings.
<img src="http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y207/slatox/SWING.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Left-click and right-click
As you can see by the cruddy illustration, the tail would unfurl when you initiate the attack. If you were to left-click, you would swing your head to the left (followed shortly by your tail) and vice versa for right-click. This would damage all marine and buildings on one side of you, at the end of your attack your viewpoint would be where your tail was when you started. Mid-swing the saur would immobile and unable to manually shift aim (ie look around) on the x-axis as head would be spinning around. As the tail is unfurling as you start the swing, it misses out on the first 5° of the swing and the momentum of the tail-club carries it on 5° past the body before furling up again.
This means in order to damage a bunch of buildings at once with this ability you would line up one side with enemy buildings and alternate between left and right clicks to demolish them.
This would be hard to use against marines due to it being an attack you have to stop for every time you use it, ability 4 helps here however.
<b>Ability 2</b>
Xenacid Vomit: ~150 Damage to building over duration (~5-8 seconds)
Energy ~90%? (has to be high)
Primary Function (Left-click): Very short range but temporarily disables all buildings it hits. You could shutdown Turrets, TFs, IPs, Obs, PGs, RTs or whatever you need to depending on what helps your strategy. It would only hit/effect a small area in front of you but it could open up some interesting strategies (granted if control 3 hives and most of the map you shouldn't need too much strategy to win in most cases). It coats them in a disgusting sticky liquid that would make it easy to tell if they were still under its effect or not.
Secondary Function (Right-click): Now I'm struggling to think of a secondary function for this, the best I could think of was that if you right-clicked and hit friendly buildings, it temporarily gives them protective armour that could significantly reduce damage from explosions and flames, they would have have the same coating effect.
<b>Ability 3</b> (Two hives)
Bileweave: Web that spreads and hits buildings infront, increasing damage taken by 50% for the duration (5-8 seconds)
Energy: ~90%
Primary Function: Short range, when fire spreads somewhat to coat buildings infront in an acid that increases all damage taken by 50% for the duration (purple colour maybe)
Secondary Function: Same attack but used against marines, increases damage taken to armour by 50% for duration (green coloured web perhaps)
<b>Alternate Ability 3 or 4</b>
<b>BABBLERS!!!</b>
<b>Ability 4</b> (Three hives)
Sapspit: Damage 40-50 over duration (~5 seconds)
Energy: 30%
Damages enemy marines over time and clouds their vision while reducing movement speed by 33%.
This is the ability that evens the playing field between the saur and those one or two LALMGs that keep at a distance preventing you from hurting them.
Primary Function: I could ask you to imagine a gorge spit that arcs and falls over a medium distance (while dropping gunk on the way), but it would be easier to picture if you've seen a boomer from L4D vomit in a straight line (the saur wouldn't be able to hit more than one person with this attack as it would follow a straight line only). This would allow him to pick off one or two lmg harassers.
Secondary Function: This would be the same attack but instead of spitting in a vertical line over a distance is spreads horizontally over a very short distance in order to coat a tightknit group of marines in sticky sap from almost point-blank range in front of the saur.
The problem with the first design (which was basically a sieging wombatfade) is that if an offensive fails there is little no chance of escape, but with a smaller, quicker, wall climber you could coordinate highly effective expansion/base rushes through vents. With this it would synergise much better with skulks and lerk at destroying base early on and also synergise with fades for raining hell on bases while they pick off marines.
Thank you so much to Hatch (Dodge) for the ideas and suggestion that went into this redesign and my gf Seoin for the concept art.
Is this a necessary addition to alien roster? What should be changed?
<img src="http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y207/slatox/saur1.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<img src="http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y207/slatox/saur2.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<b>Name:</b> Saur (or whatever else you like more)
<b>Role:</b> Siege Support/Base Disruption
<b>Would it be useful?:</b> Early on in the game it's common for marines to try and push out an expansion. It's also common for a teammate to lerk to support an assault on the expansion, but could there be something that works better at disrupting and destroying bases? Mid-to-late game marines will often have a large fortification set up, perhaps sieging a hive. Aliens will send in the fades to pick off the marines, and fades are great as anti-marine aliens, but could they not use an alien whos role is focused on base destruction and disruption? (Without waiting for 75 res that is.)
<b>Imagery:</b> It's roughly based on an Ankylosaurus with a bit of gecko thrown in
<b>Resource Cost:</b> ~35 Res
<b>Speed:</b> 230 units/sec (Skulk is 290 u/s) Also a wall walker
<b>Health/Armour:</b> 130/100 (very subject to change)
Reasoning: I decided to redesign it based on a friend's input to be cheaper/faster/more focused. It is an alternative to lerk that can be evolved early on to counter marine expansions. It's slower than a skulk, lacks maneuvering abilities but is more focused on base disruption and destruction. You could use it destroy bases quickly or briefly shutdown phasegates or turret factories. You could even run around in loops harassing the marine commander but continually shutting down a bunch of RTs near each other. This version definitely sounds more to me like something I'd invest my res in.
<b>Ability 1</b>
Swing: Damage 95 (slow attack speed, x2 to buildings)
Energy: 11% (high cost but slow speed means more time to recover between attacks, might need to be higher cost depending on how fast the attack turns out to be)
Swings your tail across to damage marines/buildings on one side. Does double damage to buildings.
<img src="http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y207/slatox/SWING.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Left-click and right-click
As you can see by the cruddy illustration, the tail would unfurl when you initiate the attack. If you were to left-click, you would swing your head to the left (followed shortly by your tail) and vice versa for right-click. This would damage all marine and buildings on one side of you, at the end of your attack your viewpoint would be where your tail was when you started. Mid-swing the saur would immobile and unable to manually shift aim (ie look around) on the x-axis as head would be spinning around. As the tail is unfurling as you start the swing, it misses out on the first 5° of the swing and the momentum of the tail-club carries it on 5° past the body before furling up again.
This means in order to damage a bunch of buildings at once with this ability you would line up one side with enemy buildings and alternate between left and right clicks to demolish them.
This would be hard to use against marines due to it being an attack you have to stop for every time you use it, ability 4 helps here however.
<b>Ability 2</b>
Xenacid Vomit: ~150 Damage to building over duration (~5-8 seconds)
Energy ~90%? (has to be high)
Primary Function (Left-click): Very short range but temporarily disables all buildings it hits. You could shutdown Turrets, TFs, IPs, Obs, PGs, RTs or whatever you need to depending on what helps your strategy. It would only hit/effect a small area in front of you but it could open up some interesting strategies (granted if control 3 hives and most of the map you shouldn't need too much strategy to win in most cases). It coats them in a disgusting sticky liquid that would make it easy to tell if they were still under its effect or not.
Secondary Function (Right-click): Now I'm struggling to think of a secondary function for this, the best I could think of was that if you right-clicked and hit friendly buildings, it temporarily gives them protective armour that could significantly reduce damage from explosions and flames, they would have have the same coating effect.
<b>Ability 3</b> (Two hives)
Bileweave: Web that spreads and hits buildings infront, increasing damage taken by 50% for the duration (5-8 seconds)
Energy: ~90%
Primary Function: Short range, when fire spreads somewhat to coat buildings infront in an acid that increases all damage taken by 50% for the duration (purple colour maybe)
Secondary Function: Same attack but used against marines, increases damage taken to armour by 50% for duration (green coloured web perhaps)
<b>Alternate Ability 3 or 4</b>
<b>BABBLERS!!!</b>
<b>Ability 4</b> (Three hives)
Sapspit: Damage 40-50 over duration (~5 seconds)
Energy: 30%
Damages enemy marines over time and clouds their vision while reducing movement speed by 33%.
This is the ability that evens the playing field between the saur and those one or two LALMGs that keep at a distance preventing you from hurting them.
Primary Function: I could ask you to imagine a gorge spit that arcs and falls over a medium distance (while dropping gunk on the way), but it would be easier to picture if you've seen a boomer from L4D vomit in a straight line (the saur wouldn't be able to hit more than one person with this attack as it would follow a straight line only). This would allow him to pick off one or two lmg harassers.
Secondary Function: This would be the same attack but instead of spitting in a vertical line over a distance is spreads horizontally over a very short distance in order to coat a tightknit group of marines in sticky sap from almost point-blank range in front of the saur.
The problem with the first design (which was basically a sieging wombatfade) is that if an offensive fails there is little no chance of escape, but with a smaller, quicker, wall climber you could coordinate highly effective expansion/base rushes through vents. With this it would synergise much better with skulks and lerk at destroying base early on and also synergise with fades for raining hell on bases while they pick off marines.
Thank you so much to Hatch (Dodge) for the ideas and suggestion that went into this redesign and my gf Seoin for the concept art.
Is this a necessary addition to alien roster? What should be changed?
Comments
<b>1. Is this a replacement for the gorge or simply a supporting class?</b>
Considering the gorge no longer builds things he will probably be shifting to a more offensive role. Assuming he can still bile, I don't see what advantages the Saur will have over the NS2 Gorge, especially with heal.
<b>Ability 1</b>
You aren't really facing your target, which I think would make things awkward and hitting good marines very difficult.
It looks like he has a hard shell to protect his head, maybe he could HEADBUTT stuff ;D
<b>1. Is this a replacement for the gorge or simply a supporting class?</b>
Considering the gorge no longer builds things he will probably be shifting to a more offensive role. Assuming he can still bile, I don't see what advantages the Saur will have over the NS2 Gorge, especially with heal.
<b>Ability 1</b>
You aren't really facing your target, which I think would make things awkward and hitting good marines very difficult.
It looks like he has a hard shell to protect his head, maybe he could HEADBUTT stuff ;D<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thanks for the response <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
Well I think there's no real way of knowing if or how he is replacing the gorge until we actually see the gorge abilities. I was under the impression gorges might be able to create soft walls or somesuch and maybe something like OCs. But yeah can't really say until we know what abilities the gorge does have. If you gave gorge something like Ability 2 then there wouldn't be a need for this really.
As for the swing, you have some level of peripheral vision and don't forget the swing goes past the middle of where you started to so if you were straight at something the swing should pretty hit through the vision you had when you clicked. Yeah it would take some skill to be great with but I don't see it being overly difficult, just my opinion though.
I was thinking about this the other day. I've never seen a game that portrays the view of an animal that has eyes on the side of its head. Animals like this cannot see directly in front of themself and also have terrible depth perception. Almost a split screen with some black down the middle could do it well. It would be interesting.
Otherwise, good concept, although i found some of it doesn't fit that well.
i wont have any problems with it, and i would play it.
it would be nice to have something tougher than a skulk early on i would play as this
Yeah it's really more of a rough template of a potential new alien class. Yeah spawn I originally had a bile bomb in there (with bouncing alternate fire) but that's the reason I took it out. What do you feel is in there currently that is too similar to things already ingame? You might be right about the swings, what if the degrees before the tail is full outstretched (and the damage starts) was a lot higher, or should the whole vision-moving idea be scrapped?
If you guys have any suggestions for new abilities I would love to hear and incorporate them. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
BUT disabling a PG would make all of this moot point. A job that would normally require 2-3 onoses and about 3/4 of the alien team could be reduced to being accomplished by this new creature's vomit, and about 4-5 skulks.
Just saying, let it do all other building except the PG
other than that, I like this creature, needs a more gory attack, though