Bullet specialization
Hawkeye
Join Date: 2002-10-31 Member: 1855Members
Join Date: 2002-10-31 Member: 1855Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Possible upgrade idea</div>I thought it would be interesting for the commander to made bullet upgrades. Rather than have damage upgrades, you would provide a choice between three advantageous bullet upgrade trees, each upgradeable to level 3. The catch is that once the first level is chosen, you cannot continue upgrades in other upgrade trees (also to prevent having overpowered weapons).
Hollow tip - Researchers have found that hollow tip bullets have remarkable damage capabilities, physically tearing pieces of flesh upon exit of the wound, however scientists have not been able to counter its unability to punch through armor as effectively due to having a lesser weight. Upgrades in Hollow Tip will increase damage dealt to the Kharaa lacking armor. (Kharaa starting off with armor are still effected by this damage once armor is stripped through excessive damage).
Level 1 - Bullet damage dealt to unarmored Kharaa lacking armor increased by 15%.
Level 2 - Bullet damage dealt to unarmored Kharaa lacking armor increased by 30%.
Level 3 - Bullet damage dealt to unarmored Kharaa lacking armor increased by 50%.
Steel tip - Steel carries remarkable strength and one such advantage is that it can penetrate anything, even Kharaa carpace. Upgrades in Steel tip will reduce the effectiveness of Kharaa armor (Note that this does not strip armor faster, merely inflicts more damage to health than to armor with increasing effectiveness. It does not, however, make this more effective normal bullet damage against unarmored Kharaa)
Level 1 - Bullet damage penetrates armor 10%.
Level 2 - Bullet damage penetrates armor 20%.
Level 3 - Bullet damage penetrates armor 35%.
Needling - One of the most common complaints from Frontiersmen (at least from those who survived our first encounter with the Kharaa) was the constant enslaught of aliens which often meant damage wasn't enough. Researchers might have discovered a solution to this problem through a technique called Needling. With a small modification to bullet weapons, projectiles fire slower but punch a hole through anything it hits.
Level 1 - Bullets fire 10% slower but have a 15% chance to penetrate, striking any Kharaa behind your target.
Level 2 - Bullets fire 20% slower but have a 30% chance to penetrate, striking any Kharaa behind your target.
Level 3 - Bullets fire 30% slower but have a 50% chance to penetrate, striking any Kharaa behind your target.
Hollow tip - Researchers have found that hollow tip bullets have remarkable damage capabilities, physically tearing pieces of flesh upon exit of the wound, however scientists have not been able to counter its unability to punch through armor as effectively due to having a lesser weight. Upgrades in Hollow Tip will increase damage dealt to the Kharaa lacking armor. (Kharaa starting off with armor are still effected by this damage once armor is stripped through excessive damage).
Level 1 - Bullet damage dealt to unarmored Kharaa lacking armor increased by 15%.
Level 2 - Bullet damage dealt to unarmored Kharaa lacking armor increased by 30%.
Level 3 - Bullet damage dealt to unarmored Kharaa lacking armor increased by 50%.
Steel tip - Steel carries remarkable strength and one such advantage is that it can penetrate anything, even Kharaa carpace. Upgrades in Steel tip will reduce the effectiveness of Kharaa armor (Note that this does not strip armor faster, merely inflicts more damage to health than to armor with increasing effectiveness. It does not, however, make this more effective normal bullet damage against unarmored Kharaa)
Level 1 - Bullet damage penetrates armor 10%.
Level 2 - Bullet damage penetrates armor 20%.
Level 3 - Bullet damage penetrates armor 35%.
Needling - One of the most common complaints from Frontiersmen (at least from those who survived our first encounter with the Kharaa) was the constant enslaught of aliens which often meant damage wasn't enough. Researchers might have discovered a solution to this problem through a technique called Needling. With a small modification to bullet weapons, projectiles fire slower but punch a hole through anything it hits.
Level 1 - Bullets fire 10% slower but have a 15% chance to penetrate, striking any Kharaa behind your target.
Level 2 - Bullets fire 20% slower but have a 30% chance to penetrate, striking any Kharaa behind your target.
Level 3 - Bullets fire 30% slower but have a 50% chance to penetrate, striking any Kharaa behind your target.
Comments
That'd be Piercing High Speed Ammunition, and it would counter the greatest advantage of an organized Spearhead Rush, where the First line Sponges Damage until it's exhausted and send to the Respawn queue...
Also, Kharaa hadn't a seperate Armorvalue as far as I can remember. They just had "overall Health".
As for armor, skulks have 70 health and 10 armor (30 with carpace). I think they all had an armor value, even if it was low. The importance of the armor penetration or the damage increase vs Kharaa without armor begins to be significant when you're dealing with Kharaa with high and low armor types in the late game. Might immediately seem advantageous to only improve armor penetration, though the ability to reduce an unarmored onos to a pulp of flesh and blood in a matter of seconds is not so unappealing either. All depends on where the humans wish to place their emphasis I guess.
This way a couple of marines can still kill the first enemy they encounter with a couple bullets... but for those unusual times where the aliens use teamwork and attack relentlessly to exploit the marines's overall inability to kill anything (in ns1)... well this empowers the marines to stop massive alien rushes...
It would then be 100% impossible for an alien team to do 25onos rushes on the marine team... or any type of hallway rush... all of this without sacrificing the ability to kill solitary targets which your needling idea fails at.
To the OP, I like where your idea is going, definitely a cool feature that should be implemented into NS2 but needs a little bit if refining. And to the guy who said that Aliens had only one overall health, you couldn't be more wrong.
Every alien unit had
hp = hit points, health points whatever
ap = armor points
Skulk had 70hp 10ap upgradeable to 30ap
Onos had 900hp and 650ap upgradeable to 950ap
I don't remember the other ones but how do you guys not remember the fact that aliens and marines had both hit points and armor points?
Because of this the original post has a lot of value, the Armor piercing rounds rendering armor less useful is great vs an onos which has tons of armor but would be worthless against a skulk for instance which has barely any armor at all and the Armor Piercing rounds wouldn't deal extra damage to the Hit Points. This is awesome because it forces the commander and team to really brainstorm and predict what they think the aliens strategy is going to be, how well the marines predict the alien strategy based on the players on the alien team, the previous playing style of the alien team as well as the map would be crucial and would absolutely add a lot of depth to the teamwork aspect.
Devs check this out!!! this is a really neat and workable feature addition that should be considered if not already implemented in a different way.
At least say something about the topic dude, this is ideas and suggestions, not hey I'll just reply with some aspect of the original NS1. This is a place where NEW ideas are suggested.
Sheesh you nostalgics have infested everywhere
FocusedWolf,
A) I think you miss the whole point here. The idea of bullet specialization was to diversify how damage is done vs various Kharaa classes which in turn adds another dimension to the strategy in the game. If being overpowered were the only issue here, that could be remedied easily enough.
B) Needling isn't overpowered. More often than not, you probably wouldn't even be hitting an alien while shooting an onos. Even if you were, you're dealing less overall damage vs single alien players which more often than not you're probably aiming for a single target anyway.
A) I think you miss the whole point here. The idea of bullet specialization was to diversify how damage is done vs various Kharaa classes which in turn adds another dimension to the strategy in the game. If being overpowered were the only issue here, that could be remedied easily enough.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
But their are only 2 types of targets... armored and soft... on a soft target you want a hollow point and on an armored, you want a strong bullet that won't shatter when it hits bone but continues through to the organs inside. You can have both... For example a type of frangible ammunition that penetrates armor and then breaks up to do multiple exit wounds once inside the target.
However your idea of using this to make marines totally weak against one type of enemy and totally strong against another is just plain silly NERFING. If a commander makes such a decision... suddenly people loose the ability to kill a soft target like a fade or gorge in order to do heavy damage against a couple of onos running around... a poor commander could really mess up the game in this way with such team-wide manipulation. He's not fighting the enemy so he has no way of picking appropriately or know ahead of time what works for 1 particular player to fit his tactics. However if you say that when you goto an armory for a new weapon and ammo that you, the player, have a choice between different types of ammo then it's ok. Then we can have a game mechanic for introducing new forms of bullets like light armor piercing incendiary which i really like :P Custom servers will be so much more fun that way :P Finally a shotgunner can have a choice between armor piercing slugs or fade slaying buckshot!
Now on top of all this if their was a damage upgrade the commander could research such as enhanced-penetration... then i think it solves the problem of killing multiple targets in a row.. that's a basis for an upgrade system where a commander can only research things which HELP the team... not exploit it in different new ways... like how an alien team is exploited if someone drops a SC at the start, where depending on the map, could mean slaughter etc.
And the concept the original poster suggested would not nerf the marines against one type of target, on the contrary, the point of the different ammunition is so that a marine team that plans ahead well and works together would have a slight boost in effectiveness vs the higher alien classes they predicted would appear later in the game.
And the concept the original poster suggested would not nerf the marines against one type of target, on the contrary, the point of the different ammunition is so that a marine team that plans ahead well and works together would have a slight boost in effectiveness vs the higher alien classes they predicted would appear later in the game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well it's because i hate the alien team... never play on the alien team... totally avoid the alien team. And because of this i get a unique perspective on what the marine team needs to stand a chance if their are just random players of random skill on the marine team... Example::: 1 good alien on the alien team means the game ends... but 10 good marines could do nothing at all in stopping it. Perhaps you encountered "lolasaurusrex" in NS1... we got that ###### banned ... he was psychotic. He could go on the alien team... go fade... NEVER DIE AND GET LIKE 200 KILLS EVERY GAME!!!... we got him banned because he had like 5 accounts and when he was banned on one temporarially, it was found through IP logs that he was connecting with another account... that was it.. perma ban and the marines started winning again.
A good balanced game shouldn't allow for such unbalanced ###### to occur. Marine team NEEDS STRENGTHS... we cannot have guns that fire blanks.
btw... COD4 is a great game. I can't imagine anyone making it sound like a bad thing to like COD4. The only thing COD4 misses is multiple addons to the gun in multiplayer... And besides all that it won game of the year! Just like GoldenEye. You don't see NS winning ###### lol
And on that note... The marine team has MARINES... why the hell aren't they blood thirsty and armed to the teeth!!!!
Inflicting 50% damage conditionally as opposed to 30% damage unconditionally is clearly an advantage if that condition is met. For example if were commander and I wanted to rush the hive, I'd upgrade damage done vs unarmored. Otherwise if I was expecting a longer game, I might wait until mid game before upgrading steel tip anticipating fades and oni. The fact that there's no single 'best upgrade' here only means that like the alien chambers, they each have their advantages and disadvantages.
And I've won plenty a game with sensory chamber as the first chamber. Most of the time, the only serious disadvantage we had was the whining from the players going "omg sensory f4!!"
you're totally missing the point. The goal of improvements is not to power up both teams more an more. No one likes arms races where both sides gets stronger and stronger with every game-update. Tactics should be rewarded. So this idea of bullet specialisation is exactly this: It doesn't have to make marines weaker at all. It's just a way to make them _not_ overall stronger, but only in one direction. It's like the decision between JP and HA (u have to decide for one thing first and that way decide the teams tactics).
A random team without teamwork or a team with a stupid commander who wants to ruin the game should NEVER stand a chance of winning against an organized and well-playing alien-team. The idea of teamwork would be completely destroyed if marines get improved in a way such that they can win even without teamplay...
Perhaps some sort of recycling of the upgrade tree (of course not at full price) would be needed. This in the sense that you give some sort of adaptability to the marines on par with what the aliens have so they aren't stuck in an upgrade tree that does them no good or has already been countered.
Well, that's bad luck. If you couldn't stop him, you did it wrong.
But yelling at others because you failed doesn't make anything better, instead it makes you look like a Fool.
Incendiary matches Hollow, Hollow is meant to kill unarmored, so is Incendiary.
High Explosive matches Steel Tip, Steel Tip is meant to kill through armor, so is HE.
You can have a three way split on each branch, Either upgrade your Hollow/Steel/Needle to Superior, or, choose one of two new bullet types that can only be found in that branch, but doing so, you can only get Advanced version of those rounds, as they don't get a Superior Upgrade like the basic Hollow/Steel/Needle rounds do.
If you think that idea just would complicate and ######over the Commander in charge, eh, I at least brainstormed a new idea.
Science and Industry style?
<!--quoteo(post=1713050:date=Jun 19 2009, 12:16 PM:name=FocusedWolf)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (FocusedWolf @ Jun 19 2009, 12:16 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1713050"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Well it's because i hate the alien team... never play on the alien team... totally avoid the alien team. And because of this i get a unique perspective on what the marine team needs to stand a chance if their are just random players of random skill on the marine team... Example::: 1 good alien on the alien team means the game ends... but 10 good marines could do nothing at all in stopping it. Perhaps you encountered "lolasaurusrex" in NS1... we got that ###### banned ... he was psychotic. He could go on the alien team... go fade... NEVER DIE AND GET LIKE 200 KILLS EVERY GAME!!!... we got him banned because he had like 5 accounts and when he was banned on one temporarially, it was found through IP logs that he was connecting with another account... that was it.. perma ban and the marines started winning again.
A good balanced game shouldn't allow for such unbalanced ###### to occur. Marine team NEEDS STRENGTHS... we cannot have guns that fire blanks.
btw... COD4 is a great game. I can't imagine anyone making it sound like a bad thing to like COD4. The only thing COD4 misses is multiple addons to the gun in multiplayer...(cut)
And on that note... The marine team has MARINES... why the hell aren't they blood thirsty and armed to the teeth!!!!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
skipped this post, but thankfully, i went back to read it.
My gods son, what twisted world were you spawned from? Flame and Ash, scream and pain? The hell pit as-s of our world? Damn.
Balance... lets drill that into your skull.
And, with that, I say, if you couldn't beat that dude, YOU SUCK, my god, I killed him on NS server, I ###### lured his as-s into a minefield in shadow, lawl, you just suck. Banning him for skill, my god, what has this world come to? The noobs are in charge 0_o?
All you need is one good marine, and you can decimate an army of pro aliens, you just need to, well, HELP?
COD4 is completely opposite to NS2, so yea, when talking in NS, it's quite an annoying.
They are marines, woopde fucin do! They are armed, but to the teeth? Hell no, they are kinda there to, uh, save the station and/or ship, not blow it to kindomcome with Miniature Rocket Propelled Tactical Nukes with Heatseeking ability that are the size of a walnut and you can't hear it as it flies by and it detonates and kills everything but the marines cause they got super omega nanite shields that protect them from everythi....oh god, you got my point, hopefully.
<!--quoteo(post=1713050:date=Jun 19 2009, 12:16 PM:name=FocusedWolf)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (FocusedWolf @ Jun 19 2009, 12:16 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1713050"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->And besides all that it won game of the year! Just like GoldenEye. You don't see NS winning ###### lol<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wow, just, just leave, never fucing return, go. I ain't kidding.
2) It got Gamespy's "<i>Mod</i> of the Year" award for 2002.
So yes, we do see it winning ######, ######.
Now we're on the second page, lets get back on topic shall we? No one's responded to my post, why don't yall start there(Not flame post against Wolf, the one before).
Incendiary matches Hollow, Hollow is meant to kill unarmored, so is Incendiary.
High Explosive matches Steel Tip, Steel Tip is meant to kill through armor, so is HE.
You can have a three way split on each branch, Either upgrade your Hollow/Steel/Needle to Superior, or, choose one of two new bullet types that can only be found in that branch, but doing so, you can only get Advanced version of those rounds, as they don't get a Superior Upgrade like the basic Hollow/Steel/Needle rounds do.
If you think that idea just would complicate and ######over the Commander in charge, eh, I at least brainstormed a new idea.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not sure what you mean by incendiary. The bullets are explosive?
I think I see what you mean.. you can specialize or you can pick the first level in all three bullet specializations. I could see that. I only wanted the restriction on the bullet type because getting level 3 on all three bullet specializations is omg gameover. (sry for the post delay)
I made a picture for you cavemen out there :D
<img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z200/ryknow69/BulletTechTree.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Heated Copper punctures armor better than Phosphorus, fyi.
I take flare gun :D
I made a picture for you cavemen out there :D
<img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z200/ryknow69/BulletTechTree.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thanks for that picture for cavemen :D It was hard to read and understand your orginal post with this idea. I wonder if it gets too complicated?
As these are suggestions I'd like to give my idea here for brainstorming:
Instead of complicated tech tree for bullets, commander could deside eatch bullet specialization for every group. So group 1 could have hollow tip and group 2 steel tip.
Now everybody notices broblem with this: If someone in group 1 notices onos why wouldn't commander just move him to group 2 and he would receive steel tip. As this is problem it could be so that player who changes group doesn't get ammo upgrade until he has respawned or until 30seconds have elapsed from group change.
So now commander could have 1 group for killing skulks and one group for onos etc.
When I'm saying if they drop a movement chamber, or a defense chamber or what not, I mean at the beginning of the game, when the marines find these chambers and let the commander know what the deal is so he could start upgrading the marines based on this alien upgrade.
Great idea, I just can't think of something for the sensory chamber. Although aliens can get focus, which give them a very strong bite. Maybe something that would be not as effective damage wise, but maybe knockback the alien as to have him slow down when hit. Only to an extent to where the alien would have a harder time to get that first, probably second focus bite on the marine.
Yeah, nothing comes to mind for me either. Though in all honesty, it doesn't bother me to simply not have an equivalent for the sensory chamber. Natural selection is about asymmetry, isn't it? Why do the bullets have to match the chambers? I can obviously see the reasons for choosing certain bullet types, but that's not to say that you wouldn't pick steel tip just because they went movement instead of defense for example. Could simply be a late-game decision in which commander wants to boost damage against the aspect which he expects most to find.