New Lifeform Brainstorm
brownymaster
Join Date: 2009-07-11 Member: 68110Members
Join Date: 2009-07-11 Member: 68110Members
<div class="IPBDescription">because too many bad marine ideas and not enough bad alien ideas</div>In NS1, aliens played as close quarters ambushing mainly with support lifeforms (gorge/lerk) one being in charge of the construction of buildings, upgrades, and resources and the other a harasser. Then there's the tank (the onos) that eats up damage and has a bonus against buildings, but really isn't actually much stronger in terms of attack power compared to a skulk or fade (skulk 75, fade 80, onos 90. with focus, it's 150, 160, 180). Then there's the fade, the most vital alien lifeform arguably better than onos at 2/3 the cost. He is the surgical striker, whose main purpose is solely for attacking marines and causing chaos. Now, the main roles are:
Skulks: ambushers, roamers, sabotage (basically killing RTs). grunts that will probably die very fast, aren't important as one, but important in the scheme of the game. they have movement that makes them much mor eeffective and can become suicide lifeforms. basically, always a sacrifice for the team, and you get less enjoyment if you can't always get a few kills on marines that can kill you much easier.
Gorge: builders. upgrade chambers, hive, rts. they were core to the game, and you counted on them to support you behind the scenes and out of fights.
Lerk: harasser, support. spore softens up marines a good lot, making them weak enough to get killed in 1 or 2 attacks by grunts and fades. umbra also increased survivability of other aliens a significant amount. most important support, usually playing out of danger but occasionally going in for a kill when appropriate.
Fade: the carry, hunter, killer, initiator. you have to count on fades to carry your team. they have the speed, the damage, and keeps marines in check. the survivability is totally dependent on how good your movement is. hit and run, rinse and repeat, and hope your team eventually wins ground. can be killed by a single good marine though, and is often fighting against the odds if marines have any decent equipment.
Onos: the tank, support, disabler. they can reduce player count for a good amount of time. stomp lets the grunts and fades come in and clean up. lots of HP and armor make them hard to kill, but easy to hit. requires many marines to kill, no matter what equipment.
So, to sum it up, we have the grunt, the harasser, the carrier, the support/builder, and the tank. Unfortunately, most people will end up playing as grunts the entire game, with a select few actually playing the higher up lifeforms, and only the good fades and lerks make up the greater fight against the marines. The tank is extremely costly, so most players will have to just be the people who make lots of small differences. This is unlike the marine structure, where everybody will be shooting, and you at least get the satisfaction of having truly hitting the enemy instead of distracting and diverting the enemy like skulks do. They also have less penalty for dying because the commander can choose to reequip them or not. What I'd like to see is something that's a cheaper lifeform for aliens that are capable of either dealing small damage and able to tank up some hits. A low res cost so that people are able to use them with little costs, but doesn't provide a significant advantage in mass (that is, you can't win early game by massing this lifeform). Still later in the game if you know you're not good with fade, there's already enough lerks, gorges/the alien com is already building everything, but you don't want to wait for 75 res to help by tanking.
Anyways, my suggestion (unpolished):
Res cost: 15
this will mean that it's easier to obtain, potentially early game too. might be an issue if this becomes spammed over fade/lerk, but better players should know better anyways
Health: 90 Armor: 50 (+30 carapace)
they will have a significant increase in amount of armor and slightly more hp. this makes it so they have about double the survivability of a skulk, but that's not significant enough to make it so that killing this lifeform is going to be so much of a bigger pain than a skulk rush/ambush
Ability 1: acid spray, range: two-three onos long, damage: 15 (tinker at around 10-45), deals double damage to armor OR deals 28 (tinker around 25-35) damage, but does double if the person has no armor. attacks the speed of grenade launchers or gorge spit, the projectile speed is either instant or gorge spit. make the projectile radius big though. takes up 20%-40% energy to attack.
i'm not sure if there should be splash or not honestly because they'd be possibly too effective if made like that. This makes them have to engage at a relatively closer range than a lerk has to, but is still a bit harder to attack. it's also harder to dodge the attack because of projectile/explosion radius. They're still force to attack at a range close enough for marines to chase and take down.
Alt of ability 1: acid pool, does 100 (+30 per 15% of hp gone from structure) damage to structures. small radius, maybe half the range as before. takes up 20% of energy. attacks bilebomb speed.
allows this unit to take out rts and such instead of skulks.
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Other abilities to be thought of later.
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Movespeed: gorge
this will allow them to be easier attacked to make up for the HP increase, but they're still fast enough to get into range
special qualities: fast jump. requires lifeform to be on the ground or touch a wall, but is able to make either a fast dash or a jump to get into vents or run for cover. costs 40% of energy though so it doesn't have greater mobility. potentially a 2nd hive ability, or possibly we could just nerf the horizontal gain compared to vertical gain.
Anyways, this idea isn't all that great in concept yet. I think that aliens should get another role into the game though, so long as it's a front-line unit. I'm welcome to suggestions and refinement, but I think it'd be nice to have another lower lifeform that's worth getting and an alternative to always playing a hybrid class. Feedback welcome, and I know/admit there are flaws in my concept like movespeed and the HP/AP it should be at to merit costing 15 res. I might be doing a S2/HoN (giving every hero the ability to do everything and OP).
Skulks: ambushers, roamers, sabotage (basically killing RTs). grunts that will probably die very fast, aren't important as one, but important in the scheme of the game. they have movement that makes them much mor eeffective and can become suicide lifeforms. basically, always a sacrifice for the team, and you get less enjoyment if you can't always get a few kills on marines that can kill you much easier.
Gorge: builders. upgrade chambers, hive, rts. they were core to the game, and you counted on them to support you behind the scenes and out of fights.
Lerk: harasser, support. spore softens up marines a good lot, making them weak enough to get killed in 1 or 2 attacks by grunts and fades. umbra also increased survivability of other aliens a significant amount. most important support, usually playing out of danger but occasionally going in for a kill when appropriate.
Fade: the carry, hunter, killer, initiator. you have to count on fades to carry your team. they have the speed, the damage, and keeps marines in check. the survivability is totally dependent on how good your movement is. hit and run, rinse and repeat, and hope your team eventually wins ground. can be killed by a single good marine though, and is often fighting against the odds if marines have any decent equipment.
Onos: the tank, support, disabler. they can reduce player count for a good amount of time. stomp lets the grunts and fades come in and clean up. lots of HP and armor make them hard to kill, but easy to hit. requires many marines to kill, no matter what equipment.
So, to sum it up, we have the grunt, the harasser, the carrier, the support/builder, and the tank. Unfortunately, most people will end up playing as grunts the entire game, with a select few actually playing the higher up lifeforms, and only the good fades and lerks make up the greater fight against the marines. The tank is extremely costly, so most players will have to just be the people who make lots of small differences. This is unlike the marine structure, where everybody will be shooting, and you at least get the satisfaction of having truly hitting the enemy instead of distracting and diverting the enemy like skulks do. They also have less penalty for dying because the commander can choose to reequip them or not. What I'd like to see is something that's a cheaper lifeform for aliens that are capable of either dealing small damage and able to tank up some hits. A low res cost so that people are able to use them with little costs, but doesn't provide a significant advantage in mass (that is, you can't win early game by massing this lifeform). Still later in the game if you know you're not good with fade, there's already enough lerks, gorges/the alien com is already building everything, but you don't want to wait for 75 res to help by tanking.
Anyways, my suggestion (unpolished):
Res cost: 15
this will mean that it's easier to obtain, potentially early game too. might be an issue if this becomes spammed over fade/lerk, but better players should know better anyways
Health: 90 Armor: 50 (+30 carapace)
they will have a significant increase in amount of armor and slightly more hp. this makes it so they have about double the survivability of a skulk, but that's not significant enough to make it so that killing this lifeform is going to be so much of a bigger pain than a skulk rush/ambush
Ability 1: acid spray, range: two-three onos long, damage: 15 (tinker at around 10-45), deals double damage to armor OR deals 28 (tinker around 25-35) damage, but does double if the person has no armor. attacks the speed of grenade launchers or gorge spit, the projectile speed is either instant or gorge spit. make the projectile radius big though. takes up 20%-40% energy to attack.
i'm not sure if there should be splash or not honestly because they'd be possibly too effective if made like that. This makes them have to engage at a relatively closer range than a lerk has to, but is still a bit harder to attack. it's also harder to dodge the attack because of projectile/explosion radius. They're still force to attack at a range close enough for marines to chase and take down.
Alt of ability 1: acid pool, does 100 (+30 per 15% of hp gone from structure) damage to structures. small radius, maybe half the range as before. takes up 20% of energy. attacks bilebomb speed.
allows this unit to take out rts and such instead of skulks.
---
Other abilities to be thought of later.
---
Movespeed: gorge
this will allow them to be easier attacked to make up for the HP increase, but they're still fast enough to get into range
special qualities: fast jump. requires lifeform to be on the ground or touch a wall, but is able to make either a fast dash or a jump to get into vents or run for cover. costs 40% of energy though so it doesn't have greater mobility. potentially a 2nd hive ability, or possibly we could just nerf the horizontal gain compared to vertical gain.
Anyways, this idea isn't all that great in concept yet. I think that aliens should get another role into the game though, so long as it's a front-line unit. I'm welcome to suggestions and refinement, but I think it'd be nice to have another lower lifeform that's worth getting and an alternative to always playing a hybrid class. Feedback welcome, and I know/admit there are flaws in my concept like movespeed and the HP/AP it should be at to merit costing 15 res. I might be doing a S2/HoN (giving every hero the ability to do everything and OP).
Comments
If skulks are getting leap with 1 hive, skulks will have the range of your acid spit but with the requirement of more skill and latency compensation/luck as I remember leap not being as effective if you didn't know how to use it properly. Though with the new engine perhaps this will end up different and over/underwhelm.
Additions aren't to be made lightly. Adding something new always changes something unintended or is less useful and rarely ever gets used unless specifically needed or resources allow for it so the addition hardly warrants its own addition. (Cat packs seemed to be something that fits the pending circumstances or when resources are plentiful criteria, but perhaps i'm wrong)
Now that I think about it, it's really hard to know what to add knowing that alien commander fulfills roles of the gorge and even more new ones. I honestly don't know how much we can essentially think about adding when we don't knows what's the current plan for the game. Same goes for marines, but marines it only takes some dumb "cool" concept that really has no basis for balanced gameplay and still being fun/manageable for all sides.