Late Game MAC / Drifter Upgrades

tk-421

Since it appears that "protect the MAC" and / or "protect the Drifter" might take center stage for NS2 strategies / expansion, I thought it might be useful to have some specific upgrades for our respective builders.

These upgrades would be available from a higher tier and selected from the comm chair / hive or perhaps a specific building ("MAC" research center, etc).

For the MAC, something akin to the electrified RT's from NS1 might be useful. The MAC itself could have its own electrified defense shield. This would remove the focus from escorting the MAC if it could successfully deflect the attacks of skulks / lerks (but still be taken down by fades, onos, etc). If this were included as a costly upgrade, the decision could be made earlier in the game to sacrifice resources to ensure faster and more reliable RT expansion, similar to the tradeoff for electrifying RT's early in NS1.

Also for the MAC - additional upgrades could include reducing the construction time of RT's by half or increasing the armor / movement speed of the MAC.

In regards to Drifters, I was thinking some kind of detection system for marines might be useful. Perhaps within a certain radius of the Drifter you would see something similar to the parasite symbol for marines hiding nearby.

A second useful upgrade for the Drifter might be something in line with the sensory upgrade from NS1. Perhaps the Drifter gets 100% cloak while stationary and 85% while moving.

For the aliens the Drifter could also upgrade passively depending on what upgrade buildings are built by the gorge / alien commander.

Anyways, I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but these are just some ideas to shift the focus from "protect the MAC / Drifter" later in the game (I imagine it would be boring fast, personally I'm not a fan of "escort" missions from other FPS's) and letting the little expansion helpers fend for themselves or fulfill alternative roles.

Obraxis

For me, Having both teams have the Mac/Drifter makes them very similar, with less of the 2 'unique sides' pillar that UWE were designing. However, I do like them. I worry about old NS1 players 'using' the hive thinking it will take them to the next hive...and then they become a commander. Saw this on our NS2 server a few times.

Maybe a small menu asking 'Do you want to become alien commander - Yes/No' is needed?

spellman23

I think it would be best if these upgrades were to individual units and not applied to all of them.

These ideas a kinda cool. We'll have to see if they have time / how they interact in real games once performance settles down.

tk-421

Excellent point spellman, you could make each upgrade unit-specific and then perhaps the upgrades themselves are unlockable at different tiers. In that sense you could choose to heavily invest in upgrading all your MAC's / Drifters or just pick a few for a select investment. It would also expand their usefulness later in game if they received new abilities with the progress of different tiers.

Killpo1

I really like the idea of upgrades for MACs, I also think they should be highly specialized for each role so no one MAC is to powerful.

Basically you have 1 upgrade per MAC, for example if you a builder MAC that wasn't going to be escorted all the time you could put that electric shield or a small turret on it to ward off lerks/skulks.
Or if you were going to be escorted upgrade it for am improved build time,
Or for it support squads, have a med station, ammo station, and chem thrower( clears out infestation and does good damage to buildings but doesn't do much against creatures)

I think keeping them 1 upgrade per MAC and making them a reasonable amount of resources would keep the game balanced, and also help marines out a lot.

Sinter

I think a nice upgrade for the MACs would be the ability for a marine to carry one like a backpack and deploy it out in the field. This may sound counter-intuitive, but I've read a few complaints about how the need for MACs to build removed the "ninja" element, and an upgrade like this could somewhat resolve that, as it would "hide" the MAC behind the Marine.