Hydra limit
alster
Join Date: 2003-08-06 Member: 19124Members
Join Date: 2003-08-06 Member: 19124Members
The gorge should be limited to about 3 to 5 hydras for every tech point captured. 3 tech points = 9 to 15 hydras allowed.
There should also be a hydra bar on the right, top, or bottom of the screen showing a maximum faded hydra amount based on the tech points. This fills up one at a time when a hydra is dropped and lowers when a hydra dies. If a player reaches the max amount then the next hydra drop will kill his earliest hydra. If a player disconnects then all their hydras die.
The hydra limit can be adjusted for game play balance by making the hydra stronger or weaker.
Thoughts?
There should also be a hydra bar on the right, top, or bottom of the screen showing a maximum faded hydra amount based on the tech points. This fills up one at a time when a hydra is dropped and lowers when a hydra dies. If a player reaches the max amount then the next hydra drop will kill his earliest hydra. If a player disconnects then all their hydras die.
The hydra limit can be adjusted for game play balance by making the hydra stronger or weaker.
Thoughts?
Comments
It scales better than the tech node thing ever could, it could easily have the limit in your area displayed while switched to hydra building so you'd know if you can or cant within that area. It'd also deal with spamming in one spot rather than the number per tech node would.. say everyone built their per node limit in one spot for instance.
It could be per room instead of a range, but the range idea feels smoother in the case of custom maps we're likely to get loads of later.
So X to Y Hydras per Tech Point per Gorge (this sounds like a lot, but Gorges are a class that will likely not fill the team roster) sounds pretty sweet to me.
and I wouldn't call per tech more intuitive really especially when it starts scaling per player too to try and deal with the hole in per tech point. It's just seems more complex than it needs to be really to me.
It also promotes spread out builds to keep away co-operative hydra walls of death from happening, with less implementation effort.
It's nothing of this game at this point. Tech Points are at this point entirely useless for Marines, and only marginally useful to Aliens.
<!--quoteo(post=1844911:date=May 8 2011, 07:16 PM:name=Kurrine)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Kurrine @ May 8 2011, 07:16 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1844911"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->and I wouldn't call per tech more intuitive really especially when it starts scaling per player too to try and deal with the hole in per tech point. It's just seems more complex than it needs to be really to me.
It also promotes spread out builds to keep away co-operative hydra walls of death from happening, with less implementation effort.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What "hole" in per Tech Point? I was stating that the per Player limit is the necessary one (IMHO), and that limiting Hydras by Tech Point serves an entirely different function that while unfitting for the OPs original intention, might still prove useful. The per Tech Point restriction exists to scale the strength of Gorges as the game progress, while the per Player restriction addresses the issue of Hydra spam in a manner that keeps game-play equal and balanced for all affected players.
There's actually very little complexity of either individual mechanic.
The max hydras is determined by the amount of players on the alien team.
5 players = 5 hydras or 12 players = 12 hydras.
Every captured tech points multiplies the max amount of hydras.
3 hives = 15 hydras or 3 hives = 36 hydras.
The hydra limit pool is shared by all the gorges on the alien team.
Info bars tell all gorges the max hydras and how many are currently built.
3 hives = 3 hydra info bars.
The oldest living hydra dies when the max is reached and someone drops a new one.
The oldest living hydra dies and the max hydra limit is reduced when a player quits the alien team.
This makes it simple for everyone to know the max hydra limit = players on enemy team.
It allows more choices for a gorge that likes to build and one that doesn't.
It also prevents alien turtling with 1 hive left.
Your thoughts.
That would be, in a 6v6 game, 12 hydras to defend 5 locations:
Harvester 3
Harvester 3
Harvester 2
Hive 2
Hive 2
And later on when you get a third hive:
Harvester 3
Harvester 3
Harvester 3
Hive 3
Hive 3
Hive 3
You don't have any hydras to put anywhere else on the map unless you want to erase the defense at important locations, even though you can afford to use more resources on hydras.
And you now have easy targets in mid-late game, as soon as marines get Advanced armory, they can get Grenade Launchers, and they are VERY powerful against these few hydras, and even huge clusters of hydras, if you can aim it just a little. Other than that the commander can drop medpacks for his marines and very easily keep his marines alive against these numbers.
Other than that, these hydras actually cost resources, but in my opinion 5 res too cheap.
A limitation that says; "Number of hydras within hydras range", like this picture(I took the number five, it will need balancing for both hydras and sentrys):
<a href="http://postimage.org/image/1ht3xphr8/" target="_blank"><img src="http://s4.postimage.org/1ht3xphr8/hydralimit.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>
Hydras have pretty long range, so this way you cant have much more than five in most rooms depending on size.
Its a easy and very clear rule, and could be shown to gorges in the HUD.
You would have alot more strategic placement of these hydras, as GLs are so powerful against clusters of hydras, that might lead to more sneaky hydras. It would also reduce these clusters of them as only bad gorges would set them up like that.
And you would throughout the game keep being able to use your resources as a gorge on hydras, you would just have to put them in another, more forward position on the map, with the risk of maybe losing your life to a marine.
cause theyre so f**king weak, they dont hit anything that moves fast enough. marines run right past them- camp behind the res tower and shoot it down in less than 10 seconds.
seriously i mean just consider thinking for longer than 5 minutes before you slop this sh*t out.
Ive even been in many games where marines spam sentries every where but no one gives a sh*t about putting a cap on them.
cause theyre so f**king weak, they dont hit anything that moves fast enough. marines run right past them- camp behind the res tower and shoot it down in less than 10 seconds.
seriously i mean just consider thinking for longer than 5 minutes before you slop this sh*t out.
Ive even been in many games where marines spam sentries every where but no one gives a sh*t about putting a cap on them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
When did you last play the game? After UWE optimized hydras targeting they became alot better. But yes, they still sometimes miss fast moving targets, but five of them is quite powerful, and will damage marines alot (kill them if they don't get medpacks) if they try to do what you just said. If they had good placements, that is.
The oc's in ns1 had a ton of health, and did 20 damage each and it never missed, if my memory serves me right. A Single marine would never dare to waste his time killing a group of 3 oc's and im sure every decent player agrees that 3 was all that was needed to defend a corridor.
But in ns2 a single marine easly wipes out a room full of hydras, as if its still not easy enough that they need to complain about hydra spamming? Is there no satisfying people?
(and befor anyone mentions about it lagging the server. Let me remind you the game isnt optimized for performance just yet, so get over it)
Speaking of onos, all late game 'siege' items are not in yet. ARCs and exos could make late game hydra spam a completely moot tactic...and any nerfs now completely unnecessary.
The biggest argument for hydra spam removal is lag... but we need to wait until they really try to address that. Once they get rid of the lag, or they tell us they can't fix the lag...then we can seriously entertain number restrictions.
Single-minded strategies should be counterable. Ie, a room full of hydras should be assailable.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So buffing the hydra for the sake of "making rooms fulls of hydras more dangerous" would be counter to their design philosophy.
Drop a Crag or two. No more babysitting.
Once personal res actually starts being worth anything, hydra spam will be less of a problem.
For instance, in rockdown. If I'm the alien commander I always drop 1 crag, 1 fast expo and 1 resource node. After which I spread infestation on top of all power nodes except the marine starting ones. I then become a gorge and place a reasonable amount of hydras in order to defend all these points.
This is how the game should work. However it gets out of hand once I begin upgrading the player resource rate on harvesters. Then I find myself with 200+ player resources and begin the hydra spam. I place hydras far away from each other in lines down every hallway. If my hydras are under attack, I abandon them and begin spamming down another hallway. By the time they clear my first group, I've got hydras waiting outside the marine base from the other side. Something needs to be done about the amount of hydras allowed.
I've joined long games late, where it looks like the marines are about to win. However, I stop them simply with infestation and hydra spam. I'll jump in the hive, see multiple hives with 100+ energy. Spam the entire map with infestation then begin the hydra drop. Hydras take too long to kill with the current available marine features. Which I think should be addressed, since if the only way to beat hydras is to tech to heavy armor or siege turrets, then aliens have an obvious advantage midgame.
So therefore, allowing hydra within hydra range will not fix the problem. I place hydras in a way that would work with this solution and I still view it as overpowered. However you cannot put a number of hydras allowed per tech point either. Since map sizes vary, this may make certain maps unbalanced for hydras. The best way I see it is to use a system that makes consecutive hydras cost more. What I propose is to put the cost of hydras into an equation like so.
Total Hydra Cost = Base Hydra Cost + (#of player hydras x 5)
This would make it so that each consecutive hydra would cost 5 resources more then the last one you made, not to be confused with the last one your team made. I feel this would be the most balanced approach with our current resource system. It would also take into factor map size, since essentially the number of hydras would only be limited to resources and the amount of players. Where as the player variable would account for the map size assuming of course that map size is directly proportional to player limits. Also, if you need quick hydras, they will easily be available unless you already placed a ton of them elsewhere.
However resource overhauls would obviously change this. =P
In other words, require the Gorge to Heal his structures in order for them to construct at the current rate, otherwise make them build slowly.
This would reinforce the paradigm of Marine Mobility vs. Alien Expansion: Marines are slow moving but establish bases quickly, while Aliens are fast and agile but slow to expand.
Matter of fact, I'm gonna go code this into my super secret pet project now.
The only outstanding issue is performance. If that gets addressed, then this whole issue is moot.
This is the problem. When I'm an alien, I look at my 400 res and think, well shoot, I better build some hydras after I die as a fade...
Right now, personal res amounts are simply too huge.
Why the devil would you do such a thing.
You've obviously never seen the Hydra forests found in the earlier builds.
Now those were spectacles of beauty.
Sadly this is a major problem, and I hope a good solution is implemented soon.
After all, it is a lot more difficult for Aliens to destroy sentries than it is for Marines to take out Hydras.
Could be solved if <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=113423" target="_blank">tech points gave team res and res nodes gave personal res</a>.