Requiring new alien structures
TremanN
Join Date: 2002-11-13 Member: 8471Members
Join Date: 2002-11-13 Member: 8471Members
<div class="IPBDescription">for fade and onos</div>This probably has been talked about so bleh.
To mitigate early fades/onos, what about needing a structure to evolve fade or onos? At hive 2, the 'fade chamber' unlocks. At hive 3 and a fade chamber, the 'onos chamber' unlocks. Marines can "snipe" these structures to deny lifeforms similar to aliens being able to snipe the advanced armory. With these structures in place, alien tech is very clearly three tiers and a clear early, mid, and late-game is in place as well. Similar to marines with the armory, advanced armory, and proto lab.
To mitigate early fades/onos, what about needing a structure to evolve fade or onos? At hive 2, the 'fade chamber' unlocks. At hive 3 and a fade chamber, the 'onos chamber' unlocks. Marines can "snipe" these structures to deny lifeforms similar to aliens being able to snipe the advanced armory. With these structures in place, alien tech is very clearly three tiers and a clear early, mid, and late-game is in place as well. Similar to marines with the armory, advanced armory, and proto lab.
Comments
It's still asymmetric to the marines' mechanics, because players can evolve to lifeforms anywhere, and they're incredibly vulnerable while doing it. Alien commanders also can't "drop you a fade body" or anything like that.
The only part of your post I'd forget is where you tie it to hive count. Keep the existing untied lifeforms mechanic, and make it so that the cost of the chamber is what drives the decision making (just like when you debate whether to build a veil/shell, research an upgrade and so on). There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to use blink-less fades if I want to get myself a fade den on hive 1. If I can research grenades before aliens can have the silence upgrade available at the start of the game, why should I have to wait for hive 2 to research fades?
At the end of the day, this creates more things that aliens have to spend money on, and more things that marines can/should target. What positives does it have for aliens? You can create some by expanding the idea - maybe the number of fade dens/lerk roosts/onos caverns you have dictates the health/armor/energy of those lifeforms? <b>It would be a really nice, clean way to fix the 1 hive onos problem in build 201.</b>
You can go even farther with this line of thinking. If I have to make a bunch of chambers to use lifeforms, why does the hive cost so much? Reduce the hive cost. Now what? Well, the hive cost is closer to the command station cost because the hive does less stuff for you automatically. Now you change the hive build time, effect of catalyze and so on. I feel like this is the type of stuff we should be trying in the beta, even if it's messy as hell.
Exactly. Marines already have the advantage of needing only 1 CC, this turns aliens back to where they were and worse off still.