"place pheromone trail" alien ability
Rowen
Join Date: 2012-05-04 Member: 151545Members
Join Date: 2012-05-04 Member: 151545Members
I believe the alien team lacks an ingame means of communication and orientation. Even when the alien commander is supposed to be a gardener with little direct interaction with individual lifeforms, I think the social aspect of the game requires a certain amount of it. Also, there's some concerns mentioned in another thread about maps being difficult to navigate for new players and that's a problem where there's an emergency.
I propose a new feature that I believe is useful and flavorful, a new ability called “place pheromone trailâ€
This new ability would place a marker on the map centered on the structure that activated the ability; the obvious candidates for this are drifters and/or cysts. This marker would be both visible in hive sight from a long distance (ideally the whole map) and place a trail for each alien in range much like the waypoint trail for marines that increase in strength the closer the lifeform is to the marker.
This marker would last for a couple minutes at most or until you use it on another structure. Potentially there could be a researchable upgrade that could make the trail stronger, like giving a minor bonus to aliens who reach the marker's vicinity.
The pheromone trail would be used to coordinate attacks and call for defense of particular spots. There may be concerns that is too similar to the marine side, but instead of directing individual marines this functions like a general call for the alien immune system (I mean the lifeforms) to concentrate in a particular spot, which sounds to me like the kind of things that fit the alien commander style. Also, it doesn't look like the kind of things that would see much use in competitive games, but it should be a welcome addition to pub or casual games.
I propose a new feature that I believe is useful and flavorful, a new ability called “place pheromone trailâ€
This new ability would place a marker on the map centered on the structure that activated the ability; the obvious candidates for this are drifters and/or cysts. This marker would be both visible in hive sight from a long distance (ideally the whole map) and place a trail for each alien in range much like the waypoint trail for marines that increase in strength the closer the lifeform is to the marker.
This marker would last for a couple minutes at most or until you use it on another structure. Potentially there could be a researchable upgrade that could make the trail stronger, like giving a minor bonus to aliens who reach the marker's vicinity.
The pheromone trail would be used to coordinate attacks and call for defense of particular spots. There may be concerns that is too similar to the marine side, but instead of directing individual marines this functions like a general call for the alien immune system (I mean the lifeforms) to concentrate in a particular spot, which sounds to me like the kind of things that fit the alien commander style. Also, it doesn't look like the kind of things that would see much use in competitive games, but it should be a welcome addition to pub or casual games.
Comments
To encourage players to go to the areas that need attention the commander could place a pheromone trail that the aliens could follow - this would :
1. give an instant speed boost running in the direction of the pheromones.
2.maybe heal
3.maybe restore energy
4.short period where attack damage is increased
This would be an amazingly powerful tool to encourage the team to follow orders.
you could even do a nanite trail as a marine commander which could do a similar thing ( or maybe give other buffs, such as armor regen, or building things faster).
also there could be two ways of putting down the pheromone trail
1. as you state - creating a player waypoint the normal way (click a player, click a location) which would automatically create the trail.
2. drawing on either the minimap or the main screen, so the commander create a kind of highway between two areas of the map.
i guess the pheromone trail would be something like lerk spores but easier to see thru. (probably completely invisible to marines since they can't smell the pheromones)
1. give an instant speed boost running in the direction of the pheromones.
2.maybe heal
3.maybe restore energy
4.short period where attack damage is increased
This would be an amazingly powerful tool to encourage the team to follow orders.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I support this idea for the aliens. It would be much better than the drifter enzyme cloud. You just need to check if the alien is near the pheromones-path and give it a little boost (nothing drastic!) in maybe attack speed. The path-generation has to be automatic. The kham only needs to click on the end-point of the path for easier use. The path should start at the hive that is nearest to the target and it should prefer vents. It should be global and not one for every alien, so it's not like the marine waypoints. It could even cost the com resources because it buffs the aliens.
Marines don't need such thing. The marine com is supposed to order its people around. But on the alien side this could bring in more team play without making the alien com symmetrical to the marine one.