Balance changes
Rise
Join Date: 2012-04-17 Member: 150595Members
Join Date: 2012-04-17 Member: 150595Members
Sentry HP increased.
Sentry tracking speed restored
Sentry performance no longer tied with marine proximity (unintuitive and ineffective).
Damage Ramp up removed, accuracy (not tracking) ramp up would make more sense and achieve a similar effect against smaller lifeforms.
Ability to self wield
Welders don't require research
Reintroduce the HMG
Longer reload, less accuracy, higher rate of fire, more damage per bullet, your ground movement speed is slowed down while firing
Reduce the cost of the flamethrower to 25
Regeneration takes longer to kick in based on how much damage you've sustained. If you can't kill a lerk or fade, you should at least be able to remove them from the battle for a significant amount of time.
Carapace is returned to what it use to be, no slowdown.
Celerity works in combat, or at least in a reduced capacity.
You can remain completely cloaked while walking.
Hypermutation is removed as an evolution. It can be replaced with a global upgrade that is tied to a chamber.
Gorges cost 15-20 res, to reflect their greater impact on the battlefield as compared with NS1.
Hydra HP and numbers scales with hives.
Clog HP scales with hives
Hydras gain boosts based on the evolutions the gorge takes.
Scan and Distress Beacon use observatory energy.
Med and Ammo packs use armory energy (subject to balance as to how much they should cost, so they can't spammed too much)
Nano shield uses command station energy. It's cooldown can be reduced now that it is on finite energy again.
Nano construct returns, tied to command station energy, but has a higher cost than nano shield so you'll have to choose between which path you want to take in tactics.
Infestation spike uses hive energy. Cooldown is reduced, duration increased, as it is now tied to a finite energy source (which will limit it's abuse potential). Can be used at first hive like nano shield.
Alien buildings use abilities drawing either from their own energy or from hive energy, or both, depending on whether or not you want to take an asymetric approach to their building support abilities.
Ink cloud won't allow anything to be revealed by a scan while it's up for it's duration.
Replace the current hallucations with an area of effect click activated ability (but only a certain distance from the shade) that causes marines in the area to start suffering from hallucations where they hear sounds that aren't there, see visions of aliens running around or attacking at random that aren't there, etc.
Sentry tracking speed restored
Sentry performance no longer tied with marine proximity (unintuitive and ineffective).
Damage Ramp up removed, accuracy (not tracking) ramp up would make more sense and achieve a similar effect against smaller lifeforms.
Ability to self wield
Welders don't require research
Reintroduce the HMG
Longer reload, less accuracy, higher rate of fire, more damage per bullet, your ground movement speed is slowed down while firing
Reduce the cost of the flamethrower to 25
Regeneration takes longer to kick in based on how much damage you've sustained. If you can't kill a lerk or fade, you should at least be able to remove them from the battle for a significant amount of time.
Carapace is returned to what it use to be, no slowdown.
Celerity works in combat, or at least in a reduced capacity.
You can remain completely cloaked while walking.
Hypermutation is removed as an evolution. It can be replaced with a global upgrade that is tied to a chamber.
Gorges cost 15-20 res, to reflect their greater impact on the battlefield as compared with NS1.
Hydra HP and numbers scales with hives.
Clog HP scales with hives
Hydras gain boosts based on the evolutions the gorge takes.
Scan and Distress Beacon use observatory energy.
Med and Ammo packs use armory energy (subject to balance as to how much they should cost, so they can't spammed too much)
Nano shield uses command station energy. It's cooldown can be reduced now that it is on finite energy again.
Nano construct returns, tied to command station energy, but has a higher cost than nano shield so you'll have to choose between which path you want to take in tactics.
Infestation spike uses hive energy. Cooldown is reduced, duration increased, as it is now tied to a finite energy source (which will limit it's abuse potential). Can be used at first hive like nano shield.
Alien buildings use abilities drawing either from their own energy or from hive energy, or both, depending on whether or not you want to take an asymetric approach to their building support abilities.
Ink cloud won't allow anything to be revealed by a scan while it's up for it's duration.
Replace the current hallucations with an area of effect click activated ability (but only a certain distance from the shade) that causes marines in the area to start suffering from hallucations where they hear sounds that aren't there, see visions of aliens running around or attacking at random that aren't there, etc.
Comments
For example: there are sentry, welder, gorge, hydra, and hyper-mutation topics already going on the front page, and a clog topic on the second page. And those are just the ones I'm bothering to take the time to point out - also make sure you read the <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=105803" target="_blank">NS2 I&S Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices</a> topic.
For example: there are sentry, welder, gorge, hydra, and hyper-mutation topics already going on the front page, and a clog topic on the second page. And those are just the ones I'm bothering to take the time to point out - also make sure you read the <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=105803" target="_blank">NS2 I&S Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices</a> topic.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A lot of balance changes have to be done at same time. I.e. one or two changes wont make a game more balanced, but a whole set of them.
As I've played the game and come to my own conclusions, and read everyone else's feedback on the forums, these are the collective suggestions I've come to believe are necessary when taken as a whole to get the game back on balance track.
Reasonsings:
-With marines no longer having the defensive power of easily restored armor, they need better sentries.
The current sentries pose no real threat to aliens. Sentries are suppose to be enough of a threat that lerk gas is a desired counter.
-Self welding is obvious. Gorges can self heal.
-If welders are going to be so essential as to be tied to power nodes (a change a love btw), then it becomes redundant to require research because they are almost an automatic purchase early on. Not a lot of choice with that one.
-Marines need some mid game tech that can pose a more serious threat to hit and run lerks and fades, this is where the HMG comes in. It is a failing arguement to claim that in an RTS hybrid built around strait increases in power over time, that the marines neither need nor should have a weapon that can help them match the kind of overt power increase one gets in going from a skulk to a fade. Sure, there are some minor benefits to staying a skulk, but for the most part no one is going to choose to be a skulk over a fade if the fade were free.
-Flamethrower is not good enough to justify being more expensive than the grenade launcher. It's a different kind of support weapon, not a better kind.
-The change to carapace clearly was fundamentally bad when you not only had to reduce the armor benefit to lerks, but had to reduce the speed penalty to onos. Meanwhile skulks are still stronger than they should be, and fades and lerks are stronger than the use to be on top of their evasive power.
The changes should simply be reverted, and dealing with carapace should either be done by making the other hive options more compelling in benefit, or scaling upgrade power with hive numbers (although the later is probably a good idea for most things anyway, I would wait on doing that until seeing how all the other changes play out)
-Aliens have far too much power when it comes to relentless hit and run as higher lifeforms, and the main contributor to this is regeneration being too quick and effective. It is extremely unsatisifying as a marine to feel like nothing you do matters because even after a hard fought battle of doing serious damage to a fade, you aren't even rewarded with at least removing them from the fight for a while.
What I like about my regeneration suggestion here is that it's not a strait increase in regen time, but the increase in regen time is tied to how low you let your health and armor get. This will reward smarter play with less downtime. It will allow for quick touchups but put someone who barely escaped death out of combat for much longer as it takes longer for the regen to kick in.
I don't mind at all that crags can achieve a simialr effect and make the relentless push more pronounced, because that is what they are designed to do, either as part of a defensive tool or as a forward assault base outside a marine position. You always have the option of dealing with these crag fortifications to remove the alien's regen power locally.
-Make celerity and cloak more compelling and you won't find carapace being the only viable first option. There's no reason you shouldn't be fully cloaked like NS1 when moving, without that it's just not useful enough.
Celerity in combat brings with it it's own survivability, a different kind of survivability.
-Hypermutation makes no sense as an evolution. It is cumbersome and unintuitive to evolve something just to evolve something else, then get rid of the evolution you no longer need now that you've finished evolving into a new lifeform.
It would fit a lot better as a global upgrade since it has no combat purpose and there is never any reason to leave it on your lifeform.
-Gorges are powerful early and mig game area denial. To the point where marines often just ignore and bypass hallways with a gorge in them. Their cost of 10 res doesn't reflect this. That was a cost from back in NS1 when they were just passive building and healing units.
The increased cost would help make it more risky to gorge around, and more rewarding for marines to finally kill the offending gorge without thinking "well, he'll just be back for a cheap 10 res anyway".
-Even with an increased cost, part of the problem is still hydras are too effective early game and too weak late game against heavier weapons (especially once the exo comes out).
Increased HP with hives will help with the late game, while allowing them to be weaker early game. Possibly even increased numbers (5 hydras once you get 3+ hives perhaps?).
Increasing clog HP would be nice to go along with it, as well as maybe increased clogs to 15 at 3 hives.
-Since the gorge is now so heavily based around his hydras and clogs as his contribution to the team, it would be a lot funner and make sense for his hydras to benefit from his personal evolutions, even if it's not a lot.
-Energy made sense in the game. Some things shouldn't be tied to team res because it forces you to make counter productive decisions about supporting your team on the field or building up infrastructure and tech. This narrows your options as a commander, leaves your team inadaquately supported, and is not as fun.
-There is also the possibility of returning nano construct now that it's tied to a finite energy pool that would force you to choose between nano shield or nano construct. A higher energy cost could also limit it to more selective applications, like setting up a phase gate or armory tactically, as opposed to a blanket use of always building RTs quickly.
-Infestation spike need not be so limited once it's tied to finite energy. It really isn't impactful enough anymore to see much use in influencing a battle, especially when it costs res.
-I would like to see mist and cysts share hive energy so the commander has a choice between expansion, building up, or defending/influencing with spikes. THese are fun options. The only part I don't like is that it can be annoying and unsatisfying to try to deal with cyst spam. I like that when I kill a cyst it has cost the alien team something now. Although with the changes to cyst health and flamethrowers, I wonder if the old energy system can be justified.
-Hallucations had some minor benefit back when they weren't so easily destroyed, charging oni down a hallway. But there's so much wrong with the way these work that I think the whole concept should be scrapped in favor of something that is more intuitive, reliable, and useful.
-Again, some things are best left as a seperate energy pool. Alien structure abilities being one of them. It's often way too counterproductive trying to calculate the trade off being using res for an ability versus saving up for infrastructure.
Also flamers should be reduced to 20, not 25
Its a higher tiered weapon than a shotgun yes
But its a utility weapon, and generaly half the effectiveness unless versus onoses, fades, or lerk spores.
also, i would love to have energy brought back.
MAybe as a room-per-room-pool.
This would make it so the structure spamming savvies will be pleased. and the bringbackerderenergiesers (which is quite alot of people, seriously guys.) Pleased too. Then give power packs a Use, by making them produce energy to help the power node out in large amount of structures being energised.