<!--quoteo(post=1962929:date=Aug 14 2012, 02:04 PM:name=Typhon)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Typhon @ Aug 14 2012, 02:04 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1962929"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Well, they can, but not as easily a marines build more ips: shift allows eggs to be spawned at 1 tres a piece (but that locks you into a tech path you may not want and has an ongoing cost), and of course hives spawn more eggs.
Decoupling eggs from hives would certainly make things easier to balance. Really the spawn system on both sides needs some reworking a neither of them are team size invariant, although it's much easier for marines to work around that by building more ips.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well but the eggs are in most cases not the problem, the problem is the max 3 players in each spawn wave and that aliens in general need longer to respawn.
Eggs are almost never the limiting factor in alien respawns. It's typically >3 people being dead that is making players have insane spawn times. You can have 50 eggs available, but if 4 people are dead then you're going to wait 25 seconds to spawn.
Then you have the RFD (no res while dead) system where aliens are furthur punished.
a) vanilla marines > vanilla skulks b) vanilla skulks have longer respawns c) no res while dead
This means that not only are skulks dying more often than marines, but when they die they wait for longer to respawn after each death, and accrue significantly less pres because of RFD.
It also is incredibly frustrating to look at a big pile of eggs in a hive being attacked while also looking at your spawn timer saying "23 seconds till next spawn." There's eggs RIGHT THERE. The marines are IGNORING THEM. LET ME SPAWN!
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edited August 2012
Necro, what i describe is the fact that adding wavespawn to aliens is very: <ol type='1'>1) Unintuitive, aliens are individual lifeforms, not squads of marines. 2) Extremely detrimental to gameplay, 3 spawns only or not, if you happen to hop in at the end of the wave, and miss it, you have to wait until the next wave to spawn, which adds to the unintuitivity. 3) if you have to balance your game with SPAWN TIMES, something is VERY, VERY wrong.</li></ol>
I disagree. 1) This is a lore-thing. Balance > Lore. But if you want you can explain why aliens spawn in waves very easily. The most simple explanation would be birth cycles. You see this on many animals. They need time to give birth, but than there are many animals that gave birth to many individuals at once. Mice for example but many others too. "Wave spawning" isn't that unnatural. 2) There is no difference in the need to wait an always fixed time or a dynamical time. It only gets frustrating if you have to wait to long. If there is a reasonable max-waiting time the wave spawn system could be fine. You would even be happy when you happen to spawn right away, because you hit the wave at the right time. Also many other games have a spawn-wave system and it works. 3) I can't see why balancing with spawn times in an asymmetric game should be bad. In fact it is a very good tool to compensate the asymmetric movement speed / map control speed / marine-skulk fighting balance.
Again: It only gets frustrating when you have to wait to long. Beside that, dieing and waiting in a spawn queue is always not fun. In every game. But it is needed.
If it is needed, let marines wait an approximate equal time in the queue. Like IPs who need to accumulate energy for the next warp cycle using a global energy pool. You'll have people berserk on you if that gets implemented, yet its what aliens get currently.
I would get rid of wave spawning and just have a spawntime of 10 seconds (for example). In this time you can cycle through any eggs not already chosen by someone to choose where you spawn. Maybe less eggs are created by the hive for free, but the alien comm can drop new ones from the hive for a res cost, like he can with the shift now. Only time you would need to wait more than 10 seconds is when you dont have any eggs. Should probably be cooldown for eggdrop so its still possible to egglock the alien team if they let marines inside the hiveroom, or if they all die at the same time a couple of times.
<!--quoteo(post=1963340:date=Aug 15 2012, 04:44 AM:name=elmo9000)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (elmo9000 @ Aug 15 2012, 04:44 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1963340"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I would get rid of wave spawning and just have a spawntime of 10 seconds (for example). In this time you can cycle through any eggs not already chosen by someone to choose where you spawn. Maybe less eggs are created by the hive for free, but the alien comm can drop new ones from the hive for a res cost, like he can with the shift now. Only time you would need to wait more than 10 seconds is when you dont have any eggs. Should probably be cooldown for eggdrop so its still possible to egglock the alien team if they let marines inside the hiveroom, or if they all die at the same time a couple of times.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd love to be able to pick which egg I spawned in. At the very least you shouldn't spawn in one of the eggs that the khamm spent pres to mutated to a different life form for someone else... Nothing more frustrating than headed to the hive after the khamm dropped the egg for the lifeform you wanted and then seeing someone else spawn in your egg XD.
10 seconds sounds like a decent amount of time for a spawn timer, but make sure there isn't a limit on how many people can spawn at the same time. It should only be limited by the number of available eggs.
Some would say this would be overpowered when the aliens have 3 or more hives, but honestly if the aliens have 3 or 4 hives they usually already won anyways, so its moot point.
<!--quoteo(post=1963562:date=Aug 15 2012, 01:40 PM:name=leeleatherwood)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (leeleatherwood @ Aug 15 2012, 01:40 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1963562"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Why not just make it so with each additional hive the wave gets a +2 bonus?
Some would say this would be overpowered when the aliens have 3 or more hives, but honestly if the aliens have 3 or 4 hives they usually already won anyways, so its moot point.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Problem is, that doesn't address the issues the spawn system has early game.
<!--quoteo(post=1963570:date=Aug 15 2012, 11:01 AM:name=MisterNubs)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MisterNubs @ Aug 15 2012, 11:01 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1963570"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Problem is, that doesn't address the issues the spawn system has early game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So because they cant skulk rush the marines and win every single time this indicates they have a problem?
Aliens don't have a problem early game, they do just fine.
The problem aliens have is mid-late game when they are trying to defend a hive but cant because they can only spawn 3 at a time.
Oh yeah, the egg system is not good.
They should just eliminate it, it doesn't serve a real purpose.
It should be either a (revised) egg system OR wave spawning, but not a combination of both.
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<!--quoteo(post=1963576:date=Aug 15 2012, 11:12 AM:name=leeleatherwood)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (leeleatherwood @ Aug 15 2012, 11:12 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1963576"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So because they cant skulk rush the marines and win every single time this indicates they have a problem?
Aliens don't have a problem early game, they do just fine.
The problem aliens have is mid-late game when they are trying to defend a hive but cant because they can only spawn 3 at a time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> .. you should play some larger games, where a max of 3 spawning at a time is like a bat to the knees.
Ever waited a full 50 seconds to spawn? Happens with 30 players. Its hard to coordinate such a thing with volunteers, i am sure.. but trust me early game - rushing marines or not - is a problem for aliens with a larger player count, something that is inevitable as performance increases.
Typhon is right, it needs to scale with player count. Starting at 50% is a good start.
<!--quoteo(post=1963562:date=Aug 15 2012, 01:40 PM:name=leeleatherwood)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (leeleatherwood @ Aug 15 2012, 01:40 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1963562"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Why not just make it so with each additional hive the wave gets a +2 bonus?
Some would say this would be overpowered when the aliens have 3 or more hives, but honestly if the aliens have 3 or 4 hives they usually already won anyways, so its moot point.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1963576:date=Aug 15 2012, 02:12 PM:name=leeleatherwood)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (leeleatherwood @ Aug 15 2012, 02:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1963576"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So because they cant skulk rush the marines and win every single time this indicates they have a problem?
Aliens don't have a problem early game, they do just fine.
The problem aliens have is mid-late game when they are trying to defend a hive but cant because they can only spawn 3 at a time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No. The problem is mostly early game because aliens are taking 15+ seconds to respawn while marines are taking 10 seconds to respawn. Later on in the game, lerks and fades come out which die much less than skulks do. Because aliens are dying less later on, there are less aliens clogging up the spawn queue. This leads to faster spawn times for everyone later on, though sometimes even late game spawns can be bad during a marine push. This is still not as bad as the spawn timers get in early game.
Marines pushing and just trading kills with aliens can often lead to huge advantages for the marines because the alien spawn slower and the wave system clogs up. You see this happen a lot in close positions in the early game.
Yup, marines are learning to exploit this in the early game. If at any point in time a bunch of aliens happen to die close together, just bum rush the hive. They can't spawn fast enough to fend you off.
<!--quoteo(post=1963766:date=Aug 16 2012, 01:13 PM:name=ironhorse)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ironhorse @ Aug 16 2012, 01:13 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1963766"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Typhon is right, it needs to scale with player count. Starting at 50% is a good start.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I mentioned this in another thread last night...so I also agree with Typhon :)
50% of the alien team able to spawn (assuming eggs are there) seems like a good starting point if the numbers rounded up (so 9v9 gives you 5 not 4). I think it will be much easier to tinker with balance as it scales by design (unlike current 3 cap), so it may be dropped to say 40% or bumped to 70% but with it holding "more true" for all player sizes it should be easy enough to avoid the 30 second spawns or greater that are often seen currently.
The bigger problem that is now happening is not the skulk rush but the marine rush as others have highlighted. A lot of game there are 3 or even more marines pushing inside alien spawn taking out upgrades and spawn camping. The current wave system does nothing to help to aliens recover against this, the comm cant easily jump out and take on 3 marines so aliens get slapped about hard and are in a position thats almost impossible to recover from....perhaps with the swing of things we could just switch the wave spawning to marines. That way they can directly control the wave sizes (if they want 5 build 5 IP's)....but I digress.
And I believe we don't need that at all. Even with 50% you will have spawn-times that are not acceptable in terms of fun. (Simply because it is spawn time x2 when you miss one wave.)
Max-spawn of 3 is only a way to nerf skulk rushing. You can achieve the same with dynamic spawn times (=going up for dieing, going down over time.) This way you can set a maximum of longest possible waiting time for a player to spawn. That gives you much more control over the spawn times and guarantees, that you haven't players that have to wait times, that aren't fun anymore.
The egg-mechanic is there to allow marines that are pushing a hive to stop aliens from spawning in this hive (=killing eggs). An egg-lock because of massive skulk rush early game is a bad side effect of this mechanic and simply needs to go.
Spawning one egg for every alien that dies (additional to the eggs the hive spawns over time) is enough to counter the normal egg-lock, but leaving the option for marines to kill the eggs in one hive to get it down easier.
Comments
Decoupling eggs from hives would certainly make things easier to balance. Really the spawn system on both sides needs some reworking a neither of them are team size invariant, although it's much easier for marines to work around that by building more ips.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well but the eggs are in most cases not the problem, the problem is the max 3 players in each spawn wave and that aliens in general need longer to respawn.
Then you have the RFD (no res while dead) system where aliens are furthur punished.
a) vanilla marines > vanilla skulks
b) vanilla skulks have longer respawns
c) no res while dead
This means that not only are skulks dying more often than marines, but when they die they wait for longer to respawn after each death, and accrue significantly less pres because of RFD.
<ol type='1'>1) Unintuitive, aliens are individual lifeforms, not squads of marines.
2) Extremely detrimental to gameplay, 3 spawns only or not, if you happen to hop in at the end of the wave, and miss it, you have to wait until the next wave to spawn, which adds to the unintuitivity.
3) if you have to balance your game with SPAWN TIMES, something is VERY, VERY wrong.</li></ol>
1) This is a lore-thing. Balance > Lore. But if you want you can explain why aliens spawn in waves very easily. The most simple explanation would be birth cycles. You see this on many animals. They need time to give birth, but than there are many animals that gave birth to many individuals at once. Mice for example but many others too. "Wave spawning" isn't that unnatural.
2) There is no difference in the need to wait an always fixed time or a dynamical time. It only gets frustrating if you have to wait to long. If there is a reasonable max-waiting time the wave spawn system could be fine. You would even be happy when you happen to spawn right away, because you hit the wave at the right time. Also many other games have a spawn-wave system and it works.
3) I can't see why balancing with spawn times in an asymmetric game should be bad. In fact it is a very good tool to compensate the asymmetric movement speed / map control speed / marine-skulk fighting balance.
Again: It only gets frustrating when you have to wait to long. Beside that, dieing and waiting in a spawn queue is always not fun. In every game. But it is needed.
I'd love to be able to pick which egg I spawned in. At the very least you shouldn't spawn in one of the eggs that the khamm spent pres to mutated to a different life form for someone else... Nothing more frustrating than headed to the hive after the khamm dropped the egg for the lifeform you wanted and then seeing someone else spawn in your egg XD.
10 seconds sounds like a decent amount of time for a spawn timer, but make sure there isn't a limit on how many people can spawn at the same time. It should only be limited by the number of available eggs.
You should be able to select an egg to spawn from via a commander-like view, instead of cycling through 20-30 eggs with mouseclicks..!
just make the commander view extremely simplified, "egg choose mode"
1 Hive = 3 Aliens per wave
2 Hives = 5 Aliens per wave
3 Hives = 7...
4 Hives = 9...
Some would say this would be overpowered when the aliens have 3 or more hives, but honestly if the aliens have 3 or 4 hives they usually already won anyways, so its moot point.
1 Hive = 3 Aliens per wave
2 Hives = 5 Aliens per wave
3 Hives = 7...
4 Hives = 9...
Some would say this would be overpowered when the aliens have 3 or more hives, but honestly if the aliens have 3 or 4 hives they usually already won anyways, so its moot point.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Problem is, that doesn't address the issues the spawn system has early game.
Making waves max out at 1/2 alien team size may be a passable quick fix until it can be more thoughtfully reworked.
So because they cant skulk rush the marines and win every single time this indicates they have a problem?
Aliens don't have a problem early game, they do just fine.
The problem aliens have is mid-late game when they are trying to defend a hive but cant because they can only spawn 3 at a time.
Oh yeah, the egg system is not good.
They should just eliminate it, it doesn't serve a real purpose.
It should be either a (revised) egg system OR wave spawning, but not a combination of both.
Aliens don't have a problem early game, they do just fine.
The problem aliens have is mid-late game when they are trying to defend a hive but cant because they can only spawn 3 at a time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
.. you should play some larger games, where a max of 3 spawning at a time is like a bat to the knees.
Ever waited a full 50 seconds to spawn? Happens with 30 players.
Its hard to coordinate such a thing with volunteers, i am sure.. but trust me early game - rushing marines or not - is a problem for aliens with a larger player count, something that is inevitable as performance increases.
Typhon is right, it needs to scale with player count.
Starting at 50% is a good start.
1 Hive = 3 Aliens per wave
2 Hives = 5 Aliens per wave
3 Hives = 7...
4 Hives = 9...
Some would say this would be overpowered when the aliens have 3 or more hives, but honestly if the aliens have 3 or 4 hives they usually already won anyways, so its moot point.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1963576:date=Aug 15 2012, 02:12 PM:name=leeleatherwood)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (leeleatherwood @ Aug 15 2012, 02:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1963576"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So because they cant skulk rush the marines and win every single time this indicates they have a problem?
Aliens don't have a problem early game, they do just fine.
The problem aliens have is mid-late game when they are trying to defend a hive but cant because they can only spawn 3 at a time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No. The problem is mostly early game because aliens are taking 15+ seconds to respawn while marines are taking 10 seconds to respawn. Later on in the game, lerks and fades come out which die much less than skulks do. Because aliens are dying less later on, there are less aliens clogging up the spawn queue. This leads to faster spawn times for everyone later on, though sometimes even late game spawns can be bad during a marine push. This is still not as bad as the spawn timers get in early game.
Marines pushing and just trading kills with aliens can often lead to huge advantages for the marines because the alien spawn slower and the wave system clogs up. You see this happen a lot in close positions in the early game.
Starting at 50% is a good start.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I mentioned this in another thread last night...so I also agree with Typhon :)
50% of the alien team able to spawn (assuming eggs are there) seems like a good starting point if the numbers rounded up (so 9v9 gives you 5 not 4).
I think it will be much easier to tinker with balance as it scales by design (unlike current 3 cap), so it may be dropped to say 40% or bumped to 70% but with it holding "more true" for all player sizes it should be easy enough to avoid the 30 second spawns or greater that are often seen currently.
The bigger problem that is now happening is not the skulk rush but the marine rush as others have highlighted.
A lot of game there are 3 or even more marines pushing inside alien spawn taking out upgrades and spawn camping.
The current wave system does nothing to help to aliens recover against this, the comm cant easily jump out and take on 3 marines so aliens get slapped about hard and are in a position thats almost impossible to recover from....perhaps with the swing of things we could just switch the wave spawning to marines.
That way they can directly control the wave sizes (if they want 5 build 5 IP's)....but I digress.
Max-spawn of 3 is only a way to nerf skulk rushing. You can achieve the same with dynamic spawn times (=going up for dieing, going down over time.) This way you can set a maximum of longest possible waiting time for a player to spawn. That gives you much more control over the spawn times and guarantees, that you haven't players that have to wait times, that aren't fun anymore.
The egg-mechanic is there to allow marines that are pushing a hive to stop aliens from spawning in this hive (=killing eggs). An egg-lock because of massive skulk rush early game is a bad side effect of this mechanic and simply needs to go.
Spawning one egg for every alien that dies (additional to the eggs the hive spawns over time) is enough to counter the normal egg-lock, but leaving the option for marines to kill the eggs in one hive to get it down easier.