The concept of nanites and power needs improvement
DarkScythe
Join Date: 2012-08-30 Member: 156876Members
Join Date: 2012-08-30 Member: 156876Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Two quick suggestions..</div>Hello,
I've been wondering about this for a couple of days now, and I thought I'd toss it up in this ideas forum and see if anyone might have thought of the same thing.
I checked the last couple of pages and didn't see anything relevant to this, so I apologize if this has been brought up much longer ago.
If I recall correctly, the marines rely on some kind of invisible/tiny structure called a nanite to provide a variety of benefits.
With NS2, there's also now the concept of power, and how important it is to the marine team.
However, it seems there's very little in the game to link the two together.
I was thinking of a few tweaks or additions to the existing systems to try to give players a sense of this presence being around, without directly seeing or interacting with it.
First of all, with regard to the power nodes.
These nodes provide power to a limited area, and as a marine team, you will always want to get these up and repaired. These nodes, as I understand it, powers the structures and lights in any given room. However, it should also be hinted that the nanites themselves are being powered. The player would most likely see this if there was an effect for the marines having passive armor regeneration (I imagine nanites can repair armor, but not health) but have it very slow; something like 1% max armor every second? This means it'd take 100 seconds to fully repair/restore armor from zero, which could be adjusted up or down to achieve balance. This regeneration should only occur while a marine is in a room with an active power node.
Furthermore, on the alien side, in the games I've played, it's typical that the aliens will target the extractor first in any given room, then maybe kill the power, or just leave it alone. I think there should be additional incentive for the aliens to take out the power in non-tech-point rooms, besides simply turning off the lights.
Again, as I understand it, Cysts spread infestation by "corrupting" the invisible nanites. However, while they are powered, they should be able to resist the corruption to some degree. Taking out the power would render the nanites completely susceptible to corruption, and in this case, infestation spread could be increased dramatically (+100% perhaps?) or you can leave it as it is currently, and simply apply a -50% penalty to the current speed when the area is powered. This gives additional incentive for the alien team to keep these power nodes knocked out.
In order for the marines to reverse the infestation, not only will they have to kill the cysts, but they will also have to resupply power to the area (to power up the nanites so they can begin cleansing themselves again.) Since NS2 does bring the concept of "emergency power" to bring up those red lights in an area without power, I think this can also be represented during this restoration phase as something like a -75% penalty in infestation-repair speed in unpowered areas. The idea being that the nanites are receiving very limited power; not enough to fight against the corruption being caused by the cysts, but with the cysts gone, have enough power to "fight back" weakly, so to speak. That, or emergency power is only able to activate a small percentage of the nanites in the room at a time to run the cleansing routines.
I apologize again if something like this has already been brought up, but this has been something I was thinking about lately, and I thought it might be rpetty cool, and at least increase a bit of the immersion into the NS universe/technology.
I've been wondering about this for a couple of days now, and I thought I'd toss it up in this ideas forum and see if anyone might have thought of the same thing.
I checked the last couple of pages and didn't see anything relevant to this, so I apologize if this has been brought up much longer ago.
If I recall correctly, the marines rely on some kind of invisible/tiny structure called a nanite to provide a variety of benefits.
With NS2, there's also now the concept of power, and how important it is to the marine team.
However, it seems there's very little in the game to link the two together.
I was thinking of a few tweaks or additions to the existing systems to try to give players a sense of this presence being around, without directly seeing or interacting with it.
First of all, with regard to the power nodes.
These nodes provide power to a limited area, and as a marine team, you will always want to get these up and repaired. These nodes, as I understand it, powers the structures and lights in any given room. However, it should also be hinted that the nanites themselves are being powered. The player would most likely see this if there was an effect for the marines having passive armor regeneration (I imagine nanites can repair armor, but not health) but have it very slow; something like 1% max armor every second? This means it'd take 100 seconds to fully repair/restore armor from zero, which could be adjusted up or down to achieve balance. This regeneration should only occur while a marine is in a room with an active power node.
Furthermore, on the alien side, in the games I've played, it's typical that the aliens will target the extractor first in any given room, then maybe kill the power, or just leave it alone. I think there should be additional incentive for the aliens to take out the power in non-tech-point rooms, besides simply turning off the lights.
Again, as I understand it, Cysts spread infestation by "corrupting" the invisible nanites. However, while they are powered, they should be able to resist the corruption to some degree. Taking out the power would render the nanites completely susceptible to corruption, and in this case, infestation spread could be increased dramatically (+100% perhaps?) or you can leave it as it is currently, and simply apply a -50% penalty to the current speed when the area is powered. This gives additional incentive for the alien team to keep these power nodes knocked out.
In order for the marines to reverse the infestation, not only will they have to kill the cysts, but they will also have to resupply power to the area (to power up the nanites so they can begin cleansing themselves again.) Since NS2 does bring the concept of "emergency power" to bring up those red lights in an area without power, I think this can also be represented during this restoration phase as something like a -75% penalty in infestation-repair speed in unpowered areas. The idea being that the nanites are receiving very limited power; not enough to fight against the corruption being caused by the cysts, but with the cysts gone, have enough power to "fight back" weakly, so to speak. That, or emergency power is only able to activate a small percentage of the nanites in the room at a time to run the cleansing routines.
I apologize again if something like this has already been brought up, but this has been something I was thinking about lately, and I thought it might be rpetty cool, and at least increase a bit of the immersion into the NS universe/technology.
Comments
Right now I'd say there isn't a need for an additional incentive to take out the Power Nodes. The emergency lighting and unpowered buildings already make life hellish for Marines. Plus, there are plenty of regions that start off without a power node and remain "powered" at least according to lighting. How are you handling that case?
The regions that start off without a power node and remain powered is a tricky proposition.
If I were to simply explain it in terms of a story, I would say that (At least in NS1, these were all space ships) the main generators are still running to provide the various sections of the ship power, but when the TSA arrive, they built "power nodes" on top of each "breaker box" thing to siphon power away to power their structures, but a loss of the power node now interrupts the power supply for the entire room since it's hooked into the main power supply system.
However, this does negatively impact the aliens' initial expansion, unless UWE were able to allow maps to automatically turn off the power in the areas around the starting hive location, or turn it off for the entire map, and turn on the power for the areas around the marine start.