Hypermutation
Ness_FrogKing
Join Date: 2012-10-18 Member: 162628Members
Join Date: 2012-10-18 Member: 162628Members
I had an idea for how Hypermutation could work, without it being exploited like it was. Unfortunately, it's kind of complicated, which is something that I think UWE wants to avoid, but it does retain most of the functionality of the old Hypermutation.
When you're using Hypermutation, any refunded res should go in a separate bank, which is withdrawn from first when you go up the chain. Dying empties the bank with no refund. All other aspects are the same as before.
So, if you have 32 res and go Lerk, then decide you want to go Gorge for some reason, you get 20 banked res and 2 normal res. You have fun belly sliding for a while, so now you have 20/33, and decide to go Fade. This will drain your bank plus another 20 normal res, leaving you at 0/13. As you're blinking around, you almost die, so you find a nice corner and go Gorge again to heal yourself. The res ticks have brought you up to 27 at this point, so when you go Gorge you have 40/27. As you're healing yourself, you think, "Sweet, I'm gonna Onos!" Sadly, a sg/jp comes around the corner and turns you in to icky goo. You lose your banked res, and are now left with just the normal 27 res.
This does allow you to sort of break the 100 res limit (up to 75 banked res, and 100 normal res), which is probably not desired. To avoid this, refunds to the bank could be capped at 100-(current res), and res ticks that would increase your combined res past 100 will increase your normal res but decrease your bank to keep the total at 100. So, if you go Onos->Skulk when you have 23 res, you'll get 75/23, then the res ticks will go 75/24, 75/25, 74/26, 73/27, etc.
This keeps the "change lifeforms at will"/"cheap lifeform upgrades" idea, and prevents the exploiting of Onos->Skulk to keep your res, though it does make downgrading riskier since you're not truly refunded for it (the player in my example above would have ended up with 67 under the old model; in my model, they may as well have died as a Fade).
Now, since I don't like that huge risk, it could swap one res point from the bank to normal res on every tick (in addition to the normal amount gained), so you eventually recoup the bank while playing as a lower form without instantly gaining it all back. (Not taken in to account in the examples above, obviously.) If your combined res is at 100, you should gain 2 normal res and lose 2 bank res on ticks; 1 from this mechanism, 1 from the one above. This still makes it risky right after you swap, but the risk goes down the longer you stay alive as the lower form (which encourages the type of play that Hypermutation was probably meant for; going from Fade to Gorge to heal a hive after the marines are pushed out, for example, or going Fade to Lerk to Umbra the Onos).
The bank could be justified by saying that the Hypermutation gland has to reprocess the res in order to use it again; this process is drastically sped up while evolving, which is why it can be used when changing lifeforms. ;-)
So, I guess the teal deer version is:
<ul><li>Downgrading puts res in a bank, instead of directly to res pool</li><li>Bank + res pool capped at 100</li><li>Bank drains to normal res over time</li><li>Bank is used first when upgrading</li><li>Bank is lost on death</li></ul>
Thoughts?
When you're using Hypermutation, any refunded res should go in a separate bank, which is withdrawn from first when you go up the chain. Dying empties the bank with no refund. All other aspects are the same as before.
So, if you have 32 res and go Lerk, then decide you want to go Gorge for some reason, you get 20 banked res and 2 normal res. You have fun belly sliding for a while, so now you have 20/33, and decide to go Fade. This will drain your bank plus another 20 normal res, leaving you at 0/13. As you're blinking around, you almost die, so you find a nice corner and go Gorge again to heal yourself. The res ticks have brought you up to 27 at this point, so when you go Gorge you have 40/27. As you're healing yourself, you think, "Sweet, I'm gonna Onos!" Sadly, a sg/jp comes around the corner and turns you in to icky goo. You lose your banked res, and are now left with just the normal 27 res.
This does allow you to sort of break the 100 res limit (up to 75 banked res, and 100 normal res), which is probably not desired. To avoid this, refunds to the bank could be capped at 100-(current res), and res ticks that would increase your combined res past 100 will increase your normal res but decrease your bank to keep the total at 100. So, if you go Onos->Skulk when you have 23 res, you'll get 75/23, then the res ticks will go 75/24, 75/25, 74/26, 73/27, etc.
This keeps the "change lifeforms at will"/"cheap lifeform upgrades" idea, and prevents the exploiting of Onos->Skulk to keep your res, though it does make downgrading riskier since you're not truly refunded for it (the player in my example above would have ended up with 67 under the old model; in my model, they may as well have died as a Fade).
Now, since I don't like that huge risk, it could swap one res point from the bank to normal res on every tick (in addition to the normal amount gained), so you eventually recoup the bank while playing as a lower form without instantly gaining it all back. (Not taken in to account in the examples above, obviously.) If your combined res is at 100, you should gain 2 normal res and lose 2 bank res on ticks; 1 from this mechanism, 1 from the one above. This still makes it risky right after you swap, but the risk goes down the longer you stay alive as the lower form (which encourages the type of play that Hypermutation was probably meant for; going from Fade to Gorge to heal a hive after the marines are pushed out, for example, or going Fade to Lerk to Umbra the Onos).
The bank could be justified by saying that the Hypermutation gland has to reprocess the res in order to use it again; this process is drastically sped up while evolving, which is why it can be used when changing lifeforms. ;-)
So, I guess the teal deer version is:
<ul><li>Downgrading puts res in a bank, instead of directly to res pool</li><li>Bank + res pool capped at 100</li><li>Bank drains to normal res over time</li><li>Bank is used first when upgrading</li><li>Bank is lost on death</li></ul>
Thoughts?
Comments
Having it NOT give you res back if you decided to downgrade so you could xenocide/bilebomb rush would make it no where
near as good as it used to be.