Some suggestions to give aliens more choices
CrushaK
Join Date: 2012-11-05 Member: 167195Members, NS2 Playtester
Join Date: 2012-11-05 Member: 167195Members, NS2 Playtester
Some thoughts on balance changes to give aliens a bit more help to adapt to late-game marine upgrades and to generally provide more different strategies for alien commanders to choose from.
<ul><li><b>Make some alien upgrades available without requiring a second hive.</b>
Marines can research up to level 3 armour and weapons without ever needing a second command post. But aliens are limited to only the trait-type of their current hive and can't get any permanent upgrades without at least two hives.
<b>Leap</b> would be a pretty good candidate for this in order to buff your Skulks early on to keep up with the marine upgrades. And the <b>Lerk's poisonous cloud</b> -basically his signature move- is not really so overpowered that it would hurt him to have that researchable with only one hive - he is already pretty fragile against shotgun marines and yet a steep investment, so might as well buff him a bit.
Others like Bile Bomb and Blink are stronger abilities and thus justify to need a second hive, as well as stompy Onos.
</li><li><b>Buff the Gorge's structures</b>, at least his clots (or what they are called). Give them the ability to place more of them, maybe make it also depend on the hives and add +5 clot capacity for each controlled hive, so you can actually seal off more than one area as Gorge once you gain more map control. And let it take a bit more than one grenade to destroy them all.
</li><li>Nerf the endgame Onos tactic, buff other approaches instead. Often games end where you starve them Marines in their base, with no chance for them to free themselves but still strong enough to keep aliens pushed back, just to wait for the inevitable wave of 5 Onos due to all the resources that the aliens control. The match is basically decided for 5-10 minutes already and everyone is just waiting until the aliens got enough cash to prepare their combined stomp - wasting everyone's time.
And while a good Skulk can take out an enemy Exo all on his own, it gets hard for 1-2 marines alone to take out an Onos, especially if he has stomp.
</li><li>If the aliens manage to get a <b>fourth hive</b>, why not allow them to turn that into an advantage so that they can end the game without the obligatory Onos? For instance allow aliens to select a <b>fourth trait</b> to evolve into (depending on what the fourth hive got assigned to be), so they could run Carpace AND Regeneration if they wanted to. (<b>Why are traits from the same tech tree actually mutually exclusive?</b> None of those combinations seems really OP to me. It just limits the amount of choices and freedom that the aliens could have.)
Or come up with a <b>fourth tech tree for aliens</b>, so there would be a reason to have four hives and to give even more variety in gameplay and in the strategic decisions made by a commander. We have trees for durability, agility and stealth. The next plausible thing in that list would be <b>offence</b> (of course balanced reasonably).
Traits from this tree could (slightly!) increase the damage per hit or the rate of fire (making it also easier to land hits with projectiles) and would add another counter against the armour upgrades of the marines. The associated building for this tree could be another attacking structure like the Whip, possibly more focused on a ranged attack, or some pheromones that give a small buff for combat to all aliens in a radius around them and which stays active for a few more seconds after leaving the radius.
</li><li>Maybe also the ability to <b>re-evolve your hive</b> (at the cost of resources, of course). So you can change your tactics as alien commander on the fly if needed. However, aliens can still only evolve traits from the hives that are currently active. So you can't go Shade Hive first, then build all the stealth trait upgrades and then switch back to a Durability Hive and still use those stealth traits. Buildings that belong to a non-active hive type could shut down or work only at minimum capacity (flickering stealth on buildings, less frequent and less effective health fumes, etc.) or anything like that.
</li><li>And the last suggestion is a careful one, since I don't know how it would work out in "comp" play: maybe <b>limit the amount of Exos and Onos</b> that are available simultaneously to <u>three</u> (after buffing the other aliens), so things don't always drag out to the endgame stomp and it actually becomes important where you have your "super units" on the map, as you can't have armies of them defend every possible place. And three should still be way enough to take out any heavily defended base. The only danger would be griefers who would become such a unit and then decide to idle somewhere in their base - but I guess you could votekick such players.</li></ul>
<ul><li><b>Make some alien upgrades available without requiring a second hive.</b>
Marines can research up to level 3 armour and weapons without ever needing a second command post. But aliens are limited to only the trait-type of their current hive and can't get any permanent upgrades without at least two hives.
<b>Leap</b> would be a pretty good candidate for this in order to buff your Skulks early on to keep up with the marine upgrades. And the <b>Lerk's poisonous cloud</b> -basically his signature move- is not really so overpowered that it would hurt him to have that researchable with only one hive - he is already pretty fragile against shotgun marines and yet a steep investment, so might as well buff him a bit.
Others like Bile Bomb and Blink are stronger abilities and thus justify to need a second hive, as well as stompy Onos.
</li><li><b>Buff the Gorge's structures</b>, at least his clots (or what they are called). Give them the ability to place more of them, maybe make it also depend on the hives and add +5 clot capacity for each controlled hive, so you can actually seal off more than one area as Gorge once you gain more map control. And let it take a bit more than one grenade to destroy them all.
</li><li>Nerf the endgame Onos tactic, buff other approaches instead. Often games end where you starve them Marines in their base, with no chance for them to free themselves but still strong enough to keep aliens pushed back, just to wait for the inevitable wave of 5 Onos due to all the resources that the aliens control. The match is basically decided for 5-10 minutes already and everyone is just waiting until the aliens got enough cash to prepare their combined stomp - wasting everyone's time.
And while a good Skulk can take out an enemy Exo all on his own, it gets hard for 1-2 marines alone to take out an Onos, especially if he has stomp.
</li><li>If the aliens manage to get a <b>fourth hive</b>, why not allow them to turn that into an advantage so that they can end the game without the obligatory Onos? For instance allow aliens to select a <b>fourth trait</b> to evolve into (depending on what the fourth hive got assigned to be), so they could run Carpace AND Regeneration if they wanted to. (<b>Why are traits from the same tech tree actually mutually exclusive?</b> None of those combinations seems really OP to me. It just limits the amount of choices and freedom that the aliens could have.)
Or come up with a <b>fourth tech tree for aliens</b>, so there would be a reason to have four hives and to give even more variety in gameplay and in the strategic decisions made by a commander. We have trees for durability, agility and stealth. The next plausible thing in that list would be <b>offence</b> (of course balanced reasonably).
Traits from this tree could (slightly!) increase the damage per hit or the rate of fire (making it also easier to land hits with projectiles) and would add another counter against the armour upgrades of the marines. The associated building for this tree could be another attacking structure like the Whip, possibly more focused on a ranged attack, or some pheromones that give a small buff for combat to all aliens in a radius around them and which stays active for a few more seconds after leaving the radius.
</li><li>Maybe also the ability to <b>re-evolve your hive</b> (at the cost of resources, of course). So you can change your tactics as alien commander on the fly if needed. However, aliens can still only evolve traits from the hives that are currently active. So you can't go Shade Hive first, then build all the stealth trait upgrades and then switch back to a Durability Hive and still use those stealth traits. Buildings that belong to a non-active hive type could shut down or work only at minimum capacity (flickering stealth on buildings, less frequent and less effective health fumes, etc.) or anything like that.
</li><li>And the last suggestion is a careful one, since I don't know how it would work out in "comp" play: maybe <b>limit the amount of Exos and Onos</b> that are available simultaneously to <u>three</u> (after buffing the other aliens), so things don't always drag out to the endgame stomp and it actually becomes important where you have your "super units" on the map, as you can't have armies of them defend every possible place. And three should still be way enough to take out any heavily defended base. The only danger would be griefers who would become such a unit and then decide to idle somewhere in their base - but I guess you could votekick such players.</li></ul>
Comments
It was possible in Beta. Let's just say what Fades did to people wasn't very pretty.
Adrenalin + Carapace + Regeneration means that they would blink in, kill some people, leave, reg themselves to full, come back and so on. They were entirely self-sufficient without any need of support from the Khammander.
The same was true for other lifeforms to a lesser extend too.
I agree though that Aliens need more finishing options. Or the Marine Turtle needs to be nerfed.
Overall there are a lot of minor and major issues still around that need to be taken care of. Most of what we have now works pretty well in a Tournament environment, but isn't very feasible in public games.