Aliens win too much, suggesting sentry changes
MrChoke
Join Date: 2012-12-13 Member: 174990Members, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2012-12-13 Member: 174990Members, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Shadow
Ok, I'd like to explore non "Learn to Play" ways to balance this game. Any posts in this thread regarding L2P, please go away and troll another thread. I am sick of hearing it.
The general consensus I hear and that I agree with is marines lose the battle for RT. Aliens get Onos and Fades before marines get enough Exxos and Jetpacks and its over. And I have no problem with this. If marines fail to get the RT, they deserve to lose.
So what can be addressed to make this easier? I don't think we should change ANY health, armor, reload times or alien abilities to solve this. This should make the L2P people happy. My assumption is people are GOOD at the skills required. Not GODLIKE, but GOOD.
If we look at the only real balance change UWE made last patch is was around RT. They tried to nerf aleins ability to get it as fast by cuttung cyst health in half and infestation goes away as soon as the cyst dies. A step in the right direction for sure but clearly it is not having any real effect that I can see. I also don't think we should make cyst health lower either. It will become an alien micromanagement nightmare if we do. I think we leave this alone.
I want talk about buffing the marines ability to hold RT. Marines need to babysit and rebuild the extractors far too often. Having to do this takes time from the activity of harrassing alien RT and hives. I believe if we improve this, the game will balance better. There are many ways this can be done.
We can increase health/armor of extractors. It already takes a fair amount of time to chew down an extractor. It may help but it will be too frustrating for aliens to have to sit their hitting the mouse button longer. I don't like it.
How about a way to protect the extractors? Let's look at sentries right now. They suck. They are so easy to get around and destroy. And we only get 3 in a room, all huddled together. I think we look here to solve this. Its not adding any new concept to the game. Its not a big change.
How about having 4 sentries per room?
or
Two sentry batteries per room and only 2 sentries?
I want to hear CONSTRUCTIVE feedback on this idea.
If people don't talk me out of it, I am thinking of writing a mod. I will learn LUA and see if I can implment this simple change. I wish UWE would chime in on this too. Maybe I gave them a new idea on how to solve this.
The general consensus I hear and that I agree with is marines lose the battle for RT. Aliens get Onos and Fades before marines get enough Exxos and Jetpacks and its over. And I have no problem with this. If marines fail to get the RT, they deserve to lose.
So what can be addressed to make this easier? I don't think we should change ANY health, armor, reload times or alien abilities to solve this. This should make the L2P people happy. My assumption is people are GOOD at the skills required. Not GODLIKE, but GOOD.
If we look at the only real balance change UWE made last patch is was around RT. They tried to nerf aleins ability to get it as fast by cuttung cyst health in half and infestation goes away as soon as the cyst dies. A step in the right direction for sure but clearly it is not having any real effect that I can see. I also don't think we should make cyst health lower either. It will become an alien micromanagement nightmare if we do. I think we leave this alone.
I want talk about buffing the marines ability to hold RT. Marines need to babysit and rebuild the extractors far too often. Having to do this takes time from the activity of harrassing alien RT and hives. I believe if we improve this, the game will balance better. There are many ways this can be done.
We can increase health/armor of extractors. It already takes a fair amount of time to chew down an extractor. It may help but it will be too frustrating for aliens to have to sit their hitting the mouse button longer. I don't like it.
How about a way to protect the extractors? Let's look at sentries right now. They suck. They are so easy to get around and destroy. And we only get 3 in a room, all huddled together. I think we look here to solve this. Its not adding any new concept to the game. Its not a big change.
How about having 4 sentries per room?
or
Two sentry batteries per room and only 2 sentries?
I want to hear CONSTRUCTIVE feedback on this idea.
If people don't talk me out of it, I am thinking of writing a mod. I will learn LUA and see if I can implment this simple change. I wish UWE would chime in on this too. Maybe I gave them a new idea on how to solve this.
Comments
No other changes necessary.
No other changes necessary.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Want to make sure I understood what you said. Do you mean basically increase the allowed placement of the sentry to anywhere in the room, as long as it has a sentry battery in it? If so, that sounds good. We could even increase the circle radius by quite a bit and accomplish the same thing. That is probably an easier change to make. It will make it less obvious to the aliens where the sentries are, therefore they will get hit more often. And it protects rooms better when the power node and RT are far away. I like it.
Problem is, fighting turrets isn't fun, and it's very hard to make them work well enough to substitute for marines without making them also really powerful when marines are there to help.
My suggestion would be to allow marines to change the map geometry to reduce the amount of space they have to protect. Rather than being open to alien attacks from all sides, they can reduce it to fewer sides and protect those, that keeps the combat player vs player, still allows marines to control larger territories, and allows possibly more variety in map layouts if they can be changed in game.
Difficulty is, of course, figuring out how to do it to start with, how to make it so marines can't turtle in one unassailable corridor fortress, and how to make it a strategic choice.
Perhaps, off the top of my head, you could have a 'nano wall' power, which lets you block off one of a series of points in a room with an extractor, creating a forcefield of sorts across the path which completely blocks alien (and marine) movement. Generally this would be restricted to small corridors and vents (so you could make large doorways as a mapper if you didn't want people to be able to block that route at all) and activating it would cut the extractor's resource income in half (as some of the nanites are used to sustain the wall).
That way, you could, for example, block off observation on tram from any large aliens, but the vent would still be open, and you would also suffer from half income from observation. The vent could be covered with turrets however which could make that section much tougher to attack, but also less valuable for aliens to attack (because it's only giving you half income). Combining this with blocking off the western bit (used to be marine expansion, think it's called holo imaging or something now?) would mean that aliens would be force to only use the large (unblockable) tram tunnel to attack with onoses/large alien groups but on the other hand, marines would be controlling three extractors but only getting two extractors worth of income, and they also would be forced to use the tram tunnel to expand, so aliens could bottle them off as much as marines do to aliens, and aliens would control more territory if marines just turtled.
This gives marines a lot of reasons to choose where to block off, the nano wall can just be a magic forcefield graphic so it's easy to implement, and it trades short term gain (vulnerable, but high income) for long term gain (less income, but much easier to defend) and there are also other things you could do with it, such as adding 'nano bridges' in some areas to open new routes for marines, and combining it with things like doors and mines to create a multi-faceted defence.
IMO a better way to make up for this aside from creating more sentry guns (games where sentries are in every room feel like brushing my teeth with sand paper) would be to allow marines to electrify their RTs for 10 res per node. The damage done by electrification would have to be something reasonable so a single skulk couldn't kill it on its own, but 2-3 could easily.
This give the marines more staying power at the cost of res and manpower, compared to the aliens having no inherent defense and being auto-built
I know, but being able to place them anywhere in a room is still a huge buff. There are a lot of positions you could setup a solo turret D in that's ridiculously hard to kill when not limited by the power radius. Turrets should be used to support/buff actual players by making it easier for them to survive near the sentries, not to solo defend areas of the map.
They would be a good delay to allow marines to get to an RT in time, but right now they cost way too much res for that to ever be efficient. I wouldn't mind seeing the cost lowered slightly because of that (even though it'll probably encourage new/bad cmdrs to spam them even more and waste more res)
If you truely want to balance out the game for pubs, you need to change the resource dynamic. In competitive play, aliens LOVE to be on 3 RTs. 3 RTs is a dream for aliens. In pubs, you plant 5 RTs as your opening build because you know the marines are too retarded to be able to push in.
Exactly.
Problem is, fighting turrets isn't fun, and it's very hard to make them work well enough to substitute for marines without making them also really powerful when marines are there to help.
My suggestion would be to allow marines to change the map geometry to reduce the amount of space they have to protect. Rather than being open to alien attacks from all sides, they can reduce it to fewer sides and protect those, that keeps the combat player vs player, still allows marines to control larger territories, and allows possibly more variety in map layouts if they can be changed in game.
Difficulty is, of course, figuring out how to do it to start with, how to make it so marines can't turtle in one unassailable corridor fortress, and how to make it a strategic choice.
Perhaps, off the top of my head, you could have a 'nano wall' power, which lets you block off one of a series of points in a room with an extractor, creating a forcefield of sorts across the path which completely blocks alien (and marine) movement. Generally this would be restricted to small corridors and vents (so you could make large doorways as a mapper if you didn't want people to be able to block that route at all) and activating it would cut the extractor's resource income in half (as some of the nanites are used to sustain the wall).
That way, you could, for example, block off observation on tram from any large aliens, but the vent would still be open, and you would also suffer from half income from observation. The vent could be covered with turrets however which could make that section much tougher to attack, but also less valuable for aliens to attack (because it's only giving you half income). Combining this with blocking off the western bit (used to be marine expansion, think it's called holo imaging or something now?) would mean that aliens would be force to only use the large (unblockable) tram tunnel to attack with onoses/large alien groups but on the other hand, marines would be controlling three extractors but only getting two extractors worth of income, and they also would be forced to use the tram tunnel to expand, so aliens could bottle them off as much as marines do to aliens, and aliens would control more territory if marines just turtled.
This gives marines a lot of reasons to choose where to block off, the nano wall can just be a magic forcefield graphic so it's easy to implement, and it trades short term gain (vulnerable, but high income) for long term gain (less income, but much easier to defend) and there are also other things you could do with it, such as adding 'nano bridges' in some areas to open new routes for marines, and combining it with things like doors and mines to create a multi-faceted defence.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Adding new concepts and things to the game may be great but that is out of scope of what I want to discuss. I am talking about a few lines of code changing to tweak the game. Simple stuff.
OK, what do you suggest then? A 70% loss percentasge for marines sucks to.
Currently they're closer to the useless mark, make them better and it makes them perhaps equal parts useless and annoying, make them very good and it makes them incredibly annoying. It's just not a situation where I think finding a golden mean between the two is going to improve the game, so it's not really something you can solve with changing code numbers.
There must be a reason they felt the need for sentries to be powered without room power. I don't want to change that concept. I think that is a bad idea.
Currently they're closer to the useless mark, make them better and it makes them perhaps equal parts useless and annoying, make them very good and it makes them incredibly annoying. It's just not a situation where I think finding a golden mean between the two is going to improve the game, so it's not really something you can solve with changing code numbers.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I definitely don't want them to be annoying but you are right what they are right now. They are useless. Why wouldn't a few number tweaks help this? I don't want them so powerful that it takes many aliens to beat them. I simply want the marines to not have to babysit RT so much and do it in a way that its not adding a new concept or major change to the game.
The solution is NOT in sentries.
The biggest problem with sentries is that when you need them (very beginning of game) you can't afford them, but when you can afford them the aliens have lerks and gorges who take them out like they're nothing. No - sentries are not the answer.
What marines need are electrified res nodes, OR permanently nanoshielded res nodes. Marines loose the early game far too often since they can't keep their extractors up. NS2 becomes a glorified game of whack-a-mole (whack-a-skulk) where marines run from extractor to extractor playing cat and mouse. It's *PAINFULLY* boring, and it dilutes the game down to a glorified game of 'Extractor Warz!'.
Especially at the start when you have armor 0 marines dying in 2 bites (since there is no arms lab yet) the marines are very much vulnerable to skulk 'gank squads' of three which zerg around killing marine and extractor alike. For marines to counter they need to be in one big group, which then too means they lose map control and are unable to develop their economy.
<b>
TLDR version: It's too easy for aliens to win the game in the first 5 minutes by simply taking out a few extractors.</b>
The solution - imho - is to return the early game to a player versus player game. Right now it is a skulk versus extractor game. Marines can't attack alien extractors in the early game since they can't normally make it across the map. (unless the aliens are newbies) The skulk speed means that the battle is always on the marine side of the map. As such, the marines need a way to counter that.
We had the same thing happen in NS1, and while the developers resisted it, they eventually realized that electrified res nodes were needed since marines were building sentry nests at EVERY extractor they built. (and they were still losing since they were spending all that res on sentries - not to mention there were often blind spots that cost them the extractor anyway)
There is no 'L2P' issue here for marines since any alien who knows how to play will just constantly rush the marine extractors. If you kill off three you win the game. It's that simple. Marines will never be able to recover. (and killing 3 is easy) Making the marines pay 25 res just to secure one extractor (not to mention the initial cost to build a robotics factory) will only delay a marine loss. Yeah it may save the early extractors, but all that lost res poured into sentry nests means the marines are fatally behind in tech.
Sentries - in their present form - are just a waste of resources. Plain and simple. I won't bother listing all the reasons why since most people know it. So instead of sentries what marines need is a means to hold onto extractors in the beginning of the game. Give them that and you'll have a contest.
Because like I said in the big post. Fighting sentries is annoying. They aren't interesting. If you can see their front they shoot you, if you're behind them they don't shoot you.
If you make them less tough/damaging, they are slightly annoying (because they have minimal effect) and mostly useless) because they have minimal effect). If you boost their damage/health they become more annoying (more effect, longer to destroy) and less useless (better at actually killing/deterring aliens, if only because aliens don't want to be annoyed to death).
If you make them actually dangerous, it's like giving marines the ability to permanently set hallways on fire. It doesn't take any skill to get past, there's nothing aliens can do to reduce it that doesn't involve getting through the fire hallway, it just means aliens have to tank a bunch of damage to go somewhere, and their reward is turning off the annoying damage hallway.
They just aren't an interesting mechanic. The 'best' way they could function is as a solid wall to stop aliens going in that place, but actually getting them to work like that is really hard without making them also really good room coverers.
Hence why I suggested an actual wall, because ultimately that's what they are supposed to be as far as I can tell.
I think the idea was that if you lost power, the sentries could still help defend despite it. (edit: I cannot remember, were sentires made offensive (anti-structure with poor tracking) before or after the sentry battery change? I know part of the point was you could place a battery in the hive room, put 3 sentries, and win. This was undone few builds later.)
However I far prefer the old system of sentries anywhere, and powerpacks working on anything. Just put a hard limit on powerpacks, and keep 3 sentries per room max. Powerpacks were great for the chance of ninja-phasegates, and running IPs without power.
Or, you know, we could just write the power system off as a bad idea and remove power requirements from all marine buildings...
By the time electrify would appear, marines have lost anyway. This is not an issue.
Furthermore, if all the marines are harassing the aliens, who is building extractors? Who is protecting extractors? Who is securing your second tech point? Marines have so much to do in the early game that they can't afford to go rushing off to the alien side of the map since they die in two bites and will only end up setting themselves back anyway.
Furthermore, if all the marines are harassing the aliens, who is building extractors? Who is protecting extractors? Who is securing your second tech point? Marines have so much to do in the early game that they can't afford to go rushing off to the alien side of the map since they die in two bites and will only end up setting themselves back anyway.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well in comp games that are only 6v6 I see marines harassing constantly. It really only takes 1 or 2 people to build and the rest can harass or go where is needed. I've been playing mostly in 12v12 or 10v10 lately in pubs and this is what I see. When marines win it's because only about 3 or 4 people are actually building and defending and the rest are pressuring the hive or killing rt's.
The alien team generally won't attack you when you're killing their rt's because they need their harvesters more than they need to harass you especially early game. Sometimes the aliens will group up and attack one area but at most this generally results in the loss of one tech point and leaves their hive open. I never said all the marines should go harass just that some need to.
Marines can not spare the res to build turrets early on, even if they were good.
How about making armslab (and perhaps armor1) a bit less expensive. Marines will have it earlier. You only need to upgrade & build it once (unless destroyed) so it wont be a significant boost later on in game.
We could also perhaps introduce a small bonus to, lets say armor or damage, if marines stay in groups. (unstackable etc) so it wont be to strong later on. Something to promote grouped play.
It wont keep the RTs up, but it will keep your marines more alive.. which indirectly helps them to push and keep aliens of your RTs.
The alien team generally won't attack you when you're killing their rt's because they need their harvesters more than they need to harass you especially early game. Sometimes the aliens will group up and attack one area but at most this generally results in the loss of one tech point and leaves their hive open. I never said all the marines should go harass just that some need to.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is exactly right, and this is why it is a l2p issue for a lot of marine teams. Marines think they can just sit on a couple RTs, lockdown a tech point, turret up and win. WRONG.
Marine teams win, when they pressure alien res/hive. If you are constantly hitting their res, they will stop attacking your res, that's the key to the game. Most marine teams don't understand this concept.
ANECDOTE coming you are warned:
Playing Veil, players are constantly terrified that instead of putting a PG in sub hive, and dbl, and y-junction, i simply place a PG in System waypointing. I try to explain that a PG here can help us defend all the RTs on the left side of the map, better than one in sub can, and let's us defend the Rts in dbl, and we can pressure the cargo hive. They are baffled and call me noobie. I try and explain it, but they don't buy it. You know what else they don't buy? the Mines i researched first so as to protect our PG interests across the map. I usually have to get out as the commander and place mines to cover our Pgs, because my team thinks its a waste of res and just want shotguns.
I try and explain that when weapons 1 comes online, i'll make sure there are sgs, until then they aren't super useful, and there are better upgrades to get. then i get called noob for not turreting base.
THATS WHY MARINES LOSE EVERYGAME.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The alien team generally won't attack you when you're killing their rt's because they need their harvesters more than they need to harass you especially early game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->The problem is that is if the marines are killing harvesters then the alien team is generally unskilled and likely to lose anyway. If the alien team allows the marines to roam the map then they've lost already. That's a skill imbalance, not a game imbalance.
In teams of equal skill with people who understand basic game mechanics, that will never happen. As the months go by, and the bulk of the player base either gets skilled or leaves from boredom, the alien team will never allow a marine team the ability to roam the map. It just won't happen. Plus if you are a marine on the far side of the map, once you die you won't be getting back there since you have no phase gates yet. Meanwhile all your extractors are going down while you sit in the spawn queue. Unless you out-skill the alien team, rushing them is a losing scenario.
To balance out the game, I think something even as simple as "alien harvesters now take 15 more seconds to build" would be sufficient. Perhaps nerf lerk+carapace a tiny bit. That's all.
Skulks have almost zero liabilities. Each marine death sends aftershocks through the marine team, a skulk death is nothing. This is a problem because even though marines are free, they have to build, they have to protect nodes, they have to walk from one end to the other of these giant maps, and if the aliens simply harass RTs they WILL WIN, because they have the benefit of auto building res nodes. You can't kill enough harvesters fast enough to compete as marine. Aliens can also "scrape by" on 3-4 nodes, where as I don't feel comfortable as a marine comm until I am holding 5.
Does anyone know whether marines or aliens require more res to reach effective late game tech?
Aliens win when they are on 4 nodes. They do well when they are on 3. They can "scrape by" on 2 assuming they hold a tech point.
Asymmetrical balance.