The problems are at the very beginning. skulks vs marine. the new skulk is so strong now that marines have really big problems to get even a second tech point. i saw it in lot of public games. since 250 skulk vs marine is not a fair combat anymore.
The early game is the best and most balanced part of the game as of now.
Where do you see this? I see quite more games losing in early game in 250/251 than 249. The new skulk messed the early game up. There are a lot more games where marines can control only 1 or 2 extractor in the first 5 or 6 minutes. in 249 you had more chances against the slower normal skulks. but now if you play against a good alien team they kill you under 1 sec. a mark and two bites with super fast jump and its over
Sigh.
This is all anecdotal, based on nothing. Tell me, when you play as a skulk, do you simply go around with "a mark and two bites with super fast jump" and own the entire marine team?
The problems are at the very beginning. skulks vs marine. the new skulk is so strong now that marines have really big problems to get even a second tech point. i saw it in lot of public games. since 250 skulk vs marine is not a fair combat anymore.
The early game is the best and most balanced part of the game as of now.
Where do you see this? I see quite more games losing in early game in 250/251 than 249. The new skulk messed the early game up. There are a lot more games where marines can control only 1 or 2 extractor in the first 5 or 6 minutes. in 249 you had more chances against the slower normal skulks. but now if you play against a good alien team they kill you under 1 sec. a mark and two bites with super fast jump and its over
Sigh.
This is all anecdotal, based on nothing. Tell me, when you play as a skulk, do you simply go around with "a mark and two bites with super fast jump" and own the entire marine team?
The problems are at the very beginning. skulks vs marine. the new skulk is so strong now that marines have really big problems to get even a second tech point. i saw it in lot of public games. since 250 skulk vs marine is not a fair combat anymore.
The early game is the best and most balanced part of the game as of now.
Where do you see this? I see quite more games losing in early game in 250/251 than 249. The new skulk messed the early game up. There are a lot more games where marines can control only 1 or 2 extractor in the first 5 or 6 minutes. in 249 you had more chances against the slower normal skulks. but now if you play against a good alien team they kill you under 1 sec. a mark and two bites with super fast jump and its over
Sigh.
This is all anecdotal, based on nothing. Tell me, when you play as a skulk, do you simply go around with "a mark and two bites with super fast jump" and own the entire marine team?
of course. at least you can kill one marine. because you kill him in 0.5-1 secs with a mark. and thanks to sewlek every bite gives 75 damage. so there is no way you can fail by hitting him 2 times. the problem is not the marking or the bite. it is the new skulk movement and damage. this is so powerful that marines need very good aim AND teamwork to win the early game. in public i see too much alien wins even BEFORE the fades are up. i really wonder why you guys can not see this. even ns2 stats demonstrates it
From my own experience in publics, it's very clear aliens are winning the early game more. I'm a pretty bad player, but sometimes I'll happen into a server where I can topfrag as marines. It seems like as aliens, where I only need to kill 1-2 marines 1-2 times to take down an rt with one skulk actual on the rt, as Marines you need to kill 1-2 skulks 3-4 times with reloads and ammo drops from your commander to take down an extractor. And if you die, it's like you made no ground at all. The skulk can easily hop to your rt like nothing happened. Not to mention you're expected to build for your team as well.
In strategy games, the less aggressive team will always lose. And right now, it's very hard for early marines to go aggressive.
If skulks were straight up easier to kill than marines, then it might be fair. But then it would just be unfun to play as a a skulk.
Which is why we need RFK to punish overly aggressive play... Suicide skulk is ok but it is unfair that you can make multiple marines waste time on killing you when it doesn't give them anything in return.
So just summing up some reasons I think that NS2 is less balanced than NS1:
For aliens - the biggest change from NS1 to 2 was the introduction of the TRes commander taking away the PRes sinks required by gorges to delay lifeform explosions. Since alien com is here to stay, a new and necessary Pres sink must be introduced to slow or prevent lifeform explosion.
Likewise, the biggest change to marines was the introduction of Pres, which takes away expenditures of the commander.
Now fixing Fadeballs is great, but I feel that once we fix the alien lifeform explosion issues, the balance will then see-saw to the marine side and the marine commander is going to be free to go hog wild with ARC+MAC trains and phase gate map control while the aliens won’t be able to contend due to their weakened state. Therefore, at the very least, an additional marine commander Tres sink is needed to buff his players combat ability like in the old days of commander weapons drops.
So with that in mind, I have the following suggestions as an alternate solution to Fade/ Shotty/ ARC Balls:
For aliens:
This is an idea to introduce PRes expenditures to the alien side, while trying not to introduce any new “Lore.” For aliens we will rip the concept of maturity from what already exists on structures, and the concept of paying for upgrades from what already exists as introduced in b250.
-Life forms start out in an “immature” state with 15% (tweakable) less health and damage (applies to all lifeforms).
-The life form will naturally mature over time to it’s present form. For theory crafting lets just say bigger lifeforms take longer to mature, the skulk can mature in 30 seconds, Gorge 45 sec, Lerk 1 min, Fade 2 min, Onos in 3 min.
-The player has an option to pay his Pres (20% of lifeform cost (and 2 res for skulk) – all tweakable) to “mature” the lifeform up right away - up to their current build version.
Effect – Players now have a meaningful res sink to delay fadeballs. They can choose to just wing it and mature naturally, but marines will have an easier time of picking them off, and they will have to play slower if they choose this route. In effect the gameplay would be mostly unchanged, but timings will now be much more random and harder to coordinate popping fadeballs all at once. If you think about it, this is sort of an alternate to RFK. Worse players will die more often, meaning they will probably spend more res maturing their lifeform than better players who would die less often.
For marines:
This idea is to introduce a meaningful TRes expenditure for the commander which directly effects the combat effectiveness of his players. It’s a bit of a change, but not so major that everyone would be squealing about it I think.
-Basically, the commander must now drop armor upgrades for his marines. He will still need to research Armor 1 – 3, but now he has to drop the armor for the marines.
-Marines start with base armor until the commander drops them the upgraded suit. Upgraded armor suits can only be dropped from around the Arms Lab.
-I don’t like the idea of doing this for weapons too since marines directly buy those already.
Question: “but why can’t the marines just directly buy the armor themselves??”
Answer: “Nanites”
Effect – Once Fadeball is fixed, I just think we are going to have the same problem expect from the marines now forming Shotty Balls or worse yet HMG balls, all while the commander blindly spams ARC + MAC trains that the aliens won’t be able to kill since the marine players will also have more map control thanks to less fades and more phase gates. So by introducing Tres sinks, and inherent weakness to the stock marine players, the commander will have to also slow down that map control. Marines will once again be a burden on the commander!! Yay! And I would assume not everyone will get armor thanks to more limited Tres, so they must take greater risks while pushing, balancing things out a bit.
Overall, nothing drastically changes from how it is today, everything mostly fits into the current lore, and the games should hopefully become a bit more dynamic with greater risk vs reward – “Lets just push to get that RT even though half of us are immature skulks. It will pay off in a few minutes if we succeed.”
The issue with this Chu is this is more of a big patch that will lead to a lot of other issues. Not to mention how complicated the game will become for newer players. The core mechanics of the game need to be able to work without to many rules limiting the freedom they give. I partly agree with how you approach the issue but I think a more accessible one and more gameplay driven would be better.
We are already Seeing Sewlek working on getting the alien commander stay in hive and give marines tools to work with to do early pressure. Even minor adjustment like that can have huge affect on the alien gameplay and will probably force the fade count from 4 to 3. That will almost drop the fadeball power by half since every fade added to the ball makes it much much stronger.
The other small change I expect to see is small decrease in fade mobility, that will give marines more time to react before the fadeball hits.
After these fixes are in place there is a high chance that marine turtling power will become a issue so we might expect some marine adjustments at the same time to counteract with these changes.
I do agree that my suggestion could be a big patch, mainly because there needs to be a way to visually communicate to everyone that a unit is immature vs mature (maybe as simple as a pallet change or a size change?), and also a new entity created for armor suits (probably level 1-3 entities even), and probably a way to communicate armor type on marines. But I don’t think all of that needs added for a beta test just to see if it would work.
A side note is I seem to recall Cory saying at one point they wanted to add new skins to communicate upgrades anyway, so maybe after this new content patch it becomes a moot point (seeing as we really don’t know everything that is coming).
As for making it inaccessible to newbs, I don't think it would be so bad, and could be made very intuitive if implemented correctly. For aliens it's a simple addition to the Evolve menu to purchase "Mature Lifeform", and a new HUD counter in the lower right that shows -Time to Maturity-.
For marines it’s less of a problem I think because the onus is on the commander to make sure his marine newbs grab their armor before they head out to lemming (or maybe he chooses not to waste the res on them even). Add a tool tip to the marines HUD to show an armor nearby waypoint. My assumption is this would be a far less confusing mechanic than weld for armor is.
The % health reduction, maturity rates, and maturity upgrade costs would need tweaked for balance, but you can always just start with some basic numbers and see how things shake out from there. Heck, that might make future balance tweaking easier even?
Now perhaps simply an earlier pressure weapon for marines could work (as I also suggested quite a few pages back now), but the last thing Sewlek mentioned in that regards made it sound to me like the idea was a new LATE game weapon akin to the HMG. I don’t see how a new late game weapon can help prevent fadeball. It can help mitigate it, but it will do nothing to prevent it. And once the fadeball is in play, it’s sort of gg anyway because good luck holding any res outside of phasegate range at that point – hello marine turtle.
A lower of fade mobility would be nice though I agree. Preferably not nerf his combat mobility too much, but definitely to his map mobility.
Summary: Marines dominate early game, kill all but one alien harvester, kill 2 (or even 3, dont remember exaclty) fades. Marine are starved for PRES all the time while aliens sit on a comfortable 150 tres at the end and are able to almost win due to a baserush + 3 hive drops. Does this seem balanced to you? Do Marines really need more TRES sinks??? I dont think so.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited August 2013
I've come to the anecdotal conclusion that Prototype lab and Weapons 3 existing on only 1 CC contributes magnitudes more to turtling than it does to comebacks.
Whats worse is, even the small amount of successful comebacks that come out of it.. nobody actually enjoys. Its just an exo train taking 15 minutes to clean up the map, generally leading to aliens conceding soon after it begins.
I know marines dont need a nerf.. but i really don't think its a nerf as much as it is severely lessening a universally and highly undesired scenario.
I just keep thinking how much more often turtles occur now, since this change... and yes aliens need better breaching tools.. but that only will not solve it, imo.
I've come to the anecdotal conclusion that Prototype lab and Weapons 3 existing on only 1 CC contributes magnitudes more to turtling than it does to comebacks.
Funny thing is how these comebacks can only happen if the aliens are mentally handicapped. The 1-CC comeback is only possible if the entire alien team doesn't understand the concept behind basetrading. The entire premise behind the 1-CC comeback is for your opponent to be so inept at the most basic of RTS tactics...which sadly is more common than I would like to believe.
In the meantime, the alien team can do nothing but bend over when stuck at 1-Hive. BALANCE!
Lower fade damage to structures from 50 to 40. Primarily a change for competitive with little effect on public play, and may help to give aliens a desire to not have 4-5 fades.
Adjust fade health to scale better with biomass. Biomass 1 fade hp should be lowered, and it should scale to the current max HP of biomass 12. Makes them slightly more fragile at the fadeplosion point, but if the aliens manage to keep them alive, they get a little stronger to scale with marine w2/a2 w3/a3 upgrades.
Maybe some alien abilities should adjust with biomass as well. We can start small and have umbra be say, 20% block at 1 biomass, up to 33% at 6 biomass. Also scale babbler HP. This might fix the current, semi-prevalent problem of lerkumbra+gorgebabbler+gorgeheals+skulkpack being too overpowered in the early game.
Increase Onos armor/health a little. Not much. Or give them directional armor (shooting front = less damage).
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I had a idea which may also prevent a fadeplosion.
Ok so the kham upgrades a hive type fine. Lets say crag. And then the kham places shells x3.. and if all goes well.. kham wont replace them ever. Meaning kham interaction, and thus need, to do shells/veil/spur themselves is minimal.
Let the kham pick a hive upgrade type and let the gorge, instead of the kham, specificly drop shell/veil/spur while keeping crag/shift/shade for the kham still.
This forces more on the team to gorge up and use res, preventing fadeplosion.
The kham can still drop eggs, but if they have enought res for fade eggs & 2 hives for the option @ 5mins, then marines.. you're doing it wrong.
I've come to the anecdotal conclusion that Prototype lab and Weapons 3 existing on only 1 CC contributes magnitudes more to turtling than it does to comebacks.
Whats worse is, even the small amount of successful comebacks that come out of it.. nobody actually enjoys. Its just an exo train taking 15 minutes to clean up the map, generally leading to aliens conceding soon after it begins.
I know marines dont need a nerf.. but i really don't think its a nerf as much as it is severely lessening a universally and highly undesired scenario.
I just keep thinking how much more often turtles occur now, since this change... and yes aliens need better breaching tools.. but that only will not solve it, imo.
I'm not taking part in the discussion of whether or not certain tech should be only available on 2 CCs.
But if you assume that moving tech from 1 CC to 2 CCs will only affect turtles, or affect everything else very little, then you're dead wrong.
The distinction between having to build and hold a CC on a tech point and only needing the room for map control purposes is huge. This affects PG placements, skulk harassment and marine tres, all of these outside the 'undesired scenario' of a late-game turtle.
Again, I'm not saying whether it'd be better or not. I'm just saying it's got a huge impact.
There are means to fix turtling without tampering with the main gameplay. Don't fix a broken gearbox by buying a new car.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Well its a good thing I'm not assuming that, then!
I have a hard time not seeing this as the largest contributor to the most frequent pub outcome when marines don't lose before the 15 minute mark. What practical major benefit is it providing that couldn't be accomplished in another way? I don't see many rushing for exos and weapons 3 before the team reaches the nearest tech point anyways.. So its not timing? Is it the tres cost for another chair? That could be balanced out easily elsewhere in research costs etc
Also, i dont view the change as the whole car.. More like the unreliable 3rd party part that you thought would bring something to the table and now regret it, despite everything working without it for half a year. (i recall pre 250, some users in here even claimed turtles were a thing of the past..)
I have to agree with ironhorse... Marines being able to turtle is in my opinion due to the 1 cc exos. And a3/w3 is a another but I would rather just move exos to a 2 cc than limit ups
Yeah. And bind GL (and maybe Flamers too) also on 2 CCs.
Jetpacks are fine on 1 CC. They don't contribute to turtles and allow (at least theoretically) for comebacks.
The 15 Tres for that second CC can be divided to the tech that is now bound to it. For example decreasing the cost for Exo-Research by 5 each and also the cost of the advanced weaponry by 5.
I see the same regular outcomes on pub servers as @IronHorse has described. Most games are either stomps or turtles. The ominous "chance for comeback" is a fairytale. There was never one for the aliens and for marines it isn't as exciting as we would want it to be. I would rather trade those comeback chance for the decreased appearance of turtles we had before 250.
You say you don't assume it, but your entire post I quoted talks about nothing else than turtles.
Like I said, turtles can be fixed with solutions that don't affect normal gameplay. Comebacks from 1 CC are rare, boring and not deserved, so just give aliens massive turtle breaking capabilities researchable when they have 3-4 hives (all but one tech point). A scenario like that only happens when normal gameplay is already over and the aliens have won. Requiring a 2nd CC affects gameplay on every level, not just the turtling scenario. If you want to advocate for certain tech being moved to the 2nd CC, give other reasons than turtling.
you can't put the game-ending tech on 3rd hive without actually fixing the game balance
you can't put the game ending tech on 4th hive unless all maps have 5 tech points
requiring 2 CC works on all maps, even if it's less elegant
you can't put the game-ending tech on 3rd hive without actually fixing the game balance
you can't put the game ending tech on 4th hive unless all maps have 5 tech points
But you can put it on Biomass 10-12. Simply give each Hive the ability to research yet another Biomass upgrade for 40 res after the one for 30, so each Hive can provide up to 4 Biomass.
Other positive side effects:
- Aliens actually have a choice between dropping a third Hive to get their upgrades cheaper or sticking to the already existing 2 Hives and pay more res for that "safe" research. Makes the whole Biomass system less of a farce, since it currently doesn't give you any more freedom than the pre-Biomass Hive requirements.
- Opens up Leap on 1 Hive, which in return increases the fighting chances of aliens in that situation. Plus a little more HP bonus from the additional Biomass.
Reasons to still get more Hives:
- Opens up the other tech paths.
- Provides map control.
- Spreading out your Biomass across multiple Hives makes losing a Hive less severe.
- If research was moved from chambers back to the Hive, you could have Biomass and evolutions competing for the "research slot" with each other, so the order in which you research stuff is actually important. And the more Hives you have, the more you can research at the same time.
If I knew my way around in Lua, I'd probably have started my own branch of the mod with experimental changes by now to see how different scenarios of the proposed changes here played out.
An excellent idea. The only balance problem would be 3rd hive abilities being available on 2 hives, but as everyone knows, this is not an issue, as the abilities are rather lackluster. Maybe place xenocide at the 9th biomass spot, as that is the only 3rd hive ability that might prove problematic on 2 hives. Leap on 1 hive wouldn't be too much of an issue, especially if the 4th biomass would cost 40-50res, as it would be an extremely expensive investment.
you can't put the game-ending tech on 3rd hive without actually fixing the game balance
you can't put the game ending tech on 4th hive unless all maps have 5 tech points
requiring 2 CC works on all maps, even if it's less elegant
Like I said, the requirement wouldn't be 3 or 4 hives, it would be "all tech points except one". But @CrushaK 's solution is much more elegant.
you can't put the game-ending tech on 3rd hive without actually fixing the game balance
you can't put the game ending tech on 4th hive unless all maps have 5 tech points
But you can put it on Biomass 10-12. Simply give each Hive the ability to research yet another Biomass upgrade for 40 res after the one for 30, so each Hive can provide up to 4 Biomass.
Other positive side effects:
- Aliens actually have a choice between dropping a third Hive to get their upgrades cheaper or sticking to the already existing 2 Hives and pay more res for that "safe" research. Makes the whole Biomass system less of a farce, since it currently doesn't give you any more freedom than the pre-Biomass Hive requirements.
- Opens up Leap on 1 Hive, which in return increases the fighting chances of aliens in that situation. Plus a little more HP bonus from the additional Biomass.
Reasons to still get more Hives:
- Opens up the other tech paths.
- Provides map control.
- Spreading out your Biomass across multiple Hives makes losing a Hive less severe.
- If research was moved from chambers back to the Hive, you could have Biomass and evolutions competing for the "research slot" with each other, so the order in which you research stuff is actually important. And the more Hives you have, the more you can research at the same time.
If I knew my way around in Lua, I'd probably have started my own branch of the mod with experimental changes by now to see how different scenarios of the proposed changes here played out.
but the game doesn't have enough balance for 3rd hive game-ending abilities
in a non-comp game aliens often get and hold 3 hives for a long time before marines can push out with exos
in 6v6 games with good players, 3 mature hives is almost always followed by victory, but that isn't the case in pubs
i don't have a problem with the idea, but marines need to be equipped to actually kill a hive
they don't have the power to do so because the game isn't balanced for common play
so just give aliens massive turtle breaking capabilities
This isn't enough.. I can't say more than that, so you'll just have to take me at my word that the problem will still exist, and that I'm not making this up. ;-)
I think the reason why has more to do with higher player counts concentrating their fire /spamming into a bottle neck with maximum upgrades. Believe it or not this isn't even mitigated by near cheat level "turtle breaking capabilities"
I still agree it's needed.. Just not that it's the only thing needed.
If you want to advocate for certain tech being moved to the 2nd CC, give other reasons than turtling.
HA!
Somebody hasn't been reading my posts since alpha! ;-)
I've literally gone blue in the face with pages of arguments on why, dozens of times .. Even in this very thread if you search.
Is it just that you feel such a requirement would negatively impact marines, even if it was financially balanced out? Just the burden of holding said ground?
Marines needing to hold 2CC actually forced marines to play turtling style. Allowing marines to get advance tech on 1 cc has given marines much more freedom for aggressive play.
The current issue with turtles is simply they are to effective (nano shields, macs, really powerful turrets) and marines can't really play aggressivly during the mid game because of a hard early game and fade balls mid game.
Marines are also forced to play careful throughout the game because a single mistake can lead to a loss.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited August 2013
The 3rd hive abilities are mostly useless for breaking turtles, public or otherwise. 3rd hive 40 minute marine come back wins aren't particularly fun for anyone. Even the marines who would rarely even get any payoff for their 30 minutes of waiting around not doing much before the concede comes down.
Much like multiple dual miniguns signalling the aliens end, getting those 3rd hive biomass abilities should be geared torwards making that final push possible.
Quick and dirty thoughts on T3 alien abilities when ending a marine turtle.
Buff xeno structure damage and damage to players
Make T1 lerk ability ranged spores, stronger T3 spike for higher dps and precision. Cropbuster sporing gets low level lerks killed every time. Flamer probably burning in turtle situation also.
Junk vortex. Usually just gives marines or exo's breathing room to reload and reposition. Doesn't effect arms lab.
Increase onos speed and general maneuverability. Onos primal scream?
Is it just that you feel such a requirement would negatively impact marines, even if it was financially balanced out? Just the burden of holding said ground?
Like I said, I'm not taking part in the discussion, since I play mostly comp where turtles are not a problem. I don't really care.
This isn't enough.. I can't say more than that, so you'll just have to take me at my word that the problem will still exist, and that I'm not making this up. ;-)
I think the reason why has more to do with higher player counts concentrating their fire /spamming into a bottle neck with maximum upgrades. Believe it or not this isn't even mitigated by near cheat level "turtle breaking capabilities"
Of course it can be solved via new or buffed abilities. Why couldn't it?
HA!
Somebody hasn't been reading my posts since alpha! ;-)
I've literally gone blue in the face with pages of arguments on why, dozens of times .. Even in this very thread if you search.
Might be. Preventing turtles is still not a strong reason.
Vortex should affect aliens for a powerful T3 endgame... Vortex the onos before he runs in so he can close the distance to the Exo... Vortex the hive to keep the duel Exo off it for a few seconds... As long as you can't vortex yourself it would add a new layer...
4th Hive should allow 4th shell/viel/spur to further upgrade aliens and end turtles...
Primal scream for lerks...
Level 12 biomass upgrade cost 100tres... Xenocide for all life forms with damage and radius proportional to life form size... 4 onos Xeon rush BOOM base levelled!
Am I the only one who currently likes vortex in pubs? With its current range, you can vortex the exo, go kill the welder and get out to heal before going back after the exo... It is also useful for cancelling beacons and temp-disabling gates.
but the game doesn't have enough balance for 3rd hive game-ending abilities
in a non-comp game aliens often get and hold 3 hives for a long time before marines can push out with exos
in 6v6 games with good players, 3 mature hives is almost always followed by victory, but that isn't the case in pubs
i don't have a problem with the idea, but marines need to be equipped to actually kill a hive
they don't have the power to do so because the game isn't balanced for common play
If Evolution research is moved back to the Hives, this will effectively slow down alien tech progression and give marines a little more time to handle it. Besides that it would be 120 additional tres to get Biomass 12 on 3 Hives.
I dare to say that if marines are unable to stop aliens with slower tech progression (and a bigger drawback than marines face when losing a base) from accumulating that many resources and getting three Hives up in the first place, they deserve to feel the power of endgame abilities.
Comments
Sigh.
This is all anecdotal, based on nothing. Tell me, when you play as a skulk, do you simply go around with "a mark and two bites with super fast jump" and own the entire marine team?
public play in America
try it sometime
of course. at least you can kill one marine. because you kill him in 0.5-1 secs with a mark. and thanks to sewlek every bite gives 75 damage. so there is no way you can fail by hitting him 2 times. the problem is not the marking or the bite. it is the new skulk movement and damage. this is so powerful that marines need very good aim AND teamwork to win the early game. in public i see too much alien wins even BEFORE the fades are up. i really wonder why you guys can not see this. even ns2 stats demonstrates it
In strategy games, the less aggressive team will always lose. And right now, it's very hard for early marines to go aggressive.
If skulks were straight up easier to kill than marines, then it might be fair. But then it would just be unfun to play as a a skulk.
For aliens - the biggest change from NS1 to 2 was the introduction of the TRes commander taking away the PRes sinks required by gorges to delay lifeform explosions. Since alien com is here to stay, a new and necessary Pres sink must be introduced to slow or prevent lifeform explosion.
Likewise, the biggest change to marines was the introduction of Pres, which takes away expenditures of the commander.
Now fixing Fadeballs is great, but I feel that once we fix the alien lifeform explosion issues, the balance will then see-saw to the marine side and the marine commander is going to be free to go hog wild with ARC+MAC trains and phase gate map control while the aliens won’t be able to contend due to their weakened state. Therefore, at the very least, an additional marine commander Tres sink is needed to buff his players combat ability like in the old days of commander weapons drops.
So with that in mind, I have the following suggestions as an alternate solution to Fade/ Shotty/ ARC Balls:
For aliens:
This is an idea to introduce PRes expenditures to the alien side, while trying not to introduce any new “Lore.” For aliens we will rip the concept of maturity from what already exists on structures, and the concept of paying for upgrades from what already exists as introduced in b250.
-Life forms start out in an “immature” state with 15% (tweakable) less health and damage (applies to all lifeforms).
-The life form will naturally mature over time to it’s present form. For theory crafting lets just say bigger lifeforms take longer to mature, the skulk can mature in 30 seconds, Gorge 45 sec, Lerk 1 min, Fade 2 min, Onos in 3 min.
-The player has an option to pay his Pres (20% of lifeform cost (and 2 res for skulk) – all tweakable) to “mature” the lifeform up right away - up to their current build version.
Effect – Players now have a meaningful res sink to delay fadeballs. They can choose to just wing it and mature naturally, but marines will have an easier time of picking them off, and they will have to play slower if they choose this route. In effect the gameplay would be mostly unchanged, but timings will now be much more random and harder to coordinate popping fadeballs all at once. If you think about it, this is sort of an alternate to RFK. Worse players will die more often, meaning they will probably spend more res maturing their lifeform than better players who would die less often.
For marines:
This idea is to introduce a meaningful TRes expenditure for the commander which directly effects the combat effectiveness of his players. It’s a bit of a change, but not so major that everyone would be squealing about it I think.
-Basically, the commander must now drop armor upgrades for his marines. He will still need to research Armor 1 – 3, but now he has to drop the armor for the marines.
-Marines start with base armor until the commander drops them the upgraded suit. Upgraded armor suits can only be dropped from around the Arms Lab.
-I don’t like the idea of doing this for weapons too since marines directly buy those already.
Question: “but why can’t the marines just directly buy the armor themselves??”
Answer: “Nanites”
Effect – Once Fadeball is fixed, I just think we are going to have the same problem expect from the marines now forming Shotty Balls or worse yet HMG balls, all while the commander blindly spams ARC + MAC trains that the aliens won’t be able to kill since the marine players will also have more map control thanks to less fades and more phase gates. So by introducing Tres sinks, and inherent weakness to the stock marine players, the commander will have to also slow down that map control. Marines will once again be a burden on the commander!! Yay! And I would assume not everyone will get armor thanks to more limited Tres, so they must take greater risks while pushing, balancing things out a bit.
Overall, nothing drastically changes from how it is today, everything mostly fits into the current lore, and the games should hopefully become a bit more dynamic with greater risk vs reward – “Lets just push to get that RT even though half of us are immature skulks. It will pay off in a few minutes if we succeed.”
We are already Seeing Sewlek working on getting the alien commander stay in hive and give marines tools to work with to do early pressure. Even minor adjustment like that can have huge affect on the alien gameplay and will probably force the fade count from 4 to 3. That will almost drop the fadeball power by half since every fade added to the ball makes it much much stronger.
The other small change I expect to see is small decrease in fade mobility, that will give marines more time to react before the fadeball hits.
After these fixes are in place there is a high chance that marine turtling power will become a issue so we might expect some marine adjustments at the same time to counteract with these changes.
A side note is I seem to recall Cory saying at one point they wanted to add new skins to communicate upgrades anyway, so maybe after this new content patch it becomes a moot point (seeing as we really don’t know everything that is coming).
As for making it inaccessible to newbs, I don't think it would be so bad, and could be made very intuitive if implemented correctly. For aliens it's a simple addition to the Evolve menu to purchase "Mature Lifeform", and a new HUD counter in the lower right that shows -Time to Maturity-.
For marines it’s less of a problem I think because the onus is on the commander to make sure his marine newbs grab their armor before they head out to lemming (or maybe he chooses not to waste the res on them even). Add a tool tip to the marines HUD to show an armor nearby waypoint. My assumption is this would be a far less confusing mechanic than weld for armor is.
The % health reduction, maturity rates, and maturity upgrade costs would need tweaked for balance, but you can always just start with some basic numbers and see how things shake out from there. Heck, that might make future balance tweaking easier even?
Now perhaps simply an earlier pressure weapon for marines could work (as I also suggested quite a few pages back now), but the last thing Sewlek mentioned in that regards made it sound to me like the idea was a new LATE game weapon akin to the HMG. I don’t see how a new late game weapon can help prevent fadeball. It can help mitigate it, but it will do nothing to prevent it. And once the fadeball is in play, it’s sort of gg anyway because good luck holding any res outside of phasegate range at that point – hello marine turtle.
A lower of fade mobility would be nice though I agree. Preferably not nerf his combat mobility too much, but definitely to his map mobility.
Summary: Marines dominate early game, kill all but one alien harvester, kill 2 (or even 3, dont remember exaclty) fades. Marine are starved for PRES all the time while aliens sit on a comfortable 150 tres at the end and are able to almost win due to a baserush + 3 hive drops. Does this seem balanced to you? Do Marines really need more TRES sinks??? I dont think so.
Whats worse is, even the small amount of successful comebacks that come out of it.. nobody actually enjoys. Its just an exo train taking 15 minutes to clean up the map, generally leading to aliens conceding soon after it begins.
I know marines dont need a nerf.. but i really don't think its a nerf as much as it is severely lessening a universally and highly undesired scenario.
I just keep thinking how much more often turtles occur now, since this change... and yes aliens need better breaching tools.. but that only will not solve it, imo.
In the meantime, the alien team can do nothing but bend over when stuck at 1-Hive. BALANCE!
Adjust fade health to scale better with biomass. Biomass 1 fade hp should be lowered, and it should scale to the current max HP of biomass 12. Makes them slightly more fragile at the fadeplosion point, but if the aliens manage to keep them alive, they get a little stronger to scale with marine w2/a2 w3/a3 upgrades.
Maybe some alien abilities should adjust with biomass as well. We can start small and have umbra be say, 20% block at 1 biomass, up to 33% at 6 biomass. Also scale babbler HP. This might fix the current, semi-prevalent problem of lerkumbra+gorgebabbler+gorgeheals+skulkpack being too overpowered in the early game.
Increase Onos armor/health a little. Not much. Or give them directional armor (shooting front = less damage).
Ok so the kham upgrades a hive type fine. Lets say crag. And then the kham places shells x3.. and if all goes well.. kham wont replace them ever. Meaning kham interaction, and thus need, to do shells/veil/spur themselves is minimal.
Let the kham pick a hive upgrade type and let the gorge, instead of the kham, specificly drop shell/veil/spur while keeping crag/shift/shade for the kham still.
This forces more on the team to gorge up and use res, preventing fadeplosion.
The kham can still drop eggs, but if they have enought res for fade eggs & 2 hives for the option @ 5mins, then marines.. you're doing it wrong.
I'm not taking part in the discussion of whether or not certain tech should be only available on 2 CCs.
But if you assume that moving tech from 1 CC to 2 CCs will only affect turtles, or affect everything else very little, then you're dead wrong.
The distinction between having to build and hold a CC on a tech point and only needing the room for map control purposes is huge. This affects PG placements, skulk harassment and marine tres, all of these outside the 'undesired scenario' of a late-game turtle.
Again, I'm not saying whether it'd be better or not. I'm just saying it's got a huge impact.
There are means to fix turtling without tampering with the main gameplay. Don't fix a broken gearbox by buying a new car.
I have a hard time not seeing this as the largest contributor to the most frequent pub outcome when marines don't lose before the 15 minute mark. What practical major benefit is it providing that couldn't be accomplished in another way? I don't see many rushing for exos and weapons 3 before the team reaches the nearest tech point anyways.. So its not timing? Is it the tres cost for another chair? That could be balanced out easily elsewhere in research costs etc
Also, i dont view the change as the whole car.. More like the unreliable 3rd party part that you thought would bring something to the table and now regret it, despite everything working without it for half a year. (i recall pre 250, some users in here even claimed turtles were a thing of the past..)
Jetpacks are fine on 1 CC. They don't contribute to turtles and allow (at least theoretically) for comebacks.
The 15 Tres for that second CC can be divided to the tech that is now bound to it. For example decreasing the cost for Exo-Research by 5 each and also the cost of the advanced weaponry by 5.
I see the same regular outcomes on pub servers as @IronHorse has described. Most games are either stomps or turtles. The ominous "chance for comeback" is a fairytale. There was never one for the aliens and for marines it isn't as exciting as we would want it to be. I would rather trade those comeback chance for the decreased appearance of turtles we had before 250.
You say you don't assume it, but your entire post I quoted talks about nothing else than turtles.
Like I said, turtles can be fixed with solutions that don't affect normal gameplay. Comebacks from 1 CC are rare, boring and not deserved, so just give aliens massive turtle breaking capabilities researchable when they have 3-4 hives (all but one tech point). A scenario like that only happens when normal gameplay is already over and the aliens have won. Requiring a 2nd CC affects gameplay on every level, not just the turtling scenario. If you want to advocate for certain tech being moved to the 2nd CC, give other reasons than turtling.
you can't put the game ending tech on 4th hive unless all maps have 5 tech points
requiring 2 CC works on all maps, even if it's less elegant
But you can put it on Biomass 10-12. Simply give each Hive the ability to research yet another Biomass upgrade for 40 res after the one for 30, so each Hive can provide up to 4 Biomass.
Other positive side effects:
- Aliens actually have a choice between dropping a third Hive to get their upgrades cheaper or sticking to the already existing 2 Hives and pay more res for that "safe" research. Makes the whole Biomass system less of a farce, since it currently doesn't give you any more freedom than the pre-Biomass Hive requirements.
- Opens up Leap on 1 Hive, which in return increases the fighting chances of aliens in that situation. Plus a little more HP bonus from the additional Biomass.
Reasons to still get more Hives:
- Opens up the other tech paths.
- Provides map control.
- Spreading out your Biomass across multiple Hives makes losing a Hive less severe.
- If research was moved from chambers back to the Hive, you could have Biomass and evolutions competing for the "research slot" with each other, so the order in which you research stuff is actually important. And the more Hives you have, the more you can research at the same time.
If I knew my way around in Lua, I'd probably have started my own branch of the mod with experimental changes by now to see how different scenarios of the proposed changes here played out.
An excellent idea. The only balance problem would be 3rd hive abilities being available on 2 hives, but as everyone knows, this is not an issue, as the abilities are rather lackluster. Maybe place xenocide at the 9th biomass spot, as that is the only 3rd hive ability that might prove problematic on 2 hives. Leap on 1 hive wouldn't be too much of an issue, especially if the 4th biomass would cost 40-50res, as it would be an extremely expensive investment.
Like I said, the requirement wouldn't be 3 or 4 hives, it would be "all tech points except one". But @CrushaK 's solution is much more elegant.
but the game doesn't have enough balance for 3rd hive game-ending abilities
in a non-comp game aliens often get and hold 3 hives for a long time before marines can push out with exos
in 6v6 games with good players, 3 mature hives is almost always followed by victory, but that isn't the case in pubs
i don't have a problem with the idea, but marines need to be equipped to actually kill a hive
they don't have the power to do so because the game isn't balanced for common play
Uh.. Of course I was taking about turtles??..
I just wasn't assuming what you mentioned :
This isn't enough.. I can't say more than that, so you'll just have to take me at my word that the problem will still exist, and that I'm not making this up. ;-)
I think the reason why has more to do with higher player counts concentrating their fire /spamming into a bottle neck with maximum upgrades. Believe it or not this isn't even mitigated by near cheat level "turtle breaking capabilities"
I still agree it's needed.. Just not that it's the only thing needed.
HA!
Somebody hasn't been reading my posts since alpha! ;-)
I've literally gone blue in the face with pages of arguments on why, dozens of times .. Even in this very thread if you search.
Is it just that you feel such a requirement would negatively impact marines, even if it was financially balanced out? Just the burden of holding said ground?
The current issue with turtles is simply they are to effective (nano shields, macs, really powerful turrets) and marines can't really play aggressivly during the mid game because of a hard early game and fade balls mid game.
Marines are also forced to play careful throughout the game because a single mistake can lead to a loss.
Much like multiple dual miniguns signalling the aliens end, getting those 3rd hive biomass abilities should be geared torwards making that final push possible.
Quick and dirty thoughts on T3 alien abilities when ending a marine turtle.
Buff xeno structure damage and damage to players
Make T1 lerk ability ranged spores, stronger T3 spike for higher dps and precision. Cropbuster sporing gets low level lerks killed every time. Flamer probably burning in turtle situation also.
Junk vortex. Usually just gives marines or exo's breathing room to reload and reposition. Doesn't effect arms lab.
Increase onos speed and general maneuverability. Onos primal scream?
Like I said, I'm not taking part in the discussion, since I play mostly comp where turtles are not a problem. I don't really care.
???
Of course it can be solved via new or buffed abilities. Why couldn't it?
Might be. Preventing turtles is still not a strong reason.
4th Hive should allow 4th shell/viel/spur to further upgrade aliens and end turtles...
Primal scream for lerks...
Level 12 biomass upgrade cost 100tres... Xenocide for all life forms with damage and radius proportional to life form size... 4 onos Xeon rush BOOM base levelled!
Maybe I am just weird.
If Evolution research is moved back to the Hives, this will effectively slow down alien tech progression and give marines a little more time to handle it. Besides that it would be 120 additional tres to get Biomass 12 on 3 Hives.
I dare to say that if marines are unable to stop aliens with slower tech progression (and a bigger drawback than marines face when losing a base) from accumulating that many resources and getting three Hives up in the first place, they deserve to feel the power of endgame abilities.