remiremedy [blu.knight]Join Date: 2003-11-18Member: 23112Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester
Also, would be nice if we could make the command center grow legs and go for a walk with the Exos.
Putting your eggs in one basket, but this would at least allow the marines to do an all out exo rush at the expense of losing everything else in their base.
Also, would be nice if we could make the command center grow legs and go for a walk with the Exos.
Putting your eggs in one basket, but this would at least allow the marines to do an all out exo rush at the expense of losing everything else in their base.
lmao imagine if the commander could pilot it around like a starcraft science vessel.
I like the new Fade with Blink instead of ShadowStep, but man does it deplete your energy quickly. ShadowStep is better for moving around the map with its low energy cost, whereas Blink is much better in combat.
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 April 2013
Played full servers for like 3 hours today.
Felt great!
Skulk movement is my favorite so far, from any build, including vanilla NS2. Well done!
Feels so fluid, fast, useful in combat.
And after adjustments mid map changes, lerk ended up feeling great as well.
But by far the greatest change today was the Marine hitreg... OMG.. FINALLY i can kill skulks in 10 rounds!
Everything felt great.
Only gripes:
Welder details like requesting a weld radio command, icons, general UI (that you already know)
No Umbra feedback (that you already know)
Biomass tooltips, and tooltips in general
JP fuel is still WAAYY too much for the horizontal maneuvering you get out of it.
And finally.. i really do wish vortex was somehow useful. (1 v 1 netherworld!) These games went on average over 20 minutes.. and it worked out great. Felt like balanced games. But vortex was never once researched, no matter how well the alien team was doing.
Can't wait to see many of these mechanics integrated!
Funny how many complained about 3 CC requirements for W3 when they lost.. but when they secured it no one said anything. I feel people are just used to Tier 3 tech at 2 CCs for one team, maybe. The gains of 3 CC requirements have nothing to do with turtling anymore, like @Jekt pointed out. But rather allowing for more comebacks (like power surge) since its way harder for marines to hold onto 3 TPs adequately than 2, thus its easier to knock them back down to W2/A2.
Also, the argument that hives did away with TP/upgrade scaling isnt accurate afaik?
You still need minimum 3 hives to get T3 tech like Xeno.
I've always been in favor of ensuring homogeneity in the resource system /economic model, (like equal access to tech, timing to reach RTs etc) but allow asymmetry through playstyle and tactics. This follows that criteria imo.
So far the mod is pretty much making map control much more crucial(also making the game faster), and once a team has majority of the map they will begin to snowball harder (this is the RTS part) however the losing team is still given a chance by tons of different things, like not losing tons of vital upgrades as soon as a hive goes down. Also it's to stop end-game turtling as well, marines with 1 CC now won't be able to hold out
So you're saying it's exactly what I've wanted UWE to do?
Played a few times today. I was skeptical in the beginning with the changes, but having personally tried them completely changed my mind. Please tell me this is build 246!
Infestation should still have another purpose than "aliens can build stuff on it, cast some abilities on it and allows Gorges to slide faster".
I agree so much.
Infestation should be a crucial element of gameplay. Alien commanders should be rewarded for deploying it wisely and punished for doing it poorly. Marines should be eager to remove infestation in order to assert their map control and deny the aliens theirs, but they should face tradeoffs so that it's neither always the right thing to kill cysts nor always the right thing to ignore them. Spreading and clearing infestation should be a constant struggle for both sides, a struggle which simultaneously both reflects and affects the progress of the larger game - but not strictly, so that infestation, while important, is neither a perfect indication of the game's status (but is merely one of several such indicators) nor a primary determining factor in the outcome (but is merely one of several such factors).
Everyone should care about infestation. Aliens should rejoice in seeing it spread. Marines should hate and fear it, as much as they hate and fear the very existence of the aliens themselves.
I think a lot of the changes in both the live game and Sewlek's mod are steps in that direction, probably very intentionally so. Good. Keep it up, and let's see if we can't do more. Specifically, let's up the stakes.
I like CrushaK's suggestion:
Structures built on infestation start without armor and can't get any armor until the infestation is cleared away, so it's easier for all aliens to combat intruders in their territory.
Suppose that infestation also ate away at armor over time, both on buildings and players? Like gorge tunnels do, but not as drastically. It shouldn't be so strong that it seriously hinders marines from invading alien territory... just enough that it makes them literally think twice about doing so, and makes them hyper-aware that they are in fact in enemy territory. Watching the squares drop off their armor bar will do more to set them on edge than any amount of green bubbly visual effects can do (although those are awesome too, of course).
Contra Bullet Wizard's suggestion, I'd suggest that infestation doing armor damage would be the default from the get-go, no alien upgrade required. However, I'd also suggest that the Nano Armor marine upgrade would nullify the infestation damage completely in addition to healing armor over time (but price it accordingly, of course).
As for spreading and removing infestation: Increase the cost of cysting a bit more, so that khams have a tougher decision about whether spreading infestation somewhere is worth it, both due to the up-front cost as well as the risk of losing their investment to marine axes and welders. Make the decay from broken chains faster, so that topology becomes more important: nexus points where multiple chains can be cut or merged become more important for aliens to defend and more important for marines to attack. This means that khams will spread infestation either to places where their team is going to push (so that they can be supported) or to places where their team has established control (so that they won't lose the resources invested in the cysts). Unwise khams who spread themselves too fast or too thin will end up wasting resources and thus put themselves at a disadvantage.
And on the flip side, give marines some good reasons to NOT cut chains. As it is now, destroying cysts is mostly a waste of time, and smart marines just ignore them while pressing on towards the actual objective. But if we buff infestation, smart marines will ALWAYS destroy cysts. Neither one is a good state of affairs; in each case there's no real decision to make. So how about this: buff infestation (including damaging armor), but:
a) Don't give infestation foresight, not even for sprinting marines or exos, and
b) When a cyst is destroyed, it releases a bile burst in a small radius which does some damage to armor and acts as a short-duration parasite.
This would mean that marines trying to be sneaky will refrain from killing cysts, knowing that they can only spotted by drifters, alien patrols, or some stupid rookie killing a cyst. But the sneak-squad will be facing a tradeoff, because they'll be losing armor (slowly) while working their way to their ninja target.
This also means that marines intent on destruction (or distraction) rather than being sneaky will have two choices: get up close and take down the cyst quickly, but take some armor damage and increase their visibility, OR stay at a distance and kill it with a rifle or pistol but at the cost of time and ammunition. In either case, they'll get the most bang for their buck by choosing their cyst targets wisely. If there's an increased decay rate for isolated cysts, then marines can still effectively clear out infestation by only killing every other cyst, or every third or fourth cyst, or only cysts in key junctions. If killing cysts has downsides, then marines will be rewarded for targeting cysts wisely and punished for shooting them blindly.
I've always been in favor of ensuring homogeneity in the resource system /economic model, (like equal access to tech, timing to reach RTs etc) but allow asymmetry through playstyle and tactics.
Can't agree. The more asymmetry, the better. It makes it harder to balance, but UWE is good enough to do hard things, and the end result would be better for it.
I've always been in favor of ensuring homogeneity in the resource system /economic model, (like equal access to tech, timing to reach RTs etc) but allow asymmetry through playstyle and tactics.
Can't agree. The more asymmetry, the better. It makes it harder to balance, but UWE is good enough to do hard things, and the end result would be better for it.
Yeah I'm with you, I still miss the asymmetric resource models from NS1. Made the team dynamics totally different for marines vs. aliens.
I, too, prefer the NS1 system of resource management to that of NS2. It added to the asymmetrical style of the game. I've always felt that the alien commander is pretty unnecessary.
Time tested: 8 hours total
Experience: 7 years of NS1, 600 hours of NS2
Marines:
Movement
Marine movement feels so damn crisp at the moment, it is fantastic. I am unaware of the technical changes, but it feels like the deaccleration when changing between left/right stafe has been removed + acceleration has been increased. Allows rapid change of direction to counter skulk movement. Feels like NS1
Hit Rego
What was changed for this? Whatever has happened, my hit rego is 100% better in BT mod.
Armoury healing Armour & Nano Armour
Great change.
People constantly purchase welders now to assist each other, increased the teamwork dynamic 1000%. Hit & run tactics actually mean something for aliens now, as they are more effective if marines have not made the investment of maintaining their armour. Also provides a pres sink for marines which was required, previously only pres sink was mass mines.
Nano armour is effective & not OP. I like that this is an investment.
Upgrades tied to x amount of TP
Great change.
I love this change
- Increases requirement for map control
- Prevents late game turtling when the game is obviously over, allows aliens to finish earlier
- Loosing a hive has a massive impact on aliens, it's only fair it has a massive impact on marines (loosing upgrades).
Jetpacks
Have not had a chance to play with this yet, but people tell me they are much more responsive. This is only a good thing
Mass Mines
I think that land mines need to be a TRES purchase, instead of PRES. It is still possible for marines to mass mine everything at 3-4 minutes.
Exo using PG
I like this change.
As marines will now have to defend multiple tech points at the same time + attacking a hive exo's need to be able to use PGs. If exo's could not use PG, I simply do not see them even being used in 6v6 due to their cripled mobility + requirement for increased map control.
Kharra:
Movement
Clap clap, bravo good sir. Still minor improvements to be made, but overall great. The combination of walljump + bhop is great.
I am still uncertain how to start the bhop without leap, I seem to just randomly jump along the ground then seeminly pick up speed. I know that circle jumping + moving mouse in figure of 8 is not required anymore.
Trading predictability for speed is a good balance. YOu can go damn fast with current implementation, but it means you're travelling close to a straight line. The skill set will be determining when to go a tad slower for increased air control.
Glancing Bite
Any word on glancing bite being removed? I would rather miss then receieve a 25 damage bite as skulk.
Biomass
I don't feel this is strong enough, needs more impact on the game. I have not thought this through completely, but if the idea is for them to scale evenly with marines then:
Scenario A: If marines have level 3 weapons (+30% damage), then max level of biomass would equate to +30% total HP (combinted with cara).
Blink on 1 hive Fade
Good change. YOu can fight + transverse map very easily when combined with bhop. I find it hard to see fades though when they blink, visability is quite low.
Reworked Shadow Step
So much propulsion, I'm just not used to it to comment on it.
Life form explosion
Problem still exists, not sure how to fix this without removing TRES dropped lerk/fade/onos eggs.
Regarding the hitreg changes, I would be interested to what people think about how many shots they are hitting now. Do you feel like your hitting shots that you are missing? It was easy to kill skulks before, but now i feel that there is little challenge, and it feels like all the positives from the movement changes just make this worse, your much more predictable and easy to shoot.
This is difficult to evaluate as people always overestimate their own skill level, but personally I feel that this change makes too many shots hit, and overall will only make the early game brutal for aliens.
Regarding the hitreg changes, I would be interested to what people think about how many shots they are hitting now. Do you feel like your hitting shots that you are missing? It was easy to kill skulks before, but now i feel that there is little challenge, and it feels like all the positives from the movement changes just make this worse, your much more predictable and easy to shoot.
This is difficult to evaluate as people always overestimate their own skill level, but personally I feel that this change makes too many shots hit, and overall will only make the early game brutal for aliens.
Hitting with a lot of your bullets feels good. Aliens could always get an HP boost to compensate for balance.
Then your just moving the game more towards HP vs HP and numbers vs numbers, and less away from the individual skill aspect of it... Thats not something that I can agree with. Fixing hitreg issues is a good change but adding a mechanic which makes misses hits is not.
Hitreg change seems like a step backwards in the end. I liked how things were playing out with the live values and the new skulk movement. Now, Marines dominate the early game even harder.
I understand changing the reghit is a step towards giving aliens more air control in general but I don't think it adds much skill ceiling in the end.
ScatterJoin Date: 2012-09-02Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
Removed stepped melee cones
Keep a narrow-ish 75 damage cone
Revert skulk acceleration to pre-gorgeous
The current skulk lacks any evasive ability and the stepped cones are incredibly frustrating. The narrow cone will ensure that too much erratic behavior will make landing bites more difficult.
Then your just moving the game more towards HP vs HP and numbers vs numbers, and less away from the individual skill aspect of it... Thats not something that I can agree with. Fixing hitreg issues is a good change but adding a mechanic which makes misses hits is not.
You're exaggerating. If 1-pixel misses become hits, that's not exactly an aimbot. It's not a black and white issue. Making marine aiming more forgiving allows aliens to be faster, and everybody wins.
the difference is larger than 1 pixel, and the difference up close where the larger skulk model already makes skulks easy to shoot is very noticeable. There is no reason to make marine aiming more forgivable when aliens already have a predictable speed gain mechanic... Its like a double nerf to the already weak team.
Had a blast playing on the 24p server yesterday for a few hours, the mod feels complete, almost everything I always wanted for NS 2 is there
- Larger comeback potential for both sides when losing TPs
- Deeper and more engaging alien khammander, much richer alien strategic gameplay overall
- Viable alternatives to PG start (though I do believe sentries could use some love) for marines
- Better movement overall (i.e playing aliens in particular is way more fun)
- Longer early game
- Better hit reg
- New abilities and research that add to the game (power surge, drifter rework, nano armour)
- Even bigger focus on teamplay (welding, umbra, etc)
- Fixed alien economic pace
- ...
I could go on probably but this is truly NS 2 2.0.
I haven't been able to play BT for a while but exo horizontal thruster sounds like a great idea, just the sort of thing they need to give them sufficient map mobility to be more broadly useful.
every time i go to play bt mod the servers are empty, but i had a quick look versus bots and can take a guess.
when you 'near miss', about 20% of shots seem to still hit the target. up from 0% before. perhaps a percentage of bullets have a slightly wider hitscan radius (similar to the railgun, but smaller).
Comments
Putting your eggs in one basket, but this would at least allow the marines to do an all out exo rush at the expense of losing everything else in their base.
lmao imagine if the commander could pilot it around like a starcraft science vessel.
OFFLINE
That was fun killing everyone.
I like the new Fade with Blink instead of ShadowStep, but man does it deplete your energy quickly. ShadowStep is better for moving around the map with its low energy cost, whereas Blink is much better in combat.
Felt great!
Skulk movement is my favorite so far, from any build, including vanilla NS2. Well done!
Feels so fluid, fast, useful in combat.
And after adjustments mid map changes, lerk ended up feeling great as well.
But by far the greatest change today was the Marine hitreg... OMG.. FINALLY i can kill skulks in 10 rounds!
Everything felt great.
Only gripes:
Can't wait to see many of these mechanics integrated!
Funny how many complained about 3 CC requirements for W3 when they lost.. but when they secured it no one said anything. I feel people are just used to Tier 3 tech at 2 CCs for one team, maybe. The gains of 3 CC requirements have nothing to do with turtling anymore, like @Jekt pointed out. But rather allowing for more comebacks (like power surge) since its way harder for marines to hold onto 3 TPs adequately than 2, thus its easier to knock them back down to W2/A2.
Also, the argument that hives did away with TP/upgrade scaling isnt accurate afaik?
You still need minimum 3 hives to get T3 tech like Xeno.
I've always been in favor of ensuring homogeneity in the resource system /economic model, (like equal access to tech, timing to reach RTs etc) but allow asymmetry through playstyle and tactics. This follows that criteria imo.
So you're saying it's exactly what I've wanted UWE to do?
Sounds great!
Power surge allows the marine comm to temporarily power a structure in an unpowered room
I'm not the best person to ask since I haven't played much of the bt mod, but I believe it just costs res.
I agree so much.
Infestation should be a crucial element of gameplay. Alien commanders should be rewarded for deploying it wisely and punished for doing it poorly. Marines should be eager to remove infestation in order to assert their map control and deny the aliens theirs, but they should face tradeoffs so that it's neither always the right thing to kill cysts nor always the right thing to ignore them. Spreading and clearing infestation should be a constant struggle for both sides, a struggle which simultaneously both reflects and affects the progress of the larger game - but not strictly, so that infestation, while important, is neither a perfect indication of the game's status (but is merely one of several such indicators) nor a primary determining factor in the outcome (but is merely one of several such factors).
Everyone should care about infestation. Aliens should rejoice in seeing it spread. Marines should hate and fear it, as much as they hate and fear the very existence of the aliens themselves.
I think a lot of the changes in both the live game and Sewlek's mod are steps in that direction, probably very intentionally so. Good. Keep it up, and let's see if we can't do more. Specifically, let's up the stakes.
I like CrushaK's suggestion:
Suppose that infestation also ate away at armor over time, both on buildings and players? Like gorge tunnels do, but not as drastically. It shouldn't be so strong that it seriously hinders marines from invading alien territory... just enough that it makes them literally think twice about doing so, and makes them hyper-aware that they are in fact in enemy territory. Watching the squares drop off their armor bar will do more to set them on edge than any amount of green bubbly visual effects can do (although those are awesome too, of course).
Contra Bullet Wizard's suggestion, I'd suggest that infestation doing armor damage would be the default from the get-go, no alien upgrade required. However, I'd also suggest that the Nano Armor marine upgrade would nullify the infestation damage completely in addition to healing armor over time (but price it accordingly, of course).
As for spreading and removing infestation: Increase the cost of cysting a bit more, so that khams have a tougher decision about whether spreading infestation somewhere is worth it, both due to the up-front cost as well as the risk of losing their investment to marine axes and welders. Make the decay from broken chains faster, so that topology becomes more important: nexus points where multiple chains can be cut or merged become more important for aliens to defend and more important for marines to attack. This means that khams will spread infestation either to places where their team is going to push (so that they can be supported) or to places where their team has established control (so that they won't lose the resources invested in the cysts). Unwise khams who spread themselves too fast or too thin will end up wasting resources and thus put themselves at a disadvantage.
And on the flip side, give marines some good reasons to NOT cut chains. As it is now, destroying cysts is mostly a waste of time, and smart marines just ignore them while pressing on towards the actual objective. But if we buff infestation, smart marines will ALWAYS destroy cysts. Neither one is a good state of affairs; in each case there's no real decision to make. So how about this: buff infestation (including damaging armor), but:
a) Don't give infestation foresight, not even for sprinting marines or exos, and
b) When a cyst is destroyed, it releases a bile burst in a small radius which does some damage to armor and acts as a short-duration parasite.
This would mean that marines trying to be sneaky will refrain from killing cysts, knowing that they can only spotted by drifters, alien patrols, or some stupid rookie killing a cyst. But the sneak-squad will be facing a tradeoff, because they'll be losing armor (slowly) while working their way to their ninja target.
This also means that marines intent on destruction (or distraction) rather than being sneaky will have two choices: get up close and take down the cyst quickly, but take some armor damage and increase their visibility, OR stay at a distance and kill it with a rifle or pistol but at the cost of time and ammunition. In either case, they'll get the most bang for their buck by choosing their cyst targets wisely. If there's an increased decay rate for isolated cysts, then marines can still effectively clear out infestation by only killing every other cyst, or every third or fourth cyst, or only cysts in key junctions. If killing cysts has downsides, then marines will be rewarded for targeting cysts wisely and punished for shooting them blindly.
Can't agree. The more asymmetry, the better. It makes it harder to balance, but UWE is good enough to do hard things, and the end result would be better for it.
Time tested: 8 hours total
Experience: 7 years of NS1, 600 hours of NS2
Marines:
Movement
Marine movement feels so damn crisp at the moment, it is fantastic. I am unaware of the technical changes, but it feels like the deaccleration when changing between left/right stafe has been removed + acceleration has been increased. Allows rapid change of direction to counter skulk movement. Feels like NS1
Hit Rego
What was changed for this? Whatever has happened, my hit rego is 100% better in BT mod.
Armoury healing Armour & Nano Armour
Great change.
People constantly purchase welders now to assist each other, increased the teamwork dynamic 1000%. Hit & run tactics actually mean something for aliens now, as they are more effective if marines have not made the investment of maintaining their armour. Also provides a pres sink for marines which was required, previously only pres sink was mass mines.
Nano armour is effective & not OP. I like that this is an investment.
Upgrades tied to x amount of TP
Great change.
I love this change
- Increases requirement for map control
- Prevents late game turtling when the game is obviously over, allows aliens to finish earlier
- Loosing a hive has a massive impact on aliens, it's only fair it has a massive impact on marines (loosing upgrades).
Jetpacks
Have not had a chance to play with this yet, but people tell me they are much more responsive. This is only a good thing
Mass Mines
I think that land mines need to be a TRES purchase, instead of PRES. It is still possible for marines to mass mine everything at 3-4 minutes.
Exo using PG
I like this change.
As marines will now have to defend multiple tech points at the same time + attacking a hive exo's need to be able to use PGs. If exo's could not use PG, I simply do not see them even being used in 6v6 due to their cripled mobility + requirement for increased map control.
Kharra:
Movement
Clap clap, bravo good sir. Still minor improvements to be made, but overall great. The combination of walljump + bhop is great.
I am still uncertain how to start the bhop without leap, I seem to just randomly jump along the ground then seeminly pick up speed. I know that circle jumping + moving mouse in figure of 8 is not required anymore.
Trading predictability for speed is a good balance. YOu can go damn fast with current implementation, but it means you're travelling close to a straight line. The skill set will be determining when to go a tad slower for increased air control.
Glancing Bite
Any word on glancing bite being removed? I would rather miss then receieve a 25 damage bite as skulk.
Biomass
I don't feel this is strong enough, needs more impact on the game. I have not thought this through completely, but if the idea is for them to scale evenly with marines then:
Scenario A: If marines have level 3 weapons (+30% damage), then max level of biomass would equate to +30% total HP (combinted with cara).
Blink on 1 hive Fade
Good change. YOu can fight + transverse map very easily when combined with bhop. I find it hard to see fades though when they blink, visability is quite low.
Reworked Shadow Step
So much propulsion, I'm just not used to it to comment on it.
Life form explosion
Problem still exists, not sure how to fix this without removing TRES dropped lerk/fade/onos eggs.
This is difficult to evaluate as people always overestimate their own skill level, but personally I feel that this change makes too many shots hit, and overall will only make the early game brutal for aliens.
Hitting with a lot of your bullets feels good. Aliens could always get an HP boost to compensate for balance.
I understand changing the reghit is a step towards giving aliens more air control in general but I don't think it adds much skill ceiling in the end.
Keep a narrow-ish 75 damage cone
Revert skulk acceleration to pre-gorgeous
The current skulk lacks any evasive ability and the stepped cones are incredibly frustrating. The narrow cone will ensure that too much erratic behavior will make landing bites more difficult.
You're exaggerating. If 1-pixel misses become hits, that's not exactly an aimbot. It's not a black and white issue. Making marine aiming more forgiving allows aliens to be faster, and everybody wins.
- Larger comeback potential for both sides when losing TPs
- Deeper and more engaging alien khammander, much richer alien strategic gameplay overall
- Viable alternatives to PG start (though I do believe sentries could use some love) for marines
- Better movement overall (i.e playing aliens in particular is way more fun)
- Longer early game
- Better hit reg
- New abilities and research that add to the game (power surge, drifter rework, nano armour)
- Even bigger focus on teamplay (welding, umbra, etc)
- Fixed alien economic pace
- ...
I could go on probably but this is truly NS 2 2.0.
every time i go to play bt mod the servers are empty, but i had a quick look versus bots and can take a guess.
when you 'near miss', about 20% of shots seem to still hit the target. up from 0% before. perhaps a percentage of bullets have a slightly wider hitscan radius (similar to the railgun, but smaller).