Babbler buffs without breaking early game (scalability)
BULLET WIZARD
Join Date: 2013-01-05 Member: 177702Members
Join Date: 2013-01-05 Member: 177702Members
I assume the main reason babblers aren't as useful as they could be is that if you made them much stronger, gorge rushes would become completely overpowered.
On that assumption I have a few suggestions that could remedy this.
Currently babblers only benefit from silence, why not celerity, camo and carapace? (more on camo later)
Their strength could then be balanced around how much armour & speed they get from each upgrade, having little effect on gorge rushes.
Babblers also need (1,2?) more command options, this way rather than lagging the game with complex babbler AI to fix their derpiness a simple stay/converge command could be used. Perhaps use the gorge taunt? Could be fun, early on ambushes would be hard to set up as your taunt would alert players to your position but with silence it could work in some situations. This would also allow babblers to be effected by camo. I feel this change also would not effect early game much at all.
I would also suggest a single change be made to fix 2 issues.
The first issue is babblers in vents just do not work, from what I've read this is because they use mac/drifter pathing which does not factor in vents.
Secondly the issue of babblers keeping up with you.
The change to babbler speed was a move in the right direction however I feel it benefits their offense more than their maneuverability. I've thought up a couple of solutions to fix this.
First one is allow the parent gorge to carry all their babblers on themselves, that way you can collect them in vents and carry them out, this would need to be coupled with the parent gorge being able to release the babblers at will, using the bait ball.
The other option requires no changes to other mechanics but the addition of a new one. Add a tether to the parent gorge when the babblers are in it's vicinity & no bait ball has been thrown. This way if you are near your babblers and slide away with celerity they naturally keep up & it would allow you to travel through vents with them, when outside of this tether range the regular pathing would kick in.
Lastly allow the overwriting of babblers with new eggs, killing the old ones and replacing them, that way if you rush to defend a hive you can spawn more eggs which would be considerably quicker than waiting for your babblers to catch up. This would inadvertently fix something else that bothers me about babblers and that is when you lose 2/3 from each egg you are now stuck with 3 babblers only & cannot spawn more until they die.
Overall I'm happy with the way they are currently implemented & think they just need a few tweaks to get them in the sweet spot.
Anyone else have any ideas for babblers that wouldn't effect early game too much?
On that assumption I have a few suggestions that could remedy this.
Currently babblers only benefit from silence, why not celerity, camo and carapace? (more on camo later)
Their strength could then be balanced around how much armour & speed they get from each upgrade, having little effect on gorge rushes.
Babblers also need (1,2?) more command options, this way rather than lagging the game with complex babbler AI to fix their derpiness a simple stay/converge command could be used. Perhaps use the gorge taunt? Could be fun, early on ambushes would be hard to set up as your taunt would alert players to your position but with silence it could work in some situations. This would also allow babblers to be effected by camo. I feel this change also would not effect early game much at all.
I would also suggest a single change be made to fix 2 issues.
The first issue is babblers in vents just do not work, from what I've read this is because they use mac/drifter pathing which does not factor in vents.
Secondly the issue of babblers keeping up with you.
The change to babbler speed was a move in the right direction however I feel it benefits their offense more than their maneuverability. I've thought up a couple of solutions to fix this.
First one is allow the parent gorge to carry all their babblers on themselves, that way you can collect them in vents and carry them out, this would need to be coupled with the parent gorge being able to release the babblers at will, using the bait ball.
The other option requires no changes to other mechanics but the addition of a new one. Add a tether to the parent gorge when the babblers are in it's vicinity & no bait ball has been thrown. This way if you are near your babblers and slide away with celerity they naturally keep up & it would allow you to travel through vents with them, when outside of this tether range the regular pathing would kick in.
Lastly allow the overwriting of babblers with new eggs, killing the old ones and replacing them, that way if you rush to defend a hive you can spawn more eggs which would be considerably quicker than waiting for your babblers to catch up. This would inadvertently fix something else that bothers me about babblers and that is when you lose 2/3 from each egg you are now stuck with 3 babblers only & cannot spawn more until they die.
Overall I'm happy with the way they are currently implemented & think they just need a few tweaks to get them in the sweet spot.
Anyone else have any ideas for babblers that wouldn't effect early game too much?