Bait ball changes

Frothybeverage

1) Make bait ball faster than spit, while retaining the "arc" and "bounce".
2) Add a secondary bait ball that sends a single babbler that is currently following you, and not another player or at a location.
3) Increase the time that they stay deployed at a location.
4) Possibly increase the time following/riding a player.
Edit:
Another thought would be to add the second bait ball, with the characteristics of the first, third, and fouth suggestions, but leave the default bait ball unchanged.
ie: It's faster to send a single babbler at a target.

I could see this opening up sending single babblers ahead as scouts.
eg: Following a marine.

Fits the Gorge's support role.

Send a single babbler to follow a marine.
Send a single babbler to each entrance of a room that you know is going to be attacked, or set them up on either side of a door so they pounce* on a marine.


*In order for this to work, their AI would need to be improved, or their attack % increased.
I think they'd be okay if they attacked faster, as long as they didn't hit constantly unless you were sitting still.

Calego

I definitely like the idea of being able to set up babblers like little door guarders or scouts. What if you got one bait ball per egg you spawned? So you could command little 3-babbler squads to do things? Wouldn't be quite as versatile as commanding one at a time, but would still add to babbler usability.

Frothybeverage

This is definitely an open thread.

I like your idea too, but wouldn't that make the UI more cluttered?

Frothybeverage

I was just thinking about the games Overlord(Pretty awful, but hilarious game), and Overlord II(Same deal).
I like how they set up controlling minions.

You "Targetted" a unit and could send one minion at them per press of a button, or you could control all your minions at once(assuming they weren't already attacking something) in a giant mob.

Something similar could work for babblers.

I'm thinking something like being perched on the second level in Mineshaft, and you "Sweep" your babblers with your mouse(Basically, your view gets centered on where they are).

Calego

Frothybeverage wrote: »

This is definitely an open thread.

I like your idea too, but wouldn't that make the UI more cluttered?

I guess it would be a bit cluttered, it'd be difficult to figure out which bait ball went to which babbler 'squad' too.

It seems like we're making an RTS within an FPS within an RTS. The only really simple way I can see this hapenning is with another UI. maybe another gorge specific menu with a very few simple commands that could be applied to a single bait ball. But that also sounds like more clutter than its worth.

Something like
- Scout ahead/Return
- Guard Door
- Follow
- Attach
- Attack

SixtyWattMan

I definitely feel like I don't have any control over what the Babblers so when I'm a Gorge.

RadimaX

think gorge has to many things already on the menu, the babblers barely do anything anyway it would be waste of valueble development time to add loads of funtions to something as pointless as babblers

Frothybeverage

They could be not pointless.
Also:
Increase babbler follow speed.

Is it possible to make babblers player controlled, so that they strafe when the player strafes?

Savant

In case you are interested, I extracted some of the changes in the beta build 242, and there are a number of babbler and bait ball changes. I posted them in this message here.