New alien building idea
AnkleBitingKitty
United States Join Date: 2014-01-19 Member: 193284Members
United States Join Date: 2014-01-19 Member: 193284Members
I just came up with this cool alien building idea, but havnt come up with any good name so far, so I'll call it a flower for now. I feel it would be a pretty awesome building but im not so sure if it would be terribly effective.
The flower needs to be on infestation and acts like a turret in that it faces one direction. the commands can rotate and move it so that it covers different areas.
The flower looks like a flower bent over and has all the petals closed up when a marine comes in line of sight with the flower in its firing arc the petals will open up revealing a few darts inside and the flower will shoot a dart that is guaranteed to hit if the marine is still in the line of sight when it fires. after firing the flower closes up and a harvester kind of bulge travels through the stem as the flower loads another dart and after this will fire again, taking about 5 seconds.
My first idea for what the dart would do is that it could apply a more powerful parasite affect that tracks the marines until he goes to an armory, and the flower will target other marines and try to parasite everyone giving skulks an ability to track down and kill the marines more efficiently and also alert the team of marine position.
My second idea is that the dart could apply a poison that poison could drain marine health until healed by a medpack, I don't like this idea too much as it just turns the flower into a bland marine turret that can become useless with commander support but could cost a few Tres to enemy team but would be a bit annoying to marine player
Another idea for poison is that it could cause the marine to hallucinate making the marine player see the room as if the power was recently destroyed, and the marine could be outlined purple on aliens screen showing that he is hallucinating. Flashlights should still work during hallucination so the marine has a chance to protect themselves.
Also, maybe by using some Tres the Khammander could upgrade the Flower for one time to fire a special dart that fires a parasite that acts like a normal parasite but aliens see him highlighted green so they no they might not want to attack the marine, as after 10 seconds the khammander has the option at any time as long as he doesnlt remove parasite via armory to make the parasite emerge from the marine aliens style, instantly killing the marine and spawning a special khammander creature that cant attack but has the ability to morph into a special egg for free that doesn't require infestation and a dead player can select to spawn in the egg as a skulk, allowing for him to rush the main base or hit some res far behind where expected.
One thing that could balance the parasite special dart is that the flower cant hit people using the jetpack as they are going so fast to prevent this things randomly sniping down and killing jpers. Or it couldn't be implemented at all.
What do you guys think? Im not too much for the parasite emerging or the draining health poison dart ideas, but do you think the thing would actually work?
The flower needs to be on infestation and acts like a turret in that it faces one direction. the commands can rotate and move it so that it covers different areas.
The flower looks like a flower bent over and has all the petals closed up when a marine comes in line of sight with the flower in its firing arc the petals will open up revealing a few darts inside and the flower will shoot a dart that is guaranteed to hit if the marine is still in the line of sight when it fires. after firing the flower closes up and a harvester kind of bulge travels through the stem as the flower loads another dart and after this will fire again, taking about 5 seconds.
My first idea for what the dart would do is that it could apply a more powerful parasite affect that tracks the marines until he goes to an armory, and the flower will target other marines and try to parasite everyone giving skulks an ability to track down and kill the marines more efficiently and also alert the team of marine position.
My second idea is that the dart could apply a poison that poison could drain marine health until healed by a medpack, I don't like this idea too much as it just turns the flower into a bland marine turret that can become useless with commander support but could cost a few Tres to enemy team but would be a bit annoying to marine player
Another idea for poison is that it could cause the marine to hallucinate making the marine player see the room as if the power was recently destroyed, and the marine could be outlined purple on aliens screen showing that he is hallucinating. Flashlights should still work during hallucination so the marine has a chance to protect themselves.
Also, maybe by using some Tres the Khammander could upgrade the Flower for one time to fire a special dart that fires a parasite that acts like a normal parasite but aliens see him highlighted green so they no they might not want to attack the marine, as after 10 seconds the khammander has the option at any time as long as he doesnlt remove parasite via armory to make the parasite emerge from the marine aliens style, instantly killing the marine and spawning a special khammander creature that cant attack but has the ability to morph into a special egg for free that doesn't require infestation and a dead player can select to spawn in the egg as a skulk, allowing for him to rush the main base or hit some res far behind where expected.
One thing that could balance the parasite special dart is that the flower cant hit people using the jetpack as they are going so fast to prevent this things randomly sniping down and killing jpers. Or it couldn't be implemented at all.
What do you guys think? Im not too much for the parasite emerging or the draining health poison dart ideas, but do you think the thing would actually work?
Comments
it also seems quite similar to the hydra in terms of appeareance (not mechanics).
as for mechanics:
poison is already used via lerk.
i somehow like the idea of a parasiting defense mechanism; it would help against surprise attacks, similar to the passive observatory scan range. how about making that a gimmick of hydras? little effort to implement and makes the hydras more powerful and versatile without making them frustrating (as might be the case with higher damage).
now instakilling a marine with some commander ability goes against ns2 design principles: you'll notice that all commander abilities are focused on supporting, nothing is directly damaging a marine in order to put more emphasis on PVP. what i could imagine is that a marine could be marked by some ability, but the ability itself doesn't deal any damage (let alone instakill). however, if the marine dies while marked (e.g. bitten by skulks), he'll have a different death animation and give birth to some creature(s). again, adding anything new here is problematic.
so here is my counter-suggestion based on your ideas:
hydras parasite marines when hitting them with their spikes (only for a short time, like 5 seconds). when a marine under that effect dies (from any source), he will burst open and give birth to some babblers (the babblers expire after something like 30 seconds). hydras should be a bit more expensive then ofc.
idea behind this: requires only one additional animation without adding any new models from scratch. makes hydras more versatile and you'll have a reason to split them up instead of putting all 3 next to each other (which is almost always the best choice right now). the babbler-death-effect makes them a viable defense support structure while still putting emphasis on life forms (without them, the marine will most likely not die, so no babblers). also, the babblers are only really useful if multiple marines are attacking, because they'll have limited life time. and the hydra itself will not last long against multiple marines.
I like the idea of babblers marking marines to spawn babblers upon death. Maybe instead changing how hydras work altogether, the effect could be added along with gorge upgrades.