Make the Babblers ability chargeable

Mouse

This is a repost of this comment.

I'd like to see the babbler egg and the babbler ball removed; they unnecessarily complicate things. Instead I think it should be implemented as a chargeable weapon that releases a swarm of 1-10 babblers.
Tapping LMB would release 1 babbler. Holding LMB would gradually add babblers to the swarm. Once LMB is released, the gorge releases the swarm and takes an energy hit that's proportional to the number of babblers released. The babblers then act according to what's around them: If there's anything marine, they attack; If there are any other aliens, they jump on; and if there's nothing around, they jump onto the gorge.

SantaClaws

So you would remove the pres penalty or what?

Mouse

Yeah. I don't think making the babbler egg cost pres really achieved anything anyway.

Pelargir

That makes sense I like the idea. But I guess that should release the same number of babblers everytime. I don't really know if a bunch of 10 babblers isn't too much. Because, even if the current babblers aren't so strong & powerful than before, they're not 100% pointless, so removing their cost to make them free as an attack, dunno. I like the idea, but we need something to make sure that's balanced enough. OR, there's still the limitations, for instance, each shot releases like 3 babblers, and you can only do it 3 times. But, if that becomes a proper attack, I have no idea how to do that.

AurOn2

Not sure if relevant.
http://i.imgur.com/7cOte84.jpg
Anyway, releasing 10 babblers at once - probably not a good idea.
Somewhere in the range of 2-5 would be better.
This would definately leave the babblers more of a combat support unit than a mobile meat shield dispensary.

RadimaX

it is indeed a clunky mechanic, hold to burst them out (on a wall to bounce them on yourself like usual) or just straight on an extractor/node/marine
this would indeed make the gorge smoother to use, and easier to handle in

RadimaX

i took liberty to make a concept hud of this idea, you release 2 or 3 OR....charge them up and burst them all out: -The arrow is only to show direction of them activating trough 1 -> 5

The cool thing would be if it holds it at maximum of lets say 5 as in picture BUT you hold it down while running into a base, so once you are inside (release) wherever or what ever u want them to attack. And they casually burst out all at once

Another thing could be if you have 5 as armor and marines are shooting them off, your loading up another set of babblers as you are running in that could pop out and attack something else rather than be sitting on you or possibly already be all dead.

twiliteblue

I think instant Babblers, lobbed one at a time would be sufficiantly powerful.

"Babbler shield" could become more useful, if they sacrifice themselves and heal aliens nearby upon taking damage, instead of only blocking bullets for their host. Babblers would be a soft counter against Grenade spam.

ns2isgood

I prefer to control what I do with my babblers myself and wouldn't want some automated check down list they go react to. Why anyone would want less control of them, I personally don't understand. And I also think Babblers are fine and serve as a great bullet sponge.

If anything, I would want the ability to assign groups of Babblers to multiple aliens.

AurOn2

Hmm, yeah, maybe instead of getting rid of the babbler ball, put it on RMB on the babbler ability? Would make more sense.

meatmachine

Repost of my comment in the other babbler thread. Tempted to try making this as a mod...

meatmachine wrote: »

1) make it so babblers follow your path like ducklings instead of this weird and complicated loitering they do at the moment

2) make it so if a marine comes within range of you, the gorge, the babblers will attack him automatically. If, after they've attacked, you are out of range of the marine, they'll run back and follow you. You can still use the bait ball to put them on yourself or get them to attack something specific until death while you run away.

3) bait ball - should have faster initial velocity so they can be fired further (and used in an aggressive-defensive way without putting the gorge at great risk.
On second thoughts, make it so you can hold the LMB to 'charge' the bait ball to fire it further. If you hold LMB a bit longer, however... (see next point)

4) bait ball - bouncing it off a wall to put babblers on yourself is extremely unintuitive and seems... hack-ish in a way. Just make it so if you hold LMB for a couple of seconds with the bait ball out, your gorge does a sparkly bait-ball coloured fart and the babblers stick to you. Could use a similar graphic to the railgun for charge status.

Make it so the fart sound isnt affected by phantom/silence please, just so I can hide in a corner and get marines to turn on eachother for not owning up "who smelt it dealt it!"

5) if you die, the babblers should commit seppuku so they dont clutter the place up.

problem fixed, EZPZ wheres my payrise

6) Secret 4th Hive upgrade available- Babbler hive, automatically covers every alien, structure and cyst in babblers. Also babblers do heavy damage.

RejZoR

I never use babblers because they are unnecessarely overcomplicated for how useless they are. Taking time to vomit out eggs and build them just for some annoyance is just well, stupid. In 500+ hours of NS2 gameplay i've only used them once and even that was on a Combat server where two of us gorged up for a bile attack. And that was it. Never bothered doing that in normal NS2 game, because i think i can use Pres for something more useful. But i might use them if process of making them would be simplified.

You can make them take the same time to create, but for the love of god, simplify the entire process.