My Alien change ideas
Kasharic
Hull, England Join Date: 2013-03-27 Member: 184473Members, Forum Admins, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
Hull, England Join Date: 2013-03-27 Member: 184473Members, Forum Admins, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
Okay, I have lots of Ideas for changes/additions to NS2 so I have seperated them into 2 threads… one for Aliens (this one) and one for Marines (found here: forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/139569/my-marine-change-ideas?new=1 )
These are just ideas of course, there would be pros and cons to everything i’ve written, I just want to get my ideas out there to allow the NS2Dev team to see them and hopefully add a little to their future NS2 plans.
Lifeforms
These lifeform options should be put into a menu similar to the one you use to pick skins for your marines/aliens, this menu should not be accessible during a game round… when the timer starts you are stuck with the choices you made…
Note: there is no visible difference between the skulk/lerk/fade variants.
Skulk Light - faster, less health, no armour (carapace disabled) slightly lower damage, faster bite speed.
Skulk Medium - Current Skulk
Skulk Heavy - slower, more health/armour, slower bite speed, higher damage, cannot climb walls but can hop to increase/maintain speed like the current skulk..
Bite Lerk - Full bite damage (poison damage is applied with the bite and not as a dot) spores will trail like they do on pub servers, Bite lerks have more health + armour to deal with always being up close and personal and they will be a little faster (scaling with celerity.
Spike Lerk - spikes are altered to cause poison and minor parasite (parasite only lasts 8 seconds). spores will be ranged but be available way earlier (biomass 3). their mobility will be untouched.
Blink Fade - Current fade
Shadowstep Fade - Replace Blink with Shadowstep
Gorilla Dude (new uber lifeform) - a slow moving ranged/melee alien, can wall hop for speed, can hang onto walls like a lerk... looks kind of gorilla-like... has an acid rocket kind of ability and a smash ability (commander drop only, this is an egg upgrade, costs 100 Tres, 90 second gestation period)
Lifeform Abilities
Gorge:
babblers:
- gorge can only have 1 active egg at a time.
- 5 or 6 babblers per egg
- no pres cost on producing babbler egg
- Babblers should be able to attach to marine structures like they do to aliens, only while attached to structures they cause minor damage.
Webs Should be cloaked (or at least cloakable by a nearby shade)... currently they are too easy to spot for marines and they can be easily killed, which is a waste of gorge Pres… so we don’t really see them used very often.
Gain ability to drop whips (2 maximum, 5 Pres each, commander can no longer place whips)
Fade:
I discussed stab with a few people and 2 options came up as the most wanted.
1. Remove stab and replace with acid rocket.
or
2. Remove the hiss, Reduce stab delay between command and execution to be closer to that of swipe, but implement a 1.5 second cooldown and increase stabs effectiveness against armour by a small amount.
Commander stuff
Can no longer upgrade eggs to lifeform eggs (other than the gorilla dude)
Add 4th hive type (Earth)
Upgrade structure - Mound
Crag upgrades - Carapace (rebalance to slow a little per shell), Regen (out of combat only, 2 seconds out of combat regen starts again)
Shift upgrades - Celerity, Adrenaline (change to energy regen instead of energy increase)
Shade upgrade - Phantom (unchanged), Aura (increase range a tiny amount)
Earth upgrade - Vampirism (4% primary attack damage caused returned as health per mound), Ferocity (Damage and energy cost increased by 5% per mound)
Earth hive drifter ability - adds AoE marine slow reducing speed by 30% lasting 2 seconds.
Whips need to be fixed, currently their targeting is pretty bad.
Add more Drifter abilities (no real suggestions here, but I feel like adding more drifter abilities will spice up alien commanding a bit more.
Remove visual effect of rupture and add armour damage over time.
Side notes of things i’d like to see:
Drifters should be able to actually drift vertically, on veil if you send a drifter from sub to overlook to build the RT, it uses the ramps… it shouldn’t need to, its a floating/flying creature.
The camera angle as skulk should have an option in the main menu to allow it to rotate like the original AVP games when you played alien... so that if you are on the ceiling, the ceiling is at the bottom of your screen etc… again, it should be an on/off option for those that want it.
There should be a secondary skill button bind option, that you can apply parasite/umbra etc to.
*** EDIT ***
I forgot to mention that I would like to see Biomass no longer scale the health of lifeforms (the reason for this is that the passive damage upgrades of marines will be gone)
These are just ideas of course, there would be pros and cons to everything i’ve written, I just want to get my ideas out there to allow the NS2Dev team to see them and hopefully add a little to their future NS2 plans.
Lifeforms
These lifeform options should be put into a menu similar to the one you use to pick skins for your marines/aliens, this menu should not be accessible during a game round… when the timer starts you are stuck with the choices you made…
Note: there is no visible difference between the skulk/lerk/fade variants.
Skulk Light - faster, less health, no armour (carapace disabled) slightly lower damage, faster bite speed.
Skulk Medium - Current Skulk
Skulk Heavy - slower, more health/armour, slower bite speed, higher damage, cannot climb walls but can hop to increase/maintain speed like the current skulk..
Bite Lerk - Full bite damage (poison damage is applied with the bite and not as a dot) spores will trail like they do on pub servers, Bite lerks have more health + armour to deal with always being up close and personal and they will be a little faster (scaling with celerity.
Spike Lerk - spikes are altered to cause poison and minor parasite (parasite only lasts 8 seconds). spores will be ranged but be available way earlier (biomass 3). their mobility will be untouched.
Blink Fade - Current fade
Shadowstep Fade - Replace Blink with Shadowstep
Gorilla Dude (new uber lifeform) - a slow moving ranged/melee alien, can wall hop for speed, can hang onto walls like a lerk... looks kind of gorilla-like... has an acid rocket kind of ability and a smash ability (commander drop only, this is an egg upgrade, costs 100 Tres, 90 second gestation period)
Lifeform Abilities
Gorge:
babblers:
- gorge can only have 1 active egg at a time.
- 5 or 6 babblers per egg
- no pres cost on producing babbler egg
- Babblers should be able to attach to marine structures like they do to aliens, only while attached to structures they cause minor damage.
Webs Should be cloaked (or at least cloakable by a nearby shade)... currently they are too easy to spot for marines and they can be easily killed, which is a waste of gorge Pres… so we don’t really see them used very often.
Gain ability to drop whips (2 maximum, 5 Pres each, commander can no longer place whips)
Fade:
I discussed stab with a few people and 2 options came up as the most wanted.
1. Remove stab and replace with acid rocket.
or
2. Remove the hiss, Reduce stab delay between command and execution to be closer to that of swipe, but implement a 1.5 second cooldown and increase stabs effectiveness against armour by a small amount.
Commander stuff
Can no longer upgrade eggs to lifeform eggs (other than the gorilla dude)
Add 4th hive type (Earth)
Upgrade structure - Mound
Crag upgrades - Carapace (rebalance to slow a little per shell), Regen (out of combat only, 2 seconds out of combat regen starts again)
Shift upgrades - Celerity, Adrenaline (change to energy regen instead of energy increase)
Shade upgrade - Phantom (unchanged), Aura (increase range a tiny amount)
Earth upgrade - Vampirism (4% primary attack damage caused returned as health per mound), Ferocity (Damage and energy cost increased by 5% per mound)
Earth hive drifter ability - adds AoE marine slow reducing speed by 30% lasting 2 seconds.
Whips need to be fixed, currently their targeting is pretty bad.
Add more Drifter abilities (no real suggestions here, but I feel like adding more drifter abilities will spice up alien commanding a bit more.
Remove visual effect of rupture and add armour damage over time.
Side notes of things i’d like to see:
Drifters should be able to actually drift vertically, on veil if you send a drifter from sub to overlook to build the RT, it uses the ramps… it shouldn’t need to, its a floating/flying creature.
The camera angle as skulk should have an option in the main menu to allow it to rotate like the original AVP games when you played alien... so that if you are on the ceiling, the ceiling is at the bottom of your screen etc… again, it should be an on/off option for those that want it.
There should be a secondary skill button bind option, that you can apply parasite/umbra etc to.
*** EDIT ***
I forgot to mention that I would like to see Biomass no longer scale the health of lifeforms (the reason for this is that the passive damage upgrades of marines will be gone)
Comments
I would be okay with people switching mid round... but I thought it would take more work than doing it this way... so I figured it would be more likely to happen if it were quicker and easier to do :P