Medpack Spamming Fix Idea

RevanCorana

Have you ever seen a commander dropping a carpet of medpack around a couple of very good marines pushing the hive early game? securing a cheap but effective win.

My suggestion for this issue is:

Limit the amount of medpacks a commander can drop each 10 seconds, for example 5 medpacks per 10 seconds with a recharge rate of 1 medpack each 2 seconds regardless of the team ressources.

Possibly also add "first aid research" in armory or arms lab that increase the recharge rate and/or the maximum reserve of meds.

Legend_Boss

I think med pack drop varies by server, as some server do have a time delay between each drop. Some servers also have a limit on the amount of med packs can be on field at any one time preventing a med spam.

A med pack spam does not always work and if it's early on, could be sacrificing a lot of res instead of getting upgrades for a tactic that may not work.

having to make marines research med pack will be unfair as aliens can be healed by the hive and gorges from the very start.

Aliens have an equivalent of med spam, which are gorges. A few sulks and a gorge healing can be a force to reckon with if they move and work together. This group can easily make advancement or also take an early victory.

Sounds to me as if the problem is either lack of team work on the alien part and/or teams unbalanced from the start.

personally not a fan to limit med drop or for a delay between use or for a need to research med packs. I do propose an alternative that I reckon could help counter such spam and keep things fair, which is for med/ammo/catalyst drops to be destroyed by bile the same way that weapons are, something which I don't think is the case right now.

Nordic

Instead of limiting the commander, do you think it might be better to limit how quickly marines can pick up medpacks?

One of the most frustrating things in this game is biting a marine 8 times and still not killing him because of medpack spam. I do think it could use a longer cool down.

That is why I really like the idea from the Ns2 simplification thread.

• Address ease of support for commander (larger pickup radius with increased cooldown?)
  - Make medpacks HoT and unstackable rather than instant
  - Address extreme commander support (medpack spam, Hand of God)

I pulled that out of this document.

Frozen

I think that the cap should be removed altogether. This game is better without restriction

Nordic

mattji104 wrote: »

I think that the cap should be removed altogether. This game is better without restriction

So you would want a commander to be able to drop as many medpacks as he wants to keep a marine alive? There would have to be some restriction. At least an additional tres cost for that. I think 4 tres per medpack sounds fair for unlimited medpacks.

Very crazy idea.

This would be a hidden mechanic, but what if the cost of medpacks went up for each medpack dropped but had no cooldown.
1 medpack = 1 tres
2 medpack = 2 tres
3 medpack = 4 tres
4 medpack = 8 tres

Then the cost would go down with time. So after 4 medpacks dropped, would cool down back to 1 tres cost after 8 seconds. 1 medpack would cooldown to 1 tres after 1 second. This way a commander could still drop 2 medpacks cheaply, but medpack spamming a single marine would be very costly.

The_Welsh_Wizard

Isn't there already a pick-up delay since 250? I think limit it even more is a bad idea, medpacks cost res! So if a commander is playing "Hand of God" he has to use much team res which is and should be a tactic that the commander should be able to use if he thinks it is worth it. 2 team res to heal one skulk bite is already an expensive deal. And by restricting medpacking you are restricting the fun part about being marine commander.

Nordic

There is a pick up delay already. When one marine can be so more skilled that he can take out the other of 11 skulks by himself there is a problem.

• There is a problem with the other team not going in together most of the time, but even if skulks all go in together it does not work on these players. I have been on both ends of that. The marine who wont die and the 1 out of 6 skulks who all go in together and can not kill 1 marine.
• There is a problem with the high skill and low skill players being forced to play together. This is mostly because we have such a small community.
• There is a problem with the game itself for enabling 1 player to have enough power to cause the other team to lose all by himself.

The first one is a l2p issue and I don't think that can be changed anytime soon. If we had thousands of players, I don't think this would be a big problem. We might get more players, but we also might not. That leave one thing we can do to improve this poor balance that only helps one kind of player.

Even at 2 tres each, it is incredibly worth it to med a marine who can kill the whole team. There is no downside because you will win. The power of meds scale down with skill, but it is a serious balance issue in my opinion.

Medspam, hand of god, needs to be nerfed. The easiest and probably least troublesome way of doing that is to increase the pickup cooldown while increasing the pickup radius. You could just remove all cooldowns on medpacks, but then you would need to increase the cost. That would make even dropping any amount of medpacks expensive so I don't think it is realistic.

Legend_Boss

I don't see the idea of a larger pickup radius with increased cooldown working in practice. If there are a group if marines, who have all got parasited and there is 1 marine with very lttle health left, the other marines may unintentionally pick up the med pack just for being near it due to the larger radius. If the med spam needs to be nerfed, increase the cool down withput changing the radius. Also add the feature that bile either destroys med pack or reduces the amount of hp it refils.

Another system I just thought of could be that each armoury the marine has, produces 1 free med pack every 20 seconds which gets stockpiled and possibly have a cap of 20 on the stockpile. Each armoury will increase the cap to an overall limit but if the structure is destroyed the limit is reduced and X% of stockpile is lost. So the commander could either support marines throughout or save up. Due to the way med packs are produce, the comm will have to be strategic with its use. Ammo packs will have the same system.

This is very different to the current system that I couldn't say how it may play out.

Nordic

Legend_Boss wrote: »

I don't see the idea of a larger pickup radius with increased cooldown working in practice. If there are a group if marines, who have all got parasited and there is 1 marine with very lttle health left, the other marines may unintentionally pick up the med pack just for being near it due to the larger radius. If the med spam needs to be nerfed, increase the cool down withput changing the radius. Also add the feature that bile either destroys med pack or reduces the amount of hp it refils.

The larger radius would make it easier when there is just one marine. I don't see it being any different than now with a group of marines. As it is now or with a larger radius the commander needs to be fairly accurate with his meds. As it is now, if a commander misses now there is nothing stopping another marine stealing the medpack unintentionally.

Just make it so the medpack goes to the marine standing closest to the center of the medpack.

Calego

The current delay makes it possible to doublebite a marine with no armor between medpacks. So if a marine has no armor, three bites in a row (with no delay) will make him die.

I for one have destroyed many a game by medding my marines far too much. Medpacks cost res, this is their only downside and it is arguably a significant one. With few RTs, its a tradeoff between research and keeping marines alive. With enough RTs (4+) this isn't a problem with an accurate comm as you can med enough to keep your marines in the field, while also having enough res to research.

The problems come when you couple a skilled marine, who can either aim or dodge well enough to out-play the aliens trying to kill him, with a skilled comm, who can med accurately and quickly enough to keep the marine alive between bites.

In the strictest sense, they deserve to win. They're more skilled than the other team. It sucks to say, but they just out-played you. Since your group of skulks/fades/lerks/whatever couldn't coordinate an attack and land two consecutive bites, they won the engagement. They spent team money in an investment that the commander deemed necessary, and it paid off.

However, that's not the most fun-loving way to look at this. Perhaps making meds heal a large amount at first and then finish off the healing with a smaller HoT is a good idea on how to nerf them a slight amount. This would need some careful calculation however.

The biggest thing to consider with meds is that they are absolutely necessary to engage higher lifeforms successfully as marines. Don't just think about skulking when you think about meds. Lerks can be out-medded without a doublebite as well, though fades have a better time I think once armor is gone.

Hidden mechanics are not the way to 'fix' this, cost increases / dimishing effectiveness will only make it more confusing for newer comms (who have enough trouble medding as it is). Even a slight increase in the cooldown might have unexpectedly drastic results, but that might be the simplest thing to do.

All in all, I prefer to think of this as one of the few things that a marine comm can get skilled at, and as such should remain a skill factor. Good marine comms can make up for mediocre shooters by medding the shit out of them, but it takes two to tango.