Idea: Modified Alien Upgrade System
Zifnab
Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 6062Members
Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 6062Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Some tweeks for the betterment of all</div> I currently see two problems with the aliens' upgrade system. On the marines' side, once they have two hives (which is pretty quick) you pretty much instantly are facing fades with full combat upgrades (carapace and adrenaline), while the marines will still have a while before they get to full upgrades. Although marines with full upgrades are better than aliens with full upgrades, the shear magnitude of the difference in time between these two occurances is a bit unbalancing.
On the aliens' side, you can only pick 1 upgrade of each type, making pretty much ALL upgrades besides carapace, adrenaline (sometimes celerity if you're a skulk) and cloaking go utterly unused.
MY SOLUTION:
PART 1: This would be no small tweek, and I really don't expect anything like this would ever come to pass, but I'm just throwing it out there.
Each upgrade chamber would function as they normally do, healing, teleporting, etc., and there would still be a limit of one type per hive.
But here's the change: Instead of each chamber (up to a max of 3) instantly giving aliens the upgrade, the upgrade is 'researched' over time. The first would go pretty quickly, maybe 30 seconds. The next two would take about as long as the marine upgrades. While this is going on, a small amount of resources is used up. The rate at which resources would be used for this would match the rate at which you get them from nozzles, so effectively it'd just nullify a nozzle for a minute or two, depending on which upgrade you're getting. There would also still be the limit of 1 upgrade level per chamber, so if you wanted to get some resources faster instead of just spitting out all 3 movement/sensory chambers the second you get the second/third hive, you can kind of manage this by waiting to build the other chambers of that type.
So that everyone knows how the upgrading is coming along, a little bar depicting this would be put in the HUD up by the hives next to the picture of the chamber type being supported by each hive.
This tweek would hopefully balance out just a bit the instantaneous, practically free upgrades that aliens get. (People build DC's all over, and 1 MC per hive is a very good idea, so since the chambers themselves have functionality, the upgrades themselves are essentially free perks.)
PART 2: This is a bit more implementable, but since it kind just gives aliens a perk, I wouldn't reccomend it unless it's balanced by something akin to PART 1. Anyways, start by making upgrade times go much faster than they do. Yes, they aleady go super fast, yes yes. But have each upgrade only give you 1 level of that upgrade, and give the option to have combinations of upgrades. I personally know that I'd take 2 carapace and 1 regen pretty often, if I was a fade assaulting marine outposts with nowhere to fall back to and heal. 2 carapace and 1 redemption would be popular with onos crowd, I'm sure. As a skulk, 2 celerity and 1 adrenaline would be great, since chomping on buildings wears you out, but 3 adren still doesn't outweigh 3 celerity for skulks.
Ya know how on the right side of the HUD it tells you how many levels of your upgrades you have via the little icons? Well this tweek would make it so that each upgrade you got would make an icon appear of the appropriate type. Very simple.
Another major advantage of this tweek would be that the lesser used upgrades would actually see some usage.
OK, that's all folks.
Comments and constructive criticism of my idea are very very welcome.
On the aliens' side, you can only pick 1 upgrade of each type, making pretty much ALL upgrades besides carapace, adrenaline (sometimes celerity if you're a skulk) and cloaking go utterly unused.
MY SOLUTION:
PART 1: This would be no small tweek, and I really don't expect anything like this would ever come to pass, but I'm just throwing it out there.
Each upgrade chamber would function as they normally do, healing, teleporting, etc., and there would still be a limit of one type per hive.
But here's the change: Instead of each chamber (up to a max of 3) instantly giving aliens the upgrade, the upgrade is 'researched' over time. The first would go pretty quickly, maybe 30 seconds. The next two would take about as long as the marine upgrades. While this is going on, a small amount of resources is used up. The rate at which resources would be used for this would match the rate at which you get them from nozzles, so effectively it'd just nullify a nozzle for a minute or two, depending on which upgrade you're getting. There would also still be the limit of 1 upgrade level per chamber, so if you wanted to get some resources faster instead of just spitting out all 3 movement/sensory chambers the second you get the second/third hive, you can kind of manage this by waiting to build the other chambers of that type.
So that everyone knows how the upgrading is coming along, a little bar depicting this would be put in the HUD up by the hives next to the picture of the chamber type being supported by each hive.
This tweek would hopefully balance out just a bit the instantaneous, practically free upgrades that aliens get. (People build DC's all over, and 1 MC per hive is a very good idea, so since the chambers themselves have functionality, the upgrades themselves are essentially free perks.)
PART 2: This is a bit more implementable, but since it kind just gives aliens a perk, I wouldn't reccomend it unless it's balanced by something akin to PART 1. Anyways, start by making upgrade times go much faster than they do. Yes, they aleady go super fast, yes yes. But have each upgrade only give you 1 level of that upgrade, and give the option to have combinations of upgrades. I personally know that I'd take 2 carapace and 1 regen pretty often, if I was a fade assaulting marine outposts with nowhere to fall back to and heal. 2 carapace and 1 redemption would be popular with onos crowd, I'm sure. As a skulk, 2 celerity and 1 adrenaline would be great, since chomping on buildings wears you out, but 3 adren still doesn't outweigh 3 celerity for skulks.
Ya know how on the right side of the HUD it tells you how many levels of your upgrades you have via the little icons? Well this tweek would make it so that each upgrade you got would make an icon appear of the appropriate type. Very simple.
Another major advantage of this tweek would be that the lesser used upgrades would actually see some usage.
OK, that's all folks.
Comments and constructive criticism of my idea are very very welcome.
Comments
the game is balanced at the moment, it's just that the majority of marine teams are not competent enough to survive until they have all the bonuses. If aliens are nerfed because marine players don't work together as a team and thus lose the game by themselves then the game will be seriously less fun to play.
Alien upgrades are quick and cheap because you have to re-evolve them everytime you die.
Its balanced.
I believe the reason that the manual (and game text) says that the "level 5 behemoth" can't use Redemption is because it was disabled before the release because of clipping issues with the onos popping back to a hive. It's generally been decided that since you can decide whether or not to use Redemption with your onos, you can choose to take the clipping risk or not, so all's well.