Some words about the Power increase of NS2
The_Welsh_Wizard
Join Date: 2013-09-10 Member: 188101Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Join Date: 2013-09-10 Member: 188101Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Hey,
So I often hear people complaining about two things: Games being decided very early in the game and difficulties ending a game.
This is of course a more complex topic, but I want to show an issue that lies in the fundamentals of the game and plays an important part for this two issues.
The power curve of NS2 appears to be rather steady. It looks similar to this (yes it is very rough):
Teams can get early in the game big advantages over the opponent, leading to an almost unwinnable uphill battle. It also means that in the end game, teams have difficulties playing out advantages because the opponent is also very high teched. What I like to see is a curve like this:
Meaning that at the start of the game, advantages do play out, but at a smaller scale than they do now. It also means that in the end game, teams in pole position can play out their advantages easier and more effective because small advantages have bigger effects. It would force an end to a stalemate game much sooner than what we have now.
How could that be achieved?
I think right now, at this stage of development, it is impossible because it requires an immense amount of rework and rebalancing. But general ideas would be: Weapon and armor upgrades scale per level: W1 +10%, W2 +20%, W3 +30%. HMG (or a similar weapon) could cost 60 PRes and deal an incredible amount of damage (Exo in better). Change biomass HP scaling similar to above proposed marine weapon scaling. Give every lifeform a Hive 3 ability that is extremely good (Stomp back to hive 3, Xeno is fine, Spores to hive 3 and more powerful, give fades and gorges strong abilities aswell).
So I often hear people complaining about two things: Games being decided very early in the game and difficulties ending a game.
This is of course a more complex topic, but I want to show an issue that lies in the fundamentals of the game and plays an important part for this two issues.
The power curve of NS2 appears to be rather steady. It looks similar to this (yes it is very rough):
Teams can get early in the game big advantages over the opponent, leading to an almost unwinnable uphill battle. It also means that in the end game, teams have difficulties playing out advantages because the opponent is also very high teched. What I like to see is a curve like this:
Meaning that at the start of the game, advantages do play out, but at a smaller scale than they do now. It also means that in the end game, teams in pole position can play out their advantages easier and more effective because small advantages have bigger effects. It would force an end to a stalemate game much sooner than what we have now.
How could that be achieved?
I think right now, at this stage of development, it is impossible because it requires an immense amount of rework and rebalancing. But general ideas would be: Weapon and armor upgrades scale per level: W1 +10%, W2 +20%, W3 +30%. HMG (or a similar weapon) could cost 60 PRes and deal an incredible amount of damage (Exo in better). Change biomass HP scaling similar to above proposed marine weapon scaling. Give every lifeform a Hive 3 ability that is extremely good (Stomp back to hive 3, Xeno is fine, Spores to hive 3 and more powerful, give fades and gorges strong abilities aswell).
Comments
This is my favorite topic of NS2 and has been talked about in this community since 2013, roughly. And such a curve would most definitely help produce less predictable outcomes imho.
The issue isn't so much in that it requires fundamental changes, but rather the reception to said changes. Even you would take issue with the necessary steps based on prior discussions. For instance, I believe you have advocated for marines being at a statistical advantage in the early game, and aliens having the advantage in the late game - that design fights against a stable early game by its very nature of intentionally being imbalanced. I'll admit though, utilizing the arms lab upgrades and biomass system is an easy approach (I've brought up the idea before to poor reception). But that maybe assumes that other tech power levels (like lifeforms or weapons) wouldn't negate those changes due to their degrees of impact on said curve, or that they shouldn't be addressed as well.
Regardless, even if you achieved that curve, I'd argue that it alone would not address predictable outcomes without an increased number of comeback mechanics.
This is because even with a hypothetical perfect example of balanced team tech, power curve and skill balance.. all it takes is for one team to reach X point in the round or tech tree and then the other team says "Oh they have X, GG" -> concede. The "extremely good" Tier 3 abilities you mention that can achieve fragility will dissuade the losing team from even attempting to try, without a viable and accessible comeback.
lol
Do we change how the game works by allowing comeback mechanics or super strong late game (before hive 3) abilities? I would say no to comeback mechanics. You could make aliens stronger late game, a nudge in a direction. It forces the marines to move as they are on some sort of clock to make something happen. That hopefully would lead to less stalemates. You would have to develop a late game alien ability that still allowed the marines to win, but they would be playing at a disadvantage. I don't think stomp does this well, and it's not fun to play against.
Or you keep it as is with very fair fights and you limit the game to 8v8 for more dynamic game-play. Sadly 8v8 probably can't be a norm based on what we have, but it would be nice if all servers were forced to play 10v10 (compromise) max except for arcade servers.
That late game tech like proto lab, and onos/stomp/xeno are powerful enough to pressure the team on the back foot into aggression in the late stages of the midgame. The whole "we have to kill this hive before they get stomp up". Or "We need to secure this hive location before JPs".
The issue isn't with the balance of the effectiveness of these abilities, to use the OP's terminology the power curve. I think the biggest issue is that these abilities just aren't fun or don't feel fair to use.
Exos feel sort of BS sometimes, their glass cannon design is prone to huge decisive fights being won or lost by razor thin margins/luck. The fact they can kill and be killed so quickly feels contradictory to the relative long TTK for other high tech level loadouts(JP marines, Fades, onos).
And everyone complains about how stomp is incredibly unfun to play against.
Balance wise, these abilities are incredibly strong, and DO strengthen their respective teams. I feel like the game does adhere to the power curve in the OP, but its just that the lategame is somewhat of a mess to play.
Hmmm... devour, JP-paralyzing webs... two things that were taken out compared to NS1 to make the game more enjoyable for both sides.
Luck is true for most engagements. You can establish yourself in an important room by just +1 HP margin, then command the rest of the game from that position.
Fades arent that robust either... and if exos had more armour, that would make them a show-ending tool. You know.... "gg, they have exos now, concede pls"
Yeah, that's what we got instead of devour. Incapacitate MORE marines for LESS time. Btw, you can dodge the stomps of a single onos indefinitely, if you time the jumps right.
So marines do have a counter against one stomping onos, and its free...
I see no mess there...
stomp: support, good against lone JPs and groups of riflemen. perfect when youre attacking in a group as aliens
xeno: good for softening up turtling marines
contamination: create a distraction for the marines, if 2-3 marines dont constantly shoot at them, they start to lose buildings
exo: classic tank role
jp: hunter of lifeforms, hiverushes
Although i loved devour (even if i was the one being digested), i can understand why it was taken out. It crossed a line where the annoyance to one team outweighed the usefulness for the other team.
BUT, people will get annoyed when they start losing. Especially if the other team has better gear, so they start blaming it for being unfair. That's just human psychology, so i wouldnt give too much attention to it :P
I don't remember everything I said, but I believe it was something around power shifting with lifeform timings. It is more an obversation of how it currently is and marines have the advantage versus skulks until Lerks come up. The thing is, you will always have power spikes. Your power level stays at the same level until an upgrade is researched, then it instantly puts you on a higher power level.
I disagree. You could very well make it work. But I don't think you should lol. I would like if OVERALL (by flattening out the power spikes), teams should be evenly balanced for the most time of the game.
I think you are categorizing things here on a level where it shouldn't be categorized. Everything that is somehow an increase in power should be used to balance the power curve (this is true for everything you can spend res on in this game). Does this mean you HAVE TO change weapons for example to fit the proposed curve? No, but it would be better, because it would be more consistent (I can't stress this enough because NS2 is generally rather lacking consistency). It also would be more fun to play because power increase can be seen and felt by new gear you can actually use, like lifeforms. You can feel the power of the Lerk when it comes out, of the fade and even new players can feel the power of the onos.
It wouldn't, but it would be a huge improvement. I am not sure what you mean with comeback mechanics though. But it sounds a bit too artifical. Comebacks should happen because of outplaying the opponent or smart stratetig choices.
You have to differentiate here a bit. I am not proposing gg mechanics. I hate them, I hate contamination (also because of its design lol, but that is another topic). But the late game mechanics must be very strong, I mean that is the point of the idea and the curve. To be able to gain more advantage of tech advantage over your opponent. Successful plays should matter more.
The other thing here is the alien end tech advantage. This is the only point in the game where I want a big power difference between aliens and marines. The ONLY situation this comes into play is when both teams are playing so even that every team stays in the game until they both reach late game. But there must not be hard timers now (like contamination), but softtimers. The power curve of both teams should be the same, but the maximum power of aliens must be higher. This basically means that when marines hit their max power level, aliens can still climb more upwards. The only reason for this is to give marines an incentive to end the game, they cannot stall. It is needed because marines are the ranged race.
I think you are mistaking what I value. I value that the game is not like cs. Many ns games go in a direction where the winning team that earned their lead dominates at the end or the other team quits. We are discussing close games hanging in the balance, right? The close games matter. Making it fun throughout the round. I’m not promoting comeback mechanics.
Not wanting the late game to be super fragile with dominating abilities doesn’t mean I don’t value the rts gameplay. This is all about balance. You are playing a FPS game that builds with advantages over time. But you don’t want the game to be extremely boring and anticlimactic at the end. Example - you wait for the super gun that will surely win the game, and it’s the obvious smart play.
You also don’t want the 20 minutes before that to feel like a waste of time.
The goal is to make it as fun, dynamic as possible through the whole round and make the game also feel earned. The easiest thing to change without ruining what we have now is stomp on biomass 8. I don’t like it there, move it to biomass 9 and replace with something else.
For the aliens, an approach for both situations would be to add some more powerful abilities.
If you want them to be used to speed up victory, make them available from biomass 9+. If you want them to be used in a comeback, make them expensive and available from biomass 5-6+.
On a side note, it'd be nice to see some more/new abilities and passive upgrades for the alien comm & the team as a whole, that were attached to biomass.
Passive research could be such a good idea, like
Crag-Redemption-30res: each new lifeform is given a single redemption
Shift-Control-30res: increased air control for all lifeforms
Shade-Hallucination-20res: spawn a hallucination when reaching 50% e-hp, every 2 minutes
Or fade-double swipe-40 res: upon landing a 4th swipe without missing within a 2s duration, deal double damage for that swipe
or lerk-primal scream-30 res: when at full energy, taunts grant nearby units +30% attack speed
or marines-augment speed: bring marines walk speed closer to skulk base speed
or lmg augment: clip size 60
Just stuff to make the late game more interesting and changing over time, cause right now in one of these "amazing 45 minute games" we have:
early game:3 mins
mid game:10 mins
late game:32 minutes
And late game really isn't very fun for that long. And passives could just be number tweaks so "i presume" a reasonable development time.
I know these are for examples, but would it compound on top of drifter enzyme?
If yes, that's kinda overpowered.
If no, then you have parallel features, which is... it just feels wrong
But yes, these could make the game a lot more interesting. My main gripe about passive upgrades (its also true for A+W ups), is the other team has no idea about your tech state.
I think this was mention several times already. Some visual indication about these passive upgrades would be nice.
I think these specific examples are terrible ideas, but the having passive upgrades does sound interesting.
I like to concede early and concede often because playing a new game will likely be more fun than the potential of having a comeback this game. My opinion on this seems to amount of a very small minority within the playerbase. The ability to come back is a popular one. Players seem to relish at the potential to win and enjoy the thrill when it sometimes happens.
There are two problems with comeback mechanics in NS2.
The other solution is to increase the slippery slope within NS2. That is to make it so that the winning team wins faster. T3 abilities are supposed to be this. Exo's sometimes serve this role, or at least used to when they were stronger. Onos used to serve this role too. Contaminate is an incredibly blunt version of this function. "Oh they have X, GG -> concede."
There are three problems with increasing the slippery slope within NS2.
I don't think comeback mechanics are inherently a bad thing. I think they tend to bring out the worst aspects of NS2 gameplay. I think the solution is to make better lategame abilities, that are more fun and strong enough to end the game very quickly. This is my opinion, albeit and unpopular one.
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The rest of this post is me rambling about ideas.
Our current late game abilities are not only not strong enough, but they suck. Stab is just bad. Advanced metabolism is useful but lame. Stomp is really really good, but annoying for the marines and a bad mechanic. Xeno is kind of good but annoying for you. Jetpacks, exo's, and advanced armory are strong, and generally fun, but don't end the game quickly. Grenade launchers are unfun, but that is a different subject because they are effective. All of these late game abilities could use a replacement with something better. I don't know what.
I also would like to see uber strong passive whole team buffs researched by the commanders. I think player controlled late game game enders such as strong exo's and onos are more unfun. We have seen strong exo's and onos before. Uber strong exo's and onos are player controlled units that create hero play, which I don't think is very fun to play against because of the skill disparity in game. I do not know what these passive whole team buffs should be.
Brainstorming:
Please let us not have more blunt game enders like contaminate.
Early Game:
Marines:
Aliens:
In the early game, plays feel meaningful, yet not game ending. There are many options, many strategies, and things are generally feel intense. The early game is one of the best things about NS2 because it sets up the match. Things gradually warm up during the early game with the introduction of tunnels and lerks, but overall early game in NS2 is solid in my opinion.
Mid Game
Marines:
Aliens:
In the mid game, the key is teching up and maintain the front line. Aliens have some dynamic play with hive tech, hitting back res, harassing with higher lifeforms, etc.
Marines get more options to push, have to maintain their forward positions, and tech up to push some hives. The mid game in NS2 is currently interesting for the most part. There's still a lot of opportunity for plays and multiple tech pathways.
Late Game
Marines:
Aliens:
Late game is where the main problems start to arise in NS2. There isn't much left to research or to tech up on. The late game can genuinely be fun when back and forth matches occur. However, these back and forth matches usually do not occur as either aliens or marines win here, or you enter the dreaded supreme late game.
Supreme Late Game
Marines:
Aliens:
The supreme late game is the main issue with NS2 as it stands. The main issue is that during this phase of the game, everything is researched and unlocked. Aliens are simply waiting for stomp and defending. Marines attempt to attack and kill hives, but end up just losing all their p-res due to trying to end the game and now are left with nothing. The game stagnates and thus for a majority of players, the supreme late game becomes boring. There is literally nothing new or interesting to gain during a match. The game becomes a slugfest to see who loses all their will to play first. This is not enjoyable or fun for either side.
For rookies, these matches are fun at first. "WOW! WHAT A MATCH! IT WENT ON FOR TWO HOURS ON VEIL!" We all experienced this enjoyment at one point. However, after you experience a few hundred to a thousand hours, you understand how garbage long games are (other than the 0.00001% of games with good back and forth).
The problem is, NS2 does not have anything to compensate for the supreme late game. As such, the game suffers greatly in this area. If aliens get a third tech point, the game is arguably over because marines get spammed with zero skill abilities such as xenocide and contaminate (stomp counts). Aliens then have to pound through hundreds of marine corpses to attempt to end the game. "Oh shit, we lost our lifeforms when we were about to win. Oh shit, we lost the third hive due to gate rush. Guess we got to spend another thirty minutes doing nothing till we get all our lifeforms back."
The issue with this, is that it's not satisfying in the slightest. We worked so hard to get to this point and now we lost because a comm drops unstoppable bile in our main or we die to mass stomp and xeno? You see, the issue is no one would have a problem getting to the late game/supreme late game if there was anything dynamic about it. There is nothing game changing here.
Here are the options put before us:
-Get newer passive upgrades to increase playability!
-Infinite tech to make insta-kill machines!
How about this: Start killing off the map...
Wouldn't that be so fun? Both teams finally get to have a visual and environmental cue that the game needs to end as soon as possible. Time to start making some serious plays or go with the map. This accomplishes many things:
This is a long post and I'm tired of writing.
Basic issue is in my opinion that the tools available will not be used or commanders are playing with the mentality "better safe than sorry" -> "defense is better than offense"
(And with that Meta currently have Marines the upper hand)
Marines currently stall, try to tech up slowly, but the comm does only invest in defensive stuff like turrets in the end.
But disregards 90% nanoshield, Catpackss, PowerSurge (AND IF he uses that only for defensive measures but never risking anything!! You only see stuff like that after the comm has endless ress or you miracuously get a competitive player as commander that uses catpacks and stuff for offensive purposes)
For Aliens it feels the same, that common commanders often only try to fortify everything but only around the tunnel.
But with that defensive stance currently Marines are winning. Aliencomms aren't any better with using their tools. Aside from the fact that upgrades like Metabolize aren't researched or rather disregarded when fades are up one big issue is that Aliencomms also do not use drifters or structures for offensive purposes.
In a ns2_veil stalemate they rather wait and sit in nanogrid but do not use their tools available.
Example:
Especially if there are no arcs yet you can cyst up to system... get your PvE Crag/Shift/Shade close to System for passive support, to help your lifeforms (give lerks the needed adrenaline for spores/umbra or gorge for bile)...even whips to defend the PvE (and gorges going with them)
More importantly, use driftersupport. The drifterabilities are really rarely used that would help insanely in any big push into system or any other bigger engagement. Once you see more than 3 skulks go anywhere you'll never see any drifter helping them with their buffs.
1. If the aliens are losing and are on one hive, the game is not fun at all for them, they just concede 99% of the time (me included).
2. If the aliens are on two hives but loosing the res/kill game, they usually hang on until one of their hives is dead, then default to #1.
3. If the marines are losing without decent tech, they concede 99% of the times.
4. If the marines are losing with decent tech (AA, some W+A), they usually turtle.
#4 is the most often QUACK scenario, but marines SHOULD actually turtle, even if winning is impossible. If they haven't, aliens would have a bunch of tier 3 abilities that they will never use. Or maybe once, then the marines realize they have it and concede.
Turtling can be fun for both sides, i think of it as a mini zombie-game.
Maybe instead of going against it, we could embrace it by adding some nifty feature like some scoreboard of how much they biomass endured at the last stand... maybe stupid, just babbling.
Gotta disagree wholeheartedly here.
Turtling is by far the most cancerous aspect of NS2.
It's no fun to sit outside the losing teams main racking up kills against virtually helpless opponents (yet still somehow lacking the power and/or coordination to end it)
It's no fun to be the turtling team where half the time you're spawnkilled within one step of the ip, and the other half your sitting there in boredom getting ez kills with a gl or exo.
I've seen turtles empty more servers than anything else.
Aliens most definitely seem to enjoy stomping and xenoing and sporing :P They finally got the abilities and want to use it.
Yeah, holding out on a losing ground is not appealing for everyone. I can't argue with that.
But I respect the other team's efforts, and dont want to ruin their coup de grace by anticlimactically conceding.
There will always be QUACK situations, that's inevitable due to RTS mechanics.
You all outlined the problems with countering it. All im trying here is to think outside the box...
Cant get rid of it? Embrace it somehow. Completely different approach, but maybe that's what's needed
In my experience, and opinion, way too many games don't end soon enough because so many players are unwilling to concede. Players seem to relish at the potential to win and enjoy the thrill when it sometimes happens.
This is exactly the stuff I dislike so much but other players seem to love.
How can we build a consensus when there are two groups of players who want nearly opposite things? The result of situations like these are crappy compromises that don't make anyone perticularly happy.
I do agree this is largely a player issue, making a problem (in my opinion) inherent in the game design worse. It tends to be the lower skill players, but it isn't only lower skill player. Trixx is a good example of a higher skill player liking the turtles and lame duck game play.
This is kind of a player issue, but it is more than that. 1) a lot of players get very upset if you deviate from the safe strategies to the point of even ejecting you sometimes. 2) Some of those things are very hard. I don't mean for rookies, but veterans too. I am not a perticularly good comm because I am not able to rally my team to do what I want done, nor am I able to pull of drifter support very easily. I am not a good commander, but I would say I am mid tier in pub games.
Try these things:
-Remove supply. Aliens almost never reach the cap, and it often prevents marines from arcing a hive in the super late game, as late game aliens are often defensive as is and have very powerful tools to stall out ARCs. ARC damage can be reduced since the number of ARCs that can come up in the super late game is much more than the number you can generate anywhere else. I will defend that this will not result in an apocalypse, and may be crucial to ONLY the latest portions of a game. The res cost alone will be prohibitory. With 2 armories and one robo, the number of producable ARCs is too small (can't have two robos because THOSE cost supply).
-Make alien supply much lower. If we want to play a game with less junk in it, make it a reality. The best way to make all structures have more merit (to Handshuch's point) is to make them rare. If I can drop "infinite" crags, whips, shifts, and shades, I can be lazy with their position. Take caged. A hive room on that map is often bristling with excessive structures that stall out marines but provide no offensive edge to aliens. The game simply can't end.
-Give marines something akin to contamination. I will argue 10/10 times to keep contamination in the game, as it is the only sure way to kill a marine team that is down, and end turtling (the most frustrating and useless part of a game). If you like skill-lacking combat in one room, play with bots. NS2 is a strategic game, and a concede should have happened by this point UNLESS it is short term prior to a rush. I give merit to almost all strategic ideas and tactics, but marine turtling is up there as one of the few ideas I almost never talk well about. In its current state (nerfed by FT and can be arced) contam is fine, especially once that 60 res biomass block was added. Thumbs up for that choice. The issue is that marines don't have that solution, that massive form of game ending power. I like seige's approach of having arcs hitting your hive, where the alien team has immense pressure to end the game before it is ended for them. I don't see why infinite (or simply very long) range arc units behind a ludicrous tech barrier can't be that solution (unlocks only after all other tech is complete and costs 150 res, or even requires a certain number of tech points). Keep this game aggressive. Just because alien teams don't call it turtling does not mean that isn't what's happening. I don't want a nuke to just end the game, but it seems unfair to give one team an often game ending upgrade and not the other.
Continuing this thought, I think a game's power curve should always hit spikes, and be countered by spikes in the other team. That is a balanced NS2 game. Flat line power curves are boring, and most importantly not possible, in a game where res determines progression, and lifeforms are determined by those same variables. Lifeforms are always there, and because of it, a tech style that works in busts is simply required for good gameplay. At some point though, both teams are maxed out. Because map control alone is the only metric for which team is doing better (and it is often marines in these stally games), something must bring the game to an end, and it must be unanimous that the winning team earned it. Notice how aliens don't have this problem with base pushing anymore, now that contamination is enough (99/100 times), and notice that most people don't complain about it being unfair or that the alien team "cheated" to win. That's because the aliens needed to hold three hives for several minutes to get that final, massive power spike that ends the game. I will again speak for a marine upgrade that has this strength. Nanosheild and catpacks are both useless if marines don't move, and as a commander I have NO CONTROL over those people at their keyboards like an alien com has over contamination. I love power surge to bits, but that 5 res cost on use is too high to use as anything other than last ditch unless res is doing well.
We should work to find more ways to create sudden death scenarios in these 50 minute-120minute stall wars, and find ways to reduce ways for people to reach those conditions before the match has become a "drag". No team should be called out for "cheating" the system, yet this way we can end games despite people who cling to .0001% victory conditions refusing to concede. When the tactical game is over, the game should be over. No concede required. For aliens, that is three hives + a few minutes (unless their commander is lazy or they have low res). For marines, such an option does not exist. No amount of ground or power can change a game if a team is unable to kill an alien base. Losing in those situations as a marine commander is why it is hard to get back in the chair on the next map. It is frustrating to concede on 6rts. And it shouldn't happen for marines and not aliens.
Just posted a lot, so comment and suggest as always. Find me on discord too if you wanna DM or take the chat elsewhere.
Well argued point about adding a Maine tech that is the equivalent of contaminate. It might play decent in rounds where marines are looking for a way to end the game and don’t know how to do it otherwise.
The way I see it is, the teams are different. If marines know they can get a ‘super arc’ or they have to wait to get all tech and wait for their best upgrade, then you are promoting extremely slow marine play. I like the idea of biomass 8 ability forcing the marines to move. Force the marines to move while the game is still even. Aliens can only get contaminate when they control a huge portion of the map which is what the aliens are trying to do. The marines don’t need to do that to win and the game is better for it. If you promote a sit in bases game, the game-play slows down. Marines have to feel some pressure.
Also, it’s hard for aliens to hold 3 hives and get to biomass 9. For marines, you can hold out for upgrades and res by playing the sit on phase gates game. I don’t think you’ve earned anything, you just made the game play out terrible.
Perhaps your idea could work if marines already are feeling more pressure to do something when the game is even (aliens have 2 hives) and it’s the late game. So let’s say most rounds play out where marines have to get stuff done or risk losing, then on the very rare round that it is a stalemate, marines could end it easier. I just would be scared to promote this now with no changes to aliens because I don’t think the gameplay scares marines enough which leads to the stalemate discussions.
If we see steelcaps serverside changes go live in vanilla, the supply costs are a mood point, since they're probably not the bottleneck for servers anymore.
Generally I've seen several instances of increased supply costs in Ghouls Balancemod without a good result or resonance from the players..
Gives marines a big bomb they can plant that takes X amount of seconds to arm, then X amount of seconds to detonate like a thermal fusion charge or something and have it do a large radius like 1/2 or more of a room of very high dmg (chambers, small structures, Skulks, Gorges and Lerks an maybe Fades get obliterated but the hive and Onos are left barely alive), also make it so aliens can destroy it before the countdown timer finishes so marines have to protect it. Have it make an audible arm sound/count down beeps to let the aliens know something bad is about to happen. You can also make it cost a huge amount of p-res like 90+ or something that the commander can only drop 1 of every X amount minutes for a marine to pick up. Would make for some harrowing end games for both sides.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=873978863
I think an easy way to address this is to make defensive play in the LATE game much weaker. The original posters were calling for instability in the late game. An unstable lategame is the antithesis of the current meta, where once exos come out, they are basically used as seige weapons which are either escorted to the frontlines or used as base fortifications. In the way they are used by commanders now, they almost fill the same role as ARCs.
I think a solution to be tried, would be to add mobility and more armor/health at the expense of firepower. Or perhaps add a self repair feature(idk about this one). And at the same time, I think fades should be given the ability to attack structures.
The idea of these changes, are to add more mobility to the marine side. As it stands, marines once they lose all their phase gates, they have basically no chance to win and become trapped in their base. By making the proto upgrades primarily focused on increasing mobility, I think it would make the relative value of gates much less. As groups of marines can be strong and quickly move around the map. From a philosophical standpoint, proto upgrades make the game more symmetrical, by giving the marines the mobility of aliens.
Meanwhile, by adding structure damage to fades, it makes it so the aliens can break through marine bases more easily, inscentivizing marines to rely more on their improved mobility instead of "trench warfare" style tactics. As technology improves, the idea is to make late game more like WW2 than WW1 in that forces can gain lots of ground in little time. It becomes a game of trading territory at this point.
This also has the knock on affect of making marine commanders less important once the proto upgrades come out, so the focus of the commander/where they allocate res will be more focused on supporting the players which encourages more cat packs and stuff.
Love everything about the fade idea. So many times im in spots that I can hit structures but am just unable to due to crap structure damage.
What if Biomass were to also increase the effectiveness of upgrade chambers like Veils, Shells, Spurs by a percent or 2? So in the later the game the more the slippery the slope is. That would help a lot with the alien side because even though I am a decent player, aliens feel so weak. Especially the onos until you get stomp.
The only general change to lifeforms i would like to see is a bit more base armor on all lifeforms above gorge but maybe not onos. Funny enough I think gorges are the only really balanced lifeform aside from bile which could use a slight nerf. On the marines this would incentivize holding tech locations or at least denying the other team from them.
As for end game marines i think comm purchasable passive upgrades could be really nice like faster sprint, electric armor, etc. That or unlockable purchasable items like Placeable Heal health over time bubbles, one time use cat packs / meds, an arm shield, are examples of things you can buy for example. Make these a 2 tech point requirement + expensive upgrade on commander side so its not OP in early game.
Also please make it so that marines cant build armory walls. Like a minimum distance between them would be great.
If it were a 3rd hive thing more like stab but less energy ridiculous, this could work.
Please for the love of god don't do this. Contamination is so dumb. It is such a basic and lame mechanic. It has a purpose, and it does it, but the same purpose could be done another way. Aliens can't turtle as well as marines can because marines can get arcs. Arcs already serve this role. So do exo and jetpacks to an extent, but they are not as strong.
I would also like to remind everyone again that contamination was nerfed several times because people didn't like that it just ended the game.
That actions have consequences is what a slippery slope mechanics are. NS2 already has a fairly steep slippery slope. Increasing the slippery slope is to increase the consequences of losing. I think that in the late game, the consequences should be greater. I also think that those benefits should be universal to the whole team, not just for a few players. This is why I was suggesting passive upgrades.