The Upcomming 1.04 Patch
Evildwarf
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 2489Members
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 2489Members
<div class="IPBDescription">What do you think about it?</div> Ok, i've just the changes in the 1.04 patch, some of them are really good some of them are bad.
- Increased scan cost from 1 to 3.
Ok, I dont see the balance issue with scan to be honest, it's a great tool and a good commancer will use it
alot. Without scan you cant keep updated on whats happening around you, if it cost 3 res per scan it would
take 9 resources just to check the hives, looking up the nozzles for alien expansion would be even more expensive.
At the moment I feel critical to this change but we will see, the good part is that it makes the sensory chamber a bit better. Not much though.
- Reduced shotgun cost from 20 to 17
Good since it's a bit to expensive, bad since it makes the dreaded shotgun rush even easier to perform.
- Increased cost of infantry portal from 15 to 22
Good since it makes rushing a bit harder due to the high costs, bad since infportals already cost a fair amount considered how low their health is.
- Increased cost of phase gate from 20 to 25
- Decreased health of phase gate from 3500 to 2000
Ugh, we will see how this works. My favourite tool as a marine, guess its the most important tool they have.
This means PGs will last about half the time from skulk attacks and they will be 5 res more expensive to build, thats 10 res off my starting strat. with the increased infportal cost it's a total of 24 res off my strat. Tough i have to say. Guess I will be going for 1 infportal at the start. risky.
- Siege cannon targets now must be sighted to be hit (in view of friendly player or scanned by commander)
- Reduced siege cannon range from 1250 to 1100
Hm, seige all of a sudden became much less attractive, I think I will stick to handing out GLs instead. Much more worth the res if you can trust your grunts <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
- Reduced radius of acid rocket splash from 200 to 165
Good, less splashing on the walls and more actual skill required from the Fade players.
- Armory can now give out ammo while upgrading to advanced armory (more intuitive)
Ugh, really really tough change considered the new invention The HMG rush, now you can first try a standard LMG rush to lessen the resistance then go for a full scale HMG rush when the upgrade is done.
Very nasty, good though if they find a solution for the rush syndrome <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
- Defense chambers no longer heal themselves
To be honest I dont see the point in this change. Never heard any complaints about this either. Why did they do it? Defchambers have been nerfed enough imho.
The rest of the changes seems much to be bug fixes, I could have left something out though. Fill in the blanks if i've missed any other important patch issue.
Still I think they have missed some important things in this patch, I hope they havnt forgotten them.
1. The much unstopable HMG rush.
2. The Khaara respawn times in big games. (Head on charges from the marines seldom fail in game sizes of 10+, the respawn times are so slow for Khaara that marines often can win even without a phasegate rush.)
3. The Khaara resource times in big games. (Gorges get resources WAY to slow in big games, it will take ages before they are able to expand)
//None tosses a dwarf!
- Increased scan cost from 1 to 3.
Ok, I dont see the balance issue with scan to be honest, it's a great tool and a good commancer will use it
alot. Without scan you cant keep updated on whats happening around you, if it cost 3 res per scan it would
take 9 resources just to check the hives, looking up the nozzles for alien expansion would be even more expensive.
At the moment I feel critical to this change but we will see, the good part is that it makes the sensory chamber a bit better. Not much though.
- Reduced shotgun cost from 20 to 17
Good since it's a bit to expensive, bad since it makes the dreaded shotgun rush even easier to perform.
- Increased cost of infantry portal from 15 to 22
Good since it makes rushing a bit harder due to the high costs, bad since infportals already cost a fair amount considered how low their health is.
- Increased cost of phase gate from 20 to 25
- Decreased health of phase gate from 3500 to 2000
Ugh, we will see how this works. My favourite tool as a marine, guess its the most important tool they have.
This means PGs will last about half the time from skulk attacks and they will be 5 res more expensive to build, thats 10 res off my starting strat. with the increased infportal cost it's a total of 24 res off my strat. Tough i have to say. Guess I will be going for 1 infportal at the start. risky.
- Siege cannon targets now must be sighted to be hit (in view of friendly player or scanned by commander)
- Reduced siege cannon range from 1250 to 1100
Hm, seige all of a sudden became much less attractive, I think I will stick to handing out GLs instead. Much more worth the res if you can trust your grunts <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
- Reduced radius of acid rocket splash from 200 to 165
Good, less splashing on the walls and more actual skill required from the Fade players.
- Armory can now give out ammo while upgrading to advanced armory (more intuitive)
Ugh, really really tough change considered the new invention The HMG rush, now you can first try a standard LMG rush to lessen the resistance then go for a full scale HMG rush when the upgrade is done.
Very nasty, good though if they find a solution for the rush syndrome <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
- Defense chambers no longer heal themselves
To be honest I dont see the point in this change. Never heard any complaints about this either. Why did they do it? Defchambers have been nerfed enough imho.
The rest of the changes seems much to be bug fixes, I could have left something out though. Fill in the blanks if i've missed any other important patch issue.
Still I think they have missed some important things in this patch, I hope they havnt forgotten them.
1. The much unstopable HMG rush.
2. The Khaara respawn times in big games. (Head on charges from the marines seldom fail in game sizes of 10+, the respawn times are so slow for Khaara that marines often can win even without a phasegate rush.)
3. The Khaara resource times in big games. (Gorges get resources WAY to slow in big games, it will take ages before they are able to expand)
//None tosses a dwarf!
Comments
Phase gates costing more is a fair change. Lessening their HP is not.
I am disapointed to see resource recycling go, because that dude is right. It takes gorges FOREVER to get resources in the beginning of a big game. I also dont understand why they decided to do this. I mean, a guy stays on alien, participates in attacking, helps get the team resources, saves resource towers and is also getting resources himself (like the rest of the team). But when this guy has to go, the resources that he gathered for the team, just vanish....POOF! where'd they go? I dont know! The resources that he gathered should go back to the TEAM, not just disappear. I think that this needs to be looked at, not just removed. If he is "jacking" resources from the team, the team should get them back if he leaves.
Just need something to be clarified. Siege cannons will still attack through walls if the comm scans the area?
oh yeah one other thing. Dev's, if you're gonna make that change with siege cannons, then you better add a short cut key for scanner sweeps. I have never used a scanner sweep EVER and I have about a 90% win ratio as a comm. But if you're gonna make that change I will actually be using scanner sweep, and am gonna need a quick shortcut key for it. Sounds like marines are getting gimped in this patch....wow
The scan increase is to prevent commanders from spamming scanning just to use the seige gun. This will hopefully make commanders think twice before using it, and also considering motion tracking as an alternative to constant scan spamming (which I used to do a lot of <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> )
At the moment, handing out 2 shotties = 34 rp < 40 < 2 hmgs. I think the dev team finally realized that it really is worth a lot less in cold hard rps, considering its slow reload and close range combat value are pretty significant disadvantages, esp against a fade across the hallway (killing hives with a shotty instead of an hmg is also significantly tougher).
Phase Gates were already pretty amazingly tough to destroy as it was. It was amazing how a commander could just plop a phasegate down and keep reinforcements coming until he had the rps to secure the location. Hopefully this will make taking down seige locations all the easier (And provide more of a challenge for marines to deal with).
HMG rushes can be stopped by a well-coordinated skulk team. However, it does require more than your average amount of coordination. Skulks have 2 ways of defending themselves: 1) a really quick super-rush to throw off the marine's balance, take down a few ips or two.
2) if they KNOW the rush is coming (i.e. advanced scout got wasted by an hmg 3 minutes into the game), they should counter by simply hiding above one of many entrances to their hive, leap down, and bite the hell out of the hmg marine. If another marine picks up their hmg, boo. They'll only have the remaining clip left to be of any use.
Gorges actually get more resources in larger games. It's just that quite often, you see 2, or even 3 gorges early on in most pubs--which more than negates the unusually large team size. Large teams need to be patient and work to conserve resources.
I agree that aliens respawn a tad too slowly, but once you get the second hive, respawn rates are pretty comparable to marines (combined with the recall ability, which can save many a fade--although sometimes I still get telefragged from a lagged bullet =( ).
As for the marine rush issue, if the aliens are quick enough to pick up on an early rush, they can do many things to stop it. First of all, the above HMG defense applies, and works even better against lmg marines. The key to remember about any rush is that the rusher loses any/all time that could have been spent building important structures, etc. Your gorges should probably head off in a safe direction away from the marine start and start collecting resources/building def chambers asap so that your advantages as a quick skulker can be maximized.
There is a bindable shortcut key for comsweep. If you can't find it (or it doesn't exist in the config menu), look up one of the excellent commander configs and bind the hotkey for comsweep to your key of choice.
Phase gates were way too powerful as it is. Taking them down a notch is a disadvantage I wholly welcome as marine commander, being that the first structure targetted by smart aliens IS the phasegate or the tf. The difference I think matters for, say, an additional few seconds against a concerted alien attack. This will hopefully make commanders more aware of the fragility of their forward outposts!
And from what I read, yes, seige guns should still be able to fire through walls, SO LONG as something is spotting it. (one com)weep should be able to let a seige fire one full time...maybe twice? I haven't checked to see how long a comsweep lasts.
- Siege cannon targets now must be sighted to be hit (in view of friendly player or scanned by commander)
Lets just give marines the ability to use knives only.
What is the range anyways?
Like..lets use a TF turret placement..what is the range from the left side to the right side of the circle?
Marines can still win w/o sieges. I've done it before in a 30 player server while commanding. (man did my troops love me *wink*)
And Def chambers not being able to heal...so..the only way they can get healed is by a Gorge? There was no need for this...nobody had a prob w/ that...Marines had sieges or themselves to take care of a D chamber.
Increasing price of spawn portals???...tell me...WHY!? <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='mad.gif'><!--endemo-->
<ul>
<li>Reduced ammo for HMG shouldn't make a major difference, means the commander may have to drop some ammo in a prolonged engagement, but that's always how it was.
<li>Reduced shotgun cost is overdue - personally I think the boomstick is generally worse than a LMG, I'd have priced it at 15 or even 10.
<li>Reduced welder damage by 30% (7 instead of 10) I don't see too much point in - the Welder was never a massively potent weapon to begin with - it was great against alien structures but that was about it. (Marines need as much low cost any-alien structure weapons as they can get.)
<li>Increased cost of infantry portal I think is fair. IIncreased cost of phase gate I think is fair.
<li>Decreased phase gate health I am a little dissipointed in - phase gates are important for marines to be able to hold their positions since their turrets are neigh useless against anything but skulks and gorges when placed right. Still, I if you've lost control of a phase gate badly enough that it loses 2000 hps, you probably lost control of it badly enough it would have lost 3000 hps.
<li>Upgraded advanced turret hitpoints should help. Fix or not, I like the balance change this introduces.
<li>Fixxed observation tower blips on Linux servers will help alot.
<li>Siege cannon change (now requires LOS): Yes, I love this! Siege cannons are massively potent. Putting in the balancing factor of requiring somebody is in LOS of the target, or commander will ping it, should help a bit. At the very least, it'll cost the marines resources and commander attention to use the siege cannon in an overly exploitive manner
<li>Siege cannon reduced range: 1300 range versus 1100 range is no biggie, and that it'll fix issues on certain maps makes it mandatory.
</ul>
The biggest change of this was the marines requiring more tactics to use the siege cannon.
I think that's great, because generally marines have been generally wussing out provided they have the resources. "Look out! Some gorge took the time to build an extencive defence here!" "Well, I don't want to dare try to fight it off with my HMG, heavy armor, and grenade launcher backup - tell you what, lets just sit here and build a siege cannon."
I am thinking Marines need some more free (on marine with spawn) tools to help match the versitility aliens have, and Marine automated defences are no match for the power of two hive aliens (which is a BIG problem) but that's hopefully something that'll be added in 1.1.
- Siege cannon targets now must be sighted to be hit (in view of friendly player or scanned by commander)
Lets just give marines the ability to use knives only.
What is the range anyways?
Like..lets use a TF turret placement..what is the range from the left side to the right side of the circle?
Marines can still win w/o sieges. I've done it before in a 30 player server while commanding. (man did my troops love me *wink*)
And Def chambers not being able to heal...so..the only way they can get healed is by a Gorge? There was no need for this...nobody had a prob w/ that...Marines had sieges or themselves to take care of a D chamber.
Increasing price of spawn portals???...tell me...WHY!? <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='mad.gif'><!--endemo--><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=20&t=17375' target='_blank'>Range of seige in terms that non-mappers can understand.</a>
More expensive gates are fine. Weaker gates are a little problematic, but I don't think it will change too much.
More expensive infantry portals, however, I'm really wondering about. Those things drop like flies to a Skulk, if they're going to cost more as well, then they should be harder to destroy by an equivalent amount.
there are 2 statements I'm not sure I understand...
1. <<Acid rocket showing damage icon when not taking damage? Range working right?>>
2.<<Removed lingering "organic" damage type for acid rocket and spore cloud (fixes bug where acid rocket wasn't doing damage properly to organic structures)>>
I'm unsure about additional the IP cost...
Phase gates... hell they are still good, and so you have to place them a little more carfully now..
I think the Fade needed to be toned down in some way.. I'm just not sure that reducing the splash damage range is enough. I would have prefered less accuracy.. (currently it goes exactly where its pointed)
As for the seiges well they caught the largest alteration, hope its Ok (I thought they were close to balanced. a range reduction is fine, but the LOS targeting, as well with the upgraded sensor sweep costs... I'll be interested to see just how ping and Seige turrets work now
Motion tracing on *nix mahcines !!! Great!!!!
But what of the unable to upragde turret factory bug??? this is one of the most important ones in my mind...
And great to see that the Alien-marine skin exploit is going the way of the Dodo... (that one was making me not want to play)
Bart
yeah, why the hayle were the IP cost raised?
Are they going to fix the bug as comm, where mouse3 doesnt work for voice com?
Of course, that's reading a lot into a balance change; but it does make fluffy-sense.
<!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> Cheater
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As for the siege cannons, I think this majorly nerfs them. I'd rather see them cost more or build even slower than have them require a spotter. :/
As for the siege cannons, I think this majorly nerfs them. I'd rather see them cost more or build even slower than have them require a spotter. :/<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's really not that big of a nerf. Give a guy a 9 RP jetpack, have him dance around in the hive room for a while, and watch the fireworks.
OR, build 9 seige cannons, then sensor sweep them all at once.
Can you say pwn?
As for LOS siege shooting, bravo! But why nerf them even more? The range is fine if the areas have to be LOS, or scanned...
These changes will cause many a change to the opening strategies of all races. Who knows, I might even upgrade the armory now, but it made more sense when you couldn't do anything while it was upgrading. But it does slow down people who reload even though they don't need to. *shrug*
This'll make for new strategies, and kills some of the old ones.
p.s.: I'm still gonna build 2 inf portals early on.. I hate slow marine spawn rates. But I'm definitely not going to invest in a 3rd early on
It clearly states that these things are being tested and some can (and probably will) be changed during testing, but the list Flayra has going there looks great. He's addressing pretty much all of the issues that we cry about in this forum and taking care of some annoying bugs and exploits. Kudos to Flayra I say!
At least make the IP portals 18-20
wierd.
To counterbalance this, make it so that motion tracking only works within a certain radius of an observatory (similar to the alien sensory chamber). So, an effective siege camp establishment would need:
a) A turret factory
b) A siege turret
c) An observatory
d) The motion tracking upgrade
If any of a-c is destroyed, then the siege turret ends (or, in the observatory's case, only if there is no marine LOS). That seems quite well balanced to me, since the observatory is pretty week health-wise. I'm sorry, but if you are an alien, and you can't take down an observatory, a turret factory, or a siege turret...then you deserve to lose whatever is being sieged.
To combat the CC+spawn rush. Rush towards hive, build CC, build 4 spawn portals, own. Will be a bit more dangerous now.
We'll just have to see how people adapt to the changes, but I think the aliens have it much easier than before now. <!--emo&::gorge::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/pudgy.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='pudgy.gif'><!--endemo-->
Edit: Infantry Portals, 15rp - 22rp
Omg thats just insane. 7 more resources wasted like that?
Thats my only negative reaction to it, but I see why it was changed. Basically for matches so the marines will need a better strategy, or better marines to kill the aliens on the first try.
but yeah, umbra needs to be looked at. I dont think that umbra should take effect on bullets that are shot inside of it. So if a marine gets inside the umbra, his bullets shouldnt be affected. Just a thought. I also like the Jet pack idea, just have some dude flying around watching the fireworks, lol. Nice one
Also not that random stabbing with the knife might just kill a lerk, welders are not that bad either, since Umbra dont work against Melee weapons.
Gorges and pull off secret healing stations, as long as marines dont see it.
Bast Hive locations cant be bombed anymore.
A helpful alert for the aliens that siege is coming (scanner sweeps, o chambers shooting at a ducked marine, etc.)
Although Secret sieges for marines are a bit for complicated, but at least o chambers in strategic places can just be wiped out from a siege cannons. Actually makes the marines use a bit of skill. I like the siege idea.
Increased spawn portal cost: Good, less phase gate rushing = longer games.
Fades acid rocket: Even better, damn fades are too easy to use right now...
All I think should be implemented now is a better working redemption, sensory chamber better passive abilities, less blink getting-stuck-in-walls, afk kick system, increased lerk fighting abilities, faster skulk speeds, lower turret factory costs, increased fade cost, and a fixed gamma level, so on and so forth.