hey monse, will these communist ####### aliens also have skimasks? and oh, can they grab stolen hostage eggs and bring them back to their hives for cash?
The problem is everyone here is getting confused over two seperate things:
1. Aliens get upgrades and cool class-specific add-on features during the course of the game if their team is doing well (i.e. Hives aren't being destroyed). These are, for the most part, a secret. Even if <b>NO ONE EVER PLAYS BUILDER EVER</b>, you will get your cool individual class-specific upgrades as long as your hives keep expanding.
2. Builders can create nifty communal structures which allow further <b>non-class-specific</b> upgrades to be <i>selected from</i> by a player. You are not forced to use them, but they can be upgraded to if you like. If you don't see an upgrade you desperately want you can evolve into a builder, create the structure, then evolve into your preferred class, 'buy' your upgrade, and move along.
The theory behind all this is that some people will like to play a more defensive, team-helping class like the builder. Similar to how people play engy in TFC. As with all of the more nifty features of NS, it's not necessary to follow some weird rule in order to win that will keep new players from contributing. Just because so many other mods don't have any foresight does not mean NS has the same issue. It's all under control...
So instead of 'builder builds building X which gives aliens ability X', it's 'builder builds building Y which gives aliens the ability to upgrade X, Y, Z, and antidisestablishmentarianism'.
well I have an idea. How about an SI like voting system for NS that allows you to upgrade certain aspects but you can control the way it upgrades... Let me explain
Basically the team vote to upgrade "Muscle Fibre Strength". Once this is done you can allocate it to what you want, ie upgrade muscle power (more damage) muscle strength (more health) or muscle performance (more speed).
Have a few seperate areas to upgrade such as muscle, weight, size and special. for muscle you could use the above, weight, well you could lessen weight to increase speed, increase weight to increase power, better distribute weight to increase health. Again with size, you might choose 'smaller' to make the hitboxes slightly smaller, and make you faster, or 'bigger' for more hp more armour and larger hitboxes. Or the team could choose to upgrade special which would allow them access to tier x level special ability upgrades, ie cloaking, regeneration etc etc.
Then when you die, you can customise all the advances you had again to become a different variant of your class.
Im not sure how well this would work for balence, or how well it would fit in the game, but IMO I think it would add a sense of team descision making, and still allow people to 'customise' their alien to their liking.
<edit> whoops.... Each of the upgrade areas would need to be different, like upgrading muscle would give you different or only slightly similiar choices that say upgrading weight, or size. Thats the whole team aspect thing of it. btw these are just examples, you could use it however you see fit. </edit>
THAT would be cool. I think, that the aliens should have communal and individual upgrades. I think the indivudual ones should be like upgraded speed and crap, maybe instead of the chance to evolve. But i think the voting idea is great.
I've heard what people don't like about communal upgrades and I've addressed the issue. I'm glad people spoke up about because it made me look for a better solution. The new system has builders creating upgrade structures, but instead of each structure granting immediate and team-wide abilities, they unlock a class of abilities. Alien players can then choose upgrades from this category. This ensures upgrade coherence which is needed for overall strategic play, but also lets alien players customize their lifeform for their particular play-style.
The problem with telling everyone exactly how certain things work is that it only opens up more questions. Questions which I usually don't have time to address properly. So...I'm not going to be going into depth about the new system until we get a chance to see how it works. <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->
i like half-individual-upgrade , but maybe there should be a limit of upgrades and u can do only 5 upgrades till u dont anymore - and u can choose betveen many upgrade ways (limit 5 isnt sure , maybe there is some differences betveen those but its keep u to camping and upgrading u total-power-god thing who can take down any class of marine - if there are classes of marines)
Comments
hey monse, will these communist ####### aliens also have skimasks? and oh, can they grab stolen hostage eggs and bring them back to their hives for cash?
(Sorry, I suppose I should have put sarcasm tags or something on my last post...)
1. Aliens get upgrades and cool class-specific add-on features during the course of the game if their team is doing well (i.e. Hives aren't being destroyed). These are, for the most part, a secret. Even if <b>NO ONE EVER PLAYS BUILDER EVER</b>, you will get your cool individual class-specific upgrades as long as your hives keep expanding.
2. Builders can create nifty communal structures which allow further <b>non-class-specific</b> upgrades to be <i>selected from</i> by a player. You are not forced to use them, but they can be upgraded to if you like. If you don't see an upgrade you desperately want you can evolve into a builder, create the structure, then evolve into your preferred class, 'buy' your upgrade, and move along.
The theory behind all this is that some people will like to play a more defensive, team-helping class like the builder. Similar to how people play engy in TFC. As with all of the more nifty features of NS, it's not necessary to follow some weird rule in order to win that will keep new players from contributing. Just because so many other mods don't have any foresight does not mean NS has the same issue. It's all under control...
<!--EDIT|MonsieurEvil|Feb. 20 2002,18:09-->
So instead of 'builder builds building X which gives aliens ability X', it's 'builder builds building Y which gives aliens the ability to upgrade X, Y, Z, and antidisestablishmentarianism'.
Basically the team vote to upgrade "Muscle Fibre Strength". Once this is done you can allocate it to what you want, ie upgrade muscle power (more damage) muscle strength (more health) or muscle performance (more speed).
Have a few seperate areas to upgrade such as muscle, weight, size and special. for muscle you could use the above, weight, well you could lessen weight to increase speed, increase weight to increase power, better distribute weight to increase health. Again with size, you might choose 'smaller' to make the hitboxes slightly smaller, and make you faster, or 'bigger' for more hp more armour and larger hitboxes. Or the team could choose to upgrade special which would allow them access to tier x level special ability upgrades, ie cloaking, regeneration etc etc.
Then when you die, you can customise all the advances you had again to become a different variant of your class.
Im not sure how well this would work for balence, or how well it would fit in the game, but IMO I think it would add a sense of team descision making, and still allow people to 'customise' their alien to their liking.
<edit> whoops.... Each of the upgrade areas would need to be different, like upgrading muscle would give you different or only slightly similiar choices that say upgrading weight, or size. Thats the whole team aspect thing of it. btw these are just examples, you could use it however you see fit. </edit>
I've heard what people don't like about communal upgrades and I've addressed the issue. I'm glad people spoke up about because it made me look for a better solution. The new system has builders creating upgrade structures, but instead of each structure granting immediate and team-wide abilities, they unlock a class of abilities. Alien players can then choose upgrades from this category. This ensures upgrade coherence which is needed for overall strategic play, but also lets alien players customize their lifeform for their particular play-style.
The problem with telling everyone exactly how certain things work is that it only opens up more questions. Questions which I usually don't have time to address properly. So...I'm not going to be going into depth about the new system until we get a chance to see how it works. <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->
(limit 5 isnt sure , maybe there is some differences betveen those but its keep u to camping and upgrading u total-power-god thing who can take down any class of marine - if there are classes of marines)
Hurray for the infallible NS-team.