Putting An End To The Slippery Slope [long]
Savant
Join Date: 2002-11-30 Member: 10289Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
Join Date: 2002-11-30 Member: 10289Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
<div class="IPBDescription">Why we need to fix games to stop F4</div> You've all had it time and time again... The game ends unexpectedly and you wonder why, only to realise that some people hit F4 to quit because their team was in a no-win situation.
In the majority of cases this happens with the alien team, but it does happen with the marine team on occasion. I'd like to explore the reasons for these actions, and see if we could propose changes that would make this a thing of the past.
I would ask that people NOT post utterly useless and unintelligent comments like "this is how it is supposed to be" or "deal with it" since it doesn't help.
<b>MARINES</b>
Problem:
-One main reason marines F4 is because of commander issues, most notably an inexperienced or poor commander can make a few mistakes which put the marines in a precarious position. Part of the problem is that this is a catch-22 of sorts. New commanders can't get any experience since they don't get to command, yet if they don't get to command they can't get experience so they wouldn't be a 'new' commander'.
Potential solution:
-While a trainer could be made to give commanders a basic grasp of how to command, perhaps we could also make it so that a player has to spectate a commander in a game where marines win. (perhaps more than once) Also, perhaps a limit could be placed on new commanders so that they can only command their first few games on servers where the total player count is no more than 10-12.
Problem:
-Marines vote to eject a commander, but as soon as the vote starts the commander proceeds to spend as much resources as possible on useless things in order to sabotage the team. During the confusion the marines are screwed for res and proceed to F4.
Potential solution:
-Make it so that the vote happens quickly, AND during the vote, disable spending of all resources by the commander. While this may not be ideal, if you compare allowing the commander to spend all the resources with the commander not being able to spend any resources for 30 seconds, then I think the latter is not as big a deal. The vote would have to be made and completed in a short period of time and everyone would have to be informed of the vote in a way so that they couldn't miss it. (right now I often have no idea that a vote has started)
Problem:
-Marines are 'locked down' into their base, but because the marine team is inherently stronger, the aliens have great difficulty in finishing them off. Late game marines own late game aliens unless the aliens send wave after wave of heavy aliens into the marine spawn. This problem comes up more than once. Basically it is that no matter how little territory the marine occupy, they still get to retain their upgrades. No matter if the marines hold two hives and all but one node, or if they only hold one node, they are STILL just as strong depending on the upgrades they have chosen.
Potential solution:
-I'd like to see certain upgrades tied into territorial control. For example, armour and ammo upgrades could be tied to the number of nodes held. So to get armour/ammo 1 the marines would need to have possession of TWO res nodes. For armour/ammo 2 they would need FOUR res nodes, and for armour/ammo 3 they would need to control SIX res nodes. Additionally we could put in that marines need to have control of a hive in order to build a proto lab or advanced armoury. If they don't control a hive they would not be able to use the proto lab or hand out heavy weapons from the armoury. In this way marines would be rewarded for controlling territory. Aliens on the other hand would be able to weaken marines by taking out res nodes. Right now there is a minor incentive to take out marine res nodes, but if the marines strength was tied to the number they held, you would see more battles over res nodes. Same for hives. If the marines could be weakened by aliens taking territory from them, you would see fewer stalemates, not to mention better gameplay.
Problem:
-Node grabs are increasingly common in large games. By this I mean that in a game that has 16 or more players it is possible for marines to send out a squad of 6+ marines to start capping a large number of nodes. Their concentrated firepower makes short work of the pathetically weak skulks. Add a healthy dose of medpack spam and you have a team that can have half the map electrified before the first hive drops. When that happens the marines get so much res that they become unstoppable. Aliens find the game pointless and F4 in disgust.
Potential solution:
-I'd like to see increased time to electrify nodes based on team size. The larger the team the longer it takes. This way marines would be forced to take a chance on leaving the node undefended or they could wait and thus would be unable to cap as many nodes as they could otherwise. Given the strong marine res economy this seems quite reasonable.
<b>ALIENS</b>
Problem:
-Early game spawn camp sets back aliens enough so that marines have too much of an advantage. While not as prevalent as it used to be, this still happens on a regular basis. On maps with multiple routes and vents there is many a time when a marine can trot to the hive and they pass the aliens going the other way. When the marine gets to the hive they can often use the hive's size to their advantage and spawn camp from a distance. Aliens need to rush back to the hive which allows marines uncontested expansion, leading to a marine win.
Potential solution:
-Since no one can afford OCs in the early game, I'd like to see the hive have some kind of weak defense. Perhaps it would spore cloud any one target in the hive area. Nothing serious, but enough to weaken the marine and keep them moving. This wouldn't impact a marine assault on the hive though since a spore cloud wouldn't stop bullets.
Problem:
-Someone drops sensory and then the rest of the team complains and then quits. It doesn't matter if YOU can play well with sensory so no replies with 'sensory first is fine' please. If the majority of people can't play with sensory first, then it is a problem.
Potential solution:
-Sensory, even with focus, is STILL not as viable a first chamber as defense is, for one simple reason. Caparace for skulks and regen/redempt for fades/onos. The gimped armor skulks are no match for mobile marines with upgrades. As such, as soon as marines get damage 1 upgrade the advantage that focus MIGHT have provided goes down the drain. I think we need to yank carapace off the defense chamber and make it part of the hive. So aliens will get the armour upgrade based on the number of built hives they have and not whether they have a D chamber. This would make hives that much more important to get sooner, and provide a tangible benefit to the aliens, aside from the additional weapon skill. D chambers would still have all their other traits and a new skill. I'd also like to see low level regenration become inherant to aliens. (regen would be a skill that would heal you that much faster)
Problem:
-Two hive lockdowns make the game pointless for aliens. However it happens, the two hive lockdown is usually unbeatable. It often happens when the marines make a push on a key area of the map, and while aliens struggle to hold them off, the superior marine spawning rate gives them the advantage and not only do they usually take the area they wanted to take, they often have sent a couple marines to lock down hives. A perfect example of this is marines trying to take the double node when aliens start in hive that is close to it. The aliens can't let marines have the double node since it is too close to their hive and it would lead to an early loss. However, while they fight off the repeated attacks the marines quickly secure the other hives. It is NOT acceptable to say that 'aliens should secure the other hives' since the manpower needed to do so would leave them vulnerable at the double node. (this scenario is only an example though) The bottom line is that if marines get a TF and turrets up in two hives, it is EXTREMELY hard to remove it and usually leads to an F4 by aliens.
Potential solution:
-First off the lerk needs spikes back in slot 2. Lerks used to be great at taking out turrets and suck, but now they no ability to help break a base. Skulks are useless in this capacity as well, along with a gorge. That leaves only fade and onos, which take money to buy. In the early game a fade is the only possible one that can be afforded, and even then, if aliens have dropped anything but a D chamber they have to head back to hive to heal or have a gorge nearby (who is an easy target) Aside from the lerk change, I'm tempted to juggle the gorge weapons. What if we put healspray first and then moved bile down to #2 and moved spit to #3 with a damage increase...? This would make the early gorge more of a support class and give them the potential ability to bust bases. They would still be easy to kill though, so I don't seee this as being unbalanced. If marines can't kill a gorge that is busting their base then the fact the gorge is using bile bomb is not the problem.
Problem:
-Losing a single hive to the marines often puts aliens in a no-win situation. First off, I understand that losing hives is part of the game to an extent. However, losing ONE hive when they have others built should NOT put the aliens at such a great disadvantage to the extent where they cannot make a comeback. Otherwise, why play? Just have the game give the marines a win if they take out ANY hives.
Potential solution:
-This is a HUGE issue in the game because of the balance issues that go with it. The problem here is more complex then it would seem. The issue seems to revolve around the fact that the marines are able to continually tech up to higher levels no matter how much territory or nodes they lose. Alternately, the aliens are at risk from losing a hive and having their strength diminished. Marines don't have that risk and have no incentive to hold hives other than to deprive aliens of them. As I noted above, I think marines should be forced to hold territory in order to obtain certain upgrades. That way aliens could deprive marines of upgrades by taking that territory in the same way marines do it to aliens.
These are just my observations from the past week, but I am finding more and more people getting frustrated with the game, and that takes all the fun out of it. I'd love to see some of these issues addressed.
Regards,
Savant
In the majority of cases this happens with the alien team, but it does happen with the marine team on occasion. I'd like to explore the reasons for these actions, and see if we could propose changes that would make this a thing of the past.
I would ask that people NOT post utterly useless and unintelligent comments like "this is how it is supposed to be" or "deal with it" since it doesn't help.
<b>MARINES</b>
Problem:
-One main reason marines F4 is because of commander issues, most notably an inexperienced or poor commander can make a few mistakes which put the marines in a precarious position. Part of the problem is that this is a catch-22 of sorts. New commanders can't get any experience since they don't get to command, yet if they don't get to command they can't get experience so they wouldn't be a 'new' commander'.
Potential solution:
-While a trainer could be made to give commanders a basic grasp of how to command, perhaps we could also make it so that a player has to spectate a commander in a game where marines win. (perhaps more than once) Also, perhaps a limit could be placed on new commanders so that they can only command their first few games on servers where the total player count is no more than 10-12.
Problem:
-Marines vote to eject a commander, but as soon as the vote starts the commander proceeds to spend as much resources as possible on useless things in order to sabotage the team. During the confusion the marines are screwed for res and proceed to F4.
Potential solution:
-Make it so that the vote happens quickly, AND during the vote, disable spending of all resources by the commander. While this may not be ideal, if you compare allowing the commander to spend all the resources with the commander not being able to spend any resources for 30 seconds, then I think the latter is not as big a deal. The vote would have to be made and completed in a short period of time and everyone would have to be informed of the vote in a way so that they couldn't miss it. (right now I often have no idea that a vote has started)
Problem:
-Marines are 'locked down' into their base, but because the marine team is inherently stronger, the aliens have great difficulty in finishing them off. Late game marines own late game aliens unless the aliens send wave after wave of heavy aliens into the marine spawn. This problem comes up more than once. Basically it is that no matter how little territory the marine occupy, they still get to retain their upgrades. No matter if the marines hold two hives and all but one node, or if they only hold one node, they are STILL just as strong depending on the upgrades they have chosen.
Potential solution:
-I'd like to see certain upgrades tied into territorial control. For example, armour and ammo upgrades could be tied to the number of nodes held. So to get armour/ammo 1 the marines would need to have possession of TWO res nodes. For armour/ammo 2 they would need FOUR res nodes, and for armour/ammo 3 they would need to control SIX res nodes. Additionally we could put in that marines need to have control of a hive in order to build a proto lab or advanced armoury. If they don't control a hive they would not be able to use the proto lab or hand out heavy weapons from the armoury. In this way marines would be rewarded for controlling territory. Aliens on the other hand would be able to weaken marines by taking out res nodes. Right now there is a minor incentive to take out marine res nodes, but if the marines strength was tied to the number they held, you would see more battles over res nodes. Same for hives. If the marines could be weakened by aliens taking territory from them, you would see fewer stalemates, not to mention better gameplay.
Problem:
-Node grabs are increasingly common in large games. By this I mean that in a game that has 16 or more players it is possible for marines to send out a squad of 6+ marines to start capping a large number of nodes. Their concentrated firepower makes short work of the pathetically weak skulks. Add a healthy dose of medpack spam and you have a team that can have half the map electrified before the first hive drops. When that happens the marines get so much res that they become unstoppable. Aliens find the game pointless and F4 in disgust.
Potential solution:
-I'd like to see increased time to electrify nodes based on team size. The larger the team the longer it takes. This way marines would be forced to take a chance on leaving the node undefended or they could wait and thus would be unable to cap as many nodes as they could otherwise. Given the strong marine res economy this seems quite reasonable.
<b>ALIENS</b>
Problem:
-Early game spawn camp sets back aliens enough so that marines have too much of an advantage. While not as prevalent as it used to be, this still happens on a regular basis. On maps with multiple routes and vents there is many a time when a marine can trot to the hive and they pass the aliens going the other way. When the marine gets to the hive they can often use the hive's size to their advantage and spawn camp from a distance. Aliens need to rush back to the hive which allows marines uncontested expansion, leading to a marine win.
Potential solution:
-Since no one can afford OCs in the early game, I'd like to see the hive have some kind of weak defense. Perhaps it would spore cloud any one target in the hive area. Nothing serious, but enough to weaken the marine and keep them moving. This wouldn't impact a marine assault on the hive though since a spore cloud wouldn't stop bullets.
Problem:
-Someone drops sensory and then the rest of the team complains and then quits. It doesn't matter if YOU can play well with sensory so no replies with 'sensory first is fine' please. If the majority of people can't play with sensory first, then it is a problem.
Potential solution:
-Sensory, even with focus, is STILL not as viable a first chamber as defense is, for one simple reason. Caparace for skulks and regen/redempt for fades/onos. The gimped armor skulks are no match for mobile marines with upgrades. As such, as soon as marines get damage 1 upgrade the advantage that focus MIGHT have provided goes down the drain. I think we need to yank carapace off the defense chamber and make it part of the hive. So aliens will get the armour upgrade based on the number of built hives they have and not whether they have a D chamber. This would make hives that much more important to get sooner, and provide a tangible benefit to the aliens, aside from the additional weapon skill. D chambers would still have all their other traits and a new skill. I'd also like to see low level regenration become inherant to aliens. (regen would be a skill that would heal you that much faster)
Problem:
-Two hive lockdowns make the game pointless for aliens. However it happens, the two hive lockdown is usually unbeatable. It often happens when the marines make a push on a key area of the map, and while aliens struggle to hold them off, the superior marine spawning rate gives them the advantage and not only do they usually take the area they wanted to take, they often have sent a couple marines to lock down hives. A perfect example of this is marines trying to take the double node when aliens start in hive that is close to it. The aliens can't let marines have the double node since it is too close to their hive and it would lead to an early loss. However, while they fight off the repeated attacks the marines quickly secure the other hives. It is NOT acceptable to say that 'aliens should secure the other hives' since the manpower needed to do so would leave them vulnerable at the double node. (this scenario is only an example though) The bottom line is that if marines get a TF and turrets up in two hives, it is EXTREMELY hard to remove it and usually leads to an F4 by aliens.
Potential solution:
-First off the lerk needs spikes back in slot 2. Lerks used to be great at taking out turrets and suck, but now they no ability to help break a base. Skulks are useless in this capacity as well, along with a gorge. That leaves only fade and onos, which take money to buy. In the early game a fade is the only possible one that can be afforded, and even then, if aliens have dropped anything but a D chamber they have to head back to hive to heal or have a gorge nearby (who is an easy target) Aside from the lerk change, I'm tempted to juggle the gorge weapons. What if we put healspray first and then moved bile down to #2 and moved spit to #3 with a damage increase...? This would make the early gorge more of a support class and give them the potential ability to bust bases. They would still be easy to kill though, so I don't seee this as being unbalanced. If marines can't kill a gorge that is busting their base then the fact the gorge is using bile bomb is not the problem.
Problem:
-Losing a single hive to the marines often puts aliens in a no-win situation. First off, I understand that losing hives is part of the game to an extent. However, losing ONE hive when they have others built should NOT put the aliens at such a great disadvantage to the extent where they cannot make a comeback. Otherwise, why play? Just have the game give the marines a win if they take out ANY hives.
Potential solution:
-This is a HUGE issue in the game because of the balance issues that go with it. The problem here is more complex then it would seem. The issue seems to revolve around the fact that the marines are able to continually tech up to higher levels no matter how much territory or nodes they lose. Alternately, the aliens are at risk from losing a hive and having their strength diminished. Marines don't have that risk and have no incentive to hold hives other than to deprive aliens of them. As I noted above, I think marines should be forced to hold territory in order to obtain certain upgrades. That way aliens could deprive marines of upgrades by taking that territory in the same way marines do it to aliens.
These are just my observations from the past week, but I am finding more and more people getting frustrated with the game, and that takes all the fun out of it. I'd love to see some of these issues addressed.
Regards,
Savant
Comments
They're well thought out and all, but I just don't like them, and I think they would just be stupid and cause mroe problems.
I think loosing a hive <i>should</i> seriously set back the aliens, I mean, it's a hive!!
The com chair eject thing is also stupid, what if you're a good com? and then some **** votes to eject? Just because of that one person you want to lose 30 seconds of time while rines wait at rts and hives?
30 seconds is a long time in this game.
I do agree newb coms need to watch or at least pay attention to how some good coms do it, and i don't think your limit would be enforcable. This sin't a game with just one server, each server is seperate.
Making the stuff based on rts is also quite stupid, there's insentive enough to kill the rts. If you don't, then they get their upgrades faster, and kill you faster.
There is also no marine base that I have seen be able to hold off an entire team rushing at the same time.... at least not more then once. And with that many rts, you should have OCs blocking the exits, and by the time you finish gestating to onos or something, you should probabyl hvae another 75 res.
Team suicide rushes are good.
The real problem with end game bases is if they're in a hive room. Third hive helps so much for crushing bases.
The spawn camping thing is utterly obnoxious, and I hate it when people do this... The good thing is I almost never see this. The only one I've ever really see do it on a frequent basis was oits.
The carapace thing you're saying actually IS based on hives, your armor gets strong depending on the hives. Not so noticable for skulks, but for stuff with huge amounts of armor (say... onos?) it becomes aparent.
Elecing based on team size is stupid. I don't ever use elec, and in a 32 person server like you're saying, I don't know how useful it would even be, and if you did want to use it, you would need the stuff eleced fast.
In the early game, gorges are not needed for support, they are needed for building. There are no higher level lifeforms to support.
When you're a gorge in the begining, you need to have spit, because you often find yourself facing at least one rine, with no skulks in sight. You need to be able to hold them off until support comes, and try to kill them.
Healspray is also neccessary for first hive, just because it seems to make sense.
I can't think of any other solutions.
The lerk i think should get its spikes back, merely becasue they are more fun then spores.
Now, about the last thing.
Marines are based on time. Given enough time, they will tech up.
Aliens are based on locations.
Think about it.
It makes sense.
Marines need to hold off aliens, and aliens are really fast, and so can travel between, and protect locations, much more easily then the marines.
The only way marines can really hold places is using phase gates. And i don't think that it should become neccessary to get a obs and research phase tech in the first 3 minutes of the game.
I think there's just one thing I would change.
I think that if every one of the marine's arms labs are destroyed, then they should loose those upgrades, and need to research them again. I feel the same about protolab upgrades.
(not sure if nades do it like the adv armory, or like the weaopn upgrades, but if you don't loose it when you loose all your armories, i think it should work that way too)
SC is only viable as a first chamber if you do at the very game start, get an organized skulk rush, and rush their base.
It's the equivalent of a shotty rush.
Any smart com would research armor 1 the moment they saw a focused skulk.
For 20 points, you give your marines the ability to take one more bite, focused or not.
Because of this, you would need to finish them off in the first or second rush. (second may be too late.)
Sensory is the only chamber that can so easily be countered.
It's also good for keeping them contained, but you need an organized team for that.
If you don't keep them contained, it becomes a waste.
Obs to counter cloaking,
armor 1 to counter focus.
--
Thankyou, Thankyou. *bows*
-One main reason marines F4 is because of commander issues, most notably an inexperienced or poor commander can make a few mistakes which put the marines in a precarious position. Part of the problem is that this is a catch-22 of sorts. New commanders can't get any experience since they don't get to command, yet if they don't get to command they can't get experience so they wouldn't be a 'new' commander'.
Potential solution:
-While a trainer could be made to give commanders a basic grasp of how to command, perhaps we could also make it so that a player has to spectate a commander in a game where marines win. (perhaps more than once) Also, perhaps a limit could be placed on new commanders so that they can only command their first few games on servers where the total player count is no more than 10-12.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yep, this is a problem - commanding is not newbie-friendly. Commanders need to understand strategy, understand the game, have good micro, and communicate effectively. Only a few people meet these requirements.
I don't get your first solution at all. Care to elaborate?
Servers can't keep track of the total time a player (unique steam id) has played on the server. I'm not sure if it's possible to implement with the HL engine, but even if it is possible, it would require each server to have a database of players, which I'm sure many server operators wouldn't like. However, if these technical hurdles can be bypassed, then I'd support this idea. It would allow players to be ranked, and the auto-teaming-based-on-rank feature in RtCW Enemy Territory can be implemented in NS.
GUI improvements would also help.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Marines vote to eject a commander, but as soon as the vote starts the commander proceeds to spend as much resources as possible on useless things in order to sabotage the team. During the confusion the marines are screwed for res and proceed to F4.
Potential solution:
-Make it so that the vote happens quickly, AND during the vote, disable spending of all resources by the commander. While this may not be ideal, if you compare allowing the commander to spend all the resources with the commander not being able to spend any resources for 30 seconds, then I think the latter is not as big a deal. The vote would have to be made and completed in a short period of time and everyone would have to be informed of the vote in a way so that they couldn't miss it. (right now I often have no idea that a vote has started)<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Your solution isn't acceptable. That would cause far more abuse than it would now. There are many marines compared to one commander. The chance of disgruntled marines abusing your solution is greater than the chance of a single disgruntled commander abusing the current system.
A better solution:
1) Don't notify the commander that he's being voted off.
2) Simplify voting so that player only has to press a key to vote the commander off. These keys can't be defaulted to already bound keys (such as 1 and 2). The additional keys won't be a problem since the hintbox that appears will explain to the player what to do.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Marines are 'locked down' into their base, but because the marine team is inherently stronger, the aliens have great difficulty in finishing them off. Late game marines own late game aliens unless the aliens send wave after wave of heavy aliens into the marine spawn. This problem comes up more than once. Basically it is that no matter how little territory the marine occupy, they still get to retain their upgrades. No matter if the marines hold two hives and all but one node, or if they only hold one node, they are STILL just as strong depending on the upgrades they have chosen.
Potential solution:
-I'd like to see certain upgrades tied into territorial control. For example, armour and ammo upgrades could be tied to the number of nodes held. So to get armour/ammo 1 the marines would need to have possession of TWO res nodes. For armour/ammo 2 they would need FOUR res nodes, and for armour/ammo 3 they would need to control SIX res nodes. Additionally we could put in that marines need to have control of a hive in order to build a proto lab or advanced armoury. If they don't control a hive they would not be able to use the proto lab or hand out heavy weapons from the armoury. In this way marines would be rewarded for controlling territory. Aliens on the other hand would be able to weaken marines by taking out res nodes. Right now there is a minor incentive to take out marine res nodes, but if the marines strength was tied to the number they held, you would see more battles over res nodes. Same for hives. If the marines could be weakened by aliens taking territory from them, you would see fewer stalemates, not to mention better gameplay.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree that it's a problem, and I've seen the solution you propose before. However, I like the marine structure res upkeep idea better.
The general idea of a structure res upkeep system is to require the marines to control enough RTs to maintain their structures or face consequences. The advantages this have over your proposed system is that it's much more versatile, in which the discrete quantities are not the number of RTs/hives but rather the amount of res.
There are many variations of the structure upkeep idea, but in all variations, structures drain res from the marine pool at structure-specific rates, e.g electricity drains 1 res per 10 seconds, prototype lab drains 1 res per 6 seconds, sentry turret drains 1 res per 30 seconds. All these numbers were pulled out of thin air, so don't comment on them - I'm merely demonstrating how each structure has different upkeep rates.
The variations:
- net res income can go negative; if 0 res, highest upkeep structure is disabled until res income becomes nonnegative
- net res income can go negative; if 0 res, nothing happens
- net res income cannot go negative; if it would go negative, instead the highest upkeep structure is disabled until res income becomes nonnegative
- net res income simply cannot go negative
- and many more variations (which exemplifies this system's flexibility)
I use the term "net res income" above. Structures may not have res rates that are multiple of a RT res rate, so res drain should be delayed until the next RT "cycle". For example, suppose a RT give res at a rate of 1 res per 5 seconds and an arms lab drains 1 res per 7 seconds. Then:
@ 0 sec: net res income = 1 - 1 = 0
@ 5 sec: net res income = 1 - 0 = 1
@ 10 sec: net res income = 1 - 1 = 0 (since 7 seconds is delayed til 10 seconds)
@ 15 sec: net res income = 1 - 1 = 0 (since 14 seconds is delayed til 15 seconds)
@ 20 sec: net res income = 1 - 0 = 1
@ 25 secs: net res income = 1 - 1 = 0 (since 21 seconds is delayed til 25 seconds)
@ 30 secs: net res income = 1 - 1 = 0 (since 28 seconds is delayed til 30 seconds)
...and so forth. Again, the numbers given are made up.
This system won't just address the marine turtling problem. It also addresses the 2 hive lockdown problem. Marines can't sit idly once they control 2 hives. They have to strike fast since placing seige turrets and electrifying TFs is bound to be very costly to maintain for a long time.
Additional GUI elements should be included:
- Display the res income rate next to the current res, e.g. "216 (-5) resources" is displayed on the top.
- Display the res upkeep rates in the structure hintboxes.
In both your and my solution, marines will depend a lot on RTs while aliens depend a lot on hives. So marine tech can be wiped out in 2 ways: directly destroy the structures or destroy enough RTs.
If structure upkeep nerfs marines too much, simply adjust the rates or improve marines some other way.
Also, 3rd hive abilities need to be looked at.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Node grabs are increasingly common in large games. By this I mean that in a game that has 16 or more players it is possible for marines to send out a squad of 6+ marines to start capping a large number of nodes. Their concentrated firepower makes short work of the pathetically weak skulks. Add a healthy dose of medpack spam and you have a team that can have half the map electrified before the first hive drops. When that happens the marines get so much res that they become unstoppable. Aliens find the game pointless and F4 in disgust.
Potential solution:
-I'd like to see increased time to electrify nodes based on team size. The larger the team the longer it takes. This way marines would be forced to take a chance on leaving the node undefended or they could wait and thus would be unable to cap as many nodes as they could otherwise. Given the strong marine res economy this seems quite reasonable.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Two things:
1) If this tactic is too powerful, then beef up alien early game a bit.
2) If this tactic is not overpowered and the situation you described is arrived at because of more skilled marines, then the key issue is how to make marines win quickly.
Also, with the res upkeep system I proposed above, electricity can reduce the net res income from RTs.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Early game spawn camp sets back aliens enough so that marines have too much of an advantage. While not as prevalent as it used to be, this still happens on a regular basis. On maps with multiple routes and vents there is many a time when a marine can trot to the hive and they pass the aliens going the other way. When the marine gets to the hive they can often use the hive's size to their advantage and spawn camp from a distance. Aliens need to rush back to the hive which allows marines uncontested expansion, leading to a marine win.
Potential solution:
-Since no one can afford OCs in the early game, I'd like to see the hive have some kind of weak defense. Perhaps it would spore cloud any one target in the hive area. Nothing serious, but enough to weaken the marine and keep them moving. This wouldn't impact a marine assault on the hive though since a spore cloud wouldn't stop bullets.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No, the hive shouldn't have any defenses. A better solution is just to decrease the cost of the gorge, and adjust initial res and evo chamber costs to compensate. That would fix several problems at once:
- more OCs
- make gorges more viable in combat (skulk/gorge squads)
- encourage more people to gorge, which is a problem in pubs
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Someone drops sensory and then the rest of the team complains and then quits. It doesn't matter if YOU can play well with sensory so no replies with 'sensory first is fine' please. If the majority of people can't play with sensory first, then it is a problem.
Potential solution:
-Sensory, even with focus, is STILL not as viable a first chamber as defense is, for one simple reason. Caparace for skulks and regen/redempt for fades/onos. The gimped armor skulks are no match for mobile marines with upgrades. As such, as soon as marines get damage 1 upgrade the advantage that focus MIGHT have provided goes down the drain. I think we need to yank carapace off the defense chamber and make it part of the hive. So aliens will get the armour upgrade based on the number of built hives they have and not whether they have a D chamber. This would make hives that much more important to get sooner, and provide a tangible benefit to the aliens, aside from the additional weapon skill. D chambers would still have all their other traits and a new skill. I'd also like to see low level regenration become inherant to aliens. (regen would be a skill that would heal you that much faster)<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree with the problem, and I agree with only one part of your solution: an innate regen. Aliens should have an innate 1% HP + 2 HP regen.
The problems with sensory:
1) it's the only branch that is totally useless against electricity
2) it's too easily counterable (observatories and armor level 1)
3) overall, its upgrades are the hardest to take advantage of
Here's my proposed fix the the sensory vs. electricity problem: Aliens within cloaking range of a sensory chamber gain some sort of "umbra" against electricity. A percentage of electric attacks on the "e-umbra" alien are blocked. 1 SC = 50% chance (increases "life" 2X). 2 SC = 67% chance (increases "life" 3X). 3 SC = 75% chance (increases "life" 4X). 4 SC = 80% chance (increases "life" 5X). And so forth.
I've thought up some solutions to sensory's other problems, but I really don't like them, so I won't post them.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Two hive lockdowns make the game pointless for aliens. However it happens, the two hive lockdown is usually unbeatable. It often happens when the marines make a push on a key area of the map, and while aliens struggle to hold them off, the superior marine spawning rate gives them the advantage and not only do they usually take the area they wanted to take, they often have sent a couple marines to lock down hives. A perfect example of this is marines trying to take the double node when aliens start in hive that is close to it. The aliens can't let marines have the double node since it is too close to their hive and it would lead to an early loss. However, while they fight off the repeated attacks the marines quickly secure the other hives. It is NOT acceptable to say that 'aliens should secure the other hives' since the manpower needed to do so would leave them vulnerable at the double node. (this scenario is only an example though) The bottom line is that if marines get a TF and turrets up in two hives, it is EXTREMELY hard to remove it and usually leads to an F4 by aliens.
Potential solution:
-First off the lerk needs spikes back in slot 2. Lerks used to be great at taking out turrets and suck, but now they no ability to help break a base. Skulks are useless in this capacity as well, along with a gorge. That leaves only fade and onos, which take money to buy. In the early game a fade is the only possible one that can be afforded, and even then, if aliens have dropped anything but a D chamber they have to head back to hive to heal or have a gorge nearby (who is an easy target) Aside from the lerk change, I'm tempted to juggle the gorge weapons. What if we put healspray first and then moved bile down to #2 and moved spit to #3 with a damage increase...? This would make the early gorge more of a support class and give them the potential ability to bust bases. They would still be easy to kill though, so I don't seee this as being unbalanced. If marines can't kill a gorge that is busting their base then the fact the gorge is using bile bomb is not the problem.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The problem is not that aliens have little chance of winning at this point. Rather, it's that marines take their time to stabilize the situation before taking out the final hive - there's little incentive for marines to finish the game as fast as possible.
The marine structure res upkeep system would solve this. Locking down hives would be expensive to maintain. They have two choices at this point: don't build that many structures and risk the expansion being easily overrun, or spam defensive structures and accept the heavy upkeep penalty. In the former case, aliens still have a sizable chance at turning the tides. The the latter case, aliens can win via a war of attrition. In either case, marines are encouraged to finish the game early.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Losing a single hive to the marines often puts aliens in a no-win situation. First off, I understand that losing hives is part of the game to an extent. However, losing ONE hive when they have others built should NOT put the aliens at such a great disadvantage to the extent where they cannot make a comeback. Otherwise, why play? Just have the game give the marines a win if they take out ANY hives.
Potential solution:
-This is a HUGE issue in the game because of the balance issues that go with it. The problem here is more complex then it would seem. The issue seems to revolve around the fact that the marines are able to continually tech up to higher levels no matter how much territory or nodes they lose. Alternately, the aliens are at risk from losing a hive and having their strength diminished. Marines don't have that risk and have no incentive to hold hives other than to deprive aliens of them. As I noted above, I think marines should be forced to hold territory in order to obtain certain upgrades. That way aliens could deprive marines of upgrades by taking that territory in the same way marines do it to aliens.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree. If marines can destroy alien tech, then aliens should be capable of destroying marine tech. Racial diversity is still there - marines and aliens would have different ways of wiping out each others tech.
I believe that the Commander has too much to do. Distribute ammo and meds to players, direct people around the map, monitor the whole map, build things, distribute weapons, etc etc etc.
There's just too much to do, and it makes it so that only the best of the best can be very effective commanders.
There either needs to be some automation put into the process (ala Savage; people request items, and the commander simply accepts the request, and can even put it on auto-accept), AND/OR there needs to be a sub-commander position which has access to certain commander features, taking the load off the main commander.
I expect neither of these features in the current iteration of NS, but I believe the Commander position will (or at least should) be altered and improved for the next release of NS (ie using HL2).
With this, the Marine tech tree would be based on all of the res on the map, and would likely require Marines to hold 6 nodes at any given time to maintain top tech. Marine res flow for the purposes of actually SPENDING would be severely impeded by any upkeep plan strict enough to deny marines tech they have already researched on just 2 nodes.
Under either of those plans, seeing Marine top tech vs Alien top tech would become even more rare than it was in 1.04, as even under the perfect map distribution where Aliens control all 3 Hives and the Marines control the rest of the res so they can pay their tech upkeep, the Aliens now lack the res to buy any respectable number of higher lifeforms. Sure, they can field the occasional Onos or Fade by saving for many minutes, but once the Marines have top tech and decent res flow, having one Fade/Onos appear every few minutes is just not enough to even fight back.
<!--QuoteBegin-Zek+Feb 16 2004, 10:23 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Zek @ Feb 16 2004, 10:23 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->And we have to remember that NS is still a hefty chunk FPS so hard counters should be frowned upon when it comes to players.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I disagree. Each team has multiple players, after all, to fill multiple roles. Not that there isn't already a fair number of "hard counters" for lower alien species.
With this, the Marine tech tree would be based on all of the res on the map, and would likely require Marines to hold 6 nodes at any given time to maintain top tech. Marine res flow for the purposes of actually SPENDING would be severely impeded by any upkeep plan strict enough to deny marines tech they have already researched on just 2 nodes. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
The values can be tweaked so that marines can live off 4-5 res nodes (about half the map) + R4K with full tech. However, if they want to spam equipment or static defenses, they'd better have more nodes. They can still do so with very few nodes, but they would run out of res quickly.
What structure res upkeep will/can do:
1) encourages marines to finish the game up
2) addresses 2 hive lockdowns - by encouraging marines to hurry up and placing seiges at every outpost would now be unviable
3) adds another counter to marine tech, which gives aliens more strategic option and is the counterpart to marines destroying hives
4) addresses marine turtling
5) can tweak electricity so that it has a longterm downside (slower res rate) instead of an immediate downside (huge cost)
The biggest downside I see of res upkeep is that it will demand more strategic thinking and micro from the commander. Some variations are more newbie-friendly than others.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Under either of those plans, seeing Marine top tech vs Alien top tech would become even more rare than it was in 1.04, as even under the perfect map distribution where Aliens control all 3 Hives and the Marines control the rest of the res so they can pay their tech upkeep, the Aliens now lack the res to buy any respectable number of higher lifeforms. Sure, they can field the occasional Onos or Fade by saving for many minutes, but once the Marines have top tech and decent res flow, having one Fade/Onos appear every few minutes is just not enough to even fight back.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not sure what you're getting at here. If marines control most res nodes and aliens don't have all hives, then aliens should lose. The res upkeep does give aliens a better chance at winning, but it's primary purpose is make the marines hurry up. Marine strength will still grow if they control nearly all res nodes, but it won't grow as fast anymore. Meanwhile, aliens are growing in strength comparatively, so marines had better make a move.
The key is to make sure marines never reach a "state of stability". Once they reach that, they are pretty much ensured victory so they become lax and go about at a leisurely rate. In fact the only state of stability should be victory itself. So if marines want to achieve such a state (which they always do, since the commander is stressed), they should win the game.
It's less a matter of tech and more a matter of the amount of static defenses. Marines can no longer turret up hives without any longterm cost. If they have too many static defenses, especially seiges, they will have little res to spare for equipment, and vice versa. Even if marines control nearly all res nodes, they can't turtle up each outpost or else they may start losing a war of attrition - if they could, they would reach a state of stability. And the only time they should reach such a state is when the game ends.
Mostly what you have done is make the marine infrastructure self-decaying. Now, this may work fine and dandy for allowing Aliens a chance to come back from 2-Hive lockdown and letting them wipeout a Marine base that is trying to turtle...but remember, during the normal course of the game while the marines are still building their infrastructure, it is ALREADY decaying, resulting in a far slower buildup to begin with. It will quite literally become FAR more expensive to reach Marine top tech levels. Even when the Marine upkeep is only half what is sustainable on their current number of res nodes, so they aren't in any danger of decaying, that means they are now only getting half of the money they need to actually buy new things, giving the Aliens a marked advantage.
This whole idea just seems like Marine-hate.
1: When Marines control most of the map and Aliens are locked in a corner, the Aliens (generally speaking) have no chance for a comeback at all, and will quickly die.
2: When Aliens control most of the map and Marines are locked in a corner, the Marines can "turtle up" and force the Aliens to fight a long drawn-out endgame before finally sucumbing, and if they hold out long enough they can occasionally save up for massive counterattacks that can actually let them win.
Agreed, this is not balanced. However, only one of these things need to change. Your solution would basically reverse the situation, giving Aliens a decent shot at defending themselves and a small chance at a true comeback while removing the Marine ability to defend themselves and their small chance at comeback. That wouldn't be any more fair than the current situation.
Just make the 2 sides balanced and the rest is up to the people who play. If you get a group of people on a team who dont know how to fight, or when they are really beat, it doesn't matter how the game is programmed the outcome is the same.
This will let gorges bilebomb marine 3rdhive turtles into submission if they are supported by fades.
At the moment gorges die far too quickly against huge turret farms to be any use.
- Newbie commander. Some people have a problem with their attitudes -not the game. Still, I have to admit that sometimes I, too, get kinda **** when the comm doesn't understand what the rest of the team is shouting together. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif' /><!--endemo-->
- Sabotage (a.ka. "terrorism" :-p ) A server-side problem -not in the game itself. Hopefully, somewhere in the misty future, every server has at least 1 admin... *sigh*
- Marines are stronger, but (fortunately?) this is still a beta. (IMO, skulk carapace should be back at the v2 level and marine tech should cost 5 res more)
- Node grasping/rushing. Yea... true... common tactic: rest of the team keeps all aliens busy or break through, while 1-2 marines electrify nodes. Takes time and patience to level them... :-(
- Alien spawn camping. True, had a few of these cases; gotta love that "shooting gallery" near the generator hive at ns_caged (perfect place for llamas with maxed gamma) <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='mad.gif' /><!--endemo--> Your suggestion is as good as any (like placing two starting oc s).
- SC first. Our favorite subject :-D Focus needs tweaking and carapace is again mandatory as a skulk.
- Two hive lock-down. I'd say this is back because of the previously mentioned RT-rush problem; commanders can turret farm the hives without even needing to think the cost. Without bile, there isn't a cheap solution to this. However, giving spikes back to lerk will not be the answer -the turrets are a lot more accurate now ;-)
- Losing 1 hive. Eh... that won't make the aliens lose. Besides, if marines failed in the RT-rush, it doesn't even matter that much if they have both hives (okay, they have 3 rt's then, but that is beside the point :-p )
-One main reason marines F4 is because of commander issues, most notably an inexperienced or poor commander can make a few mistakes which put the marines in a precarious position. Part of the problem is that this is a catch-22 of sorts. New commanders can't get any experience since they don't get to command, yet if they don't get to command they can't get experience so they wouldn't be a 'new' commander'.
Potential solution:
-While a trainer could be made to give commanders a basic grasp of how to command, perhaps we could also make it so that a player has to spectate a commander in a game where marines win. (perhaps more than once) Also, perhaps a limit could be placed on new commanders so that they can only command their first few games on servers where the total player count is no more than 10-12.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Being able to spectate other commanders would perhaps be the best addition to NS right now. I would help people learn on so many levels, it would be an amazing accomplishment.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Marines vote to eject a commander, but as soon as the vote starts the commander proceeds to spend as much resources as possible on useless things in order to sabotage the team. During the confusion the marines are screwed for res and proceed to F4.
Potential solution:
-Make it so that the vote happens quickly, AND during the vote, disable spending of all resources by the commander. While this may not be ideal, if you compare allowing the commander to spend all the resources with the commander not being able to spend any resources for 30 seconds, then I think the latter is not as big a deal. The vote would have to be made and completed in a short period of time and everyone would have to be informed of the vote in a way so that they couldn't miss it. (right now I often have no idea that a vote has started)
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Just make it so the comm doesn't see he's being ejected, and the comm won't have any incentive to screw over the game.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Marines are 'locked down' into their base, but because the marine team is inherently stronger, the aliens have great difficulty in finishing them off. Late game marines own late game aliens unless the aliens send wave after wave of heavy aliens into the marine spawn. This problem comes up more than once. Basically it is that no matter how little territory the marine occupy, they still get to retain their upgrades. No matter if the marines hold two hives and all but one node, or if they only hold one node, they are STILL just as strong depending on the upgrades they have chosen.
Potential solution:
-I'd like to see certain upgrades tied into territorial control. For example, armour and ammo upgrades could be tied to the number of nodes held. So to get armour/ammo 1 the marines would need to have possession of TWO res nodes. For armour/ammo 2 they would need FOUR res nodes, and for armour/ammo 3 they would need to control SIX res nodes. Additionally we could put in that marines need to have control of a hive in order to build a proto lab or advanced armoury. If they don't control a hive they would not be able to use the proto lab or hand out heavy weapons from the armoury. In this way marines would be rewarded for controlling territory. Aliens on the other hand would be able to weaken marines by taking out res nodes. Right now there is a minor incentive to take out marine res nodes, but if the marines strength was tied to the number they held, you would see more battles over res nodes. Same for hives. If the marines could be weakened by aliens taking territory from them, you would see fewer stalemates, not to mention better gameplay.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The easy solution to this is to make it so 3 hive abilites are stronger. If marines relocate to a hive, you say this would make it so aliens are unable to finish the game, right? Not true, next it's up to the mappers to make sure each hive is very marine-unfriendly, complete with lots of vents and exits so marines would have a difficult time defending it.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Node grabs are increasingly common in large games. By this I mean that in a game that has 16 or more players it is possible for marines to send out a squad of 6+ marines to start capping a large number of nodes. Their concentrated firepower makes short work of the pathetically weak skulks. Add a healthy dose of medpack spam and you have a team that can have half the map electrified before the first hive drops. When that happens the marines get so much res that they become unstoppable. Aliens find the game pointless and F4 in disgust.
Potential solution:
-I'd like to see increased time to electrify nodes based on team size. The larger the team the longer it takes. This way marines would be forced to take a chance on leaving the node undefended or they could wait and thus would be unable to cap as many nodes as they could otherwise. Given the strong marine res economy this seems quite reasonable.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The real problem with increased teamsizes for marines is not electricity (if you were to nerf it anymore, it would be completely worthless, which it kinda already is), and it's not stacked firepower. It's the fact that marines can easily upgrade their already stacked firepower with exceptionally cheap upgrades. Basically, the upgrades become exponetially more effective with increased teamsizes for marines. This is the number one unbalancing factor for marines and aliens, and it is precisely why pub games appear "unbalanced".
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=41573&hl=' target='_blank'>Read this.</a> Skip the number 1 problem I listed, I think it's out of date now, but the number 2 problem is still very much a problem:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Lets say, for arguments sake, the most balanced size of an NS game is 6v6. This is clan standard.
Now the arms lab currently (as of 2.01b) is 20/30/40. This is all fine and dandy.
Lets say the game is now 12v12. Arms lab is still 20/30/40. Anyone here see the imbalance? It?s not hard to spot out.
On larger games(8v8 or more), the arms lab is more than worth it?s cost. You upgrade all of your marines for a fraction of the cost of what buying them all equipment would be, and it?s much more effective as there are more guns that get the upgrades. In smaller games(4v4 or less), the arms lab is crap compared to outfitting your 3-4 marines with some good equipment. Arms lab will still be important in small games, however, it comes second to equipment. And the opposite is true in large games.
The Arms Lab, believe it or not, is what causes a lot of unbalancing on large and small games right now, it?s either too good or too bad. On large games, you see stalemates quite often because aliens can?t hope to compete with marines that come out of spawn that shred them to pieces easily, even with an LMG, as there is such a high volume of it all. That is why large games almost never end early, as marines get their arms lab upgrades for too good of a cost, and they get them all very quickly, resulting in marines that generally cannot do well on attack, but pretty much own on defense, forcing aliens to get their third hive for some uber powerful abilities (or if the aliens chose sensory first so they can get Def or Move chambers).
So, the fix for the arms lab is to make it proportional to the amount of marines playing.
For 6 marines, the cost is 20/30/40.
For 12 marines, you have double the marines, and thus, the upgrades should cost 40/60/80.
For 3 marines, you have half the marines, and thus, the upgrades should cost 10/15/20.
However, just by looking at the numbers presented here I?m sure all the commanders must be dropping their Jaw?s onto the floor screaming: ?NO WAY! 40 res for the first set of upgrades? TOO MUCH!? Or? ?10 res on a 3 man server? It?s practically free ffs!? And, for the most part, they are right.
So, a small modification to the above said proposal: Only add/subtract 50% additional cost for every 100% increase/decrease in marines.
12 marines: 30/45/60
3 marines: 15/23/30
This is a formula that needs to be calculated, one that figures out the cost of the arms labs upgrades based on how many marines there are.
An easy way to calculate the costs of these upgrades if you are without a calculator is:
For every 3 marines lost/gained over 6, add/subtract 5 res for the first upgrade, add/subtract 7 res for the second upgrade, and add/subtract 10 res for the third upgrade.
Very simple, and this would balance out the arms lab completely, no matter the teamsize.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not only should this system go to the arms lab, but to any of the universal upgrades as they become too cheap for the amount of marines you are paying for.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Early game spawn camp sets back aliens enough so that marines have too much of an advantage. While not as prevalent as it used to be, this still happens on a regular basis. On maps with multiple routes and vents there is many a time when a marine can trot to the hive and they pass the aliens going the other way. When the marine gets to the hive they can often use the hive's size to their advantage and spawn camp from a distance. Aliens need to rush back to the hive which allows marines uncontested expansion, leading to a marine win.
Potential solution:
-Since no one can afford OCs in the early game, I'd like to see the hive have some kind of weak defense. Perhaps it would spore cloud any one target in the hive area. Nothing serious, but enough to weaken the marine and keep them moving. This wouldn't impact a marine assault on the hive though since a spore cloud wouldn't stop bullets.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If aliens get spawn camped in their own hive, the bottem line is that their team was so much more underskilled or lacked that much more coordination that they deserved to be spawn camped. Sorry if you don't agree, but try to look at the skill differences between teams next time you see a spawn camp.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Someone drops sensory and then the rest of the team complains and then quits. It doesn't matter if YOU can play well with sensory so no replies with 'sensory first is fine' please. If the majority of people can't play with sensory first, then it is a problem.
Potential solution:
-Sensory, even with focus, is STILL not as viable a first chamber as defense is, for one simple reason. Caparace for skulks and regen/redempt for fades/onos. The gimped armor skulks are no match for mobile marines with upgrades. As such, as soon as marines get damage 1 upgrade the advantage that focus MIGHT have provided goes down the drain. I think we need to yank carapace off the defense chamber and make it part of the hive. So aliens will get the armour upgrade based on the number of built hives they have and not whether they have a D chamber. This would make hives that much more important to get sooner, and provide a tangible benefit to the aliens, aside from the additional weapon skill. D chambers would still have all their other traits and a new skill. I'd also like to see low level regenration become inherant to aliens. (regen would be a skill that would heal you that much faster)<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sensory chambers are indeed difficult chambers to use first. I think scent of fear could use a little boost (like making it so if a skulk has scent of fear, and sees an enemy, he should show up to all other teammates on hivesight), but the main problem is that with sensory chambers it's very difficult to place them in hotspots before marines arrive. Also, once marines take an area with sensory chambers, they will generally keep them for good if they use electricity or turrets. Static defenses are never a problem in clan play, but they are in pub play. I think sensory chambers themselves would be nicer to setup if they were cheaper to place, like only 5 res or 7 res, and were faster to build.
They need a slight boost somewhere, but I really don't know where to find it.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Two hive lockdowns make the game pointless for aliens. However it happens, the two hive lockdown is usually unbeatable. It often happens when the marines make a push on a key area of the map, and while aliens struggle to hold them off, the superior marine spawning rate gives them the advantage and not only do they usually take the area they wanted to take, they often have sent a couple marines to lock down hives. A perfect example of this is marines trying to take the double node when aliens start in hive that is close to it. The aliens can't let marines have the double node since it is too close to their hive and it would lead to an early loss. However, while they fight off the repeated attacks the marines quickly secure the other hives. It is NOT acceptable to say that 'aliens should secure the other hives' since the manpower needed to do so would leave them vulnerable at the double node. (this scenario is only an example though) The bottom line is that if marines get a TF and turrets up in two hives, it is EXTREMELY hard to remove it and usually leads to an F4 by aliens.
Potential solution:
-First off the lerk needs spikes back in slot 2. Lerks used to be great at taking out turrets and suck, but now they no ability to help break a base. Skulks are useless in this capacity as well, along with a gorge. That leaves only fade and onos, which take money to buy. In the early game a fade is the only possible one that can be afforded, and even then, if aliens have dropped anything but a D chamber they have to head back to hive to heal or have a gorge nearby (who is an easy target) Aside from the lerk change, I'm tempted to juggle the gorge weapons. What if we put healspray first and then moved bile down to #2 and moved spit to #3 with a damage increase...? This would make the early gorge more of a support class and give them the potential ability to bust bases. They would still be easy to kill though, so I don't seee this as being unbalanced. If marines can't kill a gorge that is busting their base then the fact the gorge is using bile bomb is not the problem.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Two hive lockdowns exist once again in 3.0 because without a second hive to give a boost to your armor (and umbra!!) you will die almost instantly as onos/fade.
However, it's still possible to break out of a two hive lockdown, the maps themselves need to be made more marine unfriendly, that would go a long way towards stopping any chance of a two hive lockdown.
Also, spikes are 100% inferior to bite or spores, so I don't advocate putting them back in.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Problem:
-Losing a single hive to the marines often puts aliens in a no-win situation. First off, I understand that losing hives is part of the game to an extent. However, losing ONE hive when they have others built should NOT put the aliens at such a great disadvantage to the extent where they cannot make a comeback. Otherwise, why play? Just have the game give the marines a win if they take out ANY hives.
Potential solution:
-This is a HUGE issue in the game because of the balance issues that go with it. The problem here is more complex then it would seem. The issue seems to revolve around the fact that the marines are able to continually tech up to higher levels no matter how much territory or nodes they lose. Alternately, the aliens are at risk from losing a hive and having their strength diminished. Marines don't have that risk and have no incentive to hold hives other than to deprive aliens of them. As I noted above, I think marines should be forced to hold territory in order to obtain certain upgrades. That way aliens could deprive marines of upgrades by taking that territory in the same way marines do it to aliens.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It would be interesting to see some sort of territory penalty/bonus for marines as well as aliens.
-Someone drops sensory and then the rest of the team complains and then quits. It doesn't matter if YOU can play well with sensory so no replies with 'sensory first is fine' please. If the majority of people can't play with sensory first, then it is a problem.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I take no credit for this suggestion, I saw it somewhere on the forums. I think a possible solution is to unchain alien upgrades from hives to an extent. What if all chambers could be built at anytime BUT you could only buy one upgrade per hive? i.e: At one hive you could have three SC's, three DC's and three MC's but could only buy Focus, or Regen, or Silence. Once additional hives were built you could access the other 2 upgrades. This would certainly end the biggest alien sabotage possible and also allow for greater diversity on the alien team AND let individual players play to their strengths (a Kharaa quality no?)
It may turn out to be too powerful with the chambers inherant abilities (regen, cloaking, teleport to hive) but that probably won't be the case. More often that not unless every alien is standing by a MC, aliens poping into a hive under attack are likely to be fragged the instant they appear; and a simple scanner sweep eliminates the SC's cloaking effect.
-Someone drops sensory and then the rest of the team complains and then quits. It doesn't matter if YOU can play well with sensory so no replies with 'sensory first is fine' please. If the majority of people can't play with sensory first, then it is a problem.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I take no credit for this suggestion, I saw it somewhere on the forums. I think a possible solution is to unchain alien upgrades from hives to an extent. What if all chambers could be built at anytime BUT you could only buy one upgrade per hive? i.e: At one hive you could have three SC's, three DC's and three MC's but could only buy Focus, or Regen, or Silence. Once additional hives were built you could access the other 2 upgrades. This would certainly end the biggest alien sabotage possible and also allow for greater diversity on the alien team AND let individual players play to their strengths (a Kharaa quality no?)
It may turn out to be too powerful with the chambers inherant abilities (regen, cloaking, teleport to hive) but that probably won't be the case. More often that not unless every alien is standing by a MC, aliens poping into a hive under attack are likely to be fragged the instant they appear; and a simple scanner sweep eliminates the SC's cloaking effect. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ah yes Torak, I remember this, there is a 6 page discussion about it in the beta forums, you probably don't have acess to it, but Savant does, so here you go Savant:
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=58256' target='_blank'>I really like this idea a lot</a>
The small enterance thing is not a problem for marine for two reasons. One, they are small and can easily all rush to a hive through a small door in seconds. Two, because aliens are close range, they can't just sit back as far away from the enterance as possible and do the equivalent of 2 hmg focused fire plus gernade spam.
I think fades need a decent (cough 1.04) acid rocket at hive one, and that marine bases need many wide enterances. If the marines don't like being vunerable, a tactic is to relocate.
Regards,
Rennex
Oh looky, it's by me <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
However, there are several other noticeable differences. First is res distribution. Yes, the total amount of res Aliens recieve is actually slightly higher than in smaller games, but because it is split between that many more people, it becomes that much harder to actually spend it. A person saving for a Fade or a Hive at the beginning of a game has to wait for 300 total res to tick in in a 12v12, compared to 150 in a 6v6 and only 75 in a 3v3. A player who insta-gorges, drops his res tower, and THEN starts saving for Fade has to wait for 600 res to tick in. This starts to disappear in midgame, as the net rate of appearances over time is about the same, since twice as many people can buy stuff half as often, but the first appearance of anything useful is substantially delayed.
Second is the spawn rate. In an 8v8 or above, I'll usually start by building 2 IPs. In 10v10 or more, its not uncommon to see 3 IPs. Meanwhile the Aliens must wait even longer than normal (because of res distribution) to get up a second Hive for 2 spawnpoints. For a large portion of the game, the Marines simply outspawn the Aliens unless the Aliens are careful to avoid confrontation as much as possible so that most of the team stays alive most of the time.
Third, and tying in to both of the above, is that marines just have a lot more manpower available than the Aliens. This starts with the fact that early-game aliens must split their forces between builders and combat, while early-game marines are all suited for both building AND combat. Yes, this is true of smaller games as well, but in the larger games the Marines finally have enough manpower to take advantage of it properly. 11 Marines marching into the map can basically go in EVERY direction. It is generally agreed that if Marines take a location and then camp it, Skulks have a hell of a time trying to get in to take it back. This is countered by the fact that early-game skulks can generally get to most locations first, forcing the Marines to attack into a skulk-infested room to take it back.
However, unlike a smaller game where the Aliens can figure out which direction the marines are heading in and go guard that way, the Marines are now going every way. To have a decent chance of stopping them, the Aliens would need to give up the opportunity to build for awhile. But this means that large portions of both teams will end up dead in a short order, as the entire teams clash with each other, bringing us back to problem 2, the better Marine spawn rate. The Marines will quickly repopulate the map and try again while the Aliens are still struggling to respawn.
Alternatively, the Aliens can split their forces, and try to stop the marines in some places while letting them go through in others so the extra Aliens can go build. 45 seconds later or so, the marines have taken some res and the Aliens have taken some res, while half the teams this time are fighting and killing each other, and still putting decent pressure on the Alien spawn system because even half of the team is much larger than usual. Now what do these gorges do? The standard answer (/kill) is much worse than normal becuase the already pressured spawn-system will basically remove those players from the game for some time, leaving the Marines who were uncontested to still be uncontested and go take the rest of the map. Res distribution means if they stay gorge, they won't be saving for anything else to build anytime soon...they are just fighting as gorges. And while a pair of gorges healspraying each other are an intimidating challenge for a single rambo marine...we are now dealing with packs of rambo marines supporting each other, because of the larger team. These packs of marines, with Medspam, will annihilate any Gorges they run across and then proceed to capture the territory.
Now, I'm not saying any of this is inevitable or unbeatable, but it demands a much higher level of play from the Aliens, and much better kill ratios than normal. As far as a solution goes...I don't see an easy one, and perhaps making arms lab upgrades more expensive will help the balance a bit...but the arms lab is NOT the cause.
-Marines are 'locked down' into their base, but because the marine team is inherently stronger, the aliens have great difficulty in finishing them off. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong... the "locked down" situation occurs because... simply put, 3rd hive abilities SUCK. We are talking worse then 0 hive abilities, so bad that if you saw someone using them, you would laugh at them and call them newbies. Also, marines hold the ranged advantage at all times (yes ALL TIMES thanks to the lack of spikes and the "fun" change to acid rocket).
"Third hive helps so much for crushing bases." Which ones? Did i miss the 3rd hive nuke ability for the gorge?
-Xenocide: I admit good for killing marines (in mass), but horrible for taking out structures and KEEPING the marines dead (as it takes the combatant out of the fight) Please notice that with the larger number of players on the alien's team, the better Xenocide (as they can afford to have 3-4 skulks constantly xeno spamming the rine base)
-Web: Keeps the marines IN the base (that is, if the newb gorge at the hive didn't use up the redicuously low amount of webs available)
-Primal Scream: possibly the only 3rd hive ability that lets aliens take down structures faster, and thanks to the longer duration... it is used more. even still, I'd rather have more umbra coverage then to bite/move a tad faster
-Acid Rocket: no, i think nemesis is sick of me talking about Acid rocket (most likely because I point out the blatently obvious over and over... it just seems like no one else thinks what was done to AR was a disaster)
-Charge: LoL... ROFLes OMG <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
And I remain convinced that what was done to acid rocket was a big mistake and will be fixed soon.
1: When Marines control most of the map and Aliens are locked in a corner, the Aliens (generally speaking) have no chance for a comeback at all, and will quickly die.
2: When Aliens control most of the map and Marines are locked in a corner, the Marines can "turtle up" and force the Aliens to fight a long drawn-out endgame before finally sucumbing, and if they hold out long enough they can occasionally save up for massive counterattacks that can actually let them win.
Agreed, this is not balanced. However, only one of these things need to change. Your solution would basically reverse the situation, giving Aliens a decent shot at defending themselves and a small chance at a true comeback while removing the Marine ability to defend themselves and their small chance at comeback. That wouldn't be any more fair than the current situation. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Marines would still have a comeback chance, but it's a one-shot chance. While they still have their tech and before res upkeep drains all their res, marines must use up all their res to try to kill a hive or kill all the highend lifeforms and alien RTs. It's not impossible - HA + heavy weapons + PG can take aliens by surprise.
It's only a nerf to lategame marines. Marines are powerful enough when they HA trains and have turreted up 2 hives and double res nodes. The primary focus is to prevent marines from ever reaching a state of stability. If it's too much a nerf, upkeep rates can be tweaked. In fact, the upkeep can be geared toward preventing spamming too many static defenses instead of providing a marine tech weakness.
I agree with you on team sizes. I haven't seen a really good solution that addresses this...
You know...you don't always have to build 3 Sens chambers. At Hive 3, if you just want to improve your attack power, you could always build just 1 or 2.
Lvl1 Focus actually INCREASES your damage over time by about 7%, as well as giving you slightly greater damage immediately for easier marine killing.
Lvl2 Focus does no change to the damage over time, but gives more damage upfront and takes less Energy, letting you maybe get something besides Adrenaline.
Comparison: I will assume a skulk bite has a refire rate of .5 seconds, even though I know it is slightly faster than that in reality.
Marine Armor:---------LA0-------LA1-----LA2-----LA3------HA0----HA1------HA2------HA3
Skulk Bites(Time):--2(.5 sec)--3(1)---4(1.5)---4(1.5)----7(3)----8(3.5)----9(4)------10(4.5)
Skulk Focus1:-------2(.63)----2(.63)--3(1.25)--3(1.25)--5(2.5)--6(3.12)--7(3.75)--7(3.75)
Skulk Focus2:-------2(.83)----2(.83)--2(.83)---3(1.67)--4(2.5)--5(3.33)--5(3.33)--6(4.17)
Skulk Focus3:-------1(0.0)----2(1.0)--2(1.0)---2(1.0)---4(3.0)---4(3.0)---5(4.0)----5(4.0)
Assuming same fire rate for Onos although I have no clue what it is:
Onos Gore(Time):--2(.5 sec)--3(1.0)--3(1.0)--3(1.0)---6(2.5)---7(3.0)---7(3.0)----8(3.5)
Onos Focus1:-------2(.63)----2(.63)---2(.63)--3(1.25)--5(2.5)--5(2.5)---6(3.12)--6(3.12)
Onos Focus2:-------1(0.0)----2(.83)---2(.83)---2(.83)---4(2.5)--4(2.5)---5(3.33)--5(3.33)
Onos Focus3:-------1(0.0)----2(1.0)---2(1.0)---2(1.0)---3(2.0)--4(3.0)---4(3.0)---4(3.0)
Regards,
Rennex <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Dood where have you been he came back awhile now, nub
Regards,
Rennex <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Dood where have you been he came back awhile now, nub <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Meight, I didn't even know this sub-forum existed until someone said savant was back and linked me. It's not my fault he hides in here.
<b>Problem: Marine Dominance High Player Count</b>
<b>Possible Solution(s):</b>
- Strip hive dependent respawn rates for Kharaa. Set the static respawn rate to the equivalent of two hives.
- Give Kharaa playercount-dependent starting res. This gives them a better chance early game while still requiring them to work hard for mid and late-game advantage. It also helps Kharaa dominance in small games. (ie. 2res per extra player over six: 6p=25res; 10p=33res; 3p=19res)
<b>Problem: Long Kharaa End-Games</b>
<b>Possible Solution(s):</b>
- Improve hive-3 abilities. Possibilities include giving blast damage back to xenocide and replacing charge with something more viable for base-breaking.
- Allow multiple upgrades per chamber. (also allows easier balance between combat and classic) Possible limitations for balance include # of upgrades depedent on # of hives and/or # of upgrades dependent on # of chambers (1:3, 2:6, 3:9). Due to the high cost of getting all those upgrades, this would be most valuable to late-game aliens with many resource nodes while only minimally affecting early-game aliens.
- Reconsider res-for-kills. I was hesitant to put this in since it's been discussed to death and is met by resistance from Flayra, I believe.
<b>Problem: F4 Bad Sportsmanship?</b>
<b>Possible Solution(s):</b>
- Give drama to retreating by use of F4 with appropriate text (ie. "TSA has retreated" or something similar) and appropriate end-game sounds (ie. "Emergency evacuation siren/alerts"). Basically make winning by F4 more rewarding. It is a defeat by demoralization, afterall.
- Speed up long kharaa end-games with solutions provided above.
<b>Problem: Sensory Chamber First</b>
<b>Possible Solution(s):</b>
- Since it's so good, imo, I'd like to repeat the idea to allow detected marines by use of scent-of-fear to appear on hive-sight.