A forgotten strategy: Stackable OC/Chambers
Mr. Epic
Join Date: 2003-08-01 Member: 18660Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-08-01 Member: 18660Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Thoughts and recollections?</div>One of the most interesting strategies of the NS of yore was the alien strat of stacking OC's or chambers. Used either as walls of lame, or walls to simply block the marines/get places otherwise hard to reach, it was an interesting bit of emergent behavior so to speak. For NS2, some more formal way of doing this would be interesting.. for example, upgrading existing OCs so that lvl2 ocs could be twice as tall, or something... some mechanism to allow the dynamic, but prevent the lame.
Thoughts?
Thoughts?
Comments
thats the thing- I would very much like to have a real fix this paradigm than just a lua mod to let it happen... again, do we want walls of lame or walls that make sense? If ns2 actually addressed it, we would all be better off.
Although thinking along the lines of how chambers will be placed. I would like a way to stick them on walls/cielings.
But if you want to go even further and make them stackable, you could instead make a system to combine multiple levels of chambers.
For example
You're a gorge. You walk into a hallway facing foward place an OC right in the middle. But you have enough resources for another and you dont want marines to just hop over your little chamber. So you get the option to place another on top of it, but when you hover the OC your about to build over the one you already built, they combine, the top and bottom attach and when you move the mouse around you can control the angle, pitch etc of the new OC.
Think like a Cactus. Every Gorge's construction would be different and unique. And would allow new strategies to form.
Although thinking along the lines of how chambers will be placed. I would like a way to stick them on walls/cielings.
But if you want to go even further and make them stackable, you could instead make a system to combine multiple levels of chambers.
For example
You're a gorge. You walk into a hallway facing foward place an OC right in the middle. But you have enough resources for another and you dont want marines to just hop over your little chamber. So you get the option to place another on top of it, but when you hover the OC your about to build over the one you already built, they combine, the top and bottom attach and when you move the mouse around you can control the angle, pitch etc of the new OC.
Think like a Cactus. Every Gorge's construction would be different and unique. And would allow new strategies to form.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
thats kind of what I was thinking- dynamic like your suggestion would be best, but even if pre-made models of multi-tiered OC or DC or whatever would still suffice. Would love a dev's take on this.
It afforded aliens the option to completely shutoff a section of the map at the cost of resources, but of which could be relatively easily broken by GLs or a quick seige, either of which would cost the marines considerably less than the aliens in overall res
I dont think you read the post, or experienced a good NS game. The concept is if walls of lame are too lame... then allow for towers but limit the oc output to say 1 per stack of 3... blocking is a useful strategy, walls oflame were an interesting concept, and it requires skill to deal with them.
A few smart marines with LMGs could take out 1-3 chambers in no time, this only worked on pubs with people who panicked at the sight of a single OC and called for sieges.
But again, 3 ocs were pretty much never as useful as a good lerk, thus it was both less effective as well as boring to spend your time fighting a wall of lame instead of real players. Additionally you have the problem of new players who just stick with spamming chambers rather than developing ability with a higher life form because it takes more skill to enjoy playing a lerk or fade than to continuously heal spray behind a pack of chambers. I would actually say that I played in some of the best competitive matches in NS history as well as some great pub games over the years that I played NS.
I think OCs could be used to create a little bit of extra option into fights as a slow damage output, cover and maybe some additional features, but they shouldn't completely replace the player vs player fighting in a room. At best good OC placement could be a part of the team's defence plan with some planned ambush spots, retreat routes and safe resupply positions.
Of course some people enjoy creating those blockades, but in my opinion the WoLs should go.
I would suggest that instead of physically stacking chambers it would be a cool to be able to upgrade an existing chamber to be more effective (e.g. rate of fire or damage for an OC, rate of healing or amount for DC, range or detail of SC) this could be something done by the alien commander or gorge?
I think the solution is either
1) allow horizontal walls but no vertical stack
2) PaladinDude's idea of upgraded lame, but prevent any walls (vert or horz)
3) allow lame to be built on DI, so it could sprout on ceilings and walls. Again, no wall forming abilities. This was suggested several times in other threads.
Well, that's just my opinion. Who knows how the devs are planning on balancing OCs.
I'm in two minds on this, as I have been for years, long before they were removed. On the one hand, walls provided an interesting game mechanic, where aliens could effectively seal off areas/routes from individual marines, but acted neatly as a 'speedbump' to any proper team push, much like the TF+Sentries eventually did. In that regard, they were excellent, because they reinforced that feeling of 'territory' which worked so well.
However, the counterpoint to this is that they earned the name 'Wall of Lame' for a reason, they were <i>lame</i>. Nobody wants to lose to AI controlled entities, because it denies the player the fun aspect of competing against another player (See the TF2 Sentry Gun syndrome for this annoyance). Simple example: Chasing a Gorge around a wall of lame trying to kill it before the OC's got you was actually fun. Just dying to OC's on their own (especially cloaked ones) wasn't.
Summary: I'd like to see buildable options for aliens to control the map, but I'm not convinced the style of the WoL is the right way to go about it.
For example, I've dumped a number of OCs in a hallway, but I'm trying to block the hallway on the other side of the wall. The OC density checker says I can't drop anymore because there's too many in the area. However, these two hallways may not even be on the same pathways.
If instead density is forced by placing OCs apart from one another, we may still have sme issues of not being able to place them right next to a wall but it will help avoid this issue. Granted, now the check isn't a single radius and check # of OCs in the circle, but a proximity check for all OCs in the region, but I think there's a few clever ways to speed up the process.
This applies to the other chambers as well, although it's usually less of an issue. I mean, how many times do you run out of spots to place MCs?
Ring of death!
That's the reason I liked them. Players were forced to change their routes due to other player placed obstacles. They couldn't follow the exact same path everytime because it was no longer the "best" path.
Wall of lame!
After they fixed the DC bug where all DCs healed all chambers in range, walls were only a problem for badly organised teams. Sealing off areas is all well and good until a fade or onos tries to escape that way and gets blocked, which happens even without being able to stack them. OCs are only really good against jetpacks in a hive, in which case they need to be spread out anyway.
Wall of lame!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Looks like a a nice use of 200+ resources, of which did not go towards RTs or hives
Also, me thinks 4 GLs with 2 HMGs for cover would wipe that out in about 20 seconds ;p
*EDIT* oooh please add in the ablity to stick to walls.