<!--quoteo(post=1896563:date=Jan 22 2012, 06:35 AM:name=1dominator1)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (1dominator1 @ Jan 22 2012, 06:35 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896563"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Check that auto update is turned on in steam. Right click on NS2 in steam library and select properties, then the update tab.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Auto-update is activated but doesn't update to build 193 :(
I think that the skulk is too strong at the start of the game even without carapace. An average marine should have little problems winning a 1v1 combat, so skulks should have to work in packs and hide on the ceilings and vents like the original NS. Marines should be the ones who do the initial attack and skulks should try to ambush them. Now its like playing LFD2 Survival mode.
<!--quoteo(post=1896589:date=Jan 22 2012, 10:50 AM:name=simon kamakazi)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (simon kamakazi @ Jan 22 2012, 10:50 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896589"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->:D thanx , thats a really awesome compliment! im glad u like it,
and also i get the same feeling sometimes that all im doing is playing with action figures and making them go "BADOOM SPLAT PIEW ZAP"<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I particularly enjoyed the ARC sounds, found myself sitting in my chair going wzzwzzwzzwzzWZZWZZWZZPPPZZHHEEEWWWW! every time they fired.
Just have to do something about the odd looks my family are giving me.
I actually had quite a bit of fun this build, managed to get a game on the HBZ server where I could hit the things I shot at, there wasn't too much lag, managed to get on a decent team, was quite fun.
Although I imagine I would feel differently if I was on the other team as the game is a lot less fun if you're losing.
Still, the lerk is quite cool now, the spkes are fairly responsive and the movement is a lot better, I hated the lerk in previous builds but this one is rather good. You might want to nerf that hide armor a bit though as I wasn't taking very much damage at all from marines with rifles, and shotguns are easy to avoid. The general playstyle though is good, easy to pick up and make it do what you want it to.
The alien upgrades system is very good also, carapace and regen are way better than armor upgrade, and once we get some more upgrades in, it's going to be hard to choose between all the good ones.
The game is getting there, it needs to run close to perfect to be any fun, but it is quite fun when it does.
Oh also the alien comm pulled a fun trick, he used cysts to detonate mines, I think this should be a feature and encouraged as an anti-mine counter.
<!--quoteo(post=1896591:date=Jan 22 2012, 01:05 PM:name=Runteh)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Runteh @ Jan 22 2012, 01:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896591"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--># With the debate going on about IPs and build times, why not just make it so IPs DONT require building, same goes for power nodes.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
IPs not require building? That's absurd. I can see a lot of down sides to this... In my opinion the skulk rush won't be so effective once the welder is in. Because the reason why early skulk rushes are so dangerous, is that there is no way to repair the comm chair and the ip, so marines are forced to stay in base, and as we have all witnessed, even that doesn't help. Once the welder is in, it would make early rushes just a chore to pin down the marines a bit, it wouldn't mean an early victory for the aliens.
<!--quoteo(post=1896625:date=Jan 22 2012, 03:20 PM:name=Yes, this is Dog)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Yes, this is Dog @ Jan 22 2012, 03:20 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896625"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think that the skulk is too strong at the start of the game even without carapace. An average marine should have little problems winning a 1v1 combat, so skulks should have to work in packs and hide on the ceilings and vents like the original NS. Marines should be the ones who do the initial attack and skulks should try to ambush them. Now its like playing LFD2 Survival mode.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So basically you are suggesting to weaken the skulks (again) and enhance the carapace effect on them? Personally i don't find much trouble in 1v1 as a marine, even tho I play @ 14fps. My kd ratio is quite satisfying, even if the deaths are more than kills. In future builds, when the response time will be even better, i think everything is going to fall into place, maybe even people will start saying that marines are op, who knows.
Nice!! My system (phenomIIX4 3.4ghz 16gb) absolutely loves this build. She starts moaning so loud I think the neighbors will complain. LMG feels pretty tight (bonus). Skulk movement is good (but could be better). Fade is gnarly.. Love dominating and getting in some stabs! I, too, think mines should be put back into the domain of MAC. Hope to see a gauge/indicator for camouflage soon. Kudos to Simon. The sounds are gratifying. Question; Will a sound for bullet ricochet on (marines) armor ie (sounds/teamfire.wav) be introduced?
swalkSay hello to my little friend.Join Date: 2011-01-20Member: 78384Members, Squad Five Blue
I think the mines are fine to have for players, they cost quite an amount of personal res, and result in less weapons on the battlefield. One thing I dislike about the mines is the delay before they explode, they cost alot of resources. And they have become quite useless with this delay. A skulk can take them out with a few parasites, lerk with a few spikes. Two mines cost 15 personal res, and at the moment they are quite useless if people know how to play. Skulks can trigger the mines without losing any HP. They were fine without an delay, but the cost per mine was not fine, now that's fine. So I'd say; lets get that annoying delay out of the game, and make mines useful against skulks chewing on structures again.
Not been playing NS2 much recently but decided to have a few hours on it last night. A few observations and thoughts.
I lagged more on every server than I have for a good while during every game last night. Players warping and freezing, and trying to kill a Skulk was near impossible for me because of this.
My favourite Marine weapon has always been the GL but the grenades don't seem to go further than 8 feet in front of me before exploding which means I was doing more damage to myself than the aliens. Was the arming/explosion distance dropped severely? I stopped buying it as it seems useless now as I needed to be directly in front of an alien structure to damage it...along with myself in the process.
I bought a flame thrower and each charge/fuel cell gave me only about 2-3 seconds of flame before it needed reloaded again. In a game where aliens have dominated for a good long time I don't see the need for marine weapons to be made less useful for what is a lot of res to buy.
Not sure about the mines as they seemed to do very little damage for cost and didn't see one alien die from them in three hours in game. And they are overly loud.
Hydras are a waste of time now and no deterrent to Marines. I was taking them out with a LMG and pistol no problem.
The Bile Bomb is way too powerful now.
Gorges are not frightened of marines at all now and seem a little overpowered.
I'm seeing way too many games lost by marines simply because the commander forgets or doesn't think to make a IP first.
I like the idea of the res cap but feel its a bit low. I think 150 would be better.
Marine jump spam is still the thing I hate most about NS2 though.
DghelneshiAims to surpass Fana in post edits.Join Date: 2011-11-01Member: 130634Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
<!--quoteo(post=1896669:date=Jan 22 2012, 05:13 PM:name=Salraine_Chi)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Salraine_Chi @ Jan 22 2012, 05:13 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896669"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->[stuff]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> What server were you playing on? Grenades exploding early (even right in your face) are usually an issue of the server tickrate being below 5 updates per second. That would also explain the warping.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
<!--quoteo(post=1896611:date=Jan 22 2012, 04:52 AM:name=NurEinMensch)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (NurEinMensch @ Jan 22 2012, 04:52 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896611"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In my personal opinion mines should get back much of their old power, but only the commander should by able to buy them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
as long as marines can still place them where they want, as the commander is limited to placing mines on the floor only. (same limitation the alien commander has with infestation.)
<!--quoteo(post=1896611:date=Jan 22 2012, 08:52 PM:name=NurEinMensch)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (NurEinMensch @ Jan 22 2012, 08:52 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896611"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In my personal opinion mines should get back much of their old power, but only the commander should by able to buy them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> The problem with this is that the commander's resources (whether personal res or team res) do not scale with the number of players: essentially mines are finite, limited by the team's resources and independent of the game size. Therefore, the effectiveness of mines are inversely proportional to the game size; where effectiveness is defined as the 'number of mines' / 'number of targets'.
If spam is a problem, the solution is increasing the cost per mine and decreasing the number of mines each marine can carry at a single time.
I also like the "safety" disarming suggestion, so that marines can't use it in combat - it makes a lot of sense too.
<!--quoteo(post=1896670:date=Jan 22 2012, 04:23 PM:name=Dghelneshi)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Dghelneshi @ Jan 22 2012, 04:23 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896670"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->What server were you playing on? Grenades exploding early (even right in your face) are usually an issue of the server tickrate being below 5 updates per second. That would also explain the warping.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I was mainly on the Fades Emporium, HBZ and Armoury servers but did try a few others to see if it was happening. Every server was the same. It feels like what it did just over a year ago. Builds 188 to 190 were the best so far for me but since 191 have noticed my performance has gone down drastically to the point I really cant play for now. I will try again now and again but what with the lag and warping and some of the changes it just doesn't feel like the the same game i was playing a few months ago. I just hope the devs are not listening to too much to these forums and being distracted from the vision they had for NS2.
I have just bought the game for a friend for his 50th birthday and he was the same performance wise and his machine is very similar. He was having lag, freezes and warping too. I have a GTX480, Quad i7 930 and 6 gig of ram.
<!--quoteo(post=1896625:date=Jan 22 2012, 05:20 AM:name=Yes, this is Dog)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Yes, this is Dog @ Jan 22 2012, 05:20 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896625"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think that the skulk is too strong at the start of the game even without carapace. An average marine should have little problems winning a 1v1 combat, so skulks should have to work in packs and hide on the ceilings and vents like the original NS. Marines should be the ones who do the initial attack and skulks should try to ambush them. Now its like playing LFD2 Survival mode.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> LOL. You do realize that in a 1vs1 a skulk is supposed to be able to beat a single marine, right? I believe according the the NS2HD video the rule of thumb was that a skulk in 1vs1 or 2vs1 should typically normally succeed; at least prior to armor upgrades. Of course I think this is a bunch of rubbish as I get my behind owned against 2 marines and I'm probably 50/50 against one. I don't see that there is currently a problem. My rule of thumb is that if If I can get close enough to bite then your gonna die unless you have backup.
<!--quoteo(post=1896764:date=Jan 23 2012, 04:30 AM:name=Harimau)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Harimau @ Jan 23 2012, 04:30 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896764"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The problem with this is that the commander's resources (whether personal res or team res) do not scale with the number of players:<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I see what you mean. I think the role of mines as a deterrent allows this lack of scalability. Mine effectiveness is more dependent on map size (fairly constant) than number of targets.
I don't agree, because of the fact that mines are consumables. You use them once, and they are gone.
Let's consider the sentry gun on the other hand. The only way to remove a sentry gun is to kill it. Clearly, you don't want the number of sentry guns to ever scale with the number of players (hence the reason they cost TRes). But this is fine because the sentry gun is essentially area-effect, semi-permanent and defends structures and locations: they defend a space and act as a deterrent, but do not (or should not) have an anti-player focus.
Mines, however, are, for lack of a better term, consumable anti-player point defense. It is (or should be) rare that one mine ever does damage to more than one alien. The number of mines in the game therefore should scale with the number of players. Note that this doesn't mean there should be one mine for every skulk, but a ratio of say 1 mine to every 2 skulks is reasonable - achieving this ratio would involve increasing the cost of mines, decreasing the number of mines marines can carry, and giving the marines other, more important, things (especially other consumables) to spend their PRes on.
Now, if mines, for example, re-armed after an explosion (.......nanites), then it might allow for a lack of scalability. The number of players might simply affect the pacing of mine effectiveness, but not the overall effectiveness. I'm not suggesting this as an idea, I'm just using it for comparison.
Build is really playable (almost ~60fps, in "normal" combat a minimum of ~40) but please fix the sounds and the tickrate problems. The VON is still to quiet and the mines are way to loud. In my opinion you should optimize the whole game (server/client/network) a lot more before concentrate on new gameplay-elements (I can wait for onos, exo, jet, ...).
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
<!--quoteo(post=1897156:date=Jan 24 2012, 10:07 PM:name=Dr_Cox1911)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Dr_Cox1911 @ Jan 24 2012, 10:07 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897156"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In my opinion you should optimize the whole game (server/client/network) a lot more before concentrate on new gameplay-elements (I can wait for onos, exo, jet, ...).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> It's all part of the bigger picture, everything is being worked on ;)
<!--quoteo(post=1897084:date=Jan 24 2012, 09:10 PM:name=NurEinMensch)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (NurEinMensch @ Jan 24 2012, 09:10 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897084"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I remain on the position that mines are primarily a deterrent, not a means to kill enemies even though they do that too.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Even so, so what? The sentry is a deterrent, but it 'scales' with player count - it generally doesn't become less effective at its role with player count. Triggering a sentry does not automatically make it safe for all of your other teammates. Mines do become less effective. Deterrent or defense or whatever you want to call it, the key is that mines, currently, do scale with player count; and commander-supplied mines would not. The real issue with mines is that there aren't any trade-offs. You just spend excess PRes on mines because there's nothing else really to spend it on.
It seems to me that the hive build time is too short (120 secs??). Marines need more time to be able to react to a growing hive. Not a whole lot though, maybe 150 secs or 180. What do you guys think?
I think the 193 is very good to play and a great basis for further work, but the balance seems to get worse.
V.193: Marines = 348 (26%) wins Aliens = 966 wins
V.192: Marines = 121 (26%) wins Aliens = 331 wins
V.191: Marines = 599 (52%) wins Aliens = 541 wins
(see <a href="http://unknownworldsstats.appspot.com/displayendgamestats?version=191" target="_blank">http://unknownworldsstats.appspot.com/disp...ats?version=191</a> or 192 or 193)
fanaticThis post has been edited.Join Date: 2003-07-23Member: 18377Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited January 2012
It feels like aliens are spawning ridiculously fast again. I thought the zombie game-esque spawn rate was fixed several versions ago? Right now there's almost no penalty for dying, as aliens just spawn a couple of seconds later and rush you again.
The problem was public players raging in the forum, because without any organization and teamwork there is always this random 0/20 guy in the first 5min(and he kinda doest stop ramboing) => so you had more or less no eggs all the time. (and ppl were like, wtf game is broken - no eggs spawning etc etc.)
I liked it when dieing actually meant something as alien, and you had to care about egg count and sometimes play saver - dont just rambo rush like stupid one by one... (or try to get back and heal up at a gorge, and not just waste your life because you are a skulk with 10hp left... => made gorges important in early game)
(but this might need some oh-###### button for aliens so you can spawn eggs at some tres cost or need of some extra structure)
Atm with the super fast egg spawn-rate i see a lot of skulk players that compleatly ignore everything in public and only rush the cc - die - rush cc - die...
that's because rushing the cc, even 1 at a time, is too effective. a single skulk can easily (depending on marine spawn location) take the cc down 20-30% at a time, which basically forces marines to either stay in base, or get a robo fac right off the bat. especially in places like repair room in tram, it's literally impossible to do anything except fast robo because of the many easy access points skulks and lerks have to the cc. the other problem is without constant pressure on res nodes and base rushes, marines exert extractor dominance and tech up too fast and the aliens stand no chance.
ZeikkoJoin Date: 2007-12-16Member: 63179Members, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester
<!--quoteo(post=1897350:date=Jan 25 2012, 11:58 PM:name=fanatic)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (fanatic @ Jan 25 2012, 11:58 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1897350"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It feels like aliens are spawning ridiculously fast again. I thought the zombie game-esque spawn rate was fixed several versions ago? Right now there's almost no penalty for dying, as aliens just spawn a couple of seconds later and rush you again.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah the slow spawn rate couple of builds again improved the game so much. Now marines are playing this weird survival game against endless waves of aliens again. And aliens can do anything they want and dying doesn't matter at all. I hate that people kept referring the awesome slower spawn rate as a bug. It was one of the best balance fixes NS2 had ever seen.
Comments
Auto-update is activated but doesn't update to build 193 :(
EDIT: Just had to verify the game-content
and also i get the same feeling sometimes that all im doing is playing with action figures and making them go "BADOOM SPLAT PIEW ZAP"<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I particularly enjoyed the ARC sounds, found myself sitting in my chair going wzzwzzwzzwzzWZZWZZWZZPPPZZHHEEEWWWW! every time they fired.
Just have to do something about the odd looks my family are giving me.
I actually had quite a bit of fun this build, managed to get a game on the HBZ server where I could hit the things I shot at, there wasn't too much lag, managed to get on a decent team, was quite fun.
Although I imagine I would feel differently if I was on the other team as the game is a lot less fun if you're losing.
Still, the lerk is quite cool now, the spkes are fairly responsive and the movement is a lot better, I hated the lerk in previous builds but this one is rather good. You might want to nerf that hide armor a bit though as I wasn't taking very much damage at all from marines with rifles, and shotguns are easy to avoid. The general playstyle though is good, easy to pick up and make it do what you want it to.
The alien upgrades system is very good also, carapace and regen are way better than armor upgrade, and once we get some more upgrades in, it's going to be hard to choose between all the good ones.
The game is getting there, it needs to run close to perfect to be any fun, but it is quite fun when it does.
Oh also the alien comm pulled a fun trick, he used cysts to detonate mines, I think this should be a feature and encouraged as an anti-mine counter.
IPs not require building? That's absurd. I can see a lot of down sides to this... In my opinion the skulk rush won't be so effective once the welder is in. Because the reason why early skulk rushes are so dangerous, is that there is no way to repair the comm chair and the ip, so marines are forced to stay in base, and as we have all witnessed, even that doesn't help. Once the welder is in, it would make early rushes just a chore to pin down the marines a bit, it wouldn't mean an early victory for the aliens.
So basically you are suggesting to weaken the skulks (again) and enhance the carapace effect on them? Personally i don't find much trouble in 1v1 as a marine, even tho I play @ 14fps. My kd ratio is quite satisfying, even if the deaths are more than kills. In future builds, when the response time will be even better, i think everything is going to fall into place, maybe even people will start saying that marines are op, who knows.
My system (phenomIIX4 3.4ghz 16gb) absolutely loves this build. She starts moaning so loud I think the neighbors will complain. LMG feels pretty tight (bonus). Skulk movement is good (but could be better). Fade is gnarly.. Love dominating and getting in some stabs!
I, too, think mines should be put back into the domain of MAC.
Hope to see a gauge/indicator for camouflage soon.
Kudos to Simon. The sounds are gratifying.
Question;
Will a sound for bullet ricochet on (marines) armor ie (sounds/teamfire.wav) be introduced?
One thing I dislike about the mines is the delay before they explode, they cost alot of resources.
And they have become quite useless with this delay.
A skulk can take them out with a few parasites, lerk with a few spikes.
Two mines cost 15 personal res, and at the moment they are quite useless if people know how to play.
Skulks can trigger the mines without losing any HP.
They were fine without an delay, but the cost per mine was not fine, now that's fine.
So I'd say; lets get that annoying delay out of the game, and make mines useful against skulks chewing on structures again.
I lagged more on every server than I have for a good while during every game last night. Players warping and freezing, and trying to kill a Skulk was near impossible for me because of this.
My favourite Marine weapon has always been the GL but the grenades don't seem to go further than 8 feet in front of me before exploding which means I was doing more damage to myself than the aliens. Was the arming/explosion distance dropped severely? I stopped buying it as it seems useless now as I needed to be directly in front of an alien structure to damage it...along with myself in the process.
I bought a flame thrower and each charge/fuel cell gave me only about 2-3 seconds of flame before it needed reloaded again. In a game where aliens have dominated for a good long time I don't see the need for marine weapons to be made less useful for what is a lot of res to buy.
Not sure about the mines as they seemed to do very little damage for cost and didn't see one alien die from them in three hours in game. And they are overly loud.
Hydras are a waste of time now and no deterrent to Marines. I was taking them out with a LMG and pistol no problem.
The Bile Bomb is way too powerful now.
Gorges are not frightened of marines at all now and seem a little overpowered.
I'm seeing way too many games lost by marines simply because the commander forgets or doesn't think to make a IP first.
I like the idea of the res cap but feel its a bit low. I think 150 would be better.
Marine jump spam is still the thing I hate most about NS2 though.
Ta
Sal
What server were you playing on? Grenades exploding early (even right in your face) are usually an issue of the server tickrate being below 5 updates per second. That would also explain the warping.
as long as marines can still place them where they want, as the commander is limited to placing mines on the floor only. (same limitation the alien commander has with infestation.)
The problem with this is that the commander's resources (whether personal res or team res) do not scale with the number of players: essentially mines are finite, limited by the team's resources and independent of the game size. Therefore, the effectiveness of mines are inversely proportional to the game size; where effectiveness is defined as the 'number of mines' / 'number of targets'.
If spam is a problem, the solution is increasing the cost per mine and decreasing the number of mines each marine can carry at a single time.
I also like the "safety" disarming suggestion, so that marines can't use it in combat - it makes a lot of sense too.
I was mainly on the Fades Emporium, HBZ and Armoury servers but did try a few others to see if it was happening. Every server was the same. It feels like what it did just over a year ago. Builds 188 to 190 were the best so far for me but since 191 have noticed my performance has gone down drastically to the point I really cant play for now. I will try again now and again but what with the lag and warping and some of the changes it just doesn't feel like the the same game i was playing a few months ago. I just hope the devs are not listening to too much to these forums and being distracted from the vision they had for NS2.
I have just bought the game for a friend for his 50th birthday and he was the same performance wise and his machine is very similar. He was having lag, freezes and warping too. I have a GTX480, Quad i7 930 and 6 gig of ram.
Ta
Sal
b190/191 actually improved performance <b>a lot</b> for all people I know. It actually made the game playable for me. Very strange. :/
LOL. You do realize that in a 1vs1 a skulk is supposed to be able to beat a single marine, right? I believe according the the NS2HD video the rule of thumb was that a skulk in 1vs1 or 2vs1 should typically normally succeed; at least prior to armor upgrades. Of course I think this is a bunch of rubbish as I get my behind owned against 2 marines and I'm probably 50/50 against one. I don't see that there is currently a problem. My rule of thumb is that if If I can get close enough to bite then your gonna die unless you have backup.
I see what you mean. I think the role of mines as a deterrent allows this lack of scalability. Mine effectiveness is more dependent on map size (fairly constant) than number of targets.
Let's consider the sentry gun on the other hand. The only way to remove a sentry gun is to kill it. Clearly, you don't want the number of sentry guns to ever scale with the number of players (hence the reason they cost TRes). But this is fine because the sentry gun is essentially area-effect, semi-permanent and defends structures and locations: they defend a space and act as a deterrent, but do not (or should not) have an anti-player focus.
Mines, however, are, for lack of a better term, consumable anti-player point defense. It is (or should be) rare that one mine ever does damage to more than one alien. The number of mines in the game therefore should scale with the number of players. Note that this doesn't mean there should be one mine for every skulk, but a ratio of say 1 mine to every 2 skulks is reasonable - achieving this ratio would involve increasing the cost of mines, decreasing the number of mines marines can carry, and giving the marines other, more important, things (especially other consumables) to spend their PRes on.
Now, if mines, for example, re-armed after an explosion (.......nanites), then it might allow for a lack of scalability. The number of players might simply affect the pacing of mine effectiveness, but not the overall effectiveness. I'm not suggesting this as an idea, I'm just using it for comparison.
In my opinion you should optimize the whole game (server/client/network) a lot more before concentrate on new gameplay-elements (I can wait for onos, exo, jet, ...).
It's all part of the bigger picture, everything is being worked on ;)
Even so, so what? The sentry is a deterrent, but it 'scales' with player count - it generally doesn't become less effective at its role with player count. Triggering a sentry does not automatically make it safe for all of your other teammates. Mines do become less effective. Deterrent or defense or whatever you want to call it, the key is that mines, currently, do scale with player count; and commander-supplied mines would not. The real issue with mines is that there aren't any trade-offs. You just spend excess PRes on mines because there's nothing else really to spend it on.
V.193:
Marines = 348 (26%) wins
Aliens = 966 wins
V.192:
Marines = 121 (26%) wins
Aliens = 331 wins
V.191:
Marines = 599 (52%) wins
Aliens = 541 wins
(see <a href="http://unknownworldsstats.appspot.com/displayendgamestats?version=191" target="_blank">http://unknownworldsstats.appspot.com/disp...ats?version=191</a> or 192 or 193)
I liked it when dieing actually meant something as alien, and you had to care about egg count and sometimes play saver - dont just rambo rush like stupid one by one... (or try to get back and heal up at a gorge, and not just waste your life because you are a skulk with 10hp left... => made gorges important in early game)
(but this might need some oh-###### button for aliens so you can spawn eggs at some tres cost or need of some extra structure)
Atm with the super fast egg spawn-rate i see a lot of skulk players that compleatly ignore everything in public and only rush the cc - die - rush cc - die...
Yeah the slow spawn rate couple of builds again improved the game so much. Now marines are playing this weird survival game against endless waves of aliens again. And aliens can do anything they want and dying doesn't matter at all. I hate that people kept referring the awesome slower spawn rate as a bug. It was one of the best balance fixes NS2 had ever seen.