@Schimmel: Perhaps when Cyst can be "matured" for more tendril connections, it also grants an additional "charge" so a used Cyst can be lit again to place another Cyst?
I do like your suggestions, but what of Mini-Cysts? Should they be lit up and provide the Alien Commander with an additional Mini-Cyst?
I like that idea alot, Schimmel! I don't see a problem with cysts spam. They need long to create infestation. And the die rly fast in marine bases. The best part is that they can be dropped anywhere, I still don't understan why the gorge can drop unconnected but kham not. Also it would finally seperate the pustule from the drifter. It is annoying replacing killed cysts and then wait more than 30s to produce a drifter.
As I understand it the infestation model is still a placeholder and if the 1.0 infestation will be something like in the techvideo, it's a waste of time working to much on the actual PT. Atleast if they don't use elements of the actual infestation placeholder.
SewlekThe programmer previously known as SchimmelJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16247Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Developer
edited February 2012
<!--quoteo(post=1902183:date=Feb 11 2012, 08:08 PM:name=PsiWarp)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (PsiWarp @ Feb 11 2012, 08:08 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1902183"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->@Schimmel: Perhaps when Cyst can be "matured" for more tendril connections, it also grants an additional "charge" so a used Cyst can be lit again to place another Cyst?
I do like your suggestions, but what of Mini-Cysts? Should they be lit up and provide the Alien Commander with an additional Mini-Cyst?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
the same restrictions could apply for mini cysts (build on infestation only) but they don't provide a charge. but i was not thinking so much about them actually
edit: maybe the gorge should be able to build them off infestation. that would make the gorge more important
<!--quoteo(post=1902158:date=Feb 11 2012, 11:14 AM:name=marsvin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (marsvin @ Feb 11 2012, 11:14 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1902158"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I see most of the ideas here still revolve around cysts, which I always took to be a placeholder for lack of a better idea. I'm still hopeful in the final implementation they will be gone.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Cysts were placeholders early on in the game. I don’t think they are necessary this late in development.
The problem with cysts are: 1. They create little to no diversity in infestation appearance--everything looks like a large infestation circle. You cannot stretch infestation to adjust their length/width to create infestation vines that cover more distance. Why not let the Kham stretch an infestation vine through a vent to access a far away room? With the current implementation you cannot do this in any quick manner. This means in the early-mid game there is very little strategy the Kham can do from an expanding point of view. 2. When a cyst is dropped it goes on auto-pilot and starts spreading infestation concentrically. That may be fine for a flat game like starcraft, but NS2 is an FPS with more dimensions--like walls, ceilings, vents, and dynamic lighting. The Kham should be able to spread infestation with finer accuracy so each room’s walls, ceilings, and lighting can be by controlled by the Kham.
How can the Kham stretch infestation? I have proposed one possible way on page1 of this thread using stretchable vertices which I won’t go into here. My idea was to start brainstorming the possibilities a more dynamic infestation control would give the Kham.
On the topic of Cysts, perhaps add a short-moderate build time (like 5~8 seconds) and have the infestation spread rate synced with build time.
That way, Gorges can help speed up infestation spread by speeding up Cyst growth, and Marines can stop infestation from spreading too far by killing the building Cysts (also makes Alien Commander think twice before putting Cysts in the middle of a Marine push)
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
<!--quoteo(post=1902254:date=Feb 11 2012, 10:57 PM:name=PsiWarp)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (PsiWarp @ Feb 11 2012, 10:57 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1902254"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->On the topic of Cysts, perhaps add a short-moderate build time (like 5~8 seconds) and have the infestation spread rate synced with build time.
That way, Gorges can help speed up infestation spread by speeding up Cyst growth, and Marines can stop infestation from spreading too far by killing the building Cysts (also makes Alien Commander think twice before putting Cysts in the middle of a Marine push)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I'd like to see this.
Self sustained Mini Cysts is also a great idea.
I would love to see Hydras becoming temporary turrets that Gorges place defensively, as well as offensively. It would facility multiple Gorge strategies, by promoting the Gorge to be a more effective combat unit.
<!--quoteo(post=1902138:date=Feb 11 2012, 02:50 PM:name=Schimmel)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Schimmel @ Feb 11 2012, 02:50 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1902138"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->totally, here is my personal idea about infestation, you might recognize similarities to another game :)
- cysts can only be build on infestation - Harvesters and Hives create initial infestation on which you can build cysts to spread it further - cyst cost is much higher (~50 energy?) but they work like creep tumors in SC2: you drop one and it has the ability to generate one more cyst (after it charged some energy) -> more hives -> more energy -> faster infestation spread - cysts don't need to be connected, but buildings off infestation will die like they do now - we can reuse the current models: glowing cyst means it is able to create another cyst, used cysts are grey (marines will know which cyst to kill). to preserve the atmosphere we could improve the general appearance of infestation itself (add glowing veins?)
i think that would simplify how infestation works (i bet new players don't understand at first that cysts need to be connected) but also adds much more dynamic to alien play, without sacrificing any importance of infestation. To prevent too many cysts from being spammed, we need to a) make the cyst (and drifter?) energy costs pretty high and b) add more abilities for the alien commander which use hive energy (which are crucial for the game), which you want to use instead of spamming cysts after you control enough territory to support your troops/structures etc. that will also to some degree solve the problem of being stuck on 1 hive and not being able to spread infestation: you just create a Harvester, save up some hive energy for 2 cysts and spread from there.
what do you think?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1902217:date=Feb 12 2012, 03:42 AM:name=Kiai)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Kiai @ Feb 12 2012, 03:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1902217"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Cysts were placeholders early on in the game. I don’t think they are necessary this late in development.
The problem with cysts are: 1. They create little to no diversity in infestation appearance--everything looks like a large infestation circle. You cannot stretch infestation to adjust their length/width to create infestation vines that cover more distance. Why not let the Kham stretch an infestation vine through a vent to access a far away room? With the current implementation you cannot do this in any quick manner. This means in the early-mid game there is very little strategy the Kham can do from an expanding point of view. 2. When a cyst is dropped it goes on auto-pilot and starts spreading infestation concentrically. That may be fine for a flat game like starcraft, but NS2 is an FPS with more dimensions--like walls, ceilings, vents, and dynamic lighting. The Kham should be able to spread infestation with finer accuracy so each room’s walls, ceilings, and lighting can be by controlled by the Kham.
How can the Kham stretch infestation? I have proposed one possible way on page1 of this thread using stretchable vertices which I won’t go into here. My idea was to start brainstorming the possibilities a more dynamic infestation control would give the Kham.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Don't want to crush the dreams from several persons. But I think, they will stick to the cysts. 1. They are easy handleable by the aliens and marines. (Placing and destroying them is intuitive. Much more than dragging vertices or having some weired second fire to remove the infestation patch per patch) 2. This way its (relatively) easy to calculate for the server and programmable, because of the similarity to the building placement (And you don't want to get even more load on the server.) 3. They doesn't look that bad. Actually they really give the look and feel of an infested area. If you didn't noticed, there are also 3Dpatches of the infestation.
Now to your contra points: 1. The circles are mostly not visible after they have grown a while. Because in most cases the corridors are small enough to hide this circular pattern. So visually you can stretch them through vents by placing cysts there. (At least a gorge can and a kham should be able to place cysts there too.) It will not look like circles. It will look like an infested vent. 2. That is actually a good idea but way more simple to implement with the cysts. They just have to spread their infestation in a sphere. Not a circle. (Don't get me wrong here, they don't spread in the air. They just cover walls and ceilings in its sphere.)
I agree, that we need to make the alien gameplay <-> infestation more dynamical. But we should stop to argue for game mechanics which are impossible to implement now. That would take much more development time than the half year until release and would raise the hardware dependence of servers enormous.
I think ideally, the tentacles connecting 2 Cysts would also spread infestation, so the space between Point A and B would not be exposed, but become infested over time.
With Schimmel's Cyst placement model however, it would be very similar to SC2 Creep Tumors. Maybe too similar :O...
I've been thinking about this a little bit, my biggest issue is the network vulnerability in the middle. So my two cents would to make cysts more durable in the middle areas. A cyst on the end of the network would be easy to destroy, but the deeper in the network you get the more they resist damage.
Another option would be to have a cyst network self sustained if it's cut off but is still a large chunk covering multiple rooms. (5-7 linked structures, at least one must be a hive spawned cyst)
Another option would be to let the commander spend personal res to place a mini cyst for those situations where a marine kamikazi's the middle of your network, and to make the fact that the network is broken somewhere much more obvious.
Just played a bunch of rounds as aliens i have to say its absolutely broken the current design against any marine team with brains..
Pustals are super expensive to place the energy cost is simply to high and you can't expand the network fast enough to allow for gorges to build defences in forward positions..
If you do manage to spread your network enough along comes a marine and kills 3 pustals in like 30seconds bam 75 energy gone...
Then you have the problem of getting drifters to hives alive to build they are so easy to kill..
Literally in 4 games we had a situation where we had well over 100 res but couldn't spend it due to having no energy
This situation is only going to get worse as more and more players begin to understand all you have to do as marines to win is kill pustals...
Personally, 2 things that Cyst could use from SC2 Creep Tumor: invisibility and invulnerability to (most) weapon damage while invisible. So not like Cloak, where you can just shoot at a cloaked Hive and reveal it by damage, but by Observatory Scan.
Basically:
- Bullet-based weapons, such as Assault Rifle, Pistol, and Shotgun, plus Switch-Ax, should not inflict damage on unrevealed Cysts nor reveal them. It makes Scanning all the more crucial against oncoming infestation.
- Siege weapons, such as Grenade Launcher and ARC (if it can see them), should be able to damage them, but not reveal them. Cysts should still remain as low priority targets for ARCs though.
- Flamethrower should be able to reveal Cysts when they are being burned and are burning. Anti-infestation tool, yes please. Also, I think I heard somewhere that they plan on making fire spread to nearby connected Cysts as well, down the tentacles connecting them?
For Marines, they would see one long tentacle stretching from the Hive, and only Scan and Flamethrower would reveal the Cysts in between.
<!--quoteo(post=1902994:date=Feb 14 2012, 10:50 PM:name=kabab)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (kabab @ Feb 14 2012, 10:50 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1902994"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Just played a bunch of rounds as aliens i have to say its absolutely broken the current design against any marine team with brains..
Pustals are super expensive to place the energy cost is simply to high and you can't expand the network fast enough to allow for gorges to build defences in forward positions..
If you do manage to spread your network enough along comes a marine and kills 3 pustals in like 30seconds bam 75 energy gone...
Then you have the problem of getting drifters to hives alive to build they are so easy to kill..
Literally in 4 games we had a situation where we had well over 100 res but couldn't spend it due to having no energy
This situation is only going to get worse as more and more players begin to understand all you have to do as marines to win is kill pustals...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I believe I was just playing with you kabab, the reason we lost is we just could not expand at any reasonable rate due to marines killing off the infestation. Making infestation costs too much energy for the amount of effort required by a marine to destroy it. As you say, all a competant marine team has to do is kill enough infestation to cost the alien commander enough energy, then he is effectively neutered and no tech can occur. Meanwhile, because the alien team is so hell bent on keeping the marines off the infestation one marine or two has the run of the map to cap res nodes, increasing the gap.
IMO the game balance is currently skewed in the alien's favour on a 1v1 perspective. lone skulk kills lone marine, lone fade kills lone marine, or several if not aware. But the fact that aliens can't expand using sneaky gorges like they did in NS1 limits their options and opportunity in regards to expansion.
I'd love cheaper pustules or free Gorge cysts. It's really difficult to get the infestation out to where it needs to be and so incredibly easy to lose all that investment. The invisibility would also help this problem.
Comments
I do like your suggestions, but what of Mini-Cysts? Should they be lit up and provide the Alien Commander with an additional Mini-Cyst?
I don't see a problem with cysts spam. They need long to create infestation. And the die rly fast in marine bases.
The best part is that they can be dropped anywhere, I still don't understan why the gorge can drop unconnected but kham not. Also it would finally seperate the pustule from the drifter. It is annoying replacing killed cysts and then wait more than 30s to produce a drifter.
As I understand it the infestation model is still a placeholder and if the 1.0 infestation will be something like in the techvideo, it's a waste of time working to much on the actual PT. Atleast if they don't use elements of the actual infestation placeholder.
I do like your suggestions, but what of Mini-Cysts? Should they be lit up and provide the Alien Commander with an additional Mini-Cyst?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
the same restrictions could apply for mini cysts (build on infestation only) but they don't provide a charge. but i was not thinking so much about them actually
edit: maybe the gorge should be able to build them off infestation. that would make the gorge more important
Cysts were placeholders early on in the game. I don’t think they are necessary this late in development.
The problem with cysts are:
1. They create little to no diversity in infestation appearance--everything looks like a large infestation circle. You cannot stretch infestation to adjust their length/width to create infestation vines that cover more distance. Why not let the Kham stretch an infestation vine through a vent to access a far away room? With the current implementation you cannot do this in any quick manner. This means in the early-mid game there is very little strategy the Kham can do from an expanding point of view.
2. When a cyst is dropped it goes on auto-pilot and starts spreading infestation concentrically. That may be fine for a flat game like starcraft, but NS2 is an FPS with more dimensions--like walls, ceilings, vents, and dynamic lighting. The Kham should be able to spread infestation with finer accuracy so each room’s walls, ceilings, and lighting can be by controlled by the Kham.
How can the Kham stretch infestation? I have proposed one possible way on page1 of this thread using stretchable vertices which I won’t go into here. My idea was to start brainstorming the possibilities a more dynamic infestation control would give the Kham.
Only gorge cysts can be dropped anywhere.. gives a bit more balance and less 'ninja bases' without needing a gorge to start it in the first place
Commander can still be in charge of spreading that cyst after the gorge has dropped the first one
The gorge cyst cost increase to ??? res
Gorge can help spread the infestation, but they must be in range of a cyst. (Eg, gorges in charge of spreading to ceilings/walls)
That way, Gorges can help speed up infestation spread by speeding up Cyst growth, and Marines can stop infestation from spreading too far by killing the building Cysts (also makes Alien Commander think twice before putting Cysts in the middle of a Marine push)
That way, Gorges can help speed up infestation spread by speeding up Cyst growth, and Marines can stop infestation from spreading too far by killing the building Cysts (also makes Alien Commander think twice before putting Cysts in the middle of a Marine push)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd like to see this.
Self sustained Mini Cysts is also a great idea.
I would love to see Hydras becoming temporary turrets that Gorges place defensively, as well as offensively. It would facility multiple Gorge strategies, by promoting the Gorge to be a more effective combat unit.
- cysts can only be build on infestation
- Harvesters and Hives create initial infestation on which you can build cysts to spread it further
- cyst cost is much higher (~50 energy?) but they work like creep tumors in SC2: you drop one and it has the ability to
generate one more cyst (after it charged some energy) -> more hives -> more energy -> faster infestation spread
- cysts don't need to be connected, but buildings off infestation will die like they do now
- we can reuse the current models: glowing cyst means it is able to create another cyst, used cysts are grey (marines will know which cyst to kill). to preserve the atmosphere we could improve the general appearance of infestation itself (add glowing veins?)
i think that would simplify how infestation works (i bet new players don't understand at first that cysts need to be connected) but also adds much more dynamic to alien play, without sacrificing any importance of infestation. To prevent too many cysts from being spammed, we need to a) make the cyst (and drifter?) energy costs pretty high and b) add more abilities for the alien commander which use hive energy (which are crucial for the game), which you want to use instead of spamming cysts after you control enough territory to support your troops/structures etc. that will also to some degree solve the problem of being stuck on 1 hive and not being able to spread infestation: you just create a Harvester, save up some hive energy for 2 cysts and spread from there.
what do you think?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
+2 much better imo
The problem with cysts are:
1. They create little to no diversity in infestation appearance--everything looks like a large infestation circle. You cannot stretch infestation to adjust their length/width to create infestation vines that cover more distance. Why not let the Kham stretch an infestation vine through a vent to access a far away room? With the current implementation you cannot do this in any quick manner. This means in the early-mid game there is very little strategy the Kham can do from an expanding point of view.
2. When a cyst is dropped it goes on auto-pilot and starts spreading infestation concentrically. That may be fine for a flat game like starcraft, but NS2 is an FPS with more dimensions--like walls, ceilings, vents, and dynamic lighting. The Kham should be able to spread infestation with finer accuracy so each room’s walls, ceilings, and lighting can be by controlled by the Kham.
How can the Kham stretch infestation? I have proposed one possible way on page1 of this thread using stretchable vertices which I won’t go into here. My idea was to start brainstorming the possibilities a more dynamic infestation control would give the Kham.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Don't want to crush the dreams from several persons. But I think, they will stick to the cysts.
1. They are easy handleable by the aliens and marines.
(Placing and destroying them is intuitive. Much more than dragging vertices or having some weired second fire to remove the infestation patch per patch)
2. This way its (relatively) easy to calculate for the server and programmable, because of the similarity to the building placement
(And you don't want to get even more load on the server.)
3. They doesn't look that bad. Actually they really give the look and feel of an infested area. If you didn't noticed, there are also 3Dpatches of the infestation.
Now to your contra points:
1. The circles are mostly not visible after they have grown a while. Because in most cases the corridors are small enough to hide this circular pattern. So visually you can stretch them through vents by placing cysts there. (At least a gorge can and a kham should be able to place cysts there too.) It will not look like circles. It will look like an infested vent.
2. That is actually a good idea but way more simple to implement with the cysts. They just have to spread their infestation in a sphere. Not a circle. (Don't get me wrong here, they don't spread in the air. They just cover walls and ceilings in its sphere.)
I agree, that we need to make the alien gameplay <-> infestation more dynamical. But we should stop to argue for game mechanics which are impossible to implement now. That would take much more development time than the half year until release and would raise the hardware dependence of servers enormous.
With Schimmel's Cyst placement model however, it would be very similar to SC2 Creep Tumors. Maybe too similar :O...
Another option would be to have a cyst network self sustained if it's cut off but is still a large chunk covering multiple rooms. (5-7 linked structures, at least one must be a hive spawned cyst)
Another option would be to let the commander spend personal res to place a mini cyst for those situations where a marine kamikazi's the middle of your network, and to make the fact that the network is broken somewhere much more obvious.
Pustals are super expensive to place the energy cost is simply to high and you can't expand the network fast enough to allow for gorges to build defences in forward positions..
If you do manage to spread your network enough along comes a marine and kills 3 pustals in like 30seconds bam 75 energy gone...
Then you have the problem of getting drifters to hives alive to build they are so easy to kill..
Literally in 4 games we had a situation where we had well over 100 res but couldn't spend it due to having no energy
This situation is only going to get worse as more and more players begin to understand all you have to do as marines to win is kill pustals...
Basically:
- Bullet-based weapons, such as Assault Rifle, Pistol, and Shotgun, plus Switch-Ax, should not inflict damage on unrevealed Cysts nor reveal them. It makes Scanning all the more crucial against oncoming infestation.
- Siege weapons, such as Grenade Launcher and ARC (if it can see them), should be able to damage them, but not reveal them. Cysts should still remain as low priority targets for ARCs though.
- Flamethrower should be able to reveal Cysts when they are being burned and are burning. Anti-infestation tool, yes please. Also, I think I heard somewhere that they plan on making fire spread to nearby connected Cysts as well, down the tentacles connecting them?
For Marines, they would see one long tentacle stretching from the Hive, and only Scan and Flamethrower would reveal the Cysts in between.
Pustals are super expensive to place the energy cost is simply to high and you can't expand the network fast enough to allow for gorges to build defences in forward positions..
If you do manage to spread your network enough along comes a marine and kills 3 pustals in like 30seconds bam 75 energy gone...
Then you have the problem of getting drifters to hives alive to build they are so easy to kill..
Literally in 4 games we had a situation where we had well over 100 res but couldn't spend it due to having no energy
This situation is only going to get worse as more and more players begin to understand all you have to do as marines to win is kill pustals...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I believe I was just playing with you kabab, the reason we lost is we just could not expand at any reasonable rate due to marines killing off the infestation. Making infestation costs too much energy for the amount of effort required by a marine to destroy it. As you say, all a competant marine team has to do is kill enough infestation to cost the alien commander enough energy, then he is effectively neutered and no tech can occur. Meanwhile, because the alien team is so hell bent on keeping the marines off the infestation one marine or two has the run of the map to cap res nodes, increasing the gap.
IMO the game balance is currently skewed in the alien's favour on a 1v1 perspective. lone skulk kills lone marine, lone fade kills lone marine, or several if not aware. But the fact that aliens can't expand using sneaky gorges like they did in NS1 limits their options and opportunity in regards to expansion.