Sneaky phase gate placements impossible in NS2
swalk
Say hello to my little friend. Join Date: 2011-01-20 Member: 78384Members, Squad Five Blue
Say hello to my little friend. Join Date: 2011-01-20 Member: 78384Members, Squad Five Blue
<div class="IPBDescription">And how to fix it!</div>Currently marines are forced to build their phase gates near a powernode to be able to defend it properly.
If they build the phase gate too far from it, aliens can easily disable the phase gate.
That limits creative play for marines, and strategy in general.
Now how do we adress that?
We take one of the better ideas from the developers, and improve it!
<b>Powerpacks!</b>
But some changes will need to be made to powerpacks, to not make them too powerful at turtling down areas.
That became quite evident last they were implement, and may be the reason for their removal?
Powerpacks should cost 10 team res(due to it being less effective and more costly with these changes).
Also the powerpack building time should be very similar to building a powernode for the first time. Around 5 seconds?
Sneaky needs to be fast, or sneaky will get spotted.
When you build a powerpack it checks if there are any buildings in it's AoE, without power.
If there are any buildings out of power within it's range, it starts taking 1 team res every 6 seconds.
The commander is able to turn powerpacks on/off, so he can manage his resources.
If he runs out of res the powerpack will go offline.
This encourages creative play for marines, and is something that they are heavily in need of.
I know that have been brought up before, but I wanted to bring more focus to it now that NS2 is closing in on it's release.
What does the community think?
Is the current powergrid too limiting about placements?
Would this adress it?
I think so.
If they build the phase gate too far from it, aliens can easily disable the phase gate.
That limits creative play for marines, and strategy in general.
Now how do we adress that?
We take one of the better ideas from the developers, and improve it!
<b>Powerpacks!</b>
But some changes will need to be made to powerpacks, to not make them too powerful at turtling down areas.
That became quite evident last they were implement, and may be the reason for their removal?
Powerpacks should cost 10 team res(due to it being less effective and more costly with these changes).
Also the powerpack building time should be very similar to building a powernode for the first time. Around 5 seconds?
Sneaky needs to be fast, or sneaky will get spotted.
When you build a powerpack it checks if there are any buildings in it's AoE, without power.
If there are any buildings out of power within it's range, it starts taking 1 team res every 6 seconds.
The commander is able to turn powerpacks on/off, so he can manage his resources.
If he runs out of res the powerpack will go offline.
This encourages creative play for marines, and is something that they are heavily in need of.
I know that have been brought up before, but I wanted to bring more focus to it now that NS2 is closing in on it's release.
What does the community think?
Is the current powergrid too limiting about placements?
Would this adress it?
I think so.
Comments
I bet you this would be more fun.
Erm that would be a bad change. Then you could not return to the base. Since phase gates circle through all phase gates you would be stuck in a unpowered room, no chance for you to run then by your feet or a beacon.
Err yeah...I think thats kinda the point - its a one way ticket, quasi suicide mission. Either you phase through and kill the hive/secure the area or your dead :P
But you cant decide to go there yourself. This means if there is a room which has no power but a phasegate your trip would end there, even if you or the comm didn't plan for you to go there.
Lets take the example you got 3 phasegates on the map summit. Your first phasegate is in the base at flight control. The second one is in datacore. The third one is flight control. Datacore just recently has lost its power and flight control is now under attack. You cant phasegate to flight control because you would end in datacore.
Or you have to phase back to the base because of a attack and comm has no beacon ready or is already dead. If a phasegate to a room without power would be in the queue before the phasegate of your base you would be stranded in this room and not reaching the base.
That would be a pretty fun idea actually, imagine the aliens chewing the cords and Marines need to go in with a welder and repair the damage.
I think it would end up to similar to the aliens cyrst system. But yeah it would be rather funny watching a marine running while pulling an extension cord to the next room.
My other idea is a battery pack only lasts x amount of time and can only connect to one device. This would give the marines a fast counter punch tactic when used with a portal. It would work like this: 1-2 marines head off close to a hive comm drops a gate, the gate is built then the comm places a power pack on it beacons everyone back and they use the portal to assualt. Since the power pack can only last so long the marines either have to setup power and turrents or rush in for a quick attack. I consider this far better then the current phase gate -> power node because you can build this around the corner out of sight.
Due to the limited time and connection it can't be used to long to keep things running after the power goes down so it shouldn't have to great an impact on turtle situations.
Pretty much this.
Any team with enough communication & organisation can build a ninja-phasegate. I would suspect that in the majority of cases the reason a marine 'push' fails is because only a fraction of the team actually pushes simultaneously. The rest either don't push at all or arrive on their own far too late and promptly get killed. Think about it; in the majority of pugs the marine comm doesn't give orders. Needless to say this isn't as much of an issue in organised games, where either the comm is experienced enough or the players know what to do, but in public games it'll take a while longer for a necessary number of players to develop skills as commander.
It is easy to build a hidden phase gate on the map but then you have to build the power node as well. Because of the general power node placements there is a high chance you will be spotted.
If you manage to get the power node up and successfully get the phase gate up you will only have chance for a single rush for all that effort. As soon as the alien know about the phase gate they will simply send 1 skulk to the power node while the other delay the marines at the phase gate, it's impossible to defend and way to risky to even try.
Just getting a normal phase gate up and keeping it up can be hard enough since the phase gate model is kinda big, easy to camp and mines are not worth their cost to defend it(also you dont get res back when you kill skulks with mines like in ns1). Also there are not many viable phase gate spots since you have to have the phase in a location where you can get good map control and defend the power node.
About the original Idea, I do like the idea of having some kind of power pack but I dont like the idea it has a recource upkeep, I feel its like a patch on a bigger problem and I don't think we need to start adding more complicated mechanics into the game. I think the focus should be on refining the game mechanings we have now. I have said before I do like the power system if they can make it work, atm I feel like its a big limitation to marine play, main reason is marines can only build close to the power nodes. So if the power node is inside the hive location they can only get a phase gate inside the hive when its not build to defend it. If the power node is outside the hive then they have to hope there is a good enough power node for them to place a pg close to.
I'm starting to think this mechanics wil probably work best in a mix, so there are some rooms that require power but others are automaticly powered. That will create more power to the map makers and they can select the locations where marines should be limited. But if we went that route then the game needs to add something for the players to know right away if there is a powernode in the room or not.
I still think however that the purpose of a ninja-phasegate is to rush and try to take down a hive in one go - if you get spotted and subsequently fail then that's just the price you pay. Bear in mind there are actually quite a few power nodes that I've never seen marines take advantage of when assaulting a hive - possibly due to lack of awareness. A factor also affecting the ninja-phasegate is the knowledge of a marines location if they're near to cysts - which any decent khamm/gorge will scatter around in locations likely to see ninja-phasegate action.
Sustained pushes consisting of mini-bases (usually at least PG & Armoury) repeatedly assaulting a hive do not require ninja-phasegates and are something different. Allowing these to be built too close to a hive without a penalty would massively favour the marine team.
if you can afford to waste Tres on powerpacks, then you dont need a ninja phase in the 1st place.
maybe make powerpacks cost personal res, like med packs and ammo packs, then just give them a time limit, like power any structure within the powerpacks range for 20-30 seconds, after which the powerpack will explode/disappear.
uses for powerpacks would be supplying unpowered res towers until marines can rebuild the power node, or build ninja phases/obs/whatever, or supply IP's with power if aliens have knocked out you bases power.
Commander will be able to drop these power packs to power ip's / arms lab / observatory to becon, it will last limited ammount of time. Since it will cost 10-20 res commander wont be spamming it but will have this option to temprorary keep the power on when needed. Even if it only lasted 10-20 sec would be enough.
I'm not sure if it should cost player res, I think it should cost team res since team res is more scarce. If a commander has enough res to spam these power packs for some reason then its the alien team to blame for not keeping their rt's down.
I think this is a better solution that the op gave, even though it is somewhat similar. Numbers can be tweaked later. I dont think this fixes all the issues with power system but it is a step in the right direction.
I like the ability to cut the lights, and disable the turrets (since no turret factory anymore), but yes everything else being tied to power nodes is too much imo.
Power nodes tend to be better concealed than resource nodes, so skulks can happily chew them up and cut the resources. Marines become very limited to where they can build, while aliens can build anywhere they manage to build infestation. Perhaps powered nodes should be required to construct new buildings, but powering everything should not be tied to it aswell. And the construction range needs to be increased to give marines flexibility.
Or perhaps a better way to allow marines to move flexibly would be to have a mobile phase gate, like the siege guns are now.
And I don't think the cost for a command chair is worth the extra energy.
And I don't think the cost for a command chair is worth the extra energy.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
CC doesn't require power.
My bad, should have said more.
If Marines place a new CC Im sure they want to place structure around for map control/defence. It is a big investment to just place a command chair somewhere and then just leave it to be taken down by skulks.
The marine team will be unable to defend the CC if they dont have a phase gate/ip's or turrets nearby.
QFT
Is the current powergrid too limiting about placements?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Powergrid limits too much sneaky phase gates and other marine buildings as well. Removing the powergrid would probably be the best way to solve this issue and couple of others. I also feel that the infestation takes away a lot from the game by making it harder for both marines and aliens to do sneaky stuff. The fact that infestation will reveal marines on it and prevent them from building on it causes many of the sneaky pg rushes to fail. Sure, sometimes players are doing it wrong when they keep standing on the infestation or shoot the cyst instead of ninja building, but often you marines don't even have a chance to sneak around the infestation.
I constantly check the map for sneaky marines, and they always pop up in time for me to reach and kill them before they can do the damage.
I played the other night on Mineshaft, and I was jetpacking down the east of the map as marine to keep off the infestation. My plan was to land on top of the hive and shotgun it to prevent the opposing team gaining the onos.
Well, I only touched the ground a couple of times and not for that long. Someone must have seen and warned the team, because I went from being totally alone to a Fade and Skulk attacking me simultaneously.
Wrong.
You <b>have</b> to build them near a powernode. You will not be able to properly hold your phase gate without doing that.
That is very limiting in terms of sneakyness.
Fixed.
I don't think there is a thousand solutions :
1) Remove power completely or introduce a special rule for phase gate.
2) Marines can build everywhere, infestation don't give vision.
Boots which do not give away marine posistion on infestation.
Battery Pack which marine can buy to manually insert into a phase gate to let it operate for X seconds.
Obviously this would take a bit of res because if a phase gate gets built chances are the hive is down (as long as the marine team is half decent).
For me, the idea of sneaking into a hive, building a phase gate and then selecting the battery and inserting it in the phase gate to power it up sounds epic.
!! its cloak for marines. i love it. community: implement!