Chatting with a mate tonight after playing for a few hours we agreed on a few points which I thought I'd share. Firstly, aliens won every game, comfortably, on both docking & summit. I spent most of the night as a skulk.
In this build, alien unlocks feel <i>advantageous</i>, but not <i>necessary</i>, right from the start of the round. There is no time criticallity to upgrades, they're not needed in response to marine tech. Carapace and leap is an incredibly strong early game option, even with the slowing effect of cara. Yet a skulk without cara or leap is still plenty effective. Shades are a great alternative - aliens will rack up lots of early game kills and/or drain the marine economy (whether they scan or build obs). That's just the start game stuff but it feels like there's no urgency the whole way through the tech tree. Instead of feeling that the team has to make a collective choice about the priority/order of attack unlocks, it's more about satisfying teammates based on what they chose to evolve to. So again, the key point I'm making is that esentially there's no pressure on alien tech/unlocks. Don't misunderstand me, it's excellent that they have choice - this leads to varied gameplay - but...
The absolute opposite is true for marines. Ultimately marines strive for JP because they give a compelling combat advantage. Everything else is about surviving until JP or directly reacting to something the aliens do. JP requires an advanced armoury, proto-lab and research totalling 10+20+40+25=95 tRes. With no fast path to JP, marines have to plan for the early game lifeforms/upgrades they'll be facing, so at a minimum they'll need armour 1 for survival and shotguns to score kills (vs skulks, lerks & fades) totalling 65tRes. Without phase gates (45tRes) their map control will suffer, which = further income penalty. Since you've already got the arms lab down, weapons 1 is a solid choice because the flagfall has already been paid. All of this stuff just defers JP.
<b>Key point</b>: in b212, marines suffer from reduced strategic choice and are channeled towards one particular upgrade path. This provides a compound advantage for aliens who are better able to predict the marine development & threat capabilities.
Mines are useless once cara is in play; even for 5 pRes you're not assured of a skulk kill where a skulk is hanging laps recklessly in the marine base. I think some pro-aliens will take issue with this point but I'm sincere that I believe for 5pRes a marine should be basically assured of a kill of a reckless skulk. Mines should make skulks <i>cautious</i>. As for the rest of it, no other lifeforms are vulnerable to mines unless spammed, all other lifeforms are able to clear them out for free (bile, spikes, fade and onos can damage soak).
<u>Some suggestions...</u> <ul><li>Change shotgun back to light damage. At the moment it's too effective against Onos in particular. It's also the reason why skulks needed such a huge boost from carapace.</li><li>Reduce skulk armour bonus from carapace. This should help early marine survival and make mines useful again.</li><li>Adjust the cost/HP of cysts. Either make them more expensive or weaker. The least time or cost effective thing a marine can do is attack a cyst. It confers no penalty to the aliens and conversely ties down a marine from doing anything economically productive for the marines or destructive to the aliens. They're also ridiculously effective at soaking up rifle clips, pub marines <u><i>really</i></u> don't understand how ineffective that is which just means it's far from intuitive. It's so bad at the moment that it's <i>advantageous</i> for a Kham to keep re-dropping cysts around a marine. This change is particularly important if ARCs continue not to be able to fire on cysts.</li><li>Decouple Prototype Lab from Advanced Armoury. I heard you're toying with coupling the PL to a 2nd CS - I'm generally in favour of that (esp if you also decoupling AA) but I am concerned about how artificial/abstract/unintuitive such a requirement would be. Still, I'd love to test it out.</li><li>Decrease JP fuel and recharge & enable the extended flight-time research option which would bring them back up to current levels. (eg 75% of current value without, 100% with. You want marines to have one or two evade chances with a basic JP but the current values provide nearly perpetual evade chance because of the recharge while hovering). I think the effect should be on both total fuel and recharge speed (shorter escape burst, takes longer to recover). The research option should be about 40 tRes and take 2 minutes. Aliens should feel the presence of JP but be able to do something about it for a little while (time to react strategically). This should remove the nothing-everything effect that JP currently represents and create an intermediate level.</li></ul> <u>Sentry turrets...</u> Current problem: they die too quickly. Pre-212 problems: they were spammed late game and used for passageway/entrance denial rather than area denial. I like the idea behind the damage-ramp up but I think it would be better implemented as an accuracy ramp-up. The effect would be more intuitive, thinking the sentry gets better at tracking/predicting a target as it collects more tracking data. The callibre and velocity bullets doesn't change. This way a skulk and lerk might benefit from their smaller profile. <ul><li>Restore their HP to pre b212 levels but increase their cost to 12-14 res.</li><li>Remove the ability to re-orient sentries. This change is designed to encourage commanders to build sentries in pairs, facing each other with their backs to the walls to cover each other. This is also the strongest configuration for area denial. We want to discourage them being built in packs all facing the entrance. I want skulks to be able to get in behind and savage them if they're built like that. 24-28 res for a pair should provide decent area denial for fast creatures soo...</li><li>Increase the tracking speed while decreasing the damage. Objective: Encourage light lifeforms to be able to raid but not assault an area that's protected by sentries. Discourage sentries from being the primary target of these light lifeforms. The accuracy ramp-up/tracking speed boost might seem to be in conflict but what I'm suggesting is that a sentry can start shooting at something instantly but have a probabilty based damage for the first little while. By design the effect should be more dramatic at range which in turn makes the sentries more ignorable except for the area they're protecting (in pairs). The way for aliens to deal with sentries is with bile bomb, onos or by taking out the power.</li></ul>
Good post Khyron and I agree with your suggestions for the most part. I would prefer to see Carapace restored to its original state though - less armour but no slowdown (or at least much less).
I agree with most posts on this thread. I also must admit this is probably one of the least fun builds. Could you push out a short fix at minimum to resolve the sentry gun issue and carapace to make the game enjoyable while you work through the rest. This is the first time I actually feel more and more discouraged the more I play.
Kyrons points are very good to the point where (non cara) skulks are still ok vs level 1 armour and weapon marines (which is normally a couple of minutes in) but a marine is useless against a carapace skulk at the same level. It takes two decent marines to kill a carapce skulk before upper tier unlocks are available unless the area is super open (most maps are not so open).
My personal thoughts on a solution are ; 1. Bring back upgrades at maturity (worked well IMO), leave leap as single hive but this will slow it down and give marines time to build something. 2. Blink, Bile Bomb and Stomp should be 2 hive abilities (Should atleast have a second hive by this time anyway) 3. Umbra and Vortex should be a 3 hive ability (I also believe Onos and gorge should get an endgame ability to finish games quicker, ala the old NS1 Web and perhaps a bite which temporarily disables a structure) 4. Mature Upgrade chambers should be tiered and be upgradable as per the arms lab. Carapace should start small and be upgradable at a cost and time the other delay would be awaiting the chamber to mature. Initial cost of dropping the chamber is fine, but instead of a 15 tres cost to select the chamber it could be free with costs to upgrade being about half that of marines arms lab options (ie 10,15,20) 5. Remove the slow impact from carapace, the above reduces the need for the trade-off. 6. Make sentries stand alone (no requirement and if possible damage tied to arms lab), remove the marine increasing damage, they are designed to allow marines to push while buying time to hold an area. Current strategy seems to encourage turtling which isnt what I think most players want. The link to arms lab should be sufficient to help bolster things as aliens get more powerful. 7. A single mine should always kill a skulk (again perhaps tie to arms lab), would be good to see the chain explosions removed as well. New players not knowing any better will place them in clsoe distance to others and you can easily watch 60pres disappear on a single skulk.
At the end of the day Games are determined in the first 5 minutes almost eveyrtime. Any marine win has been setup by strangling the res of aliens and vice versa. With Alien wins being far too easy and marine wins being too uncommon. Skulks should need to employ strategy (ie drop frm the roof, hide around corners) rather than the just jump towards the marine and chomp which appears to work all too effectively at the moment.
Comments
In this build, alien unlocks feel <i>advantageous</i>, but not <i>necessary</i>, right from the start of the round. There is no time criticallity to upgrades, they're not needed in response to marine tech. Carapace and leap is an incredibly strong early game option, even with the slowing effect of cara. Yet a skulk without cara or leap is still plenty effective. Shades are a great alternative - aliens will rack up lots of early game kills and/or drain the marine economy (whether they scan or build obs). That's just the start game stuff but it feels like there's no urgency the whole way through the tech tree. Instead of feeling that the team has to make a collective choice about the priority/order of attack unlocks, it's more about satisfying teammates based on what they chose to evolve to. So again, the key point I'm making is that esentially there's no pressure on alien tech/unlocks. Don't misunderstand me, it's excellent that they have choice - this leads to varied gameplay - but...
The absolute opposite is true for marines. Ultimately marines strive for JP because they give a compelling combat advantage. Everything else is about surviving until JP or directly reacting to something the aliens do. JP requires an advanced armoury, proto-lab and research totalling 10+20+40+25=95 tRes. With no fast path to JP, marines have to plan for the early game lifeforms/upgrades they'll be facing, so at a minimum they'll need armour 1 for survival and shotguns to score kills (vs skulks, lerks & fades) totalling 65tRes. Without phase gates (45tRes) their map control will suffer, which = further income penalty. Since you've already got the arms lab down, weapons 1 is a solid choice because the flagfall has already been paid. All of this stuff just defers JP.
<b>Key point</b>: in b212, marines suffer from reduced strategic choice and are channeled towards one particular upgrade path. This provides a compound advantage for aliens who are better able to predict the marine development & threat capabilities.
Mines are useless once cara is in play; even for 5 pRes you're not assured of a skulk kill where a skulk is hanging laps recklessly in the marine base. I think some pro-aliens will take issue with this point but I'm sincere that I believe for 5pRes a marine should be basically assured of a kill of a reckless skulk. Mines should make skulks <i>cautious</i>. As for the rest of it, no other lifeforms are vulnerable to mines unless spammed, all other lifeforms are able to clear them out for free (bile, spikes, fade and onos can damage soak).
<u>Some suggestions...</u>
<ul><li>Change shotgun back to light damage. At the moment it's too effective against Onos in particular. It's also the reason why skulks needed such a huge boost from carapace.</li><li>Reduce skulk armour bonus from carapace. This should help early marine survival and make mines useful again.</li><li>Adjust the cost/HP of cysts. Either make them more expensive or weaker. The least time or cost effective thing a marine can do is attack a cyst. It confers no penalty to the aliens and conversely ties down a marine from doing anything economically productive for the marines or destructive to the aliens. They're also ridiculously effective at soaking up rifle clips, pub marines <u><i>really</i></u> don't understand how ineffective that is which just means it's far from intuitive. It's so bad at the moment that it's <i>advantageous</i> for a Kham to keep re-dropping cysts around a marine. This change is particularly important if ARCs continue not to be able to fire on cysts.</li><li>Decouple Prototype Lab from Advanced Armoury. I heard you're toying with coupling the PL to a 2nd CS - I'm generally in favour of that (esp if you also decoupling AA) but I am concerned about how artificial/abstract/unintuitive such a requirement would be. Still, I'd love to test it out.</li><li>Decrease JP fuel and recharge & enable the extended flight-time research option which would bring them back up to current levels. (eg 75% of current value without, 100% with. You want marines to have one or two evade chances with a basic JP but the current values provide nearly perpetual evade chance because of the recharge while hovering). I think the effect should be on both total fuel and recharge speed (shorter escape burst, takes longer to recover). The research option should be about 40 tRes and take 2 minutes. Aliens should feel the presence of JP but be able to do something about it for a little while (time to react strategically). This should remove the nothing-everything effect that JP currently represents and create an intermediate level.</li></ul>
<u>Sentry turrets...</u>
Current problem: they die too quickly. Pre-212 problems: they were spammed late game and used for passageway/entrance denial rather than area denial.
I like the idea behind the damage-ramp up but I think it would be better implemented as an accuracy ramp-up. The effect would be more intuitive, thinking the sentry gets better at tracking/predicting a target as it collects more tracking data. The callibre and velocity bullets doesn't change. This way a skulk and lerk might benefit from their smaller profile.
<ul><li>Restore their HP to pre b212 levels but increase their cost to 12-14 res.</li><li>Remove the ability to re-orient sentries. This change is designed to encourage commanders to build sentries in pairs, facing each other with their backs to the walls to cover each other. This is also the strongest configuration for area denial. We want to discourage them being built in packs all facing the entrance. I want skulks to be able to get in behind and savage them if they're built like that. 24-28 res for a pair should provide decent area denial for fast creatures soo...</li><li>Increase the tracking speed while decreasing the damage. Objective: Encourage light lifeforms to be able to raid but not assault an area that's protected by sentries. Discourage sentries from being the primary target of these light lifeforms. The accuracy ramp-up/tracking speed boost might seem to be in conflict but what I'm suggesting is that a sentry can start shooting at something instantly but have a probabilty based damage for the first little while. By design the effect should be more dramatic at range which in turn makes the sentries more ignorable except for the area they're protecting (in pairs). The way for aliens to deal with sentries is with bile bomb, onos or by taking out the power.</li></ul>
Kyrons points are very good to the point where (non cara) skulks are still ok vs level 1 armour and weapon marines (which is normally a couple of minutes in) but a marine is useless against a carapace skulk at the same level. It takes two decent marines to kill a carapce skulk before upper tier unlocks are available unless the area is super open (most maps are not so open).
My personal thoughts on a solution are ;
1. Bring back upgrades at maturity (worked well IMO), leave leap as single hive but this will slow it down and give marines time to build something.
2. Blink, Bile Bomb and Stomp should be 2 hive abilities (Should atleast have a second hive by this time anyway)
3. Umbra and Vortex should be a 3 hive ability (I also believe Onos and gorge should get an endgame ability to finish games quicker, ala the old NS1 Web and perhaps a bite which temporarily disables a structure)
4. Mature Upgrade chambers should be tiered and be upgradable as per the arms lab. Carapace should start small and be upgradable at a cost and time the other delay would be awaiting the chamber to mature. Initial cost of dropping the chamber is fine, but instead of a 15 tres cost to select the chamber it could be free with costs to upgrade being about half that of marines arms lab options (ie 10,15,20)
5. Remove the slow impact from carapace, the above reduces the need for the trade-off.
6. Make sentries stand alone (no requirement and if possible damage tied to arms lab), remove the marine increasing damage, they are designed to allow marines to push while buying time to hold an area. Current strategy seems to encourage turtling which isnt what I think most players want. The link to arms lab should be sufficient to help bolster things as aliens get more powerful.
7. A single mine should always kill a skulk (again perhaps tie to arms lab), would be good to see the chain explosions removed as well. New players not knowing any better will place them in clsoe distance to others and you can easily watch 60pres disappear on a single skulk.
At the end of the day Games are determined in the first 5 minutes almost eveyrtime. Any marine win has been setup by strangling the res of aliens and vice versa. With Alien wins being far too easy and marine wins being too uncommon. Skulks should need to employ strategy (ie drop frm the roof, hide around corners) rather than the just jump towards the marine and chomp which appears to work all too effectively at the moment.