Lets fix aliens.
MisterNubs
Join Date: 2012-03-01 Member: 147912Members
Join Date: 2012-03-01 Member: 147912Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Ideas and suggestions.</div><b>Upgrades</b>
<u>Crag:</u>
-Carapace: Remove the slowdown trade off. Since the armor was brought back down, I don't see a reason why the slowdown is still there. With the slowdown, carapace is hardly an upgrade for skulks. Due to the fact that you're easier to hit, thus making the extra armor you gain negligible. You're still going to get one shot by a shotgun with it and carapace makes it easier for a marine to do so. Ironic.
-Regeneration: Instead of a flat number, change it to a percentage (if it already isn't).
<u>Shade:</u>
-Combine silence and camouflage, or remove camouflage. Camouflage without silence is a terrible upgrade choice. Marines can still hear you coming from two rooms away. To use camouflage effectively, you're then hindering your team by sitting around doing nothing. You'll be more effective taking silence as it still lets you move around the map without giving you away, and makes it easier to get to undefended extractors. And because of the upgrade choice limitations (one upgrade per hive type), going silence/camouflage is impossible.
-Combining silence and camouflage gives room to bring back Focus. Focus decreased the speed of attack on slot 1, but increases the damage. Finally giving aliens much needed killing power.
These changes could make shade hive a more reasonable first or second hive upgrade choice, instead of the third hive only as it currently is. It would also give players actual choices between which upgrade to take. And who doesn't love choices, right? A better stealth, better killing potential with focus, or increased survival possibilities with feign death.
<u>Shift:</u>
-Celerity: Make it a flat increase already. Get rid of the ramp up completely, and get rid of the deactivation during combat. I don't understand this fascination with making alien upgrades ineffective during combat.
-Adrenaline is fine.
-Hypermutation: Not worth an upgrade slot, but no idea what could replace it.
<b>Lifeforms</b>
<u>Skulks:</u>
Xenocide needs to be axed or needs to be changed. As it currently is, using it is a sign of a new/bad skulk player, and researching it is a sign of a new/troll alien commander as one should never even allow a player the possibility to use it. Xenocide actually favors marines. It does pitiful damage, kills the skulk in the process, places the player in a waiting list to spawn that could take upwards of 30 seconds, and while they're dead they gain zero personal resources. One possible change is instead of the player activating the ability, how about when the skulk dies due to marine fire, they explode dealing damage to nearby marines.
Unsure why the change to energy costs on bite. Revert please.
<u>
Gorges:</u>
Hydras are pitiful, even more pitiful now that they are back to costing personal resources. Increase the hp/damage on them to compensate for costing resources again, or actually use the maturation system in a meaningful way. When a single hydra fully matures, they have the hp/damage of two hydras.
<u>
Lerks:</u>
Now that spores require two hives, bring back ranged spores. Currently, there is zero reason to research trail spores. It's suicidal to use by the time you get it.
<u>Fades:</u>
Swap blink and shadow step. Make blink the basic ability, and shadow step a second hive upgrade. Increase the functionality of shadow step and/or remove the energy cost on it. Now fades can handle jet packs on one hive and shadow step won't be completely overshadowed by blink.
<u>Onos:</u>
Give them bone armor. They take zero damage (or damage reduction) when taking damage to the front. Increasing hp alone isn't going to fix how bad they are. Unsure why exosuits are immune to stomp, considering stomp requires three hives. (Dual exosuits should require three tech points imo).
<b>Economy</b>
<u>Cysts:</u> On large maps it can actually cost more to place cysts up to the resource node than the harvester itself. 20+ team res for a single harvester on large maps is completely insane (especially when power nodes are free). Either cysts should refund the resource cost when they fully mature, or make it so that harvesters can be placed on nodes without requiring infestation.
<u>Crag:</u>
-Carapace: Remove the slowdown trade off. Since the armor was brought back down, I don't see a reason why the slowdown is still there. With the slowdown, carapace is hardly an upgrade for skulks. Due to the fact that you're easier to hit, thus making the extra armor you gain negligible. You're still going to get one shot by a shotgun with it and carapace makes it easier for a marine to do so. Ironic.
-Regeneration: Instead of a flat number, change it to a percentage (if it already isn't).
<u>Shade:</u>
-Combine silence and camouflage, or remove camouflage. Camouflage without silence is a terrible upgrade choice. Marines can still hear you coming from two rooms away. To use camouflage effectively, you're then hindering your team by sitting around doing nothing. You'll be more effective taking silence as it still lets you move around the map without giving you away, and makes it easier to get to undefended extractors. And because of the upgrade choice limitations (one upgrade per hive type), going silence/camouflage is impossible.
-Combining silence and camouflage gives room to bring back Focus. Focus decreased the speed of attack on slot 1, but increases the damage. Finally giving aliens much needed killing power.
These changes could make shade hive a more reasonable first or second hive upgrade choice, instead of the third hive only as it currently is. It would also give players actual choices between which upgrade to take. And who doesn't love choices, right? A better stealth, better killing potential with focus, or increased survival possibilities with feign death.
<u>Shift:</u>
-Celerity: Make it a flat increase already. Get rid of the ramp up completely, and get rid of the deactivation during combat. I don't understand this fascination with making alien upgrades ineffective during combat.
-Adrenaline is fine.
-Hypermutation: Not worth an upgrade slot, but no idea what could replace it.
<b>Lifeforms</b>
<u>Skulks:</u>
Xenocide needs to be axed or needs to be changed. As it currently is, using it is a sign of a new/bad skulk player, and researching it is a sign of a new/troll alien commander as one should never even allow a player the possibility to use it. Xenocide actually favors marines. It does pitiful damage, kills the skulk in the process, places the player in a waiting list to spawn that could take upwards of 30 seconds, and while they're dead they gain zero personal resources. One possible change is instead of the player activating the ability, how about when the skulk dies due to marine fire, they explode dealing damage to nearby marines.
Unsure why the change to energy costs on bite. Revert please.
<u>
Gorges:</u>
Hydras are pitiful, even more pitiful now that they are back to costing personal resources. Increase the hp/damage on them to compensate for costing resources again, or actually use the maturation system in a meaningful way. When a single hydra fully matures, they have the hp/damage of two hydras.
<u>
Lerks:</u>
Now that spores require two hives, bring back ranged spores. Currently, there is zero reason to research trail spores. It's suicidal to use by the time you get it.
<u>Fades:</u>
Swap blink and shadow step. Make blink the basic ability, and shadow step a second hive upgrade. Increase the functionality of shadow step and/or remove the energy cost on it. Now fades can handle jet packs on one hive and shadow step won't be completely overshadowed by blink.
<u>Onos:</u>
Give them bone armor. They take zero damage (or damage reduction) when taking damage to the front. Increasing hp alone isn't going to fix how bad they are. Unsure why exosuits are immune to stomp, considering stomp requires three hives. (Dual exosuits should require three tech points imo).
<b>Economy</b>
<u>Cysts:</u> On large maps it can actually cost more to place cysts up to the resource node than the harvester itself. 20+ team res for a single harvester on large maps is completely insane (especially when power nodes are free). Either cysts should refund the resource cost when they fully mature, or make it so that harvesters can be placed on nodes without requiring infestation.
Comments
Most of all I want Focus. And make it combinable with silence - it was sick in NS1. Huge fun, and still fair (because no celerity).
Regeneration - No. This was a recent change, it used to be %. Problem was that onos and fades would go around a corner and regenerate heavy very fast then rejoin. A consistent regeneration rate gives benefit to skulks, while keeping higher lifeforms dependent on crags or gorges.
Camo/Silence - No real opinion. Maybe would be overpowered. At the moment people sometimes get silence over feint death, but never see anyone getting camo. Likely because shades do the job.
Celerity - No. Its fine. It does the job of aiding movement between locations, rather than helping actual combat.
Adrenaline - Yes its fine.
Hypermutation - Yeah it does seem to be pointless. Hardly anyone survives long enough anymore for it to be useful. Just remove it, or somehow rework it to be a commander ability/upgrade.
Xeno - Yes it is useless. Needs to work after leaping, and have clearer way of showing countdown to death. Audio cue is not accurate. Needs a bit more damage, but I think the biggest issue is spawn timers for aliens.
Hydras - Yes need a buff now that they cost res.
Lerk - I prefered it when spores was starting ability. Its always useful, never particularly powerful making spikes an obvious upgrade. Spores loses usefulness later game, so seems a wasted upgrade.
Blink/Shadowstep - Not sure. Blink from start sounds overpowered, although it is needed to simply fight jetpacks. Impossible otherwise. Leap/Blink should really be 1 hive abilities, just need to find an alternate way to prevent aliens researching them in first 2 minutes.
Onos bone armour - I agree.
Cysts - Refund after being matured sounds nice, I do agree it seems insane to spend so much just to reach an RT. Then again if they were free I would just spam them to slow down marines.
I'm thinking on hypermutation....what if it just refunded a large percentage of the res cost of the life form if you die. So carapace helps you not die, feign helps you escape, and hyper mutation makes the dying hurt less. So each upgrade path has it's own unique way of increasing "survivability".
Most of all I want Focus. And make it combinable with silence - it was sick in NS1. Huge fun, and still fair (because no celerity).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Focus+silence would too strong of a combination.
@TimMC
I would have felt sad if I left out regeneration. Honestly, regeneration using a percentage would be on the lines of marines healing on an armory in a good 2-3 seconds. Haha, but a bad game flaw doesn't deserve another bad game decision I guess. Those MACs humping exosuits, unf.
About celerity, I'll have to disagree with your reasoning. After second hive, celerity is a lost cause because of the fact it deactivates during combat. Adrenaline/leap outclasses celerity/leap in its current state. Currently: adrenaline/leap allows you more leaps during combat and still have energy whereas celerity/leap leaves you with very little energy if you use leap, and you're still moving the same speed as adren/leap making celerity a useless upgrade. And then outside of combat, a continuously steam of leaps with adren will move you around the just as fast. That means adrenaline has more perks. The combat restriction needs to be removed if celerity wants to stay relevant as the game moves on from early to mid to late.
<!--quoteo(post=1968987:date=Aug 30 2012, 04:00 PM:name=Typhon)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Typhon @ Aug 30 2012, 04:00 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1968987"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Lots of good stuff here.
I'm thinking on hypermutation....what if it just refunded a large percentage of the res cost of the life form if you die. So carapace helps you not die, feign helps you escape, and hyper mutation makes the dying hurt less. So each upgrade path has it's own unique way of increasing "survivability".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I can get behind that.
Just because celerity is not useful on skulk does not mean its a bad upgrade. Its still useful in vents (where cannot leap), its extremely useful for lerks and onos who use it to counter carapace slowdown. Fades and gorges are too energy heavy to use anything but adrenaline.
I'm thinking on hypermutation....what if it just refunded a large percentage of the res cost of the life form if you die. So carapace helps you not die, feign helps you escape, and hyper mutation makes the dying hurt less. So each upgrade path has it's own unique way of increasing "survivability".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This, I like.
Edit: Would it be useless on Skulk, though? That doesn't seem like good game design. What if it shortened your time to respawn if you got it as a skulk?
Doesn't matter if you have carapace either.
You wait for 50 res for like 10-15 minutes, only to have it undone in 2 seconds by the Exosuit. I'm about as frustrated by that as I was with Jetpacks (until the current blink system was placed in).
Focus ability is the only viable option, lest you want to nerf the exo damage.
Adren or Celerity on a lerk is a matter of personal opinion I feel. I prefer adren on the lerk so that I can constantly spam spikes and gas at an nearly endless rate without worrying about energy. Some might prefer celerity so they can zoom around faster while sporing. Onos I feel is a really bad reason to argue the usefulness of celerity. Again, speaking of combat wise: If you take damage, you lose celerity (if it's still that way), and then you're even slower because of carapace. Dead.
This is how I feel about celerity. Doesn't matter if I arrive 6 seconds sooner to my destination with celerity than without. If I die because I couldn't leap due to having run dry of energy, then arriving faster was completely pointless. Whereas I might arrive 6 seconds later because I chose adren, but I survived because I had enough energy to use leap/blink/spore/spikes/stomp, killing the marine. I'm then able to continue on my way taking out resource nodes and what not.
You shouldn't be forced to take an upgrade to fix a flaw in another upgrade. That's bad game design.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->This, I like.
Edit: Would it be useless on Skulk, though? That doesn't seem like good game design. What if it shortened your time to respawn if you got it as a skulk?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You'd probably take adren/celerity over hypermutation on a skulk anyway. Shortening respawn time would involving having to fix alien's spawn system.
Doesn't matter if you have carapace either.
You wait for 50 res for like 10-15 minutes, only to have it undone in 2 seconds by the Exosuit. I'm about as frustrated by that as I was with Jetpacks (until the current blink system was placed in).
Focus ability is the only viable option, lest you want to nerf the exo damage.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I was seeing quite the opposite last night. Perhaps we were just facing godly fades but they were blinking into a ball of multiple exos and support marines, taking a couple swipes, and blinking away to heal, then returning a couple seconds later. We simply could not kill them, and they eventually took out all the support marines, and then the exos slowly fell.
The only thing that can kill a really good fade before they blink away is burst damage (shotgun, GL), and exos don't have access to that.
Getting around the map faster than Marines is still important and underrated. All the games I had of NS_veil the aliens could swarm around most of the map hitting RTs and if the Marines just chased them down they'd lose.
Losing the speed boost on damage is a slight hinderance since Skulks/Lerks can't keep dodging fire and Onos can't escape as well.
The only thing that can kill a really good fade before they blink away is burst damage (shotgun, GL), and exos don't have access to that.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It might've been a shotgun that did the most damage with the EXO finishing me off.
It happened so quick, like not even a second.
I'll still have to give it time, but as of now, I only find <!--coloro:#008080--><span style="color:#008080"><!--/coloro-->hitting their base<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> as a Fade more useful than <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->engaging Exo's<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->.
If we had Focus swipe, then thats a different story.
Out of the 10 games I've played, I've only killed <!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro-->7 Exo's as a skulk<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> in 4 of the games. 3 of which were solo encounters with a lonely Exo.
The skulk's small size is better in close encounters compared to Fade from what I've experienced.
The only thing that can kill a really good fade before they blink away is burst damage (shotgun, GL), and exos don't have access to that.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
1 on 1 with a fade as an exo its really hard. They just keep blinking and I just keep shooting. even if the fade isn't doing much damage at all its quite a distraction
Alien upgrades need reworking.
<u>Crag:</u>
-Carapace: Remove the slowdown trade off. Since the armor was brought back down, I don't see a reason why the slowdown is still there. With the slowdown, carapace is hardly an upgrade for skulks. Due to the fact that you're easier to hit, thus making the extra armor you gain negligible. You're still going to get one shot by a shotgun with it and carapace makes it easier for a marine to do so. Ironic.
-Regeneration: Instead of a flat number, change it to a percentage (if it already isn't).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Slowdown needs to go from carapace as does carapace from it current flat form.
Why not allow 2 or 3 shells to be built that allow carapce to be buffed from 30 (1 shell) - 45/50 (3 shells) with an increasing research cost. This would allow aliens to scale much better, I know its a throw back t NS1 but I cant see any other way of having carapace that is even close to useful when you see a w3 marine.
We could go further and take carapace off crag and simply make it researched separately. In doing this we could move silence to crag, silence is simply changing the foot surface so no noise/vibration is passed through which is not to far from self healing skin
<!--quoteo(post=1968977:date=Aug 31 2012, 06:34 AM:name=MisterNubs)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MisterNubs @ Aug 31 2012, 06:34 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1968977"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><u>Shade:</u>
-Combine silence and camouflage, or remove camouflage. Camouflage without silence is a terrible upgrade choice. Marines can still hear you coming from two rooms away. To use camouflage effectively, you're then hindering your team by sitting around doing nothing. You'll be more effective taking silence as it still lets you move around the map without giving you away, and makes it easier to get to undefended extractors. And because of the upgrade choice limitations (one upgrade per hive type), going silence/camouflage is impossible.
-Combining silence and camouflage gives room to bring back Focus. Focus decreased the speed of attack on slot 1, but increases the damage. Finally giving aliens much needed killing power.
These changes could make shade hive a more reasonable first or second hive upgrade choice, instead of the third hive only as it currently is. It would also give players actual choices between which upgrade to take. And who doesn't love choices, right? A better stealth, better killing potential with focus, or increased survival possibilities with feign death.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Silence and camo need to be able to be used together..either move one to another hive (as outlined in the carapace discussion) or combine.
As you have pointed out being invisible but noisy is silly....you do much better being visible but silent.Feign death is useless for onos, really only fades have much use for it...even skulks its 50-50 at best.
<!--quoteo(post=1968977:date=Aug 31 2012, 06:34 AM:name=MisterNubs)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MisterNubs @ Aug 31 2012, 06:34 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1968977"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><u>Shift:</u>
-Celerity: Make it a flat increase already. Get rid of the ramp up completely, and get rid of the deactivation during combat. I don't understand this fascination with making alien upgrades ineffective during combat.
-Adrenaline is fine.
-Hypermutation: Not worth an upgrade slot, but no idea what could replace it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah you could probably do a flat increase thats not as fast but not lost during combat, is frustrating as does not help you survive a battle through escaping.
Bring back MC to hive telepporting, playing veil made me realise how much it helped on those really big maps.
Marines already have PG and Beacon with some larger maps being made/remade aliens will struggle getting anything around the map except fades, lerks and skulks. Gorges and Onos will be useless as neither has the strength to warrant their slow arrival to battle...by the time they make it battles over and they are running in alone.
<!--quoteo(post=1968977:date=Aug 31 2012, 06:34 AM:name=MisterNubs)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MisterNubs @ Aug 31 2012, 06:34 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1968977"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>Lifeforms</b>
<u>Skulks:</u>
Xenocide needs to be axed or needs to be changed. As it currently is, using it is a sign of a new/bad skulk player, and researching it is a sign of a new/troll alien commander as one should never even allow a player the possibility to use it. Xenocide actually favors marines. It does pitiful damage, kills the skulk in the process, places the player in a waiting list to spawn that could take upwards of 30 seconds, and while they're dead they gain zero personal resources. One possible change is instead of the player activating the ability, how about when the skulk dies due to marine fire, they explode dealing damage to nearby marines.
Unsure why the change to energy costs on bite. Revert please.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Xeno is so in need of a buff, mines seem to do more damage and they dont require the marine sits out of battle for the next 15-30 seconds.
Bite cost needs to be lowered...I should not have to get adrenalin to be able to take out a RT without running out of energy.
<!--quoteo(post=1968977:date=Aug 31 2012, 06:34 AM:name=MisterNubs)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MisterNubs @ Aug 31 2012, 06:34 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1968977"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><u>
Gorges:</u>
Hydras are pitiful, even more pitiful now that they are back to costing personal resources. Increase the hp/damage on them to compensate for costing resources again, or actually use the maturation system in a meaningful way. When a single hydra fully matures, they have the hp/damage of two hydras.
<u>
Lerks:</u>
Now that spores require two hives, bring back ranged spores. Currently, there is zero reason to research trail spores. It's suicidal to use by the time you get it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Gorges make me cry...as does the 3 res I lose when a marine sneezes at my hydras.
I have forked out 9 res and I am actively healing them yet they die....waste of 9 res (19 really as I had to evolve to gorge to drop them).
Make hydras cost 15 res each, cap at 3 but give them the HP of whips but with slightly higher armour (1 gorge should be able to out heal 2-3 marines early game, increase the damage slightly.
This will make them something that actually stops marines and forces them to either go around or come back with GL's/FT/Arcs/exos.
Hydras where crap against anything before exos came out...now they are worse than a bad joke against an exo..9 res.
Agree with ranged spores, also they need to be buffed back up to the level they where at previously (which was balanced for 2nd tier...atleast that was explanation when nerfed)
<!--quoteo(post=1968977:date=Aug 31 2012, 06:34 AM:name=MisterNubs)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MisterNubs @ Aug 31 2012, 06:34 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1968977"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><u>Fades:</u>
Swap blink and shadow step. Make blink the basic ability, and shadow step a second hive upgrade. Increase the functionality of shadow step and/or remove the energy cost on it. Now fades can handle jet packs on one hive and shadow step won't be completely overshadowed by blink.
<u>Onos:</u>
Give them bone armor. They take zero damage (or damage reduction) when taking damage to the front. Increasing hp alone isn't going to fix how bad they are. Unsure why exosuits are immune to stomp, considering stomp requires three hives. (Dual exosuits should require three tech points imo).
<b>Economy</b>
<u>Cysts:</u> On large maps it can actually cost more to place cysts up to the resource node than the harvester itself. 20+ team res for a single harvester on large maps is completely insane (especially when power nodes are free). Either cysts should refund the resource cost when they fully mature, or make it so that harvesters can be placed on nodes without requiring infestation.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agree with fade changes..aliens need some way to take out JPs with 1 hive.
Onos got badly nerfed and is in need a a decent buff, bone armour is a great idea...still leaves a weak spot on a fleeing onos but help them if they keep the marines in front of them.
Cysts cost ideas great, but why not allow aliens ability to recycle the same way marines can? Why cant the alien comm recycle the harvester being attacked?
Marines (organised oned) have a much easier time maintaining upgrade patchs due to the ability to recycle, putting a forward armoury is easy if you know you can get back 1/3 of its cost by recycling when it start getting attacked.
An alien comm has no such luxury with a forward crag he cant recycle when it starts getting attacked.
-Combine silence and camouflage, or remove camouflage. Camouflage without silence is a terrible upgrade choice. Marines can still hear you coming from two rooms away. To use camouflage effectively, you're then hindering your team by sitting around doing nothing. You'll be more effective taking silence as it still lets you move around the map without giving you away, and makes it easier to get to undefended extractors. And because of the upgrade choice limitations (one upgrade per hive type), going silence/camouflage is impossible.
-Combining silence and camouflage gives room to bring back Focus. Focus decreased the speed of attack on slot 1, but increases the damage. Finally giving aliens much needed killing power.
These changes could make shade hive a more reasonable first or second hive upgrade choice, instead of the third hive only as it currently is. It would also give players actual choices between which upgrade to take. And who doesn't love choices, right? A better stealth, better killing potential with focus, or increased survival possibilities with feign death.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I like this suggestion.
Although Cloak did get better, combining it with silence would get it in the line with cara or celerity as first choice, because at the moment it is hard to intercept sprinting marines.
You often can't use cloak in situations where you actually need it, because the marines are already aware of you when you are coming and will search for walking ghosts when they know you go shade hive. It takes too much time to start cloak walking when you are out of the hearing range.
So combining cloak with silence gives you the complete stealth pack where you can choose to move faster but are visible, or you can give up some speed to sneak to them.
Really? Being a ninja with a critical damage sneaky attack isn't part of the Shade?
No, it isn't.
A shade hive is known as a deception hive. Biting really hard isn't very deceptive. Its just painful.
A shade hive is known as a deception hive. Biting really hard isn't very deceptive. Its just painful.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Except you also can't hit as fast. So your new playstyle involves timing to get in close when you can strike, and dodging away when you can't. Hit-and-Run.
But at this point we're probably not gonna agree. So I'll agree we disagree on Focus' thematic fit with the Shade.
I'm thinking on hypermutation....what if it just refunded a large percentage of the res cost of the life form if you die. So carapace helps you not die, feign helps you escape, and hyper mutation makes the dying hurt less. So each upgrade path has it's own unique way of increasing "survivability".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I like your thinking!
Gorge, nice late game base attack but Die 2 shot to a shotty or 1 clip to an AR, costs you 20 res to set up (in effect) but is a minor annoyance at best. Too slow to harass structures without being caught by marines. Can speed up the dreadfully slow build time but not by enough.
Lerk: Why would I take this? 30 res for this class feels very silly, all he does early game is sit in a vent spiking an extractor/power for tiny damage then run away. Skulk could do the vent attacks better . Spores is nice but the damage is low by the tiem you get it, the bite is meh since you have to get in close range and will get melted.
Fade: Absolutely fine now its had the survivability nerfs
Onos: Needs looking at, 10 res JPs ###### him over, 50 res exos ###### him over. Really all I use him for now is to distract enemies from the gorge. Instead of the gorge following me I follow him now. Needs 3 hives to get his base upgrade. Really just dont like the class at all
Harvester build time nerf is nice, but Id like it to be down to 35 (another 10 seconds), either increase infestation grow speed OR make it so once a cyst has fully grown its infestation it stealths. And a cost increase in CCs would be nice too, currently if you kill off their fast expand then meh, they loose a 10 res extractor and a 15 res CC. Its an annoyance but not a major financial hit like killing a hive is.
All I can say is thank god for Exos, people saving for those rather than just going Jetpack GL and soloing the hives..
It could even be made so that aliens can drag corpses of alies back to creep and player gets rewarded with res and the player who's corpse that was would get bigger refund. Its kinda like marines can pick up weapons, Aliens recycle by getting resources fra from corpses would fit very well actually
Encourages aliens to not push also. The khammander would be encouraged to cyst further into marine territory, which then will probably be removed, wasting the tres for the cysts.