Crags everywhere...stop it!
Mr.Greedy
Join Date: 2012-07-21 Member: 154270Members
Join Date: 2012-07-21 Member: 154270Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Only one crag in one area pls</div>How much shifts or shades do u need at a certain location? Exactly one(yes, a second shift is ok but absolutly not necessary at the same spot) . Why in hell we have to build 3-5 or more crags to use them effective? Especially for higher lifeforms its horrible to get heal by only one or two single crags. Most players just ignore them and run back to the hive to get healed.
They should be usefull like the shifts and shades. Just let them heal a percentage of HP like the hive(maybe exactly the same amount of HP like the hive) and allow only one crag in the same area. This would also increase the FPS a bit for some players :>.
They should be usefull like the shifts and shades. Just let them heal a percentage of HP like the hive(maybe exactly the same amount of HP like the hive) and allow only one crag in the same area. This would also increase the FPS a bit for some players :>.
Comments
I've been playing as alien comm again this build for the first time in a few builds (before shift was in the game), and it really bugs me that I can put up a reasonable offensive point with:
1 Shift
1 Shade
1 Whip
but it needs
5 Crags
That is ridiculous and is one of the reasons for servers tanking late game when aliens have the res to buy crags, they need 5 in every choke point/offence point. That can mean as many as 30 crags on a server, when there should be 6. Think of the increase in server performance that simple game balance change would produce!!
Not all performance increases come from code, sometimes they come from good design.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Setting Crags to be percentage-based and non-stacking wouldn't be the worst thing in the world I suppose?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Best way to handle it imo. Its really how it should have been from the beginning. Increase cost, build time and/or maturity time to balance.
Badly amortized, therefore not a performance increase.
Maybe Crags can be better at healing armor than Gorge and Regen? Something like simultaneous armor regen while also healing health comes to mind.
It is kind of sad that while a shift is very useful and quick in reenergizing, a crag is incredibly slow without heal wave.
Then again, if heal wave and the "basic" crag regen is buffed, that would just be extremely bad and make groups of crags invincible because they would be simply able to outheal even nade spam by healing each other - or heal a hive infinitely when stacked around it.
So: maybe buff crags quite a lot, and make them only be able to heal alien life forms, not structures or themselves?
Didn't work out, required gorges to heal things and that was tedious, so it was never done, so a hive that was hit 1 min into the game and gotten to 50% was gunna be at 50% all game, for example.
Wheras marines could build macs, that autoweld everything.
You run in, wait for the next heal wave to go through the area to heal up a very large amount of health, and go back to the front line. Larger life forms like fades and onos will have to wait for a second or third heal wave before they can go back or find the next closest crag to get a quicker heal.
This also allows crags to self heal in a far more balanced way, because between heal waves they would be very susceptible to group fire.
If crags healed a flat percentage per second across all structures & lifeforms, you could wind up with a situation where the Onos (or hive) is healed faster than they can be damaged or the skulk is healed far too slowly.
If crags healed a flat percentage per second across all structures & lifeforms, you could wind up with a situation where the Onos (or hive) is healed faster than they can be damaged or the skulk is healed far too slowly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why? Is an Onos currently unkillable @ hive?
Its all a question about balancing and testing. You can let the crags heal like the hive @ 100, 75,50 % power . You can also set a fix rate. Just modifier this for every lifeform. Like 10 HP for skulk, 25 HP for lerk/gorge , 50 HP for harvester 100 HP for hive and so on. Just dont allow two crags in the same area so u cant get healed doubled. Or just programm the gamecode that two or more crags in the same area gives the effect of only one crag. Like 2-3 shades @ the same spot. U cannot receive double or trippel invisibility, right? Its possible to build like that but its also sensless. There are so many ways to fix that issue but the current situation is crap.
it would make balancing a lot better since you can fine tune each life form/structure individually.
e.g.
skulk takes 2 seconds to heal to full health
onos takes 10 seconds to heal to full health
whip takes 12 seconds to heal to full health
you could even make it so that your(or structures) current health doesnt matter, so that it always takes the same amount of time to heal to full HP regardless of current HP.
There's no need to limit crags in an area as long as there's no stacking effect. If someone wants to throw down a second crag as a backup in case the first gets blown up then that's just good strategy, same as throwing down a second shade or whatever. Dropping a second crag would also be useful due to the whole "max three targets per crag" thing. Substantially buffing crags wouldn't be a problem as long as you can't have two crags working on the same guy simultaneously.
<!--quoteo(post=1988314:date=Oct 7 2012, 06:14 PM:name=Mouse)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mouse @ Oct 7 2012, 06:14 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1988314"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->One possible concern with percentage based heal:
If crags healed a flat percentage per second across all structures & lifeforms, you could wind up with a situation where the Onos (or hive) is healed faster than they can be damaged or the skulk is healed far too slowly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is a valid worry. At 20% every two seconds a Skulk would be healing 40% more than now (14HP vs 10) and an Onos would be healing a massive 260HP every two seconds. Which is a bit much. A hybrid approach (20HP + 5% of max health for example) would reduce the amount healed by the higher lifeforms while still being a buff. Or there's the "tailor made" option, where it's adjusted per lifeform (make the gorge heal superfast!). The point being that by removing or limiting the stacking effect gives you a massive amount of leeway when it comes to designing the actual ratios.
<!--quoteo(post=1988297:date=Oct 7 2012, 04:52 PM:name=HeatSurge)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (HeatSurge @ Oct 7 2012, 04:52 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1988297"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Then again, if heal wave and the "basic" crag regen is buffed, that would just be extremely bad and make groups of crags invincible because they would be simply able to outheal even nade spam by healing each other - or heal a hive infinitely when stacked around it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Not if you remove stacking. Without stacking a hive with 50 crags around it is no more defended than a hive with one, except for the "backup" functionality.
add : passive ability that umbras all structures and players within crag range
change : Active heal does percentage and does not stack
premise and conclusion incompatible.
Why?
Direct comparison of team mechanics in asymmetric game. Does not comply. Does not comply.
Did you miss the part where the idea is to buff individual crags AND remove stacking?
And as long as were on the subject of limiting placement of structures, how about when marines throw down robotics factories in every small doorway to stop aliens from getting in or escaping easily? Or a mass production of IPs to keep soliders comming back faster? Ive also seen more than 1 armory placed to bypass the energy drain on them. And you wanna do something silly like limit the amount of crags in a room or make them not heal stack when theres much worse things going on with the marine team.
The point is that in order for crags to be effective right now you HAVE to throw a whole bunchof them into one room. The thread is about coming up with a buff good enough that you only need one. But since such a buff would be broken if stacking was allowed therefore stacking must also be disabled to make this buff work. Nobody is complaining that crags stack, people are complaining that individual crags are useless. Quit railing against people who don't exist.
Kind of funny how some design issues keep going round in circles. Crags to effective? Nerf. Now we have to spam them to get the desired effect. Spam is dumb, pls make them better. Now they're too effective. Repeat. Hard limits seem to be the only circuit breaker and I'm not a fan of hard limits. Coming soon to sentries: 1 power pack per room. :/
Kind of funny how some design issues keep going round in circles. Crags to effective? Nerf. Now we have to spam them to get the desired effect. Spam is dumb, pls make them better. Now they're too effective. Repeat. Hard limits seem to be the only circuit breaker and I'm not a fan of hard limits. Coming soon to sentries: 1 power pack per room. :/<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Dont
Even
Suggest it.
:/