Making the cyst chain 'drawable'
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The Lighter Side of Pessimism Join Date: 2002-03-02 Member: 263Members, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
The Lighter Side of Pessimism Join Date: 2002-03-02 Member: 263Members, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">cyst placement = the most tedious aspect of khammanding</div>At the moment, placing cysts is incredibly tedious. You always want to place half a dozen or so at once, but you can only put them down one at a time. And there's a cooldown between placing each one.
What would be wonderful is if as well as being able to place cysts one at a time, you were able to 'draw' the cyst chain out along the ground. As in, you click-drag away from a cyst and the moment you exit its radius, another cyst is dropped. Then, if you want to place more cysts, you just keep that click-drag going, automagically dropping cysts and extending the existing cyst chain.
What would be wonderful is if as well as being able to place cysts one at a time, you were able to 'draw' the cyst chain out along the ground. As in, you click-drag away from a cyst and the moment you exit its radius, another cyst is dropped. Then, if you want to place more cysts, you just keep that click-drag going, automagically dropping cysts and extending the existing cyst chain.
Comments
Also works with the idea of the tenticles underneath the infestation as seen in the concept art
but could have a limit, lets say 3-5. and a delay between them.
i think thats a midway nice compromise in gameplay.
because when you r a marine cysts can be a pain aswell.
Placing cysts is still incredibly tedious.
When you're placing cysts, simply hold SHIFT and:
1) Left click to set the placement of the initial cyst. Keep holding SHIFT.
2) Move your cursor to place the next cyst (the minimum/maximum cyst range circles should appear around each cyst placement).
3) Repeat Step 2 as desired (obviously, there must be a maximum amount you can set at a time using this SHIFT method to prevent abuse).
4) Release SHIFT, and each cyst will be created in the order and location that you placed them adhering to the usual cyst cooldown (i.e. cyst #1 drops immediately, cyst #2 drops once the cooldown is up, etc.). Team resources are deducted as each is placed (or, perhaps it can deduct all the res required as a trade-off for using this 'click-and-forget-it' method).
If you need visual aid for this, check out this SupCom2 vid (it starts 38 seconds in):
He's holding shift as he's placing the structures. As long as he's holding shift, he can place an indefinite amount of structures (even different kinds of structures, so for instance, if this was applied to NS2, you could hold SHIFT, place a Harvester, then place a Spur, release SHIFT, and both are dropped successively). Even if he runs out of resources, it will be queued up until he orders the unit to stop building. Most likely, this part of the mechanic wouldn't translate to NS2 very well (or would it :O? A different topic for a different day/thread!), but the point is, holding shift allows multiple placements.
I think bringing shift-click to NS2 almost needs (and deserves) a thread of its own. Off the top of my head I can think of a number of things I'd want to use it for: drawing cyst chains, queuing research, queuing orders to AI units. Hell, if you wanted to get really wild, you could probably devise some shift-click based interface for sketching out expansion plans with those rarely used alert icons.
[EDIT]
Oh and I think the way you describe using shift-click to draw cyst chains would be cool and work well.
Wonder if cysting is already fixed in it.
The placing cysts in a row should be very nice, but also be an option. Somebody said already that they hide their cysts in tactical places where marines has to place themselves in dangerous positions. With only a chain-option, this isnt possible anymore.
'Draw chain' lets you define a starting point and an ending point, meant for covering long distances, automatically draws the chain for you. An increased cooldown timer between cyst placments could make sure this cannot be used to go kraken on the entire map.
'Shift placement' is a tad faster than the other method, meant to fill rooms with infestation. The individual cysts appear one by one in the order they have been created.
In both cases the chain will deduce the resources only when a cyst actually spawns. If the source of the chain is interrupted, all connected cyst chains that have not yet spawned will be deleted. The khamm has to place them again.
As for shift orders in general, I wouldn't want it for placing structures or queuing research, it would only mess up my resource management anyways. But I would find it helpful for dropping stuff like medpacks or weapons.
that said, it is a very cool and novel mechanic and absolutely interesting but i think it takes away from the fun factor of cysting out and turns it into just another thing to do.
on a side note; can we "que"up waypoints for drifters or players yet?
It's also sometimes difficult to find out why a cyst cannot be placed (z-axis distance), especially when you are not so experienced as a commander.
YAY!
Any rough ETA?
My quick fix com UI improvement requests ..
Implement timer on double tap structure / player hotkey to map location feature.
When clicking on the large ingame map to move view, don't deselect everything.
This is the thread for that, yeah? : D
You're looking incredibly attractive right now.