Unused Technologies
Typhon
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 1899Members
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 1899Members
<div class="IPBDescription">and suggestions to fix them</div>Figured I’d run through the tech that I never/rarely see used in the games I’ve been playing recently to help identify the things that are broken, useless, or just unappealing. Also, some suggestions on how to improve them to make them used more often.
<b>Vortex</b>
Huge energy cost for 4 seconds of effect, and fades live or die by their energy pool. If you want to blink or shadowstep in and then vortex, you very well may be unable to do so due to lack of energy. And, if you take adrenaline to increase your pool, you can’t even drop 2 at the same time; the first disappears when you cast the second. Simply due to its effect, which can <i>sometimes</i> be game-ending, its likely always going to be either useless (cost matches best case scenario effect, making the cost too high any other time), or overpowered (cost matches typical scenario effect, making it broken in the ideal case). Should probably just replace with something else.
<b>Xenocide</b>
Poor damage, and has acquired a list of drawbacks compared to NS1: can’t use basic attack during the countdown, and no RFK in NS2 (can’t gain res for a good xeno, and xeno doesn’t deny marines any res). Also does pretty disappointing damage for a 3 hive ability, those should be pretty powerful. The alien spawn system also has an impact here, it is quite long and there is loss of res for being dead, so all a xeno accomplishes is sending you back into the queue where you’ll gain 0 res for your effort. The fact that marines have free armor refills from the armory also plays a role here, xeno doesn't do enough to 1shot marines (nor should it), but with armory healing and repairing you're very rarely going to see marines not at 100%. Possible solutions (implement one to start, see where that brings it):
1. Allow bite to be used during countdown
2. Greatly reduced respawn time on successful xeno
3. Make xeno a passive ability, detonating whenever the skulk dies
4. Remove/greatly decrease armory repair speed.
<b>Bombard</b>
Expensive (15 for the whip, 15 for the upgrade), low HP, buggy (does not attack reliably or accurately). Does some pretty impressive damage when it hits, but it hits so rarely. Solutions:
1. Fix issues with targeting/accuracy. Has a big tendency to toss the bombard into the ceiling as it tries to throw in a high arc. Give it a much more direct shot trajectory (ie throw overhand, not underhand), should fix most of it.
2. Decrease upgrade cost to say 10
<b>Rupture</b>
Likely more an education issue than anything else, I doubt most players are even aware of this ability. One wouldn’t really think to look for special abilities on a tiny little cyst. Also, if a marine is sitting on top of it axing it, you can’t even click on the cyst to use the ability. Solution:
1. Move the ability itself onto the main commander menu. It would appear as a red circle around the cursor indicating the AOE which would ‘snap’ to a nearby cyst as the khamm moves the mouse over the screen and go green, indicating to the user its AOE (which currently isn’t visible to the khamm, so can’t tell who he’s going to affect) and that its only usable on a cyst. This avoids the comm having to both find a nearby cyst and click directly on it, and increases awareness of the ability.
<b>Echo</b>
Pretty limited in application simply due to its mechanics: sending a structure next to the shift to any other infestation-covered part of the map. Its also quite annoying that you can’t choose which structure to echo, its just ‘randomly pick an X in the radius, and move it here’. Now, that’s ok for whips, but not so much for upgrade structures where it may be way more important to echo the carapace shell than the regen shell, but its gonna be a roll of the dice. Solutions:
1. Change UI a bit: you click Echo, click on the structure you want to move, then click where you want it to go.
2. Enable echo to also move a far-away structure to within the AOE of the shift (reverse of the current mechanism). This would allow for structures to not only be echoed offensively but defensively as well (pulling structures back from the frontlines or an under-siege hive).
<b>Hallucinate</b>
No redeeming qualities whatsoever aside from humor value, this is the granddaddy of useless tech. Hallucinations can be destroyed by a single cheap, infinite range, huge AOE, zero cooldown ability: scanner sweep. Every commander has access to scanner sweep since phase gates, and therefore observatories, are mandatory. Not to mention that the hallucinations don’t fool anyone because they are incapable of attacking, and die to a stiff breeze even aside from scanner sweep. Hallucinated structures are even worse, amazingly, since they don't even build. What marine is going to be fooled by a bunch of unbuilt structures? Oh, and all hallucinations have an expiration time, so even if they aren't shot or scanned they go away anyway. Should probably just be scrapped and have something else take its place. The only way I see to make this viable are to implement the following:
1. Scanner sweep reveals hallucinations as hallucinations, but does not dispel them. (Required)
2. Hallucinations have far more HP (Required)
3. Hallucinated structures start in the built state, not unbuilt (required)
4. Hallucinations gain the ability to attack (doing no damage of course) so they behave somewhat more believably. That way it would be viable to send in a couple real aliens with some hallucinations to make your attack look a lot bigger than it is, maybe triggering an unneeded beacon. If the hallucinations can attack then this ruse looks much more believable to the comm. (Optional. If 1 and 2 are implemented but not 3 then hallucinations can at least function as shields for real aliens).
<u><b>Honorable mentions</b></u> - Tech that, while not entirely absent from the game, should be more usable/useful
<b>Flamethrower</b>
Initially very important for the ability to stop whips from whacking grenades, that feature of whips has been nerfed repeatedly such that GLs can easily overcome that defense by themselves (fire at ground and they won’t whack, and whips don’t whack directly back at attackers anymore), leaving the flamethrower no longer a valuable part of a hive assault. Aside from that feature, flamethrowers are quite lackluster, their other primarily ability of energy sapping has also been repeatedly nerfed. Solutions:
1. Allow flamethrowers to disable the passive ability of crag, shade, and shift as well (healing, cloaking, energy auras, respectively). Keeps in the theme of stopping grenade whacking (whip passive) and provides some more utility which is supposed to be the flamethrower’s specialty.
2. Un-nerf grenade whacking to make flamethrowers more important in hive assaults.
3. Improving usability of bone wall, nutrient mist, and rupture would indirectly make flamethrower more important as it denies the use of those abilities by removing infestation rapidly.
<b>EMP</b>
I've used this and seen it used (gonna have MACs near EXOs anyway, so upgrade this and pop it when a fade comes in to attack) but its fiddly. You have to click on the MAC, then click the button for EMP. MACs are tiny and hard to click on in combat. Not really sure how best to improve this.
<b>Enzyme</b>
Fiddly to use. You can’t actually see the AOE, so its hard to judge how best to use it. Should be you press button, cursor turns into AOE, click to fire at the chosen location. Would make it easier to deploy in battle, catch more aliens in the area. That’s really my only knock against it, otherwise its a fine ability. If it were just a bit easier to use it would see more use by khamms I think.
<b>Bone Wall</b>
Fiddly to use, you can’t see the AOE or whether or not you have a legal placement (on infestation). I also find its placement on the commander UI to be a pain. Marine comm support abilities are E > ASDF, whereas Alien gives orders on those keys, you have to use E > X for bone wall, its just awkward and inconsistent. Solutions:
1. Show AOE as green/red circle so you know exactly where its going to block and whether or not you can drop it at your current location.
2. Move active abilities to E > ASDF for alien comm, put orders on E > ZXCV
<b>
Nutrient Mist</b>
Awkward key placement like Bone Wall, and like bone wall the AOE isn't visible. It can affect many structures at once, but you can't see the AOE so its hard to maximize that. Only useful on fades/onos, lerk and gorge evolve fast enough for mist to not matter. Maturation, its other effect, just isn’t very important (see the extensive list of unused maturity-requiring abilities above). Solutions:
1. Increase build speed of structures too
2. Usable as emergency healing station for lifeforms/structures, granting some healing effect. Not as much as the crag active since that requires a specific tech path and is tied to a fixed location so it should be stronger, but something to help injured lifeforms in the field.
3. Solving other problems above, making maturity more useful, will naturally increase value of nutrient mist
4. Rearrange comm UI so its on E > A
You’ll notice that of this list, there is only 2 marine techs (and one is just a research for marines at that, not even an active comm ability) but 9 alien techs (many of which are khamm active abilities). The marine tech tree is doing pretty well right now, almost everything sees play, but the alien tech tree is in shambles and needs some serious love from UWE. This is what leads to alien comm feeling so ineffective and boring: many of the things he could be doing just aren’t viable right now or worth fighting the interface over.
<b>Vortex</b>
Huge energy cost for 4 seconds of effect, and fades live or die by their energy pool. If you want to blink or shadowstep in and then vortex, you very well may be unable to do so due to lack of energy. And, if you take adrenaline to increase your pool, you can’t even drop 2 at the same time; the first disappears when you cast the second. Simply due to its effect, which can <i>sometimes</i> be game-ending, its likely always going to be either useless (cost matches best case scenario effect, making the cost too high any other time), or overpowered (cost matches typical scenario effect, making it broken in the ideal case). Should probably just replace with something else.
<b>Xenocide</b>
Poor damage, and has acquired a list of drawbacks compared to NS1: can’t use basic attack during the countdown, and no RFK in NS2 (can’t gain res for a good xeno, and xeno doesn’t deny marines any res). Also does pretty disappointing damage for a 3 hive ability, those should be pretty powerful. The alien spawn system also has an impact here, it is quite long and there is loss of res for being dead, so all a xeno accomplishes is sending you back into the queue where you’ll gain 0 res for your effort. The fact that marines have free armor refills from the armory also plays a role here, xeno doesn't do enough to 1shot marines (nor should it), but with armory healing and repairing you're very rarely going to see marines not at 100%. Possible solutions (implement one to start, see where that brings it):
1. Allow bite to be used during countdown
2. Greatly reduced respawn time on successful xeno
3. Make xeno a passive ability, detonating whenever the skulk dies
4. Remove/greatly decrease armory repair speed.
<b>Bombard</b>
Expensive (15 for the whip, 15 for the upgrade), low HP, buggy (does not attack reliably or accurately). Does some pretty impressive damage when it hits, but it hits so rarely. Solutions:
1. Fix issues with targeting/accuracy. Has a big tendency to toss the bombard into the ceiling as it tries to throw in a high arc. Give it a much more direct shot trajectory (ie throw overhand, not underhand), should fix most of it.
2. Decrease upgrade cost to say 10
<b>Rupture</b>
Likely more an education issue than anything else, I doubt most players are even aware of this ability. One wouldn’t really think to look for special abilities on a tiny little cyst. Also, if a marine is sitting on top of it axing it, you can’t even click on the cyst to use the ability. Solution:
1. Move the ability itself onto the main commander menu. It would appear as a red circle around the cursor indicating the AOE which would ‘snap’ to a nearby cyst as the khamm moves the mouse over the screen and go green, indicating to the user its AOE (which currently isn’t visible to the khamm, so can’t tell who he’s going to affect) and that its only usable on a cyst. This avoids the comm having to both find a nearby cyst and click directly on it, and increases awareness of the ability.
<b>Echo</b>
Pretty limited in application simply due to its mechanics: sending a structure next to the shift to any other infestation-covered part of the map. Its also quite annoying that you can’t choose which structure to echo, its just ‘randomly pick an X in the radius, and move it here’. Now, that’s ok for whips, but not so much for upgrade structures where it may be way more important to echo the carapace shell than the regen shell, but its gonna be a roll of the dice. Solutions:
1. Change UI a bit: you click Echo, click on the structure you want to move, then click where you want it to go.
2. Enable echo to also move a far-away structure to within the AOE of the shift (reverse of the current mechanism). This would allow for structures to not only be echoed offensively but defensively as well (pulling structures back from the frontlines or an under-siege hive).
<b>Hallucinate</b>
No redeeming qualities whatsoever aside from humor value, this is the granddaddy of useless tech. Hallucinations can be destroyed by a single cheap, infinite range, huge AOE, zero cooldown ability: scanner sweep. Every commander has access to scanner sweep since phase gates, and therefore observatories, are mandatory. Not to mention that the hallucinations don’t fool anyone because they are incapable of attacking, and die to a stiff breeze even aside from scanner sweep. Hallucinated structures are even worse, amazingly, since they don't even build. What marine is going to be fooled by a bunch of unbuilt structures? Oh, and all hallucinations have an expiration time, so even if they aren't shot or scanned they go away anyway. Should probably just be scrapped and have something else take its place. The only way I see to make this viable are to implement the following:
1. Scanner sweep reveals hallucinations as hallucinations, but does not dispel them. (Required)
2. Hallucinations have far more HP (Required)
3. Hallucinated structures start in the built state, not unbuilt (required)
4. Hallucinations gain the ability to attack (doing no damage of course) so they behave somewhat more believably. That way it would be viable to send in a couple real aliens with some hallucinations to make your attack look a lot bigger than it is, maybe triggering an unneeded beacon. If the hallucinations can attack then this ruse looks much more believable to the comm. (Optional. If 1 and 2 are implemented but not 3 then hallucinations can at least function as shields for real aliens).
<u><b>Honorable mentions</b></u> - Tech that, while not entirely absent from the game, should be more usable/useful
<b>Flamethrower</b>
Initially very important for the ability to stop whips from whacking grenades, that feature of whips has been nerfed repeatedly such that GLs can easily overcome that defense by themselves (fire at ground and they won’t whack, and whips don’t whack directly back at attackers anymore), leaving the flamethrower no longer a valuable part of a hive assault. Aside from that feature, flamethrowers are quite lackluster, their other primarily ability of energy sapping has also been repeatedly nerfed. Solutions:
1. Allow flamethrowers to disable the passive ability of crag, shade, and shift as well (healing, cloaking, energy auras, respectively). Keeps in the theme of stopping grenade whacking (whip passive) and provides some more utility which is supposed to be the flamethrower’s specialty.
2. Un-nerf grenade whacking to make flamethrowers more important in hive assaults.
3. Improving usability of bone wall, nutrient mist, and rupture would indirectly make flamethrower more important as it denies the use of those abilities by removing infestation rapidly.
<b>EMP</b>
I've used this and seen it used (gonna have MACs near EXOs anyway, so upgrade this and pop it when a fade comes in to attack) but its fiddly. You have to click on the MAC, then click the button for EMP. MACs are tiny and hard to click on in combat. Not really sure how best to improve this.
<b>Enzyme</b>
Fiddly to use. You can’t actually see the AOE, so its hard to judge how best to use it. Should be you press button, cursor turns into AOE, click to fire at the chosen location. Would make it easier to deploy in battle, catch more aliens in the area. That’s really my only knock against it, otherwise its a fine ability. If it were just a bit easier to use it would see more use by khamms I think.
<b>Bone Wall</b>
Fiddly to use, you can’t see the AOE or whether or not you have a legal placement (on infestation). I also find its placement on the commander UI to be a pain. Marine comm support abilities are E > ASDF, whereas Alien gives orders on those keys, you have to use E > X for bone wall, its just awkward and inconsistent. Solutions:
1. Show AOE as green/red circle so you know exactly where its going to block and whether or not you can drop it at your current location.
2. Move active abilities to E > ASDF for alien comm, put orders on E > ZXCV
<b>
Nutrient Mist</b>
Awkward key placement like Bone Wall, and like bone wall the AOE isn't visible. It can affect many structures at once, but you can't see the AOE so its hard to maximize that. Only useful on fades/onos, lerk and gorge evolve fast enough for mist to not matter. Maturation, its other effect, just isn’t very important (see the extensive list of unused maturity-requiring abilities above). Solutions:
1. Increase build speed of structures too
2. Usable as emergency healing station for lifeforms/structures, granting some healing effect. Not as much as the crag active since that requires a specific tech path and is tied to a fixed location so it should be stronger, but something to help injured lifeforms in the field.
3. Solving other problems above, making maturity more useful, will naturally increase value of nutrient mist
4. Rearrange comm UI so its on E > A
You’ll notice that of this list, there is only 2 marine techs (and one is just a research for marines at that, not even an active comm ability) but 9 alien techs (many of which are khamm active abilities). The marine tech tree is doing pretty well right now, almost everything sees play, but the alien tech tree is in shambles and needs some serious love from UWE. This is what leads to alien comm feeling so ineffective and boring: many of the things he could be doing just aren’t viable right now or worth fighting the interface over.
Comments
I agree that most of the other things need help. But not these 3 abilities.
The maturation effect on mist is extremely powerful when used properly with whips and shifts. Again mainly to rush bombard whips to stop exo pushes.
Also I have zero problems with the keybinding placements. But I play a lot of SC2 and used to play WoW which both use pretty much every key on the left side of the keyboard plus their shift counterparts.
Personaly I think that the idea or tool of popping a cyst can be removed.
1. Requires a commander to always be in a hive.
2. using 1 t res for something that cost the same to build.
3. getting goo on my face doesn't block my view, I used to it from my boyfriend.
4. has no use, when players get goo on their face it's cause their attacking the cyst and theres no aliens around.
5. popping a cyst has no effect when there are aliens around cause the marines are focused on the aliens and not the cysts.
Xenocide + Spores dominates large player servers more than rushing onos eggs
You can set command groups like any modern RTS so you only have to hit 2 buttons to use EMP
I will grant you that using rupture is very annoying since it's only available on mature cysts
I think it should be changed so that if you use it on normal cysts that they just die instead
It's also problematic if you double click on a cyst accidentally and use rupture on 15 cysts at once <i>(huge res waste)</i>
Enzyme, Mist, and Bone wall are fine
Everything else I'd like to see get some fixes or buffs
Also you already said how to make EMP easier to use. I guess you just didn't put two and two together?
<!--quoteo(post=2019780:date=Nov 11 2012, 11:41 AM:name=Typhon)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Typhon @ Nov 11 2012, 11:41 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2019780"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>EMP</b>
MACs are tiny and hard to click on in combat. Not really sure how best to improve this.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=2019780:date=Nov 11 2012, 11:41 AM:name=Typhon)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Typhon @ Nov 11 2012, 11:41 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2019780"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>Rupture</b>
1. Move the ability itself onto the main commander menu. It would appear as a red circle around the cursor indicating the AOE which would ‘snap’ to a nearby cyst as the khamm moves the mouse over the screen and go green, indicating to the user its AOE (which currently isn’t visible to the khamm, so can’t tell who he’s going to affect) and that its only usable on a cyst.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Flamethrowers are amazing at killing any type of structure, including hives. Two jetpackers with Flamethowers will end hives. Just because people are newbs and rush 6 Exo's doesn't mean Flamethrowers are useless, they're just useful in a way most players don't care about. (I.E. you won't rack up kills, but your score will skyrocket from clearing entire alien hives.) Their ability to clear out Spores and Umbra is also critical, and renders Lerks moot for the most part.
Echo is actually extremely useful late-game, or can be. I generally build up 4 to 6 Whips in my hive around an upgraded shift and get them to full maturity. Then when I place a forward base for assault I'll shift in fully matured Whips to defend it. As some other people have pointed out, they can also be used to save your upgrade chambers if a hive is being heavily assaulted and you're in danger of losing not only the hive, but all your upgrades too.
Enzyme is actually incredibly easy to use even though the mist itself isn't terribly visible from up high. It's the 'Z' key by default when you have the drifter selected. What would be nice is if Drifters were easier to see as commander. They blend in entirely too well on top of infestation with their innate cloaking ability.
Nutrient mist is underwhelming, but does have it's uses if you're in a hurry.
@shrimm: I considered that, but felt that interface option wouldn't work quite as well for mobile macs. Could try it though.
@spacejew: good point on the other enzyme issue which is that drifters can be pretty hard to find as khamm since they blend in so well when cloaked.
... About players, gorge tunnels are in the works. So we probably will have one soon.
Source? :o
Pretty limited in application simply due to its mechanics: sending a structure next to the shift to any other infestation-covered part of the map. Its also quite annoying that you can’t choose which structure to echo, its just ‘randomly pick an X in the radius, and move it here’. Now, that’s ok for whips, but not so much for upgrade structures where it may be way more important to echo the carapace shell than the regen shell, but its gonna be a roll of the dice. Solutions:
1. Change UI a bit: you click Echo, click on the structure you want to move, then click where you want it to go.
2. Enable echo to also move a far-away structure to within the AOE of the shift (reverse of the current mechanism). This would allow for structures to not only be echoed offensively but defensively as well (pulling structures back from the frontlines or an under-siege hive).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is a good idea, but do not remove the hotkeys (or buttons I guess). Have both the ability to select the specific structure, or just click the button or press the hotkey and have it pick for you. That way you can still use hotkeys to move whips in quick succession, but you can still move out specific structures (like carapace shells) if you want to.
Also, I think it would be funny if echo shifts could move hives (even ones that are still building). But logistically, this would be insanely OP.
Rupture for example, and Vortex.
<b>
Rupture</b> requires a marine to be axing, a lifeform to be near by and attacking, and the lifeform to actually attack whilst the marine is near by. All the time as commander you are waiting to hit the 'rupture' key, when I need to be seeing what is going on in the map and communicating with players.
It is incredibly flawed and should be changed or removed.
I really appreciate UWE coming up with an interesting secondary attack for the Fade, as I thought the secondary focus attack was boring. But really this is not working!
Some sort of 'whirlwind' attack would be better? Who knows. But again, when does the situation come about when a Fade is in the perfect position to <b>vortex</b> some exos to then gain some ground on them. Or hit the armoury to disable upgrades (does this even work?).
What it really does is disable marines for a few seconds, and you can't shoot them either. Therefore, fairly useless.
I love <b>bombard</b>, but you are right that the cost to get up to it is extreme. Great when supported by skulks and an exo walks through the door, but not accurate enough. I also think whips need auto-rooting/de-rooting.
<b>Echo</b>, great basic concept but fairly useless. I mean, moving a whip to a hive before it is about to die perhaps? I guarantee the whip will die and so will the hive.
<b>Xeno</b> needs work, or even dare I say removal? I think it is too hard to balance correctly.
Shade's <b>ink cloud</b> is poor (love it, but needs tweaking), and to be honest I like the passive cloaking and player cloaking is working reasonably well right now. But i'd rather see more deception, such as removing lifeforms from the marine minimap until shot perhaps.
Or maybe commander can not see life forms but hear them? Or they fade in and out of commanders view?
I'd rather than then effecting the FPS aspect of the game any more.
<b>Hallucinate</b> would be great if you beaconed when you saw an Onos, unfortunately people are not stupid. Needs removing or changing significantly. I don't think buffing HP is a good idea, i'll get fed up of seeing 100 Oni running round my base but can't be bothered to shoot them all because there are more important things to be doing.
I agree on the Echo ability. It IS a nice addition to the Shift. Teleporting your upgrade chambers in case of emergency is quite useful, but I really want to be able to select the structure to teleport (with the cursor) When I have only time to save one chamber I want to be able to select the one with the upgrade I think is more useful. I've not yet used it to reinforce forward bases with whips, etc. simply because I don't place whipe IN my hive but in corridors, etc. So simply unrooting them and have them walk to the frontline works ok. Anyway, the ability to spawn eggs is really nice, be it for early defending a second unbuilt hive, pushing the frontlines, etc. So all in all I thin kthe Shift as a whole is quite nice.
I've used Hallucinations just twice and both times in situations where the Aliens were already on the brink of victory. I used Hallucination-Oni to "clutter" the Marines' screen so they basically won't have anything to aim at. But that's basically the only real use I found (and if you're swimming in res anyway...). Hallucinations clip, so they are easily identifyable. They die to very little damage, which I guess is not too bad in general, but a little more couldn't hurt. They show no attack animation, they just stand there... not too great. I'd see a similar kind of "deception" we had with feigh death in the beta: have hallucitations attack, draw the "hit" indicator on Marine HUD and trigger "soldier/base under attack" messages, but have them do no damage. That would be a step into the right direction I think, but not perfect, because any player/commander who experienced this once will just look at the life bar and see it's an halluzination. The Shade's cloaking field itself is pretty useful and Ink Cloud is ok (but needs work), so overall still pretty good chamber.
It took me quite a while to actually find out what vortex does and I agree that it's an ability that CAN be very useful, most of the time it isn't. Using it against one or two Marines you are fighting somewhere is pretty much useless, because you lose the energy needed to blink/dash out of danger. On one game we managed to "spawn lock" the Marines by vortexing their IPs, but it takes a coordinated team and a commander stupid enough to place 3 IPs right next to each other. Vortex on an Exo can give the rest of the team the time thez need to close in which is VERY useful. I give UWE credit for implementing an ability that requires teamwork to be useful. However the game does a VERY POOR job on explaining what this ability acutally does! I still haven't figured out some of its aspects. Does vortexing the armslab disable Marine upgrades for the time? (could be very useful). Does vortexing the CC stop the commander from giving orders, etc.?`If I vortex a vortex, will the universe exploooaaaahhhhhhHHH HELP IT'S PULLING ME IN! HEEELLL......
<!--quoteo(post=2019780:date=Nov 11 2012, 06:41 PM:name=Typhon)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Typhon @ Nov 11 2012, 06:41 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2019780"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>Xenocide</b>
Poor damage, and has acquired a list of drawbacks compared to NS1: can’t use basic attack during the countdown, and no RFK in NS2 (can’t gain res for a good xeno, and xeno doesn’t deny marines any res). Also does pretty disappointing damage for a 3 hive ability, those should be pretty powerful. The alien spawn system also has an impact here, it is quite long and there is loss of res for being dead, so all a xeno accomplishes is sending you back into the queue where you’ll gain 0 res for your effort. The fact that marines have free armor refills from the armory also plays a role here, xeno doesn't do enough to 1shot marines (nor should it), but with armory healing and repairing you're very rarely going to see marines not at 100%. Possible solutions (implement one to start, see where that brings it):
1. Allow bite to be used during countdown
2. Greatly reduced respawn time on successful xeno
3. Make xeno a passive ability, detonating whenever the skulk dies
4. Remove/greatly decrease armory repair speed.
<!--coloro:#2E8B57--><span style="color:#2E8B57"><!--/coloro-->Your point 3 would guarantee every skulk a hit with the extremely big radius of xeno. Making it not counter-able for marines and would need absolutely no skill. I think this would be bad design. Xeno should be a very powerful ability that takes <u>skill</u> to be used effectively and that needs to be counter-able by marines.
For example: <b>When you activate Xeno, you get 4 seconds to your explosion. Every-time you bite, the timer is stopped for 1 second. The more damage you do via bite, while xeno is active, the more damage the explosion of Xeno does</b>. You need to stop biting to actually let the explosion happen. You need skill to make much damage and you can fail when overextending. The marines can counter this, by killing you, before you explode. THAT would be a skillful tool.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<b>Bombard</b>
Expensive (15 for the whip, 15 for the upgrade), low HP, buggy (does not attack reliably or accurately). Does some pretty impressive damage when it hits, but it hits so rarely. Solutions:
1. Fix issues with targeting/accuracy. Has a big tendency to toss the bombard into the ceiling as it tries to throw in a high arc. Give it a much more direct shot trajectory (ie throw overhand, not underhand), should fix most of it.
2. Decrease upgrade cost to say 10
<!--coloro:#2E8B57--><span style="color:#2E8B57"><!--/coloro-->Agreed.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<b>Rupture</b>
Likely more an education issue than anything else, I doubt most players are even aware of this ability. One wouldn’t really think to look for special abilities on a tiny little cyst. Also, if a marine is sitting on top of it axing it, you can’t even click on the cyst to use the ability. Solution:
1. Move the ability itself onto the main commander menu. It would appear as a red circle around the cursor indicating the AOE which would ‘snap’ to a nearby cyst as the khamm moves the mouse over the screen and go green, indicating to the user its AOE (which currently isn’t visible to the khamm, so can’t tell who he’s going to affect) and that its only usable on a cyst. This avoids the comm having to both find a nearby cyst and click directly on it, and increases awareness of the ability.
<!--coloro:#2E8B57--><span style="color:#2E8B57"><!--/coloro-->Agreed! This is a very good idea.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<b>Echo</b>
Pretty limited in application simply due to its mechanics: sending a structure next to the shift to any other infestation-covered part of the map. Its also quite annoying that you can’t choose which structure to echo, its just ‘randomly pick an X in the radius, and move it here’. Now, that’s ok for whips, but not so much for upgrade structures where it may be way more important to echo the carapace shell than the regen shell, but its gonna be a roll of the dice. Solutions:
1. Change UI a bit: you click Echo, click on the structure you want to move, then click where you want it to go.
2. Enable echo to also move a far-away structure to within the AOE of the shift (reverse of the current mechanism). This would allow for structures to not only be echoed offensively but defensively as well (pulling structures back from the frontlines or an under-siege hive).
<!--coloro:#2E8B57--><span style="color:#2E8B57"><!--/coloro-->Agreed. And I want to be able to echo hives. This wouldn't be to overpowered, because you need a free tech point and this are scarce when the marine team plays good. It would ensure some hilarious gameplay moments of beaming your hive away in front of this 5 marines rushing it.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<b>Hallucinate</b>
No redeeming qualities whatsoever aside from humor value, this is the granddaddy of useless tech. Hallucinations can be destroyed by a single cheap, infinite range, huge AOE, zero cooldown ability: scanner sweep. Every commander has access to scanner sweep since phase gates, and therefore observatories, are mandatory. Not to mention that the hallucinations don’t fool anyone because they are incapable of attacking, and die to a stiff breeze even aside from scanner sweep. Hallucinated structures are even worse, amazingly, since they don't even build. What marine is going to be fooled by a bunch of unbuilt structures? Oh, and all hallucinations have an expiration time, so even if they aren't shot or scanned they go away anyway. Should probably just be scrapped and have something else take its place. The only way I see to make this viable are to implement the following:
1. Scanner sweep reveals hallucinations as hallucinations, but does not dispel them. (Required)
2. Hallucinations have far more HP (Required)
3. Hallucinated structures start in the built state, not unbuilt (required)
4. Hallucinations gain the ability to attack (doing no damage of course) so they behave somewhat more believably. That way it would be viable to send in a couple real aliens with some hallucinations to make your attack look a lot bigger than it is, maybe triggering an unneeded beacon. If the hallucinations can attack then this ruse looks much more believable to the comm. (Optional. If 1 and 2 are implemented but not 3 then hallucinations can at least function as shields for real aliens).
<!--coloro:#2E8B57--><span style="color:#2E8B57"><!--/coloro-->Agreed, beside this <u>far</u> more HP point. They may be to weak right now, yes. But they can get very imbalanced when you can use them as spam-able, move-able cover for your aliens.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<u><b>Honorable mentions</b></u> - Tech that, while not entirely absent from the game, should be more usable/useful
<b>EMP</b>
I've used this and seen it used (gonna have MACs near EXOs anyway, so upgrade this and pop it when a fade comes in to attack) but its fiddly. You have to click on the MAC, then click the button for EMP. MACs are tiny and hard to click on in combat. Not really sure how best to improve this.
<!--coloro:#2E8B57--><span style="color:#2E8B57"><!--/coloro-->Make it like for rupture. Add it to the coms assist tab and draw a circle that indicates the range around every mac while selected. Let it snap onto the nearest mac and by click it is activated.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<b>Enzyme</b>
Fiddly to use. You can’t actually see the AOE, so its hard to judge how best to use it. Should be you press button, cursor turns into AOE, click to fire at the chosen location. Would make it easier to deploy in battle, catch more aliens in the area. That’s really my only knock against it, otherwise its a fine ability. If it were just a bit easier to use it would see more use by khamms I think.
<!--coloro:#2E8B57--><span style="color:#2E8B57"><!--/coloro-->Yeah. And additionally add it to the assist tab of the com. Same like MAC EMP should but now you have a red / green circle when it is in the radius of a drifter.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<b>Nutrient Mist</b>
Awkward key placement like Bone Wall, and like bone wall the AOE isn't visible. It can affect many structures at once, but you can't see the AOE so its hard to maximize that. Only useful on fades/onos, lerk and gorge evolve fast enough for mist to not matter. Maturation, its other effect, just isn’t very important (see the extensive list of unused maturity-requiring abilities above). Solutions:
1. Increase build speed of structures too
2. Usable as emergency healing station for lifeforms/structures, granting some healing effect. Not as much as the crag active since that requires a specific tech path and is tied to a fixed location so it should be stronger, but something to help injured lifeforms in the field.
3. Solving other problems above, making maturity more useful, will naturally increase value of nutrient mist
4. Rearrange comm UI so its on E > A
<!--coloro:#2E8B57--><span style="color:#2E8B57"><!--/coloro-->Your point 1 was tried in beta and was very bad unbalanced. Even marines had something like that and the consensus was, that build times should not be shorter without binding more players to this task. Also this healing would be redundant to craigs. It doesn't belongs to mist. But I have no idea to make this ability more viable. Beside shortening gestation times.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I also think there are definitely awareness issues with active abilities on alien structures in general. A couple reasons for that:
1. Alien structures don't read very well visually from a top down perspective - it all blends in with infestation. This is even worse when it's all cloaked by a Shade. Singling them out to use active abilities is a pain. I think all structures should have subtle outline effects on them - their profiles are relatively distinct so hopefully this would be enough. If more is needed, some of the effects should be toned down in the commander's perspective, like the cloak transparency and maybe infestation depth.
2. It doesn't occur to most players that a structure with a clear passive role also has an active ability. I think this is a communication problem, there need to be tutorial prompts for these. And not those annoying floating icons that eat your clicks to do things you didn't mean to do. Also I don't remember if this stuff is still tied to maturity, but if so it shouldn't be IMO, comms won't think to check back on the structure later if it doesn't do anything active when it's first built.