Solution to just 'waiting to get res to evolve to non skulk'

Balmark · December 2012

<div class="IPBDescription">er.. possibly</div>Hey,

I do like skulks, and the majority of people do too, but tbh, having to wait ages before you can evolve is getting a bit tedious half of the time.

I find myself just gorging the entire game for something to do apart from biting stuff..

Would it be possible to introduce a 'malformed' lerk or fade for half their res? These malformed aliens (it makes sense :P .. people who are in a rush to get a different lifeform are impatient and want it now now now .. they're popping out of their egg sacs early before they're fully developed :P ) could have SERIOUS drawbacks .. it could be possiblly be later to fully evolve for the difference in res + a little charge for the privilege..

Common attributes of the malformed classes :
No armour..
Half energy pool, quarter energy pool .. whatever is enough to gimp them
possibly only get half benifits from upgrades
Only have access to hive 1 abilities (no spores for lerk, no blink for fade, no stomp for gimp onos)

So to get a gimped lerk, you spend 15 res.. get 0 armour and something that doesnt get proper benifit of celerity with the possibility of max 15 armour with carapace (or none)?

Just a little variety..

(Another possibility is give them minial gimpage but give them the opposite to regen .. they lose health while not on infestation or something)

Hope you consider it, the gimpage are just suggestions, if it does become a possiblity no doubt these would need balancing :P

Bal

Balmark · December 2012

I shoulda made the topic 'malformed aliens' ;) still.. I likes the idea and I'd expect it'd be easy enough to implement ;)

Dwavenhobble · December 2012

Oddly I think the skulk is OK at the moment for resource gathering even for players like me. You just use them as a scout to parasite people and let the better team and packs on your team deal with them once they're marked

SixtyWattMan · December 2012

If you're just "waiting" while playing Skulk you are either playing the game horrible wrong or the game just isn't for you.

wulf · December 2012

reintroduce rfk

hus · December 2012

You might find Call of Modern Black Duty Ops Warfare of Heroes 9 more your thing if you're bored.

You have 3 lifeforms available under 5 minutes.

d0ped0g · December 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (hus @ Dec 18 2012, 09:08 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2047812"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>You might find Call of Modern Black Duty Ops Warfare of Heroes 9 more your thing if you're bored.

You have 3 lifeforms available under 5 minutes.</div>

As much as you may think this idea is silly and caters to the less patient COD crowd, Balmark is an ns1 veteran and Constellation member, so it's not like he's some Modern Warfare nub who wants the game to be more generic and dumbed-down.

Personally though, I disagree with the idea of including this in the core game, although it would be interesting to see somebody experiment with this concept in a mod.

I think a lot of the problem with 'waiting around' has to do with Fade not being all that viable at the moment. Unless you want to go Lerk, you have to wait around for ages for Onos (which takes a while), as Fade is often skipped due to the fact it's just more effective to wait to get 25 more res for Onos (unless there's too much pressure to withstand, and a Fade needs to take the field right away).

Soylent_green · December 2012

Easy fix, RFK

hakenspit · December 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Balmark @ Dec 17 2012, 08:24 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2047039"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Hey,

I do like skulks, and the majority of people do too, but tbh, having to wait ages before you can evolve is getting a bit tedious half of the time.

I find myself just gorging the entire game for something to do apart from biting stuff..

Would it be possible to introduce a 'malformed' lerk or fade for half their res? These malformed aliens (it makes sense :P .. people who are in a rush to get a different lifeform are impatient and want it now now now .. they're popping out of their egg sacs early before they're fully developed :P ) could have SERIOUS drawbacks .. it could be possiblly be later to fully evolve for the difference in res + a little charge for the privilege..

Common attributes of the malformed classes :
No armour..
Half energy pool, quarter energy pool .. whatever is enough to gimp them
possibly only get half benifits from upgrades
Only have access to hive 1 abilities (no spores for lerk, no blink for fade, no stomp for gimp onos)

So to get a gimped lerk, you spend 15 res.. get 0 armour and something that doesnt get proper benifit of celerity with the possibility of max 15 armour with carapace (or none)?

Just a little variety..

(Another possibility is give them minial gimpage but give them the opposite to regen .. they lose health while not on infestation or something)

Hope you consider it, the gimpage are just suggestions, if it does become a possiblity no doubt these would need balancing :P

Bal</div>
Interesting, I would like to see a lerk with only spikes or bite for 15 res.
Getting a fade with only shadow step (or not even) for 25 could also be an interesting addition.
An onos with 0 armour would be interesting for say 35 res.
Not sure it would work for gorge...but otherwise I think this would be interesting.

Personally think this has some merit and could be fleshed out to integrate well...more types of aliens is good...even if gimped versions of existing.

Juomari · December 2012

this game could use new lifeform, that costs 0res and would differ from skulk and have different role.

so people could have option do i want to be scout / damage skulk or XX / XX other lifeform ? it could be tanky lifeform with lot less mobility, something like fade without his mobility.

phoenixbbs · December 2012

I suppose it could make for an interesting "variance", if, say, you wanted to move to a "higher" lifeform earlier, if the maximum health for that life was a ratio of normal_cost to early_cost - so if you wanted a lerk, but only had 5 res instead of 30, you'd only have a maximum health of 6:1, or (IIRC) 120:6 = 20 health.

I can't see it being a whole lot of use though :-}

Keldorn · December 2012

Infested marines would be sweet to have ! Parasite a marine and kill him with a parasite on him would allow you to respawn as an infested marine with advantages and disadvantages compared to normal marines. Biggest advantage is a ranged attack. :)

It would be like a combination of starcraft infested marines and halflife's headcrabs. The skulk attached itself on the backside of a marine body and gets to control him neurally using that parasite, which wormed itself into the marine's brains. If the marine dies (again), the skulks dies since its using its body as somekind of power supply for the marine body to function (such as regeneration).

It would make a nice hive 1 research, similiar to the shotgun cost.

Balmark · December 2012

'Waiting' wasn't a great word to use, ok ..

But for a little variety without much dev/balance changes is tough to suggest without outlining a new alien class which I'm sure someone else would be better at that than me, something like a new class would also involve alot more work for the devs, where something like this could be implemented easier imho without effecting balance all that much

Marines would get a nice 'gotcha!' mowing down a malformed fade.. the ability to spend p-res for aliens would also increase the time 'real' onos would appear.. a malformed alien would be the equiv of a marine buying a shotgun and a welder early in the game (that marine wouldn't be able to get exo later than others while contributing to their team earlier on)

Variety is the key ..

While I've been around for a bit I'm a shockingly bad player atm .. I blame my 20fps (checked with r_stats last night :P ) but I do believe I know the game pretty well and I've been involved in writing games (ok... only MUDS.. but still .. balance is huge there) and know that even minor changes can effect balance in huge ways .. gimping malformed aliens is a tool to help with balance of them.. they're expected to be weak so I wouldn't expect much of an uproar if they're tweaked a bit

This could just be an idea for the modders... but it's also something that might be worth investigating, as D0ped0g said (and so many others!) why get fade at 50 when you can just wait a little more for onos..

OutlawDr · December 2012

Honestly I don't think its a bad idea.

I wouldn't gimp stats, and just remove all abilities other than the lifeforms most basic. A 10 res lerk with just bite would be interesting. Or what about a 10-15 res fade with just swipe no SS or blink (ha)..... You might actually want to use camo and celerity on a fade. A 0 res gorge with just spit/heal (no hydra/bb). Allow player to later pay the res difference to upgrade the lifeform to full abilities.

I think it would add in some interesting variation without breaking the game (well who knows). It will also allow new player to experience and practice with higher lifeforms without getting harshly punished when their 50 res fade dies in seconds on its first engagement.

Sehzade · December 2012

Your approach is interesting.
But the weaker lifeorms would need new, resized, rebrushed models.

Furthermore, the lifeforms already are pretty fragile. You can die easily as fade or lerk. A weaker version would end in you jsut dieing in the first engagement.
And less abilities or debuffs means it is more boring to play.

You can evolve into a lerk pretty fast. And if you are not too eager you survive pretty long.
Maybe you should try this lifeform more often.

Your <span style="color:#F4A460">HEADLINE</span> is the striking point to me.

<span style="color:#F4A460">WAITING</span> to get res [...]
In this topic <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=126210&st=0#entry2048413" target="_blank">HERE</a> is another approach to the resource system, which could be a solution to your issue.

hakenspit · December 2012

The nerfing stats for lerk and to some extent fade I agree could be a tad harsh and perhaps attack adjustments would be better.

Lerk perhaps you just remove spores, umbra and the poison aspect from bite and remove spikes (or just leave spikes but remove bite).

Fade, remove blink and vortex and as it only has 1 arm so half damage or ROF. I think you nerf shadow step with leaving the energy pool by 50%.

I think though that you could probably stop there and dont need to nerf armour/hp for these two.
The shadowstep and no blink makes fades fragile and without poison bite (spores etc) really is just a nuisance.

Onos I think you have to nerf HP and Armour as otherwise your onos is no different to a 1 hive onos (no stomp).
Perhaps aiming to be around 50 res (similar t single exo cost) and scale down HP and armour by ~ 25-35%.

Perhaps these could be unlocked by, the otherwise greatly mocked, hypermutation.
But instead of a personal upgrade its a hive upgrade the a khamm has to research, would mean its not do-able until after a short delay.

RobustPenguin · December 2012

They just need to make the skulk more interesting tbh

Solution to just 'waiting to get res to evolve to non skulk'

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