No third Crag upgrade?
WhiteWeasel
Join Date: 2012-11-25 Member: 173197Members
Join Date: 2012-11-25 Member: 173197Members
Shade & shifts (are going to) Get 3 upgrades, but just two for Crag? Or are the devs keeping it a surprise?
Regeneration is self explanatory.
Carapace give more armor, so a buff to hp wouldn't make sense.
Feign death kinda takes the 'second chance' ability you see in RPG's.
Hmmm, how could we improve HP that already hasn't been done?
My idea:
Siphon/Vampire: Gain a small percentile of hp when damaging an organic target (marine). Smaller % taken the higher lifeform you are to make up for the additional HP. Also it only applies to your primary attack, so no recovering health with spikes or bile bomb.
My problem with this however is that:
A) A fine line between useless and OP. Considering how many TSF weapons are instagibbers anyways, it would be little of use, but on the other hand if made effective enough to make a difference it could be too powerful. And never mind encouraging players being too hostile, especially if they are something that costs resources.
B) It has to compete with carapace with out being the latter of A.
Feel free to post your ideas too.
Regeneration is self explanatory.
Carapace give more armor, so a buff to hp wouldn't make sense.
Feign death kinda takes the 'second chance' ability you see in RPG's.
Hmmm, how could we improve HP that already hasn't been done?
My idea:
Siphon/Vampire: Gain a small percentile of hp when damaging an organic target (marine). Smaller % taken the higher lifeform you are to make up for the additional HP. Also it only applies to your primary attack, so no recovering health with spikes or bile bomb.
My problem with this however is that:
A) A fine line between useless and OP. Considering how many TSF weapons are instagibbers anyways, it would be little of use, but on the other hand if made effective enough to make a difference it could be too powerful. And never mind encouraging players being too hostile, especially if they are something that costs resources.
B) It has to compete with carapace with out being the latter of A.
Feel free to post your ideas too.
Comments
Personally, I would like completely revised 3rd upgrades on shift and shade (and obviously a new one for crag too) rather than have them make a comeback. I think shade needs a new upgrade first - something that keeps the hive viable in the late game if you only have 2 hives - like focus or feign death, but preferably not either. Only until a viable late-game upgrade is introduced will shade be able to be balanced properly.
I really liked feign death but it always did seem a bit clumsy, very powerful on things like fades and pretty atrocious on other aliens. If corpses stayed around longer on the map then maybe feign death could be added how it seems to make sense (lie as a corpse on the floor), but I don't know whether that would be different enough to camouflage.
regarding your crag idea: i would somehow like to see something similar. not sure what this would do to game play, but an upgrade which inreases your max health temporary when you attack an "organic" target (does not heal you) would be interesting. i dont necessary see it conflicting with carapace either: carapace helps you with your first engagement / stay longer in combat, whereas that new upgrade works better in subsequent attacks (and hit and run). maybe i should try that out in my mod :D
I think an interesting third Crag upgrade would be something geared towards reckless suicide play, sort of like Redemption was in NS1. That upgrade was inconsistent and frustrating for marines though. My brainstorming idea:
Relentless: Instantly respawn with a freshly generated egg upon death. For higher lifeforms, part of your res cost is refunded. If that's not good enough, also grant a temporary bonus after respawning, like faster movement speed and gestating.
I think an interesting third Crag upgrade would be something geared towards reckless suicide play, sort of like Redemption was in NS1. That upgrade was inconsistent and frustrating for marines though. My brainstorming idea:
Relentless: Instantly respawn with a freshly generated egg upon death. For higher lifeforms, part of your res cost is refunded. If that's not good enough, also grant a temporary bonus after respawning, like faster movement speed and gestating.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How about some type of berserk? Like a health and armor buff at a particular % of life remaining. Once activated (passively?), you will die, but while active, you tank a lot better and <i>maybe</i> increase damage output slightly.
<img src="http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/26265493.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<img src="http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/26265493.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Babblers for all? Hmm, sounds noisy...
I thought we were trying to come up with a third upgrade for Crags for all aliens; something passive. :)
How bout:
Below 20%-30%(adjust slider for balance) increased attack speed and energy regeneration.
Give aliens that big push before they die, make marines work harder to get that thing down before it takes them out. I would try to avoid increasing movement speed as well as it would just make it easier for an Onos to run away when they are low on health to heal up. I see it being pretty OP for Onos rushes on the power node so it is gonna need a lot of fine tuning.
Craig evolution ideas
Hunger: Every successful hit restores a small amount of health, and maybe a bit of energy as well. The amount of health restored would be based on the specific attack in question, and the target. Hitting a marine would restore more health than hitting building would for example, exos being somewhere in between. A quick and dirty estimate would be something like a skulk bite would restore 15 health per hit on a marine (for reference carapace is an effecting increase of 40 health, so 3 bites to kill a marine in the early game would restore 45 with hunger, but cara gives it right up front so it easier to die before getting those bites in with hunger), an onos I would guess around 40 or so per hit. Essentially carapace is all about surviving this battle, regeneration is about surviving the next one, and hunger ends up somewhere between. To receive the health you must be within a certain range of the victim, it would be easier to have it only proc on melee attacks but then hunger would do nothing for a gorge, and that’s bad design, so range limit instead.
Retribution: When the alien takes damage all enemies within a short range take a small amount of damage also with a slightly larger burst when the alien actually dies. The amount of damage needed to trigger it, and the amount off of damage dealt when triggered would be variable to life form. If you wanted to get really fancy the effect could be different for each life form, low low damage from skulks but applies the parasite tracking effect, gorges could have bile bomb type effect, higher damage and a dot, but only hurts armor/buildings, lerk could release spores, not sure about fades, onos could provide a very short knock down.
Tenacity: When you die all other evilution are disabled and your screen turns red and you become invulnerable for a few seconds, when that time is over you die. as an alternate to being timed, it could refill your energy, and you would have no way of regaining energy, and your energy passively drain. When your energy runs out you die (thus kind of like being timed escept each attack/ability you perform reduces how long it works, but if you are not attacking/using abilities it lasts longer)
Shift evolution ideas
Flurry: Increases attack rate. About as simple as it gets. Though you should be real careful about watching your energy reserves.
Hamstring: Your attacks slow marines, drain their sprint stamina, and reduce their jump height. Ranged attacks provide a smaller debuff. Exos are either immune or very resistant.
Shade evolution ideas
Precision: Slightly increases the range and angle of melee attacks, reduces spread of lerk spikes, and increases velocity of gorge projectiles (faster spit and bile bombes, this would also increase the range of bile bomb). Pretty sure parasite is already perfectly accurate, so not sure what to do with that. Pretty sure stomp, vortex, xenocide, heal spray, umbra and spores would be unaffected, though maybe a slight AOE increase.
Displacement: A second image of you follows you around a few seconds behind you.
Scent of Fear: A short ranged wallhack, letting you see marines/exos through walls just like if they were hit by parasite. Except instead of always glowing orange, their halo will be color coded based on remaining health so you can easily target the wounded first.
Retribution: bad design idea. Players should not be punished directly for inflicting damage upon opponents, which is what the game is all about. If someone hits you, there should be no benefit to you from it. Since aliens are pretty much always in close range to marines, you wouldn't have a lot of means to avoid it.
Tenacity: as far as I know, players always disliked Last Stand or Martydom in CoD for a reason, and were nerfed in subsequent releases. Martydom only kicks in after a death streak, Last Stand is no longer instantly ready and has no more protection in the first 0.5 seconds.
I am on the edge on this idea. Can't say I like it, but it probably depends on the actual values? How much HP would the alien have left? Too few and you would be better off with Carapace to get the same effect of staying longer in the battle. Too much and it would Carapace redundant. All in all it probably has no place in the game at all.
Hamstring: too powerful. The ability to dodge aliens is all marines have left as defense. This would turn them into stationary target. And in combination with Camouflage would it be dead easy to get that first bite in that stuns marines and allows you to just chomp them down afterwards.
Displacement: I actually like this one, but it probably depends on how close the image follows you. Too far and it wouldn't be all that useful. Too close and the marines could easily see that it's fake and only focus on the original. Maybe it should get some random offset to it's direction applied (but only while moving) so it's not as easily predictable. The ability would probably require to record all actions of the player for a while on the server.
I think an interesting third Crag upgrade would be something geared towards reckless suicide play, sort of like Redemption was in NS1. That upgrade was inconsistent and frustrating for marines though. My brainstorming idea:
Relentless: Instantly respawn with a freshly generated egg upon death. For higher lifeforms, part of your res cost is refunded. If that's not good enough, also grant a temporary bonus after respawning, like faster movement speed and gestating.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I always thought hyper mutation should work so that the first time you go lerk it costs you 30 res, this cost drops by 10 res for each consecutive lerk evolution after a death.
This reduction in cost is reset by dying as another lifeform (skulk, egg anything) or dying without the hyper-mutation upgrade, as to eliminate it from being OP'd.
I thought feign death worked fairly well, the bug aside. The only issue I saw was that it was clearly trumps over camo and silence at the time...now camo actually works it does make for a tougher choice.
Transfuse: Sacrifice 15% of your life (heath + armor) to heal an ally of to the equivalent of 30% of your max health.
So a skulk at full heath lose all its armor (10) and 2 hp to heal for 24.
I'm pretty sure UWE intended these to prevent damage but never got around to it...
'Ablative armor' prevents 2/3s of explosive and fire damage.
'Tough skin' prevents the first 3 damage of each shot: effective versus low damage/high bullet count weps (lmg and shottie) but not exos, gls, and lets say non-bullet weapons.
Dunno about how it would work, as I've never seen it in actual match, except on Explore mode, where it can be played with as Alien Commander...