DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
How about any player can set a manual res overflow cap on kharaa for themselves. Lets say the standard is 33.
* Kham starts with a base amount of res, like 100 to get initial structures going.
* Kham receives 0 res from rts, all goes to players.
* when a player reaches his/her cap, for example 33, any res from that player over the cap goes to the khams pool.
+ This would again promote who would save for lifeforms, who would set a low limit to support the kham.
+ As it, in a way, does come from pres, aliens will feel a bigger need to defend.
- Downside is letting new folk catch on, on the mechanics.
- Another downside is starving the kham, but I will see this as acceptable. You will notice I did not say which minimum a player could set the cap, only what the start cap would be.
Underwhelmed, I am, er, underwhelmed with your employment proposal.
You find a mechanic that allows combacks for Aliens that doesn't hinder late game Marines (who should be focusing on killing Hives, not res nodes), then decide it's a bad thing, suggest throwing it away, suggest nothing to replace it with yet ask for a job.
You haven't convinced me the Alien res model is 'resilient' ... either team with 6-9 res nodes will dominate in structures. Not just Aliens.
Hugh also stated that the skulk vs marine balance was slightly (1.2) bent toward skulk. I'm not sure how the stats we're made, and they certainly hide skill scaling, but if this is correct it's also a fundamental issue imo (skulk vs vanilla marine balance being a trivial design goal).
Trivial in what way though?
Trivial as in possibly central to the balance of the entire game? Or trivial as in an easy to ensure starting step?
I think trying to get 50/50 skulk marine balance is a lost cause. From my experience, a vanilla skulk will beat a vanilla marine almost all the time if both are complete noobs. Yet at competitive level marines will very rarely go down 1v1 to a skulk. So how does one balance that?
A "complete noob" skulk will run in a straight line on the ground, as many of them did at launch when the game was pretty balanced in pubs. I think the issue is when both players are just "semi-noobs". In that scenario the marine is a bit better at aiming and positioning than he was before, whereas the skulk has learned to ambush at close range to avoid being shot. That's where the skulk starts to gain the upper hand due to a shallower skill curve IMO. Personally I don't think skulks should be made harder to play, but rather marines should have an easier skill floor to compete against such skulks. I've mentioned before the idea of an improved rifle bash to aid newer marines without affecting higher skill play too much.
I think a good idea would be to make it so that the alien commander has to work in synergy with a gorge. Maybe make it so that ONLY the Gorge can drop cysts. Right now it's just pure skulk alien team at the go, like people said.
I don't agree with making it so that BOTH the alien comm and gorge can drop cysts. That seems kind of dumb to me, and would reduce synergy. This is just a single step, however, and the road to balance is going to be a long and hard one.
I just hope UWE doesn't go the way of many other games, where balance is completely neglected. If this isn't taken care of, the competitive scene is going to die once people realize the horrendous balance (it's even worse in the comp scene, actually. Aliens have a 70% win rate!)
I think a good idea would be to make it so that the alien commander has to work in synergy with a gorge. Maybe make it so that ONLY the Gorge can drop cysts. Right now it's just pure skulk alien team at the go, like people said.
I don't agree with making it so that BOTH the alien comm and gorge can drop cysts. That seems kind of dumb to me, and would reduce synergy. This is just a single step, however, and the road to balance is going to be a long and hard one.
I just hope UWE doesn't go the way of many other games, where balance is completely neglected. If this isn't taken care of, the competitive scene is going to die once people realize the horrendous balance (it's even worse in the comp scene, actually. Aliens have a 70% win rate!)
I don't see 70 percent alien win rate as too problematic for competitive scene, just think of it as swapping attack and defense every turn, and make it so you need to win by 2 games.
I don't see 70 percent alien win rate as too problematic for competitive scene, just think of it as swapping attack and defense every turn, and make it so you need to win by 2 games.
A 70% win rate is pathetic, especially for a game that seems to be going to heavily towards e-sports like NS2 is. People complain whenever a single race in StarCraft 2 has a 36% win rate intead of 33%, and that's about as competitive as you can get for a video game.
70% win rate means that basically whoever gets Kharra first is guaranteed victory. This is like leaving the Superbowl up to the coin toss at the beginning.
Best of X matches are too many times decided by the coin flip, with the team going alien first taking the victory home, assuming equal skill levels.
It should also be noted that more often than not (read: almost every single time) competitive games are played with ns2stats on, so that 65,85% is pretty accurate.
I don't see 70 percent alien win rate as too problematic for competitive scene, just think of it as swapping attack and defense every turn, and make it so you need to win by 2 games.
A 70% win rate is pathetic, especially for a game that seems to be going to heavily towards e-sports like NS2 is. People complain whenever a single race in StarCraft 2 has a 36% win rate intead of 33%, and that's about as competitive as you can get for a video game.Tu
70% win rate means that basically whoever gets Kharra first is guaranteed victory. This is like leaving the Superbowl up to the coin toss at the beginning.
what I was trying to remember was stopwatch mode from wolf:et. games invariably favor offense because of spawn timer and nature of the game, so first team would play, and second team would have to best the time or lose.
what I was trying to remember was stopwatch mode from wolf:et. games invariably favor offense because of spawn timer and nature of the game, so first team would play, and second team would have to best the time or lose.
We used to do that in ns1 also. Not sure which version, but I feel like it may have been around 3.x
Using a "fastest time to win" method changes the nature of the game, and not for the better.
Using a "win by two games" method is best, but it still needs the two sides to be at least somewhat balanced, otherwise too many matches will end in a draw.
Win by 2 games seems like it might take a lot of games to decide.
I like the stopwatch idea as a tiebreaker. Play 4 games. If tied at 2-2, look at avg length of each team's wins, choose the shorter of them as the winner.
At least that's somewhat of a level playing field.
You haven't convinced me the Alien res model is 'resilient' ... either team with 6-9 res nodes will dominate in structures.
I thought his explanation was pretty clear...
BUILDING RES TOWERS
Extractors require marines/MACs to build them (not to mention building the power node, which is even more dangerous if it is destroyed and the room is dark and the marines don't have welders). In the early game, this takes at least one marine out of the frontline action anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or more - assuming he doesn't get ambushed while building the extractor or power node. Meanwhile on the alien side...cysts chains and harvesters are all placed by a single player who is largely immune to danger, and has a god-like top down overview of the entire map with fast scroll capabilities. The rest of the alien team is free to kill marines and destroy their structures.
Rebuilding a fallen extractor requires a marine or MAC to be physically present at the res node, and they may have to rebuild/repair the power node first. The marine(s) may even have to clear infestation. This all adds up to valuable time wasted before any res flow can even begin, and that's if there are no aliens camping that area waiting to launch an ambush. It is much safer to have a second marine covering you, but that just means another marine tied up in the task of rebuilding an extractor.
Rebuilding a fallen harvester simply requires the alien commander to do a bunch of Q-A to replace cysts, and a single Q-S to get the harvester going. It is all done in seconds and nobody on the alien team ever has to lift a claw/hoof to help make it happen.
DESTROYING RES TOWERS
For marines to take out alien harvesters behind enemy lines, they need to get to that harvester undetected. This is rather unlikely given that good alien comms usually have early drifters set up at key corridors and rooms - plus alien comms can see a shadow moving on infestation (and hear their footsteps). Also, many vents are inaccessible to marines because of the height they're placed at, and vertical shafts inside the vents too high for marines to climb out of. Even if they do start chopping the harvester, the alien response is far swifter due to increased mobility options (flying, vents, ceilings, etc) and movement speed.
Aliens find it much easier to take out marine extractors because of their ingress-egress options (vents), their movement speed and their ability to go undetected by the marine comm as long as they keep out of sight and don't stray into observatory range. How many times have you played on Summit where Reactor Core/Ventilation/Computer Lab/Crevice keep going down over and over, and you keep having to send a marine or two to 'save it'?
WHAT IT ALL BOILS DOWN TO
Aliens are free to devote all of their available players to offense, which includes destroying the marine economy. Marines have to divert some available players to base building/defense, and there are more penalties that can be imposed on them if the room is cysted up and/or the power node is destroyed. By contrast, aside from losing a bunch of 1 res cysts, there are no penalties imposed on the alien team for a room that they lose control of. The lighting remains the same (alien vision), there is no 'marine infestation' that they need to get rid of before they can retake the res node, and there is no power node to rebuild.
This is why people talk about a small window of opportunity in the early game for marines to brutally suppress the alien scum and delay their second hive for as long as possible, because once that second hive is up, here comes the leaping skulks, the crop dusting lerks, flying fades and base-busting ninja gorges. Before that second hive is up, marines have to keep pressure for as long and as hard as possible in order to secure enough res to tech up before they lose their stranglehold...
All right, guys. You, probably, already know what I bring. Mod has reached it's maturity and wants to be played. Most balance issues of NS2 are fixed with major support of the community.
Final changelog for now:
-Aliens-
1. Reworked onos system. Onos can only be created by Khammender with at least two hives. It costs 150 res. It has 4000 hp and 750(1000) armor. No stomp. If you let it come, it's too late for you to run.
2. Bilebomb: -20% damage.
3. Hallucinations x4 HP.
4. Evolution Structures cost 10 res, Evolutions cost 15 res. Shift Hatch costs 3 res.
5. Crags heal 33% slower.
6. Xenocide, Umbra and Vortex are available at Second Hive. All abilities cost 30 res to research.
7. Carapace nerfed. Skulk 10(20) armor, Gorge 120(150), Fade 75(100).
8. Nerfed whip's grenade Whack ability.
-Marines-
1. Advanced Armory removed. Weapons moved to basic Armory. Limit: 2 per room max. Flamethrower and Grenadelauncher: 20 res each.
2. Prototype Lab costs 50 res, jetpack tech and jetpacks +5 res cost.
3. Sentry. 1 per room, doesn't require power, can be built on infestation, 8 damage, 7 res.
4. Batteries work as small reserve power sources for structures. 1 per room, small radius, 7 res. Don't need Robotics to use.
5. Phase Gates are limited to 3 per map. Use them wisely.
6. Mines trigger faster, slightly higher jetpack acceleration.
7. ARCs HP reduced to 1500, damage reduced by 35%.
8. Nanoshield: 35% dmg reduction and 60 sec cooldown.
9. Claw Exo cost reduced to 35 res. Exos can crush cysts now.
-Aliens-
1. Reworked onos system. Onos can only be created by Khammender with at least two hives. It costs 150 res. It has 4000 hp and 750(1000) armor. No stomp. If you let it come, it's too late for you to run.
7. Carapace nerfed. Skulk 10(20) armor, Gorge 120(150), Fade 75(100).
-Marines-
1. Advanced Armory removed. Weapons moved to basic Armory.
5. Phase Gates are limited to 3 per map. Use them wisely.
I am curious, what problem do the changes above seek to solve? The phase gate limit and carapace nerf are especially puzzling to me. Why do phases need a hard limit when they essentially have a soft cap that reduces their effectiveness built in to the queuing system? Aliens sadly need carapace to have any sort of scaling with marine weapon upgrades into the late game. If you are looking to reduce dependence on that upgrade it needs a complete rework away from being a static armor upgrade and other options need to be explored for alien armor scaling.
I can appreciate the effort you are putting into this but I am not following the train of thought on the changes I pointed out in particular. The OP is contending that the root of the problem is the alien economy but the changes you propose seem to be symptomatic.
1. Reworked onos system. Onos can only be created by Khammender with at least two hives. It costs 150 res. It has 4000 hp and 750(1000) armor. No stomp. If you let it come, it's too late for you to run.
While I see what you are getting at, something you should consider is that you are denying the aliens variety in gameplay. It would be better to have a weaker Onos that people get more often than a tougher one that they rarely if ever get to play. (Also, if it is only commander drop then many people would never get to play Onos at all.)
People complain about power nodes.
Really, they are just in terrible spots. Wide open, and often at some edge of the room, away from anything useful.
They aren't even built at the start. mineshaft does this for Operations through Repair. That halves the time for the econ to start.
Khamm can cyst and lay resources without his team.
Really, the nodes are too close together and not open enough for marine aggression. Heck Veil feels like the only place that Marines can starve out just by killing cysts. (System waypoint/YJunction)
As long as the play between the two teams is fun, the maps should change to fit the balance.
-Aliens-
1. Reworked onos system. Onos can only be created by Khammender with at least two hives. It costs 150 res. It has 4000 hp and 750(1000) armor. No stomp. If you let it come, it's too late for you to run.
7. Carapace nerfed. Skulk 10(20) armor, Gorge 120(150), Fade 75(100).
-Marines-
1. Advanced Armory removed. Weapons moved to basic Armory.
5. Phase Gates are limited to 3 per map. Use them wisely.
I am curious, what problem do the changes above seek to solve? The phase gate limit and carapace nerf are especially puzzling to me. Why do phases need a hard limit when they essentially have a soft cap that reduces their effectiveness built in to the queuing system? Aliens sadly need carapace to have any sort of scaling with marine weapon upgrades into the late game. If you are looking to reduce dependence on that upgrade it needs a complete rework away from being a static armor upgrade and other options need to be explored for alien armor scaling.
I can appreciate the effort you are putting into this but I am not following the train of thought on the changes I pointed out in particular. The OP is contending that the root of the problem is the alien economy but the changes you propose seem to be symptomatic.
Onos Explosion. It's fixed now. Now people know they can't buy onos so they can use fades/lerks more often.
Carapace. On pubs there are only 2 evos - carapace and celerity. By reducing effective armor of carapace I want players to look into other evo paths as well.
Armory. Last time I saw a flametrower in game was when I picked it. Marine economy is under too much pressure to go for flames/nades, especially with original Whack. Now we can see all 3 weapons on the regular basis.
Phase Gates. Single and the strongest defence of good marines. Have it in every second room and aliens just give up, because full marine team arrives anywhere in no time. I wanted to be other means of defence be used as well. And it releaves marines from patrolling RTs like half of the game.
1. Reworked onos system. Onos can only be created by Khammender with at least two hives. It costs 150 res. It has 4000 hp and 750(1000) armor. No stomp. If you let it come, it's too late for you to run.
While I see what you are getting at, something you should consider is that you are denying the aliens variety in gameplay. It would be better to have a weaker Onos that people get more often than a tougher one that they rarely if ever get to play. (Also, if it is only commander drop then many people would never get to play Onos at all.)
Aliens get tons of other underused technology in return. Onos takes no skill to play and is way too strong is game ending in numbers more than 2. This solution impacts economy and balance issues.
People complain about power nodes.
Really, they are just in terrible spots. Wide open, and often at some edge of the room, away from anything useful.
They aren't even built at the start. mineshaft does this for Operations through Repair. That halves the time for the econ to start.
Khamm can cyst and lay resources without his team.
Really, the nodes are too close together and not open enough for marine aggression. Heck Veil feels like the only place that Marines can starve out just by killing cysts. (System waypoint/YJunction)
As long as the play between the two teams is fun, the maps should change to fit the balance.
Or we can fix it inside original alien/marine scheme. And that's what happened in mod.
You can buy batteries to prevent losing game with 1 powernode destroyed.
You haven't convinced me the Alien res model is 'resilient' ... either team with 6-9 res nodes will dominate in structures.
You must not have been paying attention. First off, aliens can easily manage on 2 - 3 harvesters with marines on 4 - 5+. Marines can't, simple as that, because they have a lot more t.res expenditures and thus they need way more extractors to tech in a timely fashion. This also means that replacing extractor losses is significantly easier for aliens than it is for marines, since it doesn't set the alien team back as much in terms of tech research.
Additionally, because alien lifeforms function on an exclusive p.res model, where as all marine equipment needs prior t.res investment, they can just 'creep' their way to 75 p.res and again have a very good chance of turning the game if need be. Marines simply can't do this, I've often sat at 80 p.res at a later point in a game with nothing but shotguns or mines to spend it on because we hadn't yet researched jps or exos, or gls or FTs. This is HUGE in terms of balance impact.
On top of this there's the points Gorgenapper reiterated, in regards to how aliens can put a lot more pressure on the marine economy ON TOP OF their own economy being much more resilient. Surely we can all agree this doesn't make much sense. Adding new abilities to the alien side in the next patch isn't going to magically change this, since all of these new features are 'surplus' and not in any way a necessity for aliens to be competitive. So here's to hoping that the patch also introduces some serious balance changes.
You haven't convinced me the Alien res model is 'resilient' ... either team with 6-9 res nodes will dominate in structures.
I thought his explanation was pretty clear...
BUILDING RES TOWERS
Extractors require marines/MACs to build them (not to mention building the power node, which is even more dangerous if it is destroyed and the room is dark and the marines don't have welders). In the early game, this takes at least one marine out of the frontline action anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or more - assuming he doesn't get ambushed while building the extractor or power node. Meanwhile on the alien side...cysts chains and harvesters are all placed by a single player who is largely immune to danger, and has a god-like top down overview of the entire map with fast scroll capabilities. The rest of the alien team is free to kill marines and destroy their structures.
Rebuilding a fallen extractor requires a marine or MAC to be physically present at the res node, and they may have to rebuild/repair the power node first. The marine(s) may even have to clear infestation. This all adds up to valuable time wasted before any res flow can even begin, and that's if there are no aliens camping that area waiting to launch an ambush. It is much safer to have a second marine covering you, but that just means another marine tied up in the task of rebuilding an extractor.
Rebuilding a fallen harvester simply requires the alien commander to do a bunch of Q-A to replace cysts, and a single Q-S to get the harvester going. It is all done in seconds and nobody on the alien team ever has to lift a claw/hoof to help make it happen.
DESTROYING RES TOWERS
For marines to take out alien harvesters behind enemy lines, they need to get to that harvester undetected. This is rather unlikely given that good alien comms usually have early drifters set up at key corridors and rooms - plus alien comms can see a shadow moving on infestation (and hear their footsteps). Also, many vents are inaccessible to marines because of the height they're placed at, and vertical shafts inside the vents too high for marines to climb out of. Even if they do start chopping the harvester, the alien response is far swifter due to increased mobility options (flying, vents, ceilings, etc) and movement speed.
Aliens find it much easier to take out marine extractors because of their ingress-egress options (vents), their movement speed and their ability to go undetected by the marine comm as long as they keep out of sight and don't stray into observatory range. How many times have you played on Summit where Reactor Core/Ventilation/Computer Lab/Crevice keep going down over and over, and you keep having to send a marine or two to 'save it'?
WHAT IT ALL BOILS DOWN TO
Aliens are free to devote all of their available players to offense, which includes destroying the marine economy. Marines have to divert some available players to base building/defense, and there are more penalties that can be imposed on them if the room is cysted up and/or the power node is destroyed. By contrast, aside from losing a bunch of 1 res cysts, there are no penalties imposed on the alien team for a room that they lose control of. The lighting remains the same (alien vision), there is no 'marine infestation' that they need to get rid of before they can retake the res node, and there is no power node to rebuild.
This is why people talk about a small window of opportunity in the early game for marines to brutally suppress the alien scum and delay their second hive for as long as possible, because once that second hive is up, here comes the leaping skulks, the crop dusting lerks, flying fades and base-busting ninja gorges. Before that second hive is up, marines have to keep pressure for as long and as hard as possible in order to secure enough res to tech up before they lose their stranglehold...
²
On top of this, add the fact that aliens actually need less harvesters than marines to keep up.
Guys, but did you think, that if we get perfectly fair economy balance, wouldn't it get boring? Marines will just lose tension, if both teams can get an equal amount of RTs and wait for simultaneous tech explosions on both sides. I don't like it's current state, but game must have tension.
Also, I wouldn't put to much hope on upcoming balance changes, especially with those 10 sec rines spawn in off balance mod.
Guys, but did you think, that if we get perfectly fair economy balance, wouldn't it get boring? Marines will just lose tension, if both teams can get an equal amount of RTs and wait for simultaneous tech explosions on both sides. I don't like it's current state, but game must have tension.
Also, I wouldn't put to much hope on upcoming balance changes, especially with those 10 sec rines spawn in off balance mod.
Imbalance is not a necessity to provide tension. I don't see how you can link the two. If anything, imbalance makes the game more boring, because you'll be able to predict outcomes more easily.
It does make winning as a marine more rewarding, if that's what you're getting at. Still doesn't excuse the imbalance though.
Guys, but did you think, that if we get perfectly fair economy balance, wouldn't it get boring? Marines will just lose tension, if both teams can get an equal amount of RTs and wait for simultaneous tech explosions on both sides. I don't like it's current state, but game must have tension.
Also, I wouldn't put to much hope on upcoming balance changes, especially with those 10 sec rines spawn in off balance mod.
Imbalance is not a necessity to provide tension. I don't see how you can link the two. If anything, imbalance makes the game more boring, because you'll be able to predict outcomes more easily.
It does make winning as a marine more rewarding, if that's what you're getting at. Still doesn't excuse the imbalance though.
No, I'm not justifying current inbalance. But I think assymetry in building approaches should stay. If we force 2 gorges to be on the field for aliens to expand, it would just destroy aliens. Slower expansion, huge cooperation required and number of skulks cut almost in two on 6v6.
My approach is to forget about ns1. Current model is exciting. It just needs to be balanced hard. I don't like changing the conception of ns2. Game can be made balanced within original idea pool.
Surely you would agree that the most fun games are the ones in which both sides are on even footing and need to compete heavily to gain the upper hand, rather than one side just 'rolling' into its dominant position as long as it doesn't get completely stomped by the other side. (Less than 2 harvesters). There's absolutely 0 fun in the current 'fight against the clock' for marines and it completely takes away the focus from the FPS side of the game to an almost exclusive RTS one, where marines have to kill harvesters at any cost.
You don't necessarily need both sides to require an even amount of map control to achieve proper balance, though it IS by far the easiest method. Since UWE clearly hasn't taken that path however, they need to better address the simple fact that aliens can apply more pressure on the marine economy AND require significantly less tech and map control at the same time. It doesn't take much RTS experience at all to see how incredibly flawed the current setup is. It would make a lot more sense if marines were the faction that could heavily pressure aliens but with a very resilient and low-cost alien economic model.
In short:
Aliens have a significant advantage when it comes to pressuring map control, AS A RESULT they are also able to acquire more map control and have their own map control contested less. This would be fine IF it wasn't for the fact that they also have a much lower-cost economic model than marines. I.e Better map control AND cheaper/faster tech.
Easy solutions:
- Make the second hive 'jump' less powerful
- Make the third hive 'jump' more powerful and as such a necessity for aliens to be truly competitive lategame
- Increase the costs on some alien tech
- (Optional but desirable) Add more depth to alien tech, make upgrades aside from cara/cele more attractive
Surely you would agree that the most fun games are the ones in which both sides are on even footing and need to compete heavily to gain the upper hand, rather than one side just 'rolling' into its dominant position as long as it doesn't get completely stomped by the other side. (Less than 2 harvesters). There's absolutely 0 fun in the current 'fight against the clock' for marines and it completely takes away the focus from the FPS side of the game to an almost exclusive RTS one, where marines have to kill harvesters at any cost.
You don't necessarily need both sides to require an even amount of map control to achieve proper balance, though it IS by far the easiest method. Since UWE clearly hasn't taken that path however, they need to better address the simple fact that aliens can apply more pressure on the marine economy AND require significantly less tech and map control at the same time. It doesn't take much RTS experience at all to see how incredibly flawed the current setup is. It would make a lot more sense if marines were the faction that could heavily pressure aliens but with a very resilient and low-cost alien economic model.
In short:
Aliens have a significant advantage when it comes to pressuring map control, AS A RESULT they are also able to acquire more map control and have their own map control contested less. This would be fine IF it wasn't for the fact that they also have a much lower-cost economic model than marines. I.e Better map control AND cheaper/faster tech.
Easy solutions:
- Make the second hive 'jump' less powerful
- Make the third hive 'jump' more powerful and as such a necessity for aliens to be truly competitive lategame
- Increase the costs on some alien tech
- (Optional but desirable) Add more depth to alien tech, make upgrades aside from cara/cele more attractive
Dependence on the third would make game longer and less active wouldn't it? Marines get full power at two. Aliens can get additional boost at third.
In late game marines gain a huge mobility boost (phase/jets) and aliens can't hold 3 hives. It will just make their maximum strength unreachable.
Game can be built around 2 hives.
Guys, what do you think of Onos King? Or you'd rather see multiple onoses, but with strength more dependent on other alien structures?
I saw that awesome Hive-number-power-scale idea several pages before(by MisterNubs). I could make Onos's strength scale with number of hives.
My approach is to forget about ns1. Current model is exciting. It just needs to be balanced hard. I don't like changing the conception of ns2. Game can be made balanced within original idea pool.
You see, this is exactly the reason why we have imbalance. Lots of lessons learned from ns1 were forgotten so we could try out new stuff. There is nothing wrong with experimenting. But there were reasons why certain things worked for ns1 and dont work for ns2:
The alien economy:
In low player games (1-4), the aliens always (also in ns1) had the advantage, because a single gorge could spam as many structures as he wanted (no need to build them up) and marines have a hard time killing higher lifeforms with low playercounts. It also takes them longer to clear out structures than it takes the aliens to place them. When more people joined the server, the game balanced out, the marines missing one player on the field was less imporatant and alien res was split amongst more people, making it harder to spam structures and lifeforms.
NS2 tries to make the game scale better for different teamsizes, so we now have the alien commander. It is like we have the single gorge in ns1 who can spam structures plus he is completly safe in his hive. To make it balanced, the marines get faster respawn and more damange output so they can kill these structures.
The lessons from ns1 are:
- Killing lots of structures is no fun.
- Marines are vulnerable when attacking/building structures
- The best way of hampering the alien econemy was killing their workers (gorges) and not be dying a lot (RFK).
NS2 ignores all these lessons and introduced gameplay elements that do exactly the opposite:
- Cysts everywhere, khammander with central tres pool can spam structures.
- To retake any room, marines need to kill alien structures, build powernode, kill cysts, build structures.
- Marines have to kill harvesters (see #2), dying has hardly any consequence -> marine zerging.
Sieges/Turtles:
In ns1, the construction of a siege site next to a hive put them in a "defend the base" scenario which is highly immersive for the alien vs marine theme. The theme just works best for bugs unrelentlessly attacking a marine stronghold.
Sometimes you had marines turtle in a hive, holding out for an hour of continuous alien assault. While some players hated these turtles, they were often fought until the end because the experience of defending the base against the alien onlslaught was so rewarding.
Turtles usually ended with a coordinated assault from the alien team. They needed to kill all the marines, take out the obs then take out the ips. This was hard to accomplish but was a rewarding experience every time it worked.
The lessons:
- Defending a marine base is lots of fun.
- Aliens on 2 hives can have problems breaking a turtle, on 3 hives they are fine.
- Using teamwork to take out a base is rewarding.
NS2:
- NS2 gave us the ARCs, that takes away the good base defense battle ns1 had.
- Hive 3 abilities are more or less useless, aliens are fine with 2 hives and enough res.
- Marine bases have the powernode as an achilles heel, a single alien can take out a base. Coordinated attacks are that much easier since they can focus on one target.
Onos Explosion. It's fixed now. Now people know they can't buy onos so they can use fades/lerks more often.
Carapace. On pubs there are only 2 evos - carapace and celerity. By reducing effective armor of carapace I want players to look into other evo paths as well.
Armory. Last time I saw a flametrower in game was when I picked it. Marine economy is under too much pressure to go for flames/nades, especially with original Whack. Now we can see all 3 weapons on the regular basis.
Phase Gates. Single and the strongest defence of good marines. Have it in every second room and aliens just give up, because full marine team arrives anywhere in no time. I wanted to be other means of defence be used as well. And it releaves marines from patrolling RTs like half of the game.
Disclaimer: Industry's opinions contained within probably with profoundly stupid grammar mistakes caused by too much or not enough Bailey's in his coffee.
Fixed is a relative term in this case. While yes, you won't see the onos in great numbers, the changes you described require the onos to be so ludicrously OP that it can't scale properly with player counts. In a 6v6 setting there is no way a commander dropped onos of the relative power required of a 150 TRes lifeform can be taken down. It isn't just an onos explosion either, it is a lifeform explosion. Fades are just as guilty in this regard and in the hands of a talented player (even with their neutered HP) can be far more devastating in terms of PK. Regardless, this is definitely thinking outside the box which is more of the kind of ideas we should be throwing around but this one in the current state of the game won't address the underlying issue, it will just shift it somewhere else. An entire alternate gameplay mod (akin to MvM, CO and Faded) based around a god mode onos could be fun though.
Concerning carapace, the reason it is used so often is that it is REQUIRED to be able to continue to compete with marines throughout the game. A lot of this has been covered in this thread by multiple people (albeit with an abrasive attitude and in this case the hive order being discussed is irrelevant to this balance concept): http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/128052/going-shift-hive-before-crag-hive-is-terrible-alien-commanding/p1 Simply nerfing the armor value isn't going to make crag hive any less wanted until you have nerfed carapace to the point of being inconsequential. I've harped on alien armor scaling since the beta, and some may not agree with me (maybe no one at all), but I think it would be a move towards the better rather than carapace being the scaling aliens need to compete with w2+. To break it down, in my mind, to make carapace less prominent you need a mechanic change and not a number value tweak.
For the phase gate change, the issue here is that with the current design there is already a pretty harsh diminishing return. The more phase gates you have the longer it takes to get to the particular gate you need. Anything over 3-4 and the marines aren't going to be able to react quick enough before a gate goes down to bile bomb or a skulk pack and on top of that phases are a bit of a meat grinder now without the pushback. Setting a hard limit honestly just forces marines into "good practices" (ie not building too many gates) which was there to begin with in the form of a soft cap.
Now, to bring this all full circle and relate it to the OP's contention: Removing the advanced armory and cheapening the GL/FT is not the solution we need to fix the economy. Point being that the alien tech tree happens far too fast, bringing the marines down to this level could (and I believe probably will) make the game more unfun. The RTS aspect is about choices, do I spend my res on X or do I spend it on Y? Reducing costs takes that choice away as now it's WHY NOT BOTH? You need to look at the piece of tech first and ask what is it's role? What problem does it solve? Does another piece of tech solve that problem better? If so it is time to look elsewhere. The problem as I see it with the GL/FT is not that their costs are prohibitively expensive it is that their role is not clearly defined.
Let's look at the GL in particular. The GL in earlier iterations was a skulk killing machine, however it does structure damage which screams, "I am outside my role." The other problem is that it has a straight up hard counter in the whip which keeps it from fulfilling the task it should be meant to complete. Now, on top of that when we look elsewhere in the tech tree we see we have another way to handle structures that doesn't have the same problem (ARCs). Given the task of clearing structures, which route would you choose? The answer in the current patch is ARCs. They are more bang for the buck, and not because of their cost relative to the GL but because they are simply better when taken from a mechanics perspective. The problem I feel needs to be solved is simply this: What can I change in the GL to make it fit its role better? (That role being FPS controlled anti-structure) Is it a change to the GL itself or to its counters? On the other end what happens where there are too many GLs on the field? This problem was seen pretty starkly during the beta with mass grenade spam.
Circling back again, the advanced armory is meant as a gate in the tech tree, similar to the armory being required to build an obs or arms lab. Specifically it is there as a cost increasing measure to deem when the proto/GL/FT can come out. Removing it can cause a ripple effect that needs to be taken into account. I see res costs as measures of controlling timings. As such reducing costs on the marines may not be the best choice. As I said earlier, alien tech comes hard and fast and is essentially a time bomb. This is a result of not enough choices and/or poor gating. Simply put: 1 hive aliens don't have enough and 2 hive aliens simply have too much. The alien tree is where most of the work needs to be done as comparatively, even when losing, the marine tree is just more fun and better paced.
I hope this makes sense and I was able to explain my reservations with the changes you propose in your mod.
Comments
* Kham starts with a base amount of res, like 100 to get initial structures going.
* Kham receives 0 res from rts, all goes to players.
* when a player reaches his/her cap, for example 33, any res from that player over the cap goes to the khams pool.
+ This would again promote who would save for lifeforms, who would set a low limit to support the kham.
+ As it, in a way, does come from pres, aliens will feel a bigger need to defend.
- Downside is letting new folk catch on, on the mechanics.
- Another downside is starving the kham, but I will see this as acceptable. You will notice I did not say which minimum a player could set the cap, only what the start cap would be.
You find a mechanic that allows combacks for Aliens that doesn't hinder late game Marines (who should be focusing on killing Hives, not res nodes), then decide it's a bad thing, suggest throwing it away, suggest nothing to replace it with yet ask for a job.
You haven't convinced me the Alien res model is 'resilient' ... either team with 6-9 res nodes will dominate in structures. Not just Aliens.
A "complete noob" skulk will run in a straight line on the ground, as many of them did at launch when the game was pretty balanced in pubs. I think the issue is when both players are just "semi-noobs". In that scenario the marine is a bit better at aiming and positioning than he was before, whereas the skulk has learned to ambush at close range to avoid being shot. That's where the skulk starts to gain the upper hand due to a shallower skill curve IMO. Personally I don't think skulks should be made harder to play, but rather marines should have an easier skill floor to compete against such skulks. I've mentioned before the idea of an improved rifle bash to aid newer marines without affecting higher skill play too much.
I don't agree with making it so that BOTH the alien comm and gorge can drop cysts. That seems kind of dumb to me, and would reduce synergy. This is just a single step, however, and the road to balance is going to be a long and hard one.
I just hope UWE doesn't go the way of many other games, where balance is completely neglected. If this isn't taken care of, the competitive scene is going to die once people realize the horrendous balance (it's even worse in the comp scene, actually. Aliens have a 70% win rate!)
I don't see 70 percent alien win rate as too problematic for competitive scene, just think of it as swapping attack and defense every turn, and make it so you need to win by 2 games.
A 70% win rate is pathetic, especially for a game that seems to be going to heavily towards e-sports like NS2 is. People complain whenever a single race in StarCraft 2 has a 36% win rate intead of 33%, and that's about as competitive as you can get for a video game.
70% win rate means that basically whoever gets Kharra first is guaranteed victory. This is like leaving the Superbowl up to the coin toss at the beginning.
65,85% for competitive. Which is really bad.
Best of X matches are too many times decided by the coin flip, with the team going alien first taking the victory home, assuming equal skill levels.
It should also be noted that more often than not (read: almost every single time) competitive games are played with ns2stats on, so that 65,85% is pretty accurate.
that's why I said win by 2, not best of.
We used to do that in ns1 also. Not sure which version, but I feel like it may have been around 3.x
Using a "win by two games" method is best, but it still needs the two sides to be at least somewhat balanced, otherwise too many matches will end in a draw.
I like the stopwatch idea as a tiebreaker. Play 4 games. If tied at 2-2, look at avg length of each team's wins, choose the shorter of them as the winner.
At least that's somewhat of a level playing field.
I thought his explanation was pretty clear...
BUILDING RES TOWERS
Extractors require marines/MACs to build them (not to mention building the power node, which is even more dangerous if it is destroyed and the room is dark and the marines don't have welders). In the early game, this takes at least one marine out of the frontline action anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or more - assuming he doesn't get ambushed while building the extractor or power node. Meanwhile on the alien side...cysts chains and harvesters are all placed by a single player who is largely immune to danger, and has a god-like top down overview of the entire map with fast scroll capabilities. The rest of the alien team is free to kill marines and destroy their structures.
Rebuilding a fallen extractor requires a marine or MAC to be physically present at the res node, and they may have to rebuild/repair the power node first. The marine(s) may even have to clear infestation. This all adds up to valuable time wasted before any res flow can even begin, and that's if there are no aliens camping that area waiting to launch an ambush. It is much safer to have a second marine covering you, but that just means another marine tied up in the task of rebuilding an extractor.
Rebuilding a fallen harvester simply requires the alien commander to do a bunch of Q-A to replace cysts, and a single Q-S to get the harvester going. It is all done in seconds and nobody on the alien team ever has to lift a claw/hoof to help make it happen.
DESTROYING RES TOWERS
For marines to take out alien harvesters behind enemy lines, they need to get to that harvester undetected. This is rather unlikely given that good alien comms usually have early drifters set up at key corridors and rooms - plus alien comms can see a shadow moving on infestation (and hear their footsteps). Also, many vents are inaccessible to marines because of the height they're placed at, and vertical shafts inside the vents too high for marines to climb out of. Even if they do start chopping the harvester, the alien response is far swifter due to increased mobility options (flying, vents, ceilings, etc) and movement speed.
Aliens find it much easier to take out marine extractors because of their ingress-egress options (vents), their movement speed and their ability to go undetected by the marine comm as long as they keep out of sight and don't stray into observatory range. How many times have you played on Summit where Reactor Core/Ventilation/Computer Lab/Crevice keep going down over and over, and you keep having to send a marine or two to 'save it'?
WHAT IT ALL BOILS DOWN TO
Aliens are free to devote all of their available players to offense, which includes destroying the marine economy. Marines have to divert some available players to base building/defense, and there are more penalties that can be imposed on them if the room is cysted up and/or the power node is destroyed. By contrast, aside from losing a bunch of 1 res cysts, there are no penalties imposed on the alien team for a room that they lose control of. The lighting remains the same (alien vision), there is no 'marine infestation' that they need to get rid of before they can retake the res node, and there is no power node to rebuild.
This is why people talk about a small window of opportunity in the early game for marines to brutally suppress the alien scum and delay their second hive for as long as possible, because once that second hive is up, here comes the leaping skulks, the crop dusting lerks, flying fades and base-busting ninja gorges. Before that second hive is up, marines have to keep pressure for as long and as hard as possible in order to secure enough res to tech up before they lose their stranglehold...
Final changelog for now:
-Aliens-
1. Reworked onos system. Onos can only be created by Khammender with at least two hives. It costs 150 res. It has 4000 hp and 750(1000) armor. No stomp. If you let it come, it's too late for you to run.
2. Bilebomb: -20% damage.
3. Hallucinations x4 HP.
4. Evolution Structures cost 10 res, Evolutions cost 15 res. Shift Hatch costs 3 res.
5. Crags heal 33% slower.
6. Xenocide, Umbra and Vortex are available at Second Hive. All abilities cost 30 res to research.
7. Carapace nerfed. Skulk 10(20) armor, Gorge 120(150), Fade 75(100).
8. Nerfed whip's grenade Whack ability.
-Marines-
1. Advanced Armory removed. Weapons moved to basic Armory. Limit: 2 per room max. Flamethrower and Grenadelauncher: 20 res each.
2. Prototype Lab costs 50 res, jetpack tech and jetpacks +5 res cost.
3. Sentry. 1 per room, doesn't require power, can be built on infestation, 8 damage, 7 res.
4. Batteries work as small reserve power sources for structures. 1 per room, small radius, 7 res. Don't need Robotics to use.
5. Phase Gates are limited to 3 per map. Use them wisely.
6. Mines trigger faster, slightly higher jetpack acceleration.
7. ARCs HP reduced to 1500, damage reduced by 35%.
8. Nanoshield: 35% dmg reduction and 60 sec cooldown.
9. Claw Exo cost reduced to 35 res. Exos can crush cysts now.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=127813673
Speak your mind.
I am curious, what problem do the changes above seek to solve? The phase gate limit and carapace nerf are especially puzzling to me. Why do phases need a hard limit when they essentially have a soft cap that reduces their effectiveness built in to the queuing system? Aliens sadly need carapace to have any sort of scaling with marine weapon upgrades into the late game. If you are looking to reduce dependence on that upgrade it needs a complete rework away from being a static armor upgrade and other options need to be explored for alien armor scaling.
I can appreciate the effort you are putting into this but I am not following the train of thought on the changes I pointed out in particular. The OP is contending that the root of the problem is the alien economy but the changes you propose seem to be symptomatic.
People complain about power nodes.
Really, they are just in terrible spots. Wide open, and often at some edge of the room, away from anything useful.
They aren't even built at the start. mineshaft does this for Operations through Repair. That halves the time for the econ to start.
Khamm can cyst and lay resources without his team.
Really, the nodes are too close together and not open enough for marine aggression. Heck Veil feels like the only place that Marines can starve out just by killing cysts. (System waypoint/YJunction)
As long as the play between the two teams is fun, the maps should change to fit the balance.
Onos Explosion. It's fixed now. Now people know they can't buy onos so they can use fades/lerks more often.
Carapace. On pubs there are only 2 evos - carapace and celerity. By reducing effective armor of carapace I want players to look into other evo paths as well.
Armory. Last time I saw a flametrower in game was when I picked it. Marine economy is under too much pressure to go for flames/nades, especially with original Whack. Now we can see all 3 weapons on the regular basis.
Phase Gates. Single and the strongest defence of good marines. Have it in every second room and aliens just give up, because full marine team arrives anywhere in no time. I wanted to be other means of defence be used as well. And it releaves marines from patrolling RTs like half of the game.
Aliens get tons of other underused technology in return. Onos takes no skill to play and is way too strong is game ending in numbers more than 2. This solution impacts economy and balance issues.
Or we can fix it inside original alien/marine scheme. And that's what happened in mod.
You can buy batteries to prevent losing game with 1 powernode destroyed.
You must not have been paying attention. First off, aliens can easily manage on 2 - 3 harvesters with marines on 4 - 5+. Marines can't, simple as that, because they have a lot more t.res expenditures and thus they need way more extractors to tech in a timely fashion. This also means that replacing extractor losses is significantly easier for aliens than it is for marines, since it doesn't set the alien team back as much in terms of tech research.
Additionally, because alien lifeforms function on an exclusive p.res model, where as all marine equipment needs prior t.res investment, they can just 'creep' their way to 75 p.res and again have a very good chance of turning the game if need be. Marines simply can't do this, I've often sat at 80 p.res at a later point in a game with nothing but shotguns or mines to spend it on because we hadn't yet researched jps or exos, or gls or FTs. This is HUGE in terms of balance impact.
On top of this there's the points Gorgenapper reiterated, in regards to how aliens can put a lot more pressure on the marine economy ON TOP OF their own economy being much more resilient. Surely we can all agree this doesn't make much sense. Adding new abilities to the alien side in the next patch isn't going to magically change this, since all of these new features are 'surplus' and not in any way a necessity for aliens to be competitive. So here's to hoping that the patch also introduces some serious balance changes.
²
On top of this, add the fact that aliens actually need less harvesters than marines to keep up.
Can we add this summary to the googledoc?
Also, I wouldn't put to much hope on upcoming balance changes, especially with those 10 sec rines spawn in off balance mod.
Imbalance is not a necessity to provide tension. I don't see how you can link the two. If anything, imbalance makes the game more boring, because you'll be able to predict outcomes more easily.
It does make winning as a marine more rewarding, if that's what you're getting at. Still doesn't excuse the imbalance though.
No, I'm not justifying current inbalance. But I think assymetry in building approaches should stay. If we force 2 gorges to be on the field for aliens to expand, it would just destroy aliens. Slower expansion, huge cooperation required and number of skulks cut almost in two on 6v6.
My approach is to forget about ns1. Current model is exciting. It just needs to be balanced hard. I don't like changing the conception of ns2. Game can be made balanced within original idea pool.
You don't necessarily need both sides to require an even amount of map control to achieve proper balance, though it IS by far the easiest method. Since UWE clearly hasn't taken that path however, they need to better address the simple fact that aliens can apply more pressure on the marine economy AND require significantly less tech and map control at the same time. It doesn't take much RTS experience at all to see how incredibly flawed the current setup is. It would make a lot more sense if marines were the faction that could heavily pressure aliens but with a very resilient and low-cost alien economic model.
In short:
Aliens have a significant advantage when it comes to pressuring map control, AS A RESULT they are also able to acquire more map control and have their own map control contested less. This would be fine IF it wasn't for the fact that they also have a much lower-cost economic model than marines. I.e Better map control AND cheaper/faster tech.
Easy solutions:
- Make the second hive 'jump' less powerful
- Make the third hive 'jump' more powerful and as such a necessity for aliens to be truly competitive lategame
- Increase the costs on some alien tech
- (Optional but desirable) Add more depth to alien tech, make upgrades aside from cara/cele more attractive
Dependence on the third would make game longer and less active wouldn't it? Marines get full power at two. Aliens can get additional boost at third.
In late game marines gain a huge mobility boost (phase/jets) and aliens can't hold 3 hives. It will just make their maximum strength unreachable.
Game can be built around 2 hives.
I saw that awesome Hive-number-power-scale idea several pages before(by MisterNubs). I could make Onos's strength scale with number of hives.
You see, this is exactly the reason why we have imbalance. Lots of lessons learned from ns1 were forgotten so we could try out new stuff. There is nothing wrong with experimenting. But there were reasons why certain things worked for ns1 and dont work for ns2:
The alien economy:
In low player games (1-4), the aliens always (also in ns1) had the advantage, because a single gorge could spam as many structures as he wanted (no need to build them up) and marines have a hard time killing higher lifeforms with low playercounts. It also takes them longer to clear out structures than it takes the aliens to place them. When more people joined the server, the game balanced out, the marines missing one player on the field was less imporatant and alien res was split amongst more people, making it harder to spam structures and lifeforms.
NS2 tries to make the game scale better for different teamsizes, so we now have the alien commander. It is like we have the single gorge in ns1 who can spam structures plus he is completly safe in his hive. To make it balanced, the marines get faster respawn and more damange output so they can kill these structures.
The lessons from ns1 are:
- Killing lots of structures is no fun.
- Marines are vulnerable when attacking/building structures
- The best way of hampering the alien econemy was killing their workers (gorges) and not be dying a lot (RFK).
NS2 ignores all these lessons and introduced gameplay elements that do exactly the opposite:
- Cysts everywhere, khammander with central tres pool can spam structures.
- To retake any room, marines need to kill alien structures, build powernode, kill cysts, build structures.
- Marines have to kill harvesters (see #2), dying has hardly any consequence -> marine zerging.
Sieges/Turtles:
In ns1, the construction of a siege site next to a hive put them in a "defend the base" scenario which is highly immersive for the alien vs marine theme. The theme just works best for bugs unrelentlessly attacking a marine stronghold.
Sometimes you had marines turtle in a hive, holding out for an hour of continuous alien assault. While some players hated these turtles, they were often fought until the end because the experience of defending the base against the alien onlslaught was so rewarding.
Turtles usually ended with a coordinated assault from the alien team. They needed to kill all the marines, take out the obs then take out the ips. This was hard to accomplish but was a rewarding experience every time it worked.
The lessons:
- Defending a marine base is lots of fun.
- Aliens on 2 hives can have problems breaking a turtle, on 3 hives they are fine.
- Using teamwork to take out a base is rewarding.
NS2:
- NS2 gave us the ARCs, that takes away the good base defense battle ns1 had.
- Hive 3 abilities are more or less useless, aliens are fine with 2 hives and enough res.
- Marine bases have the powernode as an achilles heel, a single alien can take out a base. Coordinated attacks are that much easier since they can focus on one target.
Disclaimer: Industry's opinions contained within probably with profoundly stupid grammar mistakes caused by too much or not enough Bailey's in his coffee.
Fixed is a relative term in this case. While yes, you won't see the onos in great numbers, the changes you described require the onos to be so ludicrously OP that it can't scale properly with player counts. In a 6v6 setting there is no way a commander dropped onos of the relative power required of a 150 TRes lifeform can be taken down. It isn't just an onos explosion either, it is a lifeform explosion. Fades are just as guilty in this regard and in the hands of a talented player (even with their neutered HP) can be far more devastating in terms of PK. Regardless, this is definitely thinking outside the box which is more of the kind of ideas we should be throwing around but this one in the current state of the game won't address the underlying issue, it will just shift it somewhere else. An entire alternate gameplay mod (akin to MvM, CO and Faded) based around a god mode onos could be fun though.
Concerning carapace, the reason it is used so often is that it is REQUIRED to be able to continue to compete with marines throughout the game. A lot of this has been covered in this thread by multiple people (albeit with an abrasive attitude and in this case the hive order being discussed is irrelevant to this balance concept): http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/128052/going-shift-hive-before-crag-hive-is-terrible-alien-commanding/p1 Simply nerfing the armor value isn't going to make crag hive any less wanted until you have nerfed carapace to the point of being inconsequential. I've harped on alien armor scaling since the beta, and some may not agree with me (maybe no one at all), but I think it would be a move towards the better rather than carapace being the scaling aliens need to compete with w2+. To break it down, in my mind, to make carapace less prominent you need a mechanic change and not a number value tweak.
For the phase gate change, the issue here is that with the current design there is already a pretty harsh diminishing return. The more phase gates you have the longer it takes to get to the particular gate you need. Anything over 3-4 and the marines aren't going to be able to react quick enough before a gate goes down to bile bomb or a skulk pack and on top of that phases are a bit of a meat grinder now without the pushback. Setting a hard limit honestly just forces marines into "good practices" (ie not building too many gates) which was there to begin with in the form of a soft cap.
Now, to bring this all full circle and relate it to the OP's contention: Removing the advanced armory and cheapening the GL/FT is not the solution we need to fix the economy. Point being that the alien tech tree happens far too fast, bringing the marines down to this level could (and I believe probably will) make the game more unfun. The RTS aspect is about choices, do I spend my res on X or do I spend it on Y? Reducing costs takes that choice away as now it's WHY NOT BOTH? You need to look at the piece of tech first and ask what is it's role? What problem does it solve? Does another piece of tech solve that problem better? If so it is time to look elsewhere. The problem as I see it with the GL/FT is not that their costs are prohibitively expensive it is that their role is not clearly defined.
Let's look at the GL in particular. The GL in earlier iterations was a skulk killing machine, however it does structure damage which screams, "I am outside my role." The other problem is that it has a straight up hard counter in the whip which keeps it from fulfilling the task it should be meant to complete. Now, on top of that when we look elsewhere in the tech tree we see we have another way to handle structures that doesn't have the same problem (ARCs). Given the task of clearing structures, which route would you choose? The answer in the current patch is ARCs. They are more bang for the buck, and not because of their cost relative to the GL but because they are simply better when taken from a mechanics perspective. The problem I feel needs to be solved is simply this: What can I change in the GL to make it fit its role better? (That role being FPS controlled anti-structure) Is it a change to the GL itself or to its counters? On the other end what happens where there are too many GLs on the field? This problem was seen pretty starkly during the beta with mass grenade spam.
Circling back again, the advanced armory is meant as a gate in the tech tree, similar to the armory being required to build an obs or arms lab. Specifically it is there as a cost increasing measure to deem when the proto/GL/FT can come out. Removing it can cause a ripple effect that needs to be taken into account. I see res costs as measures of controlling timings. As such reducing costs on the marines may not be the best choice. As I said earlier, alien tech comes hard and fast and is essentially a time bomb. This is a result of not enough choices and/or poor gating. Simply put: 1 hive aliens don't have enough and 2 hive aliens simply have too much. The alien tree is where most of the work needs to be done as comparatively, even when losing, the marine tree is just more fun and better paced.
I hope this makes sense and I was able to explain my reservations with the changes you propose in your mod.