Babblers, Babblers, Babblers
Timarius
Join Date: 2012-11-15 Member: 171220Members
Join Date: 2012-11-15 Member: 171220Members
Let's talk about them.
For the future:
The rest of it is AI and mass.
To sum this data up for those who either don't like to read code or cannot, here's the data again.
Babblers have 30 health, 5 armor, do 10 damage a hit, attack at a rate of one attack per 0.37th of a second, live for 120 seconds (two minutes), and one Gorge can have 9 of them (3 eggs) at a time. Six Babblers can attach to one teammate at a time, and they will leave their death ride after 20 seconds. Their speed is 0.9 higher than a Gorge (about the speed of a Skulk), and they bounce around at randomized heights.
On paper, that means you have 270 health, 45 armor, (360 effective health against normal, 315 against heavy, and 450 against light) and 90 damage worth of Babblers ready to cause trouble.
The health of the babbler is amazing when used as armor as they quite literally take the bullets for their pony ride of doom (piggy back ride of doom, if you prefer that). That's 4 rounds or more extra for your Skulky friends during the early game (which is kind of important seeing as they move a bit slower now). That's an entire shotgun blast for an Onos, or most of it. For a Fade, it could mean life and death in engagements, and let's not start on the Lerk [I've got problems with that smoke trail on spikes].
Babblers simply work wonders when used as cheap meat shields. But as support to keep the adorable little Gorgies alive, well... they fall short. The problem mainly lies with server performance taking a hit (at least on servers I frequent) since the patch. Occasionally their little AI brains derp out and they have no idea there's an enemy in the room, opting instead to bounce in place and hug each other. While adorable, this leaves the Gorge in question a lot more vulnerable when nine little buggers could be chomping on some toes while the Gorge blinds the enemy.
But how do they stack against a base? Undefended, well... let's measure that DPS! They'll get in 2.7 bites in a second. Rather than simplifying that, let's go ahead and get that DPS! 10*2.7 means 27 DPS for each of them. That means nine of them will do 243DPS.
Nine Babblers would munch an A2 marine down instantly (assuming they ever got to their target and proceeded to munch). It also means they'll wreck havoc on bases (again, assuming they attack a building together and don't wander off, clicking their song of... well, derpiness [They're not the brightest tools in the Kharaa arsenal]).
So, on paper, they're damn good assault units and damn good base wreckers.
Unfortunately, in practice, Babblers used to attack kind of make a huge mess as they pop everywhere far from any would be targets, and usually too quickly for a Skulk to move into engagement range. Nevermind if a shotgun blast makes its way down a corridor, as those Babblers sure won't seem to have that much health.
So. Babblers.
TL;DR - I've made my case here based on numbers and experience [Albeit, not much experience (the patch just landed today, after all)]. I don't feel Babblers are worthwhile unless they are used to defend your allies. Specifically, to cover the deficit left by the changes to Skulk movement. Moreover, since you only get maximum effectiveness from six Babblers as defensive units (bit of a problem with the pheromone ball once you've attached them) at a time, I feel that it's never a good idea to spend the rest for 9 of them at a time.
Of course, I don't advocate a buff to them until we've had more time to play around with them. What I'd rather see is server performance optimizations and other changes that have been called for in the past (which I'll not name to hopefully prevent flames from rising).
My fellow Natural Selection 2 players, I made this thread and did my homework so I could invite discussion. How do you folk feel about Babblers? Let's talk!
EDIT - Added in Babbler speed and jump speed.
For the future:
kBabblerPheromoneEnergyCost = 7
kBabblerDamage = 10
kBabblerCost = 1
kBabblerEggBuildTime = 8
kNumBabblerEggsPerGorge = 3
kNumBabblersPerEgg = 3
kBabblerHealth = 30 kBabblerArmor = 5 kBabblerPointValue = 0
kBabblerEggHealth = 300 kBabblerEggArmor = 0 kBabblerEggPointValue = 0
local kTargetSearchRange = 12
local kAttackRate = 0.37
local kLifeTime = 120
local kBabblerClingDuration = 20
BabblerClingMixin.networkVars =
{
numBabblers = "integer (0 to 6)"
}
local kMinJumpDistance = 6
local kBabblerRunSpeed = 5
local kVerticalJumpForce = 6
local kMaxJumpForce = 15
local kMinJumpForce = 5
The rest of it is AI and mass.
To sum this data up for those who either don't like to read code or cannot, here's the data again.
Babblers have 30 health, 5 armor, do 10 damage a hit, attack at a rate of one attack per 0.37th of a second, live for 120 seconds (two minutes), and one Gorge can have 9 of them (3 eggs) at a time. Six Babblers can attach to one teammate at a time, and they will leave their death ride after 20 seconds. Their speed is 0.9 higher than a Gorge (about the speed of a Skulk), and they bounce around at randomized heights.
On paper, that means you have 270 health, 45 armor, (360 effective health against normal, 315 against heavy, and 450 against light) and 90 damage worth of Babblers ready to cause trouble.
The health of the babbler is amazing when used as armor as they quite literally take the bullets for their pony ride of doom (piggy back ride of doom, if you prefer that). That's 4 rounds or more extra for your Skulky friends during the early game (which is kind of important seeing as they move a bit slower now). That's an entire shotgun blast for an Onos, or most of it. For a Fade, it could mean life and death in engagements, and let's not start on the Lerk [I've got problems with that smoke trail on spikes].
Babblers simply work wonders when used as cheap meat shields. But as support to keep the adorable little Gorgies alive, well... they fall short. The problem mainly lies with server performance taking a hit (at least on servers I frequent) since the patch. Occasionally their little AI brains derp out and they have no idea there's an enemy in the room, opting instead to bounce in place and hug each other. While adorable, this leaves the Gorge in question a lot more vulnerable when nine little buggers could be chomping on some toes while the Gorge blinds the enemy.
But how do they stack against a base? Undefended, well... let's measure that DPS! They'll get in 2.7 bites in a second. Rather than simplifying that, let's go ahead and get that DPS! 10*2.7 means 27 DPS for each of them. That means nine of them will do 243DPS.
Nine Babblers would munch an A2 marine down instantly (assuming they ever got to their target and proceeded to munch). It also means they'll wreck havoc on bases (again, assuming they attack a building together and don't wander off, clicking their song of... well, derpiness [They're not the brightest tools in the Kharaa arsenal]).
So, on paper, they're damn good assault units and damn good base wreckers.
Unfortunately, in practice, Babblers used to attack kind of make a huge mess as they pop everywhere far from any would be targets, and usually too quickly for a Skulk to move into engagement range. Nevermind if a shotgun blast makes its way down a corridor, as those Babblers sure won't seem to have that much health.
So. Babblers.
TL;DR - I've made my case here based on numbers and experience [Albeit, not much experience (the patch just landed today, after all)]. I don't feel Babblers are worthwhile unless they are used to defend your allies. Specifically, to cover the deficit left by the changes to Skulk movement. Moreover, since you only get maximum effectiveness from six Babblers as defensive units (bit of a problem with the pheromone ball once you've attached them) at a time, I feel that it's never a good idea to spend the rest for 9 of them at a time.
Of course, I don't advocate a buff to them until we've had more time to play around with them. What I'd rather see is server performance optimizations and other changes that have been called for in the past (which I'll not name to hopefully prevent flames from rising).
My fellow Natural Selection 2 players, I made this thread and did my homework so I could invite discussion. How do you folk feel about Babblers? Let's talk!
EDIT - Added in Babbler speed and jump speed.
Comments
There's a case I didn't think of. I haven't seen Gorges actually get together and use a horde of Babblers like that. Mostly just sitting in hives, contemplating where their hydras should go and whether they should spray that hive.
Were shotguns in play, or any other tech?
That one I did see, a lot. If a Babbler attaches close to your face, you're unable to Bile Bomb or use the Pheromone Ball, and it was mentioned earlier that it blocks bites, too.
Now that hurts their defensive capabilities.
Babbler AI is GARBAGE ( sorry but it really is ) as they don't stick with the gorge, often trailing behind. Not to mention that actually throwing a Bait Ball is always lagged and by the time it comes out of your mouth, your target has moved or your babblers wont even follow where the ball goes.
I think all the babbler AI and position should be loosey handled by the server and run mostly on the client, having the server sync to the client. This way babblers aren't affected by network and on the clients screen, the babblers perform much more responsively. I don't think we really have to worry about babbler hacks..
Just an idea, no real knowledge how Babblers work over network
On to the armor.. 20 seconds is not long enough when you consider that actually getting the babblers to attach to a player is extremely laggy and unresponsive. Even if the player stands still, you throw your bait ball and it hits the player, the babblers will warp around and lunge at the players previous position if he moves a bit and completely not attach themselves, often running off into nowhere. So you try to attach and the player gets hit with the ball, you both think "Ok the ball hit the babblers will attach" but they don't so he runs off with no babblers or like 2 of them.
Every time I have thrown my bait ball while assaulting a base, my babblers are nowhere to be seen, I turn around and they are halfway down the hallway wondering where I went.
But Babblers are new, I'm sure UWE will address these issues and make them as good as they should be. As for the actual Babbler and it's abilities.. I LOVE THEM
W2/A2 (I think), and we had a Shotgun and two welders (not that it matters) with us.
I think the flamethrower would have worked, but sadly we didn't have 'em. Just a constant stream of babblers, gorges, and skulks with a clot wall preventing us from really going anywhere.
Edit: This was on the path between Cafe and Bar.
Anyway, babblers are useless until pathing/ai is fixed (they don't attack marines, and can't follow you in most cases)
You can see how many are on you at the bottom left of the screen.
They are slow.. that's really their one downside and the thing I've been very very verbal about internally (almost annoyingly hehe)
This leads to not connecting attacks, which can make damage numbers irrelevant, missing mounting on moving players, and of course not being able to keep up like in the cute trailer intro and in actual games.
Babblers are useless at attacking marines. If they even bother to try and attack a marine, one of them might do 10 damage, then give up and not attack again. The others like to run back and forth between where I told them to go and myself.
The babbler ball is buggy too. Sometimes it will just pop as soon as I throw it, and the babblers stick to me. I have no idea how to make them get off the gorge. If I throw the ball in the direction of a marine, the babblers will run to the ball, then sorta do nothing. So there's no way to effectively send them to attack, or to recall them.
Best use I found for them was attacking structures. Throw the ball at a marine structure and eventually the babblers will all eventually surround it and start doing damage.
I love the concept too, but like you said, the execution definitely needs some work.
2. i can't speak for the babbler AI, but the babbler body-armour is amazing... it's effectively a double-carapace upgrade. if babbler attack was deadly to marines it could be overpowered.
1. as previously stated by other posters, babblers have terrible AI. I have no idea how this made it out of internal testing...
2. the hidden 2 minute lifespan is removed. There is no reason to impose such a time limit. Babblers will now live forever. The fact that it is never communicated to players that they don't live forever was particularly confusing for new players. Many players ended up spending all personal resources on babblers thinking they were just dying in combat
3. babblers move faster by default
4. the babbler pheremone ball is replaced by an instant-hit projectile with no travel time for easier and more straightforward use
5. there is no longer a minimum number of babblers (6) required before you can attach babblers to another player. the more babblers you attach, the more powerful the shield on the target friendly player will become.
6. babblers attach to players within 0.5 seconds, and never lag behind players.
7. A circular cooldown graphic will display visually, for the shielded player, how much time remains before the babblers will detach from the shielded player
8. babblers will still be alive after detaching and will attack any nearby enemy units and/or structures. At this point the gorge can recall them by throwing the pheremone ball. they will recall automatically and make their way back to the gorge if, after detaching, there are no enemy targets nearby
BRAND **NEW** THINGS:
1. please allow the gorge to attach babblers to any friendly structure, to command them to defend that structure. Example: attach to a resource node and they will bury themselves nearby in the infestation and pop out to defend it when the enemy is nearby
2. babblers will passively inherit any evolutions of the parent gorge. for example, if the gorge has carapace, the babblers will have more armor. if the parent gorge has regeneration, they will regen health in and out of combat.
3. A circular cooldown timer will display visually how much time remains before the babblers will detach from the host organism. this will assist players to coordinate and use babblers offensively
Yes, remove the 2 minute limit. I can't see the point. It takes me that long to get 9 babblers to do something.
They're just afraid of height. :x