Last stand mode might be much more fair and give more accurate win rates. I like the idea of the hive/cc not being able to be healed/repaired in last stand - in fact that alone might be enough to even the game out and still end it in reasonable time (25 min + 3-5 min last stand) without any need to worry about changing the overall balance. Instead of incentivizing camping this would force aggression.
@JimWest - how about invincible/invisible cysts in combat for next version?
I'd really like to see power nodes return that only affect a maps lighting.
As a mapper power and lighting can make for really interesting tactical advantages to either team.
The idea where the power node auto regenerates was a great compromise as it required a least 2-3 aliens using team work to take it down.
Can I ask why it was removed ?
As Aliens spawn power can now be built but not destroyed.
we removed it cause many players complained about not wanting to play in the darkness, it was a not so fun task for both teams to distroy/repair it and they wanted to focus on the battle itself, many players liked the idea of dark areas in the map where it might be a shorter route but a dangerous one so they know they are taking a risk as opposed to being in one place and boom lights out.
But then again who knows we might revisit that and adjust it to play better, I can't promise anything now as Jim and Greeds are hard at work on other stuff.
No I think it was a good move. Players in combat are there to shoot/bite stuff, not weld & worry about visibility. This also leaves it on the mapper to designate where it should be darker to give aliens more advantage and vice versa.
@DarkSeraph, currently no plans for cyst like that, what should they do, just spread infestation?
Yes, just normal dynamic infestation. Maybe the cyst itself should be invisible and invincible. It was casually mentioned as a future possibility in the OP.
What I'd really use it for, as a mapper, is to make it visibly obvious that the room/hall is on the alien side of the map and near the hive. e.g. in co_skylight there are almost identical halls, but I want the ones on the alien side to look infested. Right now I have this crappy fake infestation I tried to make, as is barely visible in this screenshot (I flattened the round infestation model).
SecurityJoin Date: 2005-01-07Member: 33133Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited April 2013
I liked weldable things in NS1 Combat Maps quite a lot. Those added some more tactics and depth to the game.
And oh, the feeling of SUCCESS when actually managing to sneak past the alien team to weld open the phasegates.. :] OR successfully defending the welder point as kharaa! (Later in the game placing some offense chambers and a sensory chamber around it, as a gorge, using buildmenu.. ;])
There should definitively be weldables in NS2 Combat - and destroyables, for the alien side.
Also: Why not just make the power node behaviour a config option for server admins? Make everyone happy. :]
New Combat version is up now, we removed the Oni and exos exept for the rail gun one to test and see how it will play out, other major changes are coming soon.
Servers should update in a min, please try it out and tell us what you think.
we removed it cause many players complained about not wanting to play in the darkness, it was a not so fun task for both teams to distroy/repair it and they wanted to focus on the battle itself, many players liked the idea of dark areas in the map where it might be a shorter route but a dangerous one so they know they are taking a risk as opposed to being in one place and boom lights out.
But then again who knows we might revisit that and adjust it to play better, I can't promise anything now as Jim and Greeds are hard at work on other stuff.
Thanks for your reply Jibrail, You can't please everyone, I get that. Just like when I make a map, I can't please everyone. Finding that happy medium is never easy.
But just to set the record straight for people complaining about darkness to the mod developers.
The fault of combat in complete darkness doesn't lie with the developers but the mapper.
A mapper can remove a power node to a location entity and the lights always stay on, Or they can set any individual light or all of them to ignore the power grid if there is a power node attached to a location entity and it's destoyed. The option of darkness is in the mappers hands.
I don't speak for others but as mapper seeing tools and options removed from my tool box, limiting innovation and imagination, Doesn't inspire me to make new maps. More options not less. Someone may yet do something amazing and yet unseen with it.
So for me it's
+1 to build and destroy power nodes.
Be the shittest change by far removing game content from an already arcade version of a game, can you please for the love of god look at gorge/hydra count, NS 1 combat never had this problem as you could only drop towers with AMX mod ++ plugins, every single gorge in NS 2 co_ can drop 3 hydras that live long after the gorge dies making going gorge at level 2 almost a gimme, either put a cap on hydra count or a cap on gorge would do wonders for the mod and hive camping in general.
New Combat version is up now, we removed the Oni and exos exept for the rail gun one to test and see how it will play out, other major changes are coming soon.
Servers should update in a min, please try it out and tell us what you think.
So did this change take effect? No server seems to reflect.
New Combat version is up now, we removed the Oni and exos exept for the rail gun one to test and see how it will play out, other major changes are coming soon.
Servers should update in a min, please try it out and tell us what you think.
I don't think that completely removing something is the right way to solve a problem with it.
You could have changed the default limit per team / number of players. I would have probably done that anyways, if there were the options.
One Onos / Minigun Exo per team won't hurt.
I also don't like having such drastic changes forced on me as a server admin, without options to change or adjust it.
Thats no matter whether I like them or not.
Configurability makes everyone happy.
Thanks for your reply Jibrail, You can't please everyone, I get that. Just like when I make a map, I can't please everyone. Finding that happy medium is never easy.
But just to set the record straight for people complaining about darkness to the mod developers.
The fault of combat in complete darkness doesn't lie with the developers but the mapper.
A mapper can remove a power node to a location entity and the lights always stay on, Or they can set any individual light or all to them to ignore the power grid it there is a power node and it's destoyed. The option of darkness is in the mappers hands.
I don't speak for others but as mapper seeing tools and options removed from my tool box, limiting innovation and imagination, Doesn't inspire me to make new maps. More options not less. Someone may yet do something amazing and yet unseen with it.
So for me it's
+1 to build and destroy power nodes.
I dont think removing the Onos / exo will help in any way. Theres already too many fades moving around. Just limit more the ability to have one, maybe more people per team (6-8 people - 1 onos/exo) and more points to get it.Think of it as a price for the guy/s who makes the more upgrades points in the less time.
That way people will have a challenge on making points .When you get the onos/exo the players will feel its a reward on their game performance.
I dont think removing the Onos / exo will help in any way. Theres already too many fades moving around. Just limit more the ability to have one, maybe more people per team (6-8 people - 1 onos/exo) and more points to get it.Think of it as a price for the guy/s who makes the more upgrades points in the less time.
That way people will have a challenge on making points .When you get the onos/exo the players will feel its a reward on their game performance.
Yes - further limiting and/or increasing the cost would be a better solution.
I dont think removing the Onos / exo will help in any way. Theres already too many fades moving around. Just limit more the ability to have one, maybe more people per team (6-8 people - 1 onos/exo) and more points to get it.Think of it as a price for the guy/s who makes the more upgrades points in the less time.
That way people will have a challenge on making points .When you get the onos/exo the players will feel its a reward on their game performance.
I was going to test before passing judgement, but I will admit that I think with the current balance of Fade in combat onos/exo are not the issue. In fact this might just make fade more overpowered.
Posting this here since tbh I doubt you read comments in the workshop mod, please add a recovery system for points in case of a crash, the number of times I've lost 13 levels for crashing is uncountable!
EDIT: Also like others have said, workshop didn't get the update.
How about giving server operators the ability to configure things on their end so we can all test the different configuration options at the same time. In the end there is likely logically not 1 best way to have things configured it can very on player count for example.
I do not see why the developers of combat should even be waiting their time with balance as it has nothing to do with the mod itself unless there is no plan to ever give server operators freedom to configure anything. Balance should be the job of the server operator they run the mod they are in their server they talk to the players directly and they should know what their community does and does not want and each community may want different shit.
After one failed attempt yesterday, we've published update 3.4 to the workshop. Server ops will need to update their servers...
Changelog:
Fixed experience bar text not displaying
Temporarily removed Onos/Exo suits (except the single railgun exo, which is underpowered) from the game to see how that affects late-game gameplay.
New version of extra entities is now bundled with the mod.
How about giving server operators the ability to configure things on their end so we can all test the different configuration options at the same time. In the end there is likely logically not 1 best way to have things configured it can very on player count for example.
I do not see why the developers of combat should even be waiting their time with balance as it has nothing to do with the mod itself unless there is no plan to ever give server operators freedom to configure anything. Balance should be the job of the server operator they run the mod they are in their server they talk to the players directly and they should know what their community does and does not want and each community may want different shit.
I would love to do this. Unfortunately getting something like this to work on the old Combat codebase is going to be a lesson in developer pain. It's a feature we can definitely get into the new version of Combat once that codebase is ready, as I've totally overhauled the upgrade system.
Sounds great, part of my point though is for you guys to hopefully focus on that and other new features rather than make any balance changes to the existing code base in the interest of time.
Thanks again for all the time and work you all put into this great mod!
I played a lot of combat in ns1 and a decent bit in ns2 on this mod. Here's my feedback on the current state of combat:
--Resupply is really sad, the timer needs to be shorter on the drop. I would say 1 med per 4-5 seconds (right now it feels like 10 sec? is that about right?). This is part of the reason why early mass gorge/lerk is so effective before JPs get out, the spike/spore/spit/hydra spam simply destroys because the resupply meds are so slow.
--Hydras - these need to die if the player is not gorge
--Ink, this is a kind of neat ability but I think it degrades gameplay when it gets spammed in excess.
--Ending games: This is very difficult with the quick respawns and the spawning with nano/umbra. I would either slow the respawn or get rid of the umbra/nano on spawn.. (maybe allow aliens to spawn with their lerks/fade w/o having to re-evolve to prevent total alien spawn skulk rape)
The mod has gotten a lot better since I last played a few months ago, I find it enjoyable enough to play for fun now Another thing I would suggest if you end up bringing onos/exo back is to further limit their numbers, having 4-5 in each team felt like just a spam fest. I would suggest trying something like 1 per 10 players (so that you only have 2 per team in a typical 24 man server). I really like the way it's been playing in the last day or two since they were removed, though.
Wasn't sure where to report this bug, but made an account just to notify you guys of this.
There seems to be a bug with the railgun kills, others have reported either getting kicked personally, the entire server getting kicked, or the server crashing when someone gets a railgun kill. This just happened to me, so I attached a picture of when it happened, the scoreboard (with the server name), and the text from the console (as you can see me dying to the railgun is the very last thing listed before everything became fubar).
Please look into it and fix if possible, this has only started happening after the update. Thanks.
I played a lot of combat in ns1 and a decent bit in ns2 on this mod. Here's my feedback on the current state of combat:
--Resupply is really sad, the timer needs to be shorter on the drop. I would say 1 med per 4-5 seconds (right now it feels like 10 sec? is that about right?). This is part of the reason why early mass gorge/lerk is so effective before JPs get out, the spike/spore/spit/hydra spam simply destroys because the resupply meds are so slow.
--Hydras - these need to die if the player is not gorge
--Ink, this is a kind of neat ability but I think it degrades gameplay when it gets spammed in excess.
--Ending games: This is very difficult with the quick respawns and the spawning with nano/umbra. I would either slow the respawn or get rid of the umbra/nano on spawn.. (maybe allow aliens to spawn with their lerks/fade w/o having to re-evolve to prevent total alien spawn skulk rape)
The mod has gotten a lot better since I last played a few months ago, I find it enjoyable enough to play for fun now Another thing I would suggest if you end up bringing onos/exo back is to further limit their numbers, having 4-5 in each team felt like just a spam fest. I would suggest trying something like 1 per 10 players (so that you only have 2 per team in a typical 24 man server). I really like the way it's been playing in the last day or two since they were removed, though.
i totally agree.
i know this new version is just to see how it works, but onos need to be in. this also means dual minigun exos also need to be in. There are ways to balance the game, taking them out is just too much. Too many fades now dominate a game, there needs to be a max to this.
Wasn't sure where to report this bug, but made an account just to notify you guys of this.
There seems to be a bug with the railgun kills, others have reported either getting kicked personally, the entire server getting kicked, or the server crashing when someone gets a railgun kill. This just happened to me, so I attached a picture of when it happened, the scoreboard (with the server name), and the text from the console (as you can see me dying to the railgun is the very last thing listed before everything became fubar).
Please look into it and fix if possible, this has only started happening after the update. Thanks.
I can confirm this sort of thing happening, eventhough I am not sure what it is caused by.
Comments
@JimWest - how about invincible/invisible cysts in combat for next version?
Is a great idea or instead of players taking periodic damage the Hive and CC do.
Cant wait for xmenu returning. Last stand sounds good.
As a mapper power and lighting can make for really interesting tactical advantages to either team.
The idea where the power node auto regenerates was a great compromise as it required a least 2-3 aliens using team work to take it down.
Can I ask why it was removed ?
As Aliens spawn power can now be built but not destroyed.
But then again who knows we might revisit that and adjust it to play better, I can't promise anything now as Jim and Greeds are hard at work on other stuff.
But about those cysts in combat...
Yes, just normal dynamic infestation. Maybe the cyst itself should be invisible and invincible. It was casually mentioned as a future possibility in the OP.
What I'd really use it for, as a mapper, is to make it visibly obvious that the room/hall is on the alien side of the map and near the hive. e.g. in co_skylight there are almost identical halls, but I want the ones on the alien side to look infested. Right now I have this crappy fake infestation I tried to make, as is barely visible in this screenshot (I flattened the round infestation model).
I'd love if you'd be able to add it!
And oh, the feeling of SUCCESS when actually managing to sneak past the alien team to weld open the phasegates.. :] OR successfully defending the welder point as kharaa! (Later in the game placing some offense chambers and a sensory chamber around it, as a gorge, using buildmenu.. ;])
There should definitively be weldables in NS2 Combat - and destroyables, for the alien side.
Also: Why not just make the power node behaviour a config option for server admins? Make everyone happy. :]
Servers should update in a min, please try it out and tell us what you think.
much.
Thanks for your reply Jibrail, You can't please everyone, I get that. Just like when I make a map, I can't please everyone. Finding that happy medium is never easy.
But just to set the record straight for people complaining about darkness to the mod developers.
The fault of combat in complete darkness doesn't lie with the developers but the mapper.
A mapper can remove a power node to a location entity and the lights always stay on, Or they can set any individual light or all of them to ignore the power grid if there is a power node attached to a location entity and it's destoyed. The option of darkness is in the mappers hands.
I don't speak for others but as mapper seeing tools and options removed from my tool box, limiting innovation and imagination, Doesn't inspire me to make new maps. More options not less. Someone may yet do something amazing and yet unseen with it.
So for me it's
+1 to build and destroy power nodes.
So did this change take effect? No server seems to reflect.
I don't think that completely removing something is the right way to solve a problem with it.
You could have changed the default limit per team / number of players. I would have probably done that anyways, if there were the options.
One Onos / Minigun Exo per team won't hurt.
I also don't like having such drastic changes forced on me as a server admin, without options to change or adjust it.
Thats no matter whether I like them or not.
Configurability makes everyone happy.
Fully agreed.
That way people will have a challenge on making points .When you get the onos/exo the players will feel its a reward on their game performance.
Another reason why NS2 needs its own mod downloader. ;]
Yes - further limiting and/or increasing the cost would be a better solution.
I was going to test before passing judgement, but I will admit that I think with the current balance of Fade in combat onos/exo are not the issue. In fact this might just make fade more overpowered.
Well that sucks. Is there any way to fix it? Is the issue just that you updated and servers don't see that they have a new one to download?
EDIT: Also like others have said, workshop didn't get the update.
I do not see why the developers of combat should even be waiting their time with balance as it has nothing to do with the mod itself unless there is no plan to ever give server operators freedom to configure anything. Balance should be the job of the server operator they run the mod they are in their server they talk to the players directly and they should know what their community does and does not want and each community may want different shit.
Changelog:
Fixed experience bar text not displaying
Temporarily removed Onos/Exo suits (except the single railgun exo, which is underpowered) from the game to see how that affects late-game gameplay.
New version of extra entities is now bundled with the mod.
I would love to do this. Unfortunately getting something like this to work on the old Combat codebase is going to be a lesson in developer pain. It's a feature we can definitely get into the new version of Combat once that codebase is ready, as I've totally overhauled the upgrade system.
Thanks again for all the time and work you all put into this great mod!
--Resupply is really sad, the timer needs to be shorter on the drop. I would say 1 med per 4-5 seconds (right now it feels like 10 sec? is that about right?). This is part of the reason why early mass gorge/lerk is so effective before JPs get out, the spike/spore/spit/hydra spam simply destroys because the resupply meds are so slow.
--Hydras - these need to die if the player is not gorge
--Ink, this is a kind of neat ability but I think it degrades gameplay when it gets spammed in excess.
--Ending games: This is very difficult with the quick respawns and the spawning with nano/umbra. I would either slow the respawn or get rid of the umbra/nano on spawn.. (maybe allow aliens to spawn with their lerks/fade w/o having to re-evolve to prevent total alien spawn skulk rape)
The mod has gotten a lot better since I last played a few months ago, I find it enjoyable enough to play for fun now
There seems to be a bug with the railgun kills, others have reported either getting kicked personally, the entire server getting kicked, or the server crashing when someone gets a railgun kill. This just happened to me, so I attached a picture of when it happened, the scoreboard (with the server name), and the text from the console (as you can see me dying to the railgun is the very last thing listed before everything became fubar).
Please look into it and fix if possible, this has only started happening after the update. Thanks.
i totally agree.
i know this new version is just to see how it works, but onos need to be in. this also means dual minigun exos also need to be in. There are ways to balance the game, taking them out is just too much. Too many fades now dominate a game, there needs to be a max to this.
I can confirm this sort of thing happening, eventhough I am not sure what it is caused by.