Comments on NS2 Beacon
Join Date: 2010-11-22 Member: 75194Members, Reinforced - Onos
Hey all,
Just wondering what are the community comments regarding about the NS2 Beacon compared to how NS1 did it.
For those who don't know and need a reminder
NS1 beacon costed 15 res and respawns and recalls every alive marine back to marine spawn.
NS2 beacon costs 10 tRes and only recalls every alive marine back to the closest CC of where the obs triggered it.
My comments:
It feels like the NS2 beacon doesn't seem like an upgrade compared to NS1's beacon. NS1 could respawn every dead marine whilst NS2 only recalls every alive marine back to spawn. I'm okay with the cost of the NS2 beacon (being 10 tRes) as its quite reasonable for what it does but just can't seem to find a good reason as to why this got changed from how it worked from NS1.
When my friends (who are vets of NS1) go marine commander for the first time they always question me why the beacon doesn't respawn every marine like how it did in NS1.
My idea would be to have another obs ability called Recall and change beacon to work similar to NS1.
Recall - Costs 10 tRes - Recalls all alive marines on the field back to the closest active CC of where this ob triggered it.
Beacon - Costs 25 tRes (To be adjusted) - Respawns and recalls all marines back to the closest active CC of where this ob triggered it.
Your throughts?
Comments
No one has campaigned for it to be fixed because marine turtling is already too effective due to other reasons.
Generally, 2 ns1 res ~= 1.5 ns2 tres, so 10 tres ns2 beacon isn't really off by that much.
Adding another, upgraded form of beacon i'm not instantly against, but i feel it needs a weakness as well as an advantage, I wouldn't want it be used as just a quick respawner. Maybe have a much longer cool down, or it "overloads" the Infantry portals so after an advanced beacon they don't start respawning marines for 30 seconds or something (fairly random number there ;p). Just so if you advanced beacon over normal beacon and you get whooped there's more risk. Or any other idea really, just something to increase the risk in line with the increased reward, i get it's more expensive but 15 res is like, some of a shotgun, and if you can revive 3 lmg people for less than 1 shotgun costs that's too good of a deal.
I unno, sounds like instant hive destroyer.
There's a real difference!
I always thought the beta days of beaconing worked exactly like how it did in NS1. It would beacon back to marine spawn regardless of where the obs was at.
I gotta agree with you on the other statement though. Ninja pg with beacon rush was a risky but rewarding strat.
Quite right - I just always mixed marine (or alien) start with spawn and vice versa a lot of the times.
It's not so much of a buff if it was implemented and adjusted properly.
i.e. You can not cancel a beacon, adjust the tRes cost, add requirements such as 2 CC's, add restrictions such as cooldowns, etc...
Aliens already have a very strong (early game) strat of spawning shift eggs anywhere on the field. They can also spam lerk spores before the beacon finishes to blind and damage the beaconed marines.
Its not hard to balance this by increasing the beacon cost or having it respawn only a fraction of the dead marines.
Personally, nerfing marines have never really solved the turtling issue. The solution is to give aliens a highly effective tier2/3 tech sieging ability equivalent to the ARC. This is why we never worry about alien turtles.
Although, your idea to have recall, and a seperate beacon that revives might work as long as the cost is significantly greater (and thus, is only justified in dire emergencies, and you have to keep 25 res open if you want to use it - thus discouraging overuse)
Also, one have to manage live / dead mates ratio. There is no miracle beacon to change a given situation and the way you can make profit out of it (opposite side), or get out of it (your side).
Type 1 "Recall" - teleports all ALIVE Marines to the tech point nearest to the Obs
Type 2 "Reinforce" - respawns all DEAD Marines at the tech point nearest to the Obs
I think there are good reasons to use any of those two. Both should have their own sound effect so players can hear the difference.
For balancing you could adjust the res cost for the different types, add a cooldown to the beacons (to prevent spamming), add a cooldown to the Obs (to prevent a combination of both types if this should be too powerful even with the res costs).
Alternatively I could think of an "overclock" ability for the IPs.
Commanders can basically spend some t-res on speeding up the time it take for the IP to "print" the next Marine. As an additional drawback the freshly spawned Marine could have reduced armor (or health) reflecting the IP skipping over parts of the printing process.
I have seen some cleverly placed obs catch aliens out on many occasions (as rarely do they look outside of the room for an obs).
It also removes the dependency on power for beacons to that tech point.
Spawning back dead marines is overkill, it can be hard enough dealing with having the current living marines suddenly appear in a base you have pushed into (and taken losses), having those marines you just killed instantly re-appearing give marines too much of an advantage.
In NS1 the beacon sent you back to original marine spawn...so the benefit was limited as it you could not use it to easily move marines around the map (you needed phase gates for that).
Beaconing does (unless something have changed) cause any marines in the spawning process to spawn...though not sure how this works when the tech point does not have IP's...I am guessing it doesn't which makes logical sense.
Marine beaconed in middle of spawning should do so as incompletes corrupted zombies ...
Legs only.
All very monty python and the holy grail....
I should hope not!
"Come back you cowards, I will bite you to death"
- partial or no refund of resources
- cancel sound played to all (including enemies)
[extra points to the dev if it sounds like the Millennium Falcon's hyper drive failing]
- cancel triggers a cool-down for using the obs again
I think all these drawbacks completely remove the ability to exploit it. A "fake" beacon would be easily recognizable by enemies, costs money, and cannot be easily followed by a real beacon.
How to add respawn to beacon without screwing up balance ...
- "beacon and respawn" is a second type of beacon
- has an altered sound compared to regular beacon
- this new beacon costs more than a normal, maybe WAY more
- triggers a cool-down for using the obs again
Once again, the drawbacks keep the feature in check. Regular beacon still exits. It's easily identified by the enemy. It's not a turtle friendly due to cost. A winning team with a good economy gets another tool to end the game quicker.
Lastly, it actually favors aliens during certain times, like a siege attack. If the alien attack requires a full respawn of the marine team, the commander can no-longer scan the hive and it takes quite a chunk of the team resources away. There would be a proper risk-reward to using the feature.
Done and Done.
It's a poor meta game... And those suggestions sound complicated and unintuitive, Imo. A different sound would easily be distinguished, for instance.
What we have now works well enough.