Give higher level lifeforms a cap hit
CatCop
Join Date: 2003-08-28 Member: 20296Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-08-28 Member: 20296Members, Constellation
I have no idea how this would scale for beyond 6v6 play, so please look at this idea assuming you're playing a 6v6. If you cannot imagine that, please leave this thread and forget this was ever posted. Thanks. 
In case anyone doesn't go in the hive/command chair: both teams currently have a supply cap of /200. For aliens Crags, Shifts, Shades and drifters all have a hit on this cap limit. Nothing else though? I should know this, oh well.
Tie higher life forms to the supply cap and remove the supply hit by drifters [or lower it to 1] and remove the supply hit from upgrade structures (shifts/crages/shades) [or lower them all to 5].
For my hypothetical, entirely untested example, let’s say that the life forms cap hit is their cost right now in build 251. Also instead of the supply cap being /200 let’s say that alien hives provide /60 cap hit base and with each biomass upgrade provides /30 more cap space.
Here’s the base cap hits I’m going to work with, assuming that upgrade structures and drifters don’t have a hit on the cap space.
Skulks = 0/
Gorge = 5/
Lerk = 25/
Fade 40/
Onos 60/
So with 1 max biomass hive you could still have:
3 fades, 3 skulks = 120/120
2 fades, 1 lerk, 1 gorge, 2 skulks = 115/120
1 onos, 1 fade, 2 gorge = 110/120
With 2 max biomass hives you could have:
6 fades = 240/240
2 onos, 3 fades, 1 skulk = 240/240
1 onos, 3 fades, 1 lerk, 2 gorges = 215/240
It could accomplish a few things, which result in the boring fade ball meta that is build 251:
It might make the early game a bit more important, no longer can Aliens get dominated early on and still get 5 fades up ~8 minutes. That fade ball would limited to 3 fades, which would probably leave the aliens in a bit of a predicament which they deserve to be in and will remain in.
And yet a ~8 minute 5 fade ball is still possible. It just require the aliens to be aggressive expansionists and spending more res in a second hive/biomass upgrades. It would be the NS2 equivalent of getting up an early “hydralisk den” in SC2, you wouldn’t be able to sink your res into upgrades like shells/veils/shifts, but would be more focused on getting a particular unit up quickly. A more standard build, at least in theory, would produce a staggered fade ball.
I think it could be a good mod, especially for competitive play.
I also know that not being able to go gorge to heal a hive or bile down some arcs might be the worst, so maybe they could have a hit of 0 like a skulk?
Anyways, Flame/Feedback away.
In case anyone doesn't go in the hive/command chair: both teams currently have a supply cap of /200. For aliens Crags, Shifts, Shades and drifters all have a hit on this cap limit. Nothing else though? I should know this, oh well.
Tie higher life forms to the supply cap and remove the supply hit by drifters [or lower it to 1] and remove the supply hit from upgrade structures (shifts/crages/shades) [or lower them all to 5].
For my hypothetical, entirely untested example, let’s say that the life forms cap hit is their cost right now in build 251. Also instead of the supply cap being /200 let’s say that alien hives provide /60 cap hit base and with each biomass upgrade provides /30 more cap space.
Here’s the base cap hits I’m going to work with, assuming that upgrade structures and drifters don’t have a hit on the cap space.
Skulks = 0/
Gorge = 5/
Lerk = 25/
Fade 40/
Onos 60/
So with 1 max biomass hive you could still have:
3 fades, 3 skulks = 120/120
2 fades, 1 lerk, 1 gorge, 2 skulks = 115/120
1 onos, 1 fade, 2 gorge = 110/120
With 2 max biomass hives you could have:
6 fades = 240/240
2 onos, 3 fades, 1 skulk = 240/240
1 onos, 3 fades, 1 lerk, 2 gorges = 215/240
It could accomplish a few things, which result in the boring fade ball meta that is build 251:
It might make the early game a bit more important, no longer can Aliens get dominated early on and still get 5 fades up ~8 minutes. That fade ball would limited to 3 fades, which would probably leave the aliens in a bit of a predicament which they deserve to be in and will remain in.
And yet a ~8 minute 5 fade ball is still possible. It just require the aliens to be aggressive expansionists and spending more res in a second hive/biomass upgrades. It would be the NS2 equivalent of getting up an early “hydralisk den” in SC2, you wouldn’t be able to sink your res into upgrades like shells/veils/shifts, but would be more focused on getting a particular unit up quickly. A more standard build, at least in theory, would produce a staggered fade ball.
I think it could be a good mod, especially for competitive play.
I also know that not being able to go gorge to heal a hive or bile down some arcs might be the worst, so maybe they could have a hit of 0 like a skulk?
Anyways, Flame/Feedback away.
Comments
1) Makes a 1-hive fade ball dangerous for aliens
2) Makes the struggle for the second hive pivotal again. This excites me. Even if it's not the upgrades from the 2nd hive that gives aliens the advantage, it's the fade ball. I'd hope abilities are rearranged to make the 2nd hive even stronger as well, further taking away the chance of 4-5 fades being reasonable
Haha, "It's not a defect, it's a feature!".
But nah, I assume once a hive died you could be over your cap limit but obviously were maxed out in cap until you went back below the cap.
Plus if the Marines have a lot of Exo's???
If you can solve these issues in some way I wouldn't mind giving it a go.
Yes, I agree. This is a part of the 6v6 thing but not just entirely server size. I have no idea how this would work outside of a competitive format where teams are communicating and working together, I have no idea how this would play out in public servers. The idea was to help fix the stale competitive strategies. It could in fact be a tournament mode option, it would not be a mod that changes any damage/balance, just how life forms are put into play for aliens, and would then leave pub servers alone.
In public games, which is what i'm guessing your playing, it's not as much of a problem. Honestly this idea is for fixing the boring meta in competitive play mostly. However in 6v6 competitive everyone having the choice to evolve to fade just because they saved up the res is making games boring for all involved. Again, assuming your 6 people working together and communicating (as everyone should be in NS2) it just gives you a few more choices to make with your strategy moving forward in the game. Who's your best fade? Are we leaving cap space for an onos? Do we get a quick second hive so everyone can go fade because they all have the res?
But yes, unfortunately this might be terrible for public games for the reasons you talk about and I don't know how that could be fixed. In theory it just gives the aliens more important choices to make and puts more emphasis on the early game for the aliens. Right now the early game is pretty much a throwaway for aliens, it doesn't matter really, just effects the fade ball timing by a minute or two if the marines keep a RT or 2 down.
Notice that you get more cap space as you take hives and get biomass upgrades. If the marines are turtling and you have 3 tech points you could have 6 onos. (remember that this is only talking about 6v6 play and that i don't know how this would scale to larger servers, although i'm sure it's possible.)
Well that kind of takes away from the point of the cap, but not too much.
For one thing, there becomes little point to using the pres system because even if you're at 100 res you can't do anything but skulk because your Fades just won't die. And lets face it, most teams are going to use their supply cost on Fades (all 3 at once as well), which means it's going to be 3 skulks instead of 1 or none, and of course no gorges or lerks. Why bother when Lerks aren't as useful as Fades and skulks are more mobile and expendable than gorges?
It also places much more emphasis on the early game. The early game is of course important and had great weight on what happens later on, but it is not the single deciding factor. Even marines, for whom the early game is pretty crucial, are still able to carry on and change things around during the middle and late game. It places much more stress on the early game alien, which isn't really a problem. It's just how it's being applied. The focus shifts more on tech points and less on RTs. And now all people have to do is get 40 res and wait for their turn to Fade. The comm also wouldn't be able to drop lifeform eggs, meaning he'll cap out and have very little to spend res on, if anything at all.
A supply cap is a heavy handed approach to holding back the aliens. It doesn't feel natural. I feel that a shared res pool for the entire alien team does everything that this intends to do but better. It makes res hitting even more crucial and more effective, and it naturally staggers the fade ball instead of doing so in a rather artificial way. It's not a perfect system either, but I think it has good potential. The supply cap idea does as well, but I'm leaning more towards res pool.
I'm also not sure about pushing competitive and public play even farther apart. Players are already apprehensive about going competitive, and complicating it further by making a much different type of game will just make it harder for people to join up.
However I would suggest having two separate supply caps coexisting at the same time:
-The first one would be exactly the same as the current supply cap
-The second would be the one CatCop suggested.
Indeed, I think it is better to separate the khammander supply cap from the players' one. Otherwise it could be problematic. For instance the comm could get cap blocked if every one on the field goes onos/fade. Also, the players could be prevented from going Onos if the comm is spaming buildings.
My only concern about this system is that is can be frustrating if for instance you want to go onos but you can't because somebody else is already onos. In such circumstances you could be tempted to do everything possible to make the onos die so you could go onos yourself. Anyway, I know that this is what I would do :-)
Yeah, That's actually a good way to deal with the potential problem. I think the commander supply cap is purely to stop spam of drifters/structures. So sure, that actually makes a lot of sense and might as well stay in the game for the sake of public play.
Yeah, this might be a problem with public servers. It just means that you need to be communicating with your team and working together. But yeah, would suck for public + beyond 6v6. I'm sure there's a way to fix it beyond that, but just like NS2 is balanced for 6v6, I'm just looking at 6v6 play where players are working together as a team and not just #YOLONOS'ing all over the map.
shotgun = 20/
exo = 60/
etc.
The cap limit would increase with the number of command stations and [to be completed].
I don't think this is the appropriate fix for this problem. What about exos, for instance? Can marines have a full team of dual minigun exos with one base, while aliens are limited to one or two onos?
Most all-exo teams I have seen lost shortly after, so probably yes
Ah well I guess it makes sense for what it is for then and yes I mostly Play Pub Games normally the 32 server ha.
1) It discourages rookies to play higher lifeforms, as pros wouldn't want them to, because they want/have to pwn by themselves.
2) It makes turtles even harder to break.
If aliens are turtle-ing Aliens will only have 1 hive and room for a limited number of life forms = easier to break.
If marines are turtle-ing Aliens will have 3-4 hives and have unlimited life forms, which would make that turtle just as easy/hard to break as always.
and i think barbbler also needs to cap point.
Hi,
I think you may have missed the opening line in this thread....
Unless you're suggesting this should be in some sort of pro mod, unfortunately you have to figure that part out to make this work if it were to ever be implemented into the real game. @F0rdPrefect's point is totally valid, and his points are some of the biggest issues that would have to be resolved. There is no point in just pretending higher player counts don't exist.
I'm not trying to say that it shouldn't work for larger player counts. However, as someone who does not really play on large player count servers it is not really in my realm of understanding to balance it for bigger servers. Do you play on these larger servers? Maybe if you read the idea and thought it had some validity you could provide some insight on how to make it work? Or maybe if you didn't like the idea you could explain why it's not a good idea. This is why I brought it to a forum and why I also added a disclaimer that I don't know how this would balance for larger servers
There are already rookie servers and combat mod to learn higher life forms. On top of that if a bad player goes fade, well they are bad so they will die quicker right? Plus I'm sure the "pro" player isn't going to be the last one to go fade and miss out. Plus if this was to scale accordingly at 1 hive w/ max bio then on large servers there would be ample slots for fade.
How? If marines are turtling and down to one base, the end game would be no different than it is now as everyone could already go fade at 2 hives with max biomass. \
This is to stagger out the initial fade zerg and make aliens more rewarding for being aggressive and less forgiving on mistakes.
How do you communicate this to new players? Also, I don't think a game should require a mod to learn the lifeforms properly.
Yes. But maybe the bad player can't be fade in the first place, because the better player evolved first. If he does evolve first, though, there will be a lot of flaming because the bad player is wasting the team's potential. If there's one slot for fades, would you want a bad or a good player filling it?
This could even go as far as players discouraging newbies to use higher lifeforms.
Sorry, I'm not really sure what you want to say with this sentence
If there are enough slots, you have exactly what you are trying to avoid.
Either you can't spam lifeforms and therefore have a harder time to break the turtle, or there are enough slots for everyone to use the lifeform they want - which is exactly what you try to avoid here.
Communicate what exactly? That a server is rookie friendly? Well I imagine you might use green text and within the title say something to affect of being noob friendly? In regards to combat - I wasn't suggesting such, but I'm saying the ability to get good with any alien class is extraordinarily easier with combat mode being available.
I just really don't see this happening though. In a 9v9, I can't even recall 8 people wanting to go fade all at the same time. People drop in and drop out randomly. Most often people don't all have the same amount of res at the same time any how.
I doubt a noob is going to beat an experienced player who knows what is going on every min of the game at getting fade first is what I was trying to imply.
OP is in regards to 6v6, where every engagement is not as forgiving (as your typical pub), couple this with the difficultly it is to manage a 4+ fade ball as 5 marines on top of either advancing, building, harassing. Trying to adjust the marine to fade ratio, which is crucial in smaller games.
At 2 hives with full bio mass your whole team can go fade. If the marines are turtling I would assume you have 3 bases with full biomass - if you go by 3 hives with full bio mass equal 360 life form cap and onos equaling 60 life form res, well then your whole team would be able to go onos.... 360/60=6???