Lets try 3 hydras per room for the gorge! They still cost pres and stuff, so why not really.
Or maybe one powerful hydra (dmg/hp) per room.. or something. I want to place more stuff \o/
And some weird suggestions..
What if the hydra either gave map vision or a short parasite that lasts for about.. 10 secs or so?
Could potentially open up more fun hydra placements instead of hydra farms by the rts.
And could help new players to know where to gather up and attack marines.
And they wouldnt be as good as the old invis drifters are (because they arent invis) but could still fill a good function. Also if it gave either of these things they could still be useful even after marines get some ups and blast them down with one mag while barely taking any damage.
Shameless repost from the thread: New Alien Khammander management
The evolution chamber in the beta-test is better than researching upgrades in single chambers, but I would question if it is actually necessary to upgrade single classes after you already got the biomass upgrade. I would rather upgrade/unlock different tiers of abilitys than different classes, just so no player in my team gets put into a disadvantage. I dont want to get stuck with no upgrades as lerk just because my khamm thinks they suck and has other priorities.
I like to complare the biomass evolution to getting to a new age in the Age of Empires series. I would suggest to keep the biomass-system to upgrade and unlock abilitys. An idea I had (probably nothing new) was to use the evolution-chamber for small upgrades. There are so many possibilties, like increased res-generation by rt, more persistant parasites or +5% on carapace.. this for example can give some good ideas. Nothing gamebraking, just to give the khamm some more options if he wants to tech instead of expanding or building units.
Other than that: Try to keep it simple and I wish there was a better way to find and select different units on the battlefiled
And some weird suggestions..
What if the hydra either gave map vision or a short parasite that lasts for about.. 10 secs or so?
Could potentially open up more fun hydra placements instead of hydra farms by the rts.
And could help new players to know where to gather up and attack marines.
And they wouldnt be as good as the old invis drifters are (because they arent invis) but could still fill a good function. Also if it gave either of these things they could still be useful even after marines get some ups and blast them down with one mag while barely taking any damage.
I'd like a dedicated Gorge-placed structure for scouting then. One that does not attack but which shows all marines in its line of sight on the alien minimap (or perhaps even in Hive Sight). And in return should it not show up on the marine minimap unless scanned.
I dislike the whole system of "red dot appears on HUD minimap, even though that player may not actually have spotted the enemy yet" in a somewhat stealth-based game in general.
The way Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter went about it was a bit nicer: Enemies that are visible to your team mates show up on your map. Enemies that are only visible to you don't show up on your map.
What you're describing is basically a gorge placed, invicible, drifter.
We've had invicible drifters before, they didn't work.
The thought process I had behind using the hydras to scout were that while they could puncture some armor before heading in to the room it would be guarding, it would also spot the marines for the aliens which would make grouping up to defend a strong RT push easier.
Not sure about the consequences this could have on comp play, but I think it would probably help even out pubs since the biggest problems aliens are having is actually grouping up and killing stuff instead of soloing.
With the damage/hp numbers, vision range, etc tweaked to a good amount I think this could greatly improve pub play without having to make aliens too strong and completely break competitive play.
Even though Im kind of leaning towards having one stronger hydra placed, as opposed to having 3 total. It should be counterable quite easily, but still ping alien interest that there is an impending attack somewhere.
@Sewlek would you consider trying a different method to keep the alien comm in the chair other than make him res locked? I honestly feel like this was a fix the symptom not the issue "fix". Many people including competitive comms disagree with this and for good reason
NarfwakJoin Date: 2002-11-02Member: 5258Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica PT Lead, NS2 Community Developer
Regarding some of the most recent changes:
- Fix for cyst placement is great, obviously.
- Pulse grenade proximity trigger is a huge boost to effectiveness. I can actually see myself wanting to use these against fades and lerks now. Definitely would love to see this in live asap.
- Cyst lighting stuff is rad as hell, but needs some tweaks. Light sources don't seem to stay lit depending on player distance and might be a bit too dim in general.
- Rooms are still fully lit until power nodes are built and then destroyed, which seems a bit weird. Not sure what the best solution for this is.
- Not really sure what to think of evo chamber system since we didn't actually play a game.
- Odd changes to drifters and alien building systems, but again since we didn't actually play a game I can't give reasonable feedback.
What you're describing is basically a gorge placed, invicible, drifter.
We've had invicible drifters before, they didn't work.
How would it be like an invincible Drifter?
It's stationary and it's still a placed structure, which means it can be found and shot. And if marines want to make sure to not be watched, they can just scan the area for it.
The fact that it requires line of sight to marines to spot them and needs to be reachable by the Gorge limits the number of places where you can put it effectively.
@Sewlek would you consider trying a different method to keep the alien comm in the chair other than make him res locked? I honestly feel like this was a fix the symptom not the issue "fix". Many people including competitive comms disagree with this and for good reason
Can you list those good reasons? It would help so everyone can understand why you think the commander should have pres
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited September 2013
Passive cloaking could be returned to Drifters, since they are still described as enemy detectors, and cannot build anymore.
Lights from alien structures should have specular switched off. They lights appear to be blocked off by structures themselves easily.
Personal resource gain changes (RFK and delayed node income) should be fun to test. Both teams will be encouraged to spend personal resources and players may be able to regain some of the costs of grenades and mines (as well as Hydras). Defending (newly) captured resource nodes will become even more important.
@Sewlek would you consider trying a different method to keep the alien comm in the chair other than make him res locked? I honestly feel like this was a fix the symptom not the issue "fix". Many people including competitive comms disagree with this and for good reason
Can you list those good reasons? It would help so everyone can understand why you think the commander should have pres
At the moment I don't enjoy the seemingly inactive alien commanding. It was fun when I could go gorge and help my team more than waiting in the hive for enough res to do anything. Now I understand if people thought that a gorge comm was OP, but if they made the alien comm more interactive then I wouldn't feel like getting out of the hive was more useful for my team. Then people feel the need to bring up drifters but I don't enjoy playing moba games, so that doesn't do it for me either. I enjoyed 250 alien commanding and it just upsets me that it changed, for what I feel, little reason. Please do the same and give me a reason they shouldn't have pres.
Aliens have the mobility to scout so much of the map already, I'm very much against the return of invisible drifters. it encourages lazy play for no good reason.
The all in one upgrade idea should be scrapped. @king_yo post about it talked about the reasons why I don't think it works.
The idea of an alien arms lab simplifies the evolutions enough that boiling it down into an upgraded or not upgraded binary isn't needed. It also makes more sense than each life form having some arbitrary tie to the support structures. Upgrade whip for leap and xenocide ... ?
Instead of the Fade Upgrade, or the Gorge Upgrade being available right at the beginning of the game (a lot of alien comm noob traps at the moment) we should go back to life form evolutions being individually researched at this alien arms lab as the required biomass level is reached.
Really it's the same system as having it on the hive, except there is a tres cost of the arms lab chamber its self and the risk of the marines taking it down. Which I like.
Can encourage research of evolutions at separate arms lab chambers by having the evolutions tied to the one its researched at. If you lose 1 arms lab chamber with all your evolutions you lose all of them. Or it could follow the same rules as the marines arms lab I guess. That's boring though.
I still think the best way to handle evolutions if to have them unlock automatically with bio levels and have bio be what is researched at a chamber instead of the hive. Although I can appreciate that choosing life form evolutions is one of the few impactful decisions an alien commander can do during a round.
Theory crafting off the change log, it seems to me that spamming res is more viable than ever with the quicker build time and cyst spread rate increase. But I do like them costing more. Really don't like no pres for 60 seconds from an extractor rule, I'm sure there's more elegant solution to whatever this is trying to address (killing extractors more damaging to pres income, rfk increase pres variation more) than more exceptions and weird timers.
Good to see this mod getting attention again, it's a really nice way to test stuff and I encourage anyone wanting to improve NS2 to play on the BT servers and give feedback good or bad.
@Sewlek would you consider trying a different method to keep the alien comm in the chair other than make him res locked? I honestly feel like this was a fix the symptom not the issue "fix". Many people including competitive comms disagree with this and for good reason
Can you list those good reasons? It would help so everyone can understand why you think the commander should have pres
At the moment I don't enjoy the seemingly inactive alien commanding. It was fun when I could go gorge and help my team more than waiting in the hive for enough res to do anything. Now I understand if people thought that a gorge comm was OP, but if they made the alien comm more interactive then I wouldn't feel like getting out of the hive was more useful for my team. Then people feel the need to bring up drifters but I don't enjoy playing moba games, so that doesn't do it for me either. I enjoyed 250 alien commanding and it just upsets me that it changed, for what I feel, little reason. Please do the same and give me a reason they shouldn't have pres.
Having 1 player without pres helps against the fade ball, because you need another player to go gorge in the beginning for fast and safe expansion.
I know what you mean though, gorging as comm made it a little more interesting.
With a 35 tres investment you can still go gorge, but without pres it's practically not worth it.
While the current "upgrades on chambers" seems like a band-aid it does force whip placement. I would love to make whips useful again (before late game whip rush). So they are viable throughout the whole game. But this is difficult. Upgrades will always be the better investment over the chambers. Don't have a solution here.
But it pictures the "leap on whip" not that bad at all. The only downside seems to be that it doesn't "feel" right.
Other than that, the kham is really shallow again. No choices at all. Biomass and Lifeform upgrades are a nobrainer. You want them anyway. Even the order seems to be given to some degree. Putting them on an extra chamber won't change that.
I always liked how you had some variety in the types of commanders on alien side. Some would stay in the hive for 99% of the time and do a lot of drifter micro, others would hop out the hive regularly and help out on the field, either as a skulk or as a battlegorge. I've even seen lerk commanders. I kinda miss that now. Also, doing fast mine (or grenade) research to deal with early base rushes is not as helpful when the commander can't purchase anything.
Man I can't figure out at all how these changes are going to pan out but they sound really fun. If you have two teams harassing the hell out of each other pres generation is going to be gimpy compared to what you get from kills, which seems like a pretty solid way to prevent lifeform/shotgun explosions. If the teams are evenly matched then you have a huge incentive to get your big guns out ASAP, but then you don't get to benefit from the synergistic advantage of having a big deadly ball that you can just roll over the other team with at very low risk of losing your pres investment. I like the fact that R4K is persistently getting re-tried in different permutations. Is it possible to split the res for a kill more evenly between kill participants similar to how points are now divided up? That might make it slightly less punishing for newer players while still rewarding good play (and more importantly, giving the same incentive to keep yourself alive)
I personally would like to see the idea of the hive mind commander to be implemented, meaning that you can enter the khammander chair at any position of the map, leaving you vulnerable. Maybe as a research?
Since alien commanding is already just kind of a part time job, you would have the flexibility to actively help your team. "Lore" -wise, it also makes sense that you are not bound to sit in the hive as an alien.
Hive khammanders would then gain pres again, which field commanders wouldn't (still starting with 0 pres though).
Switch fade's Stab and Vortex around, so you get stab first. It's a really fun ability which sadly doesn't get much use as it's so late in the tech. Also, it's hard to use without vortex as it leaves you really vulnerable when used.
Vortex on the other hand is a really powerful ability as you can use it to teleport back to the battlefield after a healing trip to the hive, saving you a ton of time. I think it's kind of boring though, when used in combat with the normal swipe.
Getting stab without vortex could give rise to interesting combat situations where you actually have the drawback of stab's slow execution (without a way out with vortex), and have to weigh the options when to use it.
(might gimp the fades somewhat though in the midgame, when the shotties are out and vortex could come in handy when taking out PGs).
Man I can't figure out at all how these changes are going to pan out but they sound really fun. If you have two teams harassing the hell out of each other pres generation is going to be gimpy compared to what you get from kills, which seems like a pretty solid way to prevent lifeform/shotgun explosions. If the teams are evenly matched then you have a huge incentive to get your big guns out ASAP, but then you don't get to benefit from the synergistic advantage of having a big deadly ball that you can just roll over the other team with at very low risk of losing your pres investment. I like the fact that R4K is persistently getting re-tried in different permutations. Is it possible to split the res for a kill more evenly between kill participants similar to how points are now divided up? That might make it slightly less punishing for newer players while still rewarding good play (and more importantly, giving the same incentive to keep yourself alive)
thats how it works atm.
added a new change today, which is quite possible to make it into the official game:
- aliens can now choose their spawn position by clicking on the minimap
I always liked how you had some variety in the types of commanders on alien side. Some would stay in the hive for 99% of the time and do a lot of drifter micro, others would hop out the hive regularly and help out on the field, either as a skulk or as a battlegorge. I've even seen lerk commanders. I kinda miss that now. Also, doing fast mine (or grenade) research to deal with early base rushes is not as helpful when the commander can't purchase anything.
In any case, I'm really liking the changelog.
Yeah. And it also makes it incredibly hard to carry a rookie team if you are the only guy who knows his stuff. I still managed to pull it off somehow yesterday and turned a certain loss into a win, but it took a lot because I had to wait several minutes outside of the Hive as Gorge, doing nothing but waiting for the countdown on the pres gain to go away so I could accumulate enough res for two Gorge Tunnel entrances.
No other player would go to the location of a new Hive drop either or would place tunnels across the map, so it's something I had to do. Whips also prove to be extremely useful when echoed in for surprises against enemies trying to take down the growing, undefended Hive.
Man I can't figure out at all how these changes are going to pan out but they sound really fun. If you have two teams harassing the hell out of each other pres generation is going to be gimpy compared to what you get from kills, which seems like a pretty solid way to prevent lifeform/shotgun explosions. If the teams are evenly matched then you have a huge incentive to get your big guns out ASAP, but then you don't get to benefit from the synergistic advantage of having a big deadly ball that you can just roll over the other team with at very low risk of losing your pres investment. I like the fact that R4K is persistently getting re-tried in different permutations. Is it possible to split the res for a kill more evenly between kill participants similar to how points are now divided up? That might make it slightly less punishing for newer players while still rewarding good play (and more importantly, giving the same incentive to keep yourself alive)
thats how it works atm.
added a new change today, which is quite possible to make it into the official game:
- aliens can now choose their spawn position by clicking on the minimap
Would it be feasible to do a similar thing for marines? It's not uncommon to see marines build IPs at more than one tech point once they build a CC there.
Comments
Or maybe one powerful hydra (dmg/hp) per room.. or something. I want to place more stuff \o/
And some weird suggestions..
What if the hydra either gave map vision or a short parasite that lasts for about.. 10 secs or so?
Could potentially open up more fun hydra placements instead of hydra farms by the rts.
And could help new players to know where to gather up and attack marines.
And they wouldnt be as good as the old invis drifters are (because they arent invis) but could still fill a good function. Also if it gave either of these things they could still be useful even after marines get some ups and blast them down with one mag while barely taking any damage.
Kind of like the sound of this
The evolution chamber in the beta-test is better than researching upgrades in single chambers, but I would question if it is actually necessary to upgrade single classes after you already got the biomass upgrade. I would rather upgrade/unlock different tiers of abilitys than different classes, just so no player in my team gets put into a disadvantage. I dont want to get stuck with no upgrades as lerk just because my khamm thinks they suck and has other priorities.
I like to complare the biomass evolution to getting to a new age in the Age of Empires series. I would suggest to keep the biomass-system to upgrade and unlock abilitys. An idea I had (probably nothing new) was to use the evolution-chamber for small upgrades. There are so many possibilties, like increased res-generation by rt, more persistant parasites or +5% on carapace.. this for example can give some good ideas. Nothing gamebraking, just to give the khamm some more options if he wants to tech instead of expanding or building units.
Other than that: Try to keep it simple and I wish there was a better way to find and select different units on the battlefiled
I'd like a dedicated Gorge-placed structure for scouting then. One that does not attack but which shows all marines in its line of sight on the alien minimap (or perhaps even in Hive Sight). And in return should it not show up on the marine minimap unless scanned.
I dislike the whole system of "red dot appears on HUD minimap, even though that player may not actually have spotted the enemy yet" in a somewhat stealth-based game in general.
The way Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter went about it was a bit nicer: Enemies that are visible to your team mates show up on your map. Enemies that are only visible to you don't show up on your map.
We've had invicible drifters before, they didn't work.
The thought process I had behind using the hydras to scout were that while they could puncture some armor before heading in to the room it would be guarding, it would also spot the marines for the aliens which would make grouping up to defend a strong RT push easier.
Not sure about the consequences this could have on comp play, but I think it would probably help even out pubs since the biggest problems aliens are having is actually grouping up and killing stuff instead of soloing.
With the damage/hp numbers, vision range, etc tweaked to a good amount I think this could greatly improve pub play without having to make aliens too strong and completely break competitive play.
Even though Im kind of leaning towards having one stronger hydra placed, as opposed to having 3 total. It should be counterable quite easily, but still ping alien interest that there is an impending attack somewhere.
I don't know, it was just a thought.
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/131949/rework-the-power-node-system-lighting#latest
i can add it
- Fix for cyst placement is great, obviously.
- Pulse grenade proximity trigger is a huge boost to effectiveness. I can actually see myself wanting to use these against fades and lerks now. Definitely would love to see this in live asap.
- Cyst lighting stuff is rad as hell, but needs some tweaks. Light sources don't seem to stay lit depending on player distance and might be a bit too dim in general.
- Rooms are still fully lit until power nodes are built and then destroyed, which seems a bit weird. Not sure what the best solution for this is.
- Not really sure what to think of evo chamber system since we didn't actually play a game.
- Odd changes to drifters and alien building systems, but again since we didn't actually play a game I can't give reasonable feedback.
How would it be like an invincible Drifter?
It's stationary and it's still a placed structure, which means it can be found and shot. And if marines want to make sure to not be watched, they can just scan the area for it.
The fact that it requires line of sight to marines to spot them and needs to be reachable by the Gorge limits the number of places where you can put it effectively.
Can you list those good reasons? It would help so everyone can understand why you think the commander should have pres
Lights from alien structures should have specular switched off. They lights appear to be blocked off by structures themselves easily.
Personal resource gain changes (RFK and delayed node income) should be fun to test. Both teams will be encouraged to spend personal resources and players may be able to regain some of the costs of grenades and mines (as well as Hydras). Defending (newly) captured resource nodes will become even more important.
At the moment I don't enjoy the seemingly inactive alien commanding. It was fun when I could go gorge and help my team more than waiting in the hive for enough res to do anything. Now I understand if people thought that a gorge comm was OP, but if they made the alien comm more interactive then I wouldn't feel like getting out of the hive was more useful for my team. Then people feel the need to bring up drifters but I don't enjoy playing moba games, so that doesn't do it for me either. I enjoyed 250 alien commanding and it just upsets me that it changed, for what I feel, little reason. Please do the same and give me a reason they shouldn't have pres.
It can scout marines without being invisible.
It has a tonne of hp
It has no turn deacceleration
It moves like this.
Aliens have the mobility to scout so much of the map already, I'm very much against the return of invisible drifters. it encourages lazy play for no good reason.
The all in one upgrade idea should be scrapped. @king_yo post about it talked about the reasons why I don't think it works.
The idea of an alien arms lab simplifies the evolutions enough that boiling it down into an upgraded or not upgraded binary isn't needed. It also makes more sense than each life form having some arbitrary tie to the support structures. Upgrade whip for leap and xenocide ... ?
Instead of the Fade Upgrade, or the Gorge Upgrade being available right at the beginning of the game (a lot of alien comm noob traps at the moment) we should go back to life form evolutions being individually researched at this alien arms lab as the required biomass level is reached.
Really it's the same system as having it on the hive, except there is a tres cost of the arms lab chamber its self and the risk of the marines taking it down. Which I like.
Can encourage research of evolutions at separate arms lab chambers by having the evolutions tied to the one its researched at. If you lose 1 arms lab chamber with all your evolutions you lose all of them. Or it could follow the same rules as the marines arms lab I guess. That's boring though.
I still think the best way to handle evolutions if to have them unlock automatically with bio levels and have bio be what is researched at a chamber instead of the hive. Although I can appreciate that choosing life form evolutions is one of the few impactful decisions an alien commander can do during a round.
Theory crafting off the change log, it seems to me that spamming res is more viable than ever with the quicker build time and cyst spread rate increase. But I do like them costing more. Really don't like no pres for 60 seconds from an extractor rule, I'm sure there's more elegant solution to whatever this is trying to address (killing extractors more damaging to pres income, rfk increase pres variation more) than more exceptions and weird timers.
Good to see this mod getting attention again, it's a really nice way to test stuff and I encourage anyone wanting to improve NS2 to play on the BT servers and give feedback good or bad.
Having 1 player without pres helps against the fade ball, because you need another player to go gorge in the beginning for fast and safe expansion.
I know what you mean though, gorging as comm made it a little more interesting.
With a 35 tres investment you can still go gorge, but without pres it's practically not worth it.
But it pictures the "leap on whip" not that bad at all. The only downside seems to be that it doesn't "feel" right.
Other than that, the kham is really shallow again. No choices at all. Biomass and Lifeform upgrades are a nobrainer. You want them anyway. Even the order seems to be given to some degree. Putting them on an extra chamber won't change that.
In any case, I'm really liking the changelog.
Since alien commanding is already just kind of a part time job, you would have the flexibility to actively help your team. "Lore" -wise, it also makes sense that you are not bound to sit in the hive as an alien.
Hive khammanders would then gain pres again, which field commanders wouldn't (still starting with 0 pres though).
Switch fade's Stab and Vortex around, so you get stab first. It's a really fun ability which sadly doesn't get much use as it's so late in the tech. Also, it's hard to use without vortex as it leaves you really vulnerable when used.
Vortex on the other hand is a really powerful ability as you can use it to teleport back to the battlefield after a healing trip to the hive, saving you a ton of time. I think it's kind of boring though, when used in combat with the normal swipe.
Getting stab without vortex could give rise to interesting combat situations where you actually have the drawback of stab's slow execution (without a way out with vortex), and have to weigh the options when to use it.
(might gimp the fades somewhat though in the midgame, when the shotties are out and vortex could come in handy when taking out PGs).
thats how it works atm.
added a new change today, which is quite possible to make it into the official game:
Yeah. And it also makes it incredibly hard to carry a rookie team if you are the only guy who knows his stuff. I still managed to pull it off somehow yesterday and turned a certain loss into a win, but it took a lot because I had to wait several minutes outside of the Hive as Gorge, doing nothing but waiting for the countdown on the pres gain to go away so I could accumulate enough res for two Gorge Tunnel entrances.
No other player would go to the location of a new Hive drop either or would place tunnels across the map, so it's something I had to do. Whips also prove to be extremely useful when echoed in for surprises against enemies trying to take down the growing, undefended Hive.
Would it be feasible to do a similar thing for marines? It's not uncommon to see marines build IPs at more than one tech point once they build a CC there. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure (like 99%) that they can in the live build. I've only gone fade, like, once this weekend, though.
Step stab definitely does work.