I was thinking about an ability called "symbiosis", the evolution chamber can attach to a structure (crag, hydra, shade etc) and increases the effectiveness of that structures passive ability.
I think Symbiosis would be better as an AoE effect.
Giving the Evo chamber the ability to attach to other structures introduces an entirely new, unfamiliar, element to the Khammanding experience.
Is contamination here to stay? I love it as kamm, but it is OP.
Playing mineshaft yesterday, and while we had a strong start, we were getting rolled deposit and cave less then 50% and are team was barley holding them back slowly losing ground(just a matter of time). I had 100+ res in dropped 10 whips misted them to bombard, and started echoing. I echoed 5 whips on to power node in operations and 5 whips on power node in repair.... Boom power out no upgrades no spawning and GG.... Could they have beaconed, sure but 1 of their bases was going to die (as soon as the power went down bombard kicked in an levelled their bases)
This was pub on a 10v10 so I know it's not what the game is balanced for but, it still seems to need a little tweaking.
Contamination isn't OP, the game is designed so marines hold either 2 tech points and deny a 3rd, or hold 3. If aliens have 3 hives you're losing already.
If marines fail at denying aliens a 3rd tech point, and don't manage to make a succesful push on one of your hives by the time you get to 9 biomass and +- 100 tres, I don't see them winning anyway, and it's probably best you have contamination to prevent endless marine turtles.
It's not like the win condition with contaminate is just "get 3 hives" it's "get 3 hives with max biomass and a huge stack of whips". Even then base arcs, exos, flamethrowers and GLs can deal with it.
Sewlek, have you considered adding a biomass multiplier to things other than life-form HP? Perhaps applying it (carefully) to alien abilities could help the situation where some things are OP in the early game, or Worthless in the late game.
Bile bomb damage/splash radius multiplier, umbra protection multiplier, bone shield energy consumption multiplier, stomp dmg/distance multiplier, babbler health multiplier, blink/shadow step energy consumption multiplier. I know it would be costly in development time to get in, but perhaps it will resolve some issues, and bring in some interesting play for alien. I think it goes in the right direction as everything else has moved towards alien scaling (health biomass scaling and # of upgrade structure scaling).
Biomass scaling on babbler health is a very good suggestion IMO. I'd be careful messing with energy costs (you risk making the choice between celerity and adren redundant), stick to hp and maybe the damage or AoE of some abilities.
yeah im going to stick with the evolution chamber for now. however, its difficult to justify the cost / artists time with something as boring as this so this thing needs to do more than just be an "research station". i was thinking about an ability called "symbiosis", the evolution chamber can attach to a structure (crag, hydra, shade etc) and increases the effectiveness of that structures passive ability. so a crag would simply heal more then (good opportunity to create a more interesting ability than heal wave), hydras more accurate / higher damage etc., and in exchange, the evolution chamber researches faster.
the question is if all structures can be used (resource tower generates more res, hive heals faster??) or exclude those 2 (since you anyway have those structures and I would like to indirectly promote usage of crag / shade etc)
Symbiosis would have to work anywhere on the map, provided the chamber is on infestation of course (exclude hydras from that requirement?). Then it would be useful, otherwise if it had to be right next to it it wouldn't be worth the cost. My thoughts:
Shade: Ink range doubles, and lasts twice as long.
Crag: Heal-wave range doubles, same with healing rate
Shift: Echo-use range doubles
Hydra: Hydras fire faster
etc..
Although if it were like that, then a commander would just keep setting off ink or heal wave safely in base to speed research. You could just have it spawn a small army of commander controlled babblers :P
Does every Khamm structure need an ability? Is there a rational reason why things can't just occupy res and enable things for the Khamm to do? Just let it enable upgrades! That alone is plenty of reason to build it, and allows it to be balanced against other structures that offer buildings as opposed to upgrades. Another thing: by introducing a structure for only researching upgrades, you can lower research costs and increase research times, thus balancing against the evolution chambers' own costs and construction times. Kind of like dual armories, but with more options. That is plenty interesting by itself.
This is like saying that armories on the marines' side needs an ability too.
I would like to see some sort of Matureing infestation, it should spread out and grow structures like the ones that can be found in the gorgetunnels, this could give the Aliens a bit more cover, especially in large rooms(it would also look awsome).
My biggest concern is how vulnerable the evolution chamber could turn out to be. Currently, if you lose all of the buildings associated with a life form upgrade, you lose the upgrade. Somewhat vulnerable, but not as vulnerable as spurs/shells/veils. However, if I've got all my upgrades in this one basket, and it gets popped, my whole team suddenly loses the ability to do anything. Hopefully the chamber won't be so expensive, and symbiosis will be powerful enough to encourage Khamms to build enough to keep one commando from neutering the entire alien team.
Symbiosis sounds like a cool idea, but I would advise against having the evolution chamber just attach to other things. That's an unfamilar mechanic and it seems too clunky/unintuitive to introduce for just one ability. Simply have it work as an AOE thing, upgrading chambers around it. No need to have the hive and harvester affected by it, simply have it affect crags/shifts/shades/whips. Crag - more healing (think of a new ability other than heal wave), Shift - faster regen, Whip - more health/more damage, Shade - not actually sure what to do to buff the shade, maybe make it maintain cloak even with a scan? That might be too OP. If you want have hydras affected too, although I think it makes more sense for khamm structures to interact only with other khamm structures.
I also love Simba's suggestion of ability scaling... At the start of the game aliens were fully binary (either you had x or you didn't) while marines scaled with arms labs. Now with biomass and multiple upgrade chambers aliens are moving towards scaling tech as well. It could work out really well to have abilities get better with higher amounts of biomass, preventing anything from ever being too powerful or too useless at any point of the game. Heck, if done perfectly this could even potentially allow abilities like Stab/Stomp to be researched at 1 hive without it being completely game-breaking.
My ideas for scaling variables are as follows (could be just one or multiples depending on what works best for balance)
Leap - energy cost
Xenocide - damage (at full biomass one-hits a3 rines)
Babblers - health/damage
Bile Bomb - damage
Webs - length of slowdown effect (?)
Umbra - resistance to incoming damage
Spores - damage
Shadowstep - energy cost
Vortex - energy cost (?)
Stab - energy cost/length of animation/damage
Charge - speed/energy cost
Boneshield - energy cost (maybe let onos move slowly at higher levels?)
Stomp - incorporate damage numbers at higher levels (at low levels no damage is done, just stuns)
I really like the symbiosis idea. Perhaps you could keep some of the idea of the current build in that, when in proximity to certain structures, you can either:
- research those particular traits (with options shade to fade, skulk requiring no attachment, and gorge attachment to the hive),
- or another option, to at least research certain traits much faster (kinda like how drifters build).
You could also tie it to biomass whereby the biomass increase morphs the structure visually in some way.
From an artistic point of view it would be cool to see some sort of tendrils creeping out of the chamber over infestation and attaching itself to structures. In terms of making it such an important structure there are three thoughts I had:
- Maybe the more structures it is attached to, the greater its health and armour, or
- You have to kill the attached structures (excluding hive) in order to damage it
- The more biomass, the stronger
I find it strange Symbiosis would affect defensive structures rather than the associated evolution structures (Shell, Veil, Spur), which could use some love being in the "build-and-forget" department.
But yeah, really like the techtree streamlining. The Evolution Chamber is much more accessible than research being on Crag, Shift, Shade, etc.
MouseThe Lighter Side of PessimismJoin Date: 2002-03-02Member: 263Members, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Oh and regarding the idea of the Evo chamber speeding up research when it's attached to a structure; it might be a better idea for research to speed up (by 50% or something) once the chamber has matured.
sewlek, do you have access to the shell model/building that was originally in, before the current shell model? i mean the one that looks like a broken egg. I dislike the current lifeform upgrade model. Lifeform upgrades should not be randomly tied to support structures (whips, shifts, crags, shades). Instead, why not make the broken egg things into the ability research structures, tie each one to a lifeform that is selectable after dropping?
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited September 2013
For the evolution chamber passive effect, I have a few simple ideas:
1. Automatic free Nutrient Mist in its surrounding area, to allow alien players and structures to mature/evolve faster near a Hive (It's natural for evolution chamber to speed up evolultion).
2. Add evolution chamber as a prerequisite of Nutrient Mist ability.
I think evolution chamber (and Arms Lab) is useful enough throughout the game (you cannot complete researching all the abilities until "end game"), so it doesn't require a complicated ability.
Additionally, I feel the current Arms Lab mechanism could be improved. Suddenly losing a massive amount of power without warning is never fun. I have always opposed the stripping of alien abilities, may it be from to the loss of a Hive or evolution chamber. Therefore, I advocate adding a passive effect to Arms Labs, as well as evolution chambers to encourage them to be placed on the outer edges of bases, where they face higher risks. The commander will then have to manage the risks (and rewards) of the placement of those structures.
yeah im going to stick with the evolution chamber for now. however, its difficult to justify the cost / artists time with something as boring as this so this thing needs to do more than just be an "research station". i was thinking about an ability called "symbiosis", the evolution chamber can attach to a structure (crag, hydra, shade etc) and increases the effectiveness of that structures passive ability. so a crag would simply heal more then (good opportunity to create a more interesting ability than heal wave), hydras more accurate / higher damage etc., and in exchange, the evolution chamber researches faster.
the question is if all structures can be used (resource tower generates more res, hive heals faster??) or exclude those 2 (since you anyway have those structures and I would like to indirectly promote usage of crag / shade etc)
Well, the cost I imagine is about the same as the arms lab... Honestly I think that sounds sort of convoluted, now we're right back to a structure that serves a particular purpose and also has ability research tacked on for some reason. That sort of thing is why the khamm is so confusing today - if a new chamber is too expensive I think ability upgrades on the hive were just fine.
Maybe you could tie the the evolution chamber to biomass in some way to reduce confusion. For example, instead of having biomass researchable in the hive, the evolution chamber itself IS the biomass.
As a result, you can only build 2 evolution chambers / biomass chambers per hive. OR alternatively you could build one chamber, which can then be upgraded like the advanced armory.
This means that you can see exactly what you can research with each chamber.
Sewlek, have you considered adding a biomass multiplier to things other than life-form HP? Perhaps applying it (carefully) to alien abilities could help the situation where some things are OP in the early game, or Worthless in the late game.
Bile bomb damage/splash radius multiplier, umbra protection multiplier, bone shield energy consumption multiplier, stomp dmg/distance multiplier, babbler health multiplier, blink/shadow step energy consumption multiplier. I know it would be costly in development time to get in, but perhaps it will resolve some issues, and bring in some interesting play for alien. I think it goes in the right direction as everything else has moved towards alien scaling (health biomass scaling and # of upgrade structure scaling).
This is an exceptional good idea! Every ability would be unbound from biomass! You could research xenocide at first, but with only 1 biomass the damage would be scaled down to be balanced vs armor 0 marines. Think about the possible combinations! The freedom the kham would get with this. With the right balancing and easy tweaks you could make every ability worth getting in the early OR the late-game. And they wouldn't be OP or useless.
Sure, it is a hell of a balancing workload until one got it right. But I think it would be totally worth it.
And screw "hidden modificators are bad"! In this case the pros would outreach the cons by light years.
I must say that I'm really worried by the idea that biomass increases all kind of different abilitys. People complain about hidden modificators for a reason!
There is the need for a streamlined alien techtree and simple functions for the different chambers.
For example: It makes no sense to unlock an ability first on biomass and then on another chamber aswell. That's why I also proposed thet some abilitys should be researchable on biomass and some on the evolution chamber, just so there is no redundancy.
And why do people complain about hidden modifiers? Because they couldn't predict the outcome of a situation. People should be able to guess what the enemy capabilities are to have a chance to react with the appropriate action.
In this, Abilities scaling with biomass is nothing else than marines scaling with A/W upgrades. You can guess one the time of the match and the number of hives, how powerful an ability is. Sure, you won't know what abilities they got until they use them, but this is the case since ages and was never a problem.
I also don't understand what you are trying to say with double unlock an upgrade. In case this is the state right now. You need to upgrade to the biomass level AND upgrade the lifeform. With the system from @simba you would only need to unlock the ability and thats it. Biomass would only strengthen their effect.
SewlekThe programmer previously known as SchimmelJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16247Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Developer
one would need to define for every single ability a way to scale with biomass (that is NOT hidden to the alien and the marines) plus you need to balance all abilities for all stages of the game.
those are huge cons, and no matter how you turn it, you basically shift some of the complexity of the tech tree (from the alien commander) to the field players, since they are now the ones who need to know how much biomass they have and how that affects their abilities (and every ability would be most likely affected in its own unique way).
some of them could be balanced quite easy (like xenocide changes damages) and would be untuitive, but others are more difficult (stomp). and the question is also if you want the default abilities to scale as well, otherwise thats inconsistent (bite and parasite).
i see the pros, but saying they outweight the cons by light years is an exaggeration.
What if you could imbue stuff from other chambers with a clear tooltip? Whip-imbue causes hydras to do more dmg to armor for example, shade-imbue gives small evasion (miss chance) or something along those lines? With an added visual like a hue change or a smallcloud like thing.
@Sewlek: Meh... Ok. I may be a bit over-excited about the idea. And yes, it is a lot of work (being a big con). But I really don't see the problems on the player side. You don't need to couple the default abilities to that system. (Thats why the health of the lifeform scales by biomass) and for all the unlockable abilities it doesn't feel weired to have, for example a longer range for leap, a bigger cloud of spores etc.
You also need to remember that hidden modifactors are in the game anyway (weapon and armor upgrades, health scaling by biomass). The other team can't see those values, but they can guess them by the time of the match. So the problem isn't purely with "hidden values". It is with predictability of the enemy. And this will remain possible (or better "guessable") because it is coupled to biomass.
And to the con of educating the player on how the ability scales. Why not simply name it in the tooltip of the evolve menu? I really don't think it is to difficult.
"Stomp: Grounding players in front of the onos at 3 - 8 meters (depending on biomass)"
"Leap: Allows the skulk to perform a fast forward jump over 5 - 15 meters (depends on biomass)"
"Babblers: Creates an egg of 3 babblers with health of 10hp - 50hp (depending on biomass)"
right now: just had a match 5 min ago... state of sewlek-balance-mod: UNPLAYABLE
not working:
* distress beacon
* arc deployment
situation:
* mineshaft
* base rush on 2 base in repair -> no beacon possible (obs + cc powered in repair) = impossible to hold base
* 6 arcs at deposit: impossible to deploy (clicked on deploy - nothing happened) -> all 6 arcs lost by gorge 30 seconds later
RIGHT NOW -> Bugs = unplayable with missing / bugged gameplay mechanics
EDIT: btw... i could deploy the arcs in main base, but 3 min later... i couldnt deploy any arcs
You also need to remember that hidden modifactors are in the game anyway (weapon and armor upgrades, health scaling by biomass). The other team can't see those values, but they can guess them by the time of the match. So the problem isn't purely with "hidden values". It is with predictability of the enemy. And this will remain possible (or better "guessable") because it is coupled to biomass..
I thought about that aswell for a while. I think the best solution would be to show those values like marine upgrades/biomass level in the scoreboard for both teams.
Comments
I think Symbiosis would be better as an AoE effect.
Giving the Evo chamber the ability to attach to other structures introduces an entirely new, unfamiliar, element to the Khammanding experience.
Playing mineshaft yesterday, and while we had a strong start, we were getting rolled deposit and cave less then 50% and are team was barley holding them back slowly losing ground(just a matter of time). I had 100+ res in dropped 10 whips misted them to bombard, and started echoing. I echoed 5 whips on to power node in operations and 5 whips on power node in repair.... Boom power out no upgrades no spawning and GG.... Could they have beaconed, sure but 1 of their bases was going to die (as soon as the power went down bombard kicked in an levelled their bases)
This was pub on a 10v10 so I know it's not what the game is balanced for but, it still seems to need a little tweaking.
Basically the COD knife.
Fade's finally been sorted after being OP for months, now the Onus is OP.
Bile bomb damage/splash radius multiplier, umbra protection multiplier, bone shield energy consumption multiplier, stomp dmg/distance multiplier, babbler health multiplier, blink/shadow step energy consumption multiplier. I know it would be costly in development time to get in, but perhaps it will resolve some issues, and bring in some interesting play for alien. I think it goes in the right direction as everything else has moved towards alien scaling (health biomass scaling and # of upgrade structure scaling).
Symbiosis would have to work anywhere on the map, provided the chamber is on infestation of course (exclude hydras from that requirement?). Then it would be useful, otherwise if it had to be right next to it it wouldn't be worth the cost. My thoughts:
Shade: Ink range doubles, and lasts twice as long.
Crag: Heal-wave range doubles, same with healing rate
Shift: Echo-use range doubles
Hydra: Hydras fire faster
etc..
Although if it were like that, then a commander would just keep setting off ink or heal wave safely in base to speed research. You could just have it spawn a small army of commander controlled babblers :P
This is like saying that armories on the marines' side needs an ability too.
I also love Simba's suggestion of ability scaling... At the start of the game aliens were fully binary (either you had x or you didn't) while marines scaled with arms labs. Now with biomass and multiple upgrade chambers aliens are moving towards scaling tech as well. It could work out really well to have abilities get better with higher amounts of biomass, preventing anything from ever being too powerful or too useless at any point of the game. Heck, if done perfectly this could even potentially allow abilities like Stab/Stomp to be researched at 1 hive without it being completely game-breaking.
My ideas for scaling variables are as follows (could be just one or multiples depending on what works best for balance)
Leap - energy cost
Xenocide - damage (at full biomass one-hits a3 rines)
Babblers - health/damage
Bile Bomb - damage
Webs - length of slowdown effect (?)
Umbra - resistance to incoming damage
Spores - damage
Shadowstep - energy cost
Vortex - energy cost (?)
Stab - energy cost/length of animation/damage
Charge - speed/energy cost
Boneshield - energy cost (maybe let onos move slowly at higher levels?)
Stomp - incorporate damage numbers at higher levels (at low levels no damage is done, just stuns)
- research those particular traits (with options shade to fade, skulk requiring no attachment, and gorge attachment to the hive),
- or another option, to at least research certain traits much faster (kinda like how drifters build).
You could also tie it to biomass whereby the biomass increase morphs the structure visually in some way.
From an artistic point of view it would be cool to see some sort of tendrils creeping out of the chamber over infestation and attaching itself to structures. In terms of making it such an important structure there are three thoughts I had:
- Maybe the more structures it is attached to, the greater its health and armour, or
- You have to kill the attached structures (excluding hive) in order to damage it
- The more biomass, the stronger
But yeah, really like the techtree streamlining. The Evolution Chamber is much more accessible than research being on Crag, Shift, Shade, etc.
1. Automatic free Nutrient Mist in its surrounding area, to allow alien players and structures to mature/evolve faster near a Hive (It's natural for evolution chamber to speed up evolultion).
2. Add evolution chamber as a prerequisite of Nutrient Mist ability.
I think evolution chamber (and Arms Lab) is useful enough throughout the game (you cannot complete researching all the abilities until "end game"), so it doesn't require a complicated ability.
Additionally, I feel the current Arms Lab mechanism could be improved. Suddenly losing a massive amount of power without warning is never fun. I have always opposed the stripping of alien abilities, may it be from to the loss of a Hive or evolution chamber. Therefore, I advocate adding a passive effect to Arms Labs, as well as evolution chambers to encourage them to be placed on the outer edges of bases, where they face higher risks. The commander will then have to manage the risks (and rewards) of the placement of those structures.
Well, the cost I imagine is about the same as the arms lab... Honestly I think that sounds sort of convoluted, now we're right back to a structure that serves a particular purpose and also has ability research tacked on for some reason. That sort of thing is why the khamm is so confusing today - if a new chamber is too expensive I think ability upgrades on the hive were just fine.
As a result, you can only build 2 evolution chambers / biomass chambers per hive. OR alternatively you could build one chamber, which can then be upgraded like the advanced armory.
This means that you can see exactly what you can research with each chamber.
This is an exceptional good idea! Every ability would be unbound from biomass! You could research xenocide at first, but with only 1 biomass the damage would be scaled down to be balanced vs armor 0 marines. Think about the possible combinations! The freedom the kham would get with this. With the right balancing and easy tweaks you could make every ability worth getting in the early OR the late-game. And they wouldn't be OP or useless.
Sure, it is a hell of a balancing workload until one got it right. But I think it would be totally worth it.
And screw "hidden modificators are bad"! In this case the pros would outreach the cons by light years.
There is the need for a streamlined alien techtree and simple functions for the different chambers.
For example: It makes no sense to unlock an ability first on biomass and then on another chamber aswell. That's why I also proposed thet some abilitys should be researchable on biomass and some on the evolution chamber, just so there is no redundancy.
In this, Abilities scaling with biomass is nothing else than marines scaling with A/W upgrades. You can guess one the time of the match and the number of hives, how powerful an ability is. Sure, you won't know what abilities they got until they use them, but this is the case since ages and was never a problem.
I also don't understand what you are trying to say with double unlock an upgrade. In case this is the state right now. You need to upgrade to the biomass level AND upgrade the lifeform. With the system from @simba you would only need to unlock the ability and thats it. Biomass would only strengthen their effect.
those are huge cons, and no matter how you turn it, you basically shift some of the complexity of the tech tree (from the alien commander) to the field players, since they are now the ones who need to know how much biomass they have and how that affects their abilities (and every ability would be most likely affected in its own unique way).
some of them could be balanced quite easy (like xenocide changes damages) and would be untuitive, but others are more difficult (stomp). and the question is also if you want the default abilities to scale as well, otherwise thats inconsistent (bite and parasite).
i see the pros, but saying they outweight the cons by light years is an exaggeration.
You also need to remember that hidden modifactors are in the game anyway (weapon and armor upgrades, health scaling by biomass). The other team can't see those values, but they can guess them by the time of the match. So the problem isn't purely with "hidden values". It is with predictability of the enemy. And this will remain possible (or better "guessable") because it is coupled to biomass.
And to the con of educating the player on how the ability scales. Why not simply name it in the tooltip of the evolve menu? I really don't think it is to difficult.
"Stomp: Grounding players in front of the onos at 3 - 8 meters (depending on biomass)"
"Leap: Allows the skulk to perform a fast forward jump over 5 - 15 meters (depends on biomass)"
"Babblers: Creates an egg of 3 babblers with health of 10hp - 50hp (depending on biomass)"
...
not working:
* distress beacon
* arc deployment
situation:
* mineshaft
* base rush on 2 base in repair -> no beacon possible (obs + cc powered in repair) = impossible to hold base
* 6 arcs at deposit: impossible to deploy (clicked on deploy - nothing happened) -> all 6 arcs lost by gorge 30 seconds later
RIGHT NOW -> Bugs = unplayable with missing / bugged gameplay mechanics
EDIT: btw... i could deploy the arcs in main base, but 3 min later... i couldnt deploy any arcs