Give alien players option to store current life form into an egg
Maddok
Seattle, WA Join Date: 2002-11-10 Member: 8049Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Supporter
Seattle, WA Join Date: 2002-11-10 Member: 8049Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Supporter
Give aliens the ability to offload their current life form into an egg.
So... Gorge wants to go lerk. Or a fade/onos wants to leave the server without ruining the game for their team. They walk up and hold e on an egg (like breaking a clog) to unload the life form into the egg (effectively kills player and puts them in the spawn queue) but leaves behind an egg like if the commander had dropped the life form (but without upgrades!)
Casual Impact: Easier for players to drop in and out. Encourages player interaction with eggs so players are more likely to keep an eye out for both player dropped and commander dropped life forms.
Competitive Impact: Egg interaction shouldn't really have a very large effect on static games (typically competitive or organized games) except in allowing players to switch roles.
Potential emergent strategies:
A player could go early gorge and leave the egg behind for the commander. (but the commander could just gorge before getting into the hive in a lot of cases)
When T-res is too low for dropping life forms, but P-res is high, players with enough res and already in a life form will end up dropping current life form for others who are low.
Gorge rushes. ("Everyone, drop your life form off at the hive, and gorge rush with us!")
Goals:
TEAMWORK.
Make drop in drop out game play more acceptable in public settings (Onos has wife aggro!)
Make eggs more interactive for aliens. (Currently feels... under utilized?)
Increase the usage and availability of lower tier life forms (lerks and gorges).
Allow players who are forced into a life form by overuse of commander dropped life forms to switch back to skulk. (hedge condition, but I've done it to people on accident before, and man did I get an ear full from the player who was forced to gorge)
Give a little equality between casual marines being able to drop items between each other and casual aliens not having any such flexibility. (A marine can buy items on his way out of the server as well, which I've certainly done)
Prevent issues with too many players went a single life-form type and now the team is under powered in some aspect and unwilling to step down and lose the life form for their team.
No additional assets are required to implement this.
Non-exploitable system.
Potential Risks:
While early game strategies are limited, late game this could swing the flow of battle.
How much time should a player need to spend before they despawn? Can this be exploited to escape death? (Maybe Onos needs spend longer devolving than a gorge would)
Should this cause special effects for marines to have a chance to kill one of these eggs?
Can players starve a hive out of skulk eggs? Will this force players to spawn as an odd life form like it does now?
Undefined behavior: What happens if a higher life form wants to enter a life form egg?
Notes:
Disconnected players just have to reset like everyone else to prevent exploits or imbalance.
Given this change, it might make sense to allow jetpackers to unload their jetpacks the same way. Potentially restricted to holding use on a prototype lab to take off the jetpack.
Yet another thing that will lower the amount of onos/fades on the field at once.
Edit: Clarified that upgrades shouldn't transfer into the egg. Considered Early game vs Late game impact.
So... Gorge wants to go lerk. Or a fade/onos wants to leave the server without ruining the game for their team. They walk up and hold e on an egg (like breaking a clog) to unload the life form into the egg (effectively kills player and puts them in the spawn queue) but leaves behind an egg like if the commander had dropped the life form (but without upgrades!)
Casual Impact: Easier for players to drop in and out. Encourages player interaction with eggs so players are more likely to keep an eye out for both player dropped and commander dropped life forms.
Competitive Impact: Egg interaction shouldn't really have a very large effect on static games (typically competitive or organized games) except in allowing players to switch roles.
Potential emergent strategies:
A player could go early gorge and leave the egg behind for the commander. (but the commander could just gorge before getting into the hive in a lot of cases)
When T-res is too low for dropping life forms, but P-res is high, players with enough res and already in a life form will end up dropping current life form for others who are low.
Gorge rushes. ("Everyone, drop your life form off at the hive, and gorge rush with us!")
Goals:
TEAMWORK.
Make drop in drop out game play more acceptable in public settings (Onos has wife aggro!)
Make eggs more interactive for aliens. (Currently feels... under utilized?)
Increase the usage and availability of lower tier life forms (lerks and gorges).
Allow players who are forced into a life form by overuse of commander dropped life forms to switch back to skulk. (hedge condition, but I've done it to people on accident before, and man did I get an ear full from the player who was forced to gorge)
Give a little equality between casual marines being able to drop items between each other and casual aliens not having any such flexibility. (A marine can buy items on his way out of the server as well, which I've certainly done)
Prevent issues with too many players went a single life-form type and now the team is under powered in some aspect and unwilling to step down and lose the life form for their team.
No additional assets are required to implement this.
Non-exploitable system.
Potential Risks:
While early game strategies are limited, late game this could swing the flow of battle.
How much time should a player need to spend before they despawn? Can this be exploited to escape death? (Maybe Onos needs spend longer devolving than a gorge would)
Should this cause special effects for marines to have a chance to kill one of these eggs?
Can players starve a hive out of skulk eggs? Will this force players to spawn as an odd life form like it does now?
Undefined behavior: What happens if a higher life form wants to enter a life form egg?
Notes:
Disconnected players just have to reset like everyone else to prevent exploits or imbalance.
Given this change, it might make sense to allow jetpackers to unload their jetpacks the same way. Potentially restricted to holding use on a prototype lab to take off the jetpack.
Yet another thing that will lower the amount of onos/fades on the field at once.
Edit: Clarified that upgrades shouldn't transfer into the egg. Considered Early game vs Late game impact.
Comments
Yes, you'd still lose overall tres/across-board pres, but you could simply give the best player/s of specific lifeforms repeated chances at said lifeforms, with less penalization. This would be a huge buff to the aliens in comp, in my opinion.
Example: Player A is an amazing lerk; he goes lerk every match, and this match, the other team managed to pinch him early (Which is HUGE) and get that lerk down. Another player would be forced to go lerk now (who is probably not nearly as good of a lerk, as per how most teams are assembled) and your change would simply be the second player just 'giving' his res to Player A, re-fielding the incredible lerk again. This is a serious problem that would come out of this.
Well thought out idea, however... for the most part.
-Colt
Edit: oh, and the player who gave a lerk to the team has to re-spawn.
The net effect is more teamwork and lost time, even if it's making that sacrifice decision to give someone your pres.
direct res sharing was done once in NS1 (I don't remember the specific implementation) and it ended up in odd behavior and bizarre tactics. Direct res transfer is metagamey and difficult to balance. However if you think of an alien life form like a shotgun, it doesn't really matter (or should not matter) who gets the shotgun. If you want to hand your shotgun to someone else, that's fine.
However because NS is all about the-same-but-different asynchronous gameplay, having an equivalent to swapping weapons for aliens makes sense. The commander can even drop lifeforms like weapons.
For comparison yesterday in a pub one of the marines on my team decided to give me his single exo as he was having a bad time with it. He jumped out then I grabbed it then I walked to the proto lab and conveniently got a second gun because I only had about 20 Pres. Sweet deal.
Considering exo's can only be brought with Pres and not dropped by the commander that feels like a fair mechanic to have on marines.
With alien egg drops / Pres sharing it opens a can of worms for upgraded fade and onos lifeforms because as soon as the team hits 40 Pres someone can fade drop an egg and another player can jump in and get the 5-15 Pres worth of upgrades that are available instantly and ditto at 60 Pres for the onos.
On the flip side of what colt said if the aliens opted instead for Tres drops for lerk and gorge eggs, that lerk that doesn't get pinched and is holding a heap of Pres could drop his lerk egg, change back to skulk to evolve into a fade, drop that fade egg for his teammate and jump back into his lerk. Thus negating the biomass egg drops in the late game.
Perhaps if it still cost a certain amount of pres for the player to jump into the dropped egg, like a discount so to speak. 2 for gorge, 5 for lerk, 10 fade, 20 onos.. something like that?
Anyhow, I like the idea.
I suppose if the issues really arise during the time about when you get a second hive, that's going to make the average point loss 2 upgrades.
And I'm fine with the counter-part of dropping a jetpack.
And direct res transfer is already somewhat done (khammander buy lerk egg, comm/player buy shotgun)...
Oh, I hadn't thought of that. However, that would necessitate changing marines dc behavior as well.
Fantastic for both comp play and pub play as it encourages and rewards teamplay. and besides, think'bout it, marines can trade (most) Weapons, yet aliens cannot?
No to p-res sharing.
in comp play it would be fantastic (pile in for the onos strategums!)
in pub play it would be disastrous.
Maybe the option instead to convert p-res to t-res? instead of lump sums, make it incomely.
Heartily agree. Lifeform eggs shouldn't count against egg total and should not be spawn-enabled.
I'm quite the namedropper lately...
* DC makes lerk egg.
* DC stays skulk a little while & gets gorge.
* player who should be lerk grabs lerk egg.
* player who is lerk saves up for onos / fade at 24 res faster
Repeat same patern to get another early lifeform @ cost of a lter lifeform.
Im sorry, I can not see how that is remotely balanced for marines.
Also, 24 res is a bit silly. That worst case scenario (onos /w 3 upgrades). If only one hive, you are 5 res faster fade. Two hives, 10 res. This is how much pres has been donated, and cannot send that pres back. that upgraded pres is lost if dropping the lifeform again. Not to mention, if the lifeform is already upgraded in the first place, that 'transferred pres' is lost from the team. You actually end up with massive team self attrition by using this too much. What does this mean? This sounds really expensive.
Think I misunderstood you.
I reread a few things and dont see a big issue with it anymore.
Valiant effort, however, at making an interesting mechanic/meta game and address some of the inequality in pres decisions between the teams.
The problems i see are mostly what Colt already covered..
Its a buff to the best players on the team.
Things like "A player could go early gorge and leave the egg behind for the commander" are actually downsides, if you ask me. A lot of work has been put into forbidding that sort of behavior/trend for very good reasons. (like no pres while commanding and gorge tres egg costs etc etc)
Other than the obvious downsides already listed, i don't see the mechanic actually being used.. much like how marines who leave mid game do not buy a bunch of shotguns and mines and drop them on the floor for their team... it just never happens despite the availability to do so.
So you could offset some of the potential downsides by increasing the amount of time it takes to gestate in the egg.. but no matter what it will always be a buff to aliens, even with an insane 2 or 3 minute wait time. A buff they do not need.
I'd much rather have some method in which to "recycle" lost lifeforms amongst one another, similar to how shotguns and many of Marine Pres expenditures are able to be recycled among their team after they die.
Think of that fade that just got shotgunned, and his dead body mass infects into some compost heap and can be re gestated and saved for a price by another team member if he gets to it in time (some short timeframe, faster than the dead player can get back to it and so as to require clearing out enemies in the vicinity first) and then some gestate time and pres investment (so that its viable still, and yet includes a risk.. say like 15 sec gestation time, and 20 pres to recycle that 40 pres lifeform) This body mass/recycle-able lifeform can be destroyed by marines still.
Its not the most well thought out implementation, but you get the idea.
A. That's kind of the point. It's situational and promotes better alien teamwork.
B. Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of your argument?
Remember Onos digest? Time matters. Don't discount it. 2-3 minutes is certainly not sane however.
Off topic :P
*edit*
Oh, and you're an upstanding gent, thanks for weighing in. I know my counters are not 100%, but a lot of the details and implementation is left up in the air.
I just remembered... Marines can drop weapons & exo for each other also. SO its not THAT big a deal if aliens can. A bigger deal yes, but not that big.