How intuitive is the alien tech tree
Benson
Join Date: 2012-03-07 Member: 148303Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Join Date: 2012-03-07 Member: 148303Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
I was playing a few games tonight with some greens, several of which were trying to learn to command.
Twice while on Aliens, the Kahmm did not understand how to upgrade any lifeform but gorge.
After explaining that the research had to be started on the actual structure, they both got the idea, but they could not understand preforming upgrade research from support structures.
My question is, how many people are OK with lifeform upgrades being researched from support structures?
Personally, I think that it is much more intuitive to have lifeform upgrades all researched from the hive. They can be made dependant on a specific structure from there, as long as there is a centralized place from which to research lifeform upgrades.
Twice while on Aliens, the Kahmm did not understand how to upgrade any lifeform but gorge.
After explaining that the research had to be started on the actual structure, they both got the idea, but they could not understand preforming upgrade research from support structures.
My question is, how many people are OK with lifeform upgrades being researched from support structures?
Personally, I think that it is much more intuitive to have lifeform upgrades all researched from the hive. They can be made dependant on a specific structure from there, as long as there is a centralized place from which to research lifeform upgrades.
Comments
don't worry toomuch about it, the current tech tree will be infinitely more intuitive than the next iteration. if past trends are any indication.
It was pretty much like an Alien Arms Lab, where each lifeform's abilities could be researched individually [And of course, higher/more expensive lifeform's upgrades costed more Tres]
[The counter argument though {I think} was that a "Evolution Chamber" would make alien/marine commanding too similar]
Now structures are like zodiac signs for aliens. "I was born under whip sign, let the power of whip protect me".
Not to mention that it made things extremely linear. Unlock whole lifeform, get abilities one by one via biomass, upgrade chamber gives alien choice between 2 upgrades. I like how before you could do silence only, so your team is actually more active, as opposed to camo, which makes part of your team stationary. Or make regen only, to encourage more hit and run play style, rather than tanking damage.
Having multiple traits available and all the abilities unlocked at the same time is good for field players, as they will eventually have everything to fit their personal playstyle, but for commander it means no actual choice. You can't rush X ability with Y trait for some awesome team tactic, so team has little choice, but stick to the plan. Every player has a complete freedom of choice, so you can't make Silent team, as part of it will be using aura, you can't force adrenaline skulks on team, so they can use multiple leaps in combat to surprise marines. It is not as effective, yes, but it could be something new to see and something new to learn for players who stick only to their own abilities.
Sad part of previous tech tree incarnations was that some abilities almost never got researched. Xeno, vortex (old one), umbra. People had no idea how strong xeno is, until it became automatically unlocked in almost every game.
Anyway, I've always been in favor for individual ability research, on the hive, as it used to be. Find clustered abilities to be quite a bit more limitating for a commander actually. It backfired in a way, because lerk and fade upgrades like umbra and shadowstep have become pretty rare in my experience, while almost every game you play will have gorge upgrades first.
In any case, clustered or not, I'd prefer them to be put on just one structure (hive or otherwise). As said before, there used to be talk about a seperate upagrade structure in the BT mod, but that was a while ago and I've not heard of it since.
If abilities are un-researched it is because they aren't good, and if they aren't good then they should be made good instead of forcing me to unlock for a whole lifeform so that I don't overlook abilities that don't need to exist such as shadow step, or abilities that don't make sense such as crop duster spores in the excellent rego state we find ourselves currently.
Would love to see individual tech research for alien lifeforms attempted again in one form or another, an 'upgrade chamber' sounds absolutely fantastic imo.
It's not like Starcraft where there are a million things to get. There are 6 upgrades besides crag/shift/shade.
0%
When in danger you can move them (slowly) off.
Edit: or 'move them of' ?
I think Andi said back then that the Evolution Chamber is not completely out of the window. But it would require new art/models, which makes it a less favorable option at the moment.
I agree that having some of the research on support structures is rather unintuitive, and one of the intended effects (deny aliens those upgrades) basically never has any practical use.
You either need to physically spread out tech around the map, or have the tech availability based on map control requirements.
i.e. 2nd hive allows research on X, but if 2nd hive is lost, you lose it again.. even if its on the evolution chamber. (similar to how biomass and other upgrades currently work)
Even the other night commanding i had to constantly hit the J key to see the tech tree to remember which structure unlocks which lifeform.
I had originally mocked up designs which allowed for easy visibility of this when we were testing reinforced, but the tech tree ended up doing that, and in the end i feel like its not a communication issue so much as an unintuitive issue.
/thread
This. I like this.
(and move them off, you were right first time :-D )
Whip - melee - Skulk
Hive - base - Gorge
Shift - movement - Lerk
Shade - deception - Fade
Crag - defense - Onos
Not that I agree it is an intuitive system, but it really isn't that hard to remember. I would welcome a centralized upgrade system (e.g. Evolution Chamber) with open arms.
Why must only one research be possible at a time? Why not limit to 1 in each category (upgrades, biomass, tech) or something. Or as many as you want.
As for what building you need for a specific upgrade, use your "show tech tree" bind, default J.
Many new players do not know that the tech tree key exists.
Perhaps UWE should include a "Tip of the Day" quote on the loading screens to teach people about such things.1
As far as encouraging variety in buildings, I think that if they would not be built without incentives, that is a symptom of weak buildings.
Here you go, a server mod that does exactly that.
Ignore this for the time being. Somehow it works when I run it client side through console map blabla, but as soon as it is put on a server it stops working......Will remove these lines whenever I have found out why and fixed it. Cheers
The Real Shit
. Upgrades 2 Hive
.. Built on Build 261
by Chariot
This is a server mod: C082815
This mod moves the upgrade icons from Crag, Shift, Shade and Whip to the Hive. It only moves the icons, you still need a Crag to upgrade Onos, a Shift to upgrade Lerk, a Shade to upgrade Fade and a Whip to upgrade Skulk.
Cheers. Chariot
But that being said having them on support structures is clearly a horrible band-aid fix and doesn't add anything to the game other than making alien commander less intuitive.
The sad part is that there was actually a great solution in BT for a while with the evo chamber. Simple but extremely logical idea that fixed the problem entirely. Unfortunately the BT died without explanation shortly after the evo chamber and a lot of other good changes were added, alas