simply because by the time midgame kicks in you NEED shift and crag hive for your higher lifeforms to be viable.
(And since shade first doesn't promote aggressive gameplay, there's less chance you will actually end up securing three hives, ironically... )
I have to disagree with both statements here.
I find Aura to be much more useful to higher life forms mid-game than Crag. Lerks and Fades can easily avoid taking damage while singling out the injured Marines (making kills easier and surviving longer) and Phantom Oni can be just plain frightening (mainly because of the silent movement)
It's the times we're stuck on Shift+Crag where I find it hardest to capture the third hive You can't use stealth to ambush as Skulk or Onos, and you can't tell how many enemies are there before rushing in as a Lerk or Fade.
Usually when Shade is first I find it really easy to ambush Marines and stop them from expanding too far from their main base.
aeroripperJoin Date: 2005-02-25Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
FWIW, I really like hallucinations. For the time being, they could use a simple addition. Just add the "follow nearest alien" button to any created hallucination. If you don't have time to guide them, you can set them to at least follow the nearest alien. I'm average at micro, so being able to move my drifter out of combat while still having the hallucinations do something is useful.
Why not scrap hallucination for a better cloak? (thats not 100%, since that failed previously)
Use that transparent shader for cloak which currently only activates on stationary players, but at full 100% speeds instead?
Think of that "Hidden" mod..
You could even make it so getting hit doesn't remove the cloak, but only attacking does.
This could make for quite a powerful offensive combat ability on par with mucous and enzyme i would think.
If cloak mimics the Hidden mod, it would be perfect. Currently, cloak sticks out like a sore thumb.
Having fast moving, near invisible aliens would be great. Most people would have trouble tracking them, which would make cloak finally useful. Since it won't be 100% invisibility, it will be obvious that there is indeed a skulk/whatever in the room and thus ask for a scan if needed in order to nullify the cloak advantage at the cost of marine TRES.
If hallucinations would mimic real aliens in terms of fake name, fake HP, fake kill message, fake score and ragdoll effect upon death, then that would probably make them a lot more viable already.
Ideally a marine player should have no idea if he just killed a hallucination or a real player, giving the real player also a chance to retreat from the combat and hide until the marine thinks he's safe again.
Not sure if scans should hardcounter hallucinations by instantly destroying them. Perhaps make it so that any Hallucination under the influence of a scan will go down in 1 hit from whatever source. So scanning some random area of the map without any marine present won't destroy the hallucinations. Then you could make it so that the hallucinations appear as usual purple ghost from the commander perspective, but all marines on the field still see them as normal aliens, preventing the ability from becoming completely useless in situations with scans involved.
Cannon_FodderAUSBrisbane, AUJoin Date: 2013-06-23Member: 185664Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
@IronHorse, agreed. The hallucinations should follow the player it was created from (like an mirror image), that would make hallucinations worth using (like a bullet buffer). Currently the micro involved when using hallucinate, make is not worthwhile (better off with enzyme or mucus micro if they are available).
- If I'm commanding aliens and I don't get shift hive either first or second, I get severe complaining, whining, and even eject votes, even from fairly experienced players. In my opinion that MUST change. I'm not sure what it would take (nerfing shift or boosting crag/shade), but hive "selection" is clearly broken beyond repair at the moment, at least in pubs. That, or might as well remove the commander role and just script it to shift-crag-shade.
Re:Ink against arcs, no, it's not. The cooldown makes it nearly useless. It used to be good without cooldown and when arcs fired 2x slower, but now I feel like it's a complete waste of the res used for the shade + ability.
1) Remove Scan dissipating Hallu's (no early hard counter),
2) Make Hallu's flammable or evaporate on burn (cement flamethrower as anti-drifter clouds weapon, welder spy-check O_o, cluster grenade soft counter),
3) Lifeforms get temporary "Ink" while their Hallu's show up on Obs/Scan detect instead (distractions thru walls + stealth play + synergy with Phantom & Aura!)
About Hallu's following their mimicked lifeform, should make sure they don't follow into them, since Hallu's have no collision :P
CBF reading whole thread - my brilliant thoughts/suggestions:
The whole problem is the Shade Hive drifter abilities become useless mid-late game because of the presents of scans/an observatory. I love Ink, and think it is comparable with echo and regeneration. I think Aura and Phantom are very good too.
The whole problem: mucus and enzyme are arguably more useful mid-late game for supporting life forms, and hallucination couldn't be more useless. It's ability should probably have an ability which can be used for packing to take down arc positions/gates and not be countered by 3-10 t-res.
As it is abundantly clear that the Shade Hive Drifter ability is the only thing needing a buff here are some very raw ideas which I haven't considered any complicated implications of:
- Make the drifter ability make the effected area or effected life-forms (NOT HIVES OBVIOUSLY, but similar to Ink) immune to Scan/Observatory detection temporarily. Early game this empowers phantom, but not too strong as if marines see the ability particle effect (YEAHHHH) they can assume skulks hiding from the scan or w/e. Maybe too hard for the rookies to understand though, but let's face it, pub comms don't med or use drifter abilities anyway. Late game it would allow the commander to hide BrOnos's when the marine comm is scanning him down and waiting for him to walk into somewhere dumb.
- Make the drifter ability create its own new colourful particle effect which allows full cloak (or close to) within it while moving at normal speeds, maybe/maybe not detectable by scans/observatories yet uncloaked by damage?
I still say the best thing to do to make shade viable is replace the Drifter's Halucination ability with an AoE Mute Ability (Organic Fog?) that cuts off all sound to Marines in the area, effectively making them deaf.
I could see this being used to initiate attacks, and help eliminate coordination between marines during fights, as marines would not know which direction the attack is comming from, will not know if their teamates are being attacked without looking at them, and will not be able to hear medpack drops during the fight.
This not only solves the "drifter ability is countered by scan" problem, but also means no vision obscuring particles and less AI calculation (if we can say halucinations have ai).
Not only that, but it doesn't even require that much work to implement as there would be no new models or ai work that would need to be done
I always picked silence over camo pre 250. The ability to run full speed undetected at an enemy if you played smart outweighed waiting for some guy to walk past your ambush position.
Yeah, back then it was the second upgrade to get after cara. But walljumping skulks don't make sound, and haven't since 250.
Speaking of shade, why is it that sentries can see you when cloaked? If you attempt to bite the battery, you lose the cloak anyways.
They use infra-red motion detection/ sonar/ psychic abilities to see the aliens.
Marines are capable of that technology, but they still didn't have the idea to install some ventilators in Armories to blow Lerk Spores away?
Of course the armories could be fitted with environmental micro-particle reduction devices but the bean counters convinced the top brass that it would be more economically viable to force the grunts to buys flamers to clean the air or robosuits, plus anyone in the second week of their tour knows no recon would ever happen if the EMPRs were installed.
SewlekThe programmer previously known as SchimmelJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16247Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Developer
Im definitely open for exploring the shade hive more, especially the drifter ability is compared to the other hives not that useful. For anyone being curious, I updated the beta mod with some experimental changes http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=130391092
aeroripperJoin Date: 2005-02-25Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
Just tested out the changes on a listen server with bots. Seems like a definite step up from the current implementation. The only thing I'm worried about is a potential performance hit with hallucinating 8-10 aliens at the same time. Although, most servers can handle 10 bots pretty easily. Will have to test on full server to determine for sure.
Now those are definitely more convincing distractions, but yeah, aeroripper makes a good point about performance. There could always be a shorter duration or cap on # of hallucinations later on.
Im definitely open for exploring the shade hive more, especially the drifter ability is compared to the other hives not that useful. For anyone being curious, I updated the beta mod with some experimental changes http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=130391092
It
is
Awesome.
I've made a hallucination of myself, it had my name, it went all the way from cargo to C12 by itself and started biting powernode, then I told it to go to control and it started biting CC.
Also, hallucination gave vision, which I think might be OP.
Edit: In sandbox, I ordered onos hallucination to go to marine base, switched teams... man it was amazing, it had my name, I killed it (~600 hp), it died as regular onos (ragdoll), won't disappear when scanned, shows full onos HP when selected by marine commander. It follows you around and attacks you, and you get all the damage effects, except HP loss! I'd really love to see how it works in real match.
Also, marine comm seeing purple aliens after scan without killing hallu was a good idea, right now it might be a little too scary to see two full teams rushing two bases with no way to identify which one is real.
Summary: awesome in it's current state, needs a few tweaks here and there. Shade hive will be totally viable.
I already think hallucinations are fairly effective when used during a base rush or team fight. They only actually help for the first .5 seconds of their lifespan but if it is cast during a fight that's a LOT more potent than mucus or storm ever were or will be. Also, even if the marine com scans they still get their effectiveness in the time it takes him to react.
SewlekThe programmer previously known as SchimmelJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16247Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Developer
yes they are useful, but compared to the other abilities, hallucination adds another layer of micro management for the alien commander to be effective. not saying its that difficult to perform, but being effective with less effort will always be preferred. using the bot code definitely changes that, since the hallucinations react and behave more similar to players without having the commander to work for it
Summary: awesome in it's current state, needs a few tweaks here and there. Shade hive will be totally viable.
Sounds like it definitely deserves to be bumped up to 2 tres then. Maybe even introduce a cooldown on its re-use, because being able to instantly spawn in another bullet sponge to cover a retreating Onos with 600 HP might be a little too effective.
Perhaps the hallucinations could start at very low HP when being spawned and then slowly have it go up to their full HP.
Summary: awesome in it's current state, needs a few tweaks here and there. Shade hive will be totally viable.
Sounds like it definitely deserves to be bumped up to 2 tres then. Maybe even introduce a cooldown on its re-use, because being able to instantly spawn in another bullet sponge to cover a retreating Onos with 600 HP might be a little too effective.
Perhaps the hallucinations could start at very low HP when being spawned and then slowly have it go up to their full HP.
I think there was some concept of 'soft targets' in balance patch, with attacks that pass through hallucinations, didn't actually notice it in game, but it sounds good, hallucinations are only visible cover, what's behind it takes same damage as hallucination.
aeroripperJoin Date: 2005-02-25Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
Played 2 rounds on veil tonight on a full 8v8 as alien comm with this. I went shade first both times, and used this ability extensively. Some observations:
1) Hitpoints need reduced on hallucinations. They should go poof with the same hitpoints as the current, vanilla hallucinations. They currently seem higher than in vanilla.
2) Hallucinations should be seen as 'hallucinations' to alien players, rather than alien player names. Although, it is a bit comical. I understand the deception angle of it for the marines, and I'm okay with it keeping alien names to show on their side. Scan should reveal purple hallucinations to marines (not kill them), and change their name to "hallucination" while revealed and on kills.
3) Hallucinations appear as normal alien players on the minimap, which creates confusion for the alien team (and deception for marines). Ideally, some icon distinction would be best, but for now its best to not show them on the minimap for aliens.
4) I had skulks winning 1v1 that they normally wouldn't win with current hallucinations. The bots are very effective at mimicking real player behavior.
5) Bots don't always seem to listen to my orders where I'm clicking them to go.
6) They're a lot easier to manage even outside battles. I can direct them to create diversions elsewhere (biting RTs, hitting structures, etc...).
Overall, adding bot AI to them makes them significantly more effective than the current vanilla iteration. Engagements with even 2-3 skulks become amplified.
Comments
I have to disagree with both statements here.
I find Aura to be much more useful to higher life forms mid-game than Crag. Lerks and Fades can easily avoid taking damage while singling out the injured Marines (making kills easier and surviving longer) and Phantom Oni can be just plain frightening (mainly because of the silent movement)
It's the times we're stuck on Shift+Crag where I find it hardest to capture the third hive You can't use stealth to ambush as Skulk or Onos, and you can't tell how many enemies are there before rushing in as a Lerk or Fade.
Usually when Shade is first I find it really easy to ambush Marines and stop them from expanding too far from their main base.
If cloak mimics the Hidden mod, it would be perfect. Currently, cloak sticks out like a sore thumb.
Having fast moving, near invisible aliens would be great. Most people would have trouble tracking them, which would make cloak finally useful. Since it won't be 100% invisibility, it will be obvious that there is indeed a skulk/whatever in the room and thus ask for a scan if needed in order to nullify the cloak advantage at the cost of marine TRES.
Ideally a marine player should have no idea if he just killed a hallucination or a real player, giving the real player also a chance to retreat from the combat and hide until the marine thinks he's safe again.
Not sure if scans should hardcounter hallucinations by instantly destroying them. Perhaps make it so that any Hallucination under the influence of a scan will go down in 1 hit from whatever source. So scanning some random area of the map without any marine present won't destroy the hallucinations. Then you could make it so that the hallucinations appear as usual purple ghost from the commander perspective, but all marines on the field still see them as normal aliens, preventing the ability from becoming completely useless in situations with scans involved.
An onos standing still facing the wall is a dead giveaway, not to mention a complete pain to micro, when you are busy enzyming and mucousing
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/133225/yatpp-yet-another-thread-on-progression-paths
All arguments aside, what it boils down is this:
- If I'm commanding aliens and I don't get shift hive either first or second, I get severe complaining, whining, and even eject votes, even from fairly experienced players. In my opinion that MUST change. I'm not sure what it would take (nerfing shift or boosting crag/shade), but hive "selection" is clearly broken beyond repair at the moment, at least in pubs. That, or might as well remove the commander role and just script it to shift-crag-shade.
Re:Ink against arcs, no, it's not. The cooldown makes it nearly useless. It used to be good without cooldown and when arcs fired 2x slower, but now I feel like it's a complete waste of the res used for the shade + ability.
1) Remove Scan dissipating Hallu's (no early hard counter),
2) Make Hallu's flammable or evaporate on burn (cement flamethrower as anti-drifter clouds weapon, welder spy-check O_o, cluster grenade soft counter),
3) Lifeforms get temporary "Ink" while their Hallu's show up on Obs/Scan detect instead (distractions thru walls + stealth play + synergy with Phantom & Aura!)
About Hallu's following their mimicked lifeform, should make sure they don't follow into them, since Hallu's have no collision :P
The whole problem is the Shade Hive drifter abilities become useless mid-late game because of the presents of scans/an observatory. I love Ink, and think it is comparable with echo and regeneration. I think Aura and Phantom are very good too.
The whole problem: mucus and enzyme are arguably more useful mid-late game for supporting life forms, and hallucination couldn't be more useless. It's ability should probably have an ability which can be used for packing to take down arc positions/gates and not be countered by 3-10 t-res.
As it is abundantly clear that the Shade Hive Drifter ability is the only thing needing a buff here are some very raw ideas which I haven't considered any complicated implications of:
- Make the drifter ability make the effected area or effected life-forms (NOT HIVES OBVIOUSLY, but similar to Ink) immune to Scan/Observatory detection temporarily. Early game this empowers phantom, but not too strong as if marines see the ability particle effect (YEAHHHH) they can assume skulks hiding from the scan or w/e. Maybe too hard for the rookies to understand though, but let's face it, pub comms don't med or use drifter abilities anyway. Late game it would allow the commander to hide BrOnos's when the marine comm is scanning him down and waiting for him to walk into somewhere dumb.
- Make the drifter ability create its own new colourful particle effect which allows full cloak (or close to) within it while moving at normal speeds, maybe/maybe not detectable by scans/observatories yet uncloaked by damage?
yi'mondisforum
I could see this being used to initiate attacks, and help eliminate coordination between marines during fights, as marines would not know which direction the attack is comming from, will not know if their teamates are being attacked without looking at them, and will not be able to hear medpack drops during the fight.
This not only solves the "drifter ability is countered by scan" problem, but also means no vision obscuring particles and less AI calculation (if we can say halucinations have ai).
Not only that, but it doesn't even require that much work to implement as there would be no new models or ai work that would need to be done
Yeah, back then it was the second upgrade to get after cara. But walljumping skulks don't make sound, and haven't since 250.
Marines are capable of that technology, but they still didn't have the idea to install some ventilators in Armories to blow Lerk Spores away?
Of course the armories could be fitted with environmental micro-particle reduction devices but the bean counters convinced the top brass that it would be more economically viable to force the grunts to buys flamers to clean the air or robosuits, plus anyone in the second week of their tour knows no recon would ever happen if the EMPRs were installed.
It
is
Awesome.
I've made a hallucination of myself, it had my name, it went all the way from cargo to C12 by itself and started biting powernode, then I told it to go to control and it started biting CC.
Also, hallucination gave vision, which I think might be OP.
Edit: In sandbox, I ordered onos hallucination to go to marine base, switched teams... man it was amazing, it had my name, I killed it (~600 hp), it died as regular onos (ragdoll), won't disappear when scanned, shows full onos HP when selected by marine commander. It follows you around and attacks you, and you get all the damage effects, except HP loss! I'd really love to see how it works in real match.
Also, marine comm seeing purple aliens after scan without killing hallu was a good idea, right now it might be a little too scary to see two full teams rushing two bases with no way to identify which one is real.
Summary: awesome in it's current state, needs a few tweaks here and there. Shade hive will be totally viable.
Sounds like it definitely deserves to be bumped up to 2 tres then. Maybe even introduce a cooldown on its re-use, because being able to instantly spawn in another bullet sponge to cover a retreating Onos with 600 HP might be a little too effective.
Perhaps the hallucinations could start at very low HP when being spawned and then slowly have it go up to their full HP.
I think there was some concept of 'soft targets' in balance patch, with attacks that pass through hallucinations, didn't actually notice it in game, but it sounds good, hallucinations are only visible cover, what's behind it takes same damage as hallucination.
1) Hitpoints need reduced on hallucinations. They should go poof with the same hitpoints as the current, vanilla hallucinations. They currently seem higher than in vanilla.
2) Hallucinations should be seen as 'hallucinations' to alien players, rather than alien player names. Although, it is a bit comical. I understand the deception angle of it for the marines, and I'm okay with it keeping alien names to show on their side. Scan should reveal purple hallucinations to marines (not kill them), and change their name to "hallucination" while revealed and on kills.
3) Hallucinations appear as normal alien players on the minimap, which creates confusion for the alien team (and deception for marines). Ideally, some icon distinction would be best, but for now its best to not show them on the minimap for aliens.
4) I had skulks winning 1v1 that they normally wouldn't win with current hallucinations. The bots are very effective at mimicking real player behavior.
5) Bots don't always seem to listen to my orders where I'm clicking them to go.
6) They're a lot easier to manage even outside battles. I can direct them to create diversions elsewhere (biting RTs, hitting structures, etc...).
Overall, adding bot AI to them makes them significantly more effective than the current vanilla iteration. Engagements with even 2-3 skulks become amplified.
Overall i like the change.