Killing Observatory Doesn't Remove Motion Tracking
JRock
Join Date: 2002-11-26 Member: 10032Members
Join Date: 2002-11-26 Member: 10032Members
<div class="IPBDescription">?!</div> It's funny how you can just now find out something like that after playing the game since day one. Whenever I'm a skulk I do my best to eat the enemy Observatory, thinking it will kill their MT. Just two nights ago I found out that it doesn't work that way, whether intentionally or because of a bug.
Instead of negatively commenting on how ridiculous this is, I will instead make this a positive post and list a few awesome ideas myself and other players have mentioned recently for making Motion Tracking more in tune with the atmosphere of the mod (suspenseful):
*Allow Sensory Chambers to create "holes" in the motion tracking so that any aliens within a small radius of a Sensory Chamber would not show up on the MT. This would also create more usefulness for the SC and perhaps get some alien teams to consider using it for the 2nd hive's chamber selection.
*Make motion tracking less accurate and only extend the green radar range from each Observatory - as it is now it's completely flawless and covers the entire map.
As it stands now motion tracking completely removes any suspense from the game, and I know whenever I pla Marines my breathing and heartrate definitely drop once MT goes up. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Instead of negatively commenting on how ridiculous this is, I will instead make this a positive post and list a few awesome ideas myself and other players have mentioned recently for making Motion Tracking more in tune with the atmosphere of the mod (suspenseful):
*Allow Sensory Chambers to create "holes" in the motion tracking so that any aliens within a small radius of a Sensory Chamber would not show up on the MT. This would also create more usefulness for the SC and perhaps get some alien teams to consider using it for the 2nd hive's chamber selection.
*Make motion tracking less accurate and only extend the green radar range from each Observatory - as it is now it's completely flawless and covers the entire map.
As it stands now motion tracking completely removes any suspense from the game, and I know whenever I pla Marines my breathing and heartrate definitely drop once MT goes up. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Comments
Maby thats what you meant?
Also:
IMO MT should be moved removed from your hud and only show up as blips in your little radar in the corner.
Flayra did say he was going to make the radar work like the commanders minimap, possibly for 1.1 , so maby Mt will be moved.
People like this are what make me love silence in the early game so much.....
I urge you son.... dont say what you cant back up.
I however do beleive that a scanner sweep should continue to function as normal, including tempory negating the "dead zone" suggeted above <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Lol have fun getting that code to work smothly <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> server load will go up again...
Bart
I however do beleive that a scanner sweep should continue to function as normal, including tempory negating the "dead zone" suggeted above <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Lol have fun getting that code to work smothly <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> server load will go up again...
Bart<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
nooo... not the 900 pings of 1.0...... seriously though.. how great would that be... mask your new hive from mt just by building a tower.
-edit New intresting thought.... As much as i would hate to nerf seiges in the slightest... imagine of you took the LOS tests from the new beta... and put it in a new way... a sensory tower in range of the siege masks the buildings so it cant see them... unless a marine can see them or a scanner sweep is done......
come on, a marine knowing exactly where anyone is from distance that can be attacked just rips out the skulks ability to hide in vents and move to roofs without being seen.
marines can easily prepare himself for an attack, getting into posistion or moving so when the skulk pops out he can shoot em in the back.
it is just a bit too powerfull, at least with parisites their are a lot of drawbacks.
I also would like sens towers to do more like give everything alien in it's radius cloaking and neutralise MT.
This idea has been doing the rounds of the suggestion forum for at least a month, possibly more. Had no feedback on it so far...
Taking the obs down should certainly negate MT and remove Sweep until is it is reconstructed - this makes it worth a skulks while to attack the weak observatory, it can really buy time fot the alien team - but losing research res is unreasonable of course.
Maybe would that be a bit «unfair», but how about disabling Phase Gates when no Observatory ? Or maybe having some teleportation errors when you've got none <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Do you realise how cool that would be in a war?
A sudden skulk rush by group A to take out the obs gives group B a small window to attack a locked down hive before the marine reinforcments arrive...the marines frantically rebuild the thing while the others stand anxiously by the gate hoping they can get through before the aliens chomp the other end of the phase connection...
Anyway, it makes a lot of sense with regard to the backstory as set out in the manual - the obs 'guides' the phase streams to their probability locations or some such...
Motion Tracking makes the aliens' greatest advantage, SURPRISE AND TERROR, completely freaking useless.
I'm curious to hear how you find it unreasonable for the marines to lose a 45RC MT research investment when the aliens can easily lose an 80RC investement plus the ability to create any more of the chamber type for whichever hive is killed when they have more than one hive.
I could see it getting out of hand if Marines lost the research completed with Arms Labs or Prototype Labs when they are eaten. That WOULD be a bit too much.
But I think MT, because of how incredibly cheesy it is right now, should be something that has to be researched again after rebuilding the Observatory, at least until they fix MT and reduce the range of it and allow some way for aliens to block it in small areas (like the Sensory Chamber idea). So maybe making them research it again (<u>instead of having the Marines plop down a new one and immediately get MT back</u>) would give the aliens a window of time without Marines having MT - which is sort of the whole point for killing the Observatory in the mid-game - and therefore help offset the full-map-range and unblockability of MT.
However play on a windows server with motion tracking and marines just wipe the floor.
It doesn't need to be in the game - marines do not need it to win in the slightest.
It seems to hinder the game more than it does make it exciting. I love the feeling of not knowing if theres a skulk heading my way. Or using eax to 'nearly' pinpoint where they are, but still leave enough of a suprise factor.
But it's likely to stay. Just needs toning down. Be it:
- Sensory chambers block the effect
- Silence nullifies the effect
- Only in range of observatories
- Personal Motion tracking devices for marines (either permanent like jetpacks/ha or replaces welder). Could have a team effect where anyone in a certain radius receives the benefit.
- Requires a prototype lab. Meaning marines have to spend 100 rps for arms lab and prototype lab before they can research it. Making it a mid game advantage - not early on where it has the most effect.
I don't. For one, the observatory radius is fairly small. This would significantly limit the usefulness of a very expensive upgrade. It also goes against the description of MT in the manual (less important, but I thought I would mention it anyway). I don't feel like pasting the section of the manual with the MT description in it, so go find it yourselves.
I like the idea of MT degrading when soldiers move farther and farther away from active observatories. This would give more strategy to the game, as far-flung implacements could need their own observatory for adaquete defense. Not sure if this would be too difficult to implement, although I have a fairly simple solution:
1)Determine closest obs to marine
2)Determine actual distance
3)Change MT refresh rate, where the refresh rate is directly proportional to the distance.
I also like the idea of sensory chambers creating pockets of MT disturbance. I think the pockets would have to be fairly small, so the aliens cannot simply spam the map with SCs and kill MT outright. An algorithm similar to the one mentioned above could also apple here; the closer the distance to the SC, the worse the disturbance.
1)Determine closest SC
2)Determine actual distance
3)Alter MT given the distance. Alterations could include MT shutting off, MT detecting marines as hostile, or even completely b0rking a marines HUD (not just making it go blank, but making it go all screwy)
The chief problem with using SC proximity and varied disturbance is that an intelligent marine could determine distance to an alien outpost by measuring levels of disturbance in their HUD and MT performance. The simple solution is to scrap the algorithm and just use an "all-or-nothing" approach. A more complex approach would be to insert a level of randomness so that proximity would be harder to determine on the marine side.
Another related idea is the comparison of MT to hivesight. As it stands now, MT can be MUCH more useful than hivesight. It tells you alien location almost all the time with very high accuracy. Hivesight tells friendly location all the time, as well as alert features, but lacks persistent enemy tracking (other than parasited enemies). Catagorizations of alerts, as well as the notification interface, is also generally lacking.
For example, a "structure under attack" alert looks very much like an "alien under attack" alert. An "enemies are approaching" alert looks just like any other enemy on HS.
Additionally, no system is implemented to track new alerts in comparison to known alerts. Example? Say an RT has been getting knifed for a while. Suddenly, some fade gets shot at and screams for help. Now, on the surface, the old RT threat and the new fade threat look identical.
My idea is similar to an idea for keeping better track of waypoints - small indicator alerts at the border of the screen to indicate which direction the player should turn to see the waypoint/alert. The difference is that new threats would have these arrows as well as a brighter ring for a limited time, then go to a persistent red until resolved. This would allow aliens to home in on new threats much faster. "Structure under attack" threats could also have a subtle visual difference from "Enemy under attack" threats.
For keeping track of visible enemies on HS, I think parasite should have a different indicator than FOV or sensory FOV sightings (perhaps yellow with a central dot?). I also think newly parasited enemies should attract an alert, or "ping" as they are often referred to in other games. Standard FOV sightings should just show up; sensory FOV should show up as a normal yellow indicator but also with a "ping."
Hives and hive locations should show up in a completely different manner. As it stands now, they just look like friendlies if you don't know the map or don't zero in on them. I think active hives should show up one way (Purple or blue circle?), an empty hive should show up slightly differently, and maybe hives in progress in a slightly different way.
Making HS more functional and easier to use does two things: it helps out n00bs that are overwhelmed by NS, and it helps to overcome the massive intel advantage that the marines currently have over the aliens.
On the flip side, MT should be kept rudimentery. This leaves room for the fundamental difference in intel gathering between the two teams - the commander. By making HS more powerful individually than MT, it allows aliens to operate without a commander helping them along with verbal information as well as scanner sweeps. I'm petter sure this was the intended balance level, but I felt the need to write about it anyway.
Still, HS would be very powerful with this many additions. Perhaps advanced hive sight could be used to access different levels of detail and precision in refresh rates (as it stands now, advanced hive sight is considered completely worthless and is up for removal entirely in a future client version, I think)?
1. Observatories are WEAK. Quite likely the weakest of all TSA structures, I know I can drop one in about five or six bites. If you tie 45-RP research on top of the 25-RP structure, that's 70 resources that poof within two seconds of a Skulk pulling up next to one. Right now, if you kill the observatory during MT research, all 70 are lost. (Disabling MT and the construction of phase gates until a new one is built, on the other hand, makes sense to me.)
2. Observatories ALREADY GIVE MOTION TRACK WITHIN THEIR RADIUS. Pull an alien up near one and watch the pretty blue circle pop up. Ooo! Pretty! And it's free! Know why it's free? Because the scanning radius of an observatory is tiny to the point of having no bearing whatsoever on the game.
3. Freaky exclusions of motion tracking involving calculating distance to sensory towers, cloaked aliens, etc. put yet more strain on servers that are already running a very processor-demanding game. Server operators have been howling on the server forum since release day about how demanding running NS is, and I'm certain that they would be none too happy about yet another layer of calculating thrown into the mix to determine who can see the blue circles and from where. If you like being able to play those 10 vs 10 games without the server choking, don't ask for more complexity in the server code.
and that taking down obs will disable MT but not need to research again, just need to rebuild to be active.
this is just for a vote purpose if this gets noticed by devs
The other option is to make it work for the mini-map instead. It would make the minimap actually useful!
Taking out the last arms lab gives newly-spawned marines the default level of upgrades?
As for the suggestions, I get kinda tired seeing the same suggestions thrown up every other week (actually it might have been a month since the last MT debate), but sometimes there are cool and innovative new ideas, as well as plain ol' dumber ideas (I personally don't mind taking the good with the bad).
Technology of the TSA would make one think that a normal "vanilla" OT would allow an entire MT ability for the map. To me that makes sense, if this thing is so powerful that it allows phase gates, those aliens should be visible. Due to balance issues, I think it's a great idea to make it researchable and not instantly available (otherwise an OT would be built first, followed by an IP.) It would be kinda silly to restrict its radius as it is supposed to be a superpowerful thing, but I could understand if they did that.
I also, however, can understand if they leave it as it is. It's fine. MT forces aliens to get D chambers first (because it cancels Sensory upgrades, and motion upgrades get creamed if they know where you are (celerity doesn't help much if the marine has been tracking you since before you came around the corner.) MT also, however, forces marines to wait another 45 RP before doing something else, like building an arms lab and upgrading their marines. When the Resource "issues" are solved, this won't be such a big deal.
also, there are a wide range of colors (more than yellow and red) available to classify every hive sight blip imagineable...
1. Yes, killing a structure in the middle of an upgrade cancels the upgrade and means all those resources go down the drain.
2. Motion tracking is almost pointless in the midgame. Fades don't care if you know where they are. "Wow, it sure was great of the comm to research motion tracking in time for me to know that Onos was coming around the corner! It gave me enough time to open the console and type readyroom." The only time in the game where motion tracking is worth the cost is the early game when the Kharaa team is still trying to be clever with Skulks. The second they get that second hive up, the IQ plummets and they all run around acid rocketing every inch of the map.
3. The minimap is not an interactive part of the screen. It's an image file. The game does not know or care what is on the image file, and as such has no means to map a blip onto the minimap.
4. If an Aliens-ripoff motion tracker was put into the HUD, people would immediatey call the game a ripoff of Aliens. As the developers have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from making a ripoff of Aliens, you can imagine the likelihood of them then turning around and ripping off Aliens.
5. Seeing every moving alien at once imparts precisely zilch for useful information to a marine. A cluster of little circles moving around on the other side of the map is meaningless; they could be two rooms away, they could be on the exact opposite corner, there's no way to tell and I just ignore them. Only when an alien is close enough to have a bigger circle do I pay any attention to it, and by then I usually hear it anyways.
Well my friend, you certainly aren't playing the game the rest of us are.
In the NS we play, one Obsevatory creates motion tracking map-wide, not just within it's radius as it should be.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->2. Motion tracking is almost pointless in the midgame. Fades don't care if you know where they are. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Now you're just making silly Marine excuses. Motion tracking is INVALUABLE mid-game when you're trying to figure out which hive that you've taken the aliens are trying to rush, or which hive the aliens have is least defended.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> The second they get that second hive up, the IQ plummets and they all run around acid rocketing every inch of the map.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ah yes, I see your posts should be ignored entirely because you're clearly Marine-biased and therefore have nothing of use to contribute to this thread since it discusses changing something of the Marines' arsenal and you are clearly being contrary just out of spite.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->3. The minimap is not an interactive part of the screen. It's an image file. The game does not know or care what is on the image file, and as such has no means to map a blip onto the minimap.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Which is why that should change and it should become a radar like most other games impliment. At least then it would be a 2D motion tracking which would help the skulks a LITTLE. I know, I know, god forbid - you wouldn't stand for any changes that don't give the Marines any less of an advantage than they have right now.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->5. Seeing every moving alien at once imparts precisely zilch for useful information to a marine. A cluster of little circles moving around on the other side of the map is meaningless; they could be two rooms away, they could be on the exact opposite corner, there's no way to tell and I just ignore them. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So because of your inability to learn how to properly perceive depth or use the motion tracker, the rest of us should be limited to your level of play? Interesting.
I think motion tracking need to be nerfed, not because the marines are too powerful at the moment, but simply because motion tracking is just far too powerful. Especially at the early stage it comes into play.