Alien Commander Idea.

Syknik

<div class="IPBDescription">Alcom.</div>Just copy pasting, what i wrote in another thread.
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I think that per hive you get a different set of upgrades that you can get. For example, for the first hive, the gorge or whoever could jump in right away, and say have choice between, three types of upgrades. If chosen for that hive, you can't get the other 2 options.

1 - Focused Mind, has three different ranks, costs from 5-15-30res.

If an the commander at the time, goes in and gets this can only start with rank 1 at first, until a certain amount of time, or until a new hive is up.

What this could do is say if a celerity skulk and a silence skulk are side by side, they each get a portion of the others talent. so say if you want a to do an ambush and you have 3 skulks with sillence, and 2 with celerity, the 3 with silence would get an additional percentage speed boost. If they are near the 2 with celerity, and the 2 with celerity if close to the other skulks would get a type of aura or whatever which would make them more silent by a certain amount. That way making team work is even moreso important with skulks and other classes. Rank 2 and rank 3 upgrades for that could be either, increases the stats by a certain amount and/or allows you to merge 2 upgrades you have with 2 upgrades which another team member has. (skulk with silence/focus, one with cloaking/silence, you get a small buff of each.)

2 - Improve Chambers - again, ranks 1-3. different costs.

Commander reaserches this, and with this, for the first rank, it increases one of your stats (by whichever chamber is dropped)

So, say if you're team goes with Movement Chambers. Commander gets this, you go with celerity, while gestating, it gives you the option of whether or not, you wish to incease your celerity by a certain stat, or silence/adren by a certain amount. rank 2 and 3 allows you to put more points into wherever. Each point you put into a certain increase, causes gestation period to last longer. Wouldn't stack with the Focused mind. Would be more of a, solo upgrade.

3 - For a third, I don't really have any other idea for it. so.. yeah =]


Small idea i thought would be neat to have. I didn't really think too long about each of the upgrades it's all just random thoughts about each.

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Daworm

Have you seen this?

<a href="http://twitpic.com/56ybg/full" target="_blank">http://twitpic.com/56ybg/full</a>

Syknik

I have, but I don't really think that'd be the best way to have it. I could see that being very useful for say.. competitive play, but for pubs ? I can't really see it working out.

NeonSpyder

I'm intrigued by the idea of the 'Focused Mind' upgrade you described. The concept of aliens sharing their chosen upgrades while in the vicinity of each other could possibly re-balance the alien end game so that it's not an immense HMG rape-train by the end of the game.

It would also seem to encourage team work... if three skulks each have Silence, Regen and Carapace respectively, then while each alien with their respective upgrade would have full use of it, but each nearby skulk/alien would receive a percentage of the other upgrade, perhaps based on the level of the alien commander's research into Focused Mind or whatever works balance wise. This could strongly encourage teamwork, especially if certain classes (like the gorge) would give a higher percentage of their bonus to nearby aliens, perhaps modified by some kind of alien tower? While a skulk might give 10% of an ability or so to his allies, then a gorge might give 15% or 20%, modified by a nearby tower for another 1.5X of that percentage, so a skulk would give 15% and a gorge 30%.

These bonuses could stack, but offer diminishing returns. So one gorge might give 20% of carapace to his nearby allies, while a second gorge with carapace would only give 10%, and a third 5% so by the time you throw down the 8th gorge in a full on gorge rush, there's only a total 40% carapace bonus across the collected gorges, which would be interesting, but not super effective, especially considering that early game aliens don't have many options (if any) for ability upgrades, and the alien research tree (i.e. focused mind) would not be well advanced either, so these kind of 'aura' bonuses wouldn't be significant early game, might be interesting mid game, but will definitely be useful late game, allowing concentrated alien efforts to be more effective then the (still useful) lonesome fade.

Let's look at the plusses:

1. Promotes alien teamwork and co-operation. "You're getting carapace? Ok I'll get regen and meet you at the junction."
2. Promotes gorge-love, if they're glowing auras of bonus abilities + tower production <3
3. Enhances alien end-game while not overpowering alien early game.
4. Did I mention alien teamwork?
5. It's a very passive effect, with the bonuses applying without any active effort required on the alien's part aside from picking an upgrade to evolve, and requiring the alien commander to 'research' the focused mind ability for the alien players. Even though it's a passive effect, players that are aware of it can still make use of it for advanced tactics. (which should be most of them, hopefully through some kind of newbie-friendly on screen tutorial pop up.)
6. Promotes diversity of upgrades. 6 aliens all with carapace won't be giving effective bonuses to each other, while one with regen, one with celerity, one with carapace, and three with whatever else would promote better overall effect across the alien group of combatants.
7. Promotes specialized tactics, alien players who co-operate might choose to focus their 'squad' of skulks or whatever on a particular kind of ability focus, such as two skulks with carapace and one with regenerate would make for tough skulks that can heal on the fly.
8. Could work very well with the proposed alien commander 'species adjustment' abilities as described here: <a href="http://twitpic.com/56ybg/full" target="_blank">http://twitpic.com/56ybg/full</a>

9. What do you think?

Negatives:

1. Difficult to balance appropriate aura bonus effects
2. Difficult to implement in regards to the GUI. How will players know what bonus they get, and how much of one? Maybe enhance the glowing of an upgraded ability icon on their screen? The more ambient occlusion/glowing the more that bonus is giving you?
3. Complicates the game. Even though it's a passive effect, some players may get confused with it's implementation.
4. Might be superfluous or excessive in implementation if used in conjunction with the species adjustment abilities of the alien commander as described here: <a href="http://twitpic.com/56ybg/full" target="_blank">http://twitpic.com/56ybg/full</a>

5. What do you think?

Avata

I think any ability that the Alien Comm has to help the team work together is a good idea. I think the commander should take the role of the current hive mind... As in the alien comm tells players what's being attacked like the marine comm does instead of the automatic way it happens now.

But I haven't worked out how a second comm is going to work/balance? If having another comm is an advantage, then come-backs are going to be harder, if it isn't such a big advantage, why would we bother? It's hard to imagine this working... In starcraft you could play a game with 2 people controlling the same team. Even that ended up being impractical.

I mentioned in another thread that the Alien commander role should be redundant. The aliens should be able to win without it, but with the comm in place, it's easier for them to work together and have a better over-view.

I do think that the alien commander needs a beacon type ability... that's always been a disadvantage to aliens

locallyunscene

<!--quoteo(post=1715880:date=Jul 5 2009, 11:11 PM:name=Frhoe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Frhoe @ Jul 5 2009, 11:11 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1715880"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->1 - Focused Mind, has three different ranks, costs from 5-15-30res.

If an the commander at the time, goes in and gets this can only start with rank 1 at first, until a certain amount of time, or until a new hive is up.

What this could do is say if a celerity skulk and a silence skulk are side by side, they each get a portion of the others talent. so say if you want a to do an ambush and you have 3 skulks with sillence, and 2 with celerity, the 3 with silence would get an additional percentage speed boost. If they are near the 2 with celerity, and the 2 with celerity if close to the other skulks would get a type of aura or whatever which would make them more silent by a certain amount. That way making team work is even moreso important with skulks and other classes. Rank 2 and rank 3 upgrades for that could be either, increases the stats by a certain amount and/or allows you to merge 2 upgrades you have with 2 upgrades which another team member has. (skulk with silence/focus, one with cloaking/silence, you get a small buff of each.)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is similar to the <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=104126&st=0&p=1676105&#entry1676105" target="_blank">Quorum Sensing</a> idea a while ago. I like it.

S!K

ya... alien commander isn't going to make much sense to anyone. I honestly can't imagine how it would work out at all. I expect it to be something kind of useless because I can't come up with any ideas for which it would be that useful.

However, I'm willing to wait to see what the dev team can come up with. Those guys are full of ideas.