Flame thrower idea. Kind of.

Pistachio

Even with the increased visibility that was added earlier for players who are on fire, I still find the flame thrower almost completely debilitating during battle(as an alien). I usually end up running into walls or at the very least missing my mark entirely. There's a couple solutions I'd like to propose.

1. Have level three armor come with a perk that prevents aliens from burning. Seeing as the flamethrower is a pretty early game advantage for marines, this would be a late game solution for the alien team.

Or.

2. Make hivesight more functional, a la Left 4 Dead style silhouettes, which would let any alien see a parasited marine easily through the flames. This would also work with whatever flavor of "scent of fear" is added. What's nice is this would provide both early and late game solutions, the latter being more reliable.

sheena_yanai

aliens just see the parasite, and not the whole marine for a reason, giving aliens a siluette gives away way to much informations about marine movement, the direction hes facing at and range. this isnt supposed to be a wallhack, but having them for other alien players would be neat, if its just for a short distance, so the game would not have to calculate them from across the map aswell. normal icon for distant aliens, l4d style for the one next room/vent .
but thats not really relevant right now

Rebel

<!--quoteo(post=1817187:date=Dec 19 2010, 04:09 AM:name=sheena_yanai)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (sheena_yanai @ Dec 19 2010, 04:09 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1817187"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->aliens just see the parasite, and not the whole marine for a reason, giving aliens a siluette gives away way to much informations about marine movement, the direction hes facing at and range. this isnt supposed to be a wallhack, but having them for other alien players would be neat, if its just for a short distance, so the game would not have to calculate them from across the map aswell. normal icon for distant aliens, l4d style for the one next room/vent .
but thats not really relevant right now<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I disagree, in NS they were just a blob purely because of engine restrictions I haven't seen anything anywhere that says that hivesight / parasite couldn't provide a full outline especially seeing as medpacks now remove it which IMHO is a shame as medpacks have a negligible cost against the risk / effort of parasiting marines in the first place.

Again having outlines for other aliens would be a great idea to highlight ambush points or what they are up to in areas close to hive / infestation / whatever the new SC's are.

Feha

I like the hive sight working well even when you are flamed, altough I actually prefer those sprites to an actually outline. The major problem right now is just that you dont see who is parasited unless they are out of your sight. It should be changed so that either it always show (maybe even show for non-parasited rines when they are in your line of sight, as others get to see them as such then), or make flamethrowers count as blocking line of sight, so you see parasited rines while getting toasted.
Or make it could as sight is blocked, but still let hivesight display even non-parasited rines that actually are around you.

Pistachio

I don't see how a silhouette would give away too much information, I think it would streamline gameplay. Also it's not like we need to see the marines clear across the map. Having them appear on hivesight/parasite when they're within a short distance would be fine. Enough to give you a heads up when a marine is about to round a corner, and it will still work like the advantage it's supposed to be. It could even become more accurate the closer you get to a marine. So, maybe you do see a cluster across the map, but you can't tell what they're doing until you're on top of them, or in an adjacent room.

luns

I've said earlier, to either reduce the damage, or the flaming dot you get on yourself. Plus the blinding effect is also annoying!
So maybe keep the flame thrower damage the same but dot damage reduced would be much better?