Make the Sentry Upgradeable!
Runteh
Join Date: 2010-06-26 Member: 72163Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2010-06-26 Member: 72163Members, Reinforced - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">Stop the Farming.</div>Can we please, please, please have sentries that can be upgraded?
# Sometimes you want to be able to place 4 to cover complicated rooms.
# Other times you want 4 facing one direction, with one in front (making 5) to cover them from the rear.
# Other times you want to build one on the front line, but where in reality you need 4 and quickly.
Why not have the ability to upgrade a sentry to 4x its strength, with a boost on health as well.
So (something like):
<b>Sentry Level 1:</b> 20 Carbon / 10 Damage / 1,300 HP
<b>Sentry Level 2:</b> 20 Carbon / 20 Damage / +25% HP
<b>Sentry Level 3:</b> 20 Carbon / 30 Damage / +25% HP
<b>Sentry Level 4:</b> 20 Carbon / 40 Damage / +25% HP (2,600 HP)
Farming for aliens 'look and feels' right, because they are a biological and infesting force. For Marines it is a real trip hazard, and makes small spaces very difficult and messy.
It would also provide Marines with the ability to create 'Outposts' near to hives, quickly and effectively.
You could suppose it would be overpowered, but remember that there is now one covering a limited area compared to 4 covering a larger one, and it would be weaker and therefore easier to loose.
# Sometimes you want to be able to place 4 to cover complicated rooms.
# Other times you want 4 facing one direction, with one in front (making 5) to cover them from the rear.
# Other times you want to build one on the front line, but where in reality you need 4 and quickly.
Why not have the ability to upgrade a sentry to 4x its strength, with a boost on health as well.
So (something like):
<b>Sentry Level 1:</b> 20 Carbon / 10 Damage / 1,300 HP
<b>Sentry Level 2:</b> 20 Carbon / 20 Damage / +25% HP
<b>Sentry Level 3:</b> 20 Carbon / 30 Damage / +25% HP
<b>Sentry Level 4:</b> 20 Carbon / 40 Damage / +25% HP (2,600 HP)
Farming for aliens 'look and feels' right, because they are a biological and infesting force. For Marines it is a real trip hazard, and makes small spaces very difficult and messy.
It would also provide Marines with the ability to create 'Outposts' near to hives, quickly and effectively.
You could suppose it would be overpowered, but remember that there is now one covering a limited area compared to 4 covering a larger one, and it would be weaker and therefore easier to loose.
Comments
Instead of 4 turrets in a room, you've got the equivalent of 6 to 16 shooting now. What kind of alien can survive that? Any skulk who is in front of 3 turrets long enough to get shot will almost always die unless he was intentionally running past them.
Remember, people won't just stop at using one upgraded turret. It's another thing if there's a hard limit, but if the game has to hard limit itself... probably not a great idea in the first place.
10 Carbon, 20 Carbon - the same cost as current sentries. (Rectified in OP)
10 Carbon, 20 Carbon - the same cost as current sentries. (Rectified in OP)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd put 4 lv2's in the corners (just assuming empty square room for a sec). No matter where you go, that's 6 turrets blasting you, even if one can't see you.
8 turrets facing inward would be awkward moving around, and would leave their backs to a hallway somewhere. Would also take much longer to set up and rotate properly.
8 turrets facing inward would be awkward moving around, and would leave their backs to a hallway somewhere. Would also take much longer to set up and rotate properly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Apart from the fact that this has been going on in 160. Now there is less Carbon (team Carbon) it won't occur. It would be sentry overspend.
I have set up (using 160 exploits) 8 in Rockdown facing one direction, and nothing can get through.
But in 161 it would be 160 Team Carbon, and there is no way that this sort of spend is available to you now.
Before 160 on Rockdown (and this is a small map) you ended up going round in circles. Even if you have a 7 man team, the alien defence takes so long to work down that it require 5 people up front. But the rear goes disregarded, and it becomes impossible to cover every part of the map and expand.
Also, if you put 4 level2s in a room, that will be max 2 firing at you if you are a Lerk or Gorge. Remember there are vents and rafters for aliens.
I don't get what the issue is here. People spam rooms anyway, and it gets messy. This does nothing more than reduce spam - whilst making them potentially much more useful in pro play for creating an outpost, or moving up the line.
I wouldn't want to see the average room a 'alien killing factory'. The fact is, if you make the spend they should work. You are sacrificing other upgrades, I don't see the issue.
This was the whole reason for electrified turrets in NS1, it was fixing a 'broken' part of the game like a plaster on a broken leg.
The average games are still, going on, 40+ minutes.
But if this goes down the same road as NS1, they are pretty much useless items. You might as well just go for marine upgrades.
It needs fixing.
They don't anyway because of the limited angle of attack. It does not matter how powerful a sentry is from the front if it can't fire more than 90 degrees.
Basically I am suggesting you have 4 turrets that can face one direction, or 4 that cover each other which is done at the moment anyway.
I fail to see the issue.
They both have different advantages in different way, and different negatives in different ways.
It means that a stretched marine team has to work 'a lot' harder than the equivalent alien team.
This is where area control becomes an issue, especially because a skulk or two can take a IP in 1/8 of the time it takes to destroy a hive.
In 160 it was not a problem, because sentry spam made the base pretty much impregnable.
In 161 is has made marine wins hard because you can't take care of the rear as well.
I'm not suggesting this be made harder for aliens - this is about reducing turret spam, whilst at the same time making them actually useful in competitive play.
But as commander, it is a game of cat and mouse with the sentries. Sometimes you just want to cover one direction really well.
Just so you know that aliens either have to take a longer route, or work to get into the room.
The sentries costing 20 carbon makes them almost useless. Carbon starting off with one resource takes 10 seconds to acquire 1 carbon, that means it take approximately 3+ minutes to achieve 20 carbon. An as carbon are used on the precious marine armories, IPs, weapon/armor upgrades, weapons and everything else that does make balancing resources to use sentrys as a method of base protection worthless seeing that 3 minutes of your time can be killed in a skulk in less than 1 minute if its not covered.
Sentrys should either cost plasma or a much smaller carbon cost. Simply by putting them as carbon you've decreased how often they will be used because the general goal for a marine right now is to acquire a second cc, armory w/ upgrade, and flamethrowers. Thats 20 for the cc, 20 for the armory, 20 the cc upgrade, 20 for the advanced armory, 20 for the weapons module, and 20 for the flamethrowers itself. Making it about 120 carbon being 6x as much as 20 being almost 18+ minutes of resources! Certainly by acquiring more rts the time is cut in half but this just goes to show the extreme dependence of the marine team on being able to acquire rts and keep them covered... and seeing that turrets cost carbon instead of plasma manpower would most likely ended up being the ones deployed to guard the precious rts which will end up leaving the marines most often in a losing battle.
I'm sorry. But, what? Do you play alien? When there are 4+ sentries facing one way, it is next to impossible to get through. Making them actually useful? They're already useful. Lets make whips with MORE range to be more balanced.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The turrets now cost wouldn't be so bad if it werent so damn easy to just get around a single turret and kill it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
/facepalm. Please read the thread first before you post. This is in regards to multiple sentries and not just one. Yes, it's easy getting around one. It should be easy.
edit: Rulgrok, but you have to also remember that aliens don't get a recycle option as a commander. Once something is being built, you can't cancel it. Not to mention, your second CC doesn't even have to be powered to get upgraded.
But, as they currently stand, are not worth 20 carbon. Its a relative comparison. 20 carbon can buy 2 armories or 1 command station or 1 ip or 1.333 extractors, which are all worth far more than a sentry.
As for support, I'd rather drop an armory and micro medkits/ammo than place a sentry. I build sentries BECAUSE I don't need to babysit them. They are a poor support structure because I want my marines to constantly on the attack and moving forward rather than camping behind a sentry wall. As it currently stands, sentries are the only useful defensive structure in NS2 and I think UWE should embrace that fact rather than try to fit them uncomfortably into a "support" role.
However, I would probably have it so the upgrades expand the firing cone, too. Just slightly, up to 130 degrees maybe.
Otherwise you would almost always prefer more sentries to cover more ground.
Nah, just a higher calibre.
OH, were you talking about the visual metamorphosis? Yeah, that'd be sweet.
I would prefer that rather than a hard damage upgrade, sentries which currently do 'light' damage (what this effectively means is that 4 hp damage is blocked per point of armour), can be upgraded to 'normal' damage (2 hp damage blocked per point of armour), then maybe again 'heavy' damage (1 hp blocked per point of armour). This will make them much more effective at damaging high-armour targets (Fade: 100, Onos: 600), but <b>not much more</b> effective at damaging low-armour targets (Skulk: 10), so it automatically scales quite well in late-game.
A greater scanning angle would be a good upgrade, too - 120 degrees or a bit higher at the highest upgrade.
Similarly, I'd like to see the rifle get a late-game 'heavy' damage upgrade (it's 'normal' damage by default), and possibly a larger magazine.
A single Lerk managed to take out 3+ Marines easily, because they couldnt hit it at all.
Even the sentry I managed to drop and construct was dominated while it was hanging overhead above it.
I don't think it's the sentrys, it's the whole thing thats half-baked still.
I'll go back to waiting for a playable version, but looking at where we came from I applaud the progress, it's still in beta for a reason after all.
Also, I just realised that HealthPerArmor doesn't really take effect until armour is low and/or damage is high, i.e. HealthPerArmor*self.armor < absorptionPercentage*damage
Otherwise, the absorptionPercentage*damage is lower, and is always taken as the minimum.
Basically, changing the damage type in this case is pointless.
So you'd have to have the absorptionPercentage change with damage type, instead.
I'm not entirely sure why they have two different things for this, actually. It would be sufficient if they had damage/HealthPerArmor -> then effectively, absorptionPercentage = 1/HealthPerArmor. Heavy: 100%, Normal: 50%, Light: 25%. That should yield the same aggregate results, but make damage type more significant from the get-go.
It could just be that absorptionPercentage = 0.7 is just a placeholder, though.
To me the sentries feel broken.
The fact is that if you play aliens a good Lerk can take down an entire farm from certain positions. Now, this is a good thing. It is a real counter to sentries - a good reason to have spikes instead of bite. But with stretched lines, marines take a long time to react to alien attacks.
I actually think there should be less sentries, but more effective. Like the alien movies, a couple block a certain pathway. I think having this approach is better than securing every room with 4+ sentries as you expand. It also leaves room for Lerks who have to sneak into your base, be it by vents or otherwise.
It also promotes strategic outposts. Be that by sneaking a MAC into quiet areas of the map, or by moving the front line further up. Or just making a dead end corridor completely secure. It won't kill the hive, but it means that the marines can move to a secure area further afield if they need to.
Maybe the Gorge could have some sort of 'bile ball' upgrade that when fired, roles across the floor and fools the sentries. Combined with a Lerk, you can sneak him in whilst the sentries are firing at this 'bile ball'. This would rational very powerful sentries and promote team play.
Competitively they are a worry, and currently I don't think they would be used in competitive matches. They have become just 'part of defending a base' with 'more is better' attitude. Rather than something that feels more considered and strategic.
You also have to consider how Whips are very 'early game' structures, and after minimal upgrades they will have the bombard function. When these start moving on bases, I imagine there is going to be a real issue combined with the alien life form ability to take out sentries easily.
I mean, shouldn't sentries be less effective against heavy lifeforms, especially the siegebreaker Onos.
For example, if sentries with light damage were to fire at an onos to the point of death and the onos let them, the Onos would effectively have 700+600*4 = 3100 hitpoints. This is an insane amount of hp. A tier1 hive by comparison has 7000 hp.
If it were normal damage, the Onos would effectively have 700+600*2 = 1900 hitpoints.
If it were heavy damage, the Onos would effectively have 700+600*1 = 1300 hitpoints. Although their armour effectiveness has dropped considerably, it still has a lot of hitpoints.
Let's consider the opposite end of the spectrum then: skulks.
Light damage vs skulk: 70+10*4 = 110 hp
Normal damage vs skulk: 70+10*2 = 90 hp
Heavy damage vs skulk: 70+10*1 = 80 hp
As you can see, the drop in hitpoints isn't very large, so sentries won't become much more effective at killing skulks than they already are. This is a good thing, I think, because it allows the skulk to scale better late-game and not become obsolete.
<strike>Anyway, that's all moot because the armour system doesn't work desirably.</strike> Health-per-armour only affects damage dealt to health when armour gets very low. It uses an absorption-percentage instead, so 70% of any damage dealt is blocked by armour, thus 30% goes directly to hp; of the 70% of damage going to armour, the amount of armour consumed depends on the health-per-armour (divide the 70% by the health-per-armour).
It should be noted that with the exoskeleton, the absorption-percentage is 95% (the number's in the balance sheet, it just hasn't been implemented yet). That's pretty crazy. That basically means that for every 200 points of normal damage, 10 points go directly to hp, 190 points go to armour, but only 95 points of armour are consumed. The exoskeleton marine has (by default) 100 hp and 300 ap.
The exoskeleton has effectively 700 hitpoints versus normal damage.
<u>Edit:</u> Oh, basically, light/normal/heavy damage-types (4,2,1 healthperarmour) determine how much armour is destroyed when damage is dealt. In that case, it actually is useful as it is. I don't know why that didn't occur to me before.
Or you can do a less realistic aproach but more balancing kinda, and do it that the sentries are made strong verses the weak aliens like skulks but are made weak on lerks or fades and ono's. This way the lvl 1 sentry's are good for the start but weaker later on, also since aliens armor upgrades, the sentries then need to upgrade inorder to keep up, and being made to shoot weaker at stronger opponents..... then the stronger opponents being already dominant will get past them better than skulks and upgraded will become a definite threat.
Yet if they are upgraded the sentry guns, then their attacks are made less weak verses the stronger opponents but same verses the weak, then stronger to help out with the armor upgrades, such as thiss: (default) lvl 1 20C; 100% vs skulks and gorges, 45% vs fades & ono's, 65% vs lerks.
lvl 2 30Cbs; 100% vs skulks and gorges, 61% vs fades and ono's, 80% vs lerks. lvl 3 25C; 110% vs skulks & 100% vs gorges and lerk's, 82% ono's, 92% fades. lvl 4 40C; 120% skulks, gorges, lerks. 110% vs fades, 100% vs ono's.(lvl 4, will have the ability to target a specific target and deal 20% more damage, this ability is activated by the commander and lasts 20 seconds)..
Range, cone of fire, damagetype or electrify (like in ns1 turret factory or RTs) would be considerable. There are already dmg upgrades => weapon 1-3, upgrades turret dmg too or am i wrong?