Submachine gun and some other small ideas
DrCube
Join Date: 2010-11-23 Member: 75221Members
Right now I think the marines have a gap in tech that can counter lerks. The starting rifle is really well rounded but its not very effective at anything. The shotgun sucks vs lerks with their fast speed and long range attacks but is good vs fades. The flamethrower is the only counter right now to lerks, but thats a really late game weapon. So right now the aliens have a huge advantage early game. I think a submachinegun with a high rate of fire and a large firing cone would be a great counter to the fast moving lerks. The downside to this weapon would be that it does less damage per bullet then the starting rifle and doesn't get any attachments. It could also have a welder as the 2ndary fire to save time on modeling, and seeing as people want to see a welder in the game anyway.It could make for the perfect support weapon with its ability to weld peoples armor and take on some of the faster moving aliens.
Well that's my main idea, here are some other ones:
DI will be able to break open welded doors, well how about making it so when DI is around doors alien commanders can also "weld" doors by infesting them and stopping them from operating. Doors could always be unwelded by welders or if the DI is removed it will reactivate the door.
Make eggs harder to kill but give them a MUCH lower respawn time. Right now its really unfair compared to how gates work. Its almost impossible to kill the last alien base with how quickly aliens respawn, and there is nothing you can do about it. Aliens only need to target the low HP gate to stop marines form being able to respawn. Aliens pretty much get an invincible gate that you cant spawn camp and it comes free of charge with each hive you build.
The fuel gauge on the flame thrower doesn't work, would be nice if that got fixed.
Well that's my main idea, here are some other ones:
DI will be able to break open welded doors, well how about making it so when DI is around doors alien commanders can also "weld" doors by infesting them and stopping them from operating. Doors could always be unwelded by welders or if the DI is removed it will reactivate the door.
Make eggs harder to kill but give them a MUCH lower respawn time. Right now its really unfair compared to how gates work. Its almost impossible to kill the last alien base with how quickly aliens respawn, and there is nothing you can do about it. Aliens only need to target the low HP gate to stop marines form being able to respawn. Aliens pretty much get an invincible gate that you cant spawn camp and it comes free of charge with each hive you build.
The fuel gauge on the flame thrower doesn't work, would be nice if that got fixed.
Comments
I like the idea of DI being able to unlock and lock doors, essentially shifting control away from the marine commander to the alien commander if the alien commander manages to spread infestation far enough, and will also make travelling for aliens much less annoying, having to around a locked door in an area that they have already locked down.
Its actually not that hard dealing with eggs in the last alien hive, because by then you already should have a shotgun, just go into alien hive and 1 shot all of the eggs, and aliens wont be able to respawn as long as you keep 1 shotting all of the eggs, really easy to do and essentially is just like taking out the IP for marines, except with a shotgun it takes mere seconds, and nearly any number of skulks won't stand a chance against you. Plus alien spawn time has already been increased, and with their such low health they are hardly a problem, and aliens usually die more often than marines do generally, they have always had a slightly faster respawn time to balance it.
yes the flame thrower ammo counter isn't in yet, it agree it would be nice to have one soon.
The benefit of the shotgun is that it fires in discrete bursts.
You don't have to track the target, you only have to aim at it for as long as it takes to pull the trigger. Compare that with trying to actually track it with an SMG, I think you'll find that the shotgun works better. It's hard enough to track them with the amazing fire sword that is the flamethrower, imagine that except you have to track it perfectly and it doesn't do damage over time. The reason the flamer works is if you catch the lerk it makes it really visible and probably kills it with DOT, and also it goes through everything and will always hit everything in its path, not so for a gun that shoots proper bullets.
Also the shotgun does considerable damage even with only a couple of pellets, and lerks have pretty poor DPS when they're flying around.
Being able to run away is something all aliens can do, apart from maybe the skulk, it's kind of the point of aliens too, they can and should run away when injured, because they can heal up faster than they can respawn and evolve. This is highly prevalent in NS1, and should be continued in NS2 as it is a very effective strategy.
The point of marines is not so much to kill the aliens, but to gain ground, if you keep chasing aliens off you can do that, then you can build some siege guns, blow up all the nearby structures, push forward some more, rinse, repeat.
You don't get anywhere by killing aliens, although it is amusing to do so, you get places by killing the hives. Aliens have way to much mobility to actually be impaired much by dying, whereas marines are generally slower to progress around the map, so killing them and sending them back to base (and more importantly, stopping them getting a foothold) is good for aliens.
Unfortunately this "anti-lerk" pee-shooter would never kill a lerk because typically they snipe from long distances, or shoot gas from cover allowing them to stay out of sight.
If you're ignoring all the possible ways a lerk can attack, and only considering the instance when their right in your face, then i'd think a high-damage weapon would be needed to drop them before they can get away. But a high-rate-of-fire + low-damage-per-shot wouldn't work due to lag. The mostly equivalent inverse we already have, i.e. the shotgun is low-rate-of-fire + medium-damage-per-shot, and that's not working (because one aimed shotgun blast [if you're that accurate] is the most you can get off in time, and that won't kill a lerk, and any follow-up shot is pointless due to the current damage ramp-off-with-distance the shotgun has).
Since you're just trying to make it easier to kill the lerk, i'm in agreement with ScardyBob:
<!--quoteo(post=1838497:date=Mar 23 2011, 11:29 AM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Mar 23 2011, 11:29 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1838497"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Lerk hit box just needs to be made bigger. Its hard to kill it with any weapon because of that.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->