Does anyone else occasionally after a successful shot with the GL have the grenade on the next shot just kind of fall to the ground with either no forward momentum or even slightly backwards? I've noted this the last 2 or 3 builds for myself at least.
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited July 2011
<!--quoteo(post=1861728:date=Jul 19 2011, 02:39 PM:name=KuBaN)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (KuBaN @ Jul 19 2011, 02:39 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1861728"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><ul><li><b>Shotgun</b>: Worrisome that puncture damage would even be considered for the Shotgun. It seems completely counter-intuitive (perhaps this was realized?).</li><li><b>Rifle</b>: This seems completely backwards. I think anyone playing the game would expect a Shotgun to deal Heavy damage, not the Rifle. Beyond that I don't understand why the Rifle is the candidate for being better against bigger/later lifeforms and heavily armored structures. Your starting weapon, the rifle should be the "jack of all trades master of none," shouldn't it? The shotgun seems a better candidate for Heavy damage (with a little damage reduction to compensate). Also, was is it an oversight or a deliberate decision that Heavy damage does not deal EXTRA damage to Armor like it was originally detailed in a previous blog post?</li><li><b>GL</b>: +1 for Concussive Rounds (and I guess grenades)! This seems like the missing link between the Rifle and the Shotgun!</li></ul>
EDIT: Take this comment with a grain of salt; apparently Charlie wasn't finished writing it, and I got antsy (sorry)!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Puncture damage just means the weapon is (30%) more effective against players than structures. For example, if the shotgun is changed from 180 Normal damage (180 v players / 180 v structures) to 138 Puncture damage (179.4 v players / 138 v structures), it will be a lot less effective against structures.
<!--quoteo(post=1861843:date=Jul 20 2011, 04:42 AM:name=twiliteblue)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (twiliteblue @ Jul 20 2011, 04:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1861843"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Puncture damage just means the weapon is (30%) more effective against players than structures. For example, if the shotgun is changed from 180 Normal damage (180 v players / 180 v structures) to 138 Puncture damage (179.4 v players / 138 v structures), it will be a lot less effective against structures.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I know what Puncture damage does :)
It just wouldn't make sense for a Shotgun, the veritable HAMMER, to deal Puncture (what used to be Piercing) damage, while the Assault Rifle deals Heavy damage.
I would expect the faster-traveling bullets with longer range to Puncture or Pierce before the Shotgun blast. Makes more sense for the Shotgun to tear away Armor with it's close-ranged, wide-coverage blast.
It also makes more sense from a technical/design standpoint: the Shotgun should be able to show up around the time the higher-tier lifeforms with more Armor show up.
1.cysts which gorges drop, let it cost energy only - this would help the spread of infestation much easier for aliens but alien commander cysts will stay the same. gorge needs to help spread infestation much quicker, depending on res extremely slows down the spread of infestation since how easy it is to kill it now.
2.maybe allowing the gorge to spit cysts this way they can place them anywhere in the room, without them always being exposed on the floor at easy to shoot locations. This would improve tactics of cysts placement since they are always on the floor, making way to easy targets.
3.cysts need passive defensive abilities, some ideas; once cysts are built they are rooted under the infestation scan or flamethrower would expose them or cysts auto cloak after they are built - allowing cysts to be easily seen, fully exposed on the floor makes them extremely easy targets and since aliens require infestation it would make sense the cysts themselves have some sort of protection from any wondering marines.
i've read the current changes to cysts, they are good especially the LOS change but they still need more changes. The above should help a lot. I just wish one day infestation can actually spread or grow on its own though.
I think the trouble with both the rifle and the grenade launcher is that the rifle is crap.
The GL isn't redundant, it just isn't useful on its own, it never was, having a GL is a very useful thing, the only trouble is that the gun it's attached to is the rifle, which isn't very good.
I'm sure if you found a way to improve the rifle for late game, the GL would become far more useful as well, at the moment the GL is the primary weapon on the GL/rifle, it should probably be the other way around, as the GL is ultimately a secondary weapon, it was in NS1, only difference being that it was the player who was the secondary weapon of the squad, rather than the addon being the secondary weapon of the rifle.
The idea of the rifle dealing heavy damage is a good one, the shotgun is a scattergun, so it feels clumsy and unwieldy but still powerful, it does a lot of damage but not very specialised or situational, it just goes bang and kills stuff in front of it. Whereas the rifle is a precise weapon, it makes sense that it would be sort of armor piercing or have some sort of specialised ammunition to deal with specific situations.
The damage types do need visual indicators though, perhaps weapons doing heavy damage should have blue tinted gunfire and a specific impact effect/sound when hitting armor. Kind of like the gargantua in HL1, if you shoot it with bullets they just ping off it to show ineffectiveness, whereas stuff that hurts it makes it bleed and make hurt noises.
<!--quoteo(post=1861975:date=Jul 20 2011, 02:36 PM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Jul 20 2011, 02:36 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1861975"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The idea of the rifle dealing heavy damage is a good one, the shotgun is a scattergun, so it feels clumsy and unwieldy but still powerful, it does a lot of damage but not very specialised or situational, it just goes bang and kills stuff in front of it. Whereas the rifle is a precise weapon, it makes sense that it would be sort of armor piercing or have some sort of specialised ammunition to deal with specific situations.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> An "Armor Piercing Round" is designed to penetrate Armor for the purpose of further damaging whatever is behind that armor, which is effectively what Puncture damage does (to players). It isn't necessarily designed to be more effective at destroying more of the Armor itself; but that is more or less what the Heavy damage type does.
So I agree; the Rifle should be a precision weapon, but Puncture (dealing 30% extra damage off the top) seems to fit that role better than Heavy, which is most effective at softening up fresh units/structures.
Or have a midgame upgrade (5 PRes at the armory, maybe?) for AP ammo for the rifle, which changes the damage type. Or some other interesting thing. The current story is, you buy a shotgun if you have the res, you buy a GL if you happen to need to dig out an infested hole, but you only stick with the rifle if you don't have the res to upgrade to a shotgun. Make a couple of inexpensive upgrades for the rifle (AP ammo, or a 99 round drum mag, or something) and you'll see people choosing it over the shotgun.
SewlekThe programmer previously known as SchimmelJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16247Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Developer
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Cyst changes - We removed the LOS requirement for cyst placement and increased their range so you will need less of them to expand. - We also changed how disconnected cysts take damage (only the ‘outside’ ones take damage) so an entire disconnected island won’t die too quickly<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1862028:date=Jul 20 2011, 11:40 PM:name=KuBaN)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (KuBaN @ Jul 20 2011, 11:40 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1862028"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->An "Armor Piercing Round" is designed to penetrate Armor for the purpose of further damaging whatever is behind that armor, which is effectively what Puncture damage does (to players). It isn't necessarily designed to be more effective at destroying more of the Armor itself; but that is more or less what the Heavy damage type does.
So I agree; the Rifle should be a precision weapon, but Puncture (dealing 30% extra damage off the top) seems to fit that role better than Heavy, which is most effective at softening up fresh units/structures.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, if we're arguing realism, armor piercing ammo tends to punch through armor at the expense of not exploding once it's inside the thing it punched through, doing less actual damage than say, hollow point ammo.
Heavy damage makes it scale better as lifeforms get more armor the further up the tech tree you go, puncture damage just makes it do 30% more damage, as nobody uses rifles against structures anyway.
If you want a specifically anti-armor weapon, which would be ideal for late game, heavy damage is more useful.
Maybe give each power node only enough energy to support 4 sentries. For additional sentries in that area, a powerpack needs to be dropped.
Or
Let firing sentries drain energy from the powernode, if there are alot of sentries firing, the energy will get low and the powernode needs to regenerate until it can power the sentries again. (Lore: Since they don't use ammo, the bullets are fabricated inside the turret, using energy)
<!--quoteo(post=1862385:date=Jul 22 2011, 10:11 AM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Jul 22 2011, 10:11 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1862385"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Heavy damage makes it scale better as lifeforms get more armor the further up the tech tree you go, puncture damage just makes it do 30% more damage, as nobody uses rifles against structures anyway.
If you want a specifically anti-armor weapon, which would be ideal for late game, heavy damage is more useful.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Exactly. But for the Shotgun.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Surprised to see the alien balance so skewed in 183 (70% atm). They lost leap but they gained significant movement speed. I remember feeling like I was pwning with Skulks, but I didn’t take it that seriously. Would love to keep the skulk speed in there, but will have to address this somehow.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think part of the reason skulks are now killing more is to do with the removal of marine jump spam. Before, 1 marine could kill a few skulks by just jumping around and avoiding them, now it's less effective. (I'm not saying bring it back! just pointing out the reason for the change in balance)
I also really believe that the skulk animations are partly to blame. It's really difficult to track them when they are just floating around as they do now.
In this build once aliens get fades they can then take over the whole map and really keep the marines stuck in their own base. The marines really need to be aggressive and stop the second hive or else the game is over.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Surprised to see the alien balance so skewed in 183 (70% atm). They lost leap but they gained significant movement speed. I remember feeling like I was pwning with Skulks, but I didn’t take it that seriously. Would love to keep the skulk speed in there, but will have to address this somehow.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I think part of the reason skulks are now killing more is to do with the removal of marine jump spam. Before, 1 marine could kill a few skulks by just jumping around and avoiding them, now it's less effective. (I'm not saying bring it back! just pointing out the reason for the change in balance)
I also really believe that the skulk animations are partly to blame. It's really difficult to track them when they are just floating around as they do now.
In this build once aliens get fades they can then take over the whole map and really keep the marines stuck in their own base. The marines really need to be aggressive and stop the second hive or else the game is over. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Skulk speed definitely is not the issue with why aliens are winning 70% of the time as you say. Early games, marines are still pretty much dominating I find, unless if they are just a bad team. What the issue is, is that once the second hive goes up, by that time, usually armor 1 and weapons 2 is up for the aliens (or weap 2 is going up) and fades are up asap. Having to fight off a fade while you have 2-3 skulks leaping around at you, a pack of 4 marines don't really stand a chance.
Fades and skulks keep the marines back into base, the aliens start to takeover more of the map, start getting more res, then the hydra/crag spam begins to happen. People can preach about about how all the marines need is a FT or a GL to clear it all out, but whenever a decent fade notices that GLer or FT, we're on him till he's dead. Even if some stuff goes down, aliens have an excessive amount of resources and we just rebuild
Also, the fact that a single gorge with a minicyst, and 2 hydras can keep 3 marines at bay from going into SA, and if they do come in, the gorge just has to jump around, heal himself and the hydras, and he'll come out the victor.
A minicyst should start to decay after a a bit if an actual cyst doesn't show up, the structures on minicyst should also deal less damage.
Oh and, whenever you're a lone skulk who is getting the drop on marines, and you have frenzy/swarm, they'll die quickly and whatever damage you take, most of the time you get healed to full by the end of it, whenever that happens I know for myself personally I just keep going along, even in a group of 4 i'll just jump right on in, because I know i'll probably be able to take down 2 or 3, because i'll just keep getting healed.
The fact that killing a structure grants you health back shouldn't happen. I can't count the amount of times, that i've seen a MAC welding a powernode with 4 marines around, i'd go kill 1 or 2 marines, jump to the side, kill the mac for some quick health and then go back to the marines.
Getting health on kill should only be if you kill a player, not structures.
Oh and whenever skulks are running on walls/ceilings they're so much harder to hit especially with an lmg, it just seems to miss so much more.
----------
TL;DR
-Skulk speed not an issue -Issue is 2nd hive fade/skulks can hold back everything until they take control of the rest of the map. -Minicysts should decay after a bit. -Structures on minicysts should deal less damage and be slower (hydras, also they should have less health while on a minicyst) -Should not get health on kill for destroying a structure. -skulks on walls/ceilings hard to kill, feels like the bullets keep missing.
Minicysts don't need to decay, gorges already swear pres at a high rate not to mention gain almost none from kills, the last thing they need is even more of a burden on them to make them capable of doing anything useful. If a gorge doesn't have hydras what is he? A heal bot with a weak shot until bile bomb comes out. Hydras pretty much make the gorge right now, minicysts are part of that, we don't need to make things worse for them.
Gorges aren't supposed to be a battle class. They aren't meant to be up in the faces of marines. The only time they should be around is whenever they're doing a massive attack against marines and the aliens will need healing to come out the victor. Hydras are ridiculous right now and are spammed to hells end. If a gorge does see a marine his ass should be getting the heck out of there, the fact that I can be a gorge and laugh at a single marine trying to kill me isn't right.
I'm saying the minicysts should decay if after a while an actual Cyst doesn't spawn close to it after a few minutes. If by after a few minutes you're still in SA and the hive still isn't up, and no cyst has reached the minicyst, it should start to wither away. Heck even actual cysts start to starve if it's not connected to anything else, should be the same with minicysts. Plus if you really want to keep that area, then just drop another minicyst after the one you had up dies.
<!--quoteo(post=1865413:date=Aug 1 2011, 04:35 AM:name=Frhoe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Frhoe @ Aug 1 2011, 04:35 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1865413"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Gorges aren't supposed to be a battle class.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> And they aren't.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->They aren't meant to be up in the faces of marines.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> And they don't.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The only time they should be around is whenever they're doing a massive attack against marines and the aliens will need healing to come out the victor.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> So basically you're saying the gorge should only exist to be a heal bot? I don't think so. I get the impression you actually intended to say: "The only time they should be around the front lines is whenever they're doing a massive attack against marines and the aliens will need healing to come out the victor." Which is an unrealistic expectation. What are they supposed to do for 2/3rds of the game, twiddle their thumbs while sitting around the hive?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Hydras are ridiculous right now and are spammed to hells end. If a gorge does see a marine his ass should be getting the heck out of there, the fact that I can be a gorge and laugh at a single marine trying to kill me isn't right.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> He doesn't laugh at a single marine trying to kill him, a single marine will kill his ass just fine. When I see a marine coming if I've done my work right, I'll retreat back to hydras for safety, and if he follows, the hydra will force him back, unless he's really cocky and sticks around, in which case, hey, I get a kill. Hydras aren't ridiculous, they're easy to kill with the right weapon, the problem is without hydras the aliens can't hold any damn ground, and with hydras holding ground, the game goes to the marines. Hydras do their job, they delay marines, the aliens for many reasons, will use them to hold ground and make an area where friendlies can retreat to throw off pursuit and heal. Effectively hydra+gorge=FAARP. Remember that a single hydra costs the gorge 10 pres to put down, +3 pres for the cyst. A single hydra can be torn down in <b>seconds</b> by a rifle unless it's being tended by a gorge, in which case, why is it wrong that one player (whose spent 10 points to upgrade and 13 points to place a hydra) can hold them off? When theres masses of hydra, 3 or 4, you need to understand some gorge has spent something like 30 or 40 points to make them, and they can all be vaped for 20 points by a grenade launcher. Aliens don't force marines into their base because they spam hydras, aliens can spam hydras because they force marines back into their base. When they get the map down to two corridors in our out the aliens can block them with hydras and push the base.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm saying the minicysts should decay if after a while an actual Cyst doesn't spawn close to it after a few minutes. If by after a few minutes you're still in SA and the hive still isn't up, and no cyst has reached the minicyst, it should start to wither away. Heck even actual cysts start to starve if it's not connected to anything else, should be the same with minicysts.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I'm pretty sure minicysts die just like normal cysts if they're not in a chain connected to a hive. Theres no reason why they need the additional onus of dying because the commander didn't put down a second normal cyst thus totally obviating the need for the gorge to waste 3 pres on the cyst in the first place.
Whats the point of mini cysts then in your view? If structures on them were slower and weaker, no gorge or commander will put things near them, i.e. they will be an obstacle for aliens.
And mini cysts DO wither away when not connected. Gorges have to keep healing them or they die quite quickly.
I believe early game until gorges finally get bile bomb that yes that they are just heal bots. You're still a heal bot if you drop hydras always having to heal the minicyst and the aliens who come back to you, so I don't understand your heal bot point, that's their job until they can progress to destroying structures.. You'll still be able to drop res for another minicyst 3res isn't that much and by the time it has withered away you'd have made up the 3 res and then some.
Minicysts are there to help defend and protect an area for a while until you've secured that area. If you want to keep that area, then yeah the alien commander should focus some energy to drop a cyst around there or the gorge should drop another 3 res, again not that expensive. If you are a gorge and you did drop a hydra and minicyst, you won't be moving much from that area. You'll be staying around to protect until the hive is up or until a cyst is around so that you can flock off to do something else.
Minicysts have no real negative effect besides the fact that they need to be healed every minute so that they don't die. In my view that definitely is not a negative effect. Again as I said, if you did drop the minicysts and hydras, you're attention is focused directly on that spot and the surrounding area. You won't be dropping it in Surface Access then running down to Flight Control. You'll be staying around the SA area, down the ramp looking at ventilation, sliding back up to SA to heal the minicyst, then sliding down to the resource tower and checking down that path to see if marines are coming, probably even healing a minicyst that's there as well.
Edit: Also it's not like in early game that you're a gorge and you run off to some obscure place to drop hydras, usually and I would hope that they'd be in a hive area. If you do have it in a hive area, that means that you're waiting for that hive to be up in a few minutes, by that time the hive will be up and the cyst will be there and then you can just leave from the area.
Edit2: I'm also not sticking my feet into the ground about how that structures on minicysts should attack slower/have less health/do less damage, but I do feel for right now, that there should be a negative effect for the structures that are placed by minicysts.
QuovatisTeam InversionJoin Date: 2010-01-26Member: 70321Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited August 2011
Regarding the 70% alien victory:
Don't attribute that all to the skulk speed increase. I think the skulk needed that. Two factors that I think have hampered marine victories are the shotgun nerf and the fade. With armor 3 upgrades, medium-skilled fades never die. They can get a swipe on you before they even appear out of blink, which is hard to combat. And the shotgun nerf means it's hard to kill anything unless they are right on top of you, by which time it's usually too late.
I've seen a few marine victories, but it usually entails a long game with nearly 50 sentries on the map and 4+ marines with GLs spamming. Unfortunately, that's about the only way marines can win at the moment (in public games). Of course most public games go into boring stalemates because the aliens have no good way to combat sentry farms, even though the marines are doomed to eventual defeat in most cases.
Basically an almost sure way to win as aliens is to get down an early hive, defend it with most of the team and have gorges place some hydras around it. If aliens play it right there's not really much the marines can do that early in the game.
If there are 4 hydras at the top of SA ramp early in the game, there's nothing the marines can do about it. It's too early for them to have nade launchers and arcs and even if lots of marines rush in they will die easily. It basically completely shuts down any kind of marine push with zero effort for the aliens. Marines can run around the back of SA but as long as aliens defend it well it's very difficult for them to take the hive down.
I think the gorges role isn't clearly defined at this point. I'd rather see him something more than a heal bot.
I also think the fade is overpowered. It's just too easy to play fade and once they come out even good marine teams get pushed back into the base. Even when they have flamethrowers etc the only strat that seems to work is slowly edging forward building loads of sentries as you go. I've said this before as well, the fade is boring to play. It's just no fun to kill marines as it's not much of a challenge.
Melee vs Range + bad performance(especially fps drops/minimum fps) + most servers out there cant really handle ns2 with around 30ticks => melee > ranged
Balance around "not so good" performance doesnt really solve the problem.
QuovatisTeam InversionJoin Date: 2010-01-26Member: 70321Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
That's true, but performance usually doesn't degrade until the late game, by which point the aliens already dominate anyway. At least that's my experience.
I agree with Quovatis on that. Definitely early and mid games the server performance is always the best, but the second it's time for the game to get heavy for a team to win, that's when stuff starts to slow down, tick rate goes down, lag kicks in and everything.
Do you really have to make skulks even weaker? They already die ridiculously easy and with the removal of leap, they have almost no skill based movement options for getting close to marines, jumping only makes them easier to hit and they are not fast enough to be a serious threat, the only way you can lose to a skulk is if it drops out of the ceiling onto your head, and to be perfectly honest, with it taking 3 or so bites to kill you, that's more than enough time to blast it with a shotgun.
I wish you'd stop trying to balance skulks vs rifles because you very rarely see skulks vs rifles, you mostly end up fighting shotguns and later everything else, skulks are already the most useless class, they don't need nerfing further.
<!--quoteo(post=1865435:date=Aug 1 2011, 04:47 PM:name=Quovatis)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Quovatis @ Aug 1 2011, 04:47 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1865435"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Regarding the 70% alien victory:
Don't attribute that all to the skulk speed increase. I think the skulk needed that. Two factors that I think have hampered marine victories are the shotgun nerf and the fade. With armor 3 upgrades, medium-skilled fades never die. They can get a swipe on you before they even appear out of blink, which is hard to combat. And the shotgun nerf means it's hard to kill anything unless they are right on top of you, by which time it's usually too late.
I've seen a few marine victories, but it usually entails a long game with nearly 50 sentries on the map and 4+ marines with GLs spamming. Unfortunately, that's about the only way marines can win at the moment (in public games). Of course most public games go into boring stalemates because the aliens have no good way to combat sentry farms, even though the marines are doomed to eventual defeat in most cases.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah the main problem at the moment balance wise is probably fades being able to one shot marines if they don't rush armor upgrades, and even then being able to do a lot of damage to them very quickly.
They die easily enough but they can kill things far faster than marines can kill them.
The biggest change was that weapon upgrades now affect fade swipe, which i don't think they did before, certainly they do far more damage per swipe than they did before, that's your problem. Skulsk got nerfed at hive one, and at hive two they're as useless as they ever were.
AsranielJoin Date: 2002-06-03Member: 724Members, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Retired Community Developer
<!--quoteo(post=1865654:date=Aug 2 2011, 10:25 AM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Aug 2 2011, 10:25 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1865654"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I wish you'd stop trying to balance skulks vs rifles because you very rarely see skulks vs rifles, you mostly end up fighting shotguns and later everything else, skulks are already the most useless class, they don't need nerfing further.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I have no idea where you get this idea from. I often have a very good kill/death ratio playing as a skulk (2:1 or so)
<!--quoteo(post=1865660:date=Aug 2 2011, 09:51 AM:name=Asraniel)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Asraniel @ Aug 2 2011, 09:51 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1865660"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I have no idea where you get this idea from. I often have a very good kill/death ratio playing as a skulk (2:1 or so)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You must be fighting remarkably bad marines then given that the basic marine weapon is better than your melee weapon in every respect, and they have more health than you do.
Shotguns one shot skulks at melee range, and pistols can three shot them at the start of the game.
Skulks just aren't worth having, the only thing they're good for is destroying power nodes.
Comments
EDIT: Take this comment with a grain of salt; apparently Charlie wasn't finished writing it, and I got antsy (sorry)!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Puncture damage just means the weapon is (30%) more effective against players than structures. For example, if the shotgun is changed from 180 Normal damage (180 v players / 180 v structures) to 138 Puncture damage (179.4 v players / 138 v structures), it will be a lot less effective against structures.
I know what Puncture damage does :)
It just wouldn't make sense for a Shotgun, the veritable HAMMER, to deal Puncture (what used to be Piercing) damage, while the Assault Rifle deals Heavy damage.
I would expect the faster-traveling bullets with longer range to Puncture or Pierce before the Shotgun blast. Makes more sense for the Shotgun to tear away Armor with it's close-ranged, wide-coverage blast.
It also makes more sense from a technical/design standpoint: the Shotgun should be able to show up around the time the higher-tier lifeforms with more Armor show up.
1.cysts which gorges drop, let it cost energy only - this would help the spread of infestation much easier for aliens but alien commander cysts will stay the same. gorge needs to help spread infestation much quicker, depending on res extremely slows down the spread of infestation since how easy it is to kill it now.
2.maybe allowing the gorge to spit cysts this way they can place them anywhere in the room, without them always being exposed on the floor at easy to shoot locations. This would improve tactics of cysts placement since they are always on the floor, making way to easy targets.
3.cysts need passive defensive abilities, some ideas; once cysts are built they are rooted under the infestation scan or flamethrower would expose them or cysts auto cloak after they are built - allowing cysts to be easily seen, fully exposed on the floor makes them extremely easy targets and since aliens require infestation it would make sense the cysts themselves have some sort of protection from any wondering marines.
i've read the current changes to cysts, they are good especially the LOS change but they still need more changes. The above should help a lot.
I just wish one day infestation can actually spread or grow on its own though.
The GL isn't redundant, it just isn't useful on its own, it never was, having a GL is a very useful thing, the only trouble is that the gun it's attached to is the rifle, which isn't very good.
I'm sure if you found a way to improve the rifle for late game, the GL would become far more useful as well, at the moment the GL is the primary weapon on the GL/rifle, it should probably be the other way around, as the GL is ultimately a secondary weapon, it was in NS1, only difference being that it was the player who was the secondary weapon of the squad, rather than the addon being the secondary weapon of the rifle.
The idea of the rifle dealing heavy damage is a good one, the shotgun is a scattergun, so it feels clumsy and unwieldy but still powerful, it does a lot of damage but not very specialised or situational, it just goes bang and kills stuff in front of it. Whereas the rifle is a precise weapon, it makes sense that it would be sort of armor piercing or have some sort of specialised ammunition to deal with specific situations.
The damage types do need visual indicators though, perhaps weapons doing heavy damage should have blue tinted gunfire and a specific impact effect/sound when hitting armor. Kind of like the gargantua in HL1, if you shoot it with bullets they just ping off it to show ineffectiveness, whereas stuff that hurts it makes it bleed and make hurt noises.
An "Armor Piercing Round" is designed to penetrate Armor for the purpose of further damaging whatever is behind that armor, which is effectively what Puncture damage does (to players). It isn't necessarily designed to be more effective at destroying more of the Armor itself; but that is more or less what the Heavy damage type does.
So I agree; the Rifle should be a precision weapon, but Puncture (dealing 30% extra damage off the top) seems to fit that role better than Heavy, which is most effective at softening up fresh units/structures.
- We removed the LOS requirement for cyst placement and increased their range so you will need less of them to expand.
- We also changed how disconnected cysts take damage (only the ‘outside’ ones take damage) so an entire disconnected island won’t die too quickly<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
great ideas! like that very much
So I agree; the Rifle should be a precision weapon, but Puncture (dealing 30% extra damage off the top) seems to fit that role better than Heavy, which is most effective at softening up fresh units/structures.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, if we're arguing realism, armor piercing ammo tends to punch through armor at the expense of not exploding once it's inside the thing it punched through, doing less actual damage than say, hollow point ammo.
Heavy damage makes it scale better as lifeforms get more armor the further up the tech tree you go, puncture damage just makes it do 30% more damage, as nobody uses rifles against structures anyway.
If you want a specifically anti-armor weapon, which would be ideal for late game, heavy damage is more useful.
For additional sentries in that area, a powerpack needs to be dropped.
Or
Let firing sentries drain energy from the powernode, if there are alot of sentries firing, the energy will get low and the powernode needs to regenerate until it can power the sentries again. (Lore: Since they don't use ammo, the bullets are fabricated inside the turret, using energy)
If you want a specifically anti-armor weapon, which would be ideal for late game, heavy damage is more useful.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Exactly. But for the Shotgun.
Seriously, can we get a sticky!?
I think part of the reason skulks are now killing more is to do with the removal of marine jump spam. Before, 1 marine could kill a few skulks by just jumping around and avoiding them, now it's less effective. (I'm not saying bring it back! just pointing out the reason for the change in balance)
I also really believe that the skulk animations are partly to blame. It's really difficult to track them when they are just floating around as they do now.
In this build once aliens get fades they can then take over the whole map and really keep the marines stuck in their own base. The marines really need to be aggressive and stop the second hive or else the game is over.
Surprised to see the alien balance so skewed in 183 (70% atm). They lost leap but they gained significant movement speed. I remember feeling like I was pwning with Skulks, but I didn’t take it that seriously. Would love to keep the skulk speed in there, but will have to address this somehow.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think part of the reason skulks are now killing more is to do with the removal of marine jump spam. Before, 1 marine could kill a few skulks by just jumping around and avoiding them, now it's less effective. (I'm not saying bring it back! just pointing out the reason for the change in balance)
I also really believe that the skulk animations are partly to blame. It's really difficult to track them when they are just floating around as they do now.
In this build once aliens get fades they can then take over the whole map and really keep the marines stuck in their own base. The marines really need to be aggressive and stop the second hive or else the game is over. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Skulk speed definitely is not the issue with why aliens are winning 70% of the time as you say. Early games, marines are still pretty much dominating I find, unless if they are just a bad team. What the issue is, is that once the second hive goes up, by that time, usually armor 1 and weapons 2 is up for the aliens (or weap 2 is going up) and fades are up asap. Having to fight off a fade while you have 2-3 skulks leaping around at you, a pack of 4 marines don't really stand a chance.
Fades and skulks keep the marines back into base, the aliens start to takeover more of the map, start getting more res, then the hydra/crag spam begins to happen. People can preach about about how all the marines need is a FT or a GL to clear it all out, but whenever a decent fade notices that GLer or FT, we're on him till he's dead. Even if some stuff goes down, aliens have an excessive amount of resources and we just rebuild
Also, the fact that a single gorge with a minicyst, and 2 hydras can keep 3 marines at bay from going into SA, and if they do come in, the gorge just has to jump around, heal himself and the hydras, and he'll come out the victor.
A minicyst should start to decay after a a bit if an actual cyst doesn't show up, the structures on minicyst should also deal less damage.
Oh and, whenever you're a lone skulk who is getting the drop on marines, and you have frenzy/swarm, they'll die quickly and whatever damage you take, most of the time you get healed to full by the end of it, whenever that happens I know for myself personally I just keep going along, even in a group of 4 i'll just jump right on in, because I know i'll probably be able to take down 2 or 3, because i'll just keep getting healed.
The fact that killing a structure grants you health back shouldn't happen. I can't count the amount of times, that i've seen a MAC welding a powernode with 4 marines around, i'd go kill 1 or 2 marines, jump to the side, kill the mac for some quick health and then go back to the marines.
Getting health on kill should only be if you kill a player, not structures.
Oh and whenever skulks are running on walls/ceilings they're so much harder to hit especially with an lmg, it just seems to miss so much more.
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TL;DR
-Skulk speed not an issue
-Issue is 2nd hive fade/skulks can hold back everything until they take control of the rest of the map.
-Minicysts should decay after a bit.
-Structures on minicysts should deal less damage and be slower (hydras, also they should have less health while on a minicyst)
-Should not get health on kill for destroying a structure.
-skulks on walls/ceilings hard to kill, feels like the bullets keep missing.
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I'm saying the minicysts should decay if after a while an actual Cyst doesn't spawn close to it after a few minutes. If by after a few minutes you're still in SA and the hive still isn't up, and no cyst has reached the minicyst, it should start to wither away. Heck even actual cysts start to starve if it's not connected to anything else, should be the same with minicysts. Plus if you really want to keep that area, then just drop another minicyst after the one you had up dies.
And they aren't.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->They aren't meant to be up in the faces of marines.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And they don't.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The only time they should be around is whenever they're doing a massive attack against marines and the aliens will need healing to come out the victor.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So basically you're saying the gorge should only exist to be a heal bot? I don't think so. I get the impression you actually intended to say: "The only time they should be around the front lines is whenever they're doing a massive attack against marines and the aliens will need healing to come out the victor." Which is an unrealistic expectation. What are they supposed to do for 2/3rds of the game, twiddle their thumbs while sitting around the hive?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Hydras are ridiculous right now and are spammed to hells end. If a gorge does see a marine his ass should be getting the heck out of there, the fact that I can be a gorge and laugh at a single marine trying to kill me isn't right.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
He doesn't laugh at a single marine trying to kill him, a single marine will kill his ass just fine. When I see a marine coming if I've done my work right, I'll retreat back to hydras for safety, and if he follows, the hydra will force him back, unless he's really cocky and sticks around, in which case, hey, I get a kill. Hydras aren't ridiculous, they're easy to kill with the right weapon, the problem is without hydras the aliens can't hold any damn ground, and with hydras holding ground, the game goes to the marines. Hydras do their job, they delay marines, the aliens for many reasons, will use them to hold ground and make an area where friendlies can retreat to throw off pursuit and heal. Effectively hydra+gorge=FAARP. Remember that a single hydra costs the gorge 10 pres to put down, +3 pres for the cyst. A single hydra can be torn down in <b>seconds</b> by a rifle unless it's being tended by a gorge, in which case, why is it wrong that one player (whose spent 10 points to upgrade and 13 points to place a hydra) can hold them off? When theres masses of hydra, 3 or 4, you need to understand some gorge has spent something like 30 or 40 points to make them, and they can all be vaped for 20 points by a grenade launcher. Aliens don't force marines into their base because they spam hydras, aliens can spam hydras because they force marines back into their base. When they get the map down to two corridors in our out the aliens can block them with hydras and push the base.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm saying the minicysts should decay if after a while an actual Cyst doesn't spawn close to it after a few minutes. If by after a few minutes you're still in SA and the hive still isn't up, and no cyst has reached the minicyst, it should start to wither away. Heck even actual cysts start to starve if it's not connected to anything else, should be the same with minicysts.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I'm pretty sure minicysts die just like normal cysts if they're not in a chain connected to a hive. Theres no reason why they need the additional onus of dying because the commander didn't put down a second normal cyst thus totally obviating the need for the gorge to waste 3 pres on the cyst in the first place.
And mini cysts DO wither away when not connected. Gorges have to keep healing them or they die quite quickly.
Minicysts are there to help defend and protect an area for a while until you've secured that area. If you want to keep that area, then yeah the alien commander should focus some energy to drop a cyst around there or the gorge should drop another 3 res, again not that expensive. If you are a gorge and you did drop a hydra and minicyst, you won't be moving much from that area. You'll be staying around to protect until the hive is up or until a cyst is around so that you can flock off to do something else.
Minicysts have no real negative effect besides the fact that they need to be healed every minute so that they don't die. In my view that definitely is not a negative effect. Again as I said, if you did drop the minicysts and hydras, you're attention is focused directly on that spot and the surrounding area. You won't be dropping it in Surface Access then running down to Flight Control. You'll be staying around the SA area, down the ramp looking at ventilation, sliding back up to SA to heal the minicyst, then sliding down to the resource tower and checking down that path to see if marines are coming, probably even healing a minicyst that's there as well.
Edit: Also it's not like in early game that you're a gorge and you run off to some obscure place to drop hydras, usually and I would hope that they'd be in a hive area. If you do have it in a hive area, that means that you're waiting for that hive to be up in a few minutes, by that time the hive will be up and the cyst will be there and then you can just leave from the area.
Edit2: I'm also not sticking my feet into the ground about how that structures on minicysts should attack slower/have less health/do less damage, but I do feel for right now, that there should be a negative effect for the structures that are placed by minicysts.
Don't attribute that all to the skulk speed increase. I think the skulk needed that. Two factors that I think have hampered marine victories are the shotgun nerf and the fade. With armor 3 upgrades, medium-skilled fades never die. They can get a swipe on you before they even appear out of blink, which is hard to combat. And the shotgun nerf means it's hard to kill anything unless they are right on top of you, by which time it's usually too late.
I've seen a few marine victories, but it usually entails a long game with nearly 50 sentries on the map and 4+ marines with GLs spamming. Unfortunately, that's about the only way marines can win at the moment (in public games). Of course most public games go into boring stalemates because the aliens have no good way to combat sentry farms, even though the marines are doomed to eventual defeat in most cases.
If there are 4 hydras at the top of SA ramp early in the game, there's nothing the marines can do about it. It's too early for them to have nade launchers and arcs and even if lots of marines rush in they will die easily. It basically completely shuts down any kind of marine push with zero effort for the aliens. Marines can run around the back of SA but as long as aliens defend it well it's very difficult for them to take the hive down.
I think the gorges role isn't clearly defined at this point. I'd rather see him something more than a heal bot.
I also think the fade is overpowered. It's just too easy to play fade and once they come out even good marine teams get pushed back into the base. Even when they have flamethrowers etc the only strat that seems to work is slowly edging forward building loads of sentries as you go. I've said this before as well, the fade is boring to play. It's just no fun to kill marines as it's not much of a challenge.
Balance around "not so good" performance doesnt really solve the problem.
I wish you'd stop trying to balance skulks vs rifles because you very rarely see skulks vs rifles, you mostly end up fighting shotguns and later everything else, skulks are already the most useless class, they don't need nerfing further.
<!--quoteo(post=1865435:date=Aug 1 2011, 04:47 PM:name=Quovatis)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Quovatis @ Aug 1 2011, 04:47 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1865435"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Regarding the 70% alien victory:
Don't attribute that all to the skulk speed increase. I think the skulk needed that. Two factors that I think have hampered marine victories are the shotgun nerf and the fade. With armor 3 upgrades, medium-skilled fades never die. They can get a swipe on you before they even appear out of blink, which is hard to combat. And the shotgun nerf means it's hard to kill anything unless they are right on top of you, by which time it's usually too late.
I've seen a few marine victories, but it usually entails a long game with nearly 50 sentries on the map and 4+ marines with GLs spamming. Unfortunately, that's about the only way marines can win at the moment (in public games). Of course most public games go into boring stalemates because the aliens have no good way to combat sentry farms, even though the marines are doomed to eventual defeat in most cases.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah the main problem at the moment balance wise is probably fades being able to one shot marines if they don't rush armor upgrades, and even then being able to do a lot of damage to them very quickly.
They die easily enough but they can kill things far faster than marines can kill them.
The biggest change was that weapon upgrades now affect fade swipe, which i don't think they did before, certainly they do far more damage per swipe than they did before, that's your problem. Skulsk got nerfed at hive one, and at hive two they're as useless as they ever were.
I have no idea where you get this idea from. I often have a very good kill/death ratio playing as a skulk (2:1 or so)
You must be fighting remarkably bad marines then given that the basic marine weapon is better than your melee weapon in every respect, and they have more health than you do.
Shotguns one shot skulks at melee range, and pistols can three shot them at the start of the game.
Skulks just aren't worth having, the only thing they're good for is destroying power nodes.