Balancing Infestation
Raneman
Join Date: 2010-01-07 Member: 69962Members
Join Date: 2010-01-07 Member: 69962Members
<div class="IPBDescription">The Ultimate Challenge</div>Dynamic Infestation right now is what drives the alien team. Infestation is responsible for everything the aliens can do. With such a fragile subject matter, how can we balance it?
Infestation right now is hard. It's a pain for both teams. The commander constantly has to micromanage infestation to end the endless whining of gorges who are out to build and other aliens out for more resources. With such large maps, constantly having to direct infestation is tiresome, and just puts a big load on the commander.
Here's what I think infestation should be like:
I. Automation
Infestation should have some degree of automation, and with stimulation from the commander, gorges, or resources, it should automatically spread out slowly. It could either do it on it's own, or we could have a big button on the commander panel that says "Speed infestation spread" or something for a slowly increasing research cost as the amount of infestation grows.
II. Gorges
Gorges should be able to spread infestation, too. Right now all infestation is temporary, and it's pretty useless to have infestation that disappears after two minutes. My solution? Give spreading infestation a larger resource drain, and let the infestation stay if it can be connected to a hive.
III. Balancing faster spreading infestation
Infestation should be easier to destroy. Right now even a full can of flamethrower fuel cannot kill one unit of infestation.
What are your ideas, or your thoughts on mine?
Infestation right now is hard. It's a pain for both teams. The commander constantly has to micromanage infestation to end the endless whining of gorges who are out to build and other aliens out for more resources. With such large maps, constantly having to direct infestation is tiresome, and just puts a big load on the commander.
Here's what I think infestation should be like:
I. Automation
Infestation should have some degree of automation, and with stimulation from the commander, gorges, or resources, it should automatically spread out slowly. It could either do it on it's own, or we could have a big button on the commander panel that says "Speed infestation spread" or something for a slowly increasing research cost as the amount of infestation grows.
II. Gorges
Gorges should be able to spread infestation, too. Right now all infestation is temporary, and it's pretty useless to have infestation that disappears after two minutes. My solution? Give spreading infestation a larger resource drain, and let the infestation stay if it can be connected to a hive.
III. Balancing faster spreading infestation
Infestation should be easier to destroy. Right now even a full can of flamethrower fuel cannot kill one unit of infestation.
What are your ideas, or your thoughts on mine?
Comments
I think infestation that grows easier/automatically but that can be destroyed more easily would make the game more fun overall.
Gorges spreading infestation permanently is interesting. I think that if infestation grew automatically and gorges were able to add to that permanently it would be a bit much.
Another thing I would like to see is a way to spread it more efficiently. From what I can tell right now, you have to guess as to where to click to spread the infestation. It would be better if either:
a) There was a preview as to where the infestation would spread to; or
b) The infestation started at a point and radiated outward, away from the current infestation (but at 2x the radius of what it does currently). This would mean you could click on the edge of the current infestation and it would spread more intelligently.
I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement, but it would certainly make the experience more enjoyable.
Also Raneman makes some nice points - in broader view, constantly spreading infestation, dependable on tech level and in effect on game time would make the games more intense and would make the rines pay for slow games and 'turtling' the base.
Alien commander would at last have to make some strategical, game-wide decisions. Advance with a hive or put the resources into DI research for long-run, wide territorial push.
And to balance it - make marines able (or at least more able) to combat it with flamethrowers.
It plays nice with the overall feel of the game and could do as a quite original game timer.
Also - for the sake of the game mood - make the infestation more 'room-wide'. Not patches of slime on the ground but slime that overwhelms and the whole place - taking over the place and turning it into alien, hostile environment for the marines. With this haunting resemblance of its former glory now covered with alien life.
Ah, got carried away a bit.
Just my humble opinion.
2. Personally I think infestation should stay forever as long as its placed in a room with the power out. If the power comes back on, then it will recede if not connected to a hive.
3. This should be fixed with the upcoming 'pustules' which provide a way for any marine (not just flamethrowers) to kill infestation.
Do you have any idea how madening that would be? Random infestation spread could make or break the game for aliens based on a random number generator. That's unacceptable.
The plan is to have it grow from pustules and for it to grow slowly on its own.
So this fairly easily translates to it takes time for infestation to grow, the longer it exists or the more time spent to reinforce an area, the stronger the infestation in that area. Infestation can be controlled by sentry guns or any other automated defence, as well as marines just shooting it.
I don't see where balance comes in really. All you have to tweak is the growth speed, which you would mostly do by fiddling with the energy cost to grow a new pustule.
Pustule health is another factor, but all it really has to be is 'not weak enough to be destroyed trivially'. As said, sentry guns will stop it from progressing past marine controlled areas, as they have infinite ammo and nothing better to do, and can keep shooting at it all day if they have to.
So it should work that aliens spread territory control over the map steadily, marines can curtail it at key locations, attacking into alien territory is best done with lots of explosives and fire to burn a way in without giving the aliens an advantage.
There needs to be a way for every alien to help spread the infestation, just as there needs to be a way for every marine to stop the spread. Marines should get points for stopping infestation, just as aliens get points for killing power nodes. Really great players will have high kill/death ratios and lots of points, but these are the small detail parts of a game that can keep the everyday more casual player around to help feel they are helping the "greater good" or the team aspect of the game that is really important in NS2 imo.
There needs to be a way for every alien to help spread the infestation, just as there needs to be a way for every marine to stop the spread. Marines should get points for stopping infestation, just as aliens get points for killing power nodes. Really great players will have high kill/death ratios and lots of points, but these are the small detail parts of a game that can keep the everyday more casual player around to help feel they are helping the "greater good" or the team aspect of the game that is really important in NS2 imo.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You help the game by killing marines. Every marine you kill costs them money, makes it harder for them to get the dangerous equipment, stops them doing whatever they were doing when you killed them, and gets you some more money so you can evolve into higher lifeforms.
You can't spread infestation without contesting the map, if you run around the map killing marines it makes it much easier to infest. Simply protecting existing infestation will help it grow because the longer it's around, the more it can grow of its own accord, and the less time the commander needs to spend patching it up and the more he can spend on expanding it.
If you aren't good at killing people, you can go gorge and help by building hydras around vulnerable points in the chain and generally healing things.
You can't spread infestation without contesting the map, if you run around the map killing marines it makes it much easier to infest. Simply protecting existing infestation will help it grow because the longer it's around, the more it can grow of its own accord, and the less time the commander needs to spend patching it up and the more he can spend on expanding it.
If you aren't good at killing people, you can go gorge and help by building hydras around vulnerable points in the chain and generally healing things.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
you completely misunderstood what I was saying....I'm saying the spreading of the infestation needs to be a team job, just as stopping the spread should be a team job. I'm not saying the point of the game should be infestation(obviously you have to kill the marines in a room to start spreading infestation in it...), but it needs to be a little more indepth part of the game rather than this tedious thing the Alien comm has to do once every 3 minutes, and then 1 marine can come in with 1 flamethrower and destroy the entire infestation that took 30 minutes to spread. Obviously the main point of the game is blowing up aliens and biting off marine's heads...However as all ns1 players know, when this game is optimized and there are 30 person servers, the game will change dramatically. As the general mechanics and balance of the game changes drastically when there are 15 players on each side, rather than 10-12 players total.
That infestation is tedious to place is mostly due to crappy interface design and responsiveness, which I'm sure will be improved eventually.
Plus, once it's done, it will grow somewhat on its own.
Besides, it takes a while to destroy infestation, and really speaking you should be defending it, if you take the layout of a level like summit, you should be putting infestation in areas where it will be harder to destroy, such as in corridors that marines have limited access to, and you should be reinforcing weak points like junctions with whips and crags to make it more defensible, and you should be connecting hives to each other with infestation so you have backup connections when one gets destroyed.
I do all of these already, so I really don't think adding pustules will make the game any harder for me as a commander.
Infestation right now is hard. It's a pain for both teams. The commander constantly has to micromanage infestation to end the endless whining of gorges who are out to build and other aliens out for more resources. With such large maps, constantly having to direct infestation is tiresome, and just puts a big load on the commander.
Here's what I think infestation should be like:
I. Automation
Infestation should have some degree of automation, and with stimulation from the commander, gorges, or resources, it should automatically spread out slowly. It could either do it on it's own, or we could have a big button on the commander panel that says "Speed infestation spread" or something for a slowly increasing research cost as the amount of infestation grows.
II. Gorges
Gorges should be able to spread infestation, too. Right now all infestation is temporary, and it's pretty useless to have infestation that disappears after two minutes. My solution? Give spreading infestation a larger resource drain, and let the infestation stay if it can be connected to a hive.
III. Balancing faster spreading infestation
Infestation should be easier to destroy. Right now even a full can of flamethrower fuel cannot kill one unit of infestation.
What are your ideas, or your thoughts on mine?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you would have read the design log You would know that all that will come soon!
Where are the design logs?
In Google Docs: <a href="http://www.tinyurl.com/ns2design" target="_blank">http://www.tinyurl.com/ns2design</a>
I don't think I really agree with that. The alien comm has so little to do already, compared to the marine comm.
Before, it was a hyper-pain, but now that hotkeys more or less are working properly (especially control groups, woo!), I don't find it much of a burden.
Before, it was a hyper-pain, but now that hotkeys more or less are working properly (especially control groups, woo!), I don't find it much of a burden.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agreed, the pustule is almost the equivalent of Marine medpack and ammopack, it's no more tiresome than medpack spamming (only pustules require some more thought in placement)
Maybe something like marines can purchase a ammo box at the armory that they could later throw down at a choke point or even in combat. Anyone that stands near it gets their ammo regenerated for a time until the box expires. Do the same thing with med kits.
Even if/when they implement pustules, I think they need to fix how much damage a spot of infestation takes from flamethrowers before it is destroyed. Right now it takes about 2 full canisters I believe, and around 30 seconds overall to destroy one spot. I'm not sure exactly how much ammo the flamethrower has but I think it's around 6 canisters, which essentially means every minute and a half you need to go back and get more ammo.
While playing yesterday, it took me about five minutes to destroy only a portion of the infestation inside a hive room aliens were trying to spread into, and it was a really small portion. That's too long and that's a lot of game time imho.
So you could have DI connected to a hive/RT growing or healing itself by 2 (no idea what units); DI in a powered area reducing by 1 to 3 (more closer to the power thingy?). Add in some variations for where the Alien commander is directing the DI to grow (e.g. having pustules giving a boost of another 2 - 3 for a certain time period), gorge activity and where the marine commander is directing the nanites to defend (powered areas only) and you have quite an interesting position but one not entirely reliant on commanders.
Concerned about DI clogging up a room? Fight to either cut the chain to the alien structures supporting it or to get the power back on (in that room or one along the DI chain somewhere).
I don't quite follow the design log or the pustule plan.
Pustules would be used for putting infestation in a specific spot for Hydras and such, while a natural advance of creep tied to the amount of alien activity nearby would account for most infestation growth.
Basically, the more times aliens travel through an area where infestation is present, the faster it will grow and cover a larger area. In places where aliens don't spend much time or die in, creep growth slows.
Mostly, this lets the alien start grow a nice bit of infestation without any player's input. It would also allow for infestation to naturally gravitate (no matter how slowly) towards res nodes. Aliens often have problems getting their creep over to resources and the AI director should help em out with this a bit.
Marines would obviously counter this whole thing with fire.
Random, slow growth of infestation near the edge, yes, putting the major expansion mechanic in the hands of the computer? No.
Random, slow growth of infestation near the edge, yes, putting the major expansion mechanic in the hands of the computer? No.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, it's less of an AI and more of a mathmatical function.
If a certain amount of aliens have been in the area within the past minute, boost to infestation growth in that room. It's still growing constantly, just at different rates.
Still though, it should remain in the game as some kind of automated system that slows marines down and buffs aliens. How about making it expand slowly automatically and removing its need in the creation of buildings? Same concept, slows marines down and gives "parasite vision" to aliens when Marines walk on it.
You could also add a "general expansion" button for the infestation if you wanted as well.
Just some thoughts.
Pustules would be used for putting infestation in a specific spot for Hydras and such, while a natural advance of creep tied to the amount of alien activity nearby would account for most infestation growth.
Basically, the more times aliens travel through an area where infestation is present, the faster it will grow and cover a larger area. In places where aliens don't spend much time or die in, creep growth slows.
Mostly, this lets the alien start grow a nice bit of infestation without any player's input. It would also allow for infestation to naturally gravitate (no matter how slowly) towards res nodes. Aliens often have problems getting their creep over to resources and the AI director should help em out with this a bit.
Marines would obviously counter this whole thing with fire.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
.. I see you are familiar with "ants scent trail" :)
<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v183/n4675/abs/1831588a0.html" target="_blank">link1</a>, <a href="http://meyleankronemann.de/lumibots.html" target="_blank">lumiBots :D</a>
Still though, it should remain in the game as some kind of automated system that slows marines down and buffs aliens. How about making it expand slowly automatically and removing its need in the creation of buildings? Same concept, slows marines down and gives "parasite vision" to aliens when Marines walk on it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes it would involve waiting for the computer to very slowly advance the infestation in the direction you want rather than doing it yourself. Waiting is much more interesting than doing.
Why would the alien commander have to wait on anything if it isn't a requirement for building structures? It would just be a passive buff that aliens get really slowly.
The whole idea is that aliens are limited by infestation but infestation is powerful, this is in contrast to the highly mobile but slightly fragile alien units.
When I originally heard about dynamic infestation, I was under the impression that it would move throughout maps by itself and not have a purpose. Once you took a hive, it would slowly spread out across the map where the aliens were present. But given the fact that you need infestation in order to build things, that would be extremely overpowered if it just naturally grew everywhere without direction or a cool down period.
At this point I don't think DI is going anywhere. DI was one of the first NS2 video blogs if I remember correctly and I think they're very high on it.
Maybe it should just go back to my original idea, however, where it just spreads but you don't need it do anything. But then that would make flamethrowers relatively useless and would change a large dynamic of the game. Ergo it's going to stay and I foresee the only change to DI being flamethrowers get rid of it quicker.