(MAS) Mobile Assault Station.

IceReaper · April 2012

MASS - Mobile Assault Support Station

Introduction:
The MASS is a moving support base designed to help marines to push alien controlled areas. While providing an alround solution, it is heavily limited and can never replace real structures. All in all its a perfect sollution for temporary mini outposts. MASS ist the marines best friend (after his weapon ofcourse) :D

Use situations:
Marines are goind to push an hive, however nobody wants to die, because if someone dies, he will probably arrive at the battle when everyone else is dead. With an MASS behind your teammates, the first death is no problem anymore, cause the mass comes with an minimal one-way phase gate. However, it does in no way replace a real Phase gate, because it can only port one marine per 10 Seconds.

Marines are holding a position. They got heavy problems with incomming aliens, and cant take the time on building an armory. Also the commander has some other things to do as spamming ammo. Now the commander sends in a MASS, which deploys and provides a minimal Armory for the marines to keep alive a little longer.

One-Way phasegate:
How does one-way exactly work? You cannot use the gate to port from the MASS away, its only to phase towards it, once per 10 seconds.

Properties:
Note: All values can ofcourse be changed. Im not that progamer nor was i faced with balancing someting anytimes. its basicaly about the idea.
- The MASS is a ver slow vehicle, about half the speed of an ARC or even slower.
- It has no attacks or any special defence, so its up to the marines to defend it.
- Only one MASS can be ingame at once, so marines will make sure it does not get lost.
- The MASS has a buildtime double as an ARC has, and costs 75 Resources.
- When deploying or undeploying a MASS, it required an enery node nearby. Also this process takes 10 seconds.
- When building up a MASS, its ammo and phase-time get resetted to 0.
- Now the MASS is able to work as an phasegate, but needs to repower up for 10 seconds to be able to phase the next marine.
- The MASS also includes a very minimal armory. It loads up, or can be pushed up with ammo packs from the commander.
- The armory loads up 1 grenade or 10 rifleshots (and pistol, shotgun, flameammo etc...) every 10 seconds.
- If someone uses the MASS he gets a maximum of 5 loads of ammo for his weapon, just to keep some ammo for others.
- The MASS cannot heal you, repair armor or provide mines.
- As soon as the powernode is destroyed the MASS will also lose his phase and armory functions till power is restored.
- If the power node is destroyed, the MASS will put an red emergency light on. This provides minimal sight for marines and easier detection for aliens.

Critics:
As stated below: "a giant walking phase-gating armory". Isnt that a little to overpowered?
Well.. basicaly: no. Its a little larger than an ARC, but its functionality is limited. The armory is just for support usage, it wont provide that much as a real armory can do.
Secondly: the phasegate is only one-way (only port towards a MASS) and also has a delay till its usable again.

Further ideas (maybe unbalanced):
A MASS unit, may eventualy also slowly loadup a heal amount, but im unsure if this will be balanced.
Upgrades for the MASS unit. Basicaly it would be nice to implement some, so if any upgrades would be implemented, they must be low.

My Notes:
Why not simply build a phasegate and an armory?
of course they are better, however there are situation you have no time building up both of them. Just wenn a quick ambush is planned, you dont spam structures around.

I would have done some concepts myself, but im a developer, not a designer, so i suck at making artworks or 3d models :D However, if anyone is willing to draw a concept for this, feel free to :)

My last thoughts:
This could make gameplay a little more interesting (please do not understand me wrong, gameplay is awesome), but also allowes some more tactics. If the MASS is not to much overpowered (easy tweakable via buildtime, cost, or values above) its nothing more than a new strategy to use, instead of giving someone massive advantages.

Well, thats it :D Like it or hate it. If more people hate the idea than people who like it, im glad when it does not come into the game, because all i wanted is to make an usefull addition. :)

Im interested in the feedback :)

EDIT: i edited the post, but cant edit the title, so it has a slightly different name :D

Champlo0 · April 2012

I think MAST would be more appropriate because a mast goes on a ship and is used to sail: Mobile Attack STation. I think this idea has strong potential, it would give marines more ability to push without having to put as much resource into an armory or PG. However, the unit needs more definition; the unit needs a resource cost, specified tech tree, and in general more definition for the numbers. I like the concept of a refreshing yet finite ammo amount. The limit to ammo grabs needs to be addressed however in the form of extended pushes, it would need some sort of control for the commander to control as to allow people more ammo/health. This idea has good potential, however, you should define the numbers and the smaller aspects of it to solve the general questions raised with it.

Techercizer · April 2012

As ridiculous (no offense intended) as a giant walking phase-gating armory sounds, this does address a major weakness of the Marine team. The major question I feel is left to be debated is whether that weakness is something that should be addressed.

Rover · April 2012

75 res for a bad phase/armory? I'd rather just drop whichever of those are needed.

IceReaper · April 2012

Could of course be less, needs to be balanced then, i never needed to do balancing for games, 75 resources was just to make sure that 1. its build in later part of the game, 2. that its not that easy to always have one. Ofcourse this value can be changed. Hm.. however you didnt tell anything about the overall idea, just something on one single value. This post was more about the idea than about what is the most balanced value :D

(MAS) Mobile Assault Station.

Comments