Crag hive, Carapace, Regen
DJPenguin
Useless Join Date: 2003-07-29 Member: 18538Members
Useless Join Date: 2003-07-29 Member: 18538Members
Choosing crag as the first hive and acquiring carapace and regen is without doubt the route 99 in 100 games plays out. Is there a flaw in the alien's base health and armor values that makes people feel compelled to take these two upgrades first? Or are these upgrade simply much more powerful than what else is (and will be) available? <i>Should</i> they be more powerful? Considering there are multiple ways to start the game off as marines in terms of what to build and research first, I see this as a problem for the Alien team.
Theoretically speaking, if the next patch automatically made the first hive Crag, would there really be many complaints?
/brainstorm
Theoretically speaking, if the next patch automatically made the first hive Crag, would there really be many complaints?
/brainstorm
Comments
* Camouflage and silence are fine and just generally underrated, but the crag/regen/cara combo is just stronger overall for sure.
IMO carapace and regen should be weaker early on, and only hit full strenght when the shell matures. In addition, upgrades should go back to costing p.res, and camouflage and silence should be considerably cheaper than carapace/regen. This would make them less of a no-brainer and actually diversify alien gameplay.
I only notice the crag upgrades when we hit 2 hives and my easymode lerk can use both upgrades at once to be unkillable.
Oh no, having to actually perform macro mechanics in an RTS. I really dislike how Alien commander has been simplified over and over again, I don't think autocasting for elements like this should be implemented.
this is a huge gripe of mine when playing as alien comm. it's frustrating for my team needing to keep asking me to click on cloak. God forbid i have multiple up then i feel compelled to just travel the map and play whack a shade.
Congratulations! Now you're playing like it's an RTS and it's not hard at all!
(Bonus tip: you can do the exact same thing with crags and umbra)
If/when the game has screen hotkeys it will be much easier to manage this, but it shouldn't ever be done for you. That takes the "RTS" out of the alien commander and reduces the amount of expressivity in how people play the game (the number of meaningful choices they can make, how they make them etc). NS1 didn't have anyone triggering the cloak on sensory chambers because there was no sensible way to assign that role, but in NS2 there is a commander and it's very obviously a task for the commander. The advantage of having it not automated is that you can pool energy on shades/crags to use their abilities continuously at a later time, if they wouldn't be effective right now. Choices! Tradeoffs!
Congratulations! Now you're playing like it's an RTS and it's not hard at all!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This. Though on that note it would be nice to have more than 5 hotkeys. Also I think the hotkey is now S since the Alien com building mechanics were simplified.
Would people have Shields/meds and ammo packs automatically administer themselves for the marine com as well?
I was gonna post this, but then I realized it's totally different. Medpacks, nano etc are specifically targeted. They have to be active abilities because you can use them 100 different ways. The comparison (unfortunately) is that MACs and ARCs do tons of stuff automatically - and maybe they shouldn't. Or maybe the comparison is bad - obviously if you deployed an ARC you want it to shoot (and it's still targetable if you want to do that), but it's not always true that a shade/crag should be using its ability at a given time.
<!--quoteo(post=1931127:date=Apr 28 2012, 10:51 AM:name=Arkanti)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Arkanti @ Apr 28 2012, 10:51 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1931127"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->And a lot of players consider the Shade hive abilities cheasy.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Because they are. On summit and tram, the presence of a shade on a competent team basically says "you need to spend 50 res on observatories to cover the map, to counteract our 10 res shade"
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Would people have Shields/meds and ammo packs automatically administer themselves for the marine com as well?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is just a stupid comparison, for one they use entirely different resources and secondly meds and ammos are not something you can or should be dropping all the time (since there are other p.res sinks to keep into account) There is nothing else to spend shade energy on, or crag umbra for that matter, so requiring the commander to click a button is completely pointless.
Also, shades shouldn't give camouflage to aliens on the move, that's the cheesy part, they have camouflage for lifeforms, shades should just be for structures. (And possibly lifeforms not moving/evolving)
It's like I said - it opens up the possibility of 'storing' cloak/umbra for later use, if they won't be useful right now. If they take the current game, and make cloak/umbra automatic, they need to introduce a new negative effect for a tradeoff (or else it's seen as "just another alien buff", which is exactly what it is). But you've played "RTS" competitively, and what I said was "retarded", so I'm gonna check out some other threads with adults posting in them now :)
Well, I was more directly responding to this statement "my team needing to keep asking me to click on cloak. God forbid i have multiple up then i feel compelled to just travel the map and play whack a shade." which I probably should have quoted in my post. You could replace the words cloak and shade with the marines assist functions.
Marine com should be able to manually target enemy structures with Arcs.
simple. keep the energy on the shade, but make the duration shorter than the time it takes to charge up enough energy to use it again. if it's on autocast, it's gonna run into "cooldown" periods. otherwise if the commander really wants to click on it manually, then there should always be enough energy.
I was addressing a specific part of the argument against the timesink of the action, the resource it uses is irrelevant.
<!--quoteo(post=1931129:date=Apr 29 2012, 12:52 AM:name=Xarius)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Xarius @ Apr 29 2012, 12:52 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1931129"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->There is nothing else to spend shade energy on, or crag umbra for that matter<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There will be.
<!--quoteo(post=1931129:date=Apr 29 2012, 12:52 AM:name=Xarius)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Xarius @ Apr 29 2012, 12:52 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1931129"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Also, shades shouldn't give camouflage to aliens on the move, that's the cheesy part, they have camouflage for lifeforms, shades should just be for structures. (And possibly lifeforms not moving/evolving)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agreed to some extent. I think that "Cloak" should affect everything within its radius, building or player. It would act as it does now, only with players leaving the radius also losing the cloak. Camouflage should be for on the field.
<!--quoteo(post=1931134:date=Apr 29 2012, 12:59 AM:name=DJPenguin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (DJPenguin @ Apr 29 2012, 12:59 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1931134"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->simple. keep the energy on the shade, but make the duration shorter than the time it takes to charge up enough energy to use it again. if it's on autocast, it's gonna run into "cooldown" periods. otherwise if the commander really wants to click on it manually, then there should always be enough energy.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This would mean anyone wanting to use the Shade effectively would still need to be doing the exact thing you have a problem with now.
Me calling it retarded is as mature as you and Arkanti completely ridiculing the argument the way you are doing. You did not provide a single point as to why it couldn't possibly be passive, or why it would be too powerful, as a result my point still stands. (I guess your argument revolves around shade being too powerful, though you never explicitly mentioned that, and I agree it is too powerful even as an active)
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's like I said - it opens up the possibility of 'storing' cloak/umbra for later use, if they won't be useful right now. If they take the current game, and make cloak/umbra automatic, they need to introduce a new negative effect for a tradeoff<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> The trade-off would be that it no longer affects moving units, which quite frankly was a bad design decision anyway. I don't mind umbra being an active as much, but you wouldn't want the heal to become an active either. The crag has 2 abilities, one is a passive and one is an active, which is fair enough, particularly because umbra is really powerful and having it triggered everytime something takes damage in its vicinity would be too powerful. The shade only has an active, when it should be designed the same way instead. Alien structures should have a purpose beyond just offering an 'active (the shade is in fact the only structure that is an exception to this design rule) so what I propose is to have cloak as a passive and phantasm as an active. (like every single other structure in the game that offers energy-abilities)
I'm expressing my concern with any and all mechanical complexity being steadily stripped away from the alien commander, a role that has been long demanding more things to keep busy with has instead had actions removed.
You could argue that drifters added complexity, since it's harder and requires more micro to build through drifters than it is currently, but surely you're not going to claim that the recent change is 'dumbing down' the khamm? Or that somehow making crag heal an active will make the commander 'more complex and enjoyable'.
I'm all for complexity, as long as it actually makes sense and isn't perceived by players as a frustrating or repetitive task.
Isn't it a little ironic to advocate simplicity that can lead to complexity and cite the resource model as one way of acomplishing this and then advocate one-button structure-specific resources just to open up one-dimensional possibilities, i.e., 'storing'? A preferable solution that maintains that possibility would be a pooled resource that applies to all triggered abilities so that the tradeoff would extend to "which ability to use and when" rather than simply "when to use the ability".
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=Arkanti)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Arkanti)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm expressing my concern with any and all mechanical complexity being steadily stripped away from the alien commander<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think you're right to worry about this and hopefully Xarius's concerns can be addressed by simply making it not such the whack-a-shade job it is currently. The unnecessary 'micro-tasks' are not necessarily the button-pressing that is involved in using each ability but the button-pressing involved in resource-management (clicking on every shade just to see how much energy it has feels quite redundant). Again, pooling this energy seems like a solution. Apm requirements would be unchanged in terms of truly useful actions and useful information can be gleaned from the UI rather than furious click-spamming.
QFT
The shade has the disorient ability as a passive.
<!--quoteo(post=1931153:date=Apr 29 2012, 01:28 AM:name=Xarius)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Xarius @ Apr 29 2012, 01:28 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1931153"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You could argue that drifters added complexity, since it's harder and requires more micro to build through drifters than it is currently, but surely you're not going to claim that the recent change is 'dumbing down' the khamm?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I would. As was the change away from drifters/cysts on the hive energy. Sure it wasn't perfect, but it provided more choice and consequence than the current mechanics do.
Wasn't defending it as a great mechanic, just pointing out what it is.
Congratulations! Now you're playing like it's an RTS and it's not hard at all!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Also you don't need to select more than 1 unit at a time, you can just hotkey all of those too, it worked in dune!
'Use clunky mechanics when more streamlined options are available' is not a good philosophy, if I want to automate it, I should be able to.
i wouldn't call that a downside, that's just how the mechanic works, and it's not taking anything away from the alien itself.