Augmentation - a fix suggestion idea
Angry Hillbilly 2
Join Date: 2012-03-31 Member: 149741Members
Join Date: 2012-03-31 Member: 149741Members
Theres a lot of talk going on about this build which as everyone knows. Alien gets Augmentation. game over.
I think the major problem is that augmentation unlocks everything at once which is like saying "READ THIS BOOK AND U WILL KNOW EVERYTHING EVER" sort of thing and it leaves absaloutly NO room stratagy or punishing decisions. Yes if a hive is lost the aliens have to start all over again with Aug and if the second hive is the aug hive it ends up being a game over as even though another hive is avalible the chance of any defence against arc trains (another problem for another topic entirely) is drastically reduced.
At the moment aliens attackin without aug and vice versa marrines attacking when Aug is there is what my biology teacher used to say in his geordie accent "Its like carrying coals to newcastle" meaning its pointless. (and the saying means that cus newcastle along with sunderland were 2 of the largest mining towns in the uk newcastle esspecially for coal.)
The way I think is to fix this is to seperate the differant ablities research (evolution) wise so the commander has decisions to make on what sort of path his team goes. So at an extreem level of this each new attack would require research or perhaps upgrading each class of creature to levels rather like the marrines weapons armour research. It would allow for a lot of varied gameplay and actually give the alien commander a little more to do apart from pruning the bushes and general gardening :P
The scale:
Far end of seperation of research:
Individual attacks require research so e.g bilebomb, blink..etc
Middle of spectra:
Each species gets a level research (of coruse would require a much more organic and awesome name other than level :P)
Lerk:
level 0 = no upgrades
Level 1 = Bile bomb
Level 2 = Faster flight....etc other stuff could be inserted here if wanted to
Fade:
Unlock
Level 0 = no upgrades
Level 1 = Blink..etc
Upper middle:
Groups of aliens style upgrades:
Light class: Skulk, Gorge.
Light class level 0 = no upgrades
Light class level 1 = leap, clogs..etc
medium class: Lerk, Fade?
Medium class level 0 = no upgrades
Medium class level 1 = Blink, Bile Bomb
Heavy class: Onos, Fade?
...etc
Top end of spectra:
No breakdown Augmentation as it is.
Now all of this is completly a random idea but i think it could definatly be a way to make it a much more stratagy style of play and slow down the aliens to a nice middle pace along with the marrines. Im not sure how it would work if a building was lost that had all the upgrades as this would be increadibly irritateing for aliens if lost back to square one which in late game is basically game over.
What ya all think?
I think the major problem is that augmentation unlocks everything at once which is like saying "READ THIS BOOK AND U WILL KNOW EVERYTHING EVER" sort of thing and it leaves absaloutly NO room stratagy or punishing decisions. Yes if a hive is lost the aliens have to start all over again with Aug and if the second hive is the aug hive it ends up being a game over as even though another hive is avalible the chance of any defence against arc trains (another problem for another topic entirely) is drastically reduced.
At the moment aliens attackin without aug and vice versa marrines attacking when Aug is there is what my biology teacher used to say in his geordie accent "Its like carrying coals to newcastle" meaning its pointless. (and the saying means that cus newcastle along with sunderland were 2 of the largest mining towns in the uk newcastle esspecially for coal.)
The way I think is to fix this is to seperate the differant ablities research (evolution) wise so the commander has decisions to make on what sort of path his team goes. So at an extreem level of this each new attack would require research or perhaps upgrading each class of creature to levels rather like the marrines weapons armour research. It would allow for a lot of varied gameplay and actually give the alien commander a little more to do apart from pruning the bushes and general gardening :P
The scale:
Far end of seperation of research:
Individual attacks require research so e.g bilebomb, blink..etc
Middle of spectra:
Each species gets a level research (of coruse would require a much more organic and awesome name other than level :P)
Lerk:
level 0 = no upgrades
Level 1 = Bile bomb
Level 2 = Faster flight....etc other stuff could be inserted here if wanted to
Fade:
Unlock
Level 0 = no upgrades
Level 1 = Blink..etc
Upper middle:
Groups of aliens style upgrades:
Light class: Skulk, Gorge.
Light class level 0 = no upgrades
Light class level 1 = leap, clogs..etc
medium class: Lerk, Fade?
Medium class level 0 = no upgrades
Medium class level 1 = Blink, Bile Bomb
Heavy class: Onos, Fade?
...etc
Top end of spectra:
No breakdown Augmentation as it is.
Now all of this is completly a random idea but i think it could definatly be a way to make it a much more stratagy style of play and slow down the aliens to a nice middle pace along with the marrines. Im not sure how it would work if a building was lost that had all the upgrades as this would be increadibly irritateing for aliens if lost back to square one which in late game is basically game over.
What ya all think?
Comments
Also a common suggestion is to require researching lifeforms before they can be used. It would have largely the same effect in that it provides more of a slow ramp up in alien power versus the very on/off switch dynamic at play in current versions of NS.
Anyway, all of this talk about getting rid of pres or energy or whatever flavor of the day revamp is really pointless. The game isn't that unbalanced at the moment. Small nudges in the right direction are the way to go. I feel like Charlie should have learned this lesson from differences between development of NS 3.0 and NS 2.0 beta, but maybe he's forgotten.
In addition, they really need to rethink the whole nutrient mist thing, it being the only ability on hive energy just makes it a no-brainer for 6-min augmentation. I think the triple resource system in general should be reconsidered, but if they insist on keeping it then they will have to at least come up with a lot more abilities that cost energy and p.res (for both sides, though it seems like they are moving away from using p.res for anything but weapons and lifeforms, might as well remove it entirely for commanders then imo)
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Also a common suggestion is to require researching lifeforms before they can be used. It would have largely the same effect in that it provides more of a slow ramp up in alien power versus the very on/off switch dynamic at play in current versions of NS.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> UWE has made it pretty clear on these forums they're not a big fan of tying tech to lifeforms for various reasons. I somewhat agree with the approach, but then they need to come up with a proper way to scale the onos from early to late game and slow the rate at which aliens get these lifeforms.
If they insist on keeping it a 1-button-upgrades-all-lifeform type augmentation, then it should cost at least 50 t.res imo because it really is a gamechanger.
I believe the devs have considered some of these idea (which can be easily implemented):
* Each Kharaa can evolve "Augmentation", which takes one Evolution slot, to unlock additional abilities of its class (eg Leap for Skulk). eg With one Hive, a Skulk may only choose one upgrade, from Leap, Carapace, Regen, or Camouflage, and so on.
* Augmentation is automatically unlocked once a Hive matures. There may even be multiple levels of Augmentation, reached at different stages of Hive maturity.
* Mist can be used to speed up maturation, but costs <b>Team Res</b>. This creates more choices for the Khammander: Do you wait for the Hive to mature for free, or pay extra resources to speed up the process?
(Mist is probably a WIP which needs more balance changes. eg Only affects the Hive when used specifically on the Hive.)
the upgrades would be done at the hive, so the incentive to grab another hive (despite of having more mist and better respawn) would be to have another research running in parallel to the first hive. the upgrade would need a reasonable amount of time to complete, to make 2 hive and 3 hive play valid tactics, but also 1 hive play should be supported. depends solely on the research cost/time to make every life form upgrade a 'good' choice. in addition i would like to see the personal upgrades (carapace etc) be more meaningful: regen works in combat, camouflage/silence unified (and a new 2nd upgrade), 2 meaningful shift upgrades
those are just my ideas, don't take any of that as official
+1 to making hives more important but not mandatory/focus of the game!
In regards to upgrades, I really believe they should go back to costing p.res, but scale based on lifeform and possibly even power of the upgrade. (I.e carapace could cost more than camouflage, impacting the decision making process for both commanders and players alike,.would make shade starts more viable as well, on top of just generally offering a much needed non-lifeform p.res sink for players)
Before, when marines killed a hive it was a very hard blow to the alien team. Now it doesn't really matter.
<!--quoteo(post=1931742:date=Apr 30 2012, 07:13 AM:name=Sewlek)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Sewlek @ Apr 30 2012, 07:13 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1931742"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->camouflage/silence unified<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This on is a bad idea :
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Thinking about cloak, it seems things have been done backward; if you can hear a cloaked alien it's fine, it puts the focus on audition instead of vision and shooting a cloaked skulk just from sound is fun. Same thing with silence, you can still see them. It's variation on senses.
Cloak used to work only when walking very slowly, it's the exact contrary that needs to be done, be cloaked when you are the most noisy, that is when you run. If you stand still, uncloak.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A skulk should never be able to take camouflage and silence at the same time.
Yes it removes some of the asymmetry that is (for some reason) so precious, but it's so much more intuitive and dynamic than "wait x minutes for leap".
Do eeeeeet.
the upgrades would be done at the hive, so the incentive to grab another hive (despite of having more mist and better respawn) would be to have another research running in parallel to the first hive. the upgrade would need a reasonable amount of time to complete, to make 2 hive and 3 hive play valid tactics, but also 1 hive play should be supported. depends solely on the research cost/time to make every life form upgrade a 'good' choice. in addition i would like to see the personal upgrades (carapace etc) be more meaningful: regen works in combat, camouflage/silence unified (and a new 2nd upgrade), 2 meaningful shift upgrades
those are just my ideas, don't take any of that as official<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I feel like this makes the tech tree a bit too complicated, especially when it comes to which upgrades are lost when a hive dies. Now not only do we have different hives at different tech levels, we also have a Leap + Blink Hive and a Bile Bomb + Clogs Hive, etc... It's just too unintuitive IMO.
Seems intuitive to me. It's no harder than remembering that JPs come from the Proto Lab and not the AA. The only difference is that the commander gets to pick which hive/building is which, adding to the depth of strategic options available to the Kharaa.
I defenately love this idea of making more than 1 hive more encoraged again but not vital so leaves room for diffearnt play styles :D The thing is would "evoultions" from the hive they were done at be attached in the way that if that hive were lost would the evolution be lost? So say if at the second hive an early stage research was done (for example sake) and then late game resarch was done at original hive. The early research is stuff that is required to be done before the late stuff can be done (like tech tree). If that hive were lost would it require the entire stack to be done again cus that could make a hive loss a real blow to the aliens leading back to square one.
Before, when marines killed a hive it was a very hard blow to the alien team. Now it doesn't really matter.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=Beta 205 changelog)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Beta 205 changelog)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->There is no more “research†on the alien side: everything is an “evolutionâ€. So if you lose a structure that had evolved an ability, and then rebuild that structure, you need to re-evolve it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If anything, the blow would be much greater since you'd be re-evolving all of those abilities rather than just the one.
the upgrades would be done at the hive, so the incentive to grab another hive (despite of having more mist and better respawn) would be to have another research running in parallel to the first hive. the upgrade would need a reasonable amount of time to complete, to make 2 hive and 3 hive play valid tactics, but also 1 hive play should be supported. depends solely on the research cost/time to make every life form upgrade a 'good' choice. in addition i would like to see the personal upgrades (carapace etc) be more meaningful: regen works in combat, camouflage/silence unified (and a new 2nd upgrade), 2 meaningful shift upgrades
those are just my ideas, don't take any of that as official<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please suggest this to Charlie. Great ideas.
I also think that upgrades should matter more. This could create a res sink for the aliens if you have to pay for them again.
Also, it would be interesting losing a hive and having half the upgrades disappear.
Side note, Bile Bomb is in a league of it's own (like GLs and ARCS). The DoT is just too wicked. A few bombs and half the marine team must buy welders.
So yeah -- I agree the core concept of this fix is nice. Return importance to hives via tech! Nerf those Kharaa!