Infested marines !

Keldorn

This idea is heavily starcraft inspired, but I'm going to suggest it anyway (flame away !).

It would be cool to have a lifeform (skulk or a new one) that allows to take control of a killed marine (special attack by this lifeform), allowing the alien to virtually "become" the marine (with maybe a few tweaks, pro and con). This would allow a long range combatant vs the marines, with the ability to pick up weapons, but no way of using armories or the like so its basically a scavenger. Could allow the alien to drop the marine body when its useless.

Flame away !

- Keldorn

Align

What would happen to the original marine meanwhile, respawn as usual? What're the downsides (since giving the aliens good ranged combat would be a big deal)?

Keldorn

Correct, the marine would normally respawn without any hinder. Becoming an infested marine is done by giving the killing blow by using a special attack. And yes, it would need to be balanced accordingly (e.g. slow movement, as in no running or a high res cost in case its a new lifeform, etc...).

Basically a marine is overally slower than most alien lifeforms, being an infested marine gives this inherited weakness and you can easily be gunned down by the marine team through ranged combat when you're not careful, losing alot of potential res. On top of that, the inability to replenish ammo without scavenging (no armory) limits the amount of overall firepower.

Not Flayra

I like it. Though I'd also add a timelimit (60 seconds before the host body can no longer be sustained), slower movement and lower health (no armor). Also have turrets treat them as enemies, but just change the color of their health bar on the Marine HUD so they could still be mistaken for the sneaky type of players.

Also, re-selecting the Infest ability should make the infested marine explode, doing AoE damage based on health remaining. So a suicidal charge into a base would be next to useless, but sidling up to a group of Marines and popping at full health would do pretty serious damage (though not instakills of course).

It would also give Max an excuse to put in those zombie-walk animations he's been messing with when he thinks I'm getting coffee.