Sensory Trait: Target vitals
yehawmcgraw
Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159694Members
Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159694Members
<div class="IPBDescription">for disparate LMG/Skulk skill curves</div>There really seams to be a delicate balance and as it stands between the fodder LMG and Skulk classes, and marines seem to be favored for skilled players.
<span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'>This is some tangential side dialog, taken out to not distract the real topic.
Breaking it down for the default classes (as the default LMG'er and skulks are still the majority of the classes for >95% of the time):
<b>Passively Marines will get:</b>
Health: 2.1 (.1 being that parasite damage) ->5 bites of health
Damage: 8 shots to kill a skulk -> 6.1 shots on skulks
Speed: Slowish walking -> Ability to phase around the map
<b>Passively Aliens will get (probably):</b>
Health: 8->12 lvl 0 LMG shots
Damage: Constant output
Speed:~ +50% from leap and celerity
Also: Feign Death (Is it fair to say this doesn't add to skulk combat ability?For skulk this give him the ability to crawl away from the battle, run to the hive, heal and run back. It's faster and costless to just die. This is much more fade-oriented)
The most import things I see from the above is that Marines get a drastic increase in health, moderate damage increase, and can phase defend the whole map, where as skulks relatively meager increase to survivability via cara and speed. But I feel it's fair to say the skulks effectiveness is hard to represented by these numbers.
</span>
I feel the biggest problem is that at any time, a marine can be expected to win if only he/she aimed perfectly and shot for about .5 seconds. The perfect skulk on the other hand requires a much larger minimum time to kill (time to close the gap + five bites). Once the marines are over a certain skill level, a good skulk's effectiveness dwindles.
<b>What an alien needs is a dimension in which it can drastically increase the its damage output in ways that require large amounts of skill</b>, just as marines can kill nearly instantly but <i>it's really hard to aim to do so</i>.
Why not a sensory upgrade that allow the aliens to target glowing vital points?
Neckbites/maybe heart -> Huge/highest damage increase, and/or bleedout DoT
Leg bites -> slow and marines can't do that dumb hopping for a while
Face-> High damage and blurred/bloody vision
Groin->Hilarious screams and expletives
Arms...guns...achilles tendon, who knows? Though it would be preferable if the marine could never be interrupted from shooting.
Like I said before it would allow a skilled skulk to close the TTK (time to kill) gap, and more diversity and flavor to gameplay, and would reward having a skulk sneak up on someone and sneak attacking a vitalpoint. The higher neck and face areas are normally very hard to reach for a skulk to reach and would normally require dropping from the ceiling, an extremely tricky leap, or a lerk. Also, with this, going sensory would look a lot more apealling than it stands now. BTW to accomidate this new ability, you might get rid of hypermutation, move silence back to movement where it belongs, and place this in that new sensory slot.
Variant: Passive mechanic, balance by tweaking default bite damage, vital point size, and vital point rewards.
<span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'>This is some tangential side dialog, taken out to not distract the real topic.
Breaking it down for the default classes (as the default LMG'er and skulks are still the majority of the classes for >95% of the time):
<b>Passively Marines will get:</b>
Health: 2.1 (.1 being that parasite damage) ->5 bites of health
Damage: 8 shots to kill a skulk -> 6.1 shots on skulks
Speed: Slowish walking -> Ability to phase around the map
<b>Passively Aliens will get (probably):</b>
Health: 8->12 lvl 0 LMG shots
Damage: Constant output
Speed:~ +50% from leap and celerity
Also: Feign Death (Is it fair to say this doesn't add to skulk combat ability?For skulk this give him the ability to crawl away from the battle, run to the hive, heal and run back. It's faster and costless to just die. This is much more fade-oriented)
The most import things I see from the above is that Marines get a drastic increase in health, moderate damage increase, and can phase defend the whole map, where as skulks relatively meager increase to survivability via cara and speed. But I feel it's fair to say the skulks effectiveness is hard to represented by these numbers.
</span>
I feel the biggest problem is that at any time, a marine can be expected to win if only he/she aimed perfectly and shot for about .5 seconds. The perfect skulk on the other hand requires a much larger minimum time to kill (time to close the gap + five bites). Once the marines are over a certain skill level, a good skulk's effectiveness dwindles.
<b>What an alien needs is a dimension in which it can drastically increase the its damage output in ways that require large amounts of skill</b>, just as marines can kill nearly instantly but <i>it's really hard to aim to do so</i>.
Why not a sensory upgrade that allow the aliens to target glowing vital points?
Neckbites/maybe heart -> Huge/highest damage increase, and/or bleedout DoT
Leg bites -> slow and marines can't do that dumb hopping for a while
Face-> High damage and blurred/bloody vision
Groin->Hilarious screams and expletives
Arms...guns...achilles tendon, who knows? Though it would be preferable if the marine could never be interrupted from shooting.
Like I said before it would allow a skilled skulk to close the TTK (time to kill) gap, and more diversity and flavor to gameplay, and would reward having a skulk sneak up on someone and sneak attacking a vitalpoint. The higher neck and face areas are normally very hard to reach for a skulk to reach and would normally require dropping from the ceiling, an extremely tricky leap, or a lerk. Also, with this, going sensory would look a lot more apealling than it stands now. BTW to accomidate this new ability, you might get rid of hypermutation, move silence back to movement where it belongs, and place this in that new sensory slot.
Variant: Passive mechanic, balance by tweaking default bite damage, vital point size, and vital point rewards.
Comments