Hive Maturity Mechanic?
yehawmcgraw
Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159694Members
Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159694Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Six Issues it Could Address</div>Hi all!
I'm seeing and hearing several recurring concerns in the game:
<ol type='1'><li>Unlike marines, aliens have no retention mechanic (besides feign death, I suppose)</li><li>Marines can turtle on 1 or 2 bases for a VERY long time</li><li>Lerks are very rare, often passed over to save for fade.</li><li>As a fade, you must not die, you are the most the hope for your team. </li><li>Because of 1, 3, and 4, a late-game alien team is 80% skulks at any time. On the other hand 80% of marines have non-standard weapons or armour.</li><li>To an arguable degree, aliens seem week (lately at least), especially in the late game</li></ol>
What I think would be appropriate is to add a "Hive maturity" mechanic to the alien team which will address these problems. After a certain prerequisite (perhaps time elapsed per hive, money spent for an upgrade, or both), Hive will start producing pre-evolved eggs which offer a deduction to evolutions. The amount deducted would increase with each degree or tier of maturity and be labeled on the egg. Something like that, I'm open to suggestions. I suggest this deduction never increase beyond 20 or 25 res.
Once all lifeforms are deducted 10-20 res, I believe you would see a lot more <b>gorges and especially lerks
</b> as these lifeforms would be cheap or free, where as Fade and Onos would remain relatively expensive. No longer would gorge and lerk be perpetually ignored to save for Fade or Onos. This addresses #1, #3, #4, and #5. Also I am fully aware that other factors (lifeform costs?) would need to be rebalanced with this addition.
Also, it would provide a natural reason for marines NOT to late-game turtle. Or at least go out and kill hives that are at risk of being too mature. This addresses #2 and 6.
Finally, I believe it it fits in with the flavor of NS. More asymmetric gameplay. An alien threat growing and evolving stronger by the minute. That kind of thing.
Suggestions, variants, thoughts? Marines loyalists too!
I'm seeing and hearing several recurring concerns in the game:
<ol type='1'><li>Unlike marines, aliens have no retention mechanic (besides feign death, I suppose)</li><li>Marines can turtle on 1 or 2 bases for a VERY long time</li><li>Lerks are very rare, often passed over to save for fade.</li><li>As a fade, you must not die, you are the most the hope for your team. </li><li>Because of 1, 3, and 4, a late-game alien team is 80% skulks at any time. On the other hand 80% of marines have non-standard weapons or armour.</li><li>To an arguable degree, aliens seem week (lately at least), especially in the late game</li></ol>
What I think would be appropriate is to add a "Hive maturity" mechanic to the alien team which will address these problems. After a certain prerequisite (perhaps time elapsed per hive, money spent for an upgrade, or both), Hive will start producing pre-evolved eggs which offer a deduction to evolutions. The amount deducted would increase with each degree or tier of maturity and be labeled on the egg. Something like that, I'm open to suggestions. I suggest this deduction never increase beyond 20 or 25 res.
Once all lifeforms are deducted 10-20 res, I believe you would see a lot more <b>gorges and especially lerks
</b> as these lifeforms would be cheap or free, where as Fade and Onos would remain relatively expensive. No longer would gorge and lerk be perpetually ignored to save for Fade or Onos. This addresses #1, #3, #4, and #5. Also I am fully aware that other factors (lifeform costs?) would need to be rebalanced with this addition.
Also, it would provide a natural reason for marines NOT to late-game turtle. Or at least go out and kill hives that are at risk of being too mature. This addresses #2 and 6.
Finally, I believe it it fits in with the flavor of NS. More asymmetric gameplay. An alien threat growing and evolving stronger by the minute. That kind of thing.
Suggestions, variants, thoughts? Marines loyalists too!
Comments
I've turned massive base assaults into a attempt to find air pockets and the lerk. i've outscored the best fade or onos. i've been an annoying prat at worst. lerk is easily the best class, just need to know when and how to use it.
People should definitely be more encouraged to go lerk. The only person I know who likes to play lerk (elfkiller) is more like a flying skulk that gets steamrolled quickly without using spore even once.
Unless Marines lost all upgrades related to a building if that building was destroyed (ie. AC/WC lvl 3 gets dropped to AC/WC 0 if all arms labs are destroyed and they should have to research them again), Aliens do really need something similar ..
Marines can take out a hive quickly after 30 minutes and bring Aliens effectivley back to the '5 minute mark' .. while they don't receive any real penalties for a good pasting of their base
Small boost in alien res collection based on Hive Maturity (in conjunction with mature res nodes?) or anything really :) Aliens shouldn't be so gimped after losing 1 hive when Marines take 10 seconds to rebuild the destroyed buildings to get back to where they were..