Problem isn't its viability as a first hive, its the problem of it being a huge blow later in the game when you only have 2 hives.
Late game aliens NEED carapace, this means that your second hive has to be Crag. This leaves you with Feign death and Carapace Fades (not bad if people don't know how to counter FD) However it leaves you WITHOUT Celerity for your skulks (Silence and camo is nice but what when you have ot make a headon push?) and your Onos is a Slownos who can't even stomp spam because he has no adren, not to mention no shifts to let your gorgies heal him forever.
If I had to tier my upgrades I would do it like this:
1: Carapace + Celerity - Always have a use 2: Adren + Hyper Mute + Silence - Situationaly Useful 3: Regen + Feigned Death - Useful for certain lifeforms 4: Camo - Sub-par.
Due to the Shade hive abilities always being alot lower down my tier of "use-ability" I would always prioritize them last. Same with the chamber abilities as well: Healing wave and Eggspawning is much more useful than ink cloud and I find teleport much more useful than hallucinations.
The player upgrades that come with the shade are not offensive enough apart from silence.
Silence - love this upgrade, does a simple but fine job.
Camo - useless upgrade, unless you are sitting around waiting for someone. Not any good for competitive play. I think a way to really give this upgrade some 'umpf' would be to prevent marines seeing you on the minimap. Comm should be able to see you from top down, but not on minimap. Perhaps this upgrade could literally just remove you from the minimap, as I think that is a very powerful tool (unless scanned).
Feign Death - It works, but I find it a bit cheesy. Perhaps you could have something whereby when you die you re-incarnate as a babbler?
Or perhaps it could be placed with some kind of foresight or awareness of what the marines are doing?
There are a lot of more interesting options out there imo that would be great for pub and competitive.
Don't really understand people who'd take Cele or Adren for Fade instead of Feign. Cele - what's the use? You're blinking anyway, doesn't increase blink speed. Adren? What's the use? You're gonna run out of health long before energy. Feign? Free life against anyone who fails to hit a blinking fade? (Not too easy...)
<!--quoteo(post=1995658:date=Oct 23 2012, 09:07 AM:name=Mestaritonttu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mestaritonttu @ Oct 23 2012, 09:07 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1995658"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Don't really understand people who'd take Cele or Adren for Fade instead of Feign. Cele - what's the use? You're blinking anyway, doesn't increase blink speed. Adren? What's the use? You're gonna run out of health long before energy. Feign? Free life against anyone who fails to hit a blinking fade? (Not too easy...)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What about giving aliens an automatic buff depending upon wht type of hive is evolved? This would be a bonus granted to all aliens aside from the upgrades. Each Hive could grant a bonus to both life forms and structures.
For example:
Shade Hive: immune to radar and scans if not moving or slow crawling / cysts and eggs perma cloaked
Shift Hive: +% speed increase to egg spawn or base speed / +% speed increase to structure maturity
Crag Hive: +% increase to Life form HP/ +% increase to structure HP
I don't understand the suggestion. There was no problem to solve. The only "problem" in this thread, is people who experience something once and then take the stance of "absolutely not" on everything else.
Against good marines with level 1 weapons or shotguns, silence is nearly totally useless for the time being. All it takes is one bite and being tossed across the room to realize someone is there and kill it. With celerity you essentially get the same effect by just holding shift, since they won't hear you walking and you're moving at basically regular speed, so they won't hear you til you bite. You also have much better map control ability since you can get places a lot quicker. Also gives the gorges with adrenaline the ability to heal a lot more or if they are near a shift, indefinitely. You're basically saying yea get silence so that it'll benefit 1 life form for the first few minutes of the game, whereas you could get celerity, hypermutation, or adrenaline which will benefit you the entire game at every level.
Thinking about this, shade hive <b>could </b>be the ultimate counter to Archea's spawn camp tactic (their only tactic). I was thinking how, the marines streaming into the hive could easily be repeatedly ambushed, and how they wouldn't be able to kill off the eggs because they couldn't find them, and and and... and then I remembered that an observatory nullifies all of this.
I think that is a central problem to why shade is so god damn awful. Its entire purpose is defeated by a single, mandatory marine building. I say forget ink cloud. Give shades themselves an ability to "absorb" marine scans. As the scan goes off, the typically clear blue lines could look distorted, while some sort of visual energy signature travels along the ground and into the shade absorbing it. The shade itself would become 50% visible while doing this, but would prevent any aliens in the area from being exposed.
This absorb ability should be passive and have a cooldown. One shade shouldn't counter an observatory indefinitely, but multiple shades should be an option.
If the area can't be scanned, it will remain invisible. If it remains invisible, it'd be ridiculously and stupidly OP. Scans are the way to find eggs and upgrades (the "non-fixed-position" things) under a shade, except running all over an area hoping to run into them. You can knife the RT and hive while invisible due to their predictable positions, but it'd be really hard to find the upgrades.
<!--quoteo(post=1995965:date=Oct 24 2012, 08:35 AM:name=HeatSurge)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (HeatSurge @ Oct 24 2012, 08:35 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1995965"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If the area can't be scanned, it will remain invisible. If it remains invisible, it'd be ridiculously and stupidly OP. Scans are the way to find eggs and upgrades (the "non-fixed-position" things) under a shade, except running all over an area hoping to run into them. You can knife the RT and hive while invisible due to their predictable positions, but it'd be really hard to find the upgrades.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That would be overpowered, but I didn't intend for the shade to have the passive ability of absorbing scans <b>and </b>cloaking units. I'll move this to the suggestions forum though, lest the topic is derailed.
The problem with camo in comp games is that most marines and marine comms know where to expect cloaked aliens and either just scan and kill them or they just rush past you and kill your rt.
You don't have the time to engage marines as a swarm when everyone is camo walking. Not even speaking about the fact that they can easily see cloaked movement.
And if you missed the point where you could engage the marines, and you have to run to follow them, as they are now in your hive killing eggs and the rt, they will already hear you coming, because you don't have the time to cloak again before engaging.
You do not gain much of an advantage out of cloak, because ambushing is probably even easier without it. It isn't needed to be hang on the ceiling with full invisibiliy, because you might just as well hide in a vent or shift-sneak around objects.
A shade in early is also wasted res most of the times, because it just gets scanned once and then killed.
My suggestion to make it more viable is to: 1) remove the speed malus 2) make it so that it gives 100% invisibility when shift walking, and ghost mode (like 10% visibility) when running 3) (maybe) increase tres cost of scan
What about an "ambush" period of 3 seconds after you start running/jump during which you remain as camoflauged as you were when you began your attack, ending immediately on your first bite/offensive ability.
100% invisible when running 50% invisible when shift walking 0% invisible when standing still
Taking damage makes you visible for a little while and then you fade away quickly again.
Cloak is boring because it forces you to be slow, this instead forces you to be fast. It also fun for marine because they will hear you coming and need to guess-shot you from sound to make you visible, it's much more satisfying that getting bitten in the ass by an invisible-silent skulk.
It's also create a new gameplay style, while like you said slow cloak play is very similar to ambushing.
<!--quoteo(post=1996053:date=Oct 24 2012, 02:12 PM:name=Bicsum)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Bicsum @ Oct 24 2012, 02:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1996053"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->My suggestion to make it more viable is to: 1) remove the speed malus 2) make it so that it gives 100% invisibility when shift walking, and ghost mode (like 10% visibility) when running<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
As I already wrote, I support this. It would make camo viable for combat. With the additional benefit for ambushing. 10% visibility while running is enough for marines to notice you, but it is harder to aim at a partially visible alien. That would make this upgrade finally useful in the faster paced NS2.
How is cloak when fast more complicated than cloak when slow ? It's just an inversion of the relationship. It has exactly the same complexity, but it's more fun and make the gameplay more diverse.
Because you obviously do not remember the CC rushes when cloak first appeared, lol. Also any percentage of transparency that can be seen, will be seen by marines. I guarantee you will not miss seeing a semi cloaked (especially moving) skulk. Even if it is static it will have a base animation of it breathing, so you will still see movement.
Also you can walk currently whilst cloaked, but it is just really slow.
Honestly, I don't think anyone likes aliens having the ability to just run around fully cloaked as they feel. Getting the balance is tough.
Silence for example just takes away a sensory perception of marines and is a very valid upgrade through NS1 and into NS2.
Taking away a marines ability to see that alien on minimap, this increases chances of ambushing and is a simple and easy implementation. It will really change the game dynamics, forcing marines to be more cautious.
cloak is redundant when there are plenty of places to ambush from whilst being more effective with better upgrades Silence is alright, but again useless against players who are any good feign death is the only real useful upgrade, then again its cheesy and bad game design :P
the actual shade itself is useless against any team with a decent commander
competitive teams will only ever go for shade hive for the feign death upgrade, its the only reason i can see them deviating from the usual shift > crag > shade build order.
SO let me get this straight...people think it would be unfair for shade to have an ability to deny scans, in which itself would say to a player at a high level or "pro" level, oh they went shade first. However back to my point, you guys seriously think its okay for ARC and every pro to use the same tactic every game? and counter everything with just that one build early on. Imo is far to easy of a tech option, its pretty much the only choice i've seen every tourny for marines. The fact that there is basically one build for marines is just dull and boring, but thats off topic. Shade needs something in order to make it viable...clearly.
I think the shade hive (#1) actually can be VERY effective. Here's why:
1. Because celerity is not in effect your pub skulks will not tend (as much) to go running halfway across the map to try to rambo.
2. It gives you a huge one up on the marines if your skulks don't try to come at them head on. Usually you can get a bite or two in before they realize what's happening.
3. It also helps you in putting up a new hive as you can shade it before it even goes up.
Ultimately I think the positive effect it has is to slow/calm down your initial skulks and make them think more strategically. Almost every time I've opted to go shade as comm we've won.
That, and I LOVE it when my comm goes shade first. My KDR is way higher.
All of that having been said, shade hive is useless if your team cannot hold RT's to allow for a relatively quick second hive.
If we are at it. Phase-tech should be disconnected form the obs. It's sad, that the obs is a mandatory building. It decreases the options of build orders one has.
Regarding camo and its usage why not just use it as a defensive opener? Marines seem to take the map anyway, regardless of what tech aliens go first. Or perhaps a quick feign death opener. something to use defensively. Honostly from what i see in comp play right now is that aliens are always on the back foot. The have to pretty much defend constantly or sneak around and snipe maybe one RT before the marines kill your whole base in one movement.
In pro alien play, most common tactic is fast expo, which gets stuffed pretty quick. Then what bothers me is when they keep, dropping the expo after they lose it, and lose it many more times in succession. I honestly think Aliens have to play more defensive at the moment. Skulks seem almost useless against a marine team that can shoot straight. I'd rather see 4 or 3 gorge at the start of the game (including comm) plus 2 skulks and just scout and defend. That amount of gorge could quite handily stack a bunch of clogs and hydras and take map control somewhat until higher life forms come out. By keeping the 2 skulks in the mix its just keeping the need for the dps and scouting, in order to defend successfully.
Thats just an idea i came up with though. I have no idea if that would work with shade play or not. :) but it could be worth a try right ;)
<!--quoteo(post=1996071:date=Oct 24 2012, 03:08 PM:name=Runteh)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Runteh @ Oct 24 2012, 03:08 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1996071"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Because you obviously do not remember the CC rushes when cloak first appeared, lol. Also any percentage of transparency that can be seen, will be seen by marines. I guarantee you will not miss seeing a semi cloaked (especially moving) skulk. Even if it is static it will have a base animation of it breathing, so you will still see movement.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is quite a large problem with camouflage at the moment. The problem is due to the fact that it is just plain transparency, whereas it needs to be distortion. It doesn't matter if a skulk is 99% invisible or 1% invisible, movement will be seen without fail. Its an evolutionary thing which a lot of visualisations take advantage of; the fact that humans simply cannot ignore a moving object, no matter how small or transparent.
The trick is to distort rather than hide with transparency. So instead of simply making the skulk essentially a different colour, you distort the pixels behind him. So instead of a certain pixel being at coordinate 10,10, it is slightly moved to 11,13 , but it remains the exact same colour. What this means is that a person can't simply look at a single pixel and notice movement. Instead they need to get reference data from all around the skulks position, in order to be able to see the discrepancies. This also means certain, more monotonous textures will be far easier to hide against, which good players can use to their advantage.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Because you obviously do not remember the CC rushes when cloak first appeared, lol.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I do remember well, but I think cloak-when-fast is better than cloak-when-slow is this regard. With cloak-when-slow you need to stay still or move very slowly, thus silently to bypass marines. They have no chances of noticing you. With cloak-when-fast the only way to bypass marines when cloaked is to run at full speed, so they will notice you.
Defending against running cloaked skulks rush as marine was easy and fun; you hear the skulks coming and you shoot them.
Shade is the most powerful evolution available.... However no other evolution have a direct counter. You can't negate a Craig or a shift... But with an obs nearby a shad is pointless....
Silence when used well is devastating... And no one can ignore the power of making every thing from eggs to hive to onos invisible.
The biggest downside is that all of these pros for shade go away the moment you enter a rine area. If rines had a structure that slowed down aliens with celerity or took away cara in base you wouldn't like it either... And while silence still works a blue circle and dot on the mini map gives you away to any experienced player.
Instead of totally reworking how shades function, what if scans near a share just had heavily reduced duration? So, sure, you can still scan, but if you want to support your marines during a push into alien territory, it's going to cost a lot more res to keep scans up.
<!--quoteo(post=1996170:date=Oct 24 2012, 05:34 PM:name=Typhon)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Typhon @ Oct 24 2012, 05:34 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1996170"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Instead of totally reworking how shades function, what if scans near a share just had heavily reduced duration? So, sure, you can still scan, but if you want to support your marines during a push into alien territory, it's going to cost a lot more res to keep scans up.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That wouldn't change the fact that the comm will just set a waypoint at the shade placement.
I think it would be nice if the shade would automatically create hallucination images of itself when scanned.
<!--quoteo(post=1996184:date=Oct 24 2012, 12:20 PM:name=Bicsum)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Bicsum @ Oct 24 2012, 12:20 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1996184"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That wouldn't change the fact that the comm will just set a waypoint at the shade placement.
I think it would be nice if the shade would automatically create hallucination images of itself when scanned.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> The idea was not to make the shade harder to find, but to make the passive cloaking a little more useful to the aliens during a marine push. Certainly once all defenders have been eliminated the shade will go down, but reduced scan duration will aid the defenders.
Comments
Late game aliens NEED carapace, this means that your second hive has to be Crag.
This leaves you with Feign death and Carapace Fades (not bad if people don't know how to counter FD)
However it leaves you WITHOUT Celerity for your skulks (Silence and camo is nice but what when you have ot make a headon push?)
and your Onos is a Slownos who can't even stomp spam because he has no adren, not to mention no shifts to let your gorgies heal
him forever.
If I had to tier my upgrades I would do it like this:
1: Carapace + Celerity - Always have a use
2: Adren + Hyper Mute + Silence - Situationaly Useful
3: Regen + Feigned Death - Useful for certain lifeforms
4: Camo - Sub-par.
Due to the Shade hive abilities always being alot lower down my tier of "use-ability" I would always
prioritize them last. Same with the chamber abilities as well: Healing wave and Eggspawning is much more useful than ink cloud and I find teleport much more useful than hallucinations.
Silence - love this upgrade, does a simple but fine job.
Camo - useless upgrade, unless you are sitting around waiting for someone. Not any good for competitive play. I think a way to really give this upgrade some 'umpf' would be to prevent marines seeing you on the minimap. Comm should be able to see you from top down, but not on minimap. Perhaps this upgrade could literally just remove you from the minimap, as I think that is a very powerful tool (unless scanned).
Feign Death - It works, but I find it a bit cheesy. Perhaps you could have something whereby when you die you re-incarnate as a babbler?
Or perhaps it could be placed with some kind of foresight or awareness of what the marines are doing?
There are a lot of more interesting options out there imo that would be great for pub and competitive.
What about giving aliens an automatic buff depending upon wht type of hive is evolved? This would be a bonus granted to all aliens aside from the upgrades. Each Hive could grant a bonus to both life forms and structures.
For example:
Shade Hive: immune to radar and scans if not moving or slow crawling / cysts and eggs perma cloaked
Shift Hive: +% speed increase to egg spawn or base speed / +% speed increase to structure maturity
Crag Hive: +% increase to Life form HP/ +% increase to structure HP
I think that is a central problem to why shade is so god damn awful. Its entire purpose is defeated by a single, mandatory marine building. I say forget ink cloud. Give shades themselves an ability to "absorb" marine scans. As the scan goes off, the typically clear blue lines could look distorted, while some sort of visual energy signature travels along the ground and into the shade absorbing it. The shade itself would become 50% visible while doing this, but would prevent any aliens in the area from being exposed.
This absorb ability should be passive and have a cooldown. One shade shouldn't counter an observatory indefinitely, but multiple shades should be an option.
That would be overpowered, but I didn't intend for the shade to have the passive ability of absorbing scans <b>and </b>cloaking units. I'll move this to the suggestions forum though, lest the topic is derailed.
You don't have the time to engage marines as a swarm when everyone is camo walking. Not even speaking about the fact that they can easily see cloaked movement.
And if you missed the point where you could engage the marines, and you have to run to follow them, as they are now in your hive killing eggs and the rt, they will already hear you coming, because you don't have the time to cloak again before engaging.
You do not gain much of an advantage out of cloak, because ambushing is probably even easier without it. It isn't needed to be hang on the ceiling with full invisibiliy, because you might just as well hide in a vent or shift-sneak around objects.
A shade in early is also wasted res most of the times, because it just gets scanned once and then killed.
My suggestion to make it more viable is to:
1) remove the speed malus
2) make it so that it gives 100% invisibility when shift walking, and ghost mode (like 10% visibility) when running
3) (maybe) increase tres cost of scan
100% invisible when running
50% invisible when shift walking
0% invisible when standing still
Taking damage makes you visible for a little while and then you fade away quickly again.
Cloak is boring because it forces you to be slow, this instead forces you to be fast. It also fun for marine because they will hear you coming and need to guess-shot you from sound to make you visible, it's much more satisfying that getting bitten in the ass by an invisible-silent skulk.
It's also create a new gameplay style, while like you said slow cloak play is very similar to ambushing.
Just keep it as is and then make it so it removes the lifeform from the marines/commanders minimap unless scanned.
Simple solution, but powerful without effecting action when it happens.
1) remove the speed malus
2) make it so that it gives 100% invisibility when shift walking, and ghost mode (like 10% visibility) when running<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
As I already wrote, I support this. It would make camo viable for combat. With the additional benefit for ambushing.
10% visibility while running is enough for marines to notice you, but it is harder to aim at a partially visible alien. That would make this upgrade finally useful in the faster paced NS2.
Also you can walk currently whilst cloaked, but it is just really slow.
Honestly, I don't think anyone likes aliens having the ability to just run around fully cloaked as they feel. Getting the balance is tough.
Silence for example just takes away a sensory perception of marines and is a very valid upgrade through NS1 and into NS2.
Taking away a marines ability to see that alien on minimap, this increases chances of ambushing and is a simple and easy implementation. It will really change the game dynamics, forcing marines to be more cautious.
Usually the simplest things are the best things.
Silence is alright, but again useless against players who are any good
feign death is the only real useful upgrade, then again its cheesy and bad game design :P
the actual shade itself is useless against any team with a decent commander
competitive teams will only ever go for shade hive for the feign death upgrade, its the only reason i can see them deviating from the usual shift > crag > shade build order.
1. Because celerity is not in effect your pub skulks will not tend (as much) to go running halfway across the map to try to rambo.
2. It gives you a huge one up on the marines if your skulks don't try to come at them head on. Usually you can get a bite or two in before they realize what's happening.
3. It also helps you in putting up a new hive as you can shade it before it even goes up.
Ultimately I think the positive effect it has is to slow/calm down your initial skulks and make them think more strategically. Almost every time I've opted to go shade as comm we've won.
That, and I LOVE it when my comm goes shade first. My KDR is way higher.
All of that having been said, shade hive is useless if your team cannot hold RT's to allow for a relatively quick second hive.
In pro alien play, most common tactic is fast expo, which gets stuffed pretty quick. Then what bothers me is when they keep, dropping the expo after they lose it, and lose it many more times in succession. I honestly think Aliens have to play more defensive at the moment. Skulks seem almost useless against a marine team that can shoot straight. I'd rather see 4 or 3 gorge at the start of the game (including comm) plus 2 skulks and just scout and defend. That amount of gorge could quite handily stack a bunch of clogs and hydras and take map control somewhat until higher life forms come out. By keeping the 2 skulks in the mix its just keeping the need for the dps and scouting, in order to defend successfully.
Thats just an idea i came up with though. I have no idea if that would work with shade play or not. :) but it could be worth a try right ;)
This is quite a large problem with camouflage at the moment. The problem is due to the fact that it is just plain transparency, whereas it needs to be distortion. It doesn't matter if a skulk is 99% invisible or 1% invisible, movement will be seen without fail. Its an evolutionary thing which a lot of visualisations take advantage of; the fact that humans simply cannot ignore a moving object, no matter how small or transparent.
The trick is to distort rather than hide with transparency. So instead of simply making the skulk essentially a different colour, you distort the pixels behind him. So instead of a certain pixel being at coordinate 10,10, it is slightly moved to 11,13 , but it remains the exact same colour. What this means is that a person can't simply look at a single pixel and notice movement. Instead they need to get reference data from all around the skulks position, in order to be able to see the discrepancies. This also means certain, more monotonous textures will be far easier to hide against, which good players can use to their advantage.
I do remember well, but I think cloak-when-fast is better than cloak-when-slow is this regard. With cloak-when-slow you need to stay still or move very slowly, thus silently to bypass marines. They have no chances of noticing you. With cloak-when-fast the only way to bypass marines when cloaked is to run at full speed, so they will notice you.
Defending against running cloaked skulks rush as marine was easy and fun; you hear the skulks coming and you shoot them.
Silence when used well is devastating... And no one can ignore the power of making every thing from eggs to hive to onos invisible.
The biggest downside is that all of these pros for shade go away the moment you enter a rine area. If rines had a structure that slowed down aliens with celerity or took away cara in base you wouldn't like it either... And while silence still works a blue circle and dot on the mini map gives you away to any experienced player.
That wouldn't change the fact that the comm will just set a waypoint at the shade placement.
I think it would be nice if the shade would automatically create hallucination images of itself when scanned.
I think it would be nice if the shade would automatically create hallucination images of itself when scanned.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The idea was not to make the shade harder to find, but to make the passive cloaking a little more useful to the aliens during a marine push. Certainly once all defenders have been eliminated the shade will go down, but reduced scan duration will aid the defenders.