- added nano armor research to arms lab (marines regenerate 0.5 armor per second when out of combat)
- added medpack cooldown of 0.3 seconds
- removed MAC EMP
alien
- reduced cyst cooldown to 0.3 seconds (was 1)
- cysts will autobuild once their parent is contructed
Not sure what that Cyst autobuild means.
Intrigued to see what impact Nano Armor will have to make up for the lack of armor healing at the Arms Lab. It means that an A0 marine will take one minute out of combat to get back to full and an A3 marine will take three minutes, which seems ok to me.
- added nano armor research to arms lab (marines regenerate 0.5 armor per second when out of combat)
- added medpack cooldown of 0.3 seconds
- removed MAC EMP
alien
- reduced cyst cooldown to 0.3 seconds (was 1)
- cysts will autobuild once their parent is contructed
Not sure what that Cyst autobuild means.
Intrigued to see what impact Nano Armor will have to make up for the lack of armor healing at the Arms Lab. It means that an A0 marine will take one minute out of combat to get back to full and an A3 marine will take three minutes, which seems ok to me.
Pretty sure autobuild would be where the cyst will not actually grow until the cyst it is connected to is fully grown. Another clever mechanism to prevent cyst spamming I believe. I will need to jump in after class today and play with it.
- added nano armor research to arms lab (marines regenerate 0.5 armor per second when out of combat)
- added medpack cooldown of 0.3 seconds
- removed MAC EMP
alien
- reduced cyst cooldown to 0.3 seconds (was 1)
- cysts will autobuild once their parent is contructed
Not sure what that Cyst autobuild means.
Intrigued to see what impact Nano Armor will have to make up for the lack of armor healing at the Arms Lab. It means that an A0 marine will take one minute out of combat to get back to full and an A3 marine will take three minutes, which seems ok to me.
I think it means when you drop a hive, a cyst will automatically drop near it to connect outstanding cysts that were already there and won't be connected to that hive until you manually drop a cyst
However, I may have drinken too much fruit punch and over thought this whole matter
nano armor research sounds pretty awesome
Not sure if I like removing mac EMP, I thought it was a useful feature but it just never took enough adrenaline out of an alien to make a difference.. and in a real match, when do you have 15 res to blow on something you may not even use! dunno if I want it removed, but re-worked! Will come on BT later tonight.. hopefully everyone is down to try and play a match? I'll make an announcement (unless I don't have that ability in the group)
Tried the nanoarmor upgrade. Seems nice but I think it will be too powerful early game. Perhaps have a pre-req of A1 or A2 at most. Also, it needs a material effect on the world model when it is regening so the aliens can see the marines have upgraded it.
what would people think about increasing bile bomb armor damage to marines? it's such a pansy range right now that there could be a bit of room for adjustment. in the live build as a marine; you really find that gorge is about as threatening as a babbler.
those 9/4 changes look amazing, can't wait to try them.
what about a small cooldown for ammo drop and scan? i worry that anything with no cooldown/cap is griefing waiting to happen. hallucination spamming etc really effects server performance, and surely the same is true if someone uses a script to drop 100+ instant med/ammo packs :P
Had some matches with the new build, mostly 2 vs 1.
The Cyst cooldown feels like it has a huge impact. Aliens can cyst across the entire map in what feels like seconds. A cyst won't start growing before it's predecessor did, but it still feels like it's much easier to get RTs before marines even get there. In general does the khammander feel much more "up close" to the latest developments on the field than in vanilla, since there is hardly anything where he has to wait for stuff to happen before he can act. No more waiting to upgrade structures for traits after they have grown, no more waiting to plant the next cyst and no more waiting for the Drifter to finish building so that you can send him out to scout.
To be fair I haven't see the new changes play out with and against an actual team yet, though. In our little match did we have a problem with uncontrollable cyst spam against a single marine, though.
Sewlek also got another change in while we were playing: unconnected cysts now take a minimum of 20 damage instead of the old 5, so they die much quicker and it's easier to really cut the aliens off.
The res cost have been adjusted as well. Both Pres and Tres gain and cost have simply been increased by factor 10 from vanilla instead of the previous x8 and x2. That gives the necessary finetuning while still keeping the prices familiar. Cysts now cost 5 res and Crags, Shades and Shifts cost 125 and medpacks cost 15, but other than that is everything just the value from vanilla with an additional 0.
Some supply costs have been adjusted as well, for instance are sentries 15 supply now instead of 25 and Armories only cost 5 instead of 10.
With all marine structures being buildable on infestation, I dont think cyst spam would ever be the problem it once was (outside of causing lag). I think its good having the alien comm able to expand quickly if he decides, infestation shouldnt restrict early game choices if at all possible.
Warning: I try my best to overly explain everything and make it easier to read by spacing out, however it might be really hard to understand and worse to read. I don't know what to tell you about that lol
Ok so I played a little bit of it today, but don't have too many things to say as we didn't get an actual game going on, just random screwing around so here's the breakdown of what I like out of everything I've seen, and what I don't like. (also these things obviously need more opinions than myself!)
Pros:
sewlek is cool, even though he never talks and is really deceiving; also he puts game ruining trolls in their place. Which was very funny
power surge, I like this ability and the concept behind it
Faster mac/arc/drifter building, I like it
Build limit: I do like it, however I feel like there should be something that can be built to increase the limit of things you can build
Skulk bhop: After fooling around with it for like 3 hours, I finally got it down and I think it's quite excellent, however if you move your mouse too quickly you will lose momentum, this wasn't really an issue besides that if you want to flick aim upward after a jump (gain height) you will lose momentum, but if there was nothing stopping the momentum, then you could probably just bhop VERY fast around the map nonstop. If you want to change direction, you can use leap when you get it to keep the momentum going. Really love this increased movement style. sewlek never really told me how to do it and probably wanted me to figure it out on my own but I got it, and I think everyone will enjoy this. Very useful for getting around the map/escaping. But very hard/probably not feasible during battle, so you won't need to worry about flying killer skulks doing nascar around you. However they can swipe by real fast as an initiation to a fight
Biomass: I do like biomass and the ideas around how abilities and etc are research from it, gives aliens a living chance on one hive
nano armor: not sure how I feel about it, I don't like the symbol you get as a player (next to the w/armor symbols, the regenerating shield should be enough of an indicator, you don't want too many things flooding the hud) it's not so fast regen that you would no longer need to weld your team mates or have a mac follow them
exo: I like increased damage for less health
Expanded cysts: I like the increased range for cysts, requires less cysting, and marine structures being buildable on the cysts seems good for preventing certain areas being locked early on by cyst dropping/spam or what not
Cons/undecided:
Lerk gains max speed without many flaps, also feels kind of "floaty" in air, I like the live build lerk, I don't mind a minor speed buff but he feels kind of weird in BT
I feel celerity has not much of a use besides on possibly lerk/onos, since celerity has no effect on skulks bhop, skulk can maintain high speeds w/out it so adrenaline would always be the choice. Same with fade you're never really going to be running around
Fade: You get blink before shadowstep now, you can't double jump, and you lose momentum when you go into air, so if you jump>blink and repeat you can still gain fast speeds, however you won't be useful in combat against marines who can aim (in my opinion) once you get shadow step, shadow step is now very fast and has a kind of "auto lock" feature, so when you shadowstep towards a marine you will stop in front of them allowing you to swipe, also the steps are very fast and allowed in any direction (including up) this allows for a lot more versatile movements combining that and blink, making it very hard for a fade to be tracked even by a skilled marine I'd think. Also I felt this fade is a lot easier to play (coming from someone who isn't a very good fade, mainly due to default key binding and lack of tons of practice w/ fade) I felt much more powerful as if the skill ceiling was lowered but also raised at the same time. Energy management isn't something I was really thinking about at all with the new fade, since shadowstep is so fast and can go in any direction I wasn't blinking as much (even though I'm sure it can be combined to get even better air movement)
^ also, in the hands of experienced fades, I feel they will be SUPER deadly once they get shadow step, if I had four fades ganging on me all mixing the new all directional shadow step with the speed of it, plus the "lock on" I will get decimated, no question about it. Like above, it feels much easier to play once you get the shadow step, the earlier on fade feels more difficult. Also the skill to use it went down and up at the same time, you can do new things with it, but a newer player will also not have the same learning curve that the current vanilla fade has
New adrenaline only gives a little bit of the bar to be thick, I guess I like this as it prevents gorge bile spam and any other type of spam
Skulk ground combat: I still feel limited when actually in combat as a skulk, like I have no air control so if a marine jumps and dodges me I feel like I can't get back to him unless I die (I think it feels slightly worse than live build in these terms cause marines jump a tad bit higher)
Marines slide after moving/their increased jump height feels kind of strange with the air movement (these things are probably one server side variable and very hard to control/fine tune, and I'm guessing you can't manually change these things for different aliens/marines)!
The res being from 0-1000, I'm not sure if this is just for helping w/ testing purposes or anything, but I didn't mind it, not sure what it effects besides aliens using pres for abilities
jetpacks: I'm undecided on them, I like how you move around w/ the mouse, and control height w/ jump tapping
Shift not being able to spawn eggs: Not sure how I feel about it, marines can make extra ips but aliens can't make extra eggs. Egg locking may be easier to do
New adrenaline only gives a little bit of the bar to be thick, I guess I like this as it prevents gorge bile spam and any other type of spam
Did the comm drop 3 spurs? It scales by the number of chambers built now (up to 3) and I believe the 3rd tier is comparable to what we have in vanilla plus it now adds slight energy regen. This might also explain what you saw with celerity.
The res being from 0-1000, I'm not sure if this is just for helping w/ testing purposes or anything, but I didn't mind it, not sure what it effects besides aliens using pres for abilities
This was done so balancing res costs would be easier. In the current system to achieve the same result we would need to use float values which would be confusing. For example .5 TRes for a cyst.
Shift not being able to spawn eggs: Not sure how I feel about it, marines can make extra ips but aliens can't make extra eggs. Egg locking may be easier to do
Hatch was moved directly onto the hive. Shifts can now just use echo to move eggs to forward positions. On top of that the spawn system for aliens was changed away from wave spawning and natural egg spawning was made to scale with player count. Egg locking should be much harder to perform now in a real game situation (from what I have seen anyway).
The movement changes are all experimental and are still subject to massive revisions. Personally, I like the new fade and skulk (they aren't perfect however) but I'd prefer the lerk movement stay as it is in vanilla.
I haven't played the mod, but by looking at the changelog it seems that shifts do spawn eggs, you just need a shift hive for it. Also the hive has a hatch feature just like the shift does.
New adrenaline only gives a little bit of the bar to be thick, I guess I like this as it prevents gorge bile spam and any other type of spam
Did the comm drop 3 spurs? The it scales by the number of chambers built now (up to 3) and I believe the 3rd tier is comparable to what we have in vanilla plus it now adds slight energy regen. This might also explain what you saw with celerity.
The res being from 0-1000, I'm not sure if this is just for helping w/ testing purposes or anything, but I didn't mind it, not sure what it effects besides aliens using pres for abilities
This was done so balancing res costs would be easier. In the current system to achieve the same result we would need to use float values which would be confusing. For example .5 TRes for a cyst.
Shift not being able to spawn eggs: Not sure how I feel about it, marines can make extra ips but aliens can't make extra eggs. Egg locking may be easier to do
Hatch was moved directly onto the hive. Shifts can now just use echo to move eggs to forward positions. On top of that the spawn system for aliens was changed away from wave spawning and natural egg spawning was made to scale with player count. Egg locking should be much harder to perform now in a real game situation (from what I have seen anyway).
The movement changes are all experimental and are still subject to massive revisions. Personally, I like the new fade and skulk (they aren't perfect however) but I'd prefer the lerk movement stay as it is in vanilla.
Cool these were things I didn't know because I didn't really get to play an actual match (also I didn't read the log, just things I noticed on my own)
And yeah, adre only gives a tiny bar of thick with level 3(this I knew, spawning 3 of each spur/crag/veil to get the max benefit was done b4 writing these things!), doesn't explain what I saw with celerity
Also forgot to mention, once you start getting/maintaining a high speed with bhop, leap no longer properly works (only thing it does is shift your movement, so like if you needed to jump over a team mate you could)
It doesn't give the boost that leap normally would, because you're traveling faster than the speed of the leap itself
Also forgot to mention, once you start getting/maintaining a high speed with bhop, leap no longer properly works (only thing it does is shift your movement, so like if you needed to jump over a team mate you could)
It doesn't give the boost that leap normally would, because you're traveling faster than the speed of the leap itself
if leap always gave a bonus, then wouldn't your top speed be infinity? you can use leap to maintain your bunny hop around certain corner/obstructions which would otherwise interrupt it.
also, about what you said earlier about skulks having worse air control than live. are you sure? trying to strafe isn't so good, but if you hold forward and wiggle the mouse you have pretty responsive movement - sure it's more predictable but seemed better than live to me because it helps to make up the distance when the marines jump away.
- increase flame thrower clip size to 50 (was 30)
- reduced amount of required cysts to make it less tedious for both sides
- resource towers and command structures will now block re-creation for 5 seconds after destruction (enemy team is allowed to drop something)
marine
- reduced claw damage to 30 (was 60)
- changed claw damage type to heavy
alien
- hydras are now flammable (die faster against flame thrower)
- cysts will block recreation in the area when destroyed for 4 seconds
- removed cyst cool down
Don't really like the sound of the cyst changes since the previous ones were already worrying me. Gotta see it in action first before making a judgment, though.
The Exo changes keep the fist equally useful against higher lifeforms while nerfing it's effectiveness against lower lifeforms. They were pretty much a death sentence to any Skulk that closed in, so I am glad Skulks become a bit more viable against Exos again.
Not sure how I feel about the invisible time limits on redropping things. Reminds me of the power node downtime which always felt sort of glitchy. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard somebody ask "why isn't it repairing???"
If the concern on RTs/CCs is marine comms blocking them with ghosts, maybe the alien comm should be able to poof them by dropping that structure?
i'm not sure about the flamethrower changes, or the flamethrower's intended role... it's incredibly easy to use right now, and incredibly annoying to play against. do we really want to keep buffing it until it becomes a no-brainer?
Also forgot to mention, once you start getting/maintaining a high speed with bhop, leap no longer properly works (only thing it does is shift your movement, so like if you needed to jump over a team mate you could)
It doesn't give the boost that leap normally would, because you're traveling faster than the speed of the leap itself
if leap always gave a bonus, then wouldn't your top speed be infinity? you can use leap to maintain your bunny hop around certain corner/obstructions which would otherwise interrupt it.
also, about what you said earlier about skulks having worse air control than live. are you sure? trying to strafe isn't so good, but if you hold forward and wiggle the mouse you have pretty responsive movement - sure it's more predictable but seemed better than live to me because it helps to make up the distance when the marines jump away.
Your top speed is already infinity, the more you keep chaining the jumps from the wall, the faster you keep on going. I haven't noticed any type of top speed
When turning a corner that's far too sharp, you'll lose all the momentum by using your mouse, however you can make the turn and leap right at it to keep momentum and make the turn, however you won't be maintaining the previous speed that you had since leap only leaps as fast as leap itself (if that makes sense) it doesn't give any type of boost if you were already going faster than the speed of leap
Yeah I need to play with the skulk a bit more in BT in actual combat (never actually got a game going, and when we did it was just a lot of greens and what not, can't really practice against people who shoot at walls) but I did feel like if a marine jumped over me, I wouldn't be able to get back to him because I'd have no real control after that point.. making me sort of like target practice for someone who can aim. I'm not sure if this would make early skulks too strong, I'm desiring control of my movements in air (hence quakeworld/cpma/warsow) where I can always immediately go back to tracking my marine, also allowing me to make much more use of all my movements
edit1: New skulk def feels better though, going back to normal build I don't even want to play as a skulk lol. The bhop mechanic is addicting, I think I spent an hour or two just circling all of veil
Is there still a 0.3 window/delay for when you hit the ground/wall, in which if you jump again you maintain the speed?
I ask because my fingers absolutely refuse to get used to priming the jump (holding the jump key before you land). I'l consentrate on it, but I keep instinctively trying to jump exactly when I land... I guess years of doing it that way has just driven it into me.
Would be nice to just see an auto-jump while holding space bar. People are going to macro it anyway, might as well make it easier for those that want that functionality and save the trouble..
I have tried to use the ...jump priming? as well and it just does not feel natural to me. It would take me a good while to get used to something like that.
'jump priming' isn't always the best way to move imo; it doesn't agree with the sticky wall-jumping. it's just a nice safety window - if you're unsure on when to hit jump; hit it a little early (and hold). it allows you to reliably maintain speed when you're on 'uneven' floor.
the new version of the mod has tweaked skulk movement again - it's a lot harder to reach maximum speed, you gain less momentum but getting vertical direction into your jumps is back. perhaps getting ready for serious testing? it feels more responsive, more fun and more skill based than the live movement - i want it soooo bad :P
- reduced claw damage to 30 (was 60)
- changed claw damage type to heavy
The Exo changes keep the fist equally useful against higher lifeforms while nerfing it's effectiveness against lower lifeforms. They were pretty much a death sentence to any Skulk that closed in, so I am glad Skulks become a bit more viable against Exos again.
Really?
I thought it was damage type structural before? This seems like a huge fist nerf across the board to the point it is useless again and not fun, just like it was pre-Gorgeous.
This is all taken from vanilla for HP / Armor values.
Carapace Skulk has 130 eHP vs structural, 100 eHP vs heavy
Old Claw @ 60 dmg w/ structural = 2.2 hits to kill
New Claw @ 30 dmg w/ heavy = 3.3 hits to kill
1 more hit to kill a Skulk now
Carapace Onos has 3100 eHP vs structural, 2200 vs heavy
Old Claw @ 60 dmg w/ structural = 51.7 hits to kill
New Claw @ 30 dmg w/ heavy = 73.3 hits to kill
22 more hits to kill an Onos now
since I'm bored...
Carapace Lerk has 275 eHP vs structural, 200 vs heavy
Old Claw @ 60 dmg w/ structural = 4.6 hits to kill
New Claw @ 30 dmg w/ heavy = 6.7 hits to kill
2 more hits to kill a Lerk now
Carapace Fade has 450 eHP vs structural, 350 vs heavy
Old Claw @ 60 dmg w/ structural = 7.5 hits to kill
New Claw @ 30 dmg w/ heavy = 11.7 hits to kill
4 more hits to kill a Fade now
Carapace Gorge has 450 eHP vs structural, 300 vs heavy
Old Claw @ 60 dmg w/ structural = 7.5 hits to kill
New Claw @ 30 dmg w/ heavy = 10 hits to kill
2 more hits to kill a Gorge now
Pretty much it's only slightly less effective now vs skulk by 1 hit, lerk by 2 hits, and basically useless vs Fade which is where I always thought it mattered the (second) most.
I thought Biomass makes aliens health & armor go up? Why is this nerf needed? I would assume a higher biomass skulk should have more eHP and probably could take 4 fists already, is that not true?
I don't really want to dredge up the old argument, but I really don't think a 0 - 3 res skulk should be able to easily 1v1 an exo. A stock marine could never 1v1 an onos, he needs a JP + Shotty to achieve that.
And besides that, why does it matter if a skulk can be easily killed by and exo fist when he can be 1 shot by the railgun as is.
imo, Claw should be left alone, but the rate of fire slowed down. That way he is still effective in a 1v1, but if a group of skulks swarm him he will die and maybe take 1~2 down with him.
Would be nice to just see an auto-jump while holding space bar. People are going to macro it anyway, might as well make it easier for those that want that functionality and save the trouble..
I have tried to use the ...jump priming? as well and it just does not feel natural to me. It would take me a good while to get used to something like that.
Negative, there is no need for macro/auto-jump, this isn't similar to perfect timing such as counter-strike 1.6, you have a window of when you land to jump again, I'm able to circle the map entirely bhopping with regular space bar! I just have it set in my brain now to jump exactly when I feel that I landed, so that factor works great! (thumbs up)
I don't really want to dredge up the old argument, but I really don't think a 0 - 3 res skulk should be able to easily 1v1 an exo. A stock marine could never 1v1 an onos, he needs a JP + Shotty to achieve that.
And besides that, why does it matter if a skulk can be easily killed by and exo fist when he can be 1 shot by the railgun as is.
The fist is a melee attack, the marine team is ranged. It was wildly powerful and not being used a last resort in a lot of cases but rather as a primary attack against skulks and fades who are required to be close to do damage. In my opinion, it did too much damage and it fires way too fast. I am glad one of those got reduced. Keep in mind the primary weapon now benefits from weapons upgrades again and the PRes costs were reduced. There are buffs to go with the fist and armor nerfs. All the exos can annihilate a skulk with their primary weapon unless you have no aim and have issues tracking.
Also, the bigger buff in gorgeous was not the damage but the range increase to actually allow you to hit skulks at your feet, that was left untouched.
edit: I should clarify what I mean by primary attack. I mean as soon as the alien is in range there is no damn reason not to hold down mouse 1.
If a macro will make it easier, people will use it regardless of how difficult it is without it. Ideally I would say that something would be added to block jump macros, I dont really want to see a hold jump feature added as it can cause other issues, especially with skulk. However if nothing is added to block the macros then something should probably be built in to provide a more 'even' playing field.
Comments
Not sure what that Cyst autobuild means.
Intrigued to see what impact Nano Armor will have to make up for the lack of armor healing at the Arms Lab. It means that an A0 marine will take one minute out of combat to get back to full and an A3 marine will take three minutes, which seems ok to me.
Pretty sure autobuild would be where the cyst will not actually grow until the cyst it is connected to is fully grown. Another clever mechanism to prevent cyst spamming I believe. I will need to jump in after class today and play with it.
I think it means when you drop a hive, a cyst will automatically drop near it to connect outstanding cysts that were already there and won't be connected to that hive until you manually drop a cyst
However, I may have drinken too much fruit punch and over thought this whole matter
nano armor research sounds pretty awesome
Not sure if I like removing mac EMP, I thought it was a useful feature but it just never took enough adrenaline out of an alien to make a difference.. and in a real match, when do you have 15 res to blow on something you may not even use! dunno if I want it removed, but re-worked! Will come on BT later tonight.. hopefully everyone is down to try and play a match? I'll make an announcement (unless I don't have that ability in the group)
I won't miss MAC EMP personally, it just didn't work on the MAC imo.
those 9/4 changes look amazing, can't wait to try them.
what about a small cooldown for ammo drop and scan? i worry that anything with no cooldown/cap is griefing waiting to happen. hallucination spamming etc really effects server performance, and surely the same is true if someone uses a script to drop 100+ instant med/ammo packs :P
The Cyst cooldown feels like it has a huge impact. Aliens can cyst across the entire map in what feels like seconds. A cyst won't start growing before it's predecessor did, but it still feels like it's much easier to get RTs before marines even get there. In general does the khammander feel much more "up close" to the latest developments on the field than in vanilla, since there is hardly anything where he has to wait for stuff to happen before he can act. No more waiting to upgrade structures for traits after they have grown, no more waiting to plant the next cyst and no more waiting for the Drifter to finish building so that you can send him out to scout.
To be fair I haven't see the new changes play out with and against an actual team yet, though. In our little match did we have a problem with uncontrollable cyst spam against a single marine, though.
Sewlek also got another change in while we were playing: unconnected cysts now take a minimum of 20 damage instead of the old 5, so they die much quicker and it's easier to really cut the aliens off.
The res cost have been adjusted as well. Both Pres and Tres gain and cost have simply been increased by factor 10 from vanilla instead of the previous x8 and x2. That gives the necessary finetuning while still keeping the prices familiar. Cysts now cost 5 res and Crags, Shades and Shifts cost 125 and medpacks cost 15, but other than that is everything just the value from vanilla with an additional 0.
Some supply costs have been adjusted as well, for instance are sentries 15 supply now instead of 25 and Armories only cost 5 instead of 10.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3376005/Images/NS2/2013-04-09_00004.jpg
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3376005/Images/NS2/2013-04-09_00008.jpg
That is how one tests the mod. Admittedly the third one was him using cheats but whatever.
It. Just. Won't. Stop. Destroying EVERYTHING!!!
Ok so I played a little bit of it today, but don't have too many things to say as we didn't get an actual game going on, just random screwing around so here's the breakdown of what I like out of everything I've seen, and what I don't like. (also these things obviously need more opinions than myself!)
Pros:
sewlek is cool, even though he never talks and is really deceiving; also he puts game ruining trolls in their place. Which was very funny
power surge, I like this ability and the concept behind it
Faster mac/arc/drifter building, I like it
Build limit: I do like it, however I feel like there should be something that can be built to increase the limit of things you can build
Skulk bhop: After fooling around with it for like 3 hours, I finally got it down and I think it's quite excellent, however if you move your mouse too quickly you will lose momentum, this wasn't really an issue besides that if you want to flick aim upward after a jump (gain height) you will lose momentum, but if there was nothing stopping the momentum, then you could probably just bhop VERY fast around the map nonstop. If you want to change direction, you can use leap when you get it to keep the momentum going. Really love this increased movement style. sewlek never really told me how to do it and probably wanted me to figure it out on my own but I got it, and I think everyone will enjoy this. Very useful for getting around the map/escaping. But very hard/probably not feasible during battle, so you won't need to worry about flying killer skulks doing nascar around you. However they can swipe by real fast as an initiation to a fight
Biomass: I do like biomass and the ideas around how abilities and etc are research from it, gives aliens a living chance on one hive
nano armor: not sure how I feel about it, I don't like the symbol you get as a player (next to the w/armor symbols, the regenerating shield should be enough of an indicator, you don't want too many things flooding the hud) it's not so fast regen that you would no longer need to weld your team mates or have a mac follow them
exo: I like increased damage for less health
Expanded cysts: I like the increased range for cysts, requires less cysting, and marine structures being buildable on the cysts seems good for preventing certain areas being locked early on by cyst dropping/spam or what not
Cons/undecided:
Lerk gains max speed without many flaps, also feels kind of "floaty" in air, I like the live build lerk, I don't mind a minor speed buff but he feels kind of weird in BT
I feel celerity has not much of a use besides on possibly lerk/onos, since celerity has no effect on skulks bhop, skulk can maintain high speeds w/out it so adrenaline would always be the choice. Same with fade you're never really going to be running around
Fade: You get blink before shadowstep now, you can't double jump, and you lose momentum when you go into air, so if you jump>blink and repeat you can still gain fast speeds, however you won't be useful in combat against marines who can aim (in my opinion) once you get shadow step, shadow step is now very fast and has a kind of "auto lock" feature, so when you shadowstep towards a marine you will stop in front of them allowing you to swipe, also the steps are very fast and allowed in any direction (including up) this allows for a lot more versatile movements combining that and blink, making it very hard for a fade to be tracked even by a skilled marine I'd think. Also I felt this fade is a lot easier to play (coming from someone who isn't a very good fade, mainly due to default key binding and lack of tons of practice w/ fade) I felt much more powerful as if the skill ceiling was lowered but also raised at the same time. Energy management isn't something I was really thinking about at all with the new fade, since shadowstep is so fast and can go in any direction I wasn't blinking as much (even though I'm sure it can be combined to get even better air movement)
^ also, in the hands of experienced fades, I feel they will be SUPER deadly once they get shadow step, if I had four fades ganging on me all mixing the new all directional shadow step with the speed of it, plus the "lock on" I will get decimated, no question about it. Like above, it feels much easier to play once you get the shadow step, the earlier on fade feels more difficult. Also the skill to use it went down and up at the same time, you can do new things with it, but a newer player will also not have the same learning curve that the current vanilla fade has
New adrenaline only gives a little bit of the bar to be thick, I guess I like this as it prevents gorge bile spam and any other type of spam
Skulk ground combat: I still feel limited when actually in combat as a skulk, like I have no air control so if a marine jumps and dodges me I feel like I can't get back to him unless I die (I think it feels slightly worse than live build in these terms cause marines jump a tad bit higher)
Marines slide after moving/their increased jump height feels kind of strange with the air movement (these things are probably one server side variable and very hard to control/fine tune, and I'm guessing you can't manually change these things for different aliens/marines)!
The res being from 0-1000, I'm not sure if this is just for helping w/ testing purposes or anything, but I didn't mind it, not sure what it effects besides aliens using pres for abilities
jetpacks: I'm undecided on them, I like how you move around w/ the mouse, and control height w/ jump tapping
Shift not being able to spawn eggs: Not sure how I feel about it, marines can make extra ips but aliens can't make extra eggs. Egg locking may be easier to do
Well that's all that came to mind
This was done so balancing res costs would be easier. In the current system to achieve the same result we would need to use float values which would be confusing. For example .5 TRes for a cyst.
Hatch was moved directly onto the hive. Shifts can now just use echo to move eggs to forward positions. On top of that the spawn system for aliens was changed away from wave spawning and natural egg spawning was made to scale with player count. Egg locking should be much harder to perform now in a real game situation (from what I have seen anyway).
The movement changes are all experimental and are still subject to massive revisions. Personally, I like the new fade and skulk (they aren't perfect however) but I'd prefer the lerk movement stay as it is in vanilla.
Cool these were things I didn't know because I didn't really get to play an actual match (also I didn't read the log, just things I noticed on my own)
And yeah, adre only gives a tiny bar of thick with level 3(this I knew, spawning 3 of each spur/crag/veil to get the max benefit was done b4 writing these things!), doesn't explain what I saw with celerity
It doesn't give the boost that leap normally would, because you're traveling faster than the speed of the leap itself
if leap always gave a bonus, then wouldn't your top speed be infinity? you can use leap to maintain your bunny hop around certain corner/obstructions which would otherwise interrupt it.
also, about what you said earlier about skulks having worse air control than live. are you sure? trying to strafe isn't so good, but if you hold forward and wiggle the mouse you have pretty responsive movement - sure it's more predictable but seemed better than live to me because it helps to make up the distance when the marines jump away.
Don't really like the sound of the cyst changes since the previous ones were already worrying me. Gotta see it in action first before making a judgment, though.
The Exo changes keep the fist equally useful against higher lifeforms while nerfing it's effectiveness against lower lifeforms. They were pretty much a death sentence to any Skulk that closed in, so I am glad Skulks become a bit more viable against Exos again.
If the concern on RTs/CCs is marine comms blocking them with ghosts, maybe the alien comm should be able to poof them by dropping that structure?
Your top speed is already infinity, the more you keep chaining the jumps from the wall, the faster you keep on going. I haven't noticed any type of top speed
When turning a corner that's far too sharp, you'll lose all the momentum by using your mouse, however you can make the turn and leap right at it to keep momentum and make the turn, however you won't be maintaining the previous speed that you had since leap only leaps as fast as leap itself (if that makes sense) it doesn't give any type of boost if you were already going faster than the speed of leap
Yeah I need to play with the skulk a bit more in BT in actual combat (never actually got a game going, and when we did it was just a lot of greens and what not, can't really practice against people who shoot at walls) but I did feel like if a marine jumped over me, I wouldn't be able to get back to him because I'd have no real control after that point.. making me sort of like target practice for someone who can aim. I'm not sure if this would make early skulks too strong, I'm desiring control of my movements in air (hence quakeworld/cpma/warsow) where I can always immediately go back to tracking my marine, also allowing me to make much more use of all my movements
edit1: New skulk def feels better though, going back to normal build I don't even want to play as a skulk lol. The bhop mechanic is addicting, I think I spent an hour or two just circling all of veil
I ask because my fingers absolutely refuse to get used to priming the jump (holding the jump key before you land). I'l consentrate on it, but I keep instinctively trying to jump exactly when I land... I guess years of doing it that way has just driven it into me.
I have tried to use the ...jump priming? as well and it just does not feel natural to me. It would take me a good while to get used to something like that.
the new version of the mod has tweaked skulk movement again - it's a lot harder to reach maximum speed, you gain less momentum but getting vertical direction into your jumps is back. perhaps getting ready for serious testing? it feels more responsive, more fun and more skill based than the live movement - i want it soooo bad :P
Really?
I thought it was damage type structural before? This seems like a huge fist nerf across the board to the point it is useless again and not fun, just like it was pre-Gorgeous.
This is all taken from vanilla for HP / Armor values.
Carapace Skulk has 130 eHP vs structural, 100 eHP vs heavy
Old Claw @ 60 dmg w/ structural = 2.2 hits to kill
New Claw @ 30 dmg w/ heavy = 3.3 hits to kill
1 more hit to kill a Skulk now
Carapace Onos has 3100 eHP vs structural, 2200 vs heavy
Old Claw @ 60 dmg w/ structural = 51.7 hits to kill
New Claw @ 30 dmg w/ heavy = 73.3 hits to kill
22 more hits to kill an Onos now
since I'm bored...
Carapace Lerk has 275 eHP vs structural, 200 vs heavy
Old Claw @ 60 dmg w/ structural = 4.6 hits to kill
New Claw @ 30 dmg w/ heavy = 6.7 hits to kill
2 more hits to kill a Lerk now
Carapace Fade has 450 eHP vs structural, 350 vs heavy
Old Claw @ 60 dmg w/ structural = 7.5 hits to kill
New Claw @ 30 dmg w/ heavy = 11.7 hits to kill
4 more hits to kill a Fade now
Carapace Gorge has 450 eHP vs structural, 300 vs heavy
Old Claw @ 60 dmg w/ structural = 7.5 hits to kill
New Claw @ 30 dmg w/ heavy = 10 hits to kill
2 more hits to kill a Gorge now
Pretty much it's only slightly less effective now vs skulk by 1 hit, lerk by 2 hits, and basically useless vs Fade which is where I always thought it mattered the (second) most.
I thought Biomass makes aliens health & armor go up? Why is this nerf needed? I would assume a higher biomass skulk should have more eHP and probably could take 4 fists already, is that not true?
I don't really want to dredge up the old argument, but I really don't think a 0 - 3 res skulk should be able to easily 1v1 an exo. A stock marine could never 1v1 an onos, he needs a JP + Shotty to achieve that.
And besides that, why does it matter if a skulk can be easily killed by and exo fist when he can be 1 shot by the railgun as is.
The current claw is a bit spammy I would agree.
Negative, there is no need for macro/auto-jump, this isn't similar to perfect timing such as counter-strike 1.6, you have a window of when you land to jump again, I'm able to circle the map entirely bhopping with regular space bar! I just have it set in my brain now to jump exactly when I feel that I landed, so that factor works great! (thumbs up)
The fist is a melee attack, the marine team is ranged. It was wildly powerful and not being used a last resort in a lot of cases but rather as a primary attack against skulks and fades who are required to be close to do damage. In my opinion, it did too much damage and it fires way too fast. I am glad one of those got reduced. Keep in mind the primary weapon now benefits from weapons upgrades again and the PRes costs were reduced. There are buffs to go with the fist and armor nerfs. All the exos can annihilate a skulk with their primary weapon unless you have no aim and have issues tracking.
Also, the bigger buff in gorgeous was not the damage but the range increase to actually allow you to hit skulks at your feet, that was left untouched.
edit: I should clarify what I mean by primary attack. I mean as soon as the alien is in range there is no damn reason not to hold down mouse 1.