Exos cost 40 and 60 res now. They also still have their crazy DPS with the minigun and as you say, oneshot and greatly harm things with what they have. They do not need an extra DPS increase of the fists. Your math is correct, but it doesn't matter since the balance requires a nerf.
Also we really need to get this group active and get some full scale games. What times does everyone have available on Friday or Saturday to make a game going? Give time and timezone, lets do this.
However if nothing is added to block the macros then something should probably be built in to provide a more 'even' playing field.
This is more what I am trying to say, sorry. I don't advocate for movement encouraging macros, but if an action can be performed more easily by players with a macro, you can bet people are going to use macros. The same is true for things like pistol scripts, if there is not adequate countermeasures to discourage it, you will just end up with some players having an advantage over those that don't use 3rd party hardware or programs to assist them.
the macro would screw them over because you don't get the wall-jump bonus unless you wait 200-300ms...
Are you 100% sure thats how it works? When I tested earlier I got the most speed from walljumps whe the jump had been primed, i.e it would have been instant. Sometimes when trying to time the jump myself on impact I'd just almost stop dead, losing momentum.
the macro would screw them over because you don't get the wall-jump bonus unless you wait 200-300ms...
Are you 100% sure thats how it works? When I tested earlier I got the most speed from walljumps whe the jump had been primed, i.e it would have been instant. Sometimes when trying to time the jump myself on impact I'd just almost stop dead, losing momentum.
yeah it seems like when you reach a certain cruising speed then all wall-jumps give you the bonus regardless of timing.
still, you don't really gain any advantage from a macro because jump priming makes the timing so easy.
What's the difference between jump priming and an auto-jump while key is pressed? besides having to rewire your brain from years of playing other games with the jump prime.. if you are going to put training wheels in, at least do it in a way that feels more natural. Just my 2c though.
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.
I suppose I agree with those and didn't take that into account. However I sort of would have liked to see the attack rate reduced instead of the damage reduced.
Actually I'd like the damage type to remain structural, attack rate reduced to maybe 75% of current, and damage reduced to maybe 50.
You could kill a skulk in 2.6 hits @ stock everything, but you would probably die before you even kill 1 if 2+ attacked you cause it would take too long.
I liked it as structural damage more than heavy, since changing it to heavy really doesn't gain much vs the Onos since he's going to destroy the railgunner anyway, and all the other life forms have much more health than armor anyway. So after 1-2 heavy or structural brofists, it doesn't matter what the damage type is anyway.
the old 60 structural allowed the rail gun exo to be useful as a semi bunker buster with a bit of marine ground support.
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.
There is no benefit to using a macro for this bhop, you should jump as soon as you feel you've hit the floor
After sitting in BT for literally hours I think I figured it all out, It works like this
Wall + Wall > Wall + floor > Floor + Floor = in terms of speed gain
WD to right wall, with mouse towards wall, then smooth transition of mouse to the left after jumping
WA to the left wall, with mouse towards wall, then smooth transition of mouse to the right after jumping
If you chain them properly, you should hear a new sound when you jump, keep doing it correctly and you'll hear another sound, if you're doing it really well you will begin to accelerate so fast that you should be outdoing a fade in blink / a lerks top speed
Move your mouse too quickly and you will lose momentum, however if you need to make a sharp turn make sure you bounce off a wall closest to the opposite of a turn (like making a wide turn) as soon as you jump shift your mouse and you can keep the speed. Also when you get leap you can avoid needing that wall and just make the turn and hit leap, but you will lose speed like this, however you'll still have momentum and have made the turn. If you learn how to make the turn w/out leap, you'll benefit because you'll still have your original high speed momentum. Another note, you can also use leap to hop over a structure while keeping the momentum (going forward)
Jump queuing feels good - it's the best of both worlds, pressing the button for each jump and still having easy timing. It might be unfamiliar to some but it's very easy to learn. Just holding down space and watching it go is lame and doesn't feel as visceral. If someone wants to macro that, let them, it's of no real advantage.
The claw nerf makes sense in the context of the railgun getting buffed by weapon upgrades now plus the cheaper pres cost of exos. The overall thrust of the changes has made exos a little more fragile and disposable but more powerful so something to balance that out is reasonable especially when the railgun exo is supposed to be the most vulnerable to getting rushed.
To keep the claw useful, it should be structural damage. With the latest change it got pretty useless against life forms. This isn't a bad thing. But it is also pretty useless all around. Having it as anti-building weapon would have a cool tradeoff. Get-close to the building to destroy it faster = being easier to attack because of worse position.
Also I'm worried about the high skulk speed that is reachable now. I haven't tested the latest build, but even in previews builds, the skulk was so damn fast, that a good one was really difficult to aim at / kill.
SewlekThe programmer previously known as SchimmelJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16247Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Developer
i dont think that the claw deserves a big discussion. in the end its range vs. melee combat, the claw heavily violated that design in the past (easy to hit and high damage) by making non carapace skulks be 2 hits. in usual combat situations when you face an already damaged skulk, its often one hit for you and its so damn hard to miss with the claw. imagine i would implement an dual claw exo, with the current balance that would be extremely powerful, it would be actually viable :X
im ok to have the claw deal higher damage against structures though (and will change that in case its necessary). but against players, it just feels cheap currently, takes the last bit of skill required for playing an exo away.
i dont think that the claw deserves a big discussion. in the end its range vs. melee combat, the claw heavily violated that design in the past (easy to hit and high damage) by making non carapace skulks be 2 hits. in usual combat situations when you face an already damaged skulk, its often one hit for you and its so damn hard to miss with the claw. imagine i would implement an dual claw exo, with the current balance that would be extremely powerful, it would be actually viable :X
im ok to have the claw deal higher damage against structures though (and will change that in case its necessary). but against players, it just feels cheap currently, takes the last bit of skill required for playing an exo away.
i don't think structure damage with claw is necessary.
a) you have infinite ammo
b) you sacrifice good positioning/vision
however, i think claw is best suited at being a 'humiliation' type move like welder/axe kill. imo it doesn't make sense for it to be a godlike skulk pulverizer; especially as it's so easy to connect and more or less eliminates exo point blank weakness.
On the jump topic, a way to do it is to have a time window around the landing time in which jumping is efficient, the further away from the landing time you jump, the less efficient it becomes. Then you can tweak the window shape and width to make the timing sufficiently easy to get and sufficiently hard to master. The hold to jump solution is a special case of this, with a square window that is very asymmetric toward early timings.
For the scripting issue, one solution is to penalize jump spam. You can have a continuous variable that spike up each time you press jump, and the decay back to zero with a given time constant. Above a certain threshold the variable start to affect the effectiveness of bhop. The main problem with this is that it's an hidden variable and that it's exactly how energy works already, so maybe jump should simply use a bit of energy.
To keep the claw useful, it should be structural damage. With the latest change it got pretty useless against life forms. This isn't a bad thing. But it is also pretty useless all around. Having it as anti-building weapon would have a cool tradeoff. Get-close to the building to destroy it faster = being easier to attack because of worse position.
Also I'm worried about the high skulk speed that is reachable now. I haven't tested the latest build, but even in previews builds, the skulk was so damn fast, that a good one was really difficult to aim at / kill.
about the skulk issue, i think something along those lines would greatly improve the game.
at the moment, pub servers are absolutely destroyed if there are 1-2 savvy marines (who can aim pretty well). it takes away all the fun from the marine team; never mind the hopeless aliens.
those savvy marines will still dominate skulks if the change goes through, but it gives skilled skulks a greater chance to fight back. the new possibilities are incredible; after reaching 10-12m/s speed you can spring off all kinds of props/obstructions with such fluidity it looks GODLIKE. it also gives skulks greater practicality in late game.
to me, the current BT skulk has the same skill potential as the release skulk wall-jump. the main difference being that it's now more accessible and not so dependent on convenient map structuring.
i think the biggest 'shock' in the BT mod has to be the fade. it's actually scary now and truly feels like a lifeform worthy of being between lerk and onos. specifically, it's super hard for a single marine to deal significant damage to a fade (unless he has shotgun*).
*imo it's far too easy for AR marine to hit fade on live build. you get almost a guaranteed ~200 damage unless you panic fire; i struggled to deal 100 damage to fades in the BT mod. that's why fade sucks on live... you kill/injure a lone marine then have to run all the way back to hive to not get instakilled by the next guy - screw that.
There is already a short window after you land where friction is increased gradually. This was added before jump queuing to make the timing easier and I don't think it's going to be removed.
As for jump queuing, I don't see the problem. It's been in every Quake game and anyone who has played any of them for a period of time should be familiar with it. Even if you aren't it's not like it dramatically changes the way the jump button works. The only difference is that it doesn't completely ignore the click if you're too early; just keep holding the button to jump as soon as you land.
- added 6 seconds delay for "kill" console command
marine
- exosuits require now a robotics factory
- EXPERIMENTAL: exosuits can now use phase gates
- armor / weapon upgrades require now 2/3 command stations
- JP and Exo are now available at 1 command station
- removed flame thrower damage ramp up
alien
- whips will now cause whacked grenades to detonate within 0.45 seconds (was 2 seconds)
- increased cyst build time to 4 seconds to compensate for lack of cool down
- increased cyst range, infestation radius
- reduced cyst cost to 15 (was 10)
- personal upgrades cost now 5 resources
Not a big fan of forcing more than 2 CCs on marines. I do like proto going back to 1 though, imo it just makes for far more varying gameplay. Maybe 2nd CC should only be required for W and A3 and dual exos. (+ additional 'population' for ARCs/MACs/structures)
Armor/Weapon now requires 2 CCs? Depending on how the alien team is playing, it could potentially be difficult to secure a second CC without at least A1/W1. But we'll see how it goes.
SewlekThe programmer previously known as SchimmelJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16247Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Developer
yeah, at the same time you have the chance to spend your resources when you have a lot of the saved up for exos / JP for a potential come back. at least i hope that is what happens. or, we see 10 dual minigun exos with macs turtling...
Comments
Also we really need to get this group active and get some full scale games. What times does everyone have available on Friday or Saturday to make a game going? Give time and timezone, lets do this.
OMG the new movement is amazing, it seems that to reliably accelerate you need to bunny hop while strafing left/right.
sewlek teh genius :P
This is more what I am trying to say, sorry. I don't advocate for movement encouraging macros, but if an action can be performed more easily by players with a macro, you can bet people are going to use macros. The same is true for things like pistol scripts, if there is not adequate countermeasures to discourage it, you will just end up with some players having an advantage over those that don't use 3rd party hardware or programs to assist them.
if anything, jump priming is the 'anti macro' device. instead of requiring perfect timing or uber spam; it makes it accessible to pretty much anyone.
Are you 100% sure thats how it works? When I tested earlier I got the most speed from walljumps whe the jump had been primed, i.e it would have been instant. Sometimes when trying to time the jump myself on impact I'd just almost stop dead, losing momentum.
yeah it seems like when you reach a certain cruising speed then all wall-jumps give you the bonus regardless of timing.
still, you don't really gain any advantage from a macro because jump priming makes the timing so easy.
I suppose I agree with those and didn't take that into account. However I sort of would have liked to see the attack rate reduced instead of the damage reduced.
Actually I'd like the damage type to remain structural, attack rate reduced to maybe 75% of current, and damage reduced to maybe 50.
You could kill a skulk in 2.6 hits @ stock everything, but you would probably die before you even kill 1 if 2+ attacked you cause it would take too long.
I liked it as structural damage more than heavy, since changing it to heavy really doesn't gain much vs the Onos since he's going to destroy the railgunner anyway, and all the other life forms have much more health than armor anyway. So after 1-2 heavy or structural brofists, it doesn't matter what the damage type is anyway.
the old 60 structural allowed the rail gun exo to be useful as a semi bunker buster with a bit of marine ground support.
There is no benefit to using a macro for this bhop, you should jump as soon as you feel you've hit the floor
After sitting in BT for literally hours I think I figured it all out, It works like this
Wall + Wall > Wall + floor > Floor + Floor = in terms of speed gain
WD to right wall, with mouse towards wall, then smooth transition of mouse to the left after jumping
WA to the left wall, with mouse towards wall, then smooth transition of mouse to the right after jumping
If you chain them properly, you should hear a new sound when you jump, keep doing it correctly and you'll hear another sound, if you're doing it really well you will begin to accelerate so fast that you should be outdoing a fade in blink / a lerks top speed
Move your mouse too quickly and you will lose momentum, however if you need to make a sharp turn make sure you bounce off a wall closest to the opposite of a turn (like making a wide turn) as soon as you jump shift your mouse and you can keep the speed. Also when you get leap you can avoid needing that wall and just make the turn and hit leap, but you will lose speed like this, however you'll still have momentum and have made the turn. If you learn how to make the turn w/out leap, you'll benefit because you'll still have your original high speed momentum. Another note, you can also use leap to hop over a structure while keeping the momentum (going forward)
hope this explains everything
Also I'm worried about the high skulk speed that is reachable now. I haven't tested the latest build, but even in previews builds, the skulk was so damn fast, that a good one was really difficult to aim at / kill.
im ok to have the claw deal higher damage against structures though (and will change that in case its necessary). but against players, it just feels cheap currently, takes the last bit of skill required for playing an exo away.
DO IT SEWLIE, DO IT!
Fully customizable Exos.
Start with a default Double-Fist Exo for 300 pres.
Go to the Prototype Lab to buy specializations.
Minigun: 150 res, +2 weight.
Railgun: 125 res, +1.25 weight.
Flamethrower: 100 res, +2.5 weight.
Shotgun: 175 res, +1.5 weight.
Welder: 30 res.
Heavy Armor: 50 res, +2 weight, +100 armor.
Light Armor: 20 res, -1.5 weight, -50 armor.
Something along those lines. Would be interesting to see how viable different combinations of Exo equipment would be.
i don't think structure damage with claw is necessary.
a) you have infinite ammo
b) you sacrifice good positioning/vision
however, i think claw is best suited at being a 'humiliation' type move like welder/axe kill. imo it doesn't make sense for it to be a godlike skulk pulverizer; especially as it's so easy to connect and more or less eliminates exo point blank weakness.
For the scripting issue, one solution is to penalize jump spam. You can have a continuous variable that spike up each time you press jump, and the decay back to zero with a given time constant. Above a certain threshold the variable start to affect the effectiveness of bhop. The main problem with this is that it's an hidden variable and that it's exactly how energy works already, so maybe jump should simply use a bit of energy.
about the skulk issue, i think something along those lines would greatly improve the game.
at the moment, pub servers are absolutely destroyed if there are 1-2 savvy marines (who can aim pretty well). it takes away all the fun from the marine team; never mind the hopeless aliens.
those savvy marines will still dominate skulks if the change goes through, but it gives skilled skulks a greater chance to fight back. the new possibilities are incredible; after reaching 10-12m/s speed you can spring off all kinds of props/obstructions with such fluidity it looks GODLIKE. it also gives skulks greater practicality in late game.
to me, the current BT skulk has the same skill potential as the release skulk wall-jump. the main difference being that it's now more accessible and not so dependent on convenient map structuring.
i think the biggest 'shock' in the BT mod has to be the fade. it's actually scary now and truly feels like a lifeform worthy of being between lerk and onos. specifically, it's super hard for a single marine to deal significant damage to a fade (unless he has shotgun*).
*imo it's far too easy for AR marine to hit fade on live build. you get almost a guaranteed ~200 damage unless you panic fire; i struggled to deal 100 damage to fades in the BT mod. that's why fade sucks on live... you kill/injure a lone marine then have to run all the way back to hive to not get instakilled by the next guy - screw that.
As for jump queuing, I don't see the problem. It's been in every Quake game and anyone who has played any of them for a period of time should be familiar with it. Even if you aren't it's not like it dramatically changes the way the jump button works. The only difference is that it doesn't completely ignore the click if you're too early; just keep holding the button to jump as soon as you land.
>.>
@sewlek how about adding a web ability for gorge and merge it with the babbler bait ball? i still think jetpack should have some kind of weakness.