People need to stop taking the end-game marine turtling scenario into account when talking about balance. For all intents and purposes, marines have lost the game if they're pushed back to just one base ,and with two bases still alive, they should be able to have strong defence. It's just a matter of annoyance and tedium if the game reaches that stage, not balance. Games where marines control one tech point, aliens control the rest of the map and still the marines are capable of pushing out of their base into victory are rare and harder to find than a needle in a haystack, and in those instances it's completely, fully, 100% the alien team's fault for letting the marines do that. Introducing mechanics like restricted weapons pick-up, vital upgrades being tied to a 2nd CC or power nodes only being capable of supporting so many buildings for the sole (or supplementary) reason of preventing late-game marine turtles is a failure. That would be the equivalent of nerfing ARCs because they are too powerful in siege maps or nerfing exos because they dominate in the combat mod. Late game marine turtles have nothing to do with game balance and have to be resolved through mechanics which won't affect the balance of normal gameplay.
For example, introduce extremely powerful alien traits that can be unlocked at biomass levels 10-12. If the aliens have a fourth hive up and have had time to research the according biomass levels and traits, the game is simply over and these traits won't interfere at all with the game balance, only help alien dominated games end faster. Another option would be to buff the biomass level 7-9 traits accordingly, like it was in NS1 where the 3rd hive usually meant an instant defeat for the marines, but I know there are a lot of pub players out there who would not want 3-hive-aliens to be too strong. With 4 hives there would be no question.
Also, regarding the complaint that aliens losing a base has much greater consequences than marines losing a base: These are not equivalents. A marine push into an alien hive-room is a high risk, high reward situation, whereas an alien push into a marine base is a low risk, low reward one. Marines pushing a hive and losing the battle have very little in the way of escaping with their gear intact (apart from the savvy commander's timely beacon when he sees things going south), but aliens attacking a marine base have a much bigger chance of escaping alive than dying. Combine this with the facts that killing a marine base (really only needing to kill the observatory and the phase gate) is much faster, and the marines' reaction time much slower (again apart from the beacon, which can be thwarted easily by the aliens) and you can easily see the difference between the risks and difficulty of a marine push and an alien push. I'm not necessarily saying that there is nothing to be fixed here, but blindly comparing the costs and build times between a full alien base and a full marine base is at best unfair without having considered the vast difference in investment, difficulty and risk.
For example, introduce extremely powerful alien traits that can be unlocked at biomass levels 10-12. If the aliens have a fourth hive up and have had time to research the according biomass levels and traits, the game is simply over and these traits won't interfere at all with the game balance, only help alien dominated games end faster. Another option would be to buff the biomass level 7-9 traits accordingly, like it was in NS1 where the 3rd hive usually meant an instant defeat for the marines, but I know there are a lot of pub players out there who would not want 3-hive-aliens to be too strong. With 4 hives there would be no question.
Not all maps have 5 TPs. We have Veil and Docking where aliens can only get Biomass 9 and at least in Docking is the marine spawn very open and easy to defend. Unless you make a 4th Biomass upgrade available on each Hive, those maps won't benefit from any turtle ending abilities on 10-12 Biomass.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited July 2013
Yet 3 hives aliens in NS2 is hardly an upgrade. The only decent upgrade would be vortex, but is gimped due to it (yeah, going to keep saying this over and over) not effecting the arms lab. Trailing spores are of questionable utility at any point in the game, xenocide doesn't pack near enough punch, etc.
I'll admit there's some genuine fun to be had with a last stand in a lost game, granted it isn't over extended. Disappearing weapons just cheapens that experience in comparison to going down to what should be an overwhelming tech'd alien side.
Right, so then just make it so you can manually swap them, but dying doesn't drop the weapon.
Now its never expected again unless coordinated between two players intentionally. And turtles are severely impacted. (just one factor though)
Its not like there's ever a shortage of non lmg weapons in a team even without recycling.
Then you've created a silly metagame where marines are discarding their weapons before they've died to make sure they drop. Which is a huge nerf because they'll often mess up and surrender a fight they would have won.
The problem is that 3 hives isn't giving the aliens enough of an advantage. Xeno is more of an annoyance to marines than a serious threat, vortex isn't particularly useful for breaking turtles (ironically the most useful structure to use vortex on would be the arms lab) and stomp is useless due to the onos now being more or less useless. Having a third set of upgrades is nice but doesn't represent a major improvement for the aliens.
In NS1 aliens getting three hives pretty much guaranteed victory for them. Xeno was more useful, web and acid rocket were both designed around breaking turtles, and charge made the onos faster and capable of dealing extremely powerful attacks.
Now, maybe you don't want 3 hives to be instant victory in NS2. That's perfectly fair now that marines are fighting for tech points as well and we've moved away from the marine start + 3 hive rooms structure of the previous game. To me it seems like the game is designed around (or at least originally designed around) 3 hive aliens being about equivalent to 2 TP marines. If we're going for this approach it would stand to reason that 3-4 hive aliens should be better than 1 TP marines. However, as it stands right now 1 TP marines are at the very least as strong as 3 hive aliens due to sewlek's questionable decision to move all marine tech to a single chair.
If someone would like to argue with me I'd love to hear it, but I currently see no practical reason why proto lab tech should be available on a single command chair. This strikes me as a change that was only made because that's the way it was in NS1. The problem is the fact that NS1 and NS2 differ in their approaches, and three hive aliens are not nearly as overpowering in NS2 as they were in NS1. So either three hive aliens need to be buffed or proto tech (and maybe W3/A3) needs to be moved to two command chairs.
Hmm.. There are better solutions that have been suggested for solving turtling, since recycling is just one factor.
But even with A2/W3, a coordinated turtle is still highly effective, with everyone welding constantly, concentrating their shots on the same lifeform,...... and continuously recycling every thing that drops.
Never do recycled weapons get as much use as during these scenarios. Spamming walls of GL explosions..
Funny how quickly alien bases go down in comparison, regardless of tech level..
You could say it was due to being unable to recycle lost pres sinks to maintain a defense.. Or you could say its the effectiveness of assaulting marines currently being able to recycle lost pres sinks...
The problem is that 3 hives isn't giving the aliens enough of an advantage. Xeno is more of an annoyance to marines than a serious threat, vortex isn't particularly useful for breaking turtles (ironically the most useful structure to use vortex on would be the arms lab) and stomp is useless due to the onos now being more or less useless. Having a third set of upgrades is nice but doesn't represent a major improvement for the aliens.
In NS1 aliens getting three hives pretty much guaranteed victory for them. Xeno was more useful, web and acid rocket were both designed around breaking turtles, and charge made the onos faster and capable of dealing extremely powerful attacks.
Now, maybe you don't want 3 hives to be instant victory in NS2. That's perfectly fair now that marines are fighting for tech points as well and we've moved away from the marine start + 3 hive rooms structure of the previous game. To me it seems like the game is designed around (or at least originally designed around) 3 hive aliens being about equivalent to 2 TP marines. If we're going for this approach it would stand to reason that 3-4 hive aliens should be better than 1 TP marines. However, as it stands right now 1 TP marines are at the very least as strong as 3 hive aliens due to sewlek's questionable decision to move all marine tech to a single chair.
If someone would like to argue with me I'd love to hear it, but I currently see no practical reason why proto lab tech should be available on a single command chair. This strikes me as a change that was only made because that's the way it was in NS1. The problem is the fact that NS1 and NS2 differ in their approaches, and three hive aliens are not nearly as overpowering in NS2 as they were in NS1. So either three hive aliens need to be buffed or proto tech (and maybe W3/A3) needs to be moved to two command chairs.
Look at all posts about "forgiveness" or "concede" or "comebacks" or "turtling"
the problem isn't that people's solutions are "wrong"
they are just solutions for different problems
At this point, imo they have failed at game experience design so hard that I would rather just see nothing but 5 tech point maps and some 3rd hive ability be OP
and if marines take out any of the hives then that ability should go away
The problem is that 3 hives isn't giving the aliens enough of an advantage. Xeno is more of an annoyance to marines than a serious threat
Xeno can be awesome, but the problem is that it's pretty much only a defensive ability. You can put it best to use when entire groups of marines start sieging your Hive, so you can send them back to their base and respawn almost instantly at the place of action yourself.
On offense is it exactly reversed: marines are already in their base, so there's no benefit to sending them back there. They don't lose any weapons at the front line and your have a longer way to get back into the action after your respawn. Xenocide should have at least a Bile Bomb effect as well, so it can be of some use against structures and MACs. Perhaps it also should leave an Umbra cloud as added bonus at the place of explosion for any aliens that might be around as well.
SamusDroidColoradoJoin Date: 2013-05-13Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
edited July 2013
Another suggestion: making a limit on the amount of weapons/lifeforms you can have. Like max 2ft 2 gl 1 dual 1 railgun. 2 lerk 2 fade 2 onos 3-4 gorges. This would fix the lifeform explosions the 2 minute in gorge rushes, end the ft gl exo spam.
Make marine tech more closely mirror alien tech.
And the win lose ratios, I wonder how many of those are alien base rushes...
A few Alien ability suggestions.
*Ice that freezes up flame throwers temporarily and blocks/deflects grenades. Slows down Marines and their structures.
*Some sort of goo researchable on 3 hives that is a projectile based attack that clogs up marine weapons causing them to malfunction and jam. Effects jet packs too, causing them to move uncontrollably.
*(just for fun) The Turtle, a big harneded ball that can be rolled/thrown into a marine base that has huge armor and health that opens up like a flower and spews lots of umbra spores bile bomb goo and ice into the air. Requires 3 hives full upgrades and costs 125 res per turtle. Requires a tether to a nearby structure where it can craw it's power.
On a related note, one of the reasons why I don't like 250 is because they forced everyone to play this, which still needs A BIT of tweaking for it to be good, but THEY DON'T UPDATE IT OFTEN ENOUGH. Sewlek was updating this mod 1-4 times A DAY. This has been like this for weeks.
Another unrelated note, I CAN'T STAND the new Docking. It is just utterly stupid now. Bar and cafe serve no purpose except to keep marines in shape. All they are are free rt's.
An arbitrary limit not communicated to the player would be annoying. We already have excess hidden timers and limitations. Honestly don't think it is necessary if biomass levels 9-12 scale more and the third hive abilities are actually worth using and capable of breaking a tech'd up turtle.
I assume this was in response to my power limit suggestion (apologies if not). And I completely agree, there would need to be clear UI elements indicating the power cost of each building, as well as how much available power there is in a current room.
The other thing that would need consideration is what would happen in the event of a comm exceeding the limit in a room, does the whole room power out? do the subsequent buildings dropped over the limit fail to come online? It would be a much bigger change than simply putting a comm chair limit on certain tech, but I think it would be a more interesting one.
Beyond turtling issues I think it would also force the marines into a strategy that thinks further out from their home CC, a problem I see a bit too much in pub games I think. It would also allow any buffs to late game alien not needing to be as powerful to cope with potential marine turtles.
All in all it could potentially change the game in other ways (whether they are good or bad is hard to say). I'd certainly love to give it a go though, could be a really interesting addition if done well.
People need to stop taking the end-game marine turtling ...
Saw this after posting. With regards to your first paragraph marines being pushed back to one CC should leave them in a position where they are strong enough to either A make a last ditch push, or B be strong enough to take back ground. It should not be this easy for them to sit in a singular room on that much high tech until they can grind the aliens down.
As for the 3rd paragraph with comparing it to aliens I disagree with your analysis on pushes entirely. As an example for risk comparison, all alien pushes involve sending in players to fight almost exclusively in melee range (ie commiting to going inside the room fully) and putting their lifeforms in high risk of being killed and losing them permanently. Yes they can escape but leaving weakens the push, and even on their way out its easy to get caught by 2+ marines coming to respond. A bad alien push can end in lost oni/fades which is a huge pres loss.
A marine push can be done with shotguns and jetpacks, which I will admit is quite risky but does always have the potential for a relatively safe exit with beacon. Id say that kind of push is probably about equal in terms of risk with an average alien push. Similar pushes can be made with FLs aswell again of similar risk levels. But you then have the ARC strategy, which allows marines to sit outside the room they are sieging, with safe MAC support and nuke the room without having to commit to much of anything. This push if going wrong is probably going to end in lost ARCs and maybe some pres losses too, however being further out from the hive they could be reclaimable. You then have the exo solution aswell which if done well can be quite easy to eggblock and again can be done from the door rather than up close and personal.
There is a very clear difference between both teams ability to push as well as variety of pushing options. Not to mention again the fact that given both 1 tech point and nothing else Marines can be fully teched for a defence whereas Aliens will always be nowhere near. This is a complete balance issue, looking at what neutral resources each team holds (i.e res points and tech points and rooms) in the same situation both teams have completely skewed capabilities. I would personally like to see a solution that does either just make marines terrible in this situation exclusively, or a crazy alien buff to overcome it. Something to make Marines want more rooms on the map to keep up I think would be a more elegant solution.
These three abilities are the full Hive three biomass party. The question is what can be done to make those abilities the end game power they should be?
I don't exactly have a good idea for Xenocide, mostly since I hate the ability as every rework I can think of makes it into a Bile Bomb or a passive ability.
Vortex, the bullet blocking was best.
Stomp, my suggestion for stomp is to make it into the most massive screw you to everyone and give it a way to deal with Jetpacks. Jetpacks are only 15 bloody res, it should be fine to get countered by a 70 or so res Onos. All nearby enemies in the default Stomp radius, in the air or not, are forced to the ground and then slowed for 90% for three seconds and not allowed to jump/JP. This will be a game ending ability and counters some of the biggest issues Onos can have. It also allows single Onos to disable people that know how to counter the current stomp by just jumping. It is also another counter to JP.
SamusDroidColoradoJoin Date: 2013-05-13Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
This is sounding a lot like devour. Ugh...I hate devour, especially with it's extreme range... OpI wouldn't want a stomp to be like devour. If anything, I wish you could dodge stump with a well placed jump. Oh, and Veil could use some tweaking to prevent ridiculous turtles.
Not to mention again the fact that given both 1 tech point and nothing else Marines can be fully teched for a defence whereas Aliens will always be nowhere near. This is a complete balance issue, looking at what neutral resources each team holds (i.e res points and tech points and rooms) in the same situation both teams have completely skewed capabilities. I would personally like to see a solution that does either just make marines terrible in this situation exclusively, or a crazy alien buff to overcome it. Something to make Marines want more rooms on the map to keep up I think would be a more elegant solution.
This isn't a balance issue. Games where marines have been set back to 1 base and aliens control the rest of the map, i.e. the famous 'marine turtling scenario', always end up in an alien victory apart from the extremely rare scenarios where the aliens handle the situation worse than a comatose sloth. This is just an enjoyment issue. It has to be resolved through mechanics that don't affect the overall gameplay and balance, unless of course someone can find a solution which both prevents this scenario from happening and makes the general gameplay and balance better. And the marines already have all the incentive in the world to get more map control; it's called trying to win the game. Whether the marines realise this or not depends on them being either good or bad players, but it's not like you often run into people thinking that all they need to win is hold their main base.
About the marine and alien pushes: alien pushes require much less commitment, whether you like it or not. Two marines walking into an alien hive to snipe upgrades are dead meat without a beacon, which isn't nearly always a viable strategic choice, but two fades hitting on the power at an empty marine base can rather trivially escape. Furthermore, marine pushes don't happen by accident. The fastest possible marine surgical strike to a hive room would be a squad of jetpackers, but even then the aliens will have plenty of time to react before the hive goes down. Even more so with the smaller risk, but higher res commitment pushes with exos or ARCs. Alien pushes happen suddenly, and killing the power node or the phase gate takes much less time than clearing a hive room would, and they happen more often because of the small amount of commitment, planning and travel time needed to do so. Take any balanced match, and you will see that you will always have more instances of aliens chewing on something in the marine base than vice versa. People are complaining that an alien base is a much bigger res and time investment, which I take can only mean that they want the marine bases to be somewhat equivalent. This would be a huge balance issue, since it's much easier to lose a marine base by accident than it is losing a hive. Killing hives is the marine tour de force only happening when the marines have secured an advantage and committed to the push, marines losing tech points can happen with 2-3 skulks chomping on the power with the commander being distracted for 5 seconds.
there's absolutely nothing wrong with 3rd hive abilities that take time to research be absolutely game-ending
And I would agree, but I know there are a lot of pub players who think that the game is supposed to be played with 2 CCs against 3 hives end-game tech galore megabattles.
there's absolutely nothing wrong with 3rd hive abilities that take time to research be absolutely game-ending
And I would agree, but I know there are a lot of pub players who think that the game is supposed to be played with 2 CCs against 3 hives end-game tech galore megabattles.
I think there are more pub players who think that the game should be played with 1 CC against 4 Hives never-ending marine turtle end-game tech galore skirmishes.
Still advocating the 4th Biomass upgrade on each Hive, thus allowing aliens to get the final Biomass advantage also on maps that only have 4 TPs, which currently seem to be the ones that have the most issues with those turtles.
there's absolutely nothing wrong with 3rd hive abilities that take time to research be absolutely game-ending
And I would agree, but I know there are a lot of pub players who think that the game is supposed to be played with 2 CCs against 3 hives end-game tech galore megabattles.
and that should still happen
the difference is the battles should be about killing a hive instead of turtling harder
I think a 3rd hive should definitely be placed in many games, but if marines know that if they let it stay up for 5-10 minutes they will end up losing then they have to get their act together and do something about it
The true answer is one of two things. Either make xeno, vortex and stomp (really the onos in general) better, or add new fourth hive abilities that make aliens unstoppable
I think gas is pretty good at breaking turtles, for 25 pres you can blanket a good portion of the room in the stuff (provided you go in with your teammates and dont get immediately shot) and its pretty damn deadly. All the other t3 abilities are pretty shit though...
I think gas is pretty good at breaking turtles, for 25 pres you can blanket a good portion of the room in the stuff (provided you go in with your teammates and dont get immediately shot) and its pretty damn deadly. All the other t3 abilities are pretty shit though...
Flamers are usually out when the turtle starts which makes spores/umbra useless.
I think gas is pretty good at breaking turtles, for 25 pres you can blanket a good portion of the room in the stuff (provided you go in with your teammates and dont get immediately shot) and its pretty damn deadly. All the other t3 abilities are pretty shit though...
Flamers are usually out when the turtle starts which makes spores/umbra useless.
Reduces effectiveness but not useless. I get plenty of kills while the flamer is trying to suppress my gas and he's not busy shooting my allies. I'ts not a hard counter to the AOE that spore can provide.
Comments
That will just lead to people manually dropping them before they die, no? Just like people used to /kill or f4 to avoid RFK.
For example, introduce extremely powerful alien traits that can be unlocked at biomass levels 10-12. If the aliens have a fourth hive up and have had time to research the according biomass levels and traits, the game is simply over and these traits won't interfere at all with the game balance, only help alien dominated games end faster. Another option would be to buff the biomass level 7-9 traits accordingly, like it was in NS1 where the 3rd hive usually meant an instant defeat for the marines, but I know there are a lot of pub players out there who would not want 3-hive-aliens to be too strong. With 4 hives there would be no question.
Also, regarding the complaint that aliens losing a base has much greater consequences than marines losing a base: These are not equivalents. A marine push into an alien hive-room is a high risk, high reward situation, whereas an alien push into a marine base is a low risk, low reward one. Marines pushing a hive and losing the battle have very little in the way of escaping with their gear intact (apart from the savvy commander's timely beacon when he sees things going south), but aliens attacking a marine base have a much bigger chance of escaping alive than dying. Combine this with the facts that killing a marine base (really only needing to kill the observatory and the phase gate) is much faster, and the marines' reaction time much slower (again apart from the beacon, which can be thwarted easily by the aliens) and you can easily see the difference between the risks and difficulty of a marine push and an alien push. I'm not necessarily saying that there is nothing to be fixed here, but blindly comparing the costs and build times between a full alien base and a full marine base is at best unfair without having considered the vast difference in investment, difficulty and risk.
Not all maps have 5 TPs. We have Veil and Docking where aliens can only get Biomass 9 and at least in Docking is the marine spawn very open and easy to defend. Unless you make a 4th Biomass upgrade available on each Hive, those maps won't benefit from any turtle ending abilities on 10-12 Biomass.
I'll admit there's some genuine fun to be had with a last stand in a lost game, granted it isn't over extended. Disappearing weapons just cheapens that experience in comparison to going down to what should be an overwhelming tech'd alien side.
Then you've created a silly metagame where marines are discarding their weapons before they've died to make sure they drop. Which is a huge nerf because they'll often mess up and surrender a fight they would have won.
In NS1 aliens getting three hives pretty much guaranteed victory for them. Xeno was more useful, web and acid rocket were both designed around breaking turtles, and charge made the onos faster and capable of dealing extremely powerful attacks.
Now, maybe you don't want 3 hives to be instant victory in NS2. That's perfectly fair now that marines are fighting for tech points as well and we've moved away from the marine start + 3 hive rooms structure of the previous game. To me it seems like the game is designed around (or at least originally designed around) 3 hive aliens being about equivalent to 2 TP marines. If we're going for this approach it would stand to reason that 3-4 hive aliens should be better than 1 TP marines. However, as it stands right now 1 TP marines are at the very least as strong as 3 hive aliens due to sewlek's questionable decision to move all marine tech to a single chair.
If someone would like to argue with me I'd love to hear it, but I currently see no practical reason why proto lab tech should be available on a single command chair. This strikes me as a change that was only made because that's the way it was in NS1. The problem is the fact that NS1 and NS2 differ in their approaches, and three hive aliens are not nearly as overpowering in NS2 as they were in NS1. So either three hive aliens need to be buffed or proto tech (and maybe W3/A3) needs to be moved to two command chairs.
Sounds like risk vs reward to me.
Hmm.. There are better solutions that have been suggested for solving turtling, since recycling is just one factor.
But even with A2/W3, a coordinated turtle is still highly effective, with everyone welding constantly, concentrating their shots on the same lifeform,...... and continuously recycling every thing that drops.
Never do recycled weapons get as much use as during these scenarios. Spamming walls of GL explosions..
Funny how quickly alien bases go down in comparison, regardless of tech level..
You could say it was due to being unable to recycle lost pres sinks to maintain a defense.. Or you could say its the effectiveness of assaulting marines currently being able to recycle lost pres sinks...
Look at all posts about "forgiveness" or "concede" or "comebacks" or "turtling"
the problem isn't that people's solutions are "wrong"
they are just solutions for different problems
At this point, imo they have failed at game experience design so hard that I would rather just see nothing but 5 tech point maps and some 3rd hive ability be OP
and if marines take out any of the hives then that ability should go away
Xeno can be awesome, but the problem is that it's pretty much only a defensive ability. You can put it best to use when entire groups of marines start sieging your Hive, so you can send them back to their base and respawn almost instantly at the place of action yourself.
On offense is it exactly reversed: marines are already in their base, so there's no benefit to sending them back there. They don't lose any weapons at the front line and your have a longer way to get back into the action after your respawn. Xenocide should have at least a Bile Bomb effect as well, so it can be of some use against structures and MACs. Perhaps it also should leave an Umbra cloud as added bonus at the place of explosion for any aliens that might be around as well.
Agreed, unless the marines have also tech'd up. Getting a third hive up should be easy in a game that's already over.
No one did that.
1. Allow all alien attacks to damage dropped weapons.
2. Reduce dropped weapons' health (to around 100).
Make marine tech more closely mirror alien tech.
And the win lose ratios, I wonder how many of those are alien base rushes...
A few Alien ability suggestions.
*Ice that freezes up flame throwers temporarily and blocks/deflects grenades. Slows down Marines and their structures.
*Some sort of goo researchable on 3 hives that is a projectile based attack that clogs up marine weapons causing them to malfunction and jam. Effects jet packs too, causing them to move uncontrollably.
*(just for fun) The Turtle, a big harneded ball that can be rolled/thrown into a marine base that has huge armor and health that opens up like a flower and spews lots of umbra spores bile bomb goo and ice into the air. Requires 3 hives full upgrades and costs 125 res per turtle. Requires a tether to a nearby structure where it can craw it's power.
On a related note, one of the reasons why I don't like 250 is because they forced everyone to play this, which still needs A BIT of tweaking for it to be good, but THEY DON'T UPDATE IT OFTEN ENOUGH. Sewlek was updating this mod 1-4 times A DAY. This has been like this for weeks.
Another unrelated note, I CAN'T STAND the new Docking. It is just utterly stupid now. Bar and cafe serve no purpose except to keep marines in shape. All they are are free rt's.
I assume this was in response to my power limit suggestion (apologies if not). And I completely agree, there would need to be clear UI elements indicating the power cost of each building, as well as how much available power there is in a current room.
The other thing that would need consideration is what would happen in the event of a comm exceeding the limit in a room, does the whole room power out? do the subsequent buildings dropped over the limit fail to come online? It would be a much bigger change than simply putting a comm chair limit on certain tech, but I think it would be a more interesting one.
Beyond turtling issues I think it would also force the marines into a strategy that thinks further out from their home CC, a problem I see a bit too much in pub games I think. It would also allow any buffs to late game alien not needing to be as powerful to cope with potential marine turtles.
All in all it could potentially change the game in other ways (whether they are good or bad is hard to say). I'd certainly love to give it a go though, could be a really interesting addition if done well.
Saw this after posting. With regards to your first paragraph marines being pushed back to one CC should leave them in a position where they are strong enough to either A make a last ditch push, or B be strong enough to take back ground. It should not be this easy for them to sit in a singular room on that much high tech until they can grind the aliens down.
As for the 3rd paragraph with comparing it to aliens I disagree with your analysis on pushes entirely. As an example for risk comparison, all alien pushes involve sending in players to fight almost exclusively in melee range (ie commiting to going inside the room fully) and putting their lifeforms in high risk of being killed and losing them permanently. Yes they can escape but leaving weakens the push, and even on their way out its easy to get caught by 2+ marines coming to respond. A bad alien push can end in lost oni/fades which is a huge pres loss.
A marine push can be done with shotguns and jetpacks, which I will admit is quite risky but does always have the potential for a relatively safe exit with beacon. Id say that kind of push is probably about equal in terms of risk with an average alien push. Similar pushes can be made with FLs aswell again of similar risk levels. But you then have the ARC strategy, which allows marines to sit outside the room they are sieging, with safe MAC support and nuke the room without having to commit to much of anything. This push if going wrong is probably going to end in lost ARCs and maybe some pres losses too, however being further out from the hive they could be reclaimable. You then have the exo solution aswell which if done well can be quite easy to eggblock and again can be done from the door rather than up close and personal.
There is a very clear difference between both teams ability to push as well as variety of pushing options. Not to mention again the fact that given both 1 tech point and nothing else Marines can be fully teched for a defence whereas Aliens will always be nowhere near. This is a complete balance issue, looking at what neutral resources each team holds (i.e res points and tech points and rooms) in the same situation both teams have completely skewed capabilities. I would personally like to see a solution that does either just make marines terrible in this situation exclusively, or a crazy alien buff to overcome it. Something to make Marines want more rooms on the map to keep up I think would be a more elegant solution.
These three abilities are the full Hive three biomass party. The question is what can be done to make those abilities the end game power they should be?
I don't exactly have a good idea for Xenocide, mostly since I hate the ability as every rework I can think of makes it into a Bile Bomb or a passive ability.
Vortex, the bullet blocking was best.
Stomp, my suggestion for stomp is to make it into the most massive screw you to everyone and give it a way to deal with Jetpacks. Jetpacks are only 15 bloody res, it should be fine to get countered by a 70 or so res Onos. All nearby enemies in the default Stomp radius, in the air or not, are forced to the ground and then slowed for 90% for three seconds and not allowed to jump/JP. This will be a game ending ability and counters some of the biggest issues Onos can have. It also allows single Onos to disable people that know how to counter the current stomp by just jumping. It is also another counter to JP.
This isn't a balance issue. Games where marines have been set back to 1 base and aliens control the rest of the map, i.e. the famous 'marine turtling scenario', always end up in an alien victory apart from the extremely rare scenarios where the aliens handle the situation worse than a comatose sloth. This is just an enjoyment issue. It has to be resolved through mechanics that don't affect the overall gameplay and balance, unless of course someone can find a solution which both prevents this scenario from happening and makes the general gameplay and balance better. And the marines already have all the incentive in the world to get more map control; it's called trying to win the game. Whether the marines realise this or not depends on them being either good or bad players, but it's not like you often run into people thinking that all they need to win is hold their main base.
About the marine and alien pushes: alien pushes require much less commitment, whether you like it or not. Two marines walking into an alien hive to snipe upgrades are dead meat without a beacon, which isn't nearly always a viable strategic choice, but two fades hitting on the power at an empty marine base can rather trivially escape. Furthermore, marine pushes don't happen by accident. The fastest possible marine surgical strike to a hive room would be a squad of jetpackers, but even then the aliens will have plenty of time to react before the hive goes down. Even more so with the smaller risk, but higher res commitment pushes with exos or ARCs. Alien pushes happen suddenly, and killing the power node or the phase gate takes much less time than clearing a hive room would, and they happen more often because of the small amount of commitment, planning and travel time needed to do so. Take any balanced match, and you will see that you will always have more instances of aliens chewing on something in the marine base than vice versa. People are complaining that an alien base is a much bigger res and time investment, which I take can only mean that they want the marine bases to be somewhat equivalent. This would be a huge balance issue, since it's much easier to lose a marine base by accident than it is losing a hive. Killing hives is the marine tour de force only happening when the marines have secured an advantage and committed to the push, marines losing tech points can happen with 2-3 skulks chomping on the power with the commander being distracted for 5 seconds.
And I would agree, but I know there are a lot of pub players who think that the game is supposed to be played with 2 CCs against 3 hives end-game tech galore megabattles.
I think there are more pub players who think that the game should be played with 1 CC against 4 Hives never-ending marine turtle end-game tech galore skirmishes.
Still advocating the 4th Biomass upgrade on each Hive, thus allowing aliens to get the final Biomass advantage also on maps that only have 4 TPs, which currently seem to be the ones that have the most issues with those turtles.
and that should still happen
the difference is the battles should be about killing a hive instead of turtling harder
I think a 3rd hive should definitely be placed in many games, but if marines know that if they let it stay up for 5-10 minutes they will end up losing then they have to get their act together and do something about it
Flamers are usually out when the turtle starts which makes spores/umbra useless.
Reduces effectiveness but not useless. I get plenty of kills while the flamer is trying to suppress my gas and he's not busy shooting my allies. I'ts not a hard counter to the AOE that spore can provide.