Amount of babblers you can spawn increase with each additional hive.

proteinstain

I was thinking of ways to make babblers more useful and thought of this idea, make it so your able to spawn more babblers with each additional hive you have. Im not sure about the number/ratio so the number would have to be played with. +6 per hive maybe?

[Deleted User]

Since the babblers are oneshots I dont think, that increasing the number of babblers would help. I would really like to see if the babblers could move on walls and ceilings and that you can choose between different sorts of these ball you got to direct them(follow, follow and attack, mine(you could shoot the ball at a wall and the babblers would get there and wait for prey), defend(defends the structure or unit that has been marked with the ball)).
Mabey this could be a two or three staged upgrade(each for every hive).

current1y

what about buffing their HP or DPS instead so they become more useful as the aliens tech up. 

Not sure i want to see 100+ babblers running around potentially if there are 5 gorges. 

SolidSpider

More AI units in the server = more performance issues, so I'd say it would be better to buff the Babblers themselves.

Kouji_San

SolidSpider said:

More AI units in the server = more performance issues, so I'd say it would be better to buff the Babblers themselves.

Mostly this yeah, and I don't want to fight mobs. But right now they do work fine as body armour or a tiny wall of "armour" vs shotties... the only thing that I find is that they are a tad clunky to use still

Nordic

Give babblers the same upgrades the gorge has. If a gorge has carapace, babblers have 1.5x more hp, which in turn would make babblers being on you stronger. Give babblers celerity if the gorge has it and make babbler celerity work in combat.

CragChrist

I'm not ok with increasing babbler count due to stability issues, but fine with making them stronger with more hives.

Babblers could follow the upgrades the gorge has (cara and such).  I think babblers right now are ok, and giving them extra HP would make the babbler armor pretty ridiculous since it seems strong as is and regen for such small HP bars would be useless.  A potential use for regen babblers would be that the armor they give grants that alien a weaker form of regen and should stack with current regen or make regen always active, even in combat.  It'd be interesting though if babblers jumped more if gorge had adren, or had a further attack range with cel.  Camo and silence babblers would seem pretty natural as well.

As far as AI, the only additional ball command I'd like to see would be one that prioritizes sacrificial mine detonating.  Trading a babbler for a mine is good in my books any day and can be useful for mines before lerks are on field.

Regnareb

I don't see how this can be a performance issue, if you just allow one egg per hive. 

On the contrary, it would improve performances compared to what we have now, and I like the idea.

Kouji_San

Regnareb said:

I don't see how this can be a performance issue, if you just allow one egg per hive. 

On the contrary, it would improve performances compared to what we have now, and I like the idea.

proteinstain said:

 +6 per hive maybe?

AI eats server ticks for breakfast

proteinstain

the +6 is just a random number it would have to be played with. if not maybe just make them stronger with each hive ?

Sherlock

Make them BIGGER with each Hive, too! Once Aliens have three Hives up, it's like trying to pop massive gnashing Kirbys!

RaZDaZ

They need to be more accurate with their attacks, you can simply go round in a circle and pretty much forever dodge them. They basically leap in the air too slowly.