I don't like just upgrading a lifeform over individual abilities. Commanders should be able to pick and choose the tools that their team needs based on the situation or plan of action. It removes choice and makes the commander less interesting. If the problem is certain abilities get upgraded rarely or ever, you could adjust that a number of ways; make the ability more attractive, lower the cost, or lower the research time. We're one step away from just making all abilities unlock at biomass levels automatically when I feel we need to be going more in the other direction.
Alien commander needs more choices in tech, not less. As it is right now (and the direction it's going) staying in the hive is uninteresting.
how about hot swap the gorgemander at the start of the game, and just drop a lerk egg for the guy that started at 0 res? would this effectively be a work around do you think? it might delay second hive a little, but what else is there to spend res on?
The alien commander is now more influencing on the battlefield, demanding more of your time and is therefore more meaningful. But if you dont try to use these features and just "drop and go".. then yea.. its going to be a boring experience.
You make it sound like people don't know how to play the game and they must be forced to use supposed useful abilities. If the abilities are useful commanders will use them, the fact that they don't means they are not. If the alien commander had more meaningful influence from hive, they would stay there, you wouldn't need to force it on players.
The alien commander is now more influencing on the battlefield, demanding more of your time and is therefore more meaningful. But if you dont try to use these features and just "drop and go".. then yea.. its going to be a boring experience.
You make it sound like people don't know how to play the game and they must be forced to use supposed useful abilities. If the abilities are useful commanders will use them, the fact that they don't means they are not. If the alien commander had more meaningful influence from hive, they would stay there, you wouldn't need to force it on players.
I don't know how you can argue otherwise.
Drifter abilities, and rupture/spike are actually useful to the point of being blatantly overpowered for their cost. The reason they wern't used often in the meta however was because you didn't need to use them to win. you used them only if you wanted to be fancy.
Now with the 0 comm pres and stronger marine movement, their use will most likely become more abundant.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
@Ironhorse
strongly disagree. The kham almost has no new abilities compared to 250. Drifters had abilities then, they do now.
Khams only additional ability now is that infestation bomb.
Most of the time you are dropping structures and upgrading.
Drifters are very costly and while it can be argued that a good kham will keep them alive, many marines shoot any drifter on sight, fully knowing the abilities they have.
This leaves the kham with a game of 'move the drifter loads while sometimes buffing his alien friends with drifter abilities' & placing structures. Its even more interesting shoving structures and whips around the map for support combat then it is to use drifters.
It gets finally interesting with multiple drifters so enought live long enought & spamming all drifter abilities in strategic spots.
The egg on infestation, while drifters are expensive, allows for fast drifter replacement making strategic placement & premovement of a drifter even less important. Thir speed also makes it even less important to correctly preplace drifters. It again makes the job more boring.
Bonewall and the likes, while useful and effective can not always be used, but even those are far better then any drifter for anything which isnt a mindnumbing kham buffbot
The alien commander is now more influencing on the battlefield, demanding more of your time and is therefore more meaningful. But if you dont try to use these features and just "drop and go".. then yea.. its going to be a boring experience.
You make it sound like people don't know how to play the game and they must be forced to use supposed useful abilities. If the abilities are useful commanders will use them, the fact that they don't means they are not. If the alien commander had more meaningful influence from hive, they would stay there, you wouldn't need to force it on players.
I don't know how you can argue otherwise.
Drifter abilities, and rupture/spike are actually useful to the point of being blatantly overpowered for their cost. The reason they wern't used often in the meta however was because you didn't need to use them to win. you used them only if you wanted to be fancy.
Now with the 0 comm pres and stronger marine movement, their use will most likely become more abundant.
ummm, if it were optimal, and thus justified for their cost, they'd have been used more. Of the abilities I saw used, enzyme was the most. bone wall toward end game to protect or trap higher life-forms and exos. enzyme was most used for grinding down gates faster.
saying that drifter abilities and rupture and bone wall are blatantly overpowered... is very easy to say, but it was just not borne out. If they were actually cost effective, they would have been used more. and some were. I've seen hallucinate used a couple of times, and storm used never. neither has rupture.
Wow, way to white knight an inelegant and ugly design decision. you basically just argued that the khamm abilities are so op, that people that want to win find they made winning too easy so intentionally chose not to use them, as a self imposed handicap.
Congrats, oh wait, look behind you, there's reason, you haven't seen him in a long long time have you?
The alien commander is now more influencing on the battlefield, demanding more of your time and is therefore more meaningful. But if you dont try to use these features and just "drop and go".. then yea.. its going to be a boring experience.
You make it sound like people don't know how to play the game and they must be forced to use supposed useful abilities. If the abilities are useful commanders will use them, the fact that they don't means they are not. If the alien commander had more meaningful influence from hive, they would stay there, you wouldn't need to force it on players.
I don't know how you can argue otherwise.
Drifter abilities, and rupture/spike are actually useful to the point of being blatantly overpowered for their cost. The reason they wern't used often in the meta however was because you didn't need to use them to win. you used them only if you wanted to be fancy.
Now with the 0 comm pres and stronger marine movement, their use will most likely become more abundant.
ummm, if it were optimal, and thus justified for their cost, they'd have been used more. Of the abilities I saw used, enzyme was the most. bone wall toward end game to protect or trap higher life-forms and exos. enzyme was most used for grinding down gates faster.
saying that drifter abilities and rupture and bone wall are blatantly overpowered... is very easy to say, but it was just not borne out. If they were actually cost effective, they would have been used more. and some were. I've seen hallucinate used a couple of times, and storm used never. neither has rupture.
Wow, way to white knight an inelegant and ugly design decision. you basically just argued that the khamm abilities are so op, that people that want to win find they made winning too easy so intentionally chose not to use them, as a self imposed handicap.
Congrats, oh wait, look behind you, there's reason, you haven't seen him in a long long time have you?
Sigh... You may not really understand ns2 gameplay yet, but theres no reason to be this aggressive.
You basically provided the same answer in your first sentence. They were previously not needed to win, which gives a sub optimal cost/benefit decision. If you didn't need medpacks to win, would you use them? 0 additional real utility for >0 cost. Welcome to the world of practical min/max.
I think you've drastically misunderstood the state of the game in previous builds.
*i dont really understand what you were saying in your last paragraph. Hope it wasn't anything important.
The alien commander is now more influencing on the battlefield, demanding more of your time and is therefore more meaningful. But if you dont try to use these features and just "drop and go".. then yea.. its going to be a boring experience.
You make it sound like people don't know how to play the game and they must be forced to use supposed useful abilities. If the abilities are useful commanders will use them, the fact that they don't means they are not. If the alien commander had more meaningful influence from hive, they would stay there, you wouldn't need to force it on players.
I don't know how you can argue otherwise.
Drifter abilities, and rupture/spike are actually useful to the point of being blatantly overpowered for their cost. The reason they wern't used often in the meta however was because you didn't need to use them to win. you used them only if you wanted to be fancy.
Now with the 0 comm pres and stronger marine movement, their use will most likely become more abundant.
I don't think we play the same game. saccing 8 res drifters for an enzyme... yeah... not gonna happen. if they were good, people would've found a way to work them into gameplans. as it stands, just go drop a gorge egg, get out and be useful.
The alien commander is now more influencing on the battlefield, demanding more of your time and is therefore more meaningful. But if you dont try to use these features and just "drop and go".. then yea.. its going to be a boring experience.
You make it sound like people don't know how to play the game and they must be forced to use supposed useful abilities. If the abilities are useful commanders will use them, the fact that they don't means they are not. If the alien commander had more meaningful influence from hive, they would stay there, you wouldn't need to force it on players.
I don't know how you can argue otherwise.
Drifter abilities, and rupture/spike are actually useful to the point of being blatantly overpowered for their cost. The reason they wern't used often in the meta however was because you didn't need to use them to win. you used them only if you wanted to be fancy.
Now with the 0 comm pres and stronger marine movement, their use will most likely become more abundant.
ummm, if it were optimal, and thus justified for their cost, they'd have been used more. Of the abilities I saw used, enzyme was the most. bone wall toward end game to protect or trap higher life-forms and exos. enzyme was most used for grinding down gates faster.
saying that drifter abilities and rupture and bone wall are blatantly overpowered... is very easy to say, but it was just not borne out. If they were actually cost effective, they would have been used more. and some were. I've seen hallucinate used a couple of times, and storm used never. neither has rupture.
Wow, way to white knight an inelegant and ugly design decision. you basically just argued that the khamm abilities are so op, that people that want to win find they made winning too easy so intentionally chose not to use them, as a self imposed handicap.
Congrats, oh wait, look behind you, there's reason, you haven't seen him in a long long time have you?
Sigh... You may not really understand ns2 gameplay yet, but theres no reason to be this aggressive.
You basically provided the same answer in your first sentence. They were previously not needed to win, which gives a sub optimal cost/benefit decision. If you didn't need medpacks to win, would you use them? 0 additional real utility for >0 cost. Welcome to the world of practical min/max.
I think you've drastically misunderstood the state of the game in previous builds.
*i dont really understand what you were saying in your last paragraph. Hope it wasn't anything important.
Way to be so passive aggressive, insulting his experience in ns2 gameplay... Most people who started playing ns2 since it was released have just as much gameplay experience as you, even if you we're a beta tester. We know how drifters are used... Not complicated, but not useful early game as they cost as much as a res node and don't significantly influence battles.
Drifters are powerful when teams are skilled, enziming a skulk who is 1-15 means he gets to miss 6 bites instead of 3 before he gets killed... So yes in higher level play drifters are good in a pug?? It's like med packing, who do you med? The guy who is 30-3 and not the guy 3-15.
My point is as skill level drops off the usefulness of drifters drop off... So for a com who knows what he is doing on a team full of noobs getting out and gorging is way more helpful...
Drifters are powerful when teams are skilled, enziming a skulk who is 1-15 means he gets to miss 6 bites instead of 3 before he gets killed... So yes in higher level play drifters are good in a pug?? It's like med packing, who do you med? The guy who is 30-3 and not the guy 3-15.
My point is as skill level drops off the usefulness of drifters drop off... So for a com who knows what he is doing on a team full of noobs getting out and gorging is way more helpful...
I have to disagree with this. Enzymes usefulness comes with destroying structures, not so much PvP combat. Why? Because a good skulk (one that's 30-3) is timing their bites when they know they can land one. If he was already doing that well, does he really need an enzyme anyway? At the risk of losing 8 res? No, probably not. Enzyme is only "helpful" in PvP with lawnmower skulks, the ones that just hold the attack button down, and like you said, you wouldn't enzyme that guy either.
Honestly, they should just drop the drifter price down to 4 res. Remove it's ability to cast enzyme and create a new unit (one that drifter's can spawn) that performs the task of hallucination/storming/enzyme-ing units. It can either A) run into a room and explode, releasing the enzyme in a cloud for # of seconds or run into a room, buries itself into the ground and fart enzymes into the air constantly until either the kham unburies it, or the marines kill it.
The alien commander is now more influencing on the battlefield, demanding more of your time and is therefore more meaningful. But if you dont try to use these features and just "drop and go".. then yea.. its going to be a boring experience.
You make it sound like people don't know how to play the game and they must be forced to use supposed useful abilities. If the abilities are useful commanders will use them, the fact that they don't means they are not. If the alien commander had more meaningful influence from hive, they would stay there, you wouldn't need to force it on players.
I don't know how you can argue otherwise.
Drifter abilities, and rupture/spike are actually useful to the point of being blatantly overpowered for their cost. The reason they wern't used often in the meta however was because you didn't need to use them to win. you used them only if you wanted to be fancy.
Now with the 0 comm pres and stronger marine movement, their use will most likely become more abundant.
ummm, if it were optimal, and thus justified for their cost, they'd have been used more. Of the abilities I saw used, enzyme was the most. bone wall toward end game to protect or trap higher life-forms and exos. enzyme was most used for grinding down gates faster.
saying that drifter abilities and rupture and bone wall are blatantly overpowered... is very easy to say, but it was just not borne out. If they were actually cost effective, they would have been used more. and some were. I've seen hallucinate used a couple of times, and storm used never. neither has rupture.
Wow, way to white knight an inelegant and ugly design decision. you basically just argued that the khamm abilities are so op, that people that want to win find they made winning too easy so intentionally chose not to use them, as a self imposed handicap.
Congrats, oh wait, look behind you, there's reason, you haven't seen him in a long long time have you?
Sigh... You may not really understand ns2 gameplay yet, but theres no reason to be this aggressive.
You basically provided the same answer in your first sentence. They were previously not needed to win, which gives a sub optimal cost/benefit decision. If you didn't need medpacks to win, would you use them? 0 additional real utility for >0 cost. Welcome to the world of practical min/max.
I think you've drastically misunderstood the state of the game in previous builds.
*i dont really understand what you were saying in your last paragraph. Hope it wasn't anything important.
Way to be so passive aggressive, insulting his experience in ns2 gameplay... Most people who started playing ns2 since it was released have just as much gameplay experience as you, even if you we're a beta tester. We know how drifters are used... Not complicated, but not useful early game as they cost as much as a res node and don't significantly influence battles.
I'm not insulting anybody.. nor am i trying to suggest that I am superior to everyone else although you're free to read that into my words if you want. All I've tried to do so far is speak as tightly as i can about gameplay topics I am confident that I understand. If you think i'm wrong, I'd love to hear your reasoning why. Not just stuff about white knighting and so on.
Looking at each drifter ability by itself, its obvious they are really very strong. So why wern't they used? You never saw it used alot previously because alien early game was guaranteed, and you could then simply win with fade ball. So that instead of spending tres on comm abilities, you would just save it for replacement fade tres eggs and so on.
Regarding your point, let's take a two step evaluation
1) Are drifter abilities worth using for their power to cost ratio? yes
2) Are drifters worth building at 8 tres? I think so.
- Cheaper than a gorge egg
- Pretty much invincible unlike a gorge. I don't want to argue this point. They just are, and if your drifter isn't invincible you arn't using it properly.
- Can drop harvesters and build them without having to travel long distances. Much faster than gorge as well.
- Can use cheap and powerful combat buffs
The alien commander is now more influencing on the battlefield, demanding more of your time and is therefore more meaningful. But if you dont try to use these features and just "drop and go".. then yea.. its going to be a boring experience.
You make it sound like people don't know how to play the game and they must be forced to use supposed useful abilities. If the abilities are useful commanders will use them, the fact that they don't means they are not. If the alien commander had more meaningful influence from hive, they would stay there, you wouldn't need to force it on players.
I don't know how you can argue otherwise.
Drifter abilities, and rupture/spike are actually useful to the point of being blatantly overpowered for their cost. The reason they wern't used often in the meta however was because you didn't need to use them to win. you used them only if you wanted to be fancy.
Now with the 0 comm pres and stronger marine movement, their use will most likely become more abundant.
ummm, if it were optimal, and thus justified for their cost, they'd have been used more. Of the abilities I saw used, enzyme was the most. bone wall toward end game to protect or trap higher life-forms and exos. enzyme was most used for grinding down gates faster.
saying that drifter abilities and rupture and bone wall are blatantly overpowered... is very easy to say, but it was just not borne out. If they were actually cost effective, they would have been used more. and some were. I've seen hallucinate used a couple of times, and storm used never. neither has rupture.
Wow, way to white knight an inelegant and ugly design decision. you basically just argued that the khamm abilities are so op, that people that want to win find they made winning too easy so intentionally chose not to use them, as a self imposed handicap.
Congrats, oh wait, look behind you, there's reason, you haven't seen him in a long long time have you?
Sigh... You may not really understand ns2 gameplay yet, but theres no reason to be this aggressive.
You basically provided the same answer in your first sentence. They were previously not needed to win, which gives a sub optimal cost/benefit decision. If you didn't need medpacks to win, would you use them? 0 additional real utility for >0 cost. Welcome to the world of practical min/max.
I think you've drastically misunderstood the state of the game in previous builds.
*i dont really understand what you were saying in your last paragraph. Hope it wasn't anything important.
and i think you're just wrong... if what you're saying is true... and lets use competitive matches as an example. You're implying that the utility of the comm abilities is so great that it's undervalued. But that nobody uses it because it's not necessary because aliens can win without the use of commander abilities and given the option, people would rather cut costs than waste money on overkill.
Lets assume that you're correct and that was the current state of the meta and the drifter abilities. But lets also assume that marines can win on occasion. And even with a 75-25 split, there's still 25 percent marine wins. Also, apparently summer cup was a little more balanced.
We should be seeing non-stop usage of the drifter abilities in those games right? especially when the alien early game is not doing so hot. khammander should be spamming rupture and bone-wall and enzyme and hallucination non-stop. because, as you said, they're OP enough to swing the game in the alien's favor, but nobody uses it, because they like cutting costs.
and i was implying that you'd left reason and all forms of logic behind when you formed your argument.
you make a blanket statement that khamm abilities are brokenly OP, then go on to say that nobody used them because they were unnecessary... you've forgotten all the times aliens don't beat the tar out of marines and they're still not used.
The alien commander is now more influencing on the battlefield, demanding more of your time and is therefore more meaningful. But if you dont try to use these features and just "drop and go".. then yea.. its going to be a boring experience.
You make it sound like people don't know how to play the game and they must be forced to use supposed useful abilities. If the abilities are useful commanders will use them, the fact that they don't means they are not. If the alien commander had more meaningful influence from hive, they would stay there, you wouldn't need to force it on players.
I don't know how you can argue otherwise.
Drifter abilities, and rupture/spike are actually useful to the point of being blatantly overpowered for their cost. The reason they wern't used often in the meta however was because you didn't need to use them to win. you used them only if you wanted to be fancy.
Now with the 0 comm pres and stronger marine movement, their use will most likely become more abundant.
ummm, if it were optimal, and thus justified for their cost, they'd have been used more. Of the abilities I saw used, enzyme was the most. bone wall toward end game to protect or trap higher life-forms and exos. enzyme was most used for grinding down gates faster.
saying that drifter abilities and rupture and bone wall are blatantly overpowered... is very easy to say, but it was just not borne out. If they were actually cost effective, they would have been used more. and some were. I've seen hallucinate used a couple of times, and storm used never. neither has rupture.
Wow, way to white knight an inelegant and ugly design decision. you basically just argued that the khamm abilities are so op, that people that want to win find they made winning too easy so intentionally chose not to use them, as a self imposed handicap.
Congrats, oh wait, look behind you, there's reason, you haven't seen him in a long long time have you?
Sigh... You may not really understand ns2 gameplay yet, but theres no reason to be this aggressive.
You basically provided the same answer in your first sentence. They were previously not needed to win, which gives a sub optimal cost/benefit decision. If you didn't need medpacks to win, would you use them? 0 additional real utility for >0 cost. Welcome to the world of practical min/max.
I think you've drastically misunderstood the state of the game in previous builds.
*i dont really understand what you were saying in your last paragraph. Hope it wasn't anything important.
and i think you're just wrong... if what you're saying is true... and lets use competitive matches as an example. You're implying that the utility of the comm abilities is so great that it's undervalued. But that nobody uses it because it's not necessary because aliens can win without the use of commander abilities and given the option, people would rather cut costs than waste money on overkill.
Lets assume that you're correct and that was the current state of the meta and the drifter abilities. But lets also assume that marines can win on occasion. And even with a 75-25 split, there's still 25 percent marine wins. Also, apparently summer cup was a little more balanced.
We should be seeing non-stop usage of the drifter abilities in those games right? especially when the alien early game is not doing so hot. khammander should be spamming rupture and bone-wall and enzyme and hallucination non-stop. because, as you said, they're OP enough to swing the game in the alien's favor, but nobody uses it, because they like cutting costs.
and i was implying that you'd left reason and all forms of logic behind when you formed your argument.
you make a blanket statement that khamm abilities are brokenly OP, then go on to say that nobody used them because they were unnecessary... you've forgotten all the times aliens don't beat the tar out of marines and they're still not used.
These facts are a given 1) Drifter abilties are overpowered for their cost mostly because they are essentially free. +75% AS and increased bite range for a measly 2 tres (now 1 tres!). Stackable with sizeable +move speed and hallucinations that cost less than the scan counter.
Imagine if we now had a changelog that said all aliens get +75% AS, +2 move speed, regenerated armour quickly, and had a random chance of passively spawning hallucinations? Is this not blatantly op? The drifter ability costs are far from prohibitive of this kinda scenario playing out if people really wanted to. 3rt into drifter ability spam with gorge + 4skulk pack is probably now the strongest (high reward, low risk) alien strategy, whereas before it was babbler into fadeball and eggs.
2) Prior to this patch they were not used alot. I did not say they were undervalued because that would imply an efficiency standard that isn't being met. I only said they were not being used alot.
The only thing up for interpretation is why this was the case. Why do we have such op abilities that are not being used?
--
You're right that it's indeed helpful sometimes to step back and look at the bigger picture of aggregate win %. In this case, it is not. Every end result has a series of different causal event chains. Let's have a look at the specific gameflow prior to the alien commander pres restriction rules to find out why this is the case.
Earlygame
Before b252, competent aliens dominated the early game without the need for drifter play. You needed to be either incompetent (not outskilled - there's a difference between that and incompetence) or purposely throw the early game to come out of it at a disadvantage
Midgame
See above.
Basically, that "25%" was largely due to incompetence. And when you have incompetence, you have by definition inefficient use of abilities and power potentials. This why you have a loss % despite there being overpowered alien abilities. This is why it is not correct to argue "but if they were op, why didn't they use them when they found themselves losing?".
Why is this important to understand?
The overpowered issues that were making alien play ezmode are being addressed. You can no longer rely on
- babblers
- subpar marine movement
- free gorge comm + hydra/clog
- turbo res expansion
- easy fade ball and fade mobility
This means you are now more likely to require drifter play in order to get the best risk vs reward vs effort outcome. Although this remains to be seen with the lerk wildcard and a very new metagame.
I am not trying to "whiteknight" the alien comm pres restrictions with this. Largely solving alien tech explosion is itself more than enough justification. All i have tried to say is that drifter abilities were op and still are, yet were not used only due to the special case nature of how pre-b252 gameplay worked out.
@elodea So looking at a previous statement which you ignored it was stated that drifter usefulness falls off as the skill level of the aliens declines. Yes drifters are powerful when you have a skulk ball with a gorge pushing together, hardly the case in pubs, also the gorge heal spray will probably win that engagement more than you drifter ability will. No doubt the benefits the drifter can give in combat can be OP if applied to a good alien team, but in pubs these abilities go to waste most of the time due to lack of coordination in pubs. I don't command in competitive games, but I know comms used drifter a lot in them as support because of these benefits, maybe not so much anymore because of the cost, but we'll see. In pubs however, which I command because I don't enjoy pub stomping and like to give my team an experienced comm, drifters are not the OP thing that they may be in competitive matches. As such I can not justify using them as much unless I have the res for it, which isn't normally the case.
Back to the subject of this thread, the alien comm (in public games) is currently dull and uninteresting (most will agree). Lack of need of a kharmmander is a reason since there is really little he can do to help sway how his team is performing other than wait for the res ticks and then click a button to buy an upgrade (or play with drifters, still not that fun). The marine comm must be constantly watching pushes to med instantly or get forward bases when your marines make advances. The kharmmander just needs to cyst, wait, drop harvesters & drifters, wait, upgrades, twiddle thumbs, bla bla bla... It's boring that's the point. Before it was fun being an active gorge comm (can't do that, fine), at least give us our choices back. I understand focusing on a grouped life form's upgrades, but that limits us. People don't like being limited. Because after you upgrade a life form you then have to wait and wait until the biomass is high enough, not fun stuff.
I personally really enjoyed 250's alien commanding, felt like it gave a lot of flexibility and it wasn't boring for me because there were options (including being a gorge comm). I don't like that they changed it again (I like the new stuff in 253, just not the changes to the alien commanding). I wish we could find a better reason to keep the alien commander in the chair other than look what you can do with the drifters...
So in that case just remove the alien comm ability to exit the hive.
Utterly ridiculous.
If you think that an outplayed alien team could win before by massing up with drifter support, then you are underestimating their opponent's tactical ability. Even as slower marines, you can make the most of out of position aliens. If you can only fight a war on one front, you leave your flanks open. Good teams exploit that. Even in div3.
@elodea So looking at a previous statement which you ignored it was stated that drifter usefulness falls off as the skill level of the aliens declines
I ignored it because it was irrelevant and facetious. You understand the concept of balancing for equally skilled teams yes? Is it true for me to say medpacks are less useful the less skilled your marines are? yes. Is it at all a statement with any worth? no.
I personally really enjoyed 250's alien commanding, felt like it gave a lot of flexibility and it wasn't boring for me because there were options (including being a gorge comm). I don't like that they changed it again (I like the new stuff in 253, just not the changes to the alien commanding). I wish we could find a better reason to keep the alien commander in the chair other than look what you can do with the drifters...
? Then just go gorge? Drop your tres gorge egg if you want. Do a gorge swap if you want. There is now a tradeoff, that is all. You're kicking so much bruhaha over essentially a non-existent slight of mind. I highly doubt you have even ever done gorge alien comming, seeing as probabilistically 95%-100% of pub alien commanders don't.
So in that case just remove the alien comm ability to exit the hive.
Utterly ridiculous.
See above. Usually the UWE general forum is full of irrational rage and that's expected, but i have never seen it be this persistent in a long time. *I should add, it's either remove alien commander, allow tech explosions to continue their reign of terror, or this direction. The first is out of the question, the second is out of the question, which leaves us with the third. This forum can rail against this all it wants, but it must understand this is the only option atm that fits the scope. Provide solutions, not rage.
If you think that an outplayed alien team could win before by massing up with drifter support, then you are underestimating their opponent's tactical ability. Even as slower marines, you can make the most of out of position aliens. If you can only fight a war on one front, you leave your flanks open. Good teams exploit that. Even in div3.
lol. Yea, go right ahead, send your other marines to attack an empty side while all 5 aliens start enzyme killing your base from the other. Or just have them get demolished as well if the aliens are playng nice and don't want to base rush out of courtesy.
Honestly, i've said all i wanted to say. Drifter abilities are powerful, bordering on blatantly overpowered for anyone to see. I'm starting to think it's really not worth the time trying to convince the few who can't see that.
@elodea So looking at a previous statement which you ignored it was stated that drifter usefulness falls off as the skill level of the aliens declines
I ignored it because it was irrelevant and facetious. You understand the concept of balancing for equally skilled teams yes? Is it true for me to say medpacks are less useful the less skilled your marines are? yes. Is it at all a statement with any worth? no.
I personally really enjoyed 250's alien commanding, felt like it gave a lot of flexibility and it wasn't boring for me because there were options (including being a gorge comm). I don't like that they changed it again (I like the new stuff in 253, just not the changes to the alien commanding). I wish we could find a better reason to keep the alien commander in the chair other than look what you can do with the drifters...
? Then just go gorge? Drop your tres gorge egg if you want. Do a gorge swap if you want. There is now a tradeoff, that is all. You're kicking so much bruhaha over essentially a non-existent slight of mind. I highly doubt you have even ever done gorge alien comming, seeing as probabilistically 95%-100% of pub alien commanders don't.
So in that case just remove the alien comm ability to exit the hive.
Utterly ridiculous.
See above. Usually the UWE general forum is full of irrational rage and that's expected, but i have never seen it be this persistent in a long time. *I should add, it's either remove alien commander, allow tech explosions to continue their reign of terror, or this direction. The first is out of the question, the second is out of the question, which leaves us with the third. This forum can rail against this all it wants, but it must understand this is the only option atm that fits the scope.
If you think that an outplayed alien team could win before by massing up with drifter support, then you are underestimating their opponent's tactical ability. Even as slower marines, you can make the most of out of position aliens. If you can only fight a war on one front, you leave your flanks open. Good teams exploit that. Even in div3.
lol. Yea, go right ahead, send your other marines to attack an empty side while all 5 aliens start enzyme killing your base from the other. Or just have them get demolished as well if the aliens are playng nice and don't want to base rush out of courtesy.
Honestly, i've said all i wanted to say. Drifter abilities are powerful, bordering on blatantly overpowered for anyone to see. I'm starting to think it's really not worth the time trying to convince the few who can't see that.
Well then I guess I was that 0-5% that always did... Made the game interesting for me. Allowed me to be involved with the actual game other than watching and waiting. And what I was saying is the drifters usefulness decreases when the skill level of the alien team decreases. I'm not going to use a 8 res drifter on an alien that ground skulks the same amount I'm not going to med a marine that can't get any kills because of his aim and disregard for his environment. Yes the point is mute, but in the end it doesn't make the drifter useful (not going to enzyme an alien after even if he won the engagement like I give meds for marines).
I didn't read the last three posts but I wanted to say something about drifters.
---
I don't use them because they are **** tedious to use.
You have to select the drifter, select the ability, select the are in which you want it to use, and then the drifter has to travel over there.
The alien commander is now more influencing on the battlefield, demanding more of your time and is therefore more meaningful. But if you dont try to use these features and just "drop and go".. then yea.. its going to be a boring experience.
You make it sound like people don't know how to play the game and they must be forced to use supposed useful abilities. If the abilities are useful commanders will use them, the fact that they don't means they are not. If the alien commander had more meaningful influence from hive, they would stay there, you wouldn't need to force it on players.
I don't know how you can argue otherwise.
Drifter abilities, and rupture/spike are actually useful to the point of being blatantly overpowered for their cost. The reason they wern't used often in the meta however was because you didn't need to use them to win. you used them only if you wanted to be fancy.
Now with the 0 comm pres and stronger marine movement, their use will most likely become more abundant.
That's all well and good, and giving more reason to confine the khammander to the hive should promote more of this kind of micro, but at the current 8 res per drifter the risk compared to reward seems too high. Should at least go back to being invisible when stationary at that kind of cost to up the reward a little and mitigate the risk, while justifying the inflated cost - or bring the cost down.
I didn't read the last three posts but I wanted to say something about drifters.
---
I don't use them because they are **** tedious to use.
You have to select the drifter, select the ability, select the are in which you want it to use, and then the drifter has to travel over there.
Compare this to a scan: Press e, press d, click.
yes there are more steps, but you can also use the hotkey for "select nearest drifter" which speeds things up:
E + F + A (enzyme) -> click
@elodea Are you playing the same game that everybody else are playing ? Drifters ability can be usefull in combat ? Yeah. But a game changer ? No. A gorge healing skulks in fight has more influence.
And concidering all others support ability, you need to have infestation, so only usefull in defencive fight. Here again, a gorge has more impact.
@Sewlek is there anychance you rethink that crappy tech tree ?
Still, the drifter's travelling time is what matters most, probably.
Sure, there is a lot you can do about position to minimize it, but as most fights happen on the frontline it's somewhat risky to place your drifter there (even more considering the res).
I'll have to agree, this is a shitty way to 'force' more gorges from players. If you actually made it so the alien commander wasn't a tedious part-time activity, maybe the commanders wouldn't be able to spend their p.res on being a part-time gorge to begin with...
Just another one of those 'fixing the symptoms rather than the actual cause' solutions that UWE loves to throw out.
Also, on the tech tree; I honestly still don't understand why this was necessary. With biomass, alien abilities now cost plenty of T.res and have plenty of prerequisites, there is really NO reason why you should sacrifice the khammander's ease of use for some obscure and illogical tech-path cost inflation. Unless it was done to make certain structures like whips more common, which would be an equally terrible reason of course. I have yet to meet one person who actually likes this dodgy tech path implementation, all it does is needlessly complicate playing the alien commander. (I don't WANT a whip so why would you force me to build one to get access to leap?)
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited September 2013
I feel like @Elodea is talking to a wall in here ..
Have any of you actually tried used drifters in supporting combat situations of late?
You say they're slow but they are insanely fast now. You don't need your drifter to sit in the room, exposed and vulnerable. Just peek and cast.
Adding to the countering of the "their abilities are only good for skilled players" fallacy.. Its like those that are saying this haven't used anything other than enzymes??
Does more evasive speed help less skilled players? Yes.
Does on the fly healing help less skilled players? Yes.
Does creating multiple decoy hallucinations help less skilled players? Yes.
Oh yeah, and does allowing a less skilled player to chomp down a phase gate or marine before they are killed help less skilled players? Yup.
.. Seriously.. Its like you guys are arguing as if you are playing 250 still. Elodea is trying to tell you to go try these race cars that cheaply (not considering the cost of drifters, since it includes knowing how not to just leave them sitting around, motionless) influence combat more than you recall or have realized.
And i have to agree.. Go try them first in earnest. You might change your mind.
On that note my feedback is that the casting distance needs to be increased by a good 30% since not all rooms are created equal. (hello main hall)
I agree that the alien techtree still feels unfinished. So many unintuitive things with it....
The evolution chamber in the beta-test is better than researching upgrades in single chambers, but I would question if it is actually necessary to upgrade single classes after you already got the biomass upgrade. I would rather upgrade/unlock different tiers of abilitys than different classes, just so no player in my team gets put into a disadvantage. I dont want to get stuck with no upgrades as lerk just because my khamm thinks they suck and has other priorities.
I would suggest to keep the biomass-system to upgrade and unlock abilitys. An idea I had (probably nothing new) was to use the evolution-chamber for small upgrades. For example +5% to the carapace upgrade. Nothing gamebraking, just to give the khamm some more options if he wants to tech instead of expanding or building units mid- to lategame.
Other than that: Try to keep it simple and I wish there was a better way to find and select different units on the battlefiled
I agree that the alien techtree still feels unfinished. So many unintuitive things with it....
The evolution chamber in the beta-test is better than researching upgrades in single chambers, but I would question if it is actually necessary to upgrade single classes after you already got the biomass upgrade. I would rather upgrade/unlock different tiers of abilitys than different classes, just so no player in my team gets put into a disadvantage. I dont want to get stuck with no upgrades as lerk just because my khamm thinks they suck and has other priorities.
I would suggest to keep the biomass-system to upgrade and unlock abilitys. An idea I had (probably nothing new) was to use the evolution-chamber for small upgrades. For example +5% to the carapace upgrade. Nothing gamebraking, just to give the khamm some more options if he wants to tech instead of expanding or building units mid- to lategame.
Other than that: Try to keep it simple and I wish there was a better way to find and select different units on the battlefiled
The thing is if we remove any research abilities and just link everything to biomass that makes the alien commander even less interesting than it already is. At that point there's virtually no choice, it's just saving up resources and waiting to move along a completely linear tech path.
If we're going to keep the alien commander around we want it to actually be interesting and require some creativity, and getting rid of trait research completely just limits the kham even more.
I think it was mentioned in patch notes that drifters can follow aliens now. DIdn't try it yet, but...
What if...
You make drifter follow an alien.
You set drifter ability that will be auto cast on alien followed enzyme request (comm won't get enzyme request sound in this case).
Now you get a skulk that can enzyme himself whenever he wants.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Did I use drifters this patch? YES I always use drifters this patch.
Old drifter:
* cheap.
* took correct placement due to drifter speed, thus making the kham think more.
* could be used to soak damage & distract.
* had all drifter abilities it has now.
New:
* fast, so can be brainlessly left deep in own lines.
* created on any infestation, reducing the need for said speed.
* costly, breaking the use for damage soak for skulks.
* reduced to boring motion clicks to keep the bloody thing in range of combat but of bullets. You either send the drifter out combat in between abilities, or keep queing moves so you dont have time to use any other structure ability, like heal, ink.
* Does more evasive speed help less skilled players?
- Perhaps, but I find what we lose far worse a deal.
* Does on the fly healing help less skilled players?
- if its that fast, have no healing. its at a hive or crag in no time.
* Does creating multiple decoy hallucinations help less skilled players?
- Because clicking a hallucination ability which is very cheap, more then once is hard right?
* Oh yeah, and does allowing a less skilled player to chomp down a phase gate or marine before they are killed help less skilled players?
- old drifter did this just as well.
It seems I am also talking to a wall here.
Yes the drifters can be used.
Yes the drifters can be kept alive.
Yes they are fast.
But it still is just movement clicks in between ability usage we already had. I can not speak for anyone but me, but I find movement clicks boring.
Before the patch you could use drifter abilities, use it to soak damage, or use some chambers or whips to help your aliens as drifters were so cheap. Now any dying drifter is a loss, forcing you to either keep busy with the damn drifter, or not use them if you want to use any chamber/whip.
Choices became less not more. Yes its still doable to use every ability in the book if you are fast enough well.. new khams aint. Which means they get an even more boring job, and if this is aimed at newbie khams I cant honestly see the use.
Comments
how about hot swap the gorgemander at the start of the game, and just drop a lerk egg for the guy that started at 0 res? would this effectively be a work around do you think? it might delay second hive a little, but what else is there to spend res on?
You make it sound like people don't know how to play the game and they must be forced to use supposed useful abilities. If the abilities are useful commanders will use them, the fact that they don't means they are not. If the alien commander had more meaningful influence from hive, they would stay there, you wouldn't need to force it on players.
I don't know how you can argue otherwise.
Now with the 0 comm pres and stronger marine movement, their use will most likely become more abundant.
strongly disagree. The kham almost has no new abilities compared to 250. Drifters had abilities then, they do now.
Khams only additional ability now is that infestation bomb.
Most of the time you are dropping structures and upgrading.
Drifters are very costly and while it can be argued that a good kham will keep them alive, many marines shoot any drifter on sight, fully knowing the abilities they have.
This leaves the kham with a game of 'move the drifter loads while sometimes buffing his alien friends with drifter abilities' & placing structures. Its even more interesting shoving structures and whips around the map for support combat then it is to use drifters.
It gets finally interesting with multiple drifters so enought live long enought & spamming all drifter abilities in strategic spots.
The egg on infestation, while drifters are expensive, allows for fast drifter replacement making strategic placement & premovement of a drifter even less important. Thir speed also makes it even less important to correctly preplace drifters. It again makes the job more boring.
Bonewall and the likes, while useful and effective can not always be used, but even those are far better then any drifter for anything which isnt a mindnumbing kham buffbot
ummm, if it were optimal, and thus justified for their cost, they'd have been used more. Of the abilities I saw used, enzyme was the most. bone wall toward end game to protect or trap higher life-forms and exos. enzyme was most used for grinding down gates faster.
saying that drifter abilities and rupture and bone wall are blatantly overpowered... is very easy to say, but it was just not borne out. If they were actually cost effective, they would have been used more. and some were. I've seen hallucinate used a couple of times, and storm used never. neither has rupture.
Wow, way to white knight an inelegant and ugly design decision. you basically just argued that the khamm abilities are so op, that people that want to win find they made winning too easy so intentionally chose not to use them, as a self imposed handicap.
Congrats, oh wait, look behind you, there's reason, you haven't seen him in a long long time have you?
You basically provided the same answer in your first sentence. They were previously not needed to win, which gives a sub optimal cost/benefit decision. If you didn't need medpacks to win, would you use them? 0 additional real utility for >0 cost. Welcome to the world of practical min/max.
I think you've drastically misunderstood the state of the game in previous builds.
*i dont really understand what you were saying in your last paragraph. Hope it wasn't anything important.
I don't think we play the same game. saccing 8 res drifters for an enzyme... yeah... not gonna happen. if they were good, people would've found a way to work them into gameplans. as it stands, just go drop a gorge egg, get out and be useful.
Way to be so passive aggressive, insulting his experience in ns2 gameplay... Most people who started playing ns2 since it was released have just as much gameplay experience as you, even if you we're a beta tester. We know how drifters are used... Not complicated, but not useful early game as they cost as much as a res node and don't significantly influence battles.
My point is as skill level drops off the usefulness of drifters drop off... So for a com who knows what he is doing on a team full of noobs getting out and gorging is way more helpful...
I have to disagree with this. Enzymes usefulness comes with destroying structures, not so much PvP combat. Why? Because a good skulk (one that's 30-3) is timing their bites when they know they can land one. If he was already doing that well, does he really need an enzyme anyway? At the risk of losing 8 res? No, probably not. Enzyme is only "helpful" in PvP with lawnmower skulks, the ones that just hold the attack button down, and like you said, you wouldn't enzyme that guy either.
Honestly, they should just drop the drifter price down to 4 res. Remove it's ability to cast enzyme and create a new unit (one that drifter's can spawn) that performs the task of hallucination/storming/enzyme-ing units. It can either A) run into a room and explode, releasing the enzyme in a cloud for # of seconds or
Looking at each drifter ability by itself, its obvious they are really very strong. So why wern't they used? You never saw it used alot previously because alien early game was guaranteed, and you could then simply win with fade ball. So that instead of spending tres on comm abilities, you would just save it for replacement fade tres eggs and so on.
Regarding your point, let's take a two step evaluation
1) Are drifter abilities worth using for their power to cost ratio? yes
2) Are drifters worth building at 8 tres? I think so.
- Cheaper than a gorge egg
- Pretty much invincible unlike a gorge. I don't want to argue this point. They just are, and if your drifter isn't invincible you arn't using it properly.
- Can drop harvesters and build them without having to travel long distances. Much faster than gorge as well.
- Can use cheap and powerful combat buffs
and i think you're just wrong... if what you're saying is true... and lets use competitive matches as an example. You're implying that the utility of the comm abilities is so great that it's undervalued. But that nobody uses it because it's not necessary because aliens can win without the use of commander abilities and given the option, people would rather cut costs than waste money on overkill.
Lets assume that you're correct and that was the current state of the meta and the drifter abilities. But lets also assume that marines can win on occasion. And even with a 75-25 split, there's still 25 percent marine wins. Also, apparently summer cup was a little more balanced.
We should be seeing non-stop usage of the drifter abilities in those games right? especially when the alien early game is not doing so hot. khammander should be spamming rupture and bone-wall and enzyme and hallucination non-stop. because, as you said, they're OP enough to swing the game in the alien's favor, but nobody uses it, because they like cutting costs.
and i was implying that you'd left reason and all forms of logic behind when you formed your argument.
you make a blanket statement that khamm abilities are brokenly OP, then go on to say that nobody used them because they were unnecessary... you've forgotten all the times aliens don't beat the tar out of marines and they're still not used.
1) Drifter abilties are overpowered for their cost mostly because they are essentially free. +75% AS and increased bite range for a measly 2 tres (now 1 tres!). Stackable with sizeable +move speed and hallucinations that cost less than the scan counter.
Imagine if we now had a changelog that said all aliens get +75% AS, +2 move speed, regenerated armour quickly, and had a random chance of passively spawning hallucinations? Is this not blatantly op? The drifter ability costs are far from prohibitive of this kinda scenario playing out if people really wanted to. 3rt into drifter ability spam with gorge + 4skulk pack is probably now the strongest (high reward, low risk) alien strategy, whereas before it was babbler into fadeball and eggs.
2) Prior to this patch they were not used alot. I did not say they were undervalued because that would imply an efficiency standard that isn't being met. I only said they were not being used alot.
The only thing up for interpretation is why this was the case. Why do we have such op abilities that are not being used?
--
You're right that it's indeed helpful sometimes to step back and look at the bigger picture of aggregate win %. In this case, it is not. Every end result has a series of different causal event chains. Let's have a look at the specific gameflow prior to the alien commander pres restriction rules to find out why this is the case.
Earlygame
Before b252, competent aliens dominated the early game without the need for drifter play. You needed to be either incompetent (not outskilled - there's a difference between that and incompetence) or purposely throw the early game to come out of it at a disadvantage
Midgame
See above.
Basically, that "25%" was largely due to incompetence. And when you have incompetence, you have by definition inefficient use of abilities and power potentials. This why you have a loss % despite there being overpowered alien abilities. This is why it is not correct to argue "but if they were op, why didn't they use them when they found themselves losing?".
Why is this important to understand?
The overpowered issues that were making alien play ezmode are being addressed. You can no longer rely on
- babblers
- subpar marine movement
- free gorge comm + hydra/clog
- turbo res expansion
- easy fade ball and fade mobility
This means you are now more likely to require drifter play in order to get the best risk vs reward vs effort outcome. Although this remains to be seen with the lerk wildcard and a very new metagame.
I am not trying to "whiteknight" the alien comm pres restrictions with this. Largely solving alien tech explosion is itself more than enough justification. All i have tried to say is that drifter abilities were op and still are, yet were not used only due to the special case nature of how pre-b252 gameplay worked out.
Back to the subject of this thread, the alien comm (in public games) is currently dull and uninteresting (most will agree). Lack of need of a kharmmander is a reason since there is really little he can do to help sway how his team is performing other than wait for the res ticks and then click a button to buy an upgrade (or play with drifters, still not that fun). The marine comm must be constantly watching pushes to med instantly or get forward bases when your marines make advances. The kharmmander just needs to cyst, wait, drop harvesters & drifters, wait, upgrades, twiddle thumbs, bla bla bla... It's boring that's the point. Before it was fun being an active gorge comm (can't do that, fine), at least give us our choices back. I understand focusing on a grouped life form's upgrades, but that limits us. People don't like being limited. Because after you upgrade a life form you then have to wait and wait until the biomass is high enough, not fun stuff.
I personally really enjoyed 250's alien commanding, felt like it gave a lot of flexibility and it wasn't boring for me because there were options (including being a gorge comm). I don't like that they changed it again (I like the new stuff in 253, just not the changes to the alien commanding). I wish we could find a better reason to keep the alien commander in the chair other than look what you can do with the drifters...
Utterly ridiculous.
If you think that an outplayed alien team could win before by massing up with drifter support, then you are underestimating their opponent's tactical ability. Even as slower marines, you can make the most of out of position aliens. If you can only fight a war on one front, you leave your flanks open. Good teams exploit that. Even in div3.
? Then just go gorge? Drop your tres gorge egg if you want. Do a gorge swap if you want. There is now a tradeoff, that is all. You're kicking so much bruhaha over essentially a non-existent slight of mind. I highly doubt you have even ever done gorge alien comming, seeing as probabilistically 95%-100% of pub alien commanders don't.
See above. Usually the UWE general forum is full of irrational rage and that's expected, but i have never seen it be this persistent in a long time. *I should add, it's either remove alien commander, allow tech explosions to continue their reign of terror, or this direction. The first is out of the question, the second is out of the question, which leaves us with the third. This forum can rail against this all it wants, but it must understand this is the only option atm that fits the scope. Provide solutions, not rage.
lol. Yea, go right ahead, send your other marines to attack an empty side while all 5 aliens start enzyme killing your base from the other. Or just have them get demolished as well if the aliens are playng nice and don't want to base rush out of courtesy.
Honestly, i've said all i wanted to say. Drifter abilities are powerful, bordering on blatantly overpowered for anyone to see. I'm starting to think it's really not worth the time trying to convince the few who can't see that.
Well then I guess I was that 0-5% that always did... Made the game interesting for me. Allowed me to be involved with the actual game other than watching and waiting. And what I was saying is the drifters usefulness decreases when the skill level of the alien team decreases. I'm not going to use a 8 res drifter on an alien that ground skulks the same amount I'm not going to med a marine that can't get any kills because of his aim and disregard for his environment. Yes the point is mute, but in the end it doesn't make the drifter useful (not going to enzyme an alien after even if he won the engagement like I give meds for marines).
---
I don't use them because they are **** tedious to use.
You have to select the drifter, select the ability, select the are in which you want it to use, and then the drifter has to travel over there.
Compare this to a scan: Press e, press d, click.
That's all well and good, and giving more reason to confine the khammander to the hive should promote more of this kind of micro, but at the current 8 res per drifter the risk compared to reward seems too high. Should at least go back to being invisible when stationary at that kind of cost to up the reward a little and mitigate the risk, while justifying the inflated cost - or bring the cost down.
yes there are more steps, but you can also use the hotkey for "select nearest drifter" which speeds things up:
E + F + A (enzyme) -> click
And concidering all others support ability, you need to have infestation, so only usefull in defencive fight. Here again, a gorge has more impact.
@Sewlek is there anychance you rethink that crappy tech tree ?
Still, the drifter's travelling time is what matters most, probably.
Sure, there is a lot you can do about position to minimize it, but as most fights happen on the frontline it's somewhat risky to place your drifter there (even more considering the res).
Just another one of those 'fixing the symptoms rather than the actual cause' solutions that UWE loves to throw out.
Also, on the tech tree; I honestly still don't understand why this was necessary. With biomass, alien abilities now cost plenty of T.res and have plenty of prerequisites, there is really NO reason why you should sacrifice the khammander's ease of use for some obscure and illogical tech-path cost inflation. Unless it was done to make certain structures like whips more common, which would be an equally terrible reason of course. I have yet to meet one person who actually likes this dodgy tech path implementation, all it does is needlessly complicate playing the alien commander. (I don't WANT a whip so why would you force me to build one to get access to leap?)
Have any of you actually tried used drifters in supporting combat situations of late?
You say they're slow but they are insanely fast now. You don't need your drifter to sit in the room, exposed and vulnerable. Just peek and cast.
Adding to the countering of the "their abilities are only good for skilled players" fallacy.. Its like those that are saying this haven't used anything other than enzymes??
Does more evasive speed help less skilled players? Yes.
Does on the fly healing help less skilled players? Yes.
Does creating multiple decoy hallucinations help less skilled players? Yes.
Oh yeah, and does allowing a less skilled player to chomp down a phase gate or marine before they are killed help less skilled players? Yup.
.. Seriously.. Its like you guys are arguing as if you are playing 250 still. Elodea is trying to tell you to go try these race cars that cheaply (not considering the cost of drifters, since it includes knowing how not to just leave them sitting around, motionless) influence combat more than you recall or have realized.
And i have to agree.. Go try them first in earnest. You might change your mind.
On that note my feedback is that the casting distance needs to be increased by a good 30% since not all rooms are created equal. (hello main hall)
The evolution chamber in the beta-test is better than researching upgrades in single chambers, but I would question if it is actually necessary to upgrade single classes after you already got the biomass upgrade. I would rather upgrade/unlock different tiers of abilitys than different classes, just so no player in my team gets put into a disadvantage. I dont want to get stuck with no upgrades as lerk just because my khamm thinks they suck and has other priorities.
I would suggest to keep the biomass-system to upgrade and unlock abilitys. An idea I had (probably nothing new) was to use the evolution-chamber for small upgrades. For example +5% to the carapace upgrade. Nothing gamebraking, just to give the khamm some more options if he wants to tech instead of expanding or building units mid- to lategame.
Other than that: Try to keep it simple and I wish there was a better way to find and select different units on the battlefiled
The thing is if we remove any research abilities and just link everything to biomass that makes the alien commander even less interesting than it already is. At that point there's virtually no choice, it's just saving up resources and waiting to move along a completely linear tech path.
If we're going to keep the alien commander around we want it to actually be interesting and require some creativity, and getting rid of trait research completely just limits the kham even more.
What if...
You make drifter follow an alien.
You set drifter ability that will be auto cast on alien followed enzyme request (comm won't get enzyme request sound in this case).
Now you get a skulk that can enzyme himself whenever he wants.
Isn't that awesome?
Old drifter:
* cheap.
* took correct placement due to drifter speed, thus making the kham think more.
* could be used to soak damage & distract.
* had all drifter abilities it has now.
New:
* fast, so can be brainlessly left deep in own lines.
* created on any infestation, reducing the need for said speed.
* costly, breaking the use for damage soak for skulks.
* reduced to boring motion clicks to keep the bloody thing in range of combat but of bullets. You either send the drifter out combat in between abilities, or keep queing moves so you dont have time to use any other structure ability, like heal, ink.
* Does more evasive speed help less skilled players?
- Perhaps, but I find what we lose far worse a deal.
* Does on the fly healing help less skilled players?
- if its that fast, have no healing. its at a hive or crag in no time.
* Does creating multiple decoy hallucinations help less skilled players?
- Because clicking a hallucination ability which is very cheap, more then once is hard right?
* Oh yeah, and does allowing a less skilled player to chomp down a phase gate or marine before they are killed help less skilled players?
- old drifter did this just as well.
It seems I am also talking to a wall here.
Yes the drifters can be used.
Yes the drifters can be kept alive.
Yes they are fast.
But it still is just movement clicks in between ability usage we already had. I can not speak for anyone but me, but I find movement clicks boring.
Before the patch you could use drifter abilities, use it to soak damage, or use some chambers or whips to help your aliens as drifters were so cheap. Now any dying drifter is a loss, forcing you to either keep busy with the damn drifter, or not use them if you want to use any chamber/whip.
Choices became less not more. Yes its still doable to use every ability in the book if you are fast enough well.. new khams aint. Which means they get an even more boring job, and if this is aimed at newbie khams I cant honestly see the use.