well the first/second step would be to buff Ink in some sort of fashion, whether it's increased duration, reduced cooldown, increased range, allowing multiple shades to ink together, or decreasing the res cost of inking.
But then we will have the problem of unarcable (yes unarcable is now a word) hives as ink blocks arcs from arcing.
ps. did i mention the word arc?
ink is pretty garbage if you think about it. all it does is stop arcs from firing on whatever is in the INK cloud for 5 seconds every 15 seconds assuming you micro it, not to mention it can only be done in a single area. so that means it will take 33% longer to arc out a hive if the khammander micro's ink every 15 seconds. Not to mention marines can take a GL to a shade and kill with very little effort.
Sure being able to keep up a hive for 33% longer can mean the difference between victory or defeat. but you probably spent 30+ res on inking alone and another 10 or 15 on the shade itself, for aliens that's extremely massive. you could practically upgrade abilities for a lifeform of your choice and have enough res for a whip or harvester still. It's just not cost effective enough to be a reliable counter to arcs. not to mention if it's set on fire it doesn't cloak or ink at all and you're completely helpless.
Can a decent comm still completely shut down a shade start by scanning properly? The issue with shade for me is that every other alien start scales with skill. The better the skill of your team, the better you can use that ability to offset the skill of the other team. This wasn't true with shade, because a shade start entirely rested on the other commander not knowing how to counter shade start, making it a dice roll (and consequently making me hate it)
To me, you can't really fix shade without fixing that fundamental gap. Shade must have an ability that a good team can utilize that doesn't come down to "I hope the other team is just bad". A skilled team using shade must be able to force the opposing team to match them with equal skill, just as the other two starts do (or at least they did the last time I played)
Not much you can do to make it as good as the other two without redoing a lot of stuff. Honestly I don't see why we have to anyway. We have two hives that are viable at hive one, this offers some variety, and shade hive is definitely viable for the second hive, so it's not always dead last or anything. The shade abilities are much more about changing how you choose to engage. Unlike the other two hives which are in combat buffs. This means shade is more of a "support" type of hive, because it "helps" you get in or out of good combat situations. So I don't see a problem with the "support hive" being the second hive, and not the first.
Shade hive is awesome, only needs a few (the more the better) buffs to hallucinations:
Health bars over halu structures, player name over halu aliens (since they are replicas of aliens anyway), so you can't insta tell it's not real.
More possible hallucinations at the same time, say one cast per each drifter or each entity can have one of it's own (new cast destroys all previous hallucinations as for now).
Crags, whips, shades, shifts should be hallucinatable (I hope it's a word).
No Hallucination death messages. First hallucination killed -> everybody knows kham uses hallucinations. If marines don't communicate enough, kham is going to have better chance of tricking marines.
Follow nearest alien button for hallucinations, same as drifters have.
Some questionable suggestions:
Halu harvesters allowed only at infested resource points (did you even know you can hallucinate harvesters?). Odds are, you'd want to place real harvester in infested area. To make it more useful, how about hallucinating a harvester and a cyst at any unoccupied resource (killing either cyst or harvester destroys whole illusion).
Halu hive gives hive drop sound.
Second cast on hive's illusion makes it appear as grown hive with some infestation under it.
Hallucinatable upgrades (and hallucinations should be movable, why would you want hallucination of stationary structure in the same spot).
Hallucinations charging and attacking (for no damage) any nearby marines or their structures.
Ink playing some random alien sounds (attack, footsteps, taunts) with sound emitters at random spots within range.
Hallucinations are actually really powerful with the right micro. They are bullet sponges drawing ammo out of marines magazine. In this regard they are close to a massive health buff for the alien PLUS distraction that messes with the marine skill. But I agree, that they are difficult to use. Even with the new feature of selecting them faster it is too cumbersome. (a better AI sounds like a lot of work and I think it is unlikely to be implemented)
The other important point I agree with, is that shade can pretty much be countered by many obs + scans. There needs to be one additional feature to mitigate this hard counter.
So a solution could be:
take the "hallucination" ability from the drifter and put it to the assist tab so it is usable without a drifter
when used, auto-select the hallucinations
Now we got free places on the drifter. There could be many ways to use them to mitigate the hard counter obs & scans are to phantom. Some ideas for example:
a distortion effect on the mini-map that blocks motion tracking by scan & obs completely for a short time. (Marines will see the distortion on the map, but they won't know if there are aliens in it, how many or if it is a bluff)
the drifter could hook up to an obs / cover it and completely disables the scanning until it is shot down from it. (would need animation)
all aliens in vicinity of a drifter will not be shown on the minimap or with motion tracking from an obs. (scan should work) This ability don't has to be passive. If to powerful, make it activate-able for x seconds and balance over resource-price.
give drifters the cloak ability as activate-able back, but make them blind while cloaked, so we don't get the problem with invisible scouts back.
There sure are more ways to make shade a more interesting first choice. But I think the important things are: Easier hallucination handling!
Mitigating the hard counter that obs & scan are to the shade path.
I'm in the minority here, but I thought cloak was much better with 100% invisibility.
^^ Could not possibly agree more.
Level 3 phantom should render you completely 100% invisible when not moving. (no matter what their graphics settings are)
The way it is currently just plain sucks, because there are those certain few Marine players who can somehow very easily see lvl 3 phantom aliens who aren't moving.
Which makes it just damned annoying, Phantom usually works on all but 1 or 2 Marine players. It leaves me wondering just how easily they can see through lvl 3 phantom with their graphic settings.
- Anything at all to make phantom more viable would be welcome. In the past month there has only been one game I've played where shade was one of the first two hives. In 99% of the games I play it is the last upgrade, despite being by far the most useful for Skulks and Lerks. (for me anyway)
I'm in the minority here, but I thought cloak was much better with 100% invisibility.
^^ Could not possibly agree more.
Level 3 phantom should render you completely 100% invisible when not moving. (no matter what their graphics settings are)
The way it is currently just plain sucks, because there are those certain few Marine players who can somehow very easily see lvl 3 phantom aliens who aren't moving.
Which makes it just damned annoying, Phantom usually works on all but 1 or 2 Marine players. It leaves me wondering just how easily they can see through lvl 3 phantom with their graphic settings.
- Anything at all to make phantom more viable would be welcome. In the past month there has only been one game I've played where shade was one of the first two hives. In 99% of the games I play it is the last upgrade, despite being by far the most useful for Skulks and Lerks. (for me anyway)
But 100% invis while moving was overpowered like hell. I'm not sure, but right now you should be 100% invis when completely still. (DONT move the mouse!) And that works for me most of the time when I'm not at completely obvious places.
Shade can be a very strong opening hive, but thats all it is really, strong opening, a good marine commander will just start scanning areas before marines move in (he should be doing that anyway) if aliens go shade there should be a fast the normal 2nd hive.
But if you have a good alien team, it wont matter how much scans the commander uses cause most time as a skulk i use aura then if i have to i switch to phantom
Phantom is pretty damn good already in the early game. Even if the commander reacts by building an obs and scanning, he'll be forced to spend a lot of tres on it. The reason shade hive is used less is, as others mentioned before, because hallucinations are much less useful than mucous and enzyme, and because spurs/shells become more vital towards the end-game, even though ink is a pretty nice ability to delay arc sieges on typical arc maps like tram. Buffing phantom to have like 100% invisi won't solve anything. It'll just be a noob trap.
Ultimately, not having shift upgrades in late game is a no-no, likewise for crag upgrades, which is why shade just gets left behind somewhat.
Whatever may or may not be changed, please don't go with obfuscation. There's enough of that already (way too much in fact). Things that screw up enemies' vision or sound are flat out bad game mechanics and should be avoided at all costs (I'm looking at you, original gorge spit, rupture, umbra, spores, old nutrient mist, low-heath vision/sound impairment... have I missed any?).
Things that screw up enemies' vision or sound are flat out bad game mechanics and should be avoided at all costs (I'm looking at you, original gorge spit, rupture, umbra, spores, old nutrient mist, low-heath vision/sound impairment... have I missed any?).
Ultimately, not having shift upgrades in late game is a no-no, likewise for crag upgrades, which is why shade just gets left behind somewhat.
Whatever may or may not be changed, please don't go with obfuscation. There's enough of that already (way too much in fact). Things that screw up enemies' vision or sound are flat out bad game mechanics and should be avoided at all costs (I'm looking at you, original gorge spit, rupture, umbra, spores, old nutrient mist, low-heath vision/sound impairment... have I missed any?).
Frankly? I thinks it's way more convenient to have Shade lategame than crag. It keeps lerks useful, and allows Onos and Fades to pick the low-health marines (and you get to know the precise health of Exos, too). PLUS you have a slight defense against arcs, which are more frequent in late game, too.
It would be great, if every player could use hallucination. Shift and crag -hives allow players to take damage and move faster so that aliens can stay and fight longer against marines. Personal hallucination could achieve same thing by redirecting damage. Sure, khammander can do that job, too, but he can't be everywhere at once. And I agree with Kamamura. Hallucinations should auto-attack nearby marines.
Let players tether a hallucination to some space beside them, from then on it just clones the player movement, so a marine would have a 50/50 chance, but players could do tricks to make a marine think one is real, and the other fake.
Just a random idea.
Or maybe an alien can splice into another, or 2 other versions of itself, all three become transparent, the fake ones disappear after the player takes a certain amount of damage, or time, and the player does not give off blood when damaged, as to blend it in with the fakes, or they all give off blood damage.
Let players tether a hallucination to some space beside them, from then on it just clones the player movement, so a marine would have a 50/50 chance, but players could do tricks to make a marine think one is real, and the other fake.
Just a random idea.
How will you do this? What if you come close to a wall? What is with wallrunning skulks? Will it be useful for a big onos that takes so much space?
I don't think it is possible to make it not obvious. Controlling them active as kham is more convincing.
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited December 2013
Too much of the shade tech is hard countered by low level marine tech: Phantom - Scan, Aura - Nano Shield/Catpack. Ink - Focus fire on Shade or use a Flamethrower.
Without both the extra toughness from Crag hive and the agility from Shift hive, aliens are disadvantaged against "equally" skilled marines on level 2+ arms lab upgrades.
Shade hive techtree also lacks synergy between its own arsenal. Whereas Crag and Shift hives' upgrades and abilities multiply their effectives when used in tandem (Carapace + Mucus = super toughness; Celerity/Adren + Storm Cloud = rabid killing machines).
Hallucination does not work effectively with Phantom or Aura, unless the alien team can out-maneuver the marines through precise coordination, which would mean that the marine players are already outclassed.
Even if hallucination AI is vastly improved, Shade tech will only remain a nuisance to inexperienced marine teams (because Hallucinations are hard countered by Scan).
well the first/second step would be to buff Ink in some sort of fashion, whether it's increased duration, reduced cooldown, increased range, allowing multiple shades to ink together, or decreasing the res cost of inking.
But then we will have the problem of unarcable (yes unarcable is now a word) hives as ink blocks arcs from arcing.
ps. did i mention the word arc?
ink is pretty garbage if you think about it. all it does is stop arcs from firing on whatever is in the INK cloud for 5 seconds every 15 seconds assuming you micro it,
It also puts an annoying ripple effect on marine vision
What if Hallucinations, instead of duplicating aliens, actually simply displaced them visually (like the old D&D Displacer Beast)? Make last for a certain amount of damage or timed duration?
What if Hallucinations, instead of duplicating aliens, actually simply displaced them visually (like the old D&D Displacer Beast)? Make last for a certain amount of damage or timed duration?
Just a random thought...
I like this idea!
Could work if the displacement wasn't fixed, but a constantly shifting displacement around the origin so you can still potentially figure out where your target is, like some kind of kaleidoscope effect. I always thought this would be a cool implementation of 'camouflage' (or even, phantom while being scanned) but works well as a drifter effect also.
Also +1 to the 'group feign death' idea somewhere above
I like the idea of creating false sounds... Dropping a fake hive causing the rine team to ether scan and give away their knowledge of a dropped hive, or potentially running in on a fake hive only to be out of position...
Maybe allow shade drifters to sound like a particular life form for a short duration .... "Oh crap onos every body group up and cut it off... Wait what? It's just a drifter..."
Personally my awareness is 50% listening, 30% mini map, 20% visual... Silence throws me way off, if you add in some fake sounds, I'd be messed up...
The ideas about fake hives and so on are all very well, but the scan is too hard a counter for this. To force the scan (and only a green comm wouldn't scan if someone said they heard a hive drop), it costs 15 res for the hive hallucination. That's a terrible return on investment at present and could really use a bit of tweaking. There are a lot of cool ideas in this thread that would have potential, provided a bit of reworking of the shift hive is done in parallel.
Hallucination FTW!
Well, ok, it's only useful with inexperienced player. But last week, i had great fun with the hallucination as kham
I think i've seen shade 1st two times in Reddog stream (in div2 or 3 game) so it probably need a buff.
Making hallucination running to the marine would be a good start.
Upgrade are in good shape (maybe camo 100% when NOT MOVING, 95% when walking?) but my need for crag/shift upgrade in mid-late-game overwhelm my love for shade 1st ^^.
PS: just read the "F" tips on drifter for autoselect hallu. Sounds amazing. Will definitely go shade 1st tonight to test
The thing is, I'm kinda glad hallucinations don't emulate alien behavior all that well, and are not used that often. Mucous and enzyme improves aliens in their encounters too, but it still requires some skill on their side in order to actually kill marines. So, it's not THAT frustrating as a marine to lose a fight if they manage to land their bites while you don't land enough hits. It was just a fair battle that you lost. But things like 100% invisibility while moving, decoy targets and vision obscuring stuff are just frustrating as hell for a marine, while feeling like very cheap tricks on the alien side.
The ideas about fake hives and so on are all very well, but the scan is too hard a counter for this. To force the scan (and only a green comm wouldn't scan if someone said they heard a hive drop), it costs 15 res for the hive hallucination. That's a terrible return on investment at present and could really use a bit of tweaking. There are a lot of cool ideas in this thread that would have potential, provided a bit of reworking of the shift hive is done in parallel.
15 res hive hallucination is soooo 249. It's 1 res now (just cast halu cloud on empty TP).
Also, if hallucination death message is removed, marine comm will never know there was something.
- They've dropped crossroads!
- *Scans* No there's nothing in there
- I swear I heard that!
- *Scans all the other tech points* Dude, are you high?
Path of confusion and deception.
Shade hive is such an awesome concept. I want khamm to toy with marine minds.
Comments
Sure being able to keep up a hive for 33% longer can mean the difference between victory or defeat. but you probably spent 30+ res on inking alone and another 10 or 15 on the shade itself, for aliens that's extremely massive. you could practically upgrade abilities for a lifeform of your choice and have enough res for a whip or harvester still. It's just not cost effective enough to be a reliable counter to arcs. not to mention if it's set on fire it doesn't cloak or ink at all and you're completely helpless.
To me, you can't really fix shade without fixing that fundamental gap. Shade must have an ability that a good team can utilize that doesn't come down to "I hope the other team is just bad". A skilled team using shade must be able to force the opposing team to match them with equal skill, just as the other two starts do (or at least they did the last time I played)
Health bars over halu structures, player name over halu aliens (since they are replicas of aliens anyway), so you can't insta tell it's not real.
More possible hallucinations at the same time, say one cast per each drifter or each entity can have one of it's own (new cast destroys all previous hallucinations as for now).
Crags, whips, shades, shifts should be hallucinatable (I hope it's a word).
No Hallucination death messages. First hallucination killed -> everybody knows kham uses hallucinations. If marines don't communicate enough, kham is going to have better chance of tricking marines.
Follow nearest alien button for hallucinations, same as drifters have.
Some questionable suggestions:
Halu harvesters allowed only at infested resource points (did you even know you can hallucinate harvesters?). Odds are, you'd want to place real harvester in infested area. To make it more useful, how about hallucinating a harvester and a cyst at any unoccupied resource (killing either cyst or harvester destroys whole illusion).
Halu hive gives hive drop sound.
Second cast on hive's illusion makes it appear as grown hive with some infestation under it.
Hallucinatable upgrades (and hallucinations should be movable, why would you want hallucination of stationary structure in the same spot).
Hallucinations charging and attacking (for no damage) any nearby marines or their structures.
Ink playing some random alien sounds (attack, footsteps, taunts) with sound emitters at random spots within range.
The other important point I agree with, is that shade can pretty much be countered by many obs + scans. There needs to be one additional feature to mitigate this hard counter.
So a solution could be:
Now we got free places on the drifter. There could be many ways to use them to mitigate the hard counter obs & scans are to phantom. Some ideas for example:
There sure are more ways to make shade a more interesting first choice. But I think the important things are:
Easier hallucination handling!
Mitigating the hard counter that obs & scan are to the shade path.
^^ Could not possibly agree more.
Level 3 phantom should render you completely 100% invisible when not moving. (no matter what their graphics settings are)
The way it is currently just plain sucks, because there are those certain few Marine players who can somehow very easily see lvl 3 phantom aliens who aren't moving.
Which makes it just damned annoying, Phantom usually works on all but 1 or 2 Marine players. It leaves me wondering just how easily they can see through lvl 3 phantom with their graphic settings.
- Anything at all to make phantom more viable would be welcome. In the past month there has only been one game I've played where shade was one of the first two hives. In 99% of the games I play it is the last upgrade, despite being by far the most useful for Skulks and Lerks. (for me anyway)
But 100% invis while moving was overpowered like hell. I'm not sure, but right now you should be 100% invis when completely still. (DONT move the mouse!) And that works for me most of the time when I'm not at completely obvious places.
But if you have a good alien team, it wont matter how much scans the commander uses cause most time as a skulk i use aura
Whatever may or may not be changed, please don't go with obfuscation. There's enough of that already (way too much in fact). Things that screw up enemies' vision or sound are flat out bad game mechanics and should be avoided at all costs (I'm looking at you, original gorge spit, rupture, umbra, spores, old nutrient mist, low-heath vision/sound impairment... have I missed any?).
Give this man a medal.
Frankly? I thinks it's way more convenient to have Shade lategame than crag. It keeps lerks useful, and allows Onos and Fades to pick the low-health marines (and you get to know the precise health of Exos, too). PLUS you have a slight defense against arcs, which are more frequent in late game, too.
Just a random idea.
Or maybe an alien can splice into another, or 2 other versions of itself, all three become transparent, the fake ones disappear after the player takes a certain amount of damage, or time, and the player does not give off blood when damaged, as to blend it in with the fakes, or they all give off blood damage.
How will you do this? What if you come close to a wall? What is with wallrunning skulks? Will it be useful for a big onos that takes so much space?
I don't think it is possible to make it not obvious. Controlling them active as kham is more convincing.
Without both the extra toughness from Crag hive and the agility from Shift hive, aliens are disadvantaged against "equally" skilled marines on level 2+ arms lab upgrades.
Shade hive techtree also lacks synergy between its own arsenal. Whereas Crag and Shift hives' upgrades and abilities multiply their effectives when used in tandem (Carapace + Mucus = super toughness; Celerity/Adren + Storm Cloud = rabid killing machines).
Hallucination does not work effectively with Phantom or Aura, unless the alien team can out-maneuver the marines through precise coordination, which would mean that the marine players are already outclassed.
Even if hallucination AI is vastly improved, Shade tech will only remain a nuisance to inexperienced marine teams (because Hallucinations are hard countered by Scan).
It also puts an annoying ripple effect on marine vision
Just a random thought...
I for one still like abilities which can at times block vision. :P
Could work if the displacement wasn't fixed, but a constantly shifting displacement around the origin so you can still potentially figure out where your target is, like some kind of kaleidoscope effect. I always thought this would be a cool implementation of 'camouflage' (or even, phantom while being scanned) but works well as a drifter effect also.
Also +1 to the 'group feign death' idea somewhere above
Maybe allow shade drifters to sound like a particular life form for a short duration .... "Oh crap onos every body group up and cut it off... Wait what? It's just a drifter..."
Personally my awareness is 50% listening, 30% mini map, 20% visual... Silence throws me way off, if you add in some fake sounds, I'd be messed up...
Well, ok, it's only useful with inexperienced player. But last week, i had great fun with the hallucination as kham
I think i've seen shade 1st two times in Reddog stream (in div2 or 3 game) so it probably need a buff.
Making hallucination running to the marine would be a good start.
Upgrade are in good shape (maybe camo 100% when NOT MOVING, 95% when walking?) but my need for crag/shift upgrade in mid-late-game overwhelm my love for shade 1st ^^.
PS: just read the "F" tips on drifter for autoselect hallu. Sounds amazing. Will definitely go shade 1st tonight to test
Also, if hallucination death message is removed, marine comm will never know there was something.
- They've dropped crossroads!
- *Scans* No there's nothing in there
- I swear I heard that!
- *Scans all the other tech points* Dude, are you high?
Path of confusion and deception.
Shade hive is such an awesome concept. I want khamm to toy with marine minds.