It used to be 40 to drop a hive hallucination (wtf?). Not sure why you'd drop a hallucinated hive that disappears in 1 shot over a real hive that might have actually grown...
The hives are really about the drifter abilities now. Enzyme and mucous are infinitely more useful than hallucination. I think aura and phantom are in a pretty good place, and neither should see any buffs.
Hallucinations should at least have the AI (and possibly attack damage) of babblers when marines are in view, plus it would be nice if a field alien could somehow make one from a nearby drifter with pres and middle click a spot on the map and the hallucination goes there.
Another useful thing would be if the hallucination lasted throughout a scan by marine comm. During through the scan it would start flickering or something before it winked out of existence.
has anyone tripped on shrooms or acid? you'd think future aliens would have even stronger shit lol... now imagine tripping but its a bit stronger. either hallucination needs a name change or the marines need to trip balls some. how about a drifter ability to make the marines in an area (like mucous) see hallucinated aliens?
There should be 'spreadable' Ink-like ability on the Shade Drifter. This would be like Umbra against scan/obs. It would not obscure vision anymore than enzyme or mucous. It would allow alien team coordination to counter the obs/scan for a short duration. This fits with the other drifter abilities much better than hallucinations. It allows the alien team to subvert the marines' reliance on Obs/Scan for ground-truth. If you don't have an actual scout in position, you will not be aware of this 'shadowed' force.
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
I didnt see anybody mention it, so :
Why not scrap hallucination for a better cloak? (thats not 100%, since that failed previously)
Use that transparent shader for cloak which currently only activates on stationary players, but at full 100% speeds instead?
Think of that "Hidden" mod..
You could even make it so getting hit doesn't remove the cloak, but only attacking does.
This could make for quite a powerful offensive combat ability on par with mucous and enzyme i would think.
Yeah it could be a lot more difficult to track that as it comes to you. I think most pro players won't have any issue though. Also the only reason 100% cloak failed was because it was useless against good players and OP against bad ones. The main issue with it being so OP against bad players was moving while invisible. Of course it was useless against good players because of scans (this still happens, but you have silence as backup).
If you go shade you take an increased risk of losing endgame if you haven't secured three hives, which is not normally the case in pubs nor comp. at the same time, every second aliens have a third hive increases the risk of a marine loss.
Higher life forms are in dire need of shift and crag upgrades, no doubt. Shade is nice to have for them, but matters more for lower life forms, except gorge where celerity is mostly a no go, except for fun. Playing around with energy cost might help increase shade popularity. Still, hallucinations are very weak.
I would like that aliens can trigger a ink cloud by pressing the use key at the shade. It should cost 1 personal res. This way the alien commander has a bit less micro management and the gorge can take over that. Also if a shade is within the radius of a shift, then it would be nice that the ink cloud interval speed get's increased.
Also i think ink cloud should be shade dependent. So if you have 2 shades you can totally block an arc attack.
About the last thing, i know aliens win still most of the games, so UWE is very carefull with making aliens stronger. So to make marines a bit stronger, I suggest that if you have a welder and you use it to build something that you also weld your armor to encourage people even more to buy a welder.
I like the idea of the hallucinations having the ability to attack (with no damage). If this triggered an alert as well this could be used to generate the appearance of rushes etc to divide forces. The idea of the Shade hive to me is subterfuge and sneakiness rather than direct combat.
Hallucinations suck. Why don't we combine them with focus? Shift has enzyme + speed boost to make it competitive with mucous. Focus + hallucinations wouldn't be enough to make shade hive first viable, but it'd be something that might make it more common as a 2nd option.
Or maybe give it a "cone of silence" kind of effect, where it becomes completely silent inside it's AOE for a few seconds (but not outside of it, so you couldn't use it as a replacement for phantom). That way it has some sort of disruptive effect without blinding/dropping FPS with stupid particle effects.
Hallucinations suck. Why don't we combine them with focus? Shift has enzyme + speed boost to make it competitive with mucous. Focus + hallucinations wouldn't be enough to make shade hive first viable, but it'd be something that might make it more common as a 2nd option.
Or maybe give it a "cone of silence" kind of effect, where it becomes completely silent inside it's AOE for a few seconds (but not outside of it, so you couldn't use it as a replacement for phantom). That way it has some sort of disruptive effect without blinding/dropping FPS with stupid particle effects.
If by cone of silence you mean it can be used on a marine to cut off all of their sound, without impairing their visuals (no gunshots, mic chat, biting, medpack drops, etc...), I would be more than OK with that. Especially if it works on aliens too. Make it an an AoE so the marine has to relocate, but give it a few seconds cooldown so you cant just mute a single marine. This would cater to shade being the aggressive option as the drifter ability can be used directly on the enemy.
Personally, while I don't care for Shade in the early game, Aura is an extremely powerful upgrade. Lerks and Fades even without Crag or Shift, should be able to stay alive pretty easily. However, by the time you get Fade, I'd hope you have at least one other hive for extra benefit.
I think the Cloak and Hallucination should be merged somewhat to combat the fact that the shade hive becomes useless when the marine com starts dropping observatories.
Here is how I think they should be merged.
If your team has got the shade hive, take the cloak ability as a alien. You can use the taunt button every x amount of time.
What the taunt button does You press the taunt button, you run somewhere, start attacking something or whatever and the taunt button makes a "hallicunation copy" of you that completes this action for y amount of time, and you can run away or whatever yourself. Can also be used like: Jumping towards the enemy, activate..it continues towards them, but you turn around a corner and hit/bite/whatever them in the back.
This way this becomes an active feat that can be used only when shade hive is up and the alien got cloak ability.
It will also work against a trillion observatories and need skill to master like everything else.
Doesnt need a buff. It is already good as it is and is already EXTREMELEY effective on a team that uses it properly (if not OP). I would lose my mind if UWE made another update that took even more skill out of the game.
Doesnt need a buff. It is already good as it is and is already EXTREMELEY effective on a team that uses it properly (if not OP). I would lose my mind if UWE made another update that took even more skill out of the game.
I don't think shade is all that bad really, though I got kicked as a commander going shade first the other day, so I guess most would disagree
Though yes, it's still the inferior choice of the three, simply because by the time midgame kicks in you NEED shift and crag hive for your higher lifeforms to be viable.
(And since shade first doesn't promote aggressive gameplay, there's less chance you will actually end up securing three hives, ironically... )
I think people are suffering short term memory loss and forgetting that it's not just about the upgrades, it's about the upgrades AND the drifter abilities (also shade/shift/crag structure abilities but apart from shift it's minor). If we compare ONLY upgrades then shade is definitely viable as a first hive.
Do not underestimate silence, it is very potent especially on skulks. Better than camo imo.
Nah back in the day I would usually pick camo, depending on lifeform and situation. Shade hive is great for skilled players ESPECIALLY when marines aren't moving in a huge group (which is most often the case)
I always picked silence over camo pre 250. The ability to run full speed undetected at an enemy if you played smart outweighed waiting for some guy to walk past your ambush position.
Comments
don't forget echo. shift got real good real fast.
Another useful thing would be if the hallucination lasted throughout a scan by marine comm. During through the scan it would start flickering or something before it winked out of existence.
Perhaps the damage they do can't actually kill the player (purely visual) and gets regenerated upon the death of the hallucination?
You wish. There should be a limit on the number of hallucinations you can spawn...
Why not scrap hallucination for a better cloak? (thats not 100%, since that failed previously)
Use that transparent shader for cloak which currently only activates on stationary players, but at full 100% speeds instead?
Think of that "Hidden" mod..
You could even make it so getting hit doesn't remove the cloak, but only attacking does.
This could make for quite a powerful offensive combat ability on par with mucous and enzyme i would think.
Higher life forms are in dire need of shift and crag upgrades, no doubt. Shade is nice to have for them, but matters more for lower life forms, except gorge where celerity is mostly a no go, except for fun. Playing around with energy cost might help increase shade popularity. Still, hallucinations are very weak.
Also i think ink cloud should be shade dependent. So if you have 2 shades you can totally block an arc attack.
About the last thing, i know aliens win still most of the games, so UWE is very carefull with making aliens stronger. So to make marines a bit stronger, I suggest that if you have a welder and you use it to build something that you also weld your armor to encourage people even more to buy a welder.
Or maybe give it a "cone of silence" kind of effect, where it becomes completely silent inside it's AOE for a few seconds (but not outside of it, so you couldn't use it as a replacement for phantom). That way it has some sort of disruptive effect without blinding/dropping FPS with stupid particle effects.
If by cone of silence you mean it can be used on a marine to cut off all of their sound, without impairing their visuals (no gunshots, mic chat, biting, medpack drops, etc...), I would be more than OK with that. Especially if it works on aliens too. Make it an an AoE so the marine has to relocate, but give it a few seconds cooldown so you cant just mute a single marine. This would cater to shade being the aggressive option as the drifter ability can be used directly on the enemy.
This would give a clear breakdown of Hive types:
Crag: Defensive
Shift: Equal parts attack and Defense
Shade: Offensive
Here is how I think they should be merged.
If your team has got the shade hive, take the cloak ability as a alien. You can use the taunt button every x amount of time.
What the taunt button does
You press the taunt button, you run somewhere, start attacking something or whatever and the taunt button makes a "hallicunation copy" of you that completes this action for y amount of time, and you can run away or whatever yourself. Can also be used like: Jumping towards the enemy, activate..it continues towards them, but you turn around a corner and hit/bite/whatever them in the back.
This way this becomes an active feat that can be used only when shade hive is up and the alien got cloak ability.
It will also work against a trillion observatories and need skill to master like everything else.
Cheers. Chariot
You exist soley to be disagreed with.
Though yes, it's still the inferior choice of the three, simply because by the time midgame kicks in you NEED shift and crag hive for your higher lifeforms to be viable.
(And since shade first doesn't promote aggressive gameplay, there's less chance you will actually end up securing three hives, ironically... )
Nah back in the day I would usually pick camo, depending on lifeform and situation. Shade hive is great for skilled players ESPECIALLY when marines aren't moving in a huge group (which is most often the case)