Change alien win conditions slightly
d0ped0g
Join Date: 2003-05-25 Member: 16679Members
Join Date: 2003-05-25 Member: 16679Members
Right now, if the entire marine team is dead and there's no powered IPs, it will trigger an alien win no matter what. I propose that the win conditions be altered such that if a MAC is building an IP or power in a room where there is an IP, or will do so eventually in its order queue, that the alien win is postponed until they stop the MAC from doing so (by either destroying the IP or the MAC or the power in the room where the under-construction IP resides).
Comments
Oh, fuck-all games end like that. I'm well aware that it may only effect 0.01% of games, if that - so it's no big deal.
Sure, it's easy to kill a MAC, and sure MACs build slow. It doesn't mean the aliens will necessarily get there in time. Perhaps all of the aliens are on the other side of the map. Aliens might check other potential spawn locations before going to the right one. If there's multiple MACs it can build much faster. Also, the MAC isn't necessarily building an IP from scratch. A MAC might have nearly completed constructing the new IP before the last remaining IP or marine drops - it would be disappointing to see marines lose pop up less than a second before you start spawning again, and this is a possibility under the current conditions.
Sure, the CC in the base they have taken will be gone. If there's a MAC building an IP elsewhere, obviously there's a second CC.
If by 'prolong the agony' you mean, marines are gonna lose anyway. That's not necessarily true. I literally just came from a game where a MAC successfully completing the IP (which it was doing when the last of our marines died) would have put us back in the game, and in a winning position. Also, marines can always concede if they are losing. It's their decision whether to prolong the agony or not. Up until then, aliens have to earn their victory, and getting rid of a MAC that could potentially start them spawning again should be part of that.
None of these are compelling arguments against this. The idea behind this is that just because marines can't spawn, if marines can still potentially spawn later in the game, then a win still needs to be earned. This is why "marines lose" doesn't pop up as soon as skulks get your power or kill your main base power. Because you can still potentially get people spawning again. Whether it's a MAC or marines building the IP is a fairly arbitrary distinction. A MAC on the field building an IP can potentially get people spawning again, and until that is dealt with, the match is not necessarily over. As mentioned, the current win conditions allow people to start spawning immediately after 'marines lose' pops up, if the MAC is already 99% done before the loss is triggered. The match is obviously not over in such a circumstance. Shouldn't we eliminate this possibility?
This is not necessarily true. Sure, it's likely you have lost under this scenario, but there does exist scenarios where you might not be losing, or might even be winning, when this happens, if the mac were allowed to complete the IP and marines were allowed to spawn again.
I just came from a tram game where we had the overwhelming resource and map control advantage - holding platform,server,mezzanine,elevator,observation,shipping&logistics. We had much more pres in the bank and they had very few lifeforms, and were relatively res-starved, holding only repair and ore processing (warehouse was just killed), and were down to only shade upgrades. Unfortunately we were subject to a rush which wasn't responded to quickly enough. I was in the spawn queue while this happened so couldn't do anything myself. The remaining marines jetpacked into Shipping (even though I told them to build IPs) to clean up the aliens and restore power but were cleaned up themselves. While this was happening, a MAC was constructing an IP at Elevator Transfer. If the loss wasn't triggered before it finished, we would have quite clearly been in the better position. It would have still been up to them to make the comeback, as they would have still been losing, despite decimating our main base with a surprise rush.
Another argument against "MACs build slowly anyway" is that if a marine remains and there's an unconstructed command station, then no loss is triggered. The time it takes for a single marine to build a command station, jump in that command station, and contruct an IP (and power if power is out) is likely comparible to the time it takes for a MAC to construct an IP or power - yet no loss is triggered in this circumstance. Sure there might be multiple marines, thus reducing build-time - but, as mentioned, there could also be multiple MACs.
To be fair, however, marines can defend themselves, whereas MACs can't, giving them more opportunity to get people spawning again. Also, the remaining marine(s) could also potentially kill a hive (if there's only one left), and we have seen this in competitive play, which gives further reason to why it is less comparable in terms of win/loss conditions.
Also, just to cover all bases, if this suggestion were ever implemented, it should also allow for a loss to not be triggered if a MAC has a move order that will send it in the vicinity where it will autobuild the necessary IP and/or power that will potentially get marines spawning again.
To add some devils advocate, in what I think is a fairly decent reason NOT to implement my suggested change - because it would only effect very few games, and there's limited dev resources, there is likely more pressing things that could be worked on. It wouldn't make sense to prioritize such work above nearly anything else if it isn't a simple change that wouldn't take too long to implement.
Obviously there are very few games that do end with a MAC(s) constructing an IP, with all marines dead, and there are even less games where the MAC won't die before it completes the IP, even less games where even if the IP is constructed, the aliens wouldn't just be able to overwhelm the spawners with lifeforms, and even less games where even if marines survive that, they are still in a position where they can potentially win (without the aliens severely dropping the ball in such a fashion that is rarely seen). Thus, obviously, there may be better things that could be worked on. I don't really see a downside if it were implemented, other than dev resources being expended on a problem that may be viewed as a fairly negligible problem.
However, IIRC, I have seen this once a long time ago in competitive play (although I forget whether they were in a position to mount a comeback). I have only encountered it personally 2 times in 2000 hours of play, and only one of those times there was still a feasible chance of winning.