NS2 Overhaul mod
Change Log v0.1
Marine
*Removed Marine Weapons and Armour upgrades
*Marines now have 100/70 default
*Marines now have Weapon level 2 damage by default
*Medpacks doubled in cost (just to fill the void left by zero upgrade research)
*Ammopacks doubled in cost (just to fill the void left by zero upgrade research)
Alien
*Aliens no longer receive additional health from biomass
*Rebalanced skulk, gorge and lerk hp/armour to take into account new marine hp and damage
*Carapace now gives more armour than vanilla but reduces speed
*Celerity now gives more speed than vanilla but reduces armour
*Celerity + Carapace now give a smaller combined boost to Armour and Speed than vanilla
*Alien movement abilities (charge, leap, blink, slide) now affected by Carapace.
ModID: 4035f354
Workshop Link
Mod require significant balance work, bug squashing and features to add.
Comments
I have a LOT more ideas that I would be happy to discuss and see if you agree, feel free to add me on steam and message me as I would love to share my ideas... especially if it were to enhance this mod, make it more popular and add more to NS2 in general. http://steamcommunity.com/id/Kasharic/
I will encourage others to try this and I will try to convince my clan to add it to one of our servers for testing and feedback purposes... seriously, I love the sound of some of these changes.
1. Phasegates can't be cloaked at the moment due to the animation (the blueish part that you walk through) not cloaking.
2. The onos are now commander dropped only, you may want to clear that up in the notes.
3. upgrades aren't very clear on the alien evolve menu, you may want to rename them, phantom is still displayed (should be camouflage) and you need to rename/rework the vampirism one (can't remember what its called in game, but you need to rename it and stop ranged attacks proccing the heal.
4. some of the marine tech path researches are a little confusing to look at due to them all having the same icon... ideal solution would be to minimize what is displayed, eg. the armour needs to be researched progressively, why not apply the same code that is used for biomass, where it uses the same slot and the new icon replaces the old one when its researched.
I'll post more as I think of it/test it.
Agreed
There's alot here and I'm actually pretty ok with a lot of these changes. The resulting matches were quite fun. They were also quite frustrating in a few matters. I'll see what I can do to suggest things. These aren't AND, they're mostly OR suggestions.
What I loved:
1. Aliens cannot save for onos. They HAVE to go lifeforms. This makes everything so much different in so many awesome ways in Pubs. People will be going and trying things they're not used to (cause they normally just save for onos).
2. Damn that Exosuit was beastly.
3. Getting an exo? Grab some sentries too!
4. Cloaking marines was very interesting.
5. Quick hives all day.
6. More variety for the alien abilities.
7. "OMG Are these changes in Vanilla now" since Rusty put this up on DMD right after the patch.
Jetpacks.
Being non-dependant on things is a bit overpowered. With the med changes this is one of the surest ways to keep alive as a marine, kiting until your health is back. It's also annoying as hell to fight against with base skulks.
Recommendations:
6. Make Jetpacks more like a "jumpjet" at first. With an option to upgrade them later (requiring an AA or robo or something) to a full JP.
7. Or just make them require A1 & 2, AA, or Robo or something.
8. Make Leap automatic or at least Biomass 2. Without it the alien team stands no chance. With A1 being Automatic, the case for Leap being automatic could be made, but I'd be happy seeing it on Bio 1 or 2 instead.
9. Or make Webs Automatic or Biomass 1.
Weapons ups.
Felt really weird not having the upgrades to be able to help my marines out. What level are marine weapons by default? W1?
People on aliens felt they were a bit stronger than they should be at start, but I felt like my marines weren't killing jack with them.
Recommendation:
2. Make Weapons individually upgradable? Idk. This is just all out odd for me and I'm not used to it yet.
3. Have Lerks slightly cheaper, I saw several lerks flash to the unexpectedly strong weapons.
Armor.
Only ever moving slower felt like way too much of a downside for me to ever go with armor. But I'm not used to this way of playing yet. I just think Jetpacks are simply better. More mobility = good.
Reccomendation:
2. Maybe have a "Light Armor" that's actually lighter and makes marines move faster? Brings you down to just above A0 (no para two bite).
3. Make people not look fat (freaked me out and made me think i was going crazy)
4. The unspeed is pretty heavy with the stronger armors, makes marines a sitting duck in a game about keeping away from damage. Tone it down a tad?
5. Have Armories weld armor again (or at least AAs or Protos). Since you have to buy it, it sucks that it never comes back without a teammate's generosity).
Medpacks.
The HoT was actually pretty ok. The rate was pretty solid, gave marines who could dodge enough time for an extra bite most of the time. But with armor (or without jets) it's a bit sketchy.
Recommendation:
1. Make meds always hit (even if full) so its possible to pre-med before the marine is actually damaged.
2. Regen a small amount of armor at the same time as health? I just feel like it needs a liiiiittle more oomph to keep them alive in the field.
Exosuit.
Dualies? Less dmg per shot, but two guns? Just always feels more badass, and you have a bit more options on how much firepower to put out.
Vampirism.
I was comm so I never experienced this but people were generally unimpressed. Felt like Regen was just better.
Silence.
On shift hive??? Swap with Ferocity from Shade to make this make sense. Plus silence and camo shouldn't be together (whole point of that split).
Celerity.
The only way to outrun a jetpack makes your skulk weak as a summer reed when slapped. Somethin ain't right. Either make jets less useful, make leap automatic (have adren skulks be a thing), or make the armor loss negligible.
Lerks.
Slightly cheaper to make flashes less painful?
Onos Eggs.
MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE SOMEONE SPAWN IN IT. I saw something about this somewhere (CDT trello?) but for the love of all sanity, make this happen. You get the res back, but with them taking eons to gestate, that's just not ok. I started an onos egg with the 6 Bio, then lost the second hive. Someone spawned in that egg, and that was the end of that.
Now for the crazy recommendations:
Have the Upgrade structures not bound to the hive type anymore.
Possible to drop 3 upgrade structures per hive, any three you want. 2 shell one spur would be a nice combo I think with the tradeoffs. Or a veil and two spurs for Ferocity. This would make things very interesting from a diversification standpoint. Sure Hives are cheaper now, but that just makes it even more cool, you can mix and match even more with the second hive. This does make hive type a little useless admittedly. Perhaps the ups of that hive type are more potent (max level of 4 now, not 3 with the hive acting as one upgrade structure automatically? Shade hive means you auto have one veil?)
Cap alien pres at 50ish?
Since they're never going to need more than that for anything, have the spillover go the teammates or the comm (makes onos more obtainable in theory).
There's my 2 cents. It's a lot I know but we played a solid 5 matches on three maps with decent teams. If you're in NA, DMD's got Dallas3 running this puppy.
Sure, I'll install the mod. Does it change the game mode from NS2 to something else? If not it will blacklist the server on the Hive and I don't want that.
It does not but indeed should do. For now you could disable the hive reports via the serverconfig's hiveranking parameter.
Ferocity.
HolyshitICan2SwipeALLTHEMARINES
^ Needs a little tweaking there.
Fades.
Energy is changed somehow? Please explain?
Overall the balance starts on the side of marines or even being pretty even at the beginning. but tips into aliens favor rather quickly based on what we've seen. If the aliens get up to fades and two hives, they're probably at a point where they're on average stronger than the marines. With the increased lifeforms, killing them is even more crucial than before.
However, this certainly feels more difficult because there are no weapon upgrades. the W0 just doesn't feel like it's doing the right amount of damage.
Something interesting that Joshhhy pointed out was that Shotties just aren't strong enough with W0. Each pellet does its base 10 damage, so to do enough damage to actually matter, you have to land perfect shots every time. With weapon ups, there's more leeway with slightly off shots, since each pellet does more damage.
I know you're trying to do away with the passive upgrade system, but marines have to get objectively stronger somehow to keep up with the aliens getting objectively stronger mid and lategame.
With the Aliens stacking upgrades to remove the negative effects (cara and celerity, or just adren and regen) later in the game, the "tradeoff" goes away, leaving aliens absolutely stronger than they were, but with marines still at the same level.
Something else to consider:
You're trying to make more strats plausible with this, but the nature of armor upgrades as they stand make Phase tech a necessity. A "light" armor that makes marines run faster would be very interesting in allowing marines to move faster without needing jetpacks, ergo allowing you to bypass phase gates.
Also using the revolver pistol from combat could be a good "upgrade" via the CC or somewhere, that perminantly replaces the pistol as a secondary weapon.
How about automated Mortar launchers? (sentries that fire grenades, in this situation)
Variety brings fun, no need for passive upgrades, just add options and everything will be fine
Notes:
*no changes to lerk or fade have been made
*lack of weapon upgrades and difficulty killing aliens as the game progresses is a primary focus of coming update. I am committed to not having passive upgrades for weapons and armor.
*no combat weapons will be added to this mod for copyright reasons. They are great models and I wish they were in ns2 but they are not unfortunately.
*armor slowdown will be looked at. They were initially placeholders awaiting feedback which I now have thanks to pwople playing.
*browser gamemode to be fixed
*vampirism and focus to be looked at
*cloak and silence together is ok to me it should just cost you two upgrade spots instead of phantom in vanilla. Silence was on movement in ns1 which is why it probably made sense to me.
Keep the feedback coming.
Just to clarify, I never meant that you should take what they have done, I was giving examples of the weapon types I was suggesting, I wouldn't expect a direct C&P of copyrighted things. So anytime I mentioned combat (or any other place of reference for that matter) it was intended as a "kind of like what these guys did" not "Just take this and put it in your mod"
Are you suuuure there's nothing different about Fades? Maybe something blanket changed with how Energy works? Pretty much every fade player I've played with in the mod (lots of us main fade) agree that energy just drains faster somehow.
Also:
Here's the Compact LMG mod someone mentioned. @Evil_Ice might be ok with you using it if you ask nicely. Though haven't seen him around for a long time.
Thirsty Onos is still up.
*Added submachinegun. Take places as the baseline weapon for marines and does the same damage as the vanilla LMG. Weight is 0.08 (credit to Evil_Ice for his SMG model)
*LMG(Rifle) is now an unlockable tech on the armoury and can be purchased for 10 pres. Damage is 12 per bullet with a 50 bullet magazine.
*Flamethrower cost reduced from 15 to 10 pres and now requires flame thrower tech to be research for 20 tres (no AA required)
*Shotgun cost reduced from 20 to 15 pres.
*HMG now costs 15 pres and requires HMG Tech research for 20 tres on AA
*GL now requires GL tech research for 20 tres on AA.
*Commander dropped medium, heavy and exoskeleton armor now deducts team resources instead of being free.
*Reduced weight impact of HMG, medium and heavy armours.
That's just the throttling bug in the ns2ds.
Could it be a conflict with other mods (eg NS2+ won't work)?
I had to disable NS2+ to get the mod to work.