or give some time to react to incoming power surge?
I like this idea as well. It takes away a bit of the fun from the commander using it, and reclasses the ability to be more of a delaying tactic rather than a hard counter. Some sort of capacitor charging sound, leading up to the overcharge would fit very well I think. Again though, too early to say, we need to see how the meta shakes out.
WyzcrakPot Pie AficionadoJoin Date: 2002-12-04Member: 10447Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
My forum configuration shows me almost 30 posts on page 2 of this thread. They are DOMINATED by constructive and altogether respectful dialog, despite room for varying interpretations, forecasts of new potential problems, and occasional, speculative disagreement about how the game should maybe be changing.
In a release of such scope as 297, that's impressive, and I wanted to take a moment to draw attention to it.
Productive and polite discourse -- agreement and disagreement alike -- means a lot to the people who are working really hard on this game -- folks who are vulnerable to misstep as they chase greatness.
So good job, everyone. Well played. Your maturity and selflessness is playing an important role in NS2's success. As a player, I really appreciate it.
IeptBarakatThe most difficult name to speak ingame.Join Date: 2009-07-10Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
edited May 2016
There should be a half a second to a second audio/visual warning before a commander action can directly affect an enemy player on the field. For example, before a cyst ruptures it will make some sort of noise and the cyst will visually look like it's about to burst before it quickly does so. Similarly for power surge's overcharge, aliens shouldn't be deterred from biting structures, so giving aliens a fair but brief window of opportunity to back away before being zapped would reduce the frustration of being attacked by someone you can't even see.
For aliens, it would introduce a risk/reward for choosing to either back away to avoid the damage when you hear the structure beginning to overcharge, which could potentially make you a bigger target to nearby marines, or staying and biting through the damage when it comes and risk dying immediately from the overcharge or being finished off by a nearby marine.
Edit: Point already made, took too long proofreading.
If power surge is to stay in its current implementation, you might want to treat it like rupture (time delay combined with visual and auditory warning to give skulks or low HP life forms time to back out) so that people can back out if they are smart. I'd start it out with a rather low delay 1s or so and tweak from there.
With that said I haven't played with it yet so I'll give er a go and see, though I suspect in the hands of a good commander this could make many things harder to take down as aliens (gates, OBS, RTs, etc) and will make poor Lane control much less fatal, which is a bad thing IMHO and will make Marines much stronger.
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
edited May 2016
Edit: Ability to avoid the damage would make this entire issue with the change go away for the most part. I agree with that 100%.
My point is that I responded directly to you earlier, and now you're saying the same thing again. The cost of an RT is not just 10 resources. It never will be just 10 resources. My time to save and/or build that RT is more valuable than 10 resources in almost every situation.
So the tone from me to you there is response to the ignoring my response to your point. You're saying it makes no sense, but Alite and I are making sense of it. You're somehow trying to ignore the cost of marines time in this equation.
When I chip a skulk on his way to an RT, is it not now possible that I can pressure an alien RT instead of save a node? I can pressure or forward cap while the marine comm monitors the RT health, when it gets past a certain % he zaps the chipped skulk and and now I've been pressuring and a significant amount of a skulks time is wasted.
The cost of the RT save is 5, but my pressure is worth 20 or more and the skulks wasted time is valuable too. Literally more valuable than the health of the RT had the comm zapped it sooner.
1. I'm really going to miss single Rail Gun Exos. They already were weak against Onos, now you are limiting their CQC abilities as well. Why not just scrap the idea of dual and single gun exos altogether and say "Railgun Exos" are armed with a Railgun and a Claw, and "Minigun Exos" are armed with two Miniguns? I'd also like to see Railguns to continue being a bit cheaper than Miniguns.
2. Due to Exos being cheaper and more mobile now, I think we are going to see them more, which is great. Unfortunately, I think once people learn how to play with them effectively as a team, they will turn out to be a little overpowered. (You know, freaking welders and not half the team buying one, and actually coordinating where to put them.) We'll see.
3. Power surge might be a little overpowered, especially if marines have lots of res to spare. I like the charge up idea. I just played a game where @meatmachine got to throw around res like crazy and used lots of powersurges; maybe he can comment on this.
4. I think you may have missed something here... may.
There should be a half a second to a second audio/visual warning before a commander action can directly affect an enemy player on the field. For example, before a cyst ruptures it will make some sort of noise and the cyst will visually look like it's about to burst before it quickly does so. Similarly for power surge's overcharge, aliens shouldn't be deterred from biting structures, so giving aliens a fair but brief window of opportunity to back away before being zapped would reduce the frustration of being attacked by someone you can't even see.
For aliens, it would introduce a risk/reward for choosing to either back away to avoid the damage when you hear the structure beginning to overcharge, which could potentially make you a bigger target to nearby marines, or staying and biting through the damage when it comes and risk dying immediately from the overcharge or being finished off by a nearby marine.
Edit: Point already made, took too long proofreading.
Reminds me of Tesla coils. I'm all about that.
"Chaaarging up!"
I definitely agree that the audio visual cues are pretty off. The audio is pulled from the pulse grenade, which makes sense, but the old MAC emp cinematic is huge and doesn't really fit the action IMO. If the structure had a charge up sound and a visual indicator of electricity coursing from the base upwards, I think it would do a lot of good.
Perhaps the blast could even partially damage the structure itself? That might be an interesting drawback, and make you pick your surges better.
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
@Frozen thank you for clarifying, I did not understand what you meant the prior two times.
Your example assumes the alien is not only chipped but chipped enough. That's not always going to be the case.
Also the example someone else gave was zapping twice. That's 10 tres, not 5. It will be 20 tres if a Marine fails to stop the single skulk , matching the tres you declared the total time was worth.
Power surge seems a tad OP, gonna make res biting a whole lot harder, more importantly its makes phasegates so much easier to defend.
All you need is power surge, one allah ackbar marine with a pulse nade, and you can clear the majority of grinds.
IeptBarakatThe most difficult name to speak ingame.Join Date: 2009-07-10Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
A single grenade is so insignificant that before I knew it I dumped all my res trying to take down a gorge fort with em, I think it would be better and provide interesting teamplay dynamics if you just got the one when you spawn and could choose which grenade type to spawn with.
A single grenade is so insignificant that before I knew it I dumped all my res trying to take down a gorge fort with em, I think it would be better and provide interesting teamplay dynamics if you just got the one when you spawn and could choose which grenade type to spawn with.
Cluster grenades are far stronger. In my testing we could take out all 10 clogs with a single cluster grenade. Were you using cluster grenades?
A single grenade is so insignificant that before I knew it I dumped all my res trying to take down a gorge fort with em, I think it would be better and provide interesting teamplay dynamics if you just got the one when you spawn and could choose which grenade type to spawn with.
Cluster grenades are far stronger. In my testing we could take out all 10 clogs with a single cluster grenade. Were you using cluster grenades?
Yes, it was just being outhealed by a gorge and crag combo. I couldn't buy nades fast enough to make em useful.
Power surge is exactly the kind of ability the game needed to make marine commanders feel like more than med dispensers. Might be a little OP at the moment but I've not played with it enough to really tell. Total damage and cooldown feel like they're in a good spot. The game vetinari refers to we were way ahead most of the early and mid game, so I had ample res to pop power surge on RTs. And yes, pretty sure I defended a PG with it to good effect a couple of times.
Provisionally, changes that could potentially improve it would be-
1. Give it a wind-up time with AV cue so there's some counterplay available on the skulks part.
2. Make the effect DOT (i would suggest 50 damage over 5 secs or even 25 insta dmg + 25 over 5 secs), opening up the opportunity for counterplay. There are also occasions where engagements happen around other structures, in which case in its current form it can be used as a mini-nuke to swing an engagement. making it a DOT at least gives aliens a chance to retreat before it's too late.
With both these suggestions you really have to be careful not to make it completely useless against decent players. Even if it's powerful, I'd rather see tech-based counterplays rather than behaviour-based counterplays due to what I just mentioned.
I see the value in power surge in terms of new player accessibility - it reminds me of electrified res nodes in NS1 which inexperienced marine comms often used as a crutch (not a bad thing). However that was a pretty big res investment per RT and had to be set up in advance, so the marines took an economy hit in exchange for the security. This implementation doesn't seem to have a lot of drawbacks, you only pay for it when and where you need it.
I just had an interesting game as alien khamm. Teams were 8v8 Marines had us on the back foot. We had server and wharehouse hives with 3 harvesters. Marines had a phasegate in elevator and ore processing. Aliens were turtling. We lost two onos and a fade. We were not doing well. Aliens were max tech on two hives, and had 90 res saved.
As skulks, aliens grouped up and killed elevator. Then killed ore while marines tried to respond to elevator. I dropped both elevator and repair hives. Both hives went up and I got biomass 9.
I then used contaminate on the marine base. Within a minute I had killed an IP. All the marines were in base trying to kill the contamination. Then I killed the 2nd ip with contaminate. Then aliens rushed in and killed the remaining marines.
Aliens FINALLY have a game ender tech besides onos.
A single grenade is so insignificant that before I knew it I dumped all my res trying to take down a gorge fort with em, I think it would be better and provide interesting teamplay dynamics if you just got the one when you spawn and could choose which grenade type to spawn with.
Cluster grenades are far stronger. In my testing we could take out all 10 clogs with a single cluster grenade. Were you using cluster grenades?
Yes, it was just being outhealed by a gorge and crag combo. I couldn't buy nades fast enough to make em useful.
It depends on what is in the gorge base. Clogs are not healed by gorges or crags. So any clogs should of died. Both clogs and hydras take extra damage from flame damage type. Cluster grenades do flame damage type. All hydras should of died also.
If there was a crag, whip, or shift then hand grenades are not the right tool for that job. A nerve gas grenade would make it a little easier, but you really got to get in there and kill the tunnel and gorge with some marine buddies.
It depends on what is in the gorge base. Clogs are not healed by gorges or crags. So any clogs should of died. Both clogs and hydras take extra damage from flame damage type. Cluster grenades do flame damage type. All hydras should of died also.
The clogs popped like they were supposed to, the hydras were persistent due to their constant healing, so I never was able to follow up the momentum of the single grenade to do anything else. Sure if I had more marines with me or some commander support it wouldn't have been an issue, but it's a pretty big contrast of the old grenade armory siege strat.
I guess I don't see it as a problem. I don't think you should be able to destroy a gorge base alone with a hand grenade.
I like where cluster and nerve gas grenades are. Pulse might be a little weak, but not by much. But I would not want to see them further buffed. I don't want grenade spam.
I guess I don't see it as a problem. I don't think you should be able to destroy a gorge base alone with a hand grenade.
I like where cluster and nerve gas grenades are. Pulse might be a little weak, but not by much. But I would not want to see them further buffed. I don't want grenade spam.
Which is why I think hand grenades should be spawn only, it makes them more situational as one life = one grenade, and you don't get the potential noob trap of dumping all your p.res on trying to take down a base on hand grenades alone. Then following that idea, teams could coordinate grenade types and for the average player they could just choose off of personal preference, giving a new layer of personal customization to your marine play as well as adding an interesting dynamic for higher level play.
aeroripperJoin Date: 2005-02-25Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
Which is why I think hand grenades should be spawn only, it makes them more situational as one life = one grenade, and you don't get the potential noob trap of dumping all your p.res on trying to take down a base on hand grenades alone. Then following that idea, teams could coordinate grenade types and for the average player they could just choose off of personal preference, giving a new layer of personal customization to your marine play as well as adding an interesting dynamic for higher level play.
I think the main deterrent that keeps players from using grenades effectively most of the time is having to spend precious pres on an item that is arguably less useful than the welder in most situations. Many players simply run out of base and forget to buy anything at all after numerous deaths.
I think it might be more enjoyable to use if you pay an initial cost at the armory (5 res?) then re-spawn with that grenade type for free every-time after until you decide to purchase a new grenade type. That is the closest approximation to how it worked in NS1, which had grenades that added a lot of depth (and fun) to marine-skulk combat.
@Frozen thank you for clarifying, I did not understand what you meant the prior two times.
Your example assumes the alien is not only chipped but chipped enough. That's not always going to be the case.
Also the example someone else gave was zapping twice. That's 10 tres, not 5. It will be 20 tres if a Marine fails to stop the single skulk , matching the tres you declared the total time was worth.
Am I missing anything?
But if the skulk is not chipped, then the commander won't zap. And you are missing the res lost from not having the extractor built, 1tres and .1pres every 6 seconds and one marine to go and recap instead of doing something else. Or you can also wear down a good skulk leading a marine by the nose by avoiding him just before he gets into line of sight and changing targets such as mezz -> plat -> server, et -> obs, c12 ->topo.
I must say, the new health bar implementation is really good; I barely noticed them when playing earlier. (this isn't sarcasm, it's good because the health bars aren't giving masses of new information an experienced player wouldnt have anyway)
On phone and in a bit of a rush but had to comment on overcharge.
Please add a 1s delay and visual cue to allow lifeforms not to get screwed over in a base rush / pg grind / rt biting.
Please make the ability make the structure redundant for 3seconds or so (you are causing a power surge afterall). Or, if you wanna go further, make it so a marine has to tap the structure with a welder to restart it.
This change is huge and has the ability to completely shut down the small windows that open up for alien come back potentials. I'm surprised @IronHorse is not more concerned about this.
i'm more concerned that a delay and visual cue weren't thought of and implemented originally. not particularly fun losing half of your health to something you can't predict, stop, or evade. especially when you know it literally took the other person 0 skill to do.
Just want to chime in, we did originally plan to have powersurge cause a "wind up" animation and sound to give aliens a short window to respond, and I think that is still likely to happen. We just did not have time to get it in for the initial release- so bear with us. Thanks for the feedback!
Comments
@Frozen I don't appreciate the mocking tone. Could you a) refrain from that and b) further explain the point you're attempting to make?
Sounds like the electrified extractor suggestion, yay.
In a release of such scope as 297, that's impressive, and I wanted to take a moment to draw attention to it.
Productive and polite discourse -- agreement and disagreement alike -- means a lot to the people who are working really hard on this game -- folks who are vulnerable to misstep as they chase greatness.
So good job, everyone. Well played. Your maturity and selflessness is playing an important role in NS2's success. As a player, I really appreciate it.
For aliens, it would introduce a risk/reward for choosing to either back away to avoid the damage when you hear the structure beginning to overcharge, which could potentially make you a bigger target to nearby marines, or staying and biting through the damage when it comes and risk dying immediately from the overcharge or being finished off by a nearby marine.
Edit: Point already made, took too long proofreading.
With that said I haven't played with it yet so I'll give er a go and see, though I suspect in the hands of a good commander this could make many things harder to take down as aliens (gates, OBS, RTs, etc) and will make poor Lane control much less fatal, which is a bad thing IMHO and will make Marines much stronger.
My point is that I responded directly to you earlier, and now you're saying the same thing again. The cost of an RT is not just 10 resources. It never will be just 10 resources. My time to save and/or build that RT is more valuable than 10 resources in almost every situation.
So the tone from me to you there is response to the ignoring my response to your point. You're saying it makes no sense, but Alite and I are making sense of it. You're somehow trying to ignore the cost of marines time in this equation.
When I chip a skulk on his way to an RT, is it not now possible that I can pressure an alien RT instead of save a node? I can pressure or forward cap while the marine comm monitors the RT health, when it gets past a certain % he zaps the chipped skulk and and now I've been pressuring and a significant amount of a skulks time is wasted.
The cost of the RT save is 5, but my pressure is worth 20 or more and the skulks wasted time is valuable too. Literally more valuable than the health of the RT had the comm zapped it sooner.
is it intended to be a hard counter? Just my opinion here, but shouldn't marines be the hard counter to any structure being damaged?
1. I'm really going to miss single Rail Gun Exos. They already were weak against Onos, now you are limiting their CQC abilities as well. Why not just scrap the idea of dual and single gun exos altogether and say "Railgun Exos" are armed with a Railgun and a Claw, and "Minigun Exos" are armed with two Miniguns? I'd also like to see Railguns to continue being a bit cheaper than Miniguns.
2. Due to Exos being cheaper and more mobile now, I think we are going to see them more, which is great. Unfortunately, I think once people learn how to play with them effectively as a team, they will turn out to be a little overpowered. (You know, freaking welders and not half the team buying one, and actually coordinating where to put them.) We'll see.
3. Power surge might be a little overpowered, especially if marines have lots of res to spare. I like the charge up idea. I just played a game where @meatmachine got to throw around res like crazy and used lots of powersurges; maybe he can comment on this.
4. I think you may have missed something here... may.
Reminds me of Tesla coils. I'm all about that.
"Chaaarging up!"
I definitely agree that the audio visual cues are pretty off. The audio is pulled from the pulse grenade, which makes sense, but the old MAC emp cinematic is huge and doesn't really fit the action IMO. If the structure had a charge up sound and a visual indicator of electricity coursing from the base upwards, I think it would do a lot of good.
Perhaps the blast could even partially damage the structure itself? That might be an interesting drawback, and make you pick your surges better.
Your example assumes the alien is not only chipped but chipped enough. That's not always going to be the case.
Also the example someone else gave was zapping twice. That's 10 tres, not 5. It will be 20 tres if a Marine fails to stop the single skulk , matching the tres you declared the total time was worth.
Am I missing anything?
Power surge seems a tad OP, gonna make res biting a whole lot harder, more importantly its makes phasegates so much easier to defend.
All you need is power surge, one allah ackbar marine with a pulse nade, and you can clear the majority of grinds.
Cluster grenades are far stronger. In my testing we could take out all 10 clogs with a single cluster grenade. Were you using cluster grenades?
Yes, it was just being outhealed by a gorge and crag combo. I couldn't buy nades fast enough to make em useful.
Provisionally, changes that could potentially improve it would be-
1. Give it a wind-up time with AV cue so there's some counterplay available on the skulks part.
2. Make the effect DOT (i would suggest 50 damage over 5 secs or even 25 insta dmg + 25 over 5 secs), opening up the opportunity for counterplay. There are also occasions where engagements happen around other structures, in which case in its current form it can be used as a mini-nuke to swing an engagement. making it a DOT at least gives aliens a chance to retreat before it's too late.
With both these suggestions you really have to be careful not to make it completely useless against decent players. Even if it's powerful, I'd rather see tech-based counterplays rather than behaviour-based counterplays due to what I just mentioned.
As skulks, aliens grouped up and killed elevator. Then killed ore while marines tried to respond to elevator. I dropped both elevator and repair hives. Both hives went up and I got biomass 9.
I then used contaminate on the marine base. Within a minute I had killed an IP. All the marines were in base trying to kill the contamination. Then I killed the 2nd ip with contaminate. Then aliens rushed in and killed the remaining marines.
Aliens FINALLY have a game ender tech besides onos.
It depends on what is in the gorge base. Clogs are not healed by gorges or crags. So any clogs should of died. Both clogs and hydras take extra damage from flame damage type. Cluster grenades do flame damage type. All hydras should of died also.
If there was a crag, whip, or shift then hand grenades are not the right tool for that job. A nerve gas grenade would make it a little easier, but you really got to get in there and kill the tunnel and gorge with some marine buddies.
The clogs popped like they were supposed to, the hydras were persistent due to their constant healing, so I never was able to follow up the momentum of the single grenade to do anything else. Sure if I had more marines with me or some commander support it wouldn't have been an issue, but it's a pretty big contrast of the old grenade armory siege strat.
I like where cluster and nerve gas grenades are. Pulse might be a little weak, but not by much. But I would not want to see them further buffed. I don't want grenade spam.
You say you want to shake it up and increase appeal of the game, but I'm growing more resentful every day.
Which is why I think hand grenades should be spawn only, it makes them more situational as one life = one grenade, and you don't get the potential noob trap of dumping all your p.res on trying to take down a base on hand grenades alone. Then following that idea, teams could coordinate grenade types and for the average player they could just choose off of personal preference, giving a new layer of personal customization to your marine play as well as adding an interesting dynamic for higher level play.
I think the main deterrent that keeps players from using grenades effectively most of the time is having to spend precious pres on an item that is arguably less useful than the welder in most situations. Many players simply run out of base and forget to buy anything at all after numerous deaths.
I think it might be more enjoyable to use if you pay an initial cost at the armory (5 res?) then re-spawn with that grenade type for free every-time after until you decide to purchase a new grenade type. That is the closest approximation to how it worked in NS1, which had grenades that added a lot of depth (and fun) to marine-skulk combat.
But if the skulk is not chipped, then the commander won't zap. And you are missing the res lost from not having the extractor built, 1tres and .1pres every 6 seconds and one marine to go and recap instead of doing something else. Or you can also wear down a good skulk leading a marine by the nose by avoiding him just before he gets into line of sight and changing targets such as mezz -> plat -> server, et -> obs, c12 ->topo.
Please add a 1s delay and visual cue to allow lifeforms not to get screwed over in a base rush / pg grind / rt biting.
Please make the ability make the structure redundant for 3seconds or so (you are causing a power surge afterall). Or, if you wanna go further, make it so a marine has to tap the structure with a welder to restart it.
This change is huge and has the ability to completely shut down the small windows that open up for alien come back potentials. I'm surprised @IronHorse is not more concerned about this.