Further cyst placement automation + a crazy change to enable it
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The Lighter Side of Pessimism Join Date: 2002-03-02 Member: 263Members, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
The Lighter Side of Pessimism Join Date: 2002-03-02 Member: 263Members, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
At the moment, when you place a cyst, the cyst chain extends to connect with it. Then once it's started spreading infestation, you can drop structures around it.
This is a 2.5 step process:
1. Place cyst anywhere on the map;
1.5. Wait for the infestation to grow around the new cyst(s);
2. Drop structure.
This could be become a one step process if the cyst chain extended to connect with any alien structure when it's dropped (except for structures placed around gorge tunnels).
For example, this would mean that you could place your naturals at the very start of the game, without needing to wait for the infestation to grow around the node.
This would be a lot more convenient, but it also has a major problem: You'd be regularly dropping structures off of infestation and at the moment, most alien structures take damage while they're off of infestation..
It could be left as it is, but it undermines the idea because the structures would be damaged by the time the infestation reached them.
The crazy suggestion: Instead of taking damage while not on infestation, the structure would stop working. So if a harvester wasn't on infestation, it wouldn't collect res. Shades wouldn't cloak, crags wouldn't heal, etc. . Cysts would mostly behave as they do now - they'd spread infestation when they're connected to the cyst chain and retract infestation when they aren't.
This would make the first idea work, but it'd also result in massive changes to the meta-game. If you wanted to disable some structures you'd only need to cut the cyst chain. But if you didn't follow up and destroy them, they'd still be there for future use.
[EDIT] I've had a couple of people ask me to clarify the new cysting behavior:
Currently, the cyst chain extends when you place a new cyst - If the new cyst is too far away from the cyst chain, the game adds more cysts to fill the gap.
What I'm suggesting is that the same thing happens when you drop a structure. If the structure isn't going to be on infestation, the game will add more cysts to make sure that the structure will be on infestation.
So instead of cysting to the RT and then dropping the RT, you could drop the RT and the game would cyst to it.
This is a 2.5 step process:
1. Place cyst anywhere on the map;
1.5. Wait for the infestation to grow around the new cyst(s);
2. Drop structure.
This could be become a one step process if the cyst chain extended to connect with any alien structure when it's dropped (except for structures placed around gorge tunnels).
For example, this would mean that you could place your naturals at the very start of the game, without needing to wait for the infestation to grow around the node.
This would be a lot more convenient, but it also has a major problem: You'd be regularly dropping structures off of infestation and at the moment, most alien structures take damage while they're off of infestation..
It could be left as it is, but it undermines the idea because the structures would be damaged by the time the infestation reached them.
The crazy suggestion: Instead of taking damage while not on infestation, the structure would stop working. So if a harvester wasn't on infestation, it wouldn't collect res. Shades wouldn't cloak, crags wouldn't heal, etc. . Cysts would mostly behave as they do now - they'd spread infestation when they're connected to the cyst chain and retract infestation when they aren't.
This would make the first idea work, but it'd also result in massive changes to the meta-game. If you wanted to disable some structures you'd only need to cut the cyst chain. But if you didn't follow up and destroy them, they'd still be there for future use.
[EDIT] I've had a couple of people ask me to clarify the new cysting behavior:
Currently, the cyst chain extends when you place a new cyst - If the new cyst is too far away from the cyst chain, the game adds more cysts to fill the gap.
What I'm suggesting is that the same thing happens when you drop a structure. If the structure isn't going to be on infestation, the game will add more cysts to make sure that the structure will be on infestation.
So instead of cysting to the RT and then dropping the RT, you could drop the RT and the game would cyst to it.
Comments
Changing that would be a hard buff for aliens while the cysts already have the insane amount of 450 HP.
Maybe giving aliens a blueprint(/orangeprint) for harvesters would help, which gets "Built" as soon as the infestation is spread... so the Commander doesn't need to wait for dropping the RT... => convenient
Will this be more convenient? Yes
But it will be risky, since I'll wait for the blueprint to "drop" so I can kill that harvester... but on the other hand the same I do now as well.. if the commander is sloppy and drops it without scouting.