Chainless Chambers, Take Two...
Nemesis_Zero
Old European Join Date: 2002-01-25 Member: 75Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Constellation
Old European Join Date: 2002-01-25 Member: 75Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Constellation
Comments
Free them!
Edit: Although the spelling of "Chmabers" is a bit odd <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Naturally I voted yes, although I think upgrade cost should start higher and decrease with no. of hives to avoid the "superskulk" syndrome we see in Combat.
Though, i've not in this isntance taken the time to read the methodology, i've seen a couple of very workable ways of doing this in the past.
I believe this could be of great benefit with the right working.
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Care to explain that statement?
This would open up so many tactical branches for the Kharaa. Imagine a Clerity skulk distracting a squad of rines while his silenced/cloaked brethern lay waste to them from behind....
Yes.
"Oh... they got the hive... Oh well keep attacking" rather than
"OMG they got the HIVE BUILD CHAMBER HELP DEFEND" <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Eh? Your still not making any sense. Hives will still be very important, for the following reasons:
<ul><li>Additional Armor absorbtion</li><li>More Spawn Slots</li><li>Greater Map Control</li><li>Warp Points</li><li>Insurance against a sucessful hive rush</li><li>2nd and 3rd level hive attack abilities</li><li>If this was to be implemented, the ability to USE a 2nd and 3rd Upgrade.</li></ul>
But yeah, I think unchaining chambers from the hive is a great great great idea.
whats done is done. The unchaining of evolutions to hive has a much larger impact on the teamwork than this. Since the evo's are already unchained and will not return back, I say unchain the chambers to finish the change.
Voted: yes to unchainage
If you were to unchain chambers right now, without any tweaking, marines would very likely get slaughtered every game. Can you imagine cloaked focus skulks during the opening minutes, regen fades later on, and never being able to attack a hive without the threat of aliens warping in via MCs? Pretty scary. Upgrade chambers have been balanced so that they are powerful individually; allowing multiple to be built right off the bat forces marines to counter every alien strat at once. It would take a ton of work to balance.
As it stands, no one is able to organize the necessary playtesting. Flayra is busy with Unknown Worlds Entertainment, the vet program is dissolved, the playtester program is without direction, and there aren't enough people able/willing to sort out the myriad opinions of the general community. Not to mention that there are a couple major balance issues that still need to be worked out before we start overhauling something that isn't exactly "broken".
So will this happen? Possibly, but don't get your hopes up. It would help if Flayra would state his position on this. If he hates it, it's dead in the water.
The original idea made it quite clear that all 3 upgrades could not be had <b>at once</b> with only one hive. You could only choose <b>one</b> of those upgrades per hive.
So while you could potentially have all 3 upgrades availalble, you could only choose one, two, or a max of three based off of the number of <b>active</b> hives.
Edit: and while reducing chamber cost would help make them more accessable, thier area status effects would have to be reduced. IE Defences heal less/slower, Cloaking range reduced, MC adren boost reduced.
Naturally voted yes.
I also think that we should try and keep things as simple as possible. The simpler the idea, the better chance we have of going it implimented. If we manage to get the chambers unchained we can take the idea further.
And let the proclaimation go out from the mountains that on this day, June 1st 2004, Marine01, beloved right wing fanatic on the Natural Selection forums, did for the first time ever use an avatar.
...
Just the adaptability and variety that aliens would get from being able to choose between any of the upgrade types as well as being able to use all the passive chamber effects to their full extent would add greatly to gameplay. =]
Not that I like or don't like the sugestion in question personally - I just believe that rebalancing the game with something as big as this changed is just going to take too much time to be worth it. And winning the poll by killing the interest of those opposing a suggestion in it is one of the dirtiest tricks politicians are known to pull - and I'd rather avoid gutter-level politics, especially on good forums like this one.
...although marines are going to get roxored so hard by the aliens all the time including in pubs if this gets implemented in next version, alongside knockback bug fix. (or even knockback removal) ... but aliens roxing more could be fun
edit: damn I just realized the supreme drawback to this that will let aliens totally own... the area effect of sensory will be way overpowered in the beginning game because you will still be able to drop dcs... so, for instance, mess hall on nancy will always be cloaked at 1:00, and marines will be screwed. the counter costs more than the original attack (obs/armor1 > scs), but with chaining it was counterbalanced by the fact that sens crippled high alien forms. no more! could be frustrating always having scs around due to unchaining. there would have to be some other change to go with unchaining chambers, like making sc area of effect smaller, or making it take more than one to fully cloak an area... or increasing cost of chambers... or or... damn. guess we'd have to see how it plays out, though; this is why i vote to unchain still
Doesn't anyone here remember 2.0? Sensory was THE chamber of choice, but the marines adapted and the chamber was once again sent to 3rd hive oblivian. Throwing down a sensory chamber does NOT mean GG for the marines, nor is that area now completely off limits. Commanders built multiple observatories, marines moved in groups and generally only one scan was needed to find the SC, which was quickly destroyed. Sensory can be combatted just like defense and movement. Yes, marines will probably suffer a bit whilst their stratagy adjusts, but it will adjust.
At any rate, any speculation about this possibly beeing overpowered or underpowered is rather irrelivant: the idea has never been tested. It can be balanced through playtesting if it's implimented, and scrapped if it's impossible to balance. There is no harm in trying.
To further support this:
If you would have asked me, during 1.x times, if unchaining life-forms from hive numbers could possibly be balanced, I would have probably laughed at you.
It just seemed too radical of a change, but it turned out to be one of the best changes ever made to the game.
maybe a way to boost the use of teh sen chamber is to maybe have it so it boosts all attack damage to bite? and focus just does what it does now
i mean the only real way to use it is makeing sen chambers in groups of 3 around the whole map so you cant be seen while you are running jumping biteing
just my thoughts on it
Tremble in fear, holders of the chains on freedom! Let it be known that from this day forth, the unassailable words of righteousness, truth and justice shall be accompanied by 6.08 kilobytes of neo-conservative knowhow.
Even as I speak, the enemies of this freedom are plotting against us, and yet we shall go on to the end, we shall fight in the Constellation forum, we shall fight on IRC and MSN, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the general forum, we shall defend our poll, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!
God wills it.
Amen
At any rate, any speculation about this possibly beeing overpowered or underpowered is rather irrelivant: the idea has never been tested. It can be balanced through playtesting if it's implimented, and scrapped if it's impossible to balance. There is no harm in trying.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Apparantly you don't remember 2.0 too clearly yourself.
Because in the 2.0 *I* played, aliens couldn't have both Sensory and Defence down in the first minute of the game, which was what the parent post was suggesting. Regenerating sensory chambers are a pain.
Don't get me wrong, I know I naysay'd it in the other thread, but I do like the idea. I'm just a tad concerned that people aren't thinking it all the way through here. The amount of play-testing that will be required to balance this change is going to be phenomenal, because it would blow the field wide open for aliens. And by phenomenal, I mean I see there being a distinct possibility of DukeNukem Forever being out first.
I'm also a bit concerned with the lessened importance of hives, however I expect that'd be adjusted through the playtesting probably by nerfing 1st and 2nd hive aliens (what else is new?) and beefing 3rd.
Eventually the marines adapted to it, and sense became useless again. They just got obs early, learnt to hunt out the sense chamber and that was that.
Just stick it in a Beta. If its pants, bin it, if it work, well great!
i dont understand why you can be so stubborn as to be against this idea, because after all, i thought a beta was an early version, the version in which you can try things.
So? Can you imagine HA/LMG marines first and LA/LMG later on? wouldn't that suck?
Ps. 85% for yes, cool <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I voted <b>yes</b>