Some Thoughts On Alien Vs Alien

Sandstorm · March 2005

I've been working on my Alien vs Alien plugin. This lead to thoughts about how Alien vs Alien gameplay should work, based on the Natural Selection storyline.

I think that, when an alien is near a fully-built Hive, the Hive will damage an enemy alien at the same rate it would heal a friendly alien. Also, enemy aliens show up on Hive Sight as parasite blips. They don't show up as SOF blips, as those are only produced through Sensory chambers or aliens "smelling" things.

I also believe that aliens cannot be parasited. Basically, the alien's body will quickly kill any parasite injected into it, as it knows exactly how to kill it. The parasite will still damage the alien when it collides with it, but it won't transmit the position on Hive Sight. This is also true of alien structures, especially with Hives.

Enemy hives will simply not show up on Hive Sight at all. There is no "Free Hive Location" blip, as there are no friendly bacterium in the area. Once the enemy Hive is destroyed, then it will show up as a "Free Hive Location" blip.

Breakthrough · March 2005

This is for NS_ maps too? If it isn't, then there's no need for the Hive locations. I don't think enemy hives should damage you, but that's my thinking.

guchi · March 2005

I'd say to try at work on gameplay first, and then fit it to the storyline, not the other way around. I reckon that parasiting needs to be in there.
I like the idea of the enemy hive doing damage to you though...

Sandstorm · March 2005

Enemy Hives killing players seems to be necessary for gameplay reasons, as a single Skulk can do massive damage to the Hive, especially once he gets Leap. Since we're talking about Combat here, I was thinking of making the Hive recieve health whenever it damaged an enemy player. On top of that, it distributes XP to the nearby team members when it kills an enemy player.

I haven't crunched the numbers, but most of the lifeforms should damage the Hive faster than it heals. The idea is to prolong the Hive's life, as it has less hitpoints than a CC, but is a much bigger, and harder to defend, target.

im_lost · March 2005

It seems quite difficult to kill an onos or a fade in alien vs. alien.

If you get devoured by an onos, and another onos devours that onos, what happens to you?

Do spores do anything? How can you tell which webs were placed by your team and which ones were placed by the other team?

urinalcake · March 2005

I havent actually played ava, no offense I'm like really gung-ho against stuff not set in the NS universe -coughsiegemapscough- But I'm usually caught playing a MVM once in a blue moon.

Although, for the hive dealing damage thing, have you thought about like.. uhm using sporify or whatever that old mod was on some servers, it'd damage Marines attacking RTs.. like Electrify?

That could do the damage to the players, and would work well.. since ava is like, really hard to do.

boooger · March 2005

Because of radically different environments that the kharaa have had to encounter, adaptations have come about. Some differences are greater than others, but they are differences none the less. These mutated kharaa have become so apart that they regard other, "normal" kharaa as enemies. Some aliens might have different skills due to mutations.

put about 30 seconds into that, but it works. showing off my new ava, really. <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' />

urinalcake · March 2005

A storyline... to ava and mvm games..

-sigh-

Fatal_Error · March 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (urinalcake @ Mar 31 2005, 10:07 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> A storyline... to ava and mvm games..

-sigh-  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
AvA: A string of nanite-infested bacterium has resided in one half of your population. You must kill them.

Hmm... How would you do the RR? Never played on an MvM server, sadly.

EPcreep · March 2005

is this for co or ns?

im_lost · March 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (EPcreep @ Mar 31 2005, 07:29 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>is this for co or ns?</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Sandstorm)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Since we're talking about Combat here...</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

EPcreep · March 2005

why is he talking about unbuilt hives then?

Sandstorm · March 2005

Alien vs Alien Classic has all the bugs of Alien vs Alien Combat, plus plenty more. It could be fun, but I'm not even going to worry about it until Combat is fully working. <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink-fix.gif' />

Marine vs Marine Classic would be interesting, if it was possible to get Resource Towers to work properly. Without those, the Marines have to survive on RFK, which slows the game to a crawl on anything less that 16 vs 16.

Edit:
The version that's currently out, 1.7, isn't compatible with 3.0 Final. I've already fixed that stuff, but I've also been fixing some other things, such as the parasited hives. Also, for some reason, the Attackers see the Defender's Hive on their HUD. They know exactly how much health it has, and it even flashes red when it's attacked.

This, of course, leads me to the question, how should players see the enemy Hive? Should they see an empty hive location? Should they just see nothing at all, until it is actually empty?

kill4thrills · March 2005

why such complicated stories? these should be no different from 2 different ant or bee colonies fighting for control of prime real estate

Some Thoughts On Alien Vs Alien

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