Classic Alien Respawn With One Hive
geekanarchy
Join Date: 2004-03-09 Member: 27244Members
Join Date: 2004-03-09 Member: 27244Members
<div class="IPBDescription">...is abysmal.</div> I was thinking this was a known problem, and surely the b4 would address it, even if only slightly. I do believe that I was mistaken.
Aliens with only 1 hive (first five minutes of game) spawn rediculously slow. Alien expansion in the early game is key to a chance at winning. A gorge does not have the means to protect itself and, with the current spawn speed, there's simply not enough skulks to protect to gorges (they get gummed up in the spawn queue). Alien spawning time for one hive needs to be increased, I would say by 50 percent. And when the second hive is up, the bonus would be removed.
Thoughts?
Aliens with only 1 hive (first five minutes of game) spawn rediculously slow. Alien expansion in the early game is key to a chance at winning. A gorge does not have the means to protect itself and, with the current spawn speed, there's simply not enough skulks to protect to gorges (they get gummed up in the spawn queue). Alien spawning time for one hive needs to be increased, I would say by 50 percent. And when the second hive is up, the bonus would be removed.
Thoughts?
Comments
while most large servers are devoid of any semblance of teamwork other than "hey i'll follow that dude ahead of me, oh look there's an enemy, let me chase it" on certain large servers where skilled players play, it's almost boring.
marines shoot well enough to kill 2-3 skulks by themselves before reloading, usually regardless of how skillful the skulk is. ambush you say? ambushing 5-6 marines isn't an easy task. 3 skulks might take down 1-2 before dying, and more skulks doesn't really help. res is incredibly slow, fades get owned by lmg's. the only thing that actually gets better with more people is the lerk, because of the AoE of gas.
and then of course, the 1 at a time spawn rate of the hive while marines spawn 3 at a time causes for spawncamping to start at 5 or 6 minutes, if the marines are aggressive enough. and this ALWAYS happens unless the teams are completely stacked the other way.
Flayra say's he was going to be do something about this. Let me just quote him.
<!--QuoteBegin-Flayra+Apr 22 2004, 04:20 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Flayra @ Apr 22 2004, 04:20 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->This has been brought up a number of times. I'm going to get better stats going soon, so I can see exactly how bad the problem is. Once that's done, I'll think about how to fix it, and run it by the community (or just test it out in a beta). Thanks, <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think you got that mixed up. Anyway Alien spawn system is not nearly as good as marine, most of all in large severs. Like 32 players(that number is just sick anyway, i comed once for that size team, i almost shot my self). Best thing i can think of to best sum this up was a 10 on 10 game. It was a very long game and marines started loseing ground. The com after 2 hours gave up and left thegame. So i steped in to see if i chould fix the mess. I knew we'd run our stoke pile of 400 res out very soon since we lost all out side res nodes. So i had to get the most bang for our buck. We had lvl 3/3 upgrades so stock marines where deadly and then i built 10 IPs(back in 2.0 when building ranges did't matter). Think of haveing a becon for free. No matter how many onos came in and killed the whole team they'd be back in a second LMGs blazeing and take em down. We'd make enuf res from the kills to replace all lost IPs or node. I sent wave after LMGing wave out to the hives aiming for eggs. They soon stoped going ono or fade (one guy some how thought it'd be safe to ono in red room, you can see the problem with his thinking.). So long story less long we won not with fancy HMGs or HA but mass stock marines slow but surely wearing them down. And there was't jack they chould do about it, you can't win spawning with 3 to 10 odds.
the skulks are not supposed to act like rambo and be killed every seconds thats all, when you keep skulk acting in this role which is scouting then there is no problem with respawn time.
And beside of that, if aliens respawn by waves it would be nearly impossible to destroy a hive and it will make the games length really huge...
look at clan war, aliens and marines are more balanced than in any other version (in beta3 and beta4 since its the same version).
Anyways, yes its a problem in larger games - there should probably be a slight spawn time reduction. <b>Keep in mind though, that some amount of queue-clogging is an intended feature</b>, that if aliens are dumb enough to constantly rush out of the hive alone and get mowed down they'll be hurting their team alot. The solution is obviously to gang up inside the Hive and then rush - anytime you have 2 or more Skulks, your chances for even a frontal assault are alot better.
But back to the topics point, if a game is larger than 8on8, spawn rates for Aliens are a problem, no matter how sensibly they play as a team.
Marines are still too good at hive1 and aliens are too good at hive2. That means marines should win every time if they know what they are doing.
As far as the spawning... I think it's fine the way it is, for games between 5v5 and 8v8. Once you start getting to, say, 10v10, aliens really suffer, though the spawn rate is a tiny part of that (think marine upgrades versus alien upgrades, not to mention marine concentrated fire). Aliens can win, but they rely heavily on insanely good, insanely clever players who can do crazy things like go 20/1 as skulks.
So, yes, outside of those numbers, the game is not balanced. But, I see no reason at all we should worry about spawn rates of 16v16 games... It'd probably unbalance reasonable sized games, at least for quite a while, no matter what was done about it, and there's really no point. You could always, I don't know, split that server into TWO SERVERS and call it a day.
It could easily be changed without affecting the spawn rates of smaller games, as some others in this thread have already suggested. Reducing the spawn time by a few seconds for every player or few players over a certain number on the alien team, say 8.
So, with 9 players on the alien team, the respawn would be slightly faster, not real noticable, but would probably help the problem somewhat. At maybe 12-13 players, it would decrease again, and again at 16 players.
You could further limit this to only applying with 1 hive, or having reduced bonus with 2 and no bonus at 3.
And yes, there should be some clog if aliens are throwing themselves in a suicidal stream at the marines.
EDIT: Wow, 4th post since '02, I should really voice my opinion a little more. <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html//emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif' /><!--endemo-->
- Increase spawn rate
- Umbra hive ( hive lets off umbra cloud when attacked )
- OC hive, the hive acts like an offence chamber ( this would basically save gorges having to gestate on top of the hive to place OC's when jetpackers are around ).
This way marines have 12 seconds per spawn, and aliens have 6 - meaning aliens have twice the spawn in rates.
Unless the marines have 2 IP's, then the spawn rate is the same. Or they have 3, and marine spawn rate is faster. Or 4, and marine spawn is twice that of aliens.