Redundancy Of Alien Classes
Eclipse
Join Date: 2003-01-18 Member: 12444Members
Join Date: 2003-01-18 Member: 12444Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Over-emphasis on Hit & Run</div> I couldn't really quite figure out where to put this topic, but I figured general discussion would be best, because I guess all I'm really looking for is just a plain ol' discussion on this idea.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'><u>The Alien classes, currently, are all based on a Hit and Run Fighting Style</u></span>
I think this is a major detriment to the team as whole, as well as a possible contributor to a general alien weakness as a whole latley.
I'm just going to take a simple look at all the individual classes.
<u>The Skulk</u>: This class by defination should be the hit and run class. Of that there is no question its small size, low HP, and fast speed all contribute to make it what it is, a guerilla fighter. Parasite and leap are both, generally, considered assistants to the ambush. Xenocide is kinda of a left hook in the skulks overall plan, but not necessarily detrimental.
<u>The Gorge</u>: At first glance its hard to label the gorge as a hit & run class. But upon further thought, most of its combat abilities force the pudgy one into just that. Spit: Even though it has a recieved a damage buff, for the most part its most effective for peaking around corners shooting a few off, and running off to catch the marine again off guard. Bile-bomb: Same concept, run into a room, fire off a few BB's, run out. Webs even this when used in a combat scenario is again best used a corner peaker. Heal-spray is obviously exempt from this theory. And while I am certainly not saying that these are the only ways to use these abilities, in most cases of playing, they ARE the way I see them used most often. An exception being to web, where its a general toss up between combat and just laying them down for defensive purposes. However the main problem exists in that it simple cannot stand up to much (Not that it should really) to be able to just keep these abilities going without hitting and running away to find another advanteous point to attack again.
<u>The Lerk</u>: Thankfully the lerk probably fills its role the best as a support class, and it has very little with actual un-intentional hit & run tactics. However at the same time it is also a hit & run class. It's primary means of damaging marines are basically harassment. Throw a spore cloud, fly away. Fly back throw a spore cloud. Rinse and repeat until you can bite them(Which also falls into the category, of simply flying in, taking a bite or 2 and flying out) and kill them with ease. I will not complain of umbra and primal however. For one they are not primary combat but secondary, in that of a support role, and also it would be difficult to argue a hit & run primal scream <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<u>The Fade</u>: Yet another guerilla fighter. The fade has gone from a front-line shock trooper to a sneaky ninja. While it's certainly nice and all, it detracts from the alien's ability to maintain any kind of large scale battle. It's base speed is barley faster than a marine's, thus making blink necessary to travel anywhere in a decent amount of time. And its HP although "high", is, in a utilitarian aspect, still relativeley weak. You simply do not see fades attacking marines head on because its either suicide or folly. Even 3 LMG marines have the potential to rip a fade down in a matter of seconds. Blink and metabolize reinforce the hit & run specialty of the class as well. Blink in, Slash Slash, Blink out, Metabolize. Anything more than that and your risking death. Acid rocket is a joke, period, this really needs to be changed, but since that is off track for the post I will leave it as is.
<u>The Onos</u>: Even the Onos is forced to hit and run. Stomp, Devour anybody? Or how about stomp, gore, gore, stomp, run away? Heck, even charge, which should assist the onos in attacking is used as an escape tool. The most expensive and powerful alien lifeform, is yet another guerilla fighter.
Beginning to see the trend here? This is something that is just horribly wrong. All the classes forced to fit the same role creates such a redundancy that it's no wonder aliens have a hard time fighting a concentrated marine push. They simply lack any ability to clash head on with the marine's firepower. And trade-off's aren't even worth it, if an onos were to charge head-long into a team of 5 marines, kill 2 or even 3 and then die. It would be considered a terrible loss for the alien team and a victory for the marines.
NS is amazing in its design, conception and execution as a hybrid of FPS and RTS. But its difficult for me to imagine an RTS game where there would be one-side of decent HP and ranged damage units, who are exceptionally powerful when in even in a simple pair, facing off against a team primarily melee-centric units with high damage low HP and that even their top-tier unit can fall to 4-6 basic units of the first team.
I guess my only idea here is bring back definitive roles for the aliens. They need some kind of distinction other than HP/Armor values and models. Because for almost all real-time encounters they play exactly the same: Run in, kill 1 whatever, Run out. That, I personally believe, is just wrong.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'><u>The Alien classes, currently, are all based on a Hit and Run Fighting Style</u></span>
I think this is a major detriment to the team as whole, as well as a possible contributor to a general alien weakness as a whole latley.
I'm just going to take a simple look at all the individual classes.
<u>The Skulk</u>: This class by defination should be the hit and run class. Of that there is no question its small size, low HP, and fast speed all contribute to make it what it is, a guerilla fighter. Parasite and leap are both, generally, considered assistants to the ambush. Xenocide is kinda of a left hook in the skulks overall plan, but not necessarily detrimental.
<u>The Gorge</u>: At first glance its hard to label the gorge as a hit & run class. But upon further thought, most of its combat abilities force the pudgy one into just that. Spit: Even though it has a recieved a damage buff, for the most part its most effective for peaking around corners shooting a few off, and running off to catch the marine again off guard. Bile-bomb: Same concept, run into a room, fire off a few BB's, run out. Webs even this when used in a combat scenario is again best used a corner peaker. Heal-spray is obviously exempt from this theory. And while I am certainly not saying that these are the only ways to use these abilities, in most cases of playing, they ARE the way I see them used most often. An exception being to web, where its a general toss up between combat and just laying them down for defensive purposes. However the main problem exists in that it simple cannot stand up to much (Not that it should really) to be able to just keep these abilities going without hitting and running away to find another advanteous point to attack again.
<u>The Lerk</u>: Thankfully the lerk probably fills its role the best as a support class, and it has very little with actual un-intentional hit & run tactics. However at the same time it is also a hit & run class. It's primary means of damaging marines are basically harassment. Throw a spore cloud, fly away. Fly back throw a spore cloud. Rinse and repeat until you can bite them(Which also falls into the category, of simply flying in, taking a bite or 2 and flying out) and kill them with ease. I will not complain of umbra and primal however. For one they are not primary combat but secondary, in that of a support role, and also it would be difficult to argue a hit & run primal scream <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<u>The Fade</u>: Yet another guerilla fighter. The fade has gone from a front-line shock trooper to a sneaky ninja. While it's certainly nice and all, it detracts from the alien's ability to maintain any kind of large scale battle. It's base speed is barley faster than a marine's, thus making blink necessary to travel anywhere in a decent amount of time. And its HP although "high", is, in a utilitarian aspect, still relativeley weak. You simply do not see fades attacking marines head on because its either suicide or folly. Even 3 LMG marines have the potential to rip a fade down in a matter of seconds. Blink and metabolize reinforce the hit & run specialty of the class as well. Blink in, Slash Slash, Blink out, Metabolize. Anything more than that and your risking death. Acid rocket is a joke, period, this really needs to be changed, but since that is off track for the post I will leave it as is.
<u>The Onos</u>: Even the Onos is forced to hit and run. Stomp, Devour anybody? Or how about stomp, gore, gore, stomp, run away? Heck, even charge, which should assist the onos in attacking is used as an escape tool. The most expensive and powerful alien lifeform, is yet another guerilla fighter.
Beginning to see the trend here? This is something that is just horribly wrong. All the classes forced to fit the same role creates such a redundancy that it's no wonder aliens have a hard time fighting a concentrated marine push. They simply lack any ability to clash head on with the marine's firepower. And trade-off's aren't even worth it, if an onos were to charge head-long into a team of 5 marines, kill 2 or even 3 and then die. It would be considered a terrible loss for the alien team and a victory for the marines.
NS is amazing in its design, conception and execution as a hybrid of FPS and RTS. But its difficult for me to imagine an RTS game where there would be one-side of decent HP and ranged damage units, who are exceptionally powerful when in even in a simple pair, facing off against a team primarily melee-centric units with high damage low HP and that even their top-tier unit can fall to 4-6 basic units of the first team.
I guess my only idea here is bring back definitive roles for the aliens. They need some kind of distinction other than HP/Armor values and models. Because for almost all real-time encounters they play exactly the same: Run in, kill 1 whatever, Run out. That, I personally believe, is just wrong.
Comments
However, you did leave out a crucial post regarding the inability to clash directly with marines and shrug off the burdens of continuous guerilla warfare. It is called attacking in numbers. That and mixing in a variety of lifeforms.
The Onos is not what you consider a guerilla fighter, by definition. Simply because he does utilizie hit and run in specific techniques, it does not classify him as such.
The onos, for game balance, SHOULD be able to be overpowered, even by light marines. If the numbers are great enough, this should happen. What do you want?.. A near invincible alien lifeform which can plow through things with no fear?
The hit and run fighting technique makes sense for the nearly-all melee attacking aliens. Marines are weak without numbers usually, even with firepower.
You've pointed out an apparent (or imagined) problem without outlining any kind of solution or what you think aliens need to have.
The alien "roles" are fairly well defined as it is. Gorge is required, Skulk is base lifeform and multi-skilled, Lerk is support, Fade is middle-of-the-road and very capable in the right hands, and Onos is nearly unstoppable under most circumstances.
And no, running headfirst into a turtled marine base and trying to eliminate four HMGs, two shotguns, and a grenade launcher without dying as Onos is not an example of a significant game balance/alien model problem.
*plots for more stompkills*
An onos who is unkillable, or rather, if you can't run then you just go in and die?
Hit and Run will happen in ANY melee vs. range game, esp. when you can recover your hp so fast.
The onos on his own would die.
Solution: don't go up against 5 marines on your own.
The hitbox was fixed, so people can actually hit it now.
People fail to understand that if we have an onos has to be countered by 3 HA/HMGs because OMG ONOS needs to be that strong, they will be back the next day saying "OMG WE HAD SIX SHOTGUNNERS SHOOTING AN ONOS AN IT WONT DIE NS IS UNBALANCED OMGOMGOGOMGMOGOGMOGO I"M SUING YOU FLAYRA YOU SUCK AT MAKING A BALANCED GAME".
Jesus, in 2.1 we had the onos with 900/500, and THAT onos wouldn't die because with regen it gets 90hp each tick. Aliens strats in 6v6 were one guy save for fade and another save for onos (instead of the usual 2 fades).
would shut you whiners up permanently with your whole bs argument "i dont know whether the devs intended this or not".
set the scene. map is eclipse. south loop resnode. aliens have ec and cc. marines have maint. they have taken sl. they have a tf, 4 turrets, and all 5 rines. 3 with hmgs, 2 with sg rines with HMG/HA ready to push into CC and obliterate everything. now. you have a fade, 2 skulks, and a lerk. lerk goes into vent and starts umbraing. fade rushes in, followed by 2 skulks. the 2 skulks double team one of the HA thats being distracted the fade as it blinks out. HA down, skulks die to turrets. rinse and repeat a couple more times and you just killed 90 res.
OR.
we have a fade, an onos, a couple of skulks and a lerk. lerk umbras, fade blinks in, followed by a stomping onos, followed by skulks. HA are outgunned, they fall quickly. Sl taken. maint falls soon after. GG due to teamwork.
OR
1 onos, on his own, charges in starts stomping everything, kills the 2 light armor after devouring a HA. then dispatches the other 2 HA. the rest of the team is off raping the rine base and such. now. WHICH DO YOU THINK IS THE BETTER SCENARIO?
Aliens are designed to be hit and run for a reason.
People fail to understand that if we have an onos has to be countered by 3 HA/HMGs because OMG ONOS needs to be that strong, they will be back the next day saying "OMG WE HAD SIX SHOTGUNNERS SHOOTING AN ONOS AN IT WONT DIE NS IS UNBALANCED OMGOMGOGOMGMOGOGMOGO I"M SUING YOU FLAYRA YOU SUCK AT MAKING A BALANCED GAME".
Jesus, in 2.1 we had the onos with 900/500, and THAT onos wouldn't die because with regen it gets 90hp each tick. Aliens strats in 6v6 were one guy save for fade and another save for onos (instead of the usual 2 fades). <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Where in my post did I suggest in buffing the any of the Alien classes up? If you don't have to intelligence to understand simple English, you shouldn't attempt and be the smart guy (the more proper term got censored).
I said the hit and run needs to be tweaked, I didn't say how, because promptly I don't know. You, however seem to have a bit of a problem distinguishing your imagination from the real stuff.
1. Buff aliens ridiculously and ruin balance.
2. Remove ALL regen (no chance of any regeneration, no hives no healspray)
3. Make lifeforms respawn as the lifeform they died as.
And, basically, they all suck.
yes, they do design the game and make the final decisions to implement changes, and yes, we can't do anything about it. but what we can do is choose to play differently from what is expected and make use of what's there to completely turn things around and try different ideas. the developers may appreciate us a lot more if we stopped depending on them to set "the right way to play" and instead let them provide the framework for establishing our own ways to play and building upon that. this is an idea almost alien in the pub and clan communities alike, as most strategies and thoughts are just regurgitated to an extent.
the initial post was correct, there really isn't enough potential for good and serious melee in this version, due to the repetitiveness and redundancy of alien classes. playing certain classes has become a chore, to an extent. other classes have been so badly nerfed since 2.0 that, for example, there is no more super fading through shotguns, there can't be. any lerks in competitive rarely bite, as if they are lost they can cost the team enormously while a ripe second hive gets shotgun rushed as soon as it goes up..
as things like hitboxes and old bugs get fixed, new and bigger problems will begin to arise because of the the RTS aspect of the game holding the fps aspect back in terms of melee.
while I haven't actually commanded in a game for a long time, it's my belief that the more you look at NS from an RTS standpoint, outlining your grunts and your fighters and whatever else, the less fun it becomes for those players who actually physically have to play. they aren't cpu guided droids, these are actual players
80% kamikaze.
Lork spikes were removed because they made things unfair for the marines. In 1.0x and 2.0x lorks could sit on rafters in certain hives and spike away ANY marine buildings there. It made it completly impossible for the marines to claim certain hives due to invincible lorks. By adding a ranged attack to aliens we also made all marine structures incredibly vulnurable since all aliens (save gorge and onos) are mobile enough to reach places that allowed them to exploit the weapons. As I can see it, there are, from this point, three diffrent fighting styles that could be considered for aliens:
1. Hit-And Run. Aliens are stealthy and sneaky. They go behind the enemy units and kill them. Larger units are stronger, but still need to use their brain when attacking. If you walk into the marine base and start hitting stuff, unless you have many more units then the other team at the time, you will certainly die.
2. Tank Melee (onos in 1.04). Aliens are nearly invicible unless you are in a group, and if you get attacked by a group of aliens you are screwed, there is nothing the marines can do. Aliens can walk up to a group of marines and kill everyone in it because they have absurd amounts of armor. This is clearly unfair to the marines.
3. Ranged attack. Aliens have equally good or better ranged guns then marines, who are supposed to be the ranged specalists. Since the aliens are far more mobile then the marines are, they can use their ranged weapons to deadly effect. Marines get killed from range and then can't return fire because the alien is too fast, which means they literally can't do anything about it. They can't hold bases in large areas (even though this should be a good thing) because of this - aliens are better then them at long range, which makes no sense whatsoever.
Now do you see why? Or are you going to continue to insist that because you have a clan tag, you should be able to kill an entire squad of heavy armors as an onos in order to make you feel better about yourself?
While I agree with most of your post, I'm just going to point out that lerk spikes were not overpowered and rather were removed because they were completely redundant with spores
Also spikes never were a threat to taking down your outposts, the spike was so rediculously slow at killing it you could probably LMG a hive down faster than a lerk could spike down a phase gate
Marines have the ability to recycle their weapons, passive upgrades, ranged attacks, and a commander, countered by very slow mobility. This forces them into a role of tatically advancing as a squad, continuously gaining ground and holding it, or die.
Aliens have superior mobility, higher hitpoints with the higher evolutions, regeneration/healing, higher damage countered by non-recycleable costly lifeforms, close range attack (except for lerk), no commander.
As you can see, both sides are very different from each other, thus requiring different types of tactics. You don't have to choose to be a hit-run alien, but you will find yourself easily overpowered by good marines who work together. The aliens have to overpower the marines over-time to win. Basically, whichever sides techs up or evolves faster will win most of the time.
As for the marines being the slow but strong, it depends on the upgrades they get. It's possible to change tatics as a marine.
Aliens start off very mobile, but not very strong. (Skulk)
As they evolve, they get less mobile, but much stronger. (Skulk to Onos)
Marines start off strong, but not very mobile. (Marine)
As they tech up, they get more mobile, and stronger (Marine to Marine with JP and HMG/ Marine to Marine with HA and HMG)
Problem is marines get strong (HA, heavy weapons) and mobile (JP) as they tech up, while Aliens lose their mobility as they evolve while their strength isn't parallel to marine's (though still stronger than before).
How to fix? Prehapse upgrade Fade attack power slightly and upgradeing the Onos attack power greatly.
The only upgrade that makes marines faster than their predecessor is the jetpack and with the jetpack, they are still some weak as in they are not able to absorb a lot of damage, and is still very vulnerable to spore. Only change I might make is to raise the cost of JPs a little.
I allmost allways do, you can deal with the onos later, especially when they're bulky, slow and don't maneuver well amongst buildings, while even a few skulks do way more damage than an onos if you just let them do whatever they want.
I allmost allways do, you can deal with the onos later, especially when they're bulky, slow and don't maneuver well amongst buildings, while even a few skulks do way more damage than an onos if you just let them do whatever they want. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
But the problem is, a smart Onos will spend the time supporting his skulk squad with continuous stomp. This cuts down on the ranged superiority of the marines, especially with leap from skulks. The marines end up being immobilized while skulks chew them to pieces. If the marines finally get the remaining skulks killed, they'd have to deal with the Onos that can easily decimate the reloading/weakened marines.
People fail to understand that if we have an onos has to be countered by 3 HA/HMGs because OMG ONOS needs to be that strong, they will be back the next day saying "OMG WE HAD SIX SHOTGUNNERS SHOOTING AN ONOS AN IT WONT DIE NS IS UNBALANCED OMGOMGOGOMGMOGOGMOGO I"M SUING YOU FLAYRA YOU SUCK AT MAKING A BALANCED GAME".
Jesus, in 2.1 we had the onos with 900/500, and THAT onos wouldn't die because with regen it gets 90hp each tick. Aliens strats in 6v6 were one guy save for fade and another save for onos (instead of the usual 2 fades). <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Where in my post did I suggest in buffing the any of the Alien classes up? If you don't have to intelligence to understand simple English, you shouldn't attempt and be the smart guy (the more proper term got censored).
I said the hit and run needs to be tweaked, I didn't say how, because promptly I don't know. You, however seem to have a bit of a problem distinguishing your imagination from the real stuff. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
then with your omniscious, could you grace us with your game breaking/fixing changes that alters how the aliens are played?
I allmost allways do, you can deal with the onos later, especially when they're bulky, slow and don't maneuver well amongst buildings, while even a few skulks do way more damage than an onos if you just let them do whatever they want. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
But the problem is, a smart Onos will spend the time supporting his skulk squad with continuous stomp. This cuts down on the ranged superiority of the marines, especially with leap from skulks. The marines end up being immobilized while skulks chew them to pieces. If the marines finally get the remaining skulks killed, they'd have to deal with the Onos that can easily decimate the reloading/weakened marines. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Combine that situation with fades instead of skulks and you have a close to unstoppable alien force
Throw in umbra too and I'd say f4
The onos shouldn't be needing the other aliens to do the job. The other aliens should need HIM. I suggested an idea dealing with this awhile go and it's somewhere in the Future Possible Idea forum now. Look for the Revamping the charge post as I'm too lazy to look it up
When I picture an Onos in 1.04 I think of a behemoth that was absolutely brutal in every way. The epitome of alien evolution. Now I look at the 3.0 one and I think the aliens have been doing some inbreeding because they now have a tissue paper tank with an eating disorder.
But in all honesty the only way to give the Onos the title it once had is to increase its HP by a huge amount. I'm talking 3000-4500 HP. Obviously this wouldn't be balanced in combat but if Onos was limited by something else other than resources in NS (re-chaining the lifeforms). Then it would be fairly balanced. Late game base breaker. Kinda like the IS2 in WW2. designed for the sole purpose of plowing through super heavily defended areas. Punching a hole big enough so the people trailing behind it can capitalize on it.