<!--QuoteBegin-comrade+Jul 14 2005, 09:21 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (comrade @ Jul 14 2005, 09:21 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> they do too much damage
gorges cant help against them very well now
it takes like 30 seconds to kill a hive from relative safety <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> isn't it how it was before?
(times below aren't exactly accurate, but just for example)
It takes 30 seconds to detect a dropped hive, 30 seconds to get your men from marine start to a seige point, 15 seconds to build the TF, 15 to upgrade it and 10 seconds to build each cannon.
Now add up the time for dying, building phases, reloading and resupplying, scanning, respawning, beaconing and phasing, waiting for res flow and so on and you'll see that the marines have way less than a minute to get the hive down before it goes up and the alien strength increases 5 fold. If your second hive is already up the alien team can delay seiging for much longer and prevent it from ever starting much easier.
The point isn't that seiging can be done quickly. The point is that the aliens should know way ahead of time when a siege is going to occur and have plenty of time and power to disable it.
<!--QuoteBegin-ultranewb+Jul 14 2005, 04:14 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (ultranewb @ Jul 14 2005, 04:14 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> (times below aren't exactly accurate, but just for example)
It takes 30 seconds to detect a dropped hive, 30 seconds to get your men from marine start to a seige point, 15 seconds to build the TF, 15 to upgrade it and 10 seconds to build each cannon.
Now add up the time for dying, building phases, reloading and resupplying, scanning, respawning, beaconing and phasing, waiting for res flow and so on and you'll see that the marines have way less than a minute to get the hive down before it goes up and the alien strength increases 5 fold. If your second hive is already up the alien team can delay seiging for much longer and prevent it from ever starting much easier.
The point isn't that seiging can be done quickly. The point is that the aliens should know way ahead of time when a siege is going to occur and have plenty of time and power to disable it. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Once a marine team solidifys a location, it's increadibly difficult to get them out on a timeline. Depending on map/lifeforms all the rines might need is a pg and a pack of mines to hold out for the nessicary minutes.
Personally I liked the 380 damage seiges, although statisticly they should have made almost no difference, they seemed a little less destructive.
The old seiges that harmed lifeforms and structures were NEVER this good. They were simply support weapons used to take down a hive and make it easier for marines to invade the hive.
The old seiges of just pinging and shooting the hive took probably twice as long as the new seiges did, they did not have huge problems of gorges healing the hive, and the seiges themselves were still immensly useful.
The new seiges on the other hand; it's like taking the sentry turret, making it so it can't hurt structures, doubling it's dmg, and lowering it's cost by 5... Today, seige turrets do ALL the work involved in taking down a hive. Before, marines HAD to go in to really kill the second hive, plus seiges, and at the very least they would need HMG's.
Seiges are overpowered as hell, there isn't a reason to go in the hive room anymore... just plop down 3 inexpensive seiges within a minute and if the aliens let the seiges go up the hive is going down. In fact, it goes down before you can kill the turret factory or the seiges or the phase gate. Hives get demolished by the new seiges and it's not even funny or fair. These seiges remind me of the old 1.00 seiges which never required a ping, or line of sight, and fired automatically... they just were thrown down and created an instant "no alien zone".
Lets do a quick comparision of why the old seiges were great, fine, and almighty, and compare them with the new broken seiges:
Old seige: - Support weapons, killing the hive with them alone took almost two minutes. (3-4 seiges) and if the marines never went into the hive, just have a gorge stay under the hive healing it, and the hive would never die unless the gorge was killed, which needed to be done by marines. Therefore marines couldn't camp on the seiges like they do now. - Gorges could still heal the hive but only if underneath it, because of lifeform damage the seiges did. - Seiges hurt aliens around the hive, so nothing could camp on top of it, allowing marines the ability to attack the hive in person. - Old seiges gave marines a deadly advantage but were counterable in many ways.
New seiges: - Main weapons that obliterate a hive room in under one minute. - Marines just have to defend them and not worry about attacking. - Line of sight isn't nessesary, but rather overkill on the hive. - Gorges cannot heal the hive to stop them from going down. <b>- The only counter to seiges now is to not let them go up.</b>
The last line is bolded because it was the same problem with the old 1.00 seiges. The only way to actually prevent them from destroying everything was to not let them go up. Once they were up, it was too late for aliens to kill the seiges before they killed the hive due to their auto-fire status with no line of sight requirement.
Solution to the seiges: Change them back to the old seiges that worked just fine.
But of course, this brings up the question, why were the seiges ever changed in the first place? They were not broken, they were not frustrating, the new sieges have become twice as good as the old ones could have ever been...
Things really have to go back to the old way, it was a lot more fun for both sides (at least compared to now) and not to mention much more balanced.
<!--QuoteBegin-ultranewb+Jul 14 2005, 04:14 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (ultranewb @ Jul 14 2005, 04:14 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> (times below aren't exactly accurate, but just for example)
It takes 30 seconds to detect a dropped hive, 30 seconds to get your men from marine start to a seige point, 15 seconds to build the TF, 15 to upgrade it and 10 seconds to build each cannon.
Now add up the time for dying, building phases, reloading and resupplying, scanning, respawning, beaconing and phasing, waiting for res flow and so on and you'll see that the marines have way less than a minute to get the hive down before it goes up and the alien strength increases 5 fold. If your second hive is already up the alien team can delay seiging for much longer and prevent it from ever starting much easier.
The point isn't that seiging can be done quickly. The point is that the aliens should know way ahead of time when a siege is going to occur and have plenty of time and power to disable it. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> after playing nine hundred thousand games of ns you'd think people would realize that if they drop the second hive, the marines are going to come attack it. Its pretty much the biggest constant in the game.
When you drop the hive, the marines know you are doing it, and they are coming to kill it, you so you had better stop them. People act like its some sort of suprise when seiges start going up.
Often the pg gets up without resistance. Its amazing.
<!--QuoteBegin-NGE+Jul 15 2005, 07:55 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (NGE @ Jul 15 2005, 07:55 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->But of course, this brings up the question, why were the seiges ever changed in the first place? They were not broken, they were not frustrating <snip><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> They were broken. The determining factors on whether a lifeform got hit by siege blasts was very inconsistency and not even remotely intuitive. On top of that It created this bizzare situation where, the moment the sieges went up, your best bet for survival was to get far away from the chambers and the hive, as those were going to get you killed. Similarly it made strategic placement of MCs/SCs/DCs a liability, since the Lerk who is using an otherwise well-positioned MC for energy runs a huge risk that one scan will come too close to that chamber and get him killed.
<!--QuoteBegin-coris+Jul 15 2005, 08:15 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (coris @ Jul 15 2005, 08:15 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I prefer the new style of the sieges since random blast damage isnt very fun. Just lower the damage caused. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> You can't do that, because then gorges who camp on top of the hive become too effective again.
Remember last patch? Sieges had their damage increased because gorges healed the hive and seiges couldn't take them down in a reasonable time. But now they cannot heal the hive to keep it alive.
Lower the damage, and gorges who camp the hive become a huge problem for seiging. Increase the damage, and gorges become meaningless (like they are now) and hives drop too fast.
This is why seige damage is nessesary to do for other players. It is the only reliable way to balance seiges and make them fair for both teams.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->They were broken. The determining factors on whether a lifeform got hit by siege blasts was very inconsistency and not even remotely intuitive. On top of that It created this bizzare situation where, the moment the sieges went up, your best bet for survival was to get far away from the chambers and the hive, as those were going to get you killed. Similarly it made strategic placement of MCs/SCs/DCs a liability, since the Lerk who is using an otherwise well-positioned MC for energy runs a huge risk that one scan will come too close to that chamber and get him killed.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No, they were not broken at all. Old players never felt that seige damage was a bad thing in the slightest, nor were they surprised that seiges hurt aliens as well. The dynamic of the siege blast was that it forced aliens out of the hive room and to attack marines. They could not camp in there because not only was their hive being killed, but it had the chance of killing them as well.
I have played hundreds of games, and never once was I in the bizzare situation of going "far away from the chambers and the hive" because I knew where the safe spots around the seige blasts were. It was not buggy, it was slighty inconsistant but it added to the feel of the game. It was easy to tell when seige blasts were coming. It still is. Therefore it made it easy to dodge the seige blasts, because you knew when they were coming.
They came whenever: - You see a ping in your hive room - Marines spot the hive or structures
When you saw either of those two things happen, you got away from structures. After that, you were safe. Not a very big deal. The old seiges only killed players who made miscalculations, and that's why they were not overpowered. They were support weapons.
The old seiges made it a liability to hang around your structures. At least you could hang around your structures.
Because JazzX, in this version you cannot even stay around your structures. Do you know why? It is because they die so fast it was like the structure was never even there.
Instead of the lerk who gets killed because he was foolish enough to stay around the predictible seige blasts, you now have a lerk who can stay where he wants but cannot actually use the movement chamber because it died in two hits from a seige.
JazzX, you claim the seiges were broken yet you do not even address my imbalance complaints. Something that is broken is game is something that is not balanced. The old seiges were balanced almost perfectly. The new seiges are not. The new seiges are far more "broken" than the old ones could ever imagine of being. Just because it was slighty (and I mean ever so slight that one could barely tell unless he's played maybe 50 games of NS) buggy does not make them "broken". Bugs are only bad for a game when it starts to affect who wins/loses a game. However the old buggyness of the old seiges actually added to the game, they did not take away from it.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> after playing nine hundred thousand games of ns you'd think people would realize that if they drop the second hive, the marines are going to come attack it. Its pretty much the biggest constant in the game.
When you drop the hive, the marines know you are doing it, and they are coming to kill it, you so you had better stop them. People act like its some sort of suprise when seiges start going up.
Often the pg gets up without resistance. Its amazing.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Router box, you seem to assume that it is possible to stop marines from placing up a phase. It is extremely time consuming and takes several hit and runs to kill good players with HMGs/Shotties. They WILL get up a phase, they WILL get up a turret factory, they WILL get up seiges, unless you kill them in under a minute (or two?)!
And the new seiges are so good, they WILL kill your hive unless you can kill the marines before they throw up the seiges! Once they go up, the hive is going down.
This isn't about sneak siege rushes. This is about aliens, who, know that marines are coming. They attack them non-stop. They are constantly sporing them. And yet the marines still take down the hive.
This is because, marines take time to kill. We aren't talking about marines who die at once to a bunch of skulks/lerk/fades. We are talking about marines who are going to kill fades if they stay in the room longer than a few seconds. Marines who hit at least 60%-70% of the time. Killing a marine fortified position takes a lot of hit and runs and a therefore a lot of time.
The new seiges kill the hive so damn fast, that aliens cannot realibly kill the marines before the seiges kill the hive.
The reason the old seiges were so much better was because they could not take down the hive by themself. The old sieges were <b>support weapons</b>. As in, they supported the attack of marines on the hive.
This made it so marines had to push, aliens had to defend. There never even existed todays situation of "OMG we have to kill the rines in under one minute or else the seiges will go up!!11" Back in the day, when aliens saw seiges, they knew "Okay boys, we are going to need two gorges under the hive, fades need to keep marines out of the hive, and we need to slowly whittle down the phase outpost... we have a huge battle in front of us."
The problem with adjusting siege damage lies in the fact that the "Effectiveness" of sieges progresses in steps and is not gradual.
If the hive has a certain amount of health it takes a certain amount of seige SHOTS to take it out. The number of shots is then divided by 3 to get the amount of ROUNDS that need to be fired from 3 cannons.
Adjusting the amount of dmg is meaningless if it doesn't affect the number of shots fired, and the number of shots fired, is largely meaningless if it takes the same number of rounds.
I think that the sieges are going faster now because they are taking out chambers in 1 round instead of 2. And taking the hive out in a or two rounds less. These rounds add up to a considerable time difference.
also before, you couldn't scan as much, the obs only had 4 scans in it when it was full and now it has 5, and if you built a new obs it only started with one scan, instead of the 2 it starts with now. This meant marines had to sight the hive, and aliens could prolong by keeping the marines out of sight.
Thats how you have to think about sieges when you adjust their damage.
<!--QuoteBegin-NGE+Jul 15 2005, 09:03 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (NGE @ Jul 15 2005, 09:03 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->JazzX, you claim the seiges were broken yet you do not even address my imbalance complaints. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> That because I don't disagree with your conclusion (Sieges are Overpowered). I disagree with your proposed solution (revert their behavior to pre-3.0Final status), and more to the point I think the methodology used by the old sieges (to determine which lifeforms were hit, and which ones were not) was absolutely horrible, and in my opinion should never be fallen back to. I don't even neccessarily disagree with the contention that sieges should damge players, but if it were to go back to that I'd want it to be done in a way that was intuitive and consistent.
NGE so the marines have to go INTO the hive to kill the gorges? I thought this was exactly the way you wanted siges to work?
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The old seiges that harmed lifeforms and structures were NEVER this good. They were simply support weapons used to take down a hive and <b>make it easier for marines to invade the hive.</b><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Uh they're called sieges for a reason, try not letting the most obvious constant in ns rock your face because you don't know whats going on. If marines secure a siege location and they're going up that hive SHOULD die, otherwise you'll make static offense/defense 100% garbage. Maybe make sieges more expensive, so instead of affording 3-4 sieges the marines can drop only 1-2.
Balancing seiges is difficult because of the unpredictabilty of gorge healing. Let me explain.
Gorges heal about 64 hp per tick, right? And they heal maybe 1.5 times per second. For sake of argument, lets simplify that to this--each gorge heals the hive for 100 hp per second.
I don't recall how fast seiges fire, so lets pull a number out of thin air--each seige fires every 3.5 seconds. Lets arbitrarily assume a patch that puts seige damage at 350, for ease of calculations. Now seiges (with constant line of sight) deal 100 damage per second.
Now how long does the hive last? Well, with 3 seiges, the hive loses 300 hp per second, with 7000 hp this means 24 seconds. Kinda quick, but not bad.
Now add 3 gorges healing the hive, with a MC in the back to provide constant adren. The hive is now losing--oh look! ZERO hp per second. It doesnt die. At all.
Now lets patch seiges to 130 damage per second (not even bothering with damage per shot). The hive being healed by 3 gorges now loses 90 hp per second, and dies in about 80 seconds. Thats not unreasonable, considering the effort being made to keep it alive.
Now look at the same hive with no gorges. 18 seconds. That hive is just about dead before you can even finish evolving to gorge. You can't hardly kill an undefended TF in that time.
Basically, the problem is that balancing seige damage is hugely dependant on the very high hp gain afforded by gorges, and balancing for any number of gorges produces skewed results with a different number of gorges. THIS was the primary benefit of the old seige cannons--while killing the hive much more slowly, they made it extremely dangerous (though not impossible) for gorges to safely get close enough to heal the hive. So you could accurately predict about how long it would take for x seiges to kill a hive, and balance around that. For this reason, seiges ought to do some damage to aliens around the hive.
<!--QuoteBegin-Cxwf+Jul 15 2005, 12:42 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Cxwf @ Jul 15 2005, 12:42 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Balancing seiges is difficult because of the unpredictabilty of gorge healing. Let me explain.
Gorges heal about 64 hp per tick, right? And they heal maybe 1.5 times per second. For sake of argument, lets simplify that to this--each gorge heals the hive for 100 hp per second.
I don't recall how fast seiges fire, so lets pull a number out of thin air--each seige fires every 3.5 seconds. Lets arbitrarily assume a patch that puts seige damage at 350, for ease of calculations. Now seiges (with constant line of sight) deal 100 damage per second.
Now how long does the hive last? Well, with 3 seiges, the hive loses 300 hp per second, with 7000 hp this means 24 seconds. Kinda quick, but not bad.
Now add 3 gorges healing the hive, with a MC in the back to provide constant adren. The hive is now losing--oh look! ZERO hp per second. It doesnt die. At all.
Now lets patch seiges to 130 damage per second (not even bothering with damage per shot). The hive being healed by 3 gorges now loses 90 hp per second, and dies in about 80 seconds. Thats not unreasonable, considering the effort being made to keep it alive.
Now look at the same hive with no gorges. 18 seconds. That hive is just about dead before you can even finish evolving to gorge. You can't hardly kill an undefended TF in that time.
Basically, the problem is that balancing seige damage is hugely dependant on the very high hp gain afforded by gorges, and balancing for any number of gorges produces skewed results with a different number of gorges. THIS was the primary benefit of the old seige cannons--while killing the hive much more slowly, they made it extremely dangerous (though not impossible) for gorges to safely get close enough to heal the hive. So you could accurately predict about how long it would take for x seiges to kill a hive, and balance around that. For this reason, seiges ought to do some damage to aliens around the hive. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> 2 gorges is all you need!!!!! Although 32 seems tempting!<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
GOOD SIR WHAT ARE YOUR CALCULATIONS FOR 32 GORGES HEALING THE HIVE WITH 1 MC AGAINST 4 SIEGES THAT DO 367 DAMAGE EACH?! <!--emo&::nerdy::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/nerd-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='nerd-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin-GoDlol+Jul 14 2005, 01:37 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (GoDlol @ Jul 14 2005, 01:37 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> ARE YOU TELLING ME THERE ARENT 32 PEOPLE ON YOUR SERVER THAT COULD HEAL THE HIVE!??!!?!? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> 32 ppl in a clanwar <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->= ?
<!--QuoteBegin-Vlad Dracul+Jul 15 2005, 02:59 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Vlad Dracul @ Jul 15 2005, 02:59 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-GoDlol+Jul 14 2005, 01:37 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (GoDlol @ Jul 14 2005, 01:37 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> ARE YOU TELLING ME THERE ARENT 32 PEOPLE ON YOUR SERVER THAT COULD HEAL THE HIVE!??!!?!? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> 32 ppl in a clanwar <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->= ? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> pubs are very good places to balance ns
Then still games are rarely so stacked that one team outnumbers the other 32:0. Well, for aliens at least they rarely are <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
and in cxwf's example, in a clan war, 3 gorgies = marines just walk in and shotty the hive to death after scaring off the fades and dealing with the skulk or 2, and thats if the aliens are already stupid enough to not have a skulk killing marine rts.
Gorges heal about 1 percent, per second, per gorge. If the alien team can delay your attack for 25 seconds, they can heal the hive from 50% to 100% with 2 gorges. My guess this is about the time it takes to beacon+phase twice for the marines. So kill enough marines to cause a beacon and you've got your hive back.
<!--QuoteBegin-Zephor+Jul 15 2005, 12:51 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Zephor @ Jul 15 2005, 12:51 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Couldn't you just make gorges evolve faster and this entire problem would be solved? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Or, instead of changing yet another factor to the game with the chance of screwing things up more, we can just go back to the old seiges that damaged structures at a reasonable rate and kept gorges at bay, because we know from 2 years of this model that it works.
<!--QuoteBegin-joee+Jul 15 2005, 03:09 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (joee @ Jul 15 2005, 03:09 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->pubs are very good places to balance ns<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> thought we are talking about competitive stuff ( clanwars ) :o|
<!--QuoteBegin-Vlad Dracul+Jul 16 2005, 08:57 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Vlad Dracul @ Jul 16 2005, 08:57 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-joee+Jul 15 2005, 03:09 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (joee @ Jul 15 2005, 03:09 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->pubs are very good places to balance ns<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> thought we are talking about competitive stuff ( clanwars ) :o| <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> He was using his sarcasm to call you out.
<!--QuoteBegin-coris+Jul 15 2005, 11:14 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (coris @ Jul 15 2005, 11:14 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> NGE so the marines have to go INTO the hive to kill the gorges? I thought this was exactly the way you wanted siges to work?
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The old seiges that harmed lifeforms and structures were NEVER this good. They were simply support weapons used to take down a hive and <b>make it easier for marines to invade the hive.</b><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Now what am I missing? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> The new seiges aren't support weapons they just blow up the hive regardless of gorges, marines do not have to invade the hiveroom in the current version.
No, but I proposed to lower the siege damage to 380 or whatever it was before 3.04, then you complained about marines having to go into the hive and killing the gorges.
Comments
gorges cant help against them very well now
it takes like 30 seconds to kill a hive from relative safety <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
isn't it how it was before?
It takes 30 seconds to detect a dropped hive, 30 seconds to get your men from marine start to a seige point, 15 seconds to build the TF, 15 to upgrade it and 10 seconds to build each cannon.
Now add up the time for dying, building phases, reloading and resupplying, scanning, respawning, beaconing and phasing, waiting for res flow and so on and you'll see that the marines have way less than a minute to get the hive down before it goes up and the alien strength increases 5 fold. If your second hive is already up the alien team can delay seiging for much longer and prevent it from ever starting much easier.
The point isn't that seiging can be done quickly. The point is that the aliens should know way ahead of time when a siege is going to occur and have plenty of time and power to disable it.
It takes 30 seconds to detect a dropped hive, 30 seconds to get your men from marine start to a seige point, 15 seconds to build the TF, 15 to upgrade it and 10 seconds to build each cannon.
Now add up the time for dying, building phases, reloading and resupplying, scanning, respawning, beaconing and phasing, waiting for res flow and so on and you'll see that the marines have way less than a minute to get the hive down before it goes up and the alien strength increases 5 fold. If your second hive is already up the alien team can delay seiging for much longer and prevent it from ever starting much easier.
The point isn't that seiging can be done quickly. The point is that the aliens should know way ahead of time when a siege is going to occur and have plenty of time and power to disable it. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Once a marine team solidifys a location, it's increadibly difficult to get them out on a timeline. Depending on map/lifeforms all the rines might need is a pg and a pack of mines to hold out for the nessicary minutes.
Personally I liked the 380 damage seiges, although statisticly they should have made almost no difference, they seemed a little less destructive.
The old seiges that harmed lifeforms and structures were NEVER this good. They were simply support weapons used to take down a hive and make it easier for marines to invade the hive.
The old seiges of just pinging and shooting the hive took probably twice as long as the new seiges did, they did not have huge problems of gorges healing the hive, and the seiges themselves were still immensly useful.
The new seiges on the other hand; it's like taking the sentry turret, making it so it can't hurt structures, doubling it's dmg, and lowering it's cost by 5...
Today, seige turrets do ALL the work involved in taking down a hive. Before, marines HAD to go in to really kill the second hive, plus seiges, and at the very least they would need HMG's.
Seiges are overpowered as hell, there isn't a reason to go in the hive room anymore... just plop down 3 inexpensive seiges within a minute and if the aliens let the seiges go up the hive is going down. In fact, it goes down before you can kill the turret factory or the seiges or the phase gate. Hives get demolished by the new seiges and it's not even funny or fair. These seiges remind me of the old 1.00 seiges which never required a ping, or line of sight, and fired automatically... they just were thrown down and created an instant "no alien zone".
Lets do a quick comparision of why the old seiges were great, fine, and almighty, and compare them with the new broken seiges:
Old seige:
- Support weapons, killing the hive with them alone took almost two minutes. (3-4 seiges) and if the marines never went into the hive, just have a gorge stay under the hive healing it, and the hive would never die unless the gorge was killed, which needed to be done by marines. Therefore marines couldn't camp on the seiges like they do now.
- Gorges could still heal the hive but only if underneath it, because of lifeform damage the seiges did.
- Seiges hurt aliens around the hive, so nothing could camp on top of it, allowing marines the ability to attack the hive in person.
- Old seiges gave marines a deadly advantage but were counterable in many ways.
New seiges:
- Main weapons that obliterate a hive room in under one minute.
- Marines just have to defend them and not worry about attacking.
- Line of sight isn't nessesary, but rather overkill on the hive.
- Gorges cannot heal the hive to stop them from going down.
<b>- The only counter to seiges now is to not let them go up.</b>
The last line is bolded because it was the same problem with the old 1.00 seiges. The only way to actually prevent them from destroying everything was to not let them go up. Once they were up, it was too late for aliens to kill the seiges before they killed the hive due to their auto-fire status with no line of sight requirement.
Solution to the seiges: Change them back to the old seiges that worked just fine.
But of course, this brings up the question, why were the seiges ever changed in the first place? They were not broken, they were not frustrating, the new sieges have become twice as good as the old ones could have ever been...
Things really have to go back to the old way, it was a lot more fun for both sides (at least compared to now) and not to mention much more balanced.
It takes 30 seconds to detect a dropped hive, 30 seconds to get your men from marine start to a seige point, 15 seconds to build the TF, 15 to upgrade it and 10 seconds to build each cannon.
Now add up the time for dying, building phases, reloading and resupplying, scanning, respawning, beaconing and phasing, waiting for res flow and so on and you'll see that the marines have way less than a minute to get the hive down before it goes up and the alien strength increases 5 fold. If your second hive is already up the alien team can delay seiging for much longer and prevent it from ever starting much easier.
The point isn't that seiging can be done quickly. The point is that the aliens should know way ahead of time when a siege is going to occur and have plenty of time and power to disable it. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
after playing nine hundred thousand games of ns you'd think people would realize that if they drop the second hive, the marines are going to come attack it. Its pretty much the biggest constant in the game.
When you drop the hive, the marines know you are doing it, and they are coming to kill it, you so you had better stop them. People act like its some sort of suprise when seiges start going up.
Often the pg gets up without resistance. Its amazing.
They were broken. The determining factors on whether a lifeform got hit by siege blasts was very inconsistency and not even remotely intuitive. On top of that It created this bizzare situation where, the moment the sieges went up, your best bet for survival was to get far away from the chambers and the hive, as those were going to get you killed. Similarly it made strategic placement of MCs/SCs/DCs a liability, since the Lerk who is using an otherwise well-positioned MC for energy runs a huge risk that one scan will come too close to that chamber and get him killed.
The siege damage itself can be tweaked by changing its damage...
lance
You can't do that, because then gorges who camp on top of the hive become too effective again.
Remember last patch? Sieges had their damage increased because gorges healed the hive and seiges couldn't take them down in a reasonable time. But now they cannot heal the hive to keep it alive.
Lower the damage, and gorges who camp the hive become a huge problem for seiging.
Increase the damage, and gorges become meaningless (like they are now) and hives drop too fast.
This is why seige damage is nessesary to do for other players. It is the only reliable way to balance seiges and make them fair for both teams.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->They were broken. The determining factors on whether a lifeform got hit by siege blasts was very inconsistency and not even remotely intuitive. On top of that It created this bizzare situation where, the moment the sieges went up, your best bet for survival was to get far away from the chambers and the hive, as those were going to get you killed. Similarly it made strategic placement of MCs/SCs/DCs a liability, since the Lerk who is using an otherwise well-positioned MC for energy runs a huge risk that one scan will come too close to that chamber and get him killed.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No, they were not broken at all. Old players never felt that seige damage was a bad thing in the slightest, nor were they surprised that seiges hurt aliens as well. The dynamic of the siege blast was that it forced aliens out of the hive room and to attack marines. They could not camp in there because not only was their hive being killed, but it had the chance of killing them as well.
I have played hundreds of games, and never once was I in the bizzare situation of going "far away from the chambers and the hive" because I knew where the safe spots around the seige blasts were. It was not buggy, it was slighty inconsistant but it added to the feel of the game. It was easy to tell when seige blasts were coming. It still is. Therefore it made it easy to dodge the seige blasts, because you knew when they were coming.
They came whenever:
- You see a ping in your hive room
- Marines spot the hive or structures
When you saw either of those two things happen, you got away from structures. After that, you were safe. Not a very big deal. The old seiges only killed players who made miscalculations, and that's why they were not overpowered. They were support weapons.
The old seiges made it a liability to hang around your structures. At least you could hang around your structures.
Because JazzX, in this version you cannot even stay around your structures. Do you know why? It is because they die so fast it was like the structure was never even there.
Instead of the lerk who gets killed because he was foolish enough to stay around the predictible seige blasts, you now have a lerk who can stay where he wants but cannot actually use the movement chamber because it died in two hits from a seige.
JazzX, you claim the seiges were broken yet you do not even address my imbalance complaints. Something that is broken is game is something that is not balanced. The old seiges were balanced almost perfectly. The new seiges are not. The new seiges are far more "broken" than the old ones could ever imagine of being. Just because it was slighty (and I mean ever so slight that one could barely tell unless he's played maybe 50 games of NS) buggy does not make them "broken". Bugs are only bad for a game when it starts to affect who wins/loses a game. However the old buggyness of the old seiges actually added to the game, they did not take away from it.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> after playing nine hundred thousand games of ns you'd think people would realize that if they drop the second hive, the marines are going to come attack it. Its pretty much the biggest constant in the game.
When you drop the hive, the marines know you are doing it, and they are coming to kill it, you so you had better stop them. People act like its some sort of suprise when seiges start going up.
Often the pg gets up without resistance. Its amazing.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Router box, you seem to assume that it is possible to stop marines from placing up a phase. It is extremely time consuming and takes several hit and runs to kill good players with HMGs/Shotties. They WILL get up a phase, they WILL get up a turret factory, they WILL get up seiges, unless you kill them in under a minute (or two?)!
And the new seiges are so good, they WILL kill your hive unless you can kill the marines before they throw up the seiges! Once they go up, the hive is going down.
This isn't about sneak siege rushes. This is about aliens, who, know that marines are coming. They attack them non-stop. They are constantly sporing them. And yet the marines still take down the hive.
This is because, marines take time to kill. We aren't talking about marines who die at once to a bunch of skulks/lerk/fades. We are talking about marines who are going to kill fades if they stay in the room longer than a few seconds. Marines who hit at least 60%-70% of the time. Killing a marine fortified position takes a lot of hit and runs and a therefore a lot of time.
The new seiges kill the hive so damn fast, that aliens cannot realibly kill the marines before the seiges kill the hive.
The reason the old seiges were so much better was because they could not take down the hive by themself. The old sieges were <b>support weapons</b>. As in, they supported the attack of marines on the hive.
This made it so marines had to push, aliens had to defend. There never even existed todays situation of "OMG we have to kill the rines in under one minute or else the seiges will go up!!11" Back in the day, when aliens saw seiges, they knew "Okay boys, we are going to need two gorges under the hive, fades need to keep marines out of the hive, and we need to slowly whittle down the phase outpost... we have a huge battle in front of us."
Adding back in siege damage vs player is not on the agenda at the moment, but we never say never.
If the hive has a certain amount of health it takes a certain amount of seige SHOTS to take it out. The number of shots is then divided by 3 to get the amount of ROUNDS that need to be fired from 3 cannons.
Adjusting the amount of dmg is meaningless if it doesn't affect the number of shots fired, and the number of shots fired, is largely meaningless if it takes the same number of rounds.
I think that the sieges are going faster now because they are taking out chambers in 1 round instead of 2. And taking the hive out in a or two rounds less. These rounds add up to a considerable time difference.
also before, you couldn't scan as much, the obs only had 4 scans in it when it was full and now it has 5, and if you built a new obs it only started with one scan, instead of the 2 it starts with now. This meant marines had to sight the hive, and aliens could prolong by keeping the marines out of sight.
Thats how you have to think about sieges when you adjust their damage.
That because I don't disagree with your conclusion (Sieges are Overpowered). I disagree with your proposed solution (revert their behavior to pre-3.0Final status), and more to the point I think the methodology used by the old sieges (to determine which lifeforms were hit, and which ones were not) was absolutely horrible, and in my opinion should never be fallen back to. I don't even neccessarily disagree with the contention that sieges should damge players, but if it were to go back to that I'd want it to be done in a way that was intuitive and consistent.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The old seiges that harmed lifeforms and structures were NEVER this good. They were simply support weapons used to take down a hive and <b>make it easier for marines to invade the hive.</b><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Now what am I missing?
100% garbage. Maybe make sieges more expensive, so instead of affording 3-4 sieges the marines can drop only 1-2.
Gorges heal about 64 hp per tick, right? And they heal maybe 1.5 times per second. For sake of argument, lets simplify that to this--each gorge heals the hive for 100 hp per second.
I don't recall how fast seiges fire, so lets pull a number out of thin air--each seige fires every 3.5 seconds. Lets arbitrarily assume a patch that puts seige damage at 350, for ease of calculations. Now seiges (with constant line of sight) deal 100 damage per second.
Now how long does the hive last? Well, with 3 seiges, the hive loses 300 hp per second, with 7000 hp this means 24 seconds. Kinda quick, but not bad.
Now add 3 gorges healing the hive, with a MC in the back to provide constant adren. The hive is now losing--oh look! ZERO hp per second. It doesnt die. At all.
Now lets patch seiges to 130 damage per second (not even bothering with damage per shot). The hive being healed by 3 gorges now loses 90 hp per second, and dies in about 80 seconds. Thats not unreasonable, considering the effort being made to keep it alive.
Now look at the same hive with no gorges. 18 seconds. That hive is just about dead before you can even finish evolving to gorge. You can't hardly kill an undefended TF in that time.
Basically, the problem is that balancing seige damage is hugely dependant on the very high hp gain afforded by gorges, and balancing for any number of gorges produces skewed results with a different number of gorges. THIS was the primary benefit of the old seige cannons--while killing the hive much more slowly, they made it extremely dangerous (though not impossible) for gorges to safely get close enough to heal the hive. So you could accurately predict about how long it would take for x seiges to kill a hive, and balance around that. For this reason, seiges ought to do some damage to aliens around the hive.
Gorges heal about 64 hp per tick, right? And they heal maybe 1.5 times per second. For sake of argument, lets simplify that to this--each gorge heals the hive for 100 hp per second.
I don't recall how fast seiges fire, so lets pull a number out of thin air--each seige fires every 3.5 seconds. Lets arbitrarily assume a patch that puts seige damage at 350, for ease of calculations. Now seiges (with constant line of sight) deal 100 damage per second.
Now how long does the hive last? Well, with 3 seiges, the hive loses 300 hp per second, with 7000 hp this means 24 seconds. Kinda quick, but not bad.
Now add 3 gorges healing the hive, with a MC in the back to provide constant adren. The hive is now losing--oh look! ZERO hp per second. It doesnt die. At all.
Now lets patch seiges to 130 damage per second (not even bothering with damage per shot). The hive being healed by 3 gorges now loses 90 hp per second, and dies in about 80 seconds. Thats not unreasonable, considering the effort being made to keep it alive.
Now look at the same hive with no gorges. 18 seconds. That hive is just about dead before you can even finish evolving to gorge. You can't hardly kill an undefended TF in that time.
Basically, the problem is that balancing seige damage is hugely dependant on the very high hp gain afforded by gorges, and balancing for any number of gorges produces skewed results with a different number of gorges. THIS was the primary benefit of the old seige cannons--while killing the hive much more slowly, they made it extremely dangerous (though not impossible) for gorges to safely get close enough to heal the hive. So you could accurately predict about how long it would take for x seiges to kill a hive, and balance around that. For this reason, seiges ought to do some damage to aliens around the hive. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> 2 gorges is all you need!!!!! Although 32 seems tempting!<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
GOOD SIR WHAT ARE YOUR CALCULATIONS FOR 32 GORGES HEALING THE HIVE WITH 1 MC AGAINST 4 SIEGES THAT DO 367 DAMAGE EACH?! <!--emo&::nerdy::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/nerd-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='nerd-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
32 ppl in a clanwar <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->= ?
32 ppl in a clanwar <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->= ? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
pubs are very good places to balance ns
Or, instead of changing yet another factor to the game with the chance of screwing things up more, we can just go back to the old seiges that damaged structures at a reasonable rate and kept gorges at bay, because we know from 2 years of this model that it works.
thought we are talking about competitive stuff ( clanwars ) :o|
thought we are talking about competitive stuff ( clanwars ) :o| <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
He was using his sarcasm to call you out.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The old seiges that harmed lifeforms and structures were NEVER this good. They were simply support weapons used to take down a hive and <b>make it easier for marines to invade the hive.</b><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Now what am I missing? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
The new seiges aren't support weapons they just blow up the hive regardless of gorges, marines do not have to invade the hiveroom in the current version.
NOW what am I missing?