Should upgrades tied to structures be lost when the structure is destroyed?
NurEinMensch
Join Date: 2003-02-26 Member: 14056Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-02-26 Member: 14056Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Like it was in NS1.</div>In NS1 most upgrades were tied to certain structures. Movement upgrades to the movement chamber, weapons upgrades to the arms lab and so on. When one of these were destroyed the respective upgrades were lost, until the structure was rebuilt.
In NS2 currently it's different. Once a certain upgrade is unlocked it stays unlocked until the end of the round. Taking out all whips doesn't affect the alien's offensive upgrades. Killing all advanced armories doesn't stop the marines from buying more flamethrowers. A marine team that's all teched up keeps their bonuses even when they're reduced to a single command station, infantry portal and plain armory. Same for the aliens.
Is this intentional or will it be changed? Should it be changed at all? Personally I prefer how it worked in NS1, but maybe there are good reasons for the new concept.
In NS2 currently it's different. Once a certain upgrade is unlocked it stays unlocked until the end of the round. Taking out all whips doesn't affect the alien's offensive upgrades. Killing all advanced armories doesn't stop the marines from buying more flamethrowers. A marine team that's all teched up keeps their bonuses even when they're reduced to a single command station, infantry portal and plain armory. Same for the aliens.
Is this intentional or will it be changed? Should it be changed at all? Personally I prefer how it worked in NS1, but maybe there are good reasons for the new concept.
Comments
More than likely, once the structures are lost the upgrades will be lost too; a la NS1.
It just simply doesn't make any sense to leave upgrades unlocked. What do aliens target when they attack marine start - the IPs? If that's the case let me just drop 4 IPs and not worry about losing any structures. Same idea for marines. I just feel like they need a couple more patches to think about it, because now alien structures aren't linked with hives per-se and the marine tech tree is much different.
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# To support the idea of come backs, make it so that when a CC is taken down - you loose the upgrades for that tier.
# If you gain the CC back - you have all the upgrades that you obtained originally before you lost it.
I think that would make for some more interesting come backs, and not 'severely' punish poor quality public play.
2 reasons. First, well i'm a starcraft 2 player and there it works that way, and it works good, so lets asume that it is a good choice because blizzard knows what they are doing in terms of RTS.
second. When you lose your buildings, usually you are already in a lot of trouble. often a building is the requirement for another building, or your are currently researching something there and that res is lost. If on top of that you lose all the upgrades of that building, while the other team still has all their upgrades, well, it's pretty much game over.
But lets see how it plays out when we can really test it.
Maybe NS2 will be a super intense and thought demanding game without killable upgrades. It could definitely work, and I wouldn't be upset if NS2's upgrades were killable. NS2 would be more intense and killable upgrades are very cheap to add to the game. Just some simple coding, no modelling, animating, or mapping involved.
2 reasons. First, well i'm a starcraft 2 player and there it works that way, and it works good, so lets asume that it is a good choice because blizzard knows what they are doing in terms of RTS.
second. When you lose your buildings, usually you are already in a lot of trouble. often a building is the requirement for another building, or your are currently researching something there and that res is lost. If on top of that you lose all the upgrades of that building, while the other team still has all their upgrades, well, it's pretty much game over.
But lets see how it plays out when we can really test it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No Starcraft 2 doesn't work this way... if you lose your Cybernetics Core you can't build any more stalkers or sentries, or if you lose your dark shrine, no more dark templars. However in NS2 if you lose your upgraded CC or upgraded Armory, you can still get flame throwers and grenade launchers.
IMO upgrades and tech should be tied to buildings much like it is in SC2. The only upgrades that aren't tied to buildings in SC2 are the abilities/weapon/armor upgrades (like blink, stimpack, damage and armor), you keep those even if the building that researched them was destroyed.
IMO upgrades and tech should be tied to buildings much like it is in SC2. The only upgrades that aren't tied to buildings in SC2 are the abilities/weapon/armor upgrades (like blink, stimpack, damage and armor), you keep those even if the building that researched them was destroyed.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think he meant that if you lose your evolution chamber you still have carapace level 3 and melee upgrade level 3.
NS 1 was a great game. you shouldnt really change a whole lot of concepts from a great game, but rather improve on it. at the moment NS2 for rines are like... rush for 2nd tier, get ur main CC upgraded and begin turtling and slowly whack away the aliens...
As for the aliens, its pretty much, stop the rines from getting 2nd tier tech, and slowly chomp on the rines...
I wish there was more dynamic gameplay from both sides. Perhaps when the mobile powernode comes into play, it would change the game just a wee bit. But still, the fact that technology that is not tied down to structures gives players the feel that, "who cares if it is down. I do not need to defend it or save it. I've got that tech all researched..."
In ns2 you currently research and eventually hit the end and get flooded with spare resources. Having to respend on lost upgrades would help lower the seemingly endless pool of resources you get late game and be a strategic asset for both sides.
Also on my talk of resources I hope the 100 max personal resource(plasma) cap returns. But for both sides. 10 minutes into a marine game and having 600 res makes the armory prices a joke. But that can be for another thread.
I also support the idea that only one chambers per hive (weapon|armor ups / cc). Should aliens lose a hive they can no longer build the chamber that hive "owned".
Also hive/cc build time should be drastically longer (2-3min a bit less for marines) to allow some chance for the comm to react (70second 4hives is seriously retarded).
To continue the Starcraft analogy, a barracks is needed to build a factory, but once the factory is built, you can continue to build factory units even after the barracks is destroyed.
To me it doesnt make sense that i.e. thickened armor plates are "forgotten" when the respective alien tech is destroyed.
Having weapon and armor upgrades even though the structures are destroyed gives more chance for a turn around. Your damage doesn't drop drastically against the other team + the tech advantage their likely to have at that point.
As for marine weapon purchases it doesn't matter. The building that researches upgrades is the armory. If the armory is destroyed, you cannot buy new weapons at the armory. The commander can put up another armory, of course, but MAC's build slow and marines are mostly running around dodging fades. Then skill and nerve will determine wether the marines survive.
As it should be.
Now we can talk about the cost and the time needed to research them, but i don't see why they should be there from the start.
Unavailable to purchase? Yes.
Also, if you rebuild the structure, you should again have to upgrade it (if necessary).
The new weapons/structures should of course be "lost", but as the poster before me suggested, if you get a new advanced armory up, then you should get back the already researched upgrades.
And only advanced armorys should give you advanced armory weapons, adds some strategy to the placement of them.
And the upgraded buildings should be marked as such, so that a marine/alien knows where to go.
If you research weapon and armor ar marine, and the armory which did this dies, I think you still should have those upgrades, if you however research guns, like sg, nade or flamethrower, I think the research should be partly tied to the structure. So if you lose the structure you have to research it again in another structure, but aslong as one has it researched already, all the other get acces to it.
Gameplay wise this makes players not have to remember which armory contains what weapon, but an alien can look at the armorys module, and see which armory they should kill to get rid of nades or such.
The passive upgrades however is more passive, and I think passive stuff like that work better if they are global XD.
As aliens, the passive armor and dmg upgrades for should be global, like I already said I want marines passive tech to be.
For other upogrades it would be harder to tie to a building, as the whip for example would be hard to have a good visible notification that it contains a leap upgrade, and I think those kind of upgrades should be tied to hives instead.
So if you go into upgrade screen for a hive, the leap upgrade should be there, with a requirement that you have a whip and hive mass (same as the currentl requirement). This would mean that when marines want to get rid of leap, they have to find a hive with some visible indication of having the leap upgrade, and kill it.
Or make all the aliens upgrades global, giving a more assymetric gameplay. Maybe with an exception for stuff like what classes you can gestate into, so if you had onos but lost the requirement, you would not be able to gestate into it until you fulfill the requirements again. Just so that marines <i>can</i> turn the tide when alien leads by removing their main advantage.
I'd actually prefer weapons, damage, and armor upgrades to relate to the armory rather than the command station. For example, if I lose my 2nd lvl cs, but I still have my advanced armory, I should still be able to upgrade lvl2 weapons, damage, and armor. Also, to make it more consistent, I'd like to see a 3rd upgrade of the armory that can only be unlocked via a 3rd lvl cs, unlocking the lvl3 weapons (minigun?), damage, and armor upgrades.
But armory weapons should still be distributed amongst all the other armories of course so people don't have to run to every armory under the sun to get their desired weapon package. But if the aliens took out the armory that had mini-guns researched they wouldn't be able to buy them anymore until they upgraded a new one for mini-guns.
The marines would either have to protect their primary armories or upgrade each armory to the max which would take a lot of res.
# To support the idea of come backs, make it so that when a CC is taken down - you loose the upgrades for that tier.
# If you gain the CC back - you have all the upgrades that you obtained originally before you lost it.
I think that would make for some more interesting come backs, and not 'severely' punish poor quality public play.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's how I think it should go. Don't want to punish the team with having to wait while everything is researched again. That would just assure victory for the other team should you lose a Hive or CC.
Example. Marines capture 2 Tech points and make their main CC Level 2. The second CC goes down, main CC is reduced to level 1 again until another tech point is captured or the one just lost is recaptured. Same for 3 CC's a level 3 reduced to 2 should one be lost, making all those tiers abilities unavailable until the CC is regained.
Do they lose upgraded armor and damage and stuff?