Power Nodes: Making them obviously important.
Ironsoul
Join Date: 2011-03-12 Member: 86048Members
Join Date: 2011-03-12 Member: 86048Members
<div class="IPBDescription">In depth discussion about the functionality of powernodes in ns2</div>Hey, welcome to my little corner of the natural selection 2 community forums.
I have some ideas about power nodes, in regards to game balance and long drawn out games, and how power nodes can help to fix that while still keeping the game fun.
first, a short paragraph like story.
The skulks we're scrambling into our position strong and hard, they scuttled over the walls, up onto the ceilings, but ultimately were cut down by our elite accuracy. Fades would be met by walls of fire, rendering them charred lifeless bags of blood and guts. We were surrounded, every other position in the outpost summit was infested, power was cut in all other rooms and infestation creeping in. Then we heard it: "Attention: Power leak in sub section 4, total power loss in T Minus 1 minute". It was only a matter of time until the infestation in the wires caused our single remaining power node to fail. "T minus 45 seconds until total power failure". If we could push the aliens back, repair a power node in another section of the base, then there would be enough integrity to allow the nanites to remove the infestation of the cables... "T minus 30 seconds until total power failure". Another wave of aliens rushed into the room, charging for the power node, but 3 well placed grenades sent them flying right back out the entrance... in pieces. "This is it" one of the newly teleported in marines said. "ten - nine - eight - seven - six - five - four - three - two - one", the command station automatically opened using it's final remaining electricity, and the lights went out. No emergency lights, just three seconds of pure darkness, a few flashlights turning on... and the final attack from the aliens...
I hope you enjoyed my crummy story, I'm not the best with writing.
But that is to try and give a sense of the solution to the stalemates which plague current public servers.
Power nodes, their current function as perceived by me.
For marines: power nodes allow marines to see easier as they move around the map, and also enable them to power structures the commander places.
For aliens: it enables the aliens to a) prevent marines from seeing well, and b) prevent marines from building buildings.
apart from that, power nodes don't actually do anything rather than be a slight inconvenience. They aren't really regarded by most as a super major part of the strategy, other than the fact it will annoy the marines if the aliens take out a power node.
What you hopefully read in my mini paragraph story is the final stages of what happens when the aliens take out all of the other power nodes.
note: I'll get to how it helps the marines in a moment.
what this new system does for the aliens:
taking out a power node as an alien does a number of things.
1) it stops the marines from seeing well, with the activation of emergency lighting
2)it prevents the marine commander from seeing what is going on in that area
3)it enables the commander to quickly infest a room using my new awesome infestation FEATURE idea.
The first two from that list are fairly self explanatory. But lets take a look at the third option.
Infest Power Node, and I know it's called something else but I really can't remember what the new name is.
This is a commander activated ability that sends a drifter over to the power node, and will form a blob of infestation on the power node, costing significantly less energy than regular cysts. The whole room will then become infested as if the commander had placed cysts all over it.
Marines can kill the mega cyst in much the same way aliens eat the power node. I think I just created a mirror of the power node, but for aliens, still seems like a good idea for game play's sake.
Emergency lighting remains on if there is still a power node working somewhere else in the base.
And finally, the game breaking/making feature of the new power node system.
I have an actual function-able system to explain later, but for now, I'll explain it in a simpler way.
Once the aliens have taken out all but the marines final power node, a timer will start after a little while, stating that there is one more minute of power left, if the marines are unable to restore power in that minute, all man made lights go out completely, the entire level goes pitch black unless there are some windows or outdoor areas with daylight.
This should prevent those stalemates when the marine team has no expansions left and is simply surviving on the fact that the aliens are unable to do significant enough damage to finish the marines off.
================================================================================
====================
Now, how will the same system, but for the marines, help them?
A room with a working power node:
a) the lights are on.
b) the commander can see what is happening in the room without the need for an observatory scan
c) infestation will slowly(die within 1 minute) die in lit rooms (explained by the fact that light kills infestation rapidly... also sort of explains why there is no infestation everwhere on the surface of the planet).
For each power node the marines have that is working, they gain a 0.5 second speed bonus on all tasks that take a set amount of time. Recycling buildings, building robots, spawning in more marines, etc get a speed boost.
So in a map that has 5 power nodes(including one in the marine base, but there is no bonus for the marine base power node), it takes 2 seconds less to spawn in a marine than if they only have the one in marine start.
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====================
BONUS TIME, I sure hope you are still reading, mechanics of how this system works. something to give the devs an idea of how they can implement this.
While this may seem like a simple modification to the existing power node system, I am actually also trying to present a new system of handling the electricity power of the base.
Let's introduce a new system, I don't know what data type it will use or how many variables this new system will take.
What is the aim of this new... function(system): To keep a track of power nodes, structures in use, and total capacity of power(electricity)
What does a power node do:
it increases the total capacity of the power storage by 100 units.
it adds 4 units to the charge every second.
What does a marine structure or building to:
every building that is powered will draw 1 unit of charge per second.
if we want to be scientific, we can also use electrons, but I am not really interested in those, I'm more concerned about units in general for game-play reasons.
SO, with that in place, we can already see how this system can work to improve upon game balance and prevent long drawn out games with lots of sentry spam.
This new game mechanic also enables the aliens to take down the power in marine start without even needing to take out the power node of marine start, because an infantry portal, a command station, and an extractor will draw power.
ALSO, an interesting point to be made, emergency lighting can also draw power, and the commander can enable/disable the lights from on/off/emergency by selecting the power node(destroyed or working) to play around with power.
on: 1 power unit per second being drawn
off: no power per second being drawn
emergency: 0.5 power unit per second is drawn (note on truncation later on)
What else does this mechanic do? It will track the current usage of structures, and the power input from power nodes. This data can then be used to calculate whether total power is going up, or down, and if power is going down, estimate how long it will take for a total power loss, where all structures will shut down for 30 seconds, while the system recharges enough power to start up again.
How the algorithm for tracking power could work: note: I'm not doing the full algorithm or even including all the variables, I don't have enough time tonight to do that... sorry.
Variables:
n is integer, b is Boolean... I don't think floats are necessary for this algorithm
nStructures
nPowerNodes
nLightsEmergency
nLightsOn
nMiscPowerusage //this is included in the next nPowerAdd loop, for use with things like a marine spawning, which takes 1 unit by default.
// note, I'm not going to bother with a variable for lights that are off, because that really isn't necessary.
bHasWarned //this is for checking if the t minus 60, 45, 30, 15 seconds messages have been activated, because it's possible to skip the actual 60 second threshhold(or any of them) in the event of another power node suddenly going down changing the estimated time til total power outage).
nTimeRemaining // time remaining until either a) power outage, or b) overcharge.
nPowerAdd
nCharge
Power Charge Loop:
every second, the game will loop through this function that:
nPowerAdd = (nPowerNodes x 4) -(nLightsOn x 1) - (nLightsEmergency) - (nStructures)
Test data: 4 working power nodes, every room has lights on, 6 structures (comm, armory, extractor, ip, armoury, extractor).
nPowerAdd = 16 -4 -0 -6
nPowerAdd = 6
total power is going up by 6 every second.
If the commander turned 3 of the 4 rooms to emergency, there will be truncation, this is okay, so the 4 power would drop to 2 power used every second(1 for the 3 emergency lighting rooms, 1 for the on room), I'm keeping things simple here. but if you want to use a float variable instead of integer to avoid the truncation, go ahead, but it's really not going to destroy the world in this sort of situation.
meaning that the total power going up would be 8 a second.
While this seems like a small amount at the moment, it's actually quite a lot, because total power is increasing to the cap, which is 400, and assuming we start at 50 power, we will make that remaining 350 power until the cap, at 8 a second in... 43 seconds. This is interesting, because I can talk about what happens when power reaches the cap.
POWER CAP REACHED, ENERGY OVERFLOW DETECTED.
when the power cap is reached, things speed up for the marines:
spawning in with an infantry portal is brought down to 4 seconds from ... 12?
building robots is halved in time take.
res gained from extractors is unaffected.
research for upgrades is doubled.
BUT, to prevent exploiting this enormous boost to the marines efficiency, the energy used when these things are completed all take 20 energy, rather than 1. So if the marines want fast spawning, they can't build a heap of buildings which equal the energy input.
================================================================================
====================
WHAT HAPPENS IF THE ALIENS CHOMP ON ALL THE POWER NODES IF THE MARINES HAVE A BASE FULL OF STRUCTURES: 5 turrets, 2 ips, 1 armory, 1 comm, 1 extractor, 1 arms lab, 1 robotics factory = 12 energy used per second on structures alone). and the aliens chomp all of the power nodes(which drops lighting to emergency automatically).
then the power used will suddenly be unbalanced, the commander will be notified that power is going down, and if there is less than 1 minute of power, the warning messages (which are audio by the way) will sound.
so lets assume marines have 5 power nodes, their base is full of the stuff previously mentioned, and the aliens chomp out all of their other power nodes INSTANTLY.
Before (assuming each other power node point has 1 extractor and nothing else):
using the
nPowerAdd = (nPowerNodes x 4) -(nLightsOn) - (nLightsEmergency) - (nStructures)
nPowerAdd = (5 x 4) - (5) - (0) - (12 + 4) //there's 4 extra extractors in use. the one in marine base is included in the 12 figure.
nPowerAdd = 20 -21 // oops, perhaps the power gained from each power node should be increased to 5. let's do that now...
nPowerAdd = (nPowerNodes x 5) -(everything else)
nPowerAdd = 25 - 21
nPowerAdd = 4 //per second positive.
AFTER:
nPowerAdd = (nPowerNodes x1) -(nLightsOn) - (nLightsEmergency x 0.5) - (nStructures) // extractors in powered down areas no longer consuming power.
nPowerAdd = 5 -(1) -(4 x 0.5 = 2) - (12)
nPowerAdd = 5 - 16
nPowerAdd = -11
so we can see the marines are now losing power at a rapid rate, let's calculate how long it will take for the marines to completely lose power assuming their previous amount of 500 // note, the cap was because of active power nodes, since they're no longer active, I don't know how easy it is to code a way to keep the previous amount of charge without it being chopped off instantly... mind you, it may be more painful to chop off the charge instantly... so, let's assume the charge is dropped to 100.
nCharge=100
then every second, the charge is going down by 11 every single second. The marines have ... oh ###### we're GOING TO DIE! nine - eight - seven - six - five - four - three - two - one - DEIAJFIWAJFAWOgawgfijawfaijsijv.
ALTERNATIVELY: if the charge is able to remain at 500.
nCharge=500
we have 45 seconds until total power loss.
OK, I'm done. Phew, that was awesome. I hope you like my idea, I hope you consider the effect it has on end games.
Also, a new structure called a battery could be constructable by the marines to increase the charge by a further 100 per building. In each loop of charge, the equation could go:
nChargeTotal = nCharge + nPowerAdd + nBatteryCharge(battery charge can be calculated in a separate loop).
// yes, I did introduce another variable, because you couldn't very well add nCharge to itself every second, that would be weird.
A FEW NOTES ON THE VARIABLES:
you could increase the total capacity added by each power node by 150 instead of 100, giving the marines a bit of a boost, or even 200 for each power node.
I don't know how easy this will be to add in as a feature, it doesn't seem too much of a change, unless UWE has done something really weird with their game code.
If they want me to code it, I don't know lua, but if given a few pointers, I'm willing to learn and send it in... but I would rather not do that for the next 6 months... trying to catch up on school work.
please read the whole thing, it details a few on the fly changes of mind.
THANKS FOR READING (if you did actually read the whole thing).
I hope UWE has a meeting about this, and implements in in one of the soon to be released builds (186 nudge nudge). Please post any comments in this post, and we can discuss theoretically how this mechanism can work better.
SOME notes on implementing it into game regarding performance.
This loop, that checks the power increase or decrease... only needs to be performed by the server.
when the rate of power increase or decrease has been calculated, the server only needs to update the players if there has been a change in the rate of power increase/decrease.
so, if for example, a power node is destroyed, the server detects that change in the rate of power usage, and updates the players.
but for 20 whole seconds, nothing happens, no marines spawn, no structures are built, no powernodes are repaired or destroyed etc. then the player's own computers can calculate the rate of increase on their own, it's sort of with the same idea of server side, or client side movement prediction.
this will greatly save on network usage, and affect server performance in the least amount.
I have some ideas about power nodes, in regards to game balance and long drawn out games, and how power nodes can help to fix that while still keeping the game fun.
first, a short paragraph like story.
The skulks we're scrambling into our position strong and hard, they scuttled over the walls, up onto the ceilings, but ultimately were cut down by our elite accuracy. Fades would be met by walls of fire, rendering them charred lifeless bags of blood and guts. We were surrounded, every other position in the outpost summit was infested, power was cut in all other rooms and infestation creeping in. Then we heard it: "Attention: Power leak in sub section 4, total power loss in T Minus 1 minute". It was only a matter of time until the infestation in the wires caused our single remaining power node to fail. "T minus 45 seconds until total power failure". If we could push the aliens back, repair a power node in another section of the base, then there would be enough integrity to allow the nanites to remove the infestation of the cables... "T minus 30 seconds until total power failure". Another wave of aliens rushed into the room, charging for the power node, but 3 well placed grenades sent them flying right back out the entrance... in pieces. "This is it" one of the newly teleported in marines said. "ten - nine - eight - seven - six - five - four - three - two - one", the command station automatically opened using it's final remaining electricity, and the lights went out. No emergency lights, just three seconds of pure darkness, a few flashlights turning on... and the final attack from the aliens...
I hope you enjoyed my crummy story, I'm not the best with writing.
But that is to try and give a sense of the solution to the stalemates which plague current public servers.
Power nodes, their current function as perceived by me.
For marines: power nodes allow marines to see easier as they move around the map, and also enable them to power structures the commander places.
For aliens: it enables the aliens to a) prevent marines from seeing well, and b) prevent marines from building buildings.
apart from that, power nodes don't actually do anything rather than be a slight inconvenience. They aren't really regarded by most as a super major part of the strategy, other than the fact it will annoy the marines if the aliens take out a power node.
What you hopefully read in my mini paragraph story is the final stages of what happens when the aliens take out all of the other power nodes.
note: I'll get to how it helps the marines in a moment.
what this new system does for the aliens:
taking out a power node as an alien does a number of things.
1) it stops the marines from seeing well, with the activation of emergency lighting
2)it prevents the marine commander from seeing what is going on in that area
3)it enables the commander to quickly infest a room using my new awesome infestation FEATURE idea.
The first two from that list are fairly self explanatory. But lets take a look at the third option.
Infest Power Node, and I know it's called something else but I really can't remember what the new name is.
This is a commander activated ability that sends a drifter over to the power node, and will form a blob of infestation on the power node, costing significantly less energy than regular cysts. The whole room will then become infested as if the commander had placed cysts all over it.
Marines can kill the mega cyst in much the same way aliens eat the power node. I think I just created a mirror of the power node, but for aliens, still seems like a good idea for game play's sake.
Emergency lighting remains on if there is still a power node working somewhere else in the base.
And finally, the game breaking/making feature of the new power node system.
I have an actual function-able system to explain later, but for now, I'll explain it in a simpler way.
Once the aliens have taken out all but the marines final power node, a timer will start after a little while, stating that there is one more minute of power left, if the marines are unable to restore power in that minute, all man made lights go out completely, the entire level goes pitch black unless there are some windows or outdoor areas with daylight.
This should prevent those stalemates when the marine team has no expansions left and is simply surviving on the fact that the aliens are unable to do significant enough damage to finish the marines off.
================================================================================
====================
Now, how will the same system, but for the marines, help them?
A room with a working power node:
a) the lights are on.
b) the commander can see what is happening in the room without the need for an observatory scan
c) infestation will slowly(die within 1 minute) die in lit rooms (explained by the fact that light kills infestation rapidly... also sort of explains why there is no infestation everwhere on the surface of the planet).
For each power node the marines have that is working, they gain a 0.5 second speed bonus on all tasks that take a set amount of time. Recycling buildings, building robots, spawning in more marines, etc get a speed boost.
So in a map that has 5 power nodes(including one in the marine base, but there is no bonus for the marine base power node), it takes 2 seconds less to spawn in a marine than if they only have the one in marine start.
================================================================================
====================
BONUS TIME, I sure hope you are still reading, mechanics of how this system works. something to give the devs an idea of how they can implement this.
While this may seem like a simple modification to the existing power node system, I am actually also trying to present a new system of handling the electricity power of the base.
Let's introduce a new system, I don't know what data type it will use or how many variables this new system will take.
What is the aim of this new... function(system): To keep a track of power nodes, structures in use, and total capacity of power(electricity)
What does a power node do:
it increases the total capacity of the power storage by 100 units.
it adds 4 units to the charge every second.
What does a marine structure or building to:
every building that is powered will draw 1 unit of charge per second.
if we want to be scientific, we can also use electrons, but I am not really interested in those, I'm more concerned about units in general for game-play reasons.
SO, with that in place, we can already see how this system can work to improve upon game balance and prevent long drawn out games with lots of sentry spam.
This new game mechanic also enables the aliens to take down the power in marine start without even needing to take out the power node of marine start, because an infantry portal, a command station, and an extractor will draw power.
ALSO, an interesting point to be made, emergency lighting can also draw power, and the commander can enable/disable the lights from on/off/emergency by selecting the power node(destroyed or working) to play around with power.
on: 1 power unit per second being drawn
off: no power per second being drawn
emergency: 0.5 power unit per second is drawn (note on truncation later on)
What else does this mechanic do? It will track the current usage of structures, and the power input from power nodes. This data can then be used to calculate whether total power is going up, or down, and if power is going down, estimate how long it will take for a total power loss, where all structures will shut down for 30 seconds, while the system recharges enough power to start up again.
How the algorithm for tracking power could work: note: I'm not doing the full algorithm or even including all the variables, I don't have enough time tonight to do that... sorry.
Variables:
n is integer, b is Boolean... I don't think floats are necessary for this algorithm
nStructures
nPowerNodes
nLightsEmergency
nLightsOn
nMiscPowerusage //this is included in the next nPowerAdd loop, for use with things like a marine spawning, which takes 1 unit by default.
// note, I'm not going to bother with a variable for lights that are off, because that really isn't necessary.
bHasWarned //this is for checking if the t minus 60, 45, 30, 15 seconds messages have been activated, because it's possible to skip the actual 60 second threshhold(or any of them) in the event of another power node suddenly going down changing the estimated time til total power outage).
nTimeRemaining // time remaining until either a) power outage, or b) overcharge.
nPowerAdd
nCharge
Power Charge Loop:
every second, the game will loop through this function that:
nPowerAdd = (nPowerNodes x 4) -(nLightsOn x 1) - (nLightsEmergency) - (nStructures)
Test data: 4 working power nodes, every room has lights on, 6 structures (comm, armory, extractor, ip, armoury, extractor).
nPowerAdd = 16 -4 -0 -6
nPowerAdd = 6
total power is going up by 6 every second.
If the commander turned 3 of the 4 rooms to emergency, there will be truncation, this is okay, so the 4 power would drop to 2 power used every second(1 for the 3 emergency lighting rooms, 1 for the on room), I'm keeping things simple here. but if you want to use a float variable instead of integer to avoid the truncation, go ahead, but it's really not going to destroy the world in this sort of situation.
meaning that the total power going up would be 8 a second.
While this seems like a small amount at the moment, it's actually quite a lot, because total power is increasing to the cap, which is 400, and assuming we start at 50 power, we will make that remaining 350 power until the cap, at 8 a second in... 43 seconds. This is interesting, because I can talk about what happens when power reaches the cap.
POWER CAP REACHED, ENERGY OVERFLOW DETECTED.
when the power cap is reached, things speed up for the marines:
spawning in with an infantry portal is brought down to 4 seconds from ... 12?
building robots is halved in time take.
res gained from extractors is unaffected.
research for upgrades is doubled.
BUT, to prevent exploiting this enormous boost to the marines efficiency, the energy used when these things are completed all take 20 energy, rather than 1. So if the marines want fast spawning, they can't build a heap of buildings which equal the energy input.
================================================================================
====================
WHAT HAPPENS IF THE ALIENS CHOMP ON ALL THE POWER NODES IF THE MARINES HAVE A BASE FULL OF STRUCTURES: 5 turrets, 2 ips, 1 armory, 1 comm, 1 extractor, 1 arms lab, 1 robotics factory = 12 energy used per second on structures alone). and the aliens chomp all of the power nodes(which drops lighting to emergency automatically).
then the power used will suddenly be unbalanced, the commander will be notified that power is going down, and if there is less than 1 minute of power, the warning messages (which are audio by the way) will sound.
so lets assume marines have 5 power nodes, their base is full of the stuff previously mentioned, and the aliens chomp out all of their other power nodes INSTANTLY.
Before (assuming each other power node point has 1 extractor and nothing else):
using the
nPowerAdd = (nPowerNodes x 4) -(nLightsOn) - (nLightsEmergency) - (nStructures)
nPowerAdd = (5 x 4) - (5) - (0) - (12 + 4) //there's 4 extra extractors in use. the one in marine base is included in the 12 figure.
nPowerAdd = 20 -21 // oops, perhaps the power gained from each power node should be increased to 5. let's do that now...
nPowerAdd = (nPowerNodes x 5) -(everything else)
nPowerAdd = 25 - 21
nPowerAdd = 4 //per second positive.
AFTER:
nPowerAdd = (nPowerNodes x1) -(nLightsOn) - (nLightsEmergency x 0.5) - (nStructures) // extractors in powered down areas no longer consuming power.
nPowerAdd = 5 -(1) -(4 x 0.5 = 2) - (12)
nPowerAdd = 5 - 16
nPowerAdd = -11
so we can see the marines are now losing power at a rapid rate, let's calculate how long it will take for the marines to completely lose power assuming their previous amount of 500 // note, the cap was because of active power nodes, since they're no longer active, I don't know how easy it is to code a way to keep the previous amount of charge without it being chopped off instantly... mind you, it may be more painful to chop off the charge instantly... so, let's assume the charge is dropped to 100.
nCharge=100
then every second, the charge is going down by 11 every single second. The marines have ... oh ###### we're GOING TO DIE! nine - eight - seven - six - five - four - three - two - one - DEIAJFIWAJFAWOgawgfijawfaijsijv.
ALTERNATIVELY: if the charge is able to remain at 500.
nCharge=500
we have 45 seconds until total power loss.
OK, I'm done. Phew, that was awesome. I hope you like my idea, I hope you consider the effect it has on end games.
Also, a new structure called a battery could be constructable by the marines to increase the charge by a further 100 per building. In each loop of charge, the equation could go:
nChargeTotal = nCharge + nPowerAdd + nBatteryCharge(battery charge can be calculated in a separate loop).
// yes, I did introduce another variable, because you couldn't very well add nCharge to itself every second, that would be weird.
A FEW NOTES ON THE VARIABLES:
you could increase the total capacity added by each power node by 150 instead of 100, giving the marines a bit of a boost, or even 200 for each power node.
I don't know how easy this will be to add in as a feature, it doesn't seem too much of a change, unless UWE has done something really weird with their game code.
If they want me to code it, I don't know lua, but if given a few pointers, I'm willing to learn and send it in... but I would rather not do that for the next 6 months... trying to catch up on school work.
please read the whole thing, it details a few on the fly changes of mind.
THANKS FOR READING (if you did actually read the whole thing).
I hope UWE has a meeting about this, and implements in in one of the soon to be released builds (186 nudge nudge). Please post any comments in this post, and we can discuss theoretically how this mechanism can work better.
SOME notes on implementing it into game regarding performance.
This loop, that checks the power increase or decrease... only needs to be performed by the server.
when the rate of power increase or decrease has been calculated, the server only needs to update the players if there has been a change in the rate of power increase/decrease.
so, if for example, a power node is destroyed, the server detects that change in the rate of power usage, and updates the players.
but for 20 whole seconds, nothing happens, no marines spawn, no structures are built, no powernodes are repaired or destroyed etc. then the player's own computers can calculate the rate of increase on their own, it's sort of with the same idea of server side, or client side movement prediction.
this will greatly save on network usage, and affect server performance in the least amount.
Comments
Best of all, it gives an analogue of the infestation to the marine commander, serving the same role of detection/construction. The numbers for structures/lights/nodes would need to be spot on though, and would need to be just as viable for the commander who only builds a single version of each structure (beside IP's) as well as the one that likes to construct forward bases.
Dammit, now I want to learn LUA. How tricky is it anyway? I have a fairly strong basis in C and Java, reckon I could pick it up?
LUA IS FREAKING EASY ...
...compared to java(which is very similar to c++ from what I know).
The second problem I see is complexity. NS is already a very hard game to learn, add on top of that commanding which is another level. Adding this in without raising the skill bar for new commanders is something which i don't think is answered here. Why are my buildings not working? I have the power?! As long as its somehow communicated to the players and commanders why things are happening, and how to fix it, then this idea has merit.
Obviously, a simple bar can appear on the commanders HUD saying the current power, the total power cap, and it's rate of increase or decrease. and an estimated time until capping or total power loss.
This Bar would look something like this:
[150/600] +6 75 seconds until power cap
So yeah... not too complicated.
We can colour it green to say that it's happy, yellow when power is mostly neutral (aside from marines spawning in). and RED when power is dropping.
later on, maybe even implement an automatic power management option marine commanders can turn on, which automatically disables lights, etc.
I could have gone for a more complicated solution in my main post, which would have involved things like armouries, turrets, infantry portals using power only when they do stuff. And extractors always consuming power, but more power because of what theyre doing, but this system is much simpler, one power used per in use structure(idle ips are classed as "in use" becaues they are plugged in and ready to go).
this way, it should be intuitive as to the fact that adding another structure will use more power, and the fact that it's 1 unit per structure per second, means players can easily calculate on the fly how much power they will need in the near future.
Throwing my two cents in with Endar, with more powerful units available to each team it would be more than a little annoying to have a game-ending function that prevents the use of them, by prematurely ending games.
With Onos included we wouldn't see games where aliens have control of the entire map besides Marine Start, and are unable to finish the match because the marine commander keeps baconing their troops back to life. I very rarely see a similar situation from the perspective of marine map control, as a coordinated push on a sole hive by marines is all but unstoppable without some higher life forms.
To whit, really looking forward to the tier 3 tech, bring it on guys!
I think its bug, that aliens can't damage "destroyed", but half-repaired power node
(opposite to repairing by marines "live" but half-damaged one)
and to top it off, most of the power management is automatic, rather than commander controlled. It serves to prevent building spam(for marines anyway), prevent long end games, is easy to code, and should tide people over until the onos and exoskeleton is implemented. I'd test the idea myself with a mod, but I sadly don't have the time at the moment.
I do however, see why some people would think that the idea complicates the game more, but at the same time, I ask the question: are you willing to give it a go?
Because even if you think it might be bad, at the same time, it is probably worth testing it to see what effect it has on gameplay and perceived complexity versus actual complexity.
I'm not exactly the best person to judge my own idea, but I thought it through fairly thoroughly and think it's worth trying in it's current state.
I actually enjoy the idea of making a game like this more complex, I would just worry that the games community will not grow without working toward simplicity.
Increase power generated by each node to 5 and give each CC a power output of 2. The reason I suggest this is simple: Marine start will need a number of buildings in order to maintain basic function (research, res etc.). Excluding ip’s you have ~6 structures in MS (extractor, armory, arms lab, obs, rob fac, and maybe a pg). I excluded ip’s as I feel that they are supported (not fully mind you, as they should still fail to function should the node be taken out) by the CC (as suggested by their required proximity to the CC). In this way the basics power requirements of the marines can be met given control of only marine start with a little left over for a turret or two to protect the ip’s or what have you, but not so much as to allow a farm that never lets the game end.
In this way even if the marines are pushed back to MS they are not (necessarily) down and out: as their lines are shorter (and the number of ip’s not limited by power) they can still put up a hell of a fight and turn the tide of the game, but without adequate power to create a turret farm the game is unlikely to be a stalemate. This would also allow aliens to use the onos as well before power just goes out.
Giving power nodes an output of 5 is very reasonable. This would allow a res point like Ventilation to possess an extractor, armory, a turret (or two) and leave enough power to charge up the batteries. A location such as DC with a CC on the tech point would have 7 power units, allowing for an extractor, armory, pg, observatory (for beacon defense) and a turret or two and still have enough to charge the batteries.
As for the alien cyst on the power node I don’t really like the idea of free creep… How about a node infestation that is built on destroyed nodes that drains power, say -0.5 per second per infested node? Having this infestation cost 20-30 res would keep it in the realm of late game usage and could be used to help speed up the endgame. Though if this were the case I would bump up CC power output to 3.
Actually the more I think about it the power from a node should probably be about 6, as we don’t want completely stifle marine buildings.
What do you guys think?
With regards to the alien power node blob that infests a room, it will still cost resources, and be destroyable by the marines, which will uninfest the entire room(including removing any cysts alien comm has placed). I'm not entirely defending this idea though, as my main concern is late end game.
Instead of upping power to 5, a better idea is probably to cancel the drain that lights have on power... in other words, don't worry about changing how lights work for the most part. That is essentially the same as upping the power to 5 like you said, mind you, the reasoning behind including lights being on with the power drain is this: when lights are on, comm can see the aliens in that room. But for simplicities sake, removing drain is probably best.
Adding in a command center to give out power is a bit weird to me, and in all honesty, linking ips directly to comm again seems a bit weird(I can understand where you are coming from though, the fact ips are actually linked to specific comm stations). But again, for simplicities sake, I don't think the comm station itself should generate power, but an alternative, it could raise the power cap level by 200 per comm station, that's a significant boost to the batteries.
So without power nodes, the command station and infantry portals will still "function", but won't be getting any charge, so the marines had better get a move on repairing the power nodes.
EVERYTHING ELSE, that is not the command station or infantry portals. Will shut down, because they were drawing power from the power node.
Again, with regards to the complicatedness of this feature. Some features of games are very complicated, I feel this one is intuitive, and can be picked up simply by playing the game. The voice saying "T - Minus 1 minute to total power failure" is tutorial enough, and rather than complicating the game, would actually for me anyway, keep the game interesting... One of those "that was so cool" moments.
Most commanders aren't even going to bother with that, because a) it will take too long to reasearch. b) if a skulk eats the node, the 20 res is wasted, c) it's easy to overlook, and d) why don't they just send in a marine to scout or do an observatory scan.
I can see where you are coming from, but making it researchable is complicating things without any actual benefit to what we already have. If we make all rooms with power visible to comm, then that's similar to the comm tapping in to existing cameras or other sensing devices that they use in the future.
Most commanders aren't even going to bother with that, because a) it will take too long to reasearch. b) if a skulk eats the node, the 20 res is wasted, c) it's easy to overlook, and d) why don't they just send in a marine to scout or do an observatory scan.
I can see where you are coming from, but making it researchable is complicating things without any actual benefit to what we already have. If we make all rooms with power visible to comm, then that's similar to the comm tapping in to existing cameras or other sensing devices that they use in the future.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, regardless, looks like the developers are making power nodes reveal everything in their line of sight next patch.
As for the complications of risking 20 res to gain an advantage ingame, well, welcome to RTS games, we've been waiting for you, ;P
(Also, as for basic commanders learning the game, something like this would be daunting, but that also applies to a lot of what you can do in the game currently. I command with techniques nobody really uses yet. I will also continue to find new commanding strats.)
But after everything, I can see how you and others would be unable to balance this on top of all the other game dynamics.
You first propose a very low power output from nodes, I think this is far too prohibitive for the marine team. With only 4 or 5 power units (PU for short) the marines can build almost nothing if pushed back to MS (only 4 or 5 buildings? IP’s will take 2 or 3 plus an extractor armory….). While this is the point in your model I do not feel this should be the case. Marines should not be downright punished for being pushed back to MS, just prevented from farming it and artificially drawing out the game. This is why I proposed more starting power, by attaching that extra power to the CC we reduce to compounding effect of controlling many power nodes as there are only so many tech points (it will also promote the use of t-res to be used on more CCs as to generate more PUs to assist in the marine endgame). Additionally, building buildings should not be so constrained as to make managing buildings tedious and annoying (another reason to keep IPs off the grid).
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->keep in mind that all power nodes are active upon starting a round, so on a map like summit, the marines will easily build up a nice stockpile of energy before the aliens get a chance to eat anything.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
As far as these unsecured nodes at game start are concerned, perhaps the addition of a relatively cheap (~5-10res) ‘energy transmitter’ attachment (or ‘enhanced ‘ node) would need to be built near (or on) a node in order for its excess energy to be added to the battery. In this way energy from nodes can still be used to power buildings (increase building pop-cap) but the excess PUs are not put towards the marine bonus until the area is properly secured
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Instead of upping power to 5, a better idea is probably to cancel the drain that lights have on power... in other words, don't worry about changing how lights work for the most part. That is essentially the same as upping the power to 5 like you said, mind you, the reasoning behind including lights being on with the power drain is this: when lights are on, comm can see the aliens in that room. But for simplicities sake, removing drain is probably best.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree just drop the whole lights thing, but keep the power up for reasons explained above
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->EVERYTHING ELSE, that is not the command station or infantry portals. Will shut down, because they were drawing power from the power node.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
IPs should still shutdown, unless supported by a power generator (whose role doesn’t change, building them will not add power to the battery, just keep buildings up and running should a node be taken down).
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Again, with regards to the complicatedness of this feature. Some features of games are very complicated, I feel this one is intuitive, and can be picked up simply by playing the game. The voice saying "T - Minus 1 minute to total power failure" is tutorial enough, and rather than complicating the game, would actually for me anyway, keep the game interesting... One of those "that was so cool" moments.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This really isn’t too complicated I agree, but the only reason this should EVER happen is if the number of buildings in a room is greater than the available power supply and thus drains the batteries to zero. It should never be implemented as a punishment for getting pushed back to MS.
As far and the bonus to marines go, it may be prudent to have the only bonus be faster respawn. If the battery is completely full respawns are X times faster. The more nodes/CCs you have the larger your battery. By doing this there is a measure of balance for a marine team doing well: the more expansive they get the longer it takes to charge a battery to full, the smaller they are the shorter the period.
I'll do that first by answering some of your quotes.
<!--quoteo(post=1872279:date=Aug 31 2011, 02:27 PM:name=Eldorwanabe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Eldorwanabe @ Aug 31 2011, 02:27 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1872279"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think what I see this accomplishing is a bit different then you do. The scope of what you want to implement is a bit more far reaching. I see it simply as a way of (a) reducing turret farm issues and(b) speeding up the end-game. Item (a) is accomplished by introducing a "build limit" via the power of the nodes and (b) through the bonus system you outlined (but my idea is a bit simpler). I'll try and map out what I am thinking so you can mold it with your original thought:<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually, what you just said there is the exact core of my idea. While I did also talk about some other ideas(the quick infestation for example), I was mostly concerned with turret spam and late game boredom. Mind you, the reason I suggested a quick infestation ability is to try to balance out the powernodes, as this will also help aliens take territory, and lose territory on a fairly equal playing field... But as I said before, it is a bit symetrical(in the fact that for marines, power nodes power the room, let them use structures, and see aliens in that room... if theres infestation from the powernode in the room, it's ... exactly the same for the alien side).
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You first propose a very low power output from nodes, I think this is far too prohibitive for the marine team. With only 4 or 5 power units (PU for short) the marines can build almost nothing if pushed back to MS (only 4 or 5 buildings? IP’s will take 2 or 3 plus an extractor armory….). While this is the point in your model I do not feel this should be the case. Marines should not be downright punished for being pushed back to MS, just prevented from farming it and artificially drawing out the game. This is why I proposed more starting power, by attaching that extra power to the CC we reduce to compounding effect of controlling many power nodes as there are only so many tech points (it will also promote the use of t-res to be used on more CCs as to generate more PUs to assist in the marine endgame). Additionally, building buildings should not be so constrained as to make managing buildings tedious and annoying (another reason to keep IPs off the grid).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Keep in mind, this low power output isn't all that low, even for early game... Let's use summit with my original(mostly) post figures of 4 PU(power units) per node and 100 cap increase per living cap. Also, let's assume that if a power node is destroyed while the battery cap is full, then the current cap isn't chopped off, but power merely stops going in until the battery is no longer overflowing(I hope that makes sense, if power > cap then stop adding power).
Ok, summit has... 6 power nodes. That's a cap of 600 power units to start. Let's add in a great idea of also using the command station as the battery, and have it add 200 power units to the cap, so we have a total of 800 power units.
Assume the aliens are organised, and it takes the aliens 45 seconds to eat 2 power nodes of a round. at 4 units per second, we get 1080(oh... uh... <.< screen resolution... freaky) power units added to the battery. Now let's assume marines are really good and have ventilation extractor built, as well as 2 infantry portals and an armoury built within the first 30 seconds... and theyre constructed exactly at the 30 second mark.
This is going to get complicated so bear with me, I'll break down the parts as much as possible. I'm doing this to explain why this "low" amount is actually balanced.
FIRST 30 SECONDS:
marines have 2 structures, the command station and a starter extractor. I'm assuming that lights do not drain power at all(I would ammend my original post, but that would destroy the flow of a forum thread discussion).
that's 60 power units for the first 30 seconds used up.
Next 15 seconds(assuming marines are able to build these buildings so instantaneously or synchronised at the 30 second mark).
there are 6 buildings. Which is 90 power units (I'm going off total buildings, not additional buildings).
Total power used for first 45 seconds: 120
Total power output in battery = 1080 - 120
Total power output in battery = 960
As you can see this, is plenty of power, in fact, the marines would have hit their overflow point a little before, and then again, once the aliens chomp on the power nodes, the cap is lowered, which by fact of the matter, ACTUALLY increases the bonus duration by a small amount.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->As far as these unsecured nodes at game start are concerned, perhaps the addition of a relatively cheap (~5-10res) ‘energy transmitter’ attachment (or ‘enhanced ‘ node) would need to be built near (or on) a node in order for its excess energy to be added to the battery. In this way energy from nodes can still be used to power buildings (increase building pop-cap) but the excess PUs are not put towards the marine bonus until the area is properly secured<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I really don't understand what you mean by this. Each power node adds power to a single cap pool, which I refer to as "the battery". The command center is also used to determine the existence of the battery, if there are no command centers, the battery goes to zero... but that's irrelevent because marines would lose anyway. Think of the battery as a weird device, that grows when it's power per second is increased by the addition of another power node, thus increasing it's total capacity, and when a power node is destroyed, that extension to the battery itself remains until the power is used up... then the add on bit falls off.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I agree just drop the whole lights thing, but keep the power up for reasons explained above<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Just to clarify, I agree with you agreeing to me agreeing.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->IPs should still shutdown, unless supported by a power generator (whose role doesn’t change, building them will not add power to the battery, just keep buildings up and running should a node be taken down).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
IPs remain active until there is no more power in the "battery". In fact, I'll probably add to the idea that as long as there is power in the "battery", all structures remain active, unless the commander sets the base to "emergency power only mode" which dims all lights (for visual effect, not actually affecting power usage due to a previous decision regarding lights). In emergency power only mode, only the command station, res nodes(extractors, because assuming marines survive, they will need res to rebuild), and infantry portals remain active, all other structures shut down.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->This really isn’t too complicated I agree, but the only reason this should EVER happen is if the number of buildings in a room is greater than the available power supply and thus drains the batteries to zero. It should never be implemented as a punishment for getting pushed back to MS.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thank you for chopping your responses up like this, it allows for multiple parts of a conversation to be discussed simultaneously. Anyway, ACTUALLY, this is exactly the opposite of what you just said there.
Marines should be punished to sum fair degree for getting pushed back to Marine Start, that is the main reason I posted this update up, to prevent the end game turret defense where marines have their single base, a heap of turrets, and waves and waves of marines to defend the base "just enough" to make sure the game just won't end for another 30 minutes.
with this new system, marines would be pushed back to marine start, be told that they have 1 minute to regroup and fix up their act or lose the game. But at the same time, it is designed to make the whole experience of losing a game interesting, rather than boring(it's boring to defend a base for 30 mintues knowing you are going to lose anyway. A fair few people simply ready room because of this). If you know that in 1 minute you are going to lose anyway, your team mates are simply not going to pull themselves together because it's a pub game and theyre here to have some fun, you may as well have some fun too and just go all epic and last standy on the aliens(but again, not all last standy in the way that increases game time by 30 minutes).
Note: this sense of fun I predict, is also a reason why the same mechanic could also work with Onos included in the game, because it's just a nice way of making losing fun, but not encouraging deliberate losing at the same time.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->As far and the bonus to marines go, it may be prudent to have the only bonus be faster respawn. If the battery is completely full respawns are X times faster. The more nodes/CCs you have the larger your battery. By doing this there is a measure of balance for a marine team doing well: the more expansive they get the longer it takes to charge a battery to full, the smaller they are the shorter the period.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's the plan, also, I agree with only boosting respawn times. I have another modification to the respawn speed increase based on that comment. I'm using it for inspiration:
Once the marines reach their cap, the speed increase isn't instant(this is going to directly conflict with some other ideas about the cap to the battery, but bear with me), it's percentage based using integers(hooray for truncation) for simplicity. The speed increase is x % faster based on how much % the power has gone over the "cap". Furthermore, the power used for each teleportation will be calculated with a funny algorithim with the use of a counter to keep track of how many times marines warp in over the cap.
Ok, let's explain this system further with an example.
Using unrealistic values:
Power Increase = 24 Units Per Second
Power Cap = 100 Units
Power Usage = 10 Units Per Second
1 infantry portal.
9 other irrelevent buildings.
Current Battery Charge = 100 units (it's at the cap)
1 second passes. No marines are dead, so none spawn in (which would cost one unit if they were at the cap).
Battery Charge = 114 Units
Percentage Overcharge 114%, or 14% over
Default Time for infantry portal after marine dies 12 seonds (I counted, it's 8 seconds after portal starts spinning, but let's use 12 because that's real value used in the game code).
Sped up time 12 - (12x0.14) (114% of 12) = 10.32 seconds
Now, before I increase time by one second and kill a marine (HAH), let me explain the overcharged infantry portal cost of marine warp in cost.
Default marine warp in cost: 1 unit (on top of 1 unit per second for having the infantry portal sitting there) per warp in.
We'll use the Fibonacci number to calculate further cost.
First marine warp in after overcharge: 1 unit
N marine warp in after overcharge: N Unit. This is actually the same integer used for the first warp overcharge, but... yeah.
To calculate Fibonacci Number, a simple algorithm as follows can be used:
Variables:
nNumCount
nNumPreviousCount
nNumCount = nNumCount + nNumPreviousCount
nNumPreviousCount = nNumCount
Done simple.
2 seconds over charge, 5 marines die.
Sped Up Time: 8.64 Seconds
Battery Charge: 128 Units
Cost Of Warp: 1, then 2.
First Warp In: 1 Unit - 0 (1 squared = 1, 1/2 x 1 = 0 (truncation makes 0.5 = 0)
Second Warp in: 2 Unit -2 (2 squared =4, 1/2 x 2 =1
3: 3 Units
4: 5 Units
5: 8 Units.
and so on and so forth, if the marines continue to get a bonus, and keep warping in, and dying, eventually, the cost of an overcharged warp in will be too great and equal out, then bring down the overcharge.
While in overcharge, powernodes continue to output charge into the battery pool, but the rate will be decreased by 50%. So it will be fairly difficult to maintain an overcharge for extended periods of time... especially if the marines have lots of structures, and also especially if they don't, becase the aliens are likely to eat powernodes in undefended rooms.
So you can see how this idea can balance itself out... but continue to post up your oppinions and we'll continue to modify the original idea further.
It might be a bit difficult to keep up with this idea at times, but In about a week, after further discussion, I'll write up a google doc which pools together all the ideas, suggestions, and modifications caused by the community into a cohesive and easily understandable idea, which I'll then edit even further after another week... Hopefull the UWE team will put the idea in shortly after I write the document though.
If you want something to be in the game, start small. lol
Instead, something simple, as for making Power Nodes important:
<b>Motion Tracking should only show movement in powered areas.</b>
This will really make them important targets for the aliens as soon as they see that observatory.
This would also help balance the motion tracking we know from NS1, that made ambushes and baserushes nearly impossible.
Powernodes no longer just make lights and structures work in their own room.
They a) allow structures to work in their room
and b) add 4 power units to the power unit pool (called the battery) every second.
and c) increase the cap of the battery by 100
Each structures uses 1 power unit per second.
Other one off ations in the game, such as spawning, giving health and ammo, researching etc now cost 1 power unit(new feature).
It has that visual thing you were talking about too in the ideas for powered areas.
And finally. A command station(and power packs) does not provide power to the pool, but it is capable of drawing power, allowing the marines to continue to fight a little longer if aliens take out their power node. Also, the command stations and power packs increase the "battery" cap by 200 points for each one in the game.
Once power goes down, the entire base goes black until there is sufficient power to activate things, such as lights and structures again.
The main reasons for this idea are:
1) power nodes serve an auxiliary pupose at the moment, I want to change that.
2) there is a lot of late game sentry spam in late game, this idea serves to fix that problem without "limiting" sentries.
I see the idea behind it, but it seems like it would make powernodes weaker.
-----Edit-----
Also even when marines end up just stuck in their base the new power node you suggested seems to do nothing more but maybe even slow the alien victory down. When marines are left with just their own base left and only have one power node left. You said if the aliens destroyed the power node then the marines only have a minute left to get their power back up till it goes out forever. This is dumb because marines will already lose withing a minute after their only base left goes out of power because marine infantry portals don't work without power. Observatories can't do beacon without power either. So the marines have to get the power back up anyways or else they lose because they have no reinforcements. Also you might argue that they have power packs and could put 4 of those up. After the power goes out it becomes harder to see the aliens and kill them. All the aliens now need to do is rush the remaining small power packs with few marines alive. Anyways I've NEVER seen a commander place more than one power pack in spawn.
As for cysts dying in light, yeah, that rule probably doesn't need to go in, especially if lit rooms give commander visibility anyway... that's enough incentive to kill the nodes in rooms as it is, as well as incentive for marines to repair power nodes too.
All in all, I'll do a rewrite of the system from memory and limit myself to 400 words. I'll try to get this up tomorrow, and the new idea should be pretty good.
The core of the idea is as follows:
Power Nodes generate power.
Structures draw power.
When there is no more power, structures begin to shut down (depending on their importance).
So aside from that, any modifications, additions, subtractions of features and functionality are all considered extra.
Here's just one idea I came up with someone(Mako I believe): replace marine structure energy with power(gathered from power nodes). This adds in the following tradeoff: should I give my marine nano shield, or should I build another turret?
I'm not too keen on prematurely forcing an endgame timer for a team, but I can't argue with any objective reason other than "a Doom timer is not fun". It would also reduce the asymmetry of play-style by tying Alien-territory control to the Power Grid in the same way the Marines are, which undermines not only the role of Cysts (making them redundant/less useful) but also the appeal of <b>Dynamic</b> Infestation.
As far as the build/production speed bonus; for Power Nodes to affect structures outside of the area they power is going to be counter-intuitive to the rest of the way Power Nodes work. I can see this confusing a lot of players. And in the end it's a complicated upkeep system which, while potentially balancing, doesn't impact the player in any memorable way.
<b>Here's what I would suggest</b>, which is somewhat aligned with what you have in mind:
<u>Alien DarkVision</u>: Make DarkVision automatic/dynamic by tying it to the state of the room. When a Node is destroyed (NoPower LightMode), DarkVision is on an provides the most benefit. Reduce the opacity of the effect to maybe 30-50% like Twiliteblue's Dark 'n Dirty mod so that Aliens have a clear seeing advantage while the room is in their control. When a unsocketed or damaged (LowPower LightMode), the effect is very faint (<1%) such that it is still helpful but barely, and when a node is socketed/powered (Normal LightMode) the effect is lost entirely, taking away the Kharaa's advantage.
As dependent as the Aliens are on DarkVision, this should give good incentive for them to destroy Nodes.
<u>Marine Energize</u>: Change all Comm P.Res costs to Energy costs. Then change starting P.Res to 0 so Marines are resource starved at Tier 1. Give Power Nodes a T.Res ability to speed up Energy regeneration of a target structure the node is powering (call it "Energize" or something). Not only does this make Power Nodes a valuable asset, it also opens up strategic avenues (double Armory for a Shotgun rush, etc.). <b><i>Alternatively</i></b>, make Doors dependent on Power Nodes and add more of them (Doors) so that Power Node control = Area control.