Buff Hydras and Onos Smash.
Blasphemy
Join Date: 2008-05-02 Member: 64201Members, NS2 Playtester, Subnautica Playtester
Join Date: 2008-05-02 Member: 64201Members, NS2 Playtester, Subnautica Playtester
I just left an immensely frustrating game just now. Aliens controlled the entire map on summit, and the marines with 2 sentries on each entrance at the south base. They were completely turtled. They had all upgrades, about 6 arcs, and just about every single marine with a jetpack, welder, or assault rifle.
Now as you could probably imagine, it should not be difficult for a team of 6 onos to destroy a single lone base, especially when both fronts had several crags, plenty of drifters, and dozens of Hydras just around the corner. Problem is, it is. Generally we would have two onos on either side waiting for eachother to heal up and push in together to try to destory the sentries. BUT all the commander has to do is pop nano shield, and the onos will run out of energy from smashing and has to leave, <b>before the sentry even goes below 80% health</b>.
Now I'm sure you could argue that we weren't arranging ourselves accordingly, or arranging the attacks proper. This is where all I can say is that you will believe it when you see it. Because the pure fact that I was 95 kills / 17 deaths, and for the life of me could not make a single dent in their base while completely supported with gorges, a lerk, and another onos, is incredibly frustrating and a massive waste of time.
At that far in to the game, an alien victory should be inevitable and short to arrive. But when you run in there and try to stomp at a little sentry, while getting shot to pieces by every gun in the room, only to see so little damage done, is very disheartening. The best I was able to do in one of my many assaults on the base was get the sentry down to 41%, only to have it nano shielded. I run out of energy, and have to either bail or squeeze in a couple more smashes and die.
And having multiple onos in the field doesn't help either. When me and a couple other onos decided to try to take out their armslab so they would stop sneaking behind our lines with jetpacks and slash our hives, we dived right into their base and began to smash the building. Two of us died, the rest bailed, and the armslab was 80% health. I think the reason it lasted for so long was because the rest of us couldn't damage it because one of the onos were standing so close, that it was actually inside him, and all our attacks came out null because were were supposedly hitting him instead.
I believe that smash should have damage ramped significantly against structures. A small sentry should not be able to withstand so many hits from a creature that can hit with the force of a freight train. He can stomp on the floor and send many a marine on their backs, but he can barely mangle a small structure?
And as for the Hydra.
I made a thread recently about the Gorge heal being nerfed and upset that the Gorge is incredibly pathetic. I still stand by this, and I've discovered that only when someone has no aim when they engage you, while you have 3 hydras, carapace, and full energy for spamming healspray would you possibly have the sides in your favor.
Now, I have been playing the game a bit more, and I find the change to healspray isn't as crippling as I originally thought. As it stands, I don't mind healing wounded teammates that just came out of battle, but you will never find me in the middle of combat healing anyone anymore, as it is just too dangerous. <b>This is fine! THIS IS FINE!</b> I never believed gorge was a combat support kind of character and having him in the background setting up defenses is completely okay in my books.
I do, however, believe that the gorge, while in his own territory, should be able to defend it with complete competency. This is where the Hydras come in.
<a href="http://i.imgur.com/vaKFQ.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/vaKFQl.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>
Now, I count seven hydras in this picture. This was taken just outside of marine base, after I intercepted 3 marines that hurried past and was slashing at an extractor of ours. As any Gorge player could tell you, one Hydra costs 10 personal res to place. So it cost that poor Gorge in that screenshot 83 res (including the cyst and evolution fee), out of his own pocket to make what you see there, and he still couldn't get a single kill on those three marines.
Here I am having problems defending myself against a lone marine with 3 Hydras, and that poor guy had seven! To give you guys a perspective on the pricing in my average scenario. I would spend 10 resources to evolve to gorge. Secondly, I would spend 30 resources on three Hydras, and maybe 3-9 res on cysts just incase I wanted to place them on a wall. In the end, I was down 43-49 pocket res. When some Marine comes barreling around a corner, I should be completely capable of killing him, but unless he has bad aim, or the server has immense lag, he would kill me. If I were to go back in time, wait a couple tics so I have 50 pocket res, I could evolve to a fade and kill many many more marines than I could ever hope to dream of with my 3 hydra hole.
Now for solutions to the Hydra problem. Here are some possible solutions that I think would be proper.
A) If the price of hydras must absolutely stay at 10 res, then they need to do much more damage than they are currently doing. Either by doing more damage per shot, or having an increased armor penetration value.
B) (<b>This is my preferred balance choice</b>) Lower the price on Hydras to 4 or 6, and reduce their health so they die easier. I do not mind if 3 marines can run past that many hydras in the picture above, that should always be an option for the marines to have. What I do mind is how espensively useless it is to the Gorge. Those hydras should turn the room into a death corridor if it costs the gorge 73 res to construct.
What do you guys think of these change ideas? Have you guys had similar problems? Maybe you guys have some stories on the other side of the coin where you are defending structures against Onos attacks or attacking a Gorge in a Hydra nest.
Now as you could probably imagine, it should not be difficult for a team of 6 onos to destroy a single lone base, especially when both fronts had several crags, plenty of drifters, and dozens of Hydras just around the corner. Problem is, it is. Generally we would have two onos on either side waiting for eachother to heal up and push in together to try to destory the sentries. BUT all the commander has to do is pop nano shield, and the onos will run out of energy from smashing and has to leave, <b>before the sentry even goes below 80% health</b>.
Now I'm sure you could argue that we weren't arranging ourselves accordingly, or arranging the attacks proper. This is where all I can say is that you will believe it when you see it. Because the pure fact that I was 95 kills / 17 deaths, and for the life of me could not make a single dent in their base while completely supported with gorges, a lerk, and another onos, is incredibly frustrating and a massive waste of time.
At that far in to the game, an alien victory should be inevitable and short to arrive. But when you run in there and try to stomp at a little sentry, while getting shot to pieces by every gun in the room, only to see so little damage done, is very disheartening. The best I was able to do in one of my many assaults on the base was get the sentry down to 41%, only to have it nano shielded. I run out of energy, and have to either bail or squeeze in a couple more smashes and die.
And having multiple onos in the field doesn't help either. When me and a couple other onos decided to try to take out their armslab so they would stop sneaking behind our lines with jetpacks and slash our hives, we dived right into their base and began to smash the building. Two of us died, the rest bailed, and the armslab was 80% health. I think the reason it lasted for so long was because the rest of us couldn't damage it because one of the onos were standing so close, that it was actually inside him, and all our attacks came out null because were were supposedly hitting him instead.
I believe that smash should have damage ramped significantly against structures. A small sentry should not be able to withstand so many hits from a creature that can hit with the force of a freight train. He can stomp on the floor and send many a marine on their backs, but he can barely mangle a small structure?
And as for the Hydra.
I made a thread recently about the Gorge heal being nerfed and upset that the Gorge is incredibly pathetic. I still stand by this, and I've discovered that only when someone has no aim when they engage you, while you have 3 hydras, carapace, and full energy for spamming healspray would you possibly have the sides in your favor.
Now, I have been playing the game a bit more, and I find the change to healspray isn't as crippling as I originally thought. As it stands, I don't mind healing wounded teammates that just came out of battle, but you will never find me in the middle of combat healing anyone anymore, as it is just too dangerous. <b>This is fine! THIS IS FINE!</b> I never believed gorge was a combat support kind of character and having him in the background setting up defenses is completely okay in my books.
I do, however, believe that the gorge, while in his own territory, should be able to defend it with complete competency. This is where the Hydras come in.
<a href="http://i.imgur.com/vaKFQ.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/vaKFQl.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>
Now, I count seven hydras in this picture. This was taken just outside of marine base, after I intercepted 3 marines that hurried past and was slashing at an extractor of ours. As any Gorge player could tell you, one Hydra costs 10 personal res to place. So it cost that poor Gorge in that screenshot 83 res (including the cyst and evolution fee), out of his own pocket to make what you see there, and he still couldn't get a single kill on those three marines.
Here I am having problems defending myself against a lone marine with 3 Hydras, and that poor guy had seven! To give you guys a perspective on the pricing in my average scenario. I would spend 10 resources to evolve to gorge. Secondly, I would spend 30 resources on three Hydras, and maybe 3-9 res on cysts just incase I wanted to place them on a wall. In the end, I was down 43-49 pocket res. When some Marine comes barreling around a corner, I should be completely capable of killing him, but unless he has bad aim, or the server has immense lag, he would kill me. If I were to go back in time, wait a couple tics so I have 50 pocket res, I could evolve to a fade and kill many many more marines than I could ever hope to dream of with my 3 hydra hole.
Now for solutions to the Hydra problem. Here are some possible solutions that I think would be proper.
A) If the price of hydras must absolutely stay at 10 res, then they need to do much more damage than they are currently doing. Either by doing more damage per shot, or having an increased armor penetration value.
B) (<b>This is my preferred balance choice</b>) Lower the price on Hydras to 4 or 6, and reduce their health so they die easier. I do not mind if 3 marines can run past that many hydras in the picture above, that should always be an option for the marines to have. What I do mind is how espensively useless it is to the Gorge. Those hydras should turn the room into a death corridor if it costs the gorge 73 res to construct.
What do you guys think of these change ideas? Have you guys had similar problems? Maybe you guys have some stories on the other side of the coin where you are defending structures against Onos attacks or attacking a Gorge in a Hydra nest.
Comments
I do hope they do not go ahead and remove the p.res cost on cysts and hydras for the gorge. The gorge SHOULD have a p.res sink but it should be much lower:
1 for cyst
2 - 3 for goo wall
3 - 5 for Hydras + hardcap based on amount of hive + buff to individual hydra. (Survivability or dps, currently they excel at neither)
Removing all p.res costs for gorge buildings will result in:
- Gorges being able to go fade/onos lategame, increasing total amount of those lifeforms active in the game at a given time
- Players going gorge to throw down some hydras and then re-evolve.
He mentioned Lerk support briefly. My guess is they got killed by nade spam at the doorways.
Between turrets, grenade spam, welding and blocking entry with structures, Marine turtling is overly effective at the moment. Not really in terms of *winning* the game, but I've seen some games turn into stalemates basically because aliens couldn't break through and eventually people just quit.
Same, though it was a 25 ARC train that caused half the alien team to crash/disconnect
Additionally, since hydras still affect the server performance, I'd like to see a price bump to 15 pres/hydra, double dmg and double health for them. Less hydras (better performance) but more effective...
That said, I think smash needs a slight bump (maybe up to 130 damage instead of the current 100). The knockdowns from the onos also need to be removed until hive 3. Seriously, what are stun mechanics doing in an fps. ;/
- Gorges being able to go fade/onos lategame, increasing total amount of those lifeforms active in the game at a given time
- Players going gorge to throw down some hydras and then re-evolve.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not if his pres is frozen for when he gorges.
And if he doesn't evolve to a gorge in X time, his hydras should wither away.
now there aren't any downsides and we can have the early game back due to a starting Pres of 0. :)
the gorge has Pres sinks currently and this creates issues as the resource model is balanced around it and thus the early game being skipped etc.
Making it free to his use abilities - as the rest of the aliens do, is a good thing for balance, imo.
So to answer your question with a question: Cool downs and limits are what govern every other class, so i dont see why the gorge should be different?
:)
I prefer Hydras to cost resources instead of energy. Instead of going some upper class, you could spend your money and invest in fortifications to protect your base for that impending marine assault. If you were to abolish the price of Hydras, then I am sure each Hydra placement would have to blow away most of your energy, and live on a timer of 2-4 minutes.
As for hard limits to Hydra amounts. As long as we have Goo wall and an ability to recycle Hydras before some kind of hard limit, then I will have no problems with this. Would this hard limit be restricted on a per-room basis? Or a global amount that is increased with the number of hives? (I like that one. Emphasizes hive expansion while still allowing for a room to be locked down.)
Personally, I would prefer a hard limit that expands with the number of hives built. In particular, I think a good limit would be 5-6 hydras per hive.
In a properly designed game, a Gorge will be needed just as badly as an Onos, and converting all of one into the other will see your team get hammered by its counter.
In a properly designed game, a Gorge will be needed just as badly as an Onos, and converting all of one into the other will see your team get hammered by its counter.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I call for skulk resource sinks all the time :-[
Rock/paper/scissors counters are terrible in an FPS game. You want soft-caps to class stack-ability and soft counters to reward strategy but not bludgeon the other team for making a strategic decision.
Rock/paper/scissors counters are terrible in an FPS game. You want soft-caps to class stack-ability and soft counters to reward strategy but not bludgeon the other team for making a strategic decision.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't see anywhere I mentioned hard counters in my post. Soft counters are counters just like all the other counters, and if your big stun-focused Oni get GL/FT rushed by skilled JPers with no Gorges around to heal or Skulks around to clean up/run interferance, they should get wiped out as their energy empties and their health gets bombed out.
The fact that this doesn't happen right now is a topic for another thread, but I don't see why you're lecturing me about the dangers of hard counters.
The fact that this doesn't happen right now is a topic for another thread, but I don't see why you're lecturing me about the dangers of hard counters.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Anything that can get 'hammered by its counter' is probably too much (for me, anyway).
Skulks can get 'hammered' by shotguns just as Oni can get 'hammered' by shotguns. Or, for example, switch-axes. Any lifeform can get 'hammered' by any weapon if enough skilled people are using it on them. If you don't like it when one side gets its ass kicked, you might want to reconsider playing pvp :/
Fact is, its much easier to defend one base while being given tools to do such, with no restrictions and still be allowed to fully upgrade, than it is to have to defend two or three bases to keep your upgrades and have piss poor defensive tools. Marines turtle till win. Happened in NS1, looks like it's happening in NS2.
If the whip is in the game, why is the hydra in the game? If we take the whip out of the game, why is the hydra so weak?
Of course, the answer to all of this is "more content is yet to come" so what can you do but be bored with the gorge for now?
Iif they do it right the gorge-comm synergy will be enjoyable and novel. It's just a matter of making one not overly dependent on the other, while still making sure they supplement one another greatly, encouraging the synergy even more.
Indeed, I miss being able to plop DCs/OCs as roadblocks in early game :(
I dunno, you seem to either be contradicting yourself or using such a wide definition of counter that it means 'anything that can be used against the opponent'. The ideal situation for me is to have every weapon or class have an equal chance of beating each other through adjusting tactics.
I don't want to have the 50 resources I just spent become invalidated because a guy on the other team saw it and decided to use his <i>~*~ strategical thinking ~*~</i> to buy whatever will beat me. I'd rather it come through game sense, movement and aim than overtly through res sinks, although it is a fine line which I think is different for everyone (which is why I was careful to say 'for me, anyway').
Reading your original post in this thread, I see you're not really disagreeing with that so I apologise. The phrase 'hammered by its counter' is like a red flag to a bull!
On the topic of hydras: They do indeed suck right now, and with the removal of bilebomb, they feed into making the gorge class a lame duck. Which is a shame. Because I love playing battle-gorge.
They're simply not cost effective, and the gorge in general is really not that viable in his current state. (Even less so since they nerfed his heal) Better off just spending all that res on an extra onos and have the khamm spam some crags. I hope they get to addressing the gorge soon, they really shouldn't leave him this crippled for a long amount of time.