Balancing upgrades for life forms

Visor1Visor1 Join Date: 2012-01-13 Member: 140300Members
edited August 2012 in Ideas and Suggestions
The following are ideas take any numbers with a grain of salt this thread is about heathy discussion to better balance upgrades for aliens.

I think this is one area of imbalance that really needs a fix. Atm aliens either have an upgrade or they don't now this either hurts the aliens ie skulks having low armour late game or hurts marines due to skulks/lerks having high armour early game. I believe the best way to fix these problems is to either make upgrades scale with the amount of hives and/or give each alien different effects or amounts for each upgrade. Another problem is imbalanced upgrades between life forms ie frenzy. As a skulk this really rewarded a good skulk and gave them abit more durability but when great fades had it they could became unstopable killing machines. Now even though this was taken out of the game there is always going to be problems with having upgrades effecting all lifeforms equally, just look at feign death on a fade.

<u>Using scaling per hive method:</u>


Lets take a look at carapace, it gives skulks 40 armour upfront. Now if the upgrade only gave 15 armour for having one 1 hive 30 for 2 hives and 45 for 3 hives. This evens out the upgrades to a point where skulks aren't weak at any point in the game but they're also not overpowered at any point either. This passive way of upgrading gives aliens a nice boast for having mutiple hives up but also a larger penalty to loosing them. The other upgrades would work in a similar fashion with the exception being feign death which wouldn't really need to scale. Imo this change feels natural and solves alot of headaches when it comes to balancing aliens in early vs late game against marines.


<u>Giving each life form a different amount or different bonus from an upgrade:</u>

I'll use carapace again for the example here. As an onos getting 40 armour isn't a big deal but what if they received 100 armour from the upgrade or some health and armour, fades could stay the same and skulks/lerks received 30. Another example would be adreniline why make this a bonus to energy when you could give different buffs to each life form to help them offset a weakness or increase a strength. It could give skulks a temp armour at low health, lerks faster spike damage,onos a combat regen to help them say on the attack and maybe upgraded spit damage for the gorge. I believe giving each life form it's own unique buffs adds to the favour of the alien side by making each class truely unique from the other classes.

Remember this are just ideas for discussion feel free to add your own.

Comments

  • plausiblesargeplausiblesarge Join Date: 2012-08-02 Member: 154558Members
    aliens already have different amounts for each upgrade. Skulks benefit the most from carapase, Onos the least.

    Usually armor level 1 and weapons level 1 is more than enough to counter carapace with a compotent team early game.
  • oMeoMe Join Date: 2004-02-01 Member: 25884Members
    So aliens will be even more ###### if they lose a hive?
    While rines still only lose jetpacks and only need 2 ccs...

    I say:
    1 hive = 1 perk
    2 hive = 2 perk and most abilites
    3 hive = 3 perks and all abilities
    inaddition perks get stronger with every hive

    1 CC = 1 weapon 1 armor upgrade
    2 CC = 2 weapon 2 armor upgrades, Jetpacks, shotguns
    3 CC = 3 weapon 3 armor upgrades, PGs, all weapons, exo

    Because right now if aliens lose the second hive they are completly ######
    while rines only need the second cc for jetpacks AND if the 2. cc is destroyed they can still use jetpacks until they die.
    That unfair.

    Rines can snipe Hives and chambers and take everything away from the alien team while aliens can only take away the abilitiy to buy new jetpacks.
    That sucks.
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