Making Aliens More Like The Guerrilla Warfare Fighters They Should Be
Al_Ka_Pwn
Join Date: 2007-12-26 Member: 63264Members
Join Date: 2007-12-26 Member: 63264Members
The basic dynamic of the game is basically like this, the marines when they move as a group and stick together should ideally win. Phase gates are their way of rewarding them for having taken and holding an area long enough to have set up a base there, and they get a mobility bonus as a reward. Marines have the most fire power and if they get in a standup fight with the aliens, the aliens should not win, marines should always win in a stand up fight where their whole team is there. Can we agree on that?
So this means that like the Vietcong the aliens are guerrilla warfare fighters who should be able to win by attrition and surprise. Its very definition is irregular warfare that utilizes surprise and mobility. But the aliens lack a lot of the surprise, mobility, and attrition that they have in the early game in the late game. Early game is fun with falling off ceilings and quickly dispatching unsuspecting marines. Late game with scans everywhere, and marines that take 6 hits for skulks and 4 for fades is not fun because there is no surprise, or attrition.
So here are some things to remedy that.
1: Give Khammander late game possibly 3 hive research that gives all skulks a venomous bite, that poisons marines and does damage over time that ignores armor. Make the time the poison lasts and the damage it does for each tick greater depending on how much of the bite hits from the glancing mechanic IE to do full damage you have to get a full bite. This gives aliens the ability to harass by running in and running away with hit and run tactics that will wear down both marine's resources to drop medkits to cure the poison and wear down their health for an easier second strike. It rewards skill and makes skulks useful and take skill by running in and escaping, but ensures that in a straight up fight marines will still win so aliens have to harass before marines get to the hive and build an armory.
2: Allow aliens to booby trap dropped marine weapons. If aliens spend money on an upgrade and die they do not get it back, but if marines are in a group like they usually are and drop their "upgrade" another one can easily pick it up. Aliens should be able to use this to their advantage. allow a research so that any alien can get close to a dropped weapon and press "E" to infect it with a bacteria that metabolizes phosphorous around the magazine cartridge so that any ignition like firing the weapon causes the entire magazine to ignite and explode in the marine's face destroying the weapon and instantly killing him. This makes picking up a fallen ally's weapon that you haven't been able to keep an eye on a tactical risk analysis.
3: Give gorges the ability to lay mines that look exactly like cysts for about 5 rez on third hive. These need to be as dangerous to a marine as a marine mine is to a skulk. Any marine that is directly next to a mine cyst will die, after it explodes by being triggered it will leave a small pool of acid similar to the spitter's spit from l4d2. This suddenly means that alien territory is dangerous and running up to cysts with an axe is not a good idea anymore, and all infestation is potentially a mine field making flame throwers very important.
4: Give Fade a backstab ability like the spy's ability in tf2. Seriously the fade isn't so much a glass cannon as he is a glass air soft rifle. Even in the trailer it shows him stabbing his claws through some hapless marine before going to town on everyone else. Give him the ability to back stab marines by sticking his claws through their back. To compensate you can make the animation take a few seconds if it becomes OP.
5: Give khammander the ability to lay down fake resource towers that do not mine any resources but can explode like a mine and fill the room with a poisonous gas if not killed with flamethrower for those situations where you know a room is going to be over run right as your RT finishes building.
6: As a tier 3 research give skulks a once per life ability where they have to charge up a parasite attack at the cost of their entire energy bar to fire one parasite that allows the skulk who fired it to respawn in the marine upon death. When the skulk dies he can spectate the marine and choose not to spawn, but if he does, the marine will be alerted and will have 12 seconds to get to an armory before a skulk bursts out of his body. This makes skulks viable late game, adds the element of surprise and only punishes marines if they are too far from a base which is how attrition should work.
7: Finally give aliens a late game siege unit, some kind of tower that they can build on infestation to pump nerve gas into the marine's base if they are turtling, the marines will have to leave base to deal with the towers or die in their base.
So this means that like the Vietcong the aliens are guerrilla warfare fighters who should be able to win by attrition and surprise. Its very definition is irregular warfare that utilizes surprise and mobility. But the aliens lack a lot of the surprise, mobility, and attrition that they have in the early game in the late game. Early game is fun with falling off ceilings and quickly dispatching unsuspecting marines. Late game with scans everywhere, and marines that take 6 hits for skulks and 4 for fades is not fun because there is no surprise, or attrition.
So here are some things to remedy that.
1: Give Khammander late game possibly 3 hive research that gives all skulks a venomous bite, that poisons marines and does damage over time that ignores armor. Make the time the poison lasts and the damage it does for each tick greater depending on how much of the bite hits from the glancing mechanic IE to do full damage you have to get a full bite. This gives aliens the ability to harass by running in and running away with hit and run tactics that will wear down both marine's resources to drop medkits to cure the poison and wear down their health for an easier second strike. It rewards skill and makes skulks useful and take skill by running in and escaping, but ensures that in a straight up fight marines will still win so aliens have to harass before marines get to the hive and build an armory.
2: Allow aliens to booby trap dropped marine weapons. If aliens spend money on an upgrade and die they do not get it back, but if marines are in a group like they usually are and drop their "upgrade" another one can easily pick it up. Aliens should be able to use this to their advantage. allow a research so that any alien can get close to a dropped weapon and press "E" to infect it with a bacteria that metabolizes phosphorous around the magazine cartridge so that any ignition like firing the weapon causes the entire magazine to ignite and explode in the marine's face destroying the weapon and instantly killing him. This makes picking up a fallen ally's weapon that you haven't been able to keep an eye on a tactical risk analysis.
3: Give gorges the ability to lay mines that look exactly like cysts for about 5 rez on third hive. These need to be as dangerous to a marine as a marine mine is to a skulk. Any marine that is directly next to a mine cyst will die, after it explodes by being triggered it will leave a small pool of acid similar to the spitter's spit from l4d2. This suddenly means that alien territory is dangerous and running up to cysts with an axe is not a good idea anymore, and all infestation is potentially a mine field making flame throwers very important.
4: Give Fade a backstab ability like the spy's ability in tf2. Seriously the fade isn't so much a glass cannon as he is a glass air soft rifle. Even in the trailer it shows him stabbing his claws through some hapless marine before going to town on everyone else. Give him the ability to back stab marines by sticking his claws through their back. To compensate you can make the animation take a few seconds if it becomes OP.
5: Give khammander the ability to lay down fake resource towers that do not mine any resources but can explode like a mine and fill the room with a poisonous gas if not killed with flamethrower for those situations where you know a room is going to be over run right as your RT finishes building.
6: As a tier 3 research give skulks a once per life ability where they have to charge up a parasite attack at the cost of their entire energy bar to fire one parasite that allows the skulk who fired it to respawn in the marine upon death. When the skulk dies he can spectate the marine and choose not to spawn, but if he does, the marine will be alerted and will have 12 seconds to get to an armory before a skulk bursts out of his body. This makes skulks viable late game, adds the element of surprise and only punishes marines if they are too far from a base which is how attrition should work.
7: Finally give aliens a late game siege unit, some kind of tower that they can build on infestation to pump nerve gas into the marine's base if they are turtling, the marines will have to leave base to deal with the towers or die in their base.
Comments
2. Unbalanced idea. This would just lead to marines never picking up weapons if it has the potential to instantly kill them. This will also make alien pushes a lot more devastating since they can just infect all the weapons the marines drop, forcing the marines to spend more resources (that they might even have) or fighting with rifles against a full team of tough aliens.
3. Overpowered. This will mean that aliens will never lose ground. The Gorges just put their fake cysts between the real ones, making it look like a chain. Marines trying to claim an area will then just die. Aliens will never lose territory. Even if they do go flamethrowers, that doesn't solve the issue for marines that push with shotguns only.
4. Fades are strong enough as they are, why make them even stronger? I don't get why you say he's a glass cannon, that would imply that he has a small hp pool, but he has the second highest hp pool in the game, even more than level 3 marines.
5. Another overpowered idea. For one thing, no alien comm would ever use it since resource management is the name of the game in NS2, but if it were to be used it just adds more territory control to the aliens, something they do not lack.
6. Overpowered again. Good players will be able to skulk rush an entire marine base and parasite them all. After respawn timer is over all the marines die and suddenly the map is full of skulks while the marines have to wait in a queue to spawn. Skulks then proceed to kill the power in the spawn room and the marine base is lost.
7. Aliens already have 3 of those. Gorge can do it with bile bomb or Onos can just smash his way through buildings. If you're looking for a structure, upgraded whips also get bile bomb.
Aliens kinda needa "spy like class from TF2". an Alien that would assume human form, oh man would that be hilarious. run around spying on marines.
As long as they cost res then I don't see it being unbalanced. Marines will be less inclined to axe cysts, and use ammo to shoot them from a far. A fair trade off for res in my opinion.