Suggestions For Some Changes
Tempting_the_port_that_serves
Join Date: 2004-03-03 Member: 27104Members
Join Date: 2004-03-03 Member: 27104Members
NS:
Increase adrenaline cost of leap so that you don't get the flying skulk phuenominon without adrenaline, increase the leap jump distance.
(Good flying skulks are hard to kill, and can fly as good as lerks with celerity, no scripts needed. Not that the aliens should rely entirely on hiding and planning, but that should be a good part of their )
Xenoside has automatic friendly fire, blows marines much further away from the point of explosion.
(whole point of xenoside is to kill marines and give the aliens an effective late-game attack, not to make a cheap instakill weapon that can't be stopped.)
Decrease bilebomb damage and adrenaline use, increase firerate.
(to force bilebombers in vents to stay viewable in the vent instead of being able to go in and out.)
Increase the maximum number of nades a marine can carry to 2. Can refill from armory, spawn with 1.
(hand nades were ment to allow nub marines to take out hiding nub skulks, but the pull time is too long. Instead, they are used as a suicide attack to clear phase gates (pull, phase, drop on white, die, boom, 6 skulks die, phase is saved) or as anti-building explosives. The alien team has an advantage against marine buildings in that they can stack a hallway with enough oc's that if a marine so much as looks at it, they get instakilled. Marines need something other than LMG-around-a-corner to clear stacks of OC's early on. 1 nade won't do it, you need 2 and a couple of people).
Give welder priority over nades (to allow heavies to heal quicker, nothing more annoying than drawing a nade or mine when I wanted my damn welder).
Increase welder healing speed.
(Makes the welder a speedy alternative to recycling and rebuilding RT's and base stuff, puts it more on par with healspray+adrenaline. Plus, you waste so much time welding a damaged RT that it's better to recycle, rebuild, and electrify again)
Jetpacks need to be edited so that the initial jump is small, so a ducking jetpacker can go around hallways easier without jumping into the celieng and getting stuck.
Alien flashlight should highlight mines when switched on.
Change catalyst so that it's a weapon under weapon group #4 that can be activated. Add a timer for it so the marine knows how much time is left before it wears off. (This way coordinated catalyst rushes are easier and you can use your catalyst when you need it.)
Combat:
Increase adrenaline cost of xenoside so that you don't have flying bombs without adrenaline.
(to help with both combat and NS games with free suicide bombers.)
Gameplay enhancements:
Replace gorge webbing with a grappling hook that has moderate range.
(Being stuck in web isn't fun, nor is being held captive by a gorge with good aim. Now gorges can put OC's in good anti-jetpacker spots as well as escape fire relitavially quickly, and get into vents without help)
Replace devour with doubled Gore damage, halfed adrenaline use.
(Devour is a bad ability. Useful against heavy trains, but it's sucky as all hell for those it gets used on. Torturing people with devour is bad, killing them quickly is a much better option. An onos still can't rush a heavy train and kill all of them but it can run up and seperate them with the new stomp, then take one down.)
Change stomp so that instead of freezing players, it flings them in the direction of the stomp at a pretty good speed and freezes them until they hit the ground.
(Nobody likes being frozen, and besides. Flinging a heavy train across a room into a pit or into a corner then charging is much more fun.)
Increase charge damage, add a kickback from being hit, increase adrenaline use.
(lets charge be something other than a run-and-devour attack, more of a run-and-hit attack with devour as an added-on perk. Not to mention what happens if you pin someone against a wall.)
Replace devour with jump, which uses a decent amount of adrenaline to fling an onos up into the air. If it lands on something, instakill.
Requests:
*Add a research called "infravision" that allows marines, when their flashlights are switched on, to see cloaked and uncloaked units like aliens see eachother. Suggested cost: 35 res, place on the observatory.
(Cloak is way too powerful and far too lame early on in the game and there's no real good counter to it as it stands right now. Too much of an advantage early on especially if the alien team can use it properly. Not to mention focus + being in a SC's field. Bigger things like onos and fades are harder to see, but you usally only see them when you're right within range of swipe or devour.)
*Rebalance the weapons/armor statistics for both sides to make it harder to kill, but as upgrades become available, if countermeasures aren't taken more instakill weapons become available. For instance, Skulk has to score 4 successful hits on a marine, while a marine must score 30% of their LMG magazine on a skulk(resivour of ammo adjusted for adrenaline use). The marine then has to hit the skulk with 16 bullets to kill it. With a shotgun, the marine has to hit 16/24 pellets in 2 blasts to kill a skulk. However, with lv1 weapons, the marines lmg's only have to hit 12 bullets, with lv2 8 bullets, and with lv3 4 bullets. With LV1 shotgun, 12 pellets have to hit, with lv2 shotgun, 8 pellets have to hit, with lv3, 4 pellets. Introduce lv1 caracapace, with nullified lv1 weapons effects, lv2 caracapace which nullified lv2 weapons effects and so on. All the changes will be done on the ARMOR of the units, not the damage quantites for the weapons (to preserve the values with attacking buildings), and the damage of buildings vs attacking units will be increased as needed.
*The alien buildings/upgrades system needs a redo. I'll state them in simple rules so the system can be more readily understood.
To start, all the aliens can get 1 upgrade from one tier at the start of the game.
With the first hive, you have a choice between silence, scent of fear, and regen. Second hive gives you cloaking, caracapace, and celerity. Final hive gives you access to adrenaline, focus, and redemption.
To get initial access to an upgrade tree, you must have the associated chamber. The cost of a upgrade chamber is 10, and it has 3/4 the health it had before (so people must protect them properly).
To get an upgrade, cost = (number of hives required to unlock the upgrade)*6 res - # of associated chambers built - 2*number of hives
If the cost of an upgrade is at or below 0, then you spawn with that upgrade.
All upgrades start out at lv1.
To level up an upgrade the cost = (4 res*level number) - number of associated chambers - 4*number of hives.
Levels are automatically given to a player when the cost is 0.
Some ways to look at the data:
If you have 3 hives, you have 3rd level for free on all upgrades. If you've got 1 hive, you've got the first level on 3 upgrades.
To spawn with the first upgrade for free, you must have 4 chambers up. (1*6)-4-(2*1)=0 or 3 hives
To spawn with the second upgrade for free, you must have 8 chambers up. (2*6)-8-(2*2)=0
To spawn with the third upgrade for free, you must have 12 chambers up. (3*6)-12-(2*3)=0
If you want the 3rd level for an upgrade on spawn with one hive, then you need 8 upgrade chambers.
With 3 hives and 1 chamber of each kind, the alien team spawns with level 3 upgrades for the first 3 upgrades(Regen, silence, scent of fear).
To get full upgrades, the cost is 120*3+40*3 = 480 res.
As for evolutions;
1 hive: lerk 100 res - 30 * number of hives - number of upgrade chambers.
2 hives: fade 100 res - 20 * number of hives - number of upgrade chambers. Requires 2nd hive.
3 hives: onos 100 res - 10* number of hives - number of upgrade chambers. Requires 2nd hive.
To counter the new alien upgrade system, the marines get a few new upgrades
Protolab:
Advanced heavies (requires heavy research): Gives heavies 150 more armor, and a self-destruct that is activated when inside of an onos that does 300 damage and destroys the heavy armors armor plating after 10 seconds. The heavy gets out of the onos if it redeems or is killed, but with no armor and little health. If it doesn't kill the onos, the heavy's health is halved and another charge is activated. If the marine is digested before then, the heavy will explode again after 10 seconds, doing 600 damage, and the heavies health is halved. 70 res, 1 minute.
Advanced jetpackers (requires jetpack research): Gives jetpackers twice the amount of jetpack fuel, and 100 more armor. 70 res, 1 minute.
Heavy jetpacker(requires advanced jetpackers and advanced heavies): Allows heavies to use jetpacks (3/4 mobility of jetpackers), requires advanced jetpackers and advanced heavies researches. All upgrades apply so a heavy jetpacker has 540 armor at lv3, self destructs in an onos and has a lot of jetpack fuel. The cost would be 15+15=30 res, plus a weapon, welder, and mabye a pack of mines.
Spawn with jetpack: Requires heavy jetpackers research. 200 res, spawn with jetpack. 3 minute research.
Spawn with heavy armor: Reqyires heavy jetpackers research. 200 res, spawn with heavy armor. 3 minute research.
Infantry portal:
2x spawnspeed(8 seconds between spawns): 50 res, requires upgraded armory. Doubles spawn speed for all IP's. 2 minute research.
4x spawnspeed(4 seconds between spawns): 100 res, requires upgraded armory, arms lab, obs. Quadruples spawn speed for IP's. 4 minute research.
Instant spawnspeed: 150 res, requires upgraded armory, protolab, 4x speedspawn. Spawns marine, 1 second between spawn times. 6 minute research.
Turret factory:
Electrify research: 20 res. Enables electrify on res towers.
Advanced turret factory:
Lv1 building: +20% health, 20 res
Lv2 building: +40% health, 20 res
Lv3 building: +60% health, 20 res, electrifies all buildings within a turret factories radius (5 damage per jolt, 5 damage added on per jolt if already electrified).
Advanced armory:
Spawn with HMG: 100 res, 2 minute research. Spawns marines with fully loaded HMG's.
Spawn with Welder: 50 res, 1 minute research. Spawns marines with welders.
Spawn with mines: 75 res, 1:30 research. Spawns marines with 2 mines.
What this will do is balance out the problems with smaller games being more rough on marine teams, and bigger games being more rough on alien teams. Concentrated res comes more slowly in bigger games to the alien team, so less of it can be used. The alien team must maintain res nodes for longer before they can get a hive, and must take down electrified res towers as quickly as they are gotten up or else they get res even slower. What will happen is getting res will be far more important, considering that both the aliens and marines will be able to, for the most part, spawn with their equipment for free. The beginning of the game will be defined by a resource tower war, fallowed by an upgrading war, then an all out war as both sides spawn with equipment for near free, then a decline via momentum of one side or another. This'll also partially remove the advantage the aliens have in being able to decimate the marine teams res towers, and therefore, their res flow.
This will re-emphasize the use of strategy, because when you've got an all-out chaotic war between both sides you aren't going to win by putting lots of pressure on any one point. Additionally, alien res **** are going to be less prevalent as they know if they work for the team they'll get more upgrades and better equipment, as will the nubs with equipment.
Also do note, those values are pretty random. They can (and probably should) be changed. I don't know any tables or do a whole lot of statistics, so I can't tell you what they should be at.
Increase adrenaline cost of leap so that you don't get the flying skulk phuenominon without adrenaline, increase the leap jump distance.
(Good flying skulks are hard to kill, and can fly as good as lerks with celerity, no scripts needed. Not that the aliens should rely entirely on hiding and planning, but that should be a good part of their )
Xenoside has automatic friendly fire, blows marines much further away from the point of explosion.
(whole point of xenoside is to kill marines and give the aliens an effective late-game attack, not to make a cheap instakill weapon that can't be stopped.)
Decrease bilebomb damage and adrenaline use, increase firerate.
(to force bilebombers in vents to stay viewable in the vent instead of being able to go in and out.)
Increase the maximum number of nades a marine can carry to 2. Can refill from armory, spawn with 1.
(hand nades were ment to allow nub marines to take out hiding nub skulks, but the pull time is too long. Instead, they are used as a suicide attack to clear phase gates (pull, phase, drop on white, die, boom, 6 skulks die, phase is saved) or as anti-building explosives. The alien team has an advantage against marine buildings in that they can stack a hallway with enough oc's that if a marine so much as looks at it, they get instakilled. Marines need something other than LMG-around-a-corner to clear stacks of OC's early on. 1 nade won't do it, you need 2 and a couple of people).
Give welder priority over nades (to allow heavies to heal quicker, nothing more annoying than drawing a nade or mine when I wanted my damn welder).
Increase welder healing speed.
(Makes the welder a speedy alternative to recycling and rebuilding RT's and base stuff, puts it more on par with healspray+adrenaline. Plus, you waste so much time welding a damaged RT that it's better to recycle, rebuild, and electrify again)
Jetpacks need to be edited so that the initial jump is small, so a ducking jetpacker can go around hallways easier without jumping into the celieng and getting stuck.
Alien flashlight should highlight mines when switched on.
Change catalyst so that it's a weapon under weapon group #4 that can be activated. Add a timer for it so the marine knows how much time is left before it wears off. (This way coordinated catalyst rushes are easier and you can use your catalyst when you need it.)
Combat:
Increase adrenaline cost of xenoside so that you don't have flying bombs without adrenaline.
(to help with both combat and NS games with free suicide bombers.)
Gameplay enhancements:
Replace gorge webbing with a grappling hook that has moderate range.
(Being stuck in web isn't fun, nor is being held captive by a gorge with good aim. Now gorges can put OC's in good anti-jetpacker spots as well as escape fire relitavially quickly, and get into vents without help)
Replace devour with doubled Gore damage, halfed adrenaline use.
(Devour is a bad ability. Useful against heavy trains, but it's sucky as all hell for those it gets used on. Torturing people with devour is bad, killing them quickly is a much better option. An onos still can't rush a heavy train and kill all of them but it can run up and seperate them with the new stomp, then take one down.)
Change stomp so that instead of freezing players, it flings them in the direction of the stomp at a pretty good speed and freezes them until they hit the ground.
(Nobody likes being frozen, and besides. Flinging a heavy train across a room into a pit or into a corner then charging is much more fun.)
Increase charge damage, add a kickback from being hit, increase adrenaline use.
(lets charge be something other than a run-and-devour attack, more of a run-and-hit attack with devour as an added-on perk. Not to mention what happens if you pin someone against a wall.)
Replace devour with jump, which uses a decent amount of adrenaline to fling an onos up into the air. If it lands on something, instakill.
Requests:
*Add a research called "infravision" that allows marines, when their flashlights are switched on, to see cloaked and uncloaked units like aliens see eachother. Suggested cost: 35 res, place on the observatory.
(Cloak is way too powerful and far too lame early on in the game and there's no real good counter to it as it stands right now. Too much of an advantage early on especially if the alien team can use it properly. Not to mention focus + being in a SC's field. Bigger things like onos and fades are harder to see, but you usally only see them when you're right within range of swipe or devour.)
*Rebalance the weapons/armor statistics for both sides to make it harder to kill, but as upgrades become available, if countermeasures aren't taken more instakill weapons become available. For instance, Skulk has to score 4 successful hits on a marine, while a marine must score 30% of their LMG magazine on a skulk(resivour of ammo adjusted for adrenaline use). The marine then has to hit the skulk with 16 bullets to kill it. With a shotgun, the marine has to hit 16/24 pellets in 2 blasts to kill a skulk. However, with lv1 weapons, the marines lmg's only have to hit 12 bullets, with lv2 8 bullets, and with lv3 4 bullets. With LV1 shotgun, 12 pellets have to hit, with lv2 shotgun, 8 pellets have to hit, with lv3, 4 pellets. Introduce lv1 caracapace, with nullified lv1 weapons effects, lv2 caracapace which nullified lv2 weapons effects and so on. All the changes will be done on the ARMOR of the units, not the damage quantites for the weapons (to preserve the values with attacking buildings), and the damage of buildings vs attacking units will be increased as needed.
*The alien buildings/upgrades system needs a redo. I'll state them in simple rules so the system can be more readily understood.
To start, all the aliens can get 1 upgrade from one tier at the start of the game.
With the first hive, you have a choice between silence, scent of fear, and regen. Second hive gives you cloaking, caracapace, and celerity. Final hive gives you access to adrenaline, focus, and redemption.
To get initial access to an upgrade tree, you must have the associated chamber. The cost of a upgrade chamber is 10, and it has 3/4 the health it had before (so people must protect them properly).
To get an upgrade, cost = (number of hives required to unlock the upgrade)*6 res - # of associated chambers built - 2*number of hives
If the cost of an upgrade is at or below 0, then you spawn with that upgrade.
All upgrades start out at lv1.
To level up an upgrade the cost = (4 res*level number) - number of associated chambers - 4*number of hives.
Levels are automatically given to a player when the cost is 0.
Some ways to look at the data:
If you have 3 hives, you have 3rd level for free on all upgrades. If you've got 1 hive, you've got the first level on 3 upgrades.
To spawn with the first upgrade for free, you must have 4 chambers up. (1*6)-4-(2*1)=0 or 3 hives
To spawn with the second upgrade for free, you must have 8 chambers up. (2*6)-8-(2*2)=0
To spawn with the third upgrade for free, you must have 12 chambers up. (3*6)-12-(2*3)=0
If you want the 3rd level for an upgrade on spawn with one hive, then you need 8 upgrade chambers.
With 3 hives and 1 chamber of each kind, the alien team spawns with level 3 upgrades for the first 3 upgrades(Regen, silence, scent of fear).
To get full upgrades, the cost is 120*3+40*3 = 480 res.
As for evolutions;
1 hive: lerk 100 res - 30 * number of hives - number of upgrade chambers.
2 hives: fade 100 res - 20 * number of hives - number of upgrade chambers. Requires 2nd hive.
3 hives: onos 100 res - 10* number of hives - number of upgrade chambers. Requires 2nd hive.
To counter the new alien upgrade system, the marines get a few new upgrades
Protolab:
Advanced heavies (requires heavy research): Gives heavies 150 more armor, and a self-destruct that is activated when inside of an onos that does 300 damage and destroys the heavy armors armor plating after 10 seconds. The heavy gets out of the onos if it redeems or is killed, but with no armor and little health. If it doesn't kill the onos, the heavy's health is halved and another charge is activated. If the marine is digested before then, the heavy will explode again after 10 seconds, doing 600 damage, and the heavies health is halved. 70 res, 1 minute.
Advanced jetpackers (requires jetpack research): Gives jetpackers twice the amount of jetpack fuel, and 100 more armor. 70 res, 1 minute.
Heavy jetpacker(requires advanced jetpackers and advanced heavies): Allows heavies to use jetpacks (3/4 mobility of jetpackers), requires advanced jetpackers and advanced heavies researches. All upgrades apply so a heavy jetpacker has 540 armor at lv3, self destructs in an onos and has a lot of jetpack fuel. The cost would be 15+15=30 res, plus a weapon, welder, and mabye a pack of mines.
Spawn with jetpack: Requires heavy jetpackers research. 200 res, spawn with jetpack. 3 minute research.
Spawn with heavy armor: Reqyires heavy jetpackers research. 200 res, spawn with heavy armor. 3 minute research.
Infantry portal:
2x spawnspeed(8 seconds between spawns): 50 res, requires upgraded armory. Doubles spawn speed for all IP's. 2 minute research.
4x spawnspeed(4 seconds between spawns): 100 res, requires upgraded armory, arms lab, obs. Quadruples spawn speed for IP's. 4 minute research.
Instant spawnspeed: 150 res, requires upgraded armory, protolab, 4x speedspawn. Spawns marine, 1 second between spawn times. 6 minute research.
Turret factory:
Electrify research: 20 res. Enables electrify on res towers.
Advanced turret factory:
Lv1 building: +20% health, 20 res
Lv2 building: +40% health, 20 res
Lv3 building: +60% health, 20 res, electrifies all buildings within a turret factories radius (5 damage per jolt, 5 damage added on per jolt if already electrified).
Advanced armory:
Spawn with HMG: 100 res, 2 minute research. Spawns marines with fully loaded HMG's.
Spawn with Welder: 50 res, 1 minute research. Spawns marines with welders.
Spawn with mines: 75 res, 1:30 research. Spawns marines with 2 mines.
What this will do is balance out the problems with smaller games being more rough on marine teams, and bigger games being more rough on alien teams. Concentrated res comes more slowly in bigger games to the alien team, so less of it can be used. The alien team must maintain res nodes for longer before they can get a hive, and must take down electrified res towers as quickly as they are gotten up or else they get res even slower. What will happen is getting res will be far more important, considering that both the aliens and marines will be able to, for the most part, spawn with their equipment for free. The beginning of the game will be defined by a resource tower war, fallowed by an upgrading war, then an all out war as both sides spawn with equipment for near free, then a decline via momentum of one side or another. This'll also partially remove the advantage the aliens have in being able to decimate the marine teams res towers, and therefore, their res flow.
This will re-emphasize the use of strategy, because when you've got an all-out chaotic war between both sides you aren't going to win by putting lots of pressure on any one point. Additionally, alien res **** are going to be less prevalent as they know if they work for the team they'll get more upgrades and better equipment, as will the nubs with equipment.
Also do note, those values are pretty random. They can (and probably should) be changed. I don't know any tables or do a whole lot of statistics, so I can't tell you what they should be at.
Comments
Just because you don't like getting frozen, doesn't mean it shouldn't be possible. I, for one, don't like being killed, but I don't think they should make it that I'm invincible. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->*Add a research called "infravision" that allows marines, when their flashlights are switched on, to see cloaked and uncloaked units like aliens see eachother. Suggested cost: 35 res, place on the observatory.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you've already got an Observatory, then you can just spend a couple res to ping the area of the SCs, and Observatories reveal structures/aliens nearby anyways. No offense, but this seems really unnecessary.
Instakill weapons = bad
Spawning and then getting killed = bad
Being frozen while a gorge builds a OC to kill you = bad
Waiting a minute to get back into the game = bad
Getting killed without a fight = bad
Taunting = bad
The FIRST SIGN of a mod going down to the shitter is the implementation of things that are just not fun or are fun for one side and suck for another. Yes, getting killed by a superior player isn't fun, but that's a part of the genre. You can eliminate instakill weapons as a part of the game, but the whole point of an RTS and a FPS with RTS elements is to change the way the game works enough that
1: As the game progresses, the gameplay changes so it doesn't get boring
2: The superiorally skilled team will win through a set of strategic exchanges at certain places, and will gradually get advantages over the enemy team if the enemy team doesn't take countermeasures.
As for the infravision, I feel it is necissary. You do have scanner sweep, but you can't be scannersweeping the entire map. There is the advantage of the alien team needing 3 hives to get regen, cara, celerity and adrenaline, especially since they're forced to choose between quick movement between 2 hives or regen/cara. But I still don't feel it balances out properly.
Most of your ideas arnt exactly needed, reasons such as "it isnt fun" dont merit a complete overhaul.
Infared is a nice, along with a knockback on charge. Grenades would prefer to be give out by the commander if anything.
Getting killed without a fight = bad
All games, RTS, FPS, flight simm, etc. They all have a core to the game. In a RTS or FPS, the fun part is positioning, planning, fallow through, skill building, etc. If this goes to fast, the game is boring. If the game is too slow, the game is boring. I consider UT2K3 a horrible game because it's lightning fast all the time, other people enjoy it. I consider Tribes 2 a good game, because it's got fast parts and slow parts. I consider Counterstrike to be a bad game, because it's all planning, positioning, and movement with little fast fallow through stuff.
Taunting = bad
I taunt you, you feel bad. You don't want to play me. Taunting serves to break up the community and make older players just not want to play.
Taking players out of the game fo accessive time = bad.
We're here to PLAY a game, not sit out of a game and wait to respawn. Every game is different, and spawn times can be a factor in a game (and in many it's a good thing) but they really shouldn't be over 10 seconds.
RTS games also develope over time. The gameplay changes to make the game interesting. In the beginning you didn't have planes, now you can do bombing runs. Before you didn't have boats, now you can bring guys over to shore and bombard the shoreline. Before you didn't have onos, now you do. A RTS game is a game of measure, countermeasure. One team takes a measure (focus) the other team implements a countermeasure (lv1 armor). By the smart countermeasure/measure system that allows for smooth transistions from one gameplay type to another, the game becomes more fun.
A good example of this evolution is if RT's only lasted 1 minute, as did turret factores. Both sides had only LMG's and skulks. No upgrades. Add in all the other stuff, and you can see the variation of the evolution of the game happens over time.
Gameplay varies drastically with a jetpacker/heavy combo vs fade/lerk/onos/gorge/skulk combo.
What I'm proposing is the elimination of the immediate, inexpensive instakill weapons (focus, shotguns) in the beginning of the game in preferance for a better balance countermeasure/measure system, where they become available if countermeasures aren't taken. If you don't get armor lv1, focus will kill you in one hit. If you don't get fade or onos, the shotguns will kill you in one hit. Additionally, since this is a team game, more team work should be required on both sides.
Why? Because instakill weapons just aren't fun. There is no dancing around or quick thinking involved in an instakill weapon. You point, shoot, dead. With Tribes 2 you've got some dancing going on, you've got to get proper positioning, speed, route planning, shot placement, etc to kill someone. With UT2k3, even without jumpjets, you've still got to get good planning even with the rocket launcher (and better reflexes). With NS, there's no dancing around. With counterstrike, the dancing around occurs way before shots are taken (which is why counterstrike is unique among FPS games). I can see how NS has planning like counterstrike, but the game seems to indefinate, almost inbetween, Tribes/UT and counterstrike. That isn't a bad thing, but I simply don't think instakill weapons are appropriate in a game like NS and especially in a game like UT or Tribes2. Why? The fighting part of the game gets eliminated, the quick movement, reflex, route planning, positioning. All that good stuff is eliminated and it needs to exist in any kind of FPS game like tribes or UT.
Increase adrenaline cost of xenoside so that you don't have flying bombs without adrenaline.
(to help with both combat and NS games with free suicide bombers.) <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
You've made a ton of suggestions I disagreed with, but I just wanted to address this one. Xenocide already costs like 90% of your Energy bar. How much more did you want? And since you can only ever fire it once per life, how will increasing it force you to get Adrenaline to use Xenocide? The timer after you fire it is about long enough to regen Energy for one Leap, even if it cost 100%. Xenocide doesn't need a nerf. If anything, it needs to be improved--it needs Blast damage back so you can actually use it as a base buster.
Increasing nade capacity would make them a bit more useful. I think really what they need though is to decrease the incredibly long pull the pin timer.
Giving welder priority over nades makes sense and the only reason its not that way is probably an oversight when they added the nades.
Increasing charge damage needs to be done. It should be a game ender not a toy.
The rest of your marine changes are either insane or not necessary. A marine with 540 armor that can fly? Your alien chamber system is entirely too complicated for the mainstream gamer and not really necessary. Xeno needs a bit of a beef, not a nerf. Devour times are annoying but I think the answer is tweaking those times not totally changing it. Basically alot of the changes that you proposed that were not insane would just change the game not make it better.
Alot of the things you say are not exactly spot on:
Xenocide is NOT an insta killweapon (especialy in reg NS b/c by then they will have armour or the com should be lynched).
It is also NOT unstopable. Its just a Skulk, who probably has no upgrades (in NS), one shot gun will say bye bye to the bewm, let alone turets + Rines.
You can make a small jump with a JP, just don't hold down the button....
Alien's DO need a way to see rines in the dark, however just making the FLight do it is WAY to powerfull. This was actualy an old Sens chamber upgrade called Advanced Hive Sight.... Noone exept me ussed it (every one got cloaking, and SoF Only showed dmged rines)
Cat PAcks I tihnk are still under construciton and the final verdict is still out....
CO:
Skulks COULDN'T XenoLeap at one point int the beta, xeno is next to useles with out leap (remember, all the rines KNOW its coming when you activate it cuss that scream is rather loud and distictive)
If you touch my web I will harm you.....
And whats the point of a grapling hook in CO? You then destroyed the Gorge as a Viable class in CO, and we have already seen what hapens when gorges get removed from CO (they get put back in <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->)
Devour is a hive one ability, soooo my choices at game start are gore, or cheaper better gore?
Devour is here to stay I am rather sure (I hope so atleast)
Stomp is what makes Oni useful atm. With the new hitboxes oni go down REALY fast, if Stomp moves his enemys AWAY from him (ok so they can't shoot in the air) its just giving the rines a longer time kill him... NOT a good thing.
Yah, charge needs tweaks, I am not gona realy coment on that b/c I have never gone Onos when we had 3 hives and I never buy the 4th wep in CO for them.
I thought insta kill weps were 'bad'? And I also think that watching an onso jump would just be silly.
Requests:
So, compleatly remove cloaking? No.
There ARE counters to cloaking: Ping, anything near an Obs is uncloaked.
And if SCs are so smegin powerfull, then why does no one build em first?
Changing upgrades as you suggested: NO!
Adren only at 3rd hive? Bye Bye Gorge.
Cloaking only Hive 2? Bye Bye Cloaking (by hive 2 most Rines have MT or atleast an Obs)
ETC.....
Bascialy, each upgrade has a proper time and place, limiting them to #s of hives is just SILLY. Honestly, Aliens rarely get 3hives, that basicaly removes those 3 abilities.
As for RElinking evoloutions to hives (Yes, I say relinking b/c they used to be like that) nope. IT was done and was desided that it was better with it unlinked.
As for all of the Rine upgrades:
They are way to powerfull.
To make them 'balanced' the research times and Rez cost are gona have to be stupidly high, and at that point it just aint worth it.
Look, as the game is atm, it is relativly balanced, and it is FUN.
Also a compleate overhaul of the system was JUST DONE! (twice tbh)
Oh, and as for all of you rine ideas for reg NS, meh... most of them are designed to give Rines a bost they don't realy need atm.