Ok, so the major changes this time around were to try and wedge MCs out of their firmly first drop place...

I myself, recall a time when the chambers were not linked to the hive, precluding the dropping of the other two. Considering that the old Gorge resource bonus was removed, most chambers have been nerfed a little, (main one I remember is DCs can no longer stack in effect...) and a number of other changes over time... along with the fact that I never heard the original logic behind tying the aliens' claws behind their backs in such a manner, I no longer see why it's a good thing. (I never actually did, just trying to sound fair there...)

So:

Unchain the chambers, but limit the upgrades to 1-per hive. Keep them about how they are now, levels 1-3 being availble off of the number of chambers dropped, but you instead have one upgrade slot per built hive.

I should think this would allow the aliens to have a much wider choice of tactics at any given point, instead of the marines pretty much always knowning what they're up against after a few minutes of playing. (Didn't hear that one coming, MCs people. / Didn't see that sucker, SCs! Obs COM! / He took a fair bit more to take down, DCs!)

Thoughts? Please refrain from painting your words in flames, they don't increase your skulk's top speed.

The chambers themselves have actually been buffed. SC now cloaks and shows scent of fear. MCs now teleport players to hives. DCs, have been practically the same until recently with the 3% regen bonus but only one DC can heal at a time.


I think this idea has been discussed before, not sure though. I actually thought 3.0 would have this idea implanted, someone said there was some chamber unchaining and that was what I thought it meant.

I'd love to see unlocked chambers in the mid/late game, which imho would especially help aliens on big servers, but you have to consider that marines can't counter/fight all the 9 upgrades in the early game without investing a lot of res.
I mean, you need the whole stuff (multiple obs) to counter cloak whereas one sc (10 res) is already enough
and you still need the other upgrade paths as marines to fight the usual mc/dc upgrades.

Maybe to make the next chamber type available, you always need at least 3 chambers of the previously choosen and dropped chamber type.
This way you can't get all different upgrade types in the early game and marines have more time, before they have to deal with all 9 upgrades.

Another idea is to start to unlock a chamber when a hive is dropped instead of when hive is completed.

i would like to see some unlocking of chambers too. i dont really like how after 1 chamber is dropped, the team is then locked into that one chamber.

This would make aliens near unstoppable. With cleverly-placed senosires and silenced skulks, marines will have no chance.

It's like saying the comm can just click and research "generic upgrade number 1" and then his marines can choose between Motion tracking and Armor 1.

I like the idea.

Keep in mind that level 1 silence only blocks out a little of the noise, not all. Level 1 cloak takes 12 seconds to fully activate, rather than 4. Level 1 cara only gives a skulk 6 more armour rather than 20. What I mean by this is that it wont require all the field obs and what not because the effect of each chamber is greatly less compared to full strength.

Only concerns is that silence level 1 and 2 are pretty useless and level 1 redemption is useless, let alone level 3.

Well aliens will be buffed for sure, but not many people build field chambers anyway, so only time will tell. I guess it will depend on the map, most definitely.

But having cloaked skulks, then celerity fades... it could be a stretch.

One thing that limiting chambers does is that it increases strategy. Strategy isn't just having a lot of things to choose from - it's also about NOT choosing certain paths. That's why a tech tree splits off.

They can't? If they actually stuck in squad formations and acted wisely you'd be suprised at what could happen. Cloaking and silence would be tougher, but you have motion tracking to counter that after not too long. You just need buy time and resources, usu. by moving out and attempting to get RTs.

Hell yeah, how easy.
Let's just buff aliens and demand more teamplay from marines to balance this out and moreover force them to go mt first every game.
Why didn't that come from me?

So our worry is cloaking from sensory + silence? I think that tiny little buff would be alright if aliens were allowed to open up with upgrade options available to them.

The benefit is being able to place chambers around and not much of the upgrades(explained below). How about making chambers cost more with only one hive?

At one hive, chambers costs 12 res. Two hives, 11 res. Three hive, 10 res.



Except nearly half of the upgrades are worthless at level 1. The rest of the upgrades may be useful in certain situations and for certain life forms, and there are only two upgrades that are help in almost all situations and lifeforms.

Useless Upgrades at level 1:

Regeneration - Regenerations 3% health every 2 seconds. Innate regeneration regenerates 1% health every 1 second, meaning Regeneration doesn't provide much boost.

Redemption - When under 40% health, 15% chance per second to be teleported to the hive. While better than regeneration, you'd have to be extra lucky to redeem before dying.

Scent of Fear - At level 1, 600 range is not big at all. Just to let you imagine how small the range is, a turret has larger range(800) of attack.

It may help if you're wondering if a marine is behind the door or not, but other than that it's useless.

Silence - In most cases, the marines can hear you. They might not be able to hear you in some fire fight though but then that means your teammates are near and there is no need for silence in the first place.

Also, Adrenaline and Celerity are much better choices than a 50% silence.



Upgrades at level 1 that may be useful or not useful at all:

Carapace - For lower lifeforms , the extra armor boost won't be much at level 1. Though it is useful for Fades and Onos and is definitely better than regen and redemption at level 1.

Focus - May or may not be better than level 3 Focus. It'd take two hits to kill a marine with or without level 1 armor and it doesn't lower the speed by much at level 1.

Useful upgrades for most situations at level 1:

Celerity - Speed boots help. It gives a large enough boost to be noticeable even at level 1.

Adrenaline - Energy regeneration helps. It gives a large enough boost to be noticeable even at level 1.




Like I said, silence at level 1 is pretty useless.

For cloaking - Then do the strat marines do to counter SCs(if they were picked first), place an extra obs in key locations such as double or a locked down hive, then scan places where the marines are attacking.

Lvl 1 focus: 33% more dmg?
Fade deals a bit over 100 dmg.
Skulk deals 99,75 dmg.

Means early game one-shotting while you can have a 2 mc adren lerk sporing the armor out + you need tons of scan for cloakers.

Unchained might work in ns:s if they decide to rework the kharaa chamber system. Now it would be quite nasty if implemented.

This would throw the balance off way too much. I've seen VANILLA skulks tear up the best marines to ever play the game, over and over, ending the game 3 minutes in. Skulks are not as weak as everyone makes them out to be.

it would be so hard to kill aliens if they had all three upgrades. one of the ideas behind killing the second hive is preventing the aliens from getting a second chamber. if this chamber was a given the aliens could easily overwhelm the marines in all hive attacks they performed.

in gaining a newhive about half of the new strength comes from the hive abilities, the other half comes from the new upgrade. if all chambers were allowed to be built with one hive the aliens wouldnt need a second hive at all, just upgrades.

A 2nd hive is far more than a 2nd chamber type and additional alien weapons.
You forget about the increased map control (teleport by using hives) and res control (2 hive rts and easier access to more nodes) that comes with a 2nd hive.

I still think that unchained chambers or somehow accessable chambers are needed for the alien mid/endgame, but they would be too powerful in the early game.
I like the idea about being able to build the 2nd chamber type when a hive is dropped.

Well, I've let the topic flow long enough, suppose I'll put in a bit more of my thoughts.

To have full access to the full range of Upgrades, it would take 90 res. Since everyone starts with 25, that's a major toss up between additional res nods and impossible early on for a team smaller than 9. (They'd have to spend 180 total to gorge, drop all the chambers, then re-skulk. Even with RFK it'll take a good while to start up other projects, like the second hive and map control.)

A possibly suicidal choice if we're talking about teams of equal skill. 1 RT means they're going to be subsisting entirely off of RFK for a long time.

I'm not proposing a reversion to the oldest style I remember, as the first level of all the upgrades is fairly useless. But, instead make the hives upgrade slots. Somewhat like they are now, but more so. (The upgrades are actually chained to the chamber's existance, while the building of them is linked to the hive.)

I highly doubt, excepting the huge games, that we'd see fully developed secondary powers before the second hive anyway. Especially since the gorges no longer get their income bonus.

I don't understand what the huge imbalancing factor about unchained chambers is. If anything, this is the kind of buff aliens need (bear with me here, naysayers and whiners) for late game, when they lose a crucial hive. Marines typically dominate late game because of upgrades and the ease at which they keep those upgrades - the arms lab gets destroyed, so what? Build another, you have the upgrades again. Observatory? Build another. Armory? The most severe loss, and it can be safely rebuilt and re-upgraded within base, under the watchful eye of newly spawning marines. A hive must be constructed then fiercely guarded while it undergoes development, and is an incredible target of opportunity for marines. The aliens currently are stripped of abilities and additional upgrades when their have is destroyed, effectively lowering them from an even playing field and giving marines an incredibly unfair advantage. Once the second hive is destroyed in a gridlock game, the tide of the battle is typically shifted far in favor of marines, who, usually, have gotten level 3 upgrades during the gridlock period and sit at the top of their tech tree, while the aliens are shifted back to square one of theirs. If a competent marine team is playing, is is extremely hard to lose against the aliens once this foothold is gained.

As Fireborn stated, it would take 180 total res to drop all chambers, if everyone wanted to get the chambers immediately. If it were only one person, they would need 100 total res to drop all chambers. And this is 'eventually', its not as though the price lessens further into the game. This costs more than an onos to achieve, and you typically do not see onos too early into game. To rush these chambers, your gorge(s) would also not have to drop RTs to conserve as many resources as possible.

Why does anyone have a concern of sensory chambers being placed in combination with silence? Where are the aliens getting all of this res from? Not only do you have to have three movement laid out, but you also have to have a sensory chamber network operating alongside of the movement chambers. Again, this is another resource heavy endeavor on the part of the aliens, and would not be seen early game. It would be seen mid to late game, where it already is being seen in the current game, simply with one chamber less.

The changes that unchaining chambers would make would not be noticeable in early game. The true effect of this change would be noticeable mid to late game, and extremely noticeable when a crucial hive is destroyed as aliens, but they still retain a fighting chance. As it stands now, making a comeback on the aliens side is made difficult because of the 'uphill battle' from being pushed back to a lower tier of tech, while the marines never experience such a substantial loss in such permanent forms.

I am in full support of unchaining chambers, and do plead with developers to consider and test this new format of play.

-It opens up the field of play substantially for aliens at the start of the game.
-It allows alien tactics to be varied much more than they are currently, effectively destroying any cookie-cutter tendencies in the game.
-It enables aliens to make a comeback after losing a crucial hive late in the game, shifting the game further into a state of balance.

This is very much similar to the dispute of chained lifeforms to 1, 2, and 3 hives, and I believe it should be treated as such. Aliens lifeforms were unchained because it was impossible to compete with marines if they were outpaced or lost a crucial hive mid to late game. Unchaining chambers is merely an extension of the same reasoning.