Basic Idea: If the Aliens build and finish a second hive, the mainhive becomes a lvl. 2 hive.
Also if the third hive is finished, the mainhive (at lvl. 2) hive now is becoming a lvl. 3 hive ([not so sure about this] and the second built (lvl. 1) hive a lvl. 2 hive).

A level of a hive is equal to aliens spawning slots available at that particular hive.
Which means, if the second hive is up and marines kill the second hive, aliens will still have two slots to spawn at their mainhive.
But if marines kill the mainhive (lvl. 2) instead the aliens will only have a lvl 1 hive and so they just got one spawning slot left.
That does not mean that aliens get more then a maximum of three spawns at a time, like it is now.

This is just a suggestion to have some middle game balancing.
It may sound a bit confusing, allthough my english is not that good (and i should reeeeally go to bed now ^^), i hope you still get the idea behind this.

Nowadays a standard NS game gets to a point where the game is decided while it will still go on for some time.
Normally this happens when either the aliens lose their second hive or they do not.
If the aliens lose their second hive, they do not only lose an ability, they also lose a slot to spawn in their spawning queue. This leads to a highly imbalanced and frustrating game aliens most often fight one on one against an uber strong marine.

some scenarios to make things clear:
main hive lvl1 - 1 slot to spawn

main hive lvl2 - 2 slots to spawn
( second hive killed )

main hive lvl3 - 3 slots to spawn
( second and third hive killed )

main hive lvl2 - 1 slot to spawn
+ second hive lvl 1 - 1 slot to spawn

main hive lvl3 - 1 slot to spawn
+ second hive lvl2 - 1 slot to spawn
+ third hive lvl1 - 1 slot to spawn

( main hive killed )
second hive lvl2 - 2 slots to spawn
+ third hive lvl1 - 1 slot to spawn

main hive lvl3 - 2 slots to spawn
( second hive killed )
+ third hive lvl1 - 1 slot so spawn

I really can not say if aliens should have three slots remaining if their third hive is killed as this would be harder for marines again, but in my opinion the second hive gameplay climax is a bit too heavy and not easy to cope with. As an alien it is just boring to play on just to be fair, but you know that you aint got no chance.

gn8

So what do marines get to compensate?

I was under the impression a marine could build at many ip's as he wanted at any and every location he chooses to build a com chair if him and his team so desired.

###### all over being bound to one spawn que, in one of three locations, every map, every game, every day, for at least a minimum first 5 minutes of each map, where you may get two spawn locations and two ques for a breif window or untill you retrive the thrid or secure victory.

This is an idea for aliens to compensate marines spawning system plus their phasegate ability.

In early games there will only be small numbers of marines approaching hives or other locations.
There you do not feel underpowered as an alien, as it takes longer for marines to come back to that specific location if they died.
But when there is a phasegate nearby marines return very fast.
Now if the second hive gets killed, the game is over, while there is still a hive left.
if marines build a phasegate nearby, aliens will fight but have no chance at all.
There is just one player respawning, trying to do something, die and then the next player does the same till the game is over.



Sorry but i don't understand what you mean, maybe the ###'ed word is missing.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

So the max level would be level 3?

For something like this, I think this would be easier.

hive 1 60% of max spawn speed
hive 2 80% max spawn speed
hive 3 100% max spawn speed

Instead of:

hive 1 33% of max spawn speed
hive 2 66%
hive 3 100%

Now it doesn't have to be these numbers. All I'm saying is that we can tweak the % of effectiveness gained, so the net change won't be as great.

Actually, Smood, that suggestion is already implemented in the game today. I couldn't give you the exact numbers without going out and doing a lot of testing, but NS accelerates the spawn rate with less than 3 Hives on servers larger than 6v6. The amount of acceleration increases as the alien team gets larger, and decreases as you put up more hives, so you get back to the standard rate at 3 Hives.

Yes, so that a map with 20 hives does not bring up a lvl20 hive with 20 slots, or rebuilt hives give you extra spawning slots.

But how does the system you mentioned react when one of the hives is taken down?
Does it set back the spawning rate?
Now i was thinking about the idea of evolving hives when our team lost its second hive and we all had to wait for the com to research jps till the game was finally finished. In that period there were only 4 players out of 12 alive at the same time leaving us no chance at all to do anything.

Also i see a slight difference in having two players spawning at a time for instance in comparison to a faster spawning rate one by one.

In my opinion evolving hives would also bring in some more strategic elements for both sides.

The system I propose, or as Cxwf says, is already implemented.

The only difference I see is that your system, hives can get stronger... The problem is, if the higher level hive is taken down, the leveling up would have been for nothing. Or it could be the case that actually killing the hive would make the other hives stronger once it is back up.

As the game progresses the mainhive will be better fortified as the second hive.

But as i said this would bring in some strategic aspects

Na just go RTS. Gorgie stands near hive goes thru menus, gets to hive under hive if hive is detected with in X units. A new button becomes active, upgrade hive to innersanctum, X res spent, hive upgrades again> Now instead of spiting out one alien at a time, at what ever rate it now spits out two aliens at a time, at what ever rate determined by amount of hives and players and players active or dead. Also hive sort of re-gastates and grows now is also visualy diffrent, the upgrade timer is X window of time. I guess coms can select CCs and upgrade them as well, how ever i was sure if coms built 8 ip's like a crap load of rines could spawn all at the same time? or is it based on com chairs as well? as i am pritty sure i have seen more than one rine ip phase in at the same time? *shrug

Yeah its based on IPs alone. One IP cannot generate 2 rines at the same time and comm chairs have no effect on any of it.

Well, marines can have hundreds of IPs and there will be only three of them in the spawning queue.
Because it is limited to a maximum of three.

Now a buyable upgrade will be a waste of res noone would buy and also allow aliens to spawn three at a time with two hives which cause game imbalances.


As i said above this is an idea to encounter midgame secondhive spawnloss.
Not a new building aliens can build at any time. Such ideas would cause new game balances lots of betatesting, modeling, skinning, menu reassignment, just too much work.

It's not limited to max 3. I think it used to be at some point, but I played a game not too long where we marines were getting owned so hard and had like 10 IPs. People went straight from Dead to Reinforcing.

OK. I reckon this idea is a great idea in that near the end, you have 1 hive, one spawning each time and they have pg right outside. Then what?

EDIT:

And then back again?

The problem with hive respawn appear only when number of marines is superior to the number of aliens, because respawn is not based on the number of enemy.

Yes, which ist most often the case when aliens lost their second hive, and the marine train moves on to the last hive to get their victory. At this point most people on the alien team are dead while the respawned aliens are again killed one by one with ease. I think aliens would have at least some chance to encounter these attacks if they still spawned two at a time.