We all know a typical game of Natural-Selection peaks around the two hive mark. That is where most time playing the game is spent. When the aliens get three hives, it's typically over and the marines lose. Because of this, aliens never get to see their third hive abilities used, and when they do get used, they aren't actually necessary. So here is my suggestion:

Allow aliens to choose their weapons.

The number of weapons an alien would be allowed to obtain is dependent on the number of hives that the aliens have. For example, in the beginning of the game with one hive, a skulk could choose xenocide and leap if he so desired instead of parasite and bite. He can only have those two weapons. If the aliens had two hives, the skulk could choose bite, leap and xenocide. Just the same, all other aliens can choose two weapons of any type at hive one, three of any type at hive two, and four of any type at hive three (IE: All of them). They would be developed the very same way as upgrades, just with a different branch in the popup menu. It is important to note that the player would only be able to choose these abilities once, and only once, for every spawn, within twenty seconds of the spawn or fifty yards within the hive you spawned from. If you are a skulk you start with bite and parasite, but you may choose two abilities through the upgrade menu before twenty seconds pass, or before you leave the vicinity of the hive. This is to prevent players from evolving leap immediately and quickly leaping across the map, then choosing the weapon of their choice when they arrive at their destination. To choose new upgrades for a new lifeform choice above skulk you would have a fifteen second restriction without the location restriction.

As for balance, I don't see how this would overpower aliens. It instead gives them verity of choices. Two and three hives would still be significant, but much less so than now. None of the abilities aliens have are extremely overpowering at hive three, and if they are they can be toned town, very much like the lerk's spores used to be incredible but have since had a reduction in their damage when moved from hive three, to hive one. Gorge web, onos charge, fade acid rocket or skulk xenocide would be applicable in the early stages of the game and not overpower it to an extreme. Unbalanced? No, but new, yes, and of course it would take adjusting.

In addition, the sheer amount of strategies this opens up for aliens is incredible. A skulk rush in the beginning of the game when all skulks have leap and xenocide could be devastating at the start of the round, but if the marine's are quick to counter then they can effortlessly move across the map and secure additional RTs and hives while the aliens sit in the spawn queue. Also, gorges would be able to choose bile bomb at hive one, finally giving the aliens the ability to counter and BREAK an early two hive lockdown with coordination without having to wait for an onos, only for the onos to get cut down because of the overwhelmingly quick advance of the marine team through the tech tree.

This is a radical change, but so was unchaining alien lifeforms from hive numbers. I ask that you give it an equal chance and seriously think of the repercussions it brings to the game. Think of the gameplay changes and how things would be affected. Also, do keep in mind that acid rocket and xenocide can have their damage values modified if too destructive in early game.

The problem here really is how awesome the third hive abilities are, but how rarely aliens get to use them. Its a frustrating catch... but im not convinced doing the above suggestion is the answer. I disagree that it would not be unbalanced... cmon every skulk would use xenocide. and acid rocket!! Its the only worthwhile ranged alien attack in the game (besides spores). 3rd hive abilities are unbalanced and devestating because theyre meant to be. Im assuming the devs consider 3 hives to be the "end game" where aliens will almost always win but marines can still have fun with "f**k 3 hives... lets play survivor".

I would more like to see some sort of innovation that would make the 3rd hive assume the role the 2nd hive plays now.... that is the crucial alien hive. this of course would mean the 2nd hive would have to be easier to get up and lock downs would be very difficult. and of course a variety of other balance changes. variable hive locations anyone? If gorges could spend resources to "infest" an area of thier choosing large enough to house a hive then build it then i think ns would be a hell of a lot more interesting!

Take it to /b/. Edit by Scythe.

Forget Xenocide. Leap would replace Parasite almost universally at Hive1, and THAT would be unbalancing. There is no modification you can make to the damage figures of Leap (leap does damage? I'd forgot!) to make that even close to balanced. Marines are simply not equipped to deal with leaping skulks 15 seconds into the game.

This would destory the game. Anyone who plays it should know why.

...why? T-T

Gorges with web and skulks with leap, lerks with umbra within in the first two minutes of the game?

Guess I don't see that as a problem. >.>

Yet even you admitted the idea sounds stupid. Well, guess what? We all agree with you. The idea sounds stupid.

If you don't consider a Leaping skulk more powerful than a non-leaping skulk, or a webbing gorge more powerful than a non-webbing gorge, then what can I say? I guess you've been playing too much combat?

Oo


No problem?

We should really meet, so I can show you that vanilla rines are in big trouble against a leaping skulk...

Leap is probably the single biggest advantage offered by the second hive. It suddenly makes the previously obsolete skulks fighting shotties/HMGs into viable killing machines again. Having leap against marines any sooner than 4 or 5 minutes into the game is going to cause insane imbalance.

I can't imagine how hard it would be for marines to attempt to seige the 2nd hive while it builds with leap coming at them the whole time. When marines are holding a position like a seige spot it takes ambusing, the most viable attack tactic for skulks, away from them. Leap negates this.

That and everyone who goes temp gorge is going to take web and cover the maps before they reskulk. Not to mention people picking bile bomb at hive 1 to clear locations rines should have secure until hive 2.

Not to mention leap lets even non-bhop skulks cross the map in like 15 seconds. Goodbye RTs.

Simply put it's unlikely marines would cap any nodes, they'd be completely decimated within minutes.

yeah i think everyone has pretty much summed up why this isnt a good idea

You mean like how aliens are now?

Rather than taking a defeatist mentality that everyone seems to jump into, I'm thinking upon how this could work.

So this system you propose sounds like Guild Wars: you are given a pool of skills, yet only a number of them can be used at a time.

One thing that needs to be noted is that in larger games, you pretty much have every ability. Some can go bile gorges, some umbra lerks, etc.

This idea seems interesting and would add depth to NS, but I have to admit that many attacks would have to be toned down. But toning them down would make aliens weaker once they are at the stage that they would have that ability...

It's a radical idea and you're a creative person Haze.

The attacks could be boosted by the amount of hives aliens have.

edit: I just think it's dumb that there are a lot of radical and fun weapons that the aliens have at their disposal in the game, but they don't get to use them. Like xenocide - a very awesome, cool ability that skulks get, it's extremely fun to use. Web for a gorge is a fun weapon and sometimes has creative uses by being able to alter your environment, which is the main reason being a gorge is fun, adding to the map. Maybe for webs, the amount of hives you hve can increase the number of webs in a single area that gorges can use, or how long the ability lasts. So what if the map is webbed up, the commander can drop welders and have the marines weld through the webs. Or maybe the marines can just use some teamwork - one guy covers while the other hits the webs. It's not as if the entire team is suddenly incapable of moving across the map. What about acid rocket - another awesome ability that hardly sees use.

There is no doubt in my mind that all of these abilities being available right from the start of the game would change how Natural-Selection works. But I don't believe it is a bad change. I don't believe that the game balance would be thrown out of wack to an extreme degree. If you have dedicated skulks moving across the map to take out RTs, then the marines are hard pressed to hold them. Leap is not the end all be all solution to RTs for marines, and when two hives go up marines still somehow hold res while aliens have leap - why is that? How does how powerful a marine's weapon effect how well they can hold RTs if the aliens can still get to the RTs sooner than the marines? I don't understand why all of a sudden marines would have no RTs active, when in the NS we play now, leap is available at hive two, and marines still manage to hold RTs.

What about xenocide? The value itself could be toned down, but it sacrifices the skulk himself. So marine's just have to learn not to stick to eachothers butts like they're ###### prison mates, and the xenocide wouldn't affect an entire group. Spread out! Like in Kain's example, if the marine's were sieging, then the skulks might all try a xenocide rush with leap and xenocide. But when they're all dead, the commander can beacon, marines can rush into the hive and spawn camp while the rest finish building. All the aliens are dead now, and their suicidal rush didn't do squat.

My bottom line is that I hate seeing all these excellent abilities that aliens have, that are extremely unique and make NS what it is, hardly get used. You don't see them too often. Web, xenocide and acid rockets are all seen once in a blue moon. Leap, umbra and metabolize are all pretty common, but it's still a ways into the game. I don't understand why it can't be, "Oh crap, now they have two hives, they can choose three weapons instead of two!" instead of "Oh crap, they have leap!" Whats wrong with that?

Yes, it changes strategy, but strategy can change, and people can adapt - after all, it's what NS is all about.

Quite simply, by that stage of the game the marines usually have W2/A1, shotguns, and sometimes MotionTracking and HMGs. All of these things are powerful marine upgrades that make it possible to fight skulks with leap, and make it very easy to defeat skulks that dont have leap yet.

However, you are talking about leaping skulks fighting marines with W0/A0 and no equipment. Do you honestly not see how that gives the skulks an advantage? If leap is so powerful that it allows skulks to hold even ground against marines with upgrades, how are marines supposed to fight back when they DONT have upgrades?

Imagine a game of ns_combat where the alien team all started at level 2 so they could get leap instantly. The marine team still started at level 1. Would that be balanced to you? How many games do you think the marines would win? Certainly they might win every once in awhile, if the marines were simply much better players than the aliens, but it wouldn't happen very often.

Now imagine playing classic, current rules, except that the aliens start with 2 Hives insted of just 1. The aliens aren't getting any new abilities they don't normally have, everything that comes with 2 hives can be defeated by the marines. But its showing up 7 minutes earlier than normal! Does it not click in your mind that those 7 minutes matter? Do you hold onto some insane hope that the marines could still win that game?

I don't see why every marine needs motion tracking, an HMG, with weapons 2 and armor 1 to defeat a leaping skulk, no. I'm thinking that, that early in the game they still have to get three bites off instead of two, and the extra third bite bites them some time to fight the skulk off.

So, to make it simple, you think an A0/W0 marine can handle a skulk with leap just as easy as one with parasite, just because he wont take that extra 10 damage from the parasite? In that case, you are so far out of it that there is no point to continuing this conversation.

(Note--I made fun of leap's damage earlier, but it does technically do a little damage, not as good as biting but it will usually do at least 10 points to replace the parasite.)

*one week timeout for not playing nice* --Comprox

No, I understand that, but it's still worth mentioning. Parasite is a ranged ability while leap is not, and leaping onto your opponent not only puts you directly on top of him but also stops your forward movement entirely. Also, a leaping skulk, I believe that two or three marines in a group can handle one or two or even three leaping skulks. It is obvious that immediately, at the beginning of the game, aliens might have a slight upper hand, but NS is in no way balanced by a 1 to 1 ratio of power in the game, and is usually always shifting.

Also, like I said, abilities could be modified - if leap's damage is laughable (as you did make fun of it earlier) then obviously damage is not it's main use in the game, correct? What about the game would be seriously hindered if the damage aspect of leap was removed, or if the damage aspect was only added onto leap when the second hive was up? What then?

I'm not 'so far out of it' as you say. No, I (clearly) don't have the 'supreme knowledge' that a clanner has about the game. But I've been around since 1.04 and I know my way around Natural-Selection well enough to debate it. Natural-Selection has changed dramatically since 1.04 to the version, 3.2, that we play now, from the unchaining of lifeforms from hives, to the switching of abilities of aliens, what the abilities do, what chambers do, what buildings do, new additions, new costs - this is only another addition to the game that would make it different, but (I believe) in a positive way.

I know that this would cause some balance issues, but I also strongly believe that they could be worked with and ironed out. As for example, our leap issue - as I said, leap could have it's damage component removed, or postponed until two hives are available. Marines now take three full bites in the beginning of the game, or "two" if you get parasite to soften your target instead. How would you view the leap ability now?

Theres no reason not to continue this conversation. I strongly believe that this would be an excellent change in the game of Natural-Selection and that's why I'm pushing this idea so hard.



Fades with no blink? Or just metabolism and acid rocket?

The biggest problems for skulk are xeno and leap. However, that does remove their RT removing potential. Leap and bite then?

Gorge... you could really make him a support unit. Use webs to isolate areas, bile to take down RTs...

Lerk... Primal could be powerful with skulks on RTs... they would probably keep their spores. Or if you wanted an offensive lerk, you could go primal and bite.

Fade... Metabolize and slash? Walker fade? Useless. Blink and slash are still the best for here. Of course some fades may opt acid rocket and blink. Or perhaps if inclined, rocket and meta.

Onos... You need that gore for everything. Devour... maybe not so much. Perhaps gore and stomp would be the choice here.

The more I think about it, the more I like it. It opens up new strategies for the aliens and new tactics. Yes, some combinations seem overly powerful, but some toning can, should, and will be done. 3.2 blink wasn't made in a day. Some key abilities that could require toning:

- leap
- web
- bile
- primal
- stomp
- xenocide

This seems like a radical idea and would open up a lot of diversity among aliens. I say it's worth a try.

That is the entire point. You can only choose so many, and the lack of choices makes it hard and balanced in accordance to the numbers of hives you have. The abilities can be tweaked a little to adjust (damage taken from leap, for example, or limit of webs tied of how many hives you have) and they would be fine. This fixes a few problems and introduces a lot of new strategies for aliens, which would make the game more diverse on a whole, not just for aliens but also for marines because they must come up with counters to the new ability combinations.

One of the glaring problems this helps address is the infamous two hive lockdown. If it happens, and your team gets their crap together, you can have a gorge with the ability to bile bomb at hive one instead of pooling all your resources for an onos, only to get obliterated by the more-advanced marines.

Early game leaping skulks would have to bite marines three times instead of twice as it is now, which balances it (in my opinion).

Fade would most of the time have to choose blink at hive one. No one is going to be walker fade, UNLESS they choose a metabolize/acid rocket fade. At hive two, again, it's up in the air as for how you want to play the fade. One thing that does bring back is the 'shock trooper fade' from 1.04, where the fade would essentially not be the hit and run attacker, but the ranged combatant with acid rocket, a 'shock trooper' more or less for the aliens.

This simply opens up so many ideas and strategies that I find it hard to ignore this idea. So far the balance reasons suggested are RTs not lasting (which isn't entirely true) and leap overpowering skulks early game (which leap would need to have its damage taken away if this were to happen - not a major nerf to aliens, considering that leap is not about the damage).

Its not really about the RTs "lasting", so much as "never getting built".

Ah, but I promised I wouldn't say anything more in this thread, so I'll stop there.

I have extreme confidence that someone can manage to build an RT when there are skulks leaping about. You can continue posting in this thread, and I do encourage you to do so, because the more discussion this idea gets the more refined it becomes, but apparently you're running out of things to say.

Let's see:
Abilities that definitely would have to be toned down
Skulk: Leap, Xeno

Gorge: Web, bbomb

Lerk: Umbra, primal

Fade: Acid most likely. Blink and swipe are necessary but constant acid spam with focus skulks would be kinda nasty at 3:30.

Onos: Charge, probably stomp too.

So almost every abilitiy would have to be toned down. If you tone them down for the 1st hive, they are still either overpowered or completely useless. For example leap without speed is nothing, leap with some speed is amazing at 1st minute. Same goes for xeno, web, bbomb, and acid rocket. Bbomb for example makes mines totally useless no matter the dmg it deals.

A system like this with 2nd and 3rd hive abilities improving while you get more hives might work if the whole thing was built around it, but ns isn't. It is also a part of the game to realize what kind of enemy you're fighting against and respond to that and not just fight aliens that access their whole tech tree at start.

Seriously haze, "adjusting damage taken from leap" and It will be OK when skulks start with leap+bite

Either you are trolling on porpuse or you really have no clue why leap skulks are so dangerous.
Currently skulks deal 175 dmg/s (dont nail me on it I am not sure). But because the only way you can make contact with a rine for long enough so that leap kills him is by leaping vertically down on his head you mainly see leap beeing used as a method of getting into biterange.

With the current setup leap would just act like parasite, meaning that it would just deal enough damage to bring a a0 marine down to 2 bites. But this is only true if you make contact with a rine while leaping. A more advanced technique is to leap past players, turn midair and bite them while you pass them. Because you dont make contact it will need 3 bites, but the skulk is nearly impossible to kill with 0/0 because he does not stop during its movement. (unlike the skulk that hits a marine and then just falls to the ground).

To sum it up: Players dont use leap to damage marines. They use leap to get in bite range, make quick escapes, travel the map etc... So you could even remove the leap damage and it would still mean that a leaping skulk rips apart a 0/0 rine.

The only reason why you get the impression that leaping skulks might be no problem is that you play too much combat on way to big servers. 8 marines, tightly packed into a small corridor are sure to withstand any number of leaping skulks, but remember co maps are smaller, more cramped and there is no territory to fight over. And then you also have the 1-2 skulks that are feeding and feeding and feeding...

I'd pick acid + meta +celerity. Lerk with umbra and spores. Skulk with leap and bite/xeno depending on whether they are sieging.

So, getting constantly hammered by acid rockets, requiring medpacking, fade being umbraed so impossible to kill. Spores. Leaping skulks. Bile bomb.

That sounds like a hive three siege, almost impossible to deal with. Oh wait this is three minutes into the game!

I don't think he's trolling, but it would be a nearly insurmountable boon to the aliens. It would change every aspect of gameplay and require heavy amounts of rebalancing - time I would prefer spent on NS2.

How about instead of just making posts in big letters, you either put some thought into them or not post at all --Comprox

Aye... NO PLS.

We already saw all the comments.
This is near impossible to balance. most of these abilities would need to be nerfed, and then most would be pointless like leap. Without nerf it would simply overrule.

Sure this helps comebacks, well lets just see.. if you were losing that badly, just LOSE. in 1.04 we had great combacks, but thats because of the game itself rather then buffing kharaa like mad to actually end it within 5 min. Sure kharaa need a buff, but this aint it.

I see a very big prob in having leap, BB, web, metab, umbra or stomp on HIVE ONE.

really.. just.. no. impossible to balance. IF you believe otherwise get a group, build a amx plugin and prove me wrong

even if better abilities can be only used around the hive ?

edit: corrected sentence.

lets be honest, thats all abilities

Not beeing able to leap around the hive area doesnt really help marines, when 6 skulks with leap attack MS at 0:25 ...

misread.. I thoughed he ment limit the power/speed of each ability per hive.

Ok, seeing as everyone is considering that this idea stinks, I've got something to say. The way I see balancing is that almost anything can be balanced if it costs more. So here is what I propose:

You could add a res price to choosing your ability. Perhaps it could be by reducing or even removing RFK?

Consider this in the point of view of any NS player (focused mainly on the pro ones):
If I were a skulk and I wanted to become a fade, I would choose to stay as bite & para skulk. Why? because I would want to get as much RFK as possible. If there was a reduction in RFK, the pro players would prefer picking the basics for best RFK income. The lesser good players will still be able to play with the new things and hopefully get kills, but wont get as much out of it.

You could even put an innital price to choose an ability, similar to the times in 1.04 where you had to pay to get carapace or other evolutions. These two, combined or not can discourage the apparently unbalanced leap from being used constantly while still remaining an option for the aliens.

More over, the Lerk abilities like umbra aren't very unbalanced really. It's not as good as spore because aliens don't stay in one place as long as marines do. Only primal scream might be unbalanced, but you don't really squeeze all the potential of it until higher lifeforms come around and it can always be tonned down.

Fades will pretty much be forced into blink/swipe to be a decent fade really (the acid rocket/meta idea is possible, but not as effective), and by the time the Onos comes around it doesn't really make a difference what he takes anyway (2 hives are usually up by then).

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that there are countless ways to change this up to make it balanced. You could change anything from LMG damage to skulk HP to the energy consumption of the attack. This idea has plenty of potential, it just needs refining, look beyond the immediate effects if you suddenly implement it tomorrow without thinking.

/ramble

I mean that the 6 skulks can only leap when they are near of the active hive, not far... This mean they can't leap at MS, or at other hive location.
(sorry for my bad english)

Ah OK.

So you suggest that the better abilities can be used but only near the hive.
This limitations should then be removed as soon as the proper number of hives is up.

Sounds interesting, because aliens would be even stronger near the hive. It's still problematic though, cause it forces marines to siege even early on thus prolonging quite a few games. Then there is also the problem that even a hive 1 fade would heal extremely fast, thanks to meta access near the hive. Then there is also the implementation problem. You cannot really decide weather aliens get free abilities by plain looking at the distance to the hive, cause it would mean that aliens could leap in a lot of siege spots. So a line of sight check might be in order. Then there is also the problem that it is not really intuitive and it can get annoying like hell.
A gorge could bile a hive 1 siege by simply staying in the LOS of the hive. Fades could AR siege spots. Overall I would say that even if you just limit advanced abilities to the hive areas aliens would still be strong enough to eliminate every siege effort, until marines gain proto tech.

Mh, this is actually rather clever, because it's the way it worked before upgrades were made free. Good players and teams decided when it was worth to use silence (mostly silence) or adrenaline and take the res hit, to gain an edge while the basic setting was conserving resources.

I still think that making upgrades free was taking the easy way out. Sure, the game did become better because of it, but I think the depth could have been preserved and the game improved some other way.

Hum other peoples nagativity a side and acctuly thinking about the idea. Ways this could be imlimented with out to much unbalance, prolly a lot of work but with out unbalance.

You could have 4 versions of each ability, but obiously the weapon limit in half life one is caped. But if you could have 4 version of each weapon, you could quite easly pick said ability in any slot but base its power on which slot its selected at e.g a leap in first slot would leap half the distance for three times as much energy dealing little to no damage, a leap in second slot would leap almost average leap but consume a fair bit more engery than normal, slot three leap the original leap, slot 4 leap would cost nearly no enegery and would do a lot of damage on contact.

Another way is the abilitys power / strength regardless of slot is based on hive's, how ever this seams a little over powered haveing say leap and xeno, at hive 3 strength. In which cass a cost could be encured.

A huge cs style cost menu buying abilitys and upgradeing them. So you can stick with ya glock, buy a fade or hell buy a leap for slot two for a ###### load of res, depending if its life based or map rotation based.

But I honoustly dont think this is required, NS 2 will yeld more weapons abilitys lets see how that pans out. Then obiously there are already the sugest ability swap and sn on threads found in the up and coming forums and or the future patches forum, just reember to set at the bottom of page display posts from ALL time.

Any ways Haze keep at it mate, I would just suggest going thru these two forums in future before posting.