Ok, SC is not used widely right now except as the third chamber because it just doesn't help the higher lifeforms that much, and it doesn't help in killing off outposts/bases at all. I have a few suggestions to fix that.

1. SCs will stop MT from working within a certain radius whether an alien is walking or running. Right now an SC only stops MT if the alien is walking I believe.

2. Within a smaller range of the SC, all aliens wil receive a 10% increase in base damage from all slot 0 attacks. This effect is stackable, up to 30% damage bonus from 3 SCs. The SCs let the aliens focus better on a marine's weak spots, allowing the aliens to deal more damage.

3. Focus is changed: Focus will now no longer lower an alien's rate of fire. However, the damage bonus to slot 0 attacks is 50% per attack, instead of the 100% per attack right now. Also, aliens with focus will receive an additional 50% bonus to damage dealt when dealing damage to buildings using a slot 0 attack. So, a skulk with focus will be biting a building for 150 damage per bite, and still biting as quickly as a non-focus skulk bites right now! If three SCs are nearby, then the skulk will be doing 172 damage (230% of 75) to the structure per bite! Put a few near your hive and ninja PGs will go down so much the quicker!

With these changes, base breaking should no longer be a problem if the aliens have sensory. And ONOS can actually take focus without worrying about goring at the pace of a snail!

I always felt like focus only got in 3.0 because of resuply in combat...30 percent bonus same speed could be good enough for skulks.

Maybe focus should give different percentage bonus depending on what kind of creature you are.

Redemption moved over to sensory could be nice but it doesn't make all that much sense. So lets unchain the chambers!

Or lets not and be happy with dms upgrades.

No, let's.

And to be blunt, an attack damage booster without a penalty would be overpowered. There's a good reason why Focus has one.

No matter how much you beef up sensory or change the abilities, nothing will ever beat regeneration in its importance to break stalements.

Besides, its no use to make sensories so good that everybody takes THEM first. Thats not the point.

So unchainign the chambers is the only viable option to break DMS.

Every other upgrade, with the exception of focus.. has no downside....

yet focus.. has one... making it almost the same off... sure you can do more damage (1 hit kills) but at 1/2 the firing rate it doesent matter....

There is no downside to regeneration... you dont get to regenerate, but have only half the hitpoints you normally would

Make it an upgrade... not a trade-off..

~Jason

I personally always thought sensory was a good way to covertly mask the entire map. You place sensorys at least a decent distance apart on the WHOLE map, and you have a giant cloaking field. I always loved that.

The problem with the (wonderfully fun) cloaking the map strategy is that it's hard to afford in the start of the game. Unlike DCs (or MCs), you need many more than 3 chambers early on, which means you have to sacrifice something else (often just having too many gorges on the field and not enough skulks/fades) to get all those scs up. That sacrifice is what gives the marines time to go and lock stuff down.

I think the best way to make scs a viable first chamber is to just make them cheaper to build, therefor allowing the kharaa to actually use them as intended without severly draining their early economy.

You idea sounds great - for normal NS.

Yes, there is a reason focus has a downside as well. Any kind of damage boost great enough to make SC (with focus) viable in NS would break it in CO. Therein lies your problem - the dev's insistence on balancing CO first.

Of course, you COULD always balance SC for NS and tweak the level cost of upgrades in CO. Or is that too obvious?

Being cloaked does not show up on motion tracking. Running, walking, due to upgrade or chamber.

Tested it on a listen server.

Thats right, so you can stop getting MT to 'counter' SCs.

Don't really care about CO -that- much. I'd suggest that Fades and Onos can't get Focus, and if an alien already has focus, it can't evolve into a Fade or Onos.

Anyhow, the point of this IS to make sensory better than it is currently, so people will USE it more. It just be good enough to make it a first or second chamber.

Remember, right now focus doubles your damage, but your ROF is slowed by more than 50% I believe, so your damage output decreases after the first few bites compared to non-focus. With the new focus damage output is always increased by 50%, and against buildings it's increased 100%! Turret farms will now no longer own a team using sensory.

Also, these buffs will have the side-effect f making endgame well...END a lot quicker. With all 3 hives, aliens will truly be overpowered and can crush marines easier than they do now.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I'd suggest reducing sensory cost to 8 instead of the normal 10 to gorges can drop more in the beginning. However, maybe reduce SC hp a bit.

i like the idea of focus increasing the rate of damage because it would make sensory chamber contribute to damaging expansions of the marines. another poster made the point that yes, SC can be a great first chamber but if the first 3 mins or so go badly, its much harder to come back compaired to useing movment or defence chambers.

cel or carapace and regeneration can be used by onos and fade to do a lot more damage to a defended position then SoF, cloaking or focus. and because of this, sensory is never going to be nearly as popular in the first 2 chambers as defence or movment chambers

Personally I wouldn't mind if skulks pay no res for upgrades, and they lose the upgrades if they evolve into another lifeform, and can then repick their upgrades (this time it'll be 2 res a pop of course)