I don't want to hear about how ONOS need 400 more health and a billion points of armour. The point of this thread is to talk about his 4 abillities and what if anything should be done with them...

Let stomp stun turrets, (full or half duration). Allows some easier seiging encourages the onos to stay for the battle rather then eat and go.

Remove devour, replace it with the stomp we have now.

3rd ability would be a new one where it temporarily enhances onos armor for a certain amount of time with energy usage. Maybe have armor decrease damage by 50% in that time frame, making it more of a tank or a battering ram for its teammates.

4th ability remains as charge.

- Increase Stomp duration to ~1.5-1.75 seconds.
If any balance issues arise, energy cost could be increased to 31-32% (33% might be a bit excessive).

Time for critique.

Cri: I love just about every idea in your post: moving Stomp to a hive-one ability, getting rid of Devour, and applying a means of reducing the Onos' damage intake, though the numbers would need to be tweaked. I'd rather be in favor of a slow energy drain over time (and thus, a longer lasting effect) if the damage absorption was lessened.

The only thing that the onos hive 4 ability could use, is more DMG. All else is fine.

Here is my vote for replacing devour (Most boring ability in NS for both aliens and marines).
Stomp for hive1 could work, because it would still be a hive 1 counter to HA.

Increase the damage Charge does to marines, so that running into them actually kills them in a reasonable amount of time. I'm so tired of seeing the Onos using Stomp and devour. Give them an excuse to actually use the third hive ability!

notice how he said HIVE 4 abillity not just 4th ability, thats all I was pointing out

yeah I wouldn't mind seeing the onos jump a little bit higher... but it might look kinda silly if the ono could learn to bunny hop

Though devour might be useful, it really doesn't add to the atmosphere to have a big chunky thing running around and pooping out marines everywhere (completely intact).

No hives weapon: Claws
One hive weapon: Stomp
Two hives weapon: Charge
Three hives weapon: [new]

The reasoning for moving Charge back to two hives is basically because two hives is the seiging equipment for marines. Bile Bomb, Umbra, Metabolize, Leap, Charge.

Bile bomb knocks out buildings, Umbra reduces damage taken by attackers, metabolize helps the fade stay in combat longer, leap lets the skulk get past the primary defences to attack the other stuff, and charge would let the tank plow through.

To balance the one hive stomp you could change the animation that the onos sees to something more realistic. Obviously to make a large quake effect the onos would have to effectively have the front half of his body jump then slam the ground again. Make it so the onos view moves up with the model so that he gets slightly disoriented. A weapon of that power and affect shouldn't be without consequence

[new] not entirely sure what a new weapon could be, perhaps using the three tentacles as whips or attacking things to deal more damage close range? He is the sieging equipment, the more power he has close range and the less he has long range the better =)

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind getting devoured and stuff, it's just, there are so many better ways of doing things then taking marines off the field for 30 seconds that won't make people create in-house rules saying "F4ing or Reconnecting to purposefully avoid devour - one week ban".

/me drops two cents

devour needs to go for the sake it is not a fun ability.
I don't much care for stomp, and charge is of course to weak to fill an attack space.

I know a radial stomp was playtest and removed, but what about a semi-radial stomp with shorter range? I would like to see the onos abilities being more conducive with a long term fighting class rather than a hit and run one.

Best ideas so far are :

-straight , instant gib charge (onos can only run forward , any marine in the way is sent to the spawn queue)

-petrify ability : makes the onos nearly invulnerable as long as it stands still. Replaces hit & run with hit & stay.

Onos abilities:

Buff gore damage to 110. This way it is more easy to kill jetpackers since stomp no longer affects them (and it takes 2, 2, 3 and 3 hits to kill any marine). It still does double-damage vs. structures.

Get rid of devour. Move stomp to hive 1. Reduce stomp-time to .75 seconds. Stomp now also stops turrets from shooting, resource towers from gaining res, and buildings from researching (for three-times the amount of the marine stun. This is to more effectively make the onos the structure-counter). Energy cost raised to 30%.

Hive 2 attack: Charge. Does 300 damage/second to marines (20 less than now) and 600 damage/second to structures. Uses 15% energy/second.

Hive 3 attack: Primal Scream: Drains 50% energy/second. 100% energy is required to use this attack. Energy will stop draining if the onos is hit by an attack. After the energy is done draining (to 0%) the onos will scream (a louder, longer, more powerful scream). This scream will boost alien speed by 40%, boost alien RoF by 75%, boost alien attack-damage by 60%, boost energy gain by 60%, reduce gestation time by 40%, boost structure-effectiveness (resource gain, healing, cloaking, etc) by 25%, for 8 seconds, in a 800 unit area.

Of course raise onos cost to 100...

I think we need to either ditch Stomp or push it to hive 3. It's the only reason Onoses are so hard to properly balance; Stomp makes them extremely room-dependant. If they're in a bad room for stomp(marines up/down a hill, too far away, on a higher level, etc) then they can't do anything. If we improve them to be strong in this situation, then they're too powerful in rooms where they can Stomp. The presence of Stomp forces Onoses to be much more physically frail to compensate for the stunning ability.

My idea for an ability setup:

Ability 1: Gore, as-is.
Ability 2: Charge. Remove its damage, lower its speed(but still faster than Celerity) and energy cost, and make it toggleable. This gives the Onos a movement ability like Skulks and Fades and makes them much more useful at hive 1. Even against HAs, being able to hit and run with charge is better than running up to one, devouring, and dying on the way out. Also lessens the dependence on Celerity and adds a significant incentive to use Adrenaline.
Ability 3: Devour. As-is, preferably somewhat easier to aim. Possibly make charge about half-speed while devouring since charge-devour wouldn't only be hive 3 anymore.
Ability 4: Stomp. 2 second stun time, and the stomp travels up/down hills(if possible). Since it would be an endgame ability, Onoses wouldn't have to be balanced around the intricacies of Stomp anymore.

Hardened Charge.
Through an adrenaline process of hardening his muscles, the onos can now rush into battle without taking much damage from projectiles for a limited time. But this new hardened state of attack is very draining to the onos and will experience charge fatigue.

Purpose: Make the onos a more affective base cracker. Shorten marine endgames. (Marines camped in base with lvl3 hmg, & 1 rt)
Limitations: Normal charge energy drain (but can be raised for balance). When energy runs out so does the protection.
Changes: Onos charge speed needs to be lowered (so supporting aliens can keep up). No changes to charge damage (charge does damage? )
Marine Counter: Marines should avoid shooting a charging onos, instead should focus on supporting aliens first. Once the onos is out of charge, bullets will affect him/her like normal.
Why this should not affect balance: As of now, onos charge drains A LOT of energy, FAST. At the end of this charge, an onos can only gore attack once every second? (I'm guessing) which is not very damaging to the rines on the receiving end. Also, 3rd hive abilities rarely make it to the game, if at all. If rines let aliens take the 3rd hive location and ALLOW THEM TIME to put the hive up, the game has LONG ALREADY been in favor of the aliens. Again, we can have charge last only 2 seconds than the 10 seconds it does now with adren if it's too powerful.
Why this is useful for aliens: A charging onos can bring the fight closer to the rines benefiting any nearby aliens rushing along side him. Unless of course, rines wise up and decide to attack the supporting aliens first, negating any benefits the charging onos brings.

This onos charge ability will mainly be used to speed up those occasional lengthy 10+ minute endgames. Not make or break the game for marines. Think about it. This ability will be the ultimate, final alien evolution through natural selection. Where aliens finally adapt to marine gunfire. The Onos will again be something to be feared, like it was before, in early NS 1.04.

Similar, but not

Bring Back Old Meta!
Make the Fade's old metabolize the new Onos 3rd Hive ability, then slap on a name like "Meta Charge!"

If you don't know what that means, basically the old meta drains the user's energy extremely fast, but converts 70%-80% of taken damage into energy. Scary huh?

Or

Combine Lerk's Primal Scream with Onos' Charge.
New "Primal Charge" will behave the same as normal charge but with the shared lengthened, larger effects of primal scream. (Counter arguments) Too strong, scream is for the lerk, not strong enough: Since when was charge 'too strong?' And scream is a passive ability, other aliens have to be around to benefit. Primal scream is more suiting to a charging Onos, rather than a bird "oOoo scary." Besides, isn't it more natural that an alien is more charged up during an attack when doing so along side an Onos? This new 'Primal Charge' will be better than what we have now. Lastly, scream is audible in the same room, so should be the effects. I suggest a larger primal scream radius.

Lerk now missing a 3rd hive ability.
Lerk's umbra then can be bumped up to hive 3 and be made to block 3/4 bullets or 7/8 bullets. (Counter arguments) Over powered, Better at hive 2: Not much complaint when it WAS AT 3/4. Onos is not always in umbra so even at 7/8, it's not a certainty. At hive 2, umbra now is MOSTLY used for personal defense when attacking. Not the support role it was meant for. Umbra rarely seen used to crack bases at hive 2. But at hive 3, aliens desperately need better base cracking 3rd hive abilities. 'Think' tanith, or eclipse. Oh, say, about 15 players.

Have any marine structure hit with charge be disabled until weilded.

So if an Onos charges into a TF, the TF is disabled. Charges into a IP, IP is disabled. CC is imune to this effect.

In general, make the onos less of a wuss (hit-and-run) and more of a charging elephant. To that end:

- Make devour regen a lot of health but slow the onos down much more. Also decrease digest time, since shorter digest time = more devours and being devoured is very boring for marines.
- Make stomp more short-ranged but decrease the energy cost to compensate, so it's harder to use when running away.
- Improve and change charge so that it's more powerful and harder to use to run away.

Make charge a passive ability, but you can move normally by holding down shift. Reduce the energy cost slightly. Reduce the damage if it's too much (though I honestly havn't seen a charge kill in months). This change would allow the onos to close the distance to marines much faster, as one of his big weaknesses currently is being sliced apart at range because he's so slow.

New 3rd hive ability: Evolutionary Perfection. The onos can evolve every trait from every chamber. The neat thing about this ability is that it doesn't affect combat balancing at all. It also means that a 3 hive onos is truely a force to be reckoned with; a regen-cara-redemp-cele-adren-focus behemoth.

ryo-ohki, that's very interesting with the ability to evolve a trait from every chamber. but what happens if the 3rd hive is killed?

my own suggestions would be to:
1. Remove devour
2. Replace Stomp with 1.0 Paralyze

^these two are what are really important to me, as they serve as the main culprits of "hit and run onos" behaviour. Without devour or stomp, the onos doesn't have a nigh-uncounterable tactic of picking off one marine at a time. which is good IMO.

Ok, here is a more detailed version of my ideas of the onos abilitys:

Hive 0 - Gore: increase damage to 95. This way light armour marines need armour-upgrade 2 to survive 2 hits. Right now he needs 3 hits to kill a armour level 1 marine (like a fade, only that a fade attacks a bit faster)

Hive 1 - Stomp: Like now, but with the addition that stomp also affects turrets and sieges. When affectet they won't be able to shoot for ~2 sec. This way it would be much easier to prevent marines sieging if aliens only have 1 hive or clearing a hiveposition which is locked down. As long as the turrets cannot shoot, skulks would be able to take them down (teamwork++).

Hive 2 - Charge: Like now, but possible with the additional feature that the onos would be able to "pick up" marines with his horn. This combination of charge and devour was already suggestet in another thread, and if it's to hard to implement, then forget it, because it would probably be nice but not necessary.

Hive 3 - New Ability - The best of my ideas:
- Paralyze Scream: A bit like the old primal scream, but with the difference that it only affects the enemy. There are many posibilitys this ability could affect, but most important: the marine must be scared. They could shoot ~25% slower, their screen could shake a bit or everything on their screen will get dark for a few seonds.

So... what dou you say?

PS.: thx to Bone-Prince for that stomp idea

Here's the deal folks, if you ditch devour without strengthening stomp, HA=GG
If you strengthen stomp, onos = GG

Onos hit and run sucks.
Cowardly onos sucks.

Onos hit and run is made more effective because of stomp.
Cowardly onos is made possible by stomp.

So ditch stomp.

Give onos metabolize instead.
Give devour slightly higher regen and much lower movment.
I realize marines hate the rectal trip, but it would be more interesting if you knew there was a chance your team-mates might get you out.

Thus, Onos can still take out HA, cannot hit & run, must mix it up, and has the abilities so that a skilled Onos can do all this and be a threat, but an unskilled Onos turns into a big ol' target. Ideally it'd be balanced so an onos devouring and metabolizing at the same time could withstand combined fire from a couple of marines just long enough to finish the digestion.

I'm not sure if this fits as an Onos ability or as a DC upgrade.

When activated adrenaline, speed and damage is pumped up and it can't be killed, but after a certain amount of time the Onos dies.

This removes the interest in running away and focuses it on dealing out damage. The fact that it can't die early once this ability is activated, means that marines can't do much to stop it except wait for it to die. This restores some of the fear factor without making it too powerful.

*cough*shamelessplug*cough

My Idea for Charge/Devour

It would effectively combine devour and charge, then fill in the empty slot with Primal Scream. If you give the Onos scream back, it will put it in more of a support position late game, lessening the chance of it doing the fade's job as it is right now.

If Onoses are going to continue to rely on Stomp(which IMHO is a mistake), then Stomp needs to be alterred to work on hills and different elevations. It would work like this:


Rather than a straight line, Stomp would go a set distance along the ground. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Stomp's range is 500 units. On flat ground, Stomp would go 500 units forward as normal. On a hill, Stomp would move 500 units at the appropriate angle, let's say 45 degrees.

But suppose a marine is standing on a ledge that's 200 units high, and the Onos is standing 200 units away. Stomp would travel 200 units to the ledge, 200 units going up the ledge, and would then move 100 units further along the ground and stun the marine. In other words, the Stomp would be able to reach the higher elevation, but its effective range was reduced to 300 units. Taking higher elevation would be an advantage against the Onos, but it's no longer guaranteed immunity. I don't know how easy this is to code, but it's a much more logical way for Stomp to function and it would lessen a lot of the pains Onoses have in certain types of rooms.

gore needs be stronger, stomp gone, charge hive 2, give some random hive 3 ability ( we all know how worthwhile hive 3 abilities are )

charge needs to do a medium sized knockback and a stun, something so u can charge into a room without fleeing from 2 hmg... this would relieve the thing i see now where u onos, go to a rine rt, see 2 hmg at the rt, get shot, back up behind a wall, keep backing up as rines shoot u slowely moving around the wall, get ambushed, try to run, realize ur slow, die

also its my opinion that a 75-81 res beast should never die to a 35 res jp , even if it is its counter. aliens are about taking on the rines solo ( yes theres teamwork, but mainly its solo ) so why should a 75-81 res beast, the largest and strongest alien be afraid of a single rambo 35 res jp? round the corner, get ambushed and die

charge is 360 damage per second. thats enough to kill a LA. but charge is moving so fast that holding the onos on the marine for even a second can be hard.

charge doesnt need more damage, it needs to lower it to .5 seconds. 1 second is to long. i believe that just doing that will make the onos good enough.


BTW skulk's leep needs to be .5 also.

What? You just said what I said.

If it takes a second to kill a marine with charge, and the Onos dosen't make contact for that whole second, the marine will still be alive.

If it takes a half a second to kill a marine with charge, the Onos only needs to make contact with the marine for a half a second; much easier than the whole one.

Blah blah blah..
Take it to the balance thread.

Now, for a new ability

If stomp is staying, give it a short range but make it affect all the way around the Onos. That way the Onos has to mix it up to use it.

Plus, make stomp knockback aliens. That answers the Onos blocking problem right there.

1.gore
2.devour
3.stomp
4.charge

nuff said...



lol. his attacks are great just need buffs.

1. gore, 110 damage
2. devour, same
3. stomp, wider range, .5 more seconds.
4. .5 second charge instead of 1 second. bumps over turrets. if marine is being attack onos pushes him instead of getting stuck on him.

now its a scarry onos!

maybe it would work if charge makes blast dmg, so the marines learn how to fly

Just a quicky, change stomp shape.

Instead of a long sraight line make it a pear shape

Make charge push marines! Who cares about how little damage it does? just push them off a ledge! (visualize LOTR 2 Towers, when them knights charge across that bridge at Minas Tirith, pushing the bad guys off. Now, replace the knights with an onos.)

After feeling like a forum noob. Ive found this forum for this idea i posted .
( Sorry Zunni )

::Copy/Pasted::

Here is one of the ideas ive had on the onos charge:

I think charge should paralize anything it comes into contact with for the same time as stomp and knock la's and ha's to the side when you run into them.

You might think thats to much.. But you wouldnt be able to do much killing with charge if they are knocked to the side let alone have the adren to mass murder the whole marine team

( You would have to time when to charge really well , and be really smart about where you did it to make great use of it).

It would make it a really good way for a onos to get in and get out and not be stoped dead in his tracks because one LA ran into the comm chair and came out with red and blue tights and held out his hand infront of the Huge~ Onos and All of a sudden!! ::insert Super man theme:: The onos cant move!


My end idea on charge is that

1) make it take just a little~~~ more adren so its more timed and lasts about 12 seconds if not shorter.
2)give it 40 dmg on impact
3) give it a small knock back to balance it all out so its not 40 dmg combo's left and right . But if your getting charged in a really small hallway you should all be run over anyway =\

Charge is the aliens knife joke. Parasite is the welder

And Spit is .. What am i talking about!? SPIT OWNS JOO!!1

Why not have charge only work when button is pressed down?

Instead of charge drain all of your energy even when you dont need it, you could control when you want to use charge and when not to charge, all you would have to change is make it like most other attacks. +attack makes it charge, -attack makes it stop.

Another upside to this is that you cant get stomp kills or really fast devour kill. (this might be a downside to some)

We should take out devour as it is no fun for marines and makes the onos a hit and run unit. The fade avoids damage with speed, the skulk avoids damage with size, a lerk avoids damage by flying onto peaks... The onos needs a way to avoid damage, but given it's tremendous size...

It needs a 1 hive attack that allows him to stay alive, and use gore as the primary weapon.

My suggestion: Shift

Here is how it would work. The attack would just have to be switched in order to be activated. When the onos switches to it, all bullets damage lower his adrenaline bar. When his bar is empty, than it starts affecting his actual hp/armor. To counter this, the marines would have to use grenade launchers which lower his adrenaline bar faster than any other weapon.

There would be several purposes for this attack. First of all, the Onos could be used to provide distraction for other aliens. Second of all, if the Onos is fleeing, this attack could be switched for a safe getaway.

The onos needs to be a strong unit, but not too strong, and it has to be killable.

I'd suggest changing charge from damage per second to damage per hit. It just makes not sense to see a onos run into a marine, stand still for a second and the marine dies because the onos was charging. So I suggest you run around as onos and hit marines with, say 130 damage and knocking them back. Perhaps add a short stunning effect (1 second).

Also, the speed of charge is ridiculous. Slow it down a little, perhaps decreasing energy cost. And fix the mouse sensitivity.

Stomp doesn't need much change, except that stomp time should definitely NOT become even shorter.

slowing down onos = no

my two cents

onos attacks:

1) gore - as is
2) devour - VERY SLOW ROF, except you munch off the upper torso. (heavies require an extra bite or two.) Maybe even able to eat turrents?
3) stomp - as is, maybe tweaked in terms of effect and range.
4) Charge - straight line, speed reduced and knockback flings marines ahead or to the side(heavies). Use gore impact damage. Now for the main change, The first "solid" structure it hits takes massive damage (tf, armoury, cc, etc..). Turrents are destroy instantly, pgs, ips take massive damage, while slowing down the onos. Thus reducing the damge to the first "solid" structure. Scs?? Should it be considered a "solid" structure?
Downside is that the onos takes damage from the things it runs over and hits. (ie. onos runs into wall.)
This will stop "farming the MS" at the end of the game.

A REMINDER: This is based upon classic maps, where if you can get all 3 hives up and go onos, then you should be a force to be reckoned with. Combat maps are a shorten version of classic so the balancing of the teams should NOT DEPEND ON THE PLAYABLILITY OF SAID TEAM IN A COMBAT MAP. CAUSE IT JUST WON'T WORK ON BOTH TYPES OF MAPS. sorry if i come off a little rude.


DISCLAIMER: credit given where credit due