Do you have any ideas about the marine tech trees, and want to change it. Post those ideas here.

I suggest making the obs require an armslab before biend able to build it, that way it'd delay the marines getting MT and make sensory a little bit better as a first chamber perhaps, if aliens could get a second hive almost about the same time marines got MT then things could still be fair game

hehe, I would've said more buildings/weapons and stuff, but that's totally been done to death and would be way better left off until NS or a similar game made by NS fans is redesigned on another engine =)

I agree with the arms lab / obs thing though.

By the marines nature, a tech-stick layout suits them. Aside from above stated obs/armslab suggestions i really have no problems with marine development

Different protolab tech levels : unchain the protolab building from the advanced armory , and give 2 upgrade levels to jetpacks and HAs. First levels (cheap) would enable jump packs (good for dodging melee attacks and reaching vents) , and heavy armors (much slower than the current HAs) ; second tech levels (expensive) would require an advanced armory , they'd enable normal jetpacks and power armors , faster HAs with a bit of regenerative armor (that would glow when regenerating)

Make catpacks available after an upgraded armory BUT dont make it so you have to research them.. (no commando's ever research them)

Maybe not a change to the tree per se, but how about prunning a few leaves?

Link

Oh and one of it's roots is getting into the piping .

Link

I'd like to see the arms lab levels linked to certain structures. Lvl1 requires nothing (already have an armslab/armory at this point. Lvl2 and lvl3 requires an advanced armory. I seriously think this would slow down marine play enough to give aliens an advantage they truly need. I'm sure some of the other competitive players will flame me, but I think it would be a good change, forcing commanders to understand the importance of upgrading the armory. If not lvl2, then lvl3, but I don't think you should be able to upgrade to lvl3 with a normal armory. If the advanced armory is destroyed, all upgrades above the cutoff level are kept unless the arms lab is destroyed. Then the upgrade level is reset back to below the cutoff level until the armory is advanced again. It then returns to the level it was before the arms lab's destruction.

@ Adj

Link lvl 1 to nothing, level 2 to the observatory (you should have an obs by then anyway), and level 3 to the armory. Since the armory has reletively low HP you can't make it THAT important (not that it isn't already).

The armory/ip combo is the equivalent of the barracks in starcraft. Upgrading the armory is like adding a factory. The factory is key to getting anything in terms of units or tech in starcraft, and the same should be said for the advanced armory. If we were going for a really tiered system you'd link lvl2 to the adv armory and lvl3 to the proto, but that's really extreme, and I don't think marines could win with that setup at all really.

replace motion tracking with thermal imaging. it only shows up if the aliens are in one place for a period of time( 5-10 secs). This would forces aliens to stay moblie and not just camping it out, so the onos sitting around the corner would be visible, bnut the 3 skulking rung at you from behind would be invisible, rewarding alien inttiative... instead of punishing it like motion tracking.

Jetpack Tech raised to 50 res.

Advanced Armory research time raised to 240 seconds (1 extra minute).

Obs is only available after the arms lab is built.

Bigger tree, I got a pic, h/o when I comeback tomarrow I'll try to find away to upload it.

gnite.

so.. bright...

i dunno.. seems like a lot of complications.. adding more buildings and such.. you just added like 3 or 4 more "advanced" upgrades for buildings and such... marines will take forever to reach what then need to survive fades, and by the time aliens get onos, marines will be pretty far behind..


but, the stamina thing for the elec... thats an idea that i tend to like... maybe not totally draning them, but enough to slow them down...

then again, that would require the aliens to get another hive for bb, and the the lerks to get spikes back again... and, now., theres a good concept!

I think that the marine tech tree is the last place you should be touching.

-Its fine now
-everyone knows
-you cant limit it too much
-the rts is just side of the fps
-just no.

How about adding trip mines back in. haveing a 10 res upgrade to resupply hand nades? umm... Personal ping sweep only rechargable at the obs? I think the marine tech tree atm is somewhat stable structure wise. Options are the only reason its somewhat linear.

Trip mines are out because they crash the server. They're not going to be put in again as long as NS uses the HL engine.

I would like to see something done to hand grenades though. It's really not worth it at the moment. They just **** me off because I can't quickswitch to my welder if I have nades.

Agreed. grenades, in some method or another, need to become most certainly more blancd in both CO and NS.

As it stands, they are pretty worthless upgrades to take in either. If youa re playing a uber-level server, it may eventually be taken, but is by no means a comparison to other upgrades.

You may do this by increasing damage, radius, quantity, firing speed, or any combination of nay of these in any amount. I leave this to your balance, you have already proven yourselves quite capable.

Although, instead of simply more powerful nade, perhaps a more inventive solution can be found? It seems liekly that a marine force such as this would likely have an "anti-alien" nade, or soemthign especially good for dealing with aliens.

Perhaps soemthign more status-effecting. (similar to flashbangs, or smoke, but these don't seem fitting"

Perhaps you could have a gren that does about the same as the current damage but temporarily removes their connection to the hive mind? (IE can't see their teammates for a time, no warning about attacks, etc) Another side effect of this (not sure how this universe operates) could be not being able to use higher abilities for a time (above swipes?) If for a short enough duration, it may be useful.

You could also have energy sapping, (energy ncreases less), or movement speed decrease.

Of coruse, these are jsut ideas of thigns to play with.

I really just want grenades to be worth taking up a weapon slot and resource and time to research/the level to get it. As of right now, it isn't. (all it realy has, in my book, is a webs-clearer, but welders are better).

Add in Medium Armor, as well as akimbo weapons

hey, if we port to Hl2, it'll be a cinch to add

What I'd like to see is slightly more of a delay for restoring upgrades when an Arms Lab is killed. As it is now, the aliens don't have much time to mount an offensive when the Arms Lab is taken down. Only an Advanced Armory has any substantial penalty when lost. It only costs a minimal amount of res and time to replace the Arms Lab. The same goes for the Obs and the ability to drop phases.

This would help reduce the last-stand-alamo when the marines have completely lost the game, but - unlike the aliens - are more highly tech'd the longer the game continues.

I think after the arms lab is rebuilt, all arms lab upgrades previously researched need to be researched again. However, the research time is cut by 80%, and the research is free. It'll give the aliens an extra few minutes to capitalize.

This isnt realy something about the tech tree but its more about the weapons. I think it would be best if the marines are made more similar to the aliens by making the marines spawn back with the machine gun instead of what ever weapon they origanaly had. that way while the aliens are multing the marines are upgrading and this also makes the marines alot more adaptible to the situation. I think this would work alot more towards the balancing of aliens and marines

plz tell me what you think of my flashing seizure giving pic

Dont derail a thread to post stupid pictures we've seen a million times before.

Reduce the Marine dependenacy on Armour 1. This will open up the tech path, allowing for MT first, or weapons 1 first, instead of armour 1.
Maybe add a few other upgrades; really cheap, and a bit useful. Such as: more building HP, auto-removal of parasite after a minute or so, faster speed, etc. All those small things that are present in most RTS games.

n ns.. when the comm starts dropping HA and jps they usually hand out welders.. thus you can assume that once the comm has dropped a jp there is a high chance that the marine will have a welder

but in co.. all jetpackers and Heavies dont get welders.. they see it as a waste of a point

i propose that a marine must purchase a welder to be able to get Jetpacks and heavy armor !!!

this is will improve CO so much more and bring CO closer to NS!!!!!!

igh.. the purpose of CO was to teach new NSers how to play NS

CO was suppose to be as close to NS as possible to simulate the gameplay and expierience.. CO was suppose to be the game to teach NEW players how to play ns...

AS of now, CO is CS with skins....

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Why would you want to bring CO closer to NS? CO blows.

Yes i dislike CO alot.. and i dislike the fact that there is absolutely no teamwork in CO... That is why I AM SUGGESTING IT

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It's just going to means marines have to get a total of 5 levels before JP or HA.

lol, are you worried about using an extra point? Look at JPs and HA, they both have 2 points, maybe reduce the 2 points to 1 point.. so that way you'll have to only spend 4 points

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You could make the welder a pre-need for HA/JP in Co and reduce their cost in turn.
But then marines are even more uber - especialy on some maps with weird and unplayable constructions.
How the hell are they uber?weird playable? explain it to me. MARINES ARE SUPPOSE TO HAVE WELDERS!! thats where most of the teamwork comes from..
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Here's an idea: Bundle welder with armor1, or bundle it with resupply.

you can't bundle it.. it'll only overpower the marines..

I think Motion Tracking should have a range limit like Scent of Fear. Or at least half the map, because when you can see aliens in which hive across the map, it defeats the purpose of stealth for the aliens.

... Nukes are fun.

if you do that then you also have to make it able to track walking cloaked things too =O

I would highly suggest getting rid of gernades. They are probably the most useless feature added to ns and you could replace it with something much more dire needed then this. Gernades were introduced to help clear out the vent problems and maybe some structures? But ANY alien good or bad isn't stupid enough to sit around while you pull out the gernade and through it in the vent, they move fast enough to be hundreds of feet away before it even leaves your hand which takes a long time anyways. I think out of all the times I've played I might have seen about 3-4 gernade kills total. Please replace this with something actually worth the res and time, or even to use.

Everything else I think it fine as it is, the only suggestion I would make is to drop the cost of electricity to rts.

Grenades should be removed and a new weapon (Electric Rifle, ala The Matrix, anyone?) added. My $0.02.

I suggest a communicator implant which allows the commander to play foot soldier as well as commander. It would have to be agreed by vote as to who got the implant, but as soon as one did, the current comm would be ejected (and the chair would be "in use") and be able to switch between comming and gunning. For more intense matches (scrims and league play and such) it could be disabled or they could just not put the res into upping to it. Com chairs could still control your ability to build structures, so if they get taken out, you're still hooped. Perhaps the comm would be restricted from going too far from the cc or obs, because the transmission between the communicator and the player would get fuzzy, and you couldn't access the comm screen then. I dunno, it may be too difficult for one to multitask between comm and player, but I found a few moments where my team has been lacking players or I have been sitting idle as a com.

If anyone thinks this might be unbalancing, I agree, but so would adding new weapons and such, just not as horrendously. I don't think game design should revolve around balance completely, but a split between that and entertainment value (ie quality of being fun).

Only things I can think of that I want would be make weapon upgrade a bit stronger and (if this would be considered tech) make the shotgun random spray instead of prefixed spray.

The armor upgrades are a lot more beneficial than weapon upgrades. Instead of making the weapon upgrades more powerful you could always make them cheeper leaving the armor upgrades alone but weapon upgrades like 15/25/35 or 10/20/30 any reduction in price would be nice. I think that +30% damage at level 3 is fine but the price is a bit high.

I think that hand grenades should be changed from an explosive to something like a concussion or sonic grenade of some sorts to disable hearing/hivesight/blur view because hand grenades while a good idea are utterly depised and frowned upon as a viable early game option.

Here's a great argument, and perhaps some design concepts for marine mech upgrades:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9fe_1188407948

We got this in 2007!