Well, I must say that the current R4K (resources for kills) is on of the most problematic things in NS, in MY eyes anways...

-It makes marines locked down into one rt against 3 hive aliens owning the map last AGES, as they can afford HA, JPs and GLs for everyone

-It screws gorges over BAD STYLE
-It wont encourage alien teamwork for aliens... let the other idiot bite them twice while you hide and you finish the marine off with a focus bite, getting the res and kills
-It makes good players better and bad players worse off. This is debatable as its one of the things that makes games fun, the reward element for playing well. HOWEVER it simply makes the skulk with low res stay poor and the fade get some 4x more kills (therefore res, which it wont need anyways) in the same time period
-It reduces teamwork for rines! Why spend time protecting and building RTs when a few shotguns and some camping/spawn whoring will give us the res we need?

I am for a full removal of R4K, however if it stays on, it should at least have some changes, eg: res are to be divided between the alien team equally, or even better, have a priority system!
players with more res in reserve or in lifeforms/upgrades (eg an onos with 30 res will count as having 105+any upgrades) will get a smaller share of the total resources coming from both kills and RTs. This shouldnt be ovewhelming(a player getting more than say 3x res than another IS overwhelming).
The multiplier is up for testing of course and should be kept small but making it higher not only makes it fairer for lower life forms but also TO GORGES!

Yes, a gorge that spent 50 res on a hive will get more res than a guy who just went fade, encouraging players to gorge, as he will count as having 10 res (considering he used it all up) while the fade will get less as it has 50 res + whatever else he has on reserve.

It maybe should be done to only kick in once a player has over X resources (75?) so that onoses can still come in time to counter HA

I of course prefer a full removal of it, above is but one of many possible solutions to at least taming it into a more balanced/fun feature

Would anyone care to point drawbacks in this system and tell me why R4K was introduced in first place?

thanks!

EDIT:
changed some assumption that sounded too imposing

I personally like the R4K system that is currently implemented for a few reasons.

You say that it requires less teamwork for rines with R4K and I see it as a system that requires more teamwork, even less ramboing. The reason is, when you are playing against a good alien team, the primary objective for marines should be to control as many resource towers as you can while NOT dying, that is very important. If you die to good aliens, chances are you're just speeding him up to go fade, then own your team. I know from experience, both marine and alien side, if a good alien player gets fed early with kills, he can go fade fast and devastate the marine team. Or, he could drop an early hive, 3min hive, which helps the aliens as a whole devastate the marines.

R4K I believe should help separate the good marine killing aliens and the ones that have a lot of trouble. I believe that those who have trouble as aliens with R4K should be those who gorge at the start and drop RTs, since they'll be relying more on RTs than kills for res. It is also an incentive to have them improve their alien game to get the res they need. Ramboing marines never survive long against a decent alien team. First, you parasite him and all the aliens know where he is, then set up an ambush with 1 or 2 other skulks coming in from different entrances, and he's doomed. He may kill one of you but most likely not two unless the aliens did something wrong.

I personally don't think it's a big deal if one person on an alien team has say 30 kills while the rest are in the single team and I don't think the other aliens should care as well as long as they are controlling the game, and winning. Aliens do what they need to to win, if it means having one person go 80-2 as fade while everyone else just supports and die supporting, so be it.

A draw back for the system you described is that a good fade always has a chance of dying, even if they're the best. A well executed ambush, no scouting, flanking marine can take down a fade if they're armed with SGs or even upgraded lmgs/pistols. Fades work hard to try to get atleast 50 more res as a safety net for himself and his team, I can't tell you how bad it is for aliens to lose a fade early. A person who drops the hive shouldn't get more res coming in than a fader because of that reason. Usually people who are good at skulking and bad at fading would be the 'hive' skulk or maybe 'dc' skulk, their primary objective is to obtain the 2nd hive as soon as possible since that would usually be the determining factor if aliens will win or lose. Fast 2nd hive means higher abilities as aliens versus low upgrade marines, slow 2nd hive means aliens having to fight off teched-up marines.

Originally, RFK was implemented as a method to attempt to offset the much slower Kharaa individual resource pools. Unfortunately, due to the kamikaze-skulk effect, this proved to be a bit more than overpowering when the Marines received no similar benefit from stopping them. It sped up the Kharaa early-game to the point where a Marine team would be under constant attack by ever-increasing lifeforms, with no chance to escape their base, much less go after RTs.

RFK was handed to Marines, and proved to be even more overpowering, allowing shotgunners to become 'mobile RTs', paying for their armament and more within a minute.



Personally, I'd rather see RFK toned down to 1RP/kill at most, and stripped from the Marines. Something to give a Skulk a bit of incentive to keep on the attack, but not allowing a five-minute Fade without a LOT of work.

Possibly combine this with the 'Building Pool' idea put forth in other threads. The other res (stripped from the RFK) is dropped in a secondary Building Pool, which only Gorges have. No gorges on the team when it tries to add the extra point, the 'extra' BP gets dropped. This encourages at least one Permagorge, and allows for generic building without over-sacrifice of personal res.
If a Gorge (with BP) gestates into something else (not just an ability upgrade, a different lifeform) then their BP is split among all other active gorges.

If there is only one Gorge left, they get it all. If that last Gorge swaps, the BP is frozen until someone Gorges again.
To add in a down side to this, when no one is Gorge, the BP have a cap. If the pool is over that cap, the excess is lost. This would encourage the Gorge to set someone else up to Gorge before gestating, so as not to lose excess BP points. It would also give the teammates incentive to Gorge when the perma needs a break, so as not to lose those extra BP.

Additionally, any OCs built with BP points will generate BP, not personal res points, for kills. All other buildings (including RTs) will function normally.

Crisano, your points are absolutely valid and i agree with them, however, the huge majority of players are pubbers, and they care more about the 10s respawn queue than giving res away to the enemy when they die. R4K doesnt make them care about dying...
R4K for marines in my opinion (and as mentioned by talesin) is not really supposed to be there..

As for the aliens, R4K is a great deterrant to being gorge to lots of people. They spend their own hard earrned res for a new hive so the whole team can benefit. The team benefits by getting more kills, the gorger, instead of becoming a fade and owning, having fun slicing marines is "rewarded" by having no res, being bored waiting for res most of the time...
R4K is the reason why its so hard to see permagorges nowadays

Sure for clan play R4K is godsend, but for the average player it is a teamwork deterrant...
If the 80-2 fade got that score its a further proof why R4K is unfair because the gorges who BUILT THE RTS AND HIVES AND CHAMBERS that allowed the fade to own like that (face it a 1 hive fade with no chambers is a lot weaker) lost all their res, got no kills and wont get many kills as they cant evolve to anything decent anytime soon...

I think Talesins idea is just as good as mine because it changes R4K, which really destroys the game at the moment...
take it out, give aliens 1.5x the resource flow from RTs and playtest it for two hours. it shouldnt be too hard (changing a few variables, keep a backup of course) and should prove my point, that even being unfair (aliens getting more res) it is still better than the current status...

R4K is one of the main reasons (indirectly mostly) that more and more people are turning to CO, it made NS classic dull with extra long marine stands, reduced teamwork, and less fairness

My two cents...

If aliens had a lesser form of rfk, and marines kept thier ability to salvage res via recycling structures and picking up droped weapons, we would have a much more balanced game. I like the alternate build pool idea, and would think it best implemented if ALL rfk went to that pool. 1 or 2 gorges would never go res hungry, fades would be pushed back as well as the second hive and the game slows down by about 10 to 15 minutes. With buildings being easier to come by, ocs not being 'worth' 10 res to some people really doesn't matter as their would be and abundance of res. We get thick jungles of alien territory the rines have to cut through to make progress.
Something to think about- would a BP make unchained chambers too pwerful? If there is any chance in hell unchained chambers is implemetned this needs to be addresed. Having all structures availble is one thing, but having all the chambers adn the res to drop them is something else.

I think the answer is rather obvious: Remove RFK for killing skulks but increase the bounty when you kill a higher lifeform. Say for killing a fade the rines should get 10-15 res and for an onos 20-25 res. But dont give em res for killing skulks anymore.
It would help a lot:
Nowadays you are screwed up when you have some skulk with 1/15 during the first 5 minutes of the game. Thats an advanced armory for free! And even sieging a hive usualy pays off, cause rines will get more res from it than they invested into that siege.

Killing a Fade or Onos already gives the marines a lot of momentum, especially if the player hasn't yet earned the res for re-evolution. I don't see the need to add more incentives. IMHO, the tactical benefits are the only things the marine team needs as a reward for killing higher lifeforms, or skulks for that matter.

I don't believe marines should have R4K. I don't mind aliens getting it, but I think there has to be another reward system for gorges.

Removing R4K could devistate NS altogether.. Marines would rambo off needing not to worry about giveing the other team a free upgrade.. aliens would stand even lessser chance in big games, and marines in small games makeing NS only suitable for 6V6-8V8 not just best suited. Aliens would be even more underpowered and ocs will almost never be put up unless its the end game as they would no longer pay themselfs off. Oh and if a fade goes armound owning the marines I belive after he fills his bar his R4k get sent to the hive pool and split among the aliens.

Only RFK for Skulks?

It should be reduced to 1 res for marines, or maybe it could randomly be 0 or 1 res.

I don't think anything remotely important in this game should be random. If that's what we wanted, it could give 0 or 1 res alternating each kill. I still don't see a need for marines to have R4K at all though.

Res should be completely independant of killing things. I am for removing afk altogether. Hoever, if that can't be done, how about the marines can only get rfk in the form of ammo packs? Every time a marine kills an alien, ammo packs are dropped on the marine automatically for free. 1 pack for skulks. 2 packs for gorges/lerks. 3 packs for a Fade, and 4 packs for an Onos.

This way, the comm can't use rfk to hand out extra shotties, since the res is forced to be spent on ammo.