Haven't seen this suggested anywhere else, but too lazy to search either...

Currently aliens need at least 3 chambers to get the full effect of whatever upgrade they choose...So if an alien chooses carapace, it gets level 1 cara if there's only one dc, and so on.

Here's my idea: make the aliens evolve their upgrades one level at a time, and let them get different upgrades in the same category, up to 3 total. If there are three DCs for example, an alien could get level 3 regen if it wants, or lv 1 regen, redemp, and cara, or any combination of them...but only 3 points in any one area. If there are 2 DCs the alien can only choose 2 points, and so on...you get the idea

Since the aliens need to evolve 3 times now, the time for each upgrade should be shortened to about half what it is now.

Also, some of the upgrades would need to be scaled so this would work, especially sensory upgrades (focus + cloak + scent oh my!) -- otherwise sensory would rapidly become the first chamber in every game

BTW, with this change you'd see more lv 1 and lv 2 skills, which to my understanding is something the devs wanted...

pretty much lvl1 anything is useless.....

Celerity - tiny speed boost....meh
Adren - tiny boost in adren regen, not worth it, not even close
Silence - this might actually be useful, a slight dampening in noise might make marines think you're farther away

Regen - it'd be faster to run back to the hive....
Carapace - take 1 extra bullet?
Redemption - feeling lucky?

SOF - see guys in the next room....or you could listen for them
Focus - doesn't change how fast it takes to kill lvl1 armor, it might be faster killing lvl2 though, I haven't done the math
Cloaking - if the marines are really dumb or you hide far enough up the ceiling, it would work, but don't expect lvl 1 cloaking to conceal you at ALL in a big brightly lit room


All in all, I'd rather get the full lvl3 upgrades ty.

I think it's a good idea.

Even though 5kyh16h91's complaints have merit, I think that it's worth playtesting to see if it's worth implementing.

However, if you made each upgrade one point, then it's increasing the cost of upgrades by almost 50% (not exactly 50, as for a small portion of the game you don't have 3 dcs). This could be balanced by making upgrades for skulks cost 0, and losing your upgrades if you go from skulk to something else.

Anyway, good idea.

L1 abilities are worthless(except maybe cloaking), and L2 are not much better. The only way we can make them an important part of the game is if upgrade functionality is totally revamped, which is probably more work than it's really worth IMHO.

Sorry, I forgot to mention the changes in costs, they would of course have to be adjusted...

I'm thinking skulk upgrades free, gorge/lerk 1 res each, and fade/onos 2 res each

Yeah, I know, everyone would get their upgrades as skulks then go fade...But once you're already a fade, and the new dc or mc goes up, it'll be cheaper to get the upgrade as a fade than go skulk then fade again. And you'd still want to get the upgrade at 6 pts (3 upgrades for one category), because it saves you res if it means not dying. So I think it would overall be balanced


And I did mention that the upgrades would need to scaled appropriately...Please comment on the idea rather than just saying "but Lv. 1 X skill is useless"...Sure, some lv 1 skills are less useful at the moment, but if they were to be scaled differently they could be more useful at just lv. 1.

i think it could be a devent option. would need alot of work in rescaling, but imagen how powerful you could justify lvl 3 abilities.

I would even go so far as to say keep each lvl at 2 points, or even jack it to 4. Have each lvl be usefull, with lvl 3 skirting to powerful. The investment would be huge, but the pay off would be greater than current.
An example would be cloaking early game. Your a skulk, meaning you will die sooner rather than later, but you go ahead and drop the 6 to how ever much res to get lvl Cloaking. At it's lower levels you can only walk/stand still But at it's extreme you can do juat about anything but Attack, and recloack hella fast (like v2.x)

Another idea- increas numbr of levels. It really doesn' take THAT much to get 3 dcs up, but 5 is stretching a gorges res pretty thin. more levels = more upgrade options and possible more power for a single upgrade if taken to the limit

No no no, current system is fine imo.

I really like the idea, it allows alot more customizing for aliens which in my opinion is a good idea that should at least be looked at in more detail. It always annoys me when i have to choose between regen and cara as skulks or lerks when level 2 regen and level 1 cara would probably be better, or maybe the other way around.

I definatly agree that levels 1 and 2 would needed to be beefed though.

imagen what this would be like with unchained chambers aswell. Each hive gives you 3 levels of upgrades or what ever, so you could be a lvl2 silence lvl 1 cloaking skulk right off the bat. Getting in place for an ambush would be so much easier with that tweak.

So how would these upgrades need to be scaled, for this system to be fair?

I think the defense upgrades are pretty good as they are...same with movement (you'd only get adren as a gorge or lerk anyway, while the other two are useful for everyone)

You could maybe justify beefing the level 1 and 2 upgrades just a little bit, but that would require some playtesting to find the right level

The only chamber that really needs adjustment IMO, would be sensory chambers...and I'm not sure how to tackle that one...because no matter what way I look at it, getting lv 1 or 2 cloaking and 1 or 2 focus is always better than lv 3 of just one skill

What do you guys think about that one?

I ALWAYS get cele as a gorge

I like the idae but like most people have said lvl 1 upgrades arn't that useful anyway. How many times have you sat on a server and the early fade gets up and says "more DC please"?

The idea is nice in princple but the upgrades would need reworking on their effectiveness.

yes, the upgrades need re-scaling. we've all agreed to that.
the horse is dead stop beating it into the ground.

try listing a new scaling concept maybe.
lvl 1 upgrad = 75%
lvl 2 = 120%
lvl 3 = 150%

those percents are of current power. So if the current lvl 3 regen healed 20 points on a gorge per tick (making up numbers here) this new system would have it heal
lvl 1 = 15
lvl 2 = 24
lvl 3 = 30

so now upgrades could be alot more powerful, but you would have to spend some more res to get that power. If you kept each upgrade costing 2 res, then a gorge healing 30 hp a tick would cost 16 res for goring and upgrades. You could just go with lvl 1 and save some res if you wanted.

Also with the numbers i made up having multiple lvl 1 upgrades could prove better than just 1 lvl 3 upgrade.

If # of upgrades were linked to hives you could have stronger end games aliens over all. Say each hive gives you 3 more upgrades to put into anyone evolution, 3 hives = 9 upgrades = 9 lvl 1 upgrades or 3 lvl 3 upgrades.
imagen an Onos with 150% stronger caparice, 150% stronger regen, and 150% faster celerity. The cost to get all those upgrades though would be 18 res and you could even have res be scaled to class size. So maybe gorges and skulks spend 1 res per upgrade but onos spend 4 res.
Lots of options that can make aliens more adaptable to a situation. If i had to fight a group of shotties, i would take lvl 3 cara lvl 2 regen and lvl 1 celerty as a fade. that would let me take the hits, chace the marines, and heal up between fightes better than just the current lvl 3 regen and lvl 3 celerity i would use today.

but you couldnt have level 3 regen AND lv 2 cara at the same time...you'd have a max 3 points to spend on defense upgrades. period. So you could mix & match if you want, but only 3 points. lv 3 regen/lv 2 cara would require 5 points in def. upgrades

just straightening this out...


I suppose we could have a poll or something to see if people would prefer it your way

It would work as, the currently, chained chambers do. But you could select a maximum 3 levels seperate from each other, depending on what (and how many of that) chamber was placed by your friendly neighbourhood gorge. So if the gorge placed just 2 DC's I could straight off get lvl1 regen and lvl1 cara, then when he later places another I can up my lvl1 cara to lvl2 cara. Then at hive2 when the gorge places, lets say, a 3 MC's (yay for DMS), I could get lvl2 cele and lvl 1 adren. etc on hive3

I don't think you should boost level 3 abilities any further than they are currently, as that would blatently unbalance the game whereas boosting level 1 and 2 wouldn't necessarily unbalance.

I think this is one of the best ideas I've read, relating to abilities and such. Why it hasn't been moved to one of the sub forums yet is beyond me.

but if you don't make lvl 3 stronger, there is no reason to have 3 lvls of an upgrade. Right now i can spend 2 res and get any ability at 100%, if i payed by the lvl, i would need to spend at least 3 res (assuming prices were dropped) for the same power. That doesn't help me much.
If you make lvl 1 and lvl 2 abilities stronger, the difference between lvl 2 and lvl 3 would be negligable. To have this system work, lvl 3 would have to be stronger than current lvl 3 abilities or you just limit the possibilites of upgrade options.

If you argue that lvl 3 focus would be to strong, i would say focus is a god-awful ability that should be removed from the game. Aliens need flexible evolutions with more power located in largerlife forms. Giving marines direct damage increase is fine, but aliens should have enough hurting power already and thier abilities/upgrades should center around getting them close enough to use that power.

As for more than 3 lvls per chamber, that was my misconception.
Although i would argue that some life forms would benifit from multiple upgrades in the same branch- ex. of aliens at second hive
Onos for base cracking (lvl2 regen lvl3 cara lvl1 redem)
Fades for marine killin (lvl 1 regen lvl3 cara lvl1 celerity lvl1 adrin)
Skulks meat rocket(lvl3 celerty lvl2 cara lvl1 adrin)
Skulk ambush (lvl1 cele lvl3 silence lvl1 cara lvl1 regen)
Lerk spammer (lvl3 adrin lvl3 regen)
Lerk biter (lvl1 adrin lvl2 cele lvl2 regen lvl1 cara)

**** i could do this all day, you get the idea. Some classes are better suited for a playing style, there for better suited for certain upgrades. Limiting the aliens on what upgrades they can get is kinda silly, so i say let them have what they want. Even with a base crushing onos like the one above, a couple of hmgs will still ward him off, but it will take some effort to kill him. I don't see how this will over power the aliens becuase a much stronger form of this upgrade system exists in combat, and people still **** about how strong single jp marines are.

The only good thing about CO is that it should us how much help aliens need in head to head combat (base breaking) so letting aliens be more powerfull if they have 3 hives and alot of res is only fair for thier hard work in getting that far.

And it's the bottom of the 9th, it 35 minutes into the game aliens hold half the nodes, rine's hold the half, rines have just got there last upgrade and are amasing a assult on the newly built for the second time third hive, were gorgie were only able to build one chamber for it last time, the aliens now have the third hive and the two remaining chmbers its game time

well i think ill go with one chamber lvl of redemption, one of carapace and one regen cos inate isnt enough, hum two focus, one sent, hum i dont want to be quiet so two celerity and one adrenaline, sounds good to me now i am a bad bad sulk, ready to spank rines, to sum it up
i am now a bad a$* adernline celerity leaping focus chomp sulk that knows last minute were rines are with the some reassurance i will be remped if i try for a xeno charge, as a splash of regen and crapace will allow me to take that extra round or two for redemption to maybe kick in or xeno to go off

wait, rine have decided they would drop our nodes first, well i now need to get close to them undetected ill take three cloak three silence, two carapace and one regen, allowing this little sulky to sneak up undetected start chomping and take the extra hits he needs and regen a little before the next wave comes in and scans the room

what are you takeing mister fade?


so i ask only cos it would be interesting, if you have a said chamber alow a choice of more than one upgrade and a choice of how many lvls to a max of three per hive if that hive has three chambers

so your on one hive and only two SC's take one focus lvl, one sent lvl, you dont get two lvls of focus and two lvls of scent, just to cerafiy its not like Co

you have two hives three sc's and two mc's take three cloak and one celerity and one adrenaline hehe i am a gorgie now ill try this set up for a bit as i bile bomb rt's

to balance it out decrease the egg time so that egging three times equal one current egging for a upgrade

players will still beable to to take three of each up grade if they wish, to have 3 max lvls of that upgrade but they cant pool extra lvls from other chamber area's
so you could only ever have three dc lvl's but the pick is up to you

in other words you couldnt sacrafice your mc chamber up grades to get two of ever dc upgrade lvl, and you cant sac your dc upgrades and your sc upgrades to get 3 lvls of every movement up grade

players can still focus on there current builds with three lvls in silence three in cloaking and three in cara if they got three hives and the 9 chambers (3 of each) they need
they will just have to egg 9 times in quike sucssetion, i was thinking about the speed of egging in CO to get these upgrades so bing bing bing three up grades

maybe the upgrade tech tree can be exstended a extra button next to each upgrade saying lvl 3 silence and you just egg like you do now

there options there people the marines get them, i want welder pistal, mines, hg and a gl, well i want hg gl, mines pital jp

but aliens have to go, well silence cloak redemption and there life forum
or they go forcus celerity regen and there life forum, hum seeing a patern so far, they only get to use 3 things plus life forum, now i arnt really basing this argument on comareing them to rines, i am basing it on that fact aliens arent versatile enough, they adapt shore and they make do with what they got,

sorry i didnt do a search i figured no one would of sujested soem thing so far fetched that could acctuly work and see improvments

wow so this idea has been sujested, and a long long time ago, its not locked, good sign also, and since this thread was started a gazzillion changes have taken place, to make this viable now, now i say, get this implimented, upgrades are for free, abilitys are tweaked to the max, fix the egging time, and crush the numbers typing monkey's

this is brilliant, and 80% of these arguments against dont hold any ground now with the changes so impliment plz

wow, old thread. (and it's one that I started, too...)

Well, with 3.0x out, aliens can already get the benefits of all 3 sensory upgrades, so that argument's void. Also, it doesnt matter if you think level 1 silence is useless, since you dont need to get it if you dont want (that can be adjusted on its own)

One tweak to this idea: for each upgrade, add menu options to choose what level of the upgrade you want - this way, you could get level 3 and only need to gestate once

This idea doesn't work at all. The chamber skills are not designed to support L1 and L2 skills being used, it gets compleatly unbalanced.

Redemption: only arguably useful at level 3
Regen: heals same speed as innate regen at level 1, L2 is still tragic, L3 its acctually useful
Cara: decent at L1 and 2 although that isn't saying much.

SoF: almost useless at L1, workable at L2, really needs 3 upgrades to be considered as an option
Focus: useless at L1, good at L2 and L3
Cloaking: godly at any level, WAY unbalanced compared to all the other upgrades at L1

Silence: pretty much useless at any level but 3
Celer: increadibly helpful with Bhop at any level
Adren: useless at L1, but ok at L2 and 3

Some of the upgrades are just too overpowered at L1 in comparison to the others, which are totally and compleatly useless until L3.

you're considering these upgrades individually, not as combinations...you argue that level 1 this or level 2 that would be useless, but I disagree on the basis that you still get to spend all 3 points for 3 upgrades. You need to be comparing Lv 3 regen with Lv 2 regen+Lv 1 cara, not just writing it off because "lv 2 is worthless"

Offering this certainly doesn't hurt the aliens at all, because they can still go level 3 if they want...some combinations may be more effective than lv 3 of one upgrade, some will definitely be less. It all depends on your playing style...and it would of course require some experimentation to see what works best for you and your lifeform.

That said, I agree that certain chamber combinations may be too powerful as they are, but there's no reason that can't be rebalanced at all. (the only one that REALLY sticks out is lv 2 focus + lv 1 cloak, but even that's not so bad since you can have all 3 benefits near a strategic chamber anyway...) Seriously, is there anything *wrong* with the idea that can't be fixed?

Edit: there's no need to boost lv 1-2 skills to make them more viable, because bad combinations will only hurt you if you get them - only balance that's needed would be to keep it from being overly powerful...


^^^
fake edit

i agree, lol at fake edit

the games to a very balanced point right now since this thread was sujested numarous changes have taken place to mae this idea way more aceptable

i have to dis agree, i had to play a whole game early with one dc the other week ito redemption as a sulk, and hell to my suprice 4 saves, 4 saves i was like man these odds are almost better than three dc's, other sprefer lvl one focus, as they get that slight buff in damage and a small delay in RoF, silence lvl one and two make you appear further away, and i lvl three SoF is point less at lvl 3 when your pertchd above a door, whats the point in seeing rines 5 lvls below you when them lvls dont exsist, i would very much like that half a second to corect me ambush to be perfect, lvl one celerity isnt much but its a dang noticable speed increase, a lurk jsut flaping can take sonsitarable advantage of adren lvl one or two as wel las some celerity or even silente to mask its true position, fades with a chance to save, as well as assist there hit and run, onos with lvl arenalin can drop a RT with out needing to rest, so they take two lvls of celarity for speed, or for slince to lose the com so he cant be tracked

shore i am only showing what i see ar ethe percs for these combos shore there a down side to them as well, but hey ill leave that up to you to decide

no swift them paths are just your prefered and chossen paths, what you think would be best to bet or have a fair chance in every situation imagineable

but you and i know thats not the case, situations change in this game so fast, an dyour combonation isnt goting to work every time if you throw it at the rines over and over, there going to adapt and habituate to it, you can then try and became a god in that tactic and stay a step ahead or adapt to there adaption and stay a step ahead

You would have to make a submenu for upgrading full 3 times on all upgrades.. What I mean is that you have a submenu to regen f.ex. with 1-3 points. Otherwise in a game with 3 hives you would have to upgrade 9 times to have all upgrades And that sucks.

The idea about changing from 33% to 50% for 1 upgrade point is good. However this would have an effect on balance, aliens would benifit from this. My opinion is that aliens have an disadvantage just in the begining of a game and this would make balance better.

Also making the evolve time faster is essential here, cause not only are you making it possible to choose many different upgrades = more evolving. I will take time just choosing all the right upgrades in all the new submenus.
You would also have to make the menu-bar smaller or dynamic at least so it is % of what your total screen resolution is. I would also suggest that you have a big menu for starters and as you start getting into more and more sub-menus ( = more of you screen is filled with a menu) the menu gets smaller. However this would take more from system res.. So the easiest thing would be to remake the whole menu-system into *some smarter sys.*.

Anothing thing, I think thease changes would benifit from is making skulks respawn with previous set of upgrades and then let people change all upgrades 1 time, this would require that you have a timer on changing, say 15 sec to decide wheather to keep upgrades or choose new ones. Just to keep down the evolving time, plus it would be smother and ofter very convenient.

My conclusion is, before making all thease changes you should think twice about all the effects this could have. I've just mentioned the effects that I could think of now, and I bet there are lots of more effect that I have not though of. But I can't say I wouldn't like thease changes because in total they are good. However this is a big change and would be only good if it was done very caryfully and with lots of time, so it's up to the ns team to decide wheather this is something to put time into.
Maybe there are a lot of other things to fix before approaching this issue, however this should be somewhere down the prioritylist of changes.

That thought did occur to me, about having to evolve 9 times...so you would need to add to the menu and choose what level of upgrade you wanted to get

The other thought I had earlier about this, was a possibility to access the evolve menu while in your egg, so you could choose the next upgrade without having to pop out several times. It would only be for upgrades, and honestly it wouldn't be all that useful unless this idea goes in


The lower level skills would need balancing, because they would actually get used now. You really don't play for very long with just level 1 or 2 of X upgrade right now, so they're balanced to the effect of not being entirely useless on their own. With this idea, they'd need to be balanced with the intention of working with other upgrades. Yes, an adren-1, cele-2 skulk would be an awesome RT muncher. Yes, a redempt-2, regen-1 onos would be good for dangerous hit-and-redeem strikes. And yes, a focus-2, cloak-1 skulk would pwn marines without armor. It would need to be rebalanced - but only lv 1-2 of the upgrades. lv 3 should stay right where it is.
The goal is to balance them so that any reasonable combination of the 3 points is just as viable in general as level 3 in a single skill...

level 1 focus is NOT useless ESPECIALLY since it does 100 dmg as a skulk at 86% speed decrease in bite. Id take lvl 1 focus lvl 2 sof any day as a fade. That would be the only thing id mix but it would be useful .

yeah if your a fade, you would mix them sc's up, and genral leave other things, ok what about 2 cerity, since 3rd lvl is only 10% faster, but one lvl of ardenaline will allow you to blink a little longer, and will allow you to gain energy back a little quiker for that metabalise, trust me everyone can use these for there said playing stlye

if i was a fade, i wouldnt play a cat and mouse fade i would play a rez node fade, with silence, two cloaking, one sent, simple smash a rez node, then move to the door were the rine comes in to build it, maybe ill beable to ghost him, if i can get behind him wait till that node drops and kill him and it, as for dc's full regen for full silence hehe

eh so i found the thread for yas, i know i bumped a antient post fr a second time, one that with my help got moved

This would rock nuff said!

God yes, lately I have been thinking about this. WHY the hell are rines allow to box us into one hive and upgrade to 3/3 with everything else and camp and waste us. While I am stuck with some chamber some noob only droped one of before switching sides.

If the shoe was on the other foot rines would still beable to upgrade 3/3 and everything else and if aliens dont crush, seal up and keep the presssure on from start to finish the job of holding rines in ms or the reloc get harder and harder. Offtan I have seen them breatch out and or lvled the playing feild.

Enoughs enough unchain the chambers and give us one upgrade per hive.

This would be an interesting idea. It would open up the aliens to more options and variablity as to what they want to do. It would need reworking of some of the chambers effects at level 1 and 2 but still a nice idea.

Worse come to worse if some combinations are WAY too powerful (for example lvl 2 focus and lvl 1 cloaking) we could scale down their effects of either upgrade if the player chooses that combination (so for example, focus and cloaking combo would reduce the effect of focus and/or cloaking by x%).

Side note:
Cloaking and focus being overly powerful isnt very bad because that would force the marines to stick in groups more, which is a good thing overall.