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Marines Gain Xp like they normal do with kills.
Was thinking that Aliens Should gain xp over time, But NO XP from kills.
First there will be two xp types for aliens. Personal XP and Team XP.
Default Time set to 13 mins
Aliens Gain 1 team xp every 30 seconds of game time.@4:30 min mark they gain team xp every 45 seconds until game ends.
Aliens Gain 1 xp at the 1 min mark 7:30 min mark and 10:30 min mark for all aliens
Aliens Gain Hive two ability at 7 min mark, and Hive Three ability at 10 min mark.
Personal Xp may only be used on chamber upgrades
Team Xp may only be used on Lifeforms. When a Lifeform dies, that used xp goes back into Team XP pool.
Gorge would use 1 team xp, lerk 2, fade 3, and onos 4.

What this all means. And the Purpose of this:
With this system in place combat will function more like regular NS. For example:
@4:30 aliens will have 9 team xp. and 1 xp per person. With 9 Team xp you can have 1 lerk, 2 fades, and 1 gorge.
Which is pretty normal for an NS game at about 4:30 so at this phase they are theoretically putting the hive up. AT 7 mins the hive is up and 30 seconds later the gorge theoretically has put down another chamber. So @7:30 aliens have 13 team points to spend. (which is like 2 fade, a lerk, a gorge, and an onos). With a third hive theoretically going up)
Now all this is designed to be a balanced 6vs6 game. But here is the idea to make it balanced for smaller and larger games.

Now since games are varied in size. The time scales will work like this. 6 divided by amount of players on team equals the modifier to the time.
I think mathematically it would look like this:
x=number of players on team; y=time modifier; z=30 second timer; a=45 second timer T=how many seconds till next team xp
6/x=y y*z=(T) after 4:30 y*a=(T)
Hopefully that makes sense.

What this should ultimately accomplish:
In competitive play, both teams camp and camp and camp. With this new system Marine are FORCED to attack, with risk. And of course the aliens must defend the hive until they have enough to kill the CC or time limit ends. Thus marines should always be rushing, and Aliens always be defending. Which should make for faster paced games.


ALL NUMBERS SUBJECT TO TWEAK FOR BETTER BALANCE.

This is the BEST idea ever Gecko!1

Add in the rule that aliens can't get more than one upgrade int he same branch (i.e, no Carapace+Redemption for example) then everything will be PEACHY.

An excellent idea, but I have a question: How do you determine who gets a higher lifeform? To use your example, how does that 9 team xp get split between X many players?

basicly who ever clicks it first, or maybe there could be some voting system.
I think who ever clicks first is fine cuase it gets newbs a chance, and since theyll just die, someone else can get it

Because Gecko told me to:
http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index....=ST&f=5&t=87165

i must say this is a well thought out idea and intresting
i dont like it.
CO_ isnt as fun as NS for me but i still enjoy it BECUASE IT IS DIFFERENT i woudlnt play NS_ to play CO_ and vise versa why change to different game types more similar that gets rid of the point.
however it isnt an entirely bad idea in fact it isnt a bad idea at all just no point to it.

well from my understanding, Combat is suspsoed to be a way for newbies to get used to NS, then ease into actual NS maps

I really like the personal XP thing, but, god, team XP is a horrible idea for the XP *****s

It's a very neat idea in some respects...but not in others. I mean combat wasn't built to be a watered down version of classic where there's only one hive and no commander. Quite frankly the idea that aliens will only have had 1 upgrade after 5 minutes is not conducive to tying combat back in to classic anyway, especially as you can't change that upgrade to suit.

The whole beauty of Co, as Flayra once said, was to have these super skulks and super marines going around fighting each other...it's been watered down a bit since then, but I don't see why we have to water it down so much further that going alien basically becomes "being the training bot" and being marines is where the fun is at. Aside from the fact marines should, in this sort of system, be getting much more much quicker than aliens despite how it will often go in classic games...

I think Co works, I just think it works better for one team right now than it does for the other. Can't we examine an idea that doesn't reduce aliens to autonomous and predictable teams?

"We can camp here for X minutes, team, because none of those aliens will have any ability whatsoever to get by us, and...whats even cooler...we can keep leveling up while we slaughter them!"

Aliens can choose any upgrade after the first minute. they get thier 2nd hive abilty at 5 mins.
You dont have complete predictabilty. You could have a bunch of lerks, or a fade, and onos, a lerk and no gorge. etc etc.

Also I would like it when the 2nd hive abilty goes up. the aliens also get the armor boost similar to classic.

And there are no super marines. Super means going above and beyond what normal NS games allow. Marine Can not do that in a CO game. While a can get more upgrades than normaly allowed to.

if you say that co must be a seperate entity then either ns or co is most likely to die. If you stick with the premis that ns is the game and co it a tool to teach noobs how to deal with the combat aspect so they are more comfotable to learn the stratigy aspect with a better environment then "watered down ns" is nessasary. if co is not to be a tool it needs to be a seperate game. having it kinda sorta linked with ns just screws things up. balances for co mess the play up in ns and vice versa. the best thng to do is figure out wheather co needs to be a tool or a new game. I honestly dont see both coexisting long as it is now. when a half of the game is controling the other by default it causes problems.

If you go on the premis its a tool there isnt much that needs discussion just figure the res system for a co game and your mostly done.

if you go by it needs its own game start fully seperating it and then balance to taste. both cases not much needs to be done but make a firm decision on what co needs to be.

So I can go 1000-0 on aliens while the rest of my team hasn't gotten a single kill and still only have the same amount of xp? You are rewarded with xp for kills. That is the point of combat. Combat is balanced, you guys just don't know how to fight certain things. OMG GLS WE DEAD!!!!1 If someone can get 3 levels for a GL a person can get 3 levels for a fade and do far more damage. If You balance Classic, you balance combat. Everything has a counter in one form or another.

Have to disagree with you there. Combat is way favorable towards aliens, Slip, and I think this can help a whole bunch by preventing aliens from being able to become super aliens!

When I frist read your idea about having it so aliens within a certain radius of the hive only get xp. I thought it was good. but then the problem is that if aliens dont set up ambushes farther out, then they have only one place to ambush, which would suck. Idealy the aliens goal is to prevent the marines from getting inside thier spawn and spawn camping them, before fades come up.

THink about it this way, If this change where to happen. Yha you might have a couple of marines camping, but they will prob get yelled at by thier team. and after a few days, most players will understand its a benefit for them not to camp, for more than 5-10 seconds. unless its in thier spawn.

Ugh.. you'd have the alien players hating each other and spending more time "life-form camping" than playing the game. The fade-wannabes would hate the lerk players, etc, it'd make the games nastier than they are already.

not nessisarly, A team exp I belive is every 30 seconds.
B. If anyone dies, that exp goes back to the group. So the better players get rewarded.
but at least it will be far more balanced.

also life form camping happens already in NS games.

Right, one every 30 seconds. So if you get one guy who goes Lerk out of the posts, your fade has to wait an extra minute from what he was planning. But if somebody else gets tired of playing skulk and switches to something else as well. that's yet another delay on your fade.

The other problem is, you force the aliens to sit there and watch for the one evolved guy to die, because if they don't, somebody else will snap up those team points. You don't see aggravation coming out of that?

Some life form camping happens in NS, yeah, but that's voluntary. There's a world of difference from not going fade because someone else called it first and not being able to go fade because two guys you don't know decided to go Lerk.

actualy kwil, you make a very good point.

Would there be a way to make it so this system is only in place with Tourny mode 1

Instead of team XP, you could also continue with XP for kills for the aliens, but reduce it drastically to like 20% of what it currently is. Camping would still be the best option, but the aliens with the most kills would get an advantage.

Probably easier than fighting over who gets the team XP, although the timed system imo would be a good way of teaching newbs about NS.

And there are super skulks/gorges/lerks/fades/onos but as far as I have seen, not a single super marine who can upgrade out of the normal marine tech tree.

because in NS, your first upgrade doesn't come around till 2 mins into the game (generly) and your hive isn't up before 6th min. (usualy)

Keep everything the same, but reduce alien upgrade to 8 or 9 instead of 10

Too complicated. The reason CO favors aliens is because aliens can get more upgrades in CO then in classic and there aren't any restrictions as far as what upgrades you can combine. A simple fix for that, place the same restrictions that are in classic into CO for alien upgrades. Meaning, you can only get 1 upgrade from each chamber type (no regen+cara or regen/cara/redemp). What this effectively does is makes it so that the strongest alien would have 1 upgrade from each chamber and both hive abilities. It also makes it so that walker fades drop like flies and aliens actually have to defend. Which means marines have to attack, because if aliens defend and ambush (they're supposed to early game) then marines can sit and camp a corner all day and get parasited to death.

Remember that the reason aliens can take more than one upgrade is to make up for not having chambers like they do in NS.

Considering that marines spawn with any equpiment they've already bought, restricting aliens to one upgrade from each tree and no chamber-effects would make them little more than fodder in the late game.

Although I think its a well thoughtout and uuquie idea - I think it's not what Combat needs now.

NS Combat is not NS Classic, and what this idea boils down to is making Combat a clone of Classic - without buildings.

Combat is, I think, very well balanced as of now. (Compared to Classic at least...) There are just a hand full of things (about 3) that I think unbalance Combat. If these problems were to be corrected I think we'd have near perfect balance in Combat.

The changes you suggest completely destroy what Combat is now, and it would make the game a whole lot more predictable.

Combat is fun because a player can do whatever he wants - this suggestion limits that. (or at the very least, puts a timer on it)

This is one of the more creative idea's I've heard - but I can't say I'd be too thrilled to see it in place.