Before someone says "OMG COMBUT SUKZZZ pR0S PLEAY NS n00|3", don't.

Combat as it stands is hugely alien baised and is exceedingly frustrating to play as marines.

However, it's fine for most pubs because of the large skill imbalances found on public servers.

But on competetive play, (the last match of combat I can remember is over a year ago I think back in UGL) marines never stand a chance.

The problems I can think off the top of my head with competetive combat:

- Aliens have upper hand at start, they just camp in hive room. Aliens in hive room have an advantage over basic marines. The +5 armor does help with this though.

- You can TK someone stealing any exp from the other team.

- Focus owns, spending a point on a welder is not practical. Furthermore welding mid combat is often sucidal.

- HA is awful because it is so slow. By the time you hit the hive, die, and respawn, the hive can easily be re-healed in that time by one gorge. On top of this, if the aliens are smart they will just wreck the CC if they know the HA are more than halfway to the hive. In regular NS, the problem of slow heavies are phase gates.

- Because HA sucks, the only other choice is JP. JP is an excellent choice regardless, because it can cover the map, attack and defend, and put constant pressure on the hive.

- Webs and Xeno are godlike in NS. Normally the best abilities in the game, they can come at lv. 5 and lv. 3, respectively. These two abilities alone are the biggest problem in combat, and guarentee that marines cannot win.

- Late game marine tech doesn't even compare to late game alien tech in combat.

- The "accessory" tree for marines is utterly worthless, save resupply and perhaps a welder marine.

What other problems are there in combat? Did I miss any? And feel free to post ideas for possible solutions too.

My main problem with small organized combat is the team that gets the first few kills will win the game 90% of the time. It's still possible to kill the other team, but the first team to shotguns or leap will usually be able to use that to tech up much faster than the other team. The early lead turns into a huge gap and one team gets stuck with vanilla units against full upgrades. Maybe if in an organized game each team started with a few upgrades it would be more interesting, since there is more parity when dealing with mid-upper tier tech.

My other problem is that people that do intangibles (such as parasiting, leading the charge and damaging the enemy so the other people can kill them, guarding base, etc) can end up screwed, while someone hiding in a vent could level up quickly. A team could conceivably run a strat around that, keeping one person alive to level up quickly and exploit the inevitable advantage. Sharing experience amongst all team members, or basing it off damage done or something would help solve these issues and focus the game more on teamplay.

Hmm ...

This aint a bad idea...

Balancing a few of these things could also make combat so much more enjoyable. Yes i love NS waaaay better, but if i have little time i love playing a good game of CO.

Maybe doing things like nerfing spores and xeno and webs will increase co's playability, and might just make a co league possible...

Good idea m8.

Armor is USELESS in combat, you lose it almost instantly, combine that with every alien having focus and you are dead. Marines need auto weld, self-weld, or some way to keep armor up.

need to restrict the amount of upgrades from the same tree with higher lifeforms, or atleast with onos / fade

self welding would be nifty also.

plus some kind of change with redempt would nice, aka it wouldnt go off if your too close to the hive. Not much an issue, just a thought on combat in general ..

Balance it for competitive play? :o

'COMPETITIVE' play should be left to the game mode that requires tactics and strategy. As said before, the team with early kills will win 95% of the time. Combat is simply not viable as a competitive game.

However, to balance it, the hive 3 abilities need to be pushed back in the tree somehow, or something else drastic. Hive 3 abilities are intended to END THE GAME in NS. Leap is also a very big problem since it comes at hive 2 in NS, 30 seconds in combat. Skulks that are easier to kill are to make up for the fades and such in NS, but in CO, skulks are equal or greater than marines early on.

The largest imbalance is in the distribution of power, especially higher lifeforms. Marines rely on them all being upgraded with equal powerboosts. A single jetpacker can't own entire teams (If they're good).

A single fade will never die and will rack up kills like there's no tomorrow.

fixed hitboxes

http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index....showtopic=90750

welcome to 3 months ago.

The problem with Xeno isn't that it's such a powerful weapon--its really not. The problem is just that once you start using xeno, the other team gets no experience off of you. Even if you only manage to kill 1 marine for every 2 xenos you pull off, you are still slowly gaining experience, and the poor marines who have to fight you gain no benefit when you die.


You have the same problem with higher lifeforms in CO (especially with redempt). In NS, if an Onos rushes marine spawn, kills one LA marine, and gets gunned down by the rest of the team, he's just wasted a huge quantity of res--the marine team gains substantial benefit from having focused all of their manpower on one enemy. In CO mode, if that Onos rushes marine spawn, kills one LA, and dies, he comes out even--and if he can kill two LAs, he comes out ahead. The problem only gets worse with redemption, where an Onos can now rush, kill one LA, redempt--and he has gained exp, while denying any benefit whatsoever to the marines.



There is the additional problem that CO aliens in general are more powerful than NS aliens, while CO marines tend to be weaker than NS marines. At level 10, a stomp onos will have 4 upgrades, instead of the 2-3 he would have in NS. A Fade will have 5. Meanwhile, a level 10 marine has to pick and choose between his wide variety of upgrades, which he would probably have ALL of in NS. Do you get a welder? Do you get those extra weapons upgrades? Do you bother buying an HMG? How about maxing out armor? MotionTracking? Pick and choose what you like, but the end result will be a weaker marine than a late-game NS marine, facing stuff more devastating than anything NS marines run into.

The problem is that the appearance of different traits isn't balanced in Co.

One shotgun can own 6 skulks, but one fade could fight 6 shotgunners off the hive. Fades reach a hive two level very quickly, but in ns you need a team of proto marines to deal with one or two fades that powerful. But the time all marines have proto tech, all the aliens are hive 3 fades. What was done was the alien and marine tech trees were put side by side. The problem is that they were never meant to be side to side, but staggered. Full marine tech can not deal with full alien tech, but co was balanced with a belief in this.

i think combat would be alot better if when u died, you lost all your exp and had to gain it back.

BUT when someone buys an upgrade, thats non-lifeform/weapon they buy it for the WHOLE TEAM and when the guy who bought it dies the WHOLE TEAM loses that upgrade.

sounds radically different, but it would encourage more teamwork imo

The only way to have a fair competitive game in combat would be to force the aliens to the classic tech tree just as the marines are. How this would be done Im not sure, but a amxx plugin could easily modify the game to balance. Question is would the league adopt it.

Vote in this poll and throw your 3 cents in.

Ok, well I posted in Larry's thread and should have probably put this here:

"Is competitive combat any different than it used to be? I only played a couple of combat scrims back when it came out, and it was entirely stupid. Both teams camped hard for over half the round until one person invariably made a mistake at which time their team got crushed quickly due to level 1s spawning in versus level 4 or higher leaping skulks or shotties."

Also, I read JazzX's suggestion thread and it's totally missing the point. Combat isn't not-fun because of marine structures and xeno/web, it's not fun because good players can dominate everyone else when given just a tiny edge. The first kill practically decides the game.

Everyone complains the aliens are to strong and only have to defend their hive to win. There's 2 rounds to every match so let's say the match winds up a tie.

Why not award 1 bonus point to the aliens IF they are successful in destroying the marine base before time expires? I'd think there is much less chance BOTH teams would be able to accomplish that, and therefore the tie is broken.

Competitively this should be enough to alter strategies significantly, and would not require any modifications to the game itself. Yeah, I like this idea .... ... ... .

Co is actually quite fun when played for fun, with plugins and other things enhancing the experience. However, it was never meant to be competitive, it's just not right.

Fades are by far the worst enemies to deal with in CO. Acid rocket + focus = dead marine team.

10 points altogether
--------------------
3 points on Fade
3 points on Acid Rocket
2 Points on Focus
2 Points left, preferably Adrenaline to deal with Acid Rocket drain and something else

What the Fade does is sit back as Acid Rocket the marine's armor to 0, and then swoops in and Focus's the entire marine team. Well there goes 6 good men. He doesnt have to do it all at once either.

Fade blinks in, kills one, runs and heals. Comes back, kills 1 or 2, run and heals. Comes back, kills 1 or 2, runs and heals. Comes back and finishes off the train, runs and heals. Fades upset me so much because that is all they are good for is hitting and running. They're the biggest cowards in the game. They might say "OMG J00 JU$7 C4N7 K1LL M3 LOLROFL".

Shut up. Lets take the fully upgraded Fade and pit them against a Fully upgraded marine. Jetpack? No, Fade shoots it down with Acid Rocket and then Blinks and Swipes. Whoop-dee-doo. HA? Fade sits back and Acid Rocket's the HA'a Armor to 0, therefor making it a slow-moving target. Focus, and its done. Vanilla marine? Bah! Useless matchup. Fade wins always, good game. The perfect Solo unit that doesnt need any backup to stand toe to toe with marines of all varieties.

It's guerilla tactics, and it's how the majority of the alien team is supposed to work. It is not "cowardly", that's your way of rationalizing why getting destroyed by fades is acceptable. While co pubnub focus fades are indeed incredibly annoying at times (because I know the same player in ns would probably be lmg'd down playing like they do in co), it's simply the way the game works right now.

Earlier focus does seem a bit scary, but on the other hand its focus+leap that is really dangerous, so with 2 point leap that could maybe work out.

I actaly sat down one day, and wrote up an idea that should help competive combat. It forces aliens to act more like regular NS. But it encourages marine rushes, since aliens no longer gain exp from kills, but from time now.
Here

Hive 3 weapons and Onos need to be disabled. Also disable GLs--play with this for a little and see if it's balanced. I'd think that it would still be a little alien biased...

Why not mod Combat, remove the Hive and CC and make it command point based... ie there are X res nodes on the map and you get Y points per minute while you hold a node, whoever has more points wins...

COMBAT:

Currently it isnt enjoyable. It was designed as a "practice" for classic, a way of introducing new players to the game.

That isnt what is happening tho! Skulking skills have halved on average through the community to say the least.

People are learning to just cloak/focus/xeno/etc and it loses appeal from the lame players.

I think it NEEDS to be more aimed at people learning the basic skills. e.g. low upgraded marine, 1 upgrade fade, low upgrade sg etc. Skulks should not be roaming around with all 3 SC upgrades and just getting easy boring frags. It puts the competative players off and doesnt help the newer players develope properly.


What I would love to see happen is:

For a start! Half the number of levels. 5 levels.. soo, fade with only 2 upgrades, onos with 1 upgrade, low upgraded heavy weapon marines or high upgraded light weapon marines. This would make people learn to use their own ability and be less dependant on upgrades. You wouldnt see as many onos' or fades and skulks with every upgrade under the sun. Less mine spam and GL spam, things that don't require the main skills of aiming/movement/quick thinking that combat SHOULD be aimed at and are more fun!

Secondly: aliens: only allow one upgrade from each chamber! So people can't cloak focus etc and slowly learn the more beneficial upgrades for combat as alien. It would be a closer game to ns_ and im sure alien skills would improve.

Make jetpacks/HA available on armour 1 but keep the cost of 2 res.. this would allow people to still jetpack/HA shotgun but without resupply making them much weaker, as people always want to practice jetpack movement with shotguns (being it a fair bit harder to keep accuracy when moving at a higher speed)

These changes wouldnt effect the balance greatly but they would stop so many of the things that make combat boring.. like super sensory chamber aliens.

Nothing should be disabled as people need to learn how to use things and how they work. But hopefully it would force people out of the habbits of using the "boring upgrades".

this would also stop the inbalance of late game alien tech being insanly strong with carra/gestate/cele onos or whatever.

1 thing to help with balance is a slow cc regen rate, similar to the hives. Just to take away the NEED for marines to buy welders.

• Limit alien upgrades to one per chamber.
• 2nd and 3rd hive abilites will cost aliens 2 points each.
• Only 2 of the 3 higher lifeforms allowed per round (lerk, fade, onos).
• 4v4 format on smaller combat maps only e.g. pulse, faceoff, core etc.

I was just thinking: Mines. Usually on a pub combat server, I'll never get mines because I rarely die. There are tons of marines who suck really hard though and die and get to plant mines all over the base. What about suiciding (sewer in co_daimos, that long elevator drop in co_daimos...) and teamkilling?

Guys, try to make the ideas quick and easy to implement. Developing new game modes (romano mode) is cool but honestly you may as well as make another game.


Think of ways to balance combat is the fewest changes possible to make it work for competetive play, that would be easy to use, and would balance out the game.

The objective, in my eyes, would be to make it so marines can have a good strong start at attacking the aliens hive, and aliens get great tech as the game goes on but marines level up evenly enough to continually put pressure on aliens. More skilled team should win.


I would suggest:

- Remove 3rd hive abilities
- Hive 2 abilities cost 2 points (gorges, admittedly, would lose a ton of their fun if they lost webs, but webs are too strong... perhaps make bile bomb deal 3x as much in CO, so they are basically are CC killers)
- Make the CC electrified, so marines do not have to worry about defending it in early game, but later game the electricity wouldn't do jack against fades/onos, CC kills do not give exp to marines
- Attacking the CC yeilds no exp for aliens; attacking the hive still gives marines exp
- Make the side tech tree for marines useful by making "combo" packs you get with an upgrade point
-- Welder + Nades
-- Scan + Catpacks
-- MT + Mines
- Marines can level up to lv. 12 to compensate for the fact that aliens have better end game tech, yet to reach lv. 12 would require many alien kills to balance out this "out-teching" factor
- Aliens can only get 2 upgrades from any given chamber (this will stop the redempting onos of doom, because this means it would lose carapace or regen, it would stop a lot of things, and add some importance to which upgrades a player chooses)
- Turn grenades in napalm nades, so they do damage over time to an area, and so nades wouldn't suck


This would be one minor patch, and then the next patch would easily fix remaining issues because this minor patch would reveal any (if any) points where aliens are still too strong.


These changes also solve all the major problems I can think of; webs, xeno, super onos who can't die, certain useless marine tech, making marines stronger late game, allowing rines to attack freely without worrying about CC, time limit also means marines must attack or lose.

The above changes make the game set, and actually ready.

combat sucks pros play ns

romano's combat mod wasn't exactly like nada's idea, it was more like that one mode in ut2k4 where you capture ndoes then you cna hit the base, nodes were RTs and the base was the hive or cc, you had to have them all capped then you could hit the hive/node/whatever and you got points for capping

Get rid of the CC.
Remove the third hive abilities.
Limit to one onos.
Allow marines 3 - 4 seconds of spawn invulnerability and the ability to shuffle points (hambone mode!).

A flexible marine team devoted solely to playing offense.. At best it will represent a well resourced marine team going up against a two hive alien team at midgame of real ns. At worst there will just be fades camping marine start with no CC to end the thing. Maybe not the best idea.

Competitive combat plugin created:

We have a Metamod plugin created to limit aliens abilities in the following respects:

• Alien players are limited to one upgrade per chamber.
• 2nd and 3rd hive abilities will each cost 2 points.
• Only 2 of the 3 higher lifeforms may exist in any game (lerk and fade, lerk and onos, fade and onos).
• This plugin was designed for 4v4 format, and will only work with mp_tournament enabled.

Thanks to Zunni and Puzl for their input on how best to balance combat for competitive play. Zunni and Nem are contemplating how to best playtest this.

Stay tuned for more .... ... .. .

Combat sucks. Just FYI so you all know why you're not enjoying this game expirience.

Enjoy the suck mode!

Combat is good for shotty practice...yep...that's about it.

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