A theme I've been noticing in the posts in this forum is that currently the Onos is not awe-inspiring enough. The appearance of one isn't striking enough fear into the enemy. This is a fair enough point, because for the game to remain balanced, the marines would need a way to deal with every alien becoming one at the same time.

Well, what if that wasn't possible? I'm not entirely clear on how the mechanics of it would work, but the general idea would be that for every player that becomes an onos, multiple other players would have to give up the option to also become one. Once the maximum number of these creatures is limited to a percentage of your team, you have a little more room for increasing their power and survivability.

The question remains though, how could this limitation be implemented in a meaningful and intuitive fashion? Perhaps multiple gorges need to "build" an onos egg before a player can merge with it? I'm a little stumped on this one, so I'd like to hear some other thoughts on this.

I agree with the onos being both harder to get and a lot stronger. They really should be a lot scarier. Kind of like a zombie or something. You shoot and shoot and they just don't die.

~edit~

Give the onos unique crushing physics and immunity to "regular" (depend on how you want to define that) bullets shot on their armor plating. In otherwords the onos is much more like a tank.

Sounds good.

Here was my ideas on the new onos system:

There could be two forms of the onos: A normal, standard onos that you see in NS, and then a super-onos type creature.

This would have a little more HP and armor, and the physics / armor bonuses. Also, to make it harder to kill, it would take a reduced 10% damage (effectively, one damage level for the marines). It would also have better attacks. However, in order to use this form, you would need to do / have the following:

1. Have a certain number of kills, either team or solo.
2. (using Revenge's idea): A special onos-egg would have to be placed, and a DESIGNATED MEMBER from the team would merge with it, and would have to be an onos BEFORE merging with the egg.
3. The egg itself would cost an additional 85 res or so
4. The new onos would take a long time to hatch.

Comments, suggestions, etc?

the game is pretty much already that way -
some people need to stay skulks to down marine res towers, and some need to gorge res towers and chambers - meaning that only a few players have the ability to become an onos at the most effective time (asap)
Sure at the end of the game when marines are camping all 8 aliens players can onos, but thats fine, cause the game needs end at that point.


only problem is that onos isnt powerful enough and doesnt cost enough res.

You could respond to my above suggestion and say if it was any good, then.

Hmm, well Moving_Target0 the way I would implement that is to make that a new sort of creature altogther. Like a Hive Queen. Give the marines APC, Tanks, Warthogs, Etc. and let this be the bane of it. Two players control it. One "drives" and one "fires".

The alien or the vehicles for rines?

I was refering to the alien "super unit", but yeah vehicles too, sure. The onos could be counter to HA and ground vehicles controlled by one player (use the physics to allow onos to flip those vehicles as well as dealing damage) But bigger marine vehicles like armored tanks and flying assault ships or drop ships should be both be controlled by multiple players. Of course the alien one needs to be an all organic design that follows similar evolutionary schemes as seen in the other Kharaa, otherwise it'll feel out of place.