I was thinking the other day it could make for some interesting game play to have a liquid bacteria orb alien - much like the screenshot below, only the nucleus would be infested and baterial looking.

if someone did a quick edit of this or own concept that would be awesome so it doesn't look as clean and sterile as below (i'd image it would blend in well with the wall infestation)







The idea would be this alien would be completely immune to all weapons, but its weakness would be the flamethrower and grenade launcher, and normal grenades too - anything that is hot enough to evaprote the bacteria inside (heat)and to distort the fluid (explosion).

It would very slowly float, slither or even roll around like a big ball of baterial jelly, a slow but ever approaching terror.
Anything making contact with it would start to take damage, and if anything was to go inside it (marines, turrets, medpacks, buildings, bullets) it would get absorbed by the bacteria, restoring the health of the orb. Perhaps even temporarily increasing the max health.


This would make it very affective as a siege weapon against turret farms or heavly fortified locations, as it would absorb the brunt of the bullets and creating a physical shield for other aliens to hide behind.

It would encourage the marines to work as a team, the flame and grenade units would try to take it out, while the machine gun and shotgun units would try to hold back any other aliens which are trying to take out the flame and grenadiers (encouraging alien team play)


Visually you could do some very amazing things.
For starters all of the watery type effects like reflection and refraction.
you could have optical heat wave effects around it etc.
Not to mention the physical warping of fluid body from interence by bullets and explosions, touching surfaces and buildings, other aliens would mold the shape of it.

Of course being transparent like dirty jelly, when a marine or build, items etc get absorbed, you would be able to see them inside for a while , not a gory/bloody way but in a way that makes them dissolve and dissappear like when people are vaporised in 60's sci fi shows



Actual Abilities?
not sure which order they would be in but it could something like :-

1. create trail
using up adrenaline, the orb leaves behind a trail of filth, from which dynamic infestation starts to emerge.

2. create bacteria
using up a large amount of adrenaline the orb can leave behind a smaller pool of itself, which will stay there for a certain amount of time, damaging anything that touches it - for example you want to attack a res tower, so you leave a pool of bateria behind which would damage the res tower, allowing you to continue to wreak havoc elsewhere. (limited to 1 or 2 pools at a time)

3.other
can't really think of anything that wouldn't be similar other aliens abilities - maybe something to do with changing shape dunno, tentacles?


4. Resitance
making the orb extremely resistant to damage - if blown apart by a grenade launcher, the orb would spread into 10's of little orbs which like magnets would slowly return to a central point, recreating the orb again, unless flame units were to kill the individual parts, perhaps at this point even shotgun units could damage the small orbs.

i'd image pairing up the orb with abilities like silence , so couldn't hear the sloppy entitiy approaching would make it deadly, not to mention being invisible -> a group of marines walking through an area, then suddenly one marine starts float, and everyone realises he's actually started to be absorbed!


Anyone else have some ideas for abilities or other suggestions ?

for some reason the way the alien looks, and the way it attacks, just reminds me of conception. as in a sperm enters the egg, cells start dividing, etc.

maybe you could get the glowies to do that, since they kinda look like sperms anyways.... glowie enters the egg, cells divide, an alien fetus forms, then 9 minutes later a new super alien is born - the FLAYRA

lol

...What?

you've just been absorbed by a bacteroaial orb, you will respawn in 10 seconds.

Bacterial zombie marine!!

Lol this idea is acually something that i would want to see. As for actual gameplay make this a high end alien and its good to go .

very interesting idea i must say.

would like to see it come true, but might be hard to "create" for the dev team i can imagine...

when you mention form distortion of the orb, i think of the tech demo for the the 3.5 UT engine (i think) where they had a "jelly cube" made out of flesh, check it out
with that effect it would be super cool, but again, MUCH to program

Kind of a crazy idea, but crazy enough it might work.

This whole idea reminds me of the Alien Queen topic from the original NS I&S which had the same general idea with a lot cooler abilities suggested...

/me goes to try and find it

actually its pretty much the same as onos, except is up to the job

lol that is crazy, but for some reason i like it. i just don't know how it would fit into the visual theme of the Kharaa.....

couldn't this possibly be a unit under the direct control of the Kharaa 'commander'? i imagine it would be less thrilling to play as on the field level.

i second that it should be formed by a converging mass of glowies, though.

At first glance I didn't really think it was a good idea but after thinking about it your screens don't give it much credit
It does actually sound like a great idea though, but instead of a sphere I'm thinking more of just a sticky blob like 'The Thing' (right movie?). I think as an alien lifeform a spherical alien isn't 'natural'. Spheres are more of a human 'trying to achieve perfection' sort of dealio.
So... perhaps like a semi translucent invested amoebe.

Eh, I don't see why a sphere wouldn't be natural. A sphere is like.. the most efficient shape.
If not a sphere, then something inspired by Fractals ;P

but again, I don't think it would be that great to play as on the field, but perhaps a unit under the control of the alien comm? comm's gotta have something to do...

If someone mods this then I have no problem

I say its not natural because I don't know very many shapes in nature that are perfect spheres. There may be some of course but I think generally most things in nature are governed by chaos, so fractals would work

there are plenty of naturally formed things which are perfectly round also, unless disrupted by another force - planets, the ripples in water etc.

but yeah ameoba type shape would be cool too

really the beginning shape doesn't matter too much, as the shape of the orb thingy would be under constant stress from walls, other aliens, getting hit by bullets and stuff etc - so its normal shape would probably be distorted 1/2 the time

Planets... Haha.
I can't believe something THAT BIG passed me by.
I don't count ripples because they aren't 'naturally occuring' as in growing/developing in nature. They are a reaction (wave) to stimuli.
But yeah, I guess if the shape was affected by its environment bullets/walls/falling a great distance and splattering then it would look decent.
If it IS a sphere I think it should almost bounce as it moves though... like... as it moves its bottom half molds to the floor and the top half sort of half bounces. As it rolls along the floor the back half of its bottom folds up and hardens into the spherical shape of its top and the forward top half folds down and molds to the ground.

I am by no means a concept artist but I hope that helps explain it a little better?

Fresh idea, but i dont like it, it doesnt suit the Kharaa.

bubbles are naturally spherical and if you want inspiration fo a lifeform in that kind of shape then check out gish

So like little bacterial aliens attacking marines structures? sounds nice, but how would the marines destroy them. Unless they have to build like these sound emitting sensors to keep them away.