Sorry if someone else already mentioned this. But for a long time. I have thought that maby. in NS2. the aliens spawn in a standard place for each map. but when you're gorge. and you look at the minimap. there's rooms that are lightly shaded in green or something. not to dark. its transparent. Showing any room where a hive could fit. But there's places where its red. like the marine start. no hives there, places where making hives would be cheap or just nor right. like a little hallway. But in the green you can make hives. like in NS1 there's standard hive locations. but in NS2 you make a hive in the ceiling like you can do on the floor with chambers. but there's still the 3 max. and they have to be spaced out. But since i saw the new infestation video. i thought as soon as you choose ur new hive location. the infestation start the second after. to make it look better.

I am aware that if this was in NS2 some players as alien would keep changing hive locations as soon as one dies. But i guess in that case you would have to wait a certain amount of time before building another. I always wanted this to be in possible. Because in NS1 if you have been playing for sometime. you memorized each hive location. But this new feature would make it so you NEVER know where the hives are until well... you find it. Some people might think this whole idea is stupid. That's fine. I just thought it would be a cool feature.

Also what i had on my mind was MABY there could be new marine and alien structures. And a new resource or something. I don't have any ideas in general about this but i thought that i should mention this so people might think of ideas and post the idea.

Thanks for you're time

At this point in time, this is completely up in the air; and it depends a great deal on what they intend to do with dynamic infestation (aka. D.I.).





With that said, would it be cool to have multiple hive locations. Alien relocations? Oooh yeah. Crazy awesome. Not possible in the original NS because infestations textures were static and dependent on the three fixed locations a mapper decided to place the hive, but made possible by D.I. Who knows? Maybe there will be one stating location for aliens -- and alien start. Maybe there will still be three primary starting locations chosen at random, but then secondary "hive locations" that a mapper can place in room where it could be possible to make a hive. There are so many wonderful possibilities for NS2 with this new capability! Yet, as I said, that capability seems completely tied to what UWE intends for D.I. I for one look forward to the possibility of making a sneaky, unexpected hive set up behind enemy lines, much the the chagrin of my enemy, as much as I would commanding against it. You'd never know where the enemy would show up next -- a true, hard-to-control infestation.

The idea is cool, my only concern is that would people abuse this power by having a hive in marine start and then using to get the whole team into the marines base and ending the game? If they make it that the area has to be infested before a hive can be set up then i suppose that would stop my fear or somthing similar.

i agree but i forgot 2 add something :| there's parts on the map in transparent red where NO hives can be made. like the marine start. or else it is cheap i agree.

phew, now i can sleep at night lol

LOL. If they drop in MS, couldn't the Marines just beacon and dump out shotguns?

i guess they could. but the idea i had meant there are places where a hive can't be build. like MS. but yeah the shotgun thing is true.

Yeah, that was just in response to dropping MS. More ways to randomly have Marines spawn in a Hive location!

Probably red out rooms that are too small and stuff like that. Or rooms that are special already, such as double res. Well, maybe not since it's probably very vulnerable, making another high-risk w/ high-payoff situation like the current Marine relocates.

I thought I read something about marine and alien starts being random (as in, there are certain places that they can have a start, but)
eg. there are hive locations as1-6, and marine locations ms1-6 (these being determined by the mapper); a game could have marine start be at ms2 and hive start at as4, or ms3 and as6, etc (these are determined by the game, with a random factor to it).
if that^ wasn't actually anything I read, and I just imagined it.. well, then..
that's my suggestion!

mapping for NS2 would be a much harder thing to do (in terms of gameplay), but this idea has a potential!

Maybe instead of colors the possible hive locations could be somehow seen on the DI, i.e. something like small lianas or different flora to appear in such places

Cant be ######ed reading the thread, but my response to the thread title is simple;

NO!

This will cause every game to end up moreso the same. In the same way MC is always the first chamber, the aliens will always pick the /best/ hive, which will make games even more similar every time around.

To be honest, i'd be all for having random chambers when you get a hive.

Yeah that's always a problem. The 'best' option almost always becomes the 'only' option.
That's the main reason for the randomised marine/alien-start idea; mix things up a bit, so the last game you played on the same map with the same players, doesn't play the same way as this one.

I really like this idea!

yep, i like it to because its harder for the marines to find it, not the damn "oh only 3 places" "one:checked" "two:checked" "ok its number three"... how BAADDDDD

It seems we are the only ones who understand why choosing a hive location is a terrible idea.

Aliens (if smart) will build hives wherever is most advantageous to them - that will depend on what part of the map marines have chosen to control, and what part aliens have picked.

Aliens will obviously try to get the best spot on the map - but so will marines. One of them will resolve, and the other will have to compromise. The feature is definitely cool and will almost certainly be in the game as I see it.

Also, if the mappers are good, you'll probably have some very close splits between the best room to build a hive.

well i assume if marines allowed a hive to complete right next to their base they DESERVE to lose loll.

While the idea has some potential there are too many problems with it.
For one, a gorge could easilly find a nice room large enough to JUST fit the hive then have only a small entrance in or out. Where would the aliens spawn? Perhaps within a certain radius of the hive... but what if they get stuck behind the hive?
What happens when a gorge finds a spot that marines cannot get to or siege out, perhaps exploiting outside the map and someone WILL most definitely find a way out in NS2.
I think choosing random start hives is still the best solution however I believe a map should be designed large enough to fit more than the maximum amount of hives. For example if the hive max remained 3 in NS2, there might be 4 or 5 hive locations in a map. These hive locations could vary in size and strategic importance, for example a small hive room could be easy to defend while a large hive room could be harder to defend but farther from marine start. It seems right now that finding the starting hive location is just too easy with all the experienced players who know all the short cuts and know what all the sounds/situations mean. It would be nice to make it more of a challenge to discover what locations are hives.

Also, if the aliens were to choose their own hive, how would it be done? Randomly choosing an alien to start as a gorge would be 'okay' and it worked for CS, but it would be frustrating if that alien was new to the game and didn't understand/got frustrated with his team yelling at him about where to place the hive and how to place the hive. He may end up just leaving the game entirely, leaving the aliens without a gorge, a hive or a hope.
A hive location vote would be another option and tie votes could be broken by picking a location randomly of the locations that had tied for a vote. Here though we may have a problem with how fast this process happens as it may either give marines a head start or if the game doesn't start until a hive location is chosen then it may slow games down somewhat.


QFT.

I'd much rather just have a random stop because I can really see the "best spot being the "only" spot thing really happeing

Do dumb gorges deserve to win at NS?

Sorry i just realized i misinterpreted this whole thread.

I originally thought it was about letting aliens choose which of the 3 hives is their starting hive, which is stupid.

Anyway, this idea is also stupid. Why?

Well, i was actually reading a really in depth commander guide (http://ns.desidius.net/comguide/?page=1) last night, and it pointed out some good strategies, game plans, tactics, etc etc etc. Allowing hives to be in more than 3 places would severely disadvantage the marines, as a good commander will always manipulate and force the aliens into hiving at a 'bad hive' or some other strategy.

Read all of that and you will understand why this idea is awful. Its a long read, but read it anyway, it will make you a better commander and even if you dont command, you will be a better marine, as you will understand what the commander is doing more, and why you should listen.

You're saying that, because the commander usually forces aliens into a bad predetermined hive spot, that a commander wouldn't have just as much or more fun forcing aliens into a bad dynamic hive spot?

I rather like the current system, forces players to use different strategies rather than finding one good starting hive and spamming it over and over.

Im saving, letting the aliens hive anywhere, takes a lot away from the strategical side of the marines.

my vote is: great idea!

@radix: word

@dalin: have you actually read the the thread? many times its mentioned 'a room large enough'/'a marked room' so that it will WORK to put a hive there. And many of the things you're worried about, just sound very silly. Haven't you heard that there's gonna be a tutorial? which will cover almost all the stuff you mentioned.

@chiss: you seem to not have realized, that ns2 is going to be a NEW GAME (and not a graphics update to ns1), if you want everything to stay unchanged, then simply play ns1
which i might add is a great game! one of my favs!

Onto my thoughts:
This concept reduces predictability and repetitiveness of ns gameplay.
One hard thing though, would be for marines to keep aliens from making hives.
Like it is now, marines pick one hive, and so do aliens. Later in the game, marines will try to take out 1 of 2 hives, then aliens can rush the locked-down hive, now marines have to split to two front (or pick a front). My point is: when rines are busy trying to take down one hive, the aliens have it VERY easy to set up another. And with multiple spots to choose from it might favor aliens, atleast it does in my head, this is when i say it needs to be playtested.
This can maybe be balanced with hive grow time, delay on hivedrop (say new hive gets taken out, the aliens cant redrop right away), hive drop cost. Or marines could get some advantage from making bases in multiple ms locations (but this breaks the asymmetric gameplay a bit).

Negative, if i was on the head of the production team of NS2, it would be a COMPLETELY different game, it wouldnt even have skulks, fades, lerks, gorges or onos'.

I'm just saying, that from my countless years of RTS experience, this is a bad idea.

And with that, im off to play StarCraft.

Gonna have to agree.

I think that in order to get this idea to work, the mapper would have to put alot of extra work in planning how many hive locations and the desired strategies/movement throughout their level.

There are alot of things that you have to take into consideration....

Imagine you have two hives, in a good location, and then suddenly some random 'reswhorin' gorge decides to drop the hive in a "bad spot" thats just big enough for the hive, and ruins the game for the rest of the aliens.

Not to mention all the extra work a mapper has to go through to map around several possible hive locations to keep it balanced.

I don't want to put people down for suggesting an idea, but if you think about it a little bit, the idea just doesn't work very well, and if you really wanted to make it work, it would just take alot of time and effort on the devs/mappers.

Well said good sir, the phrase all the extra work a mapper has to go through to map around several possible hive locations to keep it balanced. summed it up.

I've always wondered about that point: "More work for the mapper"

Which maps were arguably the least work for a mapper in NS1? The Combat maps? The custom timed siege maps?

Its strange, with all the ideas being thrown around these forums, even if you only consider the stuff we heard from the devs, such as welding doors or more than one type of resource ... well, NS2 maps are just going to have more to consider in them than NS1 maps did. *shrug* Does that mean it will be better or worse for the game? In My Humble Opinion, more stuff happening in a map, changing things up, so matches don't feel like they are giving us deja vu is far more interesting of a game because they require teams to learn adaptive strategies and tactics rather than the cookie cutter variety where our respective skills playing against each other are the only variable.

good point CanadianWolverine

to you opposed to the idea:
what do you propose to reduce the incredible repetitiveness of ns?
or is it just me?
marines starting at the exact same location everytime, even with the occasional reloc, the beacon remains static and discourages relocs.
ok, aliens have 1/3, but after 1 year, i think its pretty repetitive, cos its the same predetermined spots, and theres 3 - for 3 hives.
now when the game starts, both teams pick one empty hive loc, same thing every game, (thank god for the occasional sg/gorge rush and funmaps)
so what the idea does is basically add hivelocations, so you cant "grasp them all with one hand", which in my head leads to more dynamic and varied gameplay
again, what do you propose to reduce the repetitiveness?

Hmm, I could see something between the present and the total freedom being interesting. There are about 3 limited hive locations just as nowadays, each can support one hive. On the other hand you could drop the hive anywhere in the area. Basically that means you could for example pick one spot outside the best siege range while the location might still be easier to rush than the siege range positioning.

I can see two major setbacks though: More work for the mappers and newbies dropping the hive in some 'stupid' location.

The total freedom isn't that much of a good thing imho. It removes practically the whole element of map control when it comes to alien tech. It might work if the resoucres were given more importance in map control ála starcraft, but at that point I'd rather get a single upgrading hive than the 3 hives getting built next to each other.


Basically there are about 5 balanced enough maps for NS. The rest have some severe layout issues/hive locations that can be abused heavily. I'd say Tanith, Veil and Orbital have 3 even somewhat balanced hives and even they have got one hive clearly weaker than the others. If you add even more possible hive locations, it increases the balancing needed for the map.

i never wanted "anywhere", just more than 3, or something different from todays ways
and very true, there will be balance issues, the way were thinking about it now, in the ns1 perspective, maybe this can be solved somehow, this is what the idea thread is for...

will ns2 be multi-planar? might be interesting...MANY possibilities...
maybe aliens can grow some sort of siege suppressing infestation?
how about making maps larger for ns2? but adjusting the balance so the teams still play even.
not making the whole map one static and fully accessible volume, but have some sections not available right away. that require some different conditions to be met to access. inspiration from dig_siege?

I think a standard NS map would be the hardest, seige maps look like a lot of copy/paste work. NS maps require a lot of balance, which is why we've seen like 5-10 versions of certain maps.

I think two resources could be good, but i would like to emphasise that i dont want it to be necessary to have lots of both. I think it could be a good strategical thing, to go for one type of resource, to buy certain things that cost mainly that resource. Or you could go the other way around, or mix it up a bit. Or maybe one resource type would be worth more (+2 a tick), and therefor would be a more important and faught over node.







Now i somewhat agree that 4 hive locations would have to be good, but you would have to do it well. Simply adding another hive location, would make it too easy for aliens, theyd have too much choice when it came to what to do, and marines would have trouble preventing that second hive going up.

Also, there is nothing wrong with the current way it works with 3 hives.

Anyway, a way you could make 4 or more hives work, is that aliens need dynamic infestation to infest a hive location before they can build there, so it takes more preparation...? Therefor making it a little harder to hive, but on the flip side, its easier to hive because you have more choice.

This idea sounds really interesting, I believe this would add to the power of aliens but also add some problems to maps. Maybe if the maps have like 5 locations where you can build a hive, but you can only use 3?