Aliens have always wished they had some means to break seiges as easily as the marines can, but its very out-of-character for the aliens to have a weapon that functions the same way as the marines . So after reading this thread, I thought of a way aliens could attack marine bases while still feeling completely alien and different from the marine attack pattern. All numbers in the idea below are variable and can be changed however necessary for balance:

Hive Bloom
A 2-hive gorge can walk up to a friendly hive and spend a significant amount of res (say 30?) to purchase a Hive-Bloom. This is a single use weapon that replaces the Bile Bomb slot until used (thus requiring 2 active hives to work).

When the Gorge next uses his bile bomb attack, instead of biling, he plants the Hive-Bloom on the ground directly in front of him. (If he is killed before using the Bloom, it is lost.) The Bloom takes a few seconds as a growth period (say 5 seconds) during which Infestation rapidly grows out from it to a set radius. At the end of the growth period, the Bloom dissolves in a shockwave which disables all marine structures in that radius for a short time (say 10 or 15 seconds). Any marines standing in the Bloom radius when it goes off are slowed for a few seconds (probably not as long as the structure disable, say 6 seconds), so they cannot run or shoot as fast. (Think catpack in reverse). The effect is reduced on Heavies, say half duration or something.

After the Bloom effect wears off 10 or 15 seconds later, the remaining Infestation functions just like Infestation spread through normal means, and gives whatever benefits aliens normally get from fighting on DI, and can be burnt away like normal. But it can't be burnt away before the Bloom shockwave.

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And there you go -- alien seige weapon that feels totally in character for them, rather than some bizarre copy of seige cannons that wouldn't make sense for aliens. Marines would have a partial defense against this by being able to shoot the Gorge before he could plant the bloom, and if the Gorge couldn't safely make it to the middle of the marine base to plant it he might have to be satisfied with disabling only half of a marine base by planting it off to the side somewhere safer. Also, since marines can see the growing infestation coming out of the bloom, they can try to avoid being slowed by getting off the infestation before the shockwave triggers. You'd probably want to make the bloom occupy as much space as a chamber, so it couldnt be planted in narrow vents. Alternately you could prevent the bloom from working through walls, and require it to traverse passable space to reach its targets, but I suspect that would weaken it too much.

I find this idea can be used and (like you said) keep the aliens Different from the marines.

My only question is, could this also hurt the buildings or just disable them? It could hurt them like say 25% HP or somthing so it's not destroying everthing. But I suppose this could be overpowered.

If it could damage buildings, gorge rushes would become nightmares, plaguing a marine's dreams. Post traumatic stress disorder of a wave of gorges all planting ###### into the ground that goes boom.

It's cool that you've incorporate diversification of gameplay, as well as a reasonable set of costs and risks associated with this Kero, however:

1) Being slowed sucks more than being eaten, sieges are climaxes and should be among the most intense game points (if included) in the experience ramp. Slowing players is by itself bad game design because it costs more fun quotient than it produces for the other team (arguably unlike devour).

2) Sieges are debatable. I think it was JazzX who said the entire siege mechanic (forcing skulks to ambush marines from a predictable area to stop them from killing a hive) was dumb, although it's kind of evolved into something iconic for NS, so at this point, I might tend to disagree.

I don't follow? Being slowed is annoying, certainly, but only to the extent that something is probably going to attack you before you can run away. And since you're a marine, you can at least shoot back (unlike a slowed skulk, which would really truly suck).


Fair enough. But I tend to find that a feeling of impending doom adds intensity to a fight more often than it takes it away. And since the Bloom doesn't actually deal any damage, your impending doom is far from inevitable. It could still be prevented.

At this point I suspect you may have taken my reference to "seige" to mean "marines seiging an Alien Hive". While the Bloom certainly could be used defensively like that, I was more thinking of the alien ability to attack Marine strongholds than the reverse.

When a Bloom is used to defend against a seige, my expectation is that it won't be worth the cost unless you can use it to shut down the Phase Gate. And in a well planned seige assault, the gate should be far enough away from the hive to make that risky.

the bloom shutting down buildings (and all their bonuses) sounds like a good idea... but slowing marines as the other guy said is terrible... it ust takes fun away, it doesnt really add anything at all.

perhaps the bloom can just do 100 damage to marines in the radius, and shut down all buildings (even com chair) .. meaning communication is lost, passive abilities are lost... etc for a short time.

sure they'd be powerful on marines if gorge's all rushed with blooms... but the buildings really wouldn't take any extra punishment for a rush (at same time) and we all know gorges wouldn't last the (~30 seconds) it takes to plant and explode and effect the buildings... plus if there's 4 gorges, it becomes 1.5 minutes. so more than 1 gorge using the device becomes diminishing returns.

I like the idea... good option for COUNTERING a siege attempt aswell.. shut down a TF and damage the nearby marines... clean up and trash the PG/TF.

Why do people keep bringing this up? Bile bomb is a freaking good seige weapon. All it takes is a pittance of team work, and any marine base is raped.

Isn't this giving to much power to aliens?

I think that should be able burn away the infestation before it blows, so the gorges would have to hide them. This would also give the rines some defence against the bloom.

On the other hand it's probably one of the most dynamic situations in the whole game. Lifeform diversion, gorge energy, potential dcs, RTs for both sides, possible hives going up, building placement, bbomb and its counters, the amount of obses and their energy, the line of sight and hive spotting rolled into a one fight.

Breaking marine fortifications should be a little easier, especially on bigger servers, but I'd like to have the alien hive area sieges decided by constant fighting, not by one successful or failed hive bloom. I wonder if the bloom could be limited to offensive fortification breaking only.

Why? Many sieges are decided by a successful or failed hive growth as it stands, and that seems OK to most people.

The hive growth or death is the result if you ask me. The deciding factors are something like fades doing enough damage, lerk managing the spore, chamber selection, obs energy, res control and timing. Now, give bloom too much of power and it will be the deciding factor almost alone. I'm not saying I'm happy with the presesnt sieges, not at all, but I think they could turn out to be quite an interesting gameplay moment with a little bit of improvement.

I don't know if the bloom could be tweaked to work out somehow, but it might be difficult to make it an effective bunker buster and yet keep it under control in siege defence. If it works on both cases, then its fine by me.

Hmm...

How about this, the bloom would only work where there isn't Dynamic Infestation anymore, Marines could have their own set of problems to overcome trying to build on a place already infested to try a siege, if infestation is more than just a visual but has some impact on the game play.

If we want the Bloom to not be too good at countering seiges, there's a real easy answer: Make it affect all marine structures EXCEPT phase gates (and probably not Com Chairs either, I guess). It still fills the purpose of temporarily crippling a hardened position to give Aliens a window of opportunity for attack, but wouldn't completely ruin the marine ability to reinforce their position by phasing in.

So, suggested numbers for discussion's sake:

--5 seconds growth time, to a radius about 2/3 as wide as a seige cannon
--10 seconds disable on structures except Com Chair and Phase Gates
--3 seconds slow on marines, -50% run speed -25% fire speed
--Costs 25 res to purchase, only usable by Gorge