At the absolute earliest, probably not until after the conclusion of season 4. But at the moment there is no set date/goal.
The process will likely be like the 2nd iteration - a beta mod will be made and played on for a couple of weeks, and if people like it, we can push it into the main mod.
If you increase cyst maturation time, does this also mean cyst build time goes up again? One of the best recent changes that I have enjoyed is that cysts build a lot faster now than in vanilla, meaning I spend less time waiting for my little shits to grow. I just hope that build time and maturation time completely independent from each other.
I am pretty sure the previous change that decreased cyst mature time also, for some reason, made the infestation that a cyst makes come out faster. Basically I noticed a significant decrease in the amount of time between placing a cyst, and it having infestation generate from it.
Marine sprint: if you really think that Marine VS Skulk engagement is broken (I'm not) u can try this:
1) Decrease Marine sprint only with LMG for a bit (for example by 0.25 as Golden offered or slightly more)
2) Deasable the ability to switch the weapons while sprint.
Then marines steel will be able to move across the map with old sprint speed using a pistol, but he need go to step and switch weapon for fighting.
I am opposed to sprint removing.
Gas: I'm agree with XxSephiroth98xX we can halve its area and add the corresponding effect even after alien breaked away from gas. I think 5 seconds is optimal.
Cluster: If we conclude it's require a buff - add a simple burn effect for a 3-5 second without inflicting dps or making low dps (it must turn off hydra and whips, Shift, Crag and Shade abilities for a while)
A random idea: Can we include a motion truck circle effect for granaded aliens? It will produce nades more usefull. 6-8 seconds.
GL: agree with Golden.
About a FT secondary weapon - I think it's a bad idea. Agree with RioS: it's really powerfull if covered. Using it demand specific conditions, but give actual advantage.
Exo: Just try only to reduce they costs and teams will start use them. Then we can find out its issues if they exist.
About a babblers. Give them structural damage? Gorge could use them until the bilebomb or along with it.
Struggle with the SG monopoly is a good thought I think. This theme require a separate discussion...
Btw, marine desire to maximize upgrades is reasonable and can not be questioned. The thought that marines will try to keep late game without ArmsLab upgrades is absurd. But I think that marines relies on the brute force once too often. Is this possible to slighty increase the upgrades research time?20s/30s/40s increment would be nice. Then marines have to utilize other things while upgrade researching.
Sprint during combat is not a problem. Sprint causes issues because marines can cross the map too quickly, resulting in repeated pressure that aliens sometimes struggle to deal with.
I think everyone is missing a huge part of this idea. The FT would be scaled back in both damage and ammo capacity if it were to be moved to the secondary weapon slot. You would also have to deal with some amount of weapon switch time, probably similar to pulling out primary weapons.
I don't think this suggestion is very viable. Upgrade timings are in a pretty good spot with regards to lifeform timings and costs.
One commander QoL change I'd love to see from CompMod or NS2+ is an improvement in the way meds & ammo drop. It's annoying the number of times I've had a marine die after a medpack drops onto a mesh in the ceiling above them.
(cross-posted in the NS2+ thread on the official forums)
Just saying it will be hard to balance the game for both insane and low skilled teams.
But to say something I think sg monopoly is sad and giving commander more to do is a good idea.
So I suggest the following
Sg cost increase to 30 res
No secondary FT/GL dinamorpheus marines
GL demoman abilities and no luckyshot bs
Nrv Gas umbra mechanics sound awesome
Nerf umbra onos steam roll by increasing umbra cost and reducing its duration but make it reduce incoming damage by 40% (explained in the following)
Now to actually affect shotgun monopoly significant cost increase isn't enough. Bringing in the hmg as a must with an ability to only be blocked by umbra 10% and have a clip of 60 but be a tres drop of 30 res with maximum of 2 on the field.also give it 10% more damage than af with same up affects.
Give alien pve abilities more punch but nerf the default ones
I think you're missing the part where the damage of the FT is not what people have said will be the problem. The Damage has never been a problem on a FT.
The problem comes when you make a marine a one man army for clearing rooms of PvE, or give two marines the ability to clean a room of PvE in considerably less time. The FT will cause all structures to stop working, switch to a shotgun and that's a dead whip, crag & RT.
In large team fights you gain the adrenaline decrease on all aliens who are hit and then affected by the DoT.
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As for the rest of the changes. I agree that Exos suck and need something to become more viable in Comp, even if it's 1 out of 10 games.
Allow welders to be bought as an option instead of the fist, maybe have it a choice or make it 3pres like a normal welder.
Increase their "boost" duration and allow it to work in all movement directions, this will make them much more effective in combat or when retreating they become much less of a target.
Regen is good on lifeforms sure, but if it goes back to being useless everyone will just use carapace again. There is always going to be a better all round option. Unless one helps you counter one marine tech path over the other. Like Cara should if there are w3 shotguns, but lifeforms other than onos and hit-n-run most of the time late game and in those situations regen that isn't terrible is better.
Umbra has been biomass 4 for ages, why is it now appearing too soon? If it's a case of it considerably increasing alien survivability maybe umbra itself should be lowered in % if the existing changes to it haven't worked.
GLs should be primarily anti-structure, so their player damage should be lowered.
Decreasing marine sprint (or removing it as others have suggested) seems to be along the lines of. "Hey, marines that play well without PGs, we're forcing this tech path on you"
While everything else has been in attempt of increasing the viability of other strategies.
Removing or changing sprint changes the game massively.
Id like to see removal of the no pres for 60s if you jump in the hive/cc it's annoying to be denied pres for jumping in if your comm died and something had to be done.
Not sure if allowing commanders to gain pres while in chair/hive is fair. The marine comm pres will be of considerably more importance than the alien due to the ability to drop shotguns etc, sure the alien comm might be able to go onos lategame but you then need to switch around your players for someone to take over and there's a fair amount of comms that don't play field.
The FT debuffs will likely be adjusted as well if it becomes a secondary weapon. Currently it 100% disables everything, which is quite ... silly sometimes (especially disabling hive healing). There are a few ideas to be tried- only reduce structure effectiveness by 50%, OR apply a mortal strike type healing debuff to anything that's burning for instance.
Regarding the 60s no-pres timer on the hive, it's primary function is to deny the "musical chairs" alien commander where you essentially have 6 field players and who ever happens to be near the hive can hop in and research or drop whatever needs to be done. In the words of Golden, this method is the "half assed" version of the alien comm (well, more-so than the current iteration of the alien comm). The alien commander is still something of a heavily debated topic... I have not heard any particularly elegant solutions for it yet.
What exactly is the problem with a "half-assed" alien commander? NS2 is supposed to be an asymetrical RTS. So the fact that one team has five field players, and the other five-and-a-half, doesn't seem like a problem to me, especially if it helps solve balancing issues.
At the very least explain why "half-assed" commanding is detrimental to balance. Because, forgive me if I'm mistaken, but it seems to me that the dismissal of those particular suggestions are based on some arbitrary vision you guys have, rather than actually adjusting balance. And I think you should re-focus on the latter.
There's fear and speculation (some say evidence) that an alien field comm would mean tres banks up and PvE is then spammed.
IMO there are fixes for that like increased expense of PvE, or even a flip on the current pres penalty that introduces tres penalty for the first 18 seconds there is no commander in the hive. It would be complex but it could be an interesting experiment. Unfortunately the time for experimentation is not really suitable for this balance mod until perhaps between seasons.
Oh, and let me add this. Any silver league sc2 player knows this, but still. Any resources you spend on static defenses, is resources you don't spend on economy or technology. Resources you float is time you delay eco and tech. Having "half-assed" commanding doesn't change these facts. If you let your tres bank up, you're effectively neglecting your expansion and your tech rate.
So even if you concede the point that aliens will spam PvE (something they could regardless if they wanted to btw), they still suffer the same disadvantages.
Sorry, I did not mean to sound dismissive of the 'pseudo 6th field player" version of the alien commander. That is still on the table, but nothing has been really clearly decided yet. Everyone seems to have a different idea for how the alien commander should work and there is very little agreement from what I see..
We are also sorely lacking on commander feedback, if any commanders out there could do a short writeup on the alien comm and their views on it, it would be very helpful.
Some of my thoughts coming from a comm POV. Alien commander has always been a little boring. Im not saying that we should scrap out alien comm entirely but if thats what people want im fine with it also. But i do have some ideas that may make it a lot more engaging.
1) UPGRADEBLE DRIFTERS
What I mean by this whatever hive upgrades (crag,shift,shade) you unlock second tier abilities. By this i mean more AWESOME DRIFTERS. For example lets say you go crag hive first. The drifters will then have second abilities, Like more armor or regen. Once given these upgrades drifters will become even more used by the comm because then they can do even more scouting with or have them in more fights. Lets say you go shade hive first. You can get invis drifters but as a draw back they can only invis when they are not moving. Or you go shift hive first then you could upgrade your drifter to have a bit more speed. ALSO DRIFTERS SHOULD BE ABLE TO RUN AWAY IF THEY ARE UNDER ATTACK (idk if they did in the past but they did why was it removed?)
If something like this were to be added i think the cost of 10 TRES would be sufficient to upgrade the drifter and a way to balance it a drifter can only have one upgrade, that way if something like this were to be added the drifters wouldnt be way overpowered. And the drifters current abilities like enzyme and mucous MAY need to be nerfed as well, dont know for certain on that. I think this would be a very nice addition to alien comm because hey WHO DOESNT HATE LOSING DRIFTERS?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?
2) COMMANDER PRES
I personally think that the alien comm should start with 5pres and the 60 res collection after leaving hive should be removed. And the alien comm should never gain pres while inside the hive. With the starting of 5 pres and the removing of the timer this would let the alien comms to come outside the chair more often and letting them gain some pres on the side so they can gorge or whatever. Because with the removing of eggs it really does suck not being able to gorge if im comm. And with this being added it does come with drawbacks because if the comm is OUT of the chair TRES does build up and doesnt get used on tech and lets say a harvestor gets decysted he has to go back to the chair and recyst. So with the addition i think it would balance itself out.
These are just some ideas ive come up with for fixing up alien comm. Please leave feedback id also like to know what you guys think xD
EDIT: Yes i do know that the commanders are allowed to hop out the hive whenever but with this addition it would make them more of a player rather than a comm xD
On Tico's suggestion. I like the idea of upgradable drifters. I'd just suggest that you don't limit the upgrades to the specific hives. And that you perhaps upgrade drifters individually, opposed to like a global upgrade for all drifters. That way, you can still get invisible drifters on crag hive etc. but they become far more costly to replace.
I think returning pRes to the khamm can only open up more options for the alien team, however some things need to be addressed that come as baggage to such a change.
If we decide to implement, the big problems I think that need to be addressed are:
1. Economy balancing around lack of drifter purchases.
a. You will see 3 chambers ASAP nearly every single time.
b. Faster biomass 3.
c. Faster bilebomb
2. Mid game balance in the event khamm saves for advanced life form.
a. If the khamm chooses to play nearly like a field player, and saves for a lerk/fade, what does that mean mid game?
I think it will result in a stronger early game for the aliens, which is arguably necessary. We'll have more gorge tunnels, faster built harvesters, and potentially early game field heals. OR it could result in a commander lerk on defensive pushes. We can leave it up to the teams to determine the meta and balance that later. These are just my immediate concerns.
Or make khamm full time more engaging: Un-tie the support structures (crag, shift, shade) special abilities from a hive, and make them upgradeable options. Regardless of hive, I can eventually unlock crag heals, echo, and inking. Make crag passive heals less, and it's "power heal mode" slightly stronger, so it becomes more of a demanding and situational tool. Increase the cooldown on ink to avoid overpoweredness. Allow upgrades to drifters like increased movement speed and increased build speed. Maybe an "invis when stationary" upgrade.
If you make it so the initial comm has 0 pres, then that's less likely to make him jump out as it's going to take forever to get any worthy pres if being in hive/chair doesn't allow you to gain pres. Once lifeforms are up I could see it happening though.
Maybe have it so you gain less pres for a period after being in the hive? Say if in the hive for 15s+ once you get out you have 15-30s of 50% pres income? It still allows people to jump in and drop IPs or upgrades, but the main commander becomes less of a 6th field player.
What Tico suggests is a good idea in my head. I think an invisibility (when stationary) upgrade to drifters that works on an individual basis would be a useful tool to the alien team. At the cost of 5 res to upgrade, you have a 13 TRES mini observatory. Bumping/scanning them reveals them, like they used to be many builds ago. They can be used for scouting for the alien team, while at the same time, semi costly given if they're found, and destroyed, it creates a tres sink. An additional drawback, to this could be removing the enzyme/mucous/hallucination ability from the drifter if this upgrade is chosen. So it remains SOLELY a mobile mini observatory.
I don't really think the commander going Lerk or Fade was very good gameplay.
Sure, it was probably the strongest way to command as aliens .. but having an extra Fade or Lerk out on top of the normal lifeforms is something that can be abused pretty hard. 3 Lerks for example with one basically that can be considered "throw away". Can be a lot more impactful and push the Marines back further than they the aliens should be able to.
As with 3 fades without the penalty of not having an Onos.. I don't think it would very good for gameplay.
Well if the comms start from 0 pres then with 3 harvesters it will take alien comm about 7 minutes to get lerk res. With 4 harvesters it´s 5 minutes for the alien comm to get the lerk res. Also building up the 3 rts will take probably close to 1 minute and the comm needs to be out of the hive the whole time he gathers the res. Don´t really see that as overpowered. Mostly I bet we would see more of hive gorges.
soo we are really really trying to force the Alien com on the field? Is that the thing we try to accomplish for better gameplay?
Im sorry but i dont see how this Gamechange will improve the Gaming exprience for everyone, it might just cause balance issues or whatnot. And having the commander to be a gorge isnt what should be the goal of a new balance mod.
And if we really try to enforce this, another ress biting skulk? Or another Lerk Defending rts? Another gorge able to Bilebomb the arc pushes?
On Maps like Tram,jambi, Where Marines are forced to Pressure or lose cause of the Easy RTs Aliens get we give them more defensive power?
I think that an Alien Fieldplayer Com that gains ress is a really hard decision to do, and he can already help Defend RTs as a skulk, he isnt supposed to be a strong Lifeform!
If you are really concerned about the "ip drop then getting no rezz" after a baserush.. lower the timer to 30 secs instead.
Keep in mind. People who advocate the commander res, are not suggesting that the commander gets the lifeforms with the same timings that the rest of the field players do. We have an endless array of tools to tweak the timing of when a commander can get lifeforms to balance that shit.
As MuteD said. It would take 7 minutes of out-time, to afford a lerk on 3 rts. In other words, it's not going to happen, except in a very late game situation.
I for one, am not trying to push a "half-assed" commander, as rant put it earlier. I just want the focus to be balance. I do not care wether that means the half-assed commanding is scrapped or implemented, as long as the decision is based on improving balance.
Personally I lean towards the side, that it would improve overall balance. Perhaps tweaks would have to be made in the future to avoid certain timings, but we have the tools to easily do so without affecting anything else in the game.
Reintroduce butt jumping. It makes skulks faster and harder to hit. And it is just plain fun! Skulks are resbiting machines now as soon as the lerks come out.
^
I threw this idea around in a discussion a while ago. Starting the comm at 10 or 8 p-res allows the comm to gorge... but doesn't automatically give you the p-res for gorge PvE.
