Would love to see a NS1 heavy armor variant in NS2 as well. Anyway, I like most of the changes suggested.

As for arcs, how about just removing the speed penalty on infestation entirely?

Exos:
Replace them with the Heavy Armor from the NS Classic mod.
make him still vulernable to bilebomb.
(cause this solves the immobility issue gives a lot armor can take regular wepons with a little bit speed penaltiy in movment)

i know its a big change but to be honest the issues about the exos are:
his immobility
his vulernability from skulks.
cant use PGs.


Then Fade Stab:
There must be a reason to leave it as a Hive 3 Tech.
There are multiple possiblitys:
1) Replace it with Focus from the NS1 mod that is a 2 Swipe kill abtility but the attack rate is slower.
2) Upgrade the Regular Swipe somehow like with Metabolize and adv. Meta.
3) Let it automatical Trigger when you Pressed Mouse1 while you where still in the Blink but make fast like 0,5 second and hit, not this 1-2 second delay where he charges up. (its a freaking Hive 3 tech it suppose to be strong)

I don't really see any future atm for FT (just really no one has any clue what to do with it without making it overly-frustrating).

Afaik it was primarily a pub complaint... the GL was a rare enough thing to see in comp, this change will put it in the ground for good.

If people would rather this be the case though, I guess that's the way it'll be.

The on-damage slowdown for ARCs was meant to reduce the effectiveness of full commander autonomy - so that it is much more difficult to split push (arcs on one location, marines pushing another)... since ARCs require no marine assistance to do damage, that strat used to be quite viable when there was no slow (ARCs also did not lose armor at that time when deployed- another change that was made to make baby-sitting them more worthwhile / necessary).

So I don't think removing those vulnerabilities for ARCs would improve things, however adding the option to invest t-res for a short burst of speed, while certainly not necessary, could add some interesting gameplay choices to certain scenarios.

Basically ARC's don't necessarily need a buff, but they can be sort of boring in terms of commander micro and what you can do with them. Adding a boost ability like this might bring new options to an engagement and make things a little more interesting.... that was the idea anyway.

As for Exo/FT - They are both so oddly designed they would require a complete redesign - as you all suggest the exo would have to be completely re-purposed into something like the HA from ns1. But mind you we did also try something like this a while back... and they never got used once from what I remember. Right now they fill small niches in low-skill brackets (I think Exo is viable at any bracket). Exos to end the game, FTs to help teams who struggle with fades or umbra lerks.

I don't really see any future atm for FT (just really no one has any clue what to do with it without making it overly-frustrating). Exo I suppose we could try once again to re-purpose it into a more Heavy-Armor like design, but again this was tried and failed a while ago in a previous iteration of cmod. Depends on how badly people want this. Just noting here that I think the current iteration of the Exo is an /extremely/ strong option in mid/late game if played properly- it still does monster damage and with duals being 1 research and only 35 pres, it's never been stronger.

I'm not sure about the cyst change.

I always thought it kind of balanced itself already. More cysts costs more tres, and to put say 4 they need to be further from the actual harvester so take longer to grow so you can place it, same tradeoff if they're killed and you want to replace.

I can't see it'd ever be a real issue, harvesters have the same hp anyway, so even if you could put 8 cysts, the usefulness is capped by harvester hp anyway, can just shoot it down without decysting.

I'm not sure about the cyst change.

I always thought it kind of balanced itself already. More cysts costs more tres, and to put say 4 they need to be further from the actual harvester so take longer to grow so you can place it, same tradeoff if they're killed and you want to replace.

I can't see it'd ever be a real issue, harvesters have the same hp anyway, so even if you could put 8 cysts, the usefulness is capped by harvester hp anyway, can just shoot it down without decysting.

Afaik it was primarily a pub complaint... the GL was a rare enough thing to see in comp, this change will put it in the ground for good.

If people would rather this be the case though, I guess that's the way it'll be.

THe problem with cysts has been emerging recently from comms like me who will infest the living shit out of everything at every open opportunity. In the mid game, if the alien team has 3 or more harvesters, they don't have much else to invest tres into except to attempt to cyst into open lanes.

What this has evolved into (not theoretical) is a mid game where marines spend an ungodly amount of time PvEing. It skews the balance of marine vs alien in that one small mistake and the marines lose everything as the amount of time it takes for marines to clear the lame is far greater than the amount of time it takes the alien khamm to put it up.

I abuse the crap out of this all the time, and others are picking up on it. It's quite evident that it's NOT fun to spend 80% of the time fighting structures.

The change proposed is to give diminishing returns to the alien team so that this type of play doesn't just result in alien wins.

Simba says

THe problem with cysts has been emerging recently from comms like me who will infest the living shit out of everything at every open opportunity. In the mid game, if the alien team has 3 or more harvesters, they don't have much else to invest tres into except to attempt to cyst into open lanes.

What this has evolved into (not theoretical) is a mid game where marines spend an ungodly amount of time PvEing. It skews the balance of marine vs alien in that one small mistake and the marines lose everything as the amount of time it takes for marines to clear the lame is far greater than the amount of time it takes the alien khamm to put it up.

I abuse the crap out of this all the time, and others are picking up on it. It's quite evident that it's NOT fun to spend 80% of the time fighting structures.

The change proposed is to give diminishing returns to the alien team so that this type of play doesn't just result in alien wins.

I get you, I guess that is kind of a problem. Perhaps a shift to more active abilities for alien commander would be a good switch, rather than a heavy focus on pve. Not really sure what could be changed (and be balanced) though.

I'm gonna get crazy here.

Problem with ARCs: they are boring to use and operate against.

Crazy solution: reduce arc health to like 1/3 of what it was, meaning arcs on their own are super vulnerable. Increase ARC speed by 20-40%. Give arcs an ability that either makes them invincible or gives them a shield for 5-8s, on a 15-25s cooldown. Possibly make this ability only usable when the ARC is deployed.

What this does: Makes pushing against ARCs based on baiting out the shield and then coming in during the cooldown period. The speed and shield make it possible to use ARCs to solo clear PVE, as they can rocket around the map faster than they could before. Still gives solo aliens a way to remove arcs from play. Still requires camping the arcs that are focusing down a hive.

Make Webs an ability like bile bomb.

GameOver says

Make Webs an ability like bile bomb.

If you read the notes, this is essentially what they are. The p-res cost was removed.