Yes and lets add a market with weapon skins.

I'm going to share my viewpoint behind the cyst change.

The game is fine as is, whats wrong with it? Maybe show some statistics where marines or aliens are so far ahead of the opposite team if these cyst changes go through.

Currently marines dominate early game forcing aliens to stay on 2-3 harvesters until lerks. After they get lerks this expansion will be TIMES slower than before and can easily be cut again.
If marines win early they snowball the game like never before and aliens can never come back from the deficit. The game is made with power spikes (lerk pop, sg, fade pop, onos, hmg etc) and nerfing cysts means aliens power spike is a ton smaller than the marines. This causes imbalance, something that I personally haven't seen in a long time.
When we played last season there wasn't a single game where I thought "damn marines/aliens are overpowered that is the only reason we lost" OR "Man If cysts had less hp we would've won". Why are we targeting the cysts? If you're quick enough to take the room back nothing happens and marines actually win more because by default they have more resource nodes and aliens grouping means no resource pressure.

Just some more thoughts on what we could do with Exos. Say we went ahead and nerfed Exos, eliminating the speed boost and reducing the damage output. Less people would want to use them probably. But if we added a feature where the person controlling the Exo (Not the Com) could activate a Nano shield (Maybe this a researchable upgrade from the portolab?) for something like 5 p-res once every minute and a half (or however long) I think they would still be pretty viable in Comp. With this however, we would have to disable the Com from being able to Nano shield Exo marines (or else what's the point of wasting p-res on it). I think it would be a cool effect to be able to give yourself a nano shield in the middle of a fight, and it also makes it so Marines can't just keep pumping out Exos so easily while spending their own p-res on Nano shields. Also at the same time you could have two Exos simultaneously with Nano shields activated in one engagement.

There could also be a personal cat pack activation skill perhaps...

Just some thoughts. I love playing Exos and they're fun to play against so I don't want them to be eliminated from Comp, but I also think they're a little too OP at the moment.

Thoughts, opinions?

Arc boost? why not just make CAT packs work for arcs?

Alien snowballing is potentially a problem. Increasing cyst build time will gimp the weak alien early game which would be silly being marines are so strong.

Increasing cyst time mid game / late game might be addressing the large snowball effect. Maybe just make it so more biomass, longer time to mature cysts.

Bit of a trade off for upgrades and HP bonus from biomass, but does help stop the ridiculous expansion ability mid/late game. Particularly because 1 cyst/hive grows simultaneously.

Fixes/changes in the works (thanks Dragon!!):

-FT RoF bug
-Cyst max build time from 15sec down to 10 sec
-ARC boost will also increase the turn rate

Also hand grenades should now drop when you die and are droppable with the drop weapon key- I could not test this though as it does not work with cheats on. Please report if this is not working as intended. (they are also now 2 p-res)

About why the cyst change: Cysts are in general just an annoying, spammy PvE mechanic and it'd be nice to see less of it. That's the goal of changing them in this way... though there's been a multitude of different suggestions, this is just one of them that we're testing.

Thanks for all the feedback and the bug reports- keep it coming!

If the FT still proves to be useless I would say increase the firerate by like 10%. The doubled firerate is OP and it is a bug as you said. but maybe that's the value need to be changed to make it viable (also is FT effected by weapon upgrade?)

Spring says

When we played last season there wasn't a single game where I thought "damn marines/aliens are overpowered that is the only reason we lost" OR "Man If cysts had less hp we would've won". Why are we targeting the cysts? If you're quick enough to take the room back nothing happens and marines actually win more because by default they have more resource nodes and aliens grouping means no resource pressure.

Maybe because everyone in prem level already understands how shit cyst spam is and actively try to stop it from happening?

You have to remember these changes affect all divisions - many lower tier teams often fall into the trap mid/late game of focusing only on lifeforms - they don't clear RTs, thus letting alien comm build up tonnes of tres with nowhere to spend it other than PVE and cyst spam. It is a very real problem for many.

[Flamethrowers]
Even if this doubled firerate incresment was a bug or forgotten to remove it showed the direction the flamer should take like i said:

Mega_noComm says

FlameThrowers
i cant think of a Good easy solution to be honest the basic question is:
When is a often occuring situation where a Marine ever would prefer his Flamethrower instead of a SG/HMG/LMG/GL ?
I can only think of serisly buffing Flamer damage to make it something inbetween LMG-HMG and probly no secondary wepon.

Give the Flamer a Damage reduction of 10-25% but keep this doubled firerate.
Or the other way around remove doubled firerate but buff damage like 30%.
(so he dosnt burn lerks and skulks instantly but still can defend himself vs Aliens)

He should only disable energy/adrenline regeneration/burning half as much as he does now and
Change the TRES cost to 15
Change the PRES cost to 15


Then you got a purpose for the Flamer that is pretty fitting and not too diffrent from vanillia game
and can deal with PVE+cysts, Bilebomb, Umbra pretty good.
so it will make sense to have 1 in your 2-3 Marine Squads cause he can still defend himself and kill stuff.

This might even help lower div Marines to win more.




[FADE STAB]
Im sad you didnt even consider trying to do anything with [FADE Stab] but its not too late yet

Mega_noComm says

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 would say go for Possiblity 3 make it useable and FAST instantly hit after blink (like no delay but energy cost).
(So it will be useable like it was b4 with Shadow step+Stab where you could shadowstep and instantly hit/Stab from the shadow step.)




[EXOS]
The Comp Mod changes him to a tank(EXO) that you can play with technician(Marine with welder) support.
Where is the GOAL with the EXO how does he FIT into Marineplay ?


Maybe try to go for the GOAL of the EXO that it will be as usefull as the ONOS !?
that you allways want as many exos on the field as possible cause they are strong. (like the onos)

Can you get to this GOAL with a TANK ?
you gotta give the Marineteam or the EXO a possibility/abtility,
that makes him allways usefull even in greater numbers. (like the onos)
(let him use PGS again ????)




[Handgrenades]
What is the GOAL of them how do they fit ?
Can you ever predict a Grenade gonna be usefull in the next battle i would say only sometimes.

Mega_noComm says

Hand Grenades in theory good.
but i suggest go even further
1) let the commander buy grenades like a wepon
2) every marine spawns with 1 maybe more grenades like ns1
(maybe let the commander research grenades for 10 or 5 tres)

add Abtility 1+2 and you give them as much possibilitys as possible and from that experiment you can remove some abtilitys again.


TO be honest thats how EVERY DLC ever gets balanced they make it OP as fuck first,
so people buy (use it) then go down to balanced slowly so it dosnt Break the Balance.
And thats how you should test "experiment changes" in comp mod inthis or even better in a Seperate Mod.







AND THE MOST IMPORTANT:
PLEASE LETS DO MORE COMP MOD BALANCE MEETINGS OPEN FOR EVERYONE IN THE ENSL TS3.

How about every Week or every 2nd Week Sunday 18:00 CET or 19:00 CET ?

Alot of people are calling out for very experimental changes, I do not agree on that.

Keep the experimental stuff in a seperate mod and only incorperate stuff into the comp mod if it works perfectly. That way it's possible to try out different things without screwing everything in the comp mod over by fucking up balance with experimental changes. The comp mod itself needs to be stable.

About changes I've got this to say:

- Spores are very rarely seen because they require alot of biomass and I'd like to see them move down on the tech tree to make them available earlier in the game. I think spores are not used because of the high biomass requirement, combined with the fact that they are far less useful later in the game when marines have tech to avoid or deny the spores, like jetpacks or exos. My suggestion is to put down the biomass requirement for spores so they can be used alot earlier in the game, where they are actually useful. I would like to see spores having a lower biomass requirement than umbra as I find umbra to be way more effective at any stage of the game.

- Webs. I can only agree with others that the biomass requirement for this should go down, I mean, biomass 7 for webs? Really? Moving it down on the tech tree so it could actually be something viable you could go for earlier in the game to get extra defense, that would be optimal.

- Phase gate delay. I'd say put it down to 0.3 or 0.4, it is currently really easy to camp the phase gate with two skulks. The bite timer is 0.5 as far as I remember, exactly the same as the current phase delay, I think this is the main reason for the phase gates being so easy to camp at this time.

- Exos. As many say, they are vulnerable to sneak attack by skulks due to their sheer size and while I think they are in a decent investment level I think they should get some of their armor back, so they can easier withstand single/duo skulk sneak attacks. You wouldn't expect 1-2 rifle marines to be able to take an onos down by themselves, so the same should apply with 1-2 skulks and the exo. Teamplay(combined with bilebomb) should be the true counter to the exos, not sneaky (free, no investment) skulks. Adressing this would make them more viable and I think they would actually be used. No need to implement a copy of the ns1 heavy armor, the exos already fill this role, they just need to be viable. It's ok that they are not able to use phase gates, because they are strong units, yet vulnerable to ambushes.

- Flamethrower. I don't think the on-hit effect is enough to merit it's use and I think a small damage buff would address this. But this needs to be done carefully. A single skulk should be able to at least take the flamer with him to his grave, but the flamethrower should have the upper hand, since it's an investment and skulks aren't. I imagine a skulk coming at full speed, doing a perfect engagement, should be able to kill the flamer, but the skulk should also die from the dot effect if the flamer keeps his aim on the skulk. But that should only happen if the skulk makes a perfect engagement and don't miss any bites. I see some people suggesting the flamer being a lerk counter, but the flamer will never be a lerk counter due to it's limited range. It's a counter against the lerks abilities, but not the lerk itself, so I'd call it a soft lerk counter at best. I see it more as a fade counter due to the on-hit effect and the fact that fades need adrenaline to escape from an engagement, the flamer should obviously stick together with at least one shotgun. Also, I'd say make it a primary weapon again.

- Cysts. I support the idea of cysts being lower HP the longer away from the hive they are in the "chain". It would make sense in more than just one way. In this ideology, gorge tunnels could maybe work the same way as a hive, giving more HP to nearby cysts. Killing the hive/tunnel would remove that effect immediately on the cysts, so they are easier to clear after you kill the hive/tunnel.

- Handgrenades. I don't think the idea of marines spawning with grenades fits ns2's res model very well, or the fact that there are more than just one type of grenade. But I do think that the PRes cost should be lowered to make them more viable to go for early in the game. I think they are in a somewhat decent place right now in regards to their effectiveness, they are just too expensive in the long run, which is why I think people don't really use them. Should also be pickupable and commanders should be able to drop them like any other weapon.

- Weapons on the ground. I agree with bonage that the time weapons are on the ground should be lowered. I think lower it by 5-10 seconds. Teammates should be able to keep the weapons "alive" on the ground, but I don't think a single marine should easily be able to get his weapon back when he has died with it. Dying should be punished.

- ARCs. I'd like to see their infestation speed slowdown reduced, so they move a bit faster on infestation. That, combined with marines being required to hold "E" on them for like 2 seconds, when the commander wants to deploy them. It would need some visuals for the marines, to display that the commander has put them in "deploy-mode" and that the marines need to hold "E" to activate them. That makes nearby marines a requirement for sieging and we would get rid of split pushes with ARCs on one side and marines on the other.

- While I'm not a supporter of having different weapons/abilities when comparing to vanilla. I think the HMG is in a decent place right now. Maybe bump up the TRes cost with 5, to make it be a little more expensive investment to go for. I don't think there are any problems in regards to HMG vs onos play, lots of onos players die because they think they are the mightiest beast alive, but fact is that onos needs teamplay more than any other alien class, due to it's low mobility.

- Lifeform costs. I think the replenishment of lost lifeforms is what makes it so tough for marines at the moment. If aliens hold any decent amount of res, they can easily replenish lost lifeforms. The PRes costs of lifeforms needs to be bumped back up again. This change was combined with a change in starting res as far as I remember, so that should be adressed in combination so the first lifeforms still pop at around the same time and replenishing them will take further time/res. If aliens lose lifeforms they should really be punished for it, they shouldn't be able to always just immediately replace the lost lifeforms.

Swalk did you even read the patch notes =P

Webs did get moved down in biomass along with other changes to make them more viable
Hand grenades did get reduced in p-res along with other changes to make them more useful
ARCs did get an option to move quickly on infestation, but it is not a passive

Spore I think fit a bit better on Hive 3.... it conflicts with spikes a little too much and I think it makes more sense to have it be a powerful hive3 option for lerk than trying to squeeze it in somewhere in the hive 2 timings.

@Mega about stab: It's never been a priority because it is hive 3, and you never really see those abilities used to any great effect because of this. Though I agree it would be nice to see the movement impairing elements completely gone from it.

Exos: Some people say they are really OP right now, others want buffs- I don't think they have been used enough to really tell which way they need to go..

Meetings: Sure, we could do more of these but honestly there are very few people active anymore in terms of balance theorycraft. It would probably be a very small meeting.

I'm always up for balance talks and changes. If you want a balance meeting, people will show. Just post a time.


Many of swalks ideas are marine buffs. This may help the lower divsions, but in the higher divsions this would cripple aliens.


Edit: It would be nice to get various people from the ns2 competitive community together on TS3 or mumble to discuss balance changes throughout the divisions. Like 3 people from each division with a head on their shoulders.

@Mega and fade stab

Im not wild with the idea of changing the fade stab - the fade isn't broken, so why fix it? It was originally meant to have the stab ability to alternate, but with the current metagame people simply deem it wanting, and alternatives alot more viable. And no, I do not believe it needs to be a viable alternative. The fade is, personally, not a boring or underpowered lifeform to play.

rantology says

Swalk did you even read the patch notes =P

Webs did get moved down in biomass along with other changes to make them more viable
Hand grenades did get reduced in p-res along with other changes to make them more useful
ARCs did get an option to move quickly on infestation, but it is not a passive

Spore I think fit a bit better on Hive 3.... it conflicts with spikes a little too much and I think it makes more sense to have it be a powerful hive3 option for lerk than trying to squeeze it in somewhere in the hive 2 timings.

@Mega about stab: It's never been a priority because it is hive 3, and you never really see those abilities used to any great effect because of this. Though I agree it would be nice to see the movement impairing elements completely gone from it.

Exos: Some people say they are really OP right now, others want buffs- I don't think they have been used enough to really tell which way they need to go..

Meetings: Sure, we could do more of these but honestly there are very few people active anymore in terms of balance theorycraft. It would probably be a very small meeting.

Oh, seems I missed that completely :P

I still think webs could be on a lower biomass than the vanilla.

And yeah, you're right. Spores conflict with spikes, combined the dps would be too great in the early game. Maybe switch spores and spikes completely and make spikes the hive 3 ability instead?

@schu That's not quite true. It's very mixed with buffs and nerfs for both sides. I address specific problems which I think are causing frustration and unbalance. And I think even with these changes aliens should still do really well at the top level of play.

- Spores - switch with spikes/make available earlier than umbra - Alien buff

- Webs - make available early in the game - Alien buff

- Phase gate delay - decrease to 0.3 or 0.4 - Marine buff

- Exos - increase armor to original value or close to it - Marine buff

- Flamethrower - slight dps buff - Marine buff

- Cysts - being slower at building further away from hive/have less hp further away from hive - Alien nerf

- Handgrenades - PRes cost reduction - Marine buff

- Weapons on the ground - lower time by 5-10 seconds - Marine nerf

- ARCs - infestation speed slowdown reduced/removed - instead require marines to "activate" ARCs. Marine nerf

- HMG - 5 TRes cost increase (delayed HMGs) - Marine nerf

- Lifeform costs - Increases value of lifeforms - Alien nerf

x2 Alien buffs
x2 Alien nerfs
x4 Marine buffs
x3 Marine nerfs

swalk says

Maybe switch spores and spikes completely and make spikes the hive 3 ability instead?

That is a can of worms sir.

Ixian says

@Mega and fade stab

Im not wild with the idea of changing the fade stab - the fade isn't broken, so why fix it? It was originally meant to have the stab ability to alternate, but with the current metagame people simply deem it wanting, and alternatives alot more viable. And no, I do not believe it needs to be a viable alternative. The fade is, personally, not a boring or underpowered lifeform to play.

Yes the Fade isnt broken but compared to other lifeforms his 3rd Abtility suxx :O
cause its kinda against how the fade gets played the fade is like a ninja go in hit confuse enemy hit again or go out.
A Stab attack that takes like 1-2 seconds and welcomes the SG to make a full hit on him is not rly how you would play that lifeform.

Stab atm is like this first Picture:



OFC this is not a important fix priority wise.
I agree Fade is not broken or underpowerd.

But it would simply fit better to the Fade to have Stab instantly so i think its a change that should be tryed especialy since we have now a "Beta" build with experimental changes.

CmdrKeen says

1B. - Make drifters like drones in starcraft (they become the structure)
additional Option for 1A, 1B:
- The farther away from hive you build, the longer it takes (this would buff shift echo and gorge play)

Drifters used to work like this and I really prefer that over the current builder/ability bots. Drifters turning into structures was a boon to gameplay because it allowed marines to deny the alien commander from starting things. You'd be able to deny hives by cutting the drifter or deny expansion/pve spam by stopping the flow of drifters. Then you make the hive only able to produce 1 drifter at a time. Have the drifters cost ~5 tres, but also lower the cost of buildings by a small (3-5 tres) amount. Then make the drifter build time up to 10-15 seconds per drifter per hive. This makes it so aliens need to choose to either pool drifters over time or slowly build up pve forts and mass expansions. It also gives khammanders some more continuous work to do.

Another thing I'd actually like to see is the return of motion tracking from ns1.

It would give the marines another strategy to invest in and I believe it wouldn't too hard to edit the code of scan to make it "global" and presistent.

Sure, it's mostly a help to lower skilled teams/players, which lack game sense. But I think that it could be the needed help marines need at this level to balance out the massive alien wins a bit.

Maybe also a 4th chamber(including focus) which I believe sewlek/UWE was talking about at some point. That would give aliens another tech route.

swalk says

Another thing I'd actually like to see is the return of motion tracking from ns1.

It would give the marines another strategy to invest in and I believe it wouldn't too hard to edit the code of scan to make it "global" and presistent.

Dont get me wrong swalk new abtilitys make the game interesting.

But it would make more sense to first balance all existing abtilitys in the game so everything has its use.
The hype from streams/casters this is gonna create with the new strategies gonna be interesting enough.

And even only balancing all existing abtilitys is gonna be a lot work and testing.

The cyst change is a bit insane right now. It's incredibly hard to take the res up the side of circular map because of how long it takes to cyst up to a RT This forces the aliens to be predictable and only take their naturals for far too long in a game. Even when you feel ahead you can't really push the advantage and take tech point RTs on circular maps because it takes a minute for the cysts to grow to those RTs.

Veil takes a hilariously long time to take natural RTs as well. Cysting Cargo -> Pipe takes 65 seconds before you can drop the RT, I suspect there are similar times cysting Sub -> Cargo although I haven't had that spawn yet as khamm in v4. Nano cyst times are similar as well to the point where I feel that opening with a gorge is almost mandatory otherwise gaining and maintaining control of Nano against competent pressure is extremely difficult.

I suggest changing cysts so that they get gradually less HP as you go away from the hive rather than nerf build time. Maybe change it so that the first 6-7 cysts have normal HP and then they gradually lose health down to 200 max hp as you get farther away from a hive.

An alternative cyst nerf would be to buff welder damage vs cysts (which is already 50 in comp mod vs 30 in vanilla) to 75 damage per tick as well as possibly buff shotgun damage vs cysts so that it only takes 2 shotgun shots to kill a full hp cyst rather than 3.

IRONF1ST says

I suggest changing cysts so that they get gradually less HP as you go away from the hive rather than nerf build time. Maybe change it so that the first 6-7 cysts have normal HP and then they gradually lose health down to 200 max hp as you get farther away from a hive.

An alternative cyst nerf would be to buff welder damage vs cysts (which is already 50 in comp mod vs 30 in vanilla) to 75 damage per tick as well as possibly buff shotgun damage vs cysts so that it only takes 2 shotgun shots to kill a full hp cyst rather than 3.

++++++++++++++++ PLUS ++++ NEGATIVE A NEGATIVE EQUALS PLUS

Mega_noComm says

swalk says

Another thing I'd actually like to see is the return of motion tracking from ns1.

It would give the marines another strategy to invest in and I believe it wouldn't too hard to edit the code of scan to make it "global" and presistent.

Dont get me wrong swalk new abtilitys make the game interesting.

But it would make more sense to first balance all existing abtilitys in the game so everything has its use.
The hype from streams/casters this is gonna create with the new strategies gonna be interesting enough.

And even only balancing all existing abtilitys is gonna be a lot work and testing.

While I naturally agree with you that the main focus should be on balancing what is already there, I think that at least the motion tracking shouldn't be too hard to implement(since its just a matter of editing scan), the only thing you can really balance about it is the price, I think a good starting price could be between 30-40 TRes.

The chamber is a bit more tricky and would require another idea(for the second upgrade from the chamber, apart from focus) which I don't have at this time.

While I do not like to get the game too far from vanilla, I think these ideas would still fit well. Motion tracking is known from NS1 and the 4th chamber had been talked about by UWE themselves, they just never got around to making it/threw the idea due to lack of time.

So if we have great implementations of them in the comp mod, they could be adopted into vanilla because the original ideas for this come from UWE themselves.

I also think that both these ideas would help the current balance and bring more varied strategies.
Motion tracking helps marines mid-late game by effectively making it easier to ambush/pinch lifeforms.
Fourth chamber (with focus) helps aliens against late game marine tech and helps the hit and run tactics(mainly thinking about fades here) which are usually needed against jetpacks/exos and also gives skulks a slightly better chance against good jetpackers.

One could argue that a fourth chamber would be misplaced because aliens won't be able to get 4 hives on all maps, but we already don't really see more than two hives most of the time and the third hive is already almost a certain win. The aliens won't ever need 4 chambers at the same time, it just opens up different strategies.

I want to see the minigun exo properly balanced and the HMG removed. They are too close to each other in role with the one of them being much harder to balance.

Which one is harder to balance you ask? The HMG, of course. When balancing game elements it is easier to do so when you have access to multiple "dials" that you can turn and twist in order to balance it. With the HMG being "just" a weapon it is fairly difficult to balance it properly, especially since it can be combined in multiple ways with other equipment. What if the HMG is perfectly balanced, but when combined with a jet pack it becomes over powered? Tough luck, you're going to have to change one or the other. (This goes on and on of course, HMG + Pulse nade, HMG + cat pack, HMG + welder, et.c.)

Since the minigun comes in a single "package" and with only one variable (duals or not) it will be much easier to make sure that the sum of the pros and cons of it end up being neither under nor over powered.

So, how do you go about balancing the exo then? Well, the process is simple, yet arduous. First off we take a game aspect that we already know is well balanced. In this case that's going to be the LMG marine. Turn the minigun exo into an LMG marine stats wise and then attach a couple of benefits and drawbacks to it so that it is roughly fair.

So, what are the stats of an LMG marine? Well, from the top of my head: he has 100 HP (yes, give the exo hit points, for starters at least) 30 AP, has a build tool, each bullet deals 10 base dmg, he has a fire rate of X bullets/s, a magazine size of 50 bullets (the exo can fire 50 bullets before it overheats), a reload time of Y s (overheated minigun needs to cool down for Y s), a speed of Z and a sprint speed of A, unlimited stamina, et.c.

But what about all the drawbacks the exo comes with? Such as the Tres and Pres cost and the research time? For starters I say we keep them as is. So if we compare the "balanced" exo with a known balanced component (the LMG marine) we get a nice little list of pros and cons.

Pros:
-

Cons:
Takes x amount of build and research time.
Costs 10+20+30+25=85 Tres
Costs 35 Pres.
Can't use phase gates.
Can't use welders.
Makes loud noise when walking.
Doesn't fit in small spaces
(Probably more stuff that I can't remember at the moment, but you get the gist of it.)

Ok, that looks like the exo is under powered, right? So we gotta fix that. Now we're getting to the tricky part and I'm not sitting on the answers here, but for starters lets increase the "magazine size" of the exo. Lets give him the ability to shoot 100 bullets before overheating. Maybe we'll increase this number even more in the future, testing will have to decide. Maybe get him some extra AP while we're at it, et.c. Maybe we make him cheaper and remove other drawbacks as well.

Ok, so we end up with a more balanced list of pros and cons:

Pros:
Can fire 100 bullets before "reloading".
Has more armour.
Has base damage of 11 per bullet
[more stuff]

Cons:
Takes x minus 30 s of build and research time.
Costs 10+20+30+20=80 Tres
Costs 30 Pres.
Can't use phase gates.
Can't use welders.
Makes loud noise when walking.
Doesn't fit in small spaces.

Ok, but how do we know when our guy is finally good to go? Well, the only reliable way to do this is through playtesting. Everything else is nothing but theory crafting. Since comp mod mostly relies on teams and gathers to test the balance changes we probably have to make him a bit OP at first in order to make sure that he gets used at all. Old habits die hard, as they say. So unless he's over powered he won't get used at all. So for starters lets make the exo automatically unlocked once the protolab is built and drop the pres cost to 20. That should be OP enough for starters.

And then we work iteratively, tweaking one variable at a time until we arrive at something that is balanced. Voilà, we have a perfectly balanced exo. :-D As I said, the process is fairly simple but it requires a lot of playtesting.

P.S. I had to write this in a hurry, there's bound to be some typos and poorly explained ideas. Please be gentle. :-)

@swalk

Motion sensing removes a fuck load of skill in this game. It is an absolute abhorrent idea. I'm not sure why it worked in ns1 or how balanced it was or how it worked, I don't really care.

From my point of view, a HUGE amount of skill and fun comes from map sense and anticipating alien movement. The number of calls I've personally made to stop base rushes / trap lifeforms / neutralise res biters is invaluable and if I'm honest, probably its my only skill in the game. Obviously this means I'm going to be absolutely against the change but I want to make my personal investment clear in being against this feature.

That being said, I think it's evidence that map reading and game sense is a skill that makes a huge difference between divisions.

@d4rkAlf

I really like how you've formulated a way of balancing something. It makes good sense and is how balance ideas should be "envisioned" ( :D I feel the Rantology and Golden cringe)

Motion tracking was one the few bad features of NS1 (cloak and silence making company). Like Wob pointed out it took skill away from game and made really frustrating gameplay especially for skulks. After all MT took away ambushing from skulk gameplay.

At the moment the cyst delay really screws over aliens in the early game. The maturity time needs to be tied to something else, maybe biomass as wob suggested; or perhaps look at removing the ability for additional hives to mature additional cysts simultaneously.

@darkalf : what about adding researches for exos. Much like the onos charge, stomp, bone shield.
Onos without charge can be pretty vulnerable. what if you could research celerity for exos, to give them decent mobility ? wouldn't that make exos more useful, if they could at least dodge some attacks or get to cover, wait for rotations/back up ?

Tane says

Motion tracking was one the few bad features of NS1 (cloak and silence making company). Like Wob pointed out it took skill away from game and made really frustrating gameplay especially for skulks. After all MT took away ambushing from skulk gameplay.

Not just that, it made lifeform trapping way too easy. As soon as you suspected MT on marines, you couldn't enforce base rushes anymore, and marines had no need to lane block anything from this point on and could keep heavy pressure throughout the rest of the game. And a res capper never needed to check corners anymore, smart skulk gameplay got eliminated by it.

@wob
It was balanced in a way that aliens were much more powerful by themselves. Good skulks with focus bite were a constant danger to potent jetpackers, and fades with cara could engage double SGs, or even a bigger group, for a swipe or two. A 2nd hive fade could crack a whole pressure group alone if the first 2 SG blasts missed their target. NS1 was less about being out of position, poking and anticipating enemy movements and much more about the engagement execution (i.e. aim / bhop / dodging etc). You would never call a 3-man pressure in NS1 risky as in NS2, it was rather standard, or having even 4-5 marines push a location - with the whole alien team preparing for the upcoming fight.

I agree that this heavier focus on map awareness in NS2 requires much more (strategic) skill on marine play and it would be sad to see it go. Although I personally preferred the NS1 combat mechanics any day over NS2's.

Cmod has been updated with the following changes (thanks Dragon):

-ARC boost will also increase the turn rate
-Cysts will now have lower HP the farther away from the hive they are, down to a minimum of 200hp (the build time increases have been removed)
-Change grenades to being 1 pres for 1 nade, maximum of 2 nades (can only hold 1 type)
-FT RoF bug fixed

As an idea for discussion, in NS2c I added back in MT with some key changes:
- MT worked only within a certain radius around the marine (about 15m) and targets were only visible to that marine.
- Aliens moving under a certain speed were not detected, or aliens using silence.

I too also miss the combat mechanics from NS1.. playing NS2 for me feels very tedious over time.

What will be done with Exos? They are packing so much firepower right now at 35 res. We have seen Exos plow down 3-4 onos in 3 seconds and melt a hive. Then when you go to force a beacon to be able to Solo the exo there is an Exo in base on top of the chair that you just cant get to. They need to be nerfed in some way.