Eine handvoll gibts, aber das Forum wird eher rar genutzt.

Looks nice, good luck with that map !

Well, It's surely a nice mechanic, though it sounds a little bit imba if you consider that the stealer's going to be a fast class. Though I like the Idea of a "front breaker" that is easy to take down unless his claws are in your range =) Would make collecting points for nids easier too.
Well, nevermind. Sounds like Fluff outrage =)

Fex are T2, right, but Nids need that bulky tank to stand against the ranged weapons of marines. They force marines to focus him instead of his fragile brothers, and that makes up for the power level of the nid T2 classes and the lack of proper ranged combat.
If it's fair to include a tanky marine unit that makes up for that handycap, nids should have a VERY powerful ranged unit too to balance things out, let's say at the same power level as the heavy.
Besides, you disregard one thing completely : Tacs can take cover and run away from the fex while shooting, warriors can't do any significant harm to the termi outside of their action range (meaning the range were termi weapons become important), the first warrior approaching the terminator rarely deals any damage to the heavy.
I know well about those Genestealers. But no one knows when that is going to happen and we should opt for a game that is balanced in the present, not a game that needs a future class X to be balanced, if you get what I mean.

Specialist/Vet is a personal thing, really. I like both of them, though I prefer Vet for the fast movement speed and wide weapon arsenal that covers mostly all wishes.

Jep, healing in general would be a real balance massacre without giving both sides adequate opportunities. And even then it's complicated and needs exhaustive rebalancing, just think of a fex or termi being healed (even though that wasn't part of your proposition; just to give you an example)

Good start,
judging from my balance experience, we got quite a lot of changes on both teams. I'm very pleased to see the warrior buff, though I'm not sure what this means in the long term. On the one hand, you have really a chance against sm in ranged now. That makes Warriors a little bit more of an all-round assault class, instead a melee class that uses its ranged weaponary just to weaken or finish already heavily injured enemies. On the other hand, I had a lot of problems surving long enough as a tac to get enough points for even t2 classes. I have no predictions nor suggestionson that matter, so I'd say, time will tell.

It's nice to see the vet's chainsword being buffed and used more, though I'm not fully conviced of its usefulness yet. I still prefer plasma with its splash and big projectile size, which makes hits on close enemies guaranteed.

After some rounds playing nids, I have to admit I'm rather shocked that the termi is even more imba then I deemed it to be. While he feels like he's got a higher damage output then heavy, he takes considerably MUCH more damage . I sneaked up on a unwary terminator from behind, landed 3 hits on him only to find me struck by his immense melee dmg, though he didn't even hit the first time. Also his invulnerability to acid damage makes it incredibly difficult to handle him as a warrior, unless you approach them in triplicates.
While I enjoy his ability to kick fex asses, I feel cheated if I can't harm him as a warrior without the element of surprise, the same as Im uncontent about not being able to backstab him as a lictor.
I'd recommand to lower either his survivability or his melee dmg output drastically. Even for a T3 class he feels too powerful. The Storm bolter however looks fine.

Can't tell you anything founded about the trope yet, I didn't come to play him often until now. Actually it's a little bit early for me to discuss balance, it takes me a while to realize the problems and find possible solutions...

Dear silveralen (if that is not a good way to start!),

Thank you for your feedback, you have some really interesting suggestions. I must admit I once also thought about carnifex being a missplaced class that would fit better into t3. But here's the issue : Nids are, almost exclusively, CC. In wide open areas with free aim you'd have big problems without the bulky fexes who basicly serve as tanks.
Imagine this situation :  We have a 6 on 6 set-up on a wide map, let's say digsite, and the teams are directly approaching each other. Now, as the Marines are becoming steadily better in firepower as their numbers and map distribution grows, the nids suffer immensely because of their limited ranged abilities. There is a very small chance that more then two or even one marines fall unless there are some hiding possibilities.
And this is exactly the reason, why the t2 nid classes are, or appear to be better then the marine t2 classes. They just need the survival capabilities to compensate for their lack of ranged combat, even though this means that they beat their corresponding marines counterparts in direct 1on1 fights easier. Even if you replaced fexes with tropes (including buffing/nerfing), I couldn't tell how weaker t2 tropes could affiliate balance. Still the nids would suffer from having no big fat tank that enables an aggressive approach .


What concerns the lictor, so I can tell you every nerf in his stealth capabilities would make him suck. To be honest I find it easy to spot lictors, probably because im playing this for a long time. There are some tricky stealthers that slip away from time to time, and ofc there are maps where it is easier or catchier, but overally I can tell you that It's fairly easy to find them, providing that they try to kill you. And for now, lictor is THE major class which makes the game exciting for both sides, because it takes both sides to be equally skilled (unlike dystopia, where some pro players deem the stealth option to be bad because of its easy annulling). That's why I'm against counter-stealth skills, at least for now.

 I agree on the cap problems, but I'm strictly against nerfing his stealth capabilities in any way.  Making lictors unable to cap is a interesting suggestion, but wouldn't it annoy ppl if they were to found out their sneaky ninja class cannot cap points ? Besides from taking some strategical gimmicks away from the nids, like breaking the onmarching unstoppable marine front by forcing them to go back, what would make some marines players even more careless then they are already.

I must say I cannot stay neutral on the thermal turret suggestion, so I won't utter an explicit statement about this. For me thermal turrets in Dystopia razed a lot of possibilities and ruind the joy of stealthing, when they where introduced into V1, so I pretty much dislike them ;/    It's the dev's decision whether counter-stealth turrets are a part of their vision or not, and certainly not a balancing matter only.

Maybe it's possible to implement a "cap lock", so that following objectives cannot be capped right after the previous one , a simple timer lock so to say. My other suggestion is to make it impossible for opponent teams to cap points (expecially the last ones) unless all other marines or non-lictor (yes, that's intended) units in the area around have been wiped out. But that's a coding thing, so I cannot tell if its easy enough to be put into practice.
 

Making them move faster just doesn't work, we already have issues on certain maps where nids are just too fast, a speed buff would result in a balance catastrophy. And making the bolters shoot faster is a VERY complex encroachment into balance even with keeping the DPS it should be tested first exhaustively, though I somehow like the idea. Dev's decision.

Anyway, I hope you had fun reading through this small novel as much as I had writing it ;p


Edit : Im always screwing up with the formating... meh

Lebt der Betreuer vom dt. Forum und der Seite  eig noch ? Dieser LoC ? Hab schon lang nix mehr von dem gehoert

Thalion submitted me this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIBEzucQPf4

The quotes are quite awesome :'D


Edit : And ofc, thanks to the com, you're awesome guys !

The healing/ammo refill issue has been discussed a lot of times and is surely a feature that will be implemented one day.  In my opinion these features are the core of every shooter, but as Chrome already pointed out that brings balancing troubles which can't be forseen so far. It is better we wait for the medic/ammo dump implementation, before applying any provisional solutions.

Although not as effective as in other ego-shooters, jumping in Ex2 is NOT useless, it helps overcoming certain obstacles and makes dodging from melee attacks possible. Crouch-jumping like in Half-Life works too, try it on downward slopes.

What concerns the class suggestion... I like it the way it is, it gives the mod tactical features. Besides the fluff reasons Chrome already mentioned, it also prevents people from being too reckless.
And after all it's Exterminatus2, a WH40k mod, and not TF2  =)  That's what makes it unique.

@L.o.L: a little bit faster wouldn't work in that concept. As Chrome said, marines should not able to beat nids in CC directly, so I think the only way to make them a competitive class is the considerably larger (temporary) speed boost and making them more of a cunning combat class then a mere CC storm suicide trooper. If they were just jumping into masses of nids they wouldn't be able to be playable at all (they'd suck, tbh).
And those jumps what you mean are exactly the issue that troubles Devs... I'm actually trying to evade these with my concept. I NEVER intended them to jump as they do in DoW !!

@Xithalis: Cap lock is more of a gameplay feature and has nothing to do with Assaults, honestly =D
But I find it to be a very good idea to improve the overall gameplay, you should suggest it. Would make the games longer and more interesting, at least nids wouldn't be able to fastcap lycantium and the last 2 objectives in hive anymore. Also Einstein-Objectivecampers could not cap everything within some 10 seconds....

I never thought about making AMs capable of competing with Nids directly in terms of melee.
 They should be more like a tricky class that could fight nids with cunning "hit and run" actions rather then banal engagement in melee combat... That means not just running into nids directly face-to-face and hackattacking, but instead trying to go round them and attack from behind, be it silently or not. And in case you get spotted you can still try to dodge claws (that works).

 Even though chrome's facts about nid physiology and CC capabilities are unbreakable , I think the mobility (and I mean jumps+boost speed) would compensate much for the humble reach of the chainsword.
 Consider a setting where a Assault rine directly approaches a warrior : Let's say he either jumps into the warrior or speeds into him, and both start attacking with melee in the same moment. With the HP boost the AM could deal significant dmg before he is stroked down by the Warrior, and as the Warrior does not HAVE to hit everytime (because our cunning AM tries to dodge the attacks), the AM gets a chance to survive and slay the Warrior before he is hit 3 times. Add now the little petty small bolter to our simulation, and you can assume the AM will use it to shot some bolts before he reaches that nid.
 Dodging worked for me with vets, and as the Assault would be even faster then vets, I can imagine that it'll work just fine.  So if it's not a FLUFF matter, I think it would be perfect regarding balance in CC.
Would require some skill though, but I think that would be more of a motivation =) Would have also a neat surprise factor.

 
 Typh's objection about an all-time hovering is sound. Gotta solution here: Replace the standard marine sprint with the ability to toggle between an active and standby jumppack mode.  It would be just the same thing as with normal marines (you can't run while crouching), and if you have the possibility to boost, why would you want to sprint anyway. But it would need an bar that could show you when your jumppacket is exhausted in case you want to limit the boost-length, cuz unlike the other marines the AM counts on his run speed.

 Backpedaling was never intended too, the AM's would still suffer the penalty for running backwards as all to the same ammount as a normal tac (I thought about disabling it at all first, but that would be kinda TOO much nerf). The only thing that would be possible would be running away and turning back shortly to shoot. As they would have only a mediocre to feeble ranged weapon with low accurancy, all they can do is trying to lay mines or kite nids (what would be also fun, but not that easy, except for the mines part maybe)


Capping is an issue that can be only tested ingame, I don't have a solution for this in mind. But be sure to contact me if you want to alpha-test those jumps , I'm sure a slightly modified parameter on a server in terms of jump height on tacs would be clarifying. Maybe we could as well check the boost speed like this.

I hope I did not too much perplex you with my idle thoughts =P I've lost track of what I had already said .

We have reached numbers of more then 100 members,  so if you haven't yet joined us you should consider to do so.
Also, we're atm looking for qualified admins, that means people who are willing to spend some of their spare time for organising games/group managing, and love to write stuff.

ASSAULT MARINES
I finally managed to write a short novel about my Assault marine conception. You may read it here,
or look in >User Discussions>Suggestion & User Discussion: Assault marines.

After reading some comments from people requesting Assault Marines and the denial on the part of the devs (because you could "overview" all the map by flying out of the designed space), I had some enlightening thoughts how we could still realise an Assault-like class without causing too much trouble to the devs. I've already talked with chrome over this, and he seemed not to disapprove . To make things easier, I've divided the Post into some sections , the first one being about the technical solution I propose and the second one is mainly about balance.

MECHANICS

 First of all, Assault marines would hover in the air just like a zoan (also meaning that falling doesnt cause them dmg) , but unlike the zoan they would be a very fast class, they should be the only marine class that could outrun warriors. This could be Indeed also a problem, but I think I already have a possible remedy for that matter. More on this in the "Balance" Section.

Secondly, instead of leap-flying, as you maybe know it from DoW, they would just be able to jump higher then an average marine, about maybe 5-8 times higher, by charging up jumps . No flying, no lookout on the whole map.
Basicly I had the Leg-booster implant from dystopia in mind, that enables you to charge by hold-pressing the space button, and high-jumping by releasing afterwards. Concerning the maximum heigth... you know the small flat buildings in thunderhawk ? I thought AM's could jump on them if they charge up to the max, probably high enough to jump over a fex. 

 Problems
 One problem for me here are the controls of the jump itself (range, direction etc.) because I didn't find it easy to control those in dystopia. And besides I haven't thought about limitations for the jumps yet, because im not sure if charging is enough of a handicap. Maybe some kind of energy bar that refills itself slowly over time could help out, but that is something the dev's should decide if it's worth the effort.

Basicly, it would be a fast , mobile marine class that could jump high, without causing any ugly mapping problems.

BALANCE

As the AM's versatility breach the traditional defensive conception of marines, they must have a big drawback in firepower, or at least weaponary that can't be so easily handled (like Mr. heavy who just points and shoots).

WEAPONS
I thought of a mere chainsword/small bolter combo, but unlike the standart chainsword and small bolter the AM's weapons would be slightly buffed. I recommand a faster-shooting small bolter and a chainsword that does nearly bolter-damage.

To avoid boredom and monotony, they could get some kind of remote mines instead of the standard granades, that would enable possibilities beyond a mere "supporter" class (and would bring a great deal of fun too
These mines would be shootable and would deal about two times the dmg of standart nades, with the same, or smaller, radius of dmg. Unlike the normal granades however, they should deal bonus damage to armoured units, in this case expecially fexes. Because all-in-all, this class would have almost no other possibilities of harming fexes. With these remote mines, Assaults could punish uncaring fexes which chased the "paper class", aware of the easy prey they'd make...

HEALTH
I have also recommandations concerning their HP :
As they would be the only "melee" marines , they should at least have more hp then all other human
classes. But that doesn't mean they have to be very durable, as a "tank" class would be the absolutely devastating to the nids. They should not be able to halt the advancement of nids, not at all, they should merely be able to distract nids.
This is why they should be able to withstand 3 claw attacks, maybe 2 melee attacks and 1 direct deathspitter. Doing so makes it possible for them to survive long enough to distract tyrandis, but not too long.


END WORDS
Like this, they would be a great assault, ambushing and supporter class that would break with the standards but yet a fair class.
Yes, they maybe insane fast cappers, but if you think of the nid capabilities to fastcap already at T1 (im talkin about you, mr.lycantium!) you quickly come to realise that it isn't such a deal.  My opinion is, that in a far-distant future,  Marines should have some more offensive power, as nids need defensive . ATM its like defense vs offense, and that can be boring and annoying from time to time. After all, diversity in games means more fun, and I'm sure the class I proposed here will be fun to play

DISCUSSION
If you have any worries concerning my suggestion... just post it right here so I can think on the matter.
Until now, I have thought carefully about most things regarding the balance, but of course I'm not infallible (at least not yet:P ) and overlook
some issues that could be discovered easily ingame... Feel free to tell me.

I hope you had as much fun reading this novel as I had while writting it
Stay cool, Joven