First impressions

[silveralen]

I'm fairly new to the game, and I thought I might as well toss my 2 cents in. Firstly I love the mod and can't stop playing it, and am so glad you decided to make it. However I have a few critiques.

1. Right now, a small group (3-5) of tier 1 marines at long range can cut an entire group of tier 1 Nids of equal size to pieces before the Nids can close to cc. However, if the marines cannot start firing till mid or close rang, the exact opposite is true.

In light of that, I'd recommend that Marines have more powerful or faster firing Bolters, but to balance it have increased damage fall of at range and/or more recoil and spread, making them better at mid range and less powerful at long range. In the same vein, Nids would be served with improved movement speed, or a more powerful mid range gun, possibly balanced with a decrease in health.

The reason I feel this is needed is many parts of maps force players into areas where the are at a great disadvantage. My recommendations would make such encounters less one sided, but still give both sides a unique flavor of combat, and advantage at their race's ideal range.

2. Requisition versus power is another issue, At this point Lictors, a tier two class, are the best counter to Devastator Marines, a tier 3 class, while Carnifexs can fairly easily wipe the floor with any other tier 2 class, even a specialist marine who catches the Carni at the edge of his melta range.

 I don't have any suggestions to deal with this as, though as powerful as a Carnifex should be, I feel he would be more appropriate as a tier 3 class after some buffing.

3. Lictors capping is another major issue, and atm a bit of a game breaker for certain maps, as a few Lictors can, on certain maps, capture two or 3 objectives in less then 30 seconds, with teamwork. Simply let the bulk of the Nids take obj 1, then cloaked Lictors capture two and three before they know what happened.

Ways to fix this include: major Lictor overhauls, the cloak draining over time for instance, not letting Lictors capture points, and making it impossible/harder to approach objectives beyond the one at the front line, such as how Dystopia handles it, using heat seeking turrets t block such areas off.

I know this was a lot of text and that I am a fairly new to this game, but since it is a beta I thought I'd give some feedback from my perspective as a new player. Also, many of my suggestions are based on my own experiences testing an older game called tremulous, an aliens versus human quake mod you may you may not have played. Anyways rather or not you use any of my suggestions if you bother reading it all your doing better then most game developers, so thanks

[ChromeAngel]

I have heard of tremulous, it looked interesting.  Before working on Rival Species I spent a lot of time beta testing Natural Selection, which I understand is kind of similar.

The carnifex can easily be taken out by a specialist or veteran flanking him, at close range the melta weapons do a lot of damage very quickly.

Lictor capping or "deep capping" is an issue I would like to deal with, i'm just not sure we have the right solution for it yet.  An auspex "weapon" has been suggested, but I don't like the idea of having a tool that can neutralize the Lictors only real advantage any place any time.  Similarly automatic defenses like the turrets, would cost the marines nothing to defend, where the tyranids are expending a tier 2 class to make the capture.  Some kind of manned sensor turret maybe?

"Doing better than most game developers"?  I don't think so  
...but it's nice you to say it.

[silveralen]

To clarify on the automatic turrets, they only function on points which are not on the front lines so to speak, meaning a lictor could get a head start on the point, he just couldn't be sitting right on it, and Marines would still have to manually defend all "active points"  

As to my first and biggest point, I had a map last 30 min earlier before we rocked the vote because Marnes couldn't push into enclosed areas at all, and nids couldn't rush the defending Marines. Just kinda got bogged down. When we left it was still both of us fighting over two points, neither making any headway  

Also, ever since MW2 didn't get dedicated pc servers I get surprised when anyone making a game listens to the people playing it.

[Joven]

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

[silveralen]

I understand that argument with the Carnifex and I do not think it is a huge issue however, look at it this way. A Carnifex charges a group of Tactical Marines while a Melta is ambushed by Nid Warriors. Both are out of their races comfort zone, so how big of a group do you need to take them down.

A Carnifex could probably close and kill 3-4 marines judging from what I've seen, maybe more. A Melta Marine however will probably take out 1-2 warriors if ambushed in cc range, if that much. Further, while the Melta Marine sacrifices his races normal superiority at long ranges, the Carnifex is even more powerful then a standard warrior in cc. That is my take on the situation, and as I said earlier, a key issue right now is getting more maps that focus on medium range areas, and balancing the two races for medium range. Attempting to make a cc race viable at longer ranges will destroy balance, just like making a Bolter as powerful at point blank as a nids claws would. But again, my take.

Lictor is fine honestly,besides the capping which apparently is being addressed by the Devs. It is worth mentioning though that the Lictor is a long range class in disguise, as it helps nullify marines advantages at long range with becoming supremely powerful in cc.

As far as Turrets go, my issue is with again, Nids being places humans cannot reasonably defend, a la the landing pad on Lycantium when they already have capped he next two points. A couple Lictors can deep strike so far that humans who have almost capped the final point can find themselves losing the game in less then 30 seconds. They should never fire on a Nid unless he has passed a point that needs capping as well as human spawn, so it should never break the stealth game play unless the Lictors abilities are being, imo, abused. The cap lock is another worthy suggestion, but it could be an issue with retaking points one guy grabbed and being forced to hold off an entire spawn of the opposing players as you wait. The not being able to cap with people nearby kinda doesn't adress the issue of the lictors deep strike, but is interesting.

As for the Bolters ROF and the Tyranid speed, these are things I pulled directly from the other game I mentioned, Tremulous, and may not work in yours, especially since capturing points is the main point of the game. Even giving tyrands a more powerful but shorter ranged weapon could help, such as a flesh borer, means they do not have to cover as much distance to put the hurt on, but again the way I ideally see the game balanced may not work for you.

I should have made three different topics these short essays are hard to write. Also Joven, sorry in game I'm a bit of an ass with my opinions.

[ChromeAngel]

This post relates my thoughts about objective locking, in the specific case of the Tyranids last two objectives in Lycantium, the Monument and Launchpad.

There is a trigger event on the monument objective that fires when tyranids capture it, this trigger causes the doors on the launchpad to open.   Now I can put a delay of X seconds between the capture and triggering the  doors to open.  The trouble comes in when a marine re-captures the monument within those X seconds.   There is (currently) no way to cancel the doors opening after what remains of the X seconds have expired. Currently the doors will close again as soon as marines re-capture the monument.  However if marines re-capture within th X second delay the launchpad doors are already closed, the X second delay is still running, so we end up with marines holding the monument, but the launchpad is open (very bad).

I haven't even touched on the problem of letting the players know what is happening with these lockouts (we could have several going on at once).  But I have to got to work now...

[silveralen]

Well, I was never a very good programmer and have no idea what sort of coding you've done so far, but a solution could be to put a timer of x seconds after they capture monument. After those x seconds pass, put in a conditional to see if the tyranids still hold the door, if they do it opens.

Now- Monument is owned by Tyranids->doors open

My suggestion- Monument is owned by Tyranids->wait x seconds-> Monument is owned by Tyranids-> doors open

My C++ skills are super rusty, and this is obviously a huge oversimplification of the code, but the general principle is sound, and as far as I can tell it shouldn't be a huge pain to implement. But again, I haven't touched anything but flash and matlab for a few years

[ChromeAngel]

As far as I can recall the entity raising the event doesn't get to run any code relating to that event after the delay has timed out (it's handled by the engine).  So the objective can't check it's own team after the delay.  It would need to be the entity being triggered that checks, currently this a door, so it doesn't know about teams or objectives...

I could have the objective trigger a relay/filter entity that could then check the team membership of the objective and only open the door if it's on the tyranid team.   However the existing entity for doing this sort of thing looks at the team of the player who started the chain of events (the nid pushing the button to cap monument), rather than the team of the entity that triggered it (the  monument objective).

I could add a property to the ex_filter_team entity type to tell it to check the activator or the caller to let it function this way or make another similar entity type that does just that.  In which case we would have delayed actions from objective captures working.  However we still have no way of telling (new) players that something will happen after X seconds (unless it gets canceled).

I did spend a stupid amount of time trying to create a countdown entity (for ex_thunderhawk) that would report on the player HUD(s), but never managed to get it working correctly.

Plan B, which is more of a long term thing, was to create a standardized objective entity, that combines the capping mechanism (button/valve/breakable) and the objective itself (camera, HUD marker etc).  So every objective would have the same model, with some kind of team ownership skin.   We could have a standard capping mechanic that takes a set amount of time (like controlling an objective in TF2).

From a fluff/storytelling perspective there is no good way of justifying Plan B, but since us mapper seem to end up capturing objectives with a simple button 80% of the time anyway, it hardly seems an issue.

[silveralen]

God I hate programming, I think the gist of the first three paragraphs was something like that is possible but a gigantic pain, which is what I feared. Plan B sounds much better, and I always liked tf2s capping mechanism. I do not envy your job good sir.

[Farseer]

What about a timed lock on all player's ABILITIES to cap anything for X amount of secs? I.E Someone caps something, all players in the game cannot cap anything for the next 25 seconds?

Of course i donlt know how much coding this would take, i assume alot. THE other problem with this is Lycantium's unique objective (destroy the drop pod). SO maybe a button near the drop pod doors that has the same rules apply? (It self is not a point)

[inespie]

make, when you take a position, pop a turret who last 30 sec, crushable only by 3 warior or a fex, for give time to marine to retreat  ? and same to nyd, to be fair.


or, in every position taken, pop 5 guardmen, and Gaunt for nyd, who are dumbass, but can handle 2 warior and 2 marine before dying ? ( they dont respawn after diyng, just when poz are capped. )

The 2nd choice look great to me. it would stop situation like " we have charge, killed everyone with big casualty, i capped the poz, but  before, the entire ennemy team have respawn behind me. position lost.

and this dont seem to be too hard to code...   use antlion IA for hormagaunt is possible ? random rebels for guardmen ? the skins is already here, why dont use it ?

[silveralen]

Stupid question, can you pull the A.I. straight from hl2? Both are on source, but each game has it's own coding, or is it a violation of usage sort of thing?

[ChromeAngel]

I did try using the HL2 AI, but it does not map on well to what we're doing.   AFAIK Homagaunts don't fly or burrow, Antlions do and that behaviour is woven deeply into their code.  Disentangling the undesirable behaviour is not practical.

Using rebels for guardsman hasn't been tried (marines don't really need extra numbers), but they would probably go around calling every player Gorden, even the Tyranids.

You could build an EX map and add Antlions to it, we did during the closed alpha stage.  However the mod team can't release anything that blends the HL2 and 40k universes because that would be breach of GWs terms and conditions.

[silveralen]

Well I guess we could have ai ravener/gargoyle hybrids........... lol

A thought occurs, altering the sound file the rebels access could prevent the Gordon problem, and because the basis of their ai is following and shooting, wouldn't that script work perfect for a Homagaunt? The sound file is the bit I'm not as sure about. After all, Homagaunts shoot, something not written into Antlion code anyways. Unless I'm confusing Homagaunts and Termagaunts.

[Typheron]

The next problem comes in that the AI is coded to follow the player, and it cannot tell between the various players on one team.

The result is that the bots tend to follow whoever first connected to the server instead of there actual owners, the code was never really created for multiplayer use.

things break when that happens.