Genestealer Public Alpha

[ChromeAngel]

Results of the 5.95 test

The Genestealer nerf may have been a bit too extreme, it did feel rather too fragile in this build.  I'm planning on buffing the health from 80 to 90 in the next patch.  I may have to go higher still in order to reduce the number of bolt pistol hits it takes to kill one.

I appear to have stopped the timer part of the timer being clipped, but have broken 2 line messages in the process... back to the drawing board.

Rediscovered a problem with dig site that was reported in-game last week, but didn't get logged at the time.

The Terminator, Veteran and Stealer kill icons all seem to need work.

We had a surprisingly interesting round on ex_hive after a very bold and lucky marine took the blue console early in the game.  I was planning on dropping this map from beta 6, but I might leave it in now.  How do you guys feel about that?

HIve_city got rushed by the nids, I have no idea how it got completed that fast.

[ChromeAngel]

Results of the 5.96 test

Th 5 point health buff for Stealers seems to have done it's job.  The now seem to be an even choice with warriors.

The kill icons for actual projectile weapons (veteran plasma and thrope warp bolt) are not showing correctly.  The icon for indicating a lictor when he spawns seems to be picking up part of a stealer.

There is a (fixable) exploit that stealers can use in Spacehulk and the hole in Dig Site is still visible.

The marines Rapid fie indicator does not seem to be working, this appears to be a fault with the patch's zip file.

I should investigate allowing Melta beams and Psi attack to pass through grate textures.  This may have an unbalancing effect on the game though,  Maybe have acid dripping form when deathspitters hit grates?

Best turnout yet for a public alpha test this week.

[Nqss]

The marines Rapid fie indicator does not seem to be working, this appears to be a fault with the patch's zip file.

and placing it above the ammo idicator will be best

[ChromeAngel]

Results from the 5.97 test, not what I was hoping for...

Veteran kill icons are still b0rked, I think i'll create a new console command for testing kill icons, it just takes too long during multi-player testing (fun though it is).

Specialist were spawning without their trademark Meltaguns, i'm fairly sure this is a side effect of trying to get the meltaguns to fire through grates.  This should be patched ready for the new mid-week test game.

While fixing the hole in the roof of digsite's outpost I appear to have broken the lighting.   I'll have to put that back to the old values.

The exploit on spacehulk appears to be fixed.

A screenshot from Nqss shows the Firemode indicator working for his local client, but not when playiong on a dedicated server.  This could require some poking around in the network code to find out what's going on.
And yes the indicator stays at whatever it was last showing when you switch weapons.

I forget who said it in-game, but "Rapid fire bolters are pure RAPE" (this is why I didn't include them before).  Now you've seen it can I take this "feature" back out?

Farseer was talking in-game about reducing the reward for Stealer kills.   Since the reward is tied to the cost of class the only way to do this without re-writing the whole rewards system would be to reduce the cost of the Stealer.  The class system only gives players enough points for the cheapest class on their team.  So a side-effect of reducing the reward for stealer kills would be to make stealers the only option for tyranids at the start of the round (or any time when they haven't earned enough rewards).  As they say in galaxy far far away... "i've got a baaad feeling about this."

[Nqss]

...
I forget who said it in-game, but "Rapid fire bolters are pure RAPE" (this is why I didn't include them before).  Now you've seen it can I take this "feature" back out?

nope!
it sure helps to kill stealer faster
other nids are not that easy to kill

Farseer was talking in-game about reducing the reward for Stealer kills.   Since the reward is tied to the cost of class the only way to do this without re-writing the whole rewards system would be to reduce the cost of the Stealer.  The class system only gives players enough points for the cheapest class on their team.  So a side-effect of reducing the reward for stealer kills would be to make stealers the only option for tyranids at the start of the round (or any time when they haven't earned enough rewards).  As they say in galaxy far far away... "i've got a baaad feeling about this."

during tests we saw that stealers are easy to kill
but why would you decrease the cost? you can increase the cost and increase health with damage
WHY? because its tier 1 tyranid who can capture points with speed of light , marines doesn't have anyone who can cap as fast as them (not to mention that stealers can reach some places which some nids can't and even marines cant)
placing stealers with increased stats next to thrope and fex will be good option in my opinion

[ChromeAngel]

Update following the 5.992 test :

Their appears to be an intermittent client crash related to the bolter's firemode switch (or rather the message that tells the HUD to switch the indicator).  That will need reworking fore the next alpha test.