I don't think I like the Gorge bhop...

rantology says

The HMG is still pretty up in the air. Personally I do not believe the 100-->80 mag size solved anything either.

I think it fixes the issue of rines not having to use their ammo carefully. that extra 20 ammo allows you to spray and pray and not actually think about conserving your ammo. It's the same logic as to why the sg clip got reduced and noone seems to be complaining about that anymore.

The hmg doens't work because its too good at what it does - high damage output in a short amount of time across a large distance. If its inclusion in the game is soley to counter biomass, then it shouldn't be in the game at all. If marines do well early, then early hmg wrecks lifeforms if aliens arn't able to establish a 2nd hive or advance in biomass.

On the flip side, biomass changes are still op, marines have a very tough time doing anything if the 2nd hive goes up and there is any trace of pve on the map. Not to mention that when umbra comes out, the old regen + umbra + biomass + muccous game, aka add another 30min on of useless gameplay, occurs, resulting in marines eventually losing the battle of attrition.

Also regarding exos being turned into heavys - i dont think this is the right direction for them. Consider the fact that you need 40 tres for a proto, and then research - who is honestly going to go for exos when you have sg + cats, or hmg + cats. There is too much overlap between exos and normal marines in v3. Exos should be game ending units. Imo, they should be turned back to what they were before, ie, no slow when firing, no beaconability (makes exo positioning very important), no phase ability. These should be the heavy lifter units to cut through high biomass/pve.

I like most if not all of the other small changes that came with v3, but i don't think you guys know what you want from exos/hmg/biomass yet, which is making the game unplayable in the current v3 form.

Speaking for AusNS2, we would like to use v2 for all our tournaments/seasons until v3 is stable - can someone on the comp mod team please re-upload it to the workshop as a separate mod?

Salads says

I don't think I like the Gorge bhop...

might as well make gorges walk on walls while we are at it. XD

I can just agree with Bonage about everything he said. The current version of the CompMod makes all the games unplayable & unbalanced because of, mainly, HMGs.

So yeah, you decreased the magazine size of the HGM, but it doesn't really solve any problem. You can still one shot Lerks biting RTs if they didn't see you 'cause you're so silent. If don't, and just decide to spike the Marines team, that's the same, they can easily take 180 damages too quickly and Lerks cannot conceding shots like this. The reloading time is slow, that's right and this is definitely the only chance to push Marines carrying HMGs, except, that people aren't so stupid to be everytime alone or to shot together but in general, one shoots, the other one reloads. Depending on the map, but with the same issue on most of them, you can one shot Skulks if Aliens do not have a very high biomass. Biomass is now pretty easy to research but you need RTs, defended thanks to the Lerks (dead) or awaiting for the Fades.

I played gathers yesterday, we were aware of the recent updates & we researched HMGs first, I mean, Weapon 1, Armor 1, Advanced Armory and hop, feel free to buy one. The game was kinda balanced at this moment, but after this, lerks were killed, fades too, easy. They conceded, we switched teams & same games.

Games can be playable (more or less) if teams do not research HMGs, that, by the way, permits to have the Prototyp Lab & Jetpacks more easily.

I don't exactly what you did with adding this weapon in the mod. For sure that changes to have new weapons, but not overpowered weapons like this. So many people complained about this (at least) that made all the game unplayable & you only changed the magazine size before go live, why? Now, all the games are not fun, unplayable & unbalanced. I saw the first match of the Draft Tournament yesterday with Team Locklear vs. Team Decoy & the issue was definitely worse on these games. Aliens losing because Marines researched HMGs & killed all lifeforms.

And for your information, we tested it for a gather, yeah I already mentioned this, but that also means that we were 2/3 from Division 2/1 and the others were from Division 3 or lower (pub players). So what? If that weapon makes games unplayable when you know the guys who played weren't pro-shooters, I even don't imagine to see that on scrims/matches in our proper divisions with Marines who have a better shooting.

For us, after thinking about this, this weapon needs a big nerf (but we don't know how without make it like the LMG, or too close) or needs to be removed, that is the best solution to do for the moment except if you find better solutions but matter is urgent, otherwise, nobody will continue to play on the CompMod or, like Bonage said, release the last version of the mod (the second one I mean).

It brings me to a specific point, why did you release this version? And why so many big changes compared to the second version that needed small upgrades (only small)? You changed the gameplay again, too quickly & I even not so sure it was really needed & wished. Just go to play on pub after this & the game will be clearly different, too much different in my opinion. CompMod was made, at start, to make the games more balanced on the competitive side of NS2, not to give a different game or a least, it was that I thought. I do not care to have big differences since I rarely play pubbing anymore but so many competitive players keep playing pubbing & the new players won't join us if the changes are too huge.

That was my opinion, now, do whatever you want.

I agree with Pelargir, this is no longer just a balance mod(was it ever really just that?). The gameplay is way too different from vanilla and something needs to be done.

The mod has been moving much slower than it should have been lately because of inactivity/summer. Ideally we can speed things up now that it's been put onto the live compmod. I do agree with a lot of what is said in the feedback here, and I hope to see a new set of updates soon to try and address some of it.

Just updated today:

HMG now requires a 15 tres research on the Advanced Armory
Reduced HMG base damage to 13 down from 15
Lowered Biomass scaling for lerk, fade, and onos:
Lerk: 5 down from 10
Fade: 12 down from 20
Onos: 30 down from 35


Hopefully this alleviates some of the issues. Please keep the feedback coming! (flamethrower and Exo still have their own issues that are yet unaddressed, feedback on those is welcome as well)

I hope that will solve issues. So now, the AA only allows to unlock Prototyp Lab? (I mean, without any more cost from the Commander like GL, FT & HMG).

I believe the flamethrower will never work as a standalone weapon. The way I understand it, it is supposed to act as a support weapon for groups of marines. But when playing marine, you end up in solo situations so often, that it cannot be worth it to buy a FTs, while not making FTs so overpowered that everyone walks around with it.

I had the idea to use flamethrowers as a weapon add-on, kind of like the GL addon the LMG used to have. Then you would not have to trade your solo-abilities for group-abilities, but you could add group abilities for Pres (which would be easier to balance I expect)

the main problem is after research AA, all 5 mairne players can buy a (op) HMG at the same time, so its impossible to clear a group of 2 HMG marines or more for aliens...but with this new biomass scaling and umbra,you need HMG's in the game..so maybe make HMG an Tres weapon for marines like 30res for AA and 15tres to drop one HMG..so if we force the marines to usw there tres to usw HMG you wouldn't see like 5 HMG's on the field(depends on how many Rt's marines have), still one and against 1 HMG aliens are able to clear them.

Nexen says

the main problem is after research AA, all 5 mairne players can buy a (op) HMG at the same time, so its impossible to clear a group of 2 HMG marines or more for aliens...but with this new biomass scaling and umbra,you need HMG's in the game..so maybe make HMG an Tres weapon for marines like 30res for AA and 15tres to drop one HMG..so if we force the marines to usw there tres to usw HMG you wouldn't see like 5 HMG's on the field(depends on how many Rt's marines have), still one and against 1 HMG aliens are able to clear them.

HMG is abysmal against structures, so if a marine team fields 5 HMGs, just build a whip and crag and they cant do anything ^^
Unless aliens are already pushed back that killing structures then yes it could be a problem, base rush the marines because there is no way 5 HMGs is killing your hive first.

Also, because the HMG is LMG script, it totally suffers from the reload bug, woop!

When i cancel something that is researching in armory, i loose all my res for that research, please fix,

If you have any steps on how to repro that bug, PLEASE let me know. I cannot for the life of me reproduce it so I have been unable to fix it.

NotDragon says

If you have any steps on how to repro that bug, PLEASE let me know. I cannot for the life of me reproduce it so I have been unable to fix it.

I've been playing today at HBZ server, and every time i was cancelling any research in arms-lab or in armory i was loosing resources for that research. There is no other way to reproduce it, Just drop armslab, start an upgrade and then cancel it.

Stranger says

Thoughts on needing weapons 1 researched and the weapon has 15 damage per bullet at weapons 1?

It was about spending more time and resources to get to it because it was able to come out way too early. Forcing an arms lab build + research upgrade would push it a lot more closer to fade time (which is were I think the aliens are able to actually hold against the hmgs). It would only affect the HMG rushes though which probably is not optimal.

I think that making the weapon weaker, were we are heading at the moment with changes, is a better route instead. At least if it is aimed be an option among weapons (an option especially to the shotgun) and not create a weapon that people will pick over the other weapons (like the shotgun unless there were special situations).

I like the change of the magazine size because I wouldn't even think about aiming at 100 bullets, I didn't need to. Don't know if 80 bullets will change it for me because I haven't played enough with it yet but hopefully it will force me to actually focus on my aim and be more economical with my bullets.

rantology says

Reduced HMG base damage to 13 down from 15

This is awesome, especially from the perspective as a lerk player because the lesser the damage the more time I get to do something which is not something I have had before in encounters with hmgs. I still see it as a counter against lerks and I am fine with it staying so if fades are able counter it (which I think they are at the moment but I have already heard different opinions on that) so marines will field both hmgs and shotguns against an alien team with both lerks and fades up.

Ok the issue with cancelled researches not refunding money has been fixed, it was an issue with another mod.

So now HMGs have gone from "lol op" to "lol not worth it"

I think the problem with this massive sway in opinion towards them is that if they're countering lategame biomass, they need the power that they had before. But it has to be lategame progression for marines, or excessive early investment.

15base, late game might make some sense, but because it hit so early it destroyed everything. Right now the damage changes against a regen lifeform with 5biomass results in aliens taking ~3 more bullets

While it sounds minimal also means that with the 80 clip reduction you can easily fight a fade but will most likely die to a skulk/lerk that attacks afterwards after spending most of your bullets fighting the fade, assuming 25-30% accuracy.
Because once you've emptied the majority of your clip you're then forced to reload the damned thing and that is going to get you killed. I think in that regard putting the clip size back to 100 makes sense here.

At current dmg that should be (13/14/15/16?) you can still not solo an Onos (this is good).
Again assuming 25-30% accuracy 13 is going to struggle to kill a un-upgraded fade, this is where the current problem is, in this situation a shotgun is potentially more lethal in the hands of a pretty good marine (due to saving your shots for when that fade is close, unlike HMG spraying while he is coming towards you), an average marine might have similar damage output with both (due to maybe spamming some of those vital rounds before he is close enough to take real damage)

Ideally a good marine should be able to do more damage with a HMG, why more? It's shit against structures so it has to be better at lifeform countering.
To do that the damage has to be buffed back up slightly. 14base damage with a good marine should be able to deal around 400 damage.
This should mean you are able to deal with fades, if the HMG comes out with fades (in a balanced game that's normally @9mins with bio3) you're probably in most cases hitting w2 at that point if you're getting HMG at new cost it could be w1 only, one marine can easily fight a fade at this point. It's very close and if biomass climbs at the speed of weapon upgrades it is close with avg marine accuracy.
Regen/Cara is going to make it much safer for the aliens, Im unsure what the HMG firerate is, but you can probably get 2-3ticks in the time it would take to deal fade kill damage.

HMGs are still going to screw every lerks day up which is going to force fades to engage HMGs. So HMGs still can not come out early because without the biomass or umbra lerks dont stand a chance.

But 14base with 15/16/17 upgrades and 100clip can make the HMG the powerful scary weapon it should be without having the 15/16,5/18/19.5 slaughter fest it was before. I hope, because if that doesn't work then I don't know what HMG needs to fit into the game properly. :/

I think the 15tres investment for HMG makes sense, it forces it to a mid/late game tech, or a possibly early/mid game tech if you're willing to not take w2/3 a2/a3 as fast as you could.

But that's my opinion

I don't know why we buff Marines with hmg while the Aliens are the real problem...

You can create another lifeform, to counter the hmg, the AngelOnos with a cost of 100 pres, but giving you an ability to be immortal haha

i don't talk about hmg because they had been recently modified. Wait and see...


Why do i see all the same meta-game in aliens?

Bt mod was to balanced between, crag hive, shade hive, cele hive ? Or it was just a lie?

Why crag is too much powerful, why this over over over heal?

Why crag have a good range, can heal into other rooms, why fade conceding 200 can be full with only 2-3 secs?
And same about the Lerk...

Why if a good marine makes good damage that's not useful because aliens can regen faster! And they don't need to back to the hive. Now a marine needs to kill a lifeform to be effective... Not to do some damage.


Wtf this balance?

Why i see all the same two lerks strat?
Because it's so much powerful.

Need to balance liferform between fade and lerk.

Why the lerk's a killer than the fade...

I like to play fade, but it's strange. It's easier to kill with a lerk than a fade...
Yeah the fade is energyvor.
Clean a lmg is easier as a lerk than a fade. If you are low energy you need to back, as fade. As lerk you can stay wherever you want and bite bite bite bite bite and that costs nothing in energy... The joke is that the spikes are most expensive (about energy) than the bite.

If the marines have a good aim. They will put low the lerks but the lerks regen faster !!! That costs nothing.

I think lerk was to harass, not to clean all the time the marines.

I prefer a lerk with more powerful spikes (doing 1 or 2 more damages than a lerk biting every time...)

That game is like a rock, paper, scissor. I don't want that.
I prefer like a chess game with all pieces are useful.

My explanations about the lerk, it's easy to clean lmg. The only counter is shotgun... But the shotgun appears 1-2 more minutes after the lerks. If the lerk does a good job at the beginning, it delays the shotgun more and more...
The only job to fade is to clean shotgun while a lerk is spiking...
____________________
____________________
____________________
My ideas...

Lerks cost so much energy, to bite and maybe to (fly).
Cheaper to spike OR increase 1-2 damage (or do a research upgrade)

I am not against the current fade. i love the fade with two speed when they have metabolize and they haven't.

I think that the two lerks strat is really op when marines don't have any shotgun and aliens can take great advantages...

I talk for div1-2-3 it's very unbalanced. Maybe in div-1er it's balance enough because the good aimers can balance by themselves...


My other idea is that biomass was cool but we are too dependent of the hive. Some map are harder to get hive like summit. And some map where we can lose hive easily like tram.

I think biomass will be on a new structure. or 50/50

One hive can just have 2 biomass. And create a new structure can we put 3 times (for example a cyst, 5x greater) or a research on the cyst that are different as a normal cyst to have 3 extra biomasses.

The price would be more 20, 25, and 30 for the last.

If marines push a hive, they can choose to kill the biomass. That forces aliens to protect their hive if one or two marines go in, Aliens can't ignore them so.

Actually when marines kill the second hive, aliens can't comeback... Now, when we lose the biomass, we lose the upgrades...

Like an Arms Lab, but as marine when you lose the arms lab, you can get it back in just 10 sec...


For example, Aliens have 2 hives they have 6 biomasses but they can lose two biomasses because they get two structures. If one marine pushes the hive(s) and if aliens see that they can ignore the marine to push a phasegate for example.

Actually when 2-3 marines push the hive. Aliens can trade phasegate for one or two shells and come back to def...

I think we will see more exciting games when one-two marine(s) sneaky (or not) will push the hive to delay umbra or to cancel it!

Sorry for my english. ^_^ Good read :) xD

Also wtf when did losing upgrades when your hive dies get implemented. I thought everyone was against this?
It's so pointless, you might as well just give up after losing leap/umbra/adv meta vs w3/a3/shotguns/hmgs/cats/jps

I get fps lag and rubber banding with this mod :(

Cr4zy_ says

Also wtf when did losing upgrades when your hive dies get implemented. I thought everyone was against this?
It's so pointless, you might as well just give up after losing leap/umbra/adv meta vs w3/a3/shotguns/hmgs/cats/jps

Everyone was against as far as I know...

Leech0r says

I get fps lag and rubber banding with this mod :(

I wasn't sure if it was 'cause of me or a mod, now I know. But I can't confirm at the moment since I only played on one server with the CompMod.

By the way, the Loulebe's idea looks interesting in my opinion.

I agree completely with the ideas of loulebe, the crag hive is too powerful !

I play as a lerk ans when I'm mide or low life, i can just stay in a vent and wait 10 - 15 sec and then I'm full !

Also, need bullet decals for HMG

If you use a lerk with silence, umbra doesn't make any sound (obviously) but spores does? Is that intended or perhaps a bug in the compmod?

not sure if feature or bug but you can't burn spores anymore

Mephilles says

not sure if feature or bug but you can't burn spores anymore

It's a feature, read the changelog Meph. :p

Neoken says

Mephilles says

not sure if feature or bug but you can't burn spores anymore

It's a feature, read the changelog Meph. :p

read it alot already. guess I just missed that one^^

I think with how absurd lifeforms, specifically lerks have seemingly become and even fades to an extent with regen + biomass scaling.

Change Regen. I want to see how it plays without having it's "carapace effect" as I like to call it. Im not entirely sure the massive changes to biomass scaling need to be looked at unless you think my idea is retarded and shoudn't be tested.

Everything below is with 3 shells ( i think :D ) It assumes every fight is a sustained 1v1 and no one retreats. (Because this is the problem imo)

With 7% regen
Skulks gain 4.9hp
Lerks tick at 15hp
A Fade ticks 17.5hp
and an Onos is 63
(assuming my numbers are correct)

Carapace gives an additional eHP of
Skulk: 40hp
Lerk: 30hp
Fade: 80hp
Onos: 400HP
(again if my numbers are right)

In practice

Assuming your accuracy is pretty good and ns2 doesn't eat your bullets in the land of hitreg.

You will probably have a skulk rarely tick over in a fight, however on the occasion you miss some rounds it will probably tick once, this makes it 94hp (im guessing it doesn't round to 5)

At w0 this means it's one more bullet
With Carapace this means 4 more bullets

A lerk will tick twice in most fights at lower divisions where marine aim is worse and fights go on longer 4+ ticks

This gives the lerk 30hp for free, the exact number carapace provides woo! in a longer fight than 2 seconds the lerk has MORE HP than a carapace lerk
you're looking at now having to hit 3 more bullets.

A Fade will tick 4-5 times in most fights, unless you can one clip a fade. During which it will regen 70-87hp
More than carapace

An Onos will take 6 seconds to regen equal to his carapace. In a 1v1 he's fine anyway why are we caring about this bit?

The problem? REGEN IS LOLOP

Life forms can stay in a fight with regen as long as they can with carapace, if marines are not all premdiv (aka the majority of ns2 comp) they will stay ina fight longer and their personal healthcare will make sure they're always fine.
Carapace is designed for this job, but regen has taken it over, stabbed carapace in the heart and left it dying in the alley.

The fix?

If a lifeform takes damage while using regen. Regen does NOT tick over for the next x seconds. How long should this x be?

A normal long fight with multiple aliens and multiple marines is going to be a few seconds. a 1v1 shorter.
Ideas?

1-2 seconds? -> The lerk can regen because a reload takes 2.25 seconds (no one switched to pistol in my theories)

3-4 seconds? -> Keeps a life form out for 3 seconds this can easily turn a fight + the additional time required to heal again

5+ seconds? -> Unless you're fighting in the enemy base you are probably now forcing the lifeform out of a fight for too much time and it's better to be taking carapace and retreat to a crag?

And if this doesn't fix me having to do 250 damage to lerks mid-late-game then we can talk about the biomass scaling!

TL:DR
Make Regen not tick during fights, give Carapace a reason to be used over regen.

Very good post crazy. Regen lerk is OP as fuck, the hardest lifeform is becoming the easiest one.
A good biting lerk was skilled now every lerk lolbursts you with awful flight pattern.

You 200 dmg him? Np he'll be back in 3 secs.

I would really like to see regen changed a bit as well. The balance team seems to be quite sleepy lately and feedback/discussion is not really happening at the moment.

My idea for regen:

Instead of eliminating all in-combat healing (I feel like that would be too drastic/harsh?), reduce the amount of healing regen does in-combat by 50%, and increase the combat timer to 3-4 seconds. So you will not get full regen healing untill you have been out of combat for that amount of time. This way you'd need to stay out of the action for a longer period to fully heal.

You could of course also leave the regen healing at 100% at all times, but make it so it no longer ticks during combat at all. I think it was like this at one time though, during sewlek's b250 testing.


Anyone have other ideas?