Looking really interesting. Any chance though of putting webs on 2 hives (say biomass 5)? Also not too fond of removing the speed boost from enzyme. I always found it to be quite useful.

And I fear that with the reduced fade pres cost, metabolize abilities, and change to structure damage, fade balls might become a bit too strong again (at least in the lower divisions).

Gave this mod a proper test yesterday and it seems people are quite pleased with it.

Fade changes feels good and bad at the same time, it's more like the NS1 fade now, though I have to admit, taking away shadowstep made my fading a whole lot worse. And with Metabolize I think there will be a lot of alien wins, especially in lower divisions. (Still, meta is a nice addon and should stay, definitely a lot more useful than vortex.) Researching Stab also gave a funky name -> http://tinyurl.com/nmns36j

About the biomass icons as well. Not sure if it's related to NS2+ or this mod but I'd like to be able to view what has been researched so far. No, I don't want to press J all the time and see what is going on, I like the little icons underneath the biomass bubbles. You know, the icons you see when you press your map key and look at your biomass level? http://tinyurl.com/nd46lts

That's about all the things I have to say about the mod. Marines seems very solid with the changes, even if we're still missing the HMG! Good work so far.

In the test build, the metabolize can't be held down and has to be tapped for continuous use. Is this intended? Cause myself and my hands would appreciate it quite a lot if i could just hold it down, as the way it worked in ns1. :)

we played today with it....interesting....but grenades seeems to be a little op

PASCOW says

we played today with it....interesting....but grenades seeems to be a little op

Yep, this, we had some amazing fun playing with grenades!

/GRENADES/

Either the cost of grenades should be increased to keep them a more luxurious item, or they should be lowered in damage (maybe just change falloff so they require a direct hit with pulse grenade) Id prefer modifying the grenade(s?) instead of cost.

It felt like the only grenade that needs modifying is pulse, cluster is a random nade that is useless for targeted damage or even area denial due to the period it lasts.
Pulse is amazing for targeting a specific player in a fight, Gas is awesome for area denial and base pushing.
However as it stands now Pulse has a wonderfully large AoE, I think lowering the radius is the best bet in balancing.

Keeping them cheap means they're still the aggressive alternative to mines. Increasing the cost means they become a less favored option when pushing and go back to being a luxury.
Making the pulse requiring a direct hit for its max damage and a severe damage drop-off means they become less effective at denying multiple skulks & pack play.

/JETPACKS/

I feel like increasing the jetpack research cost might be a good idea. While the accessibility to AA is a nice alternative to having to use arcs on alien PvE and the changes feel good in the few games we played. Jet packs become available much earlier, you can easily rush them and while you'll fore-go upgrades in favor of them you will likely only be against lerks and skulks with no leap at the time.
I feel adding even just +5 tres on the existing JP research cost would bring them more inline with fade timings, or increasing pres cost by 2 would do the same thing, however pres change would make them a much riskier investment.

/EGG DROPS & TRES DROPS/

While we rarely use egg drops when we play. I don't see the issue with keeping these. I don't think there is a problem with them staying in the game. Requiring 2 hives for a lifeform that isn't support means that lerk drops don't really happen anymore. If a alien team is floating tres and they already have their upgrades, why is it so bad to allow egg drops? If they don't drop eggs for players low on pres then they build more pve, the one thing that the balance mod tried to originally combat? :p

At the same time, you want to stop the use of tres for player reward to fix balance. But marines still have the ability to drop weapons and jetpacks for their team? If you want to balance tres drops why are you only doing it for one team?

/ENZYME/

I can understand the bite-cone removal, its an unnecessary feature. But the speed increase was a wonderful way for commanders to aid early engagements however I think it was much more use late game in supporting an onos especially vs marines with cats. While the new onos movement feels great it doesn't help you escape cats down long corridors.
The speed increase is not really required for lerks/fades. Maybe keep a speed increase on enzyme but have it 50% of what it was originally?

/ARCS/

Potentially the manual targeting does not work, either that or waxxan is a noob.

/EVERYTHING ELSE/

The other changes feel good and I don't think anything is too unbalanced. Other than babblers, does anyone use babblers are they really worth 3tres&5pres? Didn't get a chance to test fade, because I suck at it, and our fade players apparently don't know how shift works to find it :D

What about separating storm and enzyme again and putting storm on biomass so that its locked away early game. Would that work?

Seb says

What about separating storm and enzyme again and putting storm on biomass so that its locked away early game. Would that work?

That could certainly be another option

Cr4zy_ says

/ARCS/

Potentially the manual targeting does not work, either that or waxxan is a noob.

Right clicking targets while having ARC:s selected does nothing. However, when you manually press S (or was it A - The attack hotkey) you'll be able to tell where they're shooting at. You can even clear cysts now manually which is nice.

Amad says

Cr4zy_ says

/ARCS/

Potentially the manual targeting does not work, either that or waxxan is a noob.

Right clicking targets while having ARC:s selected does nothing. However, when you manually press S (or was it A - The attack hotkey) you'll be able to tell where they're shooting at. You can even clear cysts now manually which is nice.

Ah ok, will have to check ^^

The one thing I forgot to mention is the UI/Biomass/Tech tree, could do with a visual update to show the new fade upgrades and change existing ones if they're split up now

I like the fade changes, but im not convinced about 1hive gorge web. Better onos movements sounds good too, since current onos moves like titanic full of bears.

I still dont know wtf vortex does for the fade - just remove it from the game already.

What about increasing swipe/bite range to more than 1mm?

Web is hive 3. Hive 1 webs would be ridiculous. Also vortex is gone. :D

Didn't try babblers mid game, but 10 of them - 2 eggs, can deal so much damage, about 2000 damage to the com chair in short time - didn't measure. Just felt like viable addition when main concern are buildings/arcs. Maybe it would work on rines too...

Thanks for the feeback everyone. We do read every single post on these threads.

C4zy, nicely formatted post, thanks. Just to address a few of your points:

nades: we actually just buffed these a tiny bit more in that the draw animation is now a bit faster as well. We're keeping a close eye on them since this is the first time they've ever actually be viable to use in combat. If they turn out to be too strong, changes will of course be made. But they need a longer period of testing to properly evaluate.

jets: Jets are still pretty costly both in P-Res and in T-res investment, would like to see a longer period of testing them before making any more changes.

t-res drops: These will not be making a return to the alien team. The p-res cost reductions on the lifeforms sort of counter-balance their removal in their own way, but the "skipping" of lifeforms via the t-res drops should never be an option- this breaks the p-res and t-res dynamics. Marines almost never use these unless they are ending the game with them... they could be removed here as well, but currently there's no plans for that. T-res is by far the most valuable resource to the marine team and the trade-off for using t-res drops is significantly higher than it was for the alien team.

Enzyme- We're happy with where this is at the moment, but as always, keeping an eye on it.

ARC targeting- dragon is looking into this. Hopefully you'll be able to right click as well.

Some new fixes to the mod that will be added later today (all hail dragon):

-Gorge tunnels are now properly separated into Entrance and Exit when you drop one (you can choose which one to drop). The entrance will be colored green on your minimap.

-Metabolize can now be used via both MovementSpecial key AND weapon slot #2

-A few UI bug fixes (like researches not showing up in insight, or the biomass-bar)


Thanks for the feedback everyone, keep it coming!

Disappointed to see none of the weapons from the new call of duty added as I requested

Disappointed to see none of the webs

Vindaloo, gave them a test, takes 10 babblers ~1m 20-30s to kill a power node. Probably more use as a distraction away from a main fight, have them attacking an RT away from the fight because they still die in 2 bullets from rifle/pistol.

Rant, thanks for addressing them. I fully agree on seeing how everything plays out, those were my initial concerns after the 3 maps that we played.

Personally I don't want grenades to change from what we played yesterday I LOVED them, but the other team didn't seem to appreciate them, they're something that's so aggressive that I think aliens have yet to adjust to them being in games.
It's a whole new skill and it's so FUN!

We only played a round yesterday with jets, we got them quickly and just hive rushed although after giving them more of a test alone I think you're probably fine keeping them how they are now. They're much easier to combat with the changes made to them.

ARCs, work as expected after the build that was pushed yesterday. Target everything fine, and accidental miss-clicks on your own obs don't end all too well, but im glad that's a feature :P

Glad the UI got updated/fixed to go with it. Gorge tunnel change is awesome. ^^

Those fixes I listed will be added later today/tomorrow, apologies.

There is also one more change to Metabolize being done: Cooldown is being increased to 2 seconds, up from 1 second. (Improved metab is being increased to 20hp per use to compensate- healing-per-seconds remains unchanged)


For those focusing a lot on the web change- Web p-res change was simply done when looking over the other gorge p-res ability changes. This change was not intended to be a major balance impact- this is a hive 3 ability after all and should be on par with the other 3-hive abilities (costing a full p-res per web just made no sense in this regard).

After commanding a few games, I dislike how you can only upgrade one thing at a time. Even if you have more than one hive, and I even more dislike that you can't research something before you have the biomass.

You used to be able to do strategies like drop a hive and then research umbra and have umbra up when the second hive went up.

It was just pointed out to me by Bruno, without shadowstep Stab is literally useless. I propose that you can blink while stabbing.

Stab has been pretty much useless from the start anyways and imho it should be removed completly or it should get a serious buff to be useful.

Hello all, thank you for those that showed up to the balance meeting and gave feedback. We've reviewed the state of the mod and made a few adjustments, the changelog can be found in the document and I will post it here as well (reasoning can be found in the doc):

Changes:
-Increase cooldown on Hallucination from 3 → 5 seconds
-Split Phantom back into 2 separate upgrades, Silence and Cloak. (shade hive will have 3 upgrades)
-Transfer more Phasegate eHP into armor. From 2000hp550ap → 1500hp800ap
-Reduce Onos Gore energy cost from 13 → 10, and Charge energy cost from 38 → 30
-Increase Metabolize tres cost from 10 → 15. Increase Improved Metabolize tres cost from 15 → 20, Switch normal Metabolize biomass requirement with Charge (move Charge to biomass 2, Metabolize to biomass 3)

Fixes:
-Advanced Metabolize now requires Metabolize to be researched before you can research it.
-Added the ability to jump back to the jetpack- it's not double jump, and jumping still consumes fuel, but you should always be able to jump regardless of current fuel levels
-Sent whips to whip-bootcamp to improve their aim and reliability (should no longer bug out constantly when a marine is clearly in their melee range)


With that, THE BIG(ish)PATCH will be going into the live competitive mod on Monday, 4/21. As always we are always accepting feedback and keeping an eye on things.

(as always huge thank you to Dragon for coding everything!)

Stranger says

After commanding a few games, I dislike how you can only upgrade one thing at a time. Even if you have more than one hive, and I even more dislike that you can't research something before you have the biomass.

You used to be able to do strategies like drop a hive and then research umbra and have umbra up when the second hive went up.

I completely agree - maybe make it so you can research stuff if the biomass level required for the ability is currently being upgraded? I have no idea how hard that would be to implement though.

Also, I really don't like the decision to split phantom up. Firstly, it just feels 'wrong' to have 3 upgrades to choose from one hive.

Secondly, this is basically just a nerf to shade, which was already a risky first hive choice anyway - you bet everything on being able to slow the marines down enough that you could have a second hive up quickly to get the useful upgrades for your lifeforms. Now, I doubt any team will really use shade hive.

As far as I can tell, the complaint has been that shade was now useful - but wasn't that the entire point of the previous changes?

Revilo says

I completely agree - maybe make it so you can research stuff if the biomass level required for the ability is currently being upgraded? I have no idea how hard that would be to implement though.

Also, I really don't like the decision to split phantom up. Firstly, it just feels 'wrong' to have 3 upgrades to choose from one hive.

Secondly, this is basically just a nerf to shade, which was already a risky first hive choice anyway - you bet everything on being able to slow the marines down enough that you could have a second hive up quickly to get the useful upgrades for your lifeforms. Now, I doubt any team will really use shade hive.

As far as I can tell, the complaint has been that shade was now useful - but wasn't that the entire point of the previous changes?

I really don't see where the problem is with having lifeform upgrades use the same system as before, research it before you have the biomass?
I don't see how allowing a commander to research a 20-30res upgrade that is going to give you nothing until you get the biomass affects any balance honestly.
If you really must limit it can you not make it a 'requires # hive(s)' and count an un-built hive so you can start researching upgrades before it completes giving you that additional biomass.

3 upgrades for shade hive does feel wrong especially when those upgrades cost the same as other hive choices that provide only two traits. It feels like it's going to go back to a one hive first option in shift all the time now.
Reduce the cost of veils maybe? 10-12 res a piece instead of 15? I don't think that makes anymore viable as a first hive now the upgrades are split into 3.


I've also seen more fade-balls now on the balance mod, fades become almost unkillable if there are 3+ with regen & (adv) metabolize. Good fade players could keep fades alive entire games anyway, now they get more staying power with less retreat time. While if they do lose one, it's 5pres less than before so it's back on the field earlier.
3+ fades can still do the one thing you didn't want, run into a base and start attacking buildings and forcing beacons. I've seen them snipe arms labs and grind gates without needing skulks to clean the armour. Whips then become the teams best friend for cleaning res nodes, or even cysting extractors to remove the armor so fade balls can clean the map.
They feel maybe too strong, to me, I'd like to see how it plays out with actual matches rather than mixes and pcws where people are still learning the changes.
But it feels like an entirely playable tactic at this point.

It would be nice with 2 hive to be able to research 2 traits (3 hives 3 traits etc).

The gorge tunnel is nice so they can move the exit around based on game play.

Is this going to be added to all the pug servers now?

Thanks for the updates it has been fun to play :D

Tried out commanding the other day, and it does bother me not being able to research multiple abilities at thesame time even when I'm on multiple hives. One research per hive would be better indeed.

xpost from ns2forums:

THE BIG(ish) PATCH is now a part of the live CompetitiveMod.


The healing stacking is something we're aware of and trying to decipher how best to address. For now we've made the following changes, hopefully this can alleviate some of the issues:

-Reduce Regeneration rate from 8% → 7% (this will make fade regen ticks go from 20 → 17.5)
-Reduce Improved Metabolize heal from 20 → 10 (this is now about 50% of the regen upgrade rate, instead of equivalent)


A bug with the onos speed has been found and fixed as well, he had somehow lost 1 speed from the live version (he was running at 6.5 instead of 7.5). The Onos is something we're continuing to keep a close eye on- he just received some significant energy management reductions yesterday and we want to see how those pan out.

This forum needs an "awesome" button.

Neoken says

Tried out commanding the other day, and it does bother me not being able to research multiple abilities at thesame time even when I'm on multiple hives. One research per hive would be better indeed.

This is by far my biggest issue with it. The way it works right now feels broken/like it works that way unintentionally.

If I have 2 arms labs, I can research A1/W1 at the same time.. hives should work the same way imo.

Ability upgrades are independent from the hive. Meaning the hive does not research them and if you lose a hive the upgrade progress is not lost/cancelled. For this reason you can also upgrade biomass while upgrading unlocked abilities at the same time.

I would just like to see research times reduced to compensate for the required biomass upgrade time.

If having two researches going at the same time is not possible, could a queueing system be done? It sucks having to babysit that menu if you get slightly behind.

I tried the fade with metabolize yesterday. Actually it felt a bit weird and I think there are a few bugs with it.

- I used metabolize quite often (with the shift key), but when I ran out of energy, it switched automatically to the second weapon slot and ofc I couldn't swipe anymore. I had to switch back to weapon slot 1

- The regeneration from the advanced metabolize is very very low. It felt like it's not working at all.
[Edit: Okay, I saw the post of rantology now, where it was lowered]

- If you have stab researched, the metabolize weapon slot is greyed out when switching weapons.

- Stab is totally useless without shadowstep - you can't approach the marines anymore. So maybe it should be removed completely.

One additional question: Is it possible to check which version of the balance mod is running on the server? With so many changes around, I don't know which version I've tested yesterday. (I was on a NSL Match Server)