Basi is in a very weird position for an alien class. It’s barely used, even with invisibility, and the abilities to become unseen and grab is considered a bit unbalanced by some players.
The other thing of note is a complete lack of support gear in the game as a whole. Yes, teams work together to push and all that, but lone high skill players are shredding through weaker teams with no chance of a comeback, and a lot of players might feel useless. For example, I can’t do anything in the late game, just because I like ambushes, but battle suits create a need for bigger aliens, whose playstyle is very aggressive.
So, I propose a small idea to fix this. Make basi a support class. Reduce, or remove it’a ability to atack, make it heal people faster when out of battle, make him use the old radar that can see through walls, or maybe let the basi hold a turret
Some things that we currently have planned for the basi:
Make its primary swipe attack manual again.
Have its grab only trigger when the primary swipe attack is used, so it is no longer automatic, but have its duration last shorter than the swipe repeat, so that there would be short windows of opportunity to break free from the grab,
Require invisibility to be charged with the secondary attack button, and while it it charging it would be visible. Upon release of the charge, the basi would generally remain invisible for as long as the charge is being discharged (the discharge rate could be different from the charging rate). All the other current rules for staying invisible would still apply. The gas attack for the adv basi would still be on the same secondary attack button, so the adv basi would be releasing gas while it would be charging for invisibility.
Allow the basi to not be noticed by rets while invisible (tesla/rc zaps would still detect the invisible basi). WIth the current rules, if/when the basi attacks, it become visible, so that shouldn’t make this feature too op, but would allow the basi to generally sneak into potentially unprotected parts of human bases. This would also add importance to having teslas.
Don’t have its gas attack work on helmets and bsuits.
Have its gas apply poison when boosted. Perhaps also have its boosted gas make teammates boosted with poison.
Lets see how the above mentioned changes work out in regards to the basi’s attacks.
What would constitute “out of battle”?
It does currently slow down the turning of rets with its grab, maybe we should increase that slow down?
By out of battle I meant that both the healer and the patient haven’t been hurt for a set amount of time
As I see, you already have a plan for basi already, I probably should change the topic to just “Ideas for support gear”
I think the basi deserves this focused topic, since we are going to be making a lot of updates to the basi, and as the updates are implemented, people may get more ideas about adjusting/changing the basi further.
“ideas for support gear” sounds like it would make a good separate general topic to discuss.
All of the features I have mentioned above are now implemented. The GrangerLab server & the Unitremia server have been updated with those features. Here are the commits:
The current stats for the basic and advanced basilisks are as follows:
With all of these recent features/enhancements implemented for the basi, especially the charging of invisibility, we decided to remove the boosted requirement for the advanced basi to stay invisible, as that requirement now seems unnecessary, and added to the complexity. This change is a part of the following commit:
What I fear with the Basilisk being able to make himself invisible and not being targeted by the turrets is that it will make an easy way to sneak into a human base and get a few hits before you even get shot once. And the humans will never see that coming since they won’t see the basilisk until it’s dead by a turret after hitting the telenodes or the armory.
So is that a good idea, yes, does it need a little tweaking, I also think yes. Sadly it might become to much of an op alien, What we need is to make the basilisk a little less useless. (Yes he does hit and stun and such, but it’s pretty much it.)
Here’s what I think personally regarding aliens:
We need new aliens completely. The default aliens were all good (In my opinion) and balanced. What was missing was the diversity in features available to them and reworking the aliens is not a long term way personally. It is more of a quick fix-and-go. Whilst if we really want new players, or even older players to come back, we need new features on new aliens and Maybe a few tweaks balance-wise on the other aliens.
The ability to be invisible to rets has been working out great so far, and has not been feeling with the following included features:
You become visible when you attack. So while you can generally safely place yourself in the human base while invisible, your location can be given away as soon as you start attacking.
You become momentarily visible when you get damaged, which means if you are getting shot by anything, you will remain visible until you stop getting damaged.
You need to be charged to become/stay invisible, and while you recharge (by holding the secondary attack button) you are visible. So you can’t stay in one place invisible indefinitely.
There are a few advantages to the game play with these faetures:
The basi becomes an option for attacking the human base, able to generally penetrate into a heavily fortified base and do some damage, but not in all cases, and has its limitations on the amount of damage it can do in various situations.
The basi can do damage to campers in many situations.
Humans have to take into consideration strategic buildable placement that factors in the invisibasi.
With a charge factor in the equation I have to agree that it is not as bad as I thought ^^
Maybe something could be added as well to the humans.
What about some kind of heat detection goggles or something.
What I think:
once the human equips them, he can only see heat registers (which means it might be hard to navigate with that only, so it’s not too op and so it doesn’t render the basi’s invisibility useless.)
He can’t use a helmet while using the thermal vision goggles.
He can’t use the radar while using them or it now picks up every single heat source as a single color on the radar (this way it’s harder to determine if it’s an enemy or ally without seeing the target right in front of you.)
But yea, with the current features you listed, the invisibasi is way better presented than just a basilisk that can insta-invisible and rekt the a whole base without anybody being able to determine the cause
Hello, I haven’t read the whole thing but it looks like a ideas and issues list for the basilisk.
Depending on the situation, I either find basilisk useful or useless.
Useless: Basilisks are useless in groups of humans simply due to it only being able to attack 1 human. Another problem with the basilisk is how weak it’s bite is. I get that basilisks are supposed to be sneaky and for 1 on 1 combat, but when it takes 5 seconds to kill a human, loads of stuff happens in 5 seconds such as another human running around the corner and instantly killing you. Another problem I have is the health regeneration aura. Ever since the (major nerf) health decay system, what is the point of healing regularly? I find it a lot better to run back, devolve into the next least expensive thing, and evolve back into whatever it is I want to. It’s a process that takes around 20 seconds, which is a 20 seconds used wisely considering you regenerate max health instead of part of it.
Useful: While there are many flaws with the Basilisk, there are a few useful things it has. Let’s say you are for whatever reason unable to devolve and evolve somewhere, and you need health fast. Basilisk helps with that a lot, the only problem is most Basilisks don’t care about the health aura and run from you. Another useful thing a basilisk can do is (overpowered teaming) prevent humans from turning and running while you (beat the shit out of a human who is unable to do anything, basically idle) bite the human with little chance of dying.
Problems: I don’t have many problems with the Basilisk in it’s current state, but there are a few. The Basilisk can practically walk into the middle of a human base, evolve, and destroy the entire base with no risk due to the fact that (humans didn’t place a turret in every single pathway and corner in the room) it can bypass at least half of the defenses the humans built. Another problem I have is the health. I find the health a little bit low in most situations. (Previously stating that a human can instantly kill). But my biggest problem with the Basilisk is the time it takes to cloak after it’s been shot. The basilisk will cloak fast enough to where if the human misses 1 bullet, it’s back to hunt the stalker. Fire at a basilisk, no longer hit it for around half a second, it’s gone and you are left checking your back every few seconds to see if it’s there.
The summary for the basi’ couldn’t be as clear and exact to this ^^
I personally agree with all the points in your post.
Basi’ has had hp problems for a while now and was only used (or mostly.)by players like menace (I do still think he/she 's one of the best basilisk player I’ve ever seen on this game.) and a few other ones that I can’t remember the names as of right now. (If I recall the names while I’m at work, I’ll write them down so I don’t forget them )
And as for the invisibility right now, I do agree and it was one of my concern when it was suggested originally and I still think it might be a little OP (not necessarily a lot, but still a little bit.)
I tried it for a few games now and I still think it needs some adjustments for sure. (Like maybe a sensor on turrets or something of that sort that we could research in the defense computer or another machine for that purpose (which fits the DC a lot ))
Anyway, off to work. Have a good one ^^ I will try to read back the forum later today when I come back.
Perhaps to simultaneously address and balance the issues of the basi being at least somewhat more useful against groups of players, and the issue of the basi going invisible too fast, we could give the basi more hp and increase the time it takes to become invisible from being damaged. Idk if the damage done by the basi should be increased though.
That is an intended feature as an option aliens have to deal significant damage to human bases. Teslas, medistations, and the rc can be used as defenses against the basi, as they can attack the basi while it is still invisible.
It depends on the situation I suppose, it does cost evos to do that, but maybe it doesn’t cost enough. Perhaps in addition to the usual cost difference between classes, there should be an additional cost the percent of decayed max health times the full value of your current class. This additional cost could apply even when devolving, but also allow you to regain your full max health from devolving alone.
Maybe the basi should gain some fractional evos from healing teammates as an incentive, but also in such a case, the basi should no longer be able to damage teammates so that incentive doesn’t result in encouraging the basi to bleed teammates.
I don’t like the idea of having healing cost more evos than it already does. When I’m a tyrant, i get around 3 evos now then I have to heal because imho aliens are weak as it already is. Tyrant costs 10, spend 10, gain 3, heal, lose 3, gain 3, heal, lose 3, repeating process. More evos based on health decay/max health would be a problem because it would then remove the point of healing and force even more of a suicide rush since healing would do nothing but say “Ha, you’re healing? We will just remove X amount of evos because you decided to heal instead of die.”
This might be intended but it ruins humans majorly by removing their defenses. Basilisks are available at stage 1, while teslas are available at stage 3. The amount of time it takes to reach stage 3 is unbelievable at times, which also means that during stage 1 and stage 2, there is no point in building anything at all since it’s all useless anyways.
Actually the intended behavior is to encourage engaging the enemy more even if it means death. A problem with the rant has been (at least since 1.1) has been its ability to kill, retreat, kill, retreat, repeat indefinitely without being killed. We want the rant to be more killable, while at the same time it can do a lot of damage in a single rush.
Currently it has to run away, the rant barely does any damage to bases and such for how much it’s worth. That’s why I suggested giving it a bomb or something via booster with limited recharges.
I was actually on a vanilla server just now with a lot of people on it, including rants. Tyrants in 1.1 die easily too, they can’t retreat in time because humans have ranged weapons that destroy it. The tyrant is imho a weak class for how much it’s worth, not just in swirl but in every gamemode.
