Come to think of it, in some currently played servers like dretch storm, human players do nade the alien base with quite devastating effects. Then once they get Lucy cannons they don’t need to nade as much in the old game play. Furthermore suicidal kamikaze aliens could be unlocked at S3 or S4 or even better yet only unlocked after their OM gets killed once. Humans could get powerful nades after their RC gets destroyed. Or have the powerful and suicidal weapons unlocked after X stage is reached or X build points are lost to enemy attacks.
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Actually, the damage is more significant in a way, since there is an effective limit on how much a buildable can heal. Even in a situation where a nade might not kill any alien buildable, if it damages alien buildables, it is weakening them up for a/some attack(s).
I would like to add that another reason nades might be used less is that aliens can build on walls/ceiling from the beginning of matches now, where as before, until aliens got to stage 2, their buildables were more vulnerable to nade attacks. Whereas the nade launcher can effectively attack alien buildables on walls/ceilings in most situations.
We made a bunch of changes to the droppable nade and the nade launcher (their stats are no longer tied together), but basically now the droppable has a larger splash radius but does less damage, while the nade launcher does a little bit more damage, but has a smaller splash radius (some other related changes is we took away the extra clip from the nade launcher, so only 6 rounds, but you can now buy ammo for the nade launcher, at a price of 400 per round, and there is now a “reload” delay whenever you buy ammo or a weapon at the armory, so that should reduce the effects of armory camping in general).
It will be interesting to see how these changes in some of our explosion attacks works out in the dev games, and perhaps from that we can get more ideas for how to best to implement a kamikaze alien.
Here are the related commits:
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I use grenades pretty frequently, with limited success…
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I use grenades occasionally, I used to use them a lot more, but they just don’t have enough bang to make their cost worth it. Grenades are a high cost and risk. If you get killed before you use it, then its wasted credits.
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Hi, I am a person who personally hates grenades, hates using them, hates being on a team with a person carrying a grenade, hates being an alien and standing near grenades, etc. I hate everything about this thing that most people call “god”, the grenade. The grenade is a standard explosion tool for humans, mostly used for alien base destruction. Grenades are useless in many ways:
1: The itemact: How hard it is to switch to this thing and actually throw it and dying trying to is very annoying. I just wasted 200 credits (150 on grangerlab and unitremia currently) on something that was literally the death of me.
2: The travel distance: When you throw a grenade, you know what happens? You drop it at your feet and commit suicide while 50 aliens are surrounding you. This thing has no range.
3: Understanding it’s purpose: I’m sorry, but I have found so many people throwing it down a hallway to try and blow up what? A dretch? No. You let your team down in 2 ways, buying the damn thing and then wasting it on a dretch that 99% of the time is going to dodge it.
4: Alien perspective: OH LOOK A GRENADE! GOTTA BACK UP AND RUN BEHIND THIS WALL!
Human: WHERE DID THE ALIEN GO? I BETTER CHASE IT! OH FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU… BOOM (Leads into 5)
5: Risk: Humans have no idea where that grenade went after they through it, did it hit a wall and bounce back? Did it make it over the cliff like you wanted it to? Did you throw it up on the ledge or did it fall right back down in time for you to take tons of self damage?
My point is, I’m not just saying that is in this game, I’m saying it is in every game. I understand it can be good at times, but most of the time it’s completely useless. Use grenades if you want to, but I won’t ever use grenades (with the exception of testing).
These are opinions. - Matte
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First I want to say up front that on the surface, talking about the nade and nade launcher in a topic about a new possible Kamikaze alien class might seem off topic, but I think the discussion of implemented and potential explosion attacks in general would aid in the specific discussion of potential Kamikaze alien implementations (besides potentially benefiting other explosive attacks). Not to mention, there was the discussion of basi/rant bombs, that are similar in concept to nades.
What if we increased its throwing speed, or maybe have its throwing speed increased only when you have sprint activated?
This is why I want to alter its purpose, by increasing its splash range, and decreasing its damage, so that it weakens a room, or decent sized areas for attack.
What if the throwing nade’s model was larger? Also, maybe a flashy dynamic light would help.
@blowFish suggested the idea of if you get killed while carrying a nade, the nade should drop, but not be activated, so that teammates could pick it up (perhaps from pressing q?).
I would also like to see this in action:
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Only the pro’s throw grenades out of nowhere like they’ve just seen an alien and instead of well, defecating normally, the defecate grenades.
But on the basics of Kamikaze aliens, perhaps an alien that explodes and DoT’s buildables?
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Grenades 101:
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What if the alien did a negligible amount of damage and instead applied an effect that marks structures as vulnerable, and attacks against vulnerable targets does bonus damage?
That would deal with the issue of random players spamming the class in order to cause massive damage, and also encourages teamplay with devastating results.
Example: If the vulnerable effect causes other aliens to do 150% damage to the target, an alien that normally does 50 damage would do 75 instead because 50 times 1.5 is 75
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That’s how you get admin in Der Bunker.
This is a cool idea, though could the really spam the class to do massive amounts of damage work? Given evolving into a suicide dretch, etc would cost evos (I hope), it’d be the same as not being able to spam grenades constantly, however they still have an impact.
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The bonus damage won’t stack.
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I like the bonus damage to vulnerable structures, to an extent. What exactly would trigger the vulnerable effect? Distance from main structure location? (Like 50 turrets near the reactor, one is off somewhere defending a door or something while remaining in the reactor range, but has the effect) Powered by a repeater? (Away from main base, such as a vulnerable mini-base) Or just a structure that is X units away from the reactor, where all of the turrets would be away from the reactor, making them all vulnerable structures? If it would be triggered by the last 2, I’d highly suggest either:
A: Improvement on the structures themselves
B: Reducing the bonus damage from 50% to perhaps, 15-25%
C: Giving structures marked “vulnerable” a damage buff.
D: Increased structure range
Aliens don’t need that much of a damage buff to vulnerable structures, I see structures that are away from the reactor more as supporting front lines, causing the structures to take more damage would then discourage the idea of building a forward, as it could easily get destroyed.
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Miscommunication, I meant to say that the suicidal alien applies a debuff to structures, and if other aliens attacked a structure marked by the suicudal alien’s effect, that structure takes % bonus damage.
50% was just an example value, I pretty much agree it’s sort of unfair too.
The best solution would be to say that there would be a limited number of times you could stack the structure vulnerability using the explosive alien.
Overall I’m not sure if it should be implemented as a debuff that lasts X seconds and causes the bonus damage whenever target structure is damaged while the debuff is active on it or a mark that lasts X seconds and is consumed when another alien performs a successful attack, dealing the bonus damage.
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Perhaps stacking the effect could be an option, although here would be an idea if it was the case:
Lets say the effect lasts 20 seconds, I would then immediately try to think of a way to balance stacking, so it’s not overpowered (placing an egg near the base, then always rushing to the structure to give it additional debuffs). My first thought is that since the first effect lasts 20 seconds, the next one could then last 10, then 5, then 2.5, then 1.25, then 0.625, so on… therefore it could still stack, it would just cancel out the additional stacks faster.
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What about something called “Diminishing Returns?”
Or we could just do it without stacking, or make it a minimal amount per stack. Or perhaps, at first the vulnerability stacks barely do anything, but the more you stack on, the more damage it deals and when you get several stacks (5+) on it make it deal massive damage? Remember we’re probably going to make this alien pretty frail and not explode if it gets shot down on the way.
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Stacking is an appealing option, but it could be too potent. It seems to me that testing the kamakaze variants might tell us something how it plays as a feature in the current set up.
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After recent testing, I find no use for a kamikaze alien, or an alien that deducts armor on anything. All of the human structures aim for the bottom middle of an alien, if the very bottom of an alien is behind cover, it then becomes unable to attack the alien. Adding something such as a damage bonus or a bomb would add to the problem with current structures.
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An interesting observation…
That may change with future updates. For example, I’m looking into using capsules/spheres as replacements to some of the buildables’ bboxes. That may make it more difficult to attack those buildables from behind cover. We may change how current offensive buildables attack, maybe finding some way for them to attack players when they are visible instead of only when their origin is visible. We may add more buildables that could change the dynamic, and/or any other number of changes to the buildable system and/or any other system may change the dynamiz significantly.
With that said, could a Kamikaze alien be useful in combat against human players, and not just against human bases?
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the original reason I suggested this was because while machinegun humans are still mildly useful at mid-lategame dretches are near useless. This can lead to being able to do nothing if you’re alien with no evos.
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Some things to considert that are different at the moment in the swirl game mode:
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Dretches can damage any human buildable (including the reactor).
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Dretches have 38 hp (although they are limited on how much they can heal: The New Heath Degrading System).
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Dretches have pounce (for movement purposes, the pounce itself doesn’t do damage, damage is still entirely from the bite).
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There is a gradual timed income system, where you constantly get fractional evos (so you don’t have to wait the couple minutes to get any timed evos).
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Income is given from team buildables killing enemy players.
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Income is given from killing enemy buildables.
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Some of the income from killing enemy players is given to the enemy team.
With that said, I still think that a kamikaze alien done the right way could add a lot to the game play, and if someone were to make the assets (the model, etc) for such a new alien class, I would definitely code an implementation for us to try.
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