I just wondered: Humans are so great to play because of their equipment. This makes playing much fun, aliens are disfavoured here. Why not give them "upgrades" they can obtain when touching an alien structure and using the "use-structure"-button?
Here are my ideas:
instincts
structure to use: Overmind
available at: Stage 1
cost of evos: 1
ability:
The overmind is the "brain", it can sense things, can understand, what it feels. If you "use" it, more of its sensitive power will be at your service, your skin will "feel" better, what is around. You will not only be able to see that there is a human, but also see how well equipped this human is. The better eqipped, the bigger will be the blue dot on your sensors. This can provide you with valuable information if you decide whether to attack nor not a group of humans.
agility
structure: booster
available at: Stage 2
cost of evos: 3
ability:
The booster does not just deliver it's poision to your skin, also, if you chose, it can give you a speed-boost. You will be able to jump higher and run faster. Tyrants can only run faster, but still cannot jump higher, they are just too heavy. Also, tyrants will permanently lose a part of their health points, because the higher speed does have its impact on their bodily structure - their skin needs to be thinner, making it softer to enable them faster movement. The skin of the other aliens is thin enough, they won't have any trouble in that respect.
hardened skin
structure: hovel
available at: Stage 3
cost of evos: 2
ability:
If you touch the hovel, you may coat yourself with a layer of the hovel's skin, thus hardening your skin. This will make you slower, because a harder skin is not that easy to move as a softer one, also, any uncharged jumps (=anything but pounce of dragoons) will be not that high. Despite all this, a hard skin provides a significant boost to your ability to take punishment: Dretches now can survive one touch with Lucifer cannon fallout, I would suggest to give it a +50 to +100 health increase, depending on the class. But: The protective layer does not grow back. If you are hit, a part of your own health goes away, but also a part of the protective skin, which does not regenerate, unless renewed for one evo at a hovel, if it is less then half gone. The moment your hardened skin is blasted away, you regain your original speed.
slime
structure: trapper
available at: Stage 2
cost of evos: 1
limit: only available for wallwalking aliens
ability:
Touch a trapper and use it to get one blop of its adhesive spit. If chased by a human, you may excrete a puddle of slime on the floor that slows down and hurts any human like an exploded alien structure would do. You can only excrete one blob of slime, after that, you'd have to get back to a trapper for more.
How to get it, how to lose it
As I said, go to the respective structure, touch it (just being near it won't work, this is an organic, not a technical structure!), and press use-structure. The "equipment" you get becomes a part of the alien body, changing it. Only if consumed up or if the alien dies, the additional body structure is gone, so make your decision: Speed, armour, slime or instincts? You cannot have more then one at a time.
technical realization
Optical stuff should be done by modifiying skins alone, the rest of course would be a normal mod.
What do you think of this?
