I've been playing 1.2 for a few weeks, and here's my impression: Overall, the aliens have been nerfed far too much. Almost every change from 1.1 has been to nerf aliens and improve humans, and the end result, like some of the 1.1 mods that are out there, is to make humans vastly overpowered. The only reason aliens are winning any games at all is due to heavily stacked teams. With evenly matched teams, the humans are winning nearly 100%.
1) Turret changes have made them far more effective against large aliens. Dragoons and tyrants die instantly if they're within range of more than one turret. I don't understand why base defense against stage 3 aliens would be improved - surely the whole point is that stage 3 aliens SHOULD BE tougher than the human base? Aliens certainly have no base defenses against stage 3 humans. Hives do 18 damage to battlesuited humans, and fire once every 3 seconds. Turrets do 60 damage/second to aliens, with nearly 100% hits against large aliens. A hive will kill a battlesuit in about 16 seconds. A turret will kill a tyrant in 6 seconds. Did I mention that the hive costs 50% more BP, and is much weaker than the turret? Why should human base defenses be powerful against stage 3 aliens?
2) Tyrants. Nobody even bothers to evolve to a tyrant anymore. I've seen dozens of alien stage 3 games without anyone ever evolving to a tyrant. A couple of naked humans with rifles kill one in a second. Rifle does 60 dps, and gets 100% hits against an alien as large as a tyrant. If the humans know how to dodge, it literally takes TWO naked humans to kill a healthy tyrant, and ONE naked human might have a chance. The only situation where a tyrant can get kills is if it waits around a corner, builds up a trample, and times it just right to hit humans as they come around the corner, and then the tyrant immediately runs away to heal for about a minute. Tyrants are nearly worthless against bases, able to kill one turret only, if they're lucky, on a suicide attack - there's no chance of retreating, as a single turret will slaughter you as you retreat - tyrants simply have no ability to rush the human base and escape anymore, they're too big and have too few hit points and healing. If humans have one or two campers the tyrant might not even make it to the turrets. If the tyrant class is kept as it is, it should cost no more than 3 evos. When your premier class isn't being used, you have a problem. Are there any stage 3 games where no human buys a battlesuit or a lucifer cannon? No.
3) Dretch. Two headbites to kill naked humans, otherwise three bites. That is, pretty much a minimum of 1.5 seconds to kill a naked human, once you've gotten close to him, while the human has a weapon that can kill you in .5 seconds from any distance. Humans who toggle sprint can sprint while backpedaling and shoot off a full clip before the dretch can close the distance. Humans who wear light armour are nearly unkillable without headbiting. Did I mention that with new human stamina, they can just jump up and down continuously to avoid being headbitten? Once they get helmets, dretches don't get any kills at all anymore. What's the dretch kill-to-death ratio against stage 2 and stage 3 humans? One kill for every hundred dretches killed? Even that is only due to poison, and only against naked humans.
4) Distance. Designer may or may not realize it, but map distance between alien and human bases is a major balance factor. Close together, humans have a major advantage. Far apart, aliens have a moderate advantage. The speed/stamina changes have massively reduced the effective map distance between bases. Humans can sprint the entire distance to alien base, no problem. Cheap forward bases also reduce effective distance. To bring back that balance, every map would have to look like Procyon.
5) Aliens in general. Every alien class has been nerfed, with the exception of the advanced marauder, which is nearly the only alien that has any survivability, and only if you keep moving. The healing reduction, combined with all the other nerfs, is terrible. Do aliens have at least one person who is willing to evolve to basilisk and then SIT AROUND THE ENTIRE GAME WITH THEIR THUMB UP THEIR ASS, avoiding combat and acting as a mobile healing station? If so, they have a chance. If not, they don't. The basilisk with its new reduced HP has very little ability to fight stage 2 or stage 3 humans - in the hands of totally expert players, a basilisk can get some occasional kills, but 100% of inexpert players just get shot down without doing any damage. Add up the total number of basilisk kills by a player who didn't finish in the top 3 on his team: it's zero. Hitbox is large enough to be shot, basilisk is slow enough to take a lot of bullets, and no HP to survive any shooting.
6) Human base. Besides the turrets, a DC makes the reactor unhoppable because of the reactor damage increase. High HP makes the armoury a lot tougher target than it once was. So the previously-vulnerable parts of human base almost never suffer premature failure anymore from aggressive cunning aliens. In fact the usual method of human base failure now is marauders zapping the telenodes - telenodes are now the weakest link in human base. Once one or two nodes are destroyed, if not immediately replaced, the reduction in human defenders spawning usually leads to base collapse. Note to human builders: build 3 telenodes. Personally, I preferred having to watch out for cunning aliens chomping my reactor or my armoury rather than having those items effectively invulnerable.
7) Dodge. Skilled human players can dodge most hits from a single alien. Dodge doesn't protect you from the alien you don't see behind you, but in the common situation of just one alien, dodge can easily let a naked human kill a dragoon, for example. With the healing reductions, humans see far more wounded aliens than they used to - that dragoon probably doesn't have anywhere near 200 HP.
Overall: Far too many nerfs for aliens. Decreasing HP and decreasing healing rate while you decrease attack ranges and speeds and make humans faster and tougher? Awesome. The cumulative effect of all of these changes strongly biases the game towards humans. There was a suggestion in an earlier thread: force auto-join, distribute players randomly among teams. You'll find humans win a LOT of games. Currently the problems are masked because the good players are interested in playing aliens, and sufficiently stacked teams will always win against noobish defenders. Humans are also more vulnerable to ONE nooby player who nades the base or moves the reactor outside the base. That causes a fair number of human losses, which shouldn't be included in balance statistics... but are. Not to mention, i.e., the reactor-gives-no-power-if-more-than-max-bp bug which I reported, and which has also caused a number of human losses, which again shouldn't be counted in balance stats... but are.
Interestingly, I was just thinking that if alien base defenses were increased, all else being equal (double the HP of every alien item, double the damage of every alien defense), the result would be a lot like 1.1 but reversed. Aliens would be sitting inside their tough-defenses base, unable to emerge, while humans would be camping outside shooting in, trying to whittle down alien defenses. Might be funny for veterans of 1.1 - turnabout is fair play.
Anyway, Tremulous 1.2 isn't interesting to play as the game is so unbalanced currently. You can get a balanced game, if you have something like 5-6 skilled alien players (plus some unskilled) vs. 2 skilled human players (plus some unskilled). If teams are balanced (and humans don't hit a reactor bug or anything like that), humans win. That's my perspective. Now you can post your "cry more n00b" responses.
