Funky Alien Abilities

[Godmil]

ok, in light of recent posts lets get new discussions going (p.s. I'm not going to dare start a politics thread )

The Aliens for Trem are nearly totally finalised in their abilities and strengths, but I still like to spend time thinking of
extra ways to make them fun to play.  stuff like: having an alien that can move faster strafing than moving forward...
or having an alien who's jump hight is determined by how long you hold down the Jump button before releasing it.

My fav suggestion was to have an alien that can do a 2 second cloak (invisibility).  Where it cant attack during this
period (only move) and has a slow recharge before it can do it again. I think this would be cool if the humans are
camping in base.. watching a corner, just waiting for an alien to pop out...  then if the cloaking alien goes invisible
just before it turns the corner it could appear right in front of the humans (or even behind).. adding an extra
ellement of fear to the camping humans (and fun to the alien player).

of course my suggestions in the Tremulous IRC channel usually go
Godmil: hey guys, how about if we had an alien that did this.....
Timbo: no
Jex: no
Stannum: no
Overflow:  eh.... no!
Godmil:

of course they're always right, but hey its still fun trying

so what about other people... are there any funky abilities.. as in weapons or movements styles that you'd like to see an alien do, which you think would add to the fun of playing a particular alien?
especially if they haven't been done before in another mod.

[M123]

Brainstorming is fun.

1. the ability to burry into a human and control him.   .
I know everyone thinks it sucks, but it has never been done and there seems to be a desire for.

2. Remote scout probes. For humans a little flying probe that can be remotly controlled.
Alien builder can glue some alien eye thingies onto the ceiling on and switch between them, to see if humans are coming.

3. Stuff to make enemies dizzy, stunned, blind, inverted controls, different gravity, pushed away.

4. Maybe a kind a teamwork concept. One alien who sprays something that works good against armor but nothing else. And another alien who sprays something that works good against health but nothing else.

5. Adrenaline mode. The more you get damaged, the faster you move and you do more damage.

6. Alien grenades that lie on the ground and jump towards the first human getting in range. Only explode on hitting a human.

7. Explosive slime blob. Charge and shoot, it sticks to surface/players and explodes after several seconds.

8. Teleportation belt. One time use, teleports you to surface your aiming at.

9. Handheld cloaking device. Blurs and transparent human, but disallows the use of heavier weapons.

10. Light armor - medium armor - heavy armor choices.
Goes from fastest-least protection-cheapest to slowest-most protection-costly. So players can fit a armor that best suites their playing style. Rely on speed take light armor, rather be a slow tank take heavy armor.

11. Personal shield. Protects against attacks and recharges. Goes permantly down if shieldpower fully drained.

12. Listener. Directional sound reciever. Allows you to hear the sound, as if you were standing 50 meters in front of you.

[Excalibur]

ok let me see how about web type mine that sticks to ceiling that when a human gets in range, it shoots a web down and pulls it up to eat it kinda like the ones in half life.

a human projection thing that when you have it you can project a image of yourself or a thing (turret or whatever) to fool aliens into thinking its a human, when an alien jumps at it, the image vanashes and the human turns and bang dead alien.

the human engi or whatever put like oil on the ground and can light it on fire by poking it. (big alien comes by says ha easy human kill dont see the oil engi lights it and BAM burning alien.

well my brainstorming is done i will come with more later

[Midicow]

Hidden Vehicle controlling code for later

Gibs?

[Ogun]

My fav suggestion was to have an alien that can do a 2 second cloak (invisibility).

Probably wouldn't be very balanced if aliens could be invisible when moving as well. Nice idea about some aliens strafing though! Crab-style .

[Godmil]

I still think it would work...

I'd have it only go for like 2 seconds... then it has to wait maybe 30 seconds before being able to do it again.
(or it could have a wee bar.. which charges up.. then you could be invisible for as long as you hold a button down (max bar length 2 seconds worth) that way you could do a series of little invisibility burts to confuse the enemy).
I think this would be a nice way to even out the balance, since the humans have many really funky weapons, especially if the Humans take to camping.

[OverFlow]

give the battlesuit ability to hold 2 weapons at the same time.  The model looks too beefy to be holding a tiny little weapon, and it cant use jetpack,  battery pack, or helmet  

(as you can tell I've been going human for test games and goddy has been going alien )

[Crylar]

It would be cool if the aliens can take the texture its standing on and use it as a skin.

Or if aliens cout go into a cocoon and refill all its health, armor, ammo, etc. and this would naturely take some time, and whan its in its cocoon it very vurnerable and cant move.

A little bigger then medium alien could be abel to charge/tackle. When its doing this it cant turn just high speed forward. and when he hits its great knowbak on the enemy.

[Midicow]

Granger haveing the abillity to repair other aliens/structures with a spit?

[Who]

LESSON 1: DO NOT ASK ANY MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY FOR GAMEPLAY IDEAS. EX: GLOOM

[M123]

Knock, knock.

[M123]

14. Temporary deafness with a ringing sound when standing too close to grenades.

15. Aliens/humans screaming when hit by flame thrower. Burning effect on flame thrower, damage and flames go on for a while.

16. Hologram. A mirror image from the being transposed next to the being. Makes enemy guess which one is the real one.

[Excalibur]

14. Temporary deafness with a ringing sound when standing too close to grenades.

how about making one alien make it so they can scream and it like turns off the sound some how for like 30 secs so he cant hear witch way the alien is comming from.

[Godmil]

Oooh I like the last two posts

yeah Ear ringing was done in Vietcong, and I really liked it, though it can give you a head ache sometimes.

As for the flamethrower, I'd like to see burnee's eyes melting... that would be fun  totally unplayable, but fun all the same ;P

[Who]

The only good advice in this thread is mine.

[Crylar]

Will there be a flying alien??

couse I got this cool idea of how it could look

[Godmil]

No, I think that would be just a little too much Gloom

[M123]

Don't let gloom hold you back.

17. Mobile spawn. Spawn from a teammate. Smallest aliens spawn out of fattest alien.

18. Worms. If you die as biggest alien, there's a chance that you emerge as smallest alien worm from corpse.

19. Devour. Eat a friends corpse to regain health faster.

[Crylar]

Hehe eat is good

Gib a human and eat the gibs, to regain health.

[Excalibur]

and if you have full health you can get it to gain more health. like you start with 30 eat a human get 40 eat another get 50, and it gets maxed at like 100 depending on the alien.

[Godmil]

Didn't AvP do that? :/

still its not a bad idea.

[Crylar]

AvP has headbite, I mean eating every part of the humans, legs armes,  head, torso.

[Carcinogen]

Both, actually. In AvP, you could 'slash' a corpse to accumulate health, compared to biting the head off a living soldier (giving you a much larger health boost).

I've been wondering, why purposely avoid a good idea if it works? Aliens, in whatever form, should have every right to heal by eating corpses—this idea isn't only unique to AvP. If an idea's golden, take it, then execute it differently. You can apply that to practically anything—music, for example: 'borrow' a chord pattern, switch it around a bit, then finger pick. Chances are, nobody will ever notice, and if they do, nobody will ever care.

It's all the same. Gloom: Aliens vs. Humans. Tremulous: Aliens vs. Humans. AvP: Aliens vs. Humans, and so on and so forth.

Replace “aliens” with “demons,” and you have Doom. Replace “demons entering from hell” with “aliens entering from another dimension” and you have Half-Life. Try something creative with aliens like making them biomechanical monsters assembled from human body parts, and you have Quake2. It's all about coming up with an interesting twist to the original idea. Everything's been done before. There's no use re-inventing the wheel.

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” —Albert Einstein

[Midicow]

/me looks at date

*Bump*

[Godmil]

Oops, yeah, I forgot to say:  Very nice post Carc

well put.