Few thoughts on aliens, humans and the HUD.

[Death Himself]

I'm loving the game so far, but there are a few things that strike me as I have been playing.

-Dretch can block in Dragoons and Tyrants. This can be really annoying when you are one of those two bigger aliens and there are two or more dretch around, it's like moving invisible walls all over the place and they move sometimes just as you try and leap over them. I'd think that Dragoons and Tyrants would be large enough to step over them, is there any way to do that I wonder?

-The chat text in the upper right corner is a little large in my opinion. Why not make it smaller, like the size of the text when you open console?

-Also about the chat text, is there any way to make it float onscreen longer? If it were smaller then it would be neat to have it keep the last 5 lines or something permenantly. Sometimes I just can't look up right at the moment I hear an alien gurgle or radio signal, forcing me to open the console to see what was said.

-For the zoom key, is there any way to make it bound to the right mouse button without overwriting the secondary fire? Having a sepretate key for it is sort of annoying when I try to keep my fingers on all the keys I use at once, there just aren't enough keys on the left side of the keyboard, I have them all bound. Plus a lot of games use the right mouse button for zoom already, its very intuitive.

-What about making alien attacks have some sort of action visible to the player, other than the blood spurt on a successful hit? Like seeing the mouth bite, even just as an effect. It feels like I'm "swinging on air" when I use some aliens (like the morrowind combat system, if you've played it, ha), tyrants especially have this problem. Of course dretch don't need this since they autobite.

-Dretch should explode when they die!

-A couple maps have stairwells where aliens can put acid tupes under them. This wouldn't be so bad if the only way to get to the tubes from either side wasn't to go right over/past them. One of the locations is even impossible to reach unless you chuck a grenade just right to bounce it in. It sort of sucks to be hit by acid tubes you cant' see or even shoot. It strikes me that this could have been intended, but it makes the alien base almost invulnerable like that, I've never been on a team who could beat the acid tube under the stair tactic unless the base was totally undefended and we had all the time we needed to carefully run through and use grenades, a single dretch or advanced granger foils the whole thing, any other alien is total human slaughter.

That's all for now. This isn't really a list of complaints, just suggestions.

[Silverius]

Most stairwells can also be approached from the other side. Plus there's the jetpack to make things more easy and splash damage from the lucifer cannon.

[SLAVE|Mietz]

-Dretch should explode when they die!

Why would that be? Dretches are a very good class without that.
This could also lead to abuse, where teams of dretches rush the turrets/teslas to blow them.

[Death Himself]

-Dretch should explode when they die!

Why would that be? Dretches are a very good class without that.
This could also lead to abuse, where teams of dretches rush the turrets/teslas to blow them.

I don't mean for it to be anything but visual. I just think it would look cool, no gameplay mechanics involved.

Most stairwells can also be approached from the other side. Plus there's the jetpack to make things more easy and splash damage from the lucifer cannon.

The two locations I am talking about are literally only reachable by going over or directly by the zone that the tube can hit. This pulls jetpackers straight to the ground with damage and there is no other side to approach from. The splash damage from the lucy also doesn't hit through the metal of the stairs, you can't even SEE through it, but the tube can shoot through it because there is just enough space to fit it in there and the acid clips the floor of the stair.

[Silverius]

Nope, splash damage doesn't go through the stairs. But as I know stairwells it's possible to shoot a fully charged luci bullet to the ground right next to the tube. Result, splash damage.

Plus, most tubes don't really do so much damage that you can't perform a quick run over them.

[b0rsuk]

As a (mostly) alien player these days, I'll tell you I'd love to have such "problems" like having to spend below 10% of my maximum credit capacity (below 10 with selling exploit) to guarantee destroying a building. Even if you run straight into acid tube, you can generally take it down with your regular weapon provided that you know exactly where it is.
Aliens suprised by unexpected turret often don't have this luxury.

If all tubes were possible to destroy without taking any damage, why would anyone bother with them ? They're not that strong in face to tube combat anyway. It would just be "insert ammo to continue".
In later stages, to actually kill someone with tubes you need a few of them in one spot, or you need to distract the human with, say, marauder while tube deals the damage.

[Silverius]

Or you need a well placed trapper to make them stick around (won't work too well with bsuits though).

[Kipu]

-Dretch can block in Dragoons and Tyrants. This can be really annoying when you are one of those two bigger aliens and there are two or more dretch around, it's like moving invisible walls all over the place and they move sometimes just as you try and leap over them. I'd think that Dragoons and Tyrants would be large enough to step over them, is there
any way to do that I wonder?.

Im new player so its usually me who is playing that Dretch. As i know this problem, i usually try to stay away from big ones so i wont block them. But then again, it would be nice to follow them. Mayby even help little and "steal" a kill. =D Well, you guys allready know how to get kills.

-Also about the chat text, is there any way to make it float onscreen longer? If it were smaller then it would be neat to have it keep the last 5 lines or something permenantly. Sometimes I just can't look up right at the moment I hear an alien gurgle or radio signal, forcing me to open the console to see what was said..

As english isnt my national language, im little slow reader. It would realy help to not need to use console all the time.

-Dretch should explode when they die!.

Not sure if it just me, but i cant allways see is the Dretch living or dead. If the body would be little more messy, it could help. At least times when im not concentrating to it that much or cant see the whole body.