Move lucifer + bsuit to S1 ??

[Ardbug]

Ok Im sorta half joking here, but still, I just went through yet another 20 minutes of mindnumbing terran camping, turret hugging, and at S3, they finally started to exit the base, wearing battlesuits and a throng of lucifers.
I see this all the time, it would seem that even a single dretch, can make a fully augmented S2 human, all suited up and with a battery powered pulse rifle, run screaming back to his turret.

So ..... I have concluded, that humans must be completely unbalanced and underpowered, and I feel sorry for making them stay in their dark humid base waiting for the S3 breakthrough, so why not give the humans the battlesuit and lucifer cannon on S1 instead ?? I know I would much rather face a bsuit+lucy in my dretch, than I would want to face an unarmored S1 rifleman sitting on his 3 turrets.

/sarcasm off

[DarkRogue]

thing is they're not underpowered. With some skill the pulse rifle, painsaw, chaingun, shotgun...hell even the basic rifle is a lethal instrument of death for aliens.

But people need two things in trem:

The awesome protection of battlesuits

and

The awesome destruction of the BFG errr luci Cannon

before they grow even the slightest balls to attack. Quite frankly I may use luci cannon now and then for suppressing fire but I feel dirty using it, its so poorly balanced and just plain easy to get kills with is like using the BFG in Q2.

You can kill everything in the immeadiate area sure. Doesn't mean you did it with any style or skill.

[Neo]

From my experience the Luci is more for suppressed aliens around corners than actually hitting things, apart from ankle-biting dretches.

tbh when I play as human I can't stand the camper mentality, but the aliens seem to like it. As they camp the human base entrance, I slip out and nail their eggs with a pulserifle.

[Teiman]

The human base is undersiege by a unknom alien lifeform. They have build auto-turrets for protection. And littel is know about the enemy.

Rambo alike heros can get a shotgun, or a painshaw and rush for the alien base, but unskilled rambos will only feed the monstruosity beyond that is hunting humans for food.

At S2, humans get superior firepower, fly ability that with helmet is like a penalty death for aliens.  But aliens can manage to survive with skill and scaring hit and run tactics.

Eventually aliens will evolve to Tyrants and will anihilate human life on the area. Or humans will get the ultimate weapon, the BattleSuit, that will the new energy weapon "Lucy Spam" can kill even the stronger aliens.

Yea, Tremulous enforte camping, the same way Tennis enforce camping. Imho.

[Neo]

Except due to the kills needed, humans get s3 long before aliens do.

[Paradox]

You have got to be kidding me right?
If we move the luci and bsuit to level 1, why not have the aliens get tyrants as the base instead of dretches.

About your comment of the game being alien tilted, you are backwards. It is the complete other way around. Aliens need a boost, and humans need a small weakining. I can kill the whole alien base with a RIFLE.

[Stof]

Only if the base consists of a single undefended egg. Else there's no way you'd have enouth ammo to kill all the aliens who get in the way *and* destroy the alien base !

[Survivor]

People, it isn't only that they are a bit unbalanced. It's also about the skill level of the players, which sadly are lacking sometimes or not distributed evenly among the teams.

As a general example I play on either db derelict or proximus and most often see the experienced players joining the aliens while the average players join the more orthodox human side. The problem is when the tides are turned. The people that are already unfamiliar with the game need to play a radically different playstyle from what they are used to from other games. While the experienced players get a bonus in orthodox weaponskills and enhanced tactics since they know the weaknesses of the aliens. Ultimately I've had some great games where both sides were excellent and the battles swayed from one side to the other and back as they should.

I'd say they're a match at stage 1, while humans definately have the advantage in stage 2, with stage 3 mainly being based on both skill and base design. Stage 2 Humans are a bit too strong for my taste, the feeling comes mostly from the pulse rifle, not the flamer, not the helmet, not the armor. Those all add, just like the adv marauder does, the goon is a killing machine in stage 1 already and offers good resistance in stage 2. The pulse rifle however is a weapon I fear only great players can avoid when they are anything but marauders.

[Ardbug]

Survivor your post is pretty much my own personal feel of the game too, I did write the OP with my tounge in my cheek, in fact the only thing that needs to be balanced, is adding some slightly larger balls to the light armour suit *G*
I find Tremulous exceptionally well balanced, other games, like CSS for example, have almost identical weapons and armours, making the balance quite narrow, Trem is completely unbalanced in that respect, aliens totally and completely rule S1 (1 vs 1), but when humans reach S2, they become the new power in the game (with a little teamplay), and humans usually reach S3 before the bugs, empowering them even further with the battlesuit, but then aliens hit S3, and the balance is almost restored again, S3 aliens are pretty scary

Sad thing is, humans CAN dominate S1 in 2 different ways:
1. Moving together.
2. Sitting on the turrets untill S2, letting the turrets get most kills.

Some of the really good players, like Orc, Norf and so on, can do number 1 solo, since their aim make up for several teammates

So Tremulous balance is like a huge rubber band, bending and stretching far and wide during the course of a game, in contrast to regular FPS games, where balance usually is a thin white line, but to quote a fantastic movie "the white line is in the middle of the road, it's the worst place to drive"

But after all that is said, then it still bores the crap out of me when the humans stay boxed in untill S3, I cant count the number of times I have gone to spectator mode, or gone to read forums, and then rejoined the game when humans finally reach S3.

[Stof]

Stage 1 humans take 94 pts of damage for dretch headshots. I can assure you that with that, moving together doesn't matter too much since it's nearly an instant kill for humans. As I see it, s1 1 vs 1 fight go like that :
- normal skill dretch vs normal skill human : human wins. Most people are more familiar with the humans than with the aliens because of the other FPS out there
- good skill dretch vs any human : humans as few chances if they attack. A good dretch player will find a way to ambush them somewhere on the way ( providing there is a place for ambush on the map ). Humans only chance to survive is to reduce the ambush risk to the minimum. Most of the time it means defending a long corridor with your back safe, ie : defending one of base entrance.
- good skilled dragoon vs any human : getting in range means getting chomped in the head. No human can survive against a dragoon unless there is at least some room to maneuver, and he can see the dragoon coming. If the map is composed of quite a few coridors and corners, dragoon has the advantage. A s1 human cannot hope to live long if he attacks with dragoons prowling around.

It's because humans are so weak and blind when they have no helmet that they camp in their base most of the time.

[benplaut]

humans can do fine in s1 with either:
1) good aim
2) a shotgun

one requires skill, the other just needs 150 creds

[werepants]

s1 humans are quite weak IMO, but so are aliens.  I have killed goons with light armor and rifle in s1, but I must admit 2-3 dretches is pretty impossible as a human away from base, unless they come from a long hall that lets you snipe them before they get to you.
I am much more base-oriented in s1, simply because I take much more damage and have to keep healing, and because I don't like to feed, and it is very easy to do that if you are not on top of your game in s1.
I don't think this is bad, though.  A fast-moving alien team can easily take out the humans in s1 if they cooperate, and get a couple of kills right off the bat.  In s1, it just highlights the need for humans planning and cooperating, which is supposed to be their focus anyways.
overall people just tend to die easier in s1, regardless of their team.  it is more a matter of player skill and strategery than of game balance.  in some ways I almost prefer the s1 gameplay to the later stages because it is more intense to play as a human since you die easier and can't see if there is a hungry goon around the corner, and because it is a lot more fair and fun for dretches since they can actually do some significant damage, plus employ their stealth abilities.  plus you don't have tyrants killing all the unarmored ppl and stealing kills that you need.