Why do humans camp? They have no incentive to leave the base (other than winning) and there is definitely a reason not to. Humans camp and they get credits, a lot of credits. Rants sitting outside the humans base gets impatient, runs in, dies, and thus the humans earn credits. If a human leaves the base, the single rant sitting outside the base instantly mauls them and why go bother that rant if he isn't doing anything to you? The answer to camping is not to promote adv. goons, for the humans respond to adv. goons attacking not by going out and killing them, but rather camping even harder and making sure they kill the goon before it can snipe their base.
Also, humans are much more dependent upon their structures then aliens are. Healing wise aliens don't even need their structures (other than touching a booster for accelerated healing) while the humans have to stand on top of the little green circle commonly known as the medistation, to replenish their health. Attack wise, humans need to constantly replenish their ammo while aliens can stay out attacking as long as they would like. Also, aliens can upgrade any where, given the Overmind is up, while humans have to run back to base to buy their upgrades.
Both the following ideas address one of the major problems with Tremulous, camping:
New alien: Another alien, most likely s3, cost around as much as rant, has a lot of health:
In itself, it is, theoretically but not visually, a big mobile hive , the player controlling it can slowly move toward human base, and set itself down. Once the player sets themselves down, they go into swarm view. Swarm view should either be the player as the swarm of bee-like-aliens flying, by looking in the direction of intended flight and holding the "forward" key, or some variation of that. Or, swarm view could be a sort of spectator view except the player mark a human and the hive automatically attacks the player (if they are in range). This will require humans to go out of the base and attack the attacker unless they wish to give it easy kills. Also, it will add some more strategy to the game. When this new alien feels itself being attacked, the user could un-siege and start slowly trying to run away when he does this, the hive stops attacking and starts making their way back to their host. (could have a feature where the hive will automatically attack the treat to their host while the host is moving) As opposed to the adv. goon, while this alien cannot attack buildings, he will be able to attack the humans from out of their view so they must go find it instead of just wait for it to come into their base.
Repeater BP:
Have BP set and customizable as it is now, but intead of it the BP being set for the total bp, have it set the BP given off by the Reactor and have a separate setting for the BP given off by a repeater. Say the Reactor BP is set as 80, in the area covered by the reach of the RC's power, the human team could only have eight telenodes or ten turrets or 4 telenodes and five turrets etc. If a player builds a repeater, the area of power the repeater supplies will have its own BP. Say the Repeater BP is set at 20. Per repeater, the builders could only make two telenodes or two turrets or a turret and a medistation, etc. Don't immediately think this will make the humans unstoppable. Remember that repeaters can only be placed outside of other areas of power so, the amount is limited to the size of the map. Also, (if the server does not make their repeater bp ridiculous) say the repeater BP is 20, the most defending structures that could hold is two turrets, this can easily be taken out by a goon, mara, or good basi. And, if the humans create too many repeaters, they will not be able to maintain them all and the aliens will be able to easily take them out. As for showing BP, my idea is if a player with a ckit walks into an area with power, display the remaining BP for that area, if they are not in an area with power, display a "X" or lightning bolt, or some other indicator as to no power.
Reasons for Repeater BP idea: It will reduce camping by rewarding players for leaving their base instead of punishing them by hurting their main base. In theory, the more repeaters the humans create, the more powerful they become. These repeaters will allow humans to stay out longer instead of having to return to base by allowing the to run through their base routine at the "mini-base" built by the humans. If the humans are on the defensive, the mini-bases will require constant upkeep against the average alien team, thus requiring the humans, if they wish to keep the mini-bases to stay by them instead of the main base. If placed strategically, the mini bases can be used to guard the main base so that the humans do not have to worry about sneak attacks. Already done before.
New Human Weapon/Class:How about having a "medic gun" something like all those class-based fps's out there. The classic thing to drop a small health pack or ammo. Or, straight from Team Fortress 2, a gun that a player can target a teammate with, and heal them constantly. I prefer the first one. The gun would of course have some type of regulator, like a recharge time on the hud (one for ammo one for health pack). As for incentive to be a medic, you could either have only the incentive of helping your teammates, or for the more selfish players (could also help noobs enjoy the game a little bit more by getting them some big guns) have the medic get a small token if one of the people they healed (and they are still by) kills an alien. Why I say they have to be around them is to prevent players from abusing this by hurting a teammate then healing them in base and letting the player run off while the medic earns creds. This way, they have to be out there helping. I personally like this idea better than my new alien class because it is much easier to add and would help stop camping and I personnally would love being a medic
.
Minor sub-idea: for players carrying a ckit, display the range of power with, by tinting the affected are or floor some color. (such as in
starcraft)
Ah and I suggest making basis or adv basis invisible on the radar so they can actually sneak up on people in s2
