Alien Armor

[Kattana]

That which does not kill you only makes you stronger.

As aliens kill they can evolve to better more lethal forms, by surviving so much damage in the process they should grow more resistant to it.
Even humans scab over and get calloused, with all that regeneration the aliens could gain 1-2% armor for every X points of damage taken where X is their max health of their current form, this could then either reset when they evolve or stay with them.
The armor could differentiate between ballistic and energy weapons if a couple aliens build up substantial armor in s1 to ballistic weapons humans get another chance at taking them out with plasma rifles once they get s2.
This would also encourage more variety in the weapons used, no more chaingun spam = instant kill if the armor carries over to the higher evolved forms, and flamers would have to worry if any of those dretches coming at them were resistant to plasma.
Of course there would need to be a maximum amount of armor comparable to humans so aliens dont get 100% protected as unlikely as that is.

IMO 2% armor/full health of damage taken differenciating by type and not having it carry over to evolved forms would be the best options, larger aliens would have a harder time building up armor because of their high health and a long lived dretch would have less reason to evolve and still be useful in later stages while still giving humans the chance to use a different weapon type to take them out.

Additionaly alien appearence could darken to reflect their armor, really stike fear into the humans when they see a near-black dretch coming at them and all they have are more bullets, it will make them wish they had stoped camping and hunted it down earlier.

[Quaoar]

So, what do humans get to combat this?

Flamer-proof dretches is not my idea of a good time. Humans are already encouraged to use more types of weapons; they're good against different types of alien classes. The same is true vice versa. Giving aliens damage resistance when injured seems ripe for abuse, considering that marauders and dragoons very often commit hit-and-runs or hallway dashes (the former and the latter, respectively), where they lose up to 60% of their life in a go, but don't die. A goon could very well just make like mad for the other side of a hallway in front of the human base back and forth until it reaches the limit in a few minutes.

And aliens already benefit from increased HP during evolutions. That's their answer to human damage reduction.

I suppose this wouldn't be the worst idea if the armor only counts during one particular evolution and one particular life. That is, you might have armor as a dretch, but you lose it when you evolve, and you also lose it when you die, so it is especially ephemeral. That wouldn't be so terrible, but it seems like a good place to insert Occam's Razor:

Why?

[Paradox]

How about just lower flamers damage to 1 hpps

[Kattana]

Flamers are just an example, and just lowering their damage is boring and makes it alot harder for humans.

Even with marauders and dragoons trying to abuse it as Quaoar says they would have to do two runs to get 1-2% armor, 17 runs for 10% at 1%, 9 runs at 2%, if they can do that they deserve it, humans should have hunted them down by then to prevent it. For the vast majority of aliens that die after a short time this would hardly ever effect things.

Also when humans are camping while aliens worry about feeding, humans would have to be careful about helping them build up armor, "hardening them" to coin a term for such a situation.

[Quaoar]

On the one hand, it'd probably encourage camping because decisive blows are more easily inflicted by base defenses and also when everyone is together, so you can prevent something like getting chomped by a dragoon in close quarters combat when he's down to like 6 HP.

On the other hand, it'd encourage chasing fleeing enemies away from base, which I do anyway, but not everyone does.

[chompers]

A goon that develops immunity to chainguns by doing lots of hit and run attacks on turrets? SIGN ME UP!!

No, I think this would be horribly overpowering.

But, if it only applied to basilisks, then this would be a seriously great idea.

[Kattana]

It would not be horribly over powering,
humans with light armor have 60-75% armor,
helmets give 70% but damage is multiplied by 2,
BSuits give 80% damage reduction,
even with no upper limit it would be nearly impossible for aliens to get anything close to that.
67 runs taking 60% damage each time to match a battle suit,
8040 damage as drag, 6030 damage as mara.

Humans can not be encouraged to camp any more than they already are, most always camp, this would give them a need to go out and finish off aliens.

[Quaoar]

And humans get damage reduction armor because they can only have 100 HP. Ever.

Aliens make up in HP what they don't have in armor. If an Alien has 400 base health, then that's like a human with 100 HP having 75% damage reduction.

[Kattana]

Humans *always* have 100 health, aliens have to work for theirs and one death can put them back down to 25 and trap them there.

Do you really think aliens will get even 10% armor often enough that it makes a difference? So mara would take 165 instead of 150 dmg, drags 220 instead of 200, that is an extra half second or so of mg fire, and with damage types only if it is ballistic armor.

Aliens make up in HP what they don't have in armor. If an Alien has 400 base health, then that's like a human with 100 HP having 75% damage reduction.

No its *exactly* like a human wearing *light* armor, to match BSuits a tyrant would need 20% armor, and dont forget medkits.

[chompers]

Either it would be overpowered or so subtle as to be pointless.

Regardless of how effective it is, as a mara or goon I would constantly hit turrets, teslas and reactor to build weapon resistance, and then just avoid flamers unless I was on full health.

Don't get me wrong, I *really* like this idea for basilisks (possibly dretches as well) but goons and marauders are already very effective at taking lots of damage then jumping away to heal in safety. What this would do is make players that are already good even harder to kill without having much effect on weaker players.

Basilisks on the other hand can't escape so easily and it would make a currently underpowered class more interesting and challenging to play. If anything, I'd make the resistance build a lot faster than what you propose and cap it at 80%.

I like the idea of tinting the colour as well, again this suits the basilisk because their default colour is so pale.
There'd be 3 classes of weapon resistance:
Impact: rifle / shotgun / chaingun / mass driver / turrets / grenades
Energy: lasgun / pulse rifle / luci / teslas / reactor / painsaw? / blaster?
Flame: flamer
 
The Red / Green / Blue components of the color would reflect resistance to Impact / Flame / Energy resistance respectively, so that the colour code would end up like this:

White - resists none
Yellow - resists energy
Red - resists energy and flamer
Magenta - resists flamer
Blue - resists impact and flamer
Cyan - resists impact
Green - resists impact and energy
Black - resists all

To make things even more interesting, you could retain some of the resistance that you built as a basilisk after you evolve to a higher class, but lose all resistance when you die. So it would really pay off to play a basilisk. Humans would avoid shooting pale basilisks unless they were sure of a kill, because an escaped basilisk now means a tougher goon later. On the other hand, humans would go out of their way to kill dark basilisks for the same reason.

Told you I liked the idea! I think it is worthy of a mod, at least.

[Issy Gee]

To give humans a similar edge, we can take a page from the same biology text and give humans a resistance to certain alien types based on how many encounters with/ how much damage is obtained from them. Thus, a dretch bite would cause 25% less damage after a player has survived dretch after dretch after dretch. Such healing capabilities would be erased/hindered, however, by the influence of the medkit injection or the BattleSuit armor. Irradiation from the mass driver and luci may also play a role.

I don't think the "armor-up" rule should apply to dragoons and tyrants, as well as grangers: The first two units are already powerful, and being deployed full scale near the end of the game, they won't have a chance to adapt anyway. Grangers need to be weak, in order to preserve the "team-play" aspect of Tremulous. Dretches, Basilisks, and Mauraders, on the other hand, are typically strike-and-return units, and the adaptation aspect should teach players not to go kamikaze into the human base, or use an all out bite and scratch attack, but to take advantage of the more mobile aspects of those aliens to strike in groups (again, emphasizing the teamplay aspect of Tremulous), and come out strong.

[Quaoar]

No its *exactly* like a human wearing *light* armor, to match BSuits a tyrant would need 20% armor, and dont forget medkits.

I DID forget medkits, because aliens regenerate.

[Kattana]

Glad you like it chompers. It is supposed to be subtle so it ISNT overpowered or pointless, if you just keep adding bigger flashier things you end up with a bunch of insta-kill weapons like lucis.

Issy Gee, that makes no sense, If I came over there and knocked some sense into you and then hit you again would it not do as much damage?
Human biology doesnt work that way, no real creatures biology works that way. Even disease resistance which is the closest thing to what you are suggesting does not work anything like that and takes a long long time.

Quaor: Ignoring you, all you do is make excuses not to do anything to improve things, in this topic and others.

[Henners]

This is a nice flavour idea, but I wouldnt want to see it having an ingame effect. The alien health increases balance things out.

Incidentally it is utter nonsense to compare alien health against human health with damage reduction, because neither side are using the same weapons.

e.g. Its irrelevent that a BS has the same "survivability" to damage that a tyrant has when a tyrant can cut a BS down no matter what weapon they have in 3 hits - this is because the tyrant hit does an obscene amount of damage, and you cannot compare human weapons to it.

One side effect of damage reducing armour a lot of people notice but dont really think about is friendly fire damage for humans. At later stages it is very low as the damage reduction deals with it. This is the only time where you can compare the survivability, but again its fairly irrelevent as you arnt likely to be pumping your pulserifle into a battlesuit for a few seconds - possibly spray across them hitting them once or twice and no more.


Back to the point in question - if you gave an advantage to the aliens that survived you would stretch the skill differential further. Every game you play tends to have a couple of good players on each side. You would be making these good players more and more dangerous, when they may already be overpoweringly so to the average player.

As someone else pointed out turrets would be brilliant for "buffing" your alien....

All that aside

It would be very cool for a colour system to be introduced to aliens, so they darken as they regen damage, as long as it has no game mechanics effect (I suppose minimal effect of allowing them to hide more easily). However this is similar to the idea of allowing customisable skins we discussed not long ago - it is probably a hell of a lot of work for the devs when there are better more important things they can be looking at.

[raf]

i really like the idea of getting (a little) more robust over the time,
this would make it much more interesting to survive

maybe all resistances should be capped @ about 20 %

it would give some kind of rpg feeling to the game

gotta have a look @ trem sourcecode^^

[werepants]

this would give good rewards to people who don't feed.  I like the idea, but I don't really think it would fit in with trem balance-wise very easily.  My favorite implementation idea is with the basilisk.  That class needs some fixin, and this is one of many ideas that could make it much more rewarding to play.

[Survivor]

Applying it to the basilisk seems to fit. A basilisk who often takes on pulse rifles and lives gets tougher against them and more efficient at dealing with them although he still has to be careful about that fresh spawned human with a rifle just around the corner. Can't do runs with a basilisk either because even an average human should be able to take out a basilisk running away from the turret near the human base.

[Kattana]

@Henners: more skill differential is a good thing, since the world cup is going on atm let me ask how popular would soccer be if you were only allowed to kick the ball in strait lines, no tricks or curves or complicated passes, so that the "skill differential" was not stretched?.
Or how would RPG's be doing if everyone was limited to the same level and abilitys.
Or tremulous if you could not buy better weapons, you have to be good enough to get kills to afford them remember.
You need to cater to good players that are showing what feats are possible not the average player in order to make the game stand out and attract more players, if they dont have to work for it, it is not as fun.

I like whats been done with the game so far and imo what stands out is how different the two sides are, but its still new, theres lots of room for improvement, the humans could use some new ideas as well, buying armor and big guns have been done to death.

[Quaoar]

I have to agree with Kattana. Getting kills to evolve/buy better weapons is already rewarding better players, and why not? Though just evolving doesn't cut it, eventually any Joe can get a bsuit and a lucifer with enough patience, and not quite the same, but still in the ballpark, for aliens.

Actively needing to avoid death to get better damage reduction would be an even better show of expertise than kills for weapons/classes. You don't need cheap shots or the "no feed" bonuses to get reduction, you need to be shot. It's different.

[Stakhanov]

It will be good for Tremulous , contributing to make alien gameplay more unique.

I suggest that acquired armor remains when evolving to the advanced form of your current class - so there would be more specialization within the alien team : dedicated granger , support basilisk , frontline marauder , hit&run dragoon and end game specialist tyrant. Since no alien lives forever , just keep the armor with one level of protection removed for each death to have a significant but balanced system. Rushing humans and dying after killing one wouldn't give any plus , but you wouldn't lose all after dying on your 10th hit&run attempt at killing that pesky pulse battlesuit.

[chompers]

An idea to balance this out for the human team: the more damage you heal with medikit, the faster that the medikit works next time you use it. As with the last ideas I posted, any advancement resets when you die.

Honestly though, I dont think it would require anything in the way of balancing if it applied only to basilisks. Consider the good alien player who would usually be out raping the human team as a stage 1 goon or marauder very early on and bringing his team to an early stage 2... he is now encouraged to play the support role as a basilisk, soaking up damage while grabbing humans for less skilled players in other classes. When humans do hit stage 2 and the pulse rifles come out, his first goon or marauder is ready to go with a decent armour boost. Of course stage 2 humans also means facing flamers for the first time, against which he has no protection unless he stays as basilisk even longer...

[Henners]

@Henners: more skill differential is a good thing, since the world cup is going on atm let me ask how popular would soccer be if you were only allowed to kick the ball in strait lines, no tricks or curves or complicated passes, so that the "skill differential" was not stretched?.
Or how would RPG's be doing if everyone was limited to the same level and abilitys.
Or tremulous if you could not buy better weapons, you have to be good enough to get kills to afford them remember.
You need to cater to good players that are showing what feats are possible not the average player in order to make the game stand out and attract more players, if they dont have to work for it, it is not as fun.

I

Showing what feats are possible in no way equates to giving them new powers. That is a completely different scenario.

The skill differential isnt in question.

Your RPG example is also critically flawed, nearly all RPGs are based on time spent playing rather than any actual skill involved. Dont mistake the two. Being able to do tricks such as curve a football is again a skill thing, not a reward bestowed upon the best players.

Good players already stand out - you dont need to cater to them further. They can display their skill in a variety of ways, such as goon chain jumping, marauder head swiping, dretch advanced wallwalking etc. The skill differential is there correctly as it should be. You dont need to add features.

Making the very good players more powerful is a horrifically bad idea. The players that good dont need to made more powerful - its that sort of thinking that leads to an absurd positive feedback loop, not to mention making the problem of players joining a game halfway through having a hard time even worse.

As someone else pointed out in a different thread I know you feel aliens are underpowered, but as the devs can show you, on average neither team has an advantage. For the record I also feel humans have a slight edge at s2 and 3, but aliens have a massive edge at s1 with their instant kill/near instant kill from just dretches! I think you really need to spend some time watching the good alien players and learning from them before suggesting more illconcieved ideas here.

[PHREAK]

The reason why most games seem balanced, according to numbers, is due to the fact that most freshlings play hummies while more skilled players prefer aliens.
If you have equally skilled aliens and humans, humans will win every time on every map.
I like the idea of built-up resistance and I dont see it necessery to give something else to humans. They already have the nade, flamer and s3 lucy.
What more can they ask for...a mass driver with lucy damage?!
The game is currenty very hummie biased, from building options and weapons, to even maps themself. Even the idea of gameplay only applys to humans, since most good aliens know the danger of fighting in a group (maras are excluded).
I'd love to see this at least as a mod. If it's liked, being included officialy is just a matter of popularity.

[Quaoar]

What more can they ask for...a mass driver with lucy damage?!

Actually, the mass driver is massively underpowered. It's a Sniper Rifle that hardly does its job. I'd rather it have a slower fire rate, but actually do a little damage besides picking off a dretch who thought no one was watching him, or in a support scenario. The entire idea of sniping is more useful for other slow moving objects like other humans than aliens, so its usefulness is already somewhat limited. It seems most effective against the big ones like goons or tyrants, but you'd need to expend more than a full clip into one, assuming it doesnt heal or... you know, kill you first. I haven't seen a really great usage of the mass driver, especially with some lag. Picking off dretches who didn't think any humans could spot them from so far away doesn't seem to be good enough to justify its use. At least it's relatively cheap.

And on KillaZ or tjw's server where it's essentially packed with experts and decent players (no newbies, at any rate), both sides are very well rounded and show no obvious racial superiority. They just play differently, if you managed to capitalize on your opponent's disadvantages and play up your own, you will do well. It was all quite balanced to me.

PS. Speaking of camping, there is a dual-camping phenomenon where humans won't go past their turrets because aliens are camping just around the corner, and aliens won't go around the corner because humans are camping at their turrets. You can't yell at humans to stop being pussies and just sit behind a door with your pounce fully charged. I mean, you can, but it wouldn't be totally fair criticism. Only one of the aforementioned two parties is capable of going somewhere further away and giving an incentive for humans to bother leaving. It's part psychological too. In one game on tjw's server, he just sat with his dragoon at the bend of a long corridor in MEEPS, and after many attempts to get through it, we pretty much just abandoned that route. We may have killed him a few times, but it wasn't worth the effort, we tried another way. If you do that at all the exits, well, we may as well wait and roast marshmellows.

[Rekov]

The game is pretty balanced as it is. Sure this would be cool, but it wouldnt be the point, and it would just through the game out of balance.

There would be a whole new world of alien camping, where you take a few hits, regen, and repeat. doesnt sound cool to me.

[Paradox]

Flamers are just an example, and just lowering their damage is boring and makes it alot harder for humans.

You mean so they cant rack up to s3 in 10 sec? Flamer is a camper weapon. I use it offensively, and thus dont get as many kills, but provide support for teammates. So what if i get toasted a little every now and then. Humans have an easy enough time.

[someloser]

i think this armor thing is really a cool idea! but, obviusly, humans would need something to counter it.

maybe some rpg like stats? like health, stamina and agility, increasing them would cost some 250 credits? i sure hope what they do need no explanation. dying would reset them.

[Quaoar]

i think this armor thing is really a cool idea! but, obviusly, humans would need something to counter it.

maybe some rpg like stats? like health, stamina and agility, increasing them would cost some 250 credits? i sure hope what they do need no explanation. dying would reset them.

Well, I don't think it really needs to be counteracted, but on the whole that doesn't sound too bad. It would certainly let you further customize your character beyond the usual combos. A building would need to be built to let you do that, like an Infusion Chamber of some sort.

Though with so many new options, the cred cap would need to be raised. I guess evos for aliens too.

[someloser]

I dont think a special building would be needed, as IRL a marathon runner gets more stamina by his running, same for a sprinter. And you do get tougher if you've taken some beating in the past.
This levelupping would be accessable 'in the field', imo.

[Quaoar]

I just think that needing to use BP to get these upgrades adds another level to the game. Thing is, you have structures that are just entirely mandatory, and everything else is defense. Medpad and armo are a must. Plus the reactor and nodes, and everything else is to protect those (which are also necessary). Aliens need OM and eggs, everything else is to harm humans (or booster).

Aliens actually have choices about whether or not they want to build certain structures, and whether it would change how they play the game. Humans all have the same 4/5 core structures (2 nodes, armo, medpad, reactor), and will pretty much always build a defense comp, and then just turrets/teslas in some mix. They use every single building, so there isn't much in the way of base customizing to emphasize a certain kind of gameplay. Giving both sides more options may make it all very cumbersome and excessive, but a few more choices that bring gameplay differences but perhaps aren't considered mandatory wouldn't be too bad.