Modify Alien Healing

[Mycroft Macarthur]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): the strength of weed healing would be reduced to some extent, if not removed and modified outright, aliens would have a slightly newer healing mechanic.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): this could potentially fix a number of the balance issues with aliens in their current form.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc): currently aliens can tank a massive number of hits and they can heal damage VERY quickly and VERY easily to the point that it can be nigh impossible to score kills against higher tiers of aliens, the biggest disparity in terms of balance seems to be the fact that getting wounded is a HUGE deal for marines whereas for aliens it doesn't seem to matter at all, rather then demand xenos get some way to receive injuries as marines can as many have done in the past i've tried to consider how we might improve gameplay balance while working within the EXISTING systems.

i had two separate, yet similar ideas, for ease of explaining things i have decided to try and combine them into one idea.

rather then aliens being healed by the weeds directly as is the case now the way they heal would be tied to their plasma stores, IE : the more plasma the alien has saved up, the faster their internal healing happens to be and if they have max plasma then they heal at the maximum possible rate, weeds would lose the ability to heal damage and would now only regenerate plasma (the rate at which they do so can be slightly increased if need be but as i understand it plasma regen is tied directly to each alien class as opposed to working identically over the entire faction so it may be best to avoid touching that)

in addition, ALL aliens save for larva would receive an ability which when activated would begin quickly draining their plasma stores completely for a burst healing effect, leaving your plasma as is would lead to greater amounts of healing done over a longer period but expending it to activate your healing ability would heal drastically more in the short term, which would be ideal for combat scenarios, the ability could be activated and deactivated at ANY time and would be COMPLETELY plasma dependent with no forms of cool downs or other requirements, aliens would be able to take advantage of this ability by transferring all their plasma to heavily wounded xenos who could then begin spamming burst heals to get back up to maximum quickly, as a trade off the other aliens would now have empty stores and need time to regenerate their OWN plasma back up so this would best be done by alien classes who naturally have high plasma regen (queen, drone, hivelord).

in exchange for these two benefits however, crit for aliens would be slightly modified.

if an alien goes into crit their plasma stores would be set to 0 automatically and they will begin losing health over time in the same manner marines do when they start to bleed to death (or other similar crit effects) and their heal over time ability would be turned off, this is due to the fact that the plasma was built up over their body and the plasma leaked out due to all their injuries, in order to heal a xeno who has gone into crit you must transfer plasma to them, they would then stop "Bleeding Out" and their body would begin recovering normally based upon how high their plasma stores are, in addition they would once again have the ability to use their burst healing ability to get out of crit as quickly as possible (since they have plasma stores) but they would not begin regenerating plasma on their own, or regenerating hitpoints over time, until they are no longer in crit.

this would represent a significant gameplay modification for the alien faction, teamwork amongst the aliens would be more important then ever since aliens in crit would be completely dependent on fellow xenos to be rescued from angry marine forces, and then provided enough plasma to survive, drones and hivelords would be more desirable among an assault force since they would represent mobile plasma stores and "Healers" for the alien faction in a way since they would be more useful in long term engagements so endless hunter spams would be less desirable overall (hunter has terrible plasma regen by comparison), in addition this means you have to make a tactical choice, spamming tail whips will grant you increased damage but will leave you without plasma stores for quick burst heals in the short term if you get wounded and you will take longer to heal over time since you used up your stores in the fight, hivelords and drones can build fortifications in combat but the more resin walls and doors they spam the less they'll be able to heal friendly xenos, should you spam your abilities or try to think more tactically so you ALWAYS have a reserve? in addition suddenly storming a marine position could become slightly easier since even if you are grievously wounded you can just use burst healing to recover from your injuries and then find cover nearby, if the idea of losing all your plasma the moment you go into crit is too unfair then perhaps instead it could begin to rapidly drain (as opposed to just going empty outright) which could be more balanced.

i think the idea is interesting enough to merit discussion, what do you guys think? if used i had another idea for something hivelords could make to massively increase plasma regen in select areas (with a potential tradeoff of course to keep things balanced) as well as an idea to give drones something similar to the medics medical hud (except in their case they would see the plasma stores of all the aliens around them)

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it): this would be a code change to how xenomorphs work, needless to say this could turn out to either be a brilliant idea, or a horrible idea, given the nature of balancing gameplay mechanics

[Felkvir]

I think this is actually a pretty good idea, and i think GOOD players of castes like hunters would actually be less dependent on frontline drones and stuff if they had this

[Mycroft Macarthur]

i feel it has something for everyone, the goal was to try and come up with an idea that worked based upon the way the game is right now (aliens are dependent completely on their hitpoints and dont have an injury system) while taking advantage of whats already there, plasma should be a much bigger part of the game then it is and some classes more or less ignore it outright, its a big deal for drones, hivelords and queens but runners can give zero fucks since due to the cooldown on pounce they'll NEVER run out of plasma for the most part, its just a background thing you dont have to consider much really but now it can play a much larger, important role

xenos will be able to heal off weeds while getting an "OHSHIT" button in case of emergencies

and marines will like it since xenos can be easier to kill when they have bad teamwork or if you chase them down, it would just be a matter of balancing how strong the burst heal is for its given plasma costs, if aliens are power spammy then their healing abilities will be impacted meaning it can be possible to turn things around forcing aliens to be abit smarter, tail whip was just a free extra bit of damage per attack before when xenos could already be boss in melee but now it becomes a tactical choice, damage or healing?

[TopHatPenguin]

As long as the hivelord can't make itself invincible due to it's plasma regen and massive amounts of plasma this should be good.

[Mycroft Macarthur]

a good point, perhaps a limiter could be put into burst healing in that you can only use it so much every so often to counteract aliens with super high plasma regen rates such as hivelord?

[apophis775]

This was taken care of.