Alien Should be Able to Receive Injuries

[poopbutt69]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):
Aliens should be able to receive permanent injuries.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):
It's much closer to the movies, wherein aliens are frequently scarred or maimed. It would encourage aliens to sneak assault more, and to capture more to recover their losses. This would be more interesting than just standing around in plain daylight spamming acid spit around corners. It would also add some kind of strategy to where you aim as opposed to just chest firing all the time. It could also add use to the sniper rifle, which could scar or maim aliens from afar. Additionally, for the coders, or people with creativity, it could be fun to think of various potential alien injuries and how they might affect specific alien classes.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):

It could be implemented in many different ways.

In general the idea would be that aliens would be able to be scarred or maimed on their various body parts. From a generic view, scarring could impair maximum health/plasma, and maiming could disable use of that limb. Or it could more creative, maiming a leg could reduce speed, or maiming a claw could reduce damage.

To offset the permanence of the effects, scarring could increase deflection marginally on that limb, or some other positive effect, and evolution could clear maims/scars. Different aliens could potentially have different limb strengths, adding to strategy of where to aim as a squad.

Although this seems like a heavy alien nerf, I think the idea of a badass alien, with a ton of scars hunting down humans is kind of the image I get when I think of AvP. The main alien in the move had a scar on its head. For Aliens scars could be a badge of honor, and could somehow have positive effects too. A crusher with a ton of scars could have less health, but be more deflective and hard to kill. Almost like upgrading, but rather than getting stronger with time, getting stronger from battles.

From the marines perspective it takes away the frustration of pulling off a great move and critting an elite alien only to have it dragged away into the darkness when you run out of ammo, as you could have caused permanent damage to it, and counter balances the idea of 'ancient' aliens who in their life time will surely accrue injuries.

I think it would add an additional layer of depth to alien play that I feel is missing. Maybe it would give rise to additional alien mechanics, like an alien healer class, or a queen having an ability to fix limbs.

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):
It should function similar to the marines limb system. If a limb has receives a certain amount of damage, it receives the scarred, or maimed condition. The alien class would determine that damage threshold. Evolving would clear scars and maims, which should work fine with the code as it is, since evolving seems to create a new body. Healing would remove limb damage and thus reset the threshold, so one could continue to accumulate very light damage and heal it with no consequences. Classes like sputter could have higher thresholds to allow them to function as they frequently take one or two shots.

[ColdSuit]

+1

Xenos are living beings. No matter how perfect they are, nothing is gonna come back from a SADAR working the same way it was before.

[Polkjm]

+1 How about when you get maimed the limb slowly grows back after like 5 minutes, leaving a scar. As for scars, they remain and I agree they should increase your AC but reduce your health.

It's important that you can see the scars on the examine text

[Renomaki]

I believe allowing xenos to lose limbs was discussed and denied before, due to balance reasons.

[Sailor Dave]

I like the scarring aspect, but I think you'll have a hard time arguing for limbs to be removed outright. Losing maximum health, scarring, those are good effects. Maybe weakness, slight slowing caused by damage to the legs, less damage/slower slash speed caused by damaged arms. Having them increase their armor might be counter-intuitive, though. Armor is a big thing for older xenos, and becoming even more resistant to shots could potentially have a much stronger effect than just losing health.

[Heckenshutze]

Health loss should be equal to speed nerf. same way marines work. A low health xenomorph shouldn't be able to run as fast as a full health one

[poopbutt69]

I believe allowing xenos to lose limbs was discussed and denied before, due to balance reasons.

i think the meta has shifted. so its worth reexamining. aliens are a little too strong right now, and not strong in the kind of way they are in the movies.

in the movies aliens getting their limbs blown off is a huge staple. they usually dominate through numbers, or sneaky high offensive capabilities.

personally i think the idea of shotgunning off a hunters leg a pretty fun idea. also the idea of a hunter with no legs being dragged by another alien slashing some people to death seems like it would be pretty fun too.

but im not tied to the idea of limb loss. i also proposed scarring. i dont think that would be imbalanced.

it would just be a compromise; a way to force aliens to think, just a little bit more. and to punish them if they got shot to hell and are crit, not letting them heal to perfect health in 4 minutes.

i also dont think it would be that hard to implement, limbs already have a health system, and aliens clearly have differentiation between limbs as (i believe) different limbs receive different damage based on the alien.

if so, it would just be a matter of a damage check of the hit limbs health, and then a function to change the max health, or max speed, or max damage of that creature by a set amount. and i suppose adding a tag to the string that describes the alien such as "its x looks scarred"

[Monoo]

Cautious +1 as long as it's properly balanced. I'm not enthusiastic about losing plasma, or anything like that, but I do oh so love the idea of permanent injuries to give the xenos some character. The grizzled ancient hunter with the missing claw and the burn scar or the crusher with a partially amputated tail.

[Casany]

Well, this probably would be hard to code

Sure, aliens have different damage areas but in the end that doesn't matter, because ALL damage an alien takes converts to non-specific brute damage to hurt its health pool. Yeah the coding may seem easy but they'd have to rework the current system as is. Losing limbs wouldn't be hard though, since all they'd PROBABLY need to do is add a max damage to each limb, and if it's exceeded then the limb flies off. (Of course, with the current system it would have to be taken all at the same time before its converted to cause limb loss)

[Toroic]

This isn't a viable idea, and you can't pull from the movies as a basis for a massive balance change.

In the movies, xenos outnumber marines around a dozen to 1 or more. Here, marines often outnumber xenos 3-5 to 1.

Secondly, this idea is a clear nerf to xenos, with a lot of bells and whistles attached to make it more appealing.

No one wants to play permanently crippled, and marines currently have both surgery and cloning to restore them completely.

I've played whiskey outpost, where you hop into a xeno body and mindlessly rush until you overwhelm the marines as xenos don't heal. It's boring and not strategic at all. AI could do that job just as well.

If xenos need a nerf they need young T3 to not be so week, and elite/ancient not to be so strong. If individual xenos are too strong we need to buff their counters or make their weaknesses more significant.

[Surrealistik]

+1 but only if it's relatively easy for aliens to regenerate limbs/fractures, they're more resistant to limb loss/fractures than marines, and they can never receive an instantly terminal injury, like their head getting blown off (or it is so hard to do, they'd be on the verge of death anyways). Essentially once they regenerate to full on weeds at full plasma their limbs regrow and their fractures are fixed.

[poopbutt69]

Well, this probably would be hard to code

Sure, aliens have different damage areas but in the end that doesn't matter, because ALL damage an alien takes converts to non-specific brute damage to hurt its health pool. Yeah the coding may seem easy but they'd have to rework the current system as is. Losing limbs wouldn't be hard though, since all they'd PROBABLY need to do is add a max damage to each limb, and if it's exceeded then the limb flies off. (Of course, with the current system it would have to be taken all at the same time before its converted to cause limb loss)

i see. well scarring could be implemented in more simple ways if its too much work. scarring could be a % chance which increases as general health pool decreases. thus a crit or very low hp aliens would be prone to receiving scars. if the % passes, whatever limb is hit could trigger what type of scar it receives.

for balance, perhaps once a scar is received, an alien could receive a condition which temporarily reduces chances of further scars. or has some positive temporary effect like faster speed.

This isn't a viable idea, and you can't pull from the movies as a basis for a massive balance change.

In the movies, xenos outnumber marines around a dozen to 1 or more. Here, marines often outnumber xenos 3-5 to 1.

Secondly, this idea is a clear nerf to xenos, with a lot of bells and whistles attached to make it more appealing.

No one wants to play permanently crippled, and marines currently have both surgery and cloning to restore them completely.

I've played whiskey outpost, where you hop into a xeno body and mindlessly rush until you overwhelm the marines as xenos don't heal. It's boring and not strategic at all. AI could do that job just as well.

If xenos need a nerf they need young T3 to not be so week, and elite/ancient not to be so strong. If individual xenos are too strong we need to buff their counters or make their weaknesses more significant.

i see your point. but i think balance is actually pretty solid right now. the one thing i think that isn't balanced is fighting at the river. its very frustrating for marines. this suggestion is pretty much targeted for that. changing numbers would change the gameplay a lot, like reducing alien health, or increasing bullet damage.

this could keep balance essentially the same, while alleviating the river fight for the marines. the only aliens that would receive these conditions would be aliens that are crit, or almost near death from recklessly charging into marine lines. those kinds of things /should/ be punished, as its just bad gameplay.

the other changes you suggest (weaker aliens, stronger counters) are going to result in bad gameplay being punished with death on the part of aliens. in contrast, my idea of just crippling them is far less severe.

i think the aliens are going to probably get a nerf soon, and probably solely because of how the river fights go. this could be a compromise, especially if scars /did/ add something positive for the aliens, as they could get something out of what, probably, otherwise will just be a number change for them that results in them dying more.

[Toroic]

i see. well scarring could be implemented in more simple ways if its too much work. scarring could be a % chance which increases as general health pool decreases. thus a crit or very low hp aliens would be prone to receiving scars. if the % passes, whatever limb is hit could trigger what type of scar it receives.

for balance, perhaps once a scar is received, an alien could receive a condition which temporarily reduces chances of further scars. or has some positive temporary effect like faster speed.




i see your point. but i think balance is actually pretty solid right now. the one thing i think that isn't balanced is fighting at the river. its very frustrating for marines. this suggestion is pretty much targeted for that. changing numbers would change the gameplay a lot, like reducing alien health, or increasing bullet damage.

this could keep balance essentially the same, while alleviating the river fight for the marines. the only aliens that would receive these conditions would be aliens that are crit, or almost near death from recklessly charging into marine lines. those kinds of things /should/ be punished, as its just bad gameplay.

the other changes you suggest (weaker aliens, stronger counters) are going to result in bad gameplay being punished with death on the part of aliens. in contrast, my idea of just crippling them is far less severe.

i think the aliens are going to probably get a nerf soon, and probably solely because of how the river fights go. this could be a compromise, especially if scars /did/ add something positive for the aliens, as they could get something out of what, probably, otherwise will just be a number change for them that results in them dying more.

If bad gameplay is punished with xenos dying... good. That's exactly how it should be.

[forwardslashN]

Can't do this at the moment. Something to look for in the future, but not at the moment.