More marine-like marines; Pain Threshold, Adrenaline and Research?

[Page Avenue]

Summary:

For a game featuring marines as the protagonists, there's little different about the marines from the civilians aside from their uniform and access to weapons. I've come up with a handful of ideas to make them generally feel tougher in contrast to the non-combat personnel, and some general game play ideas geared toward making the marines' mid-late game feel more productive and enjoyable.

*There are no exact numbers being suggested, so I'd like to think that these suggestions are very malleable.

** In theory, these are all minor suggestions that would only help slightly with larger issues. I just thought it would be more productive than "buff marines" or "nerf crushers." Maybe in conjunction with more ideas from more players, the game can reach a balanced state.

Pain threshold for Marines.

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My suggestion:

Giving marines some kind of pain threshold variable scaling with rank, that would decrease pain perceived by a character.

Something along the lines of: (Perceived Pain = Actual Pain - (Threshold * Actual Pain))

I'm not a mathematical genius, but this seems like it would be fairly easy to do.

Details:

I propose making this threshold scale with rank, bottom to top. To get an idea of how the mechanic would work, substitute the numbers for the Threshold variable.

Basic marines = .70
Medic/Engineer marines = .75
Squad Leaders = .80
Specialists = .85
Civilians = 1

These wouldn't be the actual numbers; This is just so you can get a general idea of how the mechanic itself would work.
Basics > Specialists may seem counter-intuitive but, in reverse order, certain load outs could be a bit TOO robust.

Benefits:

I believe it would highlight tactical awareness and grouping for squad leaders and specialists as their marines are, at the very least, semi-capable meat shields and they won't be incapacitated quite as quickly.

Implementation:

I saw somewhere that IDs are used for a lot of things in CM, perhaps you could attach a variable to IDs that transfers to your character upon joining. I've never looked at any SS13 coding so my knowledge is limited.

Other Notes:

If you guys are really adamant about preventing people from power gaming surgery, you could use a similar function to the one described above with something like a Know_Anatomy variable exclusive to doctors. Though if you go that route, I personally think medics should be able to perform surgery with 50% chance to mess up. The general idea being they CAN but it's not ideal, it's all up to you guys though.

I've also apparently confused the term pain "tolerance" with "threshold", though from what I can tell, they're similar concepts. Take it how you will.

Adrenaline.

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My Suggestion:

A rapidly decaying "adrenaline" chemical that your body produces* sharing similar effects to synaptizine and painkillers (up for discussion), however it becomes temporarily debilitating when it leaves your system** causing immediate nausea and losing its beneficial effects. For simplicity's sake, this probably shouldn't show up on health scanners.

* when either A. your pain greatly exceeds your threshold or B. you take a huge amount of damage suddenly

** 1 unit or less?

It could passively build up, and be released when the above conditions are met* to prevent marines from just getting adrenaline constantly.

* and you have enough adrenaline

Details:

There's not much more to explain, unless someone asks about it.

Benefits:

Simply prevents you from just being incapacitated immediately, what you do with the time is up to you. This could be effective way to help counter-balance the removal of cloning as well.

Implementation:

Fairly straightforward, "Adrenaline" chemical effects, add a variable to the mobs that tracks how much adrenaline they have built up and allow the proc to trigger if the required conditions are met.

Other notes:

http://www.news-medical.net/health/What ... ne%29.aspx
According to this, Adrenaline causes your heart to beat rapidly and enables intensified respiration.
We might not need a defib buff like people are suggesting, it also plays a role in resuscitation.
It's also been linked to heart problems and brain damage, so minor brain and heart damage to help balance it?
It could potentially be used more, but let's stick to what we have for now.
Despite initiating several different responses, epinephrine’s(Adrenaline) effects have a collective purpose – to provide energy so that the major muscles of the body can respond to the perceived threat.

More research?

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My suggestion:

Making aliens randomly affected by different chemicals at round start. The random nature would make this hard to abuse, and extremely impractical.

Details:

I'll explain in-depth how I picture it working though. The way I see it is, I'm not familiar with the role, but the Researchers are usually a bit lacking in relevance aside from "they don't like fire."* I imagine giving them a bit more to do would help with this; Injecting alien corpses/embryo with random chemicals for reactions. Injecting the proper chemical** could potentially either slow the development of or outright kill the embryo.***

You would still have an alien embryo in your chest, which I imagine comes with problems even if it's dead, it just wouldn't be an immediate threat anymore.

* http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/new ... 19/9b3.png

** into an infected marine

*** as well as anything the chemical would do anyway; you'd have to weigh your options and supplies

Benefits:

By mid to late game, med bay is packed with infected marines and it's nearly impossible for things like fractures to be treated. This could potentially lighten the load on medical staff and keep more marines fighting for longer.

Implementation:

Is there no way to assign variables to random chemicals at the start of the round such as: Kill_Embryo, Slow_Embryo_Growth, Heal_Alien, Melt_Alien_Corpse?

Feel free to take this and run.

► Show Spoiler

Idea for a new game mode. Work in progress, I probably won't touch it until I feel like the standard game mode reaches a fairly balanced state.

Hostage Situation:

U.S.S. Sulaco's objectives are (in order of importance) 1. Rescue hostages 2. Kill terrorists
Terrorist's objectives would be 1. Escape with objective (I haven't given it much thought.)

A bit of plot information for marines would be something alone the lines of: Terrorist/Mercenary group has taken hostages, establish contact, find out their demands blah blah blah, hostage safety is number one priority and so on.

Marines lose if:
All hostages die, all marines die, terrorists escape with objectives or hostages.
Terrorists lose if:
All terrorists die or marines secure all of the hostages before they get their objective.

I think it would make for interesting RP and a great alternate game mode if anyone took the time to come up with the details.

P.S. Please allow us to setup permanent Notes in the character setup. It would be really useful for retaining IC information we haven't dedicated to memory yet.

Leave some feedback.

[ShortTemperedLeprechaun]

These are actually really, really good. I like the idea of the pain threshold, as well as the adreniline bit. All and all, theres not really any negatives from me, +1.

[LocalizedDownpour]

Seriously these are some cool ideas. +1

[Mitchs98]

I dislike the fact that a specialist, aka supposedly the most valuable asset in the squad, will pretty much get bitchslapped to the ground. That should be changed.

Other than that, I like everything else; but not as a replacement to cloning. +1 anyway

[Page Avenue]

I dislike the fact that a specialist, aka supposedly the most valuable asset in the squad, will pretty much get bitchslapped to the ground. That should be changed.

Other than that, I like everything else; but not as a replacement to cloning. +1 anyway

I'd consider letting them share a tier with SL, but I don't want to be the one responsible for specialists wearing B18 armor with stocks, bayonets and riot shields soloing the hive because they simply can't be stopped. I also think 25% pain resistance is a rather generous amount considering that they have access to the B18 armor.

SL/Specialist - .25
Medics - .30
Basics - .35

The truth is though, it's out of my hands. Whoever does the coding has the final say.

I also wouldn't call it a replacement for cloning, just something to offset the loss of it. I consider my suggestions to only be a piece of the puzzle, I'm hoping the rest of the community can get into the same mentality instead of saying "to replace cloning, we'll revive people this way!"

Actually, I'm not sure, 25% still feels like a lot. It would be easier to fine-tune after it was implemented, I'd rather start small and get bigger than start too big. I feel like basics are the backbone of the marines, and should feel like such when playing them. Specialists are more like the right hand(incredibly useful, but easily severed) with medics being the left. Squad Leader is kind of like the head. Part of this is to promote better tactics, which includes cohesion.

Also, assuming all three suggestions go through, specialists would be the first to experience the adrenaline rush. Provided they aren't using the load out I described.

[Edgelord]

We're not allowed to suggest gamemodes, it's in the rules.

As for everything else you said it sounds ambitious, but really cool.

+1

[Page Avenue]

It wasn't really a suggestion, I'm trying to give the idea away. Hence "take it and run".

[Mitchs98]

I'd consider letting them share a tier with SL, but I don't want to be the one responsible for specialists wearing B18 armor with stocks, bayonets and riot shields soloing the hive because they simply can't be stopped. I also think 25% pain resistance is a rather generous amount considering that they have access to the B18 armor.

SL/Specialist - .25
Medics - .30
Basics - .35

The truth is though, it's out of my hands. Whoever does the coding has the final say.

I also wouldn't call it a replacement for cloning, just something to offset the loss of it. I consider my suggestions to only be a piece of the puzzle, I'm hoping the rest of the community can get into the same mentality instead of saying "to replace cloning, we'll revive people this way!"

Actually, I'm not sure, 25% still feels like a lot. It would be easier to fine-tune after it was implemented, I'd rather start small and get bigger than start too big. I feel like basics are the backbone of the marines, and should feel like such when playing them. Specialists are more like the right hand(incredibly useful, but easily severed) with medics being the left. Squad Leader is kind of like the head. Part of this is to promote better tactics, which includes cohesion.

Also, assuming all three suggestions go through, specialists would be the first to experience the adrenaline rush. Provided they aren't using the load out I described.

B18 is absolute shit. Most people don't take it, and I really doubt adding pain tolerance would change that since you really don't recieve a lot of pain while wearing it anyway. My thing is, there's no point in making those that don't use B18 suffer for that one guy that does.

[Page Avenue]

Well, you shouldn't really be front lining as the specialist anyway, leave the grunt work to the grunts.

[ThatOneEngie]

-1

Stop suggesting nerfs to fucking marines, jesus.

EDIT

After reading it over again, and having it explained to me, it is actually a +1 from me.

Also, i'm half awake at the moment, so gimme a break

[Page Avenue]

-1

Stop suggesting nerfs to fucking marines, jesus.

Doesn't even read.

[Mitchs98]

Well, you shouldn't really be front lining as the specialist anyway, leave the grunt work to the grunts.

This is true. But you kind of HAVE to front line to be able to do much good as a spec unless you have a smartgun. Because generally speaking every marine believes themselves to be both 1. An hero and 2. Rambo incarnate. Giving specs the shittiest pain tolerance ever will only nerf marines a lot due to such, was my thinking. I do agree with your reasoning, and it would be valid if people actually RP'd and didn't try to take on a hive alone when there's 50 marines active.

[Page Avenue]

This is true. But you kind of HAVE to front line to be able to do much good as a spec unless you have a smartgun. Because generally speaking every marine believes themselves to be both 1. An hero and 2. Rambo incarnate. Giving specs the shittiest pain tolerance ever will only nerf marines a lot due to such, was my thinking. I do agree with your reasoning, and it would be valid if people actually RP'd and didn't try to take on a hive alone when there's 50 marines active.

Well, even if they have the worst, it's still a buff. I can see where you're coming from, but this is geared towards giving the basics a little more of a crutch compared to the more valuable roles in order to discourage newer/inexperienced players from playing specialist/SL. If they think it's harder, all of the weapons don't seem so attractive anymore. I say the best way to go about it is to see it in action, and tweak it from there.

The general idea, is that you're trading off the equipment options for a little more of a crutch. I'm hoping this will get a higher quality of player to choose the higher ranks because they don't quite need the crutch, so we end up with less scenarios where a specialist kills his entire squad with a misfired rocket or grenade.

[Page Avenue]

Just going to try and keep this relevant for now.

[Biolock]

-1 To the pain threshold variable by characters. That kind of imbalance between character selections would lead to some garbage ass spread between player abilities. Specialists and SLs already get better weaponry than support classes, and they can carry more combat equipment because they aren't responsible for carrying all the tools and medicine for the squad. THAT is how it should be, don't now give them a handicap that literally buffs the player himself.

+1 To the rest of the ideas, ESPECIALLY the research idea, that would lead to some good RP... I think.

[Page Avenue]

-1 To the pain threshold variable by characters. That kind of imbalance between character selections would lead to some garbage ass spread between player abilities. Specialists and SLs already get better weaponry than support classes, and they can carry more combat equipment because they aren't responsible for carrying all the tools and medicine for the squad. THAT is how it should be, don't now give them a handicap that literally buffs the player himself.

+1 To the rest of the ideas, ESPECIALLY the research idea, that would lead to some good RP... I think.

I think you're overestimating how big the difference between each job would actually be. The idea is to reduce the amount of pain crits that happen mid combat, promote cohesion with your squad and make basics not feel so bad about being basics. I'll rework the suggestion using fewer tiers, then you can tell me what you think. However, I firmly believe that specialists shouldn't be quite as tough as basics with support classes covering some kind of middleground.

Balance 101.

P.S. In case you're unaware like the last guy. Lower numbers in the threshold variable would be better. Try using the equation I suggested.

[Peachy2912]

These ideas seem well thought out, I like them as a different approach to adding more depth to how and who you play. The adrenaline mechanic sounds pretty sweet, it would be an effective way to allow wounded marines to get out of a fight quickly rather than having to hobble away slowly.

+1

[Page Avenue]

I appreciate all of the feedback, and it would seem Biolock may be the second person to misinterpret the threshold portion of the suggestion. "Bottom to top" means that lower ranking soldiers would benefit more from the mechanic. I won't bother explaining this to a third person.

[Dyne]

Interesting. +1

[Page Avenue]

Still trying to keep this relevant.

[apophis775]

Locked.

Please split these into individual topics.

But, you can remake it without the game-mode, cause suggestions for a game mode = forum ban (read the READ THE FIRST topic in suggestions).