Lower Plasma Cost for Resin Membrane

[DrHurts]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):

Lower the plasma cost for Drones, Hivelords, and the Queen to secrete resin membrane to 30 or 40, rather than 75.

Benefits & Details (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):

The Hive rarely uses resin membrane. Drones get bitched at if they use it. Compared to walls and doors, it's too expensive for what it is. At a cheaper cost for the membrane, you'd give Hive players a real choice, whether to spam resin membrane quickly for tons of cheap walls or to build more slowly and patiently bank up plasma to get fuller, stronger walls.

You wanna go crazy with the incentivizing? Make resin walls 80 and resin membrane 40, literally half the cost. Slowly increasing costs to popular actions/items or decreasing costs for unpopular actions/items is a great way to push players into making (fun) real decisions with (fun) real consequences.

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):

I bet you can change one "75" in the code and it'll change, but I dunno.

[Sarah_U.]

I'd say 50 to round it up and make it easier on folks. Otherwise you'd have a real spamful of membranes to lock down areas and they're still annoying to remove. PS: Spitters can shoot through since a late update if I recall.

[Toroic]

Membranes are terrible, not worth using for any cost.

[Sarah_U.]

Free membrane for a round, just for lols.

[Eenkogneeto]

Membranes are like one to two bullets to remove, They are effectively useless. If the game was updated so marines see everything the same (Make doors appear as resin walls when not open to them for example) you could have hidden windows in your hive and it would cut down on meta-shooting only doors to save ammo. But as is membranes are useless and just provide marines with more vision

[ZDashe]

The only reason I would build membranes is for my fellow xeno players to know there's a nest there available for nesting hosts. Other than that, it's pretty useless imo. 50 plasma per membrane still won't do it justice...

[Toroic]

The only reason I would build membranes is for my fellow xeno players to know there's a nest there available for nesting hosts. Other than that, it's pretty useless imo. 50 plasma per membrane still won't do it justice...

They used to have some uses for jelly rooms or nesting areas, but to be honest nests should be in obvious, easily accessible areas.

There's actually a lot of things we could do to show people where nests are without using resin membrane.

[DrHurts]

The commentary here is interesting. Toroic suggests they're bad even if free. That's clearly an exaggeration. Like Sarah said, let's assume they're free or even something dirt cheap like 10 Plasma. As a Drone, you better believe I'm spamming membranes from here to Kingdom Come. At that price, it's completely worth it. I could stink up practically the whole caves before the Marines were even on the planet.

Like Sarah says, "They're still annoying to remove." It still costs the Marines "one to two bullets to remove," which isn't completely negligible. If you think of a wall as (1) blocking the line of sight and (2) blocking bullets, it's easy to think of a membrane as being a weaker wall, because it sort-of does #2 without doing #1. There's also a (3) which is blocking movement. Membrane does that too. I think there would be other creative uses for membrane if it had a lower cost that just aren't getting utilized or experimented with because it's too expensive. Are two cheap walls sometimes better than one strong wall? I think there's a case to be made. Also, I'd use membrane to thicken other walls or next to naturally existing rock walls to narrow corridors. In those cases, I don't care that they're see through and they're less likely to be shot at.

The current price is just too high. So the question is: What price makes them an attractive and interesting option? If I had free rein, I think I'd tick up the cost of walls to 80 and lower the cost of membrane to 40. But I don't know the price point yet.

If it's really terrible at any price, just remove it. But I still think it's useful, just way too expensive. At worst, this coding would take like 5 minutes, and the developers could see what happens and if it starts getting used more at a lower price. If so, great. If not, lower it even more. If it's still not used, take it out or change how it works.

[Toroic]

The commentary here is interesting. Toroic suggests they're bad even if free. That's clearly an exaggeration. Like Sarah said, let's assume they're free or even something dirt cheap like 10 Plasma. As a Drone, you better believe I'm spamming membranes from here to Kingdom Come. At that price, it's completely worth it. I could stink up practically the whole caves before the Marines were even on the planet.

Like Sarah says, "They're still annoying to remove." It still costs the Marines "one to two bullets to remove," which isn't completely negligible. If you think of a wall as (1) blocking the line of sight and (2) blocking bullets, it's easy to think of a membrane as being a weaker wall, because it sort-of does #2 without doing #1. There's also a (3) which is blocking movement. Membrane does that too. I think there would be other creative uses for membrane if it had a lower cost that just aren't getting utilized or experimented with because it's too expensive. Are two cheap walls sometimes better than one strong wall? I think there's a case to be made. Also, I'd use membrane to thicken other walls or next to naturally existing rock walls to narrow corridors. In those cases, I don't care that they're see through and they're less likely to be shot at.

The current price is just too high. So the question is: What price makes them an attractive and interesting option? If I had free rein, I think I'd tick up the cost of walls to 80 and lower the cost of membrane to 40. But I don't know the price point yet.

If it's really terrible at any price, just remove it. But I still think it's useful, just way too expensive. At worst, this coding would take like 5 minutes, and the developers could see what happens and if it starts getting used more at a lower price. If so, great. If not, lower it even more. If it's still not used, take it out or change how it works.

I wouldn't use membranes even if they were free because they take up space that could be used for something better.

Realistically, most hives are way overbuilt and anything that you build needs to compete with sticky resin, which is amazing.

You could probably make a secure hive just with doors and sticky resin. It's just that good.

[ZDashe]

I wouldn't use membranes even if they were free because they take up space that could be used for something better.

This is basically the reason, cause structures don't stack anymore to prevent abuse. Don't forget that membranes will impede your own Xenos too if you spam them, so being free can become a handicap if used in the wrong way.

[DrHurts]

Toroic: "You could probably make a secure hive just with doors and sticky resin. It's just that good."

I bet we could make a secure Hive with nothing but resin membrane - if it cost something like 30 or 40. Ask anybody who's ever played a Drone: The speed of building can be very important.

I think it's funny that people want to say how much they hate it. The point isn't whether you hate it. The point is that it costs too much. And, reading between the lines here, everybody seems to agree that it does. I just think the Hive might find good uses for it at a lower cost. Let's lower the cost and see.

[masterspots]

Allow spit and boiler gas to pass through membranes and they'd be pretty good.