inquiring because I might code some stuff like this; so I want to code this myself but who knows maybe it’s a dog shit idea
research is supposed to punish xenos the longer the round goes on - even if that isn’t the intent I think that’s what stims, whiteflame etc. kind of is
a lot of xenos maintain that stims aren’t fun to play against at all, from what I can tell. kind of makes sense, antistun etc. changes the combat flow entirely (but I do love revival stims and I don’t think those should go away, ever)
Can’t research be given more depth by literally just adding shit to research instead of rebalancing shit/making research harder (artificial depth IMO), etc???
like OT can work with research to produce incendiary rounds … Self-recharging NVGs … “Life support vests” that you wear as webbing and double the time until you perma … The list goes on.
I mean these are ALL extremely viable and potentially overpowered, right? But I don’t think that’s an issue. BECAUSE these are all viable, they’re all things Research might dedicate resources to INSTEAD OF stims/whiteflame/etc – if you just ADD ALTERNATIVES, stims = less common and marine endgame = more varied and xenos = have more fun (cuz it’s not always godstim super Saiyan marines at the 1hr30 mark anymore)
Again posting this here bc idk if it’s a terrible idea or not. Note that, as I am new, i also have 0 clearly how research even fucking works so if someone wants to fill me in while they call me a dumbass that’s fine too and id appreciate it
Also I realize this would require Research to have some limited autonomy over what they choose to develop otherwise XOs would force them to do the “meta pick” every round
This is the definition of powercreep. You see something extremely overpowered (stims), so you buff everything else to compensate. Research requires heavy handed nerfs if anything.
Let’s punish the defending side for not winning fast enough. This “supposition” is batshit insane but surprisingly a lot of people share this view.
A good way to nerf research, stims especially would be to limit the amount of stims you can make. Currently, as long as you get a recipe, you can print them infinitely (the only bottleneck is power that just regens over short amount of time). You can (theoretically) run out of ammo, but you cannot run out of stuff that turns people into supersoldiers. My proposal was to make stims require xeno blood, which would make sense thematically (you need rare fluids to get “superpowers”, not just fucking table salt) and would give xenos a chance to basically outlast stims.
Anyway, no point discussing this sadly. Because nothing ever happens, maintainers have their own view regarding research.
Stims aren’t fun to deal with as Xeno, but at the same time, rounds that go past 2:15 suck IMO. The game has to end somehow, and stims are a big way to facilitate that. As long as stims aren’t consistently being deployed around the 1:30 make I don’t really mind them.
The real issue, which I believe is already being addressed, is the metal economy. Xenos need to be aggressive to win but often can’t close out games due to the insane amount of metal and cade lines on most fobs. This leads to a constant cycle where Xenos stomp marines, but can’t break the ridiculous 5 cade line fob and attrition out, leading to a stalemate that is only broken by stims, nuke, or king.
Most rounds that lasts 3+ hours actually do have stims. In fact, stims often make round go longer by denying pending xeno victory. Over the last week there were multiple rounds that were prolonged for 1-2 hours because marines got stims and xenos had to play a lot more careful, killing marines one by one or slowly retreating to the hive. Bottom line, stims don’t make rounds shorter.
In my experience stims either cause marines to absolutely fucking stomp xenos (sometimes), or allow marines to delay the inevitable xenomorph planetside victory by a while (most of the time) However, once xenos win, marines easily wipe them during hijack because hijack + stims is basically a guaranteed marine w outside of exceptional circumstances.
It’s honestly pretty unreal how powerful stims are. The only reason marines don’t win by default once they get decent NST MST stims is because at that point most of the fraggers are dead, and the majority of marines are too incompetent to use stims the way they’re meant to be used (hold W and LMB until xenos horizontal).
Which is why I want other tools in the RND arsenal that they can leverage INSTEAD OF stims. I agree that stims are often unfun to play against, and prolong rounds.
And I think this post kind of gets at what I mean:
It used to be you could do multiple projects then the dev team tried to crack down on stims which lead to them only being able to do one project and that project usually became stims.
Over the course of the failures to utilize pattern recognition and crack down on things it’s only really ensured that marines have a higher chance of getting them. The other things research can do is only situationally useful and you know research now HAS to divert it’s resources back into one project so a lot of the time the other things get overlooked because why wouldn’t they?
Stims are currently the most viable research product. Nerfing RND production funnels more resources into producing stims, and you end up not seeing shit like whiteflame etc, because stims are ALWAYS the priority.
So how do we encourage Research to produce other shit? How do we encourage Research to do anything other than stims (beyond outright making stims unviable)? I think by adding half a dozen other viable options.
Call it powercreep but I think I’m a little correct there. And if I’m allowed to add all this dope shit for research to produce then maybe people won’t be upset if … Down the line … We nerf the FUCK out of stims
edit: I’ll try to learn research when I play tonight to maybe figure out what the fuck I’m even talking about. My context is minimal right now I just really want to see RND giving us more interestiny shit than the same old boring ass stims
Again, the problem you are pointing out: stims are too strong. Okay. The solution you are proposing: add more stuff that can compete with stims (which are too strong, so the new stuff has to be as strong to compete aka to be a viable option). Which kinda brings us back to the square one. Stims are still too strong, but we now also have other stuff that is too strong.
A way simpler solution would be to just nerf stims. Thus they will neither be too strong nor the only viable option.
You need to add a system into the chemical simulator somewhere that changes a chemicals gen_tier based on the value of the properties on the chemical, instead of always keeping it the same as the parent.
The rework half fixes the stim shit by removing create mode, but it’s still possible to relate/ add mode all the properties onto a level 1 chemical and, because it’s gen_tier is 1, the chemical simulator always rerolls reagents to sugar, iron and bicaridine. Create mode stims were always gen_tier 1 too, which is why their recipes were always a joke when rerolled a bunch, the initial complexity you set didn’t set gen_tier.
If the gen_tier was updated based on the value of properties, and you added a higher gen tier that includes xeno blood or maybe even other, previously generated research chemicals, synthesis can get much harder or much more power intense, which is also a limiting factor don’t forget.
You could even make it possible to reroll up to x6 of a reagent, instead of rerolls always being x1, making power even more of a limiting factor.
I tried looking into doing these but my brain is too rotted unfortunately.
IMO start by removing common and basic recipes for stims, now you cant create a formula to make a stim capable of rising an immortal army that consists of copper, carbon and water
Then put an overall level cap on the stim so theres only so many things you can put onto it, I.E a max of 20 so you cant have 10 brute regen, 10 burn regen, 8 nst, etc etc.