I like & support this idea.
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Your solution is just more RNG. Yeah, no.
It shouldn’t be RNG, RNG have its place in some things, but not in another. Also it is time-based. By the time marines get godstims, the round is over in 10 minutes, or so, those mutations won’t matter unless they happen super fast.
The better and easier solutions:
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Being under effect of two, or more stim effects at the same time leads to catastrophic/nasty side effects. You either take speed, or anti-stun, you take both and your movement is randomised like when drunk. Stuff like that.
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Xenos see a colored “dot” in the center of marine sprites who are under effect of any stims. Stimmed marines can be seen on xeno tacmap. Can even explain it fluffwise, shit they are on is based on their blood and stuff, so they should be able to recognise it somewhat.
And then the final solution that doesn’t even require much coding: Announce that god-stims are equivalent of xeno King. You are not supposed to have a fair fight against King, so neither you should have one against stimmed marines.
3 Likes
To get Xeno king you need to hold comms towers, essentially controlling everything but the FOB itself. Comms will be contested by other faction.
To get stims, you need to do stuff equivalent to solving Sudoku. There is no one to contest you. You cannot even fail really. Only things you are playing against is time and RNG. And even then these factors only affect how much you are gonna win, as you cannot lose.
These two are just incomparable.
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Then make it comparable. Giving marines choice between certain “win” nuke that is harder to get, or “uncertain” win godstims, while removing godstims from regular research (only leaving weak versions) for example. Or something like that.
Otherwise this stuff can’t be balanced. Imagine a game of chess where before each match one player flips a coin (RNG), if they fail to guess what side coin will land, nothing happens, but if they guess correctly, then they get a boon.
Obviously they won’t be removed (Improve, don’t remove), so we are stuck inventing bullshit balance changes and reworks.
In any case, this shouldn’t be tied to RNG.
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Hell your family would be getting cross matched for liver lobe compatibility at this point.
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Omg it’s ozemelyn from TGMC!!! Or whatever it’s called!!!
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Random IBs sounds completely horrible, being permanently slowed for taking damage with a stim is too punishing (assuming there’s no way to fix ‘stone man syndrome’), but muscle spams doesn’t sound that bad depending on how it’s implemented.
Just please, god, no random IBs. It would make oxygenating an immediate non-starter.
The concept though could be really cool. As experimental narcotics that have been tested for all of about twenty minutes at absolute maximum, drawbacks sound reasonable from both a gameplay and ‘roleplay’ perspective.
having forced negative effects per certain number of positive ones could be a thing, so you either have to mix several stimes or combine with otherchems to counteract the forced negative outcomes, but pff who is to code that
2 Likes
Hello, as someone thats been recently playing researcher, theres a lot of stuff that people dont seem to understand about research and some generalization of stims. I would like to explain some things about research since theres a lot of people not that familiar in how its currently balanced already on its current iterations.
First, getting points for stims, currently, the way to make so called “Godstims” are heavily reliant on time and IOs, specifically research needs to do botany, which is heavily RNG to gain their botany chems that could take between 20-50 minutes to get enough to stockpile for the whole round, but getting these chems can give points, it still requires a huge amount of sweat as doing botany while it sounds and looks “easy” takes a lot of effort to speedrun, and even then still relies on RNG. With a 2-3 competent researchers, getting points and botany can be quick and easy as the other 2 can do the scanning/contract chems, while 1 focuses on botany. Though the amount of points to make a “Godstim” takes a huge amount probably around 70+ points, which can probably be done when they finish the botany chems. What hastens this process on the other hand are objectives, specifically xeno corpses and Intelligence Officers bringing in research their xeno corpses, papers, and vials. Without the help of IOs and xeno corpses, the time it takes to get these stims going gets a lot longer since the points to get them is solely on the contract chems. Another thing to take note of is Survivors, the CL and Scientist survs IDs can be swiped on the research terminal to get an insane amount of points, which requires them to be alive(you cant use the dead survs IDs)
So for xenos to delay the production of these “godstims” its usually by having a backline presence and dealing with IOs and survivors, as most rounds these guys are the reason why research can produce them quick. Most rounds with small maps or competent IO teams getting intel without getting caught, these stuff research tends to get stims quick due to them having access to them and xenos not stopping them.
Now to explain another part about stims, really, the only thing most xenos worry about stims are the anti stun stims AKA NST property, which can be gotten with RNG which is why occasionally you get quick anti stun stims. The other notable effects of stims in order of usefulness from least useful to most useful
- IB treatment
- Anti Parasitic
- Bonemend
- Self revive
- Neuroshielding
- Bone break immunity
- Speed
- Anti Stun
All of these properties can be gotten through the contracts and from papers from IOs, and the contracts takes around 6 minutes to get a new one, so basically in an hour into the round, research can potentially get these, but its not consistent, as there are a lot of times that these arent even present as there are a lot of other properties, both negative and neutral that can dillute the pool that can make it a lot harder to get these properties.
There are properties that can be made, specifically the most useful ones are Neuroshielding and Bonemending, which requires some basic properties that are pretty common to get. Now that i mention “basic properties”, the RNG isnt 1 to 1, properties have a rarity type determining how rare these properties can appear. And the other properties that can be made are also the legendary properties, which is randomized every round and requires IO to get them are
- Hypergenetic (heal all organs)
- Boosting (increases all property potency effects)
- Optimizing(Increased amount of chems made per mix)
- Regulating(No OD)
- Ciphering(Greenos)
Now, back to the so called “Godstims”, usually when people refer to this, usually they only care about 1 thing, which is the anti stun property, but the stim can have a mix of all the other properties as well. The thing is, stims are already kinda balanced in how you can get these properties and attempting to get them, as making a property requires a bit more points due to requiring to spend points to making and upgrading them, and if they cant get these properties at all, they have to spend more points to be able to scan xeno blood and get these properties as well.
Another thing in how they are balanced is that, these “Godstims” when consisting of a lot of properties, they will get progressively more and more expensive to upgrade the chem, but also to produce the chem.
Now heres my recommendation on how to “nerf” it without gutting research options too much, while keeping it fair and close to the current way research is balanced
Make Anti Stun(NST) property a legendary property, requiring a paper from IO’s to be made available and remove the NST property from xeno blood, or alternatively make 5X clearance more expensive. The goal of this is to remove the most OP part of stims which is the anti stun, because so far, in my opinion the other beneficial stim properties i mentioned arent as big of a problem. The way I see it, most of the people here having issues with stims refer to them as “Godstims” without even talking what the effects of these stims are. NST id argue is the only stim thats worth being problematic as a xeno, with speed being close second
Heres a few more things to take note
Botany - Doing botany literally rots your brain if you try hard and speedrun it, requires stockpiling 10 different chems. Its not for the sane of mind.
MST/Speed - They dont make marines faster, they only remove slowdown now(which id argue is fairly balanced and doesnt need to be touched)
APS/Anti Parasitic - They do brute damage, which requires NGN(brute healing) of equal level to cancel out the damage
Contract chems - Every 6 minutes they can choose to make a chem out of 3 options and scan it to yield points and a random set of chemicals, with varying difficulties, with Hardest yielding the most points but requiring botany chemicals, the 3 options are also randomized on what difficulty, so no guarantee theres always a Hard option)
Xeno Corpses - They provide biomass for research that can be turned into contract rerolls(which lets them get a new contract), they can also create other things but most research players only use it for that anyway unless theyre like me and occasionally care about printing other stuff like nanosplints and ceramic plates
4 Likes
You don’t need IOs as much as you used to have. Most props you need to make godstims you can reliably roll from contracts.
Research is 99% PvE experience (as @birb put it). 1% is IOs and marines moving xeno corpses (this is what you really need, unlike the IOs). But moving xeno corpses is also something xenos don’t really get a say on (you can’t move corpses as a xeno). So again, it’s mostly PvE experience. And not like a game of chess against computer that you can lose. It’s like Sudoku. You can take too long solving it, you can get a difficult Sudoku, but you cannot fail at solving it.
The issue then is from winning at PvE you affect PvP on such an insane scale. This is something you cannot really justify even IF Suduku was really hard.
NST is not the only problem. Like yeah that’s the worst offender, but with NGN maxed out you can basically outheal several xenos at once. Sure no/rarer NST will make it more bearable, but will not eradicate godstims.
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heres the thing, you say godstim, but thats incredibly vague as to what it actually means, you gotta be specific instead of just saying “oh its a godstim, its OP”
The thing is while yes, if you can make an incredibly quick healing chem, it can be considered “godstim” but its incomparable to it having NST, since NST is what lets marine charge in interrupted(no stuns)
Easy to say that maxxing out NGN and ACR on a chemical, but the amount of points to get that is around 30-50 points if you really want to and thats also accounting adding the chem, but thats not to mention the other required properties for it to even do good as you need HDN/NRS, but they are also susceptible to stuns at that point. The more properties the chem has, the more expensive it is to add more, and so will the requirement to make it. This is the part where researchers need the IOs and survivors help.
saying that IOs barely contribute to “godstims” is incredibly disingenious considering they contribute a hefty amount of points from xeno corpses from fultons(literally most of corpses come from fulton, not that much ppl care about dragging it to alamo even PFCs).
Im only arguing that its not fair to look at research without also factoring in the other factors that xenos forget most of the time, which are IOs and survivors. They contribute a lot actually in hastening the process of getting stims, in fact I’ve played a lot of IO rounds recently and have done well just getting papers and vials just by sneaking around the colony, since they completely forget about them, and have also played xeno and actively try to deal with them, and always have to spam hivemind 100x to get their attention to help. I’m saying this as a xeno player, the only stims i really care worrying about are NST stims, MST less so. Self revive and Bonemending isnt that much of an issue for me as while it makes the fight harder, the current gameplay of captures makes that irrelevant.
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Godstim just means any stim that affects the battlefield. The effects are just way too rewarding for a singleplayer, PvE experience - any of these effects in any substantial amount makes marines almost unfightable. It’s important to realize it’s almost entirely singleplayer - in this massive multiplayer PvP shooter. It’s incredibly difficult to reliably influence it (especially since xeno corpses give more then enough resources), and it feels like something completely random or out of your hands to everyone except the researcher. And yet, the availability of researchers who know how to abuse stim effects to create unwinnable situations for xenos is incredibly high - meaning there is problems in the effects, and the ability to acquire these effects.
So imo theres at least 2 problems with the design of stims.
1: The effects SUCK. Like seriously. It’d be tolerable if there was some amount of counterplay (ie: a cooldown on use, high metabolism rate, only a select few people can use them) but as it stands now, the effects are WAY overtuned, and literally just give an instant marine major. The amount of emergent gameplay you get is “Well how do I counter this, they stand up from all my stun abilities, heal from all my melee strikes, heal from bonebreaks without needing to take a break”. If stims aren’t intended to be an instant endround gimmick that is far too overplayed, the effects should be fightable, unreliable, and/or extremely weak. It should add emergent, interesting PvP (not just singleplayer PvE) gameplay without providing an instant victory to marines.
2: The resources are too available, and generally uncounterable. You can say oh skill issue target the IOs, well go do it yourself!! Noone wants to interact with them because almost every xeno player hates playing in the backline and searching for IOs. And further, the small amount of backliners we do have, often do not have enough resources to reliably counter this threat - and it’s because noone works together in the backline, for some reason. And yeah IOs can just grab corpses off the frontline if they wanna, or play really really safe. It makes no sense that this system creates a win condition because it’s not designed well enough to be fought like a win condition - there is more than enough resources in generally safe parts of the map. It’s not an if IOs get back usually, its more like a when do IOs (or marines, anyone can just grab xeno bodies, and i mean for the reward I’m sure it’s not uncommon for marines to do so) get back with the fat loot. The system is incredibly marine-favored despite its implications on gameplay.
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Its RNG you can’t balance RNG
Stims are either “You have ‘em or you don’t” and I rarely see them developed during the 1st hours of games.
Also stims motivate players to push out of cades, you think PFC John Marine wants to push and give a free cap, its hard to motivate them if you don’t give them something to wrok with
Now if research could create better weapons for marines to replace stims, I’d welcome that, it involves req and research, req buys ammo, research creates guns, some marines get the special guns and everyone is happy
Godstim just means any stim that affects the battlefield.
You see this is the problem, if you made a self revive stim, you simply just cannot compare that to one that has NST/MST, because all it does is that, it just treats you and gets you back into the fight, but the problem with that stim is that it also risks marines getting captured. Generalizing it to a single term “Godstim” is way too vague to pinpoint the specific issues of stims due to the variety of possible effects. Like what if a researcher makes a “Godstim” and all it has is that, it just heals you. I will guarantee you that xenos will laugh and just get free captures that way. I have made these stims and literally still lose rounds still BECAUSE it doesnt have NST or MST. The issues with stims arent just everything, as the other effects can be bearable for xenomorphs.
And yet, the availability of researchers who know how to abuse stim effects to create unwinnable situations for xenos is incredibly high
I can guarantee you, there isnt that many, theres only currently a handful of researcher players that actually consistently make stims, and thats assuming the rounds last long enough or they have help to begin with. I am talking as one of the players that play research.
Well how do I counter this, they stand up from all my stun abilities, heal from all my melee strikes, heal from bonebreaks without needing to take a break
Remove NST, and the answer is simple, capture them and get free 2 xenos, and let me iterate this, getting all the properties to counter all of this requires a lot of points, this would require NST, ACR, NGN, HDN/Bonemend, and NRS, which at the appropriate level, requires 50+ points, on research alone without help of IO and xeno corpses would be possible within 1-2 hours into the round.
You can say oh skill issue target the IOs, well go do it yourself!!
Im guessing you didnt read what i said then, as I said, I do play as xeno and go for IOs, but I also play IO and researcher. Backline xeno presence are actually quite strong if they are present since it not only hinders research, but affects marine frontline as well due to captures from alone marines
And yeah IOs can just grab corpses off the frontline if they wanna, or play really really safe.
Just relying on xeno corpses helps research make progress through, but as I said, this is why i think they should put the biggest issue of stims which are the NST property, and possibly MST, into legendary properties that are RNG dependent on how to get them, which requires papers from IOs. AKA more than just xeno corpses. Currently the biggest problem with the reliance of IOs is that in LV, the map is hard for xenos to invade the backline because of how small the map is, but in other maps, getting anything from them is basically nonexistant if xenos dont let marines push out.
I should clarify, I do agree that stims should be nerfed, but not outright removed, it can be tuned to keep stims harder to produce or nerfed like how MST was nerfed, via replacing the speed effect to only affect slowdown. NST i have no recommendation but making it a legendary property instead(which requires IOs grabbing papers, tying this property reliant on them). The other stim properties id argue is fair game, bonemending, stronger healing, anti parasitic, IB cure, they are all completely liveable as xenos, it makes it tougher but not impossible. But I also advocate for more options for research, like expanding on making more weapons like currently they can make better fuel for flamer, but the current custom fuel mechanics sucks ass. Hell, I even like when research makes corrupted xenos over stims since its more fun.
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Hey guys. You know their is a Rsr rework going on. If you have ideas go onto discord and tell other Rsr mains and coders what you think should happen.
NST got a nerf and i think boosting getting one too.
It’s not that they motivate players to push out of cades. It’s that they make PFC John Marine so unfightable in the context of the game that it encourages him to play defense for 2 hours just for a chance to get free kills and a Marine Major when he jabs his buttcheek with an autoinjector and goes berserk. He doesn’t need to care about cades making him unfightable when he just is so powerful that he’s unfightable anyway, that’s why people play for it as a win condition.
A lot of positive effects are broken when used properly and poorly designed because of their lack of realistic counterplay. Defib is an exception, and noone intends to grab it usually because it’s not the meta effect. Most positive stims shouldn’t be a permanent (infinitely applyable), extremely strong thing. I think anti parasitic can exist unnerfed too tbh because i hate vs carrier gameplay.
And yet even one of these effects in substantial enough quantities is more or less enough to make the round over for Xenos. I’m not sure what half of these letters mean but the only ones I care about are NST, MST, bonemend, and the healing ones, all of which are massively overtuned. Healing gives you a ton of effective HP, bonemend means you never have to stop fighting nor become subject to attrition, NST makes half your abilities useless (and should probably be removed or HEAVILY nerfed), MST makes you a meth demon (and should probably be removed or heavily nerfed/limited/cooldown’d). I think all of these effects could generally use a fat nerf because yet again, stims should NOT serve a role as a win condition AT ALL considering the context of their production. If it’s a main objective, it should be obviously displayed that way and be heavily counterplayable via PvP, if it’s a side objective, it shouldn’t actively harm the gameplay experience to such an extent.
That kinda works but still doesn’t completely solve the problem of the effect sucking to everyone except the person using it and the researcher whos like “Oh, I did a good thing, I solved the sudoku and won the gamble”. Researcher should not be a role carried entirely by its rewards shifting the balance and meta so heavily in its favor based on an rng dice roll, it should be a role carried primarily by its gameplay (not that it must lack a fun rng dice roll, but it shouldn’t be so rewarding!). And if it’s gameplay is only good because its rewards are overtuned and turn the game into ez mode for marines, it’s a heavily, foundationally flawed role.
This isn’t a singleplayer PvE experience where rewarding the player with op loot is expected because it just gives you that power fantasy fun. While that’s fun for a bit it gets really old really fast in a game like this imo.
2 Likes
I am going to be blunt, all your points are diminish by making statements like this. Because it show a blatant disregard for how Stims really impact the game.
I have lost count of the times marines have lost rounds even after being given tons and tons of high end stims. AND THIS WAS EVEN BEFORE THE STIMS GOT HIT WITH THE NERFS!
Perhaps you are just being hyperbolic and don’t really mean what stated to that level. But the fact is you can’t not act like Stims are some kind of win button, A great deal coordination needs to go developing, making and delivering stims…and even if you have all that done… you can still get your Ass handed to you.
You are acting like there is no counter… The issue here is the fact that large number of Xeno player can’t seem to get in to their heads that you just need to stall. Now i am not going to act like this is some kind of hard counter but its is a counter nonetheless.
A large thing that Xeno mains are failing to take in account is logistics! not only the logistics of sending Stims ground side but also the logistics of CARRYING stims.
The most a marine is normally going to be carrying is one time use pen of Stims, Most the time of 30u. That… that is really not a lot all things considered. As such all the xenos really have to do is do a false assault and then break for the wall and just trying to stall for time.
Again this why me and few others think the real reason so many have issues with stims is the telegraphing of use.
Not to say there isn’t issues with stims, like i for one do think there should be a limit on how often you can use stims. Perhaps by making it so you build up some kind of by products that need time to be cleared less you risk various issues. Or having it so all stims above a certain level are addictive meaning that unless the lab also makes addiction clearing stim the marines will have to be on the stim constantly less they suffer withdrawals that give them issues like slowdown and pain.
This in turn would put great strain on the logistic capability to keep feeding all the marines addicted. The only reason that stims seem never ending is because the marines only need to use stims on the occasional assault.
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While I’m biased that doesn’t mean I can’t understand the points you make. I just think that looking at stims in their current condition, they are a soft win condition in a majority of situations. If marines lose a won game, that’s on them, but they had like 90/10 odds of victory if they just didn’t play stupid. That round is irregardless, kinda ruined because of stims, because it’s far too overplayed and annoying to deal with.
Stalling doesn’t really solve the problem, it just delays it - the marine position just becomes impossible to siege as a result, but this is only if marines aren’t really numerous enough or skilled enough to hold together. Sure you might be hoping like “Well if i wait on beach for an hour, they’ll all run off and die alone” and that may happen but it’s gonna be so time consuming and annoying that the round may as well be over. Not being able to maintain a siege but marines still playing defensively is some of the most boring, unfun gameplay imagineable imo.
In practice, stims frequently get to their target destination, and guarantee a victory should the marines utilize them because they do kinda last a long ass time (it feels like multiple minutes per inject tbh, at least from what i remembered it as).
I think this is an amazing idea and will help a lot, but I don’t agree that they aren’t powerful enough to justify further nerfs
I agree, I think that is a good way to make it far more counterplayable.
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I think all of these effects could generally use a fat nerf because yet again, stims should NOT serve a role as a win condition AT ALL considering the context of their production.
This is the problem, thats just a huge lie, NST is the biggest win button out of all the properties, the rest does not. I have seen multiple rounds where marines still end up losing when they have these excluding the NST effect. Healing, bonemend, IB cure, Self revive, MST doesnt guarantee winning at all.
NST is by far the biggest when you want to consider the “I win condition” hence my focus on that as the problem. MST itself isnt as that big of a problem, as I said from an earlier post. Let me put it into all caps so you can read it. MST DOES NOT MAKE YOU A METH DEMON ANYMORE. It only lowers the slowdown, it basically just lets everyone have speed of, at most, a marine with no armor. A marine with no armor does not gain any benefit at all from this and already has a limit. A big healing stim requires a lot of points to get that much, and requires a combination of other properties to make that even beneficial at all, not to mention clearance levels are also a factor in making a huge healing stim which increases the amount of points required.
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Bonemend of any value (especially early or while the marine front is still somewhat stable / good marines are still alive) leads to a very marine biased matchup, since marines no longer suffer from nearly as much attrition while frontlining. It heavily favors marine victory, and while not feeling like the worst thing ever, is still very hard to deal with (especially since it’s not hard to get it when most medics carry it once its out). It feels like your victories vs individuals just get taken away instantly by a medic and so marines can stay on a frontline forever without running out of steam, unless they get permad or capped.
IB cure is fine because that’s relatively rare and solveable by medics anyway.
Self revive is fine because its so niche and counterable anyway.
Healing (even in small values) stacks with your own medicines, similar to how MB or KD stack. Even in small values it can be heavily influential to fights, and give marines tons of effective hp especially if they are capable of avoiding high dps attacks. Just premedding with a healing med can make you feel invincible, but you’re right, at least it doesn’t stop half of the xenos abilities. It isn’t a gauranteed victory but still heavily favors marines but only if they know how to use it (But that isn’t too uncommon either).
MST is MST, no armor marines ARE fast and furious. Especially if they don’t have the downside that they get flyswatted and instafracced in 1 slash or tailjab. It’s very annoying to fight as most castes and can trivialize the round if enough people use it (or make marines run into their deaths). While it’s fun for a bit I just think it gets old really fast and the counterplay is literally just the marines thinking they’re a superhero and trying to outwrestle a warrior which while funny it’s kinda annoying when they can just run you down at any point and 1v1/pressure you immensely with nothing you can do (given they know how to be fast and furious).
I dunno, a brute mend stim with a few levels is more than enough, especially if you combine it in an autoinjector with meralyne. Also i think the wiki is wrong, and that it only goes up by 0.5 increments every level? Either way a level 4-5 is op in combat especially with other meds combined (although im not sure how expensive that is. I just know when i slash into someone for 25 dmg, their armor tanks 10 of that, and they heal up the 15 dmg they took in 1 second, I can’t outdamage their healing at all, and thus they have a huge advantage in TTK if they are capable of running and delaying their death, or in most of my experiences vs this, if they are capable of just standing still and tanking everything like they’re superman). It’s very advantageous for a marine but definitely fightable with cc abilities unless its op. And i don’t have the metric to which it’s op because I haven’t tested it, but if lets you survive a whole lurker combo without fracs or warrior combo whatsoever it’s OP and gamechanging.
And the reason I say it’s op at that point is because those are the 2 highest burst dmg castes. Sure if you targetted just them it’d be balanced because a little bit of extra counterplay never hurt. But every other caste does similar dmg or less dmg in a burst and is affected more as a result of the higher effective hp, especially since they can’t reliably stun to get their dps off.
And high point counts don’t seem to be enough to stave the hunger for op stims. People will push harder, get better, become smarter and more cleverer. But the game which stims are unleashed on will still be the same and the effect will just increase in quantity and quality, partially because of how dedicated people are to the role.
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