This is gonna be an idea dump for any strain ideas I come up with! and you can watch me put words in your mouth/argue with myself
WOLF
- “what the fuck is this kid with the furry-ahh name talking about wolves for” hush
- Strain of Runner!
- wolves are most known for their pack hunting tactics, so why not take the speediest xeno and make them stronger when there are more of them
- removing the bone spur and pounce and replacing it with “Howl”
- Gives an individual buff and a weaker version of this buff to surrounding allies. Something small, maybe slightly better move and attack speed.
- Buff strength from strongest to weakest goes: Individual > Surrounding Wolf Strains > Non-Wolf strain allies
- “fox that sounds like dogshit” yeah, however; other Wolf strain runners nearby can also Howl to increase this buff.
- basically, Howl gets better the more sisters you have howling too. perhaps even adding more buffs aside from the attack+move speed buff the more runners are howling.
- perhaps at higher levels, may debuff marines? - Problems with this
- xeno pop is much much lower than marine populations. most of the time, a hive can’t spare 2, 3, or 4 spots for some randos to all play a t1 strain and spam the *growl emote constantly
- the “Wolf” strain will have to be able to stand on its own two (four?) feet to be viable, as well as have the howl buff affect surrounding xenos enough for other players to tolerate yet more runners under their feet
VIPER
- Sentinel strain? ive got much less technical ideas here
- melees your ranged class
- drop the spread shot, maybe drop the slowing shot?
- that neurotoxin sting is cool. what if it was cooler?
- basically; make the neurotoxin sting damaging and venomous.
- initial attack deals brute and a lil bit of burn damage. victim is now envenomed
- As minutes pass, increasingly severe symptoms, toxin damage, and debuffs applied.
- movespeed slowed, vision range decreases at later levels, toxin and/or organ damage (maybe)
- perhaps “vulnerability” in the sense of an envenomed marine takes more damage from other attacks.
- perhaps a higher chance of bleed from regular attacks?
- eventually pass out
- its more of a war of attrition kind of thing
- wouldnt it be cool to encounter a viper while you’re out alone, you scuffle with it and eventually scare it off. you notice you move slower, you can’t see, and even small cuts bleed more than they should. all the while you see this monster out of the corner of your eye. watching. waiting. - consecutive stings (maybe we call it bites?) advance the venom stage
- problems
- i feel like this might be fucky with balance.
- like, its gonna be hard to get that sweet spot of having an envenomed status effect actually hinder a marine instead of being a minor annoyance but not having it be completely impossible to deal with