Defense computer and mara zap changes

[kharnov]

I've had two ideas recently that can easily be implemented. Tell me what you think. If enough people like them, and they work, they can be in-game soon. Feel free to suggest changes to them, too.

My idea for the defense computer is that in addition to its current role of providing regeneration and warning of attack, it can also hide buildings around it from alien detection. Thus, they do not appear as blips on the alien "radar" while they're moving around. Humans can also be concealed. Of course, you and your buildings can still be seen and heard, you haven't gone invisible. I believe that this could make later stages much more interesting, as your repeater outposts can include a medistation and a defense computer now, providing you with a stealthy recharge station for energy weapons. It could also help conceal mid-game base movements from rampaging aliens.

As for the marauder zap, I was thinking that instead of doing direct damage, it can do EMP instead. Thus, when you zap a structure, it's temporarily disabled. This would still allow a group of marauders to take apart a base, but you'd have to do it in a different fashion now, taking apart the defense structures before they function again. This could possibly work on humans in battlesuits too, allowing for the marauder to be more effective against stage 3 humans that can easily kill it with a single lucifer cannon shot.

[EckleckLighat]

The first suggestion seems like an interesting idea, but I cannot for the life of me come up with a way to explain how it would 'work'. Not that that's a valid complaint :)

The second would make the mara way op. Combine that with just about any other alien, and you can kiss the human base goodbye.
Perhaps the dc could act as a 'backup generator' which renders the zap ineffective? Humans would still be screwed if aliens got s2 first though...

[ViruS]

Looks like dcc stealth is winning..
I think it should show up on the alien radar as long as its making noise, or very close (200 quake units-ish or shorter), or even 'visable' (can be seen if the camera is turned).
With the zap, i like the idea, but instead of it paralizing it (in other words, taking the role of the basilisk againts bsuits), it should have a 'slowlocked' effect similar to the granger. It could also instead also have a 'grab' effect on turrets (from 1.1 basi) rather than deactivating them, as well as doing around 20-30 dmgish so it still maintains its areadamage effect. I actually quite liked 1.1 adv zap a lot better because it slowly deals its damage rather than being instant, where it is used like a 'claw' in gpp. The damage counter done should be fixed with the new sv_fps, so it should be good in my opinion to revert the zap damage system changes.

I was also thinking of grabbing some health while zapping certain structures like the rc and tesla, but then teslas wouldn't be useful anymore againts adv marauders...

[KenuR]

I like the first idea, but maybe it would be better to have a whole new structure just for that. This also gave me a different idea. How about making a stealth suit that you can buy in the armory? The idea is the same, but except for hiding structures it hides the person wearing it. Obviously, it would stop working for a few seconds if you start shooting.

I am not sure about the second idea, since it would probably make maras overpowered, but I don't see any reason not to try it.

[ViruS]

True, sex actually did a similar thing with healing structures for a seperate buildable... from 1.1 actually made his own balance mod (not X mod to prevent confusion) that used normal vanilla gameplay with little tweaks like headbite of 150% instead of the usual 200%. Anyway i am mensioning this becaused he actually made a seperate structure that autoheals buildables like a weaker ranged ckit but costs 20 bp. Its like a tiny octogon prism repeater-sized. In other words, the old dcc kept its role of speeding turret turn rates.

[seana11]

IMO, the current dc is absolutely useless.

All in all, a defence computer is usually a useless investment. Those 8 BPs could be used better as any other building (extra medi, turret, tesla, telenode, you name it). Due to the aforementioned reason repeater DCs are not good either. Also, rarely is your whole base affected by the defence computer either. The stackability of defence computers doesn't help much since two bad buildings do not equal two good buildings.

I think that taking stuff off the enemy radar would make the DC infinitely more useful, as both an offensive and defensive structure.

[Kreative]

Hiding buildings with the DCC is definitely a neat idea, but in reality I think this would be really effective when building forward bases, because aliens usually scout out what humans have in their main base from a distance anyways, so most of the time they'll already know it's there. If this were to really help the repeater would have to give 30 BP instead 20. Then again, it can also help mask things that aren't necessarily close the the Reactor but still in it's range. So I say yes.