Someone mentioned giving the flying alien the ability to lift other aliens in another part of the forums and I thought it is worth another look. There are all sorts of interesting possibilities for such a combo. Mainly bombing stuff with crush damage and increasing alien mobility.
Examples:
Lifting an alien to bypass forward defenses for a surgical strike on the home base would give aliens back their mobility allowing them to strike anywhere on the map. You could also combine class abilities to benefit the team. Airlifting a dragoon above the human base would allow it to snipe stuff easier and maybe give the barbs more power (because of greater elevation and therefore more velocity). Doing a fly through of the human base with a marauder attached would allow you to zap stuff on the way without the risk of getting hung up on anything. Dropping a tyrant on the human base would just be cool. Flying grangers around the map would also give the aliens better mobility.
In practice:
To make it work in practice and not be the ultimate troll feature there needs to be mutual consent between both parties. We don't want people airlifting tyrants into bottomless elevator shafts for shits and giggles. We also don't want to have everyone using the flying alien to be forced to use the airlift ability. Especially if airlifting teammates slows you down or otherwise impairs the fun of it. I'm thinking the one doing the airlifting needs to somehow allow it with a on/off switch and the one being airlifted can jump on/off at any time they want to.
I agree, air lifting sounds like a fun path to go. Due to the size of the Shrike to-be, it shouldn't be able to lift a Goon or Tyrant, that would just look odd. Dropping dretches and lisks on your enemy as well as flying a zap-mara over the enemy base seems legit. The Shrike would be able to lift small aliens by using MOUSE2 (or another key, depending on whether we need MOUSE2 for movement) while in air and drop them with the same key. Aliens being lifted could force a release with the jump key (or pounce if available) and would be able to use all their rergular attacks. For the granger, I believe it should lose its wallwalking ability and be able to spit structure seeds to their destination within a limited range. The airlift would allow it to reach some out-of-range areas or build on the ground of platforms and ledges.
Combine alien airlift with marauder balls for epic lolz.
I was actually thinking it could lift a goon or rant but would move very very slowly because of the heavy weight. That way you could get off some funny raids, but only if the humans are really sleeping. I don't feel too strongly about it either way.
For the implementation I was thinking the shrike would have a TOGGLE to allow/disallow passengers. The passenger then jump on and off at will. That way it is mutual consent. Example shrike has passengers allowed, granger jumps on, shrike disallows passengers and ejects granger, alternately the granger jumps off. This way you could theoretically also load up multiple very small aliens onto the shrike. I see no reason why it couldn't carry 2 or 3 dretches into battle for example.
Unless we redo collisions and somehow find a way to eliminate network latency, this won't work well. Imagine using movers, like conveyor belts on maps, or that spinny thingy on mission1, but worse. It won't feel good due to technical limitations. While the idea sounds fun in theory, I imagine the realities of actually getting it to work will end up being more frustrating and time consuming than fun. Tasks that previously required that were relatively simple, like walking up two walls and building an egg will be very difficult now. We don't want to make building harder.
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