Mara zap overhaul

Request new features or present your ideas.
Post Reply
User avatar
kharnov
Granger
Posts: 1851
Joined: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:54 pm UTC
Clan: GT
Location: New York City

Mara zap overhaul

Post by kharnov »

Back on 1.1, the mara zap was absolutely worthless. Completely and utterly unpredictable and inconsistent. GPP somewhat resolved this by giving it a flat rate of damage and making it fairly useful to take out bases with by chaining the lightning. You can still take out Unvanquished human bases with the mara zap, but it's much harder than it was before, especially with all the turret changes, not to mention rocket pods taking you out before you can even approach the base to begin with.

From what I've mostly been seeing during community games, the main means of taking out human bases now is the advanced dragoon, because the barb can easily deal with turrets and even rocket pods if you're careful. That's nice and all, but that's only one alien form, and it's available fairly late into the game. Aliens don't have a lot of early-game methods to deal with human bases, while human defenses are very powerful and will easily overwhelm aliens unless they rush in large numbers. Coordination is nice and all, but you can't really hold public games to the same standard as clan matches, since you're very unlikely to get the whole team together doing a single thing, especially when you have a lot of new players or people that aren't very skilled.

The advanced marauder is available much earlier in the game than the advanced dragoon. Back on Tremulous it had a pretty effective anti-base role with the zap, but I think we'll need to rework it to fit into our emerging gameplay. The question is, what to do with it? I have a couple of ideas.

First, what if the mara zap wasn't an attack in the strict sense, but functioned as a wide-area EMP burst? It would fit with a theme of the lightning frying the electronics of human base structures, preventing them from functioning for a few precious seconds. You could either aim this at a single thing and have it chain, or have it affect a small area around the zapping mara. I don't know which would be a better idea.

Alternatively, what if the mara zap was a charged ability? It could either function by constantly wall-jumping to build up static electricity (gimmicky but fun), or a bar that fills up by holding secondary attack (probably more sane). Then, on releasing, you deal a proportionate amount of damage to whatever you're facing, with the full charge being enough to take out one turret or rocket pod.

What do you all think?

User avatar
Tom
Dragoon
Posts: 253
Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2013 3:34 pm UTC
Location: France

Re: Mara zap overhaul

Post by Tom »

kharnov wrote:

First, what if the mara zap wasn't an attack in the strict sense, but functioned as a wide-area EMP burst? It would fit with a theme of the lightning frying the electronics of human base structures [...].

It would be very interesting, but would the zap still hurt humans?

kharnov wrote:

Alternatively, what if the mara zap was a charged ability? [...] Then, on releasing, you deal a proportionate amount of damage to whatever you're facing, with the full charge being enough to take out one turret or rocket pod.

Interesting this idea of proportionality. The time “lost” charging would be offset by dealing more damages.

Could your two suggestions be combined?

Post Reply