Poison system suggestion, make basilisk a living booster!

[lamefun]

Poision system:

• Each hit should renew duration of the poisoning to 15 seconds and make an already poisoned human more sick, up to a certain limit (5 for most aliens, 7 for basilisk). Sickness is a float value that is translated to damage per second by rounding down. Eg. if you have sickness 2.4, you recieve 2 damage per second.

• Poison transfer efficiency (PTE) is the amount of sickness an alien can deal per second. Sickness per hit = PTE / hits per second, obviously. Each alien class should have its own PTE, dragoon < tyrant < mara < dretch < basilisk.

• If you hit an armored area, the sickness of the human is increased by (PTE / hits per second) * 0.8 for helmet or light armor, or (PTE / hits per second) * 0.6 for battle suit. Note that the alien should still lose a full PTE, so some poison is wasted.

• If a human is poisoned above the normal posion limit (which only basilisks should be able to do), medkit only heals the normal poison limit, leaving the human with reisudal sickness.

• Posion capacity is a total amount of sickness an alien fully loaded with poison can deal to a naked human. Each class should have a different one, dretch < mara < basilisk < dragoon < tyrant.

• Direct contact with a booster pumps poison into the alien at a fast rate, eg. 10 per second.

• Poison slowly deteriorates, eg. 0.2 per second.

Basilisk:

• Generates its own poison at a slow rate, eg. 2 per second (advanced only). If in direct contact with a booster, the booster's supply adds to its own poison generation.

• Able to give its poison to other aliens by attacking them with secondary attack. If aimed at another alien, it shouldn't shoot gas, but transfer poison instead at booster's rate. (advanced only).

• Poison increases human sickness up to a greater limit than normal posion limit (7).

• Swipe should cause direct damage, poison AND heavy disorientation when the sickness goes beyond the normal limit (advanced only).

• Gas should transfer poison with somewhat lower efficiency than swipe AND cause mild disorientation immediately (advanced only).

• Humans able to protect themselves from basilisk gas by buying an air filter upgrade that is available for both helmet and battlesuit. Air filter could also reduce damage from acid tubes.

[kangz]

+ =

[ViruS]

PTE: Why does mara have to be on the bottom? C'mon, that's my frav class!

I like the idea of dynamic poison damage, but I don't really like the idea of turning the adv basi into a compelete booster.

[lamefun]

No idea. It cound be mara = dragoon = tyrant < dretch < basilisk.

And adv. basi will only give poison at a very limited rate (limited by its own poison generation), since when it gives some, it gives it from its own supply. Booster has infinite supply because of creep.

Booster = basilisk without legs, you can't deny that, it's obvious.

PS. I think mara should be on the bottom indeed, since PTE = damage per hit, not per second, and mara has a lot of hits per second, so should be able to deliver poison very quickly even with less PTE than a dragoon.

[lamefun]

Some changes, PTE is now sickness/second, not sickness/hit, transfer poison with gas. And I think swipe should only cause disorientation when sickness goes beyond the normal limit, or else it's overpowered.

[Viech]

Somehow my post in this thread went missing. Too busy to rewrite it in detail now but the essence was that I like some of the concepts. In short, having the booster add poision over time instead of abruptly and "spending" poision on enemies as opposed to having it run out quickly sound like good ideas to me. I'm also not opposed to having the lisk generate poision over time while other aliens lose it slowly. Making the amount of posion transfered each hit variable per class makes sense, too (so the tyrant would be able to spend a good portion of its posion in one hit while the dretch would need multiple bites to transmit the same amount). I find most of the other suggestions too complex, especially further differences/exceptions between the classes. I'd like to keep the base principles of combat as simple as possible, so they are easier to understand for new players and don't require code reading to master.

[seana11]

Somehow my post in this thread went missing. Too busy to rewrite it in detail now but the essence was that I like some of the concepts. In short, having the booster add poision over time instead of abruptly and "spending" poision on enemies as opposed to having it run out quickly sound like good ideas to me. I'm also not opposed to having the lisk generate poision over time while other aliens lose it slowly. Making the amount of posion transfered each hit variable per class makes sense, too (so the tyrant would be able to spend a good portion of its posion in one hit while the dretch would need multiple bites to transmit the same amount). I find most of the other suggestions too complex, especially further differences/exceptions between the classes. I'd like to keep the base principles of combat as simple as possible, so they are easier to understand for new players and don't require code reading to master.

That seems like a good idea, but it could have a downside. I remember that most of my time playing dretch at hs3 was spent trying to get bsuits poisoned so that I might get some evos. Of you do this, makse sure to have some other way hs3 dretches can get evos. Providing evos for people joining the game would be nic, but it wouldn't help for the people who are just out of evos.

[Viech]

Good argument. I'm not sure what role armor should play in such a poison system. Potentially none at all; poison could affect battlesuits and naked humans in the exact same way. The amount of poison transfered per hit could also differ depending on the human's armor but I'm not sure if this is necessary for anything. If poison should mainly serve as a way to give small aliens a piece of the pie when fighting against enemies that they can't kill on their own (which sounds reasonable to do, as humans are always able to score due to the nature of their weapons) then there is no reason to make naked humans very vulnerable and armored humans resistant. Making both types equally vulnerable could be the way to go. Any thoughts on this approach?

[killing time]

I thought that's what non-integer amounts of evos were for. A dretch can get a point by biting 100 battlesuits each in the foot once...unlike old trem where one must do enough damage so that the amount earned rounds up to 1.