Unvanquished Forum

OK lets kick this off. There has been some talk of a flying alien, lets discuss it. Here are some things to consider to get things rolling.

• How do you imagine a flying alien?
  Aesthetically, functionally
• What role would it play?
  Defense, Offense, Support, Base killer, Anti-personnel
• Strengths and Weaknesses
  Hitpoints, Melee/Ranged, Cost, Stagecount
• Special features
  Special attacks, mobility boosts, limitations to flight
• Speed

• How do you imagine a flying alien?

I picture an alien as a bat of sorts. High speed when diving (>dretch), but slow when walking (should have wallwalk). Jump accelerates upwards.

• What role would it play?

I'm thinking it would be mostly a scout/recon roll, with the ability to pick off s1 humans pretty easily. At hs3, it would be mainly a supporting role, much like the dretch. At as2, it would gain an extra ability of some sort that would make it more deadly to buildings. It should be strong against jettards.

• Strengths and Weaknesses

₁₀₀-150 hp, 40-50 hp bite, Short range, s1 and s2 for adv, 2/3 evos

• Special features

Bombing action:
Has a single (maybe more) bomb at adv that does ₉₅ damage (enough to kill a ret in 1 hit, but not a human)

• Speed
  Max: 1.5 (Greater than dretch)
  Min/Walwalk: 0.8 (Slower than granger)

My idea of a flying alien is a nimble support class. It has both a melee and ranged attack and is most suitable for harassing humans and taking out jetpacks. The alien muscle should stay on the ground.

The melee attack would be poisonous and do damage proportional to the movement speed of the alien, similar to the falling damage of the tyrant. The ranged attack would be mildly poisonous and slowing.

The mobility needs to be high. That does not however mean that it needs to be great at dodging. One way to do it would be to have it take a long time to climb altitude and speed up fast on the descent. The faster you move the less mobility you have strafing and turning. Mobility needs to be decreased when the overmind is down.

Hitpoints and cost should go hand in hand depending on where you want to place it in the alien hierarchy. If it is mostly for harassing then it should not be prohibitively expensive. I can see it being useful for harassing high value human targets trying to finish games solo.

Granger speed in 1.1 was 0.8 not 0.9 so its technically the same for 1.1 users.

Anyway, i was thinking of something like this:
Introduced at stage 2, advance at stage 3 since we never had an 'advance' class introduced at stage 3, and nothing introduced at stage '2'
-Weak health, between 40-80 hp (korx's spitfire is easy to target and kill with unlagged, but not many people have player korx with unlagged before... btw it had 50 hp total)
-Agile depending on its hp obviously
-Ability to "Air pounce"? Basically like a short jerk....
-Weak, but rapidly firing bites similar to a marauder
-Weak long range... erm... claw/whatever tertiary?

I think it would be cool if small aliens could climb on top of it for faster travel (dretches, grangers and maybe even basis?).

KenuR wrote:

I think it would be cool if small aliens could climb on top of it for faster travel (dretches, grangers and maybe even basis?).

:D but i don't see a point. The only use probably would be basi as it gives a aura as well as the gas which "stuns" (slowlocks)

- How do you imagine a flying alien?

I picture an alien as a bat of sorts.

I also have ideas of bat for other reasons.
The jetpack is very slow, and we find it normal because it is in the nature of the jetpack to be slow. Also, no man can fly naturally, so it does not matter if a flying machine is slow, it's better than nothing! By cons, our imagination is filled with flying creatures who can fly very well. If there is a flying alien, it will not be an alien who fly with a machine, but because it is his nature to fly. For this to be consistent with the universe, the alien must fly well.

In order to not unbalance the teams, I thought some form of handicap : alien can not get off from the ground, such as bats. Flying aliens should fly by jumping off a ceiling or a wall high enough. Aliens must walk on walls (unlike bats) to still be able to fly from anywhere there is a wall. Thus, the flying aliens could be dreadful, except when they are down.

Note : I think about bats, but the pterodactyl is also a good example ;)

If you have never seen the KoRx mod's flying alien "Spitfire" (it's a type of plane from world war 2 i think)
go to 3:30 in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxJWgvK0 ... ature=plcp[/video]
Please not that it is not the spitfire that sucks, but its my ping. The server is lagged, not unlagged. Be brave, warrior.
If you're wondering where the hell the human went, it's not my client. It's him. He's using a cloak. But my zap reduces his cloak time by absorbing its energy which is a pretty cool feature as well.

GPP's flying alien was more like a bat with 6 claws, although i think it originally had 8. I remember reading it somewhere...
GPP's Flying alien mod - I've never played it online, no one ever was online during my time of day. I have the paks i think, but i don't know the gamename [mod name] so i can't find the pak and i cbf searching through my 500+ ps that i have.

I think an alien that resembled a pterodactyl or bat would be cool, but it wouldn't make much sense to me because all of the aliens seem to be arthropod (insect/arachnid) in design. The dragonfly-ish 'spitfire' seems a little more logical from a design point of view. The only frustrating thing is trying to make a flying arthropod look intimidating.