Driftmoon Adventure RPG

DRL 19 years ago

Well........I have bluited up,a warp drill.........But well,it say that it need a "Crystal Ore"........And......Where you find that?

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Madgamer 19 years ago

Go to east or west hive (forgot which

ops: ) and go to the base that has a lot of red dots in it. There should be a lot of dire(yes, they're ALL dires

) reapers so don't just go in to do some kamikaze krap. In the bottom part of the base there should be a self ether making thing. You figure out what to do now

. And can anybody tell me what the heck is pwere prism crystal for becuse i don't think there is any use for Werivar race.

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DRL 19 years ago

And the Crystal Ore?

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Lochen 19 years ago

I have found that the ville corp area has tons of crystal ore.

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E_net4 19 years ago

You mean Reflective Crystal Ore or Power Prism crystal?

Btw,

"Madgamer" said:
Go to east or west hive (forgot which ops: ) and go to the base that has a lot of red dots in it. There should be a lot of dire(yes, they're ALL dires ) reapers so don't just go in to do some kamikaze krap. In the bottom part of the base there should be a self ether making thing. You figure out what to do now . And can anybody tell me what the heck is pwere prism crystal for becuse i don't think there is any use for Werivar race.

Power Prism Crystals Are used to create a Warp Gun (a very powerfull gun); for upgrading the hoverbike; for creating self-powered food generators and self-powered ether generators; and for creating a BattleDroid.

I think only Humans and Androids can use the crystal.

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Madgamer 19 years ago

I have found abslutely NO USE for werivar. It would help to have someone post a thing about what use it can be for werivar instead of carrying it and just having it as an item collection

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Jonathon 19 years ago

how do you make the hoverbike shoot!?

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DRL 19 years ago

Make the Hoverbike shoot?,simply:Upgrade it,you can do this by drooping near the hoverbike these items:

A robot wreckage,a power prism crystal,a pulse laser,and a enhanched power armor..........Drop them near the hoverbike.....Wait a second,and LOL!,well,now you have the upgraded hoverbike (Hoverbike Mark II)........It doen´t requires ether,as well the power prims crystal power it,and no need for repair units(if it gets toooo dmaged,you can still repair it whit a repair unit)but it "self-repair",............And also,it can shoot,a pulse laser that doesn´t requires energy.

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Crazy 19 years ago

god... that spelling is... just... horrible...

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Grim Reaper 19 years ago

"Crazy" said:
god... that spelling is... just... horrible...

Welcome to the club, Crazy.

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Toko 19 years ago

hmm... just wonder..
I you are a green alien..
how the f*** do you get brown and blue kids?
cant you remake them to green? and look like a smaller version of thire mom?

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UberWaffe 19 years ago

I'm not really working on my mod anymore.

Why?

The same reason I can't redo the graphics for the aliens. I can't do graphics from scratch.

That and the fact that I have very little free time this semester.
Sorry.

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Toko 19 years ago

*starts crying and take suecide*

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Bubb9 19 years ago

um well I think that you you should be able to use the other aliens nests and why only swamp? The unmatured brown alien doesnt mature when I give it 2 blue alien corpses. not sure if it will happen again but the ether is a lava tile. Its kind of annoying that you cant leave behind the larva whith out them killing them selves or trying following you. I rarly use the fangs because they take to much food for so little damage compared to the claws. Thats all I found the was wat I thought was a bug or annoyance that could be changed.

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eddeshun 19 years ago

Damn!! Uber, why not pass around the building blocks of the mod, and let the community take up growing it? Although your busy and have lost interest, we still got it. My computer came back online a few weeks ago, and ill be back to graphic-ing in no time.

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Bubb9 19 years ago

oops its 3 corpses lol and I would help but I dont have the utilitys I am familiar whith moding EV:Nova whith EV:New and would help whith this mod if someone could give me the site or what ever to download em. and the Repair units do the samething as the Ether cept with sand tiles(sometimes).... and I've had interesting things happen whith my status bars......

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DRL 19 years ago

I would like that you may able to pick up rovot wreckages,and if you hhave a reapir unit,repair one,then,it becomes a operational robot,just and ally idea.....

Anyone has got an idea of how to break/destroy containers?

P.S:Sorry for the bad grammar,but don´t talk about it.

Idiota: Don't double post, DRL. Just hit the edit button instead. Future double posts will get deleted without me editing the first post.

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Grim Reaper 19 years ago

"tail458" said:

Brilliant stuff whats it called? [^]

Erm... What? You'r quote is empty. :\

And to quote someone just press the quote button in the top-right corner of that person's post.

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Idiota 19 years ago

"Grim Reaper" said:
"tail458" said:

Brilliant stuff whats it called? [^]

Erm... What? You'r quote is empty. :\

And to quote someone just press the quote button in the top-right corner of that person's post.

Obviously, he was talking bout what DRL suggested. The quote thing must have happened by accident, or he somehow messed up the quote. One of the two.

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Nocture17 19 years ago

I'd just like to say....
What a gip!
I killed two of the blue missile launching battledroid thingies in the Mining Fields (No mean feat with the Alien, I tell you). What do they drop? Repair units. Repair units!

Since I'm posting anyway, however, I figure I may as well have my two pence with the two races I've currently played, for when either people take up improving this excellent expansion, or when UberWaffe becomes interested and has time. I've given my best ideas on how to bring each into line with each other, so hopefully if nothing else, it might inspire some thoughts along the lines of balancing out the non-"linear plot" version of Werivar mentioned previously.

Alien:

Having played through with the Alien, I actually found the game on the whole a lot easier than the default setting, rather than harder, as some people suggest. The alien can easily claw her way up to her penultimate Default evolution by simply sticking to the jungle areas, where a steady supply of Reapers helpfully keeps your health topped up. You're fast enough to run through the spots with ready made stasis fields to give yourself a place to rest up if you have a shortfall of Reapers, and by the time you're ready to move into the Hive, you're already gifted with Acidic Spit, which will disable Dire Reapers enough to scamper out of range. Then you level all the way up until 1100 Evo, when you get Killer Claws and enough armour to start taking even Dire Reapers out, and Devour can keep you alive through the lot. You don't even need to lay eggs, if you just hang around until 1600 Evo (Can't quite figure out how to get to the 2300 hinted at in the Dat files) you become perfectly well suited to take out the Dire Reaper area in the East Hive completely alone with rages and simple claw action. You can rage up to machine gun turrets (the greatest non-boss threat I found due to their high damage) even in numbers, and generally take on hordes of pretty well anything except flamethrower marines with claws alone.

Devouring Feast puts health and food into overdrive, and typically if you're active about hunting little blues, you can actually gain more food than you lose even when it's above maximum (10,000 food and above maintained for about half an hour was my best). Sniper Spit makes flamethrower marines so much fodder, and can stun most bosses to make kills even easier, but in the end you have enough health and recovery that you can get away with just charging flamethrower marines head on, and just sit and beat some bosses with your claws until they give up and die like sissies. Other bosses, notably ones such as the planetary defence drones, and the battledroid thingies are instead laughably difficult. The Battledroids starburst counter punishes the alien for using its pretty well only viable weapon, namely its claws, whilst its missiles deal enough damage to kill the alien in a single hit, and cannot easily be evaded at close range. Likewise, whilst fighting the planetary defence droids, around four to five direct hits will kill you, and whilst trying to finish off one of the pair, the other will ream you with missiles, requiring constant rage and enough fancy footwork to make a megaman game blush.

The only major new disadvantage with the Alien would be the extreme temperature issues. I found myself continuously freezing or burning up. The human has enviroment suits, the android isn't particularly bothered, the psionicist can directly improve his lot, and the Werivar ignores temperature so completely that it may as well be easy difficulty, whilst the Alien, whose fundamental playing aspect is continuous movement to hunt, has to continuously use fires, find trees, use fires again....

A more serious issue is the simple lack of anything really juicy. Special skills make the other characters use less food, move fast like the alien, see enemies better, see items better, and gain absolutely free experience points....
They can't use the fun generators, they can't mine for materials, they can't forge tools, or mine ores.... They can't upgrade their batteries, they can't develop completely new and unusual talents, or get even get vampiric claws (which is rather sad, since Werivar stole the whole claws thing off them) and they can't get special skills. All the Alien can do is hunt, eat, kill, lay eggs, hunt some more, kill again, eat, use the planetoid to provoke every enemy in the game to move towards you, go to the hive, kill them all and still have more health than maximum, get bored, win the game anyway you care to. The alien, bizarrely, cannot improve its health, or carrying capacity where the Werivar not only gains health like a fiend, energy like a fiend, (and to add insult to injury, I notice the Alien can no longer use battery extenders), and carrying capacity to boot.

To improve the Alien I would recommend:

- Improve Alien Weaponry

I'm not suggesting allowing the alien to use laser sniper shotguns, but now energy and ether both have become effectively unlimitted resources, it would be nice if the alien had something to account for its counterparts with access to unlimitted laser shotguns, unlimitted psi attacks that can kill Dire Reapers in two hits and health draining attacks. Lethal Fangs kills Dire Reapers in two hits, and uses food, regenerates slowly and is rather difficult to actually hit the beast with.
A bite that actually lived up to its name and was indeed lethal would be a nice improvement, as would something with knockback, allowing the alien a recourse to being swarmed by the increased numbers of monsters other than sitting clawing everything and hoping they all die before you.... and in an ideal world, vampiric claws.
Rather than simply having Devouring Feast as a suped up Devour, instead the Devour Blue, Devour Brown, and Devour Reaper abilities in addition to the standard Devour for progressively better results would give the player a reason to actually collect all those extra corpses that seem to accumulate. Gaining further immunities to things like cold and hot rain, rather than simple temperature stability, would be more in keeping with the alien's style, and be a unique method of going about it.

- Allow Alien to use some high technology.

A several of the restrictions on technology seem rather arbitrary and unintuitive, such as the self-powered generators, which are notionally even easier to use than their externally powered brethren, tool use, or the battery extension devices (surely the alien's pilfered energy supply from the pod is no different from the human's?).
Since most of the "rewards" for clearing out particularly dangerous locales (the Dire Reaper fortress springs to mind), come in the form of technology, the Alien tends to lose out. It simply doesn't have much need for piles of first aid kits, rations or bullets, its only real use for ether is food, but creating giant fortresses, mining tools and making things would actually give something to do once the alien finished its evolution, even if it was just to make as many turrets and stasis fields as possible and put a fortified base in every area.

- Alien Specialities

Rather than simply having the Alien evolve in a fixed manner, allow the alien one or two little perks of its own once it's reached high levels. A permanent minor rage of 5% or so, to take the edge off those frenetic battles, advanced rages of 50% speed reduction, or the rage slowing time, but increasing your speed to move as normal during those rages, fun things like fire breath, lava immunity, each of these fits into the Alien theme, and helps extend the evolution time of the alien. Naturally, unless I've missed a clue on how to evolve further from 1600 evo, making this extended evolution both available and possible would be a nice step in helping the alien balance out.

And now, the Werivar.

I don't know if this is as was intended, but the first impression I got when playing this race was that of "easy mode". They don't strike me as particularly powerful a race off the bat, but they are extremely, extremely easy to do well with, for a number of reasons:

- Health regeneration: Eat a rotten shroom or five? No problem, a rotten mushroom for a Werivar is essentially a ten second maximum penalty. I don't recall ever using a red plant as a Werivar. Naturally, the health is also extremely large, a nice easy character to play with on the grounds that you can leave the Werivar getting attacked by a small blue alien to get a cup of tea, and come back to see him still sitting around on full health, I've certainly managed a lava bath without taking any damage.

- Energy regeneration: Can't afford the super scanner psionic ability? No problem, even at level zero, the Werivar regenerates enough energy to use the modded subspace radio and the torch, and still actually gain energy. Unlike the human, for whom energy is a finite supply, the Werivar allows the player to squander it, use it all up, squander it again... Never will the Werivar be unable to start a fire, find an item, see in the dark, because even if they use all their energy up, they need to wait but a few moments and then turn it all back on again, they'll soon regain all their battery anyway.
Again, blue plants for Werivar? Never, their maximum energy is also simply colossal.

- Claws: For the human, close range combat is a hazardous, uncertain affair, costing health and food, for the android it costs precious energy. For the Psionic, they must lock up their other abilities in order to give themselves their primary attack....
For the Werivar, they have claws. They aren't as damaging as the alien's, and don't start backed up by that obscene speed, but they are effectively free. They don't cost health, they don't cost food, and they can kill small blues in one scratch fest. Again, this makes life easier for the Werivar.

- Temperature regulation: Short of sitting in lava, I've never seen the Werivar suffer from temperatures above or below around thirty off base. Their resistance to temperature change is so complete that the "Freezing rain" that causes the alien to huddle beneath trees for minutes at a time or die of frostbite is about as much of a danger to a Werivar as Eden's rain is. This really is like making the game an entire step easier here, why you bothered giving them the temperature regulation ability at all is a mystery.

- Psi Blast: I'm going to ignore all of the other psi abilities for the moment, because this one simply dominates the early game. The very moment the Werivar gets psi blast is the moment the Werivar can hunt Dire Reapers. It really is that simple, just line up sights and blast them back just out of range. Because of their large health and the high damage of even the most basic psi-blast, they don't even need to have that good timing, they can afford to get hit several times before keeling over, and that's generally enough. Since you get psi blast as one of the numerous bonuses granted to the Werivar for a perfect pod run, this means you can start the game able to take on and beat Dire Reapers.
This, combined with their energy regeneration and claws, makes them capable of dealing with most aliens without trouble from very early in the game, which simply jump starts their advancement.

Experience levels: An alien first needs to stay above 150 food, then kill around fifty small blue aliens, then kill thirty or so blue aliens, then another twenty brown aliens, then another twenty reapers or so, then hang around in the hive area for 300 points of evolution, gaining one point per tick, to reach even the 1100 mark. That's a good half hour of game play to evolve into a higher level form, and another 500 points of hanging around the hive, whilst you take a brief nap before you can finally reach the point that the alien can leave the hive.
Killing the alien queens won't increase those evolution points any, killing Dire Reapers so efficiently that a grand total of a singular (rarely) respawning Dire Reaper in the hive remains at the end of the genocide won't earn you a single point of evolution.

For the Werivar, sitting around taking a nap will earn you two experience points per tick, even if it's lurking in the ancient ruins with the door shut and just feeding off a bunch of generated rations. Killing aliens speeds this process up, as does staying well fed upping the two from XP machine to four. Every time the Werivar levels, their Health and Energy go up, ignore the "All" option, and simply pile on Health and Energy specific level ups once you've got the three useful special skills, and you'll end up with a 1,000 HP monster, who regenerates 20 Health a second, can permanently equip Psi Sense, Psi Armour, and unleash as many Psi Blasts as they care to without leaving maximum health....

The "other" psi abilities: Psi Armour, essentially a reusable, constantly triggering repair unit that reduces damage too. I beat every single battledroid in the mining fields by the master strategy of sitting right in front of them, sleeping, and letting the insane energy and health regeneration tag team the poor defenceless battledroids who get a taste of their own medicine by dying through super counter fire. Heal, completely, completely imbalancing when combined with the regeneration aspect. Sleep, which essentially makes stasis fields pointless, food pointless, and actually doing anything, pointless. Create food, which means the Werivar can create infinite amounts of food, all of which weigh nothing, making the game slightly pointless, seeing as it's about survival and all....
And lastly, the ability to detect both biological and energy signatures at the same time, another helper tool for those new to the game, or are too lazy to switch between their radio and their scanner.

Special skills: The most important two special skills would be food reduction and speed increase. With food reduction, what was previously similar to an Alien appetite, the Werivar's singular disadvantage, becomes the sluggish hunger of the humble human, whilst speed increase turns the already quite swift Werivar into an Alienesque speed of movement. The race becomes within the first four to six levels devoid of disadvantages, and gaining the other primary race advantage of the alien.

All in all, with all these advantages, there are four possible outcomes to a Werivar game:
Starve early on, and die.
Get mauled by a pack of Dire Reapers early on, and die.
Act carelessly and die by forgetting to heal.
Survive long enough to get a few level ups, avoid bosses for awhile, wander round killing Dire Reapers until abusively levelled, and enjoy the near inevitable win.

Whilst a nice easy race, perfect for beginners, there is one tedious trait about the Werivar I've noticed, and that is the sheer amount of psionic abilities they have. I've counted twenty to date, not including their automatic flashlight. Scrolling through all of those is a chore, and aside from an occassional "Hm, what's this do again?", most of these abilities were entirely unused, and as such detracted from, rather than added to the Werivar's appeal.
A good example of defunct abilities would be "psionic healing", vampiric claws, "psionic sleep", "psionic drain" and the Werivar's inherent regeneration. All heal, but with so many different options, why bother? Equally, once you get psionic blast, all the other projectiles are irrelevant, with the possible exception of the really high energy non-psi weapons out there, and having energy shield AND psi armour is simply excessive.

The slow time ability I would also say to be largely superfluous, the alien needs its rage because it's almost one hundred percent dependent on its claws, the Werivar, gifted with the ability to use guns, summon instant allies (all of whom are armed with a supremely potent weapon themselves), with enough health to survive getting hit by three blue missiles at the same time with some to spare, does not need this at all, especially when topped off with the psi armour and psi heal, and the generally low knockback taken from weapons (charging a machine gun turret with an alien without rage is a good way of never getting close than halfway there, an armoured Werivar can toddle through the bullets soaking up the damage, unleash a psionic blast or two to destroy the turret, and then continue on to the next one, only running away if he's low on health, only to come back fifty seconds later fully healed).

Equally, dash or teleport might be necessary movement tools, but since with Dash you can move around three times faster than the alien, and thusly cross entire maps without an enemy getting time to even turn around, it makes teleport rather pointless. Since the Werivar is so fast after skills anyway, whether these skills are needed at all is dubious.

To improve the Werivar, I'd recommend first choosing an actual ethos for the character to follow. For the alien, it's the biological terror, almost all close range, gains advantages from consuming prey, incredibly fast, strong.... For the human, it's definitely the techie, without his toys, he swiftly dies, but let him tinker with things, he'll end up with enough firepower and protection to let him take on most everything. The android is the tank, big and unstoppable, his greatest fear to run out of gas, whilst the psionic is the wimpy mage, whose energy and energy regeneration should always be the absolute best. For the Werivar, the most overriding theme to me is something akin to a werewolf, can take a lot of damage, regenerates, and has a finger firmly in the supernatural.

To adapt to follow the werewolf theme, I would lower the Werivar's energy drastically, and energy regeneration to boot. I would keep the regeneration and high health, and limit the psionic abilities to:

Psionic Blast, Summon Ally, Psionic Drain, Psi Armour, Psionic Senses, and potentially Psionic Dash.

The psionic werewolf, given to high speed physical regeneration, slow energy regeneration (certainly not enough to use Psi Armour, Psionic Senses and Psionic Dash all at the same time all the time, at least not without extreme levelling up). Use of simple weapons like pistols, but not quite the knack for the complicated things.

In general, this would keep the things that make the Werivar an entertaining race to play, it's regeneration, it's nice "Jack of all Trades" approach to Melee, Ranged and Psionic attacks, and the speed and convenience of the Psionic Senses picking up goodies and enemies combined with the Psionic Dash reaching them, with a (hopefully toned down damage output) Psi Armour to help protect the otherwise armourless Werivar.

This would still be in conjunction with the constant level increases of energy and health, but as gone into below, a potentially different means of doing so.

Even with these modifications, it should be noted that the Psionic Blast ability for the Werivar is extremely potent, and would still have the inherent anti-Dire Reaper qualities that set it far ahead of the others for the early game, but less overwhelmingly so, due to having a more serious limitation in terms of energy, stopping the game from becoming pointlessly easy. At least without serious work.

Adjusting the Levelling system:

To start with, though the system for the bonus level based stat increases is very impressive, I would actually recommend removing it entirely, for all the races who have it, not least because humans should not regenerate health and battery, and is supremely easy to imbalance. Instead, I would recommend a higher focus on the standard per level special skills that suit the theme of the character.

Giving Werivar the "enhanced regeneration" special skill, or the "nocturnal" gaining special abilities at night, and black and white night sight, and enhanced energy regeneration, the human advantages like swifter weapon reloading, swifter combine times, things fun and unique to each character, gained every few levels, to enhance the particular advantages of the race, rather than necessarily alleviating disadvantages at a basic level (such as the Alien overcoming its hunger with devour, rather than with lowering its hunger rate).

In short for the two:

Alien: Generally improve slightly to match the other races' advantages in its own way, and increase longevity of the alien scenario.
- Improve Alien Weaponry, a further evolved bite that can actually kill Dire Reapers in one bite, and possibly a howl or some other type of ability to grant the alien some means of knocking back opposition.
- Unrestrict the advanced generators, leaving other advanced things, such as weapons and hoverbikes/armours human/android only.
- Give the alien Devour Blue, Devour Brown and Devour Reaper rather than just improving the standard Devour, with further methods of gaining evolution points beyond sitting bored in the hive, combined with a little due care and attention with journal entries for the new evolutionary items saying how to do this evolution.
- Alien specific special abilities such as resisting negative rainfall effects, longer or better rages and the like, to help shore up a certain lacking trait in a new way.
- Fix the repeated Rage bug.

Werivar: Change to fit a single theme of character to tidy up what is currently a rather excessive number of abilities, whilst keeping the overall simplicity of use of the current Werivar.
- Lower energy and energy regeneration, whilst maintaining the exceptionally high health, possibly lower food consumption slightly to offset this.
- Reduce abilities to: Psionic Blast, Summon Ally, Psionic Drain, Psi Armour, Psionic Senses, and Psionic Dash. Keeping the ability to wield long range weapons and claws for a nice Jack of all Trades mixture.
- Unrestrict advanced generators as per alien, but restrict use of the subspace radio, much like the alien (has a superior psi version).
- Remove the Werivar levelling system of "strength, health, energy and all", and change the special skills to things that reflect true wolf style abilities, night time speed bonuses and night vision, as well as one off improvements to regeneration.

If any folks who actually read this have any comments to make on my ideas, incompetence and/or any difficulties in execution of my frequently bizarre ideas, feel free to say, if there's any particular interest, I'll turn my attention to my less favoured characters in the same manner. I'd just like to say.... What a gip! I killed two of the blue missile launching battledroid thingies in the Mining Fields (No mean feat with the Alien, I tell you). What do they drop? Repair units. Repair units! Since I'm posting anyway, however, I figure I may as well have my two pence with the two races I've currently played, for when either people take up improving this excellent expansion, or when UberWaffe becomes interested and has time. I've given my best ideas on how to bring each into line with each other, so hopefully if nothing else, it might inspire some thoughts along the lines of balancing out the non-"linear plot" version of Werivar mentioned previously. Alien: Having played through with the Alien, I actually found the game on the whole a lot easier than the default setting, rather than harder, as some people suggest. The alien can easily claw her way up to her penultimate Default evolution by simply sticking to the jungle areas, where a steady supply of Reapers helpfully keeps your health topped up. You're fast enough to run through the spots with ready made stasis fields to give yourself a place to rest up if you have a shortfall of Reapers, and by the time you're ready to move into the Hive, you're already gifted with Acidic Spit, which will disable Dire Reapers enough to scamper out of range. Then you level all the way up until 1100 Evo, when you get Killer Claws and enough armour to start taking even Dire Reapers out, and Devour can keep you alive through the lot. You don't even need to lay eggs, if you just hang around until 1600 Evo (Can't quite figure out how to get to the 2300 hinted at in the Dat files) you become perfectly well suited to take out the Dire Reaper area in the East Hive completely alone with rages and simple claw action. You can rage up to machine gun turrets (the greatest non-boss threat I found due to their high damage) even in numbers, and generally take on hordes of pretty well anything except flamethrower marines with claws alone. Devouring Feast puts health and food into overdrive, and typically if you're active about hunting little blues, you can actually gain more food than you lose even when it's above maximum (10,000 food and above maintained for about half an hour was my best). Sniper Spit makes flamethrower marines so much fodder, and can stun most bosses to make kills even easier, but in the end you have enough health and recovery that you can get away with just charging flamethrower marines head on, and just sit and beat some bosses with your claws until they give up and die like sissies. Other bosses, notably ones such as the planetary defence drones, and the battledroid thingies are instead laughably difficult. The Battledroids starburst counter punishes the alien for using its pretty well only viable weapon, namely its claws, whilst its missiles deal enough damage to kill the alien in a single hit, and cannot easily be evaded at close range. Likewise, whilst fighting the planetary defence droids, around four to five direct hits will kill you, and whilst trying to finish off one of the pair, the other will ream you with missiles, requiring constant rage and enough fancy footwork to make a megaman game blush. The only major new disadvantage with the Alien would be the extreme temperature issues. I found myself continuously freezing or burning up. The human has enviroment suits, the android isn't particularly bothered, the psionicist can directly improve his lot, and the Werivar ignores temperature so completely that it may as well be easy difficulty, whilst the Alien, whose fundamental playing aspect is continuous movement to hunt, has to continuously use fires, find trees, use fires again.... A more serious issue is the simple lack of anything really juicy. Special skills make the other characters use less food, move fast like the alien, see enemies better, see items better, and gain absolutely free experience points.... They can't use the fun generators, they can't mine for materials, they can't forge tools, or mine ores.... They can't upgrade their batteries, they can't develop completely new and unusual talents, or get even get vampiric claws (which is rather sad, since Werivar stole the whole claws thing off [i]them[/i]) and they can't get special skills. All the Alien can do is hunt, eat, kill, lay eggs, hunt some more, kill again, eat, use the planetoid to provoke every enemy in the game to move towards you, go to the hive, kill them all and still have more health than maximum, get bored, win the game anyway you care to. The alien, bizarrely, cannot improve its health, or carrying capacity where the Werivar not only gains health like a fiend, energy like a fiend, (and to add insult to injury, I notice the Alien can no longer use battery extenders), and carrying capacity to boot. To improve the Alien I would recommend: - Improve Alien Weaponry I'm not suggesting allowing the alien to use laser sniper shotguns, but now energy and ether both have become effectively unlimitted resources, it would be nice if the alien had something to account for its counterparts with access to unlimitted laser shotguns, unlimitted psi attacks that can kill Dire Reapers in two hits and health draining attacks. Lethal Fangs kills Dire Reapers in two hits, and uses food, regenerates slowly and is rather difficult to actually hit the beast with. A bite that actually lived up to its name and was indeed lethal would be a nice improvement, as would something with knockback, allowing the alien a recourse to being swarmed by the increased numbers of monsters other than sitting clawing everything and hoping they all die before you.... and in an ideal world, vampiric claws. Rather than simply having Devouring Feast as a suped up Devour, instead the Devour Blue, Devour Brown, and Devour Reaper abilities in addition to the standard Devour for progressively better results would give the player a reason to actually collect all those extra corpses that seem to accumulate. Gaining further immunities to things like cold and hot rain, rather than simple temperature stability, would be more in keeping with the alien's style, and be a unique method of going about it. - Allow Alien to use some high technology. A several of the restrictions on technology seem rather arbitrary and unintuitive, such as the self-powered generators, which are notionally even easier to use than their externally powered brethren, tool use, or the battery extension devices (surely the alien's pilfered energy supply from the pod is no different from the human's?). Since most of the "rewards" for clearing out particularly dangerous locales (the Dire Reaper fortress springs to mind), come in the form of technology, the Alien tends to lose out. It simply doesn't have much need for piles of first aid kits, rations or bullets, its only real use for ether is food, but creating giant fortresses, mining tools and making things would actually give something to do once the alien finished its evolution, even if it was just to make as many turrets and stasis fields as possible and put a fortified base in every area. - Alien Specialities Rather than simply having the Alien evolve in a fixed manner, allow the alien one or two little perks of its own once it's reached high levels. A permanent minor rage of 5% or so, to take the edge off those frenetic battles, advanced rages of 50% speed reduction, or the rage slowing time, but increasing your speed to move as normal during those rages, fun things like fire breath, lava immunity, each of these fits into the Alien theme, and helps extend the evolution time of the alien. Naturally, unless I've missed a clue on how to evolve further from 1600 evo, making this extended evolution both available and possible would be a nice step in helping the alien balance out. And now, the Werivar. I don't know if this is as was intended, but the first impression I got when playing this race was that of "easy mode". They don't strike me as particularly powerful a race off the bat, but they are extremely, extremely easy to do well with, for a number of reasons: - Health regeneration: Eat a rotten shroom or five? No problem, a rotten mushroom for a Werivar is essentially a ten second maximum penalty. I don't recall ever using a red plant as a Werivar. Naturally, the health is also extremely large, a nice easy character to play with on the grounds that you can leave the Werivar getting attacked by a small blue alien to get a cup of tea, and come back to see him still sitting around on full health, I've certainly managed a lava bath without taking any damage. - Energy regeneration: Can't afford the super scanner psionic ability? No problem, even at level zero, the Werivar regenerates enough energy to use the modded subspace radio and the torch, and still actually gain energy. Unlike the human, for whom energy is a finite supply, the Werivar allows the player to squander it, use it all up, squander it again... Never will the Werivar be unable to start a fire, find an item, see in the dark, because even if they use all their energy up, they need to wait but a few moments and then turn it all back on again, they'll soon regain all their battery anyway. Again, blue plants for Werivar? Never, their maximum energy is also simply colossal. - Claws: For the human, close range combat is a hazardous, uncertain affair, costing health and food, for the android it costs precious energy. For the Psionic, they must lock up their other abilities in order to give themselves their primary attack.... For the Werivar, they have claws. They aren't as damaging as the alien's, and don't start backed up by that obscene speed, but they are effectively free. They don't cost health, they don't cost food, and they can kill small blues in one scratch fest. Again, this makes life easier for the Werivar. - Temperature regulation: Short of sitting in lava, I've never seen the Werivar suffer from temperatures above or below around thirty off base. Their resistance to temperature change is so complete that the "Freezing rain" that causes the alien to huddle beneath trees for minutes at a time or die of frostbite is about as much of a danger to a Werivar as Eden's rain is. This really is like making the game an entire step easier here, why you bothered giving them the temperature regulation ability at all is a mystery. - Psi Blast: I'm going to ignore all of the other psi abilities for the moment, because this one simply dominates the early game. The very moment the Werivar gets psi blast is the moment the Werivar can hunt Dire Reapers. It really is that simple, just line up sights and blast them back just out of range. Because of their large health and the high damage of even the most basic psi-blast, they don't even need to have that good timing, they can afford to get hit several times before keeling over, and that's generally enough. Since you get psi blast as one of the numerous bonuses granted to the Werivar for a perfect pod run, this means you can start the game able to take on and beat Dire Reapers. This, combined with their energy regeneration and claws, makes them capable of dealing with most aliens without trouble from very early in the game, which simply jump starts their advancement. Experience levels: An alien first needs to stay above 150 food, then kill around fifty small blue aliens, then kill thirty or so blue aliens, then another twenty brown aliens, then another twenty reapers or so, then hang around in the hive area for 300 points of evolution, gaining one point per tick, to reach even the 1100 mark. That's a good half hour of game play to evolve into a higher level form, and another 500 points of hanging around the hive, whilst you take a brief nap before you can finally reach the point that the alien can leave the hive. Killing the alien queens won't increase those evolution points any, killing Dire Reapers so efficiently that a grand total of a singular (rarely) respawning Dire Reaper in the hive remains at the end of the genocide won't earn you a single point of evolution. For the Werivar, sitting around taking a nap will earn you two experience points per tick, even if it's lurking in the ancient ruins with the door shut and just feeding off a bunch of generated rations. Killing aliens speeds this process up, as does staying well fed upping the two from XP machine to four. Every time the Werivar levels, their Health and Energy go up, ignore the "All" option, and simply pile on Health and Energy specific level ups once you've got the three useful special skills, and you'll end up with a 1,000 HP monster, who regenerates 20 Health a second, can permanently equip Psi Sense, Psi Armour, and unleash as many Psi Blasts as they care to without leaving maximum health.... The "other" psi abilities: Psi Armour, essentially a reusable, constantly triggering repair unit that reduces damage too. I beat every single battledroid in the mining fields by the master strategy of sitting right in front of them, sleeping, and letting the insane energy and health regeneration tag team the poor defenceless battledroids who get a taste of their own medicine by dying through super counter fire. Heal, completely, completely imbalancing when combined with the regeneration aspect. Sleep, which essentially makes stasis fields pointless, food pointless, and actually doing anything, pointless. Create food, which means the Werivar can create infinite amounts of food, all of which weigh nothing, making the game slightly pointless, seeing as it's about survival and all.... And lastly, the ability to detect both biological and energy signatures at the same time, another helper tool for those new to the game, or are too lazy to switch between their radio and their scanner. Special skills: The most important two special skills would be food reduction and speed increase. With food reduction, what was previously similar to an Alien appetite, the Werivar's singular disadvantage, becomes the sluggish hunger of the humble human, whilst speed increase turns the already quite swift Werivar into an Alienesque speed of movement. The race becomes within the first four to six levels devoid of disadvantages, and gaining the other primary race advantage of the alien. All in all, with all these advantages, there are four possible outcomes to a Werivar game: Starve early on, and die. Get mauled by a pack of Dire Reapers early on, and die. Act carelessly and die by forgetting to heal. Survive long enough to get a few level ups, avoid bosses for awhile, wander round killing Dire Reapers until abusively levelled, and enjoy the near inevitable win. Whilst a nice easy race, perfect for beginners, there is one tedious trait about the Werivar I've noticed, and that is the sheer amount of psionic abilities they have. I've counted twenty to date, not including their automatic flashlight. Scrolling through all of those is a chore, and aside from an occassional "Hm, what's this do again?", most of these abilities were entirely unused, and as such detracted from, rather than added to the Werivar's appeal. A good example of defunct abilities would be "psionic healing", vampiric claws, "psionic sleep", "psionic drain" and the Werivar's inherent regeneration. All heal, but with so many different options, why bother? Equally, once you get psionic blast, all the other projectiles are irrelevant, with the possible exception of the really high energy non-psi weapons out there, and having energy shield AND psi armour is simply excessive. The slow time ability I would also say to be largely superfluous, the alien needs its rage because it's almost one hundred percent dependent on its claws, the Werivar, gifted with the ability to use guns, summon instant allies (all of whom are armed with a supremely potent weapon themselves), with enough health to survive getting hit by three blue missiles at the same time with some to spare, does not need this at all, especially when topped off with the psi armour and psi heal, and the generally low knockback taken from weapons (charging a machine gun turret with an alien without rage is a good way of never getting close than halfway there, an armoured Werivar can toddle through the bullets soaking up the damage, unleash a psionic blast or two to destroy the turret, and then continue on to the next one, only running away if he's low on health, only to come back fifty seconds later fully healed). Equally, dash or teleport might be necessary movement tools, but since with Dash you can move around three times faster than the alien, and thusly cross entire maps without an enemy getting time to even turn around, it makes teleport rather pointless. Since the Werivar is so fast after skills anyway, whether these skills are needed at all is dubious. To improve the Werivar, I'd recommend first choosing an actual ethos for the character to follow. For the alien, it's the biological terror, almost all close range, gains advantages from consuming prey, incredibly fast, strong.... For the human, it's definitely the techie, without his toys, he swiftly dies, but let him tinker with things, he'll end up with enough firepower and protection to let him take on most everything. The android is the tank, big and unstoppable, his greatest fear to run out of gas, whilst the psionic is the wimpy mage, whose energy and energy regeneration should always be the absolute best. For the Werivar, the most overriding theme to me is something akin to a werewolf, can take a lot of damage, regenerates, and has a finger firmly in the supernatural. To adapt to follow the werewolf theme, I would lower the Werivar's energy drastically, and energy regeneration to boot. I would keep the regeneration and high health, and limit the psionic abilities to: Psionic Blast, Summon Ally, Psionic Drain, Psi Armour, Psionic Senses, and potentially Psionic Dash. The psionic werewolf, given to high speed physical regeneration, slow energy regeneration (certainly not enough to use Psi Armour, Psionic Senses and Psionic Dash all at the same time all the time, at least not without extreme levelling up). Use of simple weapons like pistols, but not quite the knack for the complicated things. In general, this would keep the things that make the Werivar an entertaining race to play, it's regeneration, it's nice "Jack of all Trades" approach to Melee, Ranged and Psionic attacks, and the speed and convenience of the Psionic Senses picking up goodies and enemies combined with the Psionic Dash reaching them, with a (hopefully toned down damage output) Psi Armour to help protect the otherwise armourless Werivar. This would still be in conjunction with the constant level increases of energy and health, but as gone into below, a potentially different means of doing so. Even with these modifications, it should be noted that the Psionic Blast ability for the Werivar is extremely potent, and would still have the inherent anti-Dire Reaper qualities that set it far ahead of the others for the early game, but less overwhelmingly so, due to having a more serious limitation in terms of energy, stopping the game from becoming pointlessly easy. At least without serious work. Adjusting the Levelling system: To start with, though the system for the bonus level based stat increases is very impressive, I would actually recommend removing it entirely, for all the races who have it, not least because humans should not regenerate health and battery, and is supremely easy to imbalance. Instead, I would recommend a higher focus on the standard per level special skills that suit the theme of the character. Giving Werivar the "enhanced regeneration" special skill, or the "nocturnal" gaining special abilities at night, and black and white night sight, and enhanced energy regeneration, the human advantages like swifter weapon reloading, swifter combine times, things fun and unique to each character, gained every few levels, to enhance the particular advantages of the race, rather than necessarily alleviating disadvantages at a basic level (such as the Alien overcoming its hunger with devour, rather than with lowering its hunger rate). In short for the two: [b]Alien[/b]: Generally improve slightly to match the other races' advantages in its own way, and increase longevity of the alien scenario. - Improve Alien Weaponry, a further evolved bite that can actually kill Dire Reapers in one bite, and possibly a howl or some other type of ability to grant the alien some means of knocking back opposition. - Unrestrict the advanced generators, leaving other advanced things, such as weapons and hoverbikes/armours human/android only. - Give the alien Devour Blue, Devour Brown and Devour Reaper rather than just improving the standard Devour, with further methods of gaining evolution points beyond sitting bored in the hive, combined with a little due care and attention with journal entries for the new evolutionary items saying how to do this evolution. - Alien specific special abilities such as resisting negative rainfall effects, longer or better rages and the like, to help shore up a certain lacking trait in a new way. - Fix the repeated Rage bug. [b]Werivar[/b]: Change to fit a single theme of character to tidy up what is currently a rather excessive number of abilities, whilst keeping the overall simplicity of use of the current Werivar. - Lower energy and energy regeneration, whilst maintaining the exceptionally high health, possibly lower food consumption slightly to offset this. - Reduce abilities to: Psionic Blast, Summon Ally, Psionic Drain, Psi Armour, Psionic Senses, and Psionic Dash. Keeping the ability to wield long range weapons and claws for a nice Jack of all Trades mixture. - Unrestrict advanced generators as per alien, but restrict use of the subspace radio, much like the alien (has a superior psi version). - Remove the Werivar levelling system of "strength, health, energy and all", and change the special skills to things that reflect true wolf style abilities, night time speed bonuses and night vision, as well as one off improvements to regeneration. If any folks who actually read this have any comments to make on my ideas, incompetence and/or any difficulties in execution of my frequently bizarre ideas, feel free to say, if there's any particular interest, I'll turn my attention to my less favoured characters in the same manner.

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DRL 19 years ago

Humans have the hability to gain regeneration,and energy recharge,because whiout them,the human will die.There´s not an "energy charger",and,the one that is in the mod,needs fuel sells,instead of it,you can also regerate some energy,and health too.And,why remove the higher experience rathing at the begining?

You bassically,are unable of doing something until you can count on your regeneration capabilityes to survive.

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Anonymous1157 19 years ago

@everyone involved with the empty quote issue: DONT YOU SEE THE SARCASM!?

@Nocture17: That looks quite interesting, but I hate english*, so, you know, i'm not going to read it?

@Uberwaffe: Make the alien better, it is he who fuels my passion for humanoid dragons (oddly enough)!

*I mean the class, not the language**
**Although english is not my first language, I grew up with it.

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Grim Reaper 19 years ago

[OT]

"Anonymous1157" said:
@Uberwaffe: Make the alien better, it is he who fuels my passion for humanoid dragons (oddly enough)!

Haven't you realized that the alien is a she?

And no, I do not see the sarcasm. [/OT]

I'll have to download and install this (if i haven't already, can't quite remember...

), sounds like great fun.

What? I've been busy with other games (such as HL2 and Fahrenheit to name a few)!

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Nocture17 19 years ago

Actually, there is indeed two different infinite energy supplies present in the game:
In the mining area, the large multicoloured crystal, when used will decrease your health, but increase your energy every time you use it.
And another:
Take a battery charger, add a replicator cell, and then add two specimen containers - you can find specimen containers and replicator cells in large quantities in the Ship Graveyard, whilst battery chargers are extremely easy to make.
The latter will provide you with a Bio-generator. When using brown alien corpses on the generator, they will produce bio-batteries. Each bio-battery restores 40 energy, and is a human/android only item. Since brown aliens spawn in all but four areas or so, and are easily killed, infinite energy is just as possible as infinite food. The only two resources that were not previously limitless, Ether and Energy, both have means of permanent generation specific to the two races that should need them.

The Human should not regenerate, at all. If he does, he stops needing Stasis Fields, stops needing to conserve energy, stops needing, in short, to be all the things that make him human. The existence of energy regeneration stops people from ever even needing to use a fuel cell, ever needing a battery, ever saving energy.

In the main game energy saving was the fundamental basis and challenge of being the Human, where the early game is symbolised by avoiding being noticed by aliens and marines, scavenging carefully until you get enough weapons and resources to hold your own, just as the Alien early game is symbolised by the frantic dash to get enough food to survive. If you make the human gain energy, you might as well make the alien regain food.

I might be neglecting the difficulty of successfully reaching the ship graveyard with the human, of finding two of the ten to twenty specimen containers scattered about the place, and one of the numerous replicator cells. I'm quite sure that for the human, there is a very real difficulty getting the ready made Stasis Field generator from the Dried up marsh, that needs at least a blowtorch and preferably a pistol to achieve.

The human journal explains how to build a Stasis Field so that humans can regenerate through technology, the bio-generator provides infinite batteries, so that humans can restore energy, again through technology. Medipacks and red plants exist, not to give a burst of health to supplement you whilst standing between five machine gun turrets, but to allow the races to regain health at all, outside of killing reapers and hiding under stasis fields.

These are both parts of the human "theme". Magically regaining energy, however, is not. Humans are not solar powered, they do not regenerate mortal wounds in a matter of seconds (that being the Werivar theme), so they should not gain these traits.

If the game is too hard on the human without them, then humans should have more starting resources to be found on their starting areas (much like the android has more resources, computer units and batteries), but humans should behave and function like humans, playing with technology to survive, not becoming psychic megaregenerative monsters, then why bother playing human at all?

I will play a game with the human, on Werivar mod, and intentionally not gain any energy regeneration. I'll see how hard it is, without the arbitrary skills that have nothing much to do with humans (evil eye, pyromania, super speed, lowered hunger....). If it's too hard, then I'll have a go putting a powered particle accelerator in the Ancient Ruins area, and a supply of bullets the hermit threw away out back once his pistol stopped working. I'll add maybe a few medipacks, here and there, and that's the way I feel humans should be equalised, if there is an inequality, not by making them psychics. Actually, there is indeed two different infinite energy supplies present in the game: [color=white]In the mining area, the large multicoloured crystal, when used will decrease your health, but increase your energy every time you use it.[/color] And another: [color=white]Take a battery charger, add a replicator cell, and then add two specimen containers - you can find specimen containers and replicator cells in large quantities in the Ship Graveyard, whilst battery chargers are extremely easy to make.[/color] The latter will provide you with a Bio-generator. When using brown alien corpses on the generator, they will produce bio-batteries. Each bio-battery restores 40 energy, and is a human/android only item. Since brown aliens spawn in all but four areas or so, and are easily killed, infinite energy is just as possible as infinite food. The only two resources that were not previously limitless, Ether and Energy, both have means of permanent generation specific to the two races that should need them. The Human should not regenerate, at all. If he does, he stops needing Stasis Fields, stops needing to conserve energy, stops needing, in short, to be all the things that make him human. The existence of energy regeneration stops people from ever even needing to use a fuel cell, ever needing a battery, ever saving energy. In the main game energy saving was the fundamental basis and challenge of being the Human, where the early game is symbolised by avoiding being noticed by aliens and marines, scavenging carefully until you get enough weapons and resources to hold your own, just as the Alien early game is symbolised by the frantic dash to get enough food to survive. If you make the human gain energy, you might as well make the alien regain food. I might be neglecting the difficulty of successfully reaching the ship graveyard with the human, of finding two of the ten to twenty specimen containers scattered about the place, and one of the numerous replicator cells. I'm quite sure that for the human, there is a very real difficulty getting the ready made Stasis Field generator from the [color=white]Dried up marsh[/color], that needs at least a blowtorch and preferably a pistol to achieve. The human journal explains how to build a Stasis Field so that humans can regenerate through technology, the bio-generator provides infinite batteries, so that humans can restore energy, again through technology. Medipacks and red plants exist, not to give a burst of health to supplement you whilst standing between five machine gun turrets, but to allow the races to regain health at all, outside of killing reapers and hiding under stasis fields. These are both parts of the human "theme". Magically regaining energy, however, is not. Humans are not solar powered, they do not regenerate mortal wounds in a matter of seconds (that being the Werivar theme), so they should not gain these traits. If the game is too hard on the human without them, then humans should have more starting resources to be found on their starting areas (much like the android has more resources, computer units and batteries), but humans should behave and function like humans, playing with technology to survive, not becoming psychic megaregenerative monsters, then why bother playing human at all? I will play a game with the human, on Werivar mod, and intentionally not gain any energy regeneration. I'll see how hard it is, without the arbitrary skills that have nothing much to do with humans (evil eye, pyromania, super speed, lowered hunger....). If it's too hard, then I'll have a go putting a powered particle accelerator in the Ancient Ruins area, and a supply of bullets the hermit threw away out back once his pistol stopped working. I'll add maybe a few medipacks, here and there, and that's the way I feel humans should be equalised, if there is an inequality, not by making them psychics.

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DRL 19 years ago

"Anonymous1157" said:

**Although english is not my first language, I grew up with it.

I agree whit this,I know inglish,but isn´t my language.

And talking about these ideas stuff,here´s what I say:

In a Notruim mod like this: ENERGY SAVED IS BASYCALLY NOT NEEDED,that why the human can regenerates.as well he uses most of his energy on the field of battle,even a simple stun laser,it uses lots of energy,and whiout the regeneration,the entire mod is simply............impossible.-

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Nocture17 19 years ago

A brief mention on my progress without energy or health regeneration. So far, with my friend the hermit and my trusty blowtorch, and wandering around largely in the dark except for occassional flashes of the torch, I've managed to get a VC pistol, enough medipacks to keep me topped up, and am still going strong. Using the odd blue plant has kept me at above 70 energy at all times. The hermit has so far done an admirable job of killing everyone and everything that moves, which costs me nothing but the time of running around them to draw their fire.

Not met a Dire Reaper yet though...

Update: Even with the VC pistol, it's rarely even necessary to have anything but the Blow Torch equipped just in case of close quarters combat. Having found a fuel converter and fuel cell, and wandering through a jungle on the way back, I used the blue corpse to reinforce the Evo Armour, then made the self-powered enviro-suit. Now I regain energy anyway, because of the enviro-suit's slow battery regeneration.

This took me to day two game time, according to the journal (with, admittedly, a few reloads where I insisted on being a clumsy moron and running into stun lasers and charging m-turrets with blowtorches....). I'm far from the best human player (I'm an alien fan, could you tell?), this is literally my second game as a human. But with a perfect run through with the escape pod as my only benefit, and all levels wasted on unused special ability tokens, I've managed to garner myself some battery regeneration via technology. Still not encountered any Dire Reapers, but I've been intentionally avoiding them as any sane person should.

It's possibly not the same thing as being able to beat Dire Reapers alone single handed straight off the bat, but it certainly indicates to me that a zero inherent energy regeneration human is entirely possible.

Update #2: Now I've got a stasis field, enviro armour, over five hundred bullets, and a turret for my base. My only energy expenditure remains the Torch, since I have no radio, but bullets are, at least currently, plentiful enough to make the lack of energy weapons perfectly acceptable. Spending the time hunting marines to get the VC pistol was completely worth it, Dire Reapers can't even get close thanks to a horde of buddies with their pistols, and if they do, they can be swiftly pushed back with yours until they're plinked to death.

Having played through, yes, it's perfectly possible, even easy, to progress with the human without energy. Unlike the alien, he doesn't have to wait until he's evolved to start tearing through major enemies. The laser pistol is a great weapon, but it can really wait a few game days worth of getting and making a self-powered enviro suit, pistol weapons are perfectly good against aliens, even if robots do tend to laugh at you.

In total, it took me four game days to find enough materials to get me a laser pistol, several forcefields, a biomass generator, fully functional power armour (which, incidentally, repairs itself, and you, leading to health regeneration) and a nice base in the graveyard to base my schemes for world domination. I'd say that was actually pretty good, compared to waiting around for a week with the alien in the hive to evolve.

Humans are actually much more easily balanced, they are already geared towards accomplishing through combining what the Alien and Werivar do through evolving, and for the most part, I think that's a good thing to aim for; equal yet different. I do agree that humans should have an experience system, but the actual things they get should be human specific things, that help them with their combining, not things that make take away that need to combine. If you try to play them the same way as you play the alien or the werivar, you'll lose. Play them the way their race is suited to, and you'll find they're a lot better survivors than they might first appear, just don't rush getting their energy weapons until your energy can handle it.

As such, if they do retain having skills, I'd suggest their specific special skills include things such as one off health and weight limit increases, speeding up the combining bar, allowing them to make medikits out of reaper corpses, and possibly even more unique and interesting examples of super-tech (a solar generator, that produces solar batteries during the day? A site-to-site teleporter?). I think the human, especially when combined with his best buddy the Hermit, is already good overall character against all forms of enemies, and I've not got a single special skill or level bonus with him in my entire game (If you're untrusting as to doubt me, say and I'll get a screenshot of all the special skill tokens I've been hording). A brief mention on my progress without energy or health regeneration. So far, with my friend the hermit and my trusty blowtorch, and wandering around largely in the dark except for occassional flashes of the torch, I've managed to get a VC pistol, enough medipacks to keep me topped up, and am still going strong. Using the odd blue plant has kept me at above 70 energy at all times. The hermit has so far done an admirable job of killing everyone and everything that moves, which costs me nothing but the time of running around them to draw their fire. Not met a Dire Reaper yet though... Update: Even with the VC pistol, it's rarely even necessary to have anything but the Blow Torch equipped just in case of close quarters combat. Having found a fuel converter and fuel cell, and wandering through a jungle on the way back, I used the blue corpse to reinforce the Evo Armour, then made the self-powered enviro-suit. Now I regain energy anyway, because of the enviro-suit's slow battery regeneration. This took me to day two game time, according to the journal (with, admittedly, a few reloads where I insisted on being a clumsy moron and running into stun lasers and charging m-turrets with blowtorches....). I'm far from the best human player (I'm an alien fan, could you tell?), this is literally my second game as a human. But with a perfect run through with the escape pod as my only benefit, and all levels wasted on unused special ability tokens, I've managed to garner myself some battery regeneration via technology. Still not encountered any Dire Reapers, but I've been intentionally avoiding them as any sane person should. It's possibly not the same thing as being able to beat Dire Reapers alone single handed straight off the bat, but it certainly indicates to me that a zero inherent energy regeneration human is entirely possible. Update #2: Now I've got a stasis field, enviro armour, over five hundred bullets, and a turret for my base. My only energy expenditure remains the Torch, since I have no radio, but bullets are, at least currently, plentiful enough to make the lack of energy weapons perfectly acceptable. Spending the time hunting marines to get the VC pistol was completely worth it, Dire Reapers can't even get close thanks to a horde of buddies with their pistols, and if they do, they can be swiftly pushed back with yours until they're plinked to death. Having played through, yes, it's perfectly possible, even easy, to progress with the human without energy. Unlike the alien, he doesn't have to wait until he's evolved to start tearing through major enemies. The laser pistol is a great weapon, but it can really wait a few game days worth of getting and making a self-powered enviro suit, pistol weapons are perfectly good against aliens, even if robots do tend to laugh at you. In total, it took me four game days to find enough materials to get me a laser pistol, several forcefields, a biomass generator, fully functional power armour (which, incidentally, repairs itself, and you, leading to health regeneration) and a nice base in the graveyard to base my schemes for world domination. I'd say that was actually pretty good, compared to waiting around for a week with the alien in the hive to evolve. Humans are actually much more easily balanced, they are already geared towards accomplishing through combining what the Alien and Werivar do through evolving, and for the most part, I think that's a good thing to aim for; equal yet different. I do agree that humans should have an experience system, but the actual things they get should be human specific things, that help them with their combining, not things that make take away that need to combine. If you try to play them the same way as you play the alien or the werivar, you'll lose. Play them the way their race is suited to, and you'll find they're a lot better survivors than they might first appear, just don't rush getting their energy weapons until your energy can handle it. As such, if they do retain having skills, I'd suggest their specific special skills include things such as one off health and weight limit increases, speeding up the combining bar, allowing them to make medikits out of reaper corpses, and possibly even more unique and interesting examples of super-tech (a solar generator, that produces solar batteries during the day? A site-to-site teleporter?). I think the human, especially when combined with his best buddy the Hermit, is already good overall character against all forms of enemies, and I've not got a single special skill or level bonus with him in my entire game (If you're untrusting as to doubt me, say and I'll get a screenshot of all the special skill tokens I've been hording).

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DRL 19 years ago

How you know that *you*,are the best human player?

If someone is the best being the human,I can be that guy.

I made almost anything,and when I reload I have:

Battledroids: 5+
Human survivors: about to be 6+
Android survivors: I have 5+

95,8%,Of the entire game stuff,I have almost anything.
Beaten 98% of all bosses.

And,the abilityes I gained:

Healing level:.................................76
Energy regeneration lvl:................82

All of the special abilityes.
_____________________________________________________

Bassically,playing as human I´m one of the best players.

I also sometimes play as the alien,but I´m not so good.

I have to set up a nest,and put a lot of turrets in.

Also I will tell something:

If you are the alien,and have up to 1600<(when you can lay eggs,and other stuff) evolution,go to the hive,and stay there for a bit..............You will notice that the evolution level raises slowly

like this: 1600....1601,1602......ect........

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Idiota 19 years ago

Surely, if we start boasting our exceptional Notrium skills, I am joining. Not to boast around for myself, but for people who are surely masters. Think of Ville, he created the game. He knows 100% of the game.

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Nocture17 19 years ago

Actually, I said I was far from the best human player. I'm not claiming any particular mastery over anything, just stating that someone with my modest level of ability, on my second game of playing human ever, can thrive with the human without using the unnecessary energy and health bonuses and regeneration. I'm sorry if you thought that boasting.

You stated that it is impossible to survive with the human without those abilities due to its extreme difficulty, I have proven you wrong by doing just that.

On a side note, you seem to be claiming expertise based on the fact that you can survive with 1000 health or so, whilst regaining 30 Health and Energy per second, whilst I am talking about surviving with 100 health, and only the energy recovered from actual battery extenders, my only regeneration coming from tools the human has made. This is chalk and cheese, you are in effect playing a completely different game to me, because of the extremely different way I'm running through with the human.

And yes, whilst in the Hive waiting after 1,100 (when you can lay eggs), your evolution does continue to rise. Once it hits 1,600, it stops. At least for me.

Update: Having played through with the human, a lot of the time I was worrying over having a tiny health of 100, how I was going to clear out the East Hive base, how to beat Dire Reapers.... Then I got three weapons. Advanced Flame Thrower, Warp Drill and the Double Barrelled Pistol.

Between these three weapons, I was essentially set. There was no target I found that the Warp Drill couldn't kill in two, maybe three hits. All for 5 energy per rapid fire shot. This weapon makes human if not the easiest, then one of the easiest in the game. It's simply obscenely easy. I charged through the blue hive with a two second volley, and killed literally everything inside, including both queens. Battledroids? One shot. Sniper Marines? Find where they're hiding, one shot.

On the rare occassions my slow-regenerating battery was out, and I didn't have a few bio-batteries (with two advanced power armours, a hundred batteries would have been possible), I turned to the double barrelled pistol, which tore through Dire Reapers like they were paper. Occassionally, for a laugh, I used the Advanced Flamethrower just to toast a few aliens, but this really was optional.

All in all, given that the human can successfully fight his way into the East Hive at any time he has about five M-turrets to set up outside the door (around seven broken M-turrets can be found in that area alone, and eighteen repair units, whilst anyone with a laser pistol can snipe the M-turrets in the graveyard from just beyond their range), and that the other ingredients can be found in the Ship Graveyard in numbers that exceed energy cells (no joke), I wonder why anyone could think that humans were hard to succeed with. Now I know how, I could probably take less than a week to get a Warp Drill gun.

It didn't even matter than I had one hundred health, or a little less than five hundred energy, it didn't matter that one shot from a sniper or a boss killed me instantly, or that my hermit friend was killed by a Sniper round whilst I was off one-hit-killing battledroids.

In conclusion, humans (and androids, I suppose, since they share the weapon) are, surprisingly enough, incredibly powerful, even without inherent energy regeneration. If humans are supposed to be the benchmark through which the potency of the other races is measured, then the Alien's claws will have to start killing Dire Reapers in one hit to even hope to measure up.

My recommendations for humans?

- Tone down their warp drill gun so it doesn't kill everything in the game in one hit, maybe take ten hits for battledroids would be a good start, halve the firing rate, and double the energy expenditure. This will make it merely the best weapon in the game.

- Remove their regenerations and health gains, they simply aren't necessary in the slightest.

- Make a particle accelerator, and a "hermit's stash of bullets" available in the ancient ruins map, to give the human's shaky start a little help.

- Increase the armour value for the advanced power armour, since humans would not be hitting 1000 health or regenerating 30 health a second, this would give them a little more survivability.

If anyone is feeling bored enough to tweak the data files to try this out, I'd be interested to hear how they felt it worked. Actually, I said I was [i]far from [/i]the best human player. I'm not claiming any particular mastery over anything, just stating that someone with my modest level of ability, on my second game of playing human ever, can thrive with the human without using the unnecessary energy and health bonuses and regeneration. I'm sorry if you thought that boasting. You stated that it is impossible to survive with the human without those abilities due to its extreme difficulty, I have proven you wrong by doing just that. On a side note, you seem to be claiming expertise based on the fact that you can survive with 1000 health or so, whilst regaining 30 Health and Energy per second, whilst I am talking about surviving with 100 health, and only the energy recovered from actual battery extenders, my only regeneration coming from tools the human has made. This is chalk and cheese, you are in effect playing a completely different game to me, because of the extremely different way I'm running through with the human. And yes, whilst in the Hive waiting after 1,100 (when you can lay eggs), your evolution does continue to rise. Once it hits 1,600, it stops. At least for me. Update: Having played through with the human, a lot of the time I was worrying over having a tiny health of 100, how I was going to clear out the East Hive base, how to beat Dire Reapers.... Then I got three weapons. Advanced Flame Thrower, Warp Drill and the Double Barrelled Pistol. Between these three weapons, I was essentially set. There was no target I found that the Warp Drill couldn't kill in two, maybe three hits. All for 5 energy per rapid fire shot. This weapon makes human if not the easiest, then one of the easiest in the game. It's simply obscenely easy. I charged through the blue hive with a two second volley, and killed literally everything inside, including both queens. Battledroids? One shot. Sniper Marines? Find where they're hiding, one shot. On the rare occassions my slow-regenerating battery was out, and I didn't have a few bio-batteries (with two advanced power armours, a hundred batteries would have been possible), I turned to the double barrelled pistol, which tore through Dire Reapers like they were paper. Occassionally, for a laugh, I used the Advanced Flamethrower just to toast a few aliens, but this really was optional. All in all, given that the human can successfully fight his way into the East Hive at any time he has about five M-turrets to set up outside the door (around seven broken M-turrets can be found in that area alone, and eighteen repair units, whilst anyone with a laser pistol can snipe the M-turrets in the graveyard from just beyond their range), and that the other ingredients can be found in the Ship Graveyard in numbers that exceed energy cells (no joke), I wonder why anyone could think that humans were hard to succeed with. Now I know how, I could probably take less than a week to get a Warp Drill gun. It didn't even matter than I had one hundred health, or a little less than five hundred energy, it didn't matter that one shot from a sniper or a boss killed me instantly, or that my hermit friend was killed by a Sniper round whilst I was off one-hit-killing battledroids. In conclusion, humans (and androids, I suppose, since they share the weapon) are, surprisingly enough, incredibly powerful, even without inherent energy regeneration. If humans are supposed to be the benchmark through which the potency of the other races is measured, then the Alien's claws will have to start killing Dire Reapers in one hit to even hope to measure up. My recommendations for humans? - Tone down their warp drill gun so it doesn't kill everything in the game in one hit, maybe take ten hits for battledroids would be a good start, halve the firing rate, and double the energy expenditure. This will make it merely the best weapon in the game. - Remove their regenerations and health gains, they simply aren't necessary in the slightest. - Make a particle accelerator, and a "hermit's stash of bullets" available in the ancient ruins map, to give the human's shaky start a little help. - Increase the armour value for the advanced power armour, since humans would not be hitting 1000 health or regenerating 30 health a second, this would give them a little more survivability. If anyone is feeling bored enough to tweak the data files to try this out, I'd be interested to hear how they felt it worked.

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UberWaffe 19 years ago

AH yes, ye olde balancing problem. I had stated some time ago that it is highly unbalanced, and I had never come around to doing so. I had intentionally made the Werivar far stronger (in preparation for the part he would play in my story based mod) but the psionic blast being so bad was indeed a mistake. Also, while the dash renders the teleporation somewhat useless, it is only because on Notrium you can go anywhere without physical barriers blocking your way. While on the Ville Corp planet you would have areas lock you in. But that is another story.

Btw, the story I had in mind went something like this.

*SPOILER* (Although I doubt I will ever do this.)
Planning: Alien -> Captain -> Psionic -> Android -> Werivar -> Captain -> Werivar
Start as alien. Must kill to get last escape pod. Land on Notrium. Must fully evolve and hatch enough alien broods.
Captain - You must gather the survivors. Then get base in hive operational again.
Psionic – Must save your people from the Planetoid core.
Android - You must build your ultimate upgrade and make your way to the ville Corp ship. Kill the fake ville. (Then the Android joins ville as his right hand droid.)
Werivar – Must make your way to the Hive sector. Must gather components for the captain to build an escape pod. Others remain behind while you and captain head away to find help.
Pig - You are trapped in a illusionary dimension of strange proportions. (Puzzle part of game). Must solve puzzle to escape having your mind liquified.
Captain (Again) – You barely survive the warp malfunction. (Warp drive sabotaged by evil warp-engineer-android-gone-ville-right-hand-droid.) Werivar teleports you both down to new planet. Get seperated in teleport. New planet completely ville world. Big metal world, mostly factories, etc. Many ville robots, marines, badguys there. Must find and rescue werivar stuck in time-stasis.
Werivar (Again, last) – Must find Nirdaramuk Artifact. Must defeat ancient evil and grow strong. Must then face Android. Must kill Android. Must face ville. Must defeat ville. (Ville very weak. But massive array of very big cannons and shields to destroy to get to him.)
*SPOILER* AH yes, ye olde balancing problem. I had stated some time ago that it is highly unbalanced, and I had never come around to doing so. I had intentionally made the Werivar far stronger (in preparation for the part he would play in my story based mod) but the psionic blast being so bad was indeed a mistake. Also, while the dash renders the teleporation somewhat useless, it is only because on Notrium you can go anywhere without physical barriers blocking your way. While on the Ville Corp planet you would have areas lock you in. But that is another story. Btw, the story I had in mind went something like this. *SPOILER* (Although I doubt I will ever do this.) [color=white]Planning: Alien -> Captain -> Psionic -> Android -> Werivar -> Captain -> Werivar Start as alien. Must kill to get last escape pod. Land on Notrium. Must fully evolve and hatch enough alien broods. Captain - You must gather the survivors. Then get base in hive operational again. Psionic – Must save your people from the Planetoid core. Android - You must build your ultimate upgrade and make your way to the ville Corp ship. Kill the fake ville. (Then the Android joins ville as his right hand droid.) Werivar – Must make your way to the Hive sector. Must gather components for the captain to build an escape pod. Others remain behind while you and captain head away to find help. Pig - You are trapped in a illusionary dimension of strange proportions. (Puzzle part of game). Must solve puzzle to escape having your mind liquified. Captain (Again) – You barely survive the warp malfunction. (Warp drive sabotaged by evil warp-engineer-android-gone-ville-right-hand-droid.) Werivar teleports you both down to new planet. Get seperated in teleport. New planet completely ville world. Big metal world, mostly factories, etc. Many ville robots, marines, badguys there. Must find and rescue werivar stuck in time-stasis. Werivar (Again, last) – Must find Nirdaramuk Artifact. Must defeat ancient evil and grow strong. Must then face Android. Must kill Android. Must face ville. Must defeat ville. (Ville very weak. But massive array of very big cannons and shields to destroy to get to him.)[/color] *SPOILER*

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The Gemini 19 years ago

"UberWaffe" said:

(Although I doubt I will ever do this.)

Too bad, I think this idea is brilliant, more linear storyline and such.

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Nocture17 19 years ago

It'd be interesting to see the linear story finished, especially to see how you managed all the little details of switching between scenarios, like stripping the equipment off characters to swap to the next character. Hopefully you'll change your mind sometime in the future and finish it, it really would be adding something special to Notrium.

Good to know that the Psi Blast was an accident though, it's still obscene. =p

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lordofpete 19 years ago

The special Skills are too mighty. burning the enemy does high damage and stopping him with your eyes makes every enemy helpless. these skills should be taken out of the game.

Could someone send me a pm with instructions how to build the warp drill gun??

Please

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DRL 19 years ago

Well,they are in the mod.You select,if you Learn/Or not learn them.

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Bryjnar 19 years ago

I would like to disagree with the statement on sniper marines. They're insane. They can easily one-hit kill my slow-moving low-health human, destroy the hoverbike in instants, and have even on occasion killed my 1000+ health Werivar in an instant. Add that to their ridiculous range and they're almost impossible to kill. My poor human is stuck in the ship graveyard, trying to get to the pedestal with sniper marines surrounding it, and a few scattered elsewhere as well, so if he kills those by the entrance, he get's wiped out by the others. My attempts to snipe them out fail, as none of my weapons seem to have as much range as theirs, and I'm getting to the point of just removing them from the data files. Nothing should be that difficult. Even Battledroids die to a suitably armed human (mmm... beacon ray).

Apart from this, I love the mod.

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Werivar Mod

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