Strain Ideas/Suggestions

[TheDonkified]

do strain suggestions need to be put up in gitlab to have a chance of being ingame?

Warrior: "Spry" - Lose all abilities (excluding rest + devour). Increase in all base stats. Sprite position becomes locked on 4 legs.

not necessarily, but devs spend more time on Gitlab than on the forums. Leaving it here to discuss is great, and I appreciate the thought and discussion behind these mutators. But many devs are more focused on implementing planned changes and/or fixing bugs reported in the Gitlab than reading through these. I have read the first few pages of this thread, and some of the ideas look very promising. However, trying to juggle planned changes + life + reading through forum suggestions makes it difficult to properly consider these ideas.

[TheDonkified]

Also, here are the strains that I want to implement in the near future. Not guaranteed though. Feedback and ideas would be appreciated. I still have to dig through this thread. More ideas would also be great.

A few of these are already suggestions. Won't accept them until a dev is guaranteed to work on them, but don't worry.

These are mostly based on the idea given in this thread:

* Crusher with the horn. Charge will have extra damage, you can click on one of your sides to "tilts" your horn a little bit and do some damage to the marines to your sides (will NOT ignore barricades), and you can also impale marines and carry them with you. Max of two.

* Lurker stealth strain. I think cloak is transparent enough as it is, so that probably won't be changed. However, instead of a death blow you deal extra damage to marines if you are stealthed and the marine is facing away from you. There is a damage multiplier dependent on how long you've been standing still while cloaked. Moving while activating that damage charge will disable full cloak. However, you naturally have a minor cloak that allows you to move at current lurker speed (or slightly slower).

* Runner serpent strain. You weave around claymore. You can slither over barricades after X amount of seconds. You can slither under airlocks after X amount of seconds. You have pounce, but instead of knocking down the marines you latch to them and start constricting. Aim for head = suffocation. Aim for limbs = disable that limb and start breaking it. I was considering a venom bite but if anything that will just be like an acid bite. Marines also have a harder time hitting you FROM RANGE (being within 3 tiles will have normal accuracy).

* Ravager spear strain. Instead of scythe arms, ravager's arms are spears. No longer can delimb but have longer range (probably only two tiles tbh), increased damage to barricades and tank (or nerf the damage by normal rav), and can impale marines and attach them to the rav. If you are within 1 tile you have a chance to pierce organs and IB. This latter thing I'm iffy about.

* Seninel acid strain. No longer can neuro. However has claws that only deal acid damage and acid spit. I'm considering having the acid spit linger instead of just one hit = damage.

* Runner scout. In exchange for its significant speed runner is tankier and has a mini zoom. Pounce is only 3 tiles far but can be charged up to be farther. You can pounce while zooming out but you lose the zoom immediately upon pouncing.

* Crusher guardian/juggernaut. Crusher has the the ability to deflect projectiles except for rockets. Might have to come with a buff to snipers, or this reflecting effect will only apply when crusher is within normal view. Crusher can't charge but it can do something that is pretty much a merge of headbutt/pounce where it can "dash" to anywhere with a range of 3 tiles but any contact with a solid object/mob will stop the crusher and deal damage to that mob. Crusher maintains direction it was originally aiming at but facing your target while hitting them will deal extra damage.

I like the idea of hivewide mutators that change the dynamic of a hive. The subterranean one looked cool but there was some issues I have with it in terms of balance and feasibility. More hive-wide mutator ideas would be great too.

[Aceluke]

Time to change the gitlabs and suggest these when the other ones are gone

[themaskedman2]

All great ideas Donk. I'm personally a big fan of the Runner Snake, and maybe a venom bite, all fun little things for it.

Also i'd argue that Strains should rename the Xeno if that's possible. So instead of "Mature Spitter" you have "Mature Vomiter" and so on. Just for ease of Xenos telling what's what.

Unrelated: Why can't we see our Plasma in Status?

[Aceluke]

I�ve posted suggestions for several of the ideas in this thread currently. Any more ideas will be added at a later date.

Current strain ideas uploaded are located below.

Ravager - https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/ColonialMarines/issues/6358

Runner - https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/ColonialMarines/issues/6359

Sentinel - https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/ColonialMarines/issues/6360

Crusher - https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/ColonialMarines/issues/6361

Hivelord - https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/ColonialMarines/issues/6362

Lurker - https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/ColonialMarines/issues/6394

Defender - https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/ColonialMarines/issues/6395

Warrior - https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/ColonialMarines/issues/6397

[misto]

runner - attackdog
lesser speed. lesser dragspeed. lose hide. lose free walking over windowframes and tables. worsen pounce if you need to. all these are sacrificed for relevant amounts of health and armor. do notice that theres no damage buff here, because the runner's clickspeed allows it to naturally get more attacks off, and having more health will allow it to stick in the fight longer and get even more attacks off, so a raw damage buff would be overkill.

[prophetb1]

Crusher - Guardian
Lose charge.
Gain small amount of armor, crest-deflected projectiles are reflected at an 180 degrees infront of the crest, except for LTBs and rockets, which behave as if they hit a tile 180 infront of the crushers crest.
Reflected projectiles gain 25% more fall off and inherit their weapon attachment upgrades.

"A hardened, reflective carapace has evolved in response to heavy tallhost spitter fire."

Queen - Subterranean Hive Legacy
Hive gains an effect similar to long range Motion Detector against non-xenos, boiler loses his light source, nested tallhosts turn off their light sources, all non-acidic castes gain acid that always costs 50% of their max plasma count.
Hive slowly gains slowdown of up to 15% depending on light level of tile they are on OR/AND Hive slowly gains effect of marine gas mask the longer they stay on lighted tiles.

"Your hive descends from a line of infested subterranean enviroments, and have adapted as such."

Boiler - Factory
Gain ability to tailor your gas with chemicals (that has passed balancing), explodes on death instead.

"Chemical Warfare integrated into a perfect bioform, allows ultimate adaptibilty."

Queen - Psyker
Removes Screech, grants Psychic scream, which while in effect, any live xenos that are on marine screens recieve a duplicate, hallucinated version of that xeno on a random side of the screen. If real xeno inflicts damage, duplicate xeno will inflict hallucination damage.
Effect is Z-level big.

"Psychic power molded into a power to be reckoned with, destroy them all!"

[prophetb1]

@TheDonkified

did you play around with the subterranan hive legacy to see about coming around the balance issues? I might be able to think of some changes if you mention the balance issues.

[reuben owen]

Ravager: "Rusher" - Lower all base stats. Severely reduced cooldown on Charge.

Queen: "Vigor sense" (more of a Keystone?) - Xenos gain a medical HUD next to all Marines.

[Forst]

Either a boon for Hivelord that lets other xenos climb and hide in walls, or for Lurkers & Runners to have an ability to do so.

Aliens peeling off the walls was one of the scariest parts of the movies and that should be incorporated somehow.