/tg/Station 13

I've put up a PR that removes the Alien Hunters ability to leap.

This PR removes the ability for Alien Hunters to leap.

Alien Hunters are in their own right already a powerful entity on the station, their ability to move at the fastest in game movement speed and their ability to instantly stun a target in melee range makes them a master of melee combat. This is fair.

However Leap upsets this balance, leaping is extreamly powerful as it actually allows the Hunter to not only move at a faster movement rate, but also it allows it to instantly take down almost any human opponent instantly.

A competent hunter using leap can shut down and take down entire groups of people, I've even once witnessed a team of ERT be taken down by a single Hunter.

Link to PR: https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/10849

Your thoughts?

Seems pretty logical, given that hunters are supposed to be specialised around melee combat, especially since sentinels already fulfill the role of a ranged combatant for the aliens.

Going to guess this only happened because RNG + admins made a lot of xenos yesterday

I wasn't on yesterday, this was a PR I had brewing for a while.

You can leap straight out of a vent and take down someone, I guess it's really OP since the hunter also gets invisibility and other stuff. I think it would be fun however to give it to another, maybe new xeno class. I still hope that someday we'll have xeno "breeds" depending on the creature they are born from (lings, lizards, monkeys etc). Monkey-born xenos may be nimble and fast, with leap but low health and low damage output.

Don't get your hopes up I doubt this will get merged.

doesn't have to be removed, give it a plasma cost if it realllllllly has to be messed with.

>costs plasma to jump

Right

I put up this PR simply because people have noted over a long period of time that most players are going in as a hunter because the leap ability is the be all and end all of being a alien player.

If general attitudes have changed and people want this ability to remain then I'll close the PR (after 24 hours).

I just think its a easy 'I win' button. Irrespective if it gets a cooldown or whatever.

Man, Steelpoint, what is with all your PRs to remove fun? If it's really an issue then balance it using plasma or a higher cooldown or something.

Give it to drones; drones need some love.

... that's alien drones, not Robotics drones. Actually, give Robotics drones leap too...

Honestly best move would be to give it to an alien type that isn't so fucking fast. Maybe make a special type that just jumps around but is slower than hunters and can't cloak.

Just give it a cooldown, it has nice sprites and aliens are not supposed to be balanced.

>aliens are not supposed to be balanced, they're round enders

>Deathsquad are TOO STRONG to be round enders NEEEEERF PLEEEEASE


Give sentinels Leap. Nobody goes Sentinel anymore except for the 1-2 occasions you'll need a spit

CosmicScientist wrote:Sticky mentions in the PR that a lot of work went into it and you also mention Hunters are good enough without it. What if it was given to a different xeno?

Could give it to the larva. Basically as a last ditch attempt to escape a larva could throw itself at a crewmember to knock them down for a moment before scurrying off. Give it a fairly long cool down too of course so that they can't just use it to stun lock groups of people or actually use it in combat alongside other xenos.

Fucking nobody needs leap in its current form. You can outrun fucking crew just by spamming leap down the hallway, it's the most silly stupid broken ability I've ever seen.

While a cooldown would remove the ability to spam it to basically teleport around the station, it's just a really frustrating ability to deal with in general... even if it had a cooldown you'd still get the oh-so-fun cloak+leap combo.

People like xenos, they're usually an entertaining addition to a round... can we fucking NOT make them broken just because "MUH ROUND ENDER".

Shouldn't be merged. Aliens are squishy to anything ranged, and sentinels are supposed to be guards, not the offense. Plus, hunters get stunned if they hit walls. And they're god damn aliens. They're fucking xenomorphs, they aren't supposed to be balanced. If you've played Alien: Isolation, you know how robust they're supposed to be. And I think that was supposed to be a drone.

Besides, they have a counter already: Mechs. A durand will absolutely demolish any hive with hades bullets and giant lasers that do 80% of the alien's health.

Melee combat in this game is difficult and imprecise. The hunter's insane movespeed makes it even harder to land a click on humans. Without leap, hunters can't really be hunters. They aren't supposed to be melee combat specialists anyway, nobody fights aliens in melee range so that is a stupid reason.

Also, the ability looks really cool and it's fun to use.

Either way the PR was closed.

Irrespective of your opinions on the subject Riot Shields must be able to block leaping, otherwise there's currently no in game counter to leaping.

As I said, I've seen a squad of ERT and the Death Squad lose to a hunter. Take that for what you will.

Cheridan wrote: "You'd think that getting off a fresh ban would make you want to redeem yourself by doing something besides a hot ideadpleasenerf grudgecode pr"

I'm so glad this guy is headcoder and using his ban power responsibly.

One interesting thing I gleaned from the Aliens Colonial Marines server is how Aliens have a form of evolution tree.

Essentially for each of the three main alien classes (Hunter, Drone and Sentinal) there are three increasingly more powerful tiers of those classes. The only way to upgrade is to consume royal jelly that is laid by the alien queen. Might make a good justification for higher level aliens having access to more powerful abilities.

Then again ACM is focused on slower paced combat, aliens move at the same speed as humans do roughly.

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Ultimantly what I see here is a justification that aliens need to be overpowered to do their job. I also have noticed a lot of people seem to state that Hunters are heavily reliant on leap to do their job, where I know from my own experience that hunters used to do well without leap.

Eh, just my rambling thoughts