Increase the size of alien buildables' creep

[ghost]

I think the creep mechanics might be interesting to make alien bases less vulnerable when defended without improving defense's letality much, in a rather easy way: increasing creepSize.

As a reminder, creep have 2 effects:

1. it helps healing friendly aliens a bit
2. it slows down attackers depending on their armor, multiplying their speed by a factor: .a 0.5 if nake .b 0.75 if armoured (whatever the armour, this might be changed, too, I guess, but idk)

Now, some alien buildings should be stealthy, because it's alien's strength:

• egg (outpost, current=96)
• leech (outpost, current=96)
• trapper (because it's so fragile, you don't want it spotted more easily!, current=48)
• booster (outpost, maybe, current=64)

Other buildings don't rely on stealth imo, and need their target to not flee too fast:

• acid tube: 48
• spiker: 64
• hive: 64
• barricade: 96
• overmind: 128

I think those not greased could easily be multiplied by 2, and the greased ones by 3, maybe more. I've also thought, barricade could increase it's creepSize by a factor when it sees an enemy, and overall buildables could do this when receiving damages.

[necessarily-equal]

I think this issue's title is misleading. I'd be tempted to close it "creep plays a role in gameplay, closing" :upside_down_face:

[ghost]

Well, before you do that, remember that those sizes are really small, they are, in fact, negligible compared to building's size, except for barricade where I'd call it acceptable. In theory, it can be used to slow humans, but the creep area is so small that humans must try hard to be affected. In practice, humans can jump above stuff, including barricades when there's a wall close enough, and not be affected.

[Viech]

I'm pretty sure that creep was originally inspired by Starcraft but doing it like that was (and still is) technically challenging. However having your entire base covered in (good looking) creep sounds really cool.

I also think the stealth aspect is completely overrated, in particular as aliens already have the movement and forward building advantage. If anything humans need the ability to let builders and early forwards go unnoticed!

[illwieckz]

aliens already have the […] forward building

After having removed repeater mechanism, humans are closer to what can do aliens about forward building.

What is still making aliens have advantage about forward building is that they can evolve from thin air, heal from thin air and creep, and build eggs on walls or ceiling, meaning they can hide lone eggs without needing extra structures like armoury or medipad and even not protect them (an active tube or hive may disclose the egg…).

[necessarily-equal]

So I think I'll make agreed upon that we can make creep bigger.

Now how much bigger do we want to make it ?

[ghost]

That's a good question. I see 2 ways of doing it:

1. depending on the buildable's maximum health, that is, the more vitality a buildable have, the bigger the creep.
2. depending on buildable's radius, that is, the bigger the BBox is, the bigger the creep.

I initially was thinking about 2., but this have the drawback of disclosing more buildables which must be unnoticed to have any role, like the trapper, hence I think the health-based rescore could be a better way.

To give some input to work on:

acid_tube.attr.cfg:health            125
acid_tube.attr.cfg:creepSize         64
barricade.attr.cfg:health            300
barricade.attr.cfg:creepSize         96
booster.attr.cfg:health            150
booster.attr.cfg:creepSize         64
eggpod.attr.cfg:health            250
eggpod.attr.cfg:creepSize         96
hive.attr.cfg:health            125
hive.attr.cfg:creepSize         64
leech.attr.cfg:health            200
leech.attr.cfg:creepSize         96
overmind.attr.cfg:health            750
overmind.attr.cfg:creepSize         128
spiker.attr.cfg:health            150
spiker.attr.cfg:creepSize         64
trapper.attr.cfg:health            50
trapper.attr.cfg:creepSize         48

acid_tube.model.cfg:maxs         20 20 15
barricade.model.cfg:maxs          35 35 60
booster.model.cfg:maxs        20 20 12
eggpod.model.cfg:maxs        15 15 15
hive.model.cfg:maxs        16 16 12
leech.model.cfg:maxs         20 20 25
overmind.model.cfg:maxs          45 45 95
spiker.model.cfg:maxs        20 20 12
trapper.model.cfg:maxs        15 15 15

As you can see, basing on health, say, 50% of health would be creep, would make barricades and overmind have a real creep zone, and thus giving them more usage, which makes sense. The other buildables would be barely touched by such a change, except for trapper which would be nerfed. I would personally give a try at 75% of health, though (note that I'm not proposing to make creep size directly depending on health, but to base the config on health, so that values can still be tweaked).

[necessarily-equal]

@bmorel any progress on this? Otherwise I'd be tempted to double the barricade creep size, and maybe increase it a bit for the OM too and call it a day.

[superdupont-fr]

On Terminus map, we can see the creep on ground be visible over the wall. I think, the creep should have follow the wall and not the ground. I understand that can be complex, depending how the map is build.

Also, why not a cheap creep building, with strong effects like sticking humans, fire resistant and hardened. Granger can add them like other buildings to cover surface. They can grow slowly and allow Aliens building. Why not these can be only build not far from OM. Just some idea.

[ghost]

@bmorel any progress on this? Otherwise I'd be tempted to double the barricade creep size, and maybe increase it a bit for the OM too and call it a day.

I did nothing about it, I think those 2 buildings creep can clearly be doubled without any issue.

Also, why not a cheap creep building

Yes, would be a possibility, too.

[ghost]

I'm hesitating to implement this change right now, just before 0.53, but it has been untested at all. One could say that anyway, only nightly really tested changes, and gameplay changes were mostly last arrived. So, should I just do it before 0.53?

[Viech]

Rephrasing the title to reflect the agreed-upon idea. Correct me if I'm wrong about this.

[ghost]

Just to give some data here from my experiment. Increasing creep size and gameplay effects have several problems:

1. the creep is basically a single texture scaled. The result is ugly
2. creep goes through walls, it's a simply radius, in gameplay effects AND visually. This discloses outposts and base, but also gives aliens a wider strong heal area

About 2., I think a solution could be to emit entities instead, such as ground flames or bullet impacts. This way we could project them in a way that does not goes through walls, and it might even address bugs like lack of creep on walls, but in exchange it might lead to a performance impact. I have not experimented with that.