Aliens actively defending their base are too vulnerable when humans have already entered.

[Stooberton]

1) Aliens cannot evolve when humans are nearby, leaving them stuck as dretches and unable to effectively defend the base/outpost. Possible solution here would be to allow aliens to evolve when nearby the overmind all the time, even with humans nearby. Grangers often cannot switch to a dretch and assist in defending the base when humans are nearby. Humans, conversely, can switch back and forth from combat/builder at any time while also healing faster than aliens. 2) Aliens spawn automatically at the closest egg, even if there are humans very close by, this almost always results in a respawned player dying instantly. This applies to humans too, neither should work with enemies nearby if there are other spawns available OR the nearest egg is near the overmind. 3) Aliens heal extremely slowly, much slower than humans, even inside their own base. It is extremely easy to run inside an alien base as a human, kill the alien, and run out. Any alien that defends their base can only do so once before they have to heal for upwards of 30 seconds. This would be fixed by something like the Overmind always providing the healing of a booster.

[illwieckz]

1. Upcoming release makes possible for aliens to evolve when nearby, well, they can evolve if not in direct sight and a close range, making far easier to evolve, and prevent the annoying situation of being prevented to evolve while being right behind the wall of a human base but no one sees you, or you're in alien base and humans are close but you're somewhat safe. Note: Upcoming release will allow do devolve next to overmind (cost for such devolve would be related to your current health, the more healthier you are the less it costs you to devolve).
2. On the other hand leaving creeps unprotected can be bad, to be honest there is no easy change to do on that part. Let's look at this example: an alien egg high in plat23 center part (platform), aliens can maintain humans between the center part and their indoor part while safely spawning if the other teammates does the job well, with your suggestion the aliens would just be spawned far in base, killing the pressure they apply on preventing humans to leave their base and leaving that strategic egg unprotected… Somebody talks about being able to choose the spawn point… maybe that can help.
3. Yes, that's a really big problem. Lone aliens heal very slowly, maybe too much slowly. Note that any alien creep can heal (less than booster but significant enough), so spawning some hidden leech for example will not only brings build points but give aliens a way to heal. This mechanism encourage territory control and forward base building. I don't feel that creep heal and overmind heal are too slow, I'm more considered by the self-healing lowness. Note that balancing the teams not necessarily means giving them the same abilities (that would be a bit killing the specificity of the game). One another issue that is reported by players is that human players can run as fast as aliens, even backward. Maybe making aliens able to have more chance to save their lives and having more chance to finish a wounded humans would balance the fast human healing rate ? This or something, it may be more interesting to balance some ability by others ability, not just by ironing out everything flat.

TL;DR: we have to find ways to tell players about those mechanism, like building any alien creep near human base can help maintaining pressure on human base by providing better healing, while waiting for more efficient booster.

[Gireen]

1. is solved in upcoming release as illwieckz
2. Unvanquished/Unvanquished#1232 its probably a matter of personal preference if you want to spawn as close as possible to the enemy or in a safer distance. i for one prefer the close version except if the enemys have luci battlesuits, but then every hope is lost anyway. 🙈
3. yes. alien regeneration and defense structures need maybe some changes. it happens to often that aliens have to watch humans attack there base without much they can do.

[Viech]

This issue is on the verge of being too broadly scoped but I think I can reword the title so that we have a basis for discussion…

[Viech]

I do not agree with the notion that I have changed the title to. I think that it would be frustrating for attackers not to deal damage when they have made it into the enemy base. I'd like both teams to have a good reason to stop attackers already outside their base, which counters boring defensive strategies (base camping).

[Viech]

This being flagged as controversial just means that we didn't agree upon the key opinion posed in this issue (as I understand it) in full. However some of the more particular opinions/problems discussed here could potentially be agreed upon independently for being individually problematic or unfun, so feel free to open additional issues where you talk about any of your three original points.

[Gireen]

Aliens actively defending their base are too vulnerable when humans have already entered

I would say yes to this. Even in broader sense. Small and injured aliens can't effectively defend there base. Compared to humans where everyone can deal damage to attackers from a safe distance. With stage or cash differences this problem becomes even worse.

[Viech]

But isn't the problem rather that humans can defend so well? One human camping on a medipad next to the armory with a ranged weapon can be frustrating to aliens even in the absence of good defensive structures. Do you want similar defense strength for aliens? I'd rather have two teams that are encouraged to be playing the map to prevent enemies from entering their base and I feel aliens are fine in that regard, they really don't want to fight alongside their base defenses and that's a good thing in my opinion.

[Gireen]

This boils down to the question should a normal base with defense structures be a save place for a team? And only attackable by enemys after the defense is weakened? I think yes. For humans this is barely reached but not for aliens. If building defense has no influence on the base safety does it have any meaning at all? That is more frustrating than encouraging.

[Viech]

Defenses should make a difference, of course. But you should rarely, if at all, feel more comfortable letting the enemy inside your base than stopping them outside your base. For aliens this is true: No matter how much defense you have going, you will lose some structures if the enemy isn't prevented from going in. That's good in my opinion.

For humans we should be aware that they need stronger defenses because of their limited mobility; they can't always defend or stop aliens rushing past them. Still they should not be incentivized to stay in their base and wait for aliens to come, which I feel they currently are much more than aliens. My take would thus rather be: "Humans actively defending their base from within add too much defensive strength." Balance wise this goes in the same direction but it asks for different solutions.

[Gireen]

No matter how much defense you have going, you will lose some structures if the enemy isn't prevented from going in. That's good in my opinion.

Some. That's the point. Humans are only limited by ammo and the time it takes for aliens to kill them. Witch in the worst case lets them destroy many if not all buildings, cause

they can't always defend or stop aliens rushing past them

Thats also true for aliens.

[ghost]

3. Aliens heal extremely slowly

This received a fix here.

This leads us to having only 2. which received dedicated issues:

• 5

• #1232 "Make it possible to select spawn point"

So I believe this particular issue can be closed, since 2 of the 3 points have been addressed, and the last one have agreed upon fixes, they "only" need to be implemented.