ABS is partially right: You can't be halfassed about realism in games. Either you attempt to be as true-to-reality as you can get, and base the game's appeal off that, or you toss reality out of the window and base the game's appeal off being able to do crazy stuff that you normally can't. NS is firmly on the "unreal" side.
But I'll agree with Necrosis that it'd be better to balance the SG than to remove it entirely. People will miss it. If it had never been there in the first place, it'd be different, but now the community would scream bloody murder if you took it away completely. I don't agree that it can't be replaced because it's fundamental to close quarter battle. I often hear the following kind of argument:
Dude1: "If a skulk makes it into close combat, the marine should be practically dead."
Dude2: "Umm... no."
I have never fully understood why not, and nobody's bothered to explain it to me. In real life, guns are ridiculously overpowered. They replaced swords because against a gunman you'd never get close enough to use your sword, and they did away with armor because you had no armor that offered significant protection. You have shields and armor that can withstand bullets to a certain extent, but you're still nowhere near as protected as a knight in his shiny armor was back then.
If NS was like real life, it'd be exceedingly boring, because aliens would be chanceless. The solution was to make aliens very tough. From a real-life standpoint, even the flimsy skulk is extremely durable - remember, it can take several bullets and keep on running as if nothing happened. The result is that the skulk (or "swordsman") stands a chance now. But the big advantage of the gun still stands: You have range, he doesn't. You get in the first attack, each time. I argue that once the skulk is in melee range and still alive, you've proven that you're not making adequate use of this significant advantage - and you deserve to die. And when skulks die in close combat, it's usually because they already lost most of their hitpoints on the approach. That's the fundamental weakness of skulks, and I guess there's nothing that can be done against it.
The shotgun sacrifices range for hitting power. When both combatants have roughly the same range, the one who hits hardest wins. And that's the shotgun. This isn't wrong either - the shotgun was made to tear through skulks. But the problem is that the aliens can't reverse roles. Normally, the situation is that marines have the range advantage, aliens have the melee advantage. With the shotgun, the marines can take the melee advantage - the logical conclusion is that in order to counter this, aliens need to take the range advantage. But they can't. I've already mentioned spit and acid rocket, and why they're no solution to the problem. I'll get to spores in a moment. I see two possible solutions to the shotgun problem:[ol type=\'1\'][li]Less damage. This just might do the trick. This is always the simplest way to nerf a gun. BUT, the shotgun still needs to be reliable against skulks. Remember it's the anti-skulk weapon. If skulks need two blasts from the gun, they're far more likely to get in a bite against you, or maybe even kill you. The shotgun SHOULD be extremely effective against skulks because that's what it's for.[/li][li]Roll back the firing rate to what it was in 1.04, but keep the damage as it is. The firing rate was a good deal slower in 1.04. A blast will still be deadly to a skulk, but against lifeforms that need more than one blast, the effective damage per second is reduced. And a Fade or Onos suddenly finding himself low on hitpoints after a blast to the face has a little more time to bug out before the next shot. The drawback of this is that the shotgun becomes harder to use. You need to make each and every shot count. In 1.04, most people sucked with the shotgun because they'd miss with their first shot (or only score a partial hit and not kill the target), then get chewed up. This will lead to a dramatic decrease in shotgun use (few commanders ever handed out shotguns in 1.04), as commanders see how less skilled marines get themselves killed all the time even though they have shotguns.[/li][/ol]In spite of my concerns, I believe that the second option is the best one. Make the shotgun hard to use, and at least the "nub cannon" feel of it goes away. It'll also fit the firing animation better.
Then there's spores. I got in a good deal of time back in 2.01. I tried being a Lerk whenever I could. That said, I couldn't be a Lerk nearly as often as I wanted to. Sometimes I built a lot, and by the time I thought (ok, now I can start using resources on ME), marines had heavy armor and the aliens needed a Fade or an Onos more than a Lerk. Or I'd want to go Lerk, but the marines had a lot of nodes and we had no Fade. That said, whenever I got the chance (not too many nodes for the rines, heavy armor not likely to turn up for another five minutes or so), I tried to go Lerk. My favourite upgrades were regen (you always took a few bullets), adren (for extra spiking and sporing and flapping) or silence (for that "where the **** are those spikes coming from"-feel) and scent of fear (nothing worse than a Lerk that can see you hiding around that corner and just sends in spores to flush you out). Spikes and spores were my absolute favourites bar none. I'd spore an area with marines in it, then watch their reactions: Usually they'd either make a run for it or charge me. If they charged, I could play the "wounded bird" game where you bait them along, always just out of range, but never too far away to seem impossible to reach. The possibility of killing an advanced lifeform goaded the marines along, and I made sure to always take a few hits to make 'em think they almost had me (while in reality I never went below 50% health) - and in the process, they kept running through the spore clouds I left along the way. Nothing more satisfying than getting a pure spore kill. However, most people learned to recognize this and stopped falling for, opting to run when they were subjected to spores instead.
And that's where spikes come into play: A marine who just runs out of spore clouds whenever he's enveloped in them doesn't take a lot of damage. He'll hide around corners to get out of the direct line of fire and he'll try to ambush you. Killing a marine who's wise to your act with spores alone is pretty hard. It gets easier with sof, but SCs are rarely used before third hive these days I hear (as was the case after a few months of 2.01). The trick was that in order to get out of the spore cloud as fast as possible, the marine has to run forwards. This means turning tail and running. At this point, you, the Lerk, are in no danger at all from that marine, and therefore don't need to worry about exposing yourself to fire. And that's when you switch to spikes and shoot him in the back. With the spike/spore combo, I did far more damage than with spikes or spores alone - I used the spores to force him into a situation where I could use my spikes to maximum effect without fear of retaliation. Without spores, you had to either spike while on the ground (very accurate, but you're an easier target) or while flying (you're harder to hit, but also have a harder time hitting the marines). With spores, by making the marines turn tail and run, I could spike accurately from the ground without danger of being killed.
Needless to say, this worked extremely well against shotgunners. No matter which of the two options they chose (attack or run away), I could easily stay out of danger while whittling away at their health. Now, without spikes, spores are greatly reduced in effectiveness. You have to rely on the marines charging you, which smart marines will rarely do. If they turn tail and run, you have temporarily routed them but they'll soon be back. And if you attempt to pursue to get the kill, they'll probably ambush you - and a shotgunner ambushing you is not a pretty sight.
Oh, and if I ever get the chance, I'll need to test with the new flight model. I hear you can't fly backwards, which is detrimental to the "wounded bird" strategy - you need to fly backwards while sporing quite often.
