The general consensus(spelled so incorrectly) is that the marines are slow in early game, cuz they have to build base, hump armory cuz they need infinity bullets... etc... Obviously these problems are what need to be attacked. If marines blast the gorge to bits before he drops the hive because they managed to get a squad there 5 seconds earlier, well, theres is no hive, hence no mc ownage shall occur. So, how to go about doing this. My thinking was that the first ip could build instantly, or something. I only foresee one problem with this, being relocates are slightly faster, but hey, i like relocates. And anyways, its not like the comm chair doesnt take 45 years to build, you should get a reward. For all i care, you could even offset it by making comm chair take LONGER to build, i mean. i really want the marines to move out faster, and nothing else. However, this probably is harder to code than the next solution, which is generally better.
We could go the other way and just give the marines an ip, i mean, the aliens get a spawn point, the marines should too. This would be a significant advantage even if the marines were docked 20 res because of the free building. This change, would fix the "marines are too slow" problem admirably, not really affect balance in any way except "marines move out faster" which we like, because right now, aliens get this 30-45 second grace period where marines really arent doing anything but running around in base. Now, early game will involve both marines and aliens, instead of just aliens building stuff and marines sitting there. I still like my decrease rt hp thing, because those darned rts really need to die better.[/RangarSpamFTW!]
Granted, this free ip should be in a generally decent spot, which, could cause some nasty "Crappy ip placement ftl" spam, but, whatever, the complainers will always complain about something.
[randomrant]One thing i always hated was that for every building, except hives, some sort of work needs to occur to build it, if you want it to build in a reasonable period of time, hives are just drop n leave, which i dislike. but, i thats not really important. [/randomrant]