# Nuclear War Revamped

## The current state of nuclear war

#### What marines enjoy about NW:
- Marines have access to all their fun tools (Either roundstart or req)
- There are clear objectives with a sense of flow planned out
- Ebb and flow of combat (Fight, die, revive, repeat)
- Funny shenanigans

#### What marines dislike about NW:
- Disks are boring and unrewarding
- Most of the fun stuff are locked behind req
- Games can feel like a slog at times
- Xenos can feel unending, killing them seems to do nothing
- No req = no fun allowed
- Shipside is either overwhelmed, or bored as shit at times. Feels like most shipside jobs have no content outside of RO/MDs
- Fob is just worthless and supplies lines dont exist, you either have req and no problems, or no req and you're just fucked

#### What xenos enjoy about NW:
- Primos (sense of progression)
- Hit and run to slowly win via attrition, or balling hard and hoping marines can't catch their footing
- Relatively quick respawns, however, this is a double-edge sword since xenos mostly gain respawns from drains (killing marines and being able to secure body) or from silos (which is from drains, aka the same problem)

#### What xenos dislike about NW:
- Primos (My caste is useless until we reach 1 hour into the game)
- It's very easy to doom spiral. Marines have access to a bunch of bullshit, and if they hold miners and buy req gear, it can feel very unfair at times. Many xenos dying can be incredibly demotivating.
- Killing marines can feel unrewarding, a simple psy drain doesn't compensate for the fact that a marine can simply get defibbed and they're back as if nothing happened

#### **To summarize Nuclear War:**
Both teams can feel frustrated by things they can't control, it's hard to feel like you are making an impact at times and objectives feel worthless.
Marines have no reason to hold fob because they are better off using those materials and sentries elsewhere.
Disks feel useless to run because they don't provide any incentive outside of "The game will end eventually if you get all the disks to nuke"
Consequently, xenos can't really interact with disks outside of "Just wipe the marines lol", which shouldn't be their only way to interact

**TLDR: Nuking is boring, xenos can't win outside of "lol kill all rines"**

## Holding objectives

Sitting around a disk waiting for a progress bar to fill up is :sleepy: as hell.

My proposed solution is this: **Dual objective system**

### Marine capture points
Instead of there being 3 disks for marines to run, the system will be replaced instead with 5 capture points.

A capture point will be represented by a nuclear disk console, but it will be mirrored by an opposing xenomorph capture point.

Instead of being ran 5 times and then printed, marines simply need to begin the process of the disk running for the capture to start.

Once a capture point is fully completed, marines get 1/3 disk required to be able to nuke (Same as current), however, it is now possible to *fail* a capture point by the next system.

**The main goal for marines is to get 3/5 disks, get to nuke and nuke the planet**

### Xenomorph capture points
Once marines begin capturing a point, xenos gain an objective to capture a nearby point. As long as they hold this point, the disk progress will be paused completely, and their own point will slowly progress.

If xenomorphs manage to fully capture a point, marines lose the ability to print a nuclear disk from that console, and they get 1/3 progress towards their game ender (Xeno nuke as placeholder). This serves as an alternative win condition for xenos, targetted towards sending a psy blast towards the marines' ship, destroying it.

**The main goal for xenos is to get 3/5 capture points, which channels a game-ending psy blast towards the marine ship**

## Ship Tech Content

Any time xenos capture a point, those psy blasts are not harmless. The ship will sustain damage for each and every disk that marines fail to capture. This means that the ship will be in desparate need of repairs, after all, how do you intend to win the war without your main base?

There are various things that can be disabled on the ship:
- OB
- Railgun
- Req being unable to launch packages
- Marines being unable to call in resupplies

## Removing power from requisitions (Personal Perks)

Req will lose most of its stock. And instead will just gain points passively in order to spend on basic materials, medicines or supplies.
Nothing limited.

Marines will get access to a re-supply beacon that they can call in (think like helldivers drop pods), which they can get through req purchases and through objective completions

The more powerful gear in req will be moved over to objective rewards/marine perk rewards

## Marine perks

Marines will gain points based on doing various things:
- Completing objectives
- Doing damage to xenos
- Destroying resin weeds/structures

Medics and engineers will also gain points on doing engineering/medical tasks as well.

Points are also gained both as a team, and personally.
This means that late joins don't get absolutely fucked due to everything else being scaled up and not being able to keep up.

There will be 2 types of perks, **generalist perks** (which anyone can take and have generic upgrades) and **specialist perks**, which leads into the following idea:

### Marine spec

Specializing as a marine means that you gain access to perks that have are more focused on improving a specific thing you want to do, but sacrificing something in exchange.

#### Generalist perks
These are meant to be rather boring, but nice to have, anyone can take them
- Increased stamina
- Stamina regen
- Increased health
- Increased medical skills
- Increased rifle/shotgun skills

Current spec ideas:

#### Vali spec
- melee damage perks
- being able to load up a harvester faster
- increase to green blood capacity
- increase to harvester chemical capacity
- Loses access to guns

#### Sniper spec
- Has access to snipers (Un-specialized marines suffer penalties)
- Quicker wield time
- Less slowdown penalties
- Has access to specialized ammo types
- Suffers more from pain

#### Flamer spec
- Access to different fire types
- Access to fire-resistant armor module
- (Access to fire-immunity once the perk is maxed)
- More resistant to acid
- More vulnerable to outright slash damage

#### Deployable spec
- Access to deployables and their respective ammo + types
- Faster deploy/undeploy times
- Faster repair times
- Penalties in non-deployed gun skills

## Xeno perks
Xeno perks is the counterpart to marine perks. The goal is to give xenos something to strive towards and a feeling of progression.
If you are absolutely balling on xeno, you should feel like you are becoming more relevant rather than falling off and feeling useless.

Xenos also adopt the same system of having both **Pooled points** and **Personal points**.
Dying as a xeno should not mean you reset to 0 as you are a hivemind, your personal points will not be lost on death.

Latejoins are also not punished because joining in to the round 1 hour in should also not feel like you cannot keep up with the team.

Xenos get points from various things:
- Completing objectives
- Dealing damage
- Healing team
- Planting weeds
- Building walls
- Spending plasma

### Pooled points:
These are more generic upgrades meant to help you keep up with marine scaling.

- Health upgrade
- Health regen upgrade
- Slash damage increase
- Ability cooldown reductions
- Plasma capacity upgrades
- etc.

### Personal points:
These are caste-specific upgrades that you should be able to achieve when you are doing well.

- Primos/Strains (If we ever get strains)
- Specific caste abilities/upgrades (TBD)
I'm gonna link Kuro's design doc since it has a lot of good ideas https://hackmd.io/@wlLEbadtQoCyE4iytTkonw/BkD2V8wgR