Glossary of terms? What is ASBI?

[RockMan ZX]

I cant find a wiki or glossary of terms and acronyms for this game. I keep seeing YO, ASBI No melee challenge or something. What is ASBI, its like a secret language you all speak, can someone help me find terms and specifically what ASBI stands for or means? Please.

[jhheight]

alien swarm beyond insane.

when the original alien swarm came out in 2010 the highest difficulty was insane, but the community wanted to make the game way harder as insane was not enough for them. the community made a mod called alien swarm beyond insane which also had leaderboards and stats etc. hosted on a website. this mod was integrated into a challenge in reactivedrop with a bit more changes over the last years

[RockMan ZX]

Originally posted by jhheight:

alien swarm beyond insane.

when the original alien swarm came out in 2010 the highest difficulty was insane, but the community wanted to make the game way harder as insane was not enough for them. the community made a mod called alien swarm beyond insane which also had leaderboards and stats etc. hosted on a website. this mod was integrated into a challenge in reactivedrop with a bit more changes over the last years

Hey thank you so much! It was very hard to google, if only someone made a wiki or something. So that a mod on top of Reactive Drop? Also what does higher difficulty do, increase enemy health? Decrease ammo pick ups, increase enemy county, does the AI get smarter, even with regular gameplay, I wonder what higher diff does.

[Mithrand]

Originally posted by RockMan ZX:

It was very hard to google, if only someone made a wiki or something.

You can find the wiki here:

https://alienswarm.fandom.com/wiki/Alien_Swarm_Reactive_Drop
https://alienswarm.fandom.com/wiki/Alien_Swarm_Wiki

[RockMan ZX]

Wow, thank you. Not the most in depth wiki, but something is better than nothing.

[Ax-now]

ASBI mods like others challenges are also findable on Alien swarm Steam workshop, with a little research you should be able to find them easily. most of them have a detailed description in Workshop. :p

[jhheight]

Originally posted by RockMan ZX:

Originally posted by jhheight:

alien swarm beyond insane.

when the original alien swarm came out in 2010 the highest difficulty was insane, but the community wanted to make the game way harder as insane was not enough for them. the community made a mod called alien swarm beyond insane which also had leaderboards and stats etc. hosted on a website. this mod was integrated into a challenge in reactivedrop with a bit more changes over the last years

Hey thank you so much! It was very hard to google, if only someone made a wiki or something. So that a mod on top of Reactive Drop? Also what does higher difficulty do, increase enemy health? Decrease ammo pick ups, increase enemy county, does the AI get smarter, even with regular gameplay, I wonder what higher diff does.

To play it you have to select it as a "challenge", you can select challenges in same screen where you change the difficulty as lobby leader

What ASBI changes is it forcefully adds onslaught, and the onslaught is much bigger than default onslaught without a challenge selected. Like an onslaught 2.0 setting. Also on difficulties hard and higher, aliens are faster by 50%. Aliens do have more health and damage than without challenge but only for 1-3 marines present, where in that case they still have health and damage as if 4 or more marines are present. Another thing that gets forcefully added is hardcore friendly fire, but just like with onslaught its like hardcore 2.0, friendly fire is even stronger. Last but not least the 1 hp protection is removed. In normal gameplay if you have 2 health and an alien hits you for lets say 30 damage, you will go down to 1 health instead of dying (thats why when being a medic and very low on heals just keep healing each person once so they would be above 1). On ASBI, having 30 health and taking 30 damages does kill you

[76561198358523117]

Originally posted by RockMan ZX:

It was very hard to google

The first page by query "alien swarm asbi" is well over enough.

Originally posted by RockMan ZX:

Also what does higher difficulty do

developer (dot) reactivedrop (dot) com/tables.html
More health, damage and speed for enemies, very slight speed bonus for marines (it's why many top speedruns you see on leaderboards are on Brutal). AI unaffected from what I can tell, though increased speed makes chainsawing more comfortable as they're more likely to full throttle right into your weapon instead of stopping about half a roll distance before; ammo pickups definitely unaffected.
If map author decided and programmed in difficulty-dependant spawns, you get more enemeis. We recently had another thread about difficulty differences, I listed some of those spawns there.

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

Originally posted by RockMan ZX:

Also what does higher difficulty do, increase enemy health? Decrease ammo pick ups, increase enemy county, does the AI get smarter, even with regular game play, I wonder what higher diff does.

Most difficultly increases don't make the aliens smarter, they just go the bullet sponge route. Few ammo drops, aliens have more hit points, take less damage, do more damage , attack faster, move faster. etc. Essentially players die easier, aliens are harder to kill.

[RockMan ZX]

Originally posted by Shadow Raider:

Originally posted by RockMan ZX:

Also what does higher difficulty do, increase enemy health? Decrease ammo pick ups, increase enemy county, does the AI get smarter, even with regular game play, I wonder what higher diff does.

Most difficultly increases don't make the aliens smarter, they just go the bullet sponge route. Few ammo drops, aliens have more hit points, take less damage, do more damage , attack faster, move faster. etc. Essentially players die easier, aliens are harder to kill.

Ahh I see, so it's arbitrary difficulty, less damage i can inflict, more damage they can do, or like less ammo, more aliens, ughh. Thanks for letting me know!

[Ben Lubar]

Some alien spawns are only active on certain difficulties, and some missions (like Lana's Maintenance) add more objectives for higher difficulties.