What if..?

[kharnov]

Hi folks.

The gist of this thread is, as summarized in the topic title, a place to post unfinished ideas, and to expand upon them. Without any guarantees, developers can look over the ideas posted here and, if they're easy enough to implement, they can be placed in an experimental branch of the game. Currently, we already have a 'weaponfun' branch started up by _ds_, who goes by Anomalous on the forums. We already have several things coded based off discussions on the development channel on IRC:

• The lucifer cannon's primary shot decays over time, losing damage as it travels. The idea behind this is to prevent people from spamming shots down long corridors or across large outside areas, like the ice field on Karith.
• The lucifer cannon's primary shot speed depends on how long it's been charged, with the less powerful shots traveling closer to the secondary shot's speed.
• The flamethrower's damage decreases over the distance that the flame puffs travel.
• As pulse rifle shots travel, they slowly lose damage. Thus, over a long distance, it might be more practical to snipe alien buildings with a lasgun.
• Soon, we'll have the ability to throw grenades, utilizing a charge bar. Throwing a grenade will take stamina. The grenade can thus be thrown at walls to bounce off and hit things around corners, or onto ledges.

While we don't know how balanced these ideas are, the point is to get them running on a server so that we can test them. More significant gameplay changes can happen this way, as hopefully these ideas will spark further balance discussion than merely changing values for things that already exist.

Feel free to post whatever you have in mind, but remember that the ideas that will be picked are likely those that won't require any strenuous coding or new models. For the more elaborate ideas that require those, make a thread for them in this subforum.

[ViruS]

• [1*]The lucifer cannon's primary shot decays over time, losing damage as it travels. The idea behind this is to prevent people from spamming shots down long corridors or across large outside areas, like the ice field on Karith.
  [2*]The lucifer cannon's primary shot speed depends on how long it's been charged, with the less powerful shots traveling closer to the secondary shot's speed.
  [3*]The flamethrower's damage decreases over the distance that the flame puffs travel.
  [4*]As pulse rifle shots travel, they slowly lose damage. Thus, over a long distance, it might be more practical to snipe alien buildings with a lasgun.
  [5*]Soon, we'll have the ability to throw grenades, utilizing a charge bar. Throwing a grenade will take stamina. The grenade can thus be thrown at walls to bounce off and hit things around corners, or onto ledges.

[1]True, its not like it would be useful at that range anyway. Maybe every 0.1 second, times the current value by [{startingvalue/25}/startingvalue] where starting value is the amount charged up. Wait, thats confusing. Maybe just take away 1 dmg every 0.5 seconds, and the visual bullet decreases in size as well... If this was to be added, the overall max damage needs to be increased for balance. I was thinking we should add particle effects from the bullet as it travels like in some 1.1 mods.
[2]I've got a code for that on my repo, although you might need to change a few variable names and such before adding it. I tried merging it into the korx qvm, but i can't test it because i'm missing a file for my MinGW...
[3]I think it [the "missiles"] should be able to hit multiple objects once with losing half the damage as it hits another thing, as well with a 'quadratic damage curve' because objects very close to the flame thrower won't really get hurt much. I'm also thinking about the idea of having the visual flames [and the 'missiles' if they don't die bounce off/slow down when touching a bbox of a structure/player] I wouldn't think overall damage would need to be increased on this one if it does attacks multiple targets with each 'missile'.
[4]Yet again, overall max damage needs to be increased, but pulse is already a very powerful weapon close range. I think it should be left as is.
[5]Oh yay, finally we would be able to control how far it goes. But how will we do it? Will grenade still be a 'drop-able in mid-battle' type or a 'switch weapon to use' type?

Here are some of my ideas:
-Instead of what happened to the tyrant's charge turning ability currently, maybe it could turn similar to how you turn when sliding on the game bulletstorm.
-Change the pounce attacking system from the 'autohit' thing similar to the dretch, to something that actually involves boundary box collision.
-Pounce damage becomes speed/11[ish] [includes 'z'] with max damage 100. Means we will be able to instant kill nakeds, but it would require higher speeds.
-Make certain visible projectiles emit [more] light as it passes such as lcannon and make the light die out slowly as the projectile dies out [if the idea from before is added] [i'm not sure if this has been done, i don't use the new renderer]
-A weak Bsuit crush effect on aliens smaller than goon?
-Have projectile weapons able to mellee... not sure what use this has, maybe knockback similar to l4d's?
-Hive being able to send 2 'insectoids' swarms instead of being paralized after sending one
-Mdriver secondary: fires one clip worth for a small explosion while infecting neaby aliens [and humans?] with radiation

[kharnov]

What if you couldn't build eggs off the creep, but we brought the hovel back and it was used similarly to the human repeater?

What if the hovel in the above idea functioned as a bunker for smaller aliens, including the dretch and basilisk?

What if the marauder zap had to be charged up like a dragoon pounce?

What if you gained a dragoon barb after killing a human?

[Anomalous]

[…]
[3]I think it [the "missiles"] should be able to hit multiple objects once with losing half the damage as it hits another thing, as well with a 'quadratic damage curve' because objects very close to the flame thrower won't really get hurt much. I'm also thinking about the idea of having the visual flames [and the 'missiles' if they don't die bounce off/slow down when touching a bbox of a structure/player] I wouldn't think overall damage would need to be increased on this one if it does attacks multiple targets with each 'missile'.

I'm considering adjusting this one so that the damage is actually increased initially. Something like the first ⅕ of the distance travelled. (The maximum damage will remain unchanged.)

[…][5]Oh yay, finally we would be able to control how far it goes. But how will we do it? Will grenade still be a 'drop-able in mid-battle' type or a 'switch weapon to use' type?

itemact gren will remain unchanged regardless. What we're planning is a separate +command for charging up launch.

(That said, there is some control over distance anyway: look up or down when throwing.)

Here are some of my ideas:
-Instead of what happened to the tyrant's charge turning ability currently, maybe it could turn similar to how you turn when sliding on the game bulletstorm.

You'll have to describe that.

[…]
-Pounce damage becomes speed/11[ish] [includes 'z'] with max damage 100. Means we will be able to instant kill nakeds, but it would require higher speeds.

Pounce could do with something like that…

-Make certain visible projectiles emit [more] light as it passes such as lcannon and make the light die out slowly as the projectile dies out [if the idea from before is added] [i'm not sure if this has been done, i don't use the new renderer]

I think that we have at least some of that anyway.

-A weak Bsuit crush effect on aliens smaller than goon?

Interesting.

-Hive being able to send 2 'insectoids' swarms instead of being paralized after sending one

Hmm, possibly… would mean that hives get used more. I'd delay sending the second one out for half of the lifetime of the swarm entity, though.

-Mdriver secondary: fires one clip worth for a small explosion while infecting neaby aliens [and humans?] with radiation

Sounds like fun…! Slow health loss for H, reduced/no recovery for aliens. Temporary effect? Would have to return to medistation or creep to recover from that? I doubt that the medikit should work…

[Anomalous]

What if you couldn't build eggs off the creep, but we brought the hovel back and it was used similarly to the human repeater?

What if the hovel in the above idea functioned as a bunker for smaller aliens, including the dretch and basilisk?

What if the marauder zap had to be charged up like a dragoon pounce?

What if you gained a dragoon barb after killing a human?

No idea about the hovel. Charging up zap seems reasonable, but gaining a barb on killing a human? Maybe it could reduce the time before regaining one barb, but that should probably be about it.

[E-Mxp]

Some of my ideas:

What if you give the pulse rifle "bullets" gravity. In the second alpha they already look like electric plasmabolts(?), and giving them an arc would visually make sense. Also this would stop making it a long range weapon.

The Dragoons barb should regenerate faster when near a booster or basilisk. In game-logic, they make you regenerate faster, so you already sort of expect the barbs to regenerate faster as well.

Maybe give the hovel a (non-advanced) basilisk healing aura. Give it low health and only allow it to be built outside of the overminds creep so the regular basilisk does not lose its supportive role.

Another idea is to make the hovel regenerate the buildings faster. Have it remove the pause between taking damage and regenerating health or instance. For balance you should make it expensive though.

Have the granger spit blur the humans vision like l4d's boomer bile.

Allow players to sacrifice credits/evolution points for buildpoints. A running granger could get his just destroyed base back together faster by spending his 9 evo's he earned by not dying.

[Saliva]

Here are thoughts of some of the things posted:

1.The lucifer cannon's primary shot decays over time, losing damage as it travels. The idea behind this is to prevent people from spamming shots down long corridors or across large outside areas, like the ice field on Karith.
2.The lucifer cannon's primary shot speed depends on how long it's been charged, with the less powerful shots traveling closer to the secondary shot's speed.

Increasing shot speed is the best change here. What I don't like about gpp luci is that it's too luck based if the human isn't next to the alien. Faster shots mean that being able to predict alien movements is better rewarded.

3.The flamethrower's damage decreases over the distance that the flame puffs travel.

I hope flamethrower projectile speed is increased so that it's possible to hit a fleeing alien. Also there shouldn't be any self damage from the flames or at least limit it to instances when the projectiles hit a wall next to human or similar. What would be fun is to make the flamer do damage over time in addition because it sets aliens on fire.

4.As pulse rifle shots travel, they slowly lose damage. Thus, over a long distance, it might be more practical to snipe alien buildings with a lasgun.

The pulse rifle isn't a particularly useful weapon in gpp. It's outclassed by chaingun against aliens and usually sawing buildings is better with s2 armor than shooting them with pulse. There are some exceptions of course like in tremor pulse is very useful when staying near either of the doors leading to the alien base and sniping builings with it. Note however that it's only good because the default alien base isn't well suited for aliens. Big open space is generally bad for aliens.

I don't mind pulse losing its long range capability because it wasn't too useful in that regard anyway. Making it competitive with chaingun against aliens would be interesting. Increasing shot speed would like in the case of luci increase how much skill affects the damage it can do. It would be a choice between hitscan chaingun that is easy to hit with and a projectile weapon where good prediction is required to make it perform well. Pulse rifle should be superior if the player can predict well especially because pulse rifle is a stage 2 weapon when chaingun is only stage 1.

5.What if you gained a dragoon barb after killing a human?

Aliens get evos for kills so compared to that it's not that strange but regardless I can't help but feel that there really is no plausible explanation for why the goon would gain an extra barb. Additionally requiring to make a kill to get a benefit isn't usually too useful. In public games most fights are 1vs1. In that case it's mostly useless. It sometimes can help in the next fight but it takes time to heal too and during that time barbs regenerate anyway. Against groups of humans maybe it can help more but i don't think the extra barb will affect the outcome too much. Usually either the aliens dominate the humans or vice versa. Relative positions of the alien and human groups is what really matters in this case.

6.Have the granger spit blur the humans vision like l4d's boomer bile.

Generally affecting players vision doesn't work well. It could even just be disabled by some players by changing settings. It's not really fun for the human either.

7.Allow players to sacrifice credits/evolution points for buildpoints. A running granger could get his just destroyed base back together faster by spending his 9 evo's he earned by not dying.

I hope you don't mean to increase max bp cap. If that is the case it would support killwhoring and potentially making the games not end when they should. It's possible that in a long game both sides could have so much bp that it's almost impossible to attack bases. If you mean just getting back bp that is in queue it's not too bad I guess but still it defeats the point of the queue somewhat.

In the end most of my thoughts about these could be pointless because the game will evolve but at this time I'm comparing the changes to the most current version of trem I know and thats gpp.

[KenuR]

What if when players launch the game for the first time they are prompted to enter their name instead of having to change it later in the settings?

Also, could someone sticky this thread?

[Ishq]

Yeah, this was suggested on IRC and seems fairly simple. We plan to include this in a future release.

[Duke_Forever]

What if you can't build structures on places that are physically impossible to hold that structure? For example right now you can build a turret or an acid tube on the edge of a box, with most of the structure suspended in the air and it won't fall on the ground.