Tribes 1 Legendz

So, I just played for a few hours today... Haven't played seriously in quite awhile.

Here's what I discovered.

Necromancer is currently the most powerful armor, by far. It has 3 different items that permit it to sneak past turrets. Phase shifter can teleport past them, ghost pack and walk right through most projectiles, and it's beacons jam sensors.

But not only that, the beacons also provide shielding, which would be fine if it had a limited amount of energy, but when you toggle ghost pack, you get all of your energy back, which means you can take several phase disrupters to the face without so much as a bruised ego.

Likewise, the same energy glitch can be used to increase the damage output of the deathray... So what you end up with is a sniper who can kill Titans with 2 shots from beyond fog distance, teleport around the map, or walk through walls and take more damage than a Tank.

Meanwhile, it's flame throwing spell and shocking grasp have been nerfed for damage output, so despite the fact that it can rape every anus in the field, it can't even tickle base defenses.

Heavy armors are supposed to be difficult to kill... A light armor shouldn't be able to kill a titan with 2 shots.

Here's a breakdown on how I think the damage scale should look for the most powerful weapons held by each armor...
Any armor should be able to kill another of the same armor with 1 headshot or 2 body shots.
It should be easier to kill lighter armors than heavier armors...

Thus: LvL = 1-2, LvM = 2-4, LvH = 4-8.
MvL = 1-1, MvM = 1-2, MvH = 2-4.
HvL = 1-1, HvM = 1-1, HvH = 1-2.

Again, those are the most powerful weapons, such as sniper rifle, railgun, and particle beam. Deathray should not be more powerful than sniper rifle. vulcan should not be more powerful than railgun. Nothing should be more powerful than particle beam.

Fuck, I hate this mod, now.

I hadn't noticed that ghost pack/deathray/beacon energy issue. All the more reason that we need to come up with a proper replacement beacon for what was invisibility for Necromancer. I agree that it probably shouldn't have the shielding through a beacon if we are going to continue this strange dynamic of having ghosts be one of the only armors that can actually get out with the flag because of how strong turret damage and defense are.

When was shocking grasp nerfed?

How do we get to those balance numbers? I think we would either need to do a lot of experimenting or do the proper math and completely change how it works.

I completely agree that the nearly indestructible defense is the culprit.

I'd start by simple copy and pasting the damage settings from a stock edit of annihilation mod. Preferably a classic version, like 1.34. Obviously this wouldn't work for the newer weapons, like minigun, particle beam turret killer mode, soul grabber, Neuro basher, and whatever that wicked annoying shock grenade launcher is called. Those would have to be tweaked and tested individually.

Yes, bring it back to basics, that was when I was playing the mod. It's becoming turret warfare, not team warfare. Defenses are just that, defenses, they should be able to be taken out easily, not have them covered with multiple platforms for shielding. Tribes CTF was created for each team to have so many go for the enemy flag, while the rest defended your own. Defenses were there to be placed to temporarily slow down the incoming attackers, and if their life was low enough to kill them so they had to respawn to try to re-attack. Now this mod is all defenses and the name of the game is gone. This is what I've been relaying all these years with my past's post. There is no team balance anymore.

Yeah. You can't annihilate anything, anymore...

We spend the entire mission trying to thwart our enemy's defenses..

Missions might as well be one minute each, because after the first minute, defenses are set and it becomes a stalemate for the remaining 29 minutes.

I'm exaggerating, of course. Some times, enough of one team rage quits to end the stalemate.

this is exactly what I was saying earlier...

sorry you had to find out. I quit playing there and started focusing more on honing my skills in LT



and don't think I wont come back and snatch that life outcha boiii

If Necromancer were still that overpowered, people would be using it more/doing more to stop it. Its still very underused.

Until you figure out a way to not just dump a bunch of shit on the flag and call it defense, then I won't support a nerf to Necro.

Titan is still extremely powerful in the game right now. If anything, Warrior needs to be buffed.

If you guys are serious about wanting a major shift toward better game play and balance that can be done and you should know the only reason it hasn't is because I alone did not want to be the one to change so many things that have become somewhat of a staple of the mod.

I could change the Particle Beam gun damage back to two shots on a heavy, hit all turrets with the nerf hammer including Laser Turrets, remove Warriors spawning with boost beacons (this HAS to go if we nerf turrets), slow down Tank armor, decrease the health of deployables such as the Blast Wall, Deployable Platform etc. back to a reasonable level, remove the Pitchforks ability to move defense so that we can move away from the sunken defense over turrets mechanic OR change those turrets shapes so that this could not be done, for example making the laser turret a larger turret, remove the base damage automatically switching on when less than 3v3, change Necromancer beacons to something else to at least fix the energy glitch, balance underpowered guns such as the flame thrower.

Again I think we need to really have an agreement before such changes can be started because there would certainly be an adjustment period, but I can guarantee that I could make it so that matches feel more like matches and your base isn't rekt in the first 10 seconds by boosting Warriors and you aren't constantly one shot across the map by a particle beam and defense could be something that is no longer set and forget and no longer set and get free kills without needing to assist the defense.

Death666 wrote:I could change the Particle Beam gun damage back to two shots on a heavy

What? This was never the case, except for shielded titans with full energy and health. The original damage output of particle beam was greater than the maxDamage setting of every single datablock in the mod, except for blast walls. It always took 2.5 shots to kill a blast wall, and now that maxDamage setting has been copied to all of the other barriers.

Death666 wrote:hit all turrets with the nerf hammer including Laser Turrets

The turrets themselves aren't the problem, it's the barriers we bury them under that make them over powered.

Death666 wrote:remove Warriors spawning with boost beacons (this HAS to go if we nerf turrets)

What? No... Warriors could boost across the map long before defenses became indestructible. What's changed for warriors is the ability to ammo dump kamikaze like a troll carrying a suicide det pack. That's what needs to be nerfed.

Death666 wrote:slow down Tank armor

Yes, please!

Death666 wrote:decrease the health of deployables such as the Blast Wall, Deployable Platform etc. back to a reasonable level

Yes, please!

Death666 wrote:remove the Pitchforks ability to move defense so that we can move away from the sunken defense over turrets mechanic OR change those turrets shapes so that this could not be done, for example making the laser turret a larger turret

I completely agree with this, as I remember what it was like before pitchfork existed, but it really has become a staple of the mod, and I feel like it really wouldn't be annihilation mod anymore, if we didn't have the ability to build forts and shit. In fact, after reading all of this, I'm thinking I just want to start working on my own mod, again. I started with base mod, buffed the deployable turrets so they can be deployed on any surface, they shoot rapidly and cause a lot of damage, and it takes 2 mortars to kill them. It's really the only deployable turret needed to stop spawn rushers. You learn quickly not to place a bunch together, as they'll all get wrecked by the same mortar... Spread them out for maximum effect. But again, that's not Annihilation, at all.

Death666 wrote:remove the base damage automatically switching on when less than 3v3

The 3v3 rule was retarded from day 1... Instead, the rule should be if the difference between team player counts is less than -1 or greater than 1.

Death666 wrote:change Necromancer beacons to something else to at least fix the energy glitch

The energy glitch is easy to fix without changing the beacons. The problem is that ghost pack changes the player's armor and doesn't carry over the player's energy level. To fix it, ghost pack is activated, it should check your current energy level, change your armor, then set your energy level to the previous level. The same should be done when ghost pack is deactivated.
The problem with fixing this glitch is that necro will no longer be able to fly very far... I'm sure I'm not the only one who has learned to toggle ghost pack in order to fly across the map. Without that 'glitch' necro won't have enough energy to fly from one broadsides base to the other. To fix that, we'd have to make it recharge faster, which would permit all of it's weapons to fire faster, and make it's shields recharge faster... It's a balancing nightmare, in general.

Death666 wrote:balance underpowered guns such as the flame thrower.

Yes, please!

Yeah, the more I look at Crow's source code, the more I want to create a mod from scratch rather than fixing this server. So that's what I'm gonna do.