Red means I hate your idea.
Yellow means I don't care, or don't understand.
Green means, fuck yeah!
Blue is my amendment to your suggestions.
S_hift wrote:A way to perfectly balance annihilation
- Add the LOS bug fix (yes nerf the particle beam)
- nerf deployables by -5 max damage
- nerf vuclan by -5 max damage - nerf phase disruptor explosion radius to match the ACTUAL blue area - nerf minigun to over heatvia energy drain - nerf railgun to use energy while retaining the fire rate - tweak laser rifle to send damage to target in proportion to the energy reserves. Change the beam back to laser pulse instead of blue_blink4 - increase explosion damage of baby nuke launcher (I should never be able to survive a nuke in heavy armor even while shielded)
- give cham 3 beacons instead of 5 same with necromancer.Or, what if we got rid of chameleon pack and phase shifter, and made the beacons for chameleon and necromancer take over those functions, instead of having invisible assholes everywhere. That way, chameleon can wear another pack, and still sneak past turrets, and necromancer can wear ghost pack and still teleport around, but obviously they'd have a limited number of beacons. - Make air base max damage 50
- Give an ammo count to jailer gun and make it a touch to activate weapon based on LOS and distance. (handcuffs as ammo at 15 count).
- Require a player to redeploy a jail if the jail is destroyed - Require a player to repair the airbase solar panels to bring back power to the stationsPortable generator should be able to power any friendly objects in range... )Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, shit needs to be fixed). The range should probably be nerfed, though. - Nerf spawn shields to 3 seconds and deactivate on ALL fire not just plasma rifle but any kind of weapon fire & ammo dump. - make the flame thrower a cooler looking weapon. Reminds me of the old 1.31 particle beam with its uncreative weapon image.(purely aesthetic) - Bring back old troll armor with its happy hoppiness
Speaking of my veteran opinion... Let's discuss the role of each armor.
Rogue Angel was nearly worthless in classic annihilation. The only thing it was good for, was trolling the enemy, and getting wrecked. I even hosted a server once where Angel had the death ray, and people fucking loved it... But it was super over powered... Might as well have given Angels a Particle Beam. The addition of the Soul Grabber has almost completely fixed that, although, the only thing I would change now, is adding that frisbee thing I copied from some other mod. I forget what it was called... It was a wire guided rocket that returned to you if it didn't hit anything.
Chameleon Assassin used to be what you would use to rape a base, if you couldn't sneak past the turrets in any other armor. When the pitchfork was added to the mod, Chameleons became worthless, because they have no ability to destroy sunken blastwalls. The increase of max damage for barriers only made it worse, and suddenly, Chameleons took to the hills and started invisible camping with a sniper rifle instead. To solve this, I would make their grenades far more powerful, by scripting their explosions using containerFillBox() to apply damage, that way they can wreck sunken barriers. If a builder places a turret on a hill side, and then sinks a single blastwall on top of it, so only the corner of the blastwall is exposed, a chameleon should still be able to destroy it, without returning to base for more ammo.
Necromancer has changed a lot, with the addition of the ghost pack, the ability for phase shifter to switch places with targeted players, and various bug fixes, and I think it is pretty close to perfect, for it's roll, which is being a sneaky snake, flag capper.
Warrior was perfectly balanced before exploding ammo and spawn shields were added. Now you get noobs respawning next to you with the power of several suns, and you've got no chance at all, unless you have a jailgun. Before exploding ammo, you could kill virtually any armor with a mine disc combo, but then someone decided that ammo should explode to be more realistic (which is a false assumption), and suddenly ammo dumping replaced Troll with det packs. Add the spawn shields and you've literally got an invulnerable, super fast, nuclear powered foe, that doesn't need stations or generators to reappear in seconds. It's too fucking much.
Builder was great in classic annihilation, due to the railgun, repair gun and it's vast assortment of deployables, and it's only gotten better with the pitchfork... However, it did lose a weapon since classic annihilation, as smalls always had 3, mediums always had 4, and heavies had 5 (except tank). That's irked me ever since, but whatever. Pitchfork is awesome.
Troll was perfect, before, and then some noob who has no clue what it is for, decided to make it more like Titan. The difference between Titan and Troll, is that Titan requires skill to aim the particle beam, but troll is designed for 54kbps users. When I had dialup, I used to hop all over the map in Troll armor, raining phase disrupters on every red triangle that appeared. The only thing that could stop me was a HMer with a railgun, shooting me from the other side of the map. Now it's the same as Titan, except with a shitty sniper weapon... It's never been more worthless than right now.
Titan hasn't really changed much, and I agree that LOS targeting is required to take out sunken blastwalls, however, the particle beam fix doesn't put an end to that. It merely changes the source of the LOS from your eyeballs, to your gun sight. So the LOS info matches what the lasers will hit. It still causes damage via a function, but the beams actually hit the target when you use this fix. In fact, the only way to remain hidden and still shoot your target, is to find a tiny crack in the wall and shoot through it.
Tank used to be the perfect defense against chameleons. Chameleons could walk right past turrets, but a tank would hear that noise and light those mother fuckers up. It was slow as fuck, to match it's strength, so tanks usually sat in a corner waiting for chameleons to come around a corner. However, using two grenades and the quad rockets, I used to be able to launch myself from one roller coaster base to the other, and repair most of my damage in the air. Now it's a fucking blimp, that gets around like Troll used to, and it doesn't make any god damned sense.
DaJ4ck3L wrote:pretty much, let's use bside as an example. when killing d on bside you might have to be slightly to the left of the door, to shoot the d with pbeam. your laser will hit the door, but the damage will still be done to the d. laser turrets use a more strict los, and will only shoot you if your players is clearly visible in their los. pretty much, with the way pbeam is now, you can kill d around corners because the laser turret cant hit you, but the pbeam can hit the d. if we patched out the los, and made it so the laser has to hit the d too, then the turrets would also be able to hit the player. essentially making most d unkillable by the pbeam. the best example would be to take a pbeam, put it in standard mode, and see how many d spots you can hit with a standard pbeam.
and yes dark, i also have known shift long enough to know what he's like. i look past his issues and still consider him a friend. most of the time.
he has also given me some good ideas in past, that did get put into mod, or helped me think of ways to do things. also he makes cool maps for us!!
Oh I see. I wouldn't go as far as to say this would make most D unkillable. The wall hugging to snipe a tiny corner of a sunken piece of defense is a pretty bad game mechanic and we really shouldn't have to rely on this and builder pitchforking to destroy defense.
perrinoia wrote:
Chameleon Assassin used to be what you would use to rape a base, if you couldn't sneak past the turrets in any other armor. When the pitchfork was added to the mod, Chameleons became worthless, because they have no ability to destroy sunken blastwalls. The increase of max damage for barriers only made it worse, and suddenly, Chameleons took to the hills and started invisible camping with a sniper rifle instead. To solve this, I would make their grenades far more powerful, by scripting their explosions using containerFillBox() to apply damage, that way they can wreck sunken barriers. If a builder places a turret on a hill side, and then sinks a single blastwall on top of it, so only the corner of the blastwall is exposed, a chameleon should still be able to destroy it, without returning to base for more ammo.
This is a real solution and could not be more true. Chameleon is great at sneaking into the enemy base to kill players and jail them, but pretty much worthless against the majority of the defense that is set in the server now.
Even when we aren't talking about sunken blast walls Chameleon can barely kill one blast wall or force field with its black cat firework grenades and then one can only stand there and shotgun defense for a minute before a builder comes along and wrecks you and then proceeds to replace 15 force field doors on the flag in ten seconds to cover the one you almost killed.
A good example of the need for the containerfillbox fix would be the lasers that people place at the roof of the broadside entrance or on the ceiling of the elevator shaft in the Centerside and Airwars map. These lasers hit the feet or head of the enemy as they come before they have a chance to have a line of sight on the blast walls covering them. Trying to pitchfork this type of defense is almost always impossible because its placed in a high traffic area.
The result is that the defense is not killed for the entirety of a match and the bases become obsolete. Builders should need to actively be defending these type of bases as well the same way that one needs to actively defend and replace the flag defense on Rollercoaster. When you have these unkillable defenses including port gens that are instantly replaced or buried deep in the base behind a blast wall that will never get destroyed you're really making the game-play pretty boring on a lot of maps.
perr more people use troll now, than they did post 3.0 era. yea maybe in 1.3 troll was a beast, but the second charge pbeam hit the streets (and players started to get good at it), troll became useless. before the change literally no one used troll. the only people i ever see crying about it, are vets from the "troll" era. so far the list is at, dawn, perr, floater. this is not counting the 5-10 i see using it in the server now days that would say otherwise.... compared to the 1-2 i saw using it in the past several years before the change. dead wrong on that perr, but your opinion is noted.
tank pretty much fits that same area. was used back when we had 5-10 anni server by random noobs, but once the server population went down, it was maybe used once or twice a week before the change.
i definitely agree with defense and it being too strong now days. i like the idea of pumping up chem to better kill D, and lower barrier health by 5-10
would be cool to bring back the timed explosives options as well. Instant, 3 seconds, 5 seconds and 15 seconds. The explosive damage really shouldn't be messed with.
I'll also state that sunken walls do get damage by cham bombs, however I'll say that it needs the ability to reach a bit deeper.
The tank is starting to grow on me, but I just wish it had something special other than a repair pack to carry. It is a great support armor with repair pack. Maybe give tank the nova pack instead, and then give angel a flare pack or a shrapnel pack that releases a spread of flares or shrapnel to discharge any incoming missiles.
Also I used to use Troll indoors on bside more instead of titan simply because of its ability to eat up damage and easily get by lasers. Lately I've noticed that the warrior is more effective at indoor rape than the troll is simply because the minigun doesn't convert damage to deployables properly. It really would be a nice option to be able to carry a Minigun or a Vulcan, but not both.
DaJ4ck3L wrote:perr more people use troll now, than they did post 3.0 era. yea maybe in 1.3 troll was a beast, but the second charge pbeam hit the streets (and players started to get good at it), troll became useless. before the change literally no one used troll. the only people i ever see crying about it, are vets from the "troll" era. so far the list is at, dawn, perr, floater. this is not counting the 5-10 i see using it in the server now days that would say otherwise.... compared to the 1-2 i saw using it in the past several years before the change. dead wrong on that perr, but your opinion is noted.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that as I believe your numbers are way off. The only time I see people using troll these days is on indoor maps, where detpacks are unavoidable. Since the maps are categorized to play similar types over and over, you can go several hours where everyone is playing troll. But as soon as you load an outdoor map, the only time I see trolls in outdoor maps is when a random noob decides to try using lawn mowers offensively.
DaJ4ck3L wrote:tank pretty much fits that same area. was used back when we had 5-10 anni server by random noobs, but once the server population went down, it was maybe used once or twice a week before the change.
It's used less frequently than troll, these days. Which is funny, because it's quicker than trolls now. S_hift suggested a tank specific pack, and I know just the thing... The latest version of Annihilation from {-o-}Plasmatic has a rocket pod pack, for Tank, which fires several wire guided missiles when activated. It not only looks cool, it's pretty fucking deadly.
DaJ4ck3L wrote:i definitely agree with defense and it being too strong now days. i like the idea of pumping up chem to better kill D, and lower barrier health by 5-10
Woohoo, common ground!
Personally, I've always hated deployable barriers (except doors), and wished deployable turrets were strong enough to withstand most attacks instead of having to be burried under piles of shit, relying on glitches to stay alive. Should a nuke rape everything in a room with a single shot? Yes... Absolutely... And I'd really like to see the nuke modes implimented too, where you can choose to use 1 ammo to lob a nuke mortar, or 2 ammo to fire a nuke rocket (same projectile the nuke turret uses).
But I'm sure this idea is a pipe dream, for another mod that will never get played.
perrinoia wrote:We'll have to agree to disagree on that as I believe your numbers are way off. The only time I see people using troll these days is on indoor maps, where detpacks are unavoidable. Since the maps are categorized to play similar types over and over, you can go several hours where everyone is playing troll. But as soon as you load an outdoor map, the only time I see trolls in outdoor maps is when a random noob decides to try using lawn mowers offensively.
Have you not seen EAT*LEAD play using troll? That dude has become really good at it and has improve much over the last few months. His one weakness is that he is just above mediocre without the armor. Got to say on a pickup game he would be one of the top players I would want to choose from because of how much chaos/distraction he can cause at times.
