Nex gun discussion, reanimated...

[tChr]

I've found the ultimate solution to the nex strength issue
imao
nex damage is more correct..
The original (pre 1.0) nex had somethign like 800 dmg (iirc)
some (like me) feels that the dmg shuold be lower than 150, so that you cannot kill a newly spawned player with it.
others mean that it would be good for it to be very powerful so that it can take down players even if they are real well stacked.
the main issue is that now (especially with antilag) its very easy to use, and the refire rate is to fast for its strength.. People dont use anything else when They got the nex (thus reducing all games to instagib)
The chargning nexgun mod helps on this, but it might be too complicated.

So my suggestion is this: make the nex dmg directly proportional to the amount of ammo you have got, and make it drain lots of it.

My initial suggestion would be that each shot draws half of you remaining ammo, and the damage is the number of cells drawn multiplied by.. say 4.
so if you have 200 cells, you get a 100 cell drain for the fist shot, yealding 400 dmg.
the nex shot would daring 50 cells, and give 200 dmg.
the next would drain 25, and give 100 dmg...
and so on

Testing needed

that way it can be real powerful if you stack ammo for it, to bring down heavily armor stacekd opponents, but in regular game it would be somewhat weaker.. this would also make it a more unique weapon..
this change is no more different from the current gun than the charging nexgun thing.
and I also think it makes it cooler.. you can do insane dmg with it, but not all the time

Any comments? (i guess there will be)

[kern]

sounds good. altho it could give even more advantage to a map dominant player who can hog all the cells.

another maybe option would be to allow pre selection of damage caused. (a bit like changing FOV to suit map) as you say, at the expense of ammo drain.

user then has to gamble on his own accuracy ratio as to fire big shots, risk missing and losing loads of ammo and lose time regaining it, or to select less power and maybe have to hit opponent twice. first shot may kill if opponent not stacked. saves residual ammo.

[Wazat]

Hmm... I agree. I think this gives more advantage to the dominating player because he almost invariably has more ammo.

My idea in the other thread was to increase the amount of skill needed for the nex. It deals normal damage if it hits the body, arms, etc; however, if you manage a headshot, it deals 500 damage.
If a player has 201 health and some armor (assuming it reduces damage by 60%), he'll only barely survive a headshot.
The headshot should be difficult to do, meaning only a direct hit will work (not hitting the bounding box above the shoulders). The tricky part is how to manage this with so many player models... :/

Currently the nex is difficult enough to hit with because players run faster than my car drives downhill, but a skilled player could still pull off the headshot, though not nearly as consistantly as simply hitting him anywhere.

Another idea is for the first nex shot to completely wipe out armor, so the second shot goes in unimpeded.

You could also have it deal higher damage to a player if he has more health, though I'm not sure on the viability of that one. Or, you could have the nex shot leave corrosive acid, toxins or radiation that rapidly reduced the player's health and armor for 3 seconds, leaving them at half what they had after the nex shot did its damage.

You could also start all players with 5-10 armor that rots away in 10 seconds or so. This armor wouldn't affect most weapons too heavily, but for the nex it would really reduce its effectiveness against freshly spawned players.

All ideas, more fodder for discussion. ;D

[kern]

i like the idea of temporary armor.
Some older games used to shield freshly spawned players too.

cant remember how, think it was immunity for a couple of sec, fuzzy fog around them or something.

[Wazat]

Probably Quake. The standard was to surround the player in a ball of yellow dots and give him 3 seconds of invincibility.

The temporary armor thing wouldn't be hard to do, imo.

[k0jak]

And you can still shoot the player who is near you, when he can't hurt you.

it sucks, ive played with it on before in ut2004..please DO NOT add it.


just reduce the nex gun power, and incorporate a proper Armour protection system!

[tChr]

What do you mean by armor protection system?

[Wazat]

And you can still shoot the player who is near you, when he can't hurt you.

it sucks, ive played with it on before in ut2004..please DO NOT add it.


just reduce the nex gun power, and incorporate a proper Armour protection system!

Well, the invulnerability would be obnoxious; however, giving a player 15 armor that rots quickly would be a good idea. If they're being blasted, the armor will offer a bit of protection but will be gone very quickly. Good for a rocket or nex shot, but anything else will mow through it pretty quick, so a freshly spawned player won't be too powerful.

I suggest 2 cvars:
- Amount of armor player starts with (I believe this already exists)
- How fast starting armor drops (switch to the other rot rate if they pick up any armor item?)

[esteel]

What do you mean by armor protection system?

K0jn means something like in quake, three armor types that give different protection and once you have pickedup the stronger armors you can't pickup the weaker ones. But i'm not too sure it will fit to nexuiz. That would be a major change.

The problem indeed is that a player with good item timing can stack insane amounds of armor and health due to Nexuiz health system. Its not that bad in FFA as there are enough people to attack and take items but in 1on1 this can get quite bad.

Maybe we should reduce the waittime till the rot begins so one can't get so insane amounts or armor/healh. As with other things i do not like so fundamental changes to nexuiz.. In 1.0 the rot and regen was not stopped, this was introduced in 1.2 i think. Maybe we should get back or at least close to that again.. Maybe stop it for 1 or 2 seconds.

- Amount of armor player starts with (I believe this already exists)
- How fast starting armor drops (switch to the other rot rate if they pick up any armor item?)

Both exist, the second is g_balance_armor_rot (without taking i look at the code to confirm ).. one would have to keep track of the armor pickups to switch with rot rate. But to be honest it sound too strange and complicated..

All that was proposed to prevent a quick spawn kill. Well the only weapon that can indeed spawn kill is the nexgun and the player has 10 seconds to find items because the health will not rot before that time. There are enough games where you can spawnkill with more then just one weapon and those games do 'work'. But i can understand people do not like it. But i like it more to change the nexgun IF AT ALL..

[Vermeulen]

I really really don't like the idea of making the nex harder to use with a delay system, that would just take out the fun of using it for many players. And I don't think locational damage would do anything, it would be pretty much impossible to tell if you hit a guy in the head at nexuiz's speeds

I like the idea of taking that many cells for shots as an option though. What about keeping the current primary fire, maybe lowering it a bit, then the secondary fire could use your idea, where the damage it would give would depend on the amount of ammo (if it was secondary, i think it should take all of it though)