Starting weapons

[C.Brutail]

I have this inside my mind now for a long time: for ladder play, should the shotty be a starter weapon, or should it be a pickup? I think for a tactical cooperaitve gamestyle like ctf, the shotty should be pickupable only. This would add more need for tactics, and a little more help for attackers.
What do YOU think?

ps: I'm making a new map now, so weapon placement will be influenced by this poll.

[esteel]

I do not like the idea to have just the laser at spawn.. One might not be a 'sitting duck' with it but one is very helpless with just the laser. That the wrong way in my opinion. What might work to make it an other spawn weapon beside the laser but honestly i think the shotgun is fine and established.

[C.Brutail]

I especiall dislike the shotgun as a spawn weapon.
Think about the situation: you rush into a well guarded base, wipe out the nmy players, grab the flag... and BLAM BLAM BLAM a freshly spawned defender blasts out the shit from you with one tripple shot of the shotgun, couse it can easily do almost 100 HP damage.
From the mapper's view, I realy need more weapons, but what can I place?
Electro,Crylink,Mg,Rl,Mortar, Hagar. 3-3 of them are using the same ammo, and the Mortar and the Rl uses rockets too. Placing crylink and electro next to each other is a bad idea, as they share ammo, one can easily stock up piles of cells in notime that way. This refers to the nexgun too, of wich I should only place one on a map. The RL and the mortar is powerful too, so I shold only place one or two of them again. About the hagar, I again can't place it near a mortar or RL, see above for reasons.
For fresh spawners, a mapper should provide an easy pickup, but not an isntant killing weapon as the shotgun. Placing spawn points are important on a CTF map too, You should not place all the spawn points in the flagroom (see the original greatwall why this is a bad idea). For the attacker, you should provide a little help too: if you manage to kill all resistance, grab the flag, you must make your way back too: but if the nmy spawns back in your face with a weapon that can easily do 100 HP damage, all your work is much more hardened (almost impossible). If I don't place the spawn points inside the flagroom, I must place them outside somewhere in the base: but isn't this the route where you must carry the flag back home?
Yes, I should have tell my thoughts in the starting post, but whatever, I've given my word: if the crowd says shotty at spawn, I'll make two variants of the map: one with and one without the shotty. We realy should test this too.

[ai]

Changing the shotgun not to be at spawn for the ladder would mean to change it for the entire game. I do not like that the ladders are different than the original game, that's exactly what ladders are not, cause then it would sorta be a mod instead and ladders are based on the original game/mod.

If you wanna make a ladder different than from the original then make such a mod too. That's what I think at least.

[C.Brutail]

I suppose you read those lines I've told you why it suxx to have the shotty as a spawn weapon. So my opinion goes basically to the normal game too.
Btw. you don'T need a mod to ban the shotty from the spawn arsena afaik. Only a mapcfg.

[ai]

Yeah, I've read those lines too, but you brought up the ladder configs which goes against what a ladder really is. And as far as if the shotgun sucks or not, I like it. It's not in every game you have such a good weapon to spawn with. But still, shotgun is no weapon to attack anyone willingly with. It's not fun to start with a sucky weapon and if you play against a good player he/she might pick up good weapons all the time and not give a fighting chance to the opponent. At least with shotgun you have a chance to get back in the game.

But the matter of discussion of which weapon to spawn with etc. doesn't belong here. I only answered to the ladder question. Mod or no mod, the original game would have to change too otherwise this would be a "fake" CTF ladder.

[C.Brutail]

Oh, so basically the bad thing about my post, that it's not in the right place? Ok, so I please an admin to move this thread to Gameplay.
About the nmy picking up the good weapons: hell yes, this might happen, but mind it, this is teamplay: you have team mates, who can defend you, and give weapons to you, when freshly spawned. I've played a bunch of games with CTF, and all I can say, that in ctf it isn't realy a matter to find a weapon. Either you find somewhere a weapon placed, or, you find a dead player's gun. The good thing, that in nexuiz you can toss weapons: if you have an RL and a Hagar, you can toss the hagar away to your freshly spawned team mate: voila, no matter you don't have a good weapon. Also, freshly spawned players with a weak weapon can be very distractive too: like a bunch of bees around you.
And the shotgun isn't such a bad weapon, on some cases, it might serve you better then an electro or even the RL.
I think, when I'll finish the map, I'll make two variants: one, with laser spawning, one with shotty spawning. We'll se what's more fun to play

[ai]

No, I meant that if you change that the ladder has laser spawning, the original game has to change too as this ladder won't be based on that "particular" (if you could say that) game/mod. And what I was talking about was general DM not CTF (where people cannot toss you weapons, and generally to me I suck more with hagar than shotgun ).. But that is a bigger discussion which should be brought up there.

Let's see, to me it looks kinda like this. Taking away the shotgun when spawning is the same thing as adding RL to spawning or quad. If you add/take away a weapon for a ladder then this ladder is not the same as the general game, as you don't spawn with such things. So if the ladder gets laser with spawning the original game would also have to make that change in order for the ladder to be correct. Now you could make a change and create a ladder for such configurations but that would not be the "official" ladder, more like a mod/side ladder kinda thing

Lool, I am very tired, my last post I was tired cause I wrote it about 07 without sleep that night, now I'm tired as I just slept 3 hours. Hope I make sense

[zamesdin]

Launch a game directly TFTD scary - especially if you played the game a few times and know what they can expect. Half the time your starting weapon feel ineffective and some of them certainly are. As always, a good mix of weapons is always recommended, but here we'll take a look at the early general weapon, you'll probably want to arm your Aquanaut to make things easier.