The RC4 Developer Script discussion thread

I found out, once I delved into the scripts, that it got removed by MOOtant a few versions ago when he simplified the armour scripts. So unless it got replaced with a hardcoded fix (I don't think it did), then no, it shouldn't deal any extra damage.

 

cv health is ridiculously low. way too easy to rush and kill the command vehicle. even when it is used responsibly it's way too vulnerable.

 

did this just come from hobbs!? King of self griefing coms, king of com tank losses, king of the com chases, king of the... well you get the point.

Well then it must be true.

 

I personally enjoy it. Although I never really like the idea of one lone grenadier being able to win the game solo, it does add a nice feel to the game in that even if you are winning, you can't let your guard down.

 

it is probably nerfed a bit far imo if i can take the nf cv from 5 plates to dead with a med in plain sight amongst 6 enemy meds.

 

Stop boomtanking.

 

I know that I can't keep using this excuse forever, but I am being honest when I say that back in 2.12, the CV had even less health than it has now, and no overheat at the round start (which meant early-game rax rushing as comm), and people didn't really have problems then. You just need to be more situationally aware, and of course, know that getting stunned near enemies is essentially a death sentence. It maybe doesn't help at the moment that commanders can't give targets, so it might be difficult for the comm to really point out what's killing him, but that is possible in the next patch.

 

I don't know if this is like a gamebreaker or could be considered a valid tactic, but if one team gets Bio MG, the other is forced to get regen, and even though bio mg damage is almost negligible on regen all the other weapons do craploads of damage to regen, but because bio mg does a considerable amount of damage to every other armor, there is no point for said team to migrate from regen - so I can see in a month or two regen being the only armor researched. Basically, fix bio mg to not rape so much on any armor that isn't reactive.

Also, what constitutes as "moving" when using coolant? Because cannons still push your tank back even when fired sideways and with spacebar held down, so would moving have to be actually driving with the directional keys or is it also being pushed around by cannon recoil/tanks/gentle slopes?

 

It's if you're using the engine to move as far as I know. The biomg point is fair, I'll look into it, but I do know some bugs with bio are fixed in the patch.

 

Funny, cuz reviewing the scripts, the variable name for the subpar CV health is called hobbes. I wonder if this was VIPER's last dying wish. :p

 

Yah, it is the whole team's failure(Comm especially) to let your CV being attacked by a single grenadier.

If whole team fails, they should lose :D.

 

My list so far:

Lower damage of HE slightly
Consider regen on LT, solutions, due to RPG/mortar damage
Consider bioMG damage over time, but keep SVN changes in mind
Homing/guided should maybe not be so powerful when they are the "easy" options in terms of usage, same for anti-vehicle MGs. Maybe heat balance? Or flying speed on the MLs.
Consider wall HP

 

As a kind of preamble: I often sit in the CV since most of the time no one else is willing to, so my concerns may have not that much empirical backing concerning the "battle performance" of most of the changes.

I wouldn't say that homing and guided are necessarily the easier options: If you have a tank battle with more than 3 tanks on each side, and let's say both have heavys, NF has homing and BE HE-Cannon, NF will have a hard job focussing their fire on one selected tank - since as you know homing picks the next best tank that shows up in your HUD. So the BE players in this scenario - which in late game isn't that uncommon - have a way easier time exploiting their weapons to the best of their ability. Guided on the other hand, in my experience, acts rather akward: Often you have a blob of missiles following your crosshair, and if you score a hit, it's rather hurtfull. Was the firing-cooldown (between the shots) of Guided reduced?

An Adendum out of nostalgia maybe: I never understood why vehichle ammo was made infinite. Not only took it away something to be aware of in battle - in turn requiring more brainz of your regular emp-player -, but also a tool for fine-tuning the balancing of weapons.

 

My 2 pence. Again.

Heat up MGs, I feel this is a nerf which becomes more apparent/effective as chassis tech up and you begin to carry more & hotter weapons.

Nerfing MG will also nerf Guided to some extent. Basically with the pair of them you just hold mouse 1&2 and keep the cursor over the target. It just does a steady stream of damage, the magic being that you never really need to aim. Exception is open maps but that is what hkming is for.

 

Ok, I'll go that way then. In the SVN version I was planning on lowering the clip size, as well as removing unlimited ammunition. But I can't do that serverside. But yeah, good idea, I'll definitely go with that.

I absolutely agree regarding ammo. As I said above, I'll be re-adding ammo back in. Whilst I didn't remove the ammo, I did support it. I regret that now, it just limits balancing too much, even if humping ammoboxes is something I'd rather not have.

I can't change the fire rare of Guided serverside, and I'm not sure if I can change the speed, though that's something I could try. I can only really mess with stuff the client doesn't see, like damage, HP, heat (yeah I know the bar at the bottom but that's done serverside), etc.

Keep the feedback coming, it's really useful.

 

CV health too weak

 

Amateur.

 

Very good.
I miss the dynamic that infantry & tanks supporting each other gave. It was more than just ammo though. It meant having engineers at the thick of the action along with the tanks - which in turn leads to repairs, revives, wall tactics & generally fighting more diverse battles.

More people in a single space means more interaction and more fun.

 

And forward armories! those were pretty fun because they also acted like bunkers for the on foot engies.

 

ABSORBANT:
The whole reason why absorbant is overpowered right now is because Trickster's dual global nerf to tank weapons and tank armor. Absorbant reduces damage linearly per shot based on weapon speed at a rate of -.0075 damage points per speed unit(excepting vehicle MGs), as far as I can tell this has never been changed. Because it is a linear damage reduction, it affects weapons of lesser damage value more than weapons of greater damage value, regardless of speed. To illustrate, back in 2.24d (the scripts I wrote in response to bugged reflective armor, among other issues) HE CN did 100 damage with 3000 speed. The speed modifier of Absorbant would nullify 3000 x .0075 = 22.5 damage, resulting in a 22.5% damage reduction. In the current version, it still nullifies the same amount of damage but since it affects a lower base damage (75, to be precise), it results in a 30% damage reduction. Values are worse in cases of weapons with lower base damage, such as missiles, rails, and standard weaponry - indeed, HE cannon is one of the best examples! Essentially, Trickster's tank weapon/armor nerf essentially buffed absorbant by a huge amount (between ~8% and ~15% dependant upon weapon) for absolutely no reason.

As it is, the only way to counter absorbant properly is with anti-vehicle MGs. This creates a recursive reinforcement situation, however, since one of the best anti-vehicle MGs is also in chemistry (bio MG having been nerfed into the ground), so people are going into chem right now both for the armor, and for a way to counter the armor! A similar dynamic used to exist in the case of biological weaponry and regenerative armor, but of course the opposite relationship exists within biology now - but both it and its inverse are examples of bad research. The principle counter to a stratagem should not reside within its own tree, because this generates stale, boring, and uninteresting gameplay.

REFLECTIVE:
The whole reason why reflective originally received a reflect modifier of .5 was because of a bug that caused BE heavies to recieve full reflect modifier values even on shots that hit the BE heavy squarely and on flat surfaces. Fixing this bug was one of the main reasons why I got involved with scripting for Viper and other servers in the first place. Since this will never be fixed (it is likely a modeling issue) the value must be set back to .5, or lower.

PLASMA MG:
I don't know why anyone would ever make this deal more heat to target than it does to user, but it is a bad, bad idea. As it is, the tank with plasma MG always wins, excepting cases where bio diesel is also employed.

PLAMA CN: It seems pretty strong right now, particularly paired with bio diesel, just like "pickled heavies" were when I first started making them. I think it needs a nerf. Oh, except I hear it's still bugged and causing servers to crash. What the fuck, seriously? It's obviously a particle thing, why not just redo the fucking particle for it?

FISSION REACTOR:
Fucking terrible now. I don't care how it's buffed, but it needs it.

BIO MG: Stated once already, but is absolutely atrocious. The Bio/Regen balance is really dumb now. Countering MGs with armor in the same tree is asinine and doesn't make any sense from a gameplay standpoint. Anyway, the actual DPS for BIO MG was never very good - the great advantage was the lingering bio damage, and that's almost completely gone now. It doesn't seem to have received anything in return for losing its duration, so it's just all around bad.

INFANTRY:
I've known that trickster has been turning this into counterstrike with tanks for some time now, and though I don't approve of it, I don't really care enough to try to argue about it. But just know that increasing the unarmored individual's ability to solo the entire enemy team, tanks, etc. greatly diminishes both the commander's role in the game and the role of strategy in general.

More to add later.