Moved from dev forum I'm redoing scripts, these may or may not be used, this thread is *not* to be used to argue about who's scripts/ideas are better. This thread is to discuss only these scripts. Offtopic posts will be deleted and people trying to start a shitstorm with me or spartacus will be infracted Useful links: Weapon spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T8QZaHa0oe6BChSiznLNiB4KL2vu0wSpqBYbAkYp6Cg/edit?usp=sharing Class/weapon pastedump (not entirely up to date): http://pastebin.com/ejGdSXSP Weapon scripts (if you wanna try them out): http://a.pomf.se/effhqf.rar A bunch of weapons are fucking retarded right now, I'm willing to sit down and put effort into an infantry rehaul but I won't bother if it's just going to get ignored. I'll outline my ideas quickly here, if they don't sound retarded (you let the fucking nf50cal through so the bar isnt high) I'll do this shit properly I'll work out balance for different ranges etc and actually try and put something together that provokes interesting play and choices (e.g. HP upgrade being an important factor) I'll try and work with the current featureset but there's one or two things code support might be needed for but off the top of my head it should be possible. Other notes: The idea is to promote class variety in squads at all points of the game, not just for specific jobs (though there will still be times this is important) Scouts will be useful in trenches for their tanky health and close range weapons, and rifles while powerful will like engineers around to revive them. Certain classes will gain new uses (scouts will be good for clearing out barracks', a role they didn't used to have) but the changes shouldn't flip the game upside down. I intend to account for as much of the game as I can, it'll be balanced primarily for classic maps, but I'll try to keep district/escort playable. I'll be considering as many class skills as I can and I'll try to make them have different uses (certain weapons will kill in say, 4 shots normally, but will require 5 or 6 against a HP upgrade soldier) resistances will be tweaked in a similar manner. I'd prefer to give classes different HP but resists will be functionally the same, although they will be less clear to the player. There'll probably be a small bit of asymmetry, but for sure the SMG1 and 2 of each faction and the pistol1s will be identical. And before I release I'll do a full QA check on all weapon descriptions and names to ensure they're accurate. I will do this if I get support. I'm not going to ignore criticisms, but I do feel these changes are intuitive, encourage deep gameplay and use our available resources much more intelligently. I don't want to throw away hours of effort to have this ignored. The current weapons are unacceptable and I think I can do shitloads better.
That sounds cool to try. You got my vote. I still hate the the concept of a niche long range rifle (scout rifle, 50cal, bear, etc) with the power of a thousand suns, because it gets used by regulars like 10% of the time while noobs will use all weapons roughly proportionally even if it's horribly wrong. We've got a release in the pipeline for the end of the week, so you might want to let that go live since I know this shit takes ages to test properly, but weeks after that, you should go for it. Maybe not in one release, but you can figure that out.
Long range rifle would be looking at a 3shot kill and a 2 shot kill with headshots, probably. I don't want to give people a sniper rifle as maps being too open means it's the only weapon you see if it's actually a sniper rifle. The main reason I want people to pick it up is they just need a scoped rifle to deal with a threat, it'll be worse than the unscoped single shot rifles to encourage the better players to use unscoped weapons, but the scope will sort of be a pad for noobs to sit on and be able to take on the best marksmen, you trade weapon power for the ability to hit from a little further. I honestly think people complained too much about the scout rifle, I think it's worst period was when scout was default, I saw maybe 1 or 2 scouts per game using it and though they weren't always helpful the weapon was useful in certain situations and actually quite fun to use. The way I see it, if it's not hurting gameplay too much (and I don't think it is) and if I can work it into balance effectively (I think I can make it a valid choice) then it'll work. Also remember riflemen will have scout rifles, and riflemen will be the most frail class. A sniper may be able to kill a few people at huge range, but if 2 or 3 people see him and open fire they'll be able to kill him, especially since he won't have hide.
You had me at, "Let's turn everything on its head and make people lose their shit." But the more I hear someone try to justify a long range rifle, the more I just float back to this post. Ugh.
I see maybe one person with scout rifle per 2 games, and I can't remember the last time it's been an issue for me. empires survived for what, 6 years with the scout rifle in it, and because of my aforementioned downsides (frail snipers, not as good as semi-auto rifles, doesn't one shot to head) I don't think many 'snipers' will use the rifle more than once because they'll realise it's not doing what they expect it to. Back when the scout rifle was nerfed to shit I never saw anyone using it, ever, and that's because it sucked. My plan is to make it suck enough to discourage retards, but also useful in a few situations outside of that (e.g. you see a really really good rifleman killing your squad, so you go scout rifle to snipe him out, or using it to support a squad by taking plinkshots at their engineers so they constantly have to heal) EDIT: I think you're assuming I want a sniper rifle, that's not the case, I want to make a scoped rifle for long range. Many many times I've been pinned down by a really good rifleman and all it would take would be a scout rifle to let me take a potshot or two to make him back off and help my squad move forward, but lately I haven't had that option and it's rather frustrating knowing I can't counter a good rifleman without throwing 3 or 4 tickets at the problem.
You have my support, Empty (just as Spartacus has my support, by the way. Mixing up the weapon scripts was sorely needed just to make things interesting again). Concerning Scout Ranged Rifle: I concur with that use case, and that use case only. As soon as it becomes a long-range suppression tool, it's going to get nerfed.
Candles gave me a leg up and now I have all the loadouts for classes ingame. Machine pistol and SMG3 never felt better. They give a nice asymmetry to the loadouts. They also match up nicely (BE Engy and Scout get more pistol variety than NF, but NF get more SMG variety to balance) Gonna work on weapon handling tonight (recoil and spread etc) a few more notes that weren't in the paste Scout rifle, BEAR and 50cal will all be shit off the hip unless you have accuracy upgrade, in which case they'll be pinpoint accurate off the hip. None of them one shot players to the head so I doubt this will be a balance issue (if it is I'll just change it) I feel it's time accuracy became a viable tool, although admittedly on rifleman there aren't many other good skills to take, still hopefully it'll make players think about their choices. BEHP will be nerfed a little but I'll keep it similar to it's current power because it is actually super fun, instead the other weapons will all be brought upwards a bit to match it. NFP1 will be buffed to be similar in power to the BEHP to offset that advantage. What of poor BEP1? Well it gets a secret power. BEP1 will have a 3x headshot bonus rather than 2x (like all other pistols) and the largest clip of all pistols. So in a skilled players hands it can match up with the NFP1 and the BEHP. It'l still have falloff though, it won't be a sniper rifle, the headshot bonus will mainly be important in close quarters fights. BE HMG will be an AA12 for a little while, I want to see if an AA12 can match up to a normal HMG (NF HMG will stay a HMG, but with much better on the move accuracy) neither factions HMG will be especially useful at any long range, and if I can't balance an automatic shotgun against a HMG they'll both end up being HMGs. Simple. End goals for each class: Engineer - noob friendly, pick a loadout for any situation and be useful Scout - heavy bruiser, get up close, fuck shit up with close quarters weapons Rifle - Skill based infantry fighter most powerful at range. Lower hp than other classes means you have to actually be good at your class to win Gren - Don't fix what isn't broken I'm also going to experiment with removing penalties for standing vs crouching for several weapons. In particular SMG1s and single shot rifles will be effective standing, I feel like there's a lot of times you're behind cover (e.g. a wall) and you can't hit anything because you need to crouch to actually land shots. Again, if this doesn't work out as fun then into the trash it will go. I'm also contemplating stealing an idea from GO, their shotguns apparently have one pellet which always goes dead centre. I was thinking possibly we could do the same with our shotguns, but maybe only if the player is ducking or stationary, so shotguns can get some reach (still not much damage, but better than being useless)
I have a sort of working prototype of everything in place. I haven't gone over recoil and accuracy properly yet (I haven't had anyone to play with yet) but I've worked out some damage and falloff values I think will work. For those curious: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T8QZaHa0oe6BChSiznLNiB4KL2vu0wSpqBYbAkYp6Cg/edit?usp=sharing I'll be up tomorrow morning so if anyone wants to play around and find some problems I'd welcome it. I reckon the HMGs might be a bit insane and I have no idea if pistols are going to be ok or not, but I feel confident about the rest of the weapons.
Go find security, he's a good sport. Tell him that you'll teach him how 2 git gud. He's always looking for lessons.
Ran a test (spartacus was there) Everything went well, the automatics which were my primary goal all seem to be mostly balanced and doing what I want. HMGs were OP as fuck, but I learned my lesson. BEMP and SMG3 were unsurprisingly, pretty shitty but I had no idea where they'd sit with current weapon balance so that wasn't a surprise or a big deal either. I'm tweaking based off what I learned but I'd like to do a larger playtest soon. Who should I talk to about a server? VIPER maybe?
The only real way to do a proper playtest would be to just commit it. It goes live to the beta branch and I can just revv up the EPIC beta branch server.
Once I finish this batch of tweaks to fix what I found in the test would you be able to do that for me?
The scripts are basically ready to be put up for testing asside from one thing, we're missing the NFSMG3 world materials. I can't find them in my shit and the sands of time have washed away all the old empires stuff, if someone has the world materials that'd be fucking awesome, otherwise some placeholder material will b e necessary. If nobody has the original assets I'd like firewarrior to possibly make a quick texture for it, doesn't have to be fancy, hell if you can rig the texture from the first person model to work on the world model then that'd be abso-fuckingly-lutely fine, just anything to get it off the checkerboard and we're good to go.
I've got most of the work done so I'm moving this into gameplay for public discussion. EDIT: this is what I'm planning to test out so possibly next weekend, I need to check my roster at work.
Whoa! Let's do this! What will make empiresmod combat fun: Take the 4 shots normally down to 3 shots normally. Take the 5 or 6 down to 4 or 5. As for the rifleman: Split the weapons into three categories Assault Rifle - A close to medium range weapon with a full auto firemode and large magazine. (at least 30 bullets) It's like the BEHR. Damage is higher than an SMG. The weapon is capable of being fired in short bursts at the enemy without significant loss of accuracy. Battle Rifle - a medium to long range rifle with high damage but smaller magazine size (more like 15 bullets). Damage is higher than an Assault rifle. While the rifle is capable of being fired at the same rate as the Assault rifle, the Battle Rifle has significantly more kick/recoil due to the larger bullet cartridge size. This makes it so that rapid firing the battle rifle while standing is not practical for hitting targets at range. It's like the NFHR, but you have the same accuracy while crouching when standing so you can shoot over obstacles but you can't fire it as rapidly as when crouching. It should kill in two body hits regardless of the target. Light Machine Gun - it's the future. this weapon is unrealistically awesome at providing suppressive fire. it has a larger belt size than the current lmg, somewhere between 200-300. It does as much damage as an SMG, but fires a little faster than it used to.
I find shots to kill lower than 4 begins to make it risky, if you look at the spreadsheet you can see the new shots to kill vs the old ones (rifleman has current bullet resist, scout engy and gren are all slightly more tanky, I balanced to keep TTK similar to currentpires for engineers and grens, while rofls will die really quickly and scouts will tank lots) The AR and Battle rifle are basically what I already made, download the scripts and play with it. LMG is in the hands of scout now. Try them out and you can see some of my ideas. EDIT: woops the spreadsheet was on the 4000 range setting, I've put it down to 500 units (less than 10 meters) it gives you a good idea how fast each gun will kill people.
I didn't know it was possible to change classes health. At least not without code support. Changes sound fun.
It's not a health change its a resistance to infantry weapons. You can see that as a health buff but scouts will remain just as killable by tanks and mortars and grenades.
