But if shotguns are not good against armoured targets, what is its niche? The rifle already deals normal damage, if the shotgun did not bring anything extra to the board (besides the obvious damage it deals when at close-quarters) then the only real counter to armoured targets would be the pistol?
Could be fairly cool to let the pistol have alternative rounds that is specialized to explode say Onos carapace that deals extra damage against the armour, but it seems weird to bring up an sidearm once a huge beast comes to take a bite out of you.
S2 Games, Stunlock and now UnkownWorlds. I really adore these developers because they really listen to their community and communicates with them. All have awesome games released or coming out with really good games.
<!--coloro:grey--><span style="color:grey"><!--/coloro--><!--sizeo:1--><span style="font-size:8pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->Love how Blizzard and Activision is ###### up Starcraft 2 so bad. Only if they took some advice from their community.<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->5. <u>When heavy marines</u> are gassed by lerks, they aren't affected.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What exactly is a "heavy marine"? Are we just saying the exosuit, or is a regular marine with level 3 armor also equipped with a gasmask, and is the jetpack also considered a "heavy marine"?
grepdashvLord of the BugsJoin Date: 2002-11-13Member: 8487Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester
Interesting, but too complex and confusing. Also, it prompts a lot of questions.
* How is armor supposed to work? HL armor was a strange beast...
* If a damage type does "extra damage vs. armor", does that mean that it only does extra damage to the armor itself, or does it do more damage to classes that have armor? Will all classes have some amount of armor?
* In some cases, wouldn't it make more sense to have some ammo (rather than weapons) use different damage types? For instance, buy ammo type X at the armory and use it to replace your normal rifle rounds.
* The words "puncture" and "piercing" are too synonymous.
* It may make more sense to express a damage type as doing "decreased damage vs. structures" rather than "increased damage vs. players". However, the concept could be moot. If structures are highly armored (or if they are composed of no "health" and all "armor"), then the armor rules would simply apply to structures, too.
* The weapons listed under "puncture" are not intuitive; in fact, they are quite the opposite. I would expect that pistol, shotgun, and swipe would have trouble with armor but would be very effective against soft targets.
Here are my recommendations: * Make armor a "characteristic" rather than a number that can be depleted. All armor would be infinite and would simply reduce damage by a fixed percentage (depending on damage type and armor effectiveness). This avoids the nasty scenario where an onos would have hundreds of health points and be soaking damage like mad only to die in an instant as soon as the armor was gone. It also means that you wouldn't have to beg the commander to drop welders and then beg other players to weld your armor (both very frustrating aspects of NS1). * Players and structures will probably need to have a lot higher "numbers" than NS1 for health and damage in order for everything to scale correctly. There were weird issues with hidden fractional values in NS1, and that should be addressed by scaling up to ensure that no fractions occur.
Types: <b>Normal</b> - 100% of damage goes to player health unless adjusted by armor. Armor effects apply in full. Example: If a player has armor that reduces damage by 20%, a weapon with 30 "normal" damage as a base would do 24 damage to that player. Does full damage to structures. <b>Piercing</b> - More effective against armored targets. Armor effects are reduced by half. Example: If a player has armor that reduces damage by 20%, a weapon with 30 "piercing" damage as a base would do 27 damage to that player. Does full damage to structures. There are several possible ways to balance this benefit: buy a weapon to get it; buy ammo to get it; weapons/ammo with "piercing" do a bit less base damage than their "normal" counterparts; etc. <b>Light</b> - Less effective against armored targets and structures. Armor effects are doubled. Example: If a player has armor that reduces damage by 20%, a weapon with 30 "light" damage as a base would do 18 damage to that player. Does half damage to structures. Lerk spikes would fall under this category, since they shouldn't do a lot of damage to heavily armored personnel or to structures, but they should be effective against soft targets. <b>Heavy</b> - Behaves just like "Normal" damage versus players, but it does double damage to structures. Typically, these weapons will be expensive to obtain. <b>Player-only</b> - Affects players only. Negates the effects of armor (100% of damage goes directly to health) but may be negated by special equipment / upgrades (e.g. gas masks; vaccination). <b>Structure-only</b> - Does 100% damage to structures. Does not damage (or target) players.
Other scenarios can be handled on an exception basis.
Where should the weapons fall? <b>Normal</b> - rifle, pistol, bite, swipe, flamethrower*, parasite** <b>Piercing</b> - machine gun / minigun <b>Light</b> - spikes, spit, knife, shotgun, sentries <b>Heavy</b> - gore, axe <b>Player-only</b> - spores <b>Structure-only</b> - MASC, bile bomb
* If the flamethrower does damage to all Kharaa players and structures, that's simply Normal.
** An exception could be made for parasite to do no damage to structures (while still tagging them). In that case, it should not be placed under the Player-only type, since it can still affect structures (without damaging them). Alternately, if it were no longer desired for parasite to affect structures, then it would need to be placed under the Player-only type.
someone touched on it above for the pistol, but what about for the shotty/LMG? perhaps this could help pull the vanilla rine/skulk into the end game?
standard shotty vs standard skulk = shotty win standard shotty vs armor upgrade skulk = skulk win shotty with upgrade ammo (AP rounds, eg slugs) vs armor upgrade skulk = shotty win
standard shotty vs onos = reduced damage inflicted AP rounds in shotty vs onos = standard damage inflicted
also wanted to say how impressed i am with UWE as a dev. I'd be hard pressed to find another dev team that has such a strong relationship with their community. i mean the lead designer discussing ideas with the players... AWESOME!!
VonDoomKnee deep in the latencyJoin Date: 2009-10-08Member: 68989Members, Reinforced - Shadow
As long as a lvl3 SG still can molest anything at point blank range, I will be a happy marine.
It will be interesting to see what strategies will be popular with the new weapons and units, I hope that old school ninja phase gates and similar ballsy stunts and rushes still will be a viable tactic.
I love the risk taking of rushing, in long games against a l33t alien team, all the sudden the whole game could turn in favor of the marines because of one single clever ###### building a pg inside the hive. The moment when the whole team started to phase into the gate and you knew mayhem and chaos would ensue on the other side, was magic. The same went for alien hive rushes too of course :)
I think that if you create the mechanics in such a way that you still allow for stuff like this to happen in NS2 in both early, middle and late game, you stimulate players to take initiative and do crazy things to break stalemates or turn the tables. It makes everyone feel like thay can play a decisive part. Even if you didnt get a GL and a JP, you can still sneak around and try to build things in places the aliens wouldnt be happy about.
The only pinch I have is with the art, you absolutely NEED to get the art to convey the ideas otherwise this really falls down. But as you can use sound, particles, models and textures to do it, you can probably do a very good representation of the damage types and what is hurting the enemy most.
You could also have some good fun with this, like upgrading your rifle to different types of ammo, such as armor piercing or anti-unarmored rounds, with visual effects to show the difference and maybe sound changes. Not to mention things like the shotgun could have different ammos that quite change their behaviour, like a single slug which has armor piercing, or a buckshot with normal or antipersonnel damage. Having a bit of overlap between weapons with ammo types could give you a bit more choice in loadout.
Would be very interesting for a PvE mode with different ammo to collect from the environment.
<!--quoteo(post=1773649:date=Jun 6 2010, 04:41 PM:name=Onozki)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Onozki @ Jun 6 2010, 04:41 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1773649"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->8 different damagetypes? Oh hell no. WTF. Your goals for damage types are great, but 8 different types? I hope you are kidding me.
So long fast paced arcade that i loved. Hello new world of warcraft arena...that i happen to hate.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I can see you've never played NS before, welcome to the forums! (<=it's sarcasm, calm down)
In NS, HMGs do 1/2 damage to structures. Onos do increased damage to structures, sieges only affect structures, lerk gas doesn't affect Heavies, stomp doesn't affect jetpacks, bilebomb doesn't affect marines, etc. The damage types are simply formalizing most of the rock paper scissors stuff that is already in NS1.
Mr. EpicJoin Date: 2003-08-01Member: 18660Members, Constellation
Awesome news. I hope the counter concept isn't taken too far, but it sounds like you guys understand that. Excellent post, this is a reassuring and definitely a positive direction!
Well, I think damage of bullets or bites (ALL LMB actions by players) should depend on number of players in teams, time of action and possible tech tree. Both sides should be equal. And armor also should depend on those damages.
In example lets think A team with a marine and B team with a skulk in the begining.
PART 1:
Lets consider both teams are fighting in a face to face position and both of them are perfect players.
assume that : - 1 bullet has 100 damage - riffle is able to fire 5 bullets per second - skulk is able to rush from a corner in 5m which tooks 5 secs
Normal if they are pro and and have perfect aim, and see each other at the same time they should able to kill each other. So
In 5 secs 5x5=25 bullets will be on the skulk, and 25x100=2500 total rine damage (d1) will be on the skulk That means skulk should have at least 2500 alien armor (a1) ( you can multiply or divide those numbers)
On the alien side this pro skulk has 1 bite chance to kill that rine from a perfect point of his body (ie neck) So if 1 bite has 25 alien damage (d2) (it can be 2500 or whatever number u want) Marine should have 25 rine armor (a2)
In this normal postion in a 1 vs 1 game both were equal.
PART 2:
Now lets think rines are 2 players, and aliens are only 1 player
This time skulk needs a extra 1 sec to eat other player.
So in the same position 2 rines will start to fire at the same time.
5000 total damage will be on the skulk in the first 5 secs, then 5x100=500 more damage will be from the last rine. so skulk should have 5500 alien armor (a1)
On the alien side skulk has 25 damage per perfect bite, then each rines should have 25 armor.
From this example you can calculate 14 aliens and 15 rines based game mode.
Each players should be compared like this including tech tree upgrades in a cross table.
PART 3: On the structure side Damage of structures should be constant but in this position we should think there is perfect commander drops meds.
Normally if a hall is blocked by 3 OCs (lets consider each has 10 damage), so 1 medpack should have 30 healing points. Sory i dont remember the current name of OC in NS2.
PART 4:
To make game fun ther can be a little random handicap i.e. %10 which makes damage between 90-110. Of course some alien types may have higher armor or damage, so this time you should compare them with possible upgrade. i.e. (Onos vs. Heavy Armored Rine)
Briefly every face to face position shoul be compared including num of team players, time of action and upgrades. That means damage also depends on number of players. This idea can be obtimized for the damage of bullet and bite, so armors of players will be constant but damages per bullet or bite will be depend on those parameters. Also consider perfect players in a general position.
Thanks for reading whatever if its a very good or worst idea ever.
To whomever mentioned that they thought this was too many damage types - if you carefully read the entire post, I'm basically trying to describe how I think this is actually more intuitive overall. Most players won't know anything about damage types and they won't need to. It will just feel right.
I so do hope that it indeed will feel natural. I already feel so exasperated whenever I see lerks sporing HAs, or HMG's emptying clips into defense chambers.
Damage types are extremely useful for balance, you can tweak a powerful gun so that it doesn't annihilate people without advanced lifeforms, or allow early game weapons to compete in the late game.
As mentioned the only downside is the difficulty of conveying the nature of the damage types instinctively, which I am sure UWE can do.
<!--quoteo(post=1773669:date=Jun 7 2010, 03:57 AM:name=Flayra)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Flayra @ Jun 7 2010, 03:57 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1773669"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Most players won't know anything about damage types and they won't need to. It will just feel right.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah this is basically the result if you do it right, as long as players know that there can be damage types (if they don't expect the game to have that mechanic it might seem like random damage) a good art set should make it entirely intuitive which guns hurt which enemies more.
<!--quoteo(post=1773664:date=Jun 7 2010, 02:26 AM:name=yimmasabi)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (yimmasabi @ Jun 7 2010, 02:26 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1773664"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->assume that : - 1 bullet has 100 damage - riffle is able to fire 5 bullets per second - skulk is able to rush from a corner in 5m which tooks 5 secs<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
One bullet is probably not gonna do 100 damage, and a skulk will probably move faster that 1 m/s.
<b>Replying to the post:</b> I love the idea, but I don't think you're going to need 8 types of damage. Most FPS games don't have damage types at all, but I can follow you in that you want to make this alot more like an RTS too. I think 3-4 types would be fine. That would also make it a lot easier to understand.
In RTS games (SC/SC2 in this example), there are few damage types, that do different damage against different armor types (light/armored). Then there is the other thing: Targets. Some units can only attack ground units, some can only attack flying units, some can only attack structures, some can only target biological units and so on.
What I would recommend is to make 3 types of armor: <ul><li>Light</li><li>Armored</li><li>Heavy/Structure</li></ul>Maybe add in biological.
Then have different weapons do different amounts of damage to each of them. For example: <ul><li>A bite/slash/wipe from an alien would do slightly more damage to Light armor, and slightly less to armored.</li><li>Some aliens should be counted in as Armored, either by default (Onos/Fade) or with an upgrade.</li><li>Marines' flamethrowers would do extra damage on all Biological units, and even more if they're Light.</li></ul>The above are of course just examples. I just believe that 8 types will really confuse people.
<b>What do you think?</b>
Edit: <!--quoteo(post=1773673:date=Jun 7 2010, 04:22 AM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Jun 7 2010, 04:22 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1773673"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Yeah this is basically the result if you do it right, as long as players know that there can be damage types (if they don't expect the game to have that mechanic it might seem like random damage) a good art set should make it entirely intuitive which guns hurt which enemies more.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I completely agree. Let people know through effects and descriptions that the flamethrower will set your enemies on fire and fry them. Let people know that this weapon will shred your enemy to pieces if he has that type of armor (by showing them how much blood the enemy will spray in your head), rather than just making them think they suck too much to kill people with that weapon.
<!--quoteo(post=1773620:date=Jun 6 2010, 05:21 PM:name=glimmerman)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (glimmerman @ Jun 6 2010, 05:21 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1773620"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->the peircing/puncture thing will def be a problem, but the overall idea is awesome!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I tend to think puncture as a bleed effect, where piercing ignores armor to some extent. I do agree though, perhaps there needs to be a little clarification and greater differentiation here.
pSyk0mAnNerdish by NatureGermanyJoin Date: 2003-08-07Member: 19166Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Community Developer
edited June 2010
I like it.
I don't really know what's so confusing about it, since they've just listed all the 8 damage types you can already find in ns1. (acid rocket dbl dmg vs armor, hmg dbl dmg vs players, etc.) With the proper documentation and in-game help I don't see a problem.
(Biological maybe kinda new, but at least the parasite already worked in a similar way and those 2 weapons in that category are kinda self-explanatory)
I don't think the damage types for Marine firearms are very intuitive, since all guns basically do the same thing. What would be interesting and less confusing would be the ability to buy different ammo types at the armoury. Not only does create more variety in weapon types, but it prevents the advantages/disadvantages of the damage type to interfere with the advantages/disadvantages of the weapon's intrinsic characteristics.
Take the pistol for example. An intrinsic property is that it doesn't carry a lot of ammo, and it isn't your first choice of weaponry. If a pistol is a "heavy" weapon and does double damage against armour, this property seems to be negated by the fact that it doesn't carry a lot of ammo. You could probably deal the same amount of damage with an LMG because you can fire more bullets with half the damage. In that case, why use a pistol over an LMG or vice-versa?
Allowing players to choose ammo types allows them to customize their weapon to be most effective at the particular situation they want to engage in. This is similar to the way aliens in NS1 choose certain abilities in conjunction with their life form depending on their playstyle. A support Lerk probably wants to choose Adrenaline, Regeneration, and Scent of Fear, while an assault Lerk probably wants Celerity, Focus, and Carapace. As a marine, if you're planning to go Skulk-blasting with a shotgun, you will probably want to load up on "puncturing" ammunition. If you're planning to do some Fade-blocking, you'll probably want "heavy" ammunition, etc.
Furthermore, some damage types should have a trade-off, if you want this sort of rock-paper-scissors dynamic. Weapons/ammo that are effective against armour should be less effective against flesh, and vice-versa. For example, there seems to be no advantage to using a "light" weapon over a "heavy" weapon. Ideally, your HMG equipped with armour piercing ("heavy") rounds might be fearsome against an Onos, but only until you break through its armour. The properties of Kharaa flesh are resistant to armour piercing rounds. However, your teammate with a shotgun loaded with mini-explosive rounds could create the equivalent of a grenade explosion with each shot, allowing him to quickly finish the job you started.
pSyk0mAnNerdish by NatureGermanyJoin Date: 2003-08-07Member: 19166Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Community Developer
Actually the guns don't do the same thing. Did you even read the blog? Adding different ammo types makes all guns the same and thus the strategic research a no brainer for the commander, unless you add ammo types to the commader upgrades, which then has the same result as researching weapons, but is just unnecessarily complex.
How about this, make it so that there are different types of ammunition that can be researched by the marines so they can adept to the situation, while the Khraa can evolve to resist the upgraded ammo using evolutions such as carapace (upgrade increases armour, changes armour type to armoured), vitality (upgrade increases health, changes armour type to unarmoured) or growth (some other name maybe?)(upgrade increases both health and armour but does not change armour type for the vanila players), which in turn can be countered by the marines switching the types of ammo used at their armoury (instantly change all ammo held on hand to the type wanted to reduce armoury humping). This way the game can be constantly changing when played at a high level regardless of what stage it is at, while remaining simple enough (through the vanila upgrades such as growth and fragmentation ammo).
Also, this will allow the pistol to be properly used, where for an example, you are using AP ammo on your LMG when you encounter a Lerk, so you switch to your pistol firing HP ammo to kill it faster. In addition, I would love to see the shotgun being able to have upgrades researched for it to allow it to be adepted for different uses, from a standard shotgun to become a less powerful GL (I assume that with the introduction of the rifle mounted GL there won't be a standalone GL?)
Normal damage - Normal damage to all Marines: LMG, Pistol, HMG/Minigun; Upgrade Fragmentation rounds for: LMG, Pistol, HMG/Minigun; Reasoning: These weapons start with normal 'ball' ammo, that does the normal damage. Fragmentation round for these weapons are a combination of both Armour Piercing and Hollow Point rounds, and thus increases overall damage without becoming either piercing or impact type damage, which will suit players who don't want to think about what type of damage to use. Khraa: Skulk/Lerk bite, Gorge spit
Pierce damage - Increased damage to armoured, decreased damage to unarmoured, structures Marines: Upgrade Armour Piercing ammo for: LMG, Pistol, HMG/Minigun; Upgrade Slug rounds for shotgun; Reasoning: AP ammo is designed to go straight through armour, and thus flesh as well, so it does more damage to armoured, but little to unarmoured. For the shotgun, the upgrade allows the shotgun to fire slugs that does more(or less? needs balancing) damage per shot, allowing it to kill an armoured skulk in 1 shot, or an unarmoured skulk with health upgrade in 2 shots. Khraa: Lerk spikes, Fade swipe, Onos gore Reasoning: They poke holes in you that goes through your armour.
Impact damage - Increased damage to unarmoured, structures, decreased damage to armoured Marines: Upgrade Hollow Point ammo for: LMG, Pistol, HMG/Minigun; Pellet rounds for shotgun; SwitchAxe; Upgrade Fragmentation grenades; sentries These ammo/weapon are designed to do as much damage to flesh by increasing their surface area against their target, but because of that are ineffective against armour. Khraa: Hydra, Onos charge Reasoning: You get whacked, need I say any more?
Explosive damage - Increased damage (double or more?) to structures, normal damage to the rest Marines: Grenades, Mines; Upgrade HE rounds for shotgun; Reasoning: Explosives do more damage to an unyielding surface, like structures, while units are thrown around, thus reducing impact (although in RL, HE will also do more damage to unarmoured as well as the explosion will scramble the insides of those not protected). The HE upgrade for the shotgun will allow it to become a GL, but firing smaller grenades that does less damage and splash and yet having a larger clip.
Gas damage - same as update
Biological - same as update, although I think that the Flamethrower should do friendly fire as IMO you can't control who the fire will burn or not burn. That way, the flamethrower can be powerful and yet if some idiot uses it and just hoses everything down with it, he can take out his teamates too. And please let the guy explode when killed by lerk spikes, doing damage to teamates as the spikes puncture the gas tank causing it to explode. Also should add to here the welder and the healspray.
Siege damage - Increased damage to structures, greatly reduced damage to armoured, reduced damage to unarmoured Marines: MASC Reasoning: Siege is meant for structures, but the splash damage should be reduced, so no more running by a building when it is sieged and getting killed in 1 shot by the splash.
This way, basic marines with LMGs (depending on ammo choice) still will have a big impact on battles, and skulks (depending on evolution) can still thrive in late game where AP ammo would seem to be the choice to take down the larger aliens, but are ineffective against skulks. Also, shotguns will be able to be either a very efficient skulk/structure killer or a tank killer, but not both, thus balancing it.
EDIT: Also what I would like to see is the Onos charge being able to knock down the sentries, thus disabling them until a marine picks it up, but not destroying them, so the Onos can still wreck base defences while not actually having to spend time destroying it all.
Another thing is you mentioned that damage types should be implied by the look of things. For example, a Lerk looks unarmoured, while an Onos is covered in bony plates. It would be interesting to extend this idea to damage multipliers for different hitbox regions (which of course, is not a new thing). Shooting an Onos in the butt where it is unarmoured would be more effective than shooting it in its forehead.
I don't need to reiterate the argument against hard counters in an RTS/FPS hybrid. We should, as much as possible, not make it impossible for the player to be able to do something because the game mechanics says so. A feature like this could add a new dimension to player skill, i.e., aiming for specific regions of an enemy.
<!--quoteo(post=1773689:date=Jun 7 2010, 12:57 AM:name=pSyk0mAn)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (pSyk0mAn @ Jun 7 2010, 12:57 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1773689"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Actually the guns don't do the same thing. Did you even read the blog?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm saying in real life, guns basically do the same thing. Thus, it's not very intuitive to a player that a pistol is "heavy" while a rifle is "normal" and a minigun, "puncturing", because they all just shoot bullets.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Adding different ammo types makes all guns the same and thus the strategic research a no brainer for the commander, unless you add ammo types to the commader upgrades, which then has the same result as researching weapons, but is just unnecessarily complex.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please explain. How would adding different ammo types make all guns the same? The guns are still different from each other soley due to their characteristics (ammo count, RoF, damage). A shotgun with the same ammo loaded as an LMG is still going to be better at killing Skulks, for example. However, now the player has to make a choice. Do I load my shotgun with flesh tearing ammo to take down Skulks with even greater effectiveness, or load up on armour smashing ammo to defend against the increasing number of Fades?
A marine who knows he is a bad shot might want flesh tearing ammo for his LMG to increase his chances of killing Skulks, and chances are he won't be accurate enough to do much to a skilled Fade if he has armour piercing ammo loaded. The reverse would be true of a skilled marine, who doesn't mind using armour piercing ammo against a Skulk, because his aim is good enough that he won't need many bullets to kill it. He will be very effective at destroying a Fade's armour, because he will make sure every shot hits. Thus, he probably wants armour piercing ammo.
I don't understand why you don't follow Starcraft 2's lead and ditch the intermediate mapping layer of named damage types. Instead of a fade swipe reading "Does 60 heavy damage" (and having the player remember that Heavy means +40% vs armor), it would simply read "Does 60 damage (+24 versus armor)".
Having the explicit-named-types-layer makes more sense when you have a few types each representing many attacks, but you have tons of damage types each representing 2-3 attacks. Why bother the player with it?
The ammo types have problems of their own. They are not as visual as simply wielding a different gun. How confusing it is to have exactly the same visual and audial feedback right before the fight, while you're actually running into completely different situation depending on the ammo types?
As a marine you could have the teammate ammo types displayed in the HUD I guess (although last we heard about the HUD, it was minimalistic), but how are the aliens supposed to keep track of anything? I doubt seeing different tracers is going to be enough, since at that point you're already taking the hurt big time.
---
I think most of the confusion should be avoidable by simple summaries on gun selection. For example:
Shotgun:
+ Good against armor
- Short range
If people refuse to take in any info, I don't know where the game can go anyway.
---
Parasite seems to be back. In NS it was a big deal in skulk's ability to scale and be somewhat useful even in lifeform filled late game, so bringing it doesn't seem at least harmful for the skulk's repertoire.
---
As in general, I definitely look forward to seeing the system in action. Of course it has got issues of its own too, but it's interesting even at this point.
<!--quoteo(post=1773699:date=Jun 7 2010, 01:46 AM:name=Bacillus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Bacillus @ Jun 7 2010, 01:46 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1773699"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The ammo types have problems of their own. They are not as visual as simply wielding a different gun. How confusing it is to have exactly the same visual and audial feedback right before the fight, while you're actually running into completely different situation depending on the ammo types?
As a marine you could have the teammate ammo types displayed in the HUD I guess (although last we heard about the HUD, it was minimalistic), but how are the aliens supposed to keep track of anything? I doubt seeing different tracers is going to be enough, since at that point you're already taking the hurt big time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The point for the different ammo type is that the focus is on the overall big picture, and not just for that battle. A train of heavy marines packing ap ammo may have just wiped out an onos train, only for the feedback to be passed along to other khraa players who then go unarmoured fades or skulks and wipe them out, causing the marines to feedback to the rest of the team to switch to hp ammo, at which then the khraa players, if smart enough, can guess that happening before the next battle and revert back to using armoured units. Of course, the whole thing is a gamble for both sides, so that would keep the game interesting throughout the whole round.
I personally like the idea of ammo types myself. I think this is far more intuitive than locking weapons into a very specialized niche. With the current system, a weapon, like the pistol, would be stuck within a very very limited roll in the game. If you allow ammo type, that weapon that once was very limited in it's use now find a much wider range of use and adapt to the situation. However, it's actual effectiveness relies solely on the intelligence of the players choosing the ammo type according to the current battlefield situation. If the commander doesn't warn the players to bring AP ammo against multiple Onos's than no matter the weapon they choose they're most likely going to get rolled, as they should for their lack of planning and strategy.
Also this doesn't make weapons all the same because, as someone has already said, they still excel within certain situations. So a shotgun is going to do much better up close than far away. All the ammo change does it make it more affective against a certain type of enemy up close. Where as a pistol is far better long range, and again the ammo only changes what it is affective against at that long range. So load it up that pistol with AP rounds and you can do a nice amount of damage to an Onos from far away before he gets close, but that skulk isn't going to be slowed down one bit before it closes the distance.
If you want a very, very basic example of this, <u>Planet Side</u> incorporated this with normal ammo type and armor piercing ammo type. You could carry both around, but if you encountered an armored enemy you had to hope you already had AP rounds in the gun or you had to try and buy enough time to switch the rounds. It worked very well, in it made basic weapons usable no matter the the advanced level of the enemy.
To give a signal of the type of ammo someone has loaded, you could just attach literal ammo models to the gun, the player, and/pr both and change the model and skin of the ammo according to what is selected. So normal rounds would be a standard dull grey, AP or what I'd call incendiary rounds would be a noticeable red, Puncture would be a noticeable blue, and ect. The model would be attached in the same place every time so all the players, aliens included wouldn't have to guess the marines ammo type.
I think this is a much better system because one it is how real guns operate so it makes the most sense to the majority of people, two it allows all weapons to be used in all situations and doesn't pigeon hole them into one situation, and three it adds a more customizable depth to the game but in a understandable way.
The possible equivalent to this for the aliens, if it is even needed, is having upgrade options for their attacks. But I don't know if this would even be needed.
Comments
The rifle already deals normal damage, if the shotgun did not bring anything extra to the board (besides the obvious damage it deals when at close-quarters) then the only real counter to armoured targets would be the pistol?
Could be fairly cool to let the pistol have alternative rounds that is specialized to explode say Onos carapace that deals extra damage against the armour, but it seems weird to bring up an sidearm once a huge beast comes to take a bite out of you.
<div align='center'><!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro--><b><!--sizeo:100--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><3<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--></b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--></div>
<!--coloro:grey--><span style="color:grey"><!--/coloro--><!--sizeo:1--><span style="font-size:8pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->Love how Blizzard and Activision is ###### up Starcraft 2 so bad. Only if they took some advice from their community.<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->5. <u>When heavy marines</u> are gassed by lerks, they aren't affected.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What exactly is a "heavy marine"? Are we just saying the exosuit, or is a regular marine with level 3 armor also equipped with a gasmask, and is the jetpack also considered a "heavy marine"?
So long fast paced arcade that i loved. Hello new world of warcraft arena...that i happen to hate.
* How is armor supposed to work? HL armor was a strange beast...
* If a damage type does "extra damage vs. armor", does that mean that it only does extra damage to the armor itself, or does it do more damage to classes that have armor? Will all classes have some amount of armor?
* In some cases, wouldn't it make more sense to have some ammo (rather than weapons) use different damage types? For instance, buy ammo type X at the armory and use it to replace your normal rifle rounds.
* The words "puncture" and "piercing" are too synonymous.
* It may make more sense to express a damage type as doing "decreased damage vs. structures" rather than "increased damage vs. players". However, the concept could be moot. If structures are highly armored (or if they are composed of no "health" and all "armor"), then the armor rules would simply apply to structures, too.
* The weapons listed under "puncture" are not intuitive; in fact, they are quite the opposite. I would expect that pistol, shotgun, and swipe would have trouble with armor but would be very effective against soft targets.
Here are my recommendations:
* Make armor a "characteristic" rather than a number that can be depleted. All armor would be infinite and would simply reduce damage by a fixed percentage (depending on damage type and armor effectiveness). This avoids the nasty scenario where an onos would have hundreds of health points and be soaking damage like mad only to die in an instant as soon as the armor was gone. It also means that you wouldn't have to beg the commander to drop welders and then beg other players to weld your armor (both very frustrating aspects of NS1).
* Players and structures will probably need to have a lot higher "numbers" than NS1 for health and damage in order for everything to scale correctly. There were weird issues with hidden fractional values in NS1, and that should be addressed by scaling up to ensure that no fractions occur.
Types:
<b>Normal</b> - 100% of damage goes to player health unless adjusted by armor. Armor effects apply in full. Example: If a player has armor that reduces damage by 20%, a weapon with 30 "normal" damage as a base would do 24 damage to that player. Does full damage to structures.
<b>Piercing</b> - More effective against armored targets. Armor effects are reduced by half. Example: If a player has armor that reduces damage by 20%, a weapon with 30 "piercing" damage as a base would do 27 damage to that player. Does full damage to structures. There are several possible ways to balance this benefit: buy a weapon to get it; buy ammo to get it; weapons/ammo with "piercing" do a bit less base damage than their "normal" counterparts; etc.
<b>Light</b> - Less effective against armored targets and structures. Armor effects are doubled. Example: If a player has armor that reduces damage by 20%, a weapon with 30 "light" damage as a base would do 18 damage to that player. Does half damage to structures. Lerk spikes would fall under this category, since they shouldn't do a lot of damage to heavily armored personnel or to structures, but they should be effective against soft targets.
<b>Heavy</b> - Behaves just like "Normal" damage versus players, but it does double damage to structures. Typically, these weapons will be expensive to obtain.
<b>Player-only</b> - Affects players only. Negates the effects of armor (100% of damage goes directly to health) but may be negated by special equipment / upgrades (e.g. gas masks; vaccination).
<b>Structure-only</b> - Does 100% damage to structures. Does not damage (or target) players.
Other scenarios can be handled on an exception basis.
Where should the weapons fall?
<b>Normal</b> - rifle, pistol, bite, swipe, flamethrower*, parasite**
<b>Piercing</b> - machine gun / minigun
<b>Light</b> - spikes, spit, knife, shotgun, sentries
<b>Heavy</b> - gore, axe
<b>Player-only</b> - spores
<b>Structure-only</b> - MASC, bile bomb
* If the flamethrower does damage to all Kharaa players and structures, that's simply Normal.
** An exception could be made for parasite to do no damage to structures (while still tagging them). In that case, it should not be placed under the Player-only type, since it can still affect structures (without damaging them). Alternately, if it were no longer desired for parasite to affect structures, then it would need to be placed under the Player-only type.
someone touched on it above for the pistol, but what about for the shotty/LMG?
perhaps this could help pull the vanilla rine/skulk into the end game?
standard shotty vs standard skulk = shotty win
standard shotty vs armor upgrade skulk = skulk win
shotty with upgrade ammo (AP rounds, eg slugs) vs armor upgrade skulk = shotty win
standard shotty vs onos = reduced damage inflicted
AP rounds in shotty vs onos = standard damage inflicted
also wanted to say how impressed i am with UWE as a dev. I'd be hard pressed to find another dev team that has such a strong relationship with their community.
i mean the lead designer discussing ideas with the players... AWESOME!!
<b>edit: grepdashv +1</b>
It will be interesting to see what strategies will be popular with the new weapons and units, I hope that old school ninja phase gates and similar ballsy stunts and rushes still will be a viable tactic.
I love the risk taking of rushing, in long games against a l33t alien team, all the sudden the whole game could turn in favor of the marines because of one single clever ###### building a pg inside the hive. The moment when the whole team started to phase into the gate and you knew mayhem and chaos would ensue on the other side, was magic. The same went for alien hive rushes too of course :)
I think that if you create the mechanics in such a way that you still allow for stuff like this to happen in NS2 in both early, middle and late game, you stimulate players to take initiative and do crazy things to break stalemates or turn the tables.
It makes everyone feel like thay can play a decisive part. Even if you didnt get a GL and a JP, you can still sneak around and try to build things in places the aliens wouldnt be happy about.
You could also have some good fun with this, like upgrading your rifle to different types of ammo, such as armor piercing or anti-unarmored rounds, with visual effects to show the difference and maybe sound changes. Not to mention things like the shotgun could have different ammos that quite change their behaviour, like a single slug which has armor piercing, or a buckshot with normal or antipersonnel damage. Having a bit of overlap between weapons with ammo types could give you a bit more choice in loadout.
Would be very interesting for a PvE mode with different ammo to collect from the environment.
So long fast paced arcade that i loved. Hello new world of warcraft arena...that i happen to hate.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I can see you've never played NS before, welcome to the forums! (<=it's sarcasm, calm down)
In NS, HMGs do 1/2 damage to structures. Onos do increased damage to structures, sieges only affect structures, lerk gas doesn't affect Heavies, stomp doesn't affect jetpacks, bilebomb doesn't affect marines, etc. The damage types are simply formalizing most of the rock paper scissors stuff that is already in NS1.
I think damage of bullets or bites (ALL LMB actions by players) should depend on number of players in teams, time of action and possible tech tree. Both sides should be equal. And armor also should depend on those damages.
In example lets think A team with a marine and B team with a skulk in the begining.
PART 1:
Lets consider both teams are fighting in a face to face position and both of them are perfect players.
assume that :
- 1 bullet has 100 damage
- riffle is able to fire 5 bullets per second
- skulk is able to rush from a corner in 5m which tooks 5 secs
Normal if they are pro and and have perfect aim, and see each other at the same time they should able to kill each other. So
In 5 secs 5x5=25 bullets will be on the skulk,
and 25x100=2500 total rine damage (d1) will be on the skulk
That means skulk should have at least 2500 alien armor (a1) ( you can multiply or divide those numbers)
On the alien side this pro skulk has 1 bite chance to kill that rine from a perfect point of his body (ie neck)
So if 1 bite has 25 alien damage (d2) (it can be 2500 or whatever number u want)
Marine should have 25 rine armor (a2)
In this normal postion in a 1 vs 1 game both were equal.
PART 2:
Now lets think rines are 2 players, and aliens are only 1 player
This time skulk needs a extra 1 sec to eat other player.
So in the same position 2 rines will start to fire at the same time.
5000 total damage will be on the skulk in the first 5 secs, then 5x100=500 more damage will be from the last rine.
so skulk should have 5500 alien armor (a1)
On the alien side skulk has 25 damage per perfect bite, then each rines should have 25 armor.
From this example you can calculate 14 aliens and 15 rines based game mode.
Each players should be compared like this including tech tree upgrades in a cross table.
PART 3:
On the structure side
Damage of structures should be constant but in this position we should think there is perfect commander drops meds.
Normally if a hall is blocked by 3 OCs (lets consider each has 10 damage), so 1 medpack should have 30 healing points.
Sory i dont remember the current name of OC in NS2.
PART 4:
To make game fun ther can be a little random handicap i.e. %10 which makes damage between 90-110.
Of course some alien types may have higher armor or damage, so this time you should compare them with possible
upgrade. i.e. (Onos vs. Heavy Armored Rine)
Briefly every face to face position shoul be compared including num of team players, time of action and upgrades.
That means damage also depends on number of players. This idea can be obtimized for the damage of bullet and bite,
so armors of players will be constant but damages per bullet or bite will be depend on those parameters. Also consider
perfect players in a general position.
Thanks for reading whatever if its a very good or worst idea ever.
<img src="http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/6660/skulk.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Puncture -> Heavy
Piercing -> Puncture
To whomever mentioned that they thought this was too many damage types - if you carefully read the entire post, I'm basically trying to describe how I think this is actually more intuitive overall. Most players won't know anything about damage types and they won't need to. It will just feel right.
I so do hope that it indeed will feel natural. I already feel so exasperated whenever I see lerks sporing HAs, or HMG's emptying clips into defense chambers.
-Insert LORE Infected Nanites here(lolol)-
As mentioned the only downside is the difficulty of conveying the nature of the damage types instinctively, which I am sure UWE can do.
<!--quoteo(post=1773669:date=Jun 7 2010, 03:57 AM:name=Flayra)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Flayra @ Jun 7 2010, 03:57 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1773669"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Most players won't know anything about damage types and they won't need to. It will just feel right.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah this is basically the result if you do it right, as long as players know that there can be damage types (if they don't expect the game to have that mechanic it might seem like random damage) a good art set should make it entirely intuitive which guns hurt which enemies more.
- 1 bullet has 100 damage
- riffle is able to fire 5 bullets per second
- skulk is able to rush from a corner in 5m which tooks 5 secs<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
One bullet is probably not gonna do 100 damage, and a skulk will probably move faster that 1 m/s.
<b>Replying to the post:</b>
I love the idea, but I don't think you're going to need 8 types of damage.
Most FPS games don't have damage types at all, but I can follow you in that you want to make this alot more like an RTS too.
I think 3-4 types would be fine. That would also make it a lot easier to understand.
In RTS games (SC/SC2 in this example), there are few damage types, that do different damage against different armor types (light/armored).
Then there is the other thing: Targets. Some units can only attack ground units, some can only attack flying units, some can only attack structures, some can only target biological units and so on.
What I would recommend is to make 3 types of armor:
<ul><li>Light</li><li>Armored</li><li>Heavy/Structure</li></ul>Maybe add in biological.
Then have different weapons do different amounts of damage to each of them. For example:
<ul><li>A bite/slash/wipe from an alien would do slightly more damage to Light armor, and slightly less to armored.</li><li>Some aliens should be counted in as Armored, either by default (Onos/Fade) or with an upgrade.</li><li>Marines' flamethrowers would do extra damage on all Biological units, and even more if they're Light.</li></ul>The above are of course just examples.
I just believe that 8 types will really confuse people.
<b>What do you think?</b>
Edit:
<!--quoteo(post=1773673:date=Jun 7 2010, 04:22 AM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Jun 7 2010, 04:22 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1773673"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Yeah this is basically the result if you do it right, as long as players know that there can be damage types (if they don't expect the game to have that mechanic it might seem like random damage) a good art set should make it entirely intuitive which guns hurt which enemies more.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I completely agree.
Let people know through effects and descriptions that the flamethrower will set your enemies on fire and fry them.
Let people know that this weapon will shred your enemy to pieces if he has that type of armor (by showing them how much blood the enemy will spray in your head), rather than just making them think they suck too much to kill people with that weapon.
I tend to think puncture as a bleed effect, where piercing ignores armor to some extent. I do agree though, perhaps there needs to be a little clarification and greater differentiation here.
I don't really know what's so confusing about it, since they've just listed all the 8 damage types you can already find in ns1. (acid rocket dbl dmg vs armor, hmg dbl dmg vs players, etc.)
With the proper documentation and in-game help I don't see a problem.
(Biological maybe kinda new, but at least the parasite already worked in a similar way and those 2 weapons in that category are kinda self-explanatory)
Take the pistol for example. An intrinsic property is that it doesn't carry a lot of ammo, and it isn't your first choice of weaponry. If a pistol is a "heavy" weapon and does double damage against armour, this property seems to be negated by the fact that it doesn't carry a lot of ammo. You could probably deal the same amount of damage with an LMG because you can fire more bullets with half the damage. In that case, why use a pistol over an LMG or vice-versa?
Allowing players to choose ammo types allows them to customize their weapon to be most effective at the particular situation they want to engage in. This is similar to the way aliens in NS1 choose certain abilities in conjunction with their life form depending on their playstyle. A support Lerk probably wants to choose Adrenaline, Regeneration, and Scent of Fear, while an assault Lerk probably wants Celerity, Focus, and Carapace. As a marine, if you're planning to go Skulk-blasting with a shotgun, you will probably want to load up on "puncturing" ammunition. If you're planning to do some Fade-blocking, you'll probably want "heavy" ammunition, etc.
Furthermore, some damage types should have a trade-off, if you want this sort of rock-paper-scissors dynamic. Weapons/ammo that are effective against armour should be less effective against flesh, and vice-versa. For example, there seems to be no advantage to using a "light" weapon over a "heavy" weapon. Ideally, your HMG equipped with armour piercing ("heavy") rounds might be fearsome against an Onos, but only until you break through its armour. The properties of Kharaa flesh are resistant to armour piercing rounds. However, your teammate with a shotgun loaded with mini-explosive rounds could create the equivalent of a grenade explosion with each shot, allowing him to quickly finish the job you started.
Adding different ammo types makes all guns the same and thus the strategic research a no brainer for the commander, unless you add ammo types to the commader upgrades, which then has the same result as researching weapons, but is just unnecessarily complex.
I'll read it again later.
Also, this will allow the pistol to be properly used, where for an example, you are using AP ammo on your LMG when you encounter a Lerk, so you switch to your pistol firing HP ammo to kill it faster. In addition, I would love to see the shotgun being able to have upgrades researched for it to allow it to be adepted for different uses, from a standard shotgun to become a less powerful GL (I assume that with the introduction of the rifle mounted GL there won't be a standalone GL?)
Normal damage - Normal damage to all
Marines: LMG, Pistol, HMG/Minigun; Upgrade Fragmentation rounds for: LMG, Pistol, HMG/Minigun;
Reasoning: These weapons start with normal 'ball' ammo, that does the normal damage. Fragmentation round for these weapons are a combination of both Armour Piercing and Hollow Point rounds, and thus increases overall damage without becoming either piercing or impact type damage, which will suit players who don't want to think about what type of damage to use.
Khraa: Skulk/Lerk bite, Gorge spit
Pierce damage - Increased damage to armoured, decreased damage to unarmoured, structures
Marines: Upgrade Armour Piercing ammo for: LMG, Pistol, HMG/Minigun; Upgrade Slug rounds for shotgun;
Reasoning: AP ammo is designed to go straight through armour, and thus flesh as well, so it does more damage to armoured, but little to unarmoured. For the shotgun, the upgrade allows the shotgun to fire slugs that does more(or less? needs balancing) damage per shot, allowing it to kill an armoured skulk in 1 shot, or an unarmoured skulk with health upgrade in 2 shots.
Khraa: Lerk spikes, Fade swipe, Onos gore
Reasoning: They poke holes in you that goes through your armour.
Impact damage - Increased damage to unarmoured, structures, decreased damage to armoured
Marines: Upgrade Hollow Point ammo for: LMG, Pistol, HMG/Minigun; Pellet rounds for shotgun; SwitchAxe; Upgrade Fragmentation grenades; sentries
These ammo/weapon are designed to do as much damage to flesh by increasing their surface area against their target, but because of that are ineffective against armour.
Khraa: Hydra, Onos charge
Reasoning: You get whacked, need I say any more?
Explosive damage - Increased damage (double or more?) to structures, normal damage to the rest
Marines: Grenades, Mines; Upgrade HE rounds for shotgun;
Reasoning: Explosives do more damage to an unyielding surface, like structures, while units are thrown around, thus reducing impact (although in RL, HE will also do more damage to unarmoured as well as the explosion will scramble the insides of those not protected). The HE upgrade for the shotgun will allow it to become a GL, but firing smaller grenades that does less damage and splash and yet having a larger clip.
Gas damage - same as update
Biological - same as update, although I think that the Flamethrower should do friendly fire as IMO you can't control who the fire will burn or not burn. That way, the flamethrower can be powerful and yet if some idiot uses it and just hoses everything down with it, he can take out his teamates too. And please let the guy explode when killed by lerk spikes, doing damage to teamates as the spikes puncture the gas tank causing it to explode. Also should add to here the welder and the healspray.
Siege damage - Increased damage to structures, greatly reduced damage to armoured, reduced damage to unarmoured
Marines: MASC
Reasoning: Siege is meant for structures, but the splash damage should be reduced, so no more running by a building when it is sieged and getting killed in 1 shot by the splash.
This way, basic marines with LMGs (depending on ammo choice) still will have a big impact on battles, and skulks (depending on evolution) can still thrive in late game where AP ammo would seem to be the choice to take down the larger aliens, but are ineffective against skulks. Also, shotguns will be able to be either a very efficient skulk/structure killer or a tank killer, but not both, thus balancing it.
EDIT: Also what I would like to see is the Onos charge being able to knock down the sentries, thus disabling them until a marine picks it up, but not destroying them, so the Onos can still wreck base defences while not actually having to spend time destroying it all.
I don't need to reiterate the argument against hard counters in an RTS/FPS hybrid. We should, as much as possible, not make it impossible for the player to be able to do something because the game mechanics says so. A feature like this could add a new dimension to player skill, i.e., aiming for specific regions of an enemy.
I'm saying in real life, guns basically do the same thing. Thus, it's not very intuitive to a player that a pistol is "heavy" while a rifle is "normal" and a minigun, "puncturing", because they all just shoot bullets.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Adding different ammo types makes all guns the same and thus the strategic research a no brainer for the commander, unless you add ammo types to the commader upgrades, which then has the same result as researching weapons, but is just unnecessarily complex.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please explain. How would adding different ammo types make all guns the same? The guns are still different from each other soley due to their characteristics (ammo count, RoF, damage). A shotgun with the same ammo loaded as an LMG is still going to be better at killing Skulks, for example. However, now the player has to make a choice. Do I load my shotgun with flesh tearing ammo to take down Skulks with even greater effectiveness, or load up on armour smashing ammo to defend against the increasing number of Fades?
A marine who knows he is a bad shot might want flesh tearing ammo for his LMG to increase his chances of killing Skulks, and chances are he won't be accurate enough to do much to a skilled Fade if he has armour piercing ammo loaded. The reverse would be true of a skilled marine, who doesn't mind using armour piercing ammo against a Skulk, because his aim is good enough that he won't need many bullets to kill it. He will be very effective at destroying a Fade's armour, because he will make sure every shot hits. Thus, he probably wants armour piercing ammo.
Having the explicit-named-types-layer makes more sense when you have a few types each representing many attacks, but you have tons of damage types each representing 2-3 attacks. Why bother the player with it?
Im allways missing in ns1 when the teeth close.
Seriously poor little skulks get it tough enough.
Maybe when they are getting shot they can rage it up and do more damage.
Or just give them a shield. \o|
As a marine you could have the teammate ammo types displayed in the HUD I guess (although last we heard about the HUD, it was minimalistic), but how are the aliens supposed to keep track of anything? I doubt seeing different tracers is going to be enough, since at that point you're already taking the hurt big time.
---
I think most of the confusion should be avoidable by simple summaries on gun selection. For example:
Shotgun:
+ Good against armor
- Short range
If people refuse to take in any info, I don't know where the game can go anyway.
---
Parasite seems to be back. In NS it was a big deal in skulk's ability to scale and be somewhat useful even in lifeform filled late game, so bringing it doesn't seem at least harmful for the skulk's repertoire.
---
As in general, I definitely look forward to seeing the system in action. Of course it has got issues of its own too, but it's interesting even at this point.
As a marine you could have the teammate ammo types displayed in the HUD I guess (although last we heard about the HUD, it was minimalistic), but how are the aliens supposed to keep track of anything? I doubt seeing different tracers is going to be enough, since at that point you're already taking the hurt big time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The point for the different ammo type is that the focus is on the overall big picture, and not just for that battle. A train of heavy marines packing ap ammo may have just wiped out an onos train, only for the feedback to be passed along to other khraa players who then go unarmoured fades or skulks and wipe them out, causing the marines to feedback to the rest of the team to switch to hp ammo, at which then the khraa players, if smart enough, can guess that happening before the next battle and revert back to using armoured units. Of course, the whole thing is a gamble for both sides, so that would keep the game interesting throughout the whole round.
Also this doesn't make weapons all the same because, as someone has already said, they still excel within certain situations. So a shotgun is going to do much better up close than far away. All the ammo change does it make it more affective against a certain type of enemy up close. Where as a pistol is far better long range, and again the ammo only changes what it is affective against at that long range. So load it up that pistol with AP rounds and you can do a nice amount of damage to an Onos from far away before he gets close, but that skulk isn't going to be slowed down one bit before it closes the distance.
If you want a very, very basic example of this, <u>Planet Side</u> incorporated this with normal ammo type and armor piercing ammo type. You could carry both around, but if you encountered an armored enemy you had to hope you already had AP rounds in the gun or you had to try and buy enough time to switch the rounds. It worked very well, in it made basic weapons usable no matter the the advanced level of the enemy.
To give a signal of the type of ammo someone has loaded, you could just attach literal ammo models to the gun, the player, and/pr both and change the model and skin of the ammo according to what is selected. So normal rounds would be a standard dull grey, AP or what I'd call incendiary rounds would be a noticeable red, Puncture would be a noticeable blue, and ect. The model would be attached in the same place every time so all the players, aliens included wouldn't have to guess the marines ammo type.
I think this is a much better system because one it is how real guns operate so it makes the most sense to the majority of people, two it allows all weapons to be used in all situations and doesn't pigeon hole them into one situation, and three it adds a more customizable depth to the game but in a understandable way.
The possible equivalent to this for the aliens, if it is even needed, is having upgrade options for their attacks. But I don't know if this would even be needed.