Possible changes

First one looks like it has floating blocks. Each block needs to be resting at least partially on another block or the floor, so I am not sure I can do that one. I think you had a middle level which you transed out.

5th one looks like a semi-circle of 7 or 8 blocks with a number scattered on the second level. I think that each time you place it you might want to change the position of the second level blocks - but they can always be transed and individually spawned. Presumably this could be useful as it is bigger than the existing curved wall?

The last one is pretty similar to the high wall. You have 2 columns with a gap in the middle, and blocks along the top. Although the high wall has a block at the bottom level of the gap, it could easily be transed out. The odd blocks lying at the front look like they are individually placed just to try to fill the gaps - which will always occur to some extent.

I wonder if there is scope for a wider High Wall for filling wider passgaes - say with 2 wide blocks at each side?

Just curious: Can blocks be spawned rotated? Like standing on their side.

Szlat wrote:

Allow AMs to fire a projectile from one weapon, switch to another weapon, and get the magic from the new weapon applying to the projectile when it hits.

three words Vorpal Rocket Launcher

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

Szlat wrote:

Allow AMs to fire a projectile from one weapon, switch to another weapon, and get the magic from the new weapon applying to the projectile when it hits.

three words Vorpal Rocket Launcher

In the old days, 320 used to fire an avril, switch to the flak and alt fire, then switch to the vorpal lightning gun so the monster would get hit by 3 vorpals at once.

greg11 wrote:

Just curious: Can blocks be spawned rotated? Like standing on their side.

Not really, there is something wrong with the collision skeleton. They overlap too much.

Szlat wrote:

In the old days, 320 used to fire an avril, switch to the flak and alt fire, then switch to the vorpal lightning gun so the monster would get hit by 3 vorpals at once.

my concern is larger maps firing 5,6...10 rockets off and switching to a vorp 11 (or 22) that is a lot of potential damage (I'm loving the idea

) but could become an issue quickly

hehe ok can you make diffrent shaped blocks? examples

square,circle,triangle,octagon,L shaped blocks V shaped blocks ?stuff like that overall diffrent shapes i guess,

someone mentioned the barrels,. now could we possibly make it so we could use those barrels as bombs,big grenades? or depth charge like? i see they blow up im just curious can you add effect to certain types of barrels? could possibly go to my BIO-Mech class idea,

can you make a ceiling turret? like the cicada turret? that hangs under the ship? btw the missile turret idea is awsome szlat <hugs you>

you could always add a new weapon instead of makeing vorpals im game for whatever,people dont use vorpals like they used to, not many of the regs like before,

Some interesting ideas there.

My thoughts -

Over on Monster Mash we seem to have a very opposite problem -
Adrenaline Masters are the most powerful class, since they have the most powerful abilities with the least amount of scaling built-in. Once you purchase Loaded Artifacts you're just simply given items like Triple Damage, Globe of Invulnerability, and Lightning Rod. These items are instantly at "full power" unlike a Medic who must invest several hundred points into maxing out pets, or a Weapon Master with Loaded Weapons and Vampirism.

The way the MWM is given to AMs also turns them into more "Weapon Masters" than the Weapon Masters, since they have far more control over their arsenal, can easily max their weapons and then further enhance them beyond max.

I think, insofar as DruidsRPG may be intended to be a general purpose UT2004 RPG release, it's worth considering that the balance considerations experienced on DisastrousConsequences may not align with those experienced on a majority of RPG server configurations. In short, pretty much every RPG server I've played on has run with settings that empowered the Adrenaline Master (e.g. higher Weapon Speed and Damage Bonus, which feed Energy Leech and Adrenal Surge which feed artifacts) and made the ability to triple damage output, become invulnerable to damage, and hit infinite enemies in a radius "must have" powers.

In short, even though I primarily play / develop for Monster Mash, occasionally I do play on other servers, and I think it's worth thinking about trying to design in such a way that class balance scales across a wider range of settings.

Some fairly straightforward suggestions:

-Give AMs an ability which increases their adrenaline gain from [standard, non-modified] Adrenaline Pills. Same idea as Smart Healing, but actually useful. This would improve AM functionality on standard maps which generally have lower adrenaline values than maps that may be specifically designed for invasion.
-Give AMs an artifact to increase their adrenaline gain from adrenal drip by a certain amount (e.g. doubling it). Possible counterbalancing factors: Must remain moving to use this item, cannot use it while running any other artifacts (pretty obvious, at least how I'm seeing this implemented), and potentially increased damage taken while using it. This item would provide map-independent power to regain adrenaline, but disallowing its use with other powers makes it only a way to reduce the time in which an AM is "spent."

I see these types of abilities improving Adrenaline Masters in a way that brings up the low end power scale while [in theory] having little effect on the high point of the curve where AMs on other servers are functioning.

Anyway, to respond to some things more directly:

-I like the Energy Shield idea. I would do this as an artifact so it could be activated/deactivated. Undecided whether Drip/Leech would function regardless of if this were functioning.

-Regarding Engineer wall shapes (and potentially - Medic Pet Summons), I have been playing with using exec commands to toggle the artifact between different states. The idea would be quite easily applied to these examples so that you would only need one artifact to be given, and could simply use an artifact to toggle between different wall shapes / monsters. I know I personally despise "Artifact Spam" and find UT2004RPG's UI far too clunky at dealing with more than say, 10-12 artifacts.

Wail wrote:

The way the MWM is given to AMs also turns them into more "Weapon Masters" than the Weapon Masters, since they have far more control over their arsenal, can easily max their weapons and then further enhance them beyond max.

Yes, I agree. I think the WMs should have the best weapons, and AMs should use things like the triple and Double Modifier to get more power. But I am out-voted.

Wail wrote:

I think, insofar as DruidsRPG may be intended to be a general purpose UT2004 RPG release, it's worth considering that the balance considerations experienced on DisastrousConsequences may not align with those experienced on a majority of RPG server configurations...........In short, even though I primarily play / develop for Monster Mash, occasionally I do play on other servers, and I think it's worth thinking about trying to design in such a way that class balance scales across a wider range of settings.

I agree that we should be flexible where possible. A lot of the new stuff is configurable. But the older stuff has fixed values. The thing is DC deliberately doesn't have it's stat values too high in order to keep a balanced game. If you do set some values too high, then it will cause a shift in the balance. For example, if the stat maxes are very high, and the game is challenging for high level players, new players will not stand a chance as they will be too underpowered.

Wail wrote:

-Give AMs an ability which increases their adrenaline gain from [standard, non-modified] Adrenaline Pills. Same idea as Smart Healing, but actually useful. This would improve AM functionality on standard maps which generally have lower adrenaline values than maps that may be specifically designed for invasion.

Nice thought. However the health and shield bonuses apply to everyone, so perhaps these should?

Wail wrote:

-Give AMs an artifact to increase their adrenaline gain from adrenal drip by a certain amount (e.g. doubling it). Possible counterbalancing factors: Must remain moving to use this item, cannot use it while running any other artifacts (pretty obvious, at least how I'm seeing this implemented), and potentially increased damage taken while using it. This item would provide map-independent power to regain adrenaline, but disallowing its use with other powers makes it only a way to reduce the time in which an AM is "spent."

Why not just have more levels of drip? It is easy to give AMs adrenaline. But if you give them too much, as you say, they will globe+triple through the last wave. And in my books that has to be avoided. It is a very fine line.

Wail wrote:

I would do this as an artifact so it could be activated/deactivated. Undecided whether Drip/Leech would function regardless of if this were functioning.

I saw there were two ways this could work. As an artifact where it would take any damage before health, or as an ability where it would kick in at the last second to stop the person dying. I thought people would not use the artifact, as they would generally be saving adrenaline to use for something else - and if they were going into something really heavy then globe would be better. So I concluded the emergency shield would probably work best. Hence it has to be an ability. But perhaps kicking in at 10 health rather than 50.

Wail wrote:

-Regarding Engineer wall shapes (and potentially - Medic Pet Summons), I have been playing with using exec commands to toggle the artifact between different states.

If we had one artifact for vehicle summons, one for turrets, one for buildings etc then that would drastically reduce the list of artifacts and would generally make things better. I suppose the alternative would be to activate a menu that requested which vehicle etc.

see the usefull keybinds section. greg11 posted using a keybind txt file to select a specific artifact. I did the same and posted my examples

Szlat wrote:

Wail wrote:

-Give AMs an ability which increases their adrenaline gain from [standard, non-modified] Adrenaline Pills. Same idea as Smart Healing, but actually useful. This would improve AM functionality on standard maps which generally have lower adrenaline values than maps that may be specifically designed for invasion.
Nice thought. However the health and shield bonuses apply to everyone, so perhaps these should?

That's a possibility, but particularly with the way DC is set up - I don't see a huge need for an ability like this for the other classes.

Szlat wrote:

Wail wrote:

-Give AMs an artifact to increase their adrenaline gain from adrenal drip by a certain amount (e.g. doubling it). Possible counterbalancing factors: Must remain moving to use this item, cannot use it while running any other artifacts (pretty obvious, at least how I'm seeing this implemented), and potentially increased damage taken while using it. This item would provide map-independent power to regain adrenaline, but disallowing its use with other powers makes it only a way to reduce the time in which an AM is "spent."
Why not just have more levels of drip? It is easy to give AMs adrenaline. But if you give them too much, as you say, they will globe+triple through the last wave. And in my books that has to be avoided. It is a very fine line.

I think it could possibly be done through higher levels of Drip. Guess that really depends on a couple of factors. Buying say, 3-6 more levels of Drip versus getting an artifact that could just be added to LoadedArtifacts could be expensive.

Plus, I tend to favor the idea of actively used abilities over passive abilities, and as such you get the opportunity to build in conditionals like things I've mentioned that would make using this item useful - But not necessarily something a player is always going to be using. Adding a must-be-moving check, for example, would keep it from being used to camp somewhere and just endlessly build up adren. Since it's new and not Drip, you're not changing the rules on anyone.

Szlat wrote:

Wail wrote:

I would do this as an artifact so it could be activated/deactivated. Undecided whether Drip/Leech would function regardless of if this were functioning.
I saw there were two ways this could work. As an artifact where it would take any damage before health, or as an ability where it would kick in at the last second to stop the person dying. I thought people would not use the artifact, as they would generally be saving adrenaline to use for something else - and if they were going into something really heavy then globe would be better. So I concluded the emergency shield would probably work best. Hence it has to be an ability. But perhaps kicking in at 10 health rather than 50.

I don't see a reason why you couldn't specify the item to only kick in at a certain health level. Could potentially even make it player configurable if desired. But this is mostly my preference for active over passive abilities.

Szlat wrote:

Wail wrote:

-Regarding Engineer wall shapes (and potentially - Medic Pet Summons), I have been playing with using exec commands to toggle the artifact between different states.
If we had one artifact for vehicle summons, one for turrets, one for buildings etc then that would drastically reduce the list of artifacts and would generally make things better. I suppose the alternative would be to activate a menu that requested which vehicle etc.

Yeah - At this time I am only using this to toggle between two different states, although calling open a menu might be more sensible when talking about a number of choices. I do have some concerns about popping up menus on players' screens, though...

I have a keybind in the topic I described where I can switch between a shield blast and the pupee artifacts toggles between them

Szlat wrote:

.... So here is my list of what I am seriously considering:

Adrenaline Masters:

New ability. Energy Shield. If damage taken would take you below 50 health, the damage comes off your adrenaline first. So most of the time this ability does nothing, and only acts to try to stop your health going below 50. Might help AMs survive just that bit longer - if they haven't used all their adrenaline on the rod

Allow AMs to fire a projectile from one weapon, switch to another weapon, and get the magic from the new weapon applying to the projectile when it hits.

Beam. Reduce the timer down from 3 secs to 1 sec. I cannot remove the timer entirely or people will code a macro that just fires it 5 times - getting around the 100 damage limit in DM. Damage to be set to 7 per adrenaline rather than 6.

MegaBlast timer - reduce from 60 secs to 30 secs.

Slightly more xp per second from the Invulnerability sphere

Engineers:

New ability. Rapid Build. When maxed will half the time it takes to recover from building stuff. Once an Engineer dies, there is no chance of managing to rebuild a base in the later waves at the moment.

Add a extra wall structure. Low Wall. Four small blocks in a line.

Reduce the alt-fire strength from 20 down to 10, but increase the effectiveness against vehicles. So it will heal turrets etc slightly faster, but will damage monsters slower. Shield healing will be approx the same. This is how I should have coded it in the first place. The beam length will still be short.

Allow a third sentinel at level 100. In practice due to the points, this will mean an option of 3 defense sentinels - which tend to help everyone to some extent

Slightly reduce the no-damage timer on shield regen from 5 to 3 secs. 5 secs is a long time in a battle to not get hit

Slightly up the power of the Ball Turret from 45 to 50 to ensure it is slightly more powerful than the Energy Turret.

I thought about reducing the 'post-healing' delay on turrets before boosting and sharing xp, but decided against it. It felt like it would be rewarding people who just hid

I want to replace the Paladin with something else. But I don't know what yet. This is better dealt with in another thread. I am not sure Druid would want to use stuff from another mod, without explicitly getting the authors permission first

Medics:
No changes. At the moment, this is probably the highest xp scoring class, and probably the hardiest. But I can't bring myself to nerf it.

Weapon Masters:
No change yet. I am aware that high level WMs are perhaps a bit underpowered, but haven't decided on anything yet. I think more discussion is required. It might end up with increasing the power of Enhanced Damage as a possibility.

I have got the above changes done, and am currently in the testing phase, with the following modifications:

The energy shield kicks in at 10 health rather than 50

I have not changed the Eng Link Alt fire

The third defense sentinel is at level 130

No change to the turret healing delay

No change to the Paladin

For Weapon Masters Enhanced Damage Bonus is now 1.5% per level rather than 1%

In a turret the HUD now shows how many people are linking to you

Extra explanation. There was discussion about the Energy Shield being an artifact. However, running an artifact stops drip and leech working, and will use adrenaline each second. If players think they are going into a battle and are likely to be hit, globe will be more cost effective. So I have left it as an ability, that cuts in at the last second. However, I think I will play and test it for a while before deciding for definite.

And I haven't done anything about any extra wall shapes yet.

These changes are still in testing and not yet submitted. Please keep any comments coming.

I wish there was a way to turn "berserk" off and on.

(DC)DEMONSLAYER wrote:

I wish there was a way to turn "berserk" off and on.

BotFodder is the combo king. Perhaps he will feel tempted to look at it?