The Medic Gun

Would it be worth the effort to create a standalone healing weapon for Medics? I imagine a Link Gun Alt-Fire, perhaps with extended range. It worms around and latches on to a target and doesn't let go when your hand twitches, and it is constantly healing the target.

A way to standardize and universalize healing in the world of Invasion.

I imagine porting the resulting weapon to Shields for the Mechanic wouldn't be too difficult.

I've always liked this idea, however it was shot down by a few players (who shall remain nameless) because they dont always use the link gun to heal, and they use the special link gun to fight with as well...

I'm not opposed to the idea, but it will need a lot of discussion. So, discuss!

I never use the link gun to heal (projectiles + fastmoving players = hard to heal), as I prefer the minigun. But that's exactly the point is that a preference is afoot. Usually shock rifle, rocket launcher, minigun, or link gun, but it's still different.

Now, I was extremely bored, and decided to try making it. I have had previous experiences with the Link Gun alt-fire (and how I hate it), but I had to show it who's boss some day.

My current piece of crap is a Link Gun that has no alt-fire. Its primary fire is a straight blue beam. The beam will latch onto teammates. When broken off (range or angle) twice, it begins to act very crappily, and that is my current bug to fix.

Once I've fixed that, I then have to make it actually heal the target. Other than those two issues, it functions perfectly, though I'm sure I am going to figure out how to make the gun skin blue.

Once all that is done, I will have a perfect standalone healing weapon. Then I will have to figure out how to incorporate it with DruidsRPG, which, I'm sure, will be even more of a pain.

Any suggestions for features?

Once again, the purpose of this is not to make the link gun the standard weapon of healing, but *a* weapon the standard of healing. The fact that the plasma shaft is a very useful feature of the link gun simply makes it apt to the job of healing people. When healing with weapons, there are problems. Projectile weapons can very easily miss if the target it moving, and hitscan weapons are unsteady while following a target (due to our own hands). Onslaught coders saw this as a problem and made the shaft flexible, so that the player would have a margin of error and still be able to constantly repair their target, usually vehicles.

So, why not players? (They're smaller targets anyway; it'd be more useful.)

As long as I can still make other weps my healing weapon and I can still form link chains I have no problem with doing so.

Mach wrote:

As long as I can . . . still form link chains . . .

Kohan wrote:

. . . create a standalone healing weapon . . .

Kohan wrote:

Once again, the purpose of this is not to make the link gun the standard weapon of healing, but *a* weapon the standard of healing.

This is a new weapon. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Link Gun as far as function is concerned.

Mach wrote:

As long as I can still make other weps my healing weapon . . .

That does indeed defeat the purpose of

Kohan wrote:

A way to standardize and universalize healing in the world of Invasion.

But thank you for your input

.

The objection you're going to get is that most medics I know only use the Link Gun as their medic weapon on special cases.

I personally find myself mostly with the Flak. Sometimes the Rocket. If enough other medics are on, the mini or the link.

The key here is splash damage: without the assistance of someone shielded, you have no hope of healing yourself with the link. Even *with* the assistance of someone shielded, it's a crap shoot.

Agreed. Forcing medics to use a link for the medic weapon will mean they cannot heal themselves.
This will definitively cause medics to die more frequently, and so will not be perceived as a good change by most medics.

You could consider modifying your medic link so the other fire does do splash damage. A sort of exploding blue shock ball perhaps? Make it slow moving to limit the offensive potential. Then medics have the best of both worlds.

However, if you do go down the splash+shaft approach, for an infinite weapon, it may just be too powerful. You may need to limit the amount of damage it does to opponents.

Also, when I was doing the EngineerLink, I set the damage on the Alt-fire to be higher (20 instead of 9), so it would heal vehicles faster, but significantly reduced the distance (TraceRange 400 instead of 1100) to limit it's offensive use. You may want to consider the same.

And did you base it on the RPGLinkGun rather than the LinkGun?

Let me get a few things straight...

1. The Medic Gun will only heal people. It cannot deal damage to anything whatsoever.

2. The Medic Gun is not the Link Gun, for the fourth time.

3. The Medic Gun uses a plasma-shaft style approach because it allows a margin for error while the healer and healee are moving, allowing for more contiguous healing.

4. The Medic Gun will lock onto players of your team, and only that. Vehicles will not be affected in any way, shape, or form. (It's difficult to administer a hypodermic needle while someone's driving in a car and you're outside.)

5. If popular demand arises (I'm sure it will), a secondary self-healing fire can be added.*

6. The Medic Gun is a standalone weapon. Its own code causes it to heal, not any RPG code.

7. The Medic Gun would probably interface with the RPG, dealing with abilities and maximum health bonuses and all that jazz, apart from being standalone.

8. The plasma shaft the Medic Gun emanates is perpetually a light blue. This works in every way for Invasion; everyone is on the red team. It is also a nice healing color.

9. It is not possible to improve the power or speed of healing by linking to another healer; to heal someone faster, another Medic needs to shoot the healee, not the healer. In every case, what you shoot is healed (as long as they're on your team, of course), nothing more.

10. At the moment, The Medic has the range of the Link Gun, but due to previous methods having longer range, this will probably change. Rhyme somewhat intended.

* The visual effect would be a bright pretty gloss moving around your screen, as though you were surrounded by a blue force field, and you would be gaining health as you hold the button down. No splash damage, no projectiles, even. Just a visual effect and health.

Now, any other questions? It just seems like no one is actually reading the posts. Just 'Oh, Link Gun only for medics.'. That's all people seem to be hearing.

Okay - though I originally did misread one of your earlier messages, the self-healing issue (which you did kind of address in your most recent message) remains a major problem, until your self-heal alt-fire is implemented.

The next problem Medics are going to complain about is ammo. Their ability to do damage with the current infinite healing weapon is something they're not going want to loose. So if such a gun as your Medic Weapon was implemented, the medics would want the ability to get at least level 2 (possibly more) of Resupply. Otherwise, you're eliminating their ability to partake in combat and kill monsters on those many ammo-thin maps.

Many Medics insist that they get more XP from killing monsters than they do healing people. On the earlier levels, that's certainly true - until you've got level 3 LMed and 9 ExpH, you're not going to get XP from healing all that fast. Add to that the possibility of three or four medics on, stealing potential patients from you ...

If your weapon was implemented without addressing the issues of:

-- the loss of an infinite damage causing weapon
-- the loss of the ability to self heal

Medics probably wouldn't be very popular any more (I must say I prefer playing a 90ish AM than my 100ish M/MM these days).

I understand where the self-healing issue comes from, but I have never had a problem with it. Using a minigun is fine with me, and two people with Medic Miniguns theoretically can never die. But yes, self-healing will, as I said, probably be implemented.

As for the Infinite weapon, the Medics are sort of asking for it to be taken away. People would kill to have a guaranteed Infinite weapon for a mere 10 Adrenaline.

Medics should not be designed for combat. That is sort of the point. Weapon Masters have Basic Strengths (Loaded Weapons, Vampirism, Regeneration), Adrenaline Masters have Complex Strengths (Magic Weapons and Damage/Reduction boosting artifacts, along with other useful artifacts), and the Medic is the one behind them keeping them alive. I find that an honor in itself. I think many medics find healing more of a perk to the job rather than the whole point. And, frankly, that is just wrong.

As far as combat goes, Medics essentially deal with indirect combat. They have the ability to summon creatures (albeit relatively stupid, but hey) to do their bidding. I think it would be better suited to have Monster Mastery as a perk to being a Medic. I mean, it already is, for the most part, but the way things are put across, the Medic is more like a "Which do I want to do? Medic or Monster Master?". Medicology (new word) should be a given for Medics. If they want to take a Minor (so to speak) in Monster Mastery, they can do that. I'd explain my idea here, but I think it is better suited for another topic.

Anyway, yes. Continue discussion!

Okay, maybe I need to be a little more clear:

What you propose to do will drastically lower the average M/MM's XP rate when compared to other classes.

As part of your proposal, you should include options or a total plan as to how one would change the implementation of M/MM's to rebalance their XP rate relative to other classes. Please be sure to address the radical loss of healing based XP earning when multiple medics (say, 4 or 5, which in some cases is not unheard of) are on game.

Currently, pet monsters are insufficient: They are, as you noted, not the most skilled and sometimes loose focus even when they are being attacked. If monsters are going to be a major XP gaining factor in M/MMs (assuming M/MMs would loose much of their ability to do damage to monsters), something needs to be done to tweak their ability to survive through wave 6 for even high level M/MMs.

What I propose will lower the combatant Medic's XP rate. It isn't very difficult to increase the amount of EXP you get for healing. I actually suggest increasing the levels and decreasing the levelup points needed. At least, the point increase. It would be better to have 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 rather than 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, I think.

Anyway, the problem is easily solved. To solve the multi-medic problem, you could multiply the amount of EXP given by the number of medics on. At the same time, EXP could be thought to increase as there are less medics, because that lone medic has such a hard job.

Alright, how about a ratio is made of Medics to non-Medics, and figure out an ideal ratio, say, 1:4. So 20% of all players would be Medics, ideally. This would make the job the easiest. However, as you deviate from that ratio, the job becomes harder, or it becomes more scarce, going down and up in ratio respectively. So...

Code:

 EXP Multiplier = FMax(IR / (M / T), (M / T) / IR) * CPM;
 M = Medic Population;
 T = Total Population;
 IR = Ideal Ratio = 0.2;
 CPM = Constant Percent Multiplier = 1; // Definitely need to playtest this.

So, using this formula, the more Medics there are past 1:4, the more EXP you get, and the fewer Medics past 1:4 there are, the more EXP you get. If the ratio was 1/5, the EXPMultiplier would be 1. 1/10 results in 2, and 2/5 also results in 2. 3/16 is 1.066~, and so on. Of course, this formula would need to be playtested and tweaked, but the result, I think, will solve the problem.

I think a medic flak or rocket launcher is just fine as it is.

You can level up just fine healing IF you have experianced healing 9, and other wise your fine killing things. If you plan on removing a medic's main form of attacking, you need to do something to drastically improve the XP from healing. My medic with experianced healing 9 at most will get 30% of it's total XP on a map from healing. That is in the most ideal of circumstances too: only medic playing, lot's of other players at high levels with lots of health, and s relatively small map so the people are easy to keep track of.

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with the current way it's set up.

supertoast wrote:

I think a medic flak or rocket launcher is just fine as it is.

You can level up just fine healing IF you have experianced healing 9, and other wise your fine killing things. If you plan on removing a medic's main form of attacking, you need to do something to drastically improve the XP from healing. My medic with experianced healing 9 at most will get 30% of it's total XP on a map from healing. That is in the most ideal of circumstances too: only medic playing, lot's of other players at high levels with lots of health, and s relatively small map so the people are easy to keep track of.

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with the current way it's set up.

I agree. You can't hide out and stay on the run in every map, you have to have offensive capabilities. Most medics prefer the RL, flak or mini so not being able to use them as healing weapons would be a major drawback.

We would all love to have LA's as strictly mages who fight from afar, the LW as the front line fighters and engineers/medics in the background, but you can't have all that on the smaller maps we generally play.

Healing alone does not generate enough XP if you want to level at anywhere near a normal rate.

Forming link chains with other medics not only allows medics to heal more efficiently, but to stay alive and have some offensive power. Taking that away would be another blow to the XP a medic could get. I know this proposed medic weapon is not a link gun, but forming link chains relies on infinite healing weapons.

I think creating the medic gun would create more problems than it would solve. Furthermore, is there really a problem with the current situation of making healing weapons?

Remember the good old days when you could kill something without needing magic?

Something tells me they still exist.

Medics have offensive capabilities. Just not souped-up ones. They were not made to be souped-up. That's the point.

You all are complaining about so little EXP coming from healing. Did it not occur to you that that can be changed with only a few keystrokes?

Some of you complain about not having enough ammo. Where do you get ammo, normally? The map. If the map has scarce ammo, don't you think the mapper intended for it to be more difficult than the average map? If they didn't, they're just a crappy mapper. Find a better map.

On another note, the Medic Gun is working perfectly, aside from two minor aesthetic issues.