Further questions on engineer class

Szlat I have always been having questions in the game about the engineer class and since i don't want to bother you when your playing I will post them here as follows:

I have already mentioned that the engineers do not get xp in deathmatch, onslaught, or any game types where you have to kill eachother from any sentinel. Is this a bug or is it programmed that way?
I have a medic and everytime I spawn pets i get xp from their kills as if it were me killing them, is there a way to fix it for the engineers also?

Another question is: How come engineers don't get xp from giving shield to pets?
Is it that people think it would give too much xp to engineers, but then again we only get level 3 shield healing while medics get level 9?

Oh and you already know about the ball turrets and the null queens...

I don't want to be bugging you it's just that i see it that it might be of your concern. And thanks for your help.

Elite wrote:

Szlat I have always been having questions in the game about the engineer class and since i don't want to bother you when your playing I will post them here as follows:

Appreciated.

Elite wrote:

I have already mentioned that the engineers do not get xp in deathmatch, onslaught, or any game types where you have to kill eachother from any sentinel. Is this a bug or is it programmed that way?
I have a medic and everytime I spawn pets i get xp from their kills as if it were me killing them, is there a way to fix it for the engineers also?

In the early days, if you spawned a sentinel in deathmatch it would target you as well. At least that problem no longer exists. I am not sure why you do not get xp, I will investigate. I thought there was another post about this problem, but I can't find it. Is this definitely the case in team games as well as individual DM games?

Elite wrote:

Another question is: How come engineers don't get xp from giving shield to pets? Is it that people think it would give too much xp to engineers, but then again we only get level 3 shield healing while medics get level 9?

I have specifically put code in there to ensure you do not get xp from healing pets. I can't remember exactly why, but I think it was as you suggest - engineers would benefit too much. Shield healing is meant to be just an added extra for Engineers - their main xp should come from turrets/sentinels/vehicles.
Likewise, I agree medics can get 10% as xp where as Engineers are limited to 3%. But this is because healing is a medic's main function. It would be unfair to let Engineers have sentinels to do the killing, while they ran around and got as much xp healing as a medic would. (Plus the EngLink heals shields faster than a medic weapon does health)

Elite wrote:

Oh and you already know about the ball turrets and the null queens...

Change submitted to cvs that should fix it for all turrets and sentinels. I couldn't actually duplicate the turret exploding from poison queens, so cannot guarantee it is fixed. However, when the null effect finishes, it sets the Physics to None rather than Rotating, which I think may have caused the problem. So the null no longer affects turrets and sentinels.

Elite wrote:

I don't want to be bugging you it's just that i see it that it might be of your concern. And thanks for your help.

Please, if you see things which appear wrong please let me know. I do not guarantee being able to do anything about them, but if I do not know about them, then no chance.

Also will the paladin ever be fixed, because Ive been reading some messages posted earlier on the forums about very low fps(lag) due to spawning the paladin in some maps?

http://disastrousconsequences.com/dcforum/posts/list/3815.page

While in other maps like "Sae" the paladin doesn't affect the fps at all...

As greg posted, the paladin was an added extra from the editors choice bonus pack. And the goliath never had any problems with fps but i do agree was overpowered.

Any way to change it for the paladins maybe? Or will it keep on being this way...?

Sorry, can't help. The choice about what you get at what level is down to the configuration, so is whatever Druid sets it as. Druid is also the one who added the Paladin support, so it is definitely up to him when it gets removed.

As we all know engineers rely on their shield blast to survive just like medics with their healing blast, but there seems to be a bug I'm not sure, maybe just with the engineers because of their constant shield or might also be other classes, i don't really know. Somewhere in between when i was playing i experienced that the monsters, when they attacked me, cut right through my shield as if they had a piercing weapon. And the funny thing was, yes it was a late wave, but the low level players were still alive. How can i survive when i keep supplying myself with shield blasts but it doesn't protect me at all from the monsters? I just wish i had some proof or knew how it was started so i could better tell you and you might know what the problem might be.

Because when you start playing everything is normal, its just something random that affects it that causes the change, and even if you die and respawn the bug continues.
So I don't know the problem that starts it, I just know that the bug exists.

Haven't heard this one reported before. Has this happened a number of times, or just once?

When it goes wrong, is it all monsters that cut through your shield - so your health goes down but your shield remains constant? - or is it just some types of attack that cut through, whilst others still decrease the shield?

No monsters have Piercing fire. Poison attacks will bypass the shield and take directly off the health. But that is the only monster one I can think of (apart from the ultima bunny).

I think while the shield is above 100, it should absorb all normal damage. Below 100, damage gets split between the shield and your health. But what you are saying is your shield remains above 100 and your health goes down?

You mentioned that you kept doing shield blasts - but you wouldn't have done that if your shield was still maxed. So your shield must have been going down?

And just to check - you weren't using a Rage weapon were you?

On my engineer i have 250 max shield, and yes every time i got hit, my health would go down and only a very few points of shield would also go down with it. That is why i would do shield blast, thinking that if i keep my shield over 250 my health would not be affected but somehow it is. And all the monsters seem to cut through my shield, i even died testing it with still over 200 shield.

And it seems to happen quite often, but don't know why i know the poison queen is suppose to do that but i sometimes see normal skaarj cut through it too... and also any monster can cut through it.

Some of the monsters do piercing damage, the little ice guys with the arrow like blast first of all.

In fact, I am pretty sure that there is a bug related to piercing and the healing blast where if the blast goes off as the piercing is still going off through the player, the medic gets a amount of experience that is abnormal.

I thought that I saw it happen a while back and have been trying to duplicate it so that I could report it but have not been able. Maybe it don't happen and I just imagined things.

I was playing monster assault today and was wondering how for medics the pets always follow the owners, and an idea hit me, i know you disabled the sentinels being mounted on tanks but for monster assault wouldn't it make it more fair since building somewhere and then having to build at another location after the checkpoint is reached is kinda of a hassle. Just an idea...

Also when i was playing death match with my engineer i seemed to get damaged every time i shot with my own paladin( using the repulsion type nuke the paladin has). Every time i shot i got -1 on my shield. And it was not retal from another player because i made sure, i tested it when no one was around. It did not seem to affect the health of the tank but instead my shield.

Regarding the shields:
I checked to see if there was an issue with shieldblast and the way shields are normally handled...I was suspecting an issue with smallshield amount could cause elites problem, but I didn't find anything related to that.
I did notice something else though:
The way xPawn determines if a small shield was picked up is by the amount of shield given (50)
Lets use Elite as our specimen. If his shields are >50 and he gets injured, or he grabs a small shield, his small shield strength will be 50. Now he boosts his shield to 250. Then takes 50 damage...his shieldstrength is 200 with his smallshieldstrength=50 still. Now when he sheildblasts he wont get any shield because the function CanUseShield thinks he is picking up an already picked up small shield, and returns 0.
see below for code.

I propose in ShieldBlastCharger.DoHealing a check be made for if ShieldGiven == 50
Code:

if (CurShield < MaxShield)
 					{
 						ShieldGiven = Min(MaxShield - CurShield, ShieldGiven );
 
 //Hack to allow sheildblast to add 50 to shields
 if (ShieldGiven==50)
 {P.AddShieldStrength(25);
 P.AddShieldStrength(25);
 }
 else
 	P.AddShieldStrength(ShieldGiven);

in xPawn:
Code:

function int CanUseShield(int ShieldAmount)
 {
 	ShieldStrength = Max(ShieldStrength,0);
 	if ( ShieldStrength < ShieldStrengthMax )
 	{
 		if ( ShieldAmount == 50 )
 			ShieldAmount = 50 - SmallShieldStrength;
 		return (Min(ShieldStrengthMax, ShieldStrength + ShieldAmount) - ShieldStrength);
 	}
     return 0;
 }
 
 
 function bool AddShieldStrength(int ShieldAmount)
 {
 	local int OldShieldStrength;
 	OldShieldStrength = ShieldStrength;
 	ShieldStrength += CanUseShield(ShieldAmount);
 	if ( ShieldAmount == 50 )
 	{
 		SmallShieldStrength = 50;
 		if ( ShieldStrength < 50 )
 			ShieldStrength = 50;
 	}
 	return (ShieldStrength != OldShieldStrength);
 }

Grizzled_Imposter wrote:

Some of the monsters do piercing damage, the little ice guys with the arrow like blast first of all.

I don't see how the ice kralls do piercing damage
Like Szlat mentioned the poison attacks bypass shields, so this could be the queens or the green bugs

greg11 wrote:

I did notice something else though:
The way xPawn determines if a small shield was picked up is by the amount of shield given (50)..... Now when he sheildblasts he wont get any shield because the function CanUseShield thinks he is picking up an already picked up small shield, and returns 0.

Well spotted.
I thought I had got around that by setting the MinHealing to 100, but forgot about the situation where the player is 50 less than their maximum.
What you have proposed will work better. However, I think instead I will change ShieldBlastCharger to remove the reduction to 50
Code:

 ShieldGiven = max(1,(healingScale * (MaxHealing-MinHealing)) + MinHealing);
 
 if(ShieldGiven > 0)
 {
 	CurShield = P.GetShieldStrength();
 	MaxShield = P.GetShieldStrengthMax();
 	if (CurShield < MaxShield)
 	{
 		// ShieldGiven = Min(MaxShield - CurShield, ShieldGiven );  take out check so never pass in 50
 
 		P.AddShieldStrength(ShieldGiven);

Since the xPawn code already ensures that the increase is limited to the maximum, there is no need for me also to do the checking. So if I just pass through the ShieldGiven in the range 100-500, then everything should go through smoothly.

Grizzled_Imposter wrote:

Some of the monsters do piercing damage, the little ice guys with the arrow like blast first of all.

I don't see how the ice kralls do piercing damage
Like Szlat mentioned the poison attacks bypass shields, so this could be the queens or the green bugs

My mistake, they don't do piercing, they do penetrating, I always get the two confused and I was tired...

Szlat wrote:

Since the xPawn code already ensures that the increase is limited to the maximum, there is no need for me also to do the checking. So if I just pass through the ShieldGiven in the range 100-500, then everything should go through smoothly.

I think that is the best way to go.