Engineer power

Regarding this thread:http://www.disastrousconsequences.com/dcforum/posts/list/30/4017.page

Szlat wrote:

Thanks for posting that Ratar. Let's keep an eye on how it goes. I deliberately didn't touch the rod, because as you said, it helps others as well as yourself.
Looks like we might also need to keep an eye on these level 44 engineers tho Perhaps nerfing Dracos is what's required after all? Was it mainly sentinel kills or mainly link gun?

Dracos wrote:

Since I dont have any sents besides defensive at 44. It was mostly alt-fire with the link. I usually just charge right up to a monster and run right through him

I have to admit this method really works.
I find that the link's alt-fire kills quicker than the shield gun.
It may be possible that the link alt-fire is too powerful. (See below)
On the other hand: Engineers tend to focus on only using their link gun. They don't get resupply, and generally hold off on putting alot of points into max ammo. When someone is handing out magic weps I generally only pick them up to help distribute them or hold them for later if anyone needs them. I feel as though that my engineer link gun is more powerful than a piercing wep...but of course it is tough to do a side by side comparision.

There is a lot of talk about such and such class is more powerfull. How does one measure the power of a class?
I think I will start a new thread to discuss this, but I would like to point out that as an engineer I can play a couple of different ways:

1) Go for high scores: If I make a ball turret and a couple of other players are linking me, I can rack up a pretty high score. If I keep a sentinel out, it is even higher. I feel that the lightning sent steals kills, which may need to be looked at. ( If player with a slow fire weapon like a avril can do majority of the damage, and my lightning sent finishes it off, I get the points)

2) Go for exp: By linking a players turret I can rack up a good amount of exp and not get any points. Elite used to get all of the low level engineers to link his turret...we would get a ton of exp and he would get a ton of points.

3) Play support: Focusing on keeping other players shields up and using def sents to keep the team alive. Recently the def sents were changed to give exp for destroying projectiles. This should help motivate more engineers to play this strategy. One neat thing with this is a player could get some exp from healing shields if they are aggressive with it (and the map isn't full of engineers.) By linking/shield healing a player constantly in higher waves you can basically make them invincible (of course the titan bounce makes this difficult.) If you link a player that has a couple of levels in shields up, you can rack up a decent amount of exp.

Things to look into:
Is the linkgun too powerful?
It looks like EngineerLinkFire sets the damage to 20 where 9 is the standard damage...maybe this should be dropped down to 13-15

Szlat, while looking at the code:
I thought that maybe the code was increasing the damage a second time when Super.NewAdjustTargetDamage is called.
After looking further I noticed that the Min and Max modifier =0
If so, what is all of this for:
Code:

 		Damage = Max(1, Damage * (1.0 + DamageBonus * Modifier));
 		Momentum *= 1.0 + DamageBonus * Modifier;

Since the modifier=0 then what is the point of doing these calculations?
This should be all thats needed.
Code:

 		Damage = Max(1, Damage);

Since Damage is an integer then I don't even think you need this max statement since this block only is executed if damage>0.
If I am wrong and the modifier can be non-zero, then we run into a different issue of damage being adjusted twice...once here and again in the super class.
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For the linking turrets I am having trouble finding the code for it, but I wonder if maybe imposing a limit on the number of linked players when calculating the turrets damage. (If 5 players are linking a turret, only factor in 3 of them instead of the full 5.) All players linking should still get a share of the exp even if the team doesn't benefit from it.

greg11 wrote:

Is the linkgun too powerful?
It looks like EngineerLinkFire sets the damage to 20 where 9 is the standard damage...maybe this should be dropped down to 13-15

This is required to allow Engineers to heal turrets,vehicles etc faster.
This gives the Alt-fire a damge/sec of 20 / 0.12 = 166 damage per sec.
The normal link fire has a damage of 30 / 0.2 = 150 damage per sec. (for some reason I thought the link projectile fires at 5.5 times per sec - wonder why?)
So the Eng link beam is slightly more powerful than the projectile fire, but not by much.
However, to compensate, the range for the beam has been reduced from 1100 to 400, so only about 1/3 the length.

greg11 wrote:

Szlat, while looking at the code:
I thought that maybe the code was increasing the damage a second time when Super.NewAdjustTargetDamage is called.

In RW_EnhancedInfinity, this is done in AdjustTargetDamage. In RW_EngineerLink, the AdjustTargetDamage is overriden, so the damage bonus is only done in the NewAdjustTargetDamage. The modifier is currently zero, but the code is there in case anyone subclasses it later and ups the modifier.

greg11 wrote:

For the linking turrets I am having trouble finding the code for it, but I wonder if maybe imposing a limit on the number of linked players when calculating the turrets damage. (If 5 players are linking a turret, only factor in 3 of them instead of the full 5.) All players linking should still get a share of the exp even if the team doesn't benefit from it.

Code locations. The healing of the turret is controlled in the HealDamage function of the relevant turret class. This maintains a list of people linked to the turret, and checks when damage was last healed.
The individual weapon fire for the turret checks that healing hasn't occured in the last half second, and if so increases it according to the number of links. So no 5 times limit.
Note that you only get xp for linking to a turret and increase the damage if you are an engineer.

So if you get 9 engineers linking to a single turret, it will do 10 times damage. However, you are unlikely to get that many engineers on at once, or linking to the same turret. And if all 10 engineers were firing their links out, they would be doing 10x damage, so why not through the turret? This was to encourage engineers to get out of the turret and let other people in. Also note that if 10 people are there, then all the monsters will also be there (until killed), so the turret will be getting a lot of damage. Which means it will not be getting the damage bonus as the links will be healing instead.

If everyone thinks this is too high, or should be capped, then it could be reduced. Obviously if everyone did link to a single turret, it would allow one really high score, but that would be a team score and could not really be counted as an individual score.

(note that the link turret will fit in with the normal link rules that anyone can link to it and get xp, with the maximum of 5. But we do not use the link turret)

Eh, i think the alt-fire on the link is fine. You give up range for a little bit more damage on it. Plus if you do what I like to do, the bonzai method, its a bit reckless and dangerous. Cant really go toe to toe with multiple warlords as an bonzai engineer as there just a bit less fragile then AM's but no where near Medics and WM's in that regard. A group of warlords can chew through the shields and your health really quickly. Really its just another style of play.

greg11 wrote:

I feel as though that my engineer link gun is more powerful than a piercing wep...but of course it is tough to do a side by side comparision.

The primary fire from the Engineers link will always be lower than that from a piercing +6.

For the beam fire, the Engineers link does 20 compared to the 9*1.3 = 11.7. However, the piercing effect of the link kicks in as the monsters get harder. So when the 20 gets knocked down to 11.7 or less. If the Engineer has 80 DB, then the monster will need 171 DR, which requires level 48. So wave 16 when the lowest level player is level 64. So most of the time, the Engineers link will do more damage with the beam.

However, note that since the standard running speed is 440 units per sec, the piercing link will be in range (1100-400)/440 = 1.6 seconds earlier, and so will have done over 160 damage before the shorter beam contacts.

So, ignoring DB/DR,
a skaarj 150 health the piercing kills before the engineer is in range.
A warlord 500 health takes the piercing 500/(11.7*9) = 4.7 secs, the eng link 1.6+(500/(20*9)) = 4.3 secs
A titan 900 health takes piercing 900/(11.7*9) = 8.5 secs, the eng link 1.6+(900/(20*9)) = 6.6

However, as the titans go up in DR, the eng link will do increasingly less damage.

Dracos wrote:

Eh, i think the alt-fire on the link is fine. You give up range for a little bit more damage on it. Plus if you do what I like to do, the bonzai method, its a bit reckless and dangerous. Cant really go toe to toe with multiple warlords as an bonzai engineer as there just a bit less fragile then AM's but no where near Medics and WM's in that regard. A group of warlords can chew through the shields and your health really quickly. Really its just another style of play.

agreed shield regen maxed helps

and is does take some skill to master this style

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

agreed shield regen maxed helps and is does take some skill to master this style

Ya, I maxed Shield Regen by around level 30 or so. Really its not all that expensive to get and pretty much always grants an extra 150 effective health and a regen rate of 7.5 a sec after 10 seconds.

I do have a question Szlat though about the link gun in general. Does Weapon Speed also modify the alt-link fire as well to .08s or is it always a hit every .12s. (0.12/(1+0.5))

Dracos wrote:

I do have a question Szlat though about the link gun in general. Does Weapon Speed also modify the alt-link fire as well to .08s or is it always a hit every .12s.

It changes it. With a non-infinite weapon you can time how fast you run out of ammo.

Szlat wrote:

In RW_EnhancedInfinity, this is done in AdjustTargetDamage. In RW_EngineerLink, the AdjustTargetDamage is overriden, so the damage bonus is only done in the NewAdjustTargetDamage. The modifier is currently zero, but the code is there in case anyone subclasses it later and ups the modifier.

Looking at it again (A year later) I don't see why super.AdjustTargetDamage is called.
this occurs in RW_EngineerLink.AdjustTargetDamage:
Code:

 if (Damage < (OriginalDamage * class'OneDropRPGWeapon'.default.MinDamagePercent)) 
 			Damage = OriginalDamage * class'OneDropRPGWeapon'.default.MinDamagePercent;

then again in RW_EnhancedInfinity.
Calling super seems wasteful.
also I think using max would be better for resources.

Szlat wrote:

So if you get 9 engineers linking to a single turret, it will do 10 times damage. However, you are unlikely to get that many engineers on at once, or linking to the same turret.

How about now?

Isn't there a way to increase the damage when linking a turret, vehicle, etc. then lower it back to default when not linking?