Team artifacts

I pm'd this to Druid, and he suggested I post it here. So here it is.

I like the idea of helping each other as a team. On one of the other forums, I mentioned about how you never see high level players protecting low level medics - they just get the health and go again. So I thought I'd try it.... and failed miserably. Medics can really help keep other players alive, but all LAs and LWs can do is kill the bugs first.

So I got to thinking about artifacts. All the artifacts just help the player. Ok, I know you can max weapons for other people, but in the heat of the battle, the globe/triple/double etc just help the player, not his team.

So I thought about a team version of the globe of invulnerability.This artifact generates a sphere at the point initiated. Sphere is approx the size of a small room. The initiator gets invulnerability, exactly as the globe would give it. Any other players within this sphere are also Invulnerable, until the sphere is cancelled or they step out of the sphere. The idea being that the LA can then use his adrenaline to help protect others. Although the adrenaline goes fast! The exact radius and rate of adrenaline consumption are the balancing issues. I also thought it would be good to give a token amount of xp to the LA player to reward them for using the "team sphere" rather than the "self globe". Just something different to expand players options. So, I have coded it and am busy testing it at the moment, but suggestions gratefully received. Once it is finished, I will hand the code over to Druid, so he can incorporate it, if he is interested.

I am thinking next of doing a healing one. This however ought to be for medics rather than LAs. Should it be just automatically given to medics, or should it be an extra skill they can buy?
The idea again would be a sphere size of a small room. Any players inside the sphere essentially get their health boosted, just as if they were boosting. The exact boost rate and adrenaline consumption rate again would need to be balanced. It would take into account the maximum that medic can heal to, and would probably not boost health past the normal limit if the player is boosting themselves. Should it boost armour? Probably not. Again reward healing with xp.
The main reason for this one was when I was playing as a medic, if you don't get a triple you haven't really got anything to spend your adrenaline on.

If they were both skills, it would be possible to have multiple levels, which increased the sphere radius. Suggestions?

Other types of team spheres would be possible. However, there may difficulties on catching these types within the NetDamage implementation. bGodmode was easy, and adding extra health is easy. Implementing protection or extra damage may be more difficult.

I suppose this leads on to thoughts about players being able to give health or adrenaline to each other. It would be nice to have a key which would take 25 health off you and drop a 25 health pack. Or drop 25 adrenaline as an adrenaline pack. If a LA was running a sphere of invulnerability, players could then throw adrenaline at him to keep it going. Or LAs could throw adrenaline at a medic to keep a healing globe running. Just a thought. Not worth it, unless there are team focused artifacts.

Hey Szlat you might look at hooking into the mechanic by which a player can alt fire link gun to another. Maybe when they're running one of these artifacts, you let the players link to them and share the adrenaline burden.

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

Hey Szlat you might look at hooking into the mechanic by which a player can alt fire link gun to another. Maybe when they're running one of these artifacts, you let the players link to them and share the adrenaline burden.

Would that be in all cases when they are linked, or just when one is running the sphere?

If you are thinking about all cases, should they also share health? And are you thinking about it just draining adrenaline equally for all linked people, or the adrenaline gets redistributed evenly? So if a player with 200 health and 20 adrenaline links to a player with 20 health and 200 adrenaline, then they both immediately end up with 110 health and 110 adrenaline? Would players prefer this as a general feature of the link alt-fire?
(EDIT: allowing health to be shared would have the side effect of allowing medics with links to heal themselves by alt-firing to someone else, and getting half the bonus back. I think I have reservations about the health sharing - there is too much scope for low health players to 'steal' health off other players. Perhaps the same applies to adrenaline - LWs running around pinching adrenaline off LAs to power the triple? So, as you suggest, it would have to be just giving adrenaline down the link, and not taking anything. )

I'll have a look and think. It may be too far buried in the code to change easily.
I see two potential problems with the sphere.
Firstly, it is not immediately obvious who is running the sphere. I have made the sphere static and not move with the initiator, otherwise it is too difficult for other players to keep within it, especially on titan waves.
Secondly, as well as the healing and invulnerability spheres, I also did a double damage sphere (setting udamage). And what's the point in giving them double damage if they have to link to the initiator?