Medic and Engineer inf weapons are too powerful

DrNathan wrote:

I think that if you take away the medics ability to fight then they will only hide out of the way and because they weren't in the fight at all then they will be the only ones left on a wave and will also die from the lack of means to defend themselves.

I really am not intending to take away their ability to fight, but the infinite weapons have to go.

Jefe wrote:

An option to change and/or vote for multiple options would be good now that the options have changed several times.

Yeah I agree, except that in this case, they're just some suggestions on what we should do.

ok, i tried to give a different perspective, anyway, i feel im an open mind guy, and not a box shaped head, so i can give a suggestion..

for engis,
1) link still does the same damage, and link beam is restored to the natural lenght, but no inf ammo, but resupply 1 , now if an engi is linking a turret, car, or sentinel his ammo do not decrease. it only decrease by shooting to monsters and such..

2)link does same damage link beam stays as now, but no inf ammo, but resupply 1 (for free only for the link) , now if an engi is linking a turret, car, or sentinel his ammo do not decrease. it only decrease by shooting to monsters and such..

3)link does same damage. no inf weap, resupply 2 or 3 ( for free only in the link gun) and with the posibility to add more resuply but only to the link..

4) link goes normal, same damage the normal lenght of the link, no inf, resupply 1, and can run berzerker

5) link goes normal, same damage the normal lenght of the link, no inf, resupply 2, and cant run berzerker

6) link does almost no damage or not damage at all, the beam is extended. no ammo is used, but when two engis link, the power is increased, and if a engi is link another engi, insted of the normal power boost he recive more boost to the damage.

those are some possible options

for medics

1) medics spawn with 10 adren, his medical weapon heals "x"% more but no inf ammo, but resuply 2 and the damage to monsters is decreased

2)medics spawn with 10 adren, his medical weapon heals "y"% more and gain more exp by healing, but no inf ammo, resuply 1.

3) medics heals "z"% more, gain a hell lot more exp by healing, ammo is counted, and no resupply but if lets say they have 10 ammo they can get 50 ( five times more ammo than normal, and of course each weave ammo is restored to by half ( in my example if ton is carring a flak and the normal ammo is 80 shells, for any class, he can hold 400 shells, of course he only respawn with less shells.. now if he waste all his ammo he can take the ammo by running all the map.. the next wave his ammo is restored to lets say 180 ammo

4) medics do no damage with medic weap, but wep is infinite and medics gain a loooot of exp by healing, ( they arent carring all the weapon thats a disadvantage)

i will continue later with more solutions

If that things that I and many other people like Hatter and Wail said before are difficult to code, there is another idea:
Make these weapons being not affected by berserk, weapon speed bonus and other bonuses, but leave infinite attribute.
Because staying out of base (spawned/ghosted) with no weapon or ammo and so not being able to protect yourself isn't good.
P.S. I understand, that many players force themselves (rush) out of the base, but why because of them others would suffer?

OK following my own advice (see AM discussion long ago) I'm going to add my 2 cents as far as solutions go (no arguments for now

)

1: how about eng link that only has secondary fire ,this would eliminate link spam
2:make Medic weapons with resupply instead of truly infinite , this would prevent constant firing of Medic weapons
3:reduce damage done to monsters by say 25% and increase healing value by say 25% , this would make the medic weapons more effective as healing tool and less effective as a offensive weapon
4:I like the idea of no adren bonus for killing sprees while using these particular weapons ,but am not sure how easy the coding would be

I'm asking that we don't handcuff the medics offensive ability too much
as with the addition of engineers we have MUCH more camping (for lack of a better term) than I'm comfortable with and we don't need more people huddled in the "base" than are already there

along with these ideas I think Medics and Engineers should be given resupply to maybe level 2 depending on which ones are used of course

after all this I do believe the Medic class is a very well balanced class in comparison to others (AM,Eng) and small tweaks maybe needed ,but as a class (in my experience) it has strengths and weaknesses that put it (maybe too) close to the MW class in terms of balance
I believe that the medic class is probably the most important one one this server ,when played by a person who is aware that others rely on them

thanks Dru for being concerned about the balance on the server it's good to have you back

this might not help to the cause but... today i was doing nothing, then i said to my self " lets make a medic" i start from the scratch and i can see that they need ... and here is what i got

.. i swarmed enemys with shells, rockets and combos.. and for a lvl 20 i got 800 exp and over 1k exp...

now yes inf wep helped a lot.. but in the other hand healing team members helped none... i mean i could played in the no healing style and i would get the same exp.. exp for healing is wrong.. and thats what made me start to killing everything in sight...

So is it available to get no exp from killing monsters by these weapon and letting them stay infinite?
P.S. I don't know how do I level up a new engi, but this would help in tough situations.

MrAndrew wrote:

So is it available to get no exp from killing monsters by these weapon and letting them stay infinite?
P.S. I don't know how do I level up a new engi, but this would help in tough situations.

dont think is a good idea, because if the medic die, and ghost and overrun by lava skaajars, he must make it by killing em..

I am coming into this one rather late.

Medic healing and eng healing weapons need to be infinite so they can always heal. If Druid says they are causing too much network overhead, then we have to reduce their usage.

First question - Druid, does the eng alt fire whilst linking turrets cause lag, or is it just the primary fire that is the problem?

I have always been of the opinion that the medic's and engineer's custom infinite weapons should be reserved for what they are meant for, and should not be good offensive weapons. So I would say

Leave them infinite

Reduce their offensive ability to somewhere between 50% and 75% of current damage against enemies. This will encourage medics to use other weapons

I agree with RoadKill that to help balance that we should increase the healing rate of the medic weapon, to bring it closer to the rate at which the eng link heals

Allow medics and engineers to buy resupply 2

Other suggestions that I like are

limiting the number of engineers that can link to a turret, so say after 4 engineers no more damage improvement occurs

Other players beside medics and engineers berserk the link on titan waves. They can berserk for extended periods of time due mainly to the adrenaline bonus given by the killing sprees. I suggest (big nerf to all classes, but will hit the high levels most) entirely removing the adrenaline bonus from the sprees and just have the xp bonus. Or at least reduce the bonus

we could subclass the link gun so it fires less frequently but does more damage on each shot?

As a totally separate consideration for medics, we could scrap the medic weapon completely, and have it so that anyone close to a medic gets automatically healed say by 10 a second - provided the medic isn't firing a weapon. How can he be healing people if he is fighting? This of course would include the medic himself.

And while we are at it, has anyone suggested nerfing the rod recently?

YES Szlat, I think the rod should be gone not nerfed. Its free XP with no effort as soon as I build up my adren I push a button and boom XP for doing nothing.

BigDaddy wrote:

YES Szlat, I think the rod should be gone not nerfed. Its free XP with no effort as soon as I build up my adren I push a button and boom XP for doing nothing.

started a new thread here -- > http://www.disastrousconsequences.com/dcforum/posts/list/0/4494.page#40556
just to stay on topic

First off let me note that I've been pretty sick the last couple of days so forgive me if I get anything wrong or am unclear.

I want to bring up a point concerning "pseudo infinite" weapons. Basically, at some level of Resupply X the amount of ammo regenerated via Resupply approaches the Weapon's Maximum Fire Rate Y and the weapon becomes "pseudo infinite" in that it is impossible (or nearly impossible) to ever run out of ammo for this weapon.

This actually became a very annoying issue on Monster Mash in the past when Adrenaline Masters (and to a lesser extent, WMs) discovered that they could utilize a bug to gain multiple copies of the same weapon (e.g. 3 Miniguns) and Resupply treated each instance of the weapon separately so they received multiple times their Resupply skill level for that weapon. This highlighted to me exactly how powerful Resupply is by default (and IMO how it is silly with all of the other class perks they have that WMs and AMs would get exclusivity on this skill in Druids200, or even that they should have superior Resupply at all.)

Anyway, running some basic numbers:

Rocket Launcher
Fire Rate: 0.9
Adjusted Fire Rate (at 50 WS): 0.6 (0.9 / 1.5)
Resupply (4): 5 ammo per pulse (1 + 4 [* default.MaxAmmo/100])
Ammo expended per pulse: 5 (3 / 0.6)

So right there that indicates to me that every single WM or AM of sufficient level is running around with a pseudo infinite Rocket Launcher. The only mitigating factor here is Berserk which could result in running out of ammunition, but if you're a WM or an AM you are pretty much guaranteed to have all of the weapons (either via Loaded Weapons or Denial) anyway so you're always going to have something to use while that one recharges.

The following weapons are also pseudo infinite at Resupply level 4:

Mine Layer - pseudo infinite at Resupply 3.
Flak Cannon - Primary fire is pseudo infinite at Resupply 4 (it's actually possible to run out here, but it's vanishingly small), secondary is pseudo infinite at Resupply 3.
Lightning Gun - pseudo infinite at Resupply 2
Sniper Rifle - pseudo infinite at Resupply 3
Grenade Launcher - pseudo infinite at Resupply 3/4 (depends on how often you detonate)
AVRIL - pseudo infinite at Resupply 1

Weapons that aren't infinite at Resupply 4 (mostly to highlight how uneven Resupply is and how unfair it would be to consider Resupply without considering the rate at which certain weapons tear through ammo):

Assault Rifle - 32% refill rate on bullets but probably infinite on the grenades. (I am not sure how the dual AR thing plays into it here so I am completely ignoring it). Infinite for bullets at Resupply 14.
Bio Rifle - 36.66% refill rate using primary fire. Infinite at resupply 13. Pretty terrible, but a good candidate for an infinite Medic weapon if you're not expecting to use it for damage output.
Shock Rifle - 77.77% refill rate sans combos. Infinite at resupply 6.
Link Gun - 20% refill rate using primary (projectile) fire. Infinite at Resupply 22. Secondary is a little bit less ammo consumption but the damage output is significantly worse and basically not worth using unless you're an Engineer (or if you're not playing Invasion).
Minigun - 41% refill rate using secondary. Infinite for secondary at Resupply 10. 19% refill rate using primary. Infinite for primary at Resupply 22.

Wail, I agree that resupply 4 does make some weapons similar to infinite, when they are not berserking.

However, I think Druid is after two pioints here:

medics and engineers using their healing weapons offensively - which wasn't the original intention

Berserking using infinite links is killing the server. Obviously engineers and medics are the main culprits as they are guaranteed to have infinite links if they want them

So is it ok to solve the problem with "pseudo infinite" weapons that Wail was talking about? Until you get a better and easier to code idea...

MrAndrew wrote:

So is it ok to solve the problem with "pseudo infinite" weapons that Wail was talking about? Until you get a better and easier to code idea...

I do not know what level of resupply you would have to limit the link to for it not to be used berserking. People would use it while it had ammo, then switch to another weapon while it recharged, then back to the link. At most I reckon you would reduce link usage down by a third. And it would mean that engineers can only link a turret for a short length of time before their ammo runs out.

And it would not fix the problem of medics and engineers using their healing weapons offensively.

So, personally I don't see that it would fix it.