DescentBB

ah, forgot about the mortar. Those seem to hit like the D1/D2 megas, and i love the napalm rocket. er.. unless it's being shot at me.

Afaik most good D1/D2 multiplayer levels do not contain \"no skill\" weapons, unless explicitly built for them (e.g. shaker levels).

As far as I can remember the napalm and the black shark don't take 200 shields.

Maybe about 50-150, but they can be mean too: bs sticking you to the wall while
you see the mega coming or the napalm destroying merciless your shield and
then killing you after moments of hope to survive...


But had a lot of fun with them. I like the speed of the napalm - fast enough to kill
almost instantly from a short distance and slow enough to dodge when fired from a distant place...

The blackshark is my favourite secondary - the level has to be appropriate though...

Ferno wrote:That's psion playing. I can tell from the style.

Correct :]
It probably looks wierd to everyone because I mouse and because of that I have quite an insane flippy flying style.

Here is the current primary gun list.
All values are temporary values.
This entire document is subject to revision.
All material presented herein is property of Uplink Studios and may not be used for any purpose except this initial posting on http://descentbb.net.
Reading the rest of this document constitutes agreement with this term.








Hailstorm - Water pack
R.A.T. (Rapid Artillery Tracers) - Conventional ammo pack, shell casing
Plasma - Geo/Recharge center
Ion Spray - Ion pack
XRP (X-Ray punch) - Palladium Rods
M250 (Melter) - Geo/Recharge center

Hailstorm - Fires from gatling weapon point
BASE GUN

Fires hard rounds condensed from matter and moisture in surrounding air
has an ammo bar that goes down as you fire and then recharges as you idle.
Should take around 3.5 seconds to fully recharge. Requires water packs to work in vacuum.
Firing rate should be high (maybe around 9 cycles per second) in a slight spread but still two definate streams
2 dmg per shell


R.A.T. - Fires from gatling weapon point

Fires explosive subtle tracer rounds that have a physical impact
fire rate should be around 4 per second.
10 damage a shell
Ammo limited by packs


Plasma - Fires from laser cannons

Twin blue glowing translucent balls
Roughly 5 per second, about 12 inches across in size, fast moving.
9 Damage apeice
Ammo limited by energy


Ion Spray - Fires from gatling weapon point

Should have a cluster of tiny balls of ionized matter that glow red and have a spray pattern
Imagine spraying a mouthful of hot lava at someone, it should look somewhat like that but all the blobs the same size. Each blob should do 1 dmg for now until we test it out further, and the firing rate should be 30 per second or so.
Ammo limited by packs


XRP - Fires from heatsink weapon point

Aims a focused xray beam that consumes a palladium rod in the process of firing, hence its very slow reload rate. Has a very intense muzzle flash visible across a level causing a very brief overexposure visual effect to the pilot when fired, somewhat like a camera flash. The effect is not totally blinding, just a brief distraction due to the windshield's auto opacity response.
This gun is a charge gun, you can hold the trigger and then release it to fire. if you fire fully charged shot and it hits the center its a kill, 101 shields.
3.5 seconds to full charge
If you tap the trigger for the instant hit, 62 out of 100 shields damage.
2 second reload


Melter - Fires from laser cannons

Charge gun, the longer you hold it the stronger it gets. As you hold it the ships resource allotment to stabilization is rerouted to the reactor charge and the stabilizers begin to fight gravity which causes ship 'turbulence'. If you hold it too long it will eventually shut you down until the reactor cools enough to run safely. Fires two huge slow [green] energy blobs that fully overcharged will take 250 shields on a dead center hit, less damage the more off center the hit is.
4.5 seconds till damage starts at a rate of roughly 30 dmg/sec
You can let off any time to fire.
1 shot per second if you're spamming the fire button.
Killing with this gun will actually cause melting deformations on the ship, literally blasting it into a wall or floor as a bouncing, smoldering hunk of metal.

I could make some coffee and read a book during some of those charge up / reload times...

Krom wrote:I could make some coffee and read a book during some of those charge up / reload times...

Which is why, if someone gets you with one of those big nasty instakill weapons, you deserved to die.

Kilarin wrote:

Krom wrote:I could make some coffee and read a book during some of those charge up / reload times...

Which is why, if someone gets you with one of those big nasty instakill weapons, you deserved to die.

Or it could just be you fell asleep because there was no gameplay pace. Think about the pace of Descent, Descent 3 especially often has a nearly frantic gameplay pace. This isn't chess, a FPS game moves way too fast to wait around four and a half seconds for something to reach a full charge.

...those weapons sound great - though I'm with Krom on the 4.5 second recharge time. 3 seconds is more than enough ...unless of course if you make an enormous racket when you do it ...that might help balance out the extra firepower.

That being said, I'm comparing CD here to Descent. And while they have sililarities, CD will be a whole new game in many ways, with new challenges to master no doubt. Which is half the fun in my view.

You guys should do it your way Psion - make noobs of us all - so we can fall in love with 6DoF all over again!! All I'm doing here is adding another opinion to the mix

...cause you guys really needed another opinion on CD - right?

Krom wrote:I could make some coffee and read a book during some of those charge up / reload times...

Krom maybe I should clarify just so it doesn't seem ridiculous - when I wrote this doc I was counting in my head and trying to get values I thought were decent ballpark values so input is more than welcome on these variables, I figured I would let you guys debate them or whatever and see what comes of it.

This game will have a frenetic feeling to it but not necessarily because of the speed factor. There are many ways to make a player feel pressure and jacking up the speed is not the best one IMO.

PS: I am not afilliated with High Octane or Uplink. The words \"High_Octane\" under my name are a server glitch that I have already repoprted to BB Admin.

Gekko71 wrote:...those weapons sound great - though I'm with Krom on the 4.5 second recharge time. 3 seconds is more than enough ...unless of course if you make an enormous racket when you do it ...that might help balance out the extra firepower.

That being said, I'm comparing CD here to Descent. And while they have sililarities, CD will be a whole new game in many ways, with new challenges to master no doubt. Which is half the fun in my view.

You guys should do it your way Psion - make noobs of us all - so we can fall in love with 6DoF all over again!! All I'm doing here is adding another opinion to the mix

...cause you guys really needed another opinion on CD - right?

Yes! We love opinions on CD, as long as they are based on real game info and pose some form of valuable feedback. This gun doc should produce some interesting speculation I look forward to reading.

Besides, any reload time can just be streched out llike the recharge time of the AB, it takes a while, but if you pulse it, then it's not such a problem anymore.

Either way I didn't expect a number that long to stick around, testers are bound to actually play a bit of multiplayer with those numbers and unless all parties involved are complete rookies there is no way such long delays would slip past uncorrected. You want the reloads and charge ups to be reasonably fast in order to keep the tension and pace at a good aggressive level or players will quickly get bored. But if it is too short it becomes excessively easy to simply spew and players will still lose interest.

It is hard to explain properly, the fights have to be difficult and require focus for both the rookies and the aces. You want a balance where if a rookie approaches an ace they can expect to be respawning in only a couple seconds at most, but also where if the ace gets careless or sloppy they will also be sent to a spawn in short order.

I think the best range is to make it so 1-3 seconds of carelessness is enough to lose all your shields and be sent back to the spawn point. If you think that is pretty short, keep in mind for the PyroGL and Phoenix 3 seconds is the span it takes to fire the Mass Driver 3 times. The Magnum can fire a 3 MD rounds in only 2.4 seconds. (Before someone says \"wrong! the MD reload is 1.5 seconds on the GL/Phoenix, 1.5 x 3 makes 4.5 seconds for 3 shots!\" Remember that the first shot is already loaded and the amount of time it takes to fire 3 shots is the amount of time it takes to reload two times after firing the initial shot.) So if you are fighting against a Magnum in D3 even at long range a span as little as 2.4 seconds of carelessness can mean death.

I'm sure the Magnum pilots out there have once in a while found themselves biting their nails for what seemed like an eternity waiting for the next shot to load. While other pilots at the receiving end of MD from a Magnum have been frustrated by the extremely short reload time that gives them no time to react or shoot back before repeat shots.

I would try my best to balance it in such a way that no matter which weapon a player is fighting with, they will still be a very real threat to someone who is using their favorite weapon as long as they are within the effective range. But also keep in mind it is ok for there to be a difference in effectiveness between long range weapons and close range weapons. So for instance, Plasma and Fusion which are both close range weapons should be roughly equal in power, but Fusion vs Vauss it is fine for the Fusion to be dramatically more powerful and dangerous at close range since it is almost useless against Vauss from a long distance. Long range weapons need to be as effective as other long range weapons, short range weapons need to be as effective as other short range weapons. But using a long range weapon at short range should be unwieldy and expensive when you miss, and using a short range weapon at long range should be easy to dodge and spread out thinly. It is probably safe to make the close range weapons inflict much more damage than the long range weapons though, give someone a reward for running the gauntlet and charging in from a distance, plus draw naturally aggressive players together into intense fights.

Just out of curiosity, Psionik... does the X-ray punch go through walls? (crosses fingers)

Krom: Easy, killer...

I put a note at the top of that list just for posts like your'n.
Those number values are, like I said, just numbers off the top of my head to be ballpark values. They will all be adjusted to create the balance of the game and make it feel perfect. They have 0 testing time on them so they haven't even had the initial adjustments made.

FunkyStickman wrote:Just out of curiosity, Psionik... does the X-ray punch go through walls? (crosses fingers)

No, but I do like the idea.

I mostly agree with Krom on the damage vs long range effectiveness stuff.
That's also why I'm a bit skeptical about the XRP; I hope you can really
avoid making it into another MD. The overexposure effect and reload won't
matter if someone (with a good aim) flies around with the thing fully charged;
I suggest that it auto-fires when it reaches full charge.

IMO no skill should compensate for lack of another; someone who can't
dodge should get punished for it just as much as someone with a lousy aim.

Regarding missiles... D3 sort of reversed the meaning of `primary' and
`secondary'; please don't make the same mistake. I think Forsaken is a
fairly good example in this regard.

And make sure there's plenty of purple around for moths.

psionik wrote:

FunkyStickman wrote:Just out of curiosity, Psionik... does the X-ray punch go through walls? (crosses fingers)

No, but I do like the idea.

What about just going through doors? That would be *wicked*!

As i was reading today I noticed that the 4.5 seconds Krom mentioned was actually the time until damage starts to occur. That means it does not represent the charge time, it represent the charge time plus the amount of time you are fully charged before you take damage/shut down.

Also, on the XRP...
The XRP has been designed to a lot more like that quake 3 railgun, in fact that is where i got the damage/reload values and they will probably stick. If you do get hit with it, the 62 damage is gonna make you run for cover real fast, and the reload time should let you do that comfortably. It's not my fault if you stick your nose back out and get it blasted off :]. When you finally get down to the very end of the tweaking of times and rates and all that good stuff, thats where the split hairs will make or break a gun. You guys can trust that I will make these things balanced - do not forget I am a pilot myself, and no slouch. I am VERY aware of all the balance issues and factors in all three Descent titles, and will make sure they don't crop up in CD.

psionik wrote:As i was reading today I noticed that the 4.5 seconds Krom mentioned was actually the time until damage starts to occur. That means it does not represent the charge time, it represent the charge time plus the amount of time you are fully charged before you take damage/shut down.

Also, on the XRP...
The XRP has been designed to a lot more like that quake 3 railgun, in fact that is where i got the damage/reload values and they will probably stick. If you do get hit with it, the 62 damage is gonna make you run for cover real fast, and the reload time should let you do that comfortably. It's not my fault if you stick your nose back out and get it blasted off :]. When you finally get down to the very end of the tweaking of times and rates and all that good stuff, thats where the split hairs will make or break a gun. You guys can trust that I will make these things balanced - do not forget I am a pilot myself, and no slouch. I am VERY aware of all the balance issues and factors in all three Descent titles, and will make sure they don't crop up in CD.

Warning! Warning! You can never please all the people all the time.

Good to hear, though if we feel that they are off\\wrong when the Demo comes out I'm sure you'll get a ton of opinions on the matter, looks good to me though.

To be honest, I would rather have all the weapons travel-time. Except maybe Vulcan-like stuff - (practically) instant-hit but pretty weak. Point-click gameplay is available pretty much anywhere, and actually being able to dodge weapons is a big part of the appeal of the earlier games.

Unless hits/damage are calculated peer-to-peer. Then hitscan weapons wouldn't be much of a concern since you'd need to lead them anyway...

Sirius wrote:To be honest, I would rather have all the weapons travel-time. Except maybe Vulcan-like stuff - (practically) instant-hit but pretty weak. Point-click gameplay is available pretty much anywhere, and actually being able to dodge weapons is a big part of the appeal of the earlier games.

Unless hits/damage are calculated peer-to-peer. Then hitscan weapons wouldn't be much of a concern since you'd need to lead them anyway...

That's a good thought. There are three instant and three slow moving projectile weapons, but we havent outlined all the secondaries yet. The secondaries to me are going to be a very delicate matter, one that will take a great deal of experimentation to get right. As far as the primaries, there are plenty of solid balance examples out there to look at using relatively similar weapons. I purposely patterned most of the primaries after "classic" primary game guns. The secondaries will be more original and require a lot more care and feeding to achieve that perfect balance. There are no plans for instant hit secondaries, not counting mines of course.

Sirius raises a good point with travel time. In order to generate the kind of longevity and appeal that Descent had, you need to cater (obviously enough) for noobs and vetrans. Speaking for the noobs here (cause I am one when it comes to net play ) having an **instant** hit weapon of some variety is a necessity. In order to build dogfighting skills (and in order to *want* to build those skills) you need to meet with some small measure of success early on. Having some kind of instant hit weapon (like the Vulcan in D1 - although not quite so strong) is required as training wheel for noobs. You'll go to it in the early days to give yourself some small measure of equality with stronger players ...but you find yourself abandoning it later on for something that has a faster kill rate but requiring more skill to use.

I know we've mentioned it in this thread before but it bears repeating. You can't put total noobs in the same room as half the vetrans on this board and expect them to last long ...or possibly to stay motivated to play net games in the presence of constant ongoing thrashings. Cause when this game hits the streets there's going to be a LOT of old
Descent vetrans hitting those servers at the same time as a lot of **complete** Noobs. How much total slaughter is good for the game?

Am I off in my thinking? What does everyone else think?

With any luck, there will be enough rookies that the elites will be thinned out sufficiently as to not scare off everyone. But if a bunch of total newbies start with the game, it wouldn't surprise me if there will be \"cheat hax\" accusations flying not long after an old elite joins.

Psionik--
Things sure are shaping up! Thanks for the updates.
Secondaries: The 3 descents sure give a good array of ideas...personal favorites were the concs (rapid firing concs from a full load was devastating), and the D2 missile (forgot the name, but it wasnt insta-hit, just fast firing, with a smoke trail (?) ), I personally never minded mortors (very fun, not hard to dodge), or megas (turboing into the exact nose of a mega made it deflect off your shields), and of course, the homing missiles. Guided missiles were a novelty, that had it's place. Napalm was always fun...the flash missiles from D2 were fun as well.
Smarts were way too slow in D3 IMO.

Primaries: Vauss was the best weapon, making for great dogfights, but I think it needed to do a bit more damage in D3--compared to the MD...which I never had a problem with....
Lasers should have been a faster firing weapon to do a bit more damage, that's why few people used them.

The XRP--if it's too slow loading, then it'll require a quick weapons change to a different primary (to the vauss type gun would be logical), to keep the opponent engaged while the weapon reloads.
Personally I think more subtle damage is better than slower reloads, making for quick style dogfights and manoevers.

Will there be cloaks in CD? Cloaks were interesting, but not used very often, and invuln. was just lame.

has there been any word on game styles? CTF was fun, but entropy was the best mod EVER, followed by Hoard. 3 and 4 team TA was fun in the mod someone created for D3.

RM

CTF fun? Not in D3 anyway. =P I don't know about you, but I like to whoop some tail while on the way to the flag room. Descent 3 didn't allow for that. One always had to go straight to the flag room in a Phoenix Interceptor, back and forth (monotonous). If Entropy was the best mod ever, then how come it was almost never played? =)

Only six guns? That makes the game kind of bland, don't you think? D3 you could only use 3-5 guns depending on which ship you chose. And Descent IV had about 30 guns! ^_~ And what happened to the old weapon ideas like the Phoenix Cannon-equivalent and the Particle/Quantum Disrupter? And why can't the Rail Gun... I mean the X-Ray Punch shoot through walls? =)

heh I like that name: the R.A.T. ...rat-tat-tat ^_~

And shouldn't the XRP be a gamma ray beam? Gamma rays have more energy than x-rays ^_~

Entropy is the most complex game mode, requiring constant strategic overview over the game, even more task oriented playing by the various team members than CTF - and an Entropy match can last forever.

The guys from the German descentforum play Entropy on a regular base though. German minds ...

ReadyMan wrote:Psionik--
Things sure are shaping up! Thanks for the updates.
Secondaries: The 3 descents sure give a good array of ideas...personal favorites were the concs (rapid firing concs from a full load was devastating), and the D2 missile (forgot the name, but it wasnt insta-hit, just fast firing, with a smoke trail (?) ), I personally never minded mortors (very fun, not hard to dodge), or megas (turboing into the exact nose of a mega made it deflect off your shields), and of course, the homing missiles. Guided missiles were a novelty, that had it's place. Napalm was always fun...the flash missiles from D2 were fun as well.
Smarts were way too slow in D3 IMO.

Primaries: Vauss was the best weapon, making for great dogfights, but I think it needed to do a bit more damage in D3--compared to the MD...which I never had a problem with....
Lasers should have been a faster firing weapon to do a bit more damage, that's why few people used them.

The XRP--if it's too slow loading, then it'll require a quick weapons change to a different primary (to the vauss type gun would be logical), to keep the opponent engaged while the weapon reloads.
Personally I think more subtle damage is better than slower reloads, making for quick style dogfights and manoevers.

Will there be cloaks in CD? Cloaks were interesting, but not used very often, and invuln. was just lame.

has there been any word on game styles? CTF was fun, but entropy was the best mod EVER, followed by Hoard. 3 and 4 team TA was fun in the mod someone created for D3.

RM

There will be your standard chaos mode, ctf, and I plan to make an arena style of play as well. Other modes have not been discussed yet, but there will be more.

Gekko71 wrote:Am I off in my thinking? What does everyone else think?

weapons won't fix that (see BP). it works in other games too (server named "Newbies Only!" etc.).

i second entropy. why was it played so rarely? because pickup games don't work with that. i remember great entropy games back when many teams were highly active (and organized). as Diedel states, entropy is a current weekly event on german servers.

Neo wrote:CTF fun? Not in D3 anyway. =P I don't know about you, but I like to whoop some tail while on the way to the flag room. Descent 3 didn't allow for that. One always had to go straight to the flag room in a Phoenix Interceptor, back and forth (monotonous).

Um, apparently you've never made a flag run in a tank\\BP\\GL, as have I, you either have to dance like a drunk guy at a bar, or fight off the guys behind you. Its not impossible, just improbable.

what i miss in psionics description is the size of the balls. Vauss has very tiny balls, fusion has big ones, why it is harder / easier to hit your aim.
For rooks it would be nice to have a weapon you at least can make some demage to your aim. Was this the reason why laser is almost useless in d3?

The Ion Spray will be a good coverage weapon with enough power to be useful against multiple opponents. This will make it a very good gun for noobs.

The fast D2 missile is the Mercury Missile. Love it.

floppyfreak wrote:Was this the reason why laser is almost useless in d3?

Umm, you haven't played much D3, then. Seems like I get 15-20% of my kills via lasers, especially in CTF.

Foil wrote:

floppyfreak wrote:Was this the reason why laser is almost useless in d3?

Umm, you haven't played much D3, then. Seems like I get 15-20% of my kills via lasers, especially in CTF.

The Primary Laser and the napalm missles are killers when you are playing against the tanks (Magnums)

Foil wrote:

floppyfreak wrote:Was this the reason why laser is almost useless in d3?

Umm, you haven't played much D3, then. Seems like I get 15-20% of my kills via lasers, especially in CTF.

I played A LOT of D3 CTF, and Fusion/MD (depended on the location), then Vauss, were the weapons of choice. Lasers were just too slow, and too underpowered to do enough damage in comparison to those other 3 weapons.

Yes! The Mercury Missile! So much fun...hope that one comes back in some type of form.

What is "an arena style of play"? Like 1v1 in an arena, where the victor stays in, and others watch/observe waiting for their turn to compete?



RM

What is \"an arena style of play\"? Like 1v1 in an arena, where the victor stays in, and others watch/observe waiting for their turn to compete?

Yes, you spawn with full everything and duke it out, winner stays. You can also make teams so you can do 2v2, 3v3, so on.

KoolBear wrote:

Foil wrote:

floppyfreak wrote:Was this the reason why laser is almost useless in d3?

Umm, you haven't played much D3, then. Seems like I get 15-20% of my kills via lasers, especially in CTF.

I don't want to get deeper into this but I think, the laser ist to week in d3 multiplayer (this is "ouch" speaking)

I want to open a new question wich I already proposed in the good old times of the cd- Homepage. It is expanding the gameplay of descent a bit, but what if the ships in cd would have something like an inertia- effekt? That means, the ship accelerats / banks / generally moves slower when the weaponload is high. It would the game more ballanced in that way, that eg spawnkills wouldn't be an issue any more. Also very powerful primeries could have a stronger inertia- sideffect.