[Vehicle Weapon Concept] Web Caster

[Wormbo]

We all know the Scorpion's "web" launcher, and how bad an actual web it is. Sure, it's nice against the Manta, if you manage to hit it in the first place. Also it comes with quite some damage and is generally useful against slower targets. But it doesn't work like a spider web, really.

...but what if it did?
[video][/video]

In this video you can see the "Web Caster" concept. It's a standard Scorpion, but the weapon weaves an elastic 2D web. This web not only covers a larger area than the stock Scorpion's weapon, but also contracts once it gets stuck to stuff. As a result it can temporarily glue vehicles and players together and to walls.

Again, this is more or less a concept vehicle, a new weapon mounted onto the stock Scorpion. It is fully functional and comes with a mutator to replace the Scorpion with it, but I did not attempt to balance the weapon in any particular way. The projectile web is faster than that of the standard Scorpion and the individual proejctiles do slightly less damage, but it's probably way overpowered against stock vehicles. As always, I recommend myLeveling the package via "obj load file=WVWebCaster.u package=myLevel" at the UnrealEd console, if you want to put the vehicle into a map.

Download

[Miauz55555]

It looks interesting.

[Cat1981England]

Thank you Wormbo, finally we have an alternative to the EONSorpion

I think it should work well on the narrow, Manta favoured maps.

[EmanReleipS]

It looks awesome! It will make the Scorpion a lot more useful. (Considering how often I fly mantas, I will probably curse you later. )

Nice work!

[Miauz55555]

Hey Wormbo,

the WebCaster is awesome. The calculations from the single projectils and the web are working exelent. Thank you for your work.

I may ask how mutch damage one projectile does? 75*16=1200 for a full charged shot?

Posible suggestions from me:
Lower the damage to maybe 40. So you can frag a Manta and Scorpion with a halve charged shot, but no tank with a single full charged shot. Ok with 20 projectile the tank is gone, but thats fine.

Increase the explosion time. How mutch is it now? Maybe double it. Than you can make a real spiderweb. Or do you think to mutch projectiles will heat the CPU to mutch?

[Wormbo]

The issue is less one of CPU usage and more one of network bandwidth. Each projectile part is something completely independent, as far as the netcode is concerned. Another thing is the connections between the projectile parts, getting these to scale (logic-wise) with the number of projectiles is quite a hassle.

Since this was intended more as a technical proof-of-concept for the weapon than a balanced vehicle, the damage of individual projectile parts is 55. That's obviously way too high. Also, the web ties up players like it does vehicles and you have no chance of escaping. I think it wouldn't be fun for the receiving end to have to wait for even longer to die (because that's what's going to happen when you get stuck in the web) than they already do now.

[Miauz55555]

Just for me to understand because it's interesting: Each projectile sends all informations to every player on an own canal. So when there are four projectiles in the air they will send there position, time to detonate, travel direction and connections to every player on four canals, or need they one canal for every information? Like 16 canals for four projectiles?

Your concept is working very well, so congrats.

Balanced vehicle.. 24.. 36? I think it's very dificult to finde some good balance between weapons and vehicles regarding amour, speed and damage.

Now I have a theoretical question: When every projectile is independent is it posible to give each projectile a differend damage? Like the first four make 20 damage each the next eight 40 and the last four 60?

You'r right with the stuck in the deadly-web thing.. more time would not so funny for the target.

[Zon3r]

It can one hit a goliath, which makes scorpion suicide runs against tanks actually profitable

[smalltown]

too sticky when enemies use it against u on foot, like a sort of glue. good vehicle to counter tanks but further test with it required i still have not used it yet.../

[Miauz55555]

[...] i still have not used it yet.../

The Webcaster is currently on ONS-StorageFacility-]I[-C, ONS-LegoFort-C, ONS-Baldur-BETA3-GL-C.