[P]etya wrote:The camera positioning really needs work. Also I think you should increase the speed of the rockets a bit, because their speed is somehow low.
+1 to the both of these.
I LOVE the concept of this vehicle, is fun to fight with it!
Also giving the decoy rockets to the main pilot is a good idea to make it less vulnerable and to balance the need for close-range combat. It could be even better with the graphic signal of the original Cicada for incoming Avril, though - the big red " <!> " image.
Unfortunately the original AVRiL HUD indicator is restricted to gunner seats. The AVRiL rocket itself calls the relevant function only if the local player is in a vehicle turret seat. I guess I will have to look for AVRiLs in view myself while drawing the regular vehicle HUD. Obviously that will sacrifice flexibility as I will no longer be able to find custom AVRiL-like projectiles that also draw the HUD indicator.
I've only managed to play MS-Draco 2-3 times online, but I did try to use the Draco as much as I could during those matches to get as good a sense as possible of what its strengths and problems are. What almost immediately rises to the top of the list for me is that the combination of its current maneuverability and flamethrower's range & damage pretty quickly made me stop trying to slow-poach enemies while they're shooting right back at my the face with flak/shock and just start running 'em over instead; the latter turned out to be much more effective and that's already not a good sign. I mean, yeah, the flamethrowers do look mean (and kudos for making their emitters this good), but when we're talking brass tacks, they're more of a tickle than a terror. Couple that with the pretty restrictive pitch limits - which come into play quite often since you need to be alternating between 1st and 3rd person camera to fly and fight effectively against small, nimble targets and with a short-range weapon - particularly the pitch up one, and you get a vec whose camera/viewing limitations make it more of a liability when it comes across an enemy flyer than an asset just in terms of awareness and movement planning, never mind returning fire and handling said threat.
Additionally, I'm yet to be convinced that the 2 separate missile pods is a workable arrangement instead of just a contrivance specifically employed so that the vec can seat 3 players; usually the Draco will take off with only 2 ppl and the passenger will have to keep switching from right to left and back in a frantic attempt to address earthbound enemies, each time leaving the other side of the ship defenseless (pilot can only fire forward). Unless seating 3 somehow became an implacable restriction during the planning process, I honestly dunno what necessitated taking that path instead of just opting for a single, cicada stinger facsimile of a pod with a hemispherical downward view; perhaps it was just the challenge of seeing if you could do it :/.
Lastly, most often when my passenger(s) would manage to get a decent view of an enemy below and start firing those rockets, nothing really came of it, tbh. Even in as close(r) quarters a fighting environment as MasterShower's, any ground target faster than a tank seemed to have little problem avoiding those slow moving projectiles so, in the end, the only thing that spamming 'em seemed to achieve is just fill the place with those blazing, lingering marshmallows (and they can stack up pretty quickly too, apparently, at a rate of 1 rocket per second spawning 10 globs, each with a 5sec lifetime, esp. when you have 2 passengers firing at the same time); can't imagine any online gaming server handling that kinda scale of rapid object generation very gracefully :/.
To sum up, the Draco is faster than a Cicada to the point of getting 2-3 ppl where they wanna go fast and reliably enough (pilot's flares help there), but as it was not conceived primarily as a transport but a (confined) area suppression flyer, its restrictive and limited abilities to actually control said small area around it make it less of a problem to its enemies than to its owners. Thus, it'd still take off for a battlefield in a standard Cicada if given the chance. It could be that the Draco's configuration is just a few adjustments away from it becoming a useful and innovative new flyer or, alternatively, this could be sobering evidence that flamethrowers as a weapon are best reserved for ground vehicles in general, but whatever the takeaway for ppl here may be, what's becoming obvious is that a number of things about it need to be changed if the Draco is to attain any kinda lasting popularity.
As to the resurfacing subject of the type of battlefield the Draco might be best suited for, nothing I've seen so far (and detailed above) has made me more optimistic towards its presumed better survival/usefulness chances in bigger and more open maps; I just can't imagine what the basis of such an argument would even be. There does seem to be an overall growing frustration regarding its meaningful contribution in MasterShower matches, and I must admit I share some of it myself, but I'm inclined to believe it mostly has to do with the fact that MS only has one obvious and unprotected flight path the Draco can take from one side of the map to the other which everyone can see, thus making it lose nearly half its health from enemy shots on the average trip and diminishing its subsequent staying power around enemy nodes. Thing is, that's a more fundamental and structural issue, and it's nothing we could avoid if we'd gone with, say, MasterBath instead. For the remaining few close quarters combat maps with flyers and some degree of z-axis usage, things would be even worse in StorageFacility (imagine taking one of the lateral routes across in a Draco; you wouldn't be able to even dodge tank shells in those corridors) and VK's Sektor 8 still has a file dependency problem that can crash the server which needs looked into, never mind that its current vec loadout needs tweaking even before adding this vec so it wouldn't be a "single changed variable" affair (which is what we need). So, yeah, MasterShower was all there was in that department and, it turns out, it's not quite a stellar pick either.
While I still can find no sound reasoning in the calls to stick the Draco in more open maps, I did recently start thinking of somewhat bigger maps that could serve as alternatives that wouldn't put such a short range fighter at a serious disadvantage. After awhile I could only come up with Icarus and Tropic[Nightfall] as both are quite compartmentalized across their gameplay-significant areas (nodes', cores', special powerups' and other areas) that Cicada variants can easily duck n' weave between, so I'm throwing those 2 out there to get the ball rolling, or see if someone has any better thoughts. I wouldn't expect their results to be any better than MasterShower's, to be brutally honest here, but if ppl keep insisting on another Draco edit, at least those 2 seem (to me) to fit the bill. I definitely wouldn't recommend as open a map as Meadowloand in any case though.
Talking of more open, compartmentalized maps where I could see well the Draco, I'm thinking of Nevermore - usually I see a certain amount of "jump and hide" defensive tactics with the Cicada there, so it could be suited for the Draco. And the skyscrapers creates a lot of compartments there.
I also agree that the flamethrower seems to be pretty weak for now: the cicada model is a big target at close range, so it will take a lot of damage even from infantry before killing the target.
Ehnancing the armor of the vehicle could help, but I'm not sure.
What about making the flamethrower "sticky" to the hitten target, like the good'ol real-world napalm? That way, the Draco could take advantage of his speed and act more like a flying Scorpion: shoot the napalm, hide, and let the flames burn the target.
Also, a side note: the flamethrower probably shoudn't pass the water... In the bathtube of MS, it does
Ok, let me try to compact your complaints into a list.
The flamethrower doesn't do damage quickly enough to be useful. Against infantry you preferred running them over, because that was more efficient, given the Draco's maneuverability. It needs more damage, correct?
Aiming the flamethrower is difficult in 3rd person view, flying is difficult in 1st person view. Ideally both tasks should be possible from the same view type, i.e. I need to improve the 3rd person view's camera placement.
Flamethrower flames sticking to stuff and not entering water. As you may have noticed, the flame particles don't collide with anything but world geometry. The invisible flame projectiles are entirely unrelated to the flame particles, but must move like them to keep the physics and visuals synchronized. Unfortunately particles can neither collide with dynamic actors nor with water, so making a convincing "stick to object and burn" effect or preventing flames from entering water is quite difficult.
The limited upward pitch is a problem when the Draco turns or accelerates. I'll do some research if the view pitch limit can be turned off without affecting the aiming pitch limitations.
Rockets hardly hit anything that moves. I suppose a slightly increased rate of fire and higher speed will make hitting moving things easier.
Rockets spam too much napalm globs in total. I will reduce the time a glob can stay around on ground and also reduce the number of globs per rocket to counter the increased rate of fire.
Concerns that the many globs may take up too much bandwidth. While I think it shouldn't really be a big problem, I'll see if the amount of data they transfer can be further reduced.
Each rocket turret can only defend one side of the Draco. I'm not sure how to solve this, as it's an inherent problem of the design. I suppose both turrets could be controlled by a single gunner, but each turret only fires if it can according to the current rules.
(Did I miss anything?)
I did expect the Draco to be problematic. It's a flying vehicle with a short-range primary weapon after all. The question is: Can it be turned into a fun and useful special-case vehicle or not? The design clearly won't work on a majority of maps, but is it possible to make it efficient enough for a selected few suitable maps?
Draco is a fun vehicle to use, but from my experiences it can't be used in straightforward combat efficiently, but it is quite good if it comes to ambush and harassment.
What if instead of a flamethrower you would give it a fire cannon like the Fire Tank's alt-fire of the driver? (Hmm, i don't know if the driver could aim it easily though... take the shock-like primary of the Dragon, which is a drag to use since you have to turn the whole vehicle into aiming position instead of just aiming the weapon.)
Better yet: switch the current rockets fired by the 2nd and 3rd gunners to the driver (improved as described before me) and give the 2nd gunner the fire cannon. The 2nd gunner would sit just like the 2nd gunner in the Dragon, in the lower part of the vehicle, enabling him to engage ground targets. And no 3rd passenger. Or, 3rd passenger with the shock-turret of the Fire Tank. In other words... make it a flying Fire Tank with both weapons for the passengers and the (improved) rockets and decoys for the driver. Eh?
Kenny--OMG!! wrote:Better yet: switch the current rockets fired by the 2nd and 3rd gunners to the driver (improved as described before me) and give the 2nd gunner the fire cannon. The 2nd gunner would sit just like the 2nd gunner in the Dragon, in the lower part of the vehicle, enabling him to engage ground targets. And no 3rd passenger. Or, 3rd passenger with the shock-turret of the Fire Tank. In other words... make it a flying Fire Tank with both weapons for the passengers and the (improved) rockets and decoys for the driver. Eh?
A thing like that already exists - it's the Banshee (driver shoots mercury missiles)- not finished yet, but functionnal.
Personally, i prefere the draco to keep its currently driver shot. It's the originality of this weapon. If you want a flying weapon with a big range, take cicada or banshee.
I had a go with the Draco too, and found it very difficult to get good value from, though it is fun!
One option is to use the rockets from the pod at a distance as a support vehicle. This is OK, but not as good as the Dragon, and very hard to do anything really useful for your team other than take out fixed turrets and the odd camper.
The flame looks lovely, and I did roast a few people, but died myself pretty much every time. Its hard to envisage a situation where roasting isn't suicide. I guess if the flame was controlled by player two in a similar way to the belly gun of the Cicada that could work as way of targeting vehicles without much AA defence, or for suppressing an entrance/exit point, but from the pilot's POV is hard to make use of other than to look fierce
I was interested in Peg's description of it as a kind of troop carrier. Maybe thats the next project? Something that can carry three players straight to a target node while fending off hostile fire with flares, armour and manoeuvrability, but not necessarily doing much damage by itself.
MrPenguin wrote:I was interested in Peg's description of it as a kind of troop carrier. Maybe thats the next project? Something that can carry three players straight to a target node while fending off hostile fire with flares, armour and manoeuvrability, but not necessarily doing much damage by itself.
I never thought of that. That actualy might be very cool to test! And maybe useful on middle- and large- sized maps where it takes a while to get from a spawning node/core to a desired node which is under attack.
Something like this: ...with 6 seats, 2000 health, ludicrous speed and handling, puffing harmless smoke as a primary fire and somehow not killing players when it runs into them (maybe "bump" the players out of the way without any health damage?)
...with 6 seats, 2000 health, ludicrous speed and handling, puffing harmless smoke as a primary fire and somehow not killing players when it runs into them (maybe "bump" the players out of the way without any health damage?)