[Mutator] Reactor Shots

[Wormbo]

This one should be interesting: Power cores and nodes shoot at enemy players in range when their shield is down. Hiding behind the core to shield yourself from enemy fire while draining valuable core energy? Not anymore.
I got this idea while messing with the Descent-style rockets and took a short break to implement this. In Descent 1 and 2, the main reactors of a level will start firing at the player to defend itself.

Reactor Shots is a mutator that can also be used as two server actors (for nodes and cores separately) or even placed in the map (again, for nodes and cores separately).
Nodes and cores intentionally don't lead their targets, but have perfect aim against immobile enemies, so don't stand still.

(I'd post screenshots, but all you'd see are red or blue blobs between a power core or power node and an enemy player. Maybe I'll post a video clip tomorrow.)

Download link

[Pegasus]

Considering the creative wave you seem to've been riding during the last few months, I can't help wonder if this might be the best time to slip you a copy of the classic C&C Red Alert 2 only to see how it'd inform your next UT projects. Ah well, maybe a bit later when the summer gets even closer .

As to the mutator at hand, umm, well, while it does seem like an interesting concept to try, I'm not sure ONS players would appreciate very much having to fight both enemies & vecs spawning there and have the node itself taking potshots at 'em while they're at it. Even when managing to approach alone and in a hurry to take down an undefended node, this would complicate things way past the 7-8sec window of opportunity that a steady stream of shombos between the disc and base typically provides. Essentially, then, we're talking about a situation-agnostic defense bonus with all the benefits and cons that come with it (such as increased gameflow inertia).
As to core lurking, although it does seem like a cheap tactic at first glance and folks often get in a tizzy about it, ppl tend to forget that the lurker's behaviour tends to balance itself out by taking them outside the equation and effectively reducing their team's fighting ranks by one; as long as a primary doesn't manage to get flipped so they can hit the core right away, they're only gimping their own team and making it easier for the defenders to push 'em away.
Anyways, this minirant is just me thinking out loud and only representing my own opinions here, just to be clear; starting to think disclaimers like this may be becoming more necessary lately, but oh well :/. Obviously for a more thorough eval we'd need to see it in action, embedded in a map somewhere so until that happens, one can at best only speculate as to its (de)merits. Let's wait n' see.

Btw, methinks you're long overdue for a sig here with links to your site and YT channel, sir, so folks can more easily keep track of your new works!

[Cat1981England]

Btw, methinks you're long overdue for a sig here with links to your site and YT channel, sir, so folks can more easily keep track of your new works!

Hear hear.

We all greatly appreciate the work you put into UT Wormbo, even if we stay silent with nothing of value to add

Long may it continue Sir!

[Wormbo]

Signature - check.

Re: RA2 - well, I have it here already. Not sure if I would be able to get it to work on Win7 x64, though.

[Pegasus]

Regarding the mutator, a few more thoughts on that popped into my mind last night: for one, hadn't Kamek also put together a pack with placeable automated defense turrets a few years back (edit: yes, he did, see here for more) that could be used to achieve pretty much the same goal when it comes to auto core defending? If memory serves, that content was used in his ArenaofEvil and ArenaofDarkness maps too. Also, if anyone cares to imagine how a node trying to defend itself against any hopeful suitors would feel, they need look no further than the most popular version of SlatedWorld where such a feature had been used at its primaries for years now and it didn't exactly add much to the game, if we're being honest. Oddly enough, another issue the previous two references have in common is all of those maps had post-match-end bugs that would either fail to lock players in place or even outright crash the server running 'em (mostly why everyone quickly stopped hosting the Arena maps, even though the Evil variant was a decent effort); the conclusion I'm getting at here should be obvious by now: this gameplay feature has been cursed by a powerful witch and should be left alone! If one must persist, however, why not simply opt for team-specific hurt/kill volumes to combat node/core lurking with instead of additional code that has to consume server resources every so often (or even per tick) to check for nearby enemy actors within LoS and fire a projectile at 'em? That would seem a bit more practical to me. Anyways, that's all I got to say about that. For now .

About RA2 now, oh good, you already have it. That means you're already familiar with its wacky vecs and their mechanics the game featured when it comes to considering the suitability of such ideas for UT vec adoption. You know, stuff like ray scattering to secondary, proximal targets (prism tank); inventory/arsenal-dependent variable turret vecs (IFV), dynamic area poisoning/denial (desolator). I'm not including the hovercraft transport in that list because a flying vec carrier already discussed elsewhere is a much more practical take on that idea. Also, adding the Yuri's Revenge expansion's content on top of that, one can also pick out concepts like an exclusively minigun-based armoured vec (Gatling tank) or even a mobile attracting/repelling beam platform (Magnetron); although, admittedly, that last concept has a better implementation in Half-Life 2's grav gun, but still.
Lastly, casting an even wider net over the rest of the classic C&C titles, there's a few other, equally tempting ideas that seem to've somehow failed to inspire any UT vec creator up till now; mine laying (RA1), mobile radar/comms jamming (RA1) and mobile sensoring/decloaking (TS), mobile stealth generator (TS), flying vec carrier (TS), mobile EMP vec (TS:FS) and probably a few more than are eluding me right now. Point is, there's still plenty of room and potential to expand the ONS gameplay as well as players' established playstyles in quite a few novel and interesting directions IMO, as long as creative ppl are willing to take an inquisitive look into the mechanics of other vec/unit based titles and pick apart what all was unique and worked from the rest of their more typical content (say, all traditional tank approaches). Anyways, 'nuff rantin' for now.

Edit: I dunno if RA2 has problems running on W7 x64 (still running all my classic C&C RTSes on 32bit XP here and my brother's Win7 OS is also 32bit so I can't test that there either), but the dedicated C&C community is still quite large and with a vast enough knowledge base that I bet they'll have found ways to overcome 'em if there are. Do lemme know if I can help with anything though if/when you decide to pursue the matter more .

Kudos on the sig too!

[Wormbo]

Two new insights: "tomorrow" is not necessarily tomorrow, and I've clearly been away from RTS games for too long - I lost Tanya in the second or third Allies mission, in easy difficulty...


Anyway, today is "tomorrow":
[video][/video]

[Wormbo]

I should have done that right from the start: Reactor Shots version 2 is out and it is entirely configurable - how many shots do nodes and cores fire and how much damage will they do.
(New download available at the link in the first post.)