Avoid (or at least contain) vehicle killing at core

[Karma_geddon]

Hi fellas!

...so:

Worm asked for suggestions on what could be improved in ONS, and I thought to just throw here my usual two cents.


I know that you, casual reader and ONS player, know what I'm talking about. Some days ago, for example, I spawned at core in the middle of a Grit fight, just to find that EVERY vehicle was seriously damaged (most of all, obviously, the 1000+ hp Mino).

It's frustrating to spawn at a place just to find out that you have to choose between staying here to heal the vecs (and losing time to have actual fun with them) or going out in a fragile deathtrap.

So I thought: if we all agree that the practice of damaging locked vehicles far from the fight is lame, is there a way to hard-code something to prevent it?

I do realize that shooting down locked vehicles is acceptable when they are resources that the enemy team could deploy to immediatly threaten your team (like: shooting the Goliaths at the center of the map on TripleSlap/BitchSlap/Tyrant), as I previously talked about it somewhere here on the board to Peg, so I'm going to suppose that we, or at least me and the staff, are on the same page about this.


Keeping in count the fact that there are cases when it might be okay to shoot at locked vehicles, I thought of some possible solutions. Some are flawed, but I thought to just post all of them: maybe someone could find a way to perfect them.


1) shielded node, means shielded vehicles. Period. So: the vehicles already locked at a shielded node/core, are immune to damage until someone jumps on them.
That was the first thought that I had, but the problem here is that a shielded node DOESN'T mean that his vehicles are not a direct threat to the enemy team (I'm thinking, for example, of the Goliaths at the center of Tyrant: even if their node is shielded, they are still an immediate threat to any of the three center nodes).

2) shielded node, means that his locked vehicles have a big heal factor. If the regeneration is coded to trigger, let's say, three seconds after the vehicle took any damage, people could still destroy threatening vehicles with no problem, which is okay.
And, of course, people could still lame at core and damage vehicles and so on, but their efforts would be totally wasted after they leave.
Of course, the heal factor would exist ONLY with LOCKED vehicles. As soon as someone jumps on it, the vehicle stops regenerating.

3) shielded node, means that the lamer dies. I'm thinking of something like the damage that you take in SpankJox when you jump high in the sky with the central jump pad: if you stay in the area of a shielded node or core for more than some seconds, you start taking damage until you leave or you die. The damage might be designed to stop if enemy players are present at the node, and so the player won't be too disadvataged if there is an actual fair fight at the node/core (which sometimes might happen when you just escaped with a vehicle or jumped off a flyer, or if the node just got shielded while you were shooting at it. For example it often happens to me on SpankJox or on Nevermore).

Good thing is: with this one, we could also get rid of the core lamers/campers.
Bad thing is: and what about the ones that shoot at locked vehicles from a long distance?
Bigger bad thing is: it would not be easy to implement it, because the "area" of a node depends from map to map (for example, it's very small on Bridge, and it's very big on Grit) and so it could need to be coded and personalized for each map, that is a lot of work.


That's it.


Now: even if I have some experience of tabletop game design and pc coding, I don't know anything about UT coding. Also, I could have missed something in my three possible solution and they might be messed up.

However, I think that the "best possible solution" (in an ideal world) would be to implement both 2) and 3), to get rid of both the vehicle shooters (at close or long range) and the lamers/campers on cores.

But, thinking of what could be easier and faster to code, I think that implement only 2) might be good enough.


What do you think?

I'm looking mainly for the feedbacks from our coder fellas and the staff of the server (because, obviously, they are the ones eventually in charge to implement it and to give it the seal of approval to embed it on our server) but of course any feedback is appreciated

Cya soon!

[Wormbo]

Fourth option: Shielded node means vehicles auto-heal, maybe with a delay after taking damage and in addition to increased link heal multiplier. That leaves the option to destroy vehicles, while still preventing to leave them almost dead.

BTW: When I see heavily-damaged locked vehicles, I often unlock them so their reset timer can kick in. (Stealing them would be pointless, right?) The vehicle is still not very useful, but at least it will respawn after some time without anyone having to find a way to destroy it.

[Kentaro]

I know that you, casual reader and ONS player, know what I'm talking about.

Oh yeah. Want to kill all that lamers.

1) shielded node, means shielded vehicles. Period. So: the vehicles already locked at a shielded node/core, are immune to damage until someone jumps on them.
That was the first thought that I had, but the problem here is that a shielded node DOESN'T mean that his vehicles are not a direct threat to the enemy team (I'm thinking, for example, of the Goliaths at the center of Tyrant: even if their node is shielded, they are still an immediate threat to any of the three center nodes).

Nothing to add. You explain yourself why this solution can't be applied.

2) shielded node, means that his locked vehicles have a big heal factor. If the regeneration is coded to trigger, let's say, three seconds after the vehicle took any damage, people could still destroy threatening vehicles with no problem, which is okay.
And, of course, people could still lame at core and damage vehicles and so on, but their efforts would be totally wasted after they leave.
Of course, the heal factor would exist ONLY with LOCKED vehicles. As soon as someone jumps on it, the vehicle stops regenerating.

Fourth option: Shielded node means vehicles auto-heal, maybe with a delay after taking damage and in addition to increased link heal multiplier. That leaves the option to destroy vehicles, while still preventing to leave them almost dead.

Well, i like this one. You got my vote on this.

3) shielded node, means that the lamer dies. [...]if you stay in the area of a shielded node or core for more than some seconds, you start taking damage until you leave or you die. The damage might be designed to stop if enemy players are present at the node, and so the player won't be too disadvataged if there is an actual fair fight at the node/core [...]Bigger bad thing is: [...] that is a lot of work.

a) In fact we would need to create location volumes around each node on all the maps, to determinate the area where you got damaged. You're good here: it's a huge work.
b) Players will wonder why they got damaged in game, and will scream for injustice (even if they're laming around). Not possible to add that kind of auto-damage in an ONS game, i mind.


I would add the fifth option: just make the core's vehicules invulnerable, as long as the core is shielded.
In the majority of maps, you got several vehicules at core, powerful vehicules too, and they determinate the outcome of the game.

[EmanReleipS]

The second option for all nodes also sounds best to me, maybe combined with Ken's fifth for the cores.

As for getting rid of spawn killers, maybe increasing the re-spawn shield's duration or having a third (less useless) start weapon would help. But that's another topic....

[Wormbo]

The spawn protection time is already a serverside option. Problem is, protection is disabled when you fire your first shot.
There already are two solutions for not having a wimpy start weapon: My "Spawn With Locker Weapons" mutator and Crusha's LockerWeaponsPlayerStart. The logic they apply is standard for UT3 VCTF, Greed and Warfare.

[Crusha K. Rool]

The UltimateONSFactory also has a setting that can make the spawned vehicle invulnerable until its entered by a player, similar to how its done in Assault maps.

[Wormbo]

I suppose the real question is: what kind of solution are we looking for, per map or per server?

[Karma_geddon]

I suppose the real question is: what kind of solution are we looking for, per map or per server?

This might be the moment when we need a feedback from Heinz

[Wormbo]

I suppose the real question is: what kind of solution are we looking for, per map or per server?

This might be the moment when we need a feedback from Heinz

Or from Pegasus. He'll probably rip apart our "technical solution for a social problem"...

[Pegasus]

Or I could just point to how well previous attempts by other ONS communities to go down that road ultimately fared and hope people might see the lesson in that. Btw, I suppose I could point out the several maps where each of those (essentially 3?) proposed measures already got implemented years ago without any of 'em becoming widely adopted, just as a memory exercise.
Still, if anyone believes the game's devs implemented the shielded/locked node mechanic, but excluded the vecs from that calculation by accident, or that there's no situational/intentional context to be taken into account when determining a moral sign (positive or negative) to spawned vehicle damaging and dealing with people doing it as an ingame admin, they're welcome to that absolutist opinion of course.

But sure, personally, I'll be happy to stick to my "people solutions to people problems, tech solutions to bugs" creed, as it's a mentality that's been serving me for quite awhile now still without fail .