Unvanquished Forum

My opinion on the lucifer cannon…

Could be slowed down, but I'd keep the power-related speed changes. We should probably change the secondary, though: at present, it has the same speed and cost as the weakest primary but three times the power, and it also has splash damage. Maybe higher repeat rate, lower power, cost similar to equivalent primary shot?

Nalf has a maybe-interesting discharge mod for luciballs – it gets discharged into buildings as it travels, which makes for fun when defending using lucifer cannons in base – particularly with the bots…

I've not checked whether it's just buildings, but having it cause weak splash damage as it passes could be Fun™. (Obviously, retain the main splash damage on impact; but it could be weakened slightly to compensate for travel splash damage.)

Saliva wrote:

Pulse rifle is the worst of them because it's very easy for an alien to flee before being killed. It would still be very different from a hitscan weapon with a faster projectile speed..

You have to be kidding me. I thought it was OP i 1.1.

Anomalous wrote:

My opinion on the lucifer cannon…

[1]Could be slowed down, but I'd keep the power-related speed changes. We should probably change the secondary, though: at present, it has the same speed and cost as the weakest primary but three times the power, and it also has splash damage. Maybe higher repeat rate, lower power, cost similar to equivalent primary shot?

[2]Nalf has a maybe-interesting discharge mod for luciballs – it gets discharged into buildings as it travels, which makes for fun when defending using lucifer cannons in base – particularly with the bots…

[3]I've not checked whether it's just buildings, but having it cause weak splash damage as it passes could be Fun™. (Obviously, retain the main splash damage on impact; but it could be weakened slightly to compensate for travel splash damage.)

[1]I have a unique skill with the luci, but there goes another to the trashbin. I liked the fast secondary, because it is like a slow md that fires almost instant after a primary. Reducing this power [actually its weaker than an md, oh well] to something smaller and the ammo cost makes me want to only use primary only. If there's anything i want removed from the secondary, its only the splash and the so-called 'small boundry box' around the projectile. It just makes things too easy.
[2]Its kinda glitchy, it activates as soon as it is fired. A lot of times i end up damaging myself when firing into lets say the skybox when someone's near me. It is interesting i admit, but annoying. We could experiment with it by bullying bots though... :D
[3]I don't really see the logic in this. The barb gains speed once its "stationary point" [relating to quadratic graphs] and if it continues to lose this...
All i wish for about the barb is to either make the explosion smaller, remove it entirely, or at least nerf it to half damage. You can instant kill a naked human in 3 ways:
-Head
-Torso
-On the ground near its feet*, but not the legs.
*Trust me, this works. Kinda stupid i admit, doing more damage to the human by making it land in front of him.

Saliva: You did not clarify how significant changes you wanted. Atm shotgun is good at short range only, chaingun is short - mid (at least when used by ddos...) range, pulse is good at short range and vs buildings. Flamer is currently not much use against buildings due to the limited range, tho ofc it is very effective if you get close to buildings, but it's not a weapon players choose for base killing.
Your suggestions would make shotgun, pulse and flamer more similar to the chaingun, how much more is ofc dependent on how significant the changes are. How about instead making them better at what they currently are? If you want to kill every small alien, get mg/las/md... or even chain, if you are in ddos. If you want to kill a base, get pulse/luci. Get shotgun/chaingun to kill goons/rants.

seana11: I agree that there are players that can dodge goons very well, but the bigger problem is the huge difference of newbies and pros against an average goon (and luck also has a large role with 1 hit kills, if goon misses the first, human will live 3x longer). So how about if regular goon damage was reduced a bit and range or mobility increased? I think it would reduce frustration for new players while not significantly nerfing them against better players. It might nerf them against buildables tho... at least regular goon is s1 anyway.

It is not possible to make the game perfect for all skill levels, but this would make Unv much more forgiving to newbies than Trem without a huge effect on pros.

DeathByMe: stop trolling and gtfo of this thread until you've played GPP/Unv vs decent players (not bots) for 30+ hours.

I also disagree with nerfing barb splash: it was added to help force humans to spread out bases, and it does that job quite well. The splash damage vs players is not OP IMO.
Also anyone saying that 1.1 was balanced or that camping was caused by difference in skill levels or bad maps: LOL, and camping is a significantly more complex issue.

Khaos, Saliva was around ever since GPP was introduced. As far I remember he also had participated in Planned Dev Games.

And, while I hate to play anybody's lawyer, I have to agree that most of his ideas make sense to some degree.

Pulse rifle. You must be kidding me if you think it's useful an weapon. I'm happy when engaging one as it's an easier kill and gives plenty of evos too. When buying one myself, I hope I won't come across goon or mara before I reach their base as it'd be an exhausting duel. You rarely see them around, used often by rather newer players (as it's the most expensive weapon at s2). Besides killing bases it's not really effective. And once S3 hits, you'd rather use luci for the task anyway.

Shotgun inscreasing therange slightly wouldn't hurt, though my main issue with the weapon is that it's extremely buggy. You shoot the dretch, it's blood everywhere, yet it's still alive. You see no pellet hit the alien yet it lies dead. The only weapon that has that kind of issue, too.

Flamer is something I disagree with. It's fine as it is, self burn is not extreme, capable of killing smaller aliens as intended I guess.

Dretch is too weak compared to rifle, yes, but as I stated many times, the issue lies in the rifle itself. Dretch is fine against other weapons. I think that lowering ammo count in a clip to 25 and increasing repeat to match the current time needed to shoot out entire clip is worth checking out. I'm sceptical about adding the pounce thing, it wouldn't solve the dretch issue for newbies.

As far I remember both pounce and trample were nerfed in Unv.

While we're at it, some clear list of changes GPP->Unv would be great.

It sounds like a lot of you want to make the game easy for new players. Don't do this.

If you have pulse rifle, leave the base alone, and then encounter a more skilled mara/goon/rant, you are not supposed to win... Until you have a good chance of reaching the alien base with teammates, just don't buy pulse rifle. Is it that difficult to understand?
I don't want to make the game easy for newbies when they are playing against better players, but it does need to be easier than Trem.

ViruS wrote:

[3]I don't really see the logic in this. The barb […]

Er… barb? You appear to be confused…

mw3 wrote:

It sounds like a lot of you want to make the game easy for new players. Don't do this.

Don't make it easy, make it easier!

Not to a point where someone can come in and easily hold their own against a player with years+ more experience than them, but not so much as they'd just be clueless on what to do and just quit out of frustration. A new community has to be built up after all.

I find beating aliens with pulse rifle requiring much more effort than with basically any other weapon in humans arsenal. And vice-versa, most of the time larm+helm+rifle is equal of a threat as same guy with pulse rifle, at least to me. Won't even compare chaingun-pulse. If it's supposed to be "base killing weapon" then we have that situation of 2 weapons meant for exact same thing with luci just being better suited. I'd like to note that once s3 is hit rant doesn't replace goon or any other class, and battlesuit doesn't replace good old larm+helm.

You do realize there are fewer roles than there are weapons, right? And pulse is s2, while luci is s3, it is cheaper while having similar total damage, while also giving more control over how you spend your ammo. I don't see luci as completely replacing pulse, although their roles overlap somewhat. If you want to make them less similar, don't do it by making pulse good at everything.

Edit: maybe we should create a table of all weapons/classes and what their roles are (keeping in mind how players actually use them)?