A new human structure

[kharnov]

Today, let's look at a new human structure in the works.

Much like the flying class will present our first major divergence for the alien team, a new structure will be added for the humans to use in their bases. Similar in size and price to a turret, and very likely using the same base to provide visual coherency, the rocket pod will provide the human team with a new means of defense. Rather than firing instant-hit rounds like the turret, the structure will instead fire unguided rockets, which will be just potent enough to kill a dretch assuming that the shot hits. Each rocket can be dodged, and while the pod does not have a high rate of fire, the range is much greater than that of a turret. The rocket pod may supplement the tesla generator, or may replace it entirely. At the moment, we are leaning towards removing the tesla generator altogether.

The concept was done by Alex B. O'Dowd, and the potential gameplay mechanics by Viech based off a suggestion from Norfenstein. It is not currently being modeled, but is up next on the queue.

Stay tuned!

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[ViruS]

Finally a long range turret! (hopefully it'll have high reload time or something, because else it'll be OP when spammed)
But why planning to remove tesla? The tesla covers the turret's weakness.

[Elmo]

Teslas were rarely used because of their reliance on the defense computer. Usually it was only practical on servers with higher then usual BP. I think this is awesome, I just hope it isn't to easy to dodge.
Is it a straight shot, or a lob in the air?

Be cool to have a nice lob in the air with good splash damage, since Viech's go that nifty code for trajectory and all...

[Chomps123]

telsa should stay.just add the rocket.maybe have aliens get a new structure that combats flying humans? Or would that be the hive?

[Viech]

The tesla generator is low in priority as we came to think that an instahit weapon that can shield off an area from a specific alien class independent of the alien player's skill is just not fun to fight against (more preciselcy, Norfenstein convinced us of this). The GPP Turret is weak against dretches because their speed outperforms the turret's target locking. We expect that a rocket pod that predicts the enemie's position on impact will force the dretch to vary speed or dodge sideways, which will give the turrets more time to lock on. At the same time, the pod is supposed to make long ranged attacks such as the dragoon snipe require more skill as the rockets force the attacker to change positions frequently.

[rolandixor]

I'd like to contribute some ideas for human base items, if of course, it won't lead to the usual back and forth with no goal in mind that I encountered when trying to design a new Tesla model :)

[ViruS]

The idea of the turret I wanted was a:

1. Arc-ing moderate-speed projectile, one that was visibly noticable.
2. Large detection radius ~ 1000 units, but somewhat inaccurate.
3. Instant fire, but long reload time.
4. Maybe cluster damage (i.e. when it colides, it releases off a few more projectiles to hurt wall-hugging aliens)
5. Larger-than-average power absorbtion, like a realistic railgun artillery, which backs up Pnt#3.
6. Crap close range, hence encourage teslas/turrets to back these up.
7. Fragile so if these are somehow spammed in open areas, they can easily be mow'ed down by a tag-team with a healer.
8. Lastly, long build times. However the ckit shouldn't be hindered by this build timer, like gloom's ckit and their manual turret construction with seperate build timers.

Teslas were rarely used because of their reliance on the defense computer

That was 1.1. Dcc doesn't do that.
If there was a reason for lacking tesla usage, it's the "hit detection fix" that was made during gpp dev'ment that allowed people to hit around walls easier, and also the stupid mara zap allowed people to do hit-hide while obtaining near-nil damage.

would that be the hive?

Reminds me, the hive is still using tremfusions' style gameplay. When you attack one, it doesn't send off insectoids at you like gpp does.

We expect that a rocket pod that predicts the enemie's position on impact will force the dretch to vary speed or dodge sideways, which will give the turrets more time to lock on.

I think that'll have the opposite effect. Because they move around, and the turret's useful range is severely restricted to no less than 200 units and longer than 400 (i.e. a dretch can literally jump past them without them getting hurt, everyone knows this) hence the turret can't lock on because they're moving too fast or they're just doing hide and seek with the turret and the rocket launcher (which my suggestion on point 4 prevents to some degree)