Unvanquished Forum

Of the classes and weapons that were modified in GPP, the Lucifer Cannon has the #2 worst set of modifications. (#1 is the goon. Kudos to Unvanquished developers to restoring the chomp to its rightful place as the most powerful attack!) I propose to scrap the gpp changes to the Lucifer Cannon and make it like the 1.1 luci instead.

The gpp luci is faster, but the old one is actually more useful overall, as well as a more interesting and unique weapon. The biggest reason is that gpp luci stinks at killing dretches. It's not right that the humans' most expensive primary weapon is probably the worst of all of them for killing these nuisances. With luci 1.1's higher splash damage it was typical to blow up several dretches with every shot. The gpp luci is stronger for going 1-on-1 with a goon or rant, but to me this does not seem the true purpose of this weapon. It makes more sense for the luci to be used with support from some chainsuits or whatever (though I probably spent the majority of the game in many 1.1 battles trying to sneak into aliens base alone with a luci...) Anyway, a skilled goon/rant should still be able to avoid getting hit, so clearing dretch clouds is a more important function.

The gpp luci is too similar to the pulse rifle. They have fairly similar speeds unlike the slow 1.1 luci balls. The way to minimize damage against both is to wait for the human to reload/recharge. With the 1.1 luci, charging was faster, so the play involved more of dodging the luci shots after they were fired.

Finally, I will discuss my most favorite part of all about using the 1.1 luci: blaster switching! This is definitely a feature, not a bug. This is what I miss the most about the game when playing humans on gpp. I have itemtoggle blaster bound to a button on the side of my mouse, so whenever the luci 1.1 was charged up and no alien was near, the charge could be canceled by pressing this button a couple of times. (If you didn't have any of these buttons you could use right click.) The 1.1 luci had a lot of ammo, so the maximum ammo could be reduced quite a bit due to this ammo-conserving feature. This would be nice since it would encourage people to reduce their random shots all over the place which bleed teammates. Blaster-toggling is just totally awesome, what can I say...

blaster switching is cheat!!

killing time wrote:

Finally, I will discuss my most favorite part of all about using the 1.1 luci: blaster switching! This is definitely a feature, not a bug. This is what I miss the most about the game when playing humans on gpp. I have itemtoggle blaster bound to a button on the side of my mouse, so whenever the luci 1.1 was charged up and no alien was near, the charge could be canceled by pressing this button a couple of times. (If you didn't have any of these buttons you could use right click.) The 1.1 luci had a lot of ammo, so the maximum ammo could be reduced quite a bit due to this ammo-conserving feature. This would be nice since it would encourage people to reduce their random shots all over the place which bleed teammates. Blaster-toggling is just totally awesome, what can I say...

No.

Luci was never meant to be used this way even though a lot of people end up using it like this.

That was definitely a bug... Nothing like running towards a human (with a blaster) with your rant only to figure out they had a fully charged luci on their belt.

Switching back to a charged lucifer cannon – if we're to allow switching to blaster from a charged luci, we'd certainly have to cancel the charge. But we could attach a cost to it; perhaps 50% of the charge.

I don't think you should be allowed to switch back to the blaster at all.
Having a charged (or even partly charged) luci would give the humans an unfair advantage.

If you are going to allow people to switch back to the blaster, have it remove all the charge.

As an alternative, what about holding down alt-fire to 'decharge' the luci. Because it's pure purpose is to conserve ammo, the player should be punished a bit for charging it pre-maturely by having the decharge take the same amount of time as the charge.

Okay, having the luci still charged after switching to blaster is a bug, I agree. I just think it should be allowed to cancel the charge.

E-Mxp wrote:

If you are going to allow people to switch back to the blaster, have it remove all the charge.

Yes. Definitely.

As an alternative, what about holding down alt-fire to 'decharge' the luci.

I'm assuming that you mean secondary fire, not the Alt key plus fire… ;)

Because its pure purpose is to conserve ammo, the player should be punished a bit for charging it pre-maturely by having the decharge take the same amount of time as the charge.

Interesting idea. I've added this to the game design wiki page.

E-Mxp wrote:

The player should be punished a bit for charging it pre-maturely by having the decharge take the same amount of time as the charge.

Why.

Also some of the glitches in 1.1 are what made the game fun :|

Next thing you'll make it impossible to gain speed from strafe jumping because it may be seen as a glitch.

ie, the blaster switch (If you switched it, it wouldn't stay fully charged. You would need to switch back to luci as soon as your blaster shows up [double tapping "itemtoggle blaster" bind] in order for it to be charged. You also needed to time it perfectly or the charge would reset).

I enjoyed trying to run around with a fully charged luci, although I could only keep it there for maybe 1 or 2 switches.

At least there is a new glitch in gpp/unv that 1.1 didn't have: ramp jumping. It is pretty fun as well. If you jump while running on any sloped surface, you will fly into the air much higher than normal. I especially like to use it as dretch on nano. The places with stair steps are really good for jumping off of and flying into someone's face. Most of the time it is more useful with humans though.
There was even an obstacle course mod based on this and other trick jumping. For me it was insanely addictive but unfortunately the server, called Bob's OC, was not up very long.