Suggestions

[doomagent13]

Just a few thoughts I've had about various things.

Pounce/Crush/etc...

I don't know if the physics engine is up to this, but I suggest eliminating pounce damage and instead expanding crush to all directions and letting ALL players be capable of doing the adjusted crush damage.  Basically, pounce would not be aimable, allowing chomp to be reenabled while pouncing as stacking the damages would require a direct hit already.  This would also allow humans to crush at least the smaller aliens, and maybe the larger ones if falling from a sufficient height.  To even this out, fall damage would still need to be applied to the human, and probably should be applied to all aliens, although with different damage rates and minimum fall heights.  To go with that, the max fall damage cap should be removed.  As an example of how this would work, a bsuit falling the three stories on transit onto any alien would just about kill it, although the bsuit would take noticeable damage.  In the same situation, a granger would be able to kill a nude human.  With this system, the damage would also work going in the other direction.  For example, if a rant took a cannon on a map like pushcannon and ran into a human with a jetpack while going up, both would take considerable damage, with the human likely dying instantly, and the rant likely dying on impact with the ground.  As a more questionable benefit, such a system would set up well for a flying alien...

To sum it up, crush, pounce, and fall damage would all be combined together into a more generic high speed impact damage which would be applied to both the fast moving person and whatever they run into.  Depending on how it is set up, trample might also be includable.  Min fall height would probably need replacing with a min speed to take damage.  The way pounce would work under the new system is by providing considerable speed to the goon, which would then translate into high speed impact damage to the target.


Jetpack

The only real change that I think should be made to the jetpack is for it to be much more "floaty" with a smooth acceleration to some substantial maximum speed and a much lower air friction value.


Alien Stage 3

I don't really have a way to fix this, but aliens should have at least 2 new classes in each stage.  The luci is good enough to be the only new weapon in hs3, but the rant is not really enough by itself.  One method to solve this would be pushing the adv goon back to as3, and making adv mara zap be capable of momentarily disabling any targetted human structures.


Basilisk/Adv. Basilisk

The way I see it, the lisk is something like a ninja or assassin.  As such, it should be quite stealthy, with no footstep sounds, and maybe a delayed camouflage effect.  However, as they seem to be moving to a more indirect support role, maybe at least the adv. lisk should be able to launch a kind of gas bomb that would leave a gas cloud, and cause nearby humans to undergo the gassed effect.


Flamer

It's pretty good as it is, and the usability in vents will be nice.  That said, it should probably have a longer range, with the damage being reduced as the distance is increased.


Lucifer

While the luci did need a speed increase, I think doubling it may have been a bit extreme.  Something along the lines of 550 charged and 1100 uncharged probably would have been sufficient.  Regardless, I think the speed should scale between the two values depending on how charged the shot was.  A full 10 ammo charge would go the minimum speed while a mere 2/3 ammo charge would go nearly as fast as an uncharged shot.  While this would let mid charged shots reach their target at some noticeable speed, it would let aliens be capable of visibly identifying the more highly charged shots.


Grenade

While these haven't really changed, I do have a few thoughts.  There should be a certain built-in variability to the fuse time.  They should have a hitbox, something along the lines of a cube with sides of length 4.  Granger spit should be capable of defusing grenades.  However, as they take damage from other kinds of attacks, the variability in the fuse should be increased considerably, to the point where it might explode immediately or minutes later.  In addition, if possible, they should be capable of being knocked around by attacks, like dretch punt.


That's all I can think of now, although I may come back with more.

[gimhael]

I don't know if the physics engine is up to this, but I suggest eliminating pounce damage and instead expanding crush to all directions and letting ALL players be capable of doing the adjusted crush damage.

While the physics engine is not very sophisticated, it does track the speed of every entity, so the impact energy can be calculated (when you assign a mass to each class), but the way I and many others use the goon pounce for movement, bumping into walls and other aliens all the way, I'd probably be dead before I even see the human base.

[UniqPhoeniX]

doomagent13:
Pounce/Crush/etc... - So you are suggesting something like kinetic energy? It might work, but would require quite some time to balance, and is probably too big change for 1.2. Tho I would like to see it in a mod. Mass*velocity²/resistance (velocity perpendicular to surfaces? more logical but diff dmg from diagonal movement), mass and resistance depending on class, so goon could be made more resistant to it, also head should take more damage then legs. That would allow rants to throw dretches at humans/buildings and make strafejumping deadly even barbs could be added to this, making them more deadly when fired from above, or perhaps surviving impact if too slow. 1 problem is less consistent damage, increasing the learning curve.

Jetpack - I'd also prefer a Jetpack with slow acceleration and higher top speed, but again, too big change to make right before 1.2 beta.

Basilisk/Adv. Basilisk - I think the footsteps have already been removed; a gas cloud would also impair alien vision.

Lucifer - I think the speed and luciball size already depend on charge, tho if not, they should.

Grenade - A gren staying around for a whole minute could just delay attacks from both teams; being able to knock it around would make gren suicide attacks more risky.

[doomagent13]

Yeah...

Some of those were more random ideas I have had in my mind for a while.  Unless the code has changed significantly, the jetpack change shouldn't be all that hard.  If the values are tweaked so as to roughly maintain the pounce, crush, and trample damages as they are, the learning curve shouldn't be that bad.  It isn't something the humans would want to use all that often as they would often be taking as much damage as they would give.  However, this would also allow bsuits to crush dretches if set up properly.

[UniqPhoeniX]

Unless the code has changed significantly, the jetpack change shouldn't be all that hard.  If the values are tweaked so as to roughly maintain the pounce, crush, and trample damages as they are, the learning curve shouldn't be that bad.  It isn't something the humans would want to use all that often as they would often be taking as much damage as they would give.  However, this would also allow bsuits to crush dretches if set up properly.

I'm not saying jetpack is hard to code, it's just a large gameplay change, may take too much time to test and get right. For example you could jump and turn on the jetpack, quickly taking you upwards faster then jump speed, out of the way of anything but goons. The other damages will be inconsistent, thus you might sometimes need more hits to kill.
About the graphics changes, they are ofc possible, but probably won't happen.

[doomagent13]

As far as graphics go, it's called Xreal.  They basically took ioq3, the engine Tremulous is built on, and upgraded the graphics extensively.  Someone in the Tremfusion project tried porting the xreal renderer, but I don't think they ever got it to work.

I suppose my ideas may require more extensive balance testing than would ideally be wanted before the beta or even final releases...  Still, some of them would probably not be all that hard to test.

With the grenade idea, a minute was intended as a ridiculously extreme example.  The variability would largely stay within 5 seconds of the standard 5 seconds, so basically grenades would detonate in 0 - 10 seconds, depending on how much damage they take.  With enough damage, a grenade might not explode at all, or take significantly longer than normal, but it might also explode immediately upon being damaged, or anywhere in between.  The average time would stay around 5 seconds.  Given that any attempt to move a grenade could detonate it prematurely, most people would probably just continue running away.  Just as an added amusement, grenades would be able to knock other grenades around, which could make multi-nadings much more effective.

[David]

I want grenades to do the standard pull the pin when you press fire, throw when you release fire.
Suicide bomber

[doomagent13]

As nice as that would be, it would require fulling implementing them as a weapon.  Currently, they are a miscellaneous item that requires monster hackage to throw.  Not to mention that the delayed throwing ability would effectively necessitate changing weapons, like from blaster to the real gun, except it would be to the grenade.  Which would mean you couldn't fire your gun while preparing to throw.

As an added difficulty, humans would need some new animations in order to depict throwing the grenade.

[mooseberry]

Which would mean you couldn't fire your gun while preparing to throw.

Which I don't see anything wrong with. If you can throw a grenade that's about to explode at a weakened tyrant, you shouldn't need to also be shooting it too.

Although this probably won't be implemented, for the reasons you said. It wouldnt't be that difficult overall, but it would be a lot work, so I doubt this will be put in, even if the devs did like this idea.

[Winnie the Pooh]

Stannum could just add another animation to the new set of hands/arms that we have now, and add a throwing animation to the new trooper's anims. I'd like a cool grenade-throwing action. That would be sweet.