Gas reimplementation,goon pounce fix

[F50]

This topic is really funny, cause we all know that the suggestions probably won't happen

Yes but not posting about the uselessness of chomp makes your statement a self-fulfilling prophecy. I hope its untrue.

[ziplocpeople]

To be honest, I miss when goon pounce had virtually no range (I forget what phase, maybe 3?) I'd like to see this again, however only if slash range was increased by a small amount to compensate. As it stands, pouncing is just too easy to whore, it's like the rant slash of 1.1. Or maybe Basilisks are, or...

[baybal]

If you really want to make it more realistic... why can you turn in the air at all?  And why can anything turn on the spot so fast?

I think it's not simply non realistic, it's not rational how goon can deliver pounce to a person BEHIND him. It should be treated as simply a bug. Eyah, and I think some players got quite skillfull at this kind of pouncing.

[Anonymoose]

It actually makes perfect sense, there is no issue with the goon pounce at its not hitting you from behind *smirk*, think of it as the goon is catching you in the side with those vicious looking tusks on its head as it bounds past you. Also to anyone who thinks the goon is overpowered in any way... No, no it's not, it costs 3/(4 for advanced) credits! It is the second most powerful class after the tyrant, it is supposed to be badass!

[SirDude]

it is supposed to be badass without having to spam micro pounces, that's the issue.

pounce should be a opening attack and a form of moment, not its primary attack.

goon was MUCH more balanced in 1.1 and right now it is in a spot where the pounce is overpowered but nerfing it will make it underpowered so tweaking it is a challenge.

[Anonymoose]

Nah, if a goon manages to put you in a corner, you deserve to be "micro-pounced" the shit out of. For the cost of 3/4 credits, goons should be able to tackle fully equipped humans, there is no issue.
And no pounce should not be an opening attack, people can use it however the fuck they want.

[Dracone]

^ Stupid.

Essentially what you're saying is don't be in any area where a goon could ever get you into a corner, as well as don't play humans on any map where it's generally impossible to get that kind of distance from corners. You're saying it's ok for a goon to actually be able to kill a fully equipped human with a single pounce by virtue of putting them in a corner, even when that "advantage" is given on a basis determined by the map. And you tie this all together using the fund value of the class as supporting logic, which is awful in this case.

To reiterate other points I've made, the features of this version cause it to be a massive amount more map based than 1.1, despite the fact that it makes more sense for the game to only be map based through its fundamentals (base building, the general concepts of movement, etc.), not smaller features brought on by developmental progress.

[Meisseli]

If a goon manages to put you in a corner, you deserve to be chomped the shit out of. Not pounced.

[Anonymoose]

Dracone, i never implied that at all, i am sorry you feel that way. Humans are more than capable of dodging and avoiding pounces through various evasive maneuvers.
Just with goon being the most expensive class for all s1/2 it should be able to kill things nicely.
Chomping is just as handy in certain situations as pouncing is in others.

[Meisseli]

Dracone, i never implied that at all, i am sorry you feel that way. Humans are more than capable of dodging and avoiding pounces through various evasive maneuvers.
Just with goon being the most expensive class for all s1/2 it should be able to kill things nicely.
Chomping is just as handy in certain situations as pouncing is in others.

Pouncing is always handier except in some ramps.

[Anonymoose]

Pouncing is always handier except in some ramps.

Yes pounce is good, so it should be, it allows for some really fast paced action(something i like about tremulous), but those suggesting that pouncing usefulness should be decreased so that chomp is more used is silly, its along the same lines of wanting rant charge to be lessened so maul is used more or mara claw be reduced so more people use zap...

[Dracone]

As Meisseli said, pouncing is always the better option except on unfavorable terrain (ramps).

And your reasoning against the desires of players for weakening pounce to make chomp the dominant attack again (and your other examples) isn't very solid. As I've said before, the main reason I would want chomp dominant again is because it gives the goon more depth. While chomp is the better option on certain terrain, as Meisseli brought up, that doesn't make it better, in the overall, than pounce by virtue of you being unable to use pounce itself. Chomp will allow you a better chance to kill the opponent at his advantageous position, but it won't do it faster than pounce would in a normal situation.

Not only that, but chomps are much harder to land on a human than pounces, so a human who knows how to move will avoid chomps much more easily than pounces. Hitting a human with pounce is cake though, since there's pretty much no timing involved and no actual aim, only prediction of where the human's going to go. Essentially you pounce at a location, not the human himself. Yet another reason it's better than chomp simply by the way it's set up.

Don't give me the whole "that's strategy" bullshit either, about humans being smart by deciding to stand on ramps and stairs. That only reveals how terribly map based this version is. Not that 1.1 wasn't to some degree (you can't get rid of map-team bias in this game), but you get the point; the more ramps/stairs in a map, the more options the humans have to fuck the aliens up because their movement doesn't work properly on those kind of terrains. We can swing this concept the other way though; the more narrow halls on a map, the easier it is for rants to just camp them and own.

What we have in this version might be balance, but it's not "aliens = humans"(ish) balance. It's "aliens > humans here, humans > aliens there", and it's an uncomfortable balance to say the least.

[Meisseli]

Pouncing is always handier except in some ramps.

Yes pounce is good, so it should be, it allows for some really faced paced action(something i like about tremulous), but those suggesting that pouncing usefulness should be decreased so that chomp is more used is silly, its along the same lines of wanting rant charge to be lessened so maul is used more or mara claw be reduced so more people use zap...

Why is it silly? Do you think the marauder zap, tyrant charge and dragoon pounce are fully comparable?

Fun kill stats from Phase 6:

Code: [Select]

WEAPON               US         EURO    TOTAL

LEVEL0_BITE     188755 21646 210401
LEVEL3_POUNCE     115475 11278 126753
LEVEL3_CLAW     75527 7743 83270
LEVEL2_CLAW     64689 8309 72998
LEVEL4_CLAW     53928 5928 59856
LEVEL4_TRAMPLE     32966 3034 36000
LEVEL2_ZAP     32307 3450 35757
LEVEL1_CLAW     28057 3966 32023
LEVEL3_BOUNCEBAL     16130 1699 17829
LEVEL4_CRUSH     1389 152 1541
Primary attack vs. secondary attack ratio:

Code: [Select]

P/S RATIO

LEVEL2 2,04
LEVEL3 0,66
LEVEL4 1,66

My biggest gripes with pounce:

• It isn't dodgeable
• It makes chomp basically redundant
• It has a higher DPS than chomp
• It isn't fun, being the pouncer or being pounced

Yes, you really are unable to dodge it even if you're the game's best dodger, if the dragoon is even relatively close to your skill level. I don't find basically an automatically hitting, high-damage weapon fun, and even less when it's nowadays almost the only attack dragoons use.

Now I don't want chomp be like it used to be in 1.1, but some kind of balance between the attacks would be really in place.

[Dracone]

^ This. Goons shouldn't be able to slaughter hordes of S1 humans just because they can't dodge chomp, but what I liked was having to use pounce to open chomp up as an option. Really good dodgers would get distance, so pounce was necessary, but you couldn't kill two birds with one stone as you can in 1.2, with both catching up AND doing major damage.

Depth in the class is the point. This in turn gives the humans depth in movement, in that more of their possible movements are applicable to situations versus goons, but at the same time they have to learn which ones to use given specific situations.

EDIT: Pounce's damage may be the best factor to examine.

Imagine this scenario, but don't take anything as a direct suggestion: pounce changes to do 20 damage (fully charged) to a helmet/light armor equipped human, but the knockback is kept. You pounce a human into a corner. You have him stuck there now, but no longer can pounce rapidly kill said human, at least not nearly as quickly as before. Therefore, you would be at a disadvantage to continue pouncing him, as other humans might come along, or, depending on his weapon and accuracy, he kills you before you kill him. So you decide to use chomp, which, while using it may grant him freedom of movement, you are rewarded with a much faster kill than pounce would get you, IF you aim properly to counter his dodging.

A possible issue I see, however, is keeping knockback with pounce should an attempt be made to balance the attacks so that chomp is more useful in relation to pounce. If you have to catch up to a human IN ORDER TO CHOMP THEM, and you fuck up and hit them and knock them far enough away, you've kinda defeated the purpose of your action.

[F50]

If you have to catch up to a human IN ORDER TO CHOMP THEM, and you fuck up and hit them and knock them far enough away, you've kinda defeated the purpose of your action.

This used to be a rather common scenario for me, until I was fully convinced that chomping sucked.

[Celestial_Rage]

Chomping doesn't suck. Sure, more often than not, pouncing is the better option, but, chomping does indeed have its uses. Although, I agree with Meis and Dracone that chomping needs to be more of a primary attack than an attack very few people use.

[Anonymoose]

Those kill stats make perfect sense meis, goon being the most powerful class for all of stage 1 and 2 plus goon is still preferred by some in stage 3, i would be genuinely surprised if the goons most useful weapon wasn't the second highest killer behind the dretch. Its not like those statistics are odd or strange, that number fits in to the statistics quite well.

If all games went all the way to s3 and everyone liked going tyrant and charging around the place, the same people would be in here suggesting that tyrant charge was ridiculous and that it should be dumbed down so that maul was more used as it is a 'primary' attack.

Why should chomping be the main attack? that's so boring and plain, might as well just use marauder if that were so, adv mara claw can output the same dps as goon chomp but is far more maneuverable, in short if goons dont have pounce, they have nothing.

[Celestial_Rage]

Pouncing is extremely difficult to dodge and takes almost no skill to use. Good luck taking on any goon, even as a chainsuit.

[Dracone]

Why should chomping be the main attack? that's so boring and plain, might as well just use marauder if that were so, adv mara claw can output the same dps as goon chomp but is far more maneuverable, in short if goons dont have pounce, they have nothing.

"Why chomp for main attack, without pounce the goon is nothing."

If you're going to misinterpret our points, you're not going to get anywhere. I suggest you leave.

But to clarify, we're talking more about use as a weapon. Pounce should be used as an accessory, though having it do damage is fine. It does too much DPS at the moment though.

[Anonymoose]

"Why chomp for main attack, without pounce the goon is nothing."

If you're going to misinterpret our points, you're not going to get anywhere. I suggest you leave.

But to clarify, we're talking more about use as a weapon. Pounce should be used as an accessory, though having it do damage is fine. It does too much DPS at the moment though.

Your argument would be more solid if it wasn't obvious that you just want your 1.1 goon back.
And I certainly am not misinterpreting anything, I am reading, taking in and offering different points of view, if you don't like opposing points of view I suggest you avoid all forms of communication with anyone and everyone.
I have no problem with you disagreeing with my comments, just don't assume i am ignorant towards your own.

[Dracone]

Your argument would be more solid if it wasn't obvious that you just want your 1.1 goon back. And I certainly am not misinterpreting anything, I am reading, taking in and offering different points of view, if you don't like opposing points of view I suggest you avoid all forms of communication with anyone and everyone. I have no problem with you disagreeing with my comments, just don't assume i am ignorant towards your own.

I'm not assuming you're ignorant to them, I'm saying you are.

Now I don't want chomp be like it used to be in 1.1, but some kind of balance between the attacks would be really in place.

^ This. Goons shouldn't be able to slaughter hordes of S1 humans just because they can't dodge chomp, but what I liked was having to use pounce to open chomp up as an option. Really good dodgers would get distance, so pounce was necessary, but you couldn't kill two birds with one stone as you can in 1.2, with both catching up AND doing major damage.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but I shouldn't have had to be. If you are actually anything of a good Tremulous player (the only people who should really have much of a say in this), you would understand what I was saying.

To clarify anyways, I do want the 1.1 goon formula back, which had a balance of chomp and pounce in terms of their use, with chomp being the main damage dealer in combat and pounce as an accessory. The difference would be in the efficiency that a goon can possibly kill humans with those chomps. It would only take a very slight nerf on 1.1 values to create a more reasonable version of the 1.1 goon for 1.2. But if you think that a variation on the 1.1 goon's values as applied to the same optimal fundamental-based combat strategy is "the old 1.1 goon," you're not thinking on details nearly as much as you should be. Read into things please.

And finally, I forgot this:

My biggest gripes with pounce:

• It isn't dodgeable
• It makes chomp basically redundant
• It has a higher DPS than chomp
• It isn't fun, being the pouncer or being pounced

Why should chomping be the main attack? that's so boring and plain, might as well just use marauder if that were so, adv mara claw can output the same dps as goon chomp but is far more maneuverable

"Chomp is not fun, so if it's the main weapon you should just use marauder because it outputs the same DPS." You are making no sense.

[Anonymoose]

Now normally i would post a response with a key point of my previous statement bolded, something like this: "adv mara claw can output the same dps as goon chomp but is far more maneuverable"
Oops, look what happened

I think where said 'confusion' comes from is that nowadays chomp cant be used mid pounce as there is a cool-down upon landing, now you like the idea of using them in a combination (using pounce to get near the enemy THEN chomping and what not) so as long as this cool-down exists pounce needs to be a useful damage dealing tool, should this cool down be removed then i would have no objections to a reduction in pounce damage or whatever as that way its isn't just removing pounce effectiveness, but it is also adding other avenues to deal damage.

[Dracone]

Chomp mid-pounce hasn't been around (widely) since 2006.

Also, I have no idea what you're trying to differentiate here. When you can chomp after landing with pounce is identical to how it was in 1.1, in terms of how that works. Least that's how it is for me, since I use chomp more than pounce in 1.2 anyways. I should know.

There is no confusion, chomp doesn't work well mostly because of the repeat time being so high, with a range decrease as a slight addition to the overall (though the range being decreased is much more reasonable than the repeat rate), COMBINED with the human's ability to dodge. Also note that the goon having a lower chomp rate decreases the fast pace of combat if the goon is using chomp because the human doesn't have to move nearly as much since he can predict the goon's chomps near-perfectly if he pays attention, since there's such a long pause between them.

[Anonymoose]

Chomp mid-pounce hasn't been around (widely) since 2006.

Yes that is what I was referring to, I used to play trem way back when that was how it was, then I stopped for ages and now I am back into it on 1.2 and that's no longer an option, i find the new pounce is a reasonable substitute for it. Should pounce effectiveness be reduced and it returns to a more mobility and maneuvering tool, it would just mean reverting the chomp side of things back to 1.1 style necessary to keep the goon useful.

[F50]

Now normally i would post a response with a key point of my previous statement bolded, something like this: "adv mara claw can output the same dps as goon chomp but is far more maneuverable"
Oops, look what happened

Do you not care to try to understand what is being said, or are you just being an ass? Just because two attacks have the same DPS and similar range does not make them equal, the marauder has a much higher rate of fire, sits at a different height (a higher viewpoint puts you closer to human head height), and moves very differently. The last point you appear to have realized, but I do not think you have thought out the implications of that. A dragoon in 1.1 could expect to land most of its chomps and chomp at a fairly regular rate, while a marauder generally will land a series of slashes, and then evade. Sometimes one can pull off an evasive maneuver while landing all of your slashes, one after the other, but generally the marauder will stop slashing temporarily during this time. Attempting to land every slash as a mara is a good way to die. The increased rate of fire of the marauder also changes things considerably, since with the dragon, one does not have to be capable of following the human all of the time, just when you're chomping. Hence:

"Chomp is not fun, so if it's the main weapon you should just use marauder because it outputs the same DPS." You are making no sense.

And yes, the goon would have to receive some sort of bonus to chomp if such a change were to be implemented.

[kharnov]

From my Tremstats. I'll just leave this here.





The message should be fairly obvious.

[Meisseli]

Those kill stats make perfect sense meis, goon being the most powerful class for all of stage 1 and 2 plus goon is still preferred by some in stage 3, i would be genuinely surprised if the goons most useful weapon wasn't the second highest killer behind the dretch. Its not like those statistics are odd or strange, that number fits in to the statistics quite well.

You did misinterpret the point here a bit. The stats were there to say you comparing pounce to other secondary attacks doesn't really work. Pounce is far more powerful compared to other alien's secondary attacks, even so good that it can make the dragoon's primary redundant. And this shows in practise too, ever since people got the hang of the game, pounce has been used really excessively.

If all games went all the way to s3 and everyone liked going tyrant and charging around the place, the same people would be in here suggesting that tyrant charge was ridiculous and that it should be dumbed down so that maul was more used as it is a 'primary' attack.

No? The statistics clearly show how the charge is not being used to such a ridiculous excess. There's no logic behind what you're saying, it wouldn't shift to the opposite even if you'd have all aliens spawn as tyrants.

Why should chomping be the main attack? that's so boring and plain, might as well just use marauder if that were so, adv mara claw can output the same dps as goon chomp but is far more maneuverable, in short if goons dont have pounce, they have nothing.

Chomp shouldn't be the main attack. I don't think anyone here is saying that. But why should pounce be the main attack? Don't you think a balance between the two weapons would be better instead of what we have now?

Now come on, I'll re-use one of my examples I've used multiple times. If a dragoon jumps on top of the reactor, pouncing kills it faster than chomping. Since I naturally want to be as efficient as possible, I have to kill structures with pounce all the time. That is utterly ridiculous.

[kharnov]

I have a bit of an odd proposal. I don't expect it to be taken up, but I'll post it anyway.

At the moment,

• The basilisk can fart all it wants. Non-stop.
• The marauder apparently has power plant glands.
• The dragoon apparently never gets tired of launching itself at supersonic speeds.
• The tyrant can somehow accelerate its gigantic body at breakneck speeds to crush puny humans against walls over and over again.

How about adding a stamina equivalent to some (or all) alien secondary attacks, while keeping the current values for everything else? This will result in the following:

• The basilisk needs to wait a little bit before gassing again. Not really a major change, but whatever.
• The marauder is no longer an infinite wide-area grenade. It has to run away and recharge instead of being able to destroy an entire base by itself. Most maras die after just three zaps or so, thus a lot of people won't notice this change.
• The dragoon pounce is still very deadly, but you have to be much more careful with it. You can't get on top of a human building and constantly pounce into it. You have to think to yourself, do I use my pounces to kill things, or do I dodge with it? How certain am I of being able to run away?
• Poor tyrant. He ate so many twinkies between 1.1 and 1.2 that he can crush things now with his sheer bulk, but all the fat has given him clogged arteries and he can't run so much anymore without getting tired. Now you have to be more careful with your 1110 DPS killing machine. It would be used more for running away than killwhoring in maps with narrow corridors.

These stamina things can be tied to an alien's healing rate. Maybe the basilisk can gain a new use by helping its alien friends recharge stamina faster.

This way, primary attacks gain a larger focus, secondary attacks are deadly but limited, and the violent debates die down.

gg.

[Anonymoose]

Dude, if i take dragoon pounce and then i take the attacks of all other aliens and i put them in descending order(most powerful first)...
Tyrant Trample 1110
Dragoon Pounce 250
Tyrant Crush 240
Tyrant Maul 125
Dragoon Chomp 100
Mara Claw 100
Dragoon Snipe 91.6
Dretch Bite 72
Basilisk Claw 64
Mara Zap 40
Granger Claw 20

As you can see, that figure fits in quite well to the overall scheme of things, pounce dps seems to be just where you want it too keep dragoon a valuable class even into s3, but remember dragoons are still quite fragile, a couple of naked rifles have the potential to rip you apart within a few seconds, sure it is possible to pounce over to them and pounce each one out within around the same time as well, but that all depends on the players, and that is what you would want/expect from a class costing 3/4 credits when faced with a couple of naked rifles.

You did misinterpret the point here a bit. The stats were there to say you comparing pounce to other secondary attacks doesn't really work. Pounce is far more powerful compared to other alien's secondary attacks, even so good that it can make the dragoon's primary redundant. And this shows in practise too, ever since people got the hang of the game, pounce has been used really excessively.

Yeah, and its excessive use makes perfect sense, dragoon is available during stages 1,2 and 3 whereas the next most powerful class is tyrant, which is only available at s3, so already its obvious why the dragoons most powerful attack is used alot in the scheme of things. Tyrant charge is far greater than pounce but its not as commonly available.

No? The statistics clearly show how the charge is not being used to such a ridiculous excess. There's no logic behind what you're saying, it wouldn't shift to the opposite even if you'd have all aliens spawn as tyrants.

This is a no-brainer, relating back to my above comment, dragoon pounce is the most powerful method of killing people for all s1 and s2 and is still
 reasonably effectice in s3 whereas tyrant charge is only available in s3, wow, its almost like dragoons have way more time to kill things and increase the stats for pounce-kills during a game...

Now come on, I'll re-use one of my examples I've used multiple times. If a dragoon jumps on top of the reactor, pouncing kills it faster than chomping. Since I naturally want to be as efficient as possible, I have to kill structures with pounce all the time. That is utterly ridiculous.

That is a bit of a shady area, its not so easy, with chomping you can look around, maybe dodge a few luci blasts etc, with pouncing down like that you cut off your vision, you are less aware of shit that's happening and you will most likely get mowed down quicker.

On another note, have you looked at the goon? those tusks on its head look real nasty, id be more worried about getting gored or pounced by those tusks than being chomped by its little baby jaw =))))

[Dracone]

You're on a fucking RC but you need your vision to dodge luci shots so using pounce to kill the RC from the top is sacrificial?

I'm done.