Why are you interested in balancing weapons for maps that are poorly designed? There should be no map where the changes you are proposing to the MD will work.
The lasgun has poor damage and slow firing speed. It is, however, an accurate weapon. The lgun is the medium-long range version of the short-medium range rifle. Why on earth would you want to rebalance a long range weapon to fulfill a duty that's already covered? Also, camping in a tactical position (a forward) is something that should never be allowed by the alien team. If humans manage to get a forward up then they should reap the benefits (free energy weapon ammo, a medi, and turret cover). If, however, you think that there is another situation in which a camper will be able to help his team win the game by camping, feel free to say so. As it is, though, there are no effective base positions that will allow a player to both camp AND fight at the enemy base.
It seems that all of your reasons for rebalancing weapons are rather silly. Aliens don't need help attacking lgunners any more than they do attacking riflers, and any situation that would allow you to camp with a lasgun or snipe with an MD should not be situations in vanilla Tremulous. Community maps are NOT to be balanced for.
ALSO, repeater camping without reloads is possible with any energy weapon. It takes less than a second to buy ammo.
lgun remain a weapon with precision, but would not have surgical/robotic precision. weapons have not spread, humans have : P.
about repeater camper, maybe, there is a way to fix it, simple, delaytime to reload your weapon(like 5 seconds or more)
about MD, the verysmall spread is more for realism, not affect the gameplay much, perhaps over long distances, the player would have to target the center of the aliens (the corners are at risk of erring),yes, to kill in long range, you need to aim well, especially against small aliens : ).
and for me, lgun is like more a eletric gun(it fires small bundles of energy at the enemy
, but, I think nobody knows for sure how it works, like star wars or gantz weapons
but everyone knows that high force lasers consume very much energy, the lasgun seems to shoot the laser and then has a half-second recharge not to overheat or empty the battery too fast.
lgun have recoil, lasers gun have no recoil, so gun does not shoot lasers : )
wolfbr, you also fail to apply your own arguments to your reasoning for "realistic balance". why can the humans NOT have robotic accuracy? this is the future. they are all specially designed and augmented combat clones. in the real world, it might not be too long before we can start fielding footsoldier robots. if i were going to people my military with clones rather than machines, the clones better have a damn big advantage over machines. machines are far more inexpensive, easier to repair, and do not take as many years to "grow" and "train". the machines do not even need to be autonomic. consider the predator drones, currently in use.
the best soldier, and with better accuracy, one would still not 100% accurate, even being well-trained clones (like star wars: P) would still not be "perfect", in tremulous, humans are not perfect like jedi warriors : P.
and robots are already used in irak, and the U.S. is already developing a "battlesuit"
as I said, the weapons can be perfect(precision), but not humans, and therefore should not have 100% accuracy
yes, tremulous can have some changes made to make gameplay more fun, and perhaps even more "realistic" (of course, in a sci-fi setting, "realistic" is extremely subjective) but the changes you suggest are quite senseless. in reality, the lasgun is really not too much better than a rifle. spread and reload would change it from "rifle equivalent" to "rifle clone". i agree that the MD needs tweaking, but i feel this is more a matter of damage done vs target hp, rather than a need for spread.
not exactly equal.
rifle,lgun,chaingun and rifle, all are automatic, and have their differences, it would not change, like other games(especially those with several firearms, however, each with its pros on cons, like the fact that they do not make them equal).
some spread for lgun,"fast reload" time and maybe more damage, make it better in long range, the rifle still takes longer to recharge, and lgun has the advantage of being recharged at various locations(reapeter and reactor), I imagine the lgun more like hl2 pulse rifle(fast reload,slow fire interval, good damage, and,accurately)
