Chimera lightning weirdness

[Supa]

Well, Chimera lightning seems to be better now, but Norfenstein and I have found something kind of weird with it.

A) Lightning seems to deal damage through (thin-ish) walls, and when it does so it deals more damage.

B) Lightning seems to do more damage to everything else when it hits a structure. So if a Chimera starts jumping around a group of turrets and one human, it does extra lightning damage against everything, not just the turrets.

C) Personally, I think the Chimera lightning  is just a bit too powerful right now. A Chimera can just hop around a base zapping things with impunity right now.. I think after taking a look at A and fixing B the damage should be toned down slightly, more playtesting will be needed to see how much though.

[DCB:ETOX]

chimera lighting needs to be tonned down a bit... i dont mind the dmg becoming greater when it hits more structures. but i do dislike the headshot ability: if you jump with a chimera and use the lightning, it will usually hit any humans nearby in the head, thus killing them... sorta cheep when you jst buy weapons and stuff and then lose them without a fight. maybe make the dmg just enough so humans can survive, but a second shot is a definate kill?.

[Norfenstein]

Actually the damage seemed pretty random, though if we recreated exact cirumstances the same amount could usually be duplicated. One hit could do anywhere between 5 and 64 points of damage to a battlesuit, which is kind of a lot...now if we had had more players it wouldn't be such a guess as to how much it should be toned down...

Nothing else seemed out of whack in the 2 and 3 player games we had. Defense computer still doesn't warn of building damage and suicide can be still be used to significantly weasel out of build timers.

[Timbo]

Actually the damage seemed pretty random, though if we recreated exact cirumstances the same amount could usually be duplicated. One hit could do anywhere between 5 and 64 points of damage to a battlesuit, which is kind of a lot...now if we had had more players it wouldn't be such a guess as to how much it should be toned down...

The reason you're seeing this "random" damage is because the actual damage value the attack does is divided among the number of targets. So if you attack a lone enemy you're far more likely to kill them. This works exactly the same for structures and players alike.

Nothing else seemed out of whack in the 2 and 3 player games we had. Defense computer still doesn't warn of building damage and suicide can be still be used to significantly weasel out of build timers.

The defenese computer does warn of building damage for the reactor and spawns, i've tested this myself.

[Norfenstein]

We were only testing the chimera lightning with one chimera and one battlesuit. Unless it was somehow dividing damage between the one human and the structures in the next room (but not actually damaging the latter), then it didn't seem to work exactly as intended. I could still be wrong however.

I was under the impression the defense computer was supposed to warn about damage to any structure, not just the reactor and spawns. So no problem there then.

[Timbo]

It's possible the locational damage system is interfering; I'll disable it for the lightning attack.