Give SL's some new options

[Tristan63]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):

Right so everyone knows SLS start with some pretty good stuff, b12 is slightly better than M3 and their helmets are also better. Well since we know that the hugger combat is gonna be removed, and along with it protection against huggers that helmets provide, lets brainstorm some SL ideas. The SL would have a SL vendor coin, which can give some unique SL items. The first one would be a reinforced B12 armor, with extra plates and some black details, includes a helmet aswell. This would essentially be armor in the median of B18 and B12 but not better than B18. It would have overall better protection from ranged and melee and will have a beacon pouch that allows for 3 armor slot items, slows the user down about as much as a B18 though. Next up is a M41A/2 Battle rifle, which is normally special to PMCs but is available for SLs who wish to have it. The third option would be a large backpack, that can carry 11 items instead of the regular 7, weighs the user down. And finally the last option would be the ability to get 2 napalm OBs, which would have not only explosions, but fire along with them.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):

Make the SL slightly more important than they already are. Also gives them more of a edge on the battlefield as a fighting unit when needed.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):

A SL would get a coin from their vendor like the SPEC does, insert and receive one of the following items. 1: B12-R armor set 2: M41A/2 Battle rifle 3: Large backpack 4: Napalm OB "NOB"

[Eenkogneeto]

Rifle would have to be lowered to SMG for my +1, Its just too good.

[Karmac]

I like the idea of SL's having Battle Rifles, but all of these options will make SL's want to go and rambo a lot more, or participate in combat that they really shouldn't. Which ultimately helps no one and leaves the marines with one less SL on the ground.

[Tristan63]

I like the idea of SL's having Battle Rifles, but all of these options will make SL's want to go and rambo a lot more, or participate in combat that they really shouldn't. Which ultimately helps no one and leaves the marines with one less SL on the ground.

Should we make a suggestion about whitelisting SL's then?
It honestly wouldn't be a bad idea

[Casany]

Don't you mean b18?

[Tristan63]

I facedesked

[Karmac]

Whitelisting SL's just makes it too much of a hassle, for staff, players and anyone in-game. For now all we can do is hope people realise they should play the game for at least a week before they pretend to be meaningful members of society and go any role other than PFC.

[Youbar]

The problem with the role of squad leader is that, more often than not, it's treated like a glorified grunt. Once you add tokens for special gear, people will see is as a secondary specialist slot they can take up, further contributing to the previously mentioned problem. I think that squad leaders should receive more abilities that support their squad as a whole, rather than gear that buffs their combat endurance. You're on the right track with incendiary artillery, or a larger backpack to hold additional support items. The other ideas, not so much.
Here's an altered list that I believe would be more in line with supporting the squad as a whole, rather than the individual:

1. Incendiary orbital beacons, which have a larger blast radius, but decreased damage
2. A backpack with 9 spaces, rather than 11. This'd allow room for 2 beacons, with still plenty left for the other 2 if the squad leader desires.
3. Explosive charges which can collapse narrow parts of caves, forcing aliens to find another route
4. A small container of pills which can only be used once, but can be distributed among the squad. They'd provide long-term minor combat buffs.

My own ideas aren't fantastic, but they're a start towards an emphasis of providing for the squad itself, rather than the squad leader.

[Karmac]

The problem with the role of squad leader is that, more often than not, it's treated like a glorified grunt. Once you add tokens for special gear, people will see is as a secondary specialist slot they can take up, further contributing to the previously mentioned problem. I think that squad leaders should receive more abilities that support their squad as a whole, rather than gear that buffs their combat endurance. You're on the right track with incendiary artillery, or a larger backpack to hold additional support items. The other ideas, not so much.
Here's an altered list that I believe would be more in line with supporting the squad as a whole, rather than the individual:

1. Incendiary orbital beacons, which have a larger blast radius, but decreased damage
2. A backpack with 9 spaces, rather than 11. This'd allow room for 2 beacons, with still plenty left for the other 2 if the squad leader desires.
3. Explosive charges which can collapse narrow parts of caves, forcing aliens to find another route
4. A small container of pills which can only be used once, but can be distributed among the squad. They'd provide long-term minor combat buffs.

My own ideas aren't fantastic, but they're a start towards an emphasis of providing for the squad itself, rather than the squad leader.

Maybe some concoction with Synaptizine and Tricord thrown in? Get that anti-stun, general heal combat stimms going on.

[Casany]

Btw, B12 is only slightly worse then pred armor, and it's actually pretty good

[Szunti]

Flare gun?

[Renomaki]

Honestly, I'd rather have SLs get goodies that support his squad more than himself.

After all, the SL's job isn't to get kills, it is to lead your marines to the action and get them to kill the enemy for you while you keep them rallied around you and support them. You start giving them fancy guns, it is just going to make the glorified grunt issue worse than it already is.

We could totally use more items that help the squad as a whole, rather than items that only help the SL alone. Items like an advanced radio to communicate even when the main comms are down (which would be so useful on maps like Ice and Red, where comms aren't active from the start for everyone on the ground) or advanced binoculars that have night vision to make spotting targets easier (allowing you to call out shots for your sniper), or whatever other items that can be used to help a squad. If it encourages squads to stick together, then I'd totally invest.

[Rocco Ward]

Motion tracker anyone?!?

[Casany]

Motion tracker anyone?!?

We had that at one point, had to be removed because it caused SO much lag. Like three times the amount

[Szunti]

Motion tracker could be a highly experimental thing that may beep when xenos are close. And ghosts would make it beep. If only one ghost clicks the verb, than one beep, can sometimes be a false positive. If a lot of them it's beep-beep-beep-beep and you can be sure you are in trouble.

[Artouris]

Honestly, I'd rather have SLs get goodies that support his squad more than himself.

After all, the SL's job isn't to get kills, it is to lead your marines to the action and get them to kill the enemy for you while you keep them rallied around you and support them. You start giving them fancy guns, it is just going to make the glorified grunt issue worse than it already is.

We could totally use more items that help the squad as a whole, rather than items that only help the SL alone. Items like an advanced radio to communicate even when the main comms are down (which would be so useful on maps like Ice and Red, where comms aren't active from the start for everyone on the ground) or advanced binoculars that have night vision to make spotting targets easier (allowing you to call out shots for your sniper), or whatever other items that can be used to help a squad. If it encourages squads to stick together, then I'd totally invest.

Basically this. As a SL I can't shoot much since I'm often the center of the formation. Heres a few ideas based on my experiences as a SL.

- Having advanced comms for ice planet, red, or when comms are down would be fucken god damn amazing. I would gladly make it something that goes on the backpack slot instead of a backpack since its THAT valuable. Communication is KEY for SLs.

- Night Vision Binocs would be amazing too. Mainly because now I can call off how many contacts are approaching even with the light gaps from the flares. This would be also god fucken amazing in general for the squad.

- Smoke grenades that actually act as smoke. I don't believe the actual smoke grenades obscure you from xeno's vision at all. Not to mention if they never fixed the part where smoke grenades make you drop your own weapons. Smoke grenades basically amount to 3 pointless nades in you're vendor.

- This plays into my playstyle, which I might put into a guide on the forums for SLs since I have found it to be highly god damn effective, is the battle buddy system. Make a HUD overlay for people who are in your squad and who you assign as buddies. This would be sort of a hard thing to implement but would go make milestones in squad effectiveness and cohesion.

- This one is open for discussion(and merits on prevention of its abuse), but allow SLs or by extensions BOs at the SL's request to mute people from squad comms. This mostly comes into play of once again what happened above in that they ran away and do not deserve to be saved so I don't want them shitting up comms. Not to mention if someone is dying horribly you might not want to broadcast that over the radio for everyone to hear. It kills the morale.

- Giving the SL a gun with a railscope built in. One of the worst enemies of a SL is a boiler, mainly because if your viewing through binocs, getting sniped by boiler acid can happen and most marines don't have the range to take on the boiler. This would be mutually exclusive with the options above when using the vendor coin or whatever. Also the time to kill on boiler acid is incredibly low, which makes SLs getting snipe'd instantly a bit of a pain.

- Ability to call airstrikes or more OB variety. I would love it if the dropship could enter a sort of hover over the battlefield where it can provide air strikes for the SLs, they'd be minor OBs or something like that. That or give OBs some more variety, napalm strikes, stuff that has a higher stun radius but lower damage would be nice if stuck at the bridge where you can't advance because you have 20 ranged xenos, their mother, and 3 crushers just sitting there camping it.

- Flexable supply drop choices. Make us choose between two varieties of supply drops. There's the "MSDS(Modular Supply Drop System) Beacons" which would be what we have now, they're pretty much stuff that needs to get filled in by cargo and it can be whatever they want. Then there would be "RSDS(Rigid Supply Drop system) Beacons" which would have predetermined supplies in them and would be ready to drop when you need it. They'd come in something like ammo drops, base supply drops, etc. However you lose all the possibilities of getting a variety of supplies down and even getting the max amount out of the drop in exchange for it being ready when you need it. This stems from the fact many times RO and Command seem to take god awful long times to get my squad's supplies.

- Perhaps some sort of program on the laptop (since no one ever uses it) to remote view sentries or remote control them, however you have to tag a sentry as part of your squad for you to use the laptop. Hell even a program that allows you to track everyone's positions would be nice. Just make it so when a marine is across the river, their signal can't be tracked due to interference. That would do wonders for a bit more of a coordinator/support roles and gets use out of those god damn laptops no one ever uses.

That's a few, but theres probably way more that I just can't think of right now.

[Casany]

Motion tracker could be a highly experimental thing that may beep when xenos are close. And ghosts would make it beep. If only one ghost clicks the verb, than one beep, can sometimes be a false positive. If a lot of them it's beep-beep-beep-beep and you can be sure you are in trouble.

Again, we used to have it like you said but it caused so much lag because it had to run a check every tick for movement which hard pressed the server. Two motion trackers could literally break the server on high pop

[Szunti]

That is why the ghosts do it, you don't have to check anything. Ghost press the beep verb and it beeps. They follow the big battles can tell when it comes.

[Renomaki]

That is why the ghosts do it, you don't have to check anything. Ghost press the beep verb and it beeps. They follow the big battles can tell when it comes.

I can already see this going horribly wrong.

[Skane10634]

I can already see this going horribly wrong.

Over nine thousand beeps a second when your trying to get lunch in the cafeteria.

[Casany]

That is why the ghosts do it, you don't have to check anything. Ghost press the beep verb and it beeps. They follow the big battles can tell when it comes.

Well, you gotta understand the coding aspect of this. Is it just whenever a ghost hits the beep or when he's a certain amount of tiles away? Is there any cool down? And what if the ghosts are all just memesters who beep during briefing? All has to be taken into account

[Szunti]

Well, you gotta understand the coding aspect of this. Is it just whenever a ghost hits the beep or when he's a certain amount of tiles away? Is there any cool down? And what if the ghosts are all just memesters who beep during briefing? All has to be taken into account

It works with rate limit and verbs increasing a counter and beeping at regular intervals until it's depleted. With probably exponential depletion. But I didn't think too much about it. Actually I beleive if devs really wanted motion trackers, they could do it laglessly. If a ghost can move around, count them and play a motion tracker without lag, which includes sending all of the objects, not just xenos through the net and processing movement commands, then I think the server side should be able to do it too.

[Casany]

It works with rate limit and verbs increasing a counter and beeping at regular intervals until it's depleted. With probably exponential depletion. But I didn't think too much about it. Actually I beleive if devs really wanted motion trackers, they could do it laglessly. If a ghost can move around, count them and play a motion tracker without lag, which includes sending all of the objects, not just xenos through the net and processing movement commands, then I think the server side should be able to do it too.

But the server CANT. Imagine, just two motion trackers on and out. here is what would be REQUIRED for them to work right. At most, we could have a check every 5 ticks which checks for things moved, basically it scans out then checks what it has scanned for any "movement". Afterwords it has to change the sprite or make a beep if something moves. Even if we just coded it to detect xenos, if someone turns it on in a hive the server just WOULDNT handle it. It would have to check every 5 ticks at most, roughly 1.2 seconds, so even with TWO motion trackers, combined with everything else, would majorly lag out the server badly. maybe it would work but with major complications. if you can code a motion tracker in seamlessly then fine, Id accept that but the devs HAVE tried in pre alpha, and it was even tested in alpha, it just doesnt work with byond

[Rocco Ward]

Don't crew monitors and bridge consoles already track players position? IMO, we already have a dynamic for crushers to determine their momentum. Just give every xeno that portion of the code (under the hood, they shouldn't be able to see their momentum) and all you have to do is scan through a list of xeno mobs, determine their range from tracker, see if the momentum is over a certain amount, and presto.

[Rocco Ward]

Code: Select all

proc UseMotionTracker(pos_x, pos_y)
	for each xeno alive do
		if (xeno.pos_x - pos_x <= motion_tracker.range) and (xeno.pos_y - pos_y <= motion_tracker.range) then
		  	if xeno.momentum >= motion_tracker.momentum_detection then
		    		XENO DETECTED