Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

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Enyo
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by Enyo »

pooty wrote: Sun Aug 22, 2021 12:08 am For me it was more about the Radar, and the homing.. the Predator could kill you QUICKLY and you couldn't even see it, let alone get an Avril lock. So I think this rev moved the needle too much...its a work in progress to get it just right.
The primary fire, the machine gun-like weapon, on the predator is NOT a homing weapon. And it's not hitscan either, you actually have to aim the bullets and lead your shot where you see them going. That's why most people suck in it, they don't understand how it actually aims. The rockets/missiles on the Predator are the only weapon it has with homing. Missiles are what the max lock range is for.

Pooty, there seems to be 2 different Falcon Series II flyers on the server... one shoots much faster than the other. Without that advantage, the falcon is nearly useless and very weak. Please stop taking away EVERYTHING from flyers that make them useful and fun to use. The mino, while maybe an easy target, has 2000 health, a cannon that does over 1000 damage with a mile wide blast radius, and 2 different very powerful anti-air guns. In that light, why is it so bad to have a flyer like the Falcon that has a rapid rate of fire? Where's the massive advantage there over the mino? It's not my fault most people lack decent enough aim to shoot a flyer, and that's not a good reason to start nerfing them.

BTW, I get picked off in Falcons all the time, like the things are made of freaking paper. Takes only one railgun shot or one hellbender beam. The ONLY advantage Falcons have is their fast fire rate and maneuverability. And it's the lasers from MINO, HURRICANE, TIAMAT, TROOP CARRIER, PULSE TRAITOR, WYVERN, CENTAUR (need I go on?) on Deserted Sands that flyers have to fear, not the lame-ass, no talent avrils.

I'll ask very nicely again, please stop nerfing all the flyers, it's making the game less fun for those of us that actually enjoy flyers. Not unless you're going to start weakening all the massively OP tanks too.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by captainsnarf »

I'm happy to change these how you guys want. Predator was nerfed how Pooty and I discussed. It's actually buffed a little more than we discussed. I thought it was too wimpy at 0.36 fire interval we dicussed so I put it at 0.28 interval (it was 0.14). It's exactly half the fire rate it was, damage is unchanged. Projectile speed was changed from 30000 to 24000.

hellfire rockets take ~2 seconds to fire, so if fire rate is shorter than that it becomes continuous rockets. Happy to put it back but that's why it was changed.

Since Reaper has cloak but is basically same weapons as Predator I made all Reaper weapons slightly nerfed compared to Predator.

I don't think anybody got in Predator gunner seat. An instant shot weapon with fire interval 0.1 and 30 damage with zoom, it's pretty powerful. That was supposed to be the trade off.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by Enyo »

captainsnarf wrote: Sun Aug 22, 2021 1:06 am I'm happy to change these how you guys want. Predator was nerfed how Pooty and I discussed. It's actually buffed a little more than we discussed. I thought it was too wimpy at 0.36 fire interval we dicussed so I put it at 0.28 interval (it was 0.14). It's exactly half the fire rate it was, damage is unchanged. Projectile speed was changed from 30000 to 24000.

hellfire rockets take ~2 seconds to fire, so if fire rate is shorter than that it becomes continuous rockets. Happy to put it back but that's why it was changed.

Since Reaper has cloak but is basically same weapons as Predator I made all Reaper weapons slightly nerfed compared to Predator.

I don't think anybody got in Predator gunner seat. An instant shot weapon with fire interval 0.1 and 30 damage with zoom, it's pretty powerful. That was supposed to be the trade off.
Sorry, I should have chimed in on this whole discussion before you guys jacked up the flyers. Nerfing them to this level makes them completely useless now against all the super powerful tanks. Completely takes the fun out of using those flyers. Removing the radar was the right move, but nerfing the firepower to such a low level makes both the Predator and Reaper useless. I'm not saying I think they should be put back necessarily how they were before, but cutting fire rates in half is a bit much. And never assume putting in a second seat powerful weapon is going to be a good trade-off for nerfing primary fire... you can hardly ever get anyone to gun for you, much less get a good gunner.

I don't know what the right level of adjustments are, but these changes should be done in small increments and only one thing adjusted at a time to see how that affects it in play. Cutting anything in half is almost always going to be way too much. Start with 10-20% reductions and adjust from there.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by pooty »

So my suggestions (in bold) below, put them back nearly to what they were, but I think the Predator main gun was still too powerful, but with those specs its' pretty darn close.

With respect to the Falcon and the Wasp... that wasn't my doing that was done years ago by Danno, and others (TurboK, Wormbo, etc) http://omni.insanelabs.net/showthread.p ... n_SeriesII
I'll make a thread for the Falcon.

See this thread: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=19&sid=3ec3dedd1bb4 ... 8f8a80dcda
Ultimately this whole mess needs cleaned up, not just the flyers...there's too many "one-offs" embedded in the maps. And I suspect there's probably a couple of different falcons just like there's Hellhound variants (you know the annoying one iwth no zoom) etc. I am slowly working on cataloging them all (there's a google doc in that thread), so we know what to keep and what to not use.
I agree that there's plenty of newer anti-air as you mentioned (in fact the previous edit of Deserted IMO played pretty well, the Predators were good, but far from invulnerable), but the radar def had to go...

But back on Topic, thoughts on the suggestions?
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by pooty »

Also, in the predator main gun
MaxLockRange=30000.000000 (implies some locking, but I don't think it does anything)
I can't seem to find that variable....and the predator gun is a custom one off (doesn't extend plasma like Falcons etc), so I don't think there's homing, but I wonder if the above was meant by the original coder to limit the RANGE of the weapon, which is harder to set...I think its either 15000 (for instant hitscan weapons) or lifespan * speed.. So faster projectiles have a farther range...which is interesting (and makes it more complicated to limit ranges) at least on digging through the code.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by captainsnarf »

New version available! Download here CSAPVerIV_1.1.zip

1.1 Release Notes

- Restore all previous damage adjustments except for MaxLockRange
- Fix DropShip passenger view and adjust exits
- Increase DropShip health from 600 to 1000

Also, in the predator main gun
MaxLockRange=30000.000000
It doesn't do anything. It's some left over code it looks like. It looks like it used to be fire=main weapon, altfire=missiles, but they changed altfire to be weapon switch and left the old code around. The predator main weapon has no seeking.

I put everything back because I can see enyo's point that we have all the crazy tanks, some OP like mino. Predator can be the mino of the sky. I've had good luck killing them with twin beams so I think it might just take some learning to deal with them. Maps with them definitely need good anti-air e.g rail tank to counter them.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by leon »

I’m with Enyo.
Too many tanks. One shot – 100 kills. Getting bored. I start skipping some maps.
If we have mino and levi we must have good fliers. I hope it’s still “UT” not “Tank wars”.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by Enyo »

captainsnarf wrote: Sun Aug 22, 2021 12:08 pm New version available! Download here CSAPVerIV_1.1.zip

1.1 Release Notes

- Restore all previous damage adjustments except for MaxLockRange
- Fix DropShip passenger view and adjust exits
- Increase DropShip health from 600 to 1000
I assume you kept the Predator's radar turned off? If not please get rid of it, I totally agree with removing the radar, it essentially has the unfair benefit of a wall hack.

Also, I noticed the newest version of Deserted Sands that's currently loaded on the server has 2 Reapers at one core, vs. 1 Reaper and 1 Predator at the other. I know it's not ever intentional, but both sides of all maps should always have the same vehicle spawns. Make sure that gets fixed too.

Let's see how the Reaper/Predator do on this new version, we can always make one-off adjustments from there. Or, I'm OK with making the adjustments pooty suggested to see how that works. I understand this stuff is a work in progress, just didn't want the kind of drastic changes that were made to become a regular thing without deeper consideration for ALL players, while also maintaining a good balance between ground and air vehicles.

Thanks snarf for all the work you're putting into vehicles lately, it is very much appreciated. Let's make sure we take all angles into account before completely revamping any vehicles, especially flyers, to make sure they balance well with all the souped-up tanks. Will all of the powerful tanks, and let's be honest, the lack of aggressive node attackers on this server anymore, one powerful flyer in the hands of one good operator can make the difference for a team that's struggling to not get its clock cleaned by a more aggressive team of node attackers.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by captainsnarf »

Radar and radar range is optional and up to the mapper. On desert sands it was on for reaper but off for predator if I recall correctly. The default is off.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by pooty »

Updated the Vehicle file and the Deserted Map (V7, good catch on the reaper, it was reaper spawing at Predator factory..oops.)
Radar on Predator is OFF, Radar on Reaper (at 10000 which might be a little short.. Is that really the avril range or is it 15000?)
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