I want to make a thread on vehicle development guidelines. Please add/comment as needed. And you don't have to know the code to comment..
Vehicle appearance: Make them different than the vehicles they are based on (Sorry I was the big offender here with the Wraith that looked just like Cicada... the new textures often get confused with a dragon, but the colors are pretty different as is the shading/texture).
Vehicle Speed: See viewtopic.php?p=944&sid=b94d5b281d0b64e ... e05ad#p944
Avril rocket speed: 2800 UU (UU is the unreal unit its basically the unit of measurement)
Battery Rocket speed: 3000
Dragon: 1800
Raptor: 2000 (From what I can tell most of the raptor type fliers have this for maxspeed (Falcon, Wasp, etc.), their manuverability, including acceleration is vastly different though. Same with Mantas, and Predator/Reaper
Raptor Missle: 2000-4500
Wyvern Max Speed: 5000 (really too fast)
Starbolt 1.0 Max Speed : 4500 (should be the max fly speed )
Manta: 2000
FireManta: 2250
Missle Tank Rockets: 9900
Hurricane Ground Speed: 720
Badger: 850
Mino Ground Speed: 1000
Several of the HoverTanks (eg. Firebug 1800, but has no long range weapons at all) are faster.
Mino Tank Shell: 19000
So keep it reasonable, Wyverns and Starbolts will mostly outfly Avrils/Batteries and generally need hitscan (SHock/TwinBeams to kill). Both those die one shot from most TwinBeams.. So something that's fast and manuverable, and worse small (like the Fireblade) that has 650 health is too much.
Health:
Most flyers: 150-500 (Fireblade has more but its OP)
Most Tanks: 600-2000
MAS: 3000-10000 (Kraken is king at 10000, Levi has 5000,
On most I've tried to put in a "weakness" eg. Bio goo on Minos/MAS does extra damage. Some have resistance (most fire vehicles now has some degree of fire resistance (for example an Ifrit won't kill a FireTank in one shot, (maybe not even three)).
Weapons:
Mino is king here. Fast mostly accurate projectile, does ~1400 damage from blast, and momentum. This should be top of line except for stationary MAS. (Levi/Tiamat/Kraken/Pallas blasts).
Also, one thing to keep in mind is repeating projectiles (vs. hitscan) is harder on the server as it has to track each projectile...
Overall balance:
For Stationary Ground: Think Kraken is king
Tank types: Omnitaur (Minotaur) is king
Flyers: Varies.
Badgers: Varies, but less tough/powerful than most tanks, but faster/more manuverable.
Keep in mind tradeoffs. We don't want a flying MegaBadger, no matter how much McLovin argues for it.
Some of the newer vehicles might require tweaks...some examples to help:
Firebug - HoverTank - Fairly fast, jumps, but has one seat and no long range weapons
Moebreaker - Fast, powerful, 1600 health, but main cannon is less accurate than Goliath at range, about a half strenght mino shot. (Gunner seat is very accurate at range). Vulnerable to flyers, as the gunner seat is projectile based (so you have to lead them).
Lastly, developers
please update the vehicle name string when updating:
VehicleNameString="Firebug 2.0"
This allows players to see which version.
Also, if you're basing it on an existing vehicle rename the main class:
FireTankV2Omni vs. FireTank (players don't see this, but mappers do). The reason is in the Map Editor, the class namespace gets pushed together without package names. So often on lists myLevel.FireTank gets confused with FireVehiclesV2Omni.FireTank (UT doesn't like packages that end with a number why idk). This helps with Map Updating... its easy to replace things like Rhino (GPolice.Rhino) with CSRhino (CSGPolice.CSRhino).
You can also subclass it like this:
Code: Select all
class FireRaptorV2Omni extends FireRaptor
placeable;
This way we avoid the mess that some maps have with MyHoverBike (Book Manta), MyONSRV2 = Plasma Scorp (link gun primary)
MyONSRV3 = Shock Scorp etc. Some lazy coding there, IMO.