Vampire vehicles

[captainsnarf]

I propose we change vehicles that heal themselves.

1) They should all have purple beams like the Wraith.
2) They should not gain any link multiplier.

This means removing any link multiplier from vampire tank, chupa, and lamprey, and change Chupa's beam to be purple.

For other self healing vehicles like Bastion and Hospitaler, there should be a cap on how much you can heal yourself. Once you use up your heal points you can't self heal anymore.

[Rhamp]

I think there should be two variants of the chupa, one that uses the existing skin and does not self heal, but still benefits from the link multiplier, and a vamp chupa that heals itself but doesn't get the link multiplier. I like using the chupa as a relay node of sorts to allow a link train to form and extend beyond what it normally could.

Maybe for the bastion and hospitaler they could have a bar similar to the shield bar that depletes whenever they self heal. Receiving healing from an outside source could replenish the bar, incentivizing teamwork without neutering those vehicles' gimmics.

[captainsnarf]

If they can receive healing from an outside source to replenish, it's functionally identical to simply giving it more health.

[pooty]

Ok so, lets define a few things:
- Self heal - ability to heal the vehicle itself with no other action.
- Drain - ability to heal itself when doing damage
- LinkMuliplier/Link Stacking - when additional linkers increase the vehicles effectiveness, linking bonus, damage increase etc. Most link tanks stack like this Damage = Damage * (NumLinks + 1). Many of the others have this: Damage = Damage * ((NumLinks * LinkMultiplier) + 1).
And some vehicles have a link cap, meaning some limit on (NumLinks or NumLinks*LinkMultiplier).

All that drain have a Purple Beam except the Chupa and the Link Scorpion (its a scorpion so its kind of wimpy), so those break the "rule"

The three that self-heal from a beam and get a multiplier is the Vampire tank, Chupa and Link Scorpion. Lamprey has no link multipler links don't stack on it.

Fanatic, Bastion, Hospitaler shield combos do some Drain when they do damage from a shield combo -- but that's close up. And there's caps on that and the multiplier isn't 1 to 1. Its less than 1. Meaning doing 200 damage heals < 200 health. With an overall cap.
Those all have multipliers that can be adjusted for how much drain heals, usually bigger the vehicle the lower < 1 multiplier. I just nerfed the Hospitaler. I don't think the Fanatic or Bastion is too crazy, but could tweak them -- if we tweak the bastion low enough it just becomes an Aegis... or we make self heal pretty small and increase the combo drain.

I think the bigger issue is flyers.
1. Chupacabra - I agree two variants. Green beam, link stacks, no drain, no self heal (doesn't self heal now)
2. Stirge - based on Chupa, Purple beam, no link stacking, drains, no self heal (doesn't self heal now)

Link Scorpion - the original had purple beam and no link stacking. Removing the drain from it will considerably weaken it, but maybe that's ok?
Could make another scorpion variant with the Purple Beam, the Leech, drains, and no stack, similar to original Link Scorpion.

Tick Scorpion - Purple beam, no link stacking, drains, no self heal (doesn't self heal now), Tick gets more powerful the more it sucks -- health increases, damage increases both the beam and the web. This one is cool and I don't really want to change it.

Odin, Wraith Turrets - Purple beam, no link stacking, drains, no self heal (doesn't self heal now)

Vampire - Purple beam (both turrets), slight link stacking (< 1), drains, no self heal (doesn't self heal now). This vehicle however has two key weaknesses, 1. No real range weapon, primary beam is short, second turret shoots slow moving plasma -- if you're a good distance away it can't hit you
2. Vulnerable (3x) to fire damage (heat ray, firekill, flamekill, napalm) so things like Fire Tanks, flame tanks, firebug, ifrit, cheurfe all spank it really hard.

For other self healing vehicles like Bastion and Hospitaler, there should be a cap on how much you can heal yourself. Once you use up your heal points you can't self heal anymore.

Doesn't make any sense then, might as well just give it more health from start and be done with it. If you're sitting healing yourself, you're not really attacking and all those that do this are from shield combos, so yes, you'd get it when you're right up close and attacking...it just makes you live longer underattack. Or alternatively just remove all the self heal and leave the drain.

Meanwhile, we have a shit ton of OP flyers that can fly in do a shitton of damage and fly away... and we are worried about shield tanks and a tank with no distance attack. I mean a falcon can kill a Vampire tank all day long and take 0 damage due the range.

I agree we should make it consistent, but I don't think the self heal on the shield vehicles is unbalanced. They don't run the map like the OP flyers.

[pooty]

So both Vampire and Chupa have 0.5 Link stacking.

If we want to make it consistent let me know and I'll remove link stacking from Vampire and drain heal from the Chupa. Also remove the drain heal from Link Scorpion. Not sure we need the Purple beam version when we have the tick. No one really cares about scorpions generally anyway.

I'd make another raptor the Stirge, similar to the Chupa with Purple beam that heals itself but doesn't stack. Maybe similar alt-fire to the Lamprey and Vampire. Beam and close in explosion.

I think those this really hurts Vampire tank though, I'd probably reduced the fire extra damage to 2x from 3x.

This would now be consistent:
Green Beam - Link and Link Stacking
Purple Beam - Link, No Link Stacking and Drain to Heal.

That leaves the only vehicles that can heal themselves (Hospitaler shield gunner combo, Bastion Combo, Fanatic combo, and EONS crusader), with recent nerfs on the Hospitaler its not unkillable.

[Rhamp]

Oh don't give the Stirge an alt-fire aoe heal. I remember when the lampery could fly and was an absolute menace.

The main issue with the lampery and vamp tank is that you can leeroy jenkins into a pile of tanks, move around and kill everything. On TorlanLM I single handedly decimated entire link tank columns with both the lampery and vamp tank solely due to its aoe heal ability.

What could be interesting for the vampire related vehicles is having an alt fire that does more damage and has a bigger aoe than the current ones, but it consumes a good chunk of your hp bar when activated (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 of the max hp). If used when you are too low, it still goes off, but it kills you in the process, letting you do kamikaze runs. This fits the theme of vampire related vehicles building up "blood" with their normal attack and unleashing it in a tactical way instead of the current mash alt fire and nuke everything all while staying at max hp. Having a more melee-oriented vehicle would be interesting.

[pooty]

Oh don't give the Stirge an alt-fire aoe heal. I remember when the lampery could fly and was an absolute menace.

It would be relatively small, maybe 25 pts at most to avoid that.

The main issue with the lampery and vamp tank is that you can leeroy jenkins into a pile of tanks, move around and kill everything. On TorlanLM I single handedly decimated entire link tank columns with both the lampery and vamp tank solely due to its aoe heal ability.

True, but at the same time both have no long range weapons either. And both I think have caps on aoe heal, if they don't I'll put them in, that way hitting the pile of tanks would only get you X, whereas before I think you basically healed up big time.

If used when you are too low, it still goes off, but it kills you in the process, letting you do kamikaze runs. This fits the theme of vampire related vehicles building up "blood" with their normal attack and unleashing it in a tactical way instead of the current mash alt fire and nuke everything all while staying at max hp.

Interesting. Not sure I want to change the existing ones, but its a cool idea, not sure how to represent the health costs on an attack, you'd have to know that its going to do -100, and its sort of like the nova without the guaranteed self kill.

[pooty]

decimated entire link tank columns with both the lampery and vamp tank solely due to its aoe heal ability.

Looked this lamprey does 200 pts (once every 3.5s), so it shouldn't wipe out link tanks which have 800-1200 pts. Although maybe since its healing itself too, maybe this should be reduced. Vampire does 525 I think. By comparision Phoenix does 300.

But if we are going to nerf the link stacking on the Vampire tank I don't want to nerf it more. We could nerf the lamprey blast a bit though-- its fast and agile and self heals.

And sure you can pile into a bunch of tanks with the Vampire, but you have to get really close, its pretty easy to pick off from a distance...so its a trade off.

I'll probably look at tweaking these, and link flyer tomorrow.

[YEAAAHHHHHHHHHH]

I'm all for nerfing or removing the lamprey. That thing is annoying as hell. It's basically a NoSkillz Manta, just speed up to your enemy and press a button and they die. Drive-by ion alt fire. That thing should be the slowest and heaviest manta of all of them, like the Short Circuit but worse.

[pooty]

Hmmm. Maybe slowing it down is the answer, that way it has to be more sneaky than streaky.
I think I'll also set it so the damage is reduced a bit and reduced way more for players.

And Short Circuit is way worse, as in way more OP, as is the Pulse Traitor, with 500+ Mantas. Lamprey is a wimp compared to those, especially with lamprey it has to be close vs shooting from far away.

But I think slowing it a bit, reducing damage on players to maybe 50 ish. I am going to look at those vehicles today and try to make the
Green = link stacking
Purple = no link stacking
Consistent.

The bigger change will be Vampire Tank, which I think with like 3 linkers and a gunner is way OP.