Med kit / Ammo extension research
Hawkeye
Join Date: 2002-10-31 Member: 1855Members
Join Date: 2002-10-31 Member: 1855Members
This is sort of spawned from the idea of 'auto-med' pack in which in ns2, the idea is that you could request it and get it automatically without the comm intervening.
Several problems I have with this idea:<ol type='1'><li>What's to keep player from laming and demanding hundreds of med packs and thus draining resources? Even if it was for legitimate purposes (med spam to stay alive), it would still waste most of the resources if more than one player does it on a frequent basis.</li><li>If demanding a med pack doesn't require comm intervention, the comm may not be paying attention and could potentially remove what would otherwise be an attention getter to a potentially large attack on an area if there were this feature. The alternative is to draw the comm's attention all the same, but then I'd be willing to bet it'd be overused this feature as a way to heal, and therefore the comm would receive 10 'soldier needs medical attention' messages every minute to the comm. Not fun.</li></ol>
So I was considering an alternative solution, one which will not disturb the comm to much, but at the same time allow marines to self-regulate themselves.
How about a research upgrade (from an advanced armory?) which automatically equips each soldier with a med kit, to be used whenever necessary. It'd be a weapon slot, and when used alone, it would heal you up to 75 hit points (maximum 100) and the med kit would be consumed. Why a weapon slot? Well it'd make it more difficult to fight and heal yourself at the same time (perhaps it would activate weapon animation of you self-inducing a shot to your arm, and taking 5 seconds to activate).
At that point, in a real emergency, you could ask for a med pack and still get attention of the comm and probably get healing immediately during battle. This would be a solution that would keep you walking around near-death for what would be an inevitable demise by the first passing skulk or lerk with spore.
By applying the med kit next to another marine, you'd heal him 75 points, so they can be used in a team-favorable sense. I propose that such an upgrade could only be done at an advanced armory and with 30 points to spend.
Another upgrade idea which sort of goes hand-in-hand with this one is an ammo extension research. It lets you bring more bullets. Right now 250 bullets for lmg is a bit, and usually more than enough with an occasional pass to the base. Perhaps lower the maximum to 150 and make 300 bullets the maximum after this upgrade. Same for grenade launcher and hmg. It'd add an interesting element to gameplay of 'conserving fire' rather than shooting like you have infinite ammo. With this upgrade however, you could load up a HA with a fully loaded grenade launcher and probably have enough to take out a hive.
Ammo extension upgrade would cost again 30 resource points at an advanced armory.
I was thinking that also catalysts could be automatically distributed to marines like med kits once catalysts were researched. This would give marines a boost of speed when they really need it (for this, I wouldn't recommend a weapon slot but a hotkey to activate).
Comments? Ideas?
Several problems I have with this idea:<ol type='1'><li>What's to keep player from laming and demanding hundreds of med packs and thus draining resources? Even if it was for legitimate purposes (med spam to stay alive), it would still waste most of the resources if more than one player does it on a frequent basis.</li><li>If demanding a med pack doesn't require comm intervention, the comm may not be paying attention and could potentially remove what would otherwise be an attention getter to a potentially large attack on an area if there were this feature. The alternative is to draw the comm's attention all the same, but then I'd be willing to bet it'd be overused this feature as a way to heal, and therefore the comm would receive 10 'soldier needs medical attention' messages every minute to the comm. Not fun.</li></ol>
So I was considering an alternative solution, one which will not disturb the comm to much, but at the same time allow marines to self-regulate themselves.
How about a research upgrade (from an advanced armory?) which automatically equips each soldier with a med kit, to be used whenever necessary. It'd be a weapon slot, and when used alone, it would heal you up to 75 hit points (maximum 100) and the med kit would be consumed. Why a weapon slot? Well it'd make it more difficult to fight and heal yourself at the same time (perhaps it would activate weapon animation of you self-inducing a shot to your arm, and taking 5 seconds to activate).
At that point, in a real emergency, you could ask for a med pack and still get attention of the comm and probably get healing immediately during battle. This would be a solution that would keep you walking around near-death for what would be an inevitable demise by the first passing skulk or lerk with spore.
By applying the med kit next to another marine, you'd heal him 75 points, so they can be used in a team-favorable sense. I propose that such an upgrade could only be done at an advanced armory and with 30 points to spend.
Another upgrade idea which sort of goes hand-in-hand with this one is an ammo extension research. It lets you bring more bullets. Right now 250 bullets for lmg is a bit, and usually more than enough with an occasional pass to the base. Perhaps lower the maximum to 150 and make 300 bullets the maximum after this upgrade. Same for grenade launcher and hmg. It'd add an interesting element to gameplay of 'conserving fire' rather than shooting like you have infinite ammo. With this upgrade however, you could load up a HA with a fully loaded grenade launcher and probably have enough to take out a hive.
Ammo extension upgrade would cost again 30 resource points at an advanced armory.
I was thinking that also catalysts could be automatically distributed to marines like med kits once catalysts were researched. This would give marines a boost of speed when they really need it (for this, I wouldn't recommend a weapon slot but a hotkey to activate).
Comments? Ideas?
Comments
I like the over all idea of having a medpack in hand, reminds me of my flare and flood light idea =)
These could be very useful after a fight when the team needs healing, you can have a dedicated medic? Like he gives up his main gun to hold an extra 2-4 meds? He'll be left with a pistol, knife, and others, so he aint OP fighting wise.
dropping the medpack on the ground(like a gun) it will change into a normal med, yuo dont pick it up like the handheld if u use yours, u just get healed =)
I kinda like the health pack idea. I don't like the medic extension quite as much, but the basic idea is OK. I wouldn't let it be 75 health, just the 50hp is does currently (fact check me plz, I might be wrong). This is also a little tradeoff for tech and res to make the comm's life a bit easier. I wouldn't balance the game dependent on this upgrade, though, and would rather it was more of a set of training wheels than something comms really really need in their build setup. So, maybe it's even less effective than a standard medpack, but enough to keep you going in case the comm is busy elsewhere.
As far as weapon max ammo, I find it pointless. Humping armory = bad idea. The only time this is an issue is a long combat round, or stocking up at a defensive position. Also, more ammo traditionally means lower movespeed, so you're doubly hurting yourself by getting to the battle later from the speed and time spent armory humping. Also, if you die after the first clip, even more time has been wasted. So, I don't feel this research is even needed.
As a small side note, increased ammo in the chamber is an interesting idea, explored in the Extralevels AMXmod script for combat. Being able to pray and spray a bit longer can really help, especially for weapons like the grenade launcher which are designed for a quick burst of firepower, then retreat to reload. I'm not sure it's a good feature to make upgradable, but something to chew on instead.
Nobody likes the catalyst idea?
Nobody likes the catalyst idea?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Better idea.
As far as catalysts, there's another AMXmodx plugin that does the same thing, so if you're interested go play on a server that has it installed. I'm not quite as big of a fan of carrying cat packs around, but having them equipped on spawn might help make them a more viable strategy than they are now. Still keep it a weapon, though. Maybe weapon 5 has all these accessory items, or setup a weapon 6 for ammo/med/cat packs from spawn.
The real question is if the commander can drop them, and you pick it up and equip it. If you have one already, instant use. I would say no personally, but it might work. It would have to mean that the equipped version is just as strong as the dropped version, which is something I don't like for this particular system.
If you use yours, and someone drops theirs, when you go over it, while still slightly wounded, you auto use it like a normal med-pack, not rearm your hand held, which should do 45 HP while pickup does 75 HP.
Hmm.. Haven't seen that yet. Seems interesting though.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If you use yours, and someone drops theirs, when you go over it, while still slightly wounded, you auto use it like a normal med-pack, not rearm your hand held, which should do 45 HP while pickup does 75 HP.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree with ryknow69. Why should they be the same? Leave'em seperate. I wouldn't even like the idea of the comm being able to equip them away from base with these med kits. Plus you run into problems like the marine not having one and needs a heal, and the comm drops one on the marine and the marine 'holds' it (rather than instant use) because his is already used up.
If the comm *can* equip med kits like this, I would push for having the marines capable of using them only through activation. That is to say, the comm can spam med kits, but the marine won't get healed until he uses up his med kit (which might take a couple seconds to activate). He can still drop in this sense, but only to keep the marines who have taken damage alive by dropping several nearby. In other words, a useful self-heal, but nothing spammable.
And halo rocks. We need to turn grenades into those sticky alien bombs just because they rock.
I'm not sure if you suggest eliminating commander medpack drops or not. But without removing commander healing this ability is not very useful, as the commander spends most of their time on the people that need more than one medpack. And if commander healing is reduced/removed, then I would rather like to see an upgrade/weapon/armor that lets a on-the-ground player take on the role of the healer.
I like the idea of marines being able to administer self med packs. This would help in situations when the commander is too busy or simply bad at dropping meds. In order to keep the current comm interaction it would be best if the self administered med pack took some time to use, more specifically, took some time while the marine could not fire (like having it in a weapon slot). This would prevent the marine from in-combat self meding.
I see this ability to self heal as infinite... but less affective than a commander dropped med pack. So imagine the self med pack as being a kind of really ######ty metabolism. Strong enough that it is useful, not strong enough to allow any kind of "tanking" with it, the marine cannot fire while administering it, and of course the weapon draw delay that would prevent it from being administered mid combat.
IMHO, Instant heal popping out of the air from a source the kharaa can't stop has got to go. A marine can kill a DC, a gorge, and eventually the hive - and none of that is instant or as portable as the med drop.
I would whole heartly welcome any limitations and different methods of a commander providing hit point boosts to a marine, whether that be through a mouse hover method, mouse click and hold, a marine equiped item, or a map control limitation - all or any of those coupled with med packs healing over time rather than instant would improve greatly a need for team work and reduced aggravation for both sides in the game.
bingo, heal over time!
So, it sounds like we don't want re-equippable medpacks. Was just throwing it out there.
Let's see, I personally want the comm medpacks to be more powerful than the researched+equipped versions, but Canadian pointed out the problems with medspam. So, how about the equipped one takes some time to administer, and heals say 50hp. However, the comm one can be run over, but is a heal-over-time and only healing medpack at a time, so you can't run over multiple packs to overheal and hog them all. Also, the comm med will heal up to 75hp, but make it over say 2-3 seconds.
A med pack taking about 0.5 seconds to absorb would be about right. If a marine has 10% health, the comm should still be able to instantly drop 2 med packs and have the marine pick both of them up. A marine should only be able to pick up the number of med packs which would eventually fill his life.