Lerk Speed Up
Imbalanxd
Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104581Members
Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104581Members
Regardless of how the hit detection, frame rate, and over all shoot-ability affects how lerks need to be balanced, I think that lerks in close combat should be vulnerable. A lerk should be at serious risk if he wants to go toe to toe with a marine, but many aspects of the lerk favour a more close quarters approach. Spikes are far more effective the closer you are to the target, spores take quite a long time to fall down to the ground from the air, and in order to confuse turrets reliably, the lerk must essentially be right next to it when sporing.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, its high risk high reward, which is always nice to see. However the problem with balancing this is that the lerk is always the same speed, whether he is 100m away, or 5m. This makes things difficult, because a lerk that is too fast is near impossible to shoot at long range, whereas a lerk that is to slow can get completely annihilated when it comes closer.
So I was thinking that the lerk could gain a speed buff depending on how far away he was from the ground. So, a lerk that was mere centimetres from the floor would be going something like 140% of the current lerk speed, while a lerk that was more than say 10 meters from the floor would be going something like 90% of the current lerk speed. It would work similar to the speed up gained when dive bombing, except that the lerks actual maximum speed would increase as well. It would be difficult to explain physically, but I think the mechanic itself would be rather intuitive and believable once used a few times. This may also discourage lerks from simply flying right next to the roof and dropping bile bombs constantly.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, its high risk high reward, which is always nice to see. However the problem with balancing this is that the lerk is always the same speed, whether he is 100m away, or 5m. This makes things difficult, because a lerk that is too fast is near impossible to shoot at long range, whereas a lerk that is to slow can get completely annihilated when it comes closer.
So I was thinking that the lerk could gain a speed buff depending on how far away he was from the ground. So, a lerk that was mere centimetres from the floor would be going something like 140% of the current lerk speed, while a lerk that was more than say 10 meters from the floor would be going something like 90% of the current lerk speed. It would work similar to the speed up gained when dive bombing, except that the lerks actual maximum speed would increase as well. It would be difficult to explain physically, but I think the mechanic itself would be rather intuitive and believable once used a few times. This may also discourage lerks from simply flying right next to the roof and dropping bile bombs constantly.