Replacing spawn weapons

So well, as some of you may know- I have quite a lot planned for the balance in order to streamline and define the gameplay design more. I have decided the next project I want to work on is finishing up the core weapons idea, which essentially is bringing the default game down to only 8 weapons.

In the end, that idea will be like this:

1. 
   
2. Spawn Weapon
   
3. Nexgun
   
4. Lightning Gun
   
5. Rocketlauncher
   
6. Crylink
   
7. Grenadelauncher
   
8. Electro
   
9. Hagar
   

... and the rest of the weapons will become part of a mutator, and only accessible when the mutator is active. This means: Rifle, HLAC, Minelayer (will become vehicle only), Seeker (will become vehicle only), Machine Gun (functionality made redundant by Lightning Gun, possibly remade into chain gun), and Shotgun (made redundant by spawn weapon, possibly will be re-made into a powerful shotgun) will never be available in normal gameplay anymore. Right now though, I only want to concentrate on the spawn weapons though. Please do not take the thread off of that topic, I simply want to bring background to the changes planned and help get that information out a little... when the time comes, those will be discussed too, but it needs to be one step at a time.. and this is the first step. There are also various other reasons why I want to do this change in the first place, especially regarding ammo ideas and simply reducing complexity and confusion of the weapons.. I just don't have time to explain the entire plan quite yet. Please do try to understand though, there has been a lot of thought put into these concepts. With that said, lets continue with the concept of the new spawn weapon idea itself.


Essentially the idea is to transform the laser (renamed into a new weapon) into a sort of energy shockwave type of weapon... Primary shoots a mid-to-long range attack of energy, replacing the functionality of the shotgun primary in current balance.. Secondary shoots a close range burst of energy, which acts as both a jumping mechanism and a close high damage attack. (it would have very low self damage, but similar damage to shotgun melee...) -- Secondary would basically replace the functionality of the melee (very similar tracing method as well), and it would also have exactly the same force and pushing capabilities as the laser... There will be no functional difference to the player between laser primary and shockwave secondary, the movement will behave exactly the same as before....

The goal here is to cover the functionality of both of these weapons in a logical way without adding too much complexity... I believe a shockwave type weapon fits that description. There is however one snag: The shockwave secondary refire time might have to be quite high in order for its melee functionality to have high enough damage... OR, we need to make some kind of charging mechanism, i.e.: If you press secondary quickly, it does high force and low damage (good for jumping)... but if you hold it in, it does high damage (good for melee).

Really, that's just what we need to figure out here... how precisely should this work? I want to keep the jumping intact without harming the defensive aspect of the weapon.





Let me know your feedback and ideas.... really i'm not expecting the response to be very good from competitive players, but... *crosses fingers.*


inb4 shitstorm