[SUGGESTION] Motion / kinetic powered weapon

I was thinking about the nex and the sniper rifle and how they compare. I've always thought it makes sense to have more than one type of long-range hitscan or hitscan-like weapon to counter flag running in CTF. However, each weapon would need to be unique. When someone grabs the flag and runs off with it, there are usually only 2 ways to stop them from behind, 1) use the nex or 2) hopefully plug away at them with a spray weapon (machinegun, shotgun, crylink) which might take a while.

One downside to the nex is that people feel it's too powerful. Maybe the problem is not that it's too powerful, but that it's too powerful in all situations. It's powerful if you're sitting in one spot. It's powerful if you're moving fast. It's powerful if you're far away. It's powerful if you're close. It's always powerful.

So I was thinking of ways to change that aspect of the weapon. What if motion affected the power of the nex? So if you are sitting in one spot and you shoot someone, it's at low power. But if you are moving fast, it's max power (like the current nex). This would transition the nex to being better suited for a mid-close range action weapon, or one you use to stop flag runners as you chase after them, but allows the sniper rifle to be better suited for sit sniping. The nex could still be used for sniping, but less effective at it.

Or if anyone else can think of other ways to make the nex unique from the sniper rifle, or perhaps another way to utilize movement in relation to weapons, then submit your ideas.

The other suggestions in this thread seem more palatable to me. Namely charging or decay over distance (the latter seems to be implemented already).

when we use that the damage should go down slowly!

why didn't I think of this before =)

I do not know how the common Xonotic map will deal with nexgun/crifle (regarding whether it will usually have just one of them, or both) but this suggestion is just a different way to tackle the problem of nexgun being too strong. I like that idea. It could be used even additionally to the suggestions given in the "nerfing doesn't help" thread. The problem, however, is how to make such a ... let's call it "specialty" of the weapon, apparent to a new xonotic gamer...

I like this idea, it's much better than the other proposed solutions I think.

I dont like the idea. I.E.: in duel, there are often spots where you are low in health and forced to camp a while to recover. The nexgun is very helpful in these situations, as you can hold your enemy back/dish out a huge amount of damage when he rush you for the kill. I prefer the solution to give it one unique ammo type.

The problem, however, is how to make such a ... let's call it "specialty" of the weapon, apparent to a new xonotic gamer...

Put a tiny wind turbine on top of the muzzle, make it turn faster when the player's moving.



(Yes, this is absurd, but so is this whole concept IMHO: completely unintuitive)

One downside to the nex is that people feel it's too powerful. Maybe the problem is not that it's too powerful, but that it's too powerful in all situations. It's powerful if you're sitting in one spot. It's powerful if you're moving fast. It's powerful if you're far away. It's powerful if you're close. It's always powerful.

Provided I killed all the bugs in it....
*grabs a fat can of RAID just in case*
balanceLeeStricklin.cfg + physicsLeeStricklin.cfg

I geared it towards a long range to extreme range weapon in my settings and the rifle towards a medium to long to kinda extreme (if your freakin' good) weapon. It also has a longer animtime that makes combos slightly harder (though the delay is small enough to not be irritating... much) pull off. The rifle is meant for some of the situations as the nex, however it's the more challenging (compensate for reload, learn when to panic fire, aim for the head, it isn't hitscan...) of the two to use, but carries a bigger reward for those that can pick the right situation to use it.

In other words:

Nex: long-extreme range railgun/sniper rifle
Camping Rifle: medium-long range support with attacking capability that falls somewhere between a carbine or an assault rifle leaning more towards carbine.

You can kinda see in this butchered video how the nex works
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2V95fZnR_g

I dont like the idea. I.E.: in duel, there are often spots where you are low in health and forced to camp a while to recover. The nexgun is very helpful in these situations, as you can hold your enemy back/dish out a huge amount of damage when he rush you for the kill. I prefer the solution to give it one unique ammo type.

Switch from nexgun to CR to do exactly that?

The problem, however, is how to make such a ... let's call it "specialty" of the weapon, apparent to a new xonotic gamer...

Put a tiny wind turbine on top of the muzzle, make it turn faster when the player's moving.

(Yes, this is absurd, but so is this whole concept IMHO: completely unintuitive)

Well the idea of threads like this is not to present it as a complete solution, but to consider a direction of ideas that weren't being considered before.

Maybe combine this with the concept of charging and show a visual (with audio) of the weapon charging. What I described is basically a kinetic power converter/amplifier. So two options, either acceleration or velocity would boost the power of the weapon. If it's acceleration (which makes more sense to me), then traveling at high speed does not generate extra power. Rotation would boost the power. Jumping would boost the power. Lasering off a wall would boost it. There could be a slight buffer for the charge so someone could jump through the air and still have full power for a split second, and then it starts to degrade back to normal.

It would baseicaly mean that shots while in motion, or immediately after motion, have more power. You would have full power while in a dog fight scenario, but not while sniping in a camp spot. Maybe the power degrading over distance concept could apply as well. I'm basically going the opposite direction as Lee_Stricklin's idea, making the nex a shorter range weapon more than long range, because in shorter range fights, you move more. It could still be used long range, but it performs better close range. This would leave room for the sniper rifle to take that spot.

Or, it could be based on velocity and not acceleration. I wouldn't know the technology or physics behind that. It wouldn't need to be a wind turbine. We're talking about the future here. It could be something based on string theory for all I know. Maybe a technology meant to generate power as a spacecraft passes by a planet...but applied to a weapon.

I dont like the idea. I.E.: in duel, there are often spots where you are low in health and forced to camp a while to recover. The nexgun is very helpful in these situations, as you can hold your enemy back/dish out a huge amount of damage when he rush you for the kill. I prefer the solution to give it one unique ammo type.

Switch from nexgun to CR to do exactly that?

Because, the likely hood is that a map won't have both the weapons...

Which brings me to point B, why not just replace the nexgun with the rifle, since it is much more balanced in all situations then the nexgun, rather then constantly trying to 'fix' the nexgun's balance, is the simplest solution but no you cannot remove the nexgun because it's what made nexuiz right? Forgot this was xonotic for a moment then!

I think more than one nex-like gun (with very select limitations to make them unique and also not so dominant) would be useful. We already have enough spray weapons. CTF needs more direct weaponry to stop flag cappers.

I believe you and bundy are thinking more of 1v1 while I'm thinking more of CTF.
Though I think this idea could help DM/1v1 too. Nex would not be quite as dominant as it would be setup to not be so powerful in all situations, and there would also be another nex-like weapon available on maps. You could have proper nex vs rifle battles. Nex would require the player to move more (to get full power). Rifle would allow a player to shoot while still, but it's not exactly hitscan and it's full power is not as high as the nex. You wouldn't have players sitting out in the open (like the ledge on Final Rage) with the nex waiting for a player to turn the corner, because they have to move for the nex to have full power.

In CTF, it would balance maps like gasolinepowered. People on offense or defense that are running around base could use the nex. But camping players couldn't use the nex's full power if they perched. They would have to use the sniper rifle, which would leave the nex available for other players. That map wouldn't be dominated by 1 single weapon as often as it currently is.

I dont like the idea. I.E.: in duel, there are often spots where you are low in health and forced to camp a while to recover. The nexgun is very helpful in these situations, as you can hold your enemy back/dish out a huge amount of damage when he rush you for the kill. I prefer the solution to give it one unique ammo type.

Switch from nexgun to CR to do exactly that?

Allright, then I prefer a unique ammo type for the CR.

Imo I am not against a rework on the old railgun, but then I would wish to see some other stuff. The secondary fire of the current nex could be primary (chase enemy, push back). The weapon could disarm or freeze an enemy for some seconds. Stuff like that, if you want a chasing gun. It dont have to be a instahit weapon at all ...

I prefer to just keep it simple and not think too complex into this stuff, you can't predict exact events in games in any game-mode and situation's.

I just prefer the simple solution of a unique ammo type for the CR..mean's it won't be used load's unless you get the ammo, other weapons can't use the ammo type so there won't be an abundance of it (this is down to mappers then), but it will certainly have less on a map then the other weapons, it's also more balanced then the nexgun. Whilst there has always been constant 'balancing' queries/arguments/debates over the nexgun, the Rifle has been subject to nearly none because it doesn't dominate so heavily at all ranges.

For me it seems like the simpler solution, i'd rather see the nex as some kind of superweapon to be honest that spawns every 2 minutes or something..but anyway, my vote would be unique ammo type for Rifle and Rifle due to simplest solution and better balanced.

Sure it's 'simple' but simple often means better.

I mean i'm a nex whorer, but i'd rather see the gameplay become better rather then just keeping a weapon with issues just because it was in nexuiz. Just me $999 and 2cents

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Oh yea, I'm not against your idea or anything Dokujisan at all. I just don't see the point of having 2 weapons doing similar things, when one does everthing reasonably well and the other is trying to fix an long occuring issue with the actual weapon, as some sort of superweapon like I said would be cool, I'd prefer to see this idea implemented by someone so I could actually say whether I like it or not before I comment any further. My issue is I can see mapper's just putting both weapons on a map, which make's me think..what's the point just use the rifle. Hope this makes sense of some sort typing it quickly

I like this movement-based idea for the Nex, of course with sane caps so you can't get infinite damage by running around like crazy. Should be easy to implement as well. And would be very unique to the game, never seen anything like this before in another FPS game

The charging idea could be used on the camping rifle, so that it could have it's magazine/reload system removed altogether. It would also become a little more than a point and click weapon. Perhaps make it so that it charges only when you zoom in, and when zoomed in your movement is nerfed (no jumping, way slower movement). Right click would toggle the scope, and it would take a short while to zoom out so that camping becomes a little more humiliating when an enemy can shotgun slap you to death twice from behind.

So when not zoomed and charged the CR does very little damage, perhaps 20 normal / 30 headshot, and when fully charged it does 100 normal / 150 headshot damage.

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Oh yea, I'm not against your idea or anything Dokujisan at all. I just don't see the point of having 2 weapons doing similar things, when one does everthing reasonably well and the other is trying to fix an long occuring issue with the actual weapon, as some sort of superweapon like I said would be cool, I'd prefer to see this idea implemented by someone so I could actually say whether I like it or not before I comment any further. My issue is I can see mapper's just putting both weapons on a map, which make's me think..what's the point just use the rifle. Hope this makes sense of some sort typing it quickly

My idea of combining these as above would make the Nex and the CR very different weapons, CR strictly for camping and Nex strictly for running around with.

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Or, it could be based on velocity and not acceleration. I wouldn't know the technology or physics behind that. It wouldn't need to be a wind turbine. We're talking about the future here. It could be something based on string theory for all I know. Maybe a technology meant to generate power as a spacecraft passes by a planet...but applied to a weapon.

Velocity, absolutely. If it's based on acceleration you would just dodge like mad on the ground to get full damage, since the groundaccel is quite high in the current physics.

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(Yes, this is absurd, but so is this whole concept IMHO: completely unintuitive)

Put a power meter into the display of the Nex. Coupled with some random gibberish about velocity and stuff. Should make sense.
Plus you could change the scale up/down the effects/sounds of the shot perhaps...

Also what would be cool is if the glow map of the entire Nex model would fade out as soon as you fire, and regenerate back as if it would use all energy reserves of the weapon for the shot.

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We shouldn't be afraid of changes like these! They make the game differ more from the usual bunch of arena deathmatch games, which will pretty much be the category this game will be put into by all magazines and reviewers. So why not make it stand out as much as we can...

Don't mind the game standing out at all, but it has to be for the right reasons. If someone implements this I will try it out, I don't think I can judge the actual concept until I can atleast see/try it.

This is a unique and powerful concept that I really like.

I definitely advocate multiple indicators of power, making it intuitive. If we do it right, the brightness of the gun and the numbers on the readout could function as a speedometer. Not because we need one, but because that would act as a self-explanatory tutorial on the use of the gun, which is necessary because this concept is so unique.

I don't know about the nex, but I think it would be cool if a laser alt let you convert your kinetic energy into a sort of force-field blast.

Basic idea: laser across the map really fast, then at the end of your run, when you're fastest, aim yourself into the middle of a group of people and alt-fire the laser right as you hit the ground and kinetic blast proportional to your incoming velocity sends them flying in every direction, while you lose your momentum. As a bonus, the kinetic discharge could momentarily intercept all projectiles in its blast radius.

I envision it looking sort of like a giant laser shot/comet radiating out in a blast from the player model.

Could play with this and let it discharge shields + velocity or make it so velocity imparts blast radius and momentum imparted and shields drain off for damage given, etc.

Slogger, I really like that idea a ton. That is one thing that will help speed up the game, too.

I would suggest making the blast have a specific height, so that if you see a 'comet' coming, you can time a jump just right so that it goes underneath you. Just so that there is a counter.