Lightning Gun / Machine Gun thread

but it still doesn't change the FACT that people choose LG in most of the close close combat situations which people usually get themselves into on purpose. People want to win so they play it safe and LG is safe. The over usage is sometimes so bad that it's as if you're playing instagib, just with LGs.

So, basically Nex in Xonotic.
LG will offer another option in fights and it's much harder to use than a Nex, because of the fast movement in Xonotic. Nex is just a weapon that hits at all range, but with LG it's limited and you got to follow the super fast movement of the player. And learn to dodge.

it's because I persistently find pointing and clicking boring because for majority of the people it's easy and simple.

Let's kill Nex then!

Pointless discussion anyway. LG will be here someday.

Lets consider the basic design, as it would be / is in Xonotic, instead of getting all emoragy.

Machine gun fires rapidly, but not constantly. In Xonotic fires 10 bullets per second (primary). That in turn means if you miss just two bullets in a second, you drop 20% in damage output. A LG style weapon would be more forgiving to missing a little as it would deal damage each game frame, thus you can (in theory), get ze hurt on again faster.

Machine gun have spread, LG does not. Xonotic's MG have its spread constant set fairly low, but enough to make it hard to use effectively beyond its intended range.

LG have range limit/falloff MG does not, so a stray 'lg bullet' will never kill you half way across some huge map.

MG can be allowed to have it bullets pass thin obstacles (thanks for ballistic bullets code). That would not make sense for the LG.

Both are rapid ammo eaters, only differ in ammo type and that could have been fixed anyway so no big difference there.

LG feels more in tune with the style of Xonotic, tough MG could be turned into some (instahit, not to be confused with the start weapon ; ) "laser uzi" to deal with that (and above).

Both lacks ideas for a sensible secondary fire-mode

All in all their role and function is fairly similar, as ease use go i would give that to LG as its constant damage, and you have a constant tracer to aim with. As for more interesting design, i would say MG takes that as it has more cool shit going on.

First of all, this discussion is very hypothetical as with the current rate of development in that area it may take forever before it is in a usable state. Therefore my idea on how to integrate the LG in the current weapon system is only hypothetical too:

Spawnweapon:
- Primary: old laser (non-insta hit)
- Secondary: old crylink primary with way less damage but keep the slowing down effect

LGlink:
- Primary: simple, static lightning beam with a fixed range
- Secondary: old crylink secondary (or something crazy like a beam to heal your teammates)

This seems more realistic to do than the current plans which might delay 0.7 up to 2015 :x
The spawn weapon would be something unique and aim fans got their lightning beam.

About the MG: it is limited to a point that you got to keep the spread to have it balanced and players lack visual feedback. While shooting it is difficult to say how much damage one deals and that's in general a bad thing. A laser uzi could mostly fix that if the area of hit impact was clearly visible. Maybe it would even possible to color the lasers based on the current % (minus N ms to make it work) of hits? For example, 0-20%: green 20-40%: blue 40%+: red.

I disagree with the statement that the LG is a noob weapon and due to that shouldn't be added to Xonotic. But there are also valid arguments against the LG, with the strongest imo being the maintenance of the unique weapon system that Xonotic has. I for one don't care if there will be a LG or something else, as long as it is a progress compared to the MG.

I could imagine making the LG secondary some sort of physical effect mainly, like a hook that can only attach to players so that the player drags you behind or something that pushes a player away from you or that is able to grab and fixate a player in the air similar to star wars sith technique (though that would probably be too powerful, there would have to be a maximum velocity difference to work or something).

Just spitting out random ideas that came to my head, but a "physical" secondary fire mode would seem just right for a LG type of weapon. Healing team mates could be also a cool idea, but I don't know if that's really a big deal with auto regeneration, but it could add some new tactical elements.

Two more ideas for the LG secondary, from http://liandri.beyondunreal.com/User:Nereid/Link_Gun

UT2003, linking up with teammates to increase damage:

If a teammate is linked up to you, the teammate's link beam assumes the color of the team, and both the primary and secondary fire of your Link Gun become yellow and do extra damage. If there are n people linked up to you, the damage on the primary fire is multiplied by 1 + n, and the damage on the secondary fire is multiplied by 1 + (0.5 × n). For example, if two people are linked up to you, primary fire will do 90 damage per shot, and secondary fire will do 30 damage per hit for 165 damage per second. The primary projectile speed also increases with the number of links.

UT2004, repairing vehicles and other stuff:

In UT2004, players can also repair vehicles and Power Nodes with the alternate fire, greatly increasing the utility of this weapon in Onslaught, Vehicle CTF, and certain Assault maps.

I honestly have to say, linking up with team-mate's is a super cool idea. Used to be a lot of fun in UT2003/04 especially in TDM games when you can pull it off.

I honestly thought the linking concept was pretty lame in UC, UT2k3, and UT2k4. Being able to repair stuff though was pretty cool.