Spawn Weapon Concept: "Blaster"

Urgh, that thing gives me the creeps.

I tested the weapon some days ago with Grunt, Maddin and a guy i dont remember anymore (sry mate).
I havent had much problems while jumping up, lasering me on top of walls, climbing etc. . Everything looked cool so far.
That fine and decent visuals havent been implemented on 2nd fire mode, hell, who cares, it's testing phase.

What i absolutely dislike: Instahit! (Ranged-Touch-Attack / hitscan)
I'm certainly not an absolute ultra-aim player, but it was simply too easy to push / kill people. While in mid air and being hit by laser, theres no way of surviving.
First: Orientation is due to the push == 0. Or better said: Aiming while in mid-air, being pushed, is always a matter of luck.
Second: Due to the hitscan, you get pushed in mid air again, again and again. If you have bad luck (and named Brian ;-) ) and the opponent "okayish" aim - you die.
Third: I killed more dudes having nex'es in their hands with my laserblaster then laserblaster against laserblaster.

It's a no-go. Especially in ctf where the flagcarrier wont get to the homebase on any wide scaled spacemap.

Ah, btw: I couldnt find out if theres a limited range to the first firemode. It's been shooting along the whole map (dunno its name tbh, it's been the totally round map with a pavillion in its middle).


Back to jumping.
OP said that there should be no difference between the old laser and the blaster.
I dont know if it's an intended change, but wall-lasering behaves remarkably different. It's not that noticeable while being slow, but at a certain speed, it's changes occur very extreme.


Okay, so far, the techniques.

Gameplay:
I quote our most, beloved "houseelf": AHAHAHAHA))

Seriously, the intention to merge these two weapons into one makes the gap between new and advanced players "too damn high" (try reading that without a specific pic in your head ).
Advanced players dont have to switch weapons anymore to get a decent kill with the spawnweapons. Newbies (normally sucky aim) will have no chance while being pushed around (small, corridor like maps) or probably falling every 5 seconds off the map (spacemaps like newtonian, xoylent etc.). This wont grow the playerbase a lot, i assure you.
Saving your ass with RL while falling off the map is, thanks to instanthit, no option anymore. You get pushed away before you are able to detonate you rocket.

Going for the flag is rather impossibru in open maps (dance, newtonian, brokenworld...). Either you get pushed mid-air, or you simply are drained out by 2 guys, instahitting you.
On the other hand, fast running away while having the flag makes no sense anymore too. The fact, that it's now easier to be shot from skilled players, makes it quite easy to defend (you just let the dude bump into sth - then your team is almost save).

An overall: no-go vote from my side.


I'd recomment to fix the issues, announced in op.
That showgunammo could simply become the same as mg/rifle, since they're bullet like weapons.
The slapping with shotgun only, well, wheres the advance in having just one other weapon doing the same. It's still only one weapon. AND, for me, it's much more logical to get badly hurt by a huge shotgun (in ur face) then being slapped from a ... tiny ... laserlike model, looking quite a lot smaller than every other weapon.

P.s.: What I simply dont understand is, because the laser is used the most of all weapons (not to kill ofc), why or where is the necessity to change its behaviour?

I also voted no.

I agree with a lot of the points that Halogene/Sless has made and personally find the shotgun and laser to be fine as they are now and they don't need such a radical change as a combination. A more subtle change would be much better imo

I have tested the weapon myself on the server with some people and I personally find the weapon to detract a lot from what the laser was about. This new weapon has the potential to be abused a lot due to the hitscan and provides a disincentive to acquire another weapon if the weapon you spawn with can hitscan lesser skilled people to death.

We need to consider this in light of how the core weapons are going to change and this is what I would personally propose.

Xonotic Proposed Core Weapons

Laser-No Ammo

Shotgun-Explosive Ammo

Crylink-Plasma Cell Ammo

Electro-Plasma Cell Ammo

Nex-Plasma Cell Ammo

Rocketlauncher-Explosive Ammo

Grenade Launcher-Explosive Ammo

Hagar-Explosive Ammo

Lightning Gun-Plasma Cell Ammo

Ammo Types

Plasma Cells: Used by four weapons

Explosive: Used by four weapons

I would argue that we change the shotgun ammo to some explosive frag round which would mean we would reduce our ammo types to 2. The Machine Gun is going to be replaced by the lightning gun so there would be no need for machine gun ammo(except for the non core chain gun of course).

The only that would need to be changed for the shotgun is there to be an explosive like visual effect on a hit(I think the damage should remain the same, no need for stuns or push or anything else like that) and melee would remain the same.

I love Xonotic because of what I can do with the current laser and I do not like how this might change with this possible weapon merger implementation.

Squigger, the reason shotty is being merged is not so much ammo streamlining as it is getting rid of the clunkyness of two spawn weapons.

I see, then why not just give the shotgun the primary firemode of the laser as a third fire mode? Make it switchable with a button between that and melee.

Have it as the laser being a movement attachment to the shotgun.

A good comparison would be how the spider vehicle can switch to different missle firemodes with the mousewheel.

Why not do the same thing with the shotgun via a different button? Heck it could replace the button people would have normally used to switch to the laser weapon anyway.

Squigger, the reason shotty is being merged is not so much ammo streamlining as it is getting rid of the clunkyness of two spawn weapons.

That's exactly one of the things I don't want getting rid of. I like weapon setups where you have two spawn weapons... the first being weaker but using no ammo, and the second being a bit stronger but requiring ammo. I do however support using shared ammo for the Shotgun (possibly Bullets like the UZI) rather than it's own ammo (in our case Shells).

I see, then why not just give the shotgun the primary firemode of the laser as a third fire mode? Make it switchable with a button between that and melee.

Because if you've set it to melee you won't be able to use it as a movement tool when you need it.
Watch some high-skill duels and you'll see the problem with this idea.

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One option that i saw someone suggest a while ago was to just do the laser/shotgun as one weapon and then to make melee work with every weapon via an extra key. I think this would be worth experimenting with.

One option that i saw someone suggest a while ago was to just do the laser/shotgun as one weapon and then to make melee work with every weapon via an extra key. I think this would be worth experimenting with.

I could see that. My only concern would be it would seem to take a lot of work implementing. It took till 0.5 to get the shotgun with its melee working properly including external animation.

My only concern would be it would seem to take a lot of work implementing. It took till 0.5 to get the shotgun with its melee working properly including external animation.

Yea but now all that work is done. I imagine it would be easy to port it to the other weapons.

nope ... not easy ... every weapon model source would have to be opened up in their respective programs to have the slap animation added ...
(correct me if i'm wrong on that though ...)

if you want always available melee ... then why not a separate knife or something ...

personally I want melee to stay only shotgun

* tZork corrects hutty:
The "external slap" (eg what everyone else see when you use it) is in the player model's animations. The first person slap is in the 'hand' (h_*) model. Those are *considerably* easier to alter/replace then weapon models themselves as its basically just a animated bone that control external weapon movement (idle sway, melee swoop etc).

Just FYI, most of this idea was abandoned. What i'm going to do is merely fix up the two current spawn weapons (Laser will remain essentially the same, but Shotgun will have unlimited ammo and will be remade into an energy-style weapon... it will continue to have melee on it though. Additionally, the weapons will be renamed.)

For those who want to keep following, check out this thread: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=3801