A Path Beyond Stolen Submarines

[gammae102]

So today I was playing Hostile Water as Soviets and bought an Attack Sub. I got in my sub, and a teammate of mine bought a Missile Sub, which was promptly stolen by a spy. In spite of being in a superior anti-naval vessel, I was completely powerless to do anything about it so long as the stolen Missile Sub remained submerged.

 

Now you can say, "look before buying, and don't let your subs get stolen," but realistically there will always be new players and that will never be a solution. In the situation I mentioned earlier, me stalking the stolen sub would prevent it from surfacing and firing, but it also makes for some extremely boring gameplay. So how do we fix this (if it is even agreed upon that it is a problem)? Firing normal torpedoes under water would create more problems than it would solve, and depth charges on a sub make no sense. The only thing I can come up with is some sort of extremely short range torpedo for secondary fire that can be shot underwater.

[Pushwall]

Don't think the sub script even currently supports switching between two weapons, only having 1 weapon that either is or isn't capable of firing underwater. If it were able to have two weapons I would just make the submerged torpedoes identical to normal except for doing no damage to buildings and leave it at that - it was able to fire submerged in testing but that was problematic due to it being able to hit the naval yard while submerged (a much more common scenario than missile subs being stolen). There's still a remnant of those days in that submerged subs are actually resistant to torpedoes (though not by a lot) because sub vs sub fights did occur in testing and they were deemed to be over too fast

[Isaac The Madd]

Think sub vs sub should be a thing.

[Pushwall]

Read. If we do that now then we'll just end up with another thread about how unfair it is that submerged submarines can hurt the naval yard while being immune or super-resistant to most weapons. The situations where a submerged submarine can target a naval yard are FAR more common than situations where a missile sub gets stolen, and I'd rather keep the bigger issue squashed. If we get the ability to have submerged subs swap to another weapon that doesn't hurt buildings, then we'll bring sub vs sub back

[VERTi60]

If you drive close to the enemy sub you can hit it point blank by the explosion.

[FRAYDO]

Ten points, four ribbons, two promotions and a medal to the man who stole that submarine. In Hostile Waters of all places! That means this clever spy made his way across the lake, presumably in a LST, bypassed any Soviet vessels patrolling, and inconspicuously strolled into the Submarine Pen for a successful steal.

[Raap]

Ten points, four ribbons, two promotions and a medal to the man who stole that submarine. In Hostile Waters of all places! That means this clever spy made his way across the lake, presumably in a LST, bypassed any Soviet vessels patrolling, and inconspicuously strolled into the Submarine Pen for a successful steal.

 

That should have earned that spy the ability to hold on to his stolen ride a little longer.

 

If stolen subs really do become an issue (I doubt it), a band-aid solution can be found in raising Hind damage to submerged submarines, so they can go and seek them out and destroy them.

[Pushwall]

If stolen subs really do become an issue (I doubt it), a band-aid solution can be found in raising Hind damage to submerged submarines, so they can go and seek them out and destroy them.

 

That wouldn't help on Under or Coastal Influence though.

[Alstar]

I remember stealing a sub myself with Captain on Pacific Threat. After that i had 2 attack subs on me all the time to not let me deal any damage.

 

Still, i think that if your sub is stolen by Allies, then they have earned it and you screwed up.

[Raap]

 

If stolen subs really do become an issue (I doubt it), a band-aid solution can be found in raising Hind damage to submerged submarines, so they can go and seek them out and destroy them.

 

That wouldn't help on Under or Coastal Influence though.

 

 

Then my other suggestion would be to make Missile Subs deal damage to submerged subs, but then we still got Under having a problem.

 

I don't think this is a problem worth solving, though, especially given the difficulty of solving it. Unless of course, following this thread, a wave of spy subs becomes a standard tactic... In which case you're probably going to have to give a land based unit a damage increase to submerged units, without messing up any other balance.

Edited March 9, 2016 by Raap

[gammae102]

Part of the reason I made this topic is because I thought it might have just been developer oversight, as sub versus sub isn't something you'd encounter in a normal game. After hearing that there are technical reasons why the sub can't be given a secondary weapon, it's probably better to leave things as is. It's not a big problem, but I thought there might have been an easy fix.

 

But in the spirit of making overly complicated solutions for tiny problems, I will offer this (probably bad) idea, if it's even possible. Would it be possible to damage a sub by ramming it? Like maybe make it so if the front tip of an Attack Sub touches another part of a different sub it would do damage? Like I said, I have no idea if it's even possible, and if it is possible I'm not sure it's even a good idea, but it's the only thing I can think of if secondary fire can't be done on a sub.

[ChopBam]

What about RPGs doing a little extra damage to submerged?

[Pushwall]

They can attack naval factories from out of RPG range. And they need that much range to have any edge over gunboats.

 

Also, >making a new RPG-specific warhead to tackle an almost nonexistent problem

[ChopBam]

an almost nonexistent problem

Well there we go then.

[Pushwall]

Also, >making a new RPG-specific warhead to tackle an almost nonexistent problem

 

However, since changes to grenade logic may require the grenade to have a new unique warhead, I suppose that can be given a boost against submerged subs

Do like a "Welcome!", followed by important game mechanics in bullet point form. As long as the player speaks English, it could help his team with needless suffering

 

I already have a bunch of newbie hints on the autoannounce, stuff like how to sprint and how to view the new team/structure info boards. I guess it couldn't hurt to add a few more.

[Pushwall]

Pop up windows are also annoying and disruptive. Remember the Gamma hint system which, not only did you have to manually enable using an option nestled deep in a tree of option menus, but caused popups to appear randomly 1-10 seconds after purchasing something, which you had to manually click your way out of and prevented you from moving/firing/anything until they were gone? Need to quickly golden wrench a building or switch to a combat unit to fight off an intruder? Well you're pretty fucked then aren't ya?

[Raap]

The game would benefit of having an in-game help menu with clickable menu pages. I don't think the game can currently support this, but it might be worth exploring the options here. Besides, the help menu is in need of a few fixes anyhow.

 

Edit: Then again, the GUI is one of my main issues with W3D. I wish it was more easy to customize, even on a per-map basis (level map, anyone?). Everything from the health bars to the chat system, it all has a lot of room for improvement.

Edited March 11, 2016 by Raap

[Isaac The Madd]

Well the GUI elements are all in one texture I think you can change it per-map but you can't change the layout. I tried this once on one of my five maps that I made to play around with stuff.

Edited March 11, 2016 by Isaac The Madd

[Raap]

Well the GUI elements are all in one texture I think you can change it per-map but you can't change the layout. I tried this once on one of my five maps that I made to play around with stuff.

 

Just changing an image wouldn't quite solve the limitations or improve the new player experience.

[Isaac The Madd]

What if we brought back the renegade single player objective "screen" (it just overlaid the view when you pressed tab) to give players tips and rebound to H.

A map is entirely plausible, but I don't have the time to right it out.

Edited March 11, 2016 by Isaac The Madd

[Pushwall]

There is way too much must-know stuff for newbies to fit in one server entry popup.

[harvester]

Forget about pop ups. They're annoying and disruptive more than technicians repairing tanks. Don't try and fix things that ain't broken. The best teacher for newbies is experience, they'll learn from their own mistakes faster than annoying pop ups that most people don't give a shit about. Nobody in the game cares about losing a game just because a teammate isn't experience like them other than a handful of tryhards butthurt over some video game.

 

However, a separate help page for newbies about basic tips and unit info may be needed, how about the EVA data link page like in Renegade that explains about each units and structures?

[Pushwall]

I was actually hoping for something like that but it may not happen.

 

Instead, assuming that the logic for it's been fixed, I can add a keybinding that provides help in the chat box about your current unit, and then just add "press this button to get helpful information about your current unit!" to the autoannounce.

[Raap]

I was actually hoping for something like that but it may not happen.

 

Instead, assuming that the logic for it's been fixed, I can add a keybinding that provides help in the chat box about your current unit, and then just add "press this button to get helpful information about your current unit!" to the autoannounce.

 

That keybinding should actually be a pop-up, since the chat goes away too fast and pressing U is more annoying than pressing a key that brings up a pop-up.

 

I do agree that automatic pop-ups are aids, and should be avoided.

[Chad1233]

I remember stealing a sub in the old hostile water when spies sucked. lol

And yeah I remember using the torpedo explosion underwater to splash damage the other subs.

[Pushwall]

That doesn't work anymore since subs just can't fire underwater at all and, with a few exceptions, explosions do not hurt vehicles because server side damage is not fun.

[Raptor29aa]

Ok so here is a few ideas

Maybe a secondary/alt fire that shoots an explosive that detonates 2 meters in front of the sub.

Or alter the Hind cannon

Or alter the grenadier to do extra naval damage

Or steal a LB/ boat

Or give the Soviet Naval transport depth charges?

Or give up because you are the Soviets who are the best at everything who need no help.

[Pushwall]

As we've already mentioned in this thread, the first idea cannot work because letting it fire underwater means letting its torpedoes attack the NY from underwater which is broken, the second idea wouldn't help on naval maps that lack aircraft, and I'm already doing the third. The rest of those are terrible.