A Path Beyond Potential headshot overhaul?

[Pushwall]

1 hour ago, Chaos_Knight said:

One thing I would suggest though is to reduce bullet damage against vehicles and esp. tanks. Light vehicles may be fine as they are, but capt shouldn't be a reliable counter to meds/HTs. Maybe reduce bullet effectiveness against building exterior/defenses also (applies to rangers as well)? We got rockets for that after all.

This is kind of why I was hoping for a non-disposable launcher for the allied RS, so that we can move the M72 LAW to every other class (or make it an optional purchase) with only one shot and drop "bullet vs tank" damage drastically to compensate. Dropping the damage with nothing to compensate is just hurting the non-specialty infantry too much again.

The thing of bullets vs buildings (I guess this is specifically for ranger/cap who intentionally have decent damage, not stuff like the rifleman whose anti-exterior damage is negligible) is that without that, Allies would have only one infantry unit that can actually assault buildings from outside. While Soviets would have 4 infantry that can do this, with 3 of them also having anti-infantry power ranging from average to decent. Maybe they can go up vs "exposed" buildings (helipads and aux structures) but down vs real ones and defenses?

1 hour ago, Chaos_Knight said:

Maybe if body shots feel too weak to people, go to 4x HS multiplier with according tweaks to guns? I just feel like high risk-high reward stuff like slug rounds or tri-shots HS should still be worth trying if you know what you are doing.

That could be a fair compromise. I'll run the numbers and see what I can come up with and throw up a possible chart to go with the x3 and x5 ones in the OP.

Another thing someone suggested before, which could help with both of these issues, is reintroducing the "old Grenadier" and giving it to both teams. Put it in a similar role to the old one but with the functionalities of the new grenades (impact or VERY short timer, and its current pistol-ish range). So Allies have another infantry unit that can hurt buildings and can put the hurt on infantry if you can't get reliable headshots. Should still be different enough from the flamethrower in that he can't stand using his own weapon at point blank range (might be reinforced further by giving him no armour but higher health, which is very bad for splash damage, and also prevents them from becoming pseudo-flamers while indoors with a medic's armour cache), can't snipe buildings from a decent distance, can't counter medics, and can't flush people out of cover if he can't get a good shot behind it, but has considerably higher exterior damage than the flamer.

Either that, or if we just want to help with the headshot issue, converting some of the Remington and TOZ's damage to splash (with a small enough radius that you can't hit yourself) or extra afterburn, resulting in higher bodyshot damage and lower headshots. The splash method should work out better than how it worked on the Gamma Dragunov considering you're hitting targets that are rarely more than 30m away from you, instead of 300m.

Either way, it means Allies would have an option for a weapon that's less reliant on headshots like how the Soviets have the flamer (super-splash) and shocky (no headshot bonus damage whatsoever).

[Chaos_Knight]

3 hours ago, Pushwall said:

This is kind of why I was hoping for a non-disposable launcher for the allied RS

Well, if you have an idea in mind and wouldn't mind doing the unwrap for me, I might try and model/texture something. And maybe, just maybe this something won't have more poligons than several vehicles combined. XD
Ahem. But yea, there might be something I can do.

3 hours ago, Pushwall said:

Allies would have only one infantry unit that can actually assault buildings from outside.

True. But Allies also have a way to sustain themselves both indoors and outdoors via medics. They also have one of the best building killers - Tanya.

3 hours ago, Pushwall said:

Maybe they can go up vs "exposed" buildings (helipads and aux structures) but down vs real ones and defenses

A fair compromise I think.

4 hours ago, Pushwall said:

Another thing someone suggested before, which could help with both of these issues, is reintroducing the "old Grenadier" and giving it to both teams...

Hmm. But what weapon would it be? Mortar maybe? Has to be something which would make sense in the setting. I mean I am not against infantry artillery at all, even with somewhat decent extended range, just not stealth infantry artillery with common-sense defying characteristics (*cough* 110m frag grenade throw *cough*).

4 hours ago, Pushwall said:

Either that, or if we just want to help with the headshot issue, converting some of the Remington and TOZ's damage to splash

But what would that accomplish? I thought that for splash to work, it has to reach a certain "center" of an object which would make leg, head and some arm shots not counting splash at all. Maybe just bump up upper chest damage multiplier? This would help just about everyone, I think.

[Pushwall]

10 hours ago, Chaos_Knight said:

But what would that accomplish? I thought that for splash to work, it has to reach a certain "center" of an object which would make leg, head and some arm shots not counting splash at all.

There's another quirk of splash though; if the projectile hits the target directly (server-side) then it gives the full effect of the splash regardless of how far the explosion is from the target's origin. Of course the issue there is it's server-side so this probably isn't the best idea.

10 hours ago, Chaos_Knight said:

Hmm. But what weapon would it be? Mortar maybe? Has to be something which would make sense in the setting. I mean I am not against infantry artillery at all, even with somewhat decent extended range, just not stealth infantry artillery with common-sense defying characteristics (*cough* 110m frag grenade throw *cough*).

Nobody said it had to be an artillery  As I said it could easily have the same range that the current RPGrenadier's "anti infantry only" grenades have (i.e. barely better than a pistol), upshot being that it'd be cheaper than the RS (300 perhaps), outdamage it against buildings (with the RS also being nerfed in this department perhaps), and have a stealthier report and projectile - though with so little range it shouldn't be quite so hard to detect as the old one.

10 hours ago, Chaos_Knight said:

Well, if you have an idea in mind and wouldn't mind doing the unwrap for me, I might try and model/texture something. And maybe, just maybe this something won't have more poligons than several vehicles combined. XD
Ahem. But yea, there might be something I can do.

Unwrapping is certainly not my department, but I could see about giving it to Chop or Ice. I might as well also learn how to do it from Chop, I've gone long enough having no clue about how to do this thing that I really should know since I'm a mapper. The big possibilities on the table I'm thinking of are either the M47 Dragon (since that's consistent with what the RA manual and internal data files say he uses) or RL-83 Blindicide (alternate option since there's enough American weapons on this mostly European force already).

[Pushwall]

With regard to captains vs vehicles something I probably should do for them is shift the balance of health damage vs armour damage. Right now they're identical, just like rockets. Less damage to armour and more to health, just like the AK/M16 (but less drastic), would mean they're worse at weakening incoming tanks before the AT units arrive, but better at destroying them once they're heavily damaged and/or on the retreat - with an overall slight reduction in anti-veh DPS to pay for this maybe.

[ChopBam]

Keep in mind Captains/Kapitans are the best infantry a Barracks-less team can front against incoming vehicles. Just don't nerf them too much. 

[GaryOak]

On 29-6-2017 at 5:27 AM, Pushwall said:

Your KD of 0.92 is certainly better than the average (it might not look like it, but the average is well below 1 due to the many deaths that don't also give a kill, such as suicides and base defenses) and your KD this month is higher than it's been the other months so I really get the feeling this isn't hurting you as much as you say it is and you're just skewed by your experiences against one old player who is known to be tenacious and different gameplay rules would not change this one bit as he'd just change his playstyle to accommodate them, and most likely quicker than the average player would.

Hmm, I definitely don't have anything against any one player, I really think it's an overall feeling.

 

I might be wrong though, and just have to get used to it. Maybe it'll all get better in a few weeks.

On 29-6-2017 at 8:29 AM, Chaos_Knight said:

And a question from the "other side of the barricades" if you wish. How low would you want skill ceiling to be? One of the things, besides tech levels (eugh D:) which killed APB in Gamma was exactly dumbing down the importance of individual skill levels.

After all, if you reduce the distance between skill floors and ceilings, what reason would there be to get better over time?

This sounds like an interesting discussion! I'll first try getting better / getting a bit more used to the new gameplay elements before i form an opinion

[Pushwall]

Probably an easier solution to the "drop HS to x4" that wouldn't need me to jiggle around unit healths and weapon damages again so that everything kills in the same/similar number of headshots as before, would be raising the body damage multiplier from 1x to 1.25x, and limbs from 0.75x to 1x. So headshots effectively only do 4x as much as bodyshots do - then 5x as much as limbshots. Probably the only thing that'd need changing after that is dropping tank shell damage vs infantry as those are mostly bodyshots. And it'd be quick an easy to do and to revert if it fails. So I may give that a go.