Luci Spam

Ok, recently I've been hearing tons of complaints about luci spam
I'd like to open this topic for us to decide exactly what we shall consider
luci spam, and what to do about it

I can work on limiting the lucifer cannon in some way ( counting balls\ fire speed ect )
as I am currently about ready to upload a bug fix for all the stuff that messed up in
my latest qvm update

https://theacr.darkbb.com/t1793-server-mods#progress


most complaints that I have heard are about the number of luci balls someone has in the air
as that leads to impassable corridors and general cheapness ect ect

I only once launched 3 luci ballz(no more) but i saw people who launched even 6 ! F1 for spam reduction

well my suggestions are

1: eliminate the single luci shot fire ability

this is because no one who can actually use the lucifer cannon really ever uses the single shot fire mechanism: only new players use it mainly because they dont' realize they can fire charged shots or are trying to spam a chokepoint/ doorway

2: make the lucifer cannon shots collide with each other

this is because a common tactic (particularly on tremor) is to shoot a ball in front of you and then release another one into it the while running to make a shield in front of you. In short you use the fact you can curve the luci to put sometimes over 3 fully charged shots into one giant mega ball and then spam narrow hallways making it insta death for even tyrants. Either we could make balls explode upon contact with each other or an oldler shot will simply disappear upon touching a more recent one(probably the former is easier to code).

I personally am not a huge fan of actually limiting how fast the cannon can shoot or how many balls you can have in the air because you sometimes shoot multiple shots when your trying to pump enough damage into the OM or your trying to do a huge amount of damage to the alien base when the om is down.

just my opinions

as for what i actually consider spam i usually base it on relative to how many aliens are near the guy, whether he's actually actively engaging them (dodging) or whether he's shooting from relative safety as well as whether he's under pressure (ie having his face melted by acid tubes while sticked by a trapper). Usually though i consider it 3 or more balls in the air as spam (you should only need a maximum of 2 to take down a tyrant) and i discount shots that miss but get turned so much they create what alot of people call luci mines (balls that just kinda float there)

somnus' ideas are good. perhaps even increase the amount of ammo a fully charged shot consumes.

-Thing with the Lucifer, tyrants take 2hits for helm+arm or 3hits for bsuits with lucis, reducing firing speed or damage would make aliens overpowered.
-I'm agreeing that single fire should be taken out, no one uses it really.
-Something else with Luci mod, if you turn a full 360 with luci's in the air, they stay in place for a limited amount of time creating luci bombs.
-Reduce the time a luciball stays in the air... Id say 6seconds is good.

I use the alt fire mode of a luci... increased ammo consumption is a good idea.
Vyrus is it possible to have the damage of a luciball decrease the longer its in the air?

Atlantis wrote:

I use the alt fire mode of a luci... increased ammo consumption is a good idea.
Vyrus is it possible to have the damage of a luciball decrease the longer its in the air?

extraordinerily difficult but possible
well not that difficult but the damage isnt
a set value... its slightly more complex

Somnus wrote:

well my suggestions are

1: eliminate the single luci shot fire ability

this is because no one who can actually use the lucifer cannon really ever uses the single shot fire mechanism: only new players use it mainly because they dont' realize they can fire charged shots or are trying to spam a chokepoint/ doorway

2: make the lucifer cannon shots collide with each other

this is because a common tactic (particularly on tremor) is to shoot a ball in front of you and then release another one into it the while running to make a shield in front of you. In short you use the fact you can curve the luci to put sometimes over 3 fully charged shots into one giant mega ball and then spam narrow hallways making it insta death for even tyrants. Either we could make balls explode upon contact with each other or an oldler shot will simply disappear upon touching a more recent one(probably the former is easier to code).

I personally am not a huge fan of actually limiting how fast the cannon can shoot or how many balls you can have in the air because you sometimes shoot multiple shots when your trying to pump enough damage into the OM or your trying to do a huge amount of damage to the alien base when the om is down.

just my opinions

as for what i actually consider spam i usually base it on relative to how many aliens are near the guy, whether he's actually actively engaging them (dodging) or whether he's shooting from relative safety as well as whether he's under pressure (ie having his face melted by acid tubes while sticked by a trapper). Usually though i consider it 3 or more balls in the air as spam (you should only need a maximum of 2 to take down a tyrant) and i discount shots that miss but get turned so much they create what alot of people call luci mines (balls that just kinda float there)

I support that. F1

vyrus@ubuntu wrote:

Atlantis wrote:

I use the alt fire mode of a luci... increased ammo consumption is a good idea.
Vyrus is it possible to have the damage of a luciball decrease the longer its in the air?

extraordinerily difficult but possible
well not that difficult but the damage isnt
a set value... its slightly more complex

Is it possible to change the firing rate so that the more lucis shot equals a longer wait time for the next lucy? Make it exponential!

Physically limit the number of shots a luci can fire at the same time. you dont need to actually track the instances, just use 3 timers.

those last two are kinda like doubs idea
he was going along the lines of if you fire too rapidly
it laggs out and goes rly slow for a bit

vyrus@ubuntu wrote:

those last two are kinda like doubs idea
he was going along the lines of if you fire too rapidly
it laggs out and goes rly slow for a bit

Or if you fire too many, it starts to take away the player's life..kind of like when you let a lucy overheat and it burns you to death!

Goober wrote:

vyrus@ubuntu wrote:

those last two are kinda like doubs idea
he was going along the lines of if you fire too rapidly
it laggs out and goes rly slow for a bit

Or if you fire too many, it starts to take away the player's life..kind of like when you let a lucy overheat and it burns you to death!

originally if you held the luci to the very point at wich the maximum charge level was
it'd blow up in your face ... we kinda overwrote that when we put on curving luci,
but i could write that back in if we want


ok i've seen several good ideas here, i need some input on what people would like:

• luciballs explode when they touch each other
  
• counting luciballs in the air and limiting them to a certain number
  
• coungting fire rate of luciballs and decrease fire rate if it goes to fast (temporarily)
  
• reducing luciball flight time
  
• re implementing overcharged luci explosion

several valid points and we can accomidate more than one -- opinions ?

I totaly agree with what Gunner says: "-Reduce the time a luciball stays in the air... Id say 6seconds is good."

vyrus@ubuntu wrote:

ok i've seen several good ideas here, i need some input on what people would like:

• luciballs explode when they touch each other
  
• counting luciballs in the air and limiting them to a certain number
  
• coungting fire rate of luciballs and decrease fire rate if it goes to fast (temporarily)
  
• reducing luciball flight time
  
• re implementing overcharged luci explosion

several valid points and we can accomidate more than one -- opinions ?

those are all really good. i diddnt even think about reimplementing the explosion, that would probably make a huge difference by itself

Here's a last idea, I remember we upped the creds for psaw to like 1500 so people wouldn't use it too much. Why don't we try that with the lucy because it's the simplest and see if people are willing to give that much cred for a lucy. Maybe 2000 creds? If that doesn't work, we could move on to more complicated ideas.

Goober wrote:

Here's a last idea, I remember we upped the creds for psaw to like 1500 so people wouldn't use it too much. Why don't we try that with the lucy because it's the simplest and see if people are willing to give that much cred for a lucy. Maybe 2000 creds? If that doesn't work, we could move on to more complicated ideas.

Well that was because then we still had the modded weapons, and the psaw did insane dmg, but i can see raising the lcannon price to 1000

Shouldn't change price just for luci-spam. Gotta think about every other battle a luci has besides its spam use. Besides if you up the lucifer cannon cost, people would spam more just to save their own asses to keep that damn lucifer. I'd say we re-add Luci-charge meter back and enforce the rule more :S (update rules list). That way if players were to spam luci, it'd be harder because theyd have to watch out if they overload charge.

WhiteGunner wrote:

That way if players were to spam luci, it'd be harder because theyd have to watch out if they overload charge.

In other words, spamming would take some tidbit of actual skill.

ps white you know that the default text color is white right? you dont need to do color=white around everything you say.

i kno but orange is my fav colour and i just had to add it :S

You're all gonna flame me for saying this but personally I'm not a fan of re-implementing the luci overload explosion: its hard enough to dodge aliens while slowed down by creep, avoid trappers, not get melted by tubes, aim your shots (which because of the curve aren't fire and forget like the original luci: you have to keep track of them and keep them on course), reset the luci (by this i mean doubletap weapon switch so that it resets the charge meter w/o having to use ammo) and watch your radar at the same time even without the overload. Also my comps next to my sisters bedroom and so i can't always play with sound on to hear the warning beep. Alot of times at night I'm on humans and only one other guy like bassguyty, altair or bait is on who has any initiative to attack the alien base while everyone else turtles so as uncommon as the above scenario sounds for some, for me it happens ALOT. It would really make being an aggressive player on humans a whole lot harder, especially because of how ACRu works, there's alot more solo runs and alot of times its 1v1 human vs rantwhore. Unlike AA where people usually stay in groups if they're any good, on ACRu less experienced players just get eaten and better players have to fight for their lives. They have to worry about plugging they're shots into the rant as fast as they can and under that kind of pressure, having a weapon that potentially could blow you up would be ridiculous, especially due the extremely high damage modifier the aliens (particularly dretch and rant) get. Alot of the recent updates have been very alien oriented as "the world is gonna end" as this sounds, game balance is really starting to get screwed. A single granger can stop a luci now and goons can make your own shots blow up in your face: its like we're trying to destroy the luci's effectiveness. I think all the ideas have merit but at the same time keep this in mind. Besides, its just feels really unnatural to have to be moving your mouse with out the primary or secondary fire pushed down (think trying to get through acid spam on wroom on niveus). As unskillful as this makes me sound I really think it be just too weird.

A final thought on this (ridiculously long post) is that really: when a person is spamming, the most common kind is the guy who sits behind a door waiting for it to open. They aren't exactly under a whole lot of pressure and can easily keep track of the luci meter. A bit melodramatic but: the punishment doesn't fit the crime. People who spam doorways should stop so we will: make it harder for people not spamming the doorway to fight? @.@ The kind of spamming that occurs in aggressive gameplay is the multi luci megaball thing which is easily solvable by making shots explode on contact. Why should aggressive players suffer because their teammates want to spam?

Also !deny lcannon (when its fixed) works wonders. Maybe find a way to incorporate it into something thats votable? ie /callvote deny_lcannon som = called a vote: take lucifer cannon rights away from {ACRit}|Somnus

I do like the rest of the ideas though although 2k for a luci is pretty extreme: keep in mind that beyond the luci and the grenade, the humans really haven't got much going for them when assaulting rooms filled with spam (ie ele and wroom) and with only 2 hits against rantwhores, playing humans might become impossible. Alot of times unless the aliens have alot of suicidal dretches, the luci doesn't end up paying for itself before you die w/o extremely conservative (campy+spammy+runner) gameplay. When the aliens start running alot of s3 aliens, at best my cred level stays stable if not starts to deplete fairly fast. (14k down to 8k in a matter of minutes particularly if theres alot of rantwhores)

Quote :

A final thought on this (ridiculously long post) is that really: when a perso

So ridiculous that i read the first sentence and last sentence of each paragraph.
Yeah i agree.

We don't need the charge meter and we don't need to up the luci price. Its hard enough that Tyrants or goons can kill Helm/Suits in 3-4 shots. What you really need is the !deny weapon command to start working again.