Ideas a-la Francis Frost.

[Lord Rahl]

Heya Guys! I haven't played postnuke in waaaaaaaaaaay too long, but im back and with a head full of fresh yet probabaly redundant ideas. So I'll post em here and we'll see what y'all think.

1)My first Idea isn't so much as an idea, as it is just a statement:
The Classes need better balanicng. I mentioned this in a different topic, about how Wastelanders have greater health and an endurance bonus:
I think EVERY class needs some form of bonus like this. Scavenger and Wastelanders have something already, but the rest need something more.

2)This may anger some players, but seriously the miners are turning into game breakers FAST. People are using miners as classes other then Scavenger, and I think this is a very unbalancing aspect. I believe the players do this by unowning, having a scavenger turn it on, and then reowning. (this may have been fixed but i havnt been able to tell)
-Also, some players/groups of players have waaaaaaay too many miners out at once.
IMO its too much: a post apocalyptic wasteland wouldnt have a spots with a thousand miners moving like an organized manufactory. It seems theme-breaking to me.

3) I think that the scientist's grubs, and scavenger's miners should need to be taken care of more carefully, and be more time consuming. Or at least make it so they must be checked on a regular basis.

4) I read somewhere that you planned on adding more to the wastelander class: I have suggestions!
-Something with guns or killing. maybe more experience gained per kill?
-Add-ons to the wastelander radar:
a) Something that will create a legitamate map when you walk up to and use the tool itself,
By this i mean that something (non portable/movable) that will display a radar view of the entire map at once. This would show more/less depending on use of other add-ons.
b) A way to detect other players' tools, cars, or etc. using the radar.
-A way to hide any guns dropped on death. Like a cloaking device. maybe make them semi-transparent to anybody other then wastelanders?

5) The Cultivator, despite being an important class, seems under used: Maybe im wrong but I think is there a similar problem with Cultivator plants as there is with Scavengers' miners.
-A way to increase cultivator use could be to change the amount of food a can o' beans can restore: OR making certain food items go rotten, so people cant just stock up on food and never need a cultivator again.

6) Some people say scientists are overused, and over privledged, i think that the scientist doesnt get enough business on the server. I have tried setting up shops that sell health kits and suit power and explosives and worms and etc. I sell all the sci. items in my shops but nobody seems to ever want/need them. Idk why this is.
-Perhaps add a greater death penalty so that people will want to heal more often?

7) What if you add a class limit based on number of players? This way you literally can't have a server with 9 scavengers and 1 scientist, or vice versa. These situations are frequent and also annoying as hell.
-Increasing the penalty for class changes might also help. Although I can also see ways in which it will do the opposite.

8) Custom player models has been suggested often. I love the idea of a greater selection of player models. I see the reluctancy to make large downloads, but maybe have it as an optional download from the website?

I will add more whenever I get ideas or whenever I'm in the mood to start brainstorming, so check every now and then.
By the way: I value all criticism and compliments from players and admins alike. Tell me what you think!

[[TBU] CrazyKid]

Thought I'd put some of my thoughts out there.

1. I do not agree with the miners being game-breakers. People did do what you mentioned with disowning their miner and letting a scavenger own it to activate it then give ownership back. Even I do that, it's harmless. Some people may over-use their miners a bit but that in my opinion is not a game-breaking issue. It does not happen as frequently as you'd think.

2. I agree with the grubs needing more care. They could require food, and not be free to maintain.

3. Like the map idea

4. Agreed with the cultivator able to make better beans that give more hunger points. The cultivator is not as used as much as it could be but consider this about the orange plants: I spend 480 small parts and 60 chems every 10 minutes on 15 orange plants to make the 100's of oranges that I have now. That's fair for the plants to produce.

5. I do not agree with raising the death loss penalty in the game, it would not help in my opinion. It would only make the game harder. Scientists survive better than others because of their worms, which do need to be toned down a bit. Or require more attention as said above.

6. Not liking the class limit idea... put yourself in my shoes if I wanted to be a scavenger or scientist and there were no open slots.

That's about it.

[eldarstorm]

The miner issue will be taken care of in a since, we may have them require a power source that will need to be fuled. This will make it so they are not a unlimited resource that you never have to touch.

We will also be looking at balancing the grubs as well.

The death loss thing, this can acually be changed in the admin menu, the % a person looses on death is not acually hard coded. It can be adjusted, it can even be toggled in the Admin menu. We did this for when we release the gamemode people will be able to customize the server without having to change any code.

Not really big on the class limit thing myself, but this should become less of a problem once we manage to balance out the classes.

[Lord Rahl]

I noticed the the cultivator is the only class that needs tools in order to create its class products (foods) Maybe balance the system like this:
1) In order to make guns, Engineers must own a furnace, maybe tools as well: I've seen a wrench prop or two in the prop list.
2) In order to create medical supplies & Armor batteries, The Scientist needs a chemistry station of some sort, there are several props that can work for this.
3) For Scavengers' miners, and Wastelanders' radars, you need a tool in your inventory order to repair them when they are broken.

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On the idea of repairing things, maybe this can be added to veichle use, and that after your car gets knocked around by too many Antlion guards, or gets into a few too many crashes, it will break down and an engineer will need to repair it?

Or perhaps make it so the engineer has to repair miners and radars? Just more ideas on class balancing.

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I think every class should have their own basic weapon, I will expand on this idea in later posts.

[eldarstorm]

Will probably add gas to vehicles as well too.

[Remnant John]

I noticed the the cultivator is the only class that needs tools in order to create its class products (foods) Maybe balance the system like this:
1) In order to make guns, Engineers must own a furnace, maybe tools as well: I've seen a wrench prop or two in the prop list.

i'm pretty sure the wrench props are from portal, i have never seen a wrench in HL2 or any of the episodes

[CmdZoidberg]

Most of these suggestions are echo's of ones that have already been said. >.>
Tools for weapons/medical manufacturing, power sources for tools such as Miners (though feeding Wasteland Worms is new and I wholesomely support this as right now, the return Scientists can get from farming those little shits -is- game breaking).

Now onto the addressed points:

1: There's no doubt all the classes need balancing. Its a constant process that the devs are likely working on as we speak. Just 'cus we don't get weekly updates doesn't mean this isn't being looked into.

2: My opinion pretty much mirrors Crazy's. When I've been on there haven't been many people shelling out 20 or so miners in their bases. A regular miner owned and in use by someone who isn't a Scavenger will output 1 scrap/small part every 60 seconds. So someone with 5 miners out is only getting 5 scrap/small parts a minute. Not a lot in my opinion. On the other end of the spectrum, people who stay as Scavengers who've invested heavily in the Mining skill (like me! ) will shave off 4 seconds for each level they have in Mining. Considering how costly it is to get to the higher levels in this skill, I don't think the Miners need to be altered at all.

3: This one I agree with like stated above. The return that Scientists can get from salvaging their grubs is just ridiculous. Owning a grub farm is essentially the money printers of our server. It needs toning down -a lot-. Personally I'd rather see it that grubs become un-salvageable. If not a sever limitation should be put in place to stop them breeding over a certain number.

4: Too add to your suggestions I'd say this -

Wastelander receives double XP per kill.
A visual map addon can be added to the Radar to offer a benefit to the Wastelanders friends.

Don't go giving them the ability to spot player tools and cars... It'll only encourage the griefers to hunt down any hidden tools and try to destroy or steal them. You need to bare in mind the Wastelander is the starting class for most players. Giving them a tool like that? I don't think so.

5: Cultivators are underused simply because you rarely need more than one on at a time. One Cultivator watching over 4 or 5 orange plants can practically feed the server on a busy day. On top of that, most of the players we have at the moment are quite wealthy and don't even need to bother with getting help from a Cultivator. They can survive on large quantities of Cans 'O Beans because they can afford to. Altering the effectiveness of the Cans 'O Beans will only harm the newer players who struggle to gain supplies. When the server starts to develop some actual Role Playing then I can see the Cultivator making an important come back but I doubt it will ever be a staple class among the server.

6: Again. Scientists are over used because they're too independent at the moment, being able to survive on their worms alone. And I personally have done quite a bit of business with Scientists in the past. I just don't do it often, because I buy in large bulk quantities.

7: No, no and no. No class limitations. If anything I'd like to see the cost for changing classes being removed as its an annoyance more than anything. Or at least make it a fixed figure instead of a percentage of your resources.

8: This one I'd like to see too. Preferably more rugged character models rather than futuristic ones. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. character models would fit perfectly in our setting.


Thats about it I think. Any other comments I have about the other little things that have been said can be found in other topics that have already covered them.

[eldarstorm]

Well, the miner thing we had tossed around before was that you had to link it to a power source. So you would have multiple miners linked to one power source and that source would require gas or something. Basically introducing power generators.

Another thought and a previous idea mentiond. We have talked about vending machines, might restrict it so you can only place stuff in it related to your class. This way you could not bulk create stuff as a cultivator and then swap over to another class and still sell the stuff in the machine.

[[TBU] CrazyKid]

I am replying to Zoid's post about worms...

In my opinion, we absolutely do not need a breeding limiter for our worms. Also, un-salvageable worms? Don't you think that's a tad extreme? Honestly...

What really is needed is for the breeding rates and chemical production rates to be decreased. Once they breed a lot slower, and make chemicals a LOT slower, it'll be more balanced as far as it goes with scientist. What is also needed is for worms to require food, so that you put money into them before getting the return that you get when salvaging them.

The amount of materials you get from worms when salvaging does not need to change! Every class has a right to make money off of that specific class skill.

[eldarstorm]

I think the current % chance of a worm beeing breed is 20%. I will have to check the code to be exact. That is rather high. The other problem is the way we have it check currently. Right now, if you have two worms, when it runs the check both worms at that time have the 20% chance.

What we probably will do, lower the base rate to around the range of 5% or so, and have it so every two worms can only spawn 1 worm. Not every two worms has the chance to spawn 2 worms . The base 5% will be modified by the Scince skill, probably +1% per level. So even at max level you would no longer be at the original 20%.

You should have seen the first time we tested this, we had it set to 100% jsut to make sure it worked. Within a minute we crashed the Dev server and filled the spawn room with wroms. Could not kill them fast enough.

I may also look at making the batteries useable for more things as well. We will see.