Linkgun Primary

[moonflyer]

my opinion is:
- primary fire is really not attractive and cool, the speed could be 125% faster but ROF could be 25% less, so less spam but more accurate
- make the projectile smaller, then a little splash could be feasible, tho i am not really sure if it will be working
- also the projectile should looks even powerful and sounds like that, the one of 2k4 is too weak

 

[EggBoy]

OK people Ill tell you EXACTLY how the current link pri works:

Projectile actually looks cool like green fires if you have your detail settings up, otherwise it looks kinda weak like plastic bags blowing around. It has an initial velocity of 1000 but will accelerate to a max speed of 4000 within 1 second of flight. That is why it sometimes seems anoyingly slow and easy to dodge at close range, yet surpisingly fast and harder to dodge when you find a cloud of it flying at you from far away! It does 30 damage. The projectile will disapear after 3 seconds of flight. The damage increases by 30 and max speed by 350 for each player linked to you, so it should be even harder to dodge yellow projectiles from long range. (Not exactly sure how damage amp works with this but I think it just doubles the 30 base damage of the firer but a player linking with another has no effect if he has the amp.) Has a firing rate of 5 shots per second and uses 2 ammo per shot.

You might see a lot of people get accurate rocket direct hits yet it is quite difficult to lead a moving target with link and hit them first time in the same way. You either spam or see where you plasma goes and correct it on the fly. So why is it easier to predict your rocket direct hits than link projectile hits? I believe its because rocket travels at constant velocity but link accelerates, and it is very difficult for a human to take the acceleration into account with predictions... especially if they don't know this fact in the first place. Plasma fired from most vehicles also accelerates even more dramatically (as you might have noticed), and has splash damage making it much more effective.

I deduced all of this information from the .uc source code of latest version of UT2004. I personally dont think they should change too much because it might make linking too powerful.

 

[TraCK]

Ever played with the hyperblaster in Quake 4? It can seem a little spammy at times but really it can be a good weapon, not good enough to replace the Rail or Rocket but still a contender in a head-on fight. The link gun just sucks. Try to fight someone with any skill in a head-on fight with the Link and you'll die. It just can't compare to anything besides maybe the biorifle, which I find easier to hit my targets with than the link primary.

 

[Defeat]

>I've seen really good players with the link go against people with flack and 0wn them with secondary. Same with primary, just strafe around the opponent. One of the main things for link usage is you need to have good movment and ba able to track your opponent with the secondary.

 

[gregori]

Link primary needs small radius splash damage when pulses explode on contact,
projectiles should go slighty faster, link is a terrible weapon at medium to long range, practically pointless

 

[SlipStreams_65]

link primary with 2+ people linking onto you takes down a powernode unbelievably quickly. Same goes for secondry, much more effective when linked up, although its hard to maintain a link when dodging around.

Ive been smashed in the face more times than i care to admit by link primary....its surprisingly effective at close range, and the best choice if no flak.

 

[FireCrack]

Personaly, i think theres no problem with the way the actual projectile looks (atleast with world detail at high) but it's pathetic how when it hits the wall it turns into 3 little green sparks with the sound of a pebble falling in water, it shopuld explode and send a few buring green fragments (just athstetic ofcourse) flying everywhere. And there's also the stupid "pow pow" sound when it fires, the UT link gun had a much more powerfull firing sound.

As for the secondary fire, it could do with being more bright and glowy, and with more "tendrils". Right now it looks like some kind of stick sticking out the end of the gun that's a bit wavy, it should look like a buring hot 2900000 degree plazma beam of doom! And what happened to the end of it? in ut it terminated in this dispersing lowing spider thing, and then when it hit somthing it had this nice buring plasma ball of DOOM! In 2k3/4 it just ends, no effect whatsoever.

 

[->Sachiel<-]

Of course the link is good when well-used, but it just seems like so much effort when you can just pull out a flak and rape all within close range. Although it's good sometimes, perhaps it should gain properties that help it in mid-range because there are much better choices than it in close range, it's the whole intel idea, if you're not a specialist you better be a generalist because otherwise you won't find a niche. The link gun is a good close-range weapon but all other close-range weapons are better so it needs to be more versatile (sorry for seeming a little repetitive here).

 

[Kharnellius]

Projectiles are waaay too big and fly way too slow. I have modded the link gun a bit with TweakTool when I play botmatch. It flies faster does slightly less dmg (from 30 down to 28) same ROF bit more ammo (240 max instead of 220 max).

Primary is excellent against vehicles and nodes. (It has the highest dmg/sec of all the weapons not including superweapons.)

 

[Kharnellius]

The damage increases by 30 and max speed by 350 for each player linked to you, so it should be even harder to dodge yellow projectiles from long range.

Damage increases by 60 per player linked up to you. (One link equals 3x dmg or 90 total, 2 linked = 5x dmg or 150 total)

Personaly, i think theres no problem with the way the actual projectile looks (atleast with world detail at high) but it's pathetic how when it hits the wall it turns into 3 little green sparks with the sound of a pebble falling in water, it shopuld explode and send a few buring green fragments (just athstetic ofcourse) flying everywhere. And there's also the stupid "pow pow" sound when it fires, the UT link gun had a much more powerfull firing sound.

As for the secondary fire, it could do with being more bright and glowy, and with more "tendrils". Right now it looks like some kind of stick sticking out the end of the gun that's a bit wavy, it should look like a buring hot 2900000 degree plazma beam of doom! And what happened to the end of it? in ut it terminated in this dispersing lowing spider thing, and then when it hit somthing it had this nice buring plasma ball of DOOM! In 2k3/4 it just ends, no effect whatsoever.

Yeah I agree that the effects on it aren't nearly as good as they were in UT. I was expecting to at least leave a green glow wherever it hit. What gives?

 

[FoxDF]

In UT1 the ASMD and the Pulserifle were my favorite weapons, but the Linkgun is just crap, healing an linking is cool, but i want the old thing back...

Gimme back my damn plasma pulse/beam rifle thing with rotating barrels!

 

[-AEnubis-]

Since when don't rockets accelerate?

...also, it's 30 damage per linker.

 

[EggBoy]

Damage increases by 60 per player linked up to you. (One link equals 3x dmg or 90 total, 2 linked = 5x dmg or 150 total)

I'm pretty sure its +30 damage per link (I think it used to be +45 damage in original version of UT2k4?) the equation used in LinkProjectile.uc is "Damage * (1.0 + Links)".

Since when don't rockets accelerate?

Default properties from RocketProj.uc:

speed=1350.0
MaxSpeed=1350.0

rocket doesnt change speed once in flight

Primary is excellent against vehicles and nodes. (It has the highest dmg/sec of all the weapons not including superweapons.)

It does have the highest dmg/sec of hand held weapons, BUT it is NOT excellent against nodes and vehicles because if you peek into DamTypeLinkPlasma.uc you will find that it has the property: "VehicleDamageScaling=0.67" which means it only does 67% damage to vehicles and structures, so it is not the highest dmg/sec against these types of target. I think flak, spiders, grenades and bio rifle are higher against non-infantry.

 

[Kharnellius]

Ok so perhaps you are misunderstanding me or I am gravely mistaken. Are you telling me that if I have buddy A linked to me...and one buddy B linked to my buddy A, we are only do a combined damage of 90 (primary)? What's the point of even linking then? Why not just each fire our own link gun seperately and still do 30+30+30 = 90 pts of dmg/sec while laying down an impenetrable wall of green death?

I have played ONS enough to know that I can take nodes and tanks much faster when we are linked than when we are seperate. Bots rarely link when building nodes and if there is one other bot besides myself we will build the node pretty fast...if I link to him though we DEFINITELY build it faster than if we both just poured in our own unlinked streams.

Notice my comments in parantheses...

(One link equals 3x dmg or 90 total, 2 linked = 5x dmg or 150 total)

If what you say is true...this means there really is no advantage to linking (other than perhaps having better accuracy if the guy at the end of the chain is a crack shot) which I will bet money is NOT the case.

(Btw, I'm running 3369)

Thanks,
Kharn

 

[Fuzzle]

There is a better payoff for using secondary when linked.

 

[Kharnellius]

There is a better payoff for using secondary when linked.

None for primary? Seems kind of useless...

 

[nuttella]

None for primary? Seems kind of useless...

It helps primary too, but there's still the matter of the projectiles being easily avoidable. It is very useful in assault, though.

 

[Kharnellius]

Ok so now we are back to what I said originally.....so which is it folks? Can we make up our minds or not?

 

[J_L]

I’m not a huge fan of the Link Gun but it has its moments, I only ever use it as a defensive weapon while I collect a finer weapon because for close range I don’t trust it to kill quick enough and at mid range the primary fire can be dodged too much because of the slow projectiles, maybe if the primary fire projectiles where that little bit faster it would make the path of fire more unpredictable and the weapon a whole lot more ferocious. Maybe they could make the gun have bursts of real fast projectiles and the gun has to shut and cool down (bit like the plasma guns in Halo) just to give it a fault.

The secondary fire is a more unpredictable for the opponents, They could always have the secondary fire, fire like a BFG from Quake3 or sumin but I cant fault the plasma stream, well maybe it could deal more damage, then when you link up with only one team member you can almost instant kill, as instant as the BFG from Quake2 the streams from the old blob…also I think the gameplay will benefit from it, as people might use the linking idea more often.

The projectiles themselves look good to me as they fit the guns design, plus the gun firing modes fill the space for a rapid fire plasma gun and stream projectile (bit like Quake3 electric gun) weapon that needs to be in the game to give the game a diverse armory, that creates great gameplay.

 

[EggBoy]

Ok so now we are back to what I said originally.....so which is it folks? Can we make up our minds or not?

From what I can tell the primary increases by +100% base damage per link (i.e extra 30 damage per link) and max speed projectile speed increases by 350. The secondary increases by +150% base damage per link plus its range increases by 250 units per link from a base of 1100. So the benefits of linking secondary are much greater than firing seperately (including when building or repairing). Though it does about half as much damage per second as primary with no links (and also it does full damage to vehicles/structures while primary only does 67%).