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[Mod] Survivor Beta - Both game modes, 17 New Perks, 8 New Zeds, New Voicepack, More!

I notice the perk levels are not according to the ini file.

MinPerksLevel=6
MaxPerksLevel=12

With those settings, your level 12 to start and not level 6

You start at Level 0, and there are no levels to speak of. Basically, Surly removed the time-sink aspect of perks in KF and made it more about building to the strengths of your team, which I like.
 
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I notice the perk levels are not according to the ini file.

MinPerksLevel=6
MaxPerksLevel=12

With those settings, your level 12 to start and not level 6
This occurs because you are automatically leveled to whatever the maximum level is, due to the fact that I've taken out leveling entirely. I left everyone at level 0, and will likely go into the hud and strip out that level display entirely, eventually.

But being level 200 or whatever doesn't matter, none of the perks gain abilities from leveling.

Do you really want to have to level up 17 different perks?
 
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Just tried the game mode out with a bunch of people and it turned out pretty much as I thought it would - spam to win. It's cool to remove the vanilla meta but to leave it with just... nothing will just make it mindless gunning. I know you've limited ammo on all weapons and I'm not saying that restricting it more so will fix anything. It became pretty obvious to me at the beginning that submachine guns are op in comparison to all other weapons - their damage v ammo capacity is much higher than the other weapons. This only feeds further into the spam to win mentality.

It's not like you're the only one to have this happen to it - WPC's mods degenerated into the same thing. I think that maybe making a table of sorts for each class and weapon so that people can put in their 2 cents over what could be improved/changed to become a valid meta.Dominant Strategy is a important thing to consider. If you give someone a stratagem that outclasses all others (in this case spam to win) they'll end up only using that one.

I have some ideas that could kind of help (maybe).

Medic - for each medic gun held, increase medic dart capacity. This will make a medic hold more medic guns instead of taking a medic gun and then some more powerful weapon for the rest of the slots.

Prepper - This class. ****ing awesome idea man. Not even joking. But I think an increased grenade capacity would encourage the player to give ammo to others. Maybe even give him a better ammo capacity? This could encourage the player to give it to others and not be greedy.

Jewish Bankster - If you pickup someone else's weapons by mistake, you can't give them back. This can cause a lot of problems... :p

Heavy Weapons Expert - This class is the big culprit in the "spam to win" problem. He can kill anything. Maybe you could have him take down ghosts that aren't in mid jump? That would give him a key feature and could justify nerfing him to be more of a trash killer.

Exterminator - This class actually could have the ghost killer. That would give it some usefulness :p

Handyman - I was mislead by the name when I chose this class. Maybe a turret or something would suit him? Melee weapons don't fit a "software designer". :p

Highlander - Why are there two melee guys? o.o Highlander seems to be the proper berserker class. But some parts of the description are odd/hard to understand. "Cannot be healed by normal means"?.


That's really all I was able to see in-game. I haven't tried the other classes so I can't say much about them.

As I thought, Scrakes being flinch locked by the assault rifles makes the M14 look like a joke and gives the M14 no reason to exist (refer to dominant strategy).

Any attempts to change perks doesn't work - even though it says you will swap on death.

The weapon lists in the trader are awkward at best... Maybe have them a little bit more listed per-class?

That's it for now. All in all my reaction to this mod is somewhat positive, despite all my criticism >.>
 
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It became pretty obvious to me at the beginning that submachine guns are op in comparison to all other weapons - their damage v ammo capacity is much higher than the other weapons
Here's an excel spreadsheet with all the damage numbers:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/175212805/wpmod.xlsx

I think you may find that if you multiply the average damage by the total number of rounds held for guns, and don't even consider penetration, the SMGs aren't really all that grand. The SMGs with the highest damage are the .45 caliber Thompson and Kriss, which do not penetrate. Assault Rifles, by comparison, all penetrate relatively well and all do at least 50% more damage than even a .45 SMG. Rifles do at least twice the damage of an SMG per shot, and tend to have excellent penetration. All in all, total possible damage output from an AK47 (90 total rounds), including penetration, is at least four times that of a Kriss Vector (120 total rounds) in non-ideal circumstances, and boasts a much, much higher DPS which makes it capable of handling more situations than an SMG can. In ideal circumstances, it can reach up to 8 times the damage output.

You may want to try experimenting more with assault rifles! They're really strong!

I tend to find myself erring towards having an SMG, Pistol, and a "Primary" weapon like a Shotgun, Rifle, or Assault Rifle when playing most perks... and the SMG is mostly a strong backup. I'd carry two assault rifles, but practically no one has that kind of weight capacity besides the beefcake who sucks so bad at reloading and moves so slowly that I generally just give him an MG or the M99.

I've found that SMG-reliant perks, such as the Gangster and Exterminator (who both get EVEN MORE ammo for SMGs), really hurt for firepower in later waves. Others, like the Conventional Soldier or Storm Trooper, can handle more, bigger enemies much better.

Jewish Bankster - If you pickup someone else's weapons by mistake, you can't give them back. This can cause a lot of problems... :p
He also sucks up loose dosh on the ground. Yeah, he's supposed to be the "burnout" class for selfish people, so I think his "not being able to drop anything" helps a bit with that. The Bankster is kind of special in his role as far as balance goes. He doesn't get any bonuses, he's just there as a fallback if you keep dying and/or suck... or just want to be really selfish. He's supposed to be an asshole though, so I'd have to say the problems caused by him grabbing other people's guns is intentional.

Whenever I play it with friends and some one goes bankster, everyone just moans and tries to avoid him, and yells at him if he gets near any guns they dropped. Heh, I like it. Though I can understand the frustration. I may fiddle with him some to make him less of a prick, like removing his ability to pickup dropped weapons.

Heavy Weapons Expert - This class is the big culprit in the "spam to win" problem. He can kill anything. Maybe you could have him take down ghosts that aren't in mid jump? That would give him a key feature and could justify nerfing him to be more of a trash killer.
This perk is definitely the one I've got my eye on for changing, removing, or replacing. I'd love to hear any further suggestions you could offer with it. I keep telling people when I play "Heavy Weapons is probably OP and makes the game boring, play it and tell me what you think". Most people keep concluding that he's super powerful while his ammo holds out, but with such limited ammo he just can't sustain himself through a full wave... so they prefer to reserve judgment. Plus, I've yet to see a Heavy Weapons guy carry a team to victory by himself, or really contribute much more than anyone else.

Nonetheless, I have to say I'm not happy with this perk. Killing ghosts when they're invisible is a good idea to help him in the trash-killer department, but I don't think it's enough, alone, to change the perk significantly enough to make that his primary role.

I'll really have to consider what to do with him. Right now, he's an "everything killer" with limited ammo, and I'm not certain it's the best route.

Exterminator - This class actually could have the ghost killer. That would give it some usefulness :p
Perhaps. Have you tried his poison grenades? They're incredibly strong, and this perk kind of centers around them. They don't do all that much damage, but it buys a lot of time to regroup and coordinate when you drop one. I'm scared to really give him any more strong bonuses on top of this one, which is why he's a specialist with poison and crawler-killing (which also works on Big Green, and Arachnas) since he can kill them all in a single dart from his XMk5, or just let them attack him.

Handyman - I was mislead by the name when I chose this class. Maybe a turret or something would suit him? Melee weapons don't fit a "software designer". :p
Software designer? Huh? He's a handyman. Works with tools, chainsaws and stuff. I MAY do some turret perk in the future, it's definitely on a short list of ideas for more perks... but I honestly thought the handyman was pretty unique! Especially with all the nailbombs and stuff. He's one of those perks that's supposed to excel in specific situations rather than against specific specimens. Of other tester feedback I've gotten so far, this perk is by far the fan favorite.

Highlander - Why are there two melee guys? o.o Highlander seems to be the proper berserker class. But some parts of the description are odd/hard to understand. "Cannot be healed by normal means"?.
I can clarify the description a bit more. He's kind of weird and complicated. Basically, he can ONLY be healed by lopping off heads of enemies. Healing darts/syringes do nothing to him. The Highlander is definitely more of an analogue to the Berserker than the Beefcake ever could be, but he's also a bit more reliant on finesse than Berserkers since he can jump high enough to avoid Fleshpound attacks if he's powered up enough. That's kind of his main strength, jump-dodging attacks and healing from kills. He's gone through about 6 different balancing iterations so far, but I wouldn't mind considering more. From other playtesters, I've frequently heard that he provides a great deal of diversity for melee classes since his playstyle is so wildly different... but most of the time they complain he's too weak in early waves, and it is thus too difficult to get him powered up. For those who get him into the 400-range for soul strength, they say he's a ton of fun.


That's really all I was able to see in-game. I haven't tried the other classes so I can't say much about them.

As I thought, Scrakes being flinch locked by the assault rifles makes the M14 look like a joke and gives the M14 no reason to exist (refer to dominant strategy).
That kind of makes me feel sad, since I use the M14 a lot (it's my favorite weapon on the conventional soldier). I must be missing out on this dominant strategy. I should confess, though, that I've really considered turning the M14 into a full-auto weapon, since its real life counterpart is just an M14 in an EBR chassis. Having a laser dot on a full-auto weapon might be fun, too. I may actually do this... the more I think about it, the more I like it.

Your dissection of this Spam To Win dominant strategy theory is the first such critique I've received in this department, so I'm very interested in it. You make a good point and, provided this truly is my mod's dominant strategy, I will be focusing a great deal of effort on addressing it. So more discussion and analysis would be very much appreciated, and I'll be considering it greatly with further balance changes and perk changes/additions.

Any attempts to change perks doesn't work - even though it says you will swap on death.
Mmm, I'll look into this. I recently added this functionality and it hasn't been tested much. I've seen people switch perks when they're dead, but they probably do so while already dead. I'll look into making that work correctly, probably just some silly error I made.

The weapon lists in the trader are awkward at best... Maybe have them a little bit more listed per-class?
I could do this, I suppose, but one of the primary goals of this mod is to remove class-specific weapons for the most part. So I intentionally categorized them by weapon type, rather than perk, to break the notion of a "weapon for my perk" when looking at the trader. I'd be willing to hear ideas, though.

That's it for now. All in all my reaction to this mod is somewhat positive, despite all my criticism >.>
I greatly appreciate the feedback, it's very, very helpful. When you have anything further to add, I'm eager to hear it! Thank you so much for taking the time to discuss this. I love talking balance. As I said, beta is all about balance (and bug fixing), so having your commentary is just about the best thing I could hope for. Thanks again!

Is the Uploaded source the latest version?
Yes.
 
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THIS MOD IS AMAZING SURLY YOU'RE THE BESTEST. I love the realistically low amount of ammo and how the powerful weapons are truly powerful but lack ammo and weigh a lot (love the machine guns). I also enjoy the way highlander works, and how just about every gun is effective with just about any perk.
A few things I noticed though:
The bigger specimens seem to die a lot easier than expected
Nailgun is a beast
Sniper is not a burden at all contrary to what it was described as
Smokescreens cause lag, more so if close (for me at least)
Why is flamethrower and the husk gun perked to sharpshooter?
and I had a suggestion, what would you think of stronger specimens giving more soul power to highlander than the weaker ones?
 
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I think you may find that if you multiply the average damage by the total number of rounds held for guns, and don't even consider penetration, the SMGs aren't really all that grand. The SMGs with the highest damage are the .45 caliber Thompson and Kriss, which do not penetrate. Assault Rifles, by comparison, all penetrate relatively well and all do at least 50% more damage than even a .45 SMG. Rifles do at least twice the damage of an SMG per shot, and tend to have excellent penetration. All in all, total possible damage output from an AK47 (90 total rounds), including penetration, is at least four times that of a Kriss Vector (120 total rounds) in non-ideal circumstances, and boasts a much, much higher DPS which makes it capable of handling more situations than an SMG can. In ideal circumstances, it can reach up to 8 times the damage output.

I have to admit I was playing on Normal - that was the difficulty people were playing on. (Leaena's server, in fact :p) - so that could explain why it didn't seem to matter as far as damage and DPS went.

I'll really have to consider what to do with him. Right now, he's an "everything killer" with limited ammo, and I'm not certain it's the best route.

There's no way that's the best route. Maybe add the basic abilities of commando to him? Seeing health bars and being able to see the ghosts would help in this current state of the AI where Zeds will just go attack a random person and not the closest. You could increase the big zed's resistance to his weapons as a means of pushing the player away from using their weapons on the them.

Plus, I've yet to see a Heavy Weapons guy carry a team to victory by himself, or really contribute much more than anyone else.

I have to say that the Heavy Gunners I played with for the 5 rounds we did were always at the top of the scoreboard and, with a good Prepper, never ran out of ammo.

Software designer? Huh? He's a handyman. Works with tools, chainsaws and stuff.

Description says otherwise. :p

That kind of makes me feel sad, since I use the M14 a lot (it's my favorite weapon on the conventional soldier). I must be missing out on this dominant strategy.

You might be misunderstanding. The M14 wasn't a dominant strategy since there were other, similarly effective means of running Sharpshooter(or Support Specialist, but I won't get off-perk loadout meta) in vanilla KF. The point is that sometimes I run M14/LAR, others M14/Pistols, SP Musket/Pistols and (usually) Crossbow/Pistols. There's no #1, most powerful, 100% effective way to do it (therefore no dominant strategy). All that matters is personal skill and preference on choosing between loadouts.

I should confess, though, that I've really considered turning the M14 into a full-auto weapon, since its real life counterpart is just an M14 in an EBR chassis. Having a laser dot on a full-auto weapon might be fun, too. I may actually do this... the more I think about it, the more I like it.

Please don't do that. You're giving into the spam to win! Don't buff everything that's underpowered - try to balance everything to work together. D:

Mmm, I'll look into this. I recently added this functionality and it hasn't been tested much. I've seen people switch perks when they're dead, but they probably do so while already dead. I'll look into making that work correctly, probably just some silly error I made.

2 other people were trying with me and it was reproducible every wave. xD

I could do this, I suppose, but one of the primary goals of this mod is to remove class-specific weapons for the most part. So I intentionally categorized them by weapon type, rather than perk, to break the notion of a "weapon for my perk" when looking at the trader. I'd be willing to hear ideas, though.

This... doesn't make much sense... You have perks that offer specific bonuses to specific items and then expect people to use off-perk weapons. That would be (practically) inefficient.

Two concluding points:
-To display how vanilla KF is not spam to win

Medic's guns aren't really be spam to win since they don't do that much damage.

Support Specialist's spammability is something that can be done to a point. Ammo pools restrict it but this perk's unique skill of penetration encourages you to pick out your shots.

Sharpshooter gives large boosts for taking aiming and shooting for the head and using the M14/Crossbow taking the bigger guys (refer to resistances). Spamming is harder and inefficient using most of these guns because of reload times and low body damage.

Commando is balanced because stronger enemies have damage reduction, despite spammability. The zed time extender also encourages the player to choose the trash over the big stuff.

Demolitions' smoke, limited ammo, Scrake's vast health and Fleshpound's weakness pushes this class to know what it shoot at and what not to.

Firebug. Uh... Oh- uh... Well, I've got nothing. Oh, it's incredibly weak against anything with a decent amount of health/resistance to it.

Berserker. This class is over powered. Kiting is a dominant strategy - if you like wasting hours and don't have any skill at playing a fps. But you can't spam to win since it doesn't have anything to spam, in a sense.

-Spam 2 Win

I find it odd that no one has brought up the spam to win stuff... Although I have to admit there is a certain appeal to mindlessly blowing enemies away there's always something more satisfying about using your skill and ability to take make it through a tough obstacle.

I'd like to us Arin Hanson's analogy of snack food to high-class dessert because I think it fits nicely in this scenario of skill v spam.
Code:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aip2aIt0ROM&t=14m20s
Put in code because you can't refer to specific times in the embedded YouTube video player.
(Note: Coarse language at the last couple of seconds of the clip)

There, have all of my cents for the time being :p

EDIT: Oh, and I'll be taking a look at the damage chart tomorrow :p
 
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THIS MOD IS AMAZING SURLY YOU'RE THE BESTEST. I love the realistically low amount of ammo and how the powerful weapons are truly powerful but lack ammo and weigh a lot (love the machine guns). I also enjoy the way highlander works, and how just about every gun is effective with just about any perk.
A few things I noticed though:
The bigger specimens seem to die a lot easier than expected
Nailgun is a beast
Sniper is not a burden at all contrary to what it was described as
Smokescreens cause lag, more so if close (for me at least)
Why is flamethrower and the husk gun perked to sharpshooter?
and I had a suggestion, what would you think of stronger specimens giving more soul power to highlander than the weaker ones?
Thanks, glad you like it! Yeah, I'm still tweaking hitpoints and such. I actually want to do some more interesting things with Scrakes and Fleshpounds, and overhaul their AIs a bit. In vanilla, they're massive threats due to their possible damage output and large health pools. In this mod, that's not quite as much of an issue since you CAN obliterate them with the right weapons, no sweat. I want to restore their "threat" in a way that fits with the mod, which means altering behavior (or just giving them a ton of HPs, which I don't like). I'll probably up their base health somewhat, and give them some more tricks to liven them up more.

Smokescreens causing lag is generally a hardware issue, but I can certainly look into lowering the impact they have by changing the textures and particle emitter. Let me know what causes the worst lag... is it the Smoke Screen out of the smoking sirens, the poison cloud, or just any smoke at all (vis a vis the rocket husk, for instance)?

The nailgun has been changed back and forth a lot. It seems to either be too weak or too strong. Finding the right place for its damage is pretty tough. Given its large ammo pool, I think it may be doing 15% too much damage at the moment. Expect a nerf in the next version, but not a hefty one.

Everything in the "Misc" category is in ****ty shape for the mod since I haven't entirely overhauled the logic running those weapons. The husk gun and flamethrower are actually just the real vanilla Husk Gun and Flamethrower, which have a perk index that matches the new Sniper. Just chalk that up to "Unfinished". I'll be doing more with those weapons in the future.

This mod scares and confuses me.
Yeah, I understand. It's very... different.

I have to admit I was playing on Normal - that was the difficulty people were playing on. (Leaena's server, in fact :p) - so that could explain why it didn't seem to matter as far as damage and DPS went.



There's no way that's the best route. Maybe add the basic abilities of commando to him? Seeing health bars and being able to see the ghosts would help in this current state of the AI where Zeds will just go attack a random person and not the closest. You could increase the big zed's resistance to his weapons as a means of pushing the player away from using their weapons on the them.
Yeah, I could. It's pretty cheesy to do that though. I'll definitely give this a lot of thought.

As for the ghost killing thing, though... have you played Secret Man? He can see Ghosts from 32m, and can kill them while they're invisible. So he kind of fills that niche already.


I have to say that the Heavy Gunners I played with for the 5 rounds we did were always at the top of the scoreboard and, with a good Prepper, never ran out of ammo.
This is good feedback, and just enforces my opinion of them. They'll definitely be nerfed, or completely changed, in the next version.

Description says otherwise. :p
Maybe we're seeing different descriptions? "Once a hard working hardware store clerk, the Handyman has reinvented himself for the apocalypse. Now he deals in pain, and by the gallon. With an extensive knowledge of home repair appliances and a can-do attitude the Handyman dispenses deconstruction advice at the end of a chainsaw. Free of charge."

Oh, you're associating "Hardware" with "PC Hardware"? Hardware Store is like... a place you buy power tools, paint, and home improvement items. Yeah, I guess I can make that more blatantly "tool man" oriented. Will do.

You might be misunderstanding. The M14 wasn't a dominant strategy since there were other, similarly effective means of running Sharpshooter(or Support Specialist, but I won't get off-perk loadout meta) in vanilla KF. The point is that sometimes I run M14/LAR, others M14/Pistols, SP Musket/Pistols and (usually) Crossbow/Pistols. There's no #1, most powerful, 100% effective way to do it (therefore no dominant strategy). All that matters is personal skill and preference on choosing between loadouts.
Oh, I understand. I was just talking about the M14's real world counterpart as an aside. I know what you mean, I need to make sure that weapons are balanced and provide different mechanics so that a slow firing rifle is still viable when equally powerful alternatives are around. If I changed the M14 into a full auto gun, for instance, it'd just be another FAL clone. And what good is buffing underpowered weapons if they all just wind up working the same? It's lame, and makes loadout options limited and stale.

My only motivation for turning the M14 into a full auto gun is to introduce a 7.62 NATO gun without a scope (I wish I could still find the original IJC no-scope FAL model/animations somewhere, honestly).

But otherwise, yeah, I need to do something different with the M14 that makes it a viable choice for players given the fact that FALs and SCARs do similar damage, have the same ammo pools, and fire in full auto. The M14 is lighter and cheaper, but I think for it to really be seen as viable at the moment it'd need more ammo or something to go with that.

Please don't do that. You're giving into the spam to win! Don't buff everything that's underpowered - try to balance everything to work together. D:
Don't worry, I won't. Just because I "like" an idea doesn't mean I'll do it. My primary concern is definitely on the side of balance, not personal preferences.


2 other people were trying with me and it was reproducible every wave. xD
Yeah, I just tested it as well. It's certainly ****ed. I looked at the code, and I did something really retarded when saving the selected perk. It's fixed now, will be reflected in the next version.

This... doesn't make much sense... You have perks that offer specific bonuses to specific items and then expect people to use off-perk weapons. That would be (practically) inefficient.
Well, that's certainly good feedback if I've ever heard it. I originally disagreed with what you were saying, but I can't possibly argue with an honest impression. What I've done here is clearly confusing to players, and needs to be addressed.

I'll have to give some consideration to addressing this in a proper way, but because the majority of perks don't have perk-specific weapons it's going to be tough.

My intention is certainly to get rid of the idea of "perk-specific" weapons for the most part, so if I've failed in doing this it's going to take either reconsidering that goal, or reconsidering the perks which have perk-specific weapons.

Oh, conundrums.

Two concluding points:
-To display how vanilla KF is not spam to win

Medic's guns aren't really be spam to win since they don't do that much damage.

Support Specialist's spammability is something that can be done to a point. Ammo pools restrict it but this perk's unique skill of penetration encourages you to pick out your shots.

Sharpshooter gives large boosts for taking aiming and shooting for the head and using the M14/Crossbow taking the bigger guys (refer to resistances). Spamming is harder and inefficient using most of these guns because of reload times and low body damage.

Commando is balanced because stronger enemies have damage reduction, despite spammability. The zed time extender also encourages the player to choose the trash over the big stuff.

Demolitions' smoke, limited ammo, Scrake's vast health and Fleshpound's weakness pushes this class to know what it shoot at and what not to.

Firebug. Uh... Oh- uh... Well, I've got nothing. Oh, it's incredibly weak against anything with a decent amount of health/resistance to it.

Berserker. This class is over powered. Kiting is a dominant strategy - if you like wasting hours and don't have any skill at playing a fps. But you can't spam to win since it doesn't have anything to spam, in a sense.
So support, firebug, commando and berserker (over half of the perks in the game) are spam-to-win? Support has limited ammo, firebug/commando can't deal with big guys, and berserker is great at exploiting the dominant strategy of kiting.

Haha, sounds like I should be doing things less like Vanilla than I had originally planned!

I think you make a fantastic point about this bullet spamming stuff though. The key difficulty for me now is 1) balancing weapons to make as many loadouts as feasible as possible, and 2) altering some specimens in behavior, abilities, and statistics to make specialized tactics and skill-based (non-spammy) strategies necessary to overcome them.

I'll do my best! And I'm always happy to hear input, even if it's just some one-off idea you had while taking a ****.
 
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Personally I rather enjoyed the heavy weapons expert and I have to disagree it is spam to win, considering the low ammo bigger weapons have. I'd like to think heavy weapons expert is more knowing what to shoot and when to shoot that big weapon. I think his role could be similar to vanilla's demo: help out when things get rough but otherwise not so helpful and reliant on teammates for taking out smaller and less clumped ones. Being specialized at killing ghosts does not seem like a thing a heavy weapons expert would do. I would suggest making him even slower (10% is not all that much). He will just have to learn to make for the trader before everything dies :p Possibly restrict him to not be able to use pistols? I think I will play this perk more to get a better idea of what should be changed. I do think it could possibly be too powerful, I got to patty on solo very easily by simply using a choke point and desert eagle on anything small, switching to machine gun for when a big group or bigger specimens came and blasted them :D

Also, I think I could have just as easily got to the top of the "scoreboard" being storm trooper or something. Skell you were usually medic or prepper and welding the door so what do you expect XD puppy was sharp and got to the top very easily. I believe having the most kills is not very solid evidence of anything (including that they are most skilled) except they were the ones killing things when they appear. We usually had a random or 2 with us also and they were not very helpful.

About the smokescreen, the lag from exterminators grenades is very minimal even when I threw all 3 at once and ran in the middle. Husk rocket I'm not sure but I don't think it would be a problem since it clears up so fast. The smokescreen from sirens sticks around a while and seems to be very dense. There is no lag when I look the other way but when I look at the smokescreen it lags, and the closer I am it lags more. This can become very laggy when there are several of them at once, like 2 or 3 FPS lol.
 
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Thanks, glad you like it! Yeah, I'm still tweaking hitpoints and such. I actually want to do some more interesting things with Scrakes and Fleshpounds, and overhaul their AIs a bit. In vanilla, they're massive threats due to their possible damage output and large health pools. In this mod, that's not quite as much of an issue since you CAN obliterate them with the right weapons, no sweat. I want to restore their "threat" in a way that fits with the mod, which means altering behavior (or just giving them a ton of HPs, which I don't like). I'll probably up their base health somewhat, and give them some more tricks to liven them up more.

I would love to see this, and look forward to seeing your creative powers at work on the FP and Scrake AI. It certainly feels like they could be a bit more of a threat, and giving them a few more 'tricks' seems like a good way to do that.


Surly said:
Smokescreens causing lag is generally a hardware issue, but I can certainly look into lowering the impact they have by changing the textures and particle emitter. Let me know what causes the worst lag... is it the Smoke Screen out of the smoking sirens, the poison cloud, or just any smoke at all (vis a vis the rocket husk, for instance)?

There's definitely a big framerate drop for me when facing one or more of the smoking sirens, as others have said. The poison cloud, etc. is perfectly fine for me, and I play on somewhat lackluster hardware (i3 w/Integrated Graphics 3000 until I can build my workstation), so I think the main thing would be toning down some of the siren smoke effects a bit.

Surly said:
This is good feedback, and just enforces my opinion of them. They'll definitely be nerfed, or completely changed, in the next version.

Just thought I'd note that I'm about halfway between NomNOM and Skell's opinion on this one.


Surly said:
Well, that's certainly good feedback if I've ever heard it. I originally disagreed with what you were saying, but I can't possibly argue with an honest impression. What I've done here is clearly confusing to players, and needs to be addressed.

I'll have to give some consideration to addressing this in a proper way, but because the majority of perks don't have perk-specific weapons it's going to be tough.

My intention is certainly to get rid of the idea of "perk-specific" weapons for the most part, so if I've failed in doing this it's going to take either reconsidering that goal, or reconsidering the perks which have perk-specific weapons.

Oh, conundrums.

The concept of weapons not being perk-specific, but certain perks getting bonuses to some, is something that wasn't confusing at all to me, but I might be a special case here.

Either way, weapons not being perk-specific is one of my favorite aspects of this mod. I often find my self choosing a weapon based on factors such as whether I want 5.56 NATO or 7.62 rounds, the utility of a Glock sidearm versus the raw power of the .50 Cal Desert Eagle, so on. It adds a level of realism to the mod that I absolutely love.

(And on a less serious note, you can bet if a real-life cloning-gone-wrong disaster ever happened, I'd be making those same decisions right after grabbing my Rem. Model 700 in .308 and .45 Colt Anaconda :p)


Overall, great job! I'm really impressed with this mod, and I look forward to seeing it evolve as time goes by.

I have noticed some bugs, including Voice Commands being non-functional 99% of the time, but as I'm still playtesting I'll make another post here soon once I'm sure I haven't missed anything.
 
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So support, firebug, commando and berserker (over half of the perks in the game) are spam-to-win? Support has limited ammo, firebug/commando can't deal with big guys, and berserker is great at exploiting the dominant strategy of kiting.

Haha, sounds like I should be doing things less like Vanilla than I had originally planned!

They are not. As I said, firebug and commando can't take big guys (unless the firebug is running the Husk Fireball Launcher - which allows them to take down Scrakes similarly to how a sharpshooter would with a crossbow.) which means all they'll do is rage the big guys and get themselves killed. Dying is NOT dominate strategy. Kiting is frowned upon by anyone half-decent at this game and extends a game from 30-50 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes and up. Upon further thought, kiting is not a dominant strategy because it's not 'better' than holding because the "payoff" (winning) is much lower because of the time taken.

I also feel the need to point out that the Husk Fireball Launcher isn't then the dominant strategy because of the fact in needs to be charged to deal high damage, the user is vulnerable to trash while trying to take a stronger target.
-You're sacrificing crowd control for the ability to take Scrakes so it'll only pay off in some contexts.

Fixed dominant strategy link: Link
 
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So I played with Heavy Weapons Expert a lot today and I've come to a few suggestions. I think you should remove semi-auto from the SAW, reasons being with semi auto it sort of becomes an assault rifle you never have to reload, and it would also make them waste ammo faster plus become more dependent on the Prepper for that reason. I think you should also increase its weight by 2 blocks and lower its ammo pool (maybe make it get 45 ammo instead of 60 from ammo box) or damage a tiny bit. It definitely needs some sort of nerf because having double the ammo pool of PKM and room for m79 + desert eagle makes it a whole lot better choice.
The PKM despite being a complete beast is balanced I think, considering it has 100/120 max ammo, no semi auto and takes most of your weight.
Not so sure about the RPK 47 yet.
As for explosives I feel they are balanced. The possibility you could blow up the whole team is a good balancing factor (I usually try to avoid them now after that incident). I'm not sure if M32 gets 6 from ammo boxes or not but if it does you should lower that too.
You should give them weaker starting weapons, they seem to start with weapons better than other perks.
I take back what I said about making them slower because then if they had just joined or died the trader could be far and they won't make it :(
I would instead suggest making the LAW, SAW, PKM and M32 cause a large loss in speed while in use, while still having the 10% reduction using other weapons.
These are my thoughts so far tell me what you think.
 
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