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Ramjet [message #117681]

Fri, 01 October 2004 13:44

flyingfox
Messages: 1612
Registered: February 2003
Location: scotland, uk

Karma: 0

General (1 Star)

we can look at this a different way. going as far back as handicaps for beginners, back in the days of Goldeneye for the nintendo 64 you could put handicaps on players in multiplayer games. The handicap was set at 100% by default, and could go as far as 1000%. It could even be adjusted below 100 so you'd have even less health. I used to play this beginner who lived around my relatives. i'd set his handicap very high, like 800% or more. we could theorise that in a ratio sense it would take me 10 bullets to kill him as opposed to 1 bullet to kill me. me, being the far better player, would have something of an even fight. if I were to set my handicap as high as his, i'd easily kill him and it wouldn't be fair game. BUT, if I set the handicap lower, i'd enjoy the challenge.
it's the same deal with renegade. the weapons are not all balanced in that while one weapon has advantages in one area, another is weaker in that area but stronger in another. a good example of this is Call of Duty online. the weapon specifics are divided into four categories:

range
rate of fire
damage
mobility

a weapon such as a bolt action rifle will have a slow rate of fire, due to it's bolt action mechanism. but, the damage will be high, and could even kill someone in a single bullet. the range will be very high. the mobility will be about even, and slower than that of a pistol.
but, something like a thompson submachine gun will have short range, being inaccurate at a distance. it'll have a high rate of fire, medium damage, and high mobility, meaning you can run quickly with it.
The rifle shall excel at accurate long range cover, while the thompson excels in close range combat and quick kills.
in short, most of the weapons balance out with each other in these terms.

In renegade, there's less of a balance. everyone moves at the same speed, there's no muzzle climb on the weapons, you pay more you'll get a better weapon than that of a less costly soldier.
the justification of the ramjet is that it costs a thousand apiece. when someone pays a thousand credits for one, they're allowed to have the advantages of a raveshaw and sniper combined, with improvements in ammo count, accuracy and ease of kill. for real, when you go onto the bridge on city fly, you'll rack up a thousand points without trouble while keeping all but the best threats off your chest. i couldn't sit there with a straight face and say my unit is as balanced as a raveshaw/mobius in it's own right, or say one team should fall victim to incredibly easy kills. the only time someone should die in one hit is from a headshot or from a unit firing a single shot with a long reload.
http://thefud.brinkster.net/sakura.asp
http://thefud.brinkster.net/syd2.asp
http://thefud.brinkster.net/raveshaw.asp

note that the ramjet rifle fires four bullets in one clip and reloads even quicker than a railgun a PIC or railgun, wherein the railgun and pic prosper in vehicle damage. if you go further into the math, a railgun will take over double the time to do the damage a ramjet can do in one clip. what kind of balance is that? just study the stats and see for yourself. if you do not think the ramjet is unbalanced you should play 3 subsequent games in a large server (12 v 12 or more), first using mobius, then pic, then havoc. better yet, play the same map with all of them. take down the scores at the end and see how easy you find the game to play. If you were correct in that they are all balanced, you should find roughly the same difficulty level in all the units. if people didn't find a huge ease in gameplay with a ramjet they wouldn't use it so much.