News: T:V Pack Roundup

I think the Speed Pack's passive ability will be as good indoors as the Energy Pack's passive ability outdoors. Also, the Speed Pack may offer slight enhancements in other areas of the game, such as disc jumping and skiing.I was just playing a game with QA (7v7) and the other teams cappers were all using the speed pack, because the flag area was fairly confined and they were liking the ability to come in from any angle, grab the flag, and dash off quickly in any direction. It was actually quite frustrating on D, as they were only in view for a very short length of time. Eventually I was forced to turret their generator room.

Eventually I was forced to turret their generator room.

that'll teach em.

and what is the "reload" time of the grappler, for instance , you shoot it at a building, you swing away, retract the Grappler and then shoot it again. at which interval can you shoot grappler hook (with retracting each time ofcourse )

Maybe we can possibly beg Thrax into giving a hint as to when the beta will be released?No. Probably you can't.

can you...Wow, that a good point. Before you had to be able to stand next to it to repair it. Now you just need to get within 7m of it and then activate your pack.

So generators can now be placed in some unusual places, interesting. . .This is how stupid rumors get started. He was asking a question, and you've taken it as fact. Sigh...

Indoors isn't that big of an issue because Tribes is primarily an outdoor game.
No, CTF is primarily an outdoor game. Arena is 50/50. Dueling can take place anywhere and "ball" sounds like it could work indoors our outdoors.
The shield pack balanced out nicely when you gave up jet energy for reduced damage. Now it seems a bit overpowered in that there are no drawbacks, and much less skillful because you don't have to manage your energy. You could say the T1 shield pack doesn't contrbute to movement, but when skillfully used, it works fine. You can even dj without taking damage if you time it right so you can handle the lost energy. I'm sure the arena community will quickly mod in the old shield pack.
IMO this shieldpack is much better. Have you ever dueled a skilled player that used the shieldpack? They could effectively make you run out of ammo while staying at full health. When you had an epack the ONLY way to beat someone (good) with shield in T1/T2 was to fire quickly and accurately without ever letting up. They could just stand there and whore you to death while you're doing this. It even managed to bother me and I played more arena than CTF back in the day.

ERK.

VV Changed.

I'll try to address some of the points that were raised...Thrax said I can pretty much talk about anything at this point.

The repair pack isn't serial. You can stack the effects (new feature, hence why Thrax didn't know about it). We have control over the degree to which the effect can stack. So we can control if they fully stack, or if each additional repair effect only adds 50%, etc. Currently they fully stack.

The repair pack doesn't currently "infect" objects (although we've considered that as an option and reserve the right to make it work this way). It has a radius of effect that moves around with you. It's currently about 18m. This still makes it much easier to use. You can repair an area of objects but you can still fight while doing those repairs. Multiple people repairing together can repair an area faster. (This makes the emergency station respawn time a key balancing factor since it can distribute repair packs).

The game needs lots of tuning based on your testing. I'm really looking forward to that. The specific numbers Thrax has quoted are changing all the time based on our internal testing (for example all the pack charge times). They'll change more once we hit open beta.

We were considering a better name for the speed pack. "Action" pack isn't so bad. Any other ideas?

The chaingun was originally intended to overheat slower if you travel faster, the idea being that wind passing over the heatsink cools it down. We haven't implemented that yet. We're currently reconsidering how overheating will work.

You cannot start and stop a pack's charge arbitrarily. We've had a lot of discussions about this. Personally I enjoy the skill it takes to turn a pack on and off. Others do not like this ability, and I can appreciate why. So that's the way it is for now.

The repair pack (and all packs actually) are currently missing most of their effects. There'll be cool-looking effects for all of them eventually that should hopefully make it obvious what they're doing and how they work. For example, the repair pack is meant to be accompanied by tendrils of nano-healing goodness that stretch from the repairer to all objects receiving repairs within the area of effect.

Carrying a deployable does not currently weigh you down.

If you're repairing something as it's taking damage, or when it gets destroyed, you'll continue to repair it as long as you stay within your repair pack's radius and manage to stay alive.

Currently the speed pack doesn't help you much with the Buckler. We've considered what Rigel suggested in this thread, namely making the speed pack also affect the fuse times and/or speed and/or gravity of projectiles. The speed pack is a big unknown. It'll require lots of tuning.

The speed pack passive effect makes you run faster. The speed pack active effect makes you run even faster. This is not just useful for running around indoors. It's useful when fighting outdoors because you can dodge around on the ground quite effectively, making it more difficult for people to hit you.

You can currently switch weapons while the Buckler is in the air, allowing for some nice combos. No guarantee it'll remain this way, but so far there's been no reason to remove this ability.

The default CTF loadout is medium armor with spinfusor, chaingun, blaster. The default loadout for Ball will probably be spinfusor, grappler and buckler. You can "catch" the ball with the grappler. You'll be able to "kick" the ball with the buckler (not yet implemented).

To answer a question that'll inevitably arise: you can currently grapple a flag, but we're going to start by not allowing you to grapple it from its stand. So you can only grapple it in the field or when it's in the air. You'll be able to pass the flag further than in T1 and T2 but not nearly as far as in TR2. You'll be able to pass the ball quite far.

There's a new deployable I haven't seen mentioned yet. Maybe you can help give it a better name. Currently we just call it the repairer. It's like the inverse of a turret. It gradually repairs friendly objects and players in its radius, and this effect stacks with the repair pack. It also slowly repairs itself. I'll leave it to you guys to think of the various ways this could be used.

All repairing in the game is restricted by line-of-sight. You can't repair through walls (actually I think you currently can, but that's a bug).

Hope that answers some questions and sheds some light,
KP

Could a dev answer this please? The closest I've seen is this post (http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6206984# 6206984) but it was in response to a different question and didn't address the interrupt/resume question. I'm a repair pack whore so an ET adrenaline-like "boost" to the repair pack active function doesn't sound good to me.No, you can't toggle a pack on and off. You can't short-shift the active part. Once you flick it on, it will run to completion and then recharge.

There's been alot of talk about "pack energy". I think this is misleading and confusing. Packs don't have energy, they have a timer.No. Packs have energy. In particular, the Energy Pack has energy. It's a key point that packs have their own energy source, and do not use your suit energy like they did in the previous games. To balance this change, they can't be flicked on and off any more.

thrax can you confirm my post right above here ^ with the Repair pack thing.You're wrong. The emitting of nanorgs lasts for 10 seconds, and after that the pack recharges. Total cycle time is 18 seconds as the game stands now.

call the deployed repairer the weasle or nursey or nanog-eggnog

You're wrong. The emitting of nanorgs lasts for 10 seconds, and after that the pack recharges. Total cycle time is 18 seconds as the game stands now.


k thx, misinterpetation from my end then :)

What's the canon or rationale behind the speed pack's function? That determines a lot of what goes into the name.

The energy pack is an energy generator. The repair pack repairs things. The shield pack shields you from damage. The speed pack does what to you (not in gameplay terms, but in crappy literary excuse terms)?

The repair pack isn't serial. You can stack the effects (new feature, hence why Thrax didn't know about it).Er... odds are high that KP is being nice to me and I just got it wrong. My only excuse is that it's really hard to test that sort of thing with just one person in the game while talking to Colosus on IRC at 1:00 in the morning.

Flurry Pack
Racket Pack
Vigor Pack
Stroke Pack
Performance Pack
Fleetness Pack
Celerity Pack
Alacrity Pack

-----------for repair turret------
Debugger
Remedy Turret

How exactly is "pack energy" different than a "cooldown timer"?

Speed pack could be "Stim Pack" ;)

Also Rosdower's

Speed pack rename -> Celerity Pack = win

1.We were considering a better name for the speed pack. "Action" pack isn't so bad. Any other ideas?

2.The chaingun was originally intended to overheat slower if you travel faster, the idea being that wind passing over the heatsink cools it down. We haven't implemented that yet. We're currently reconsidering how overheating will work.
KP
Ok. Numba 1. Action does sound fine. But yet it doesn't seem so "tribesish." Heh new word. Maybe call it Boost Pack. Or Steriod Pack =). Physical Enhancement Pack.<-- Long name but, hey, wutever.

2. What if ur not moving? I can understand if ur moving fast. The faster u move the more it should cool, the slower the more it's like ur standing still shooting.

End rant :roller:

how far can you grapple? what is it's limit? 50m? .. I dno guessing here