Farming in T:V

:wave:

Does a pack and a deployable take the same slot? Meaning, can I have a speed pack and an inventory?

Mmm. I have to say it's an interesting idea to say the least. I imagine the rationale behind this system is mostly to reduce the power of spawn rush against turreting on cluster-friendly maps on the scale of Stonehenge and DangerousCrossing.

In T1, against a cluster offense on a cluster-friendly map, you have maybe 20 seconds to toss out turrets and crap to inhibit the enemy offense, and if you don't manage to keep the enemy out with your initial deployment coupled with the skill of your D, your base is pretty much toast for the rest of the map.

With individual turret stations in T:V, rather than having to quickly buy all your turrets from a station, you always have a viable way to grab and deploy turrets to help give your D an edge when the enemy O has torn your base limb from limb. I think this will prove very significant in T:V, which is shaping up to be perhaps the fastest Tribes game in the franchise.

The main drawback to this new system that I can see, and one that should not be ignored, is how the spacing and positioning of the turret stations will affect the viability of turreting on the base T:V maps.

I personally hope that the stations are rather centralized in the more open maps, because with the new E-pack boost, the return of high-powered skiing, the speed pack, and perhaps even the power of the grappling hook and the Buckler, things in T:V are shaping up to be more frantic than ever for those tasked with defending the base and the flag.

In short, I believe that the new system is a good idea given the speed of T:V, but the mappers should be particularly careful about the positioning of the turret spawns in light of the new, more powerful T:V offensive options.

It sounds to me like this will mean farms are up far more often than they are in T1/T2. I hate to say what's been said a million times but no one enjoys fighting deployables.

In the past if you kill the farmer and his station(s) he has to go back into the base, aquire a remote, come deploy it, and then he can farm again. This sounds like he just spawns and farms immediatly. I guess if the deployable spawner thing is fairly easily destroyed then it might be all good but otherwise I really can't think of a good way to slow down a farmer besides taking the gens. Still, all destroying those stations would do is make him wear a repair pack so he can repair them and get a turret immediatly anyway (if it's a quick kill it'll probably be a quick repair too)... at least he'll have to go find a repair pack I guess.

I thought they were simplifying things... that sounds very complex.

Though I suppose it might be one of those things that is hard to decribe on paper, but more intuitive once you play the game.

It sounds to me like this will mean farms are up far more often than they are in T1/T2. I hate to say what's been said a million times but no one enjoys fighting deployables.

Speak for yourself. I believe it is my God-given duty to wage unceasing war on the machines, and I do so with a song in my heart and a smile on my face.

In the past if you kill the farmer and his station(s) he has to go back into the base, aquire a remote, come deploy it, and then he can farm again. This sounds like he just spawns and farms immediatly.

That's the idea. Considering all the incredibly scary new options given the offense in T:V, I think this is the best way to make farming, hell, even suiting up, viable against skilled clusterf*ckers. And when I say scary, I DO mean scary. I have enough trouble against the basic T1 weapons, the thought of fighting something like the Buckler or chasing a skilled hooker/booster scares the D-lovin' crap outta me.

I guess if the deployable spawner thing is fairly easily destroyed then it might be all good but otherwise I really can't think of a good way to slow down a farmer besides taking the gens. Still, all destroying those stations would do is make him wear a repair pack so he can repair them and get a turret immediatly anyway (if it's a quick kill it'll probably be a quick repair too)... at least he'll have to go find a repair pack I guess.

There'll probably be only one, maybe two, turret spawn points really close to important base features like the gens or the flag, if I follow the dev team's logic.

The rest will probably be further afield, meaning greater coordination on the D's part will be necessary to create enough breathing space to really farm the hell out of mission-critical base structures. I think this is an excellent way to go about things.

I'm not saying my assumptions are perfect, however...

Speak for yourself. I believe it is my God-given duty to wage unceasing war on the machines, and I do so with a song in my heart and a smile on my face. You must love those bad T2 pubs.

That's the idea. Considering all the incredibly scary new options given the offense in T:V, I think this is the best way to make farming, hell, even suiting up, viable against skilled clusterf*ckers. And when I say scary, I DO mean scary. I have enough trouble against the basic T1 weapons, the thought of fighting something like the Buckler or chasing a skilled hooker/booster scares the D-lovin' crap outta me.That sounds like the logic that caused T2 base to turn out like it did.

I'm not saying my assumptions are perfect, however...
You must love those bad T2 pubs.

I was speaking in terms of T1 deployables. I apologize for any inferences you may have drawn in terms of T2. I did not like the power of the T2 deployables (though I never played much T2), and I was speaking in terms of good old-fashioned T1 turrets.

That sounds like the logic that caused T2 base to turn out like it did.

Now THAT'S just a goddamn low blow, you son of a b*tch.

The fact is, T:V offense HAS gained some devastating new options. While the Buckler and the Hook are still largely theory at this point, it cannot be denied that the speed pack and the e-pack boost will lend a powerful edge to the O side of things, and I am merely considering how the D should be able to compete.

And I was talking in terms of T1 LD, not T2 turret D. Do not mistake me for a lover of overpowered turrets.

Gimp, the number of turrets on a map is going to be completely controllable by the map maker. As far as we know there is only going to be one type of turret.

There will be no sanctuary in T:V where 8 clamp turrets and 2 farmers are the only defense you need unless the mapper wants the map to be that way. If he does, you can be damned sure that map will never make a competition rotation.

My concern is that a position i actually enjoy to some extent is going to be changed to the point of disappearing. Granted, there may be some maps where having a single person dedicated to maintaining a turret farm will make sense, but we (the players) won't be able to make that decision entirely on our own now. Most of the decision is going to be made by mappers.

I guess to an extent you can argue that that was the case before too, because the mapper could deliberately design the flag area in a way that it couldn't easily be farmed, but maps that fit that description are a rarity.

hate to rape a base in a good pub because some ass is deploying. Sometimes though, it just has to be done.
Fling :D

Having been a TF for many a year in T1, here are my thoughts.

The basic idea, to keep traffic around the inventories down, is gold. As a TF, the most annoying thing was playing in matches, having all the captains spam repeatedly to let me go first and there be one person who thinks they know better than the captains and decides to get in front of me to get his loadout. In pubs, this is FAR worse when you're trying to deploy and you have some newbie who is "trying to set his loadouts" in a full server and you have to wait it out or kill him and pray to god he has the cognition skills of a normal twelve year-old human being, and understands WHY you just did that.

As for the idea of multiple turret spawn points, this could be okay if and only if the number of these is kept to one or two per side, per man (for CTF). I can understand other gametypes where having a bunch of these would be a kind of strategy, but I would really prefer having consistency in the number of these per gametype.

Having not played the game, it is my opinion that having to remember the number of turrets you've deployed from your particular turret respawn point, as well as the location of other turret respawn points, in addition to your setup, etc. is just a bit too much, especially in a game that has been designed so that newbies can get into it easily. I can see myself having problems remembering the number of turret respawn points and their locations on each map, the chance of some random newbie playing the game remembering is probably far far less.

Finally, (this is a bit off-topic, and may have been covered in other threads) I really feel like turrets should be as close to the way they are in T1 as possible. Yeah yeah, this isn't T1, thanks for reminding me all you people who are thinking that. What I mean by this is, T1 turrets could kill very fast, but were taked down in ONE shot. They were large enough that you could quickly and easily identify them if you knew what you were looking for. I did not play T2 much, but I imagine that tiny indoor turrets probably pissed off more than a person or two (hell, I know my giant clanky T1 turrets did).

As for deploying them on walls or ceilings...I don't know. By nature, I'm against the idea simply because I haven't tried it before, and the simple fact that adding walls and ceilings gives turret setups an extra degree of killing power that I personally feel is unnecessary to a fast-paced game. Just my thoughts though.

good post siward. The only thing i want to clarify is that each "turret station" just spawns one turret. you deploy that turret, then when it's destroyed, that station will respawn that turret. So i would imagine there would be small clusters of these turret stations around, probably in a few key areas. hopefully somewhere near by to where you'd want to deploy turrets.

The rub about that is that the mapper is the one that decides where you are going to deploy your turrets to more of a degree than they ever were able to before. If it's a 15 second run from the stations to where you really want to put your farm, chances are that you aren't going to go to that trouble, especially if the turrets are easily disabled (which they should be).

It just seems to me that a lot of the skill there was to farming is going to be gone. Sure, you'll still be able to find optimal layouts and deploy orders, but the locations of your farms are going to be much less dynamic than they were in previous games. For example, you won't be able to throw up some turrets on a hill that your enemy is using as a point to disk spam from as easily as you would be in T1 or T2.

I did not play T2 much, but I imagine that tiny indoor turrets probably pissed off more than a person or two (hell, I know my giant clanky T1 turrets did).
I played a lot of T2 - spider clamps were no big problem in themself, only one disc to disable. Two to disable a landspike if I remember correct. There was nothing wrong with the turrets in T2 base, but the cap on skiing speed is another story.

In reply to Ben, I think all of these things will create a much more role-specific game, but for an odd reason. The skill involved in mastering the shocklance/cloak-pack made a few people very dangerous if a lot of time was spent perfecting the tactic. With T1, everyone eventually learned to do everything. There were really a lot less jobs and roles that needed to be perfected for T1. Capper, HO, and co-ordination needed to be practiced at length. Dueling is pretty obvoius as 99.9% of tribesers come from previous FPS knowledge. The limited # of *useful* items that evolved for t1 made tactics much simplier than first conceived. Soon after tribes shipped the Energy and Shield pack were the mainstays of combat. You really only needed to perfect 3 weapons to compete.

The difficult part, as with t2, is going to be deciding what positions to keep and modify, and what will dissapear entirely. Hopefully after beta, and when we finish the SP missions, we will have a general idea of all the item strengths and weaknesses.

Ohyeah, and you forgot about the clown car in T:V as adding to offense, Ben :D

I played a lot of T2 - spider clamps were no big problem in themself, only one disc to disable. Two to disable a landspike if I remember correct. There was nothing wrong with the turrets in T2 base, but the cap on skiing speed is another story.

There is a very large difference between one and 2 shots, and the ability to actually SEE where a turret is firing from. Coupled with the fact that the distances in T2 were greater, imho, it WAS a big annoyance.

I played a lot of T2 - spider clamps were no big problem in themself, only one disc to disable. Two to disable a landspike if I remember correct. There was nothing wrong with the turrets in T2 base, but the cap on skiing speed is another story.

the problem was that there were too bloody many of them. in t2 base, 16 v 16, you had 8 spiders and 8 landspikes. That's ridiculous. you have one turret for every player on your team.

Now THAT'S just a goddamn low blow, you son of a b*tch.

The fact is, T:V offense HAS gained some devastating new options. While the Buckler and the Hook are still largely theory at this point, it cannot be denied that the speed pack and the e-pack boost will lend a powerful edge to the O side of things, and I am merely considering how the D should be able to compete.
:lol:
New toys for the O is fine, but give D new toys to use instead of making static defensed more powerful.

Back on topic, perhaps it would be a good idea to give each turret station a customizable number of turrets instead of just one... that'd remove the question of which station's turret died and also remove some small amount of polies. :)

I think the way thrax stated, the number of turrets is up to the map maker, but where you put the turret deploy stations is up to the farmer.

So instead of getting a turret, you get a small station, like an rinv that can only pop out a turret. The farmer can just go pop down the station anywhere, take a repair pack or speed pack and head back and forth between the station and wherever he wants the turret. It sounds ok, but I dunno it sounds like a pain to get all the turret stations out to where they need to be.

Johnny X']I think the way thrax stated, the number of turrets is up to the map maker, but where you put the turret deploy stations is up to the farmer.

So instead of getting a turret, you get a small station, like an rinv that can only pop out a turret. The farmer can just go pop down the station anywhere, take a repair pack or speed pack and head back and forth between the station and wherever he wants the turret. It sounds ok, but I dunno it sounds like a pain to get all the turret stations out to where they need to be.

No, it's mapmaker choice in both situations.

This lets the mapmaker encourage and discourage certain turret layouts.

Basically, the further out a turret is from a station, the harder it is to replace.

If you take turrets from the generator-area stations and put them by the flag, you'll spend a lot more time walking from the gens to the flag as the gen-turrets get destroyed.

Wow, so this is where the speed pack comes into play.

as long as the mappers make the turret station layout logical and clustered (ie, all the flag turrets are near the flag), i dont think there would be a huge problem with trying to find out what turret got destroyed... u just goto teh cluster of stations and look for the one with the turret sitting by it

The team sizes were larger in T2 which also meant you were NEVER left alone to fight a farm. It was always a farm and at least 1 if not 2 LD fighting you. Sucked :[

:lol:
New toys for the O is fine, but give D new toys to use instead of making static defensed more powerful.

Back on topic, perhaps it would be a good idea to give each turret station a customizable number of turrets instead of just one... that'd remove the question of which station's turret died and also remove some small amount of polies. :)

Static defense, when properly balanced, IS a respectable component of defense. T1-style balanced deployable turrets certainly can't replace good defenders, even in large numbers, but they are an important tool because they relieve some stress on the defenders to allow them to concentrate more fully on areas where their defensive contribution is most needed.

They don't have to worry about not straying too far from the gens or the invs or even the flag because they have a turret there not to replace them, but to give them a little leeway to go out and more actively meet threats to the base or the flag.

I'm not saying D needs any more than T1-style simple, unshielded turrets. I'm just saying that the importance of turrets to the D shouldn't be shrugged off so easily, because unlike the O, the D can't afford to go around at high speeds in order to meet the O on equal footing, because they have a base and flag to worry about as their primary concern. If YOU, the offender, die, unless your team is doing really badly, you can just hop down the hill and try again -- your team, at worst, breaks even. If I, the defender, die, the enemy gets my flag or destroys my gens, and my team gets put IMMEDIATELY at a disadvantage. Having turrets around helps compensate for the D's inability to stray far from the things they're supposed to protect, even if one or two well-placed discs will blow them straight to hell.