[T:V] Vehicle Balance fix

TreW_SoulJa

Veteran X
so in playing ut2k4 i find it extremely gay that i have to spend half my time running around shooting at fast moving vehicles.

and then i realized the 2 things i hate most about it.

1) im not so interested in playing a mech game where im shooting @ vehicles all the time

2) someone in a vehicle basically gets 2 lives for one

that is to say, i can spend all my time shooting at vehicles but then the guy can just hop out and i still have to kill him. What this does is put almost anyone not in a vehicle at a huge disadvantage.

So to fix this what i propose is that your armor takes 75% of the damage the vehicle takes. That is, when the vehicle takes say 10 hitpoints of damage, your body takes 7.5 hitpoints of damage. That way no matter what they only get one real shot at it, and not the equivalent of two lives.

You can do that, or you can make it like halo where you can hit people inside the vehicles. This is why halo's vehicles were still cool, and other games' vehicles skew the gameplay.
 
Damagine players by shooting a vehicle is what made Halo Suck.

Its fine the way it is, your supposed to have an advantage when your in a vehicle, thats why they have them.
 
UT2K4 was fun






for about an hour.

Now it's just turned into vehicle dominance. Run people over. Yay for gay! Atleast with Tribes you can jet out of the way. :)
 
Most of the vehicles you can damage the pilot or whomever as well as the vehicle, effectively killing the pilot and leaving whichever thing they are in fine to steal as well, as tricky as it is. The main thing I think is leaving out the vehicle spawn running over. One thing that makes a big factor in winning that onslaught map is if someone or a group can make it to that first enemy power node with their vehicles running everyone over so you get the jump to the tank node on your side as well as the middle node to begin an early attack rush, which is pretty hard to fend off, depending on the amount of players in the game
 
devil slayer said:
Damagine players by shooting a vehicle is what made Halo Suck.

Its fine the way it is, your supposed to have an advantage when your in a vehicle, thats why they have them.

that's exactly WRONG.

vehicles are supposed to be a DIFFERENT means to accomplish the same thing. It's not supposed to be an advantage. What it's supposed to be is a tradeoff; you get this big gun and roadkill in exchange for being a slowmoving, vulnerable target. But people riding in vehicles are supposed to be vulnerable too, not just the vehicle.

as far as vehicles go you cant really compare them to real life because in real life you get to equip before things happen, in the game you can spawn with nothing useufl against vehicles.

Halo(console) was/is a great game and sold a trillion and one copies because of this. Halo online sucked.

Regardless, if vehicles offer an advantage, then the ENTIRE game becomes vehicle-centric. Meaning rather than the objective being CTF or onslaught or whatever, the objective is instead GET CONTROL OF THE VEHICLES, then we can win. Vehicle-centric games are not FPS's (persay), they are mech games and jane's combat sims. Tribes is not supposed to be a mech game.
 
the attitude a lot of players has is "FINALLY im SAFE! I'm nice and cozy here inside my vehicle, and now i dont have to really be good at this game"
 
TreW_SoulJa said:
that's exactly WRONG.

vehicles are supposed to be a DIFFERENT means to accomplish the same thing. It's not supposed to be an advantage. What it's supposed to be is a tradeoff; you get this big gun and roadkill in exchange for being a slowmoving, vulnerable target. But people riding in vehicles are supposed to be vulnerable too, not just the vehicle.

as far as vehicles go you cant really compare them to real life because in real life you get to equip before things happen, in the game you can spawn with nothing useufl against vehicles.

Halo(console) was/is a great game and sold a trillion and one copies because of this. Halo online sucked.

Regardless, if vehicles offer an advantage, then the ENTIRE game becomes vehicle-centric. Meaning rather than the objective being CTF or onslaught or whatever, the objective is instead GET CONTROL OF THE VEHICLES, then we can win. Vehicle-centric games are not FPS's (persay), they are mech games and jane's combat sims. Tribes is not supposed to be a mech game.

First of all, there is no "supposed to" in video games. It's all designer and player preferences. So vehicles are supposed to do what the designer makes them for. Now whether what the designer develops a vehicle to do makes the game suck or not is another issue altogether. There is no right or wrong here. Just what a majority of the people like and what they dont like.

Personally I like the Tribes 2 system of working vehicles where the vehicle has shields and ultimately is an advantage for the player driving it. The advantage of having the vehicle was more than payed for by the time spent that it takes to get the vehicle (alot of bad things can happen to your team in ctf in the 30sec to 2 min it takes to get a vehicle), and the limited sources from which you can get it (one vpad rather than say 6-10 stations.)

Also, vehicles, especially in t2, are easily destroyed except when they are in the hands of the most skilled players. Zprotoss may own you up and down with a shrike, but even your average vet suck at vehicles on average. Note that I do think the tank is a bit overpowered. Finally, even if vehicles do offer major armor advantages, the advantage is offered to both teams, and only in limited numbers (only a few people can operate vehicles per team).

I think that there is good argument for having vehicles be major armor advantages to players in t2. Unlike in Halo, its a hell of a lot easier to avoid them because you can jet away. You need easily destroyed vehicles in Halo beause running away is hardly an option.

I also agree with you that it is easy for a game to become vehicle centric. Tribes should not be this way if it is aiming to be true to its past. But aside from the somewhat overpowered tank, t2 is hardly vehicle centric. I say keep the vehicle shields that were in t2, just make sure to put weapons in the game that are capable of destroying vehicles. And as usual, make vehicle options the same for both teams and only allow limited numbers of vehicles on the field at a time. The game will then be far from vehicle centric.
 
Last edited:
Being in a vehicle is supposed to give you more means to an end, and maybe a slight advantage to the regular warrior. That damage system you described is stupid. Although you SHOULD be able to snipe/chain/etc.. players inside a vehicle.
 
The whole point of having vehicles is to give a player an advantage of mobility, armor, and in most cases weaponry to reward succesful attainment or retention of the conditions that are required for their use, whether that's capturing a power node or just keeping your vehicle pad intact.

If you take away the armor advantage of vehicles such as the Hellbender and the tank, you render them significantly less useful on both offense or defense -- if you hop in a Goliath which already turns like a snail and can't just hop from side to side while firing its big cannon, the tank becomes pretty much worthless on offense because it takes damage like a cardboard box getting kicked by a disgruntled hobo in the rain. Even the newbiest of newbies can jump around while pelting a slow-ass tank with shock rifle and lightning gun fire, and so by the time the tank makes it into position to really blow the shit out of the front lines, it's already a smoking, broken mess.

The Hellbender also suffers unduly under Trew_Soulja's damage proposal. The HB may be decently fast, and unlike the tank pretty good at useful offensive movement like circle-strafing, but the thing already turns much wider than a well-armed foot soldier in UT2K4, and as such the HB's speed and weaponry becomes little help against newbies pelting its exposed sides with gunfire when it's making a big turn.

I argue that UT2K4's vehicles are quite well balanced as-is, and I advise Trew_Soulja not to read too much into any flaws with those vehicles, as it is a well-established fact that Tribes vehicles always have been, and always will be, a vastly different beast from Halo/UT2K4's vehicles, especially in T:V, where due to the speed and mobility of the players, they will probably take on an especially supplemental role, rather than in a game like UT2K4's Onslaught, where the relatively low agility of the default foot soldier makes dominant vehicles the whole point of the gametype.

I wouldn't mind the ability to damage a player inside of a vehicle as a seperate entity, of course, provided that ostensibly less agile vehicles like the Buggy got some superior degree of cockpit armor.
 
I don't understand why we need a fix for vehicle balance in T:V when the game isn't even in alpha yet.

:huh:

How about everyone in this thread takes off their tinfoil hats, quits comparing T:V vehicle gameplay with UT2K4, and waits to see exactly what impact, if any, this issue has on the game?
 
Data said:
I don't understand why we need a fix for vehicle balance in T:V when the game isn't even in alpha yet.

:huh:

How about everyone in this thread takes off their tinfoil hats, quits comparing T:V vehicle gameplay with UT2K4, and waits to see exactly what impact, if any, this issue has on the game?

If I ever make it into a T:V vehicle, I plan on making an impact in Debig3's forehead.
 
i find that on servers with good players... vehicles really aint that powerful.

my clans' server... raptors (flying ones) get shot out of the air fast... with the sniper rifles.

vehicles do not dominate. they are a major factor, obviously, but much more so in terms of transport than in combat.

i'd have to say that the balance is surprisingly good.

remember, in a tribes game players themselves have much more control over movement... so they get natural advantage right there in being inherently more responsive to attack and defense.
 
Back
Top