Darkwind - Viewing Topic: Engine v.54, Scripts v.106

*sam*
The Salthill Sluggerz
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There's some nice little nuggets in today's update. Thanks to everyone who got involved in the discussions about these!

1. Weapons modifications:
- lasers will recharge faster
- grenade launchers now fire ballistic rounds. Top armour becomes important when these are being used... Ballistic weapons have a reduced hit chance if the target is not visible (no spotters implemented yet) but they will be tactically important I think since you can fire over hills with them. Ballistic weapons are typically very hard to hit with, but get triple the normal sustained fire bonus.
- paintsprays now block up your weapons for a few moves, making them a useful and unique defensive weapon.

2. Nicknames can now be given with a skill at 40. This limit is because I believe you have to have played with a character for a while to have any idea of their personality and hence give a nickname.

3. New skill: scouting. This replaces martial arts which is unlikely to ever be important. Hand-to-hand combat (probably rare) will be controlled by strength, speed and dexterity instead. The scouting skill will be used when I overhaul the scouting system soon: it will (among other things) help your squads travel without being attacked, and will help you find smaller enemy gangs to attack yourself.

4. New skill: ballistics - a new weapons skill that will apply to all ballistic weapons. I've started off all existing characters with some of this skill. There will be other ballistic type weapons along later.. I'm thinking trailer-mounted mortars as well as stationary field artillery.

......................... marshal vet deathrce1 paintladder combat1 wv ped1 cont slay2013
Posted May 23, 2007, 2:48 pm	Last edited May 23, 2007, 2:51 pm by sam

Korivak
Kestrels
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Nice. A few more races and a bit of training, and I get my first nickname.

And who am I going to put in arena events now that we don't have a bunch of useless MA's hanging out in the taverns? First Aid specialists, perhaps? I guess there's no Hippocratic Oath in the Kestrels.

......................... vet
Posted May 23, 2007, 3:24 pm	Last edited May 23, 2007, 3:24 pm by Korivak

Jansan
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Thank you Sam. These are some interesting changes.

The weapon adjustments sound great. I'm now extra eager to get some paint, though it doesn't appear to ever get shipped to Somerset. Might have to make a shopping trip.

The nickname change sounds like a nice improvement as well. I'm still hoping that once more advancement/prestige options are available for more experienced characters, that the skill value for nickname determination is flexible. As it stands, 40 might be attainable in maybe two-three months? I still haven't had a person break 30 and I've been playing for approximately two weeks (give or take).

The loss of martial arts kind of makes me sad, but as long as I can still engage in hand-to-hand combat, it's all good. I understand the reasoning, as the chance to use hand to hand is probably very minimal, but it was still an interesting concept. The scouting skill sounds very nice. And I am LOVING the idea of smaller enemy gangs to attack myself. Scouting is pretty scary right now sometimes by yourself. A half-damaged machine gun was the deciding factor in saving me from a loss of 4 gang members and two cars.

Ballistics sounds like fun. The idea of stationary field artillery is great!

I'm still looking forward to loading up a carrier van with people and using it as an APC to deploy troops when characters on foot is ready to go.

......................... vet
Posted May 24, 2007, 12:39 am