DUST Search - [IDEA] Tactical devices & HUD upgrades

Sole Fenychs wrote:

Now that sounds better. Though 3 seconds is a lot - That sounds more like militia tier.
It should be more like 1.5, 0.8, 0.2. Remember that a disorientation of 0.2 seconds can kill someone in this game.

I have two additional ideas:
- Give the devices activation delays (e.g. you plant the Flasher and it activates after a few seconds, similar to an uncooked grenade)
- Make affected areas easily visible at a distance
- In addition, allow the effects to persist after the duration, with a slowly dispersing effect. This means that, for example, the smoke bomb will fill a room with smoke for 20 seconds. Once those 20 seconds are over, people can mostly see through it, but the smoke is still visible to people who pass by and allows them to know that there might be a fight going on.

This has the following effects:
- Players have time to decide to run away when a device that they aren't shielded against appears
- Players who are shielded can make the tactical decision to run into an affected area, because it marks a fight. This also allows players to use the devices in order to pretend that there's an assault going on, which causes a diversion. Hell, you could have a coordinated team that throws smoke in five different places and prevents the enemy from knowing where to counter the assault.

Your blade is an extension of your mind. It must be swift, silent, focused. And deadly.


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Lex DOCIEL What The French Never.Surrender 21	Posted - 2014.02.16 14:39:00 - [1] - Quote Hi guys, Let's talk about tactical devices and HUD upgrades. I got this idea after a public game with my squad during which we rushed a depot covered my the whole (kindda) enemy team. That would be tactically great to have something giving a small window of opportunity for an attacking/defending team once in a while for specific situations. I first thought about classic flash and smoke grenades, but I got the thinking a bit further, and here is what I came to. I hope you enjoy this idea, and am waiting for your feedbacks. Each tactical device has a specific effect. Each HUD upgrade is here to counter a specific tactical device effect. Each race has a related tactical device and HUD upgrade (which counter its effect). To be used efficiently, a duster better equips a tactical device AND its counter (or he will basically "upset" himself every time he uses his device and go into the fight). TACTICAL DEVICES Info: launching equipement (like a grenade) casting a specific effect, in a certain sphere shaped area, for a few seconds (like 10 to 20 seconds, which is plenty enough) Fitting: grenade slot Skill: Weaponry > Explosives > Tactical devices - lvl 1 = unlock: Flasher / Fragmenter / Echoer / Smoker - +10% AoE / level Weaponry > Explosives > Tactical devices > Flasher / Fragmenter / Echoer / Smoker - Allow the use of basic / advanced / prototype tactical devices (better equipment = longer effect duration) Amarr: Flasher May the light of our purity carves into the darkness of the enemy's heart. - Cast a sphere of intense light, disabling occular vision in the AoE, and in which only the passive radar and the HUD remain visible and working properly. Light related behavior (stopped by walls, complete effect under direct angle) Caldari: Fragmenter Once we're done, they will never be able to recollect all the pieces. - Cast a sphere of fragmented titanium dust, disabling real-time HUD information (allies/ennemies arrows, shield/armor indicators, target informations) in the AoE, and in which only vision and passive radar remain working properly. Gallente: Echoer Hearing is about silence, while not hearing is about noise. Who knew ? - Cast a sphere of artificial echoes of battlefield environment, disabling passive radars (and radar indications) in the AoE, and in which only occular vision and HUD remain working properly. Minmatar: Smoker My brothers, let's bring some shadow to their damn light of heaven ! - Case a sphere of thick smoke (somehow), disabling occular vision in the AoE, and in which only the passive radar and the HUD remain visible and working properly. Smoke related behavior (spread through corridors and windows, not really spheric). HUD UPGRADES Info: HUD augmentation allowing your HUD to automatically adapt itself to specific battefield conditions. Granting its wearer specific combat situation advantages during a limited period of time. Fitting: new slot : HUD Upgrade (next to the "head" dropsuit slot on the fitting menu) Skill: Dropsuit upgrades > Dropsuit Core Upgrades > Dropsuit Engineering > HUD upgrades - lvl 1 / 3 / 5 = unlock: Basic / Advanced / Prototype Occular filter / Particle Eraser / Sound differentiator / Infrared Vision (better equipment = longer resistance to basic / advanced / prototype tactical devices) - +5% automatic activation duration / level Amarr: Occular filter Not only the true fervent can bear the infinite light, he becomes stronger with it. - Allow the wearer to keep seeing clearly in a Flasher AoE (sunglasses shade vision effect). Caldari: Particle Eraser It's a bit like our new Kaalakiota vacuum cleaner: ready to clean any dusty environment. - Allow the wearer to keep its HUD working properly in a Fragmenter AoE (insert any vision predator-like filter). Gallente: AI sound differentiator When the mind of the people is not ready to listen. A good AI can. - Allow the wearer to keep its passive radar working properly in an Echoer AoE (radar glowing effect). Minmatar: Infrared Vision They say their zealots are cold warriors. I say their blood is warm, and we are the one to make it cold once they're dead ! - Allow the wearer to keep seeing clearly in a Smoker AoE (infrared style vision filter). Your blade is an extension of your mind. It must be swift, silent, focused. And deadly.
Lex DOCIEL What The French Never.Surrender 21	Posted - 2014.02.16 14:39:00 - [2] - Quote QUESTIONS YOU WOULD ASK Why tactical devices as an alternative for grenades ? - Nobody likes grenade spam. Imagine such spam added to a flasher... Plus it should be used mainly by assault dropsuits, which could now have new toys to play and experiment with. Addind some diversity in play style and tactics on the battlefield is good to take. Such devices are cool, but it will be OP / abused / spammed / pay-to-win / insert hater comment ! - 4 different devices, 4 different effects, 4 different purposes. Plenty of possibilities. Who can know for sure if it will be OP or not, abused or not ? Nobody. So let's give it a try. How can I know which HUD Upgrades or which tactical device to fit to kick asses ? - You don't. It will depend on which race you like, which skill you trained, which ennemy you face, which game style you like, which situation you got in. If ennemies spam matar tactical devices for example, it could be a good idea for your heavy to fit matar HUD upgrades, while the assault wear different tactical and HUD to be polyvalent and efficient. Why HUD upgrades are not high/low mods instead ? - HUD Upgrades actually adds nothing to dropsuit / weapon base stats whatsoever. It only upgrades the HUD. New function requires proper new slot. Why HUD upgrades switch automatically ? - Because who wants to bother activating what your dropsuit software should activate for you ? You already have to deal with your environment, your allies, your enemies, your ammos, where you are going to launch your device... Your blade is an extension of your mind. It must be swift, silent, focused. And deadly.
Lex DOCIEL What The French Never.Surrender 31	Posted - 2014.02.17 09:34:00 - [3] - Quote Mordecai Sanguine wrote: But why the HUD upgrades are a counter to the same racial technology ??? I mean why Amarr would create the only thing that can disable their own weapons ??? Why Occultar filter (Amarr) is against flasher (Amarr)? You don't get the main purpose of tactical devices. Nor do you understand why I put the tactical device and its counter HUD upgrades as being used from the same race. This is my bad. I didn't explain well enough the dynamic I propose to implement into the game. Tactical devices must be thought of, not as grenade-like weapons, but as devices supporting an assault on specific situation. And what we call "counter" is actually more of a HUD automated adaptation to the use of the related tactical device. What happen if we do what you suggest ? For example, you are Minmatar, and you are against Amarr. That would mean: - Your fit: Smoker (Minmatar tactical) + sunglasses (Amarr HUD, which we swapped to Minmatar as you suggest). - Enemy fit: Flasher (Amarr tactical) + infrared vision (Minmatar HUD, which we swapped to Amarr) = You launch your smoke at the enemy. You enter the smoke to take advantage of its effect and to get rid of your enemy (let's say, to take a strategic point). BUT, you have sunglasses, and he has infrared. Meaning, he can see you, but you don't. So, basically, you just screwed yourself. On the other hand, he attacks you with a flasher, and while he enters the AoE, he is blinded and you are not because you got the proper HUD (which would be your racial). Efficient engagements... This is the reason why, a tactictal and its "counter" must go to the same race. And if you meant this tactical devices as spamming style grenade, that is because currently in Dust, you can stack up to 3 grenades, and replenish them quite fast. The tactical device is a one-shot grenade. Meaning, you will just have one shot (cannot stack more than one unit), and would need quite a lot of nanites to get one more in your inventory. What would you do ? You would keep it for specific occasions, specific situation, where such a tactical device, coupled with its proper "counter" (from the same race), would be the only way to take care of it efficiently. From now on, I will talked about HUD AA, for HUD Automated Adaptation, which is the effect of a HUD upgrade when entering a Tactical Device AoE. Thanks Mordecai, you highlighted crucial points I didn't explain well. I will correct that ASAP. Your blade is an extension of your mind. It must be swift, silent, focused. And deadly.
Lex DOCIEL What The French Never.Surrender 31	Posted - 2014.02.17 10:11:00 - [4] - Quote Sole Fenychs wrote: When was that tournament? I believe a 6vs6 tournament would be currently kind of hard, due to lack of corp battles. This is not the place. Go PM, and come back to the subject please. Sole Fenychs wrote: Anyway, it doesn't change my main point. We already have enough randomness in encounters.. I strongly disagree. Randomness in armor style and weapon adaptation ? With a 0.56432 sec TTK, I don't see much randomness into it. But this discussion would be relevant after 1.8 (hopefully). So, let's save it for later. And currently, most of the games are of the same kind: borring red-line style. This is where I would like to put some "randomness" in. The past week, I only made 2 games (out of, let's say 50) which was good battleground games. One was public, the other one was PC. And I am an average k/d ratio scout player on basic/advanced stuff at best. Sole Fenychs wrote: I've got nothing against a flashbang or something (No radar disabling or **** like that, though, because that's what the scan attributes are for), but giving it a dedicated counter module is hilariously stupid. If there's a counter module, it would need to counter all of those four effects. I can see you didn't grasp the purpose of HUD ugrades and HUD AA ("counters"). Please read again my second post, I made some Edits to make it clearer. Plus, it is NOT a module. Your blade is an extension of your mind. It must be swift, silent, focused. And deadly.
Lex DOCIEL What The French Never.Surrender 36	Posted - 2014.02.17 14:40:00 - [5] - Quote Sole Fenychs wrote: Yeah, you want to give those counters their own slot and add a cooldown. So there's even more randomness, because now a player who you know is invulnerable to flashbangs will suddenly be affected by them anyway. And you won't even know how long you have to wait, because there's three tiers of each device. Your thought is interesting and your point relevant. Even with a HUD upgrade, any duster would be affected by 3 other tactical devices. A countdown to HUD AA would only add randomness, or at least complexity, to their use. No one would like having to count in his head while he rushes a strategic point to be sure not running out of HUD AA. That's why what you said here has to be take into consideration. Then which use could we do of basic / advanced / prototype HUD Upgrade ? I got an idea which I think would content both you and me, by lowering randomness while leaving HUD upgrades level up interesting. What about a slightly delayed HUD AA ? Meaning, the basic HUD upgrade would start its HUD AA only after a short time into the related tactical device AoE. While the prototype version would not be delayed at all. Like: Basic HUD AA - Needs 3 seconds to completely adapt to environment change (both entering and exiting an AoE). Advanced HUD AA - Needs 2 seconds to completely adapt to environment change (both entering and exiting an AoE). Prototype HUD AA - Needs 0.3 seconds to completely adapt to environment change (both entering and exiting an AoE). What do you think ? It would work exactly like your eye adapting itself to light. That could work out pretty fine on the battlefield, while being realistic and clearing most randomness as well. Your blade is an extension of your mind. It must be swift, silent, focused. And deadly.
Lex DOCIEL What The French Never.Surrender 38	Posted - 2014.02.18 09:33:00 - [6] - Quote Sole Fenychs wrote: Now that sounds better. Though 3 seconds is a lot - That sounds more like militia tier. It should be more like 1.5, 0.8, 0.2. Remember that a disorientation of 0.2 seconds can kill someone in this game. I have two additional ideas: - Give the devices activation delays (e.g. you plant the Flasher and it activates after a few seconds, similar to an uncooked grenade) - Make affected areas easily visible at a distance - In addition, allow the effects to persist after the duration, with a slowly dispersing effect. This means that, for example, the smoke bomb will fill a room with smoke for 20 seconds. Once those 20 seconds are over, people can mostly see through it, but the smoke is still visible to people who pass by and allows them to know that there might be a fight going on. This has the following effects: - Players have time to decide to run away when a device that they aren't shielded against appears - Players who are shielded can make the tactical decision to run into an affected area, because it marks a fight. This also allows players to use the devices in order to pretend that there's an assault going on, which causes a diversion. Hell, you could have a coordinated team that throws smoke in five different places and prevents the enemy from knowing where to counter the assault. Concerning your additional ideas: 1 - devices activation delay : such delay has to exist (as you said, like a grenade). But we are definitely not planting them, but throwing them (like grenade here again). I challenge you to plant, let's say a drop uplink, in the middle of 2 heavies, 1 logi and 3 assaults. 2 - Make affected areas easily visible at a distance : Definitely. But I guess it should depends on the kind of effect the TaD (tactical devices) have. Flasher and Smoker would have a really strong effect on vision, so it has to be visible from distance, their effect being really strong. Concerning Fragmenter and Echoer, their effect is more desorienting, which can still be way more effective than the two other TaD, but in really specific situations. I don't think their visual need to be as strong. Plus it would be more realistic. 3 - persistance and dispersion : Yes once again, but depending on the TaD. Flasher could have no dispersion, and a direct complete effect but getting weaker when you get farther from the center of the AoE. While Smoker could took some seconds to reach its full potential (for the smoke to spread) but would reach a further AoE and/or take some time dispersing afterward. I think we could do the same with Echoer (Flasher style AoE) and Fragmenter (Smoker style AoE). Concerning the following effects: 1 - players can run away : yes when they see it coming from a distance, and no when it is intended to kick their ass. A bit like a grenade in fact. 2 - players can take the decision to dive into it, plan coordinated attacks, etc : Here we are, you know realise the huge interest of such devices, and how it can really bring new strategies to the battlefield ! Just imagine how it could work also on vehicles. How they would be a great way to get rid of a tank getting too close to your infantry by crushing its HUD informations, or completely confusing an assault dropship with hundred of enemies signals using an echoer. How a scout could deploy a flasher to stand enough time on a strategic point for his team to catch up with him. Or a heavy hidden in its own smoker, countered by a fragmenter, making impossible for him to distinguish between its allies and ennemies. Limitless new strategies, tactics and moves ! That would bring Dust514 to the next level. Your blade is an extension of your mind. It must be swift, silent, focused. And deadly.