Rockets.

[Spector CZ]

I've said it before. The solution for the secondary is so simple... Just make it a 3-rocket spiral, but way slower moving then primary, with an explenation due to it moving in spiral. So super high damage, but hard to hit, easy to dodge.

The solution to primary is simple as well. There's 2 ways to make balanced rocket:
1) slower, with big splash radius
3) super fast with small splash radius

Combining it will make them op and weird feeling... just as they are now.

[HexxuSz0r]

they do not need to be faster please, i have been sniping with rockets already.

[Stolid]

I've said it before. The solution for the secondary is so simple... Just make it a 3-rocket spiral, but way slower moving then primary, with an explenation due to it moving in spiral. So super high damage, but hard to hit, easy to dodge.

It may be viable, but maybe not quite the way it used to look. The spiraling rockets probably have an angle below 15 degrees which would result in a speed reduction of less than 5%. That won't be significantly harder to hit.
To make it actually hard to hit you would have to get below shock core speed, which is almost 17% slower than a rocket.
Of course there is nothing to prevent you from reducing it by that much anyway, but it will seem quite unrealistic. To combat that somewhat you could make them spiral with a much sharper angle (faster spiraling), but at some point the big exhaust flame will start looking very weird.

Even if you can make this look decent, there is still the issue of the rocket size. Spamming rockets down corridors is already quite effective because of it, so having 3 right next to each other will really fill a corridor up.

I wouldn't mind seeing this experimented with, but as long as the rockets need to be as big as they are (in order to make them register reliably online) I'm somewhat skeptical that this will work for most situations.

[Spector CZ]

It may be viable, but maybe not quite the way it used to look. The spiraling rockets probably have an angle below 15 degrees which would result in a speed reduction of less than 5%. That won't be significantly harder to hit.
To make it actually hard to hit you would have to get below shock core speed, which is almost 17% slower than a rocket.
Of course there is nothing to prevent you from reducing it by that much anyway, but it will seem quite unrealistic. To combat that somewhat you could make them spiral with a much sharper angle (faster spiraling), but at some point the big exhaust flame will start looking very weird.

Even if you can make this look decent, there is still the issue of the rocket size. Spamming rockets down corridors is already quite effective because of it, so having 3 right next to each other will really fill a corridor up.

I wouldn't mind seeing this experimented with, but as long as the rockets need to be as big as they are (in order to make them register reliably online) I'm somewhat skeptical that this will work for most situations.

Nobody says it can be spiraling in higher angle It could also look super cool, if it would fly in highly circulating motion. My view on the issue is, the power should be there. And it should come with consequences (you are loading rockets - could take longer to load them - so you are vulnerable in the meantime)

About the rocket size... I don't understand, why it already isn't a point collision (or whatever it's called). Why it was possible back in 99 to register 1 point collision rocket (was it like this or am I mistaken?) and now, with better technology and higher speed, it's problematic and we have non registrating hits even with capsule?

[Stolid]

In my Sticky Rocket Launcher thread I make a case for why loading rockets isn't that great of a disadvantage anyway and why loading (identical to primary) rockets is a problematic mechanic that hasn't worked great in any UT, but that's another discussion.

From what I understand projectiles have a significant size now to make them compete with hitscan. Why hit registration goes noticeably down when using smaller sizes, like Wail's rockets, I don't know. The netcode is still in fairly early stages and far from as good as it could and will be. Whether it will some day handle point collision rockets reliably I don't know, but even if it could it is likely the devs wouldn't go with that. If that is indeed the case, then it limits the kinds of things you can do with them and limits what you can do with a loaded pack even more.

[nubizZz]

I like the slow spiral idea. It wouldn't need to be mathematically precise to be plausible. You could also just increase the angle to get the correct behavior you want.

I'm still not keen on salvos in general, but at this point anything would help. Not only are rockets clunky, dominant, and unchallenging, there doesn't seem to be anywhere near a consensus on a general direction for them to go, let alone precise details to hash out, which to me comes back to Stolid's thread here.

I would like to see it move more towards where Tribes is, or somewhere between Tribes and UT. With high weapon efficacy, shots have a ceiling on how impressive they can be. The problem, of course, is how those who are unpracticed see these shots as lucky.

These are the kinds of shots that are why I prefer to lean towards low efficacy weapons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YCZxzCgR-8

[Smurgl]

I'd like to see the rockets go back to being all about splash damage - not direct hits. At the moment, it feels like it's worth the gamble to go for direct hits whereas it didn't in UT99 in most situations. Adding in the spread / spiral option is better because it allows more utility and you're less likely to be tri-rocket bombed on a regular basis! A damage reduction on spread / spiral rockets would also be good.

I think it needs the collision of the projectile to be reduced as far as it can go without it feeling like you should have hit but didn't. That might be enough, but the larger scale models is probably a part of this as they're simply taking up more of the screen. If it's not enough then I think it needs to have the damage reduced below 100 and, ideally, the single rocket to become more responsive - remove that little delay.

[InVader]

Imho making the aoe bigger/stronger would just reward bad aim. It would only make sense if the aoe would deal dmg based on the number of opponents caught.

[nubizZz]

The aoe doesn't need to be much bigger, if at all, but again you do not seem to understand rockets in principle. It is not about rewarding "bad aim" but buffering the difficulty of hitting an aware target with a slow, dodgeable projectile. Aim becomes the difference between 30% and 60% splash damage. It should not be about hit or miss.

[lg-]

I think rockets need to be sped up, having them be so slow is actually harder to dodge - since you have many rockets coming at you at the same time because they are so slow. If they would pass faster, they would both feel better and not cause 10 rockets to be in the same area at nearly the same time.

[HexxuSz0r]

I think rockets need to be sped up, having them be so slow is actually harder to dodge - since you have many rockets coming at you at the same time because they are so slow. If they would pass faster, they would both feel better and not cause 10 rockets to be in the same area at nearly the same time.

this is sort of true honestly : D for ctf

[dangerousShark09]

Rockets should be sped up, but at the cost of decreasing the damage to 90 and reverting back to the classic secondary style.

[lg-]

Rockets should be sped up, but at the cost of decreasing the damage to 90 and reverting back to the classic secondary style.

Agreed. Maybe a rocket to the head could be 100, but otherwise it should be 90.

[Squeebo]

I like how the rockets are now for the most part, the travel times seem fair, fire rate fine and direct hit damage fair as well. I have no issue with taking 100 damage from a direct rocket. The splash damage sometimes seems too high however, or too large of a radius perhaps.

[nubizZz]

I hate this tweak by feel non-sense. Or this iterative metamorphosis we seem to think will work.

There are ways you could balance lower damage rockets. I'm not crazy about them being fast, but damage is one of the only tweaks that can work with salvos. IF we plan on keeping salvos (which I do not advocate) I would consider the idea of fastish, low damage rockets, with less splash. Essentially tooling each rocket with the potential for a salvo in mind. I think, though, that with lower damage rockets essentially castrating the primary fire, the secondary fire needs to be more robust, or moved to primary and replaced.

If you reduce the damage enough, no one will miss insta-rockets. Go back to the full on 8ball principle of minirockets. This doesn't necessarily mean 6packs again, but give a 3 pack a longer hold, and maybe a manual placement and timing mechanism. If I can preload 3 rockets, why can't I release each rocket on a trigger pull, as fast, or slow as I want?

Take primary fire back to the old charge, with simultaneous release of the salvo. Charge prime for spread of 2 or 3 ~88 damage rockets, hold prime tap second for manual discharge. When salvo loads, give user x amount of time before automatic simultaneous discharge, but until then allow the user to release all input, and prime fire to discharge each rocket as fast or as slow as they want, and allow them to aim it kind of like the current sequential salvo, essentially giving salvos both a simultaneous and sequential option, but making the sequential option manual to increase it's versatility. Drop grenades and spirals, tweak velocity accordingly.

I'd also still love to test a single fire RL, with 100 damage rockets, slower - accelerating, that have a quick lock feature for secondary fire. If you can hit someone as it you were firing a scan (click on them) the rocket fires instantly locked (normal tracking applied). Primary fires normal, high damage single (slow) rockets, with applicable AoE.

This hybrid BS is non-sensical. We've seen what happens when you drop rocket damage below 100. Charging them becomes essential, if you have the time. You pretty much only fire singles when you absolutely have to, or intend mostly on moving your opponent over damaging him. Might as well tool the RL logically from there.