dtdesign

I do not think it is healthy to give "ordinary" players the ability to use those borderline gamebreaking buffs at their own will. You're looking at it solely from the perspective of someone who doesn't want to wait for the commander to initiate something. However, you're missing the point that a commander isn't just a buff machine, but is also someone who coordinates the team. Especially new players heavily benefit from these coordinate actions, they get a sense of what is happening. There is a guiding hand that shows them what is possible, even fulfilling a power fantasy by being part of a mighty rush that steamrolls the other team. Simply by participating in these rushes, they learn about how powerful teamwork is, they learn about the different angles of the map and all other sorts of stuff. If you were ever unlucky enough to play with me being your commander, you would have noticed that I always have encouraging words to say once a rush is over. Regardless of its outcome, I'm always looking into the positive effects and to make people understand that a failed rush is only a minor setback. Yesterday on Arctic Stronghold, we did a doza rush on Barracs but where spotted way too early + MRLS spam. Eventually we all died, but bar was down to 40% perma. This is what I focused on, highlighting that we did good damage and that we can build upon this. Afterwards there was no negativity in team chat left, everyone accepted that this didn't work out, but that it's not the end. A few minutes later we successfully rocket rushed the GDI PP from tib field and pretty much everyone from the failed doza rush was part of it again. This was the nail in the coffin for GDI and we wrapped it up shortly after, the failed bar rush didn't matter. The commander is a really challenging role, you constantly have to evaluate the situation and your CP budget to figure out what would be most effective. What if you see a good opportunity building up, but some players in tunnels or whatever decide its time to blow their own buff? Even worse, having some kind of mini rush could reveal a weakness in the enemies defense that you were about to exploit at a bigger scale. Their mini rush fails and your window of opportunity is gone. How do you expect commanders to work if you take away their tools?

The VP gains are fine, like Syntharn said, they offset the loss in VP caused by standing around and organizing things. You would be surprised how much I stand around as a commander with SBH, simply observing the battlefield and figuring out what should be the next move. I mean yes, VP rewards from landing a nice cruise are a great thing, but at the same time it is a huge investment. Some players can easily snipe the missile and/or tanks could simply back off a bit. Also take into consideration that if the missile does not have a strategic impact, a lot of CP are flused down the drain for nothing. If we're touching support powers, then please remove the damage of cruise missile on GT. It is now frequently abused by commanders to drop an airstrike+cruise on a GT and in 9/10 cases the GT is gone without being able to do anything about it. Oh and double cruise spam on nukes/ions became a thing too…

I really see people suddenly moving like maniac whenever you miss them. This makes it much more difficult for a sniper to get a hit, but I think this is a healthy evolution in terms of game play. Too many times I could barely miss repairs with the silenced snipers and they wouldn't move even a bit. In terms of the actual sound being used, I love it. I absolutely love it. No matter what you're doing right now, it stands out that much that you immediately try to figure out where the shot came from and where to find cover. Bonus points for having a sound that is quite familiar to most people due to the use of (similar) sounds in movies and tv shows. You might have never heard that sound before in Ren X, but the moment it first plays, you instinctively know someone is after you.

I second that, the new sounds are SUPERB! Really eases my life of a tech/hotwire in a heated battle where suppressed sounds go unnoticed.

Renegade X experiences a significant influx of new players in the past months, which are absolutely fantastic news. However, this comes with a significant downside in terms of proximity mines. There have been a huge amount of games where new players have randomly placed mines, either overmining or adding mines when not at full mines. First things first, I'm not having any feasible solution whatsoever, this is merely a thread intended to spark some ideas to tackle the problem. If you're playing as a dedicated base miner, there is little to no way to figure out what is happening. Last game was Walls BH (which tbh, is a terrible map w/o GT in public games!) where I did nothing but play tech since the start of the game. I made it absolutely clear that I will take care of all mines and boy, I had an excellent plan for everything. The game ended with me having 14 kills in 20ish minutes, all mine kills, they didn't even once hit a building as long as I had control over the mines, even ramps hat evil hidden mines killing SBH left and right. However, at some point people started placing mines at random places that made no sense and it took me many minutes to either convince them to remove them or have a mining ban pass. At some point I wasn't able to keep up with the mining madness and eventually the enemy team backdoored with 30/30 mines. The problem: There is nothing in the game that I can use to track down WHO placed mines, let alone WHERE they have been placed. I have to manually walk to each place to check if mines are missing to alert the team and then spend time figuring out, where these missing mines are placed. We had 20 ppl in the team and like 10 or so were either new players or not communicating at all. Let me get this out: I'm a big fan of new players, but (a) it should be balanced among teams and (b) we need to find a way to have them play without messing up things. Especially (b) is huge, because they are trying out mines with the absolute best intentions, but are unknowngly messing up stuff, eventually leading to buildings being destroyed. Maybe have two mine limits, like a "core limit" for base mining (not affected by overmining) and a "ffa limit" for mines everywhere else? This would open up the possibility of having proper mines without restricting the system too much. The time to dectect misplaced mines and the time to fix those mines is huge, sometimes taking up to 1 or 2 minutes to get something fixed that was purely an accident, giving the other team a random advantage that is also nearly impossible to defend against. Killing a building should be a reward for sneaking in or having a plan play out, not pure randomness caused by a new player.

Had this crash twice on Steppe in the past few days, running a GTX 970 w/ 32 bit client. Takes quite a lot of time before it happens, I guess about 30 minutes or more. The 64 bit client has its sound bugs, so yeah, tough decision.

The Recon Bike is very strange due to its high velocity combined with its extreme maneuverability, doing a sharp 90 degree is like what, 9g on the driver? It causes homing missiles to be unable to hit it at all, relying on projectile weapons to deal significant damage. Regular missiles already have issues properly tracking a buggy, but the recon bike is much worse than that. Everything about it feels strange in some way, it's a complete outlier when compared to all other vehicles in the game. I guess a more sensible turn rate would be enough to put it in line, on the plus side making it easier for inexperienced players to drive. Oh and also it is way too cheap in regards to its early game power, it can easily 1v1 any MRLS due to the laughable homing rockets. GDI needs some kind of compensation, otherwise this will favor Nod heavily. The maps that implement the purchasable recon bike have been designed with it in mind. Just think of Crashsite with its Titan/Wolverine available in the abandoned WF, the whole map was designed to work well with them. Slapping these or other vehicles on other maps can really break the balance of these maps. Lets face it, most maps in RenX are basically abandoned and contain the same flaws for many years, randomly adding new vehicles without adjusting these maps has the potential of breaking them. And you can't easily roll back that changes without a massive uproar, because you would be taking things away from players.

You are correct. Every. Single. Word. People like MARIUSZ are the reason I do not play in lowplayer games, because some tryhard will abuse every little bit out of the game for the sake of winning. 10vs10 on Field with Nod being base locked? MARIUSZ will happily roll in with 5 buffed mammoths, you simply cannot defend against that if your team is made out of a bunch of randoms. These things become unkillable.

I second that, early building kills are completely game breaking and especially in public games cause a lot of frustration among players. Maps like Volcano, Complex and Canyon are sad candidates for this. It should either be impossible to destroy buildings early on or at least add some kind of logic that will only disable them for like 5 minutes before the come back online with 1% perma. This gives the other team an advantage, while still allowing the affected team to partially recover from the early game.

It may make sense to not explain it. That sounds counterintuitive at first, but the idea is to keep the communication with your team limited to essential commands. You simply tell your team to "PUSH FIELD NOW" while the harvy is rolling out of your base and your spy plane is inbound. Your team is already busy fighting the enemy and getting themselves in position. YOU already thought this through, YOU spend time evaluating the possibilities, YOU saw an opportunity. Tell them only what they need to know to make your dreams happen, keep them focused on their task!

If the commander is bad, you can always elect a new one, so there already exists a way to solve this issue without introducing new things. Besides that, the commander should be always in charge of the harvester, period. For example, I once was commander for Nod on Field, with Nod being baselocked by GDI tanks. We had a somewhat okayish tunnel presence so I went with a pickle rush on GDI. Assembled everyone and right before we left, I started the harvester. That harvester died horribly and it was intentional. The idea was that having so many players invested in the rush creates a vacuum in our base that GDI can exploit for a counter tank attack. Good luck with your buffed mammoths that get shoved back by a stubborn harvester, eventually buying enough time for players to respawn in our base. Players tend to think of the harvester as a stupid money making machine, but as a commander you can make use it in a strategic way. Even in situations where you are not base locked, but the enemy is partially on the field, you can send out the harvester. Maybe it will die, but it will draw the attention of greedy enemies, while allowing your tanks and infantry to roll out, effectively trading a harvester kill for field control. That's the rationale behind the first "rule" of not interfering with the commander powers. Players sometimes do not see the bigger picture, while you as the commander will spent a considerable amount of time evaluating different strategies. At the end of the day, the harvester is just another tool for you to work with.

A simple approach: If there is a commander: All power to the commander. If there is no commander: If the harvester gets destroyed 3 consecutive times: Harvester idles in the ref bay until eternity. If the harvester is idle in ref bay: Vote option to start the harvster again. If the harvester starts dumping tib at ref: Reset the destruction counter. This requires no changes to existing maps, adds a rather simple counter for each team and introduces one new vote option which effectively clears the counter and starts the harvester. It is possible to refine this idea by adding periodic reminder messages ("Your harvester is secretly wanking in the ref bay, do something!") and to add some sort of dynamic status light at the ref that informs on the harvy state, like a flashing red light with "Harvester is stopped" or something.

Couldn't we just reduce the ridiculous amount of VP it rewards to the ENTIRE team? Especially in lower player games, the impact is huge and getting a vote passed is sometimes near impossible. I've seen too many teams where there was no commander and every player was pretty much ignorant of any votes or (benefit of the doubt) did not notice them. Also, I think we should remove the ability for non commanders to start any custom votes. Votes should either be specific to some objective (map change, kick player) or be started by the commander ("Who's in for a X rush?"). This could improve the situation by turning votes into something that really matters, rather than pointless banter of a bored player. Personally, I have not found players to be generally toxic towards a commander. There are and will always be some lonely jerks that blame others, but putting them aside most players seem to be grateful for someone taking their time to organize things. In the few times I had been commander, players were usually very encouraging, even when my ideas didn't work out. However, in some games it took some real effort to gather enough people for an unknown reason - this could be something worth investigating in terms of improving things.

Honestly, I don't know why you people focus so much on balancing the teams while the game is running. This is by far the most disruptive mechanic and can lead to a lot of frustration, without solving any real issues. Matches are a lot influenced by the early game, early harvester kills are quite important on some maps and immediately give one team or the other the edge. Coupled with the absurd VP reward for killing it, a much stronger team can easily capitalize on the early game advantage and dominate the mid game. The whole idea was to balance the teams at start and deny players from manually switching in the first few minutes. This way teams have a somewhat equal start and it is up to the individual players to make something out of it. If one team comes up on top: Good, they earned it, they worked for it! This is the complete opposite of current games where teams are too often so ridiculously stacked on map start that the other team is extremly unlikely to come out on top regardless of what they do. @Havoc69 MMR is not the perfect metric and has its flaws? Who cares! This isn't about finding the perfect solution for all of life problems, it's simply about trying to find a sufficient way to start with and build upon it. Balancing at start based on MMR should give us enough of an idea of where this is going and if it holds up, without disrupting the game too much.

One thing that never felt "right" in Under is the ability to spam vehicle fire into the tunnel exits towards field. I've seen in countless times that Nod was sieging GDI and had a dedicated arty keeping GDI's tunnel exit on lockdown. Some kind of rocks that obstruct the view would take vehicles out of the equation and should make it a bit easier for infantry to push out. Just a bit so that inf can exit the tunnel and walk a few steps while being concealed from vehicles.

I guess the most important point is that we do not need the silver bullet to resolve this issue once and for all. We do not need to constantly balance out teams during a match, let alone any siginificant gameplay changes, which would cause a lot of other issues down the line. Also, I see most players using Steam, even players like poi do use fake names at times, but a `.rank <DudeWithAbsurdKdr>` will reveal the true identity. With a few notable exceptions, the significant majority of the "known" players have a steam logon and thus an associated mmr. Right now we have a system that places people in teams at random, causing teams to be extremly imbalanced. It's like giving out wet towels to the one team and TARs to the other, you don't need to be a genius to imagine how this one ends. From my perspective, the cheapest method we can try is to place people ON JOIN based on the mmr: If there is a steam logon w/ MMR: Even teams: Put the player into the team with the lower total MMR. (Rationale: Balancing by MMR.) Uneven teams: Put the player into the team with the lower player count. If there is no steam logon or no MMR: Even teams: Favor the team with the HIGHER mmr. (Rationale: Try to place less experienced players in stronger teams.) Uneven teams: Put the player into the team with the lower player count. Disallow players from changing teams for the first few minutes of their playtime? I don't know exactly how the "in flight" players on new maps are handled. Considering that I observed a lot of games with extreme differences (e.g. 10vs16 players) during the prematch phase, I assume that the server counts them in while they are still loading the map. *IF* the server knows about the majority of players during map start: Distribute players based on their MMR evenly between both teams. Each team gets roughly the same number of "unknown" players (no logon/mmr) at RANDOM. Yes, this will tear "friends" apart that like to play together. Lets call this a sacrifice to be made in an effort to create more balanced games to keep new players. There appears a constant influx of new players that we need to keep and as the playerbase grows we can start lifting those rules. For now the rationale should be to take the EASIEST approach that requires the LEAST changes. We do not need a sophisticated or otherwise over engineered solution! Keep it simple, stupid. PS: I'm sorry, I always try to write short messages and end up with a wall of text. Duh.

Ryz already did a great job of laying out the issue, so I'll just try to add another perspective on this matter. I was in that Field game yesterday and I was on GDI, with all the merits of getting roflstomped and baselocked. After some time (could be 10 mins or such) I was so annoyed that I asked myself if I really wanted to keep playing or not. I left the game, because I didn't feel running against a wall for an eternity until Nod finally puts an end to this. I play to have fun and I don't really mind losing a game, but as a player, I need a perspective. Winning must be something I can achieve in some way: Sneaking in solo, being part of a rush, repping hotwire/tech or even (as of lately) volunteering as a commander to get things organized. It's frustrating to experience that you lose, because there was nothing one could do. The outcome of that game was set in stone by factors that I as a player did not control or could even influence. During prematch I hit tab and looked at the scoreboard and I immediately saw a huge stack of high profile players all placed in Nod. They did not switch or anything, the game just put them there. And I'm strictly not talking about poi like headshot machines, but instead a lot of players that have proben to be strong teamplayers. GDI was no match and pretty much everyone knew it. So, the match started and Field is notorious hard to even get enough players to defend the own harvester, let alone getting them to attack the opposing one. Our harvester died before reaching the tib field, getting hit from 3 or 4 rocket launchers from different vectors. I mean, even getting 2 players to pick a rocket launcher at start is like an achievement of its own and then this. We somehow managed to get Nod's harvester too, but I wasn't sure if it just exploded by itself as an act of solidarity, because it knew what was coming. We absolutely need some enforced team balancing, that tries to level the playing field on a team level. These stacked matches are killing of this game, steamrolling a team might be fun at times, but if it gets the norm, it's just boring. There's no challenge, it's just point whoring on one side and getting slaughtered on the other. We should aim for games that go back and forth. There will always be onesided games and no auto balancing can solve this, but it will prevent these things from becoming the norm. The average game needs to be balanced, outliers are perfectly fine. Please, DO SOMETHING AND DO IT SOON!

I think the real problem here is that people sometimes simply miss the vote. They do not vote for/against it, because they did not notice it being there in the first place. This happens quite a few times with map change votes, where a lot of people are surprised of the sudden end screen, because they did not notice it. It happened twice to me where I was in such an intense fight and so focused on what happens on the battlefield, that I did not take any notice of it whatsoever. Once the tunnel vision kicks in, the vote simply slips over your head and may just pass because of that. That said, I think there are essentially two ways to address this: Change the display of votes to stand out more, potentially more aggressive for votes that have a serious impact, for example, votes to surrender or change the map. Cons: This could be too distracting and thus be game breaking to some degree. Require a minimum quorum for votes to be able to pass. A change map vote with 10/10 YES should not be able to pass on a full 64 player server, like, ever. This could be a mixture of requiring a majority and a certain amount of votes cast depending on the type. A surrender vote could require at least 1/3 of the team to vote, while a map change requires, say, 1/3 of each team to vote. Cons: Votes are already borderline intransparent, including the ability to flip your decision back and forth like an idiot. Increasing the complexity ("We had 20/20 Yes Votes, why was it rejected?!") could seriously confuse people.

The crash logs are interesting, they appear to be cut off prematurely, as if some buffer was not fully flushed to disk at the time of the crash. […] [0021.57] Log: MIC::SetScalarParameterValue : Modifying 'MI_RockDirt_FakeLit' during gameplay. ParamName: GlobalParticleValue [0021.57] Log: MIC::SetScalarParameterValue : Modifying 'MI_RockDirt_FakeLit' during gameplay. ParamName: GlobalSecondaryParticleValue [0021.57] Log: MIC::SetScalarParameterValue : Modifying 'MI_Smoke_FakeLit' during<EOF> […] [0029.19] Log: MIC::SetScalarParameterValue : Modifying 'MI_Smoke_FakeLit' during gameplay. ParamName: GlobalParticleValue [0029.19] Log: MIC::SetScalarParameterValue : Modifying 'MI_Smoke_FakeLit' during gameplay. <EOF> […] [0021.92] Warning: USkeletalMeshComponent::SyncActorToRBPhysics(): no PhysicsAssetInstance for Rx_Pawn CNC-Walls.TheWorld:PersistentLevel.Rx_Pawn_19 with skeletalmesh: NULL [0021.94] Warning: USkeletalMeshComponent::SyncActorToRBPhysics(): no PhysicsAssetInstance for Rx_Pawn CNC-Walls.TheWorld<EOF> The last crash log is attached Launch.log

I tried both the 32- and the 64-bit version. After joining the server and completing the loading procedure, the game is rendered as it should and response to user input, such as movement and camera. 2-3 seconds the game crashes, but with a slightly different behavior. On 32 bit I get thrown to the desktop right away, but with 64 bit the game appears to be stuck on the screen for a while before showing the desktop again (I'm using 3 monitors, it only blockes the center one). However, the sound cues stop at the same time, so the 64 bit version staying on screen is most likely not linked to the cause of the crash.

Hello, I’ve been absent from Ren-X for quite some time and recently gave in the itch to install the game once more. There have been some changes in the meantime and especially the infantry got some interesting (balance) changes. I’m a passionate FPS player, with a strong preference for tactical shooters, for over two decades and I have my fair share of ExtraCredits Over the past weeks I have focused a lot on infantry warfare in Ren-X and started noticing a few things that feel a bit rough around the edges. I would like to propose some subtle changes to various characters classes that I feel should bring them more in line and to raise the skill ceiling. Marksman The sniper has really grown on me, it is incredibly useful to defend the harvester from a remote place. It is a bit too powerful over longer distances, especially since there is no damage fall-off. Suggestion: Slight decrease of the rate of fire of the marksman rifle. Shotgunner / McFarland The shotgun / flak cannon has always been wonky, and the hit rate feels somewhat arbitrary, with point blank shots doing almost no damage while some shots barely touch the knee and still bring a 1k toon down to low health. Suggestion: Honestly, this is probably the most difficult piece, because it is super easy to throw off any balance. I’m not sure what to do about them and I simply wanted to point it out. Gunner The fast projectile speed and very long range make it an effective tool to fight against Nod tanks. It is exceptionally efficient against the Artillery, which by itself has become the dominant tool for Nod’s area control. The lack of a target lock is greatly offset by its high velocity, it almost feels like a laser. On top of that, the splash damage against infantry feels a bit too high, the Gunner already has a respectable sidearm which should be the weapon of choice against players. Suggestion: Decrease the rocket velocity without changing the effective range. Reduce rocket (splash) damage against infantry to promote the use of the sidearm. Havoc / Sakura The inaccuracy of the unscoped sniper rifle is great, it stops players from abusing it in close quarter fights, focusing more on their designated role. However, this means that Havoc and Sakura are merely used to fight enemy tech support for tanks, which feels a bit dire to me. The utility smoke grenade is highly situational, and I think it would make more sense to push them towards a recon unit. I can imagine something like a “mini” scout airplane that works like the air strike binoculars, but instead provides intel on all units in a small area. Suggestion: Replace the smoke grenade with replenishing binoculars that tag enemies in a small area like the scout plane. Sydney / Raveshaw The delay before the weapon activation isn’t my favorite change, but I can see the motivation behind this, so I’m not going to complain about it. My concern is the EMP grenade which has been used in multiple matches by the attacking side to box in the opposing team. The map design usually leads to a small corridor for vehicles out of the base and often a strong presence of Sydney (and to some extent Raveshaw) caused a constant spam of EMP grenades despite their significant cooldown. The EMP grenade is a nice touch, but they enable one or two good players to put a complete halt to a breakout attempt. Even if the effect is only active for a few seconds, it gives the attacking team the slight edge to pull some range and tear the defenders apart. Suggestion: Limit the EMP grenade to 2, requiring a refill in the base, like (timed) C4. EMP grenades should be a meaningful choice. Mobius / Mendoza This is by far the classes that receive the most complaints and oh boy, do I like shredding GDI with my lovely doza. Despite the usual complaints about Mendoza’s damage against vehicles and especially buildings, I see nothing wrong with that. Nod’s superior infantry is quite balanced considering the toy vehicles in comparison. However, both are the top choice for dominating any sort of close quarter combat, with Field (X) and Under being the prime examples for this. I would like to see some balance of their weapons in terms of “user friendliness” by shifting damage away from headshots. This would make them a bit more forgiving while also reducing the impact of a handful of top players whose superior aim capabilities completely crush the average player. Suggestion: Increase the damage multiplier against infantry, but decrease the multiplier for headshots.

I agree on the rotation, things have become really interesting lately. All though being on huge clusterfuck, Snow is actually quite decent: It has some constant back and forth, both in terms of vehicles and infantry, the side-ramps to the bunker added a lot of variation. Under on the other hand is just a horrible timesink where most of the time people just siege the vehicle entrance (read: not actual buildings) and the infantry chokepoints are crowded with 1k toons of the sieging team. It's really a bummer that the map design makes it super easy for one team to cage-in the other. I'd rather play Walls three times in a row than one round on Under.

I agree, adding random spray to non-scoped rifles is somewhat realistic (lol, this is Renegade!), but would be completely out-of-sync in regards to all other classes. Stripping armor makes snipers more vulnerable, but the actual impact of this change is rather small. Don't get me wrong, I really like these small changes, far better than stomping a class into the ground. In regards to other solutions: Their ramjet is basically a handheld skyscraper, is there a particular reason why we shouldn't make them a bit less agile? Slightly decrease their movement speed makes them far more vulnerable to close range combat as their evasion potential gets dimished. It also rewards players who take their time to sneak up at these snipers by making snipers a somewhat easier prey. Such a change wouldn't make players like the jpoi stack any less deadly, but at the same time would make it easier to kill them. Anyone who has seen them play LCG knows how deadly they can be, but also how easy it is to shove some bullets in their faces while they're basically a slowly moving brick. One last thing for all those who die to snipers in close-range combat way too often: Do. Not. Jump. Your momentum and direction is preserved while airborne, which means that the point at which you touch the ground again can be perfectly predicted, there is no deviation and no chance for you to evade.