Demigan

I think that the moment you go for an all-out FPS+RTS hybrid that you are stuck with bots being an integral part of the experience. A 1v1 or even 5v5 wouldn't work well in most scenario's because it would completely stomp on the RTS genre. If every soldier on the ground is player controlled you'd better make servers with 50 players at minimum playing at a time, otherwise it's just FPS with a few RTS elements tacked on. A hybrid would need bots to command and move around. The FPS element would come the moment you take control of a unit. With the ability to take control of any AI unit players can do FPS as much as they like. With the costs involved for any unit you are actually pressed to do the most with the least amount of resources. I think we would also move away from the run&gun style combat we have in Renegade and most other shooters. To satisfy the RTS crowd more you would have to use the environment to your advantage. I would love to see an RTS anyway where it's more about cover and unit placement rather than the amount of clicks per second you can do and aggressive expansion. If infantry and tanks could be ordered close to cover that they would use to increase their survival as well as less of a calculation game where it's more about unit stats than actual stragetic play and outmaneuvering your enemy I would love it. Basically my idea would be to make every single player the commander. Everyone can command units around, everyone can build. This leads to a much deeper level of macro and micro management, where one player can focus on the economical side while other players are managing a fight somewhere else. Resources would be spread between a communal pot and the players. The communal pot receives 25%, the rest is spread over the players to do with as they please. Whenever you build or customize a unit it willl cost first from your personal pool and then from the communal pool. That way there's always something you can do. Since players build one and the same base I think that power supply would work normally. Although you could use an Earth 2150 idea where you need transmitting stations that supply power in a small area around them after you've build the actual powerplant somewhere else. I think a fog-of-war would be important. Weapon range could be extremely long, but vision is obscured. After X meters each unit see's a blurred line. Behind that blurred lin eyou can see a slightly blurred environment but no units. Any units vision bubble removes the blur, and any unit visible by one of your own units is visible to the player as well in command and FPS mode. This heavily emphasises vision and removes the ability of FPS players to fire at units that aren't visible. FPS players would have the advantage over AI controlled bots that they are capable of firing at things that moved beyond their vision, although I think that AI controlled units could be taught to take potshots in the direction they saw an enemy escape. Vision would also be a cone, rather than a dome. So AI controlled units wouldn't be able to see behind them. This breeds a more tactical gameplay, where players can't just create a defense based on having X units there with lots of firepower. Players would have to rely on vision and shocktroops (ideally 3D prints!). Sending in a (short-lived) scout would allow your other units to fire accurately, while your enemy can only guess at your exact location when returning fire. This also helps enforce a mixed army rather than "build X tanks and rush". Lower tier units are still useful, since their lower cost and vision make them ideal as sacrificial unit. You also have need for shocktroops that are used as canon fodder (3D prints again) to protect your more valuable and powerful units. Decentralized, communal organization. Most RTS's have simplified combat based on numbers and stats mostly because a player can focus on only so many things. By having multiple commanders that can simultaneously command several sets of units you overcome this need for simplification and have deeper mechanics. The cover system for instance would already clutter the world with more obstacles and cover, and open up the road for tactical decisions to destroy cover during battle or even before battle, or to place your own cover. Tactics could include preparing a battlefield beforehand, destroying cover that you think the enemy will use or even rigging some cover as traps once the enemy will try to use it in combat to either damage the units or simply remove the cover. Another addition would be flanking, where flanking a unit in cover would yield additional bonusses to accuracy to destroy that unit. A few units could be temporarily reserved by a player, allowing that player absolute control without having to wrestle with someone who thinks those units should be doing something else. The higher your rank and/or capabilities the more units you can reserve and for longer, although it won't be more than a % of the total amount of units compared to the total amount of players around. Reserved units cannot be FPS controlled by other players either for the duration of the reservation. Not only is it a way to make sure some units are doing what you want them too, it will enforce teamwork. Rather than one player trying to control 30 units not knowing if there's another player also trying to control (a portion of) those units, you instantly see which units you cannot control, and you can focus on positioning the remaining units. This would create a better micromanagement of the units and a stronger battlefield as a whole. With added micro-communications, where radio commands and microphone communications are restricted to almost exclusively the players helping the units in that battle you can really go deep in the amount of strategy these units can pull off. Exploits would mostly be hampering your team deliberately or through mismanagement because of a lack of experience. I think I'll use my MMORTS solution for this. Players get access to 3D printed buildings, vehicles and soldier as well as normally build buildings, vehicles and soldiers. 3D printed stuff is cheap, degrades over time if you don't keep it in repair and is in general weaker than a normally build unit. Every player can designate some 3D printers as their own, and everything they build with it is 100% under their control. They can share control if they want, but by default no one can control these units. The normally build units and structures are stronger (better armor, speed), smarter (the AI controlling them is better at using cover and has better accuracy and choses the right weapon for the job quicker) and shared between all players in the game. Every player has a rank based on their performance in that game and other games and can control a certain amount of units based on that rank, the aforementioned reserving of units. Players can vote to decrease someone's privilages to reserve or control units if they think that player is trolling or hampering them, leaving that player to play with his personal 3D printed buildings and units. This way you can punish players without having to fully remove them from the game only to troll somewhere else. This way a noob can also be taught the ropes, the noob will only be sacrificing and managing his own 3D printed stuff. Since 3D printed stuff is cheaper and quicker build the 'punishment' might actually not be that harsh, especially since all the players personal resources will now be available for 3D printed stuff rather than communal buildings and units. Any noob that manages to get certain stats or achievements, such as a solid resource collection despite his inferior units or destroy more than his units are worth, will get some privileges that the other players cannot vote to take away. Players that consistently mismanage communal units but are doing well with their 3D printed one's will receive automatic restrictions on their reservation privileges, and be able to control less if any communal units. If you can manage your 3D printed units but consistenly mismanage your communal one's you are definitely trolling. Another exploit I can see would be the difference between an FPS controlled unit and AI controlled unit. if for instance a player-controlled sniper can wipe the floor with almost any other infantry unit things get quickly out of hand and the RTS part of the game gets murdered. I think the best balance would be somewhere between player-controlled being simply better because they sacrifice their ability to lead those units more easily, but that groups of AI infantry could quickly outflank and kill player-controlled units if they aren't careful. Especially if a player is ordering those AI infantry around it shouldn't be too hard to overwhelm and kill/destroy player-controlled units. In my idea you would instantly need very large maps. If quantum computing isn't available a cartoonish style gameplay would be awesome since you can marry relatively high quality looking gameplay but can devote most resources to the AI and how things are controlled etc. For buildings I think you would mostly need extra things added like different base walls, base entrances, various guard towers, gun nests and field-deployable defenses like sandbags or barbed wire fences. I think the rewards, at least in my idea, would mostly be tied to a overall rank and a game-oriented rank. A higher rank in either will mean more units you can control at a time, possibly more resources available to you and possibly a larger variety of mutating options for your units available. For instance a low rank player only has access to the standard unit. A higher tier player can change the loadout option of that unit to have flak armor, or special composit armor on their tank, or a weapon that deals less damage against tanks but more against buildings etc. That way players have more customization of their units in side-grades, but a low rank won't really be any worse off. In fact, a low rank player has all the time in the world to learn the ropes with the standardized units before additional complexity is thrown at him through customizations. Here's something for a few 5 minutes

I actually have my doubts that it would be that easy. People in general have a limited imagination. They can think off the larger picture, but not the smaller details. That's why not everyone can write a good book, it entails more than the story, it is also about the interactions, descriptions and engaging the imagination of the readers. Then there's balance. Balance is a subjective thing. A high TTK game needs a different balance and weapon stats than a low TTK game, but how do you put that in? Even if the quantum computer can understand and build a world based on your instructions, it would still be the player that has to create a balance. Considering most players want to have their playstyle be the best and most effective it would instantly create imbalances and reduce the replayability of the game, or any game a single man will make. I think that true game design would still happen by a group of people. By adding different interests, playstyles and idea's into a single game you would be able to create a truly good experience, rather than a more bland reproduction of your past experiences. Here's an example: I had the idea for a persistent MMORTS. It has some more tagged on but that's not important. What is the problem with a persistent MMORTS? You have to find ways to keep it fun for everyone. It has to be fun for the casual player that joins and fights for a half an hour a day, it has to be fun for the dedicated player that spends half his day on the game. In normal RTS's a player that spends hours would be able to build massive armies that can crush 50 casual players, so how do you solve that? Then there's other factors, what if your base gets destroyed while you are offline? Or even if you are online? Forcing players to start all over again after having all their achievements thrown into the dirt would be bad, especially if any new base gets stomped upon by the people who crushed you in the first place. How do you stop griefing? With a massive persistent MMORTS there would be hundreds of ways to grief other players. From simply creating large alliances that crush lower players repeatedly with the goal of making them quit to things like banding together with other players to steal their stuff and create weaknesses for your real alliance to exploit. Even the solutions I came up with had their flaws, such as creating 3+ factions that everyone joins from the start, which would allow players to still grief others by teamkilling key facilities or spying on positions/ruining attacks/defends etc. I have actually several pages on idea's wasted on this. We already make more games than can be played. Of course not all of them are triple A games, but then again triple A game does not warrant success. I think it won't be that 'bad'. At worst you'll have too little time to play all the interesting things you want to play, at best you'll have too little time to play all the interesting things you want to play. I still think that most of the good games would come from combined game creators, mostly still trained developers who have most of their work cut out for them and who will focus mostly on designing the balance and features to prevent exploits. Not sure that would actually be possible. Especially if you use the following setup: To buy a game, you buy a USB. This USB has a direct quantum link to the game server. You plug it into your PC and play. This has the advantage that it's unpirateable, no one buys the actual game only a link to the game, and you cannot alter the game direactly with 3rd party software. The USB limits the amount and type of questions your PC can ask of the server to only the one's it requires. Since the game would have an easy cap to handle and nothing like disconnects or missing packages you can perfectly moniter how many packages each PC needs at a time, especially if all game-related calculations and rendering are done on the server. Actually, won't we be going back to the original first server system? One PC works as a server (in this case the server itself) and keeps everyone up to date. This prevents almost all possible cheats and exploits, and since you have instant-internet connection there will be no package loss or problems with people farther away from the server who mess up the calculations and input on the server. The only cheats available would be input cheats. Where your PC has a program that gives the input to aim and fire. That would require it to do a constant analysis of the rendered screens send to your monitor and create mouse and keyboard inputs to have perfect scores. Maybe this could be prevented by sending commands directly to the monitor without ever having a connection to your PC itself. You could then force the game to stop functioning the moment a PC is connected to prevent it, and only mouse and keyboard are allowed to be connected to the monitor. Cheat-free gaming. It could happen this way actually. The only way to cheat would be to reprogram the server, which would need physical access of you the player to do it...

Well, they want a working quantum computer in Delft with 50 qubits by 2019, 50 qubits could already defeat most of current day computers. I think that unless you are over 65, you have a real chance to witness it. I wouldn't be surprised if this technology would be available worldwide to every company within the next 20 years, within 30 years it would be commercially available anywhere, considering the speed at which computer technology is advancing, and the fact that a lot of the quantum research possibilities are actually invented by computers before testing, it would be a self-accelerating process. Each time a more advanced quantum computer is created, it advances it's own field. Quantum computing is so real that from at least the 1980's people have been doing research in developing quantum computer programming languages and software development, for computers that didn't even exist!. The first working qubit computer was in 1998 based on just 2 qubits. What did he do to the worlds supply of hard water? Anyway, what kind of game would you like to see with these type of computers? When even hamfisted calculations could work for creating ultra-detailed environments, massive amounts of AI and solid environment, structures and characters build up out of polygons that can be destroyed on that scale (as in, a bullet ripping through your characters arm would be able to show an accurate hole there as well as deal damage based on what it hits while flying through).

So this ends up with a question for both the developers and the players: Quantum computers and quantum internet are real things that show promise to turn the computing world upside-down by changing everything we know about conventional computers. A (partial) quote for instance from one of the people building a Quantum computer in Delft (with already actual working Qubits in them): "It can improve materials sciences. Calculations that would take conventional computers as much time as the age of the universe would be possible within a week with a similar quantum-computer". Just to be sure people got the ballpark estimation here: The age of the universe is estimated at 13,7 billion years or 7,1*10^11 weeks (712440000000 weeks). So these quantum computers can do 7,1*10^11 more calculations than any convenctional computer of the same size. Even if he was off and it would be capable of doing just 1/10th of what they now think it could it would revolutionarize the computer industry. These Quantum computers will be able to do wonderful and horrible things, such as being able to crack every single security alogarithm of current day computers within a week and being capable of stealing or controlling every single piece of data that is connected to the internet. Just know that every piece of information about you that has a connection to the internet right now will be cracked and stored by the first countries and people that buy one before conventional servers are replaced/protected by a Quantum computer. But I intend to look at the fun parts of this technology. Then Quantum internet. Through various methods it's possible to entangle two particles so that when one of the particles moves, the other does something similar even when they are apart without any measurable communication between them... With this method they've already proven they can send data faster then light, because there's no matter or radiation that moves in between the particles. This one actually would launch our space exploration into a new era, just think about a sattelite that can send pictures and receive commands from Mars faster than your PC sends info to your screen, rather than the 13 minutes ping it can take right now. With these technologies combined, you could have "wireless" computers that have a faster-then-light connection to a random server in the world, which is itself connected with faster-then-light connections to every other server and thus every other computer in existence, and not a single piece of data will have to move outside of a computer or server at any time. This system would allow for less latency than playing at a LAN party. In fact, why buy a computer at all? Why not just buy a screen with the minimum of computer technology to run, and have all computations be done by some large quantum server somewhere? It reaches your screen as fast (if not faster due to the lack fo a wire from your PC to the monitor) as if the hardware was right in your room, and due to the way Quantum internet works IT'S COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO HACK (at least while in transit). Besides the fact that a Quantum computer can scan 100% of the incoming data as fast as it arrives for viruses without slowing down. Anyway, the FTL internet combined with the computation power billionS of times more powerful than any commercial computer currently in existance, what kind of games would you be able to build? Or the actual question after this loooong "intro", what kind of game would YOU want to build if there was litterally no practical limitation to your computing power and latency issues? An RTS? FPS? a super MMO hybrid of RTS/FPS/RPG/Simulator combined?

You are mostly right about the 4 roles, but I started exploiting a weakness of many players: 3rd person mode. 3rd person mode creates a larger area where you can hit players, because you can aim right at them or in their "shadow" where your bullets will pass through the target to get to where you are aiming. This is wonderful for any hitscan weapons... but not for bullet-travel weapons. Now I realized this early-on, and thought it was a cheating method so I didn't use it, only realizing later how much it was abused in the game. I then also realized why I won almost every single early-stage combat: Players also used 3rd person mode while using normal infantry, meaning that their increased aim right at the body messed up their leading causing them to miss more. I started abusing this by using Patch's mostly, since people don't expect any bullet weapon to be powerful they were super surprised when someone, IE me, could hit them a lot, especially a sniper. More on topic. I think that Renegade-x has ripened very well overall. all classes have their advantages and disadvantages rather than just a few classes being useful in the game's meta, the same for vehicles. Weapons and abilities are unique and useful. What I think is my only real gripe about now is infantry movement. I am trying to shoot at some blurs at the other end of a corner somewhere, or at some ADAD spamming guy out in the open. It doesn't seem like infantry moves smoothly, and firing at them is less aiming and more firing at the center of their movement pattern, which is completely different from the original Ren or any other FPS (PS2 and UT atm) I play. Especially UT is an incredibly fast-paced game with similar speed levels I think, yet I don't have any sort of trouble aiming at targets there, or recognizing what weapons they are holding. Strangely enough in Renegade-X I do have trouble seeing what class I'm up against, and even keeping track of them as they move. I think the game would benefit a bunch from having a slight infantry momentum, not much, just a tiny bit. This smoothens the game experience as infantry a lot for me, and I think for others as well.

Despite the actual weirdness that is Tiberian Dawn and Tiberian Sun, they build up Kane pretty nicely. He was one of the few "bad guys" that kept coming back in games while the good guys kept needing new protagonists. They put a lot of hints in there, how he helped shape humanity, how he has connections to the Scrin and another alien race, how he knew about Tiberium beforehand and used that to build up Nod out in the open when Tiberium first crashed on earth. Then came things like Tiberian Twillight which was supposed to "explain everything" and basically didn't do anything but build up more questions. I mean, is he an exiled alien? Or did he crash there? Is he maybe a criminal alien on the run? Why is he so resilient, while the Scrin are far from as strong? Why does he have a human form? Was his whole "build up humanity" idea purely to get the technology to get off of earth and back to his own species? Is he still himself after Tiberian Sun Firestorm or is it a puppet made by Cabal afterwards? I wanna know, WHAT THE HELL IS KANE! They should scrap Tiberian Twillight from the canon (weird and dumb acting anyway) and build up the actual conclusion to Kane. How he got there, what he is, what he was doing, what it will mean in the end for humanity (after all he did try to use the more controllable Cyborgs to populate earth by first killing off all humanity) etc. I wanted to know about Kane, even if the gameplay was bad I would have tried playing the game just to know the answers, too bad they made Kane's end-game even worse than the game itself.

Eh? So you think this is a good idea? So the already omnipresent SBH's in any non-basedefence map will now have an actual use while sleeping in the enemy base? You know what, i'll just go to the enemy base with a friend while GDI has the field, i will sit next to the WF door to see if anyone is inside at the time of vehicle purchase, if there is not, i'll relay this information to my friend, he nukes and i steal the Mammy that just got bought. No. just NO. 20 seconds minimum, if i just bought a vehicle and straight after i'm the only one to see 2 arties pounding the refinery, i'm sure as all hell going to the refinery first by foot. You can't leave it unoccupied next to the refinery door after all, that would be much worse! Oh wait, my vehicle got stolen because an SBH saw i ran off to the Refinery. 800 credits lost because of this mechanic. Do not fix what is not broken. There currently are no downsides to the 30 second protection which is provided, why reduce it to 5? It may sound like a good idea to you, UNTIL someone uses it against you. Then sure as all hell you're going to get mad. What he said

As dumb as it is going against a dev... My spitball idea for capturable checkpoints for instance was just an extremely rough idea with, if we think about it, probably more downsides than upsides in the long run. But the basic idea is clear: Some kind of mechanic is needed to please the current day gaming crowd that needs a pat on the back for completing a tutorial. In the past I was more than content as well to simply beat against those incredible high odds and try to find a place where you could be useful for your team or actually blow something up. Maybe even for me those times are over. In timed games it barely matters if there's a stale-mate. Every point you earn gets you and your team closer to winning, blowing up buildings can improve (or depending on what building on what map, decrease) your odds of winning the game through one of the winning options. Maybe that's the solution: Make points more valuable in a marathon game. This gives players a better sense of progress since everything they do suddenly matters. Even failing to blow up a building or simple things like assaulting high-value characters with lower-value characters would be rewarded despite you failing to complete an objective. How this could be done? I don't know. I don't think that a "win if team X reaches Y score" is a good idea. Unlocking special stuff? Maybe allowing a team to buy some kind of special super-unit with the faction-score? Would need some kind of balance so someone who just joins can't go and use this super-unit or effect while the people who earned all the points are left behind. Even then it's a terrible hassle to keep it fun and make sure everyone who contributed heavily with their points can enjoy and benefit from the resulting unit or effect. Maybe you could have players buy an energy-surge that deactivates the enemy base defenses? Points could also maybe function as a plain alternative currency? Credits roll in all the time, but points only when you fight hard. With variable high costs you could maybe allow players to buy things like (temporary?) invisibility to base-defenses, upgraded armor or capabilities for the next vehicle you buy, extra health for the next infantry unit you buy, or plain and simple a super-unit that takes a ton of punishment to take down. This way someone with an very high score can acquire himself a massive hulking vehicle (Mammoth Mark II anyone?) that could be the game's end... Or get gunned down before this slow, easy to hit beast finally reaches the enemy base. Again, I'm just spitballing here to see if there's mechanics that might improve the general feel of progress for players without giving them sure-fire ways to achieve victory in one way or another. I think it can be done, preferably with as little changes to the current/future maps as possible.

One of the most alluring things from Renegade was it's long matches and the complete and utter victory you could feel at annihilating a building. And while Teamwork is a key element, a solo player can point and say "Look, I've done that", and solo play isn't a complete impossibility with the options to sneak in and blow something up. I would hate for those stalemates to end simply because magically damage dealt or repairs done to buildings disappears. What I think you are looking for is more of a feeling of progress even though you don't complete the end-goal of destroying a buildings. So rather than destroying buildings to satisfy the "it doesn't go fast enough for my taste" crowd, you add objectives or goals that players can complete and feel useful for their team even in long matches. The capturing of a Silo is of course one, so is destroying the enemy economy by taking down the Harvester. Others could maybe be added. For example: Walls or Turrets that can be destroyed (and eventually repaired at a cost) to gain an advantage, a new attack route for infantry or tanks for instance. Other options could be player-maintained checkpoints. These checkpoints can be used to maintain control of an area with player-controlled turrets or weapon mounts and perhaps some supplies could be gathered (a slow automatic heal station for instance). Destruction of the checkpoint allows the other faction to repair it, take control and use it for themselves. The checkpoints could be tiny, from just a heap of sandbags with a mounted machine gun behind it, to huge bunkers with lots of weaponry, gadgets and strength. This gives alternative goals while playing the game, where area control can be key to victory or defeat. It also gives some nice targets for airstrikes to blow up or damage. Anyway, my point is that Renegade offers a challenge in achieving goals. The original Renegade was the only game I've ever played where I could infiltrate a building and have my heart actually pounding with excitement purely because This could be it, the pivotal point where you achieve an advantage for your team! Or it could end in disaster and you get shot. Building destruction, regardless of it being a team effort or a solo infiltration, was and is tough to pull off. No other game offers the hectic one-minute showdown of a well-placed superweapon beacon. No game offers the excitement of rolling a coordinated group of tanks through your enemies door and hoping you can pound your enemy to dust this time. Because no matter what you do, the option that this might FAIL is right there. If you remove that, if it comes down to winning purely because you used a tactic during a certain stage of the game or had the field when an abitrary timer runs out, I think the game will suffer immensely.

Those are some hefty differences between flak and Kevlar. It's nice to see them, but I think that it's important to clarify these differences from the get-go, as it makes choices for infantry combined with tactics a lot more important. I've been doing rushes through mines with Kevlar infantry or happily engaging bullets with Flak armor, I would really have changed some things if I knew about this beforehand. Thanks for the info

I just downloaded the latest version after not being online for a long time, and I see Kevlar and flak armor on the characters. Now ofcourse it's easily guessed that flak armor protects against explosions and Kevlar works for bullets. But how much difference it makes is rather hard to guess. Is there any way to see the damage changes based on flak and Kevlar armor? Maybe a suggestion would be to better show off the differences for new players? Edit: game looked sweet btw

Stealth detector: Nope. the range is ridiculous and it nullifies an entire classes ability, even for that price. Just keep your eyes open. I would maybe agree to a cheaper detector that simply increases the distortion you see when they get close. Reinforce armor: Nah, first off it won't help in your situation as GDI can do the same, making their vehicles even more tanky. Second off the vehicles are finally in balance compared to the old Renegade. Sure there still need to be some changes probably, but screwing that up with this... I would rather not have that. Suicide bomber: It's pretty random, and I don't think the game has many defense options against players getting within your range. So I would say no. Choose your spawn: Definitely, completely no, no nononononononononooooooooooooooooooo. Choosing your spawn means it becomes almost impossible to destroy a building from the inside unless you can remain undetected. Having to fight off the same guy who respawns every 10 seconds is a terrible thing, as they would constantly spawn right into the building you are attacking, allowing them much better chances to defend and disarm. Airlift: I really think that the ability to get vehicles after the warfactory/airstrip is destroyed should be eliminated. The best games I've played were Marathon games where you had to use massive teamwork and patience to defeat the other team. To prevent 100% complete stalemates (however fun they were when you finally broke it) you can keep the low-end vehicles. But seriously, the best battles I've had, were on maps where both teams had buildings destroyed. My longest game was during a vacation, and the battle lasted 3 damn days! You could eat, go to sleep and it was still running when you got back, then do it again!

The first few times I played Renegade-X, I played it as if it was Renegade. And boy, it just didn't meet my expectations. So I let both Renegade and Renegade-x lie for some time. And I recently I started playing a few games again. Renegade-X... It's awesome. Tl;dr: Vehicles and infantry feel great, balanced and powerful, each shot feels like an actual shot, hard and damaging. <--- this is the main thing of the thread, I might spend more time on a few issues before but you guys should get the incredible credit for the balance and feel these weapons have got. At the same time, hitting feels off. The weapon feels great, but hitting something feels underwhelming. Even hitting stationary enemies can bring up the question "but did I actually do it?". Similarly getting hit seems off, often I die or have my vehicle destroyed without having had the idea I had been hit severely. Warping by quick direction change seems to be a thing, people use it to avoid fire rather than fighting back occasionally. Long version: Many of the glaring faults of original Renegade are gone. Vehicle movement now matters much more, making the Light tank viable against the more expensive, armored heavy-hitter the Medium Tank. Mobile Artillery is now less a general purpose vehicle and more an actual artillery. The Mammoth tank is the mastodont that it is supposed to be. The added recoil after each shot gives much more realism and balance between vehicles. Infantry has been rebalanced as well. No longer is the ramjet the mainstay weapon that dominates infantry fights, the added COF's, short sprints and overall changes in the gameplay create a much less arcadey gameplay and a more modern feel. There are a few things I did notice, that might be looked at. First off, I feel that hits don't have a good feel to them. In a vehicle I'm often wondering if I actually hit when there's more people shooting it, even when It's a harvester at 10m distance I don't really have the feeling I hit it. The same counts for infantry combat: even when I am firing a stream of bullets at a stillstanding player and get the kill I am feeling somewhat lacking in the feeling of "I did that". The same goes for getting hit. Regardless of me being in a vehicle or on foot, I often have trouble noticing if I've been hit or not. In other games, or the old Renegade, I would have an idea how the fight went during it, now I really have to look at my health afterwards and see how damaged I am. Often I die during a battle without even having had an inklling how damaged I was. So what it comes down to from my experience: a better way to see if I hit something, as well as a better way to gauge how much I'm getting hit. 2 different sounds for hits to the head or body for instance, or something else. Don't know for sure how other games manage to get a better feeling for hitting and getting hit. Another thing is infantry movement. Someone started doing a tiny circle while sprinting and it was almost impossible to see which direction he was going, as his character seemed to be build out of sprites with only a side, back and front. It feels like people can warp a bit when using quick, constant changes in direction, and use this to their advantage. Something to look at, don't know if others experience the same but seeing a black-hand sniper use this rather than fight me I guess the answer is clear: it works, and it's useful.

You can buy additional weapons in the game to add to your character, not just change character. So you can buy a heavy pistol, a carbine, with a silo you can even buy a tiberium flachette gun and tiberium auto-rifle. They all replace your pistol equivalent. The problem is that after you die, they remain available. You can die 50 times and they are still in your inventory. In fact, after a map-switch to Walls-flying I STILL had every weapon I bought the previous map, even the flachette rifle and tiberium auto-rifle. They should be impossible to have since there is no silo on Walls-flying.

HaTe, how come you think I haven't played any clanwars? How come you know for a certainty none of the others have played clanwars? Also, it's not 'just' about the principle. It's about the game. I don't want a feature that makes certain guns (all hit-scan weapons) far more potent then normal bullet-travel weapons. 3rd person can be done in a way that it gives very little actual shadow as shown in one of my first posts here. I'm not sure if the same can be said about free-aim. If the shadow can be kept small and neglegible, sure! why not! Otherwise I have definitely proven that it DOES give advantage. You don't just discard 3x more surface area to hit by saying 'it has disadvantages that weigh up against it'. I have yet to hear a good disadvantage that doesn't count for first-person or normal 3rd-person as well.

Before things escalate. HaTe, I understand that you probably didn't intentionally insult people. I just hope you will keep an eye on it next time. The video I'm making isn't going to be cracking down on you or how you snipe, it's to show how effective free-aim is. Free-aim does have the disadvantage that you will need to exit free-aim, re-aquire and use free-aim again if your enemy gets too close and goes out of one of the edges. But this scenario is hard to achieve: you need to get close first, then move through the sweet-spot where practically the entire side of the screen can be shot at for a hit before you force your enemy to do that. Add in that most of Renegade's infantry-combat happened in tunnels like the one in your video, and movement is limited. You can easily see how you (HaTe) uses this mechanic to the fullest: he puts the camera at an angle that shows the entire hallway, goes into free-aim and starts snaking up and down the hallway. This turns it more into an old shooter where the screen just moves around and you move your mouse to aim. You (HaTe) only need to re-do this when you reach another corner.

Actually, I have been talking about the advantages and disadvantages of 3rd person since the dawn of Renegade. I have tried both, and regardless of free-aim the advantage should be kept in check. I actually have tried free-aim, and so far it hasn't been all that difficult. I know how good I am normally, and aiming near someone hasn't been my problem at all. But with free-aim, I have 50% chance to be on the 'advantage' side with the shadow and hit them anyway. It's pretty ridiculous.

I'm sorry, while these idea's are great in a lot of games, they don't fit renegade. Just look at the EMP tank. You know what happens if one, single tank in a rush stops, even if it's still capable of firing? A 40+ tank rush can utterly fail because of it. Drones with enough flight and ammo capacity to attack TANKS? Holy shit, what you got on there? a small fusion reactor and a dimensional pocket? Anyway, despite the probable costs, sitting in your base and using drones isn't exactly my idea of 'fun'. Even in a support role I would find them questionable at best. An APC with firing ports? You mean 'sniper bunker' and 'Vehicle rape machine' right? Fill it up with some PIC's or RAV's and you can maul any tank-rush with just 3 of these.

HaTe, your current argument is that movement makes them harder to hit. Let's see how that works: First person: you enter a hallway, see your enemy and aim for him. Your enemy is moving so you adjust your aim and fire, hoping you predicted his movements and press the moment your reticule is on your enemy. Third person+free aim: you enter a hallway, you see your enemy and aim for him+if you miss you have a chance of hitting 2x extra surface area. Your enemy is moving so you adjust your aim and fire, hoping you predicted his movements and press the moment your reticule is on your enemy, OR on the 2x extra surface area. At worst, your enemy will run into the center of your screen, where this area goes back to 1.1 and maybe even 1.0 surface area you can hit. The horror! for one tiniest of milliseconds you have to shoot the same surface area a first-person player is shooting at! oh noes! (this is basic math: the more the enemy goes to one side, the larger the additional surface area becomes, so at the dead center between the maximum area's there should be a 0 additional surface area part, however, since the person is standing on the ground he would need to be at a precise elevation as well to complete an exact no-additional surface area point). Oh, and HaTe, don't make personal comments about other players like 'They don't know how this works' or 'they must be bad players'. I have demonstrated I knew exactly what i was talking about. Here is your second post I believe: me and Ban4life have strictly proven that it DOES give an advantage, and not a small one at that. You have changed your argument a few times since. Your arguments do not become stronger by insulting or degrading other people ('they don't know what they are talking about' etc). Also, I have analysed your first video, and will be putting an analysis video of your first and second video online. In the first video you actually hit once, all other shots were 'shadow' shots. (would be neat if you had some higher-resolution video's available, it's hard to keep track of the reticule as it is). Also, since your sniper servers solely consist of people using free-aim from what I can gather, there is the exact proof that yes, this IS far better then normal sniping.

If in the UDK you can also hit a character ANYWHERE including their gun. And If in the UDK the direction of your bullets is calculated from the tip of your gun like in renegade (which in rest position was at the left of your character) Then you have a valid point. But I doubt this is the case. Also, this would only prove effective if you are actively using the 3rd person and free-aim advantage, otherwise it doesn't matter: a hit is a hit with snipers if you aim directly at them. Only when you go in 3rd person or free-aim does the added 'shadow' in which you can hit them change due to the stance.

A flame tank's fire spreads out quickly. If you attack a mammy that starts JUST inside firing distance, a good mammy driver can escape with his life. If you attack a Med when he's halfway inside your max firing distance, the flamer is screwed. They are both just as fast and the flamer will miss too much to kill it effectively. If it started almost against it, like when you pop over the hourglass hill though... Sure! You could annihilate tanks and be back over. But here is the biggest problem: a flame tank will always be up front, the primary target. While a Stank can deal all his damage as long as his target is in range, a flamer never stops having to move closer to his enemies. A stank can effectively out-DPS a flamer in almost any situation, perhaps with the exception of building killing, simply because a flamer loses damage when he's not at point-blank range. The fact that a flamer deals the most damage in game compared to ANY type of vehicle is clear. It still remains the only vehicle that can cash out more damage to tanks then a Hotwire can repair. But only if he's against his enemy. Since just about every tanks is either just as fast or even faster, the flamer is kinda bad.

And let's not forget that since Renegade, just about NO OTHER GAME incorporated it, ESPECIALLY the COMPETITIVE one's? Also, the reasons given by Hate and Razor could just as easily have applied to... wall-hopping? Building-hopping? You know, the glitches, bugs and some of those BAD DESIGN IDEA'S that were in Renegade? There is nothing wrong with 3rd person done right. It gives you the ability to look around in 3rd person without a massive advantage like you see in our video, where you can have a 'shadow' that extents to more then 2x a person's height NEXT to that person. so... aim at person+2x height*1 time the width of person=3x the surface area on screen that would register a 'hit'. With free aim, you saw the video, we could increase this even further. Now here is where balance comes in: Bullet-travel weapons suffer from this system. When you fire your bullet straight at a moving target, he's already gone by the time the bullet get's there. So at range, when the person is smaller but his to-hit area still larger then normal you are at a disadvantage. Now in come the sniper classes, Renegades favorite and most-used classes. If they fire at this nice and large extra surface-area their hitscan weapons HIT. This scews the game heavily in favor of all instant-bullet weapons. Since anyone who goes up against them with, say, a Patch, will need to be close in order to negate their advantage that can be gotten with free-aim (and 3rd person). Is that really what we want to go back to? Wasn't one idea of Renegade-X to make all infantry classes viable? Not just high-powered snipers with 3x more chance to hit someone unless you use the same system and are already CLOSE?

The Flame-tank can beat any and all units (except the new Mammoth) when he hits with both nozzles from the point 'Go'. But when does that happen? There are so few times you can actually surprise someone that you can maul them at close range that the Flamer usually lags behind in damage compared to the Med, Light, Art, Stank... just about any tank really. I do think if all infantry get a new pass, the flamer should get one too. I liked BroTranquility's idea to have the muzzles aim slightly inwards so more damage is concentrated. Another idea is to increase it's speed, or give it an ability for a short speed-burst (3 seconds is more then enough). This way it can actually catch up on other tanks, combined with a slightly inwards aim it has an easier time hitting with both nozzles. It's also more logical to have a flame-focal point with such a short-ranged weapon, it's ability to melt tanks in real life would double. No direct damage increase, just an easier time hitting with both nozzles and a way to get close enough to actually deal that damage.

If you look at the beginning of the video, it says it was shot in Vanilla Ren yes. In the latest fan-updated versions (which you need to access ALL servers) this was removed (sadly).

Here is our (me and Ban4life's) proof, just watch the entire thing. What you should notice, is that with 3rd person and free-aim you increase the surface area on the screen where you can hit a person. Since there is a larger area on your screen, you can hit him easier. The closer you get, the larger this area becomes. In case of Free-aim the farther your enemy is to the side of the screen, the larger area you have to hit.