Trev-MUN

I was going to suggest replacing time limits in favor of making tiberium a finite resource as it is for the RTS series, which would still add a "clock" to beat of sorts. I'm not sure how that would work out though ...

Bravo, iovandrake. I'm glad there's more than one person calling SFJake out for his "I want airstrikes to be nerfed so hard it'd be no different than taking them out entirely" mandate. Unfortunately given his track record with my posts, I expect he'll ignore what you've said airstrikes bring to the game and suggestions on how to counter them in favor of easy things to attack. SFJake ignored both my suggestions for preventing cheese with airstrikes and an example of how airstrikes are hardly the cheesiest tactic available for sneering at my saying that airstrikes make the game closer to Tiberian Dawn, then proclaiming no one answered his challenge. EDIT: Oh, I see he's already replied ... the fact that all SFJake said was "You can go peanutbutter yourself for all I care" must mean that he couldn't find anything easy to attack in your post, iovandrake. Hah! It's also interesting that SFJake is claiming the sole (or primary) reason the game's population has dropped is because of airstrikes. Airstrikes are hardly a concern next to hacking and abuse of glitches; an overwhelming majority of the rage I've seen out of people during gameplay comes from glitch abuse and people hacking, especially the feeling of impotence that no one can ever seem to get the votes necessary to kick them out. For all the fanfare, Renegade X is still in open beta. Just remember that.

This actually makes more sense than my suggestion. I like it.

In Tiberian Dawn, GDI couldn't call in air strikes until all Nod SAM sites were destroyed. I know that for Renegade X, the devs added a GDI equivalent anti-air defense building, so this could be a good way to limit airstrike use that also fits the Tiberian Dawn setting; have it so that a team can't call in airstrikes until they bring down the anti-air defense.

SFJake, to me airstrikes are far less cheesy than, say, a Stealth Black Hand rush completely destroying GDI in the early game. You want Airstrikes to be made "fair" to the point they cost more than any other vehicle, character, or piece of equipment, and you want them to be so weak they can't even put a dent in a Light Tank. Meanwhile, SBHs cost $300 less than an airstrike (using the correct value) and aren't a single-use weapon. In the hands of a good player, they are far more effective than Stealth Tanks, which cost $900 apiece and have a team-wide limit that SBHs don't. I bring this up as a matter of perspective. As a fan of the original Tiberian Dawn, I find airstrikes a wonderful addition to a game that's supposed to be set in Tiberian Dawn, and a lot more appropriate than having characters from Renegade's campaign turned into classes. Using airstrikes to cover beacon placement is a cheap tactic, I will agree, but you probably didn't notice that in my post before yours, I had proposed some ideas to take the cheese out of it. Personally, I haven't ever seen airstrike spam on beacons; and you'd think that with how many complaints I have seen of them, I would run into it a LOT, as I tend to play Engineer and repair buildings/remove beacons (when they aren't glitched). No, in my experience airstrikes tend to be used to break up concentrations of vehicles and infantry.

And that's really the only thing about airstrikes I think is cheesy, that they can cover beacons. There's another thing that could be done to correct that, though; make airstrikes destroy friendly beacons (but not hostile ones ... or maybe?). It would invite griefing, no doubt, but I would greatly prefer a mechanic like that over SFJake wanting it to be "standard" that airstrikes cost more than practically everything else.

Yeah, I've been trying to avoid JellyServer for that reason, R315r4z0r. I strongly disagree with people like SFJake who think making what was a low-tier field ability in Tiberian Dawn cost way more than the actual superweapons is "the best thing ever." It should absolutely not be standard, and I sincerely hope that SFJake doesn't get his way. I would be alright with other changes, especially if they make the airstrike mechanics closer to Tiberian Dawn. For example, they can only be called in if all the anti-air defenses are destroyed.

Did you read and consider my ideas for stopping griefers before you came to that decision? Just curious.

This is going to tork off the Renegade vets, I bet, but I think there should be an option for servers that only allows one person to play each advanced class at a time. Simply put: "There Can Be Only One." This is something I've actually felt should have been a feature since the original Renegade. I didn't play it online, but having messed around in Skirmish it always bothered me how there could be multiple Havocs, Sakuras, Sydneys, Mobiuses, Raveshaws, Mendozas and Dead-6 members when story-wise they are individuals, not classes. This would also make gameplay a little more like Tiberian Dawn, making players more reliant on base classes and vehicles. And if a server has the option set, there should be a notice at the purchase terminal screen. Something like "Highlander Mode active: Only one of each advanced character may be present at any time." To prevent griefers from abusing a Highlander option (by squatting on the character and doing nothing/obstructing their team), there could be a few added mechanics: 1. Include the option for a team that allows them to vote to "demote" a player out of an advanced class. If it passes, the player will be reset to Rifleman back at the Hand of Nod/Barracks and unable to select any advanced classes for a set period of time. This vote option would only be available if Highlander mode is set. (I think the voting system could use a little reworking, but that's for another topic) 2. When a player dies, add a cooldown that restricts them from playing the same class for a given time limit. Maybe make it a server option that can be set, perhaps one that is also adaptive to the amount of players in-game (shorter for small servers, longer for bigger ones), and have the time limit visible at the purchase terminal with the character they had just played greyed out. 3. "New Uniform" crates won't count toward the limit. EDIT: And a fourth idea ... 4. Something akin to the Frustration Meter that Tanks have in Left 4 Dead 2's Versus Mode, have an "idle out" timer mechanic that counts down from the last time the player did anything that earned them points. If the timer reaches zero, they are reset to Riflemen and teleported back to the Hand of Nod/Barracks. On a fairly short but significant timer, this would prevent griefers from squatting on advanced characters and also free up the characters if someone goes away from their keyboard for a significant period of time. Maybe also make it so that the timer for individual players is shorter if they had been demoted to Riflemen by vote previously, or have already been idled out once before. This shortening would be cumulative. I think that would help keep a proven griefer from trying to earn just enough points to keep the character without really doing anything to help their team.

It seems to be a server setting. I haven't been able to figure out which servers have the correct value for airstrikes, but it appears more and more of them are more than doubling the price for an airstrike because they think it's "fair." In fact, I think it was on JellyServer that I saw some person defending the change with that very reason. I personally find it irritating. Also, if servers can decide to set nonstandard values for characters and equipment, the UI shouldn't have a fixed number for the credits required; it should reflect their actual values.

Whoever it was that said the nuke/ion cannon death crate needs to be replaced with a C4 death crate, I think that's a good idea. The superweapon death crates really do take away from the impact the actual superweapon beacons have.

Oh. Oh wow. That is some beautiful stuff they are doing with the Crysis engine there. Yeah. On the other hand, I wonder if the guys working on Tiberian Sun: Genesis would be interested in lending some of their assets for a Ren X Tiberian Sun mod.

I could get behind this, but not the removal of points; as far as I understand those actually work based on damage and repair, not just kills. Though, giving point awards for assist would be a really good idea.

This is true. On the other hand, they are described as wearing bio-hazard suits in the original game, right? The graphic used for the manual/menu icon just has them wearing a gas mask in addition to the standard Nod uniform. http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2012 ... Manual.gif

The free classes should at least have some worth, especially relevant to each other. My experience with the Flame Trooper has been in close quarters against of mix of infantry, both the characters/advanced classes and the general free classes. I never did anything of worth as a Flame Trooper.

I do think the glass in the Hand of Nod needs to be made of sterner stuff. A little silly for it to break just because someone bumped it. I did notice that the glass in the HON is pre-broken: if you look at the reflections just right, you'll see dark shatter lines. Kane, this is not how you do stained glass windows.

inb4 "If you don't have vehicles because you lost your factory/airstrip, you deserve to lose." Seriously though, SeriousPan is right. There IS an issue here when beacons are placed in ways that the target team can't disarm them at all, or only on specific circumstances.

Actually I agree with this, assists should be counted. It's kind of silly for a teamwork-based game that has a lot of beefy targets to award the kill to the person who got the last hit in. This also ties into what I was saying in the thread about KDR, and the suggestions people made there (there should be stats for repairs/healing, vehicle kills/deaths, etc.).

I was wondering about this, myself. The times I've attempted to play as a Flame Trooper, I never saw any appreciable damage done. I felt like I was just giving GDI free points by killing me. It might be because I don't know how the flamethrower is supposed to work compared to other games that have a flamethrower (TF2's Pyro, the one in Return to Castle Wolfenstein, etc.) ... if it's a straight-line projectile that requires headshots to do any real damage, that's worrisome.

It shouldn't be like that, if they intend to have sights in the game.

SFJake, be careful that you don't take your own opinion as fact. I'm saying this as a guy who still regularly plays Quake, by the way, in addition to modern shooters like TF2 and Loadout.

Oh wow, they only recently got that mod done last year? It WOULD be cool to see it ported over to Renegade X ...

I'm curious, since I never got to play the original Renegade multiplayer (as I was an AOLer at the time and that made it impossible to get in on a server) ... Did the original Renegade have KDR stats in the leaderboard? I ask, because it seems a little out of place here. Not just because this game has more emphasis on scoring points (as it should, since that encourages team play more than KDR does), but because only infantry themselves count as kills. Considering the amount of effort it can take to bring down some units, like a Mammoth Tank, it feels like that effort goes unrewarded. Maybe if there was additional stats for vehicle kills/losses it wouldn't seem so strange, but ...

Wow, this is really bothersome. And it's causing me to call into question just how much of my poor performance in recent playthroughs is due to my own lack of skill, or if it's due to running into hackers and cheaters. When playing Ren X I'd run into a sort of "Useless Useful Spell" scenario, to borrow a TVTropes term. You know, where something is amazingly effective when the enemy uses it on you, but if you get your hands on it, it does jack squat for you. I've run into this problem the most when on foot; trying to fight other infantry is often a nightmare as I can never seem to actually outdamage whoever's shooting me before they kill me, no matter the matchup. Up until now, I had assumed it's because I'm just that bad of a player. I really try not to be That Guy who thinks any time he's beaten it's because the other guy is hacking or using "overpowered" crap. However, on other FPS/TPS games I'm usually not this bad, so ...

Fingers crossed on that, Volcom. I've noticed the glitch planting getting abused a few times when I play. Some other things that have bothered me are spontaneous deaths (not getting killed by another player, but your character dying instantly for no real reason).