Declined [VSH] Rework the Crossbow and Buff Syringe Gun

[RockoRango]

Posting this as another thread entirely dedicated to VSH, as my FF2 knowledge is pretty outdated and I made this weird brainchild on an FF2 thread. Would rather do this than waste the text

The crossbow does a ridiculous amount of damage as-is (I believe around 350, increasing or decreasing based off of distance), heals teammates, and makes Huntsman virtually obsolete as a weapon itself (if a Sniper could have a crossbow, even without the healing it would be more powerful than Huntsman (~440 on crit + reload + a ~1.5 second delay)). What I'd suggest is:
CRUSADER'S CROSSBOW

• Add an 'inverse' drop-off to the healing function. Simply put, healing starts off at 40% and rises to its normal value based off of distance from the player. Suggestions for the distance in Hammer Units would be appreciated, as I'm too rusty to remember those values, but the drop-off range would likely be short.

I'd imagine this would be possible in the current language... Either make a drop-off value that's negative and add to it based on distance until it becomes 0, or decrease the healing to 40% and make the healing increase based off distance until it arrives at 100%.

• 'Inverse' drop-off does not apply to the amount of Uber given from hitting the boss with the Crossbow.

SYRINGE GUN (Switch all Syringe Guns to stock by default)

• Increase the damage for each syringe to 20 or give it crit damage, as it's stupidly weak (even for a support weapon). Last time I checked, each syringe currently does damage in the single-digits (and, rarely, in the 10s).
  
• Hitting the boss with a syringe applies a global mad-milk effect that lasts 5 seconds, each consecutive hit only resetting the timer for the mad milk to run out.
  
• Gives Uber based on 5% healing given after the Mad Milk timer expires. If consecutive shots are made, the 5% is applied to the uber % every time 5 seconds is reached.

This might be viewed as weak, but let me remind you of the numbers: if your healing dealt in 5 seconds was 500 you would gain 25% in uber. This is an unlikely scenario, but it's effective nonetheless. If you keep up your Mad Milk and other classes benefit greatly, you also benefit greatly. This number does not apply when a class is being ubered, so abuse of this would be extremely difficult.

• Remove Uber being gained from damage to the boss.
• Increase the projectile speed of syringes. In its current form, the Syringe Gun is only viable at generally close ranges (making it more geared towards damage if it was actually usable). Increasing the syringe's speed would considerably increase its viability in a support role. As a suggestion, maybe 2x the current speed would do?

This would create two play styles in the first slot instead of the current meta:

1. Damage-Support class - Medics who wish to play a more damage-heavy support could use the Crossbow, which gives them more damage potential (+ Uber by damage) at the cost of support. However, there would still be viability to using the crossbow for healing based off of long-distance healing (but no longer being able to spam crossbow + medigun as it was previously).
2. Mainly Support - Medics who wish to be a support class could use the Syringe Gun, which would apply mad milk for using it and rewards supporting your teammates over damage by giving Uber based off of the healing dealt by the Mad Milk.

I'm somewhat confident this could be done (at least the Syringe Gun), and doing both would actually bring diversity to medic instead of the best thing to do being spam Crusader's for free uber and damage.

 

[RockoRango]

Also, If this doesn't work, why can't syringe gun projectiles go through teammates? It makes it impossible to use even in its current obsolete state lmao

 

[Stack Man]

Also, If this doesn't work, why can't syringe gun projectiles go through teammates? It makes it impossible to use even in its current obsolete state lmao

Isn't that how it is in Vanilla tf2? Most things are blocked by team mates, except in specific situations

 

[RockoRango]

Isn't that how it is in Vanilla tf2? Most things are blocked by team mates, except in specific situations

Yes, but in a modded gamemode where a whole crowd is going after hale this should probably be disabled on the Syringe Gun.

 

[Eggs]

I practically main medic and I can say that the crossbow does an insane amount of dmg. The syringe gun is pretty much nothing compared to the crossbow. Base tf2 vanilla isn't the same as VSH but we can make a crossroad. Make syringe good so more medics play and crossbow nerfed but not to the point where it useless.
Eggs,
ヽ(͡◕ ͜ʖ ͡◕)ﾉ

 

[Stack Man]

Yes, but in a modded gamemode where a whole crowd is going after hale this should probably be disabled on the Syringe Gun.

Well I don't think it's really something that can be changed.

Like for example, you can't stop melees from hitting team mates, so Skial's ZE server had to make a plugin that damages enemies if they're close enough, not actually preventing the team mate blocking, and very very jank.

 

[RockoRango]

Well I don't think it's really something that can be changed.

Like for example, you can't stop melees from hitting team mates, so Skial's ZE server had to make a plugin that damages enemies if they're close enough, not actually preventing the team mate blocking, and very very jank.

That's different from applying it to projectiles, as melee weapons are hitscan and projectiles are physical objects. I'd assume that you could create a plugin that applies to how the physics engine handles syringes (which are presumably a different object type of projectile than the Crossbow, due to the difference in speed and collision) and, if so, make them unable to collide with friendly players.

As a proof-of-concept, it is (or was) possible using a sourcemod plugin to disable friendly collision for specific object classes such as arrows:

https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=221955 ([TF2] Projectiles Fix)

This was unapproved due to a String error that caused a sever crash, but it looks like a solution was found in the comments (but could be outdated); I'm sure a similar plugin could be created/original one fixed up with permission if someone that's familiar with C++ used it as a base. I'm much more fluent in Java than I am in C++ at the moment, so I can't offer the service of creating one myself, but I'm certain that applying the plugin to the specified projectile group (medic's syringe gun projectiles) would work if someone offered their services.



Also, in regards to my Crossbow change: it's more likely that the Syringe Gun could be reworked and the Crossbow left alone but I still wanted to give my take on how you could balance the two to create an 'Equalizer' situation (split the weapon into two other weapons).

 

[Bottiger]

Just because something is possible doesn't mean it should be done.

Unblocking projectiles is a huge nerf to hale when hale already has a problem with full servers where this is a problem. In zombie escape after we unblocked projectiles, it led to a massive boost to the humans.

Changing collision groups has been theorized to cause the physics engine to bug out, causing all projectiles to go through walls until the server is rebooted (a map change doesn't fix it).
https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=99819 This has happened to our ZE server 3 times now though we are not 100% sure this is the cause as we only change collision groups once immediately on spawn.

This is generally a risky procedure with very little benefit for VSH.

 

[RockoRango]

Just because something is possible doesn't mean it should be done.

Unblocking projectiles is a huge nerf to hale when hale already has a problem with full servers where this is a problem. In zombie escape after we unblocked projectiles, it led to a massive boost to the humans.

Changing collision groups has been theorized to cause the physics engine to bug out, causing all projectiles to go through walls until the server is rebooted (a map change doesn't fix it).
https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=99819 This has happened to our ZE server 3 times now though we are not 100% sure this is the cause as we only change collision groups once immediately on spawn.

This is generally a risky procedure with very little benefit for VSH.

Fair point