Balance the ut4 flak cannon?

MoxNix;The real problem with Flak isn’t the number of shards, the damage per shard or the spread, it’s the hit collision radius on the shards… The same thing that makes air rockets so easy to hit practically guarantees multiple shards hit too.

I’m not convinced it is the root cause. Stolids original post makes sense but setting up a bot shooting range and modified flak with point collision it was very subtle. Had I been able to demonstrate significant, obvious difference in a video I would have posted. Alas while it did something it was not huge. It possibly extended the range of full shards hitting but 100units? From 600 to 700 units. Maybe.

I guess you could look upon it as increasing the player hitbox? A 10unit sphere would it provide an increase of up to 10units on the player hitbox (5units on each side compared to point collision) which increases the 84unit capsule to 94. This is slightly over 11%. You could look upon this as projectiles having 10% leeway compared to other attacks, but in practice it was difficult to tell between two flaks with point and 10unit collision shards. I just don’t think it will make the difference people seem to think it will.

Having said all that the shard collision should be changed back to point – this is something I feel rather strongly about. We have 15 years of ut and quake games with point collision (excluding ut3) and in that time I do not recall anyone ever saying that the “rocket clipped through the player and did not damage him”. Is there any reason not to have points?

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One final thing that needs pointing out is reducing the spread* is not a solution if that is the only change. Currently flak shards travel faster than rocket projectile. Rockets currently have minimal splash and going for directs is the general idea – and are easy to hit for good players. If we were to go overboard and choke down flak so all shards were on top of each other we would end up with a “rocket” travelling much faster and dealing ~twice the damage it does currently. The spread can be widened until the desired max range for a full hit is achieved. However we have a problem – good players will still hit hard with this “less spread” flak. They will still be able to take the same fights they can currently. If anything they will hit more reliably to a longer range and deal more damage as a result.

There are two ways to approach flak range issues 1) Widen spread to enforce close range^ use and to put more distance between shards as distance from the shooter increases. Your side effect of “aoe cannon” is not really a problem – who cares if one or two shards hit a player every now and then? Provided you need to take 3+ shots to kill a fresh spawn beyond the effective use range your opponent its going to be able to kill you with almost anything else. This also has the side effect of differentiating the firemodes more. or 2) Aggressively tweak damage bleed over flight time so it kicks in much sooner. Tweak this so the damage reduction begins heavily at the range you want max damage to stop – because the ~1500 units it is currently is a joke, the weapon is not effective at this range at all already and the bleed achieves nothing. The down side to this is that the amount of damage dealt will vary.

The spread is nice and very quakelive shotgun-ish currently. Each shot is very similar. This is good

*like the 2k4 one. Mainly mentioning this because it comes up quite frequently as a “fix”.
^This is something I would love epic to address. Tell us what ranges are meant to be (eg close 0-500, mid 500-1500, long 1500+) for the ut4 weapons and what range each firemode is meant to be ideal at. This way the community can give feedback based on something. eg “Rockets are stated to be used out to around 800units but I find I am able to use them reliably at 1200+”.

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