Possible ideas for a multi-fire Scorp.

[Azarael]

- Arc projectile (Quantum), effective at close range or with height advantage.
- Charging, fire-on-full-charge hitscan beam. Reason for fire on full charge being that it's extremely easy to hit normal hitscan weapons against vehicles, but every implementation of a fire-on-full-charge weapon targeted against normal players I've ever seen has been impossible to use. Perhaps a balance can be found. Effective at mid-long range.
- Straight projectile (Plasma, Sentinel laser). Effective at mid range.
- Shotgun fire (Flak). Effective at close range.
- Piercing projectile of some kind. Effective against groups of enemies but lower single-target damage to compensate for that.
- Healbeam. Effective to assist allies.
- Assistance fire of some kind, in the vein of EMP. Perhaps a beam which stalls the engine, knocks the player back or pulls the player towards the firer.

- Some kind of doomblast fire, which costs the whole gauge. Paladin fire would be decent for this.

Bonus damage for hitting some kind of hardpoint, most likely the open-topped section.

I'm aware that most of these have been implemented already in the game, but there's only so much you can do when there are two methods of fire, projectile and instant. The point of this would be to make a Scorpion where correct weapon choice would matter in terms of effectiveness, and add maybe a tiny amount more thought to what you do.

[iZumo]

- Arc projectile (Quantum), effective at close range or with height advantage.
- Charging, fire-on-full-charge hitscan beam. Reason for fire on full charge being that it's extremely easy to hit normal hitscan weapons against vehicles, but every implementation of a fire-on-full-charge weapon targeted against normal players I've ever seen has been impossible to use. Perhaps a balance can be found. Effective at mid-long range.
- Straight projectile (Plasma, Sentinel laser). Effective at mid range.
- Shotgun fire (Flak). Effective at close range.
- Piercing projectile of some kind. Effective against groups of enemies but lower single-target damage to compensate for that.
- Healbeam. Effective to assist allies.
- Assistance fire of some kind, in the vein of EMP. Perhaps a beam which stalls the engine, knocks the player back or pulls the player towards the firer.

- Some kind of doomblast fire, which costs the whole gauge. Paladin fire would be decent for this.

Bonus damage for hitting some kind of hardpoint, most likely the open-topped section.

I'm aware that most of these have been implemented already in the game, but there's only so much you can do when there are two methods of fire, projectile and instant. The point of this would be to make a Scorpion where correct weapon choice would matter in terms of effectiveness, and add maybe a tiny amount more thought to what you do.

Well I think that shotgun fire would server the same way as quantum, so I'd exclude that. We also rarely have a case (except the area under base) that there is more vehicles close to each other, so a doomblast fire would do here. I'd add full EMP instead of the last and would give somekind of slowdown effect to the "sentinel plasma" projectile. Dont know much on fire-on-full-charge weapon, it's perhaps easy to hit, but would need to have some effect - can't really much imagine using it.

Also vehicles could be able to drop mines (causing non-lethal damage and slowdown).

[Azarael]

I agree with a minelayer weapon, as I know Takeo was up for the idea as well.

The idea of a fire-on-charge weapon is to cover longer ranges, where projectiles are ineffective due to compound of travel time and ping.

So at the moment we're looking at:

Quantum
Fire on charge
Straight projectile
Heal
EMP
Mine

Doomblast

[iZumo]

We could make EMP to be the "Fire on charge" type and instant on the other hand, to give usefulness of slowing down an opponent a bit futher in the track and than engaging in fight. Takeo also had in mind "Ion Tank Secondary Fire", push nearby people / vehicles.

Another thing is to specify the actual cost of nitro and ammo limit for each weapon. Quantum + "Sentinel Proj" would cost nothing and have no ammo limit.
EMP, charging, could cost 25% nitro w/o ammo limit, while Mines would be limited to 2 with 45% nitro cost of laying. Scorpion would require low speed to recharge nitro (to compare: current EMP cost = 45% nitro, current shield / repair cost = 45% nitro (except hybrid bender), Derby Scorpion Shock/Quantum nitro cost = 25% nitro; Anticamp Shock nitro cost = 15% nitro; Anticamp shock scorp require "high speed" to charge nitro (15.6 mph), Derby + EMP scorp require "low speed" to charge nitro (5.2 mph); top speed for scorp w/o nitro is 28 mph, for Derby scorps it's 32 mph).

As of Doomblast: first EMP + Doomblast could be a deadly combo and OP compared to other alternatives => EMP target, wait 3 secs for nitro recharge and blast off your target while it's still frozen (assuming you had full bar at the beginning). Secondly, Shock Scorpions are more kind of fun play, offering deadly long range shots, but requiring you to be speeded properly (damage / push is relevant to your current speed in anticamp version). One also has to properly setup blocking volumes to disable possible camping positions from previous objectives.

I'm unsure if healing weapon isn't a bit redundant due to the vehicles having repair function. Push nearby would be good to offer some "race off" ability. So we could go with:

Quantum
"Sentinel Fire"
EMP (firing on charge)
Mine

And possibly with Heal / Push Nearby.

[iRobot]

A personal pet hate is on maps with movers or narrow parts, congestion on a 32 player server becomes lets say...an issue.

How about a fire mode that makes your vehicle ethereal and able to pass through other vehicles and people, for just a few seconds. Or perhaps something to make the vehicle temporarily invisible for a few seconds, akin to the supposed "Admin Venom", to surprise campers or bypass an unsuspecting defender.

I've always liked the flakrat though, it feels more agile than a hellbender and is multi person. Perhaps you could incorporate this somewhere, having a driver and a second person to operate the guns. Driving solo would give you control of both, and driver has control over locking vehicle if they do not wish to do this? Teamplay has always been a focus on LDG with the vehicles designed to promote it, so perhaps you could incorporate this some way. Flakrat style vehicle replacing scorpions etc. Similar size so wouldn't have any reprocussions in mapping I am aware of.

Or even, depending on the skill of the coder, a weapon that can swap you places with the target enemy player (only a short range on this) would be pretty funny for race.

I like the idea of mines, always loved banana peels in mario kart. However they would likely become problematic again on movers and narrow parts. Or even borrowing ideas from Mario Kart further, you could have pickups randomly spawning that vehicles can pick up, which give random weapons like the ones you are trying to create. Oil spills which make cars behind difficult to control, instant refill nitro packs, tractor beam (if there would be a situation where this could be useful?) iono.

The possibilities are endless but, alot of the time it is down to the maps rather than the vehicles for providing a good game.

[iZumo]

Scorpion model isn't designed for two people, and flakrat model needs adjusting for it to have proper physics (lower the wheels a bit, so bottom of the car is at similar height as scorpion at least), however one man gun & drive doesn't have to mean lack of teamplay. Two man vehicle would be required for things like paladin shield, also to get around campers, you use the shields, that's why there is no need for invisibility (which would cost more nitro).

Mines in narrow areas - hmm, well they won't be ultimately lethal, so don't see that big problem.

Swapping position gun isn't a real problem to implement, however I don't see much benefit in there and find it rather annoying.

Pickups are not supported by the maps. So well - if every map is edited to add support for them, then yeah.

[Azarael]

Let me prefix this by acknowledging that you have other things to do, just seeking some opinions.

So, weaponising Scorps fixes the issue of poor Scorp offense and adds weapon switching into the mix. But the other issue is that Scorps are an easy target.

My proposed solution is thus:

- give Scorps an instant jump.
- applying nitro during this jump boosts the scorpion in the direction it is facing. Combined with air control, you can move quickly in a direction to dodge projectiles and theoretically even react to Dragonfly bombs with CarBall style backflips.

This could solve two problems, the lack of unpredictable Scorp movement and the lack of Z-axis in Scorp combat. Could also work nicely for queuejumping and risky jumps of corners.

[iRobot]

Adding jump to scorpion will break an awful lot of race maps, especially if you can jump and then nitro in that direction also.

I'd imagine it would take too much effort to go through all scorpion maps and adding blocking volumes everywhere.

[Azarael]

I'm not talking about a massive supermegaawsum jump here, simply enough to be able to dodge projectiles. A half-charged Bender jump should be appropriate.

[iRobot]

Well in my mind I envisioned a jump suitable enough to jump clear of say...triple spiral rockets. That plus nitro and you can jump pretty far.