Announcement

**Malachor** · 02-21-2009, 03:15 AM

Depending on how quick the orb respawns, the damage one may not be a problem.
I think if it respawns relatively quickly, noone will worry that much about damaging nodes/cores with weapons. Except when the other team has used their orb on a node maybe.
If the nodes are lined up symmetrically, it may be a case of which team captures nodes the fastest wins. Or teams will dispute the same node over and over again, which I guess happens anyway(I don't play much warfare).
I like points 2, 3 & 6, 4 & 5 could be either one or the other, I'd probably go for 5 because I think it would encourage passing.

**Poker** · 02-21-2009, 06:04 AM

Nodes and cores could perhaps be made immune to conventional damage, requiring the orb to capture nodes and destroy cores.

As an option, yes, great idea. Especially with a specially built set of maps, along with some of the other modifications you also mentioned, this could even evolve into what would effectively be a new game type—like BR/football/etc. in its ball-in-goal basis, but with multiple goals (nodes) that need to be controlled. Maybe even use the same principle on the power core also, where once your team has captured all the nodes you can deal the finishing blow by throwing your orb into the enemy core.

The orb could bounce.

Yes, definitely a good idea. In fact, a fair amount of elasticity would give the game some good balance: it would give an orb carrier options, in that from a distance, not only could he try to lob the orb over the defense or sling it in from an elevated position, but he could also launch it at a low angle and "roll" it toward the node base. The latter approach would be less demanding in terms of shot accuracy, but would also be much easier for defenders to prevent.

I'm thinking you'll also want to make sure to do the elasticity calculations right so as to pursue a "rolling" behavior with the orb when it collides with world geometry at very small angles of incidence ... i.e., the elasticity is dampened by the dot product of the normalized velocity of the ball's reflection and the normal of the hit surface.

The orb could have something of a smoke or energy trail for increased visibility.

Also yes. BR in UT2004 benefited from this and it's a good idea here too.

Holding down Impact Hammer Altfire could attract orbs.
Impact Hammer Altfire could select teammates to pass to, like in Bombing Run.

Very good ideas, and well worth pursuing. Using altfire without the orb to attract would be great for defending incoming thrown orbs, and altfire with the orb for BR-style passing would really open up the possibilities for teamwork.

You could be allowed to pick up and "convert" enemy orbs.

Maybe. At first glance I'm not sure the game balance could be preserved with this, but it's certainly possible if done right.

I'll add one more suggestion also, if it hasn't been addressed already: a thrown or grounded orb should be subject to collisions and hitscan traces, such that it can be deflected by appropriate types of weapon fire (e.g. shock, flak, stinger, rockets, etc.).

GJ xyx and junglist for putting down the idea, looks very very promising.

**Xyx** · 02-21-2009, 03:44 PM

I'm thinking about disconnecting the nodes so that they and the cores all get shielded. The orb would ignore those shields, making it the only way to get anywhere.

Maybe Altfire could semi-slowly lock onto not only teammates but also nodes. It's rather hard to hit anything from a good distance. I guess that is why Bombing Run had Altfire locking.