Devblog #29 - Equipment Slots, Weapon Balancing, Cremators
Development Blog #29 brings several new features and many improvements to already existing features, including some much-needed weapon and rebel balancing.
Introducing equipment slots containing slots pertaining to the head, glasses, face, torso, hands, legs, shoes, satchel, bag, and model changing items. Vortigaunts have slots of their own for their faction-specific equipment. For factions that do not need equipment (bird, stalker, headcrab, overwatch, and cremator), the inventory slots will be greyed out, as well as the model changing slot being greyed out for Vortigaunts for obvious reasons.
Icons may be changed out once we have received feedback and/or feel the icons are not reflective of what can actually be equipped on the specific slot.
Some limitations:
- You cannot equip model-changing outfits if you are wearing anything else. You can however equip clothing whilst wearing the outfit and the clothing will be worn once you deequip the outfit.
- You cannot equip two gas deterring items (like always), e.g. gasmask and bandana at the same time.
- You cannot equip a combine mask before equipping a combine suit, nor can you de equip your combine suit if you are wearing a combine mask.
- Some clothing is faction-specific and cannot be worn if you are the wrong faction (vort clothing, for instance).
- There is no space for the suitcase, since… you can’t really wear it.
Your equipped clothing will automatically be transferred to the right slot(s) in the equip slots panel, especially relevant for vortigaunts who are unable to unequip/transfer their bound equipment.
Using /charsearch will now provide you the opportunity of searching either the equip inventory and/or the default inventory.
Tired of weapons not showing up on characters’ bodies? Well, now they do. If you have a weapon equipped but not selected, it will now show up on your person in a holstered position. This includes primary weapons, sidearms, melee weapons & tools, as well as grenades.
For the last month, work has gone into rebalancing the combat on the server once again for all factions including the CPs, OTA, Rebels and Vortiguants to create a more fair battleground.
To give a round summary of what has happened so far, Civil Protection has implemented a new force known simply as the QRF, these are more heavily armed CPs and will be deployed as an extra form of escalation before OTA shows up. In turn with this, OTA will become slightly rarer to see in Combat situations (Unless it’s an event) as decently geared CPs will be the ones handling it first. Vort Escapes will most likely switch between QRF & OTA deployments depending on who is around and so on.
Now before we fully go into what we changed for balance, we would also like to mention that a big focus of this balancing update is to make sure stores in the city came back into the light while smuggling was shoved as your always online but expensive option. Stores as everyone knows die quite quickly and that is mainly because some people either have no need for stores or credit costs are too much vs a simpler currency like chips. To change this, we have made a new ratio to be followed among stores, bmd, and smuggler. The default ratio is currently 1:2 for shops to smugglers, basically meaning that if an item costs 5 credits in a shop, it would cost 10 chips at a smuggler. The BMD on the other hand, since it’s player/staff run and thus includes RP, and is not available 24/7, shall provide the item for 7-8 chips which is a ratio of around 1:1.5. In short, you got a Store > BMD > Smuggler ratio economy now of a complete ratio of 1:1.5:2.
Now into the actual changes.
To start with, a few weapons were removed including:
- SKS
- Mp5K
- Sterling
- P90
- OTS-14
- AR-15
- Famas
- MOE AKM
- SA80
- F90
- RFB
- Suppressor LMG
- Mimimi Para
- M1014
- M24
(Removed weapons will be refunded with an equivalent weapon type)
Craftable weapons have also been changed, you can now only craft the following weapons:
- Uzi
- M1917
- Sawed-off
- Toz-194
- Makarov
- Pipe bolt (Both variants)
- Pipe semi
- Pipe pistol
Spas-12M has also received a modification to its functionality and lost its ability to do semi-auto fire modes. This was broken and basically was just the Spas-12 without the pump-action part with an insane fire rate. So it was removed.
Weapons have all received damage changes, as you can see below:
In the end, as you can see all weapons have been respectfully nerfed to fit both TBC and S2K and make both fair and balanced.
Both BMD and Smuggling prices have also been altered - lots of prices are now much cheaper at the BMD than the Smuggler. The grind should pretty much be gone and those with lots of chips I assume are going to have a field day or shopping trip with the new prices as it is quite nice for Rebels.
New armors have also been added for rebel players such as the T2 and T3 kevlar vests which provide 75 to 100 armor. This should help rebels immensely when it comes to overall hitpoints.
We now have NPC Spawners which will, depending on the configuration, automatically spawn enemies to make the underground areas of City 24 a bit more dangerous, without the need for staff supervision.
Keep it clean… or he will.
Cremators have been fully implemented and will be used (mainly in events) to keep the sewers clean from xenian life and other sorts of pests, as well as perform some surface duties if required.
Workbenches can now only be picked up by their owner, this prevents people from randomly stealing them and will allow us to place free ovens in apartments to give them more value.
In addition, there’s now functionality to preview and place workbenches, meaning you shouldn’t need to wait for admins to place them anymore.
If you’re ever stuck in a location due to a bug or map issue, you can now simply type in /unstuck in your chat and you’ll be teleported back to spawn. Please use this whenever possible rather than calling for admins, but keep in mind that misuse or abuse will not be tolerated.
In an effort to combat metagame, CPs will no longer be displayed on the scoreboard by default. To check if you’re eligible to commit crimes (requires 4 CPs online) you simply need to type in the new /checkcrime command in your chatbox and you’ll get information if there are enough CPs online to commit crimes according to the rules.
The CWU/DOB now has access to “rolled up poster” and “paint can” items that allow them to place up posters using the /paneladd command without the need to call an admin over. The CWU, DOB and CPs now also have access to the /panelremove, to allow them to take down posters as well.
We’d like to keep poster placements as IC as possible, refer to the CWU or the DOB in-game whenever you want a poster rather than calling for an admin if possible.
We have made many other miscellaneous changes, ranging from quality of life for players & staff to new smaller additions to the server. Here are some of the most notable ones:
6.1 - Stamina and skills now get debuffs when your character’s health is low.
6.2 - Repair Plating now has a 20-second cooldown in-between uses.
6.3 - Dispatch no longer requires an OTA uniform to have the Combine ESP.
6.4 - Vortigaunts can no longer wear human clothes.
6.5 - The CP stunstick is an actual item now.
6.6 - CWU can now use the /GetCWUFlags command to get temporary PET flags.
6.7 - One-way containers: Containers that you can freely put items into, but need a password to take items out.
6.8 - Lots of Staff QoL changes (logging improvements, new tools, and commands, etc),
6.9 - New Pickup Terminal & Ration Dispenser models are finally in!
6.10 - The Combine ESP has been slightly altered to improve visibility.
6.11 - You can now tie, untie, and search unconscious characters.
6.12 - Citizens and vortigaunts now have coughing voice commands.
6.13 - Fixed barricade placements so they no longer float in the air.
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