Weapon Tethering

Volt Cruelerz

Legions Developer
I took the time to draw up a little something so that people can see what it is exactly that I'm talking about...

LegionsTether.jpg
 
Thanks for the drawing, it clears things up for me. I support the idea and can't wait for it to go somewhere. I wonder if it would be possible if your tether can be fixed if it is broken(if it does break and not just get sent back to you).
 

MuffNator

New Member
imagine the speeds you could get up to. especially on levels with towers near the flag like frostbyte. come in fast and whip around the tower.
To me its very similar to overdrive
 

Volt Cruelerz

Legions Developer
The tether would not "break," though if the anchor were destroyed with a couple rockets, the thing would disintegrate down the chain until it reached you (I've got a mechanic in mind for this, but I've explained it elsewhere and it takes a while to type :p ). If you are killed while tethered, it would disintegrate in the opposite direction until it returned to the anchor at which point someone else could bind to it.

Though I was thinking that if destroyed, you would be able to repair the anchors.

imagine the speeds you could get up to. especially on levels with towers near the flag like frostbyte. come in fast and whip around the tower.
To me its very similar to overdrive

You'd have to actually stop and connect to it, you can't just use it like OD or some sort of grappling mechanism...
 
This brings up new ideas. Imagine a game type where you have to carry an object to somewhere to gain points, and the only way to move it is by tethering. This would require a great amount of team work. Yes, sort of like CTF, but instead of it always being a flag, the object will differ every match, giving variety to the players.
 

Volt Cruelerz

Legions Developer
well, like I said, you'll lose some mobility as you will be tethered. The other thing is that tethers wouldn't just be anywhere and would glow, so they'd be visible.
 

Volt Cruelerz

Legions Developer
sounds nice but is it implementable atm?
Obviously, there are more pressing issues on the minds of the devs, but I'd say this falls into the category of base assets (should it ever be implemented). I do believe however that it would be possible to do this by just having lots of small links connected to each other and glowing so you don't see their edges and they all just blend together.
I really like this idea. Make sure you don't overpower these weapons, or you would have the same problems as with the turrets.
My primary concern with turrets is how much of a sitting duck they are. In other games, a vehicle can wipe out a turret simply because it can go fast enough that the turret can't track it. In Legions, you are the vehicle. For this reason, any turret would necessarily have to be super powerful and would probably need to kill an OR in one shot to compensate for their rotation. Problem is, if you add too much power, then anyone who practices with this will become game changing and will unbalance the game.

Obviously, you don't want these things to have the power a full fledged turret would have (this is why it only buffs your weapons or gives you certain ones), but you would gain mobility that would prevent you from just being shot to oblivion without any chance of survival. It does limit your mobility, but it gives you just enough that you could do different things you couldn't before like hang off walls, or off platforms, or I suppose if you wanted, get ultra-high angular momentum before launching yourself at the enemy base (would probably want to institute a "breaking strength" factor so that the tether breaks if it goes taught and you are going at least, say, 180 m/s).

Things like the mortar would just be a longer range GL, but with increased splash and damage radius, making them fit for taking out incoming cappers at long range (if you could predict where they would go when your shots hit).

I don't think that the idea is inherently overpowered, but yes, that is something that will have to be noted. We just have to make sure that defenders know that there is a benefit to being tethered, and that is increased power/RoF/range/what have you.
 

NeoNugget

New Member
If this does come out will there be a limit to how many people can do this? Like the turrets in Tribes: Vengeance, where you can physically grab it and there is a limit or just like an ammo box in Legions where you can get as many as you would like.


EDIT: I thought I saw Chaingun Rockets in here somewhere, may I point out that you should decrease the damage output so you dont completely demolish the enemy team. This seems like a great idea but still needs some touch ups.
 

Volt Cruelerz

Legions Developer
You wouldn't be able to chain rockets, don't worry. They do have a faster reload time though, but even so, it won't be bad since your angle at which to hit them is limited.

And these would be static base assets--unmovable. If destroyed, I'd assume that they could be repaired via whatever game mechanic is used to repair other base assets (assuming they are added of course).
 

Baneful

New Member
Assign a hotkey to manually de-attach the tether. Or, it manually detaches when you go a certain distance. I'd hate it if I get pulled back from stopping a capper.
 

Volt Cruelerz

Legions Developer
this is for defense, so you'd want it to remain attached, even if you get to the end. It would also be bound by a hotkey.
 

mausgang

Puzzlemaster
Assign a hotkey to manually de-attach the tether. Or, it manually detaches when you go a certain distance. I'd hate it if I get pulled back from stopping a capper.
A hotkey for grab and release is the only way to do this effectively. If it automatically released once somebody got a certain distance away from the center, all sorts of mistaken detachments would happen. Using this method for building up angular momentum would require manual release, not automatic release
 

Volt Cruelerz

Legions Developer
right, but I do think that there would have to be some mechanism for release... Let's say that if you exceed 180 while tethered, it breaks? That would seem reasonable to me anyways since if you go over that, you're obviously attempting to gain angular momentum...
 

MJ1284

Member
Sweet idea, but how about Nivosus etc. where you can easily snipe from base-to-base even without tethering? I can imagine most old LR fans (read = O-Snipe noobs) would rejoice if tethering gets implemented ingame, while base D would get frustrated same way as they did in previous build.
 

Volt Cruelerz

Legions Developer
You wouldn't necessarily have every map have tethers, just like how not every map has the Quarry jump pads. Tethers would likely be reserved for larger maps where you couldn't hit from base to base.
 
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