Support and airstrike cool-down

[Mister J]

Hey all, just wanted to sound out your views on the following. 

Currently cool-down for airstrikes and especially support is really low, meaning that support fires follow each other up rather quickly. You can call for a new support fire while the smoke of the previous one is still in the air. So actually hardly any to no cool-down at all. Which to me is too extreme. I know that privileges of each class have been discussed before, only now with the field ops there remains an issue.

Due to the extreme frequency of airstrikes and support fire, especially when many people are on, you can completely block a passage in a map. Think of Caen in the first stage, or Minas on level 3 or 4. A fanatical Field Ops is able to completely block the passage, and if there is only one passage, map ends in a stalemate. Even though attacking team is overpowered, walking through the constant rain of support makes all attempts of attackers cake's dough (got you some Shakespeare right there!). So I think there should be a small gap between any artillery fire, which actually was the case at the old Pub server as well. Maybe it's just not set right or maybe changed deliberately, but what about increasing cool-down a bit more again?

What do you think?

 

Edited November 6, 2019 by Mister J

[Jaime]

Agree with Mr J. CD should be longer. There's nothing what annoy me more than airstrake 

[Ande]

Agree..

[Ctrz]

Yeap. Same with mortar cooldown also if possible. 

[Lrw]

yea and panza cooldown is the same so quick

[street aka steve]

I agree with you arty and panzer cooldown are just plain silly 

when server is busy its Arty that's the main issue as Jay states

when server is low in number   its panzer firing at you every spawn especially if you lose map control. I used to enjoy  playing on low numbers now its just quit or play elsewhere 

Edited November 5, 2019 by street aka steve

[ddifof]

fops constantly spamming arty and airstrike also means that they have no ammo available (or are reluctant to give it as it means less arty).

I'd even like there to be third fops slot if it can be made without increasing total arty capacity of the team. I sometimes want to play fops for ammo starved team but both slots are taken by some single man armies behind enemy lines.

[Poyer]

18 hours ago, ddifof said:

fops constantly spamming arty and airstrike also means that they have no ammo available (or are reluctant to give it as it means less arty).

I'd even like there to be third fops slot if it can be made without increasing total arty capacity of the team. I sometimes want to play fops for ammo starved team but both slots are taken by some single man armies behind enemy lines.

Totally agree! Besides I like to use artillery some times as well instead of going full rambo medic :). Cooldown time can be increased though, the present cooldown time is a little short indeed, especially when considering adding a third f ops.

[Jessica]

I agree on Airstrikes / Arty.

Of course I am a panza player and I am biased.
But still the airstrike is the biggest problem,
this goes on and on and killes many people, also 2 fops are at the same time.
Panza is not so quick with reloading, certainly not after the first 2 shots, and panza killes only 1 person., and only 1 panza player per team.

[Ctrz]

32 minutes ago, Jessica said:

Panza is not so quick with reloading, certainly not after the first 2 shots, and panza killes only 1 person., and only 1 panza player per team.

It can be devastating in close quarters maps or spammy ones (spawn as allied panzer in supply depot and get 2-3 shots done, selfkill and respawn with full bar and go again). But I agree that it is not so much of an issue like arty or strikes are. Strikes even less so, because they last short time and very few know how to aim them 100% correctly. But for me, mortar is second biggest issue - for example in caen or snatch it can be really game destroying.

[slowtobi]

Interesting discussion, having all 4 stars from the beginning makes the legacy server quite unique. The gameplay is much faster (dying and killing) compared to starting from 0 servers.
I hate this arty and airstrike thing, but that is what FOPS are for. Taking fops down /changing cooldown is not an option for me. If you want to experiment with the actual setting, id suggest put everything back to 0 or 1, keep it for 2 days and wait for Feedback. The gameplay will become completely different. I loved when campaigns were running and Skills could be collected over it, maybe good old days will return:)  Anyways i like the way it is now too.

 

 

[MiniMuppet]

We will take a look see if we can do anything.

[Stumpel]

Few secs more on cooldown.. And few sec more to limit that there isnt many airstrikes at same time.. 

[Bystry]

It's due to the CVAR change and artillery-per-minute limitations rework made by the ETL dev team. Basically before the change you just had to set the value in seconds that had to elapse to call another airstrike (10, 15, 20 seconds, etc.) - after the change it's airstrikes/artilleries-per-minute limitation. Without going into details, I'll just say that I'm sure the change on the server wasn't deliberate and I noticed exactly when it happened. I believe it just needs some adjusting in the server config. 

[MiniMuppet]

@BystryThe cvar is set to 1 not sure what else we can do with that?

set team_maxAirstrikes "1"
set team_maxArtillery "1"
set team_maxMachineguns "1"
set team_maxRockets "1"

set g_fieldopsChargeTime 95000

Doesn't seem to do much if i change the charge time and im not even sure what the 1 mean for set team. We can remove the levels from the fieldops not sure what else we can do.

[MrMuppet]

Removed skills for field op and soldier.

[Ctrz]

1 hour ago, MiniMuppet said:

@BystryThe cvar is set to 1 not sure what else we can do with that?

set team_maxAirstrikes "1"
set team_maxArtillery "1"
set team_maxMachineguns "1"
set team_maxRockets "1"

set g_fieldopsChargeTime 95000

Doesn't seem to do much if i change the charge time and im not even sure what the 1 mean for set team. We can remove the levels from the fieldops not sure what else we can do.

team_maxAirstrikes[or other_maxVariants] - The maximum number of airstrikes a team can have at once. 0 disables them altogether, while any higher number is the max amount.

Thats from my olf jaymod documentation, dont think its any different in ETL or other mods.

Is there possibility to cap fieldop and soldier? Maybe instead of max level, we have lvl2 max?

[MiniMuppet]

//set team_airstrikeTime "60"
//set team_artyTime "60"

This is the old setting and yes jaymod is how many you can fire in 60 sec which im guessing what this should be, but its allowing it to fire every 15sec.

We have now remove skills for fieldops and soldiers until we can sort anything different out.

[Ctrz]

2 minutes ago, MiniMuppet said:

//set team_airstrikeTime "60"
//set team_artyTime "60"

This is the old setting and yes jaymod is how many you can fire in 60 sec which im guessing what this should be, but its allowing it to fire every 15sec.

We have now remove skills for fieldops and soldiers until we can sort anything different out.

If we have test server up, Im free to test whatever needed today if you want any help
 

[ddifof]

1 hour ago, MrMuppet said:

Removed skills for field op and soldier.

Just tested lvl 0 pf and I must say I don't like it. It feels like a chore to play with it.

PF and other "noob" weapons have a important role in games: they allow the new players to get into the game and feel somewhat useful. When I came back to ET earlier this year I had no chance against skilled players on a smg vs. smg fight and if it were not for heavy weapons and rifles I probably would have stopped playing pretty quick.

[Ctrz]

31 minutes ago, ddifof said:

Just tested lvl 0 pf and I must say I don't like it. It feels like a chore to play with it.

PF and other "noob" weapons have a important role in games: they allow the new players to get into the game and feel somewhat useful. When I came back to ET earlier this year I had no chance against skilled players on a smg vs. smg fight and if it were not for heavy weapons and rifles I probably would have stopped playing pretty quick.

Okay, low panzer or fops level isnt terrible but we should level out other classes then too. Bring medic health lower etc. Or just have panzer/fops levels in the middle - not lvl 0 like at the moment.

[Mister J]

Maybe take it easy when it comes to changing entire server settings. I feel settings were good lately, people seemed to enjoy the game-play as it was. The only issue I recognized was that of the artillery rate. And if indeed Field Opses were able to call one every 15 seconds, than this issue should be fixed. I wouldn't want to change any other parameter or aspect of any class.

[MrMuppet]

Increasing the level of the field ops from anything other than zero will increase its charge time bringing it back to the same situation, the charge time cvar makes no difference, increasing the soldier will allow then to near constantly fire the mortar as before, medics level was reduced months ago to three to stop adrenaline, to be honest guys we have had this debate many times over the life of the game and you can never keep everyone happy no matter what you do.

ETL is not really set up for our game type 6 regarding skills nor the map vote screen not being default at end of map, the dev's will say its how we set our server up, they have designed it so you have to play the game each map and build your skills that map, we have given skills to try and make it a level playing filed for all clients no matter when you join the server. 

[MiniMuppet]

Soldier put back for now.

[Eagle_cz]

I had a talk with devs, "set team_maxAirstrikes "1" means how many times per minute arty/air can be sucesfully called. So you can still 'spam' with arty but only one per minute will be done.

        if (team_maxAirstrikes.integer)
        {
            level.axisAirstrikeCounter += 60000 / team_maxAirstrikes.integer;
        }
        else
        {
            level.axisAirstrikeCounter += 60000 / G_MaxAvailableAirstrikes(ent);
        }

int G_MaxAvailableAirstrikes(gentity_t *ent)
{
    int playerCount;
    int fieldopsCount;

    playerCount   = G_TeamCount(ent, -1);
    fieldopsCount = G_CountTeamFieldops(ent->client->sess.sessionTeam);

    if (fieldopsCount > 6)
    {
        fieldopsCount = 6;
    }
    else if (fieldopsCount < 2)
    {
        fieldopsCount = 2;
    }

    // max number of airstrikes per team per minute
    return ceil(fieldopsCount * playerCount * g_heavyWeaponRestriction.integer * 0.01);
}