A bunch of minor improvements

[HAARP]

Whenever I think "this would be nice" while playing MWLL, I usually write it down. So here it goes, the list of minor improvements that could make your everyday life easier!


- Display current radar range, be it passive or active, somewhere on the hud

- Shouldn't flamers and lasers to some degree be light sources? I think it would look cool on night maps and illuminate the yellow stream of fiery death

- In addition to remembering weapon groups, it would be nice if current selected weapon and fire mode could be remembered aswell

- Does Angel ECM increase enemy lock-on times? If it doesn't, it should imo  But this is open for debate I guess (this doesn't mean I want this discussion in this thread!)

- Do passive radar and ECM stack for enemy lock-on times? It should imo (same here!)

- It should be made possible to drop tons of ammo that you mistakenly bought or want to swap with some other ammo type

- Show more info in the buy menu, like free tons, torso twist range or speed

- Also show friendly AECM radius on the radar, not only the minimap

- Maybe replace "head destroyed" by something more fitting, like "cockpit armor destroyed"? After all, I am still sitting inside the head

- Show if AECM is enabled or disabled, because some people don't know that disabling the radar disables AECM aswell.

- Headlights should make navigating underwater easier. Currently, you're pretty much blind on Thunder Rift.

- Walking through water should increase your heat dissipation a little more me thinks. It should be worth it to stand in water, not simply be a nuisance.

- At the same time, jumpjets are not supposed to recharge when in water

- Seperate the overheat notification "beep" from the Betty announcement so you can notice it even when there are other Betty messages queued up

- Allow missiles NARC/TAG-following to be switched off without having to go passive

to be continued

[Askis]

- Do passive radar and ECM stack for enemy lock-on times? It should imo (same here!)

Yes they do.

[-AAA-]

- Display current radar range, be it passive or active, somewhere on the hud

It already does - on the bottom of your right-side radar display.

- It should be made possible to drop tons of ammo that you mistakenly bought or want to swap with some other ammo type

+1

- Show more info in the buy menu, like free tons, torso twist range or speed

+1

- Also show friendly AECM radius on the radar, not only the minimap

A bit redundant, I think.  You can already easily see if you're inside the umbrella, and it's nice to have somewhere you can look to see what's inside that umbrella instead of a big blue circle.

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

Quotes in italics:

- Shouldn't flamers and lasers to some degree be light sources? I think it would look cool on night maps and illuminate the yellow stream of fiery death
Too much resource-consuming. Won't happen unless we want new rant topics about how the performance went down.

- In addition to remembering weapon groups, it would be nice if current selected weapon and fire mode could be remembered aswell
it'd be nicer if left mouse button would be "Fire group 1" by default, not "fire current selected group".

- Show more info in the buy menu, like free tons, torso twist range or speed
Planned for the future.

- Also show friendly AECM radius on the radar, not only the minimap
Not really necessary, especially because it'd make it more cluttered. Yea, I know that sometimes you need to stay under ACM all way long, but spotting the Atlas and staying close to him isn't that difficult, is it?

[HAARP]

Quotes in italics:
- In addition to remembering weapon groups, it would be nice if current selected weapon and fire mode could be remembered aswell
it'd be nicer if left mouse button would be "Fire group 1" by default, not "fire current selected group".

But only if we can set chain-fire for individual groups!

- Also show friendly AECM radius on the radar, not only the minimap
Not really necessary, especially because it'd make it more cluttered. Yea, I know that sometimes you need to stay under ACM all way long, but spotting the Atlas and staying close to him isn't that difficult, is it?

Actually, it's pretty easy. It just doesn't make sense to me that it's displayed on the minimap and not the radar. Couldn't we just swap it?

[Jaso the Sniper]

- Display current radar range, be it passive or active, somewhere on the hud

- Shouldn't flamers and lasers to some degree be light sources? I think it would look cool on night maps and illuminate the yellow stream of fiery death as a programmer, I know that that would be insanely difficult to implement

- In addition to remembering weapon groups, it would be nice if current selected weapon and fire mode could be remembered aswell MW4-style?

- Does Angel ECM increase enemy lock-on times? If it doesn't, it should imo  But this is open for debate I guess (this doesn't mean I want this discussion in this thread!) it should also, imo

- It should be made possible to drop tons of ammo that you mistakenly bought or want to swap with some other ammo type YES! Also make it so that people can walk over it and automatically "pick it up" (if enough space) or "buy it for free"

- Show more info in the buy menu, like free tons, torso twist range or speed Yep! Also, do you know when mechlab's gonna be in the game (or is it in now? I have no idea...)

- Also show friendly AECM radius on the radar, not only the minimap Not very necessary

- Maybe replace "head destroyed" by something more fitting, like "cockpit armor destroyed"? After all, I am still sitting inside the head Yep! Or is something wrong with myhead? - also: is there a voice saying that repeatedly/ Yarr, it would drive me nuts! (P.S. Someone post a link to that thread, lol...)

[Az]

- Shouldn't flamers and lasers to some degree be light sources? I think it would look cool on night maps and illuminate the yellow stream of fiery death as a programmer, I know that that would be insanely difficult to implement

Well, you know, it's actually insanely easy to implement since... about the Quake2 engine, I'd say? It's okay if you didn't know, you weren't born then.
But it was, and still is very taxing on resources. The Hyperblaster slowed my poor Cyrix (yeah, I know...) to a crawl after the first 3 blasts. Bullet time before The Matrix.

Anyway, I don't think lasers should light up the skies. After all, most of the laser's light is coherent and should be invisible, except on the receiving end. We only see the scattering of the laser upon air's impurities. Probably not bright enough to warrant their own 800m long dynamic light source. But I'm biased, as I suffer from performance issues.

Bright flamers, on the other hand, would make sense (and make my FPS drop even lower :/).

• In addition to remembering weapon groups, it would be nice if current selected weapon and fire mode could be remembered aswell

Seconded! I was thinking about making this suggestion myself.
Currently selected weapon group and fire mode, but also the selected weapon, for quick ammo buying.
Though it might "conflicts" with chain-fire, if the current design is to save weapon configuration each time it is modified.

• - Show more info in the buy menu, like free tons, torso twist range or speed

Oh yes, especially free tons and speed.

• - Also show friendly AECM radius on the radar, not only the minimap

Not essential but useful, and not really cluttering. It is already shown on the radar of the AngelECM bearing unit.

But what I'd like to see on the minimap are some icons for the bases. Maybe I'm stupid, but on most maps I still must bring up the whole map to quickly find my way to the hangar. It would proves itself necessary anyway in a game mode with capturable bases (maybe Terrain Control?).

• - Show if AECM is enabled or disabled, because some people don't know that disabling the radar disables AECM aswell.

That I didn't know for sure. In doubt, I stayed active.

What I still don't know however is if AECM also doubles as GECM or if it is a Starcraft's Arbiter-like ability.

Those words are ambiguous:

GECM = Guardian Electronic Countermeasures
Masks activated unit from radar systems.  Decreases enemy radar range to detect unit by 500m

AECM = Angel ECM
Masks team mates from radar within a 150m range.  Decreases enemy radar range to detect units within area of effect by 500m

[=CJW=Solusphere]

- Maybe replace "head destroyed" by something more fitting, like "cockpit armor destroyed"? After all, I am still sitting inside the head Yep! Or is something wrong with myhead?

"Warning! Cockpit Breach Detected!"

[~SJ~ Atlessa]

[...]
What I still don't know however is if AECM also doubles as GECM or if it is a Starcraft's Arbiter-like ability.

Those words are ambiguous:

GECM = Guardian Electronic Countermeasures
Masks activated unit from radar systems.  Decreases enemy radar range to detect unit by 500m

AECM = Angel ECM
Masks team mates from radar within a 150m range.  Decreases enemy radar range to detect units within area of effect by 500m

That's why it's Called AECM:  Arbiter-Esque-Counter-Measure

[Snowball]

What I still don't know however is if AECM also doubles as GECM or if it is a Starcraft's Arbiter-like ability.

Those words are ambiguous:

GECM = Guardian Electronic Countermeasures
Masks activated unit from radar systems.  Decreases enemy radar range to detect unit by 500m

AECM = Angel ECM
Masks team mates from radar within a 150m range.  Decreases enemy radar range to detect units within area of effect by 500m

Wiki entries for GECM, AECM, and Radar.  Note that even though it says "out of date for 0.3.0", the info is still mostly accurate.

TL;DR: AECM does not give the user GECM effects, it only nearby friendly units within a 150m radius. (i.e. Arbiter style, as Atlessa said).

[Az]

That's why it's Called AECM:  Arbiter-Esque-Counter-Measure

Haha, that makes sense now. Thank you

Wiki entries for GECM, AECM, and Radar.  Note that even though it says "out of date for 0.3.0", the info is still mostly accurate.

I did check the Wiki, but that was some time ago; the radar page has been updated since with a nice table.
(Edit: Well, it's weird: I'm pretty sure I had read the Radar page along with the GECM/AECM ones, and thought it lacked a comprehensive table of detection range. But I just checked the revision history and it's been there all along. I guess I didn't have any memory of that table since its first version lacked the information I was looking for then (BA and passive).)

However, I still find that wording ambiguous:

the AECM creates a 300m "umbrella" of signal distortion that makes all friendly units in range harder to detect.

There is no inexact or contradictory information per se, but common sense would tell me that if I hold an umbrella, it would protect me, and that most of the time I'm friendly with myself. It never specifies "nearby friendly units only", as you did.

But it never says it protects the bearer either, so I did assume the worst. As I was aware of the Arbiter's cloaking field mechanism, I suspected the AECM would work the same way, for balance reasons. But if someone has formed a preconceived idea of the AECM as an AoE GECM before reading the Wiki, he won't find any obvious contradiction in those pages.


Anyway, thanks for the clarification.

[HAARP]

btw, does AECM and GECM stack?

[Snowball]

btw, does AECM and GECM stack?

AFAIK, in 0.2.0 mechanics, no it didn't.  In 0.3.0 and 0.3.1, I haven't a clue, although I don't think the devs really touched this area.

There's a way to quickly and easily test this though, if you've got at least one other person; I'd test it myself, but I'm extremely busy this week.

[shadowkiller]

I wanted to add lights onto the particles but as mentioned before it is a bit hard on the hardware. Not only that but currently there is no way to change the color of the particle lights. Its always white. However if we even move to ce3 that is DEFINATLY on my todo list. I want all the explosions and some weapons to cast light. All the lasers, ppcs, flamers etc will all cast the proper color light as well as shadows. Just imagine a ppc flying through the trees on clearcut at night casting shows as it moves along.

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

I just imagined my PC burn
hahaha 
but yea, it'd be great!