Brainstorm ideas for types of deployables

Deployables are special items for use in combat that a player can purchase (at the armory), and drop, place, or otherwise deploy outside of their base’s main power (only). These items are intended to enhance combat encounters away from the base, and offer some (limited) resupply capabilities to the player or his teammates - where traditional buildings/structures on a forward are not available.

This eases the responsibility of the ckit role; who can then either focus on building up or repairing the main base, or the ckit can also utilize deployables for support to help him set up a forward.

Deployables will have a limited number of uses (some with only 1 use) and will also have a limited life-span (ranging from several seconds to up to a couple of minutes) - and are not meant to become permanent additions to the match.


Here’s some potential ideas for some deployable things. Please add some more ideas! :slight_smile:

  • Fragmentation Grenade
  • Laser trip-mine
  • Screamer motion sensor
  • Teleporter
  • Personal hologram generator
  • Medical station
  • Ammo refill station
3 Likes

I think a Molotov would be useful and fun.

4 Likes

I did have an idea for a “construction deployable” where if you pressed q at it a menu opens where at least some key buildables can be selected to be randomly placed in the vicinity. I’m not sure if that would be needed if the ckit remains a side arm though. My original idea was to also have this deployable replace the repeater for powering forwards, and even with the ckit side arm, that could be a good approach if the repeater was just converted to a deployable. In such a case, a “repeater deployable” could be available on spawn (like the medkit now), and purchasable at the arm (for free?) if you used the one you are carrying.

2 Likes

Would definitely encourage forwards so I am for it. Limiting what buildings could be deployed (preferably just teleports, repeaters, medis, and turrets) seems reasonable and I would rather be able to carry 2-3 but they cost credits than only have one but it be free with some cool down to give strategic players another option in pubs.

2 Likes

I was also thinking that a concussion grenade thar slows any alien looking at it would work really well for poorer human teams who cant get out of there base against upper lifeforms. It would reward coordination and force aliens to play more of the map instead of sitting literally outside of base collecting evos.

The motion detector would be awesome. I think the claymore triggering system and aoe make a huge difference in what it would be used for besides pissing off teammates? Do you have more a vision for that one. Really cheap and small would be cool early or a big trip laser c4 thing could be cool to cut off escape routes and corners aliens like to duck into.

4 Likes

As unauthentic as it feels maybe a jump pad thing launching you in the air to give people more mobility in big battles? Figure one of my suggests should at least be a building lol.

4 Likes

Keep in mind that the deployables would be a different (but related) system from the buildable system, although it looks like we would have some deployables that would correspond in behavior to some similar buildables.But what primarily distinquishes deployabales from buildables is that deployables are more portable in form (i.e. smaller), have a relatively temporary life, don’t require any construction time (just buy them intact, carry, and drop), and cost credits instead of bp.

Ah, you mentioned this to me today, but I thought that you were just refering checking if there is anything blocking the “line of sight” between the player and mine, to check if the mine is actually in the field of view of the player, besides using a line trace, you would also have to do a conical range test, similar to what is done with the trapper range.

  //only allow a narrow field of "vision"
  VectorNormalize( distance ); //is now direction of target
  if( DotProduct( distance, self->s.origin2 ) < LOCKBLOB_DOT )
    return qfalse;

Basically it would involve generating a unit direction vector pointing from the player to the mine, taking the the dot product between that vector, and the forward view vector of the player, and checking that it is less than a certain arccosine value.

In that example code above, instead of self->s.origin2 , which is the unit vector pointing in the direction that a buildable faces, you are going to want to find the forward view vector for the player as follows:

AngleVectors( self->client->ps.viewangles, forward, NULL, NULL );

I was thinking of that as a possible deployable. I know that some trem mods had a jump pad buildable, like rcz unlimited. A fun additional feature I already added is that jump pads work on buildables that are built on them, I did that because in default trem if you built a buildable on a cannon (for example) it would just annoyingly and continuously trigger the launch sound, until the buildable is removed by a player. So perhaps a jump pad deployable could be used to aid in building, to get a buildable in an otherwise hard to reach place :slight_smile: .

3 Likes

This defeats the purpose of the Ckit role - and “key buildables” doesn’t meet the criteria of “not meant to become permanent additions to the match”

Furthermore, how would buildables being “randomly placed in the vicinity” be helpful, at all? For example: A medistation ending up on top of a crate (that you can’t reach), an armory blocking the path (for both teams), a teleporter facing the wall (leaving you vulnerable to attack from behind if you use it).

2 Likes

Spewer (A): rapidly shoots weak explosive acid blobs to wherever the alien points at, like a stationary gun.

Dread Bringer (A): records a few seconds of the user’s actions and, when the human enter the trigger zone set by the user, replays them as an induced hallucination with the initial health set by the user (so you can lure an enemy in with a fake retreating alien), doing its best to make humans think it’s real (down to Luci bolts seeming to explode on contact when in reality they simply continue on). Should be invisible when not recharging though.

Time Grenade (H): reverts alive players hit by it to their states a few seconds before.

Burden Mine (H): attaches ball and chain to an alien, permitting free movement within a certain range of the ball, but hindering the alien if when it has to drag it around.

Fire Grenade (H): sets alien buildables on fire. If this is implemented, Flamer should have the same effect.

Chameleon Mine (A): shoots a sticky tongue, chaining the human to a wall, permitting only a limited range of movement. Only works once.

Frog Mine (A): jumping mine which explodes on direct contact only. If it misses, it will simply jump again from wherever it lands and will simply keep waiting if the human leaves its field of view. Can be killed.

2 Likes

I will try to be alien-centric.

Smoke bombs- cover an area with smoke, in which humans can’t see far, but aliens see red outlines of humans;

A small drone alien- grants old school alien radar(wall hack);

Healing grenade- self explanatory;

Organic EMP- lowers the accuracy and fire rate of the energy based weapons, deactivates helmet radars, jet packs and slows down battle suits;

Deployable snare- stops the first human that run into it, deals low damage, invisible before it triggers(basi style), to be free must be shot. Has 20 HP;

That’s all for now.

3 Likes

Stink Bomb (A): bomb with odour so repugnant that humans will simply refuse to enter its area of effect; if the human is already inside it or falls into it, various negative effects will be applied (slowness, dizziness, fatigue, etc.)

2 Likes

Invisible Thread (A): makes humans trip and spend a few seconds unable to shoot.

2 Likes

Screecher(A)- if a building is hurt within the range of this deployable, it will give a “base under atack” message to the person that set it up, then it explode into harmless bits

3 Likes

Cloak Dome: generates a dome that renders everything inside its range invisible to the outside. If you are inside its range you can see everything else inside, and you can see from the inside to the outside. The boundary itself may or may not be visible to some degree from the outside.

3 Likes