Vanilla Game Mode for Tremulous 1.3: Changelog

Development
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[color=#22DD11]Vanilla Game Mode for Tremulous 1.3: Changelog[/color]

[color=#11EEFF](Vanilla is one of the 3 game modes that will be included in GrangerHub’s initial release of Tremulous 1.3)[/color]

So I’ve been working on a new QVM for the pub server based off the updated Tremulous codebase instead of the hacked together slacker’s qvm. The goal is to have 1.1ified gameplay with minor improvements, as well as more commands, better admin tools and a few fun perks for players. I’ll break down the ongoing changes in this thread.

NOTE: THESE CHANGES ARE NOT FINAL, STILL NEGOTIABLE,

#NOTHING IS WRITTEN IN STONE

They will be tested in the [color=#33CC33]test[/color][color=#00E6E6]7341[/color] dev server over the next week, it may be a little while before it’s finally put on the Pub server.

* Saturday dev game thread
* Thursday dev game thread

If you have a concern, problem, feedback of any kind about these changes, discuss them, make suggestions, etc.

What does being based off the updated Tremulous code base mean?

It does not mean it is GPP, it means the code is more recent, things like improved network code, miscellaneous features and improvements like chargebars on the hud, better stability, some more polished aspects, overall a better foundation for a QVM.

There may be a few bugs, especially on 1.1 clients, if you find them, let me know, I’ll do my best to fix them.

There may also be things I forgot to do, somethings I haven’t gotten a chance to do, so if something is missing don’t freak out, it’ll be added/fixed soon.

This post is a WIP

Gameplay

Anything that isn’t mentioned here means it’s the same as 1.1, including damage values, stamina, health and regen, however there are a few minor changes that are being made to make the gameplay smoother/more enjoyable.
###Aliens
Granger

  • Base granger can now swipe.

Advanced Granger

  • Model size is smaller, same as base granger.

Basilisk

  • Basi regen from GPP is staying
  • Basi has a regen modifier of 2x
  • Adv basi has a regen modifier of 3x
  • Small bugfixes with grab.

Marauder

  • The improved marauder movement from GPP is staying, this includes better vertical air movement and the ability to jump on sloped walls.

Advanced Marauder

  • Zap improvements from GPP are staying

  • Zap can chain up to 5 humans and/or buildings, and is also easier to aim

  • Zap damage is same as 1.1, with damage falloff as it chains through objects.
    Dragoon

  • Dragoon is the same as 1.1, the only difference is the advanced dragoon is now smaller, only very slightly larger than the dragoon

Tyrant

  • The tyrant has been nerfed a bit from it’s 1.1 status,
  • it’s hit width has been nerfed, from 20 → 16
  • HP has been changed from 400 → 350
  • Regen aura has been removed
  • Tyrants crushing from GPP is staying as well, if you somehow find yourself underneath a rant, then you will die.
  • Tyrant regen change from 7 → 12 to make up for aura regen loss

Hive

  • Hive tracking improvements from GPP has stayed
  • Hive range has been increased, damage remains the same.
  • Range: 400 → 600

Acidtube

  • Acid tube has received a damage and range buff
  • Damage increased from 6 → 10
  • Range increased from 300 → 350

Barricades

  • Barricades shrinking from GPP is staying
  • Barricades cost less BP, from 8 → 6

Misc

  • Booster poison is no longer lost upon evolving
  • Booster poison timer is reset whenver you touch the booster, so you can refresh your poison without having to wait for it to wear off first.

Humans

Helmet crouch bug

  • The bug that occured when a human crouched with a helmet and took more damage than usual has been fixed.

Painsaw

  • Painsaw range increase from 40 → 64

Chaingun

  • The chaingun combined with battlesuit is a bit of an infuriating weapon to deal with
  • Chaingun spread has been increased from 900 → 1200
  • Knockback has been reduced as well, from 1.0 qunits per bullet → 0.5

Tesla Generator

  • The Tesla Generator now costs less BP, from 10 → 8

Repeater

  • The repeater is now available at stage 1

Medistation

  • The Medistation now regens stamina

Misc

  • Stamina regenerates when using a jetpack

Misc changes

  • Marked deconstruct is staying from GPP, this means instead of a building being deconstructed, it is put in a queue to be deconstructed when more BP is needed
  • BP regen, when a structure is destroyed, it takes a certain amount of time for the BP that structure took up to come back.
  • HUD chargebars for thing like tyrant trample, lucifer cannon, and dragoon pounce.

New Commands

coming soon, still documenting

5 Likes
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if nothing is set in stone, then my opinion:

  1. things like BP, damage, range sounds like it should sit in a config file and be easily configurable by server owner. if you hardcode it in qvm then if you make one single error in balancing the game, the qvm will be useless and non-developers will have to wait for your update. is the game balanced with those settings?

  2. Marked deconstruct is staying from GPP
    noooooo. other things seem minor. they may affect balance but are still easy to tune local changes. but this one changes the game significantly. you don’t need your team now, you can move base without securing the movement properly. it makes the game less strategy more fpp. but there is plenty of fpp on the market. plz reconsider it.

  3. BP regen. how is it different from 1.1? we have it already on granger pub

  4. repeater at s1. again big change. you sure it’s still balanced?

1 Like
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What about the advanced marauder secondary attack improvements from GPP?

I am assume the healing aura was also removed?

Assume this means from 10 > 8

These values seem a little powerful, isn’t the booster only 2x?

Always hated this feature. If something in the base needs specific tweaking I have to destroy it.

A 66% damage increase and a 15% range increase, holy cow.

I am really excited to test these changes, a lot of them bring about a really healthy change individually.
My initial concern from these units however, is the the overall team balance, I think humans have been overlooked.

Aliens are at an advantage in the current version, the changes to basilisk and acid tubes are huge. Compared to the humans only significant buff being the repeater at stage 1. I think an improvement to the stage 2 weapons, either the pulse rifle or flame-thrower will help offset this. Lets see how the test games go, unfortunately I won’t be able to make it this Thursday.

Thanks for your hard work, again this sounds awesome!

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thanks!!! updated the post with the missing changes.

And yeah, I agree on the potential of humans not being looked at, I reverted a lot of buffs humans got in GPP regarding stamina, flamer, pulse rifle, and lucifer cannon buffs. I’ll probably look into adding and modifying some of those buffs back.

Those were the base regen values for basi in GPP, may need to be brought down a bit, we’ll have to see.

I pretty much just pumped some numbers into the acid tubes in the hope they wouldn’t be as useless, but if it’s too much I’ll bring it back down.

In regards to marked building, you can still deconstruct a structure entirely, you’ll just have to find another key to bind it on. Mouse 2 is free as you don’t have to hold it down to repair structures anymore.

I personally won’t be able to make the dev game tomorrow either, but not everything will quite be in tomorrows games either so Saturday will be better testing wise.

planned. also updating the changes don’t take that long, there won’t be a long wait unless all the devs happen to get kidnapped or or spontaneously explode or something within the next few weeks.

i’m not sure what is meant by this, moving base willy nilly without informing your team is still not an ideal thing to do, it basically allows you to secure base moves easier without having to risk running out of BP mid-move.

if you lose a structure, the BP that structure took up does not immediately come back, over a period of time the BP recovers. So if you lose a turret, that 8 BP does not immediately come back to build a replacement turret, instead it’s added in over a period of time to your overall build points.

also the reason that if we didn’t have marked deconstruct, when moving a base, you have to make sure aliens don’t destroy all your old buildables before you get a chance to rebuild, or else you’d be waiting a long time to build a new base, which would be detrimental to your chances of success, so it’s nice to have a working base up until the exact moment you decide to move.

i’m fairly sure, again there is some risk here with the BP not immediately getting regen’d when you lose that structure, and also it promotes early aggresive strategies from humans, and hopefully helps to minimize camping.

thanks for the feedback!! it’s definitely appreciated, and if these changes end up being the wrong direction they can easily be reversed.

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I told you already that I like these changes, but I think that 3x regen is extremely strong. This would let an Adv. Goon go from 1 HP to 250 HP in around 12 seconds (or less? not sure how fast regen ticks are in 1.1). I would recommend just having Adv. Lisk have 2x regen and give normal Lisk no regen aura. This will give an incentive to have aliens use the second evo for Adv. Lisk and also ensure aliens don’t have ridiculous amounts of health regen at stage 1. In GPP, there was never any way to get double regen at stage 1; both ways came from Adv. Lisk and Booster; the 1.5x regen boost came from normal Lisk and being near base (if I recall correctly for the second part). Aliens already have a huge advantage when it comes to regenerating health, and this would drastically increase their health regeneration. 1x/2x for normal/Adv. Lisk (respectively) sounds way better.

Side note, will Basi’s footsteps be silent now?

Please no. The zap in GPP was the final change in GPP before the devs abandoned it and left zap being extremely overpowered for taking down bases, even in one-man rushes. It should be better than it is in 1.1, but definitely not as strong as it was in GPP.

If there is one thing you take from this post, it should be that Mara Zap in GPP is NOT OKAY in 1.1. AT ALL.

Chaingun isn’t the problem, battlesuit is. As I recommended, decreasing the efficiency of the armor from 80% to 78.75% would be enough to make goons able to defeat battlesuits in one less chomp (assuming all chomps hit the head). Adding more randomness to an already random gun is a bad way to balance the armor that allows the gun to be strong. In a medium to close range fight, the spread change will do next to nothing to nerf chainsuits.

In 1.1, painsaw range was not 40, it was 48. Either way, this is a MASSIVE buff to saw, allowing it to beat out dretches and basi grab when unlagged is factored in. I dislike this change, and I am a heavy proponent of using saw to fight goons and rants.

What is the new base HP regen rate for Rant after these changes? It used to be 7, but due to the regen aura, it was always 14 per tick.

I agree with Ckit. I dislike this feature. I prefer the standard deconstruction system. Mark decon prevents accidental decons, but otherwise is frequently a nuisance.

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Actually there is already a cvar that can turn marked deconstruction on and off.[quote=“newb, post:2, topic:1241”]
things like BP, damage, range sounds like it should sit in a config file and be easily configurable by server owner. if you hardcode it in qvm then if you make one single error in balancing the game, the qvm will be useless and non-developers will have to wait for your update. is the game balanced with those settings?
[/quote]

Somethings like bp can already be adjusted by cvars, and you can even have a cfg change those values for specific maps. But currently most of the game play values are hardcoded in the tremulous.h file in the CODEZ™ and require recompiling when changing them, but as Kreative mentioned, those adjustments aren’t difficult for us to do.

For the initial release of Tremulous 1.3 we are going to be including 3 basic game modes that server owners can switch bewtween, this Vanilla game mode developed now is one of those 3. But it is very important that the hardcore Tremulous 1.1 vanilla players help us with the tests over the next several dev games on the test7341 server, and discuss here on the forums how to improve this game mode, because we want to replace the current qvm used by GrangerPub and by GrangerClub with this new qvm in the next couple of weeks. Before this upgrade occurs, the game play needs to be perfected, and the community must be satisfied with this game mode.

When Tremulous 1.3 is released, modders can code new game plays based on any of the 3 basic game modes, But the code will be a whole lot cleaner and easier to work with than with 1.1 modding, with thousands of less bugs.

We will be looking into implementing a mutator engine in a subsequent release, which would allow even significant changes to the game play that can be implemented without having to recompile, and in many cases wouldn’t even require a map change. But before we look into developing such a system, our primary focus is to finish the development for the initial release.

I’m not sure about this change, it can result in significant differences in the strategy, but might be acceptable if the bp regen rate was increased enough compared to what it was in gpp.

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i like the idea, though I’m not sure the regular basi should have regen totally gone, especially with humans able to have forwards at stage 1, what about making regular basi regen 0.5 and adv basi regen 2.0?

sorry that was a bad typo, I meant zap damage will be the same as 1.1***, yeah I definitely don’t want gpp zap damage lol

i didn’t want to nerf humans more atm, i feel anything other than chainsuit is pretty dealable even with goon, i don’t want to make it a 3 goon chomp deal as I feel that would sort of devalue battlesuit overall, battlesuit is supposed to be the big, heavy equivalent for stage 3 humans, but again, after some testing and seeing it’s not enough the values can be chaged.

chainsuit spread was to make it more ideal for dealing with big aliens and give smaller ones some breathing room, i.e. less bullets will hit close range dretches/basi’s.

knockback was easily one of the most infuriating things for me as goon player fighting chainsuits, if i mess up movement even slightly, i can not readjust to the constant knockback in time to kill a chainsuit.

the width and height are still the same as 1.1, (though in 1.1 these values weren’t defined using the tremulous.h file)

ah another change i forgot to document, tyrant regen is now 12, updated post.

i can make a cvar to disable it clientside, but i definitely like it as an addition to give you more control over your base. you can still instantly deconstruct, it’ll just have to be on a different bind.

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I don’t think normal Basilisk needs many buffs (unlike Adv. Basilisk), especially if they are getting silent footsteps. Just leave Basilisk as it is in 1.1, and give Adv. Basilisk the same healing aura that the booster has in 1.1. The only change I would give normal Basilisk is giving it 3 hp regen per tick instead of the current 2 per tick (to match with Adv. Granger’s regen speed) and then Adv. Basilisk can stay at 3 regen per tick because it will always have booster-style double regen. Even with humans being able to have forwards at stage 1, it does not make sense for aliens to have access to a booster at stage 1, even if that booster cannot provide poison.

I don’t think the width and height are a problem, I think pain saw is already a strong weapon in 1.1. It costs 100 dollars, it’s not supposed to be a weapon that can solo every alien in the game. Increasing the range so substantially will make it much easier to destroy small aliens and big aliens alike while not affecting its usefulness in base rushes (except for maybe not having to crouch to kill some things). Let’s keep in mind here that the pain saw has TWO HUNDRED damage per second. That’s more than double the prifle and nearly triple the chaingun. If the pain saw had the range of a normal gun, it would be brokenly good. Furthermore, unlagged can “increase” the range to hit aliens that are further away than it should be able to hit (most notably a Basilisk, even though Basilisk grab range currently out-ranges pain saw). If any change was to be made to the pain saw, I would just have it fire more frequently for less damage per hit so it is more consistent with how much damage it does vs. how long it is actually close enough to hurt the enemy. But it really doesn’t need such a massive buff. This is the equivalent of speeding up luci balls or prifle shots by 33%, but in the form of the range it can hit. It makes it way stronger than a 100 cost gun should be.

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You are way overplaying the pain saw’s effectiveness. On paper you may be correct, but no goon that sees a pain saw thinks, “OH NO HE CAN KILL ME IN 1 SECOND, I BETTER RUN.” They walk right into the saw because it is garbage at killing anything but defenseless eggs, and pillaging the Overmind.

Keep the saw changes, don’t make the lisk too strong. Watch players like Cleanharry, Cole and Menace and I promise you that you won’t think the lisk needs a buff. Unless they are fighting me kappa.

On another note, a goon should not have the advantage against a Battlesuit. The suit is already underused and easily abused by good aliens. If you’re going to lower the effectiveness of the armor, you need to give the suit a radar to offset the damage the player takes. A change I’ve wanted to see for years now.

I would advise you to tread lightly, we’ve been playing vanilla 1.1 for years and drastic changes won’t be well received unless the community explicitly calls out for the changes. That being said I think the changes you’re making will be enjoyable.

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This particular game mode is meant to replace 1.1 vanilla so that generally all hardocre Trem 1.1 vanilla players would prefer to play this game mode on the new 1.3 qvm, instead of playing on the old 1.1 vanilla servers. We aren’t going to be including many more changes for this particular game mode than what was listed, and may even revert/alter those changes, only things that the hardcore 1.1 gamers always wanted to see in this game play will be changed. It is important the hardcore 1.1 players are made more than satisfied with this particular game mode replacing the old 1.1 vanilla servers, they have the final say for this game mode design, so that the whole Tremulous community can finally move forward together towards a fun future.

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I agree with everything in this changelog bar the Chaingun nerf. Battlesuits have never been the problem. I as well as many others can take the battlesuit out EZPZ with an Adv goon or even a reg goon. Chainguns are quintessential within a human squad for taking out big game aliens ESPECIALLY if those aliens are in some sort of squad (2 rants and a few goons, 3 rants). I figure you’re nerfing the chaingun to accomodate for the rant nerf, however this isn’t necessary. Now, instead of a rant absolutely tormenting as big of a squad as 6 humans even with a battlesuit included, the rant will have to use tactics and even a teammate to take out a squad that big. The rant nerf WAS necessary where the chaingun nerf WASN’T.

I think all of the construction changes were necessary and favorable. One change I would love to see is granting both humans and aliens on club and pub both extra BP. Maybe 36? This would allow for more interesting builds, incentive for the builder, and longer gameplay.

I’m glad the aliens got buffed for pubs because now instead of all of the whore human players (cough Pluto, Spamo, Police, ManInHijab cough) who almost never play aliens will suffer and have to work harder. However on the flip side, scrimming on atcs with humans will be more challenging than it already was.

Another change I’d like to see implemented especially now that tubs are buffed, can we turn off the “time evo” grant? At least on club. Scrims have been reduced to aliens camping for time evos and getting a quick one or two dragoons to absolutely torment s1 humans. If we can turn off time evos that’ll encourage more aggressive alien gameplay and with the buffed tubes even if the humans are domming dretches it’ll be hard to get past their defenses. Let me be clear though, don’t disable /share. Some of the less skilled players may get the lucky evo and have to fend off the opposition for their more skilled squad. I think aggression should be encouraged but we should still enable a shared economy. Right now because of time evos aliens are very OP in scrims.

Or, possibly, make it so that a certain number of kills (maybe even 1 kill) said player will start receiving time evos but within a longer span of time.

Please let me know thoughts^^

Thanks.

-bird

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Cancer.

FINALLY ZQSFQFGDSRHSZH

Not sure how I feel about this.

An interesting upgrade would’ve been to make it able to shoot over turrets, if it doesn’t already in GPP. Idk about a BP change.

The whole point of the battlesuit was always to remove the chaingun’s recoil for me. The extra hit you can take is bonus. Bsuits without luci/chaingun look tasty as fuck though.

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I think is better not to disable them, instead be an automatic activated or deactivated battle sense timer where you receive timed evos/credits if you are near or in a battle, but not sitting around in base. (I mean that you need ENEMIES somehow near you in a fixed distance)

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I think 3x is a bit OP - I agree with Menace on this. [quote=“krtv, post:1, topic:1241”]
Zap can chain up to 5 humans and/or buildings, and is also easier to aim
[/quote]

This is kinda OP for destroying bases, if I remember correctly.

I don’t particularly like this. If someone has a tiny lag spike they have a much higher chance of getting killed.

Don’t like this at all. It makes it way too easy to move a base, and aliens/humans can’t ‘hold buildings hostage’ anymore - this was a small advantage you could get from map control, and is especially important in scrims.

I either like or am indifferent(ish) to the rest of the changes outlined.

2 Likes
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I agree with turning timed evos off for scrims. Timed evoes are important in pub though. Tube range buff was overkill also. The damage buff is sufficient imo.

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Maybe just increase the time it takes to get timed evos? Instead of every 2 minutes, make it every 4-5 minutes?

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If time evo is removed perhaps all buildings could provide a small amount of kill credit, currently only spawns/OM/RC do.

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Check out this proposed alternative to timed evos: Receiving a partial credit/evo reward upon inflicting damage to an enemy player before that player's death .

Oh, I just remembered a couple of other improvements from gpp that are being kept:

  • Aliens can obtain fractional evos. If alien A accounts for 60% of the damage of a killed human, alien B accounts for 25%, and alien C accounts for 15%, The earned evo(s) would be divided base on the same fractions. However, this also means that if only one dretch bite to the ankles is sustained by a killed human that received the rest of the damage from alien buildables, that dretch only gets a fraction of the evo based on its contributed damage, and the rest of the evo is lost.

  • Tha bug where buildable models drop below the actual buildables when built on edges is fixed. So no more invisible edge boosters/dc/rets/etc…

  • Teslas can zap over rets (As Mae just brought up).

Another new feature being added (that wasn’t in gpp vanilla) is that the melee attacks will be improved so that a target that can receive damage that is within range, that is within your line of site, and that is the closest to the cross hairs, will be damaged. Two significant things result from this, when multiple targets are within range of your melee attack and within line of site, you can accurately pick a specific target, also map objects will no longer block your melee attack from damaging a target within your line of site and within range.

It might not be OP with adjusted values such as the damage, and maybe even reducing the maximum number of targets within a zap chain.

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admittedly i haven’t read every single point everyone has made in this thread, too many walls of bullshit imo, but i think i can play a role in this discussion as i feel like many ‘gpp noobs’ want the easy game back that held back good players (pro aliens in gpp couldn’t do as much as pro 1.1 alien players, humans is less of a difference as their strength isnt that different from both games, tactics are) on the other hand i feel like there are a lot of hardcore 1.1 fanatics that are not open to discussion about changing the game because they are used to the game they’ve played for so long. Seeing as i’ve played both games i think i can provide an unbiased opinion (contradictory but w/e) about actual implementation:

Some arguments against intended basi changes: 1) OP as there would be no reason for fwds anymore 2) basi players would get too many abilities for 1/2 evos

A possible nerf for basi players could obviously be: giving it 80hp and upping mdriver dmg from 38->40 (would also change md vs goon battles, but that’s open for debate) while also giving basi the regen.

If you keep seeing basi as an assault class rather than a support class, there is no reason to even debate these changes. Although im shit at basi, it’s still mostly a whore class, it can’t actually do shit other than get kills (against a decent h team)

Zap is retarded in gpp as it’s weak as fuck against suits (13dmg or some shit like that) yet you can kill a rifle (theoretically) without him even seeing you as hitboxes around corners are weird, does 60dmg vs nakeds #OP.

I’m really dissapointed that the gpp repeater hasn’t been discussed. The current debate over how much bp a team should have is retarded, give humans more bp and they have more camp structures, give humans less bp and they have more reasons to camp, just implement the gpp repeater: costs 4bp, makes free 20bp in only to be used in it’s own zone (zone is 1/2 of rc zone), no other repeater can be build in that zone, and repeaters cant be built in rc zone. in other words,repeater allows humans to build forwards, without bogging down the main base defences, humans can get map dominance more easily, but can’t camp any harder.

Guide on gpp building by meisseli, better explanation than i can give you

http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=gxAfOynVh0ZUxfa4vwO3x3&topic=14350.0

Marked deconstruct works counterintuitive for the most part, only really helps on atcs moving to tunnel at start of game, but that’s predictable anyways, so shitty feature imo.

Gpp aliens have shitty health regen compared to 1.1, which is why basi / fwd is so vital in gpp (yeah you 1.1 fuckbois might think you had it bad, think again, 2hp/s goon regen ftw) you really can’t implement gpp basi without also removing 1.1 regen or booster, and that’s going to recieve a lot of resistance.

gpp suits were overused, but that’s also because of normal armor getting 3 pounced by goons (op gpp days), so i really don’t have a clue about what would happen if you gave goons an easier time vs suits in 1.1. Chaingun however, really isn’t the problem as it’s a good counter to rants and goons when grouped.

Btw @devs idk what bsuit hitbox is, might just be this gpp scrub over here overaiming cuz im used to it, but think very carefully about making the hitbox accurate like gpp for bsuits, a lot of veterans are going to get annoyed at getting body shots vs bsuits if you implement gpp suits. I have the feeling suit hitboxes are not as tall in 1.1 as they are in gpp.

Maybe default alien crosshair implement as well in hud :>>>>

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This doesn’t mean anything until you prove it. [quote=“Shuffle, post:16, topic:1241”]
Don’t like this at all. It makes it way too easy to move a base, and aliens/humans can’t ‘hold buildings hostage’ anymore - this was a small advantage you could get from map control, and is especially important in scrims.
[/quote]Great point.[quote=“MaeJong, post:17, topic:1241”]
I agree with turning timed evos off for scrims. Timed evoes are important in pub though.
[/quote]I came to say this.