Suggestions for dealing with "construction spam"

[Slamz]

The door to the keep now has 5 construction sites, 12 siege shields and 4 ladders on it.  And god knows what else is in there.  It's a giant pile of wood and has more hit points than a Sherman tank.

The "weapon rack" can make siege mode games a bit silly.


Suggestions to handle this problem:

1) When a piece of equipment dies, it deals some damage to all other nearby pieces of equipment

2) When you hit a piece of equipment, every piece of equipment within a small radius takes the full damage of your swing

3) Equipment cannot overlap.  First one down wins.  If you place a siege shield and it intersects with another siege shield, your siege shield will fall over and blow up (ladders already do this with other ladders -- apply the same logic to construction sites and siege shields).

4) Smoke bombs become firebombs.  They still do somewhere between "little" or "nothing" to players but deal significant AE damage to siege equipment (3 foot radius explosion, extensive damage to deployables)

[Digglez]

I would like option 3, if it refunded your item (spawned on ground or back in inventory) so you can try placing it again

[Herald_Hardrata]

The door to the keep now has 5 construction sites, 12 siege shields and 4 ladders on it.  And god knows what else is in there.  It's a giant pile of wood and has more hit points than a Sherman tank.

The "weapon rack" can make siege mode games a bit silly.


Suggestions to handle this problem:

1) When a piece of equipment dies, it deals some damage to all other nearby pieces of equipment

2) When you hit a piece of equipment, every piece of equipment within a small radius takes the full damage of your swing

3) Equipment cannot overlap.  First one down wins.  If you place a siege shield and it intersects with another siege shield, your siege shield will fall over and blow up (ladders already do this with other ladders -- apply the same logic to construction sites and siege shields).

4) Smoke bombs become firebombs.  They still do somewhere between "little" or "nothing" to players but deal significant AE damage to siege equipment (3 foot radius explosion, extensive damage to deployables)

4 Sounds great.

[Malaclypse]

Yup, 4. I like the idea of building barricades in a siege, and it would be nice to require some attackers to sacrifice a bit of their loadout to take them out fast.

[Digglez]

Yup, 4. I like the idea of building barricades in a siege, and it would be nice to require some attackers to sacrifice a bit of their loadout to take them out fast.

Assuming firebomb because a 2 slot unsteathable weapon....then we'll talk.  Otherwise you are then again screwing over defense by giving ppl too easy a way to counter defenses.  Remember attacks still win the wide majority of siege maps.  If Valve or Blizzard saw the numbers they'd have a aneurysm on how imbalanced it is.

[Malaclypse]

2 slots seems reasonable. It should definitely be something of an encumberance to make it fair, and also to promote the use of both attack and defense building weapon racks at strategic points for firebomb or barricade re-supply.

[Tot.]

Option 4, if those bombs encumber the carrier a lot (unsheathable) and are 3 slots. So that there are dedicated demolition specialists same as defenders need to have dedicated engineers to build such barricades.

[Snoozer]

the only time that happens is when there is an organized clan in the defense team

[Slamz]

the only time that happens is when there is an organized clan in the defense team

You can easily do it with 2 people.  1 brings the site and 1 material, 1 brings 4 material, build your weapon rack and start placing stuff.  I've seen it done with 1 person but that takes longer to get going, as they have to run off and die to get more material.


Bear in mind that defense would have a use for the firebombs, too: you can firebomb incoming enemy ladders (not map ladders, but deployables, since map ladders don't take damage).  And rather than make firebombs take 2 or 3 slots or be unwieldy, we could just limit their damage.  I don't envision it as something 1 person brings to blow a whole door of stuff.  More like you get a 1 slot, sheathable, 1 ammo fire bomb which deals, say, 50% of the health of a medium ladder in one hit (1 meter radius from where your throw lands).


Or maybe a logical thing would be that it takes 2x as many slots of firebombs as it takes slots of deployable, to destroy that object:
Small/medium ladder: 2 slots.  Takes 4 firebombs (4 slots).
Siege shield: 2 slots.  Takes 4 firebombs.
Siege ladder: 3 slots.  Takes 6 firebombs.
Construction site: technically 8 slots (3 for site + 5 for material).  Takes 16 bombs.

But the bombs have a small AE so 4 people running up with 2 bombs each will likely clear the whole door and do 50% damage to all the construction sites.  Then they have to hack through the rest.


Also, for the record, I do not propose that firebombs do ANY special damage to map doors/gates.

Also, for those with concerns about realism, firebombs date back to at least the 10th century, so we are not entirely inventing a device (incidentally, if you really jammed all that wood into your keep door, the enemy would probably just set it on fire, wait, and drag your corpses out in the morning...)

[Banefull]

Although I am a serial "door-blocker," I openly support option 4. C-site spam does need some kind of counter and firebombs need to be useful again. Knocks out 2 birds with one stone.

P.S. I one for one would gladly enjoy firebombing enemy ladders on defense.

[Dehitay]

Or maybe a logical thing would be that it takes 2x as many slots of firebombs as it takes slots of deployable, to destroy that object:
Small/medium ladder: 2 slots.  Takes 4 firebombs (4 slots).
Siege shield: 2 slots.  Takes 4 firebombs.
Siege ladder: 3 slots.  Takes 6 firebombs.
Construction site: technically 8 slots (3 for site + 5 for material).  Takes 16 bombs.

This is rather close to how many actual hits it takes to destroy a lot of the items mentioned. Though the siege shield usually goes down with a single hit. A single firebomb should be enough to destroy any seige equipment in a certain radius of where it lands. And firebombs should not take up 2 slots and be unsheathable. Actually siege equipment shouldn't even be used in a barricade fashion in the first place. If you want to make firebombs a 2 slot or unsheathable weapon, then it should also be doing DoT damage to people again which would make it overpowered.

[Phazey]

FYI: Spamming siege equipment to block entrances is not allowed (anymore). For now, when you see this, get an admin to hand out warnings or temp bans.

Good thread though.

As i see it the solution is going to be a combination of option 3 (not allowing siege equip to 'stack') and making ladders that are not at an 'climbable' angle to self destruct.

[Slamz]

FYI: Spamming siege equipment to block entrances is not allowed (anymore). For now, when you see this, get an admin to hand out warnings or temp bans.

Word on the street is it was illegal on the ATS Community servers but is legal on the official servers (NA and EU).

Not disagreeing with you, just saying what everyone says on the siege server every time this comes up.


If it's illegal, there should probably be a general announcement about it and admins will need to start enforcing it again.  I play on siege every day and have never seen this rule enforced.  It was siege equipment galore all day today.

I don't necessarily think we need that rule.  I just think it should be a bit easier to blast apart these masses of equipment.

[Duke]

Would these firebombs also damage standard doors?

[Slamz]

Would these firebombs also damage standard doors?

In my opinion no -- they would do no damage to players or anything that comes as part of the map (or very little damage -- talking "peasant with a rock").

(RPG explanation: Gates and doors would be made with hard wood, with reinforcement.  Siege shields and ladders would be thrown together from whatever been of wood was handy and would be easier to set on fire.)


Really 1 construction site or a couple of ladders blocking your way isn't a big deal.  The problem is when they stack these things into a huge pile.  We don't need a lot of damage to 1 item, we need a modest amount of damage to everything in an area.