Elite and Checkpoints Idea

[MuNgLo]

A bit of a narrow and technical idea regarding Elite script and checkpoints.

Right now it handles checkpoints like this...

Code: Select all

Goal.Gauge.Max = ((Checkpoints.count - G_CheckpointsCapturedNb) * 1000) + 500;

Which means checkpoints are worth 1s of goal captime and a a minimum captime of 0.5s if all cp's are captured by attacker.

My suggestion is to change how it handles it a bit.

1. Make each CP worth same as S_TimeCapture so we can test around a bit on cp maps. So each CP contribute S_TimeCapture to original pole capturetime.

2. Each time a cp is captured you divide pole capturetime with 2.

3. The removed time from pole capturetime would then be added to checkpoint capture time.

Point of this setup is to slow down each cp cap more and more. Making it more and more risky. Making it more valid for defenders to concentrate on specific cp's and opening up to make the maplayout a bit more interesting.
If you take a look on the example numbers below and imagine the gameplay you could see how number of cp really is importnat to set the tone and feeling of the map. Making each map a bit more special. You could have 2 very similar maps but one cp more on one of them and it changes the way the it feels completely.

While basing it on S_TimeCapture as base isn't necessary it would be great to have some way of finetuning the values. Finding what works best for all 1, 2 and 3 cp maps will take some testing.

Oh and as a last distant idea. Change limitation on number of cp's you can have on an Elite map. making each cp take longer time to cap would open up possabilitys to make some realy weird maps with more then 3 cp's.(haven't checked today but I guess the limit is still 3cp for an Elite map)

I could do the changes myself and test it but would I be able to run it as Elite still in b2 settings and all that or would I have to launch it as customgame under Storm? I just haven't bothered testing anything like that. Have enough to mess with as is.


Some examples (with S_TimeCapture 1.5)
3cp on a map:

• 0cp : Pole captime 4.5s, CP captime 0s

• 1cp : Pole captime 2.25s, CP captime 2.25s

• 2cp : Pole captime 1.125s, CP captime 3.375s

• 3cp : Pole captime 0.5625s, CP captime 3.9375s

2cp on a map:

• 0cp : Pole captime 3s, CP captime 0s

• 1cp : Pole captime 1.5s, CP captime 1.5s

• 2cp : Pole captime 0.75s, CP captime 2.25s

1cp on a map:

• 0cp : Pole captime 1.5s, CP captime 0s

• 1cp : Pole captime 0.75s, CP captime 0.75s

I didn't check how fast CP cap is now but maybe you would need a base value of 0.5s added to all those CP captimes in the example above.


I think the checkpointsystem has a lot to offer in the Elite environment but it isn't balanced in a way to be interesting and useful enough as it is now. Maybe with the suggested changes above we could get it working or at least closer to working.