Base Raiding - Your Input Please

[Tim]

So my biggest annoyance when walking around in DarkRP is the completely unrealistic bases. The weapons we had in the past life really helped fuel the big ugly bases because of the different raiding tools and weapon effects. I don't want to make that mistake again. There needs to be a clear way to raid a base that's fair for everyone that shouldn't require a 10 page rule book to follow.

Obviously we'll have the basic lockpick and keypad cracker for your standard entryways, but beyond that there needs to be something else. I have two ideas that come to mind that I want your input on:

Before we begin, let's make it clear that completely ripping a base apart and unwelding everything isn't going to be an option. It's too messy and really hurts performance for everyone. Old RPG's wont be back.

Plasma Cutters
So think of a weapon with some sort of laser that shoots out of it. You aim it at a prop and hold down your fire mouse key. A progress bar pops up and gives you 15-20 seconds before it finishes. Once it finishes, the prop you were aiming at has its collisions disabled so you can walk through it, along with a transparency added to its color so you know that its nocollided. It'll stay this way until someone comes along and uses a repair wrench weapon on it. After a couple wacks at the transparent prop with a repair wrench, the prop will go back to having collisions again and be just as it was before being cut with the plasma cutter.

Prop Damage
So same end result as above, but different approach. With this system, every whitelisted building prop has a health value assigned to it depending on its material and size. We would assign this manually. Shooting a prop with bullets will take its health down slowly, while explosives take it down fast. Once the props health reaches 0%, it'll go transparent and collisions will be disabled, allowing you to walk through it. To repair it, pull out the repair wrench and wack it. Players should now be able to build something more aesthetically pleasing, but with thicker walls.


What do you think? Are either of this a viable option?

 

[Evolution]

Prop Damage
So same end result as above, but different approach. With this system, every whitelisted building prop has a health value assigned to it depending on its material and size. We would assign this manually. Shooting a prop with bullets will take its health down slowly, while explosives take it down fast. Once the props health reaches 0%, it'll go transparent and collisions will be disabled, allowing you to walk through it. To repair it, pull out the repair wrench and wack it. Players should now be able to build something more aesthetically pleasing, but with thicker walls.

As long as this is done manually and properly adjusted for individual props, this seems like the better and more realistic option. Seeing as different weapons can still affect the health of props compared to one SWEP makes it a better option IMO.

 

[Zailo Zokio]

These tools will only bring people to stacking props on one another so that raiders couldn't actually enter the base, leading to the bases looking uglier. From a base builder prospective I could give too shits what others think about the design of my base and cared more about how it preformed. Either way bases will be ugly, I feel it was fine as it was before.

 

[Better Dylan]

I like the health idea better, but both ideas are nice. Like Zailo said, they will most likely just stack more props to counter this feature though.

 

[Tim]

These tools will only bring people to stacking props on one another so that raiders couldn't actually enter the base, leading to the bases looking uglier. From a base builder prospective I could give too shits what others think about the design of my base and cared more about how it preformed. Either way bases will be ugly, I feel it was fine as it was before.

The goal is have some sort of realism to bases and their design. Instead of 20 playground slides being placed between eachother, we'll just have something that looks more like this. Thicker walls. The plan would be to basically force users in using the Building > General tap of props in the spawn menu to build their base with, since these would have a higher prop health vs comical props and furniture.

 

[Dope]

Personally, I would much rather prefer the Prop Damage option over the plasma clutter. I just feel like the prop damage fits more into TDRPs style of gameplay. However, as Zailo and Dylan already stated people would stack props, once again making the process very tedious. What about something like the ghoster? It didn't unwield the props but it allowed for no-collision to occur in a fast-paced environment.

 

[SteveFromAccounting]

we shouldn't even have a map, just flatgrass and bring back buildRP

 

[Tim]

Also, to add onto my comment above. If we forced users to stick to the building props, it would all fit perfectly.

For example:
Below, I used 4 pieces of a 1x1 plate. To the right of it, I used 1 piece of a 1x1x025 plate.

With the prop health idea, both of these systems would provide the same health value, resulting in less props overall to achieve the same defense structures:

 

[SteveFromAccounting]

What if i put a metal texture on my skinny wall, will it give the structural integrity that metal will give?

 

[Dope]

Also, to add onto my comment above. If we forced users to stick to the building props, it would all fit perfectly.

For example:
Below, I used 4 pieces of a 1x1 plate. To the right of it, I used 1 piece of a 1x1x025 plate.

With the prop health idea, both of these systems would provide the same health value, resulting in less props overall to achieve the same defense structures:

This visual provided a much better understanding for me. The props, in the end, would all end up with the same health value, so, therefore, stacking more or props would do nothing except take room in your prop list.

 

[SteveFromAccounting]

Also having larger props with more health wouldn't solve the stacking issue because then i can just precison tool large props into eachother and have way more health with the stacking.

 

[Tim]

What if i put a metal texture on my skinny wall, will it give the structural integrity that metal will give?

It would be based on the default texture of the prop. There's very few to really worry about that I would even consider as a building material prop. This would be it, really:

 

[Tim]

Also having larger props with more health wouldn't solve the stacking issue because then i can just precison tool large props into eachother and have way more health with the stacking.

With explosive damage, each prop would receive the same damage, since its based on a radius. As for bullet damage, we'd need to test that one and see how we can fix it if it's an issue. Though technically, most people won't even want to spray bullets at bases because of the drastic difference between bullet and explosive damage that I'm imagining for this idea.

 

[SteveFromAccounting]

the only real way i can see a health system work properly is if props were based off a budget system instead of a prop limit. Referencing something like Halo's Forge mode. you have a 5k Budget and props cost money in that budget depending on their size and usefulness

 

[Tim]

the only real way i can see a health system work properly is if props were based off a budget system instead of a prop limit. Referencing something like Halo's Forge mode. you have a 5k Budget and props cost money in that budget depending on their size and usefulness

Hm. Maybe rather than an upfront cost, we charge a tax on the props a player has spawned? Every 30 minutes or so we check which props are spawned and add up the tax associated with each prop. The player who owns the props would then be able to view the breakdown and know how much they'll be taxed when tax time comes.

This idea would probably come later after we worked out the kinks of the prop health system overall before adding anymore onto it.

 

[SteveFromAccounting]

Hm. Maybe rather than an upfront cost, we charge a tax on the props a player has spawned? Every 30 minutes or so we check which props are spawned and add up the tax associated with each prop. The player who owns the props would then be able to view the breakdown and know how much they'll be taxed when tax time comes.

This idea would probably come later after we worked out the kinks of the prop health system overall before adding anymore onto it.

I'm not talking about a budget that you actually pay for. taxing props defeats the point i was trying to make. People would be less inclined to stack a ton of props onto eachother if the cost of those props are to high, and if you do then you're sacrificing other aspects of your base that you would otherwise be able to do. the Budget can be called whatever you want. There's a resource cost to having the props and you can't go over a set limit. For example the Larger thick prop you showed in your picture could cost $100 where the smaller ones could cost $25 so having 4 would = the same health and their cost would overall be the same

 

[Tim]

I'm not talking about a budget that you actually pay for. taxing props defeats the point i was trying to make. People would be less inclined to stack a ton of props onto eachother if the cost of those props are to high, and if you do then you're sacrificing other aspects of your base that you would otherwise be able to do. the Budget can be called whatever you want. There's a resource cost to having the props and you can't go over a set limit. For example the Larger thick prop you showed in your picture could cost $100 where the smaller ones could cost $25 so having 4 would = the same health and their cost would overall be the same

Ohh, I got you. That would be cool. We could still call them props, but change the actual prop value from 1 to however we decide to do it. This would take quite a bit of experimenting to get right.

 

[Hammy Hobo]

So, the Plasma Cutter is similar to the Ghoster from before, just takes more time and stays ghosted til fixed. Seems like a cool concept, but the prop stacking would happen just like with Ghosters.
But it gets balanced out with the whole prop health thing, so I like it.
+1

 

[Kwoon]

I feel like this would actually add more actual fun raiding game-play, but like stated above if we somehow are able to manage the stacking props thingy.

 

[Creighton Goodwin]

Perhaps a way to combat people stacking many props within each other would be to introduce bullet penetration? If a bullet hits an object, it will continue to travel through, but do significantly less damage each prop it passes through. That way, it would actually be more reasonable to have a single large prop as opposed to several smaller props as the bullets will do more damage via penetration.

Let's assume that our bullets provide a default 100 damage and our blocks have a total of 1000 health. Each round fired at the wall on the left would do 100 damage to the first prop, 50 damage to the second, 25 damage to the third, and 10 damage to the fourth for a total of 185 damage over the four props while each round would only take away 100 health from the block on the right.

The block on the left would be able to withstand 7 shots while the block on the right would be able to survive 10 shots. Makes a bit of sense since one is quadrisected and the other is a whole block. With this system, it would be more efficient to use fewer props.

EDIT: It would also probably be prudent to not allow bullet penetration through players, npc's, entities, and the world.

A more detailed image describing the process in case my previous one didn't make sense.

However, if bullet penetration was not introduced with the health system, then the setup on the left would be able to withstand 12 shots as opposed to 10. Since each plate in the block has 250 health and the bullets do 100 damage, then three rounds are required to break each plate. Three times four is 12, making it more efficient armor at the cost of a higher prop count.