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[tisiphone]

Warning: Big post.

Ok, firstly, this might not be Doom-ish feature (strictly speaking) but is definitely done in shoot-‘em-ups so theme-wise I think it could go quite well. Secondly, this seems to me like quite an obvious idea, so I did a little bit of searching and I don’t find anyone suggested it before. Meaning this could be my genius idea that is so simple none dared to think it or something everyone dismissed after a seconds thought as a stupid idea. My apologies if it is the latter.

My idea is to give every (or nearly every) weapon in the game an alternative firing mode (sort of like the overload with the plasma rifle and the BFG but with out the weapon being destroyed). This would inevitably make weapons more versatile (for better or worse) which should be considered when thinking about specific ideas. Hopefully it would mean that a player has a larger wealth of tactical choices to make and would make otherwise very similar weapons differ subtly.

Here are some specific ideas on weapons alternative fires:

Fists –
   Fists could be used to perform an enraging deathblow to send Doomguy in to berserk as long as the hit kills that enemy and weapons are not changed afterwards. It should take longer to perform then the usual punching with the fists. I think it will not be too unbalancing to have an unarmed marine go berserk after each kill (if used wisely) since as far as I know fists are only used by Angels of Berserk in the first level (or so) this will make the levels just a bit easer without effecting the rest of the game and giving a bit of variety in possibilities.

Combat Knife –
   I think this was already discussed but in terms of a trait, if I remember correctly. I think it could work to allow you to throw the knife at an enemy with the price of not having it equipped after the throw (obviously). The damage should be a bit more then a normal stab with a knife to make it a bit more worthwhile. I think it would be especially good for Angel of Berserk because it would make sense to carry other things then armour and med-packs and would offer more tactical possibilities then currently available.

I’m letting someone else argue over wherever the knife should be recyclable or not after the throw.

Chainsaw –
   This idea was also discussed as a trait. A chainsaw could be used to inflict a grievous wound causing the enemy to bleed. The attack should take slightly more time then a normal attack and should be balanced so that it makes sense to use this attack on high health enemies. The bleeding should drain more health then you would have taken off by simply attacking if the enemy survives after a certain time fresh-hold. There is a possibility of abuse if you can run in – attack – and run away, but that’s why I suggest longer time to attack as the enemy (if melee) can retaliate before you move away or (if not melee) shoot after you moved away.

All this assumes that you can gain experience from enemies that bleed to death.

Pistol –
   I can’t really think of what would be appropriate for the pistol... I thought of some kind of gangster mode where you would shoot more recklessly to shoot faster but it wouldn’t really be at all any different form just shooting normally except it would use more ammo. Also had an idea of some kind of automatic mode where the pistol would fire bursts like the Chaingun but that would make it too much like a Chaingun in my opinion. Something would be good though as an addition to Angel of Marksmanship...

Shotgun –
   An alternative attack could be a form of pistol-wiping (except with a butt of a shotgun) to knock back enemies one space or so. This should do minimal damage but be quite quick to do. I imagine it being used to keep melee opponents at bay to give you some more time to reload. Obviously it shouldn’t stop melee attacks from being effective; it should just give you a bit more room to manoeuvre. 

Combat Shotgun –
   I imagine a combat shotgun could be set to automatic where you would empty the whole lot of 5 shells at one specific target. It should have reduced damage and take less time to do then to empty the shells one by one. The purpose of this is to allow greater damage output to more enduring enemies at the cost of ammunition.

Double Shotgun –
   Another weapon I can’t really think of anything that would be cool and practical to use. I suppose you could have the same thing as you have with the normal shotgun but it would not be nearly as an impressive of an upgrade as with the combat shotgun.

Chaingun –
   The chaingun could have an alternative action that will accelerate the spin of the barrels and add one more shoot to the burst of standard 5. This should be caped at 3 extra bursts to guaranty that the plasma rifle will remain a better weapon regardless of the situation. The extra shoots will be lost if any action other then firing or using alternative action will be taken. I see this being useful for situations where you know you aren’t going to stop shooting for a while and could use some extra fire power. The down sides of this action is that you could have (perhaps) better spent the time shooting at enemies if there isn’t that many of then and that it will inevitably use more ammo. 

Rocket Launcher –
   Yup, don’t really have any good ideas here either. I was thinking of something along the lines of a heat seeking missile but that would not have much of a gameplay effect as (in my experience) rocket launchers don’t miss that often. Another possibility would be to have something along the lines of a grenade mode (where missiles would bounce of the walls) or a mode where you could shoot at the ground but I think something along those lines was already suggested and rejected. I also thought of an idea of a small explosion missile mode where the splash damage area would be smaller but I think that sort of ruins the idea of the rocket launcher.

Plasma Rifle –
   An alternative fire for this weapon would be to make a piercing ray of plasma (yes, I know plasma isn’t a laser but that’s really not here or there) to cut through all the enemies in the path. Would be good in corridors as the ray would just travel through one enemy in a straight line and hit who ever is behind and keep on going until it hits a wall or travels a certain distance. Should have reduced damage compared to the normal fire (and if possible minimum knock-back). 

BFG 9000 – 
   I think you and me know this is just begging for some kind of ass-kicking supper-cool fire option.



The alternative fire / effect could be activated by pressing “F” (as in the capital of [f]ire) or if that’s a bit confusing then by pressing “a” for [a]alternative fire / effect (I don’t think the letter “a” is used for anything yet). The alternative effect could be shown as:

Plasma Rifle (1d8)×8 / (XdY)×Z [40/40]

... I think I blabbed enough, I guess I need to know what you people think now.

[DisaffectedBeta]

How about for the pistol you take a bit of time to aim, and automatically hit and do maximum damage?  Or maybe automatically cause a bleeding effect?  Or all three?  Gahha--aaahah!  *goes crazy*

[knlbr]

How about for the pistol you take a bit of time to aim, and automatically hit and do maximum damage?  Or maybe automatically cause a bleeding effect?  Or all three?  Gahha--aaahah!  *goes crazy*

Pistol: Gangsta mode
shoots with pistols sideways, 1.2x faster and 0.8x as accurate

Chaingun: Mini-gun spin-off
same as pistol: 1.2x faster, 0.8x accurate

Rocket Launcher: Mini rockets
deals half as much damage and has 2 less squares as splash, but takes 3 shots to deplete 1 "rocket".

Plasma Gun: Rail Gun - what OP suggested.

BFG: Weaken Burst
Non-projectile burst that hits every monster the character can see. takes 5 cells and deals much lower damage, but makes enemies slower.

Chainsaw: Mad swipes
Attacks 3 times in one action, with the problem that it's 2x as slower as a normal attack and half as accurate.

LS: Holy Aura
Like a V's blast, weaker than the LS's base attack, around your character. good when you're being mobbed.

[tisiphone]

Hope it’s ok if I give some constructive criticisms.

Pistol: Gangsta mode
shoots with pistols sideways, 1.2x faster and 0.8x as accurate

Chaingun: Mini-gun spin-off
same as pistol: 1.2x faster, 0.8x accurate

The problem with increasing the speed and decreasing the accuracy or vice versa, in my humble opinion, is that it has very little implications on the gameplay. Shooting faster increases the damage output, shooting with less accuracy decreases the damage output. So overall it vaguely balances out to be exactly like shooting normally (in your example it actually works out to be a tiny damage decrease). Admittedly there are side effects such as shooting faster would mean you could change your target more often and shooting with less accurately would mean using more ammo for the same damage but I don’t think (in this case) that the advantage will be noticeable as its not often you overkill someone with a pistol and the disadvantage will eventually stack up against you.

Rocket Launcher: Mini rockets
deals half as much damage and has 2 less squares as splash, but takes 3 shots to deplete 1 "rocket".

I have nothing against this. Just to make things neater I would change the amount of rockets a rocket launcher can have loaded to three and increase the rocket stacks by three times so one “mini rocket” will be just one rocket and the “normal” fire being three rockets fired at the same time.

BFG: Weaken Burst
Non-projectile burst that hits every monster the character can see. takes 5 cells and deals much lower damage, but makes enemies slower.

That would be quite cool to have in my opinion, if Kornel doesn’t mind adding extra game mechanics that this would require like slowing enemies down and the like. I would probably also increase the number of power cells that attack would require to about 20 or so as it seems pretty powerful. Anyone got any other ideas that they think would be cool for the BFG?

Chainsaw: Mad swipes
Attacks 3 times in one action, with the problem that it's 2x as slower as a normal attack and half as accurate.

I don’t really understand what you mean by attacks 3 times in one action but twice as slower... probably a game mechanic I haven’t got the grasp of yet. Anyone mind enlightening me?

LS: Holy Aura
Like a V's blast, weaker than the LS's base attack, around your character. good when you're being mobbed.

I really like this idea. It has my vote.

Combat Shotgun –
   I imagine a combat shotgun could be set to automatic where you would empty the whole lot of 5 shells at one specific target. It should have reduced damage and take less time to do then to empty the shells one by one. The purpose of this is to allow greater damage output to more enduring enemies at the cost of ammunition.

I had some second thoughts about this idea. The intention was that you could do more damage providing you have a full magazine, have some shells to spare and could take a beating from whoever can shoot at you for however long it takes to empty out your shells. Firstly it seems a bit too specific and secondly assuming that this attack takes approximately 4 / 3 times more time then a single shot, it would mean you would have to take a huge amount of risk even if you are at full health as in that time you could easily be reduced to nothing and you will not have the opportunity to stop and use a med-pack. So to fix this I would like to change the number of shells shot in a burst to 3 shells so you don’t have to have a fully loaded combat shotgun to use this and it wouldn’t be as risky.


Anyway I would still like to hear wherever people would like this to be added or not to the game. Comments of any sort are welcomed.

[knlbr]

(stuff)

Chainsaw: Mad swipes
Attacks 3 times in one action, with the problem that it's 2x as slower as a normal attack and half as accurate.

I don’t really understand what you mean by attacks 3 times in one action but twice as slower... probably a game mechanic I haven’t got the grasp of yet. Anyone mind enlightening me?

(stuff)

One action as in, you press F to do the special attack. that's "an action". it takes several "turns", and is a single "action".

[tisiphone]

Ah, thanks.
:-S
So how do you see this being used...

[knlbr]

to be honest, i don't, i was just throwing ideas around. o,o

[Kornel Kisielewicz]

Please provide alternatives. I really like the general idea, but I don't like all the specific "solutions".

I'd like the ideas to remain at least semi-believable (come on, 3 rocket blast seems unreal, as does the idea of splitting a rocket in three), and possible give a different feeling than the base attack (just increasing some almost invisible stats seems a pointless complication of the game, like the tactics are right now). Example of good suggestions are the LS one (completely different attack, but it would need a way not to be overpowered) and the railish plasma gun attack.

I really liked how the alternate attacks were implemented in the old "Dark Forces" game.

[Potman]

Here's some of my ideas:

Fists: Strong Right
- Knocks the enemy unconscious. It won't be able to do anything for a while. Takes more time to perform than a normal attack, and won't do any real damage.

Combat Knife: Throat Cut
- Fast to perform, and kills instantly if succeeds. Very low hit rate.

Chainsaw: Massacre
- Simply put, thrusts the chainsaw deep to the enemy's gut, dealing a ton of damage but taking rather a long time to perform. In addition, the chainsaw is lost - it'll be permanently stuck to the enemy's body, and can be retrieved from the corpse afterwards, although it'll take a more time to pick it up than anything else.

Pistol: Execution
- Quaranteed hit, double damage, takes more time to shoot. Can only be performed from close range.

Shotgun: Knock Back
- Pretty much what the first poster suggested: Knocks the enemy back a little.

Combat Shotgun: Durr...

Double Shotgun: Durr...

Chaingun: Bullet Rain
Shoots 15 bullets at once. Nigh impossible to hit the original target: Instead, the bullets spread up pretty much in a same fashion than a shotgun. Takes quite a more time to fire, though.

Rocket Launcher: Rocketeer
A combination of a single rocket, a rocket launcher, and large amounts of suicidal insanity: Fires the main character in a single direction, and continues going on until he hits something. The rocket only has a 50% chance of exploding afterwards, though, although both the main character and the target will take damage on impact. Convenient for a quick escape.

Plasma Rifle: Railgun
Like the first poster's suggestion: Goes through the enemy to hit the following one(s).

BFG 9000: BBQ 9000
Fires a single extremely powerful ray that will hit a single enemy only. However, this unfortunate hellspawn will be killed instantly (CD and JC are exceptions), after which the body will explode like a rocket, causing damage to everything too close as well. Takes a long time to fire, and spends 50 power cells.

LS: Purifying Light
Creates a field of energy that will remain there until the end of the game and deals moderate amounts of damage to any enemy that will pass through - like a pool of acid or lava, except that it's harmless to the player. Can only be performed once per level, and will take quite a while to do.

Well? Well?

[tisiphone]

Ok, I had an idea for what could be cool for the double shotgun. Hopefully it fits in with what Kornel was asking.

A double shotgun could be used to fire a ricochet shot that would send the pellets bouncing of the walls until a certain variable is reached. Could be used to shoot around corners, in corridors at longer range (as the pellets should hopefully converge of the walls to the enemy) and in small, packed rooms. Each ricochet should lower the damage potential of the pellet and every ricochet should endanger the player of being hit by his own pellet or two (to minimise chances of abuse by shooting around corners indefinitely).

I have to admit though, I never played Dark Force so I don’t really know exactly what Kornel has in mind. I’ll try to look it up.

[DaEezT]

For Shotty & Double Shotty:
Maybe the Doomguy could put something (the content of another shell?) into the barrel to increase the number of pellets/fragments (and thus damage). Sorta like Eric Draven does in The Crow when he puts the rings into the shotty :p

For pistols the obvious choice would be burst/auto fire (like Glock 18/Beretta 93R) but that would turn them into Chaingun clones. Maybe Double Tap. The difference is that the damage from both shots is combined and DR is only applied once, instead of once per bullet (like with the Chaingun).

[tisiphone]

Looked up weapons in Dark Forces... can’t really see what’s notable about them...

Anyway, had another idea that could work for the plasma rifle:
Highly-charged plasma bolt (which actually makes more sense then the rail-gun thing considering the nature of plasma). The alternative fire would consist of firing one bolt of plasma that upon impact would send an electric charge to the closest enemy or player. The electric current would zap around from enemy to enemy until it has covered certain distance. The damage inflicted by this electric current would depend on the distance it has traveled (i.e. it will lose its power as it travels until it dissipates). The implications of this being that this should be used when a number of enemies are bunched up together as you could inflict large damage to them all in one attack. Also this attack should be used at range to avoid the charge from homing in on you and (literally) backfiring. A further effect from this would be that in an open area this attack is likely to attract more daemons your way as the charge zaps out of sight and hits some poor unsuspecting monster(s). I guess it would also make sense to make this attack need a number of power cells to perform.

The railgun attack could be given to the chaingun (it’s possible to imagine the chaingun firing high velocity rounds through some inbuilt function) or to the BFG.

[tisiphone]

Well? Well?

I like the Rocketeer idea :). Actually your post gave me some ideas (well, what I mean is I stole your concepts and applied them slightly differently :P).

Alternative fire option for the rocket launcher could be something like an anti-tank rocket [1]. Basically, instead of an explosion when the missile impacts the rocket would spurt out corrosive fluid out around the general vicinity, generating an acid / lava pool around the target. The corrosive fluid should remain there indefinitely making it risky to use as you might need to go over it later on and you could destroy useful equipment (which should be destroyed as soon as it is hit by the corrosive fluid). The spread of the corrosive fluid should be mainly in a smaller area as compared to the natural explosion of the rocket. Also to keep with the theme of the rocket launcher being a dangerous weapon to use when equipment is near by there should be splatters of the corrosive fluid flung out of that smaller radius to endanger equipment. As a bonus, though, the anti-tank rocket should do more damage then the average rocket.

Also an idea I got from the rocketeer suggestion was that maybe one of the more high-tech weapons (BFG, plasma rifle and LS?) could have some kind of teleporting function. I imagine this being a bit like the translocator in Unreal Tournament. Or alternatively the weapon could be used to make a hole in the dimensions to allow you to make a short cut between places in times of need. Or you could have the alternative fire option work like a phase devise (using up bugger loads of ammo during the process making the phase devise a preferable choice).

By the way, since I make up nearly half of the posts on this topic, is there still some interest in this feature being implemented? Is this having any effect other then just increasing my post count :P?

[1] Shamelessly stolen from Portman’s LS idea :P.

[Thomas]

My thoughts on this:

Combat knife:
OP got it perfectly. I'm all up for anti-demon attacks on AoB.

Chainsaw:
Execute. Instant kill at 0-10 HP (Whereas a normal attack may screw you over with bad luck)
Instant kill at 11-15 HP, but tends to miss, as the enemy is still powerful enough to duck quickly.
Does nothing at 16+ HP. (Perhaps shows a message saying "Argh, he's still too healthy to finish off now."
Takes slightly longer than a normal swing.

Pistol:
Steady aim. Takes twice your current shooting speed, but always hits (regardless of any modifiers on tohit%) and can't do less than 4 damage (i.e the shot does 5-8 instead of 2-8).

Shotgun:
The OP's idea's pretty nice.

Chaingun:
Not quite sure about this one either, but a special reload for only 5 shots might be nice.

RL:
Rocketjump! Deals damage around you in a Arch-Vile-esque way, but also makes you fly a short distance and lose 5 HP. (No warning message for people who happen to be on 5 HP or less. It'd make a funny mortem.)

Thomas the cacodemon luitenant died when he blew his legs up on level 15 of the phobos base.
or
3 of them died trying to jump using the propulsion of their gun or something?

Plasma rifle:
Something that allows you to choose how many shots to fire, perhaps?

[necro]

For a pistol, at close range, it seems logical one could tap off a head shot, and possibly with higher stats a double or tripple shot at increased damage with the price being a lsower shot, perhaps not possible on fast targets.

For the shot gun, a point blank face shot for an instant kill chance on certain enemies would be neat, at the cost of having to be within melee range

for the combat shotgun, it might be neat to be able to do a double target shot but only at close ranges and the next shot would fire slower

for the double shotgun, what about a very close range shot that will thow the enemy back and stagger them

for the plasma rifle, why not a shot that deal splash damage but not directly behind the enemy

for the rocket, a melee that shoots the enemy away with the rocket for a certain range before exploding would be cool IMO (fires the enemy) and perhaps with some enemies, it could cause them to deal extra damage to the rocket like a pain elemental.  It'd also be cool to do this with explosive barrels (shooting both at once)

for the bfg, why not fire a round that sticks to its target for a few turn, each turn dealing a large amount more damage whatever is at that space (like the bfg from the doom movie)