Make ballistas deal friendly damage

Currently, almost everyone I think will agree with me when I say ballistas are overpowered. The current meta is something like take mid>set up tower>rain unstoppable explosive rain on your opponent while knights jump down spamming the 5 emoji. As is, it's basically impossible to stop ballista spam+knight attacks. I think the necessary change is adding friendly damage for explosive ballista bolts. This way, ballistas are slightly less unstoppable, the opposite team has time to recover before the knights come in. Furthermore, it doesn't really make sense how it currently works, where a huge, explosive, missile just phases right through some people and instantly kills others. The only flaw I can see with this is that it requires a certain amount of coordination usually not available in pub games... yet if knights learn to dodge ALL of the huge explosive missiles, I don't think this will be that big of a problem... not to mention, it does make sense that a team siege game rewards coordination and teamwork.

 

Ballistas are op, but adding in friendly fire is a no go for me. Why no make bombs, water arrows/bombs, fire arrows, arrows, mines and team spikes all trigger/hurt your own team while the devs are at it.

 

because those arent anywhere near as destructive as ballista bolt spam(they also pay for themselves after afew kills unlike the items you mentioned)

 

Maybe make it so that ballistas can't kill enemies, it just goes through them and only deals damage to structures. It would mean no teamkill greifers and less OP ballistas. Knights can then stand up front and protect the flag without having to worry about being insta killed while the archers get bomb arrows.

 

What do you mean by this? I don't think I've ever seen a knight shield a regular ballista bolt, but I've seen many who will survive a bolt as long as it hits their shield in a certain way. You can also just slash it, which is surprisingly reliable even on high pings as long as you can get out of the way first.

Most knights don't react fast enough or are simply caught in the middle of a slash animation, which is why they die. I could be wrong, but again, most knights that know I'm deliberately aiming at them won't die if I hit them dead-on with a bomb bolt. They only die if I hit them in such a way that the explosion expands above or below them, where their shield doesn't protect them.

 

@ParaLogia rein in the deviants

 

I see your replies and ideas on how to solve this situation, but the problem here is that you're all getting an equal amount of support from each other on different ideas. This makes it hard for the developers to decide what to do. But there is a simple solution. If you're saying ballistas are too good - you just simply raise their price, so that it can fit such a destructive weapon. There. If something's too overpowered, you just make it harder to acquire.

 

Removing the ability to spawn at ballistas would be great. Warboats are basically useless because of their price and water requirement compared to ballistas. If you can't spawn at ballistas, then it might actually be worth it to set up warboat checkpoints.

As for reducing bomb bolt player damage, I think we should just change the amount of ammo a bomb bolt takes compared to a regular bolt. Keep regular bolts at 1 ammo a piece, because they're very small, difficult to use, and useless against structures, and make bomb bolts cost 4 ammo. That might seem like a bit much, but you're still basically paying 30 gold for 3 hyper-bomb arrows. You could also raise the price of ammo itself, since I personally think it's a bit too easy to get even without spamming platforms/stone blocks for gold. Not being able to kill an enemy on direct impact with a bomb bolt would be awful, though. People scold me in matches for it all the time, but usually when I get in a ballista with bomb bolts, I do it to snipe players. It takes practice and the shots usually miss. If we make it harder to get more ammo, reduce bomb bolt player damage, etc. it would make that practice even more useless, and because you can't buy non-bomb bolt ballistas it's a permanent change of pace.

What I think might work is if we separated the regular ballista and the bomb bolt ballista into two entities that can both be bought at the shop. I'm fairly sure bomb bolt ballistas already have a small sprite change (I think it's on the front of the ballista?), so that shouldn't be an issue. It could work like this:

Regular Ballista (R-Ballista)

• 75 gold
• Allows class changing
• Fires regular bolts and spawns with 30 bolts

Bomb Bolt Ballista (B-Ballista)

• 225 gold
• Fires bomb bolts and spawns with 20 bolts, but uses 4 ammo per shot

The reason for this separation is that regular ballistas aren't that useful and bomb bolt ballistas are extremely efficient gold-wise. Catapults use stone as ammo, which is extremely inefficient because you're basically throwing away one entire stone block per throw.

Ballista Ammo

• 15 gold
• 4 ballista ammo

Ballista ammo would still fit in stacks up to 12, it's just that it would be sold in smaller chunks and at a less efficient price.

On top of all this, we could implement bases, which we already have the sprites for. I'm not exactly sure how it should work, but a base would obviously have a very large amount of health, take up a lot of room (almost exclusively above-ground), act as a spawn point, allow class changing, and also allow resupplies for all classes. It should probably break in 3 or 4 bomb arrows, and it should cost lots of materials - not gold.

It can be. If you put it in a position where it can't be easily destroyed (behind platforms), then you can very easily make enough gold through kills to buy more ammo.

If you raise the price of ammo, people won't buy it. If you raise the price of ballistas, people won't buy them. The middle ground is very fragile and it depends too much on the players; if you don't think a ballista is worth it at 300 gold, maybe someone else on your team does. If you do think it's worth it at 300 gold, maybe the rest of your team doesn't. No matter how much you focus on getting a perfect balance, it'll always be too easy to acquire or too hard to acquire for some players.

The most effective solution would be to change how the ballista itself works so that it's not as annoying. Removing the ability to spawn at ballistas, reducing explosive bolt damage, etc. are all great ways of doing just that.

 

You can make back more gold then 300 from one ballista. Especially if team mates supply you with bomb bolts.

 

The main discussion of this thread revolves around the bolts. There's a small amount of deviation, but otherwise I think a lot of it is appropriate. If we're already talking about the bolts, a few mentions of the ballista's other mechanics should be okay as long as they have some relevance to the bolts or the ballista's utility as an offensive vehicle.

 

After playing a round where the opposing team was defending their last flag and we were rocking on their doorstep, they plopped a ballista at the top of their tower and totally demolished us. I was making a tunnel but got blasted to smithereens while underground, and there was no way I could counter it by myself. If anything a ballista's ability to kill easily is not the problem, in fact honestly I'm fine with it playing offensively as knight, no, the ballista's ability to demolish any fort within about an 80 block radius is ridiculous, I think bomb bolts need a serious nerf... they're cheaper and more destructive than bomb arrows... Imagine if someone actually had skills and team coordination with a non-immobilized ballista, they could demolish... I don't have a problem with bomb arrows since they are hard to use and quite expensive and risky for an archer, but bomb bolts totally render a team's offensive push useless, and they're cheap, easy to use, and constant.

Overall ballistas are OP in a lot of ways...

 

This should really be a thing, i guess i didnt notice remember thread before because i was inactive for awhile/ it was overcome with other suggestions inside it. Honestly if ballistas teamkill it will make the weapon have a more defined use. Any killing of teammates will drain the coins you get from your slaughter, and it will give the opposing team a chance(people spamming bolts in defense of teammates is cancerous ). BUMP because it makes alot of sense

 

For those that want to tweak this behavior on their own server, it would seem the place to edit is BallistaBolt.as:79-92 (not actually verified).