I've seen a lot of complaints about C4, both that it sucks (due to bugs, time to deploy, horrible deploy arc, por damage to armor) and that its overpowered against infantry, MAXes I agree with most points on both sides, So while chatting with my outfit we talked out an overhaul that WE would love. 1. Rename it to C5 Why? ,Well because C4 stands for Compound 4 and replaced C2 and C3, so naturally in the future we would have developed the next version already. AND having it be 'Future' explosives rather than straight out of reality helps fill in some of the gamey lore gaps. (so not really needed, just something that I thought would be cool and piss easy to implement) 2. Damage increase against Turrets, Vehicles, and MAXes, but only if it is directly stuck to them. C4s biggest strength as an explosive is its malleability that lets it be pushed into cracks and seams in doors and armour, add in some nanites so it does this by itself, and viola. I'm not advocating a massive buff here, Ideally I think it should do just enough damage to kill a turret with one brick, (mainly because you can only carry 2, there are just so many turrets, and turrets don't give much xp for 200 resources, even if you kill the gunner.) 3. Splash Damage Reduction. What makes grenades and mines so deadly? Shrapnel. What does C4 have none of? Shrapnel. (plus we have energy shields) being more damaging than a grenade or mine is a big complaint, and having a LA suicide bomb a room of infantry feels cheap for me both when im the target or bomber. We have a ton of grenade options, maxes, and heavy weapons for clearing a room, we can afford to lose C4 as another tool to do this. I just don't think it needs to be able to do everything. 4. Can be disabled by bullets. C4 in reality will not explode without another triggering explosion, bullets will just damage the detonator. I think this should be implemented as with point 2 it gives a chance for any class who is on the ball to stop that vehicle from being destroyed, and makes suicide runs less effective. (the next point ties into this as well) 5. Alternate firing mode: Timer By pressing B bricks will not detonate when you use the trigger, but instead will automatically detonate 8 seconds after being thrown (or 5 or 10 a little playtesting should be used here obviously). Additionaly the C4 will beep audibly as it counts down, giving nearby infantry the task of finding it and disabling it to save your vehicle. (see point 4) HOWEVER in this firing mode killing the LA will not disable it. 6. Improved throw arc As it is you basically just hold your arm out and let go, which can really screw you when looking up or down. Just add a bit of force to it, nothing like a grenade, just a little pass or slap motion so aiming actually does something. 7. Proximity safety and faster detonation. At the moment it takes forever to detonate after throwing and its INFURIATING. I propose that instead of an arm time have an arm distance of 10 - 15 meters (vertical distance counts), you either have to be dropping it from high up or get to a safe distance it detonate it. This would also have the effect of making C4 the most effective for the LA as they can get to the required distance fastest. Well, thats my overhaul plan, what do you think? what points do you agree/disagree on? do you have any improvements or additional points?
No point. No. **** no. Already disabled by bullets/explosives. It explodes. Otherwise no point. No point. It's a satchel charge, it works fine. No.
Will only bring confusion with no purpose. "It's the future" is a bad argument, then we might as well say that by that time humans will evolve into space-faring octopus, that will fight robo-chickens with doom lasers. I'd like to see that LA trying to slap C4 on MAXes back. Would like an elephant, running from a mouse. But more realistacilly, that LA will just die instantly. What matters is not how much resources or XP a turret costs, but what strategic value it has. One turret can effectively repel enemy aircraft or tanks, thus making it's strategic value most certainly bigger than 1 or 2 C4 blocks. You sound like that if enemy dug up in a room, with MAXes and turrets, they will just lay down arms and obediently die when LA with C4 will happen to waltz nearby. Compared to a mine or grenade C4 has lots of downsides, needing manual detonation and very close deploy radius. If someone let himself be killed by C4, that's only his fault. Imagine the pain of the tank driver (allthough I very much like when they are in pain) when he'll have to destroy that disabled C4 with some sort of another explosion, and praying that his vehicle will not be blown to bits while attempting so. That actually promotes suicide runs, because now you can afford to be killed. Besides, you're all pro-realism, then explain why would anyone want their explosives to warn their victims? "CAREFUL, I'M A BIG BAD MINE! Get away, or I might hurt you! Disable me, please!" I also have a little cosmetic idea - when you're near wall or another solid surface (side of a vehicle, for example) - animations changes into "slapping", and charge goes directly where you're aiming. When you're close enough to something to slap C4 onto, a little animation plays and you can see your arm holding C4, ready-to-slap. When you're not close enough, you actually throw it. An example of hand animation from Deus Ex. Just watch how the hand moves. These are mine-grenades. You can throw them like normal grenades with timed detonation, or slap on the walls for proximity detonation. No reason not to do this, purely cosmetic change. Well, what about hiding behind cover? Feels very weird. Run, place, then jet upwards to detonate it? Weird. Run, jet upwards to throw down, detonate, fall down and die cuz run out of fuel? Weird.
Unfortunately I don't think this proposal changes anything, it is mostly just to make it a realistic game and we left that train station years ago. Also I heard that C5 contains shrapnel.
WOuldn't be forumside if the second post wasn't a remand of everything the OP suggests. Congrats, Wolfwood, you are maintaining the momentum. I've said this for many C4 threads and I'll say it here (more concisely): C4 (or whatever) is not anti-anything other than anti-material. It's been misrepresented in every FPS game since DOOM. My suggestions (they are similar to the OP's): 1. Splash damage is only effective against soft targets. MAXs are semi-resistant. Light vehicles are harmed, armored vehicles no. 2. The device acts like a limpet mine against vehicles. They must be hand placed but then they do the equivalent of a MBT HEAT round. Simple solution. Require a little more skill if you want to instagib that sunderer. If you can physically attach them to the vehicle you get your reward. Flying over and dropping blocks of explosive will NOT kill an armored target, sorry...
Fixed that for you. In the real world people don't survive headshots, but for some reason no one here is bothered by that. Would it help you bear with it if this thing wasn't called C4, as in plastique explosive device, but Magical Corn Bunghulio Explosive Device, that shoots Explosive Popcorn Shrapnel, dealing damage to both infantry and vehicles? If people want their sunderers to survive assault, I suggest they learn to park them not right under spawn room balconies. Wolfwood's reaction is justified. First of all, let me remind you that this is a forum, where everyone has a right to express his opinion. Second, we're here are sick and tired of people whining "N3RF SIPHOR!11 IT K1LLZ MAH SANDA!", when in reality it has already been nerfed many times, not mentioning high resource cost, high cert cost to unlock, grave risk for a user and low actual kill rates. Research have shown that for most players one in four or one in five placed bricks results in a kill. And thirdly, if one LA can just waltz to a sunderer, fly above it for a whole world to see, drop bricks and detonate them, then odds are this sunderer is Forever Alone Guy, needed to no one. As a strategicly valuable asset, it's YOUR duty to protect your sunderer. This is like boxing. Your goal is to strike into opponent's vulnerable area, while protecting your own. If you can't protect your valuables, it's your fault for letting LA so close, not because C4 is imbalanced.
I really think that the C4 needs to be reimagined. But not this way at least. I think it's more on the balancing issues. I like the timer idea though =) maybe a different item by itself
Yep but combined with better throwing arc, the best way would be to flank and do a hit and run. true, but there are often more turrets than people to man them, and unlike a tank they can be rebuilt from nothing. an xp sabotage bonus for destroying a recently active turret would be nice, but my big gripe is that needing 4-6 successful LA runs (will all of them having spent the 700 certs) against a fortified position to take out one gate or AA section is excessive. While in bigger seiges you will have more LAs avalible and more tanks they will also have more engineers on over watch. Sorry by disable I mean disappear, like now when you kill the one who placed it. eh.. more pro-lore, I like and understand gamey things, I just want a lore justification. It's a quirk of mine. I do see your point, though why do we have lights on our mines now? My thought process here was: well you can choose to detonate it manually if your in a good position or don't need to get back to shooting, OR you can choose to use a timer that dosen't require you to be alive and lets you fire and forget taking your gun back out again BUT it takes longer to detonate and notifies the enemy of its presence (maybe just a grenade like hud notification) This idea was more focused on vehicles though, combined with the splash nerf it would be less deadly than a grenade. I also would love this yeah, I just came up with this while writing. It's just the current detonation delay feels janky to me. Often i'll place a brick and start flying away imediately, only to run out of pack before I can detonate and constantly spamming the key. you can't remove the delay compleately though so does anyone have a possible way to make this feel more smooth? Mabey a little safety cover over the button that we have to flip up anytime we take out the detonator, you know just for a little feedback on when we can detonate. I agree "Death to realism!" its not as fun. I just don't like pesudo realism, hey this thing is named and described as something identical in the realworld yet functions completely differently. Perhaps C40 would be better, less confusion, still fiction. Again all this lore justification is really just a quirk of mine and I only mentioned it due to its near zero development time.
How 'bout SOE just fix resources so people stop whining about C4. Before resource nerf tankers weren't complaining 24/7 about C4.
I'm sorry but at the time I had all of 5 minutes to write my response and yeah seeing as I'm more then a little sick of everyone and their dog trying to change things in the game because they personally feel that they know better... You bet I'll be as effing negative as I can be in 5 short minutes. And well if that just continues the trend of the first response being negative, guess what? That means more posters are likely against it then for it. If it were the other way around, the first response would have a higher chance to be more positive. Most of the ideas lately? Yeah, they've been poorly thought out, badly written, and terrible in general. Iridar more or less shot the idea down using more words then I could afford to at the time, but his reasoning mimics my own. So not only is the first post negative, but the second as well, which backs up my theory that more people are going to dislike it then like it. If you want to bring real world into it then that much C4 should demolish a Sunderer with a single block. That is a lot of explosive material and yes that's exactly what a single block that size would do. Sunderers are large mobile blocks of steel, presenting large flat surfaces to explosive devices that can't withstand such devices all that easily. It's general shape alone would make it a death trap for RLs. It would also kill everyone in the average room in the game (so would a single grenade, which modern grenades use a small bit of C4 as the explosive charge and have a kill radius of 15 feet with a potential kill radius of 30), and cripple a tank to the point of it being immobile. That's just in case it isn't a shaped charge. If it is, the tank would be destroyed very easily with a single block. Splash damage already functions exactly as you describe. Armored vehicles are immune past 1m and the damage drop off makes it lethal to infantry, but not MAX suits, at 2m.
C4 splash on Live can kill a tank at 3m distance with two bricks, just using splash. C4 and the Dalton both have AV splash, and the AV radius is the same as the regular one.
