Hello All,

We've upgraded from 204b to 205. This update took several months to complete and test, and I'd like to personally thank Dragon for being there every step of the way.

205 doubles down on creativity and performance. I have to say that this update strikes a good balance between DC's simplicity and DEK's creativity. As always, please let me know about any bug/issues, and any balancing suggestions in this thread. Here are the major changes:

1) A merger between Wehtam and SpecialSkaarjPack monsters and Ice and Fire monsters.

Currently, Ice and Fire monsters are an exact copy of their normal counterparts -- except for health (Ice at 2x and Fire at 3x). The only difference is their texture. This is an inefficient use of resources by having players load new texture for monsters that are essentially the same. To solve this, Dragon and Jefe suggested merging the projectile properties of Wehtam and SpecialSkaarjPack monsters with Ice and Fire monsters. For instance, we're all probably familiar with the red Queen on wave 16 that shoots red Rapor plasma. This projectile property is now assigned to the Fire Queen. I've done a similar merger on the Ice/Fire Mercenaries, Warlords, Pupaes, Skaarj and Titan.

Thus, Wehtam and SpecialSkaarjPack monsters will be removed from the server to save on downloads. The merger also provides a more coherent theme to the server. I've also done my best to tone down any flashy emitters and effects that monsters use. Hopefully, this will improve any packet loss or low FPS issues for players with older machines.

2) Wave Reconfiguration

With the removal of Wehtam and SpecialSkaarjPack, the waves have been reconfigured. Now, monster difficulty progresses smoothly from wave to wave, starting with melee and vanilla monsters and working toward Ice and Fire monsters. Low level players need not worry about dodging rockets and skaarj projectiles in the early waves. But of course, the infamous Titan waves and the All-Skaarj wave are still there.

3) Expanded class interaction with Ice and Fire monsters

Overall, the server will be more difficult for some, and easier for others. With the increased concentration of Ice and Fire monsters, having a Heat and Freezing weapon are essential. Weapon Masters have a higher chance of getting these. Here's how other classes can play a part with Ice and Fire monsters:

For Adrenaline Masters and Generals, the Fireball artifact does 50% more damage to Ice monsters and less to Fire monsters. The lightning beam as been turned into the Ice Beam, and does 50% more damage to Fire Monsters and less to Ice Monsters.

For Engineers, specifically Engineer Weaponry, the new Solar Turret does 50% more against Ice monsters and less to Fire monsters. However, turret linking to a Ball, Mini, or Energy turret should suffice for the other subclasses and normal Engi.

Medic/Monster masters have no elemental buffs yet.

4) New Subclasses

Two new subclasses: Sniper and Necromancer.

The Sniper is a Weapon Master category subclass. It is the complete reversal of the Berserker - do more damage from long distances, and take more damage in close range. Currently, the damage range is up to 75% more at maximum distance, and an additional 25% when crouching.

The Necromancer is a Medic-Monster category subclass. It can resurrect dead players and can spawn unique ghost-like monsters including skulls, skeletons, wraiths and phantoms. The catch?
- No ghost
- No regeneration
- No loaded healing
- Can not be healed by others (must purchase Hardcore as a prerequisite)
The only way to sustain yourself is with the Vampire and Energy Leech ability.

5) New Monsters

As with the addition of the Necromancer subclass, we have new ghost-themed monsters. Here's what you can expect:

Skull:

An early-wave melee monster. You can receive headshot awards by killing Skulls with sniper rifles.

Skeleton:
Another early-wave melee monster. You can receive headshot awards by killing Skeletons with sniper rifles.

Soul Wraith:


The soul wraith sucks health from players and adds it to its own, up to a limit. Depicted as two white trails leaving your body and entering the wraith. Fairly harmless, but these guys are hard to spot in the middle of combat and attack you stealthily.

Spectre:
The spectre sucks adrenaline from players and adds it to its own, depicted as two orange trails leaving your body and entering the Spectre. Once it reaches 50 adrenaline, the Spectre summons a black hole at its location and teleports away. The black hole sucks in players for a few seconds before exploding. Best way to combat these guys is from a distance and out of the black hole's radius, or with a sturdy weapon that'll prevent you from getting sucked in.

Phantom:
The phantom spawns a plasma orb AT your location. You have a few seconds to move before it explodes. Every ten seconds, the Phantom casts a metor shower above the player. Again, you have a chance to move.

Sorcerer:


The Sorcerer spawns two immortal skeletons, which will glow green to indicate their immortality. Killing the Sorcerer will kill the Skeletons. The Sorcerer also resurrects dead monsters and fires green lightning at players. Currently only appears on wave 16.

6) Nanite-Strike

The Tech Skaarj, Warlord and Titan have been equipped with a nanite-strike feature. Every two seconds, the projectiles from these monsters will have a 10% chance of striking out engineer constructions within its radius. There will be a 'beep' to notify and alert Engineers.

The rest of the changes are smaller, but still worth taking a look at. Here is the list.

- Turrets for Engineers
* Lynx Turret -- turret version of Lynx vehicle on server. Designed for low level players but certainly useable as higher levels.
* Odin Turret -- high damage and penetrating instant hit turret. Limited up/down pitch, slow rotation. Best in long, narrow corridors.
* Solar Turret -- fires a link-like beam that you can sweep across monsters. 50% more damage against ice monsters, 50% less against fire monsters.

- Enchanter icons
- Summoner nerf: steadily decrease weapon damage with each level of Loaded Monsters (down to 50% less at max level, same as Healers)
- Fixed magic vault requirements on Loaded Craftsman
- Fixed weapon damage on Healers; apply to Level 8 and not 10
- Avrils no longer destroyed by team fire
- Vehicles no longer run over blocks
- Lowered Ball Turret projectile speed (over 200 damage per second no triple or link, highest of any turret including the new ones)
- Energy turret now zooms with forward/backward as well as the new turrets
- Tank Class: Players must buy each level of Increased Protection for each level of Increased Damage
- Texturized Beam Sentinel
- New magic modifier Solar Power combines Infinity + extra heat damage to ice monsters. Magic Vault 3.
- Added back in Poison Blast for Healers
- Combined several shield abilities
- Fixed TwinCore not appearing (not added on server for balance)

Credits
I drew inspiration from a lot of different sources. This update couldn't have been possible without them, and I deeply appreciate each author and their work.

- WailOfSuicide/DWRPG: Wail provided me with a bit of code that our ice-fire element system is on. He also made the Cryoarithmetic Equalizer weapon. Thanks Wail!
- Kearin/WeaponsOfPower - Revive Artifact for the Necromancer subclass.
- Iniquitous/DoomMonsters - Monster resurrection, Phantom firing property, and a lot of guide on making the new ghost monsters. You can check out his/her website here: http://unreal.shaungoeppinger.com/
- TonyTheSlayer/TonysMonstersv4 - The soul and adrenaline nalis are based off his soul sucker nali from TonysMonsters which features lots of creative and cool-concept monsters.
- Wormbo/WVHoverTank - Odin and Solar Turret; Spectre black hole. You can find Wormbo's website here: http://www.koehler-homepage.de/Wormbo/
- .:..:/U1Pawns - Phantom appear/disappear function. .:..: also made a U1 mod for UT2004.
- Ace08/SpecialSkaarjPack - SSP Mergers into DEKMonsters
- WehtamMonsters - Wehtam mergers into DEKMonsters
- Dragon, Jefe - Textures and testing
- Mysterial, Satore, Druid/Shantara, Szlat, Demon, DC Contributors: of course, for the RPG, the great DruidsRPG addition, and an awesome community.

A few notes about the turrets and their damages per second (DPS), no triple or linking:
- Lynx turret does 46 DPS
- Odin turret between 70.5 to 90 DPS (adjusted for the Weaponry 1.5x bonus)
- Energy turret between 100 to 133 DPS
- Minigun turret between 137 to 154 DPS
- Ball turret at 220 DPS
- Solar turret between 375 to 450 DPS (adjusted for the Weaponry 1.5x bonus)

Keep in consideration whether it is instant hit, or otherwise the projectile speed.

Odin turret is a penetrating turret, so even with a much weaker DPS, you can catch multiple monsters in one shot. Depends on you to set up a good base for it and funnel monsters into a line.

I'll be nerfing the Solar Turret for sure. Didn't intend for it to be a super turret, it's DPS was a bit more complicated to calculate since it has a few additional factors in it. Math, bleh.

Excellent job!

A note about constructions and black holes: engineer constructions shouldn't be affected by black holes, whether defense sentinels shoot them down or not. Sometimes, you may see your turret out of place, or blocks that are moving and floating. This is just a visual issue. Your constructions are still intact. To fix turrets, just hop out then back in. To fix blocks, you can translocate your block at its original position (the collision will still be there) and re-summon it.

Sounds real cool. Going to try it out. Been exiled to the computer room for a while and I'm too burned out for practice exams tonight. Drink, cheetos, and UT. good to go.

flak_monkey wrote:
Sounds real cool. Going to try it out. Been exiled to the computer room for a while and I'm too burned out for practice exams tonight. Drink, cheetos, and UT. good to go.

Gasp, gasp, another one arisen from the dead..................

A few balancing suggestions. Please respond with thoughts if you have any.

- Extreme WM: you do 50% extra damage, but 50% less in adrenaline. The upside is much better than the downside, considering the lightning rod is the only offensive artifact that non-AMs can pick up. Originally, WMs couldn't even pick up the lightning rod until I changed that, so there was no downside to begin with. To bring up the downside, I'll most likely make artifacts cost 50% more as well for Extreme WM, so it evens out against other WM subclasses which have bigger downsides.

- Craftsman: a bit too good. One player can sustain a sphere independently, though it does get tricky on 15 and 16. I'll most likely increase the cost on these artifacts, but still have them cheaper than what it costs for pre-subclass AM and extreme AM. I might even remove the Arctic Weapon Maker. It is almost a guaranteed win when you have an Arctic weapon on this subclass because fire monsters are high value monsters, which means a lot of adrenaline return when killing them. So, a craftsman will just have to use the MWM (which will still be cheaper) to get an element weapon.

- Lynx turret: right now, the Lynx turret does not provide proper XP share to linkers. You'll still get XP as a linker, just not as much as when you're linking to another kind of turret. There are multiple parts to the XP-linking code, and I may have missed something. For now, I'll restrict the Lynx turret to pre-subclass engineers. It does the least DPS anyway, and you'll most likely be linking a higher level player than a lower level player.

-Auto Engineer: Auto Engi's do 25% more damage in turrets/vehicles, and 25% less in weapon damage. It doesn't make much sense considering they have resupply and vampire, which is more effective with higher damage. I'll swap the damage distribution with Base engis. So, Auto Engi damage will be vanilla: normal weapon damage, normal sentinel/turret damage. Base engi's will do 25% more in sentinel/turret, and 25% less in weapon, which also makes more sense since they'll most likely be in a turret. I'll also most likely knock down the Engineer Weaponry's 50% to 40 or 35%.

-Necromancer: this subclass needs a bit of a buff up. If you don't have globe, you're a bit out of luck on higher waves with no healing. I'm thinking of lowering the adrenaline requirement on resurrection from 200 to 150 or 100, and instead increase the cooldown time from 30 seconds to 45. This will allow Necromancers to have a bit more of adrenaline left for globe/booster rather than having to waste 200 on possibly a low level player that'll just die again.

Spider mine boosting on WM/ENG hybrid is still a bit too good, even from the previous nerf from level 5 to 3. Having defense sentinels with dual actions like shooting down enemy projectiles while also boosting team projectiles is the problem. I'll make a new "spider sentinel" where it does nothing but boost spider mine projectiles. That way, it'll cost some sentinel points which means you'll have to give up some defense sentinels for a spider sentinel. This also gives me an idea for a new Engi subclass, or an addition to the Auto Engi. Hmmm..

- I removed the arctic enchanter for Craftsman and decreased the max energy leech ability from 5 to 3. Unlike Extreme AM, Craftsman do normal weapon damage, which means a lot of adrenaline return with maxed out magic weapons. Hopefully this will make it a bit more difficult for one person to sustain a wave-long sphere.

- Increased the remote damage XP for Craftsman from 10 to 20, since they no longer receive XP for the damage that the boosted player does. Remote safety is still 10 XP, but you also receive XP for damage that the boosted player takes.

- Added back in present blocks and candy cane sentinels for the holidays. Jefe also added back the xmas maps, woohoo! I forgot to add fruitcake titans and red/green monster rockets into the 205 monster pack, so I'll recompile them in a 205A version.

205A Update:
- Fixed link sentinels not linking to the new turrets
- Decreased the solar turret damage from 375-450 per fire to 245-280. This is with the weaponry subclass 40% bonus.
- Decreased the odin turret firing rate. If you miss or do not hit a monster in your second consecutive fire, your spree will end.
- Changed the utility rifle a bit to hopefully make it a bit more useful. The primary fire works a bit more like the Punisher from VCTF-AtariCombat
- Added a new Mine Booster Sentinel for WM/ENG Hybrids and removed mine boosting from defense sentinels. Players can now only make 2 defense sentinels with a mine booster sentinel.
- Changed the MWM icon
- Recompiled xmas monsters into the monster pack
- Nali cows now attack players, and bots will also target nali cows and ultima bunnies. This prevents a situation where players die before bots with these monsters on, leaving an unending wave with bots running around.

I was able to fix the candy cane defense sentinels which had a collision problem. However, now they're unlinkable or at least real difficult to link to. For the time being, I put back in the regular defense sentinels until I can get a proper fix.

If you are a WM/ENG, you'll most likely need to rebuild because of a new placeholder ability. Other hybrids will not get the mine booster sentinel, so I had to make a separate Loaded Eng ability for this subclass.

As always, let me know about bugs and balancing.