Custom Theatre

[peglegswansoon]

We've now got 3 classes for the Smoke and Knives mode:
- Smoke - same as we have now, spawns with 3 smoke grenades and the knife.
- Ammo - spawns with 1 smoke and a light carrier which can hold up to 5 mags. If you can find them...
- Armoured - spawns with 1 smoke and an armour vest.

Current limitation is the new classes can't pick up more than 1 grenade. Trying to fix that, or maybe it's balanced already...

Also I think I've fixed the supply box desync but will keep an eye on it across the various maps.

[peglegswansoon]

Hey guys. I've managed to get the mod tool working again after some frustrating problems with Mod.IO's API (big thanks to the modding Discord for coming up with a workaround for that), so I'd now like to present the first version of the EBS Custom Theatre! It's not live on the server just yet while I'm testing and tidying up some bits, but should be ready for the upcoming Friday session. Of course everything is subject to change based on you guys' feedback and ideas, so do let me know if you have any!

Changes

New Equipment
I took all the stuff we've been using from the Custom Carriers mod and incorporated it here with almost no changes. The equipment carrier now gives 5 explosive slots instead of 4, and the Marksman can use it too. This also adds the M26 MASS standalone shotgun and M79 Buckshot launcher to the Breacher class.
I've added a new all-black skin for the PF940 and MK18, mostly just to test out how making skins works.
Some weapons have access to alternate suppressor designs, no functional difference other than looking cool

New Guns
All classes have 2 new pistols to play with - the M93R and PF940 Auto.
The M93R is a 3-round-burst pistol based on the M9, while the PF940 Auto is a classic fully-automatic Glock. They cost a lot and have had recoil properties changed to try and make them balanced.

New Enemies
I've reworked the bot classes and loadouts to let them use a wider variety of weapons and attachments. I tried to keep it somewhat thematic, so you won't see Insurgents running around with the latest and greatest gear for example. But they will use some guns they didn't previously. The Security bots will now use more attachments, and should finally stop taking the front sights off their rifles.

In addition to the base enemies I've added some new counter-attack types too. The Insurgent Militia has been adjusted to use more pistols and will drop them on death. There is a new "rogue police" themed group who use the blue uniforms and some special weapons. Finally, both teams have elite PMC enemies who have access to the very best weapons and gear. I heard some of the big guys even have better armour, so watch out for those...

New player class layouts
Quite a few changes have been made to the player class layouts which opens up some new possibilities, while at the same time closes some others to emphasise teamwork. These are all based on my own "vision" for what would play better, it's by no means set in stone and this is definitely an area where your feedback is important, since it affects a lot of how we play together. Let me know what you think!

The Advisor class is gone, their weapons have been distributed amongst the others for a better balance and to let people enjoy the fancy guns while still playing "useful" roles like Commander and Observer.

Rifleman/Commander/Observer get all the guns they used to have (minus the SG552), plus the assault/battle rifles from the Advisor, and the Galil/Galil SAR from the Gunner class.

Breacher has been given the SBRs and SMGs from the Advisor, as well as the SG552. Breacher no longer has access to C4 and mines.
Breacher now has unlimited slots like the Rifleman.

Demolitions class has been split in two - "Demolitions" now has Breacher-style weapons (SMGs/Shotguns/SBRs) and C4/IEDs/Mines, while the new "Grenadier" has assault rifles with grenade launchers and rockets along with the new carrier options. I made these changes to try and divvy up the responsibility of playing Demo, as well as allow players to use the more unique CQB guns without the "need" to take C4 as well. But I'm not as sold on it as when I came up with the idea originally. There's a difficult balance between giving player freedom to do what they want, while also guiding them into class roles to emphasise teamwork rather than letting everyone be a jack-of-all-trades. Let me know if you'd rather have it changed back.

Gunner loses the Galil and Galil SAR, as those guns aren't really as useful for the Gunner compared to the heavier weapons. As mentioned they have been moved to the Rifleman. The Gunner also no longer uses mines.

Marksman has a few new guns (M16A4, SKS) and access to AP Tracer ammo. I did this because it annoyed me how often you'd shoot a guy with the Mk14 or M110 and have them walk it off, using AP ammo will help drop them in one hit
You can also try a high-velocity ammo upgrade for the M24 which should improve the lethality a bit.

Experimental class: Sniper. This class uses a subset of the Rifleman's guns as primaries, with the bonus that they can carry a sniper rifle as part of their equipment. Due to how this works at the moment the sniper weapons can't be customised, so I've added some default attachments to them. Currently you get the Mosin, M24, M99 and M82. I based this off a YouTube video I saw ages ago which mentioned in the real world, snipers carry the same guns as everyone else until they actually need to do long-ranged stuff. Thought it might be interesting to see how that plays in Sandstorm.

For the future
That's about it for now. I'm also working on some other changes I'd like to include in a future version, including but not limited to:
- Increase the turret angle for the technical, so it has a better chance at shooting down helicopters.
- Low-profile pistol optics which work with the base-game pistols, to avoid losing access to weapon skins.
- Make bots throw grenades at armed C4/IEDs if the see one, instead of running away and getting stuck.
- Maybe remind the Security Commander bot that he has an A10 at his disposal...

As always, feedback and comments welcome

[Ztranier]

I do not play a lot, but i still appreciate all the work and time you invest in our server settings m8 !!

You are a legend indeed

[darkdeamon]

Modding is like picking at a scab on a big wound. Once you start at it, it's difficult to stop

[0verzeal0us]

That's a terrible analogy D.

[peglegswansoon]

He's right though. I can't stop. Please help.

[darkdeamon]

Just remember to ban the nwi devs from the server otherwise they will pinch all your good ideas

[peglegswansoon]

I found a more reliable way to let all the classes in Smoke and Knives carry more grenades, so now all the classes can carry 3 total. But the Smoke class is the only one which spawns with 3 smokes still - Ammo and Armoured classes only get 1 to start. Let me know if this feels balanced, maybe the other classes should have more or less capacity, idk.

[peglegswansoon]

I've updated the theatre to fix Survival mode. The bots now use the new loadouts properly (watch out for the juggernauts!) and the M79 Buckshot launcher is available as a secondary for the Survivor loadout.

I also changed the AI settings to stop the bots getting stuck on Survival mode. Turns out the allowed behaviours list we had for them was outdated, so added the latest ones to the list. This may make them generally a bit tougher in Checkpoint too - there's one which will make them try to clear objectives more thoroughly when attacking, so they are less likely to stand around blocking and actually try to come find you... you have been warned! If this makes them too difficult I will look to tweak some of their other settings to compensate.

[peglegswansoon]

Added something new to the theatre, mostly for my own entertainment and to try out tinkering with the attachments system - suppressors for the .50cal rifles! The M82 and M99 get two suppressors each, normal and wrapped. They both include adjusted models and sounds, customised muzzle blast/flash and removal of the "hearing loss" effect from shooting too quickly. Let me know what you think and shout if you encounter any issues with them!

I've also tweaked the Sniper class rifles to change up the attachments a bit. The M99 for the Sniper now gets a suppressor, so does the M24, and the fire-rate on the M82 has been increased slightly to give more of a trade-off between it and the M99. This is only for the Sniper kit version though - Marksman gets the normal fire-rate. Haven't figured out how to change that with an attachment for the Marksman...yet...

Ramble incoming:
I wanted to do this for a while, but since the base-game models were not set up to accept muzzle attachments I had to come up with a script to adjust the suppressor model positions and sizes manually. Otherwise the suppressor is mounted sideways! It would have been simpler to fix the model attachment points by making a copy and adjusting those, but replacing the model requires creating my own "version" of the weapon and swapping it into our loadouts. You then have to also re-create all of the normal attachments for it, since the base-game ones won't be compatible with the "new" weapon... every.. single... one.... This also loses access to a lot of the weapon skins as only a small number of those are included with the mod tool. Part of the motivation for doing this was to figure out ways to add custom attachments to base-game guns without having to make duplicates of the weapon classes. Gotta say I'm quite pleased with how it turned out!