Spiral Knights - A monster that cracks down on LD Spawncamping

A monster that cracks down on LD Spawncamping - the Base Turret!

19 replies [Last post]

Thu, 04/02/2015 - 00:09

Oroseira

So, we all know of spawncamping: you basically sit in the front of the spawn and kill anyone who dares to come outside, usually laying a few bombs to ensure they can't leave and winning the match with a cheap tactic.

I have a bit of a countermeasure to that.

Introducing the Base Turret, invincible monsters that sit in pairs at the spawn gates and fire lasers at the enemy team if they linger around for too long at the other team's spawn (15 seconds) or if it detects too many enemy projectiles. (Pulsar spamming would trip this switch really quickly) Lasers fired cannot be avoided and deal moderate damage, but they fire rapidly, easily killing someone foolish enough to stick around.
Additionally, they destroy bullets fired by the enemy team and pass through teammates. These turrets are always active, immune to statuses and as stated before, cannot be damaged or killed, and can only be found in Lockdown maps. They also can't be avoided by Recon cloaking - it will target everyone no matter what.

I also have a concept art piece of them, and they're essentially Swarm Turret reskins which float with antigravity.

This should hopefully curb spawncamping should it ever get implemented into the game.

Any opinions on what I should change, if at all?

Thu, 04/02/2015 - 08:55

Fehzor

I think it should be inverted, so that it assists one team in spawn camping the other. That would be hilarious.

Another (and real) concern is that monsters only target knights right now. I'm not sure how long it would take to implement this, and can see it being done instantly or being incredibly hard to pull off.

If it can be done easily then I do think that it would be a nice touch to many if not all lockdown maps though- in games like TF2, it's less needed because of how the game typically relies on pushing to the end against a defending team.. in lockdown, it's about holding the control points, with both sides acting as offense/defense. Spawn camping when the team is pushing is good because the game is balanced around it (first point = directly next to your spawn, for instance); spawn camping in lockdown is far more a problem that this could alleviate.

The concept art you made is also pretty sweet- I could imagine these being team coloured easily.

Thu, 04/02/2015 - 23:48

Oroseira

@Fehzor
First off, thanks for the feedback the concept art! I wanted to do something simple that would be easy to make many retextures of, so I went ahead with a Swarm Turret reskin (but without the swarm particles and instead floating with an antigravity ring around it) that uses the color of the team it supports for the outer cube and the color of the opposite team for the ring, which means there's going to be quite a few variations. If you could provide data on the possible color combinations for teams on Lockdown, I could use that list to calculate how many reskins would be necessary (and considering the simplicity of the model, it likely would end up being more tedious than difficult) in order to cover everything.

Now to address your feedback gameplay-wise.
"I think it should be inverted, so that it assists one team in spawn camping the other. That would be hilarious."
Oh boy. That would be a recipe for disaster and probably cause new players to not want to play Lockdown. Then again, the chaos might just be worth it for people who want to be daredevils and dodge everything. (I'm guilty on that count; blame Touhou.)

"Another (and real) concern is that monsters only target knights right now. I'm not sure how long it would take to implement this, and can see it being done instantly or being incredibly hard to pull off."
This is a concern I didn't put into perspective when coming up with the idea. It could be easy to code monsters to target only specific knights, it could be nigh-impossible, we might not know, since I'm not a programmer and I don't know how things like these work.

"If it can be done easily then I do think that it would be a nice touch to many if not all lockdown maps though- in games like TF2, it's less needed because of how the game typically relies on pushing to the end against a defending team. Spawn camping when the team is pushing is good because the game is balanced around it (first point = directly next to your spawn, for instance);"
I agree with this. While things like this wouldn't be necessary in such a game like Team Fortress 2...

"spawn camping in lockdown is far more a problem that this could alleviate."
...with Spiral Knights' Lockdown minigame, the general toxicity of the community means cheap tactics can easily get abused with no way to stop them effectively. This is one way to quickly kill this tactic and give the opposing side a fighting chance, since now the enemy team can't really exploit cheap tactics to fight back against Base Turrets since they're impossible to stop short of running away from them to lose their aggro, which would allow the camped team to come out and get a second chance (but it might be too late) at trying to win.

Sat, 04/04/2015 - 05:28

Mookie-Cookie

Blah

I'm not sure how long it would take to implement this, and can see it being done instantly or being incredibly hard to pull off.
This is a concern I didn't put into perspective when coming up with the idea. It could be easy to code monsters to target only specific knights, it could be nigh-impossible, we might not know, since I'm not a programmer and I don't know how things like these work.
It's so easy, it's insane.

The game already has "teams", so they already have a list of players on a team-to-team basis. Just dump that into the AI, and you're done.
Given they have turret AI already, it shouldn't even take a day.

That said, they may have their AI be based on type, so it may mean change to the AI, which could take a bit longer.

As for what they look like, why not just base it on the Spiral Order's turrets? That would make a lot more sense.
Plus, if memory serves, those turrets are insta-hit, which would greatly discourage going anywhere near the opposing team's base. Even a "very fast" bullet can be dodged. Insta-hit rounds, though, cannot.
Obviously if they were insta-hit, you'd reduce the damage they can do.

Plus, would these turrets detect cloaked Recons? I'd imagine they should, as their point is to keep the opposing team away.

Sat, 04/04/2015 - 15:23

Deleted-Knight

The team wall already serves this purpose. People on the inside can shoot at people who get too close. Pulsar camping is the real problem. Your turret will need a long range to hit people spamming pulsar at your base.

Sat, 04/04/2015 - 22:25

Autofire

You are experiencing a PICNIC ERROR!

The game already has "teams", so they already have a list of players on a team-to-team basis. Just dump that into the AI, and you're done. Given they have turret AI already, it shouldn't even take a day.

The flaw here is when they hard code things. There could be 50-100 references to Knights/monsters specifically. They might have two templates: hit knights and hit monsters. Not 'hit knights only if they have X bit set to Y' or something like that. The game's AI never seems selective.

Granted, the dev team uses Linux so I would think a substitution would be easy with grep. This might break a few things, but a few hour's coding might fix that.

Daw, forget it. I'm being too optimistic.

Sun, 04/05/2015 - 06:53

Mookie-Cookie

Blah

@Autofire:
That's why I added the part about AI being oriented around types. So the AI might not be immediately transferable. However, I'm assuming there's something in place to separate the knights on the two teams, otherwise knight-against-knight combat simply wouldn't work. My suggestion was to develop the turret to orient to the list of the opposing team, as opposed to any object type.

Most of it should be transferable. Detection, however, might not.

On a different note, I hope they haven't gone ahead and hard-coded things. That's just plain poor practice. Heh.

@Deleted-Knight:
Ah, that's true. Turrets can reflect pulsar projectiles?
Seems a bit extreme to have that sort of protection, though.

Sun, 04/05/2015 - 18:36

Blandaxt

Hmm...

@Oroseira:

I think as long as the turrets do not target a player as long as 30 seconds, then i am good with it. Like if i stay in from of the camp for longer then 30 seconds, then they will start attacking me. But if i stayed there for 10 seconds, i should not get targeted. This way, it's more for spawn camping and not for me just wandering past the entrance of the enemy base. Also these monsters would just be labeled gold monsters like in the spiral knights beta. Also why not make them rocket puppies?

Fri, 04/10/2015 - 03:19

Oroseira

@Blandaxt

"I think as long as the turrets do not target a player as long as 30 seconds, then i am good with it. Like if i stay in from of the camp for longer then 30 seconds, then they will start attacking me. But if i stayed there for 10 seconds, i should not get targeted. This way, it's more for spawn camping and not for me just wandering past the entrance of the enemy base."
Hmm. Thirty seconds seems too merciful for the opposing team. Maybe we could do a compromise of 15, as thirty seconds allows the enemy team to easily capture all the points and completely throw the match in their favor.

@Deleted-Knight
"Pulsar camping is the real problem. Your turret will need a long range to hit people spamming pulsar at your base."

I should probably add that it could be able to destroy other projectiles with it's own.

@Mookie-Cookie
"Plus, would these turrets detect cloaked Recons? I'd imagine they should, as their point is to keep the opposing team away."

I should also add this too.

Once again, thanks for all the feedback.

Fri, 04/10/2015 - 13:20

Fangel

Fangel thoughts awaaay

Throwing a bit of balance around -
Spawncamping is a pretty big problem. However, it's only a problem if there is damage flying around - if you're at the enemy base and not attacking (cloaked recon) it's not that big of a deal. It becomes a big deal if you start laying down shock bombs outside their spawn with two guardian shields protecting you from bullets.

With this in mind, have the turrets not be spawned initially. Instead, have some sort of switch be set up somewhere around the base spawn. Hitting one of these switches with spawn a turret that fights for the base it's near.
What does this do? This means if a haze bomb is outside of the base, the switch will be flipped, and the turrets will spawn. If a pulsar bullet hits a switch, a turret will spawn. This also means that if a team is spawncamping, they can still do so but must be both precise AND prevent the other team from hitting a really nearby switch without hitting it themselves. Spamming pulsar shots will make a turret spawn if you aren't careful.
If the team who spawns there hits the switch, the turret would be alive for 10-15 seconds. If the opposing team sets it off, it lasts for 30 seconds before despawning. This is to prevent turrets from being up 24/7 and allow for one team to walk past the other team's base without a problem if just for traveling's sake. Players who want to can hit the switch at their spawn whenever they leave to try to catch the other team off-guard, but the 10-15 second lifetime is long enough to turn the tide of a fight while not being a constant threat.

Turrets would not target cloaked recons - they can't attack while cloaked so it's not like they're threatening the spawn point by cloaking around near the point.

Bottom line is I like the idea, but it needs to not make the other team's base area inaccessible, but instead not a spot to camp.

Fri, 04/10/2015 - 16:53

#10

Leekcoco

If the maps get revised it would help a lot. Most of the bad map designs are responsible for making spawn camping easy, and Avenue needs to go.

Sun, 04/12/2015 - 06:36

#11

Xaurian

@Fangel
I like the switch idea, but I can't edit the original post anymore (moving my SK account to Steam caused that). It's still definitely a good idea.

Sun, 04/12/2015 - 15:49

#12

Blandaxt

lol

@Oroseira:

maybe the forums is what really needs an update. Hehe

Tue, 04/14/2015 - 08:35

#13

Holy-Nightmare

@ OP

I have made suggestions similar to this in the past, but rather have things just defend the base why not have free roaming monsters that target only the highest damage players or the team that is in the lead?

http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/102261

Tue, 04/14/2015 - 09:33

#14

Fangel

Well that's a different situation

but rather have things just defend the base why not have free roaming monsters that target only the highest damage players or the team that is in the lead?
Spawn camping isn't always by the top-damaging players, and this is a suggestion to prevent spawn-camping. What you're suggesting is its own thing, not super relevant to this thread.

Wed, 04/15/2015 - 12:00

#15

Holy-Nightmare

@ Fangel

Meh.... Top damaging player might work, except for the fact that you tend to deal more damage than the other team when you have less allies (you winning chances still drop) since you are facing off against more enemies. I also put in "Team that is in the lead" which would be balanced but would require some trigger percentile to keep it from constantly switching sides when one team pulls a smidge ahead since the have a monster on their side.

Sat, 04/18/2015 - 18:06

#16

Carbon-Jm

Spawn Camping, Eh?

I feel like I would really hate this half the time and love it the other half. Why not have certain idiots (namingly me) who have them and the rest of the players not? That would be so much more fair.

But in all Seerusness... This sounds like a good idea. I think the original concept is the best. Recons should be targeted though. I can't tell you how many times a chaos clone with an Acheron has 9ja'd me outside a base. Well, 9ja'd for them, ambushed for me. :P

Tue, 04/21/2015 - 18:44

#17

Fight-Beetle

In all seerussness, I would

In all seerussness, I would like to add that one can shoot handgun bullets through the forcefields of one's own base. As I cannot imagine a person foolish enough not to have a useful handgun in LD, spawncamping is not much of a problem.

Wed, 04/22/2015 - 09:46

#18

Fangel

Well yeah.

An uncloaked recon should still be targeted, however a recon cloaks(after X seconds so you can't just fake it out) then the turret would stop targeting them. It's one thing if you get killed outside your base by a single recon... It's another completely if you get killed by 3 or more players outside of your base every single time you spawn. The first example is not a problem, rather just annoying but infrequent. Second example is very much a gameplay problem. Remember - recon's only defense is invisibility. Don't take away a class' ability to defend themselves but rather make it harder to do so.

Thu, 04/23/2015 - 18:48

#19

Fight-Beetle

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What I'm concerned about is, why does this monster have to resemble swarm turrets and not resemble the already existent spiral turrets/gun puppies?
After all, is it not true that a swarm based monster would make little sense in the wholesome and hole-some krogmo koliseum?

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A monster that cracks down on LD Spawncamping - the Base Turret!