Spiral Knights - Grenades

Grenades

9 replies [Last post]

Tue, 02/23/2016 - 23:46

Fangel

To start this off, I was talking with a few other people in the public Spiral Knights discord channel, and while talking I was wondering what sort of combat abilities we don't have covered right now. We have melee (sword), ranged (guns), and Area of Effect (bombs). I could seriously not think of another thing to add in.

The only thing I could think that we were missing were ranged AoE weapons. However, ranged AoE would outclass bombs most likely, so how do we introduce this idea while not outclassing our explosive classes?

The solution I thought up - grenades! Now, these aren't just bombs you throw. Grenades would act more like a sprite perk ability than they would a weapon. They would be an additional item that you always have equipped, and have various different functions which I will outline below.

Function
Grenades are activated like a sprite perk. You press a button, your knight plays an animation, and the attack happens. However this attack is not dependent on your battle sprite's server-side commands therefore you won't point and have it not listen.
When you press your grenade key, you will play a short animation (pull pin, throw. Takes about as long as a health capsule to use), and then you will throw the grenade. Depending on the type, it will be thrown 3 to 8 tiles, sit for a moment, then explode.

Grenades do not deal much damage, but rather are a utility item to use to initially engage enemies, to scatter enemies, or do a few other things. While bombs can be tossed down at a moment's notice, a grenade will have to wait between 30 to 60 seconds before another one can be thrown.

Types
Grenades would come in several functions and forms. Here are a short list of ideas:

Blast

Causes damage and knockback. Cannot deal status. Medium range. 30 second cooldown.

Burst

Causes damage and knockdown. Statuses include stun, freeze. Medium range. 30 second cooldown.

Haze

Deals no damage, but creates a small circle of status. Statuses include fire, freeze, shock, stun, poison. Medium range. 45 second cooldown.

Vortex

Deals no damage, but sucks all nearby enemies into its center and inflicts a debuff. Debuffs include defense down, attack down. Long range. 45 second cooldown.

Pulse

Deals no damage, but sends a pulse outwards to debuff enemies. Debuffs include deathmark, speed down. Long range. 45-60 second cooldown.

Quill

Causes damage, but fires multiple quills out on detonation. Quills inflict status upon hit, and additional damage when broken - like a maskeraith quill. Statuses include poison, fire. Short range. 40 second cooldown.

Mine

Deals damage and knockdown. On detonation, buries itself into ground. Upon an enemy entering its detonation radius, it beeps and explodes. Will also automatically explode after 15 seconds if no enemy walks over it. Short range. 60 second cooldown.

All grenades would deal normal damage, and would have 3 variants of each type - 0*, 2*, and 4*. For example, a 4* blast grenade would deal around 250 damage at depth 28. They follow the same naming conventions of vials and barriers.

Overall these additions would essentially give you another weapon to never use, however having a pocket fire haze might be useful for slime danger rooms with ice cubes. A pocket deathmark is always helpful, despite the 60 second cooldown. Additionally, these would spice up the Lockdown gameplay... Granted I forsee most people grabbing the shock haze one - however the mine will prove great at hindering retreating opponents if you set them up right.

Thu, 02/25/2016 - 20:19

Phyrosite

bippity boppity bump

Eyap this'd be neat ;)

Sat, 02/27/2016 - 14:20

Ganzfeld-Effect

Seems pretty balanced.

I could definitely see myself using any of these, especially that Vortex one with my Iron Slug. Gives it that little bit extra depth of gameplay without having to forgo one of your weapons.

Mon, 02/29/2016 - 05:17

Jenovasforumchar

a 4th weapon mechanic

Well, I instantly come up with an answer what else does not exist: Minions - or 'creations', to keep it more on a robotic base.

You can start to create something while beeing immobile and when done constructing, you have a certain something that helps you in battle in one way or another. See this as a mind push for further suggestions.

To the opening:
vorthex should definitelly NOT suck in 'all' enemies. Even the real vortex bombs' 3* Version are fare away to suck in even most of the enemies, so a pure Utility weapon should only be able to alter the movements of small enemies. I rather suggest it as a Brief impact rather than a real vortex - so fi you want to have enemies clumped together then you still Need a vortex bomb. If you want to just slow an enemy in its path, then you may use a Impact (vortex) grenade.

Mon, 02/29/2016 - 19:49

Fangel

Well...

"sucks all nearby enemies into its center and inflicts a debuff"

The idea of these items are to be a utility without outclassing bombs. I don't know about you, but vortex bombs are typically used over and over to group up enemies for other players to attack before exploding and scattering them. The vortex grenade would suck in all nearby enemies, nerfs them instead of sending them flying, and has a 45 second cooldown.

If you're offset by the whole "all nearby enemies" part, I assure you it comes with all the same sucking power as the regular vortex bombs, perhaps with a smaller radius for the lower star versions.

As for a minion weapon mechanic, I've actually played around with this idea before too, but as a 4th class for Lockdown. The way I see it is that the gameplay at its core is hack n' slash, and when you start having to make minions to fight it becomes less hack n' slash. However for minigames we can forgo some game design and replace it with new ideas.

Tue, 03/01/2016 - 15:27

Jenovasforumchar

hack'n'slash

Well, let's make an example for hack 'n' slash via constructing: Imagine creating something with the mechanic of one of these undead suicide bombers. But instead of running forever, it will also die after x seconds - for very obvious reasons.

But if you only count damage done in a classical way... then let me think... yea, we have meely, we have ranged and we have something between as area effect. Well, but then you would also have to say that bombs would not count as hack and slash, because of the delay and the fact that it is actually a weapon that has no contact with the knight's body while dealing damage. If you say that own contact is not necessary, then my constructing idea will work perfectly.

Another idea would be some kind of damaging aura; something that hurts an enemy if you touch an enemy in tight close range, but we have these kind of things already as pickup barriers, drako's fire barrier, vana's phase 3 and bayond and also arkus.

Hm, and fist fight would morely fit into beeing a sub-type of swords again.

Right now this is the only other idea for a new weapon style I am thinking on.

Well, I am drifting - back to the idea in the opening:
Let me be directly: I do not like your idea if it is meant to be a support weapon, because right now we have many bombs that are already support weapons and would have another rival and get make them less used.

It is possible that I get missleaded by the word 'grenade' since I think about something stronger than just support when I hear the word.

But I would definitelly like to see some weapon mechanics that you suggested as own real weapons. Like that mine for example. If you ask me, then this game is missing player-caused stuff that damages enemies 'after' the enemy runs into it. The landed crystal of a tortogun is the only weapon that is able to do this right now - so there should be able to create something like mines if you take torto crystals as base.

Actually we could take all 'grenade'-variants and add them as suggestions for real bombs and light the fire for a Bomber Update once more, nice you made some fine suggestions there ;)

Tue, 03/01/2016 - 16:14

Fangel

Yeah

All grenades involved would essentially be recharging, weak bombs. The ones that deal damage would deal about as much damage as a drakon firebolt - ie, not that much.

And I'll be honest, I don't really like the name of "grenade" either as we often think of a grenade being some really powerful explosive. However, the range and cooldown of these items make them less of a "weapon class", and more of a support utility.

The only issue with "construct" weapons would be their standard attacks would either be summoning something to attack with melee or ranged, or attacking with melee or ranged. Really you end up with the same classes, just instead of being you attacking something else is attacking. That isn't to say the idea of constructing or summoning minions isn't something we can throw out entirely, but they'd be put onto existing classes, such as a wrench weapon that creates an auto turret on its charge and kills the previous auto turret if you place another one... However that is a unique charge attack rather than a unique weapon, as it's still a melee weapon at the end of the day.

Additionally, if all of these grenades make it into an update, the code would thus exist for the new unique bombs, and therefore the mechanics could be expanded and made into viable weapons for a class that is lacking weapon variety.

Wed, 03/02/2016 - 05:02

Jenovasforumchar

Grenades:
Weak Support weapon. Well, why don't we call them 'crawlers'? Let us see them as throwable Little Spider-like robots that will do the suggested things or crawling to a specific Position if nothing is in the way and just detonate. This would distract from the whole heavy exploding grenade-thingy and would also give a reason why grenades can be used completelly seperately - because they have some Kind of own intelligence up to a certain of degree.

Constructing:
Charging:
Special Charge attack? Nah. As you assumed, the whole line class would create something with its Standard attack. So there will be no Charge attack at all - so it works reverse like bombs do. This does also mean that asi Bonus is much more valuable here since the time until a construction is completed depends on attack Speed. In Exchange, the Standard attack will root you into place while constructing. Crafter weapons will have a asi Bonus at heating instead of ctr.

If we Play with the idea of adding a Charge, too then this might be something like 'created stuff lives longer, can shoot more hits deals more damage, etc. Due to its mechanic of crafter weapons though, the Charge would take longer to finish and it also will root you down into place.

Function:
Let us take your idea of an auto-turret as example: The second crafted AT will not remove the first one. Just like a shivermist cloud is not removing a previous shiva mist cloud. The crafted AT would remain either until it has shot 3 times or until it recived x damage. And of course after x seconds have passed in case it gets created in an idle place. So the pickup AT would still have a much longer life time than the craft Version. In Exchange, the constructed AT can be created without needing a pickup.

To comprehend it, constructed things have fallowing characteristics:
-They can get hostility from Monsters and be used as decoy
-they have a limited number of attacks before vanishing (running out of energy)
-they have a limited, very small health pool (unless this is a Special Version that is meant for tanking. in this case it can deal only Little or no damage)
-they have a limited life span, even if they do not recive damage or attack themselves (you know, running out of energy. Horrible life-support Systems :P)
-A Little blast attack gets created after the creation process is done. And by Little I am thinking about 1 damage - just to make it possible to Switch and cross bushes with this weapon.

Counter-example: Meely bombs.
Constructing is something with a completelly new mechanic. If you generalize it down to meely and ranged only, then you Need to admit, hat bombs are nothing but delayed meely attacks with a very wide range of effect - just like the second swing of a cutter which would take like 1 second after the first swing to happen, while the first swing does not deal damage (bombs drop-on-earth Animation) and a huge area of effect (gigantic cutter ghost sword).

If you don't see Constructing as possible new weapon type, then bombs aren't aswell ;)

Wed, 03/02/2016 - 13:17

Fangel

Hmm.

See that's sort of what I was getting at. Standing still for even a moment in this game is a bad idea - it's why autoguns are stupid mobile now. On top of this, you cannot control how or where your minions attack. I cannot get a horde of summoned turrets to break minerals for me in a timely manner - heck, bombers could break them faster.

Minions would also need reasonable amounts of health, but still be weak enough to die in a few hits.

I also want to point out that the minion version of the auto turret you suggest is literally the exact way the current pickup works - 3 shots can be fired before it commits seppuku. With such an item added, this pickup should be buffed to last until it dies.

Overall minions are interesting additions. However, I don't really know how well it would fit in as a standard weapon. If anything, you should have a wrench/melee weapon that spawns different minions on its charge attack, and the minions would target whatever enemy you hit with the wrench/nearest your last wrench attack. Even better if all minions share a health pool, so you can either have one powerful minion or several lower health minions.

To create a minion you would charge your weapon. Charge times are long, comparable to the gran faust. On full charge, you will smash your weapon into the ground 3-5 times and build a minion. Minions would prioritize enemies you hit with the construction weapon, and would return to their creator on the combo finisher to protect them.

Now that is a new type of weapon. It's still technically a melee weapon, however it acts more like a marking system, and overall is balanced. If you want to make a horde of allies in PvP they all will die rather quickly. If you want to have a bodyguard in the clockworks, you can create one. Creating these things will leave you immobile for a moment, but not long enough to make it impossible to create your minions (trying to create a turret in dreams and nightmares would be difficult under the system you propose).

Tue, 03/15/2016 - 09:03

Rambocreativity

Woah

Yes please this looks amazing!

Search

Grenades