Nader and Rhino, should they have ammo counts?

(watsyurdeal) #1

Simple question, Nader basically has an infinite supply of grenades, and Rhino has inifinte ammo on his minigun.

Should this be changed? Should Nader have up to 12 nades total, 4 in her launcher and 8 in reserve? Should it be reloaded like thecdemo man’s launcher in tf2?

What about Rhino? Should he just have 100 ammo to spare for his minigun?

I just wonder if these changes might open the doors to these characters being better balanced on their own, and contribute more to the game without being too powerful.

(Ardez1) #2

100 ammo would disappear so fast with that minigun…

I like the system it has now. They are both very beatable mercs for sure. And limiting their ability ammo… Should we put a hard limit on fraggers nades, skyhammers airstrikes, auras station, kiras station, bushwahckers turret too? Those are all physical things they carry around and then throw/launch/deploy.

better to be consistent and just use a CD for everything then limit a couple mercs in particular by attaching them to an ammo source at the hip.

(fetchingSeahorse) #3

Nader and rhino are not op to start, why are you championing nerfs?

(Ghosthree3) #4

It’s fine as is. Nader is quite balanced right now actually.

Also imo Rhino is the least powerful of all the mercs, he certainly doesn’t need a nerf.

(watsyurdeal) #5

I wasn’t saying firvthecsaje of needing them, I was actually thinking of a compromise. More damage for Nader’s nades in exchange for an actual ammmlo count. Or a tighter spread on the minigun.

Just a discussion topic that I thought would be interesting

(Ghosthree3) #6

More damage for less nades could actually make her over powered. It might seem like more and less = the same but in reality not really. If her nades were suddenly able to one shot everyone on 100 and under health instead of just 90 she’d be much stronger even if she had a nade or two less in reserve.

(GregHouseMD) #7

As others have said, I think you’d find that having these abilities on cooldown rather than a limited ammo supply is precisely what makes the balanced.

For Nader, an ammo supply would definitely encourage suicide tactics. Launch your grenade supply into a room, run in, die, get more grenades, rinse and repeat. Rhino would just become useless if he relied on an external ammo source. Either he’d need a dedicated fire support merc feeding him ammo, or he’d have to park his ass on top of an ammo crate.

(avidCow) #8

Rhino already needs another merc to babysit him. Leave him be.

If Nader had ammo I would expect to be able to unload all 12 grenades at will. Then get more. See how you like that…

(XavienX) #9

NO…the grenade launcher most of the time is just used to suppress fire, kinda like Rhino’s minigun. But the grenade launcher sometimes just bounces everywhere and Rhino’s minigun has such a big spread that can barely hit medium range.

(Gi.Am) #10

I’m in the Nope crew for this one. For starters as far as I heard Nader had an ammopool in earlier versions. Infact the gamefiles still contain a grenadelauncher_old that has six shots and a very nice reload animation (the many spare drums on her back make sense now), they propably switched to cooldown for a good reason.

Personaly I see it like this. A Ammopool would mean that you have more Nades up front, also ammopools mean you will start with full ammo when you die. This increases the initial nadespam by quite a margin. It also increases the spam from naders who die alot. While punishing those that live long enough to end up dry. Even worse a ammopool means that her dps is only reigned in by the reload animation and wether she gets ammo or not. One Kira ammostation by her side and her DPS goes way up.

Cooldown on the other hand while not logical (and missing the reload animation making the drum magazin on her back useless) allowes to easily control her overall damage over the course of a game.

(Jostabeere) #11

I would have no problem with a reload launcher and 6 grenades. But then I want to get grenades from ammo stations/packs and every other merc should have their supplies based on ammo, too, with a need to reload them. Medikits, Bushwhackers turret should have ammo and Bushwhacker need to reload the turret, special stations for airstrike-grenades and charges for the orbital lazer. Auras station with special chargings-points in spawnpoints.

(Aazhyd) #12

No ammo count, please. If they turn out too strong you can always increase the cooldown rate.

(CCP115) #13

I think an ammo count for Nader is a no-no, the cooldown more or less promotes timed spam if that makes any sense… like saving up nades to push in, or destroy the EV.

Rhino on the other hand, should have an ammo cap, and regenerating ammo. This demotes spamming of the minigun, and promotes ammo management, which is something I think would be kind of cool.
But maybe don’t implement it yet, the new Skyhammers still haven’t figured out how to press E.

(Dirmagnos) #14

They could do a hybrid.
Cooldown is still there, but both Nader and Rhino gets finite amount of ammo for their MGL and minigun.
Since Nader seem to have 5 extra packs on her back, max amount of ammo could be 30 rounds, 25 in reserve and 5 alredy in the launcher. Also, as with regular weapons, she would start off with less ammo, id go with 5 in tube and 5-10 in reserve.
Rhino could have up to 800 rounds of ammo for minigun. If we look at iconic M134 it uses 7.62mm ammo and by the looks at Rhinos backpack hed have room there for around 4 200-round boxes plus feeding mechanism. Could start with 400 rounds as default.
Now, there has been ppl complaining about difficulty of completing Waterboy missions(dunno whats so difficult about them) and this would allow to earn extra support exp on those weapons.
Each ammo pack(Arty/Skyhammer) could restore 1 pack(5 units) of grenades or 100 rounds for minigun. Each click of Kiras ammo station could restore 2 grenades or 40 minigun rounds.
As result, ability cooldown is not going anywhere, at the same time mercs would have to count rounds(relatively) for MGL and Minigun instead of just spraying everywhere, and ammo mercs would get additional source of support exp. Especially Rhino, who currently is not relying on ammo mercs in any way(sure, he has his shotgun, but seriously, who uses it).

(Jostabeere) #15

Also the OP seemes to forget the overheat of the minigun. Rhino can’t spam endless amounts of bullets, and the cooldown is fairly long as I experienced.

(B_Montiel) #16

Back in the (very) old days, Nader had an ammo count and they switched the grenade launcher as a cooldown ability because of the spamming capabilities she had. Once you had the grip on where to find the ammo, you could just spam nades endlessly. Cooldown abilities directly limit the number of shot per period of time, which is quite long here. In other words, regardless if you’re caring about your gl ammo counts or not, you’ll be able to fire a defined numbers of grenades. So it creates an interesting choice for the players : spam everything, create total havoc and then turn almost useless because you’ve depleted all your grenades (strong fight situations) or use them with care and keep a good punch if necessary.

For Rhino, the thing is a bit different because, unless you go total retard not caring about heating the minigun at full load, it is pretty much able to fire 24/7. Putting ammo on this would not sound as useful. Just for a simple comparison, TF2’s heavy has no overheating issues but rather small ammo available. Imo, that’d be very hard to handle both heating and ammo counts at the same time. Not to mention, good Rhinos (those who are pushing not camping some random secure positions) already have to manage their life pool quite strongly.