MM8BDM v5 - Weapon Tuning (Leaf Shield)

[Mendez]

When I think of Search Snake, I think of two weapons that do a better job in the same situations: Water Wave and Ice Wave. There's been suggestions for slowing down the snakes, but given the current fire rate of the weapon, I feel that would be doing even more harm than good. Unless your opponent follows the Prometheus school of dodging, a slow projectile can be easily dodged by just walking to the side. This is especially true for a weapon that can't change its path once it's launched. So with that in mind, I propose changing the projectile to act differently from its wavy kin.
If a weapon is going to be called "Search Snake", it needs to act like a snake that searches for people. With that in mind, I propose letting the weapon home in on a target when it's first launched before zooming on the ground in a single direction. What I basically mean is let the snake turn itself to look for a target, and once it hits the ground, it lunges rather quickly in a single direction, unable to turn or change its trajectory but able to reach its destination in almost no time. What this will do is make aiming Search Snake a bit easier while also making it slightly harder to dodge since moving to the side won't work as easily against a fast projectile. In case you want to argue that a slow projectile is harder to dodge than a fast projectile, how about we play a match where one of us gets Thunder Bolt and the other gets Silver Tomahawk. From my experience in duels and firefights, the faster projectile almost always becomes harder to dodge.

[Hallan Parva]

Except your example is flawed, Thunder Bolt is one of the faster projectiles in the game (but let's be nice and call it "medium" speed) and Silver Tomahawk is practically a railgun. No seriously, you can visibly land hits before the sprite actually connects with the target. There's also the issue of the sprite dying on a floor or wall, but the projectile registering a hit regardless... actually I'd like to go over all the problems with Silver Tomahawk, but that's a topic for another time.

An impending wall of death is much different than a projectile moving at average speed. Even current Search Snake moves slower than average. And with your "home once" suggestion, Search Snake completely loses its current niche of terrain control or surprise ambush attacks, and instead becomes an inferior grounded version of the upcoming Hornet Chaser.

[Mendez]

I do believe my point still stands that faster weapons are harder to dodge than slower weapons, unless you've got an example to prove me wrong. How about Bass Buster vs Mega Buster then to keep my argument reasonable.
Regardless, the fire rate on core search snake right now doesn't allow for the creation of death walls, and a slower projectile speed wouldn't help if the enemy even caught a glimpse of the snakes coming. Remember, the search snakes have smaller hitboxes compared to their superior wavy counterparts. A horizontal wave could work, but either the snakes would have to be fired in bursts or the fire rate would need to be increased so that it's easier to align the snakes in a line.

You people want to turn me into Birdman, don't you?

[Stardust]

I believe Search Snake wasn't meant to be a weapon you use on frontal duel since it's slow it's predictable, but rather a stage crawling hazard that gets you frags eventually when you cover large areas with it (its damage is rather high for a ranged weapon with that much ammo).
A dizzy/"waving" pattern like if the snake was strafing would be nice imo.

[NemZ]

It's not that they move slower, it's that they also have some horizontal ground to cover as well so of course it takes a little longer to make forward progress.  The point of Search Snake should be area denial and indirect harrassment, so if each shot takes up more space for a longer time that means it does the job slightly better.  

If you really want to make it interesting though, slash the ammo count, make it drop three snakes at a time, and add a small random variable to the horizontal movement on each pass so their exact paths are impossible to guess at a distance... sort of like the Charged Bolt spell from Diablo.  Welcome to bullet snake hell!

[Messatsu]

I've always found Search Snake to be one of those weapons you just spam in the hopes of getting a lucky frag (See also: Screw Crusher).  From a tactical standpoint I just found it to be a bit annoying to use and annoying to fight against.  From an offense standpoint it moves too slowly to hit anyone reliably and from a defense standpoint they CAN be kinda hard to see and deal quite a bit of damage.  The question I propose is what 'role' should Search Snake play?  As I mentioned in my previous post, I think giving it a role closer to say, Needle Cannon or Water Wave fits the weapon better and matches how it worked in MM3 (It was as fast as the Mega Buster RoF wise) moreso than keeping it in the field of say, Thunder Bolt or Silver Tomahawk.

[Gumballtoid]

I'd like to see it take on a role similar to Mega Ball where it's less used in direct offensive play and more used for catching someone unawares. As opposed to the slower, more powerful Ice Wave, I'd like to see the snakes get an increase in movement speed, however slight it may be. That coupled with the ability to aim the weapon vertically would make it a force to be reckoned with on maps like MM1ELE or MM2CRA where there's a great emphasis on height variation and the use of ladders.

[MusashiAA]

The problem here is that Search Snake is overshadowed in terms of power, speed and "stackness" by every other ground crawling weapon in the game. The only redeeming factor Search Snake has is its large ammo count, four times larger than the rest.

Every other ground crawling weapon is essentially more effective in terms or stacking up projectiles than Search Snake, save for Ice Wave. Every other weapon deals more damage per full hit than Search Snake, excluding Ice Wave's ability to go through enemies. Ice Wave, Water Wave and Wind Storm (yeah, let's not forget about that one) are harder to jump over than Search Snake. And for all intents and purposes, all ground crawling weapons that instantly go down OR don't stick to vertical walls are by default faster and more versatile than Search Snake, which is to say all except Ice Wave.

The problems with Search Snake don't come from its design, but from its underperformance in comparison to others of its kin, where it even becomes unfair. I'd personally either increase its rate of fire/make it aimable to make the counterplay of jumping less effective, or make Search Snake vertical climbing way faster than what it is now. (I would like to say making the copy weapon aimable would force the Snakeman class to be changed, but core shouldn't bother about that)

A homing/leaping ground crawling projectile sounds like a very interesting idea, but then comes the question: should all Search Snake projectiles be like that or just some of them, and how do you control when you fire leaping ones and when you're not? Would it be like Axl's "blue shot", where it comes out after firing a set number of projectiles? Honestly, I'd rather keep Search Snake's design the way it is instead of adding something new, as its main problem is its underperformance rather than a flaw of its design and as such it should only require some tuning instead of a new mechanic added to it.

[Ceridran]

my idea is that the first search snake strike signals all other existing search snakes that originate from the same user to their new target. you could possibly make them leap at the target once they get close enough, too, but that may be unnecessary.

edit: you'd probably have to make the first snake really hard to hit with and speed up the next ones when they're on the hunt

you create a swarm weapon with homing abilities that first have to be unlocked through some means. power gating!

.. that, or it only overloads the weapon.

[fortegigasgospel]

How do we convey any none generic homing ability or leaping ability to players though? We have been saying that the weapons should be able to be picked up and what they do is obvious when fired. I've gotta agree with the high RoF, faster vertical movement, stance. It makes them get to the target sooner, a higher rate of fire allows you to get that large coverage going on. But don't lower the speed of the projectile just to make it "stay under the target longer" they can't jump all your snakes if you have a steady stream of them coming, also take into account it's damage and ammo, it hits hard and has some of the most ammo in 8bdm, with enough snakes to make evading them all impossible you are bound to get a kill or 2/3/4 with it before you run out of ammo. Also Search Snake is harder to dodge when you are running from it due to traveling the same direction (allowing it to stay under those jumpers longer there) making it a good chasing weapon in opposition of Boomeranging weapons being effective against chasers.
Edit: Let us not forget Search Snake barely moves faster then the player also, and you move just as fast as it if you are diagonal running, so slowing it down makes it the speed of a player and out-runnable diagonal running, so it become useless in a chase if it is slower.

[Ceridran]

add status icons somewhere in the user interface, raise the intensity with a little flash or a satisfying sound that just screams "gotcha bitch", give the snakes a ghost trail, change their color, etc. you have loads of options to pick, mix and match.

super shoddy sketch. snake should've had a lot more smears to show that it's quickly whipping around.

[Korby]

I find it unlikely that we'll be adding any sort of complex mechanic to Search Snake.
The current strategy of creating a long beam of snakes in the hope for a kill has arisen only because the weapon is so garbage right now. If we made the weapon stronger in some capacity (e.g. homing or fire rate) and also kept the ability to create a giant pile of death that you pretty much can't see coming, things would get out of hand very quickly; not to mention the idea of a very slow moving, homing death ball is going to be occupied by Hornet Chaser in this update. The idea of pushing it towards area denial by giving it a sine wave or something along those lines would be a fairly solid one were we not introducing Plug Ball in this very update, a weapon designed to tell your opponent that they cannot walk in an area.

I think the healthiest direction to go considering aiming was added would be to increase firing rate to differentiate it from Ice Wave, increase firing speed to make it a more bearable weapon, increase its speed to make it a little more dangerous and to remove the ability to make an enormous pile of snakes, and decrease its damage slightly so that it doesn't become overpowering.
If you'd like to try out my suggestions, load this wad and grab Search Snake.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/104 ... nakeEX.wad
It doesn't really use the cleanest way to replace things but it doesn't really need to to serve its purpose.
Changed stats:
--Speed 18 > 27
--Damage 28 > 24 [4 hit > 5 hit]
--Firing Rate 14 Tics in between shots > 11 Tics in between shots
--Includes Aim Snakes

In the end, if you're sad about Search Snake losing its death beam powers, you can take solace in knowing that Bubble Lead moves just as fast as Search Snake used to and does more damage.
This is more okay than Search Snake doing it because it can't climb walls.

[BiscuitSlash]

Please don't forget to consider which maps have and will have search snake. It's a weapon that's good at taking advantage of terrain and opponents up on high cliffs, and works better in these situations than usual head-to-head fighting.

[Gumballtoid]

I really like those changes. It's definitely along the lines I was looking for.

Would also like to see discussion of Pharaoh Shot and Silver Tomahawk.

[MusashiAA]

I'm kinda iffy on how your changed Search Snake projectile is as fast as a Mega Buster bullet, maybe make it just very slightly slower, somwehre between 20 and 25?. The rate of fire is fine, maybe just slightly slower than what I would expect. Aimable snakes seem too versatile of an idea for the base weapon IMO. The damage tradeoff is fine by me.