Hey there, At the moment I'm working on a map that relies on two-way teleporters for gameplay. So far in development, I've been employing a custom telefrag mechanic where soft kill areas keep players from standing on teleporters, thus maintaing the flow of the map. However, I recently discovered that the Bomb in Assault gametypes will automatically reset if the bomb carrier enters a kill area, or leaves a safe area. The map is based around team and objective games, and since Assault is one of the most popular, I don't want to leave the gametype unsupported. However, since removing the telefrag system would allow a few devious players to kill game-play, I can't go without a means to prevent telecamping. Therefore: Has anyone come up with a different anti-camping mechanism for two-way teleporters? Edit: Conceptual overview below. The gray boxes represent the bases, the blue boxes, the teleporters, and the line the link. Cheers, Moxus
I don't know of anyway to help with people standing right on top of the teleporter, but if they're camping behind it, maybe a SK zone there? That, and I would imagine (but of course youd know better than me) that if someone was standing still on such a small area, they'd be quite the target...
How about a grav lift that has enough power to push a camping player out, but not enough to stop someone from going through? Or maybe ou could figure out how to use a 1- way shield door somehow?
At the top of mind there are two possible solutions. The first one being you keep the area where the teleporters are at open so that people camping near teleporter will be under the barrage of enemy fire. The other solution is that you place a gravity lift behind the teleporter so people can't camp directly on or near the teleporter.
Hmmm... I should post an overview of the map. The teleporters join one "base" directly to another, and so if an enemy team is blocking the conjoining teleporters, it's not really possible to fire on them. I'm really glad for the input though: I'll look into making a small space behind to tempt players into camping behind as opposed to on the teleporters. Cheers, Moxus
You could have an in-tele and and out-tele right next each other, but have the receiver node be covered by a shield door cubby but leave the sender node free (obviously). It uses more pieces but still lets you use the two way mechanic but prevents standing where they'd come in. You can also have a second red-side shield push people out of the cubby as soon as they come in to prevent people from staying in there after teleporting. At first I thought this was clever but maybe there's a simpler solution without using soft kills. If this doesn't make sense maybe I could sketch it out for you.
Both are good ideas! I'd do the first, but with the mechanic of the map the way it is, I'm not sure if I could open the map up to fire without compromising the two-base setup. I can certainly give the second one a go. I understand the second idea, but not the first. Is it too remedial for me to ask for a sketch? :s. I'll toy around with both the grav-lift and the one-way shield door in the morning (its late here). If you take a peek at the overview I posted above, you'll see how the teleporters link the two far ends of each "base" together. Right now I've got three independent teleporter sets doing that job. I had a thought: If I made an extra row of teleporters, there'd be a total of six teleporters on each side. It's not the most elegant solution, but that'd make it unreasonably difficult for one team to clog all of the portals. Moxus
I think a 1-way shield door will solve your problems. Just place it so that it sucks you out of the teleporter frame as soon as you go through, but make the size of the tele's box big enough that you can still enter it, even with the anti-camping 1-way. This will also prevent the need for soft-kill boundaries. I think Cyborg was thinking of a the same thing, except you don't need the extra teles if you make the tele's area of effect big enough. EDIT: Awesome picture--
Here, let me show you my doodle, haha: This is what I was thinking of. Hopefully it's useful. Lynx has a good idea too, I just feel like mine would look cooler.
Rotate sketch of boxes on right 90* clockwise. exits set on TOP of entrances so you get bounced out and land on the ground.
You're all making this more complex than it needs to be. Simply have a soft kill zone on the floor of the teleporter. If you're worried about players jumping, have a soft kill at about head height as well. The bomb is carried at about chest height, so it won't be affected.
I was under the strong impression that it didn't matter where the bomb was, the reason that the bomb resets in a kill zone is because said player is in a kill zone. However, if you're right, then I've learned something new, so thanks and stuff.
The problem with using soft kill zones is it adds unwelcome tactics. You can draw the enemy towards you with the bomb then when your surrounded drop the bomb into the kill zone and it will reset where you can have your team waiting to have a free ride to plant. But if that isn't a problem by all means do this(except be careful if putting one above the head because grenades will bump the bomb carrier up and reset bomb unintentionally) I like this idea, It doesn't technically stop people camping it but it will make people not want to camp it. Not necessarily been under enemy fire but just make the area dangerous. If it's inside put convenient windows that there only use it to make the teleporter exit more dangerous and putting a couple fusion coils or trip mines in the general area will make it more dangerous so people wont want to camp there. (seriously think in MM how many people camp in areas near fusion coils?) If you use kill zones people will want to camp there but unable to so will camp at the edge only entering when need be.
I can't understand the difference between Cyborg's method and my own, at least from the drawing. It looks like the same thing with an extra shield door..