I’ve found something interesting that I had not noticed before. It has to do with Initial ordnance drops for weapons and the amount of ammo those weapons drop with. On my map, Camber, I wasn’t happy with the amount of ammo that the initial ordnance drops held, particularly the rocket launcher and the sniper rifle. At the same time, I prefer to have the location marker of the ordnance drops for player navigation. I decided to compromise and use the initial ordnance drops set to never respawn. I then added a basic weapon spawn next to the initial drop that would have a delayed spawn of two or three minutes. The result I was expecting was that The initial spawn would have more ammo than I preferred, but players would be shown the location of the weapon at the start of the game, and all subsequent weapon spawns, though missing the location marker, would have the preferred ammo amount. What I ended up getting was substantially different, however, and even better than I was hoping for. Setting my rocket launcher initial ordnance to never respawn actually lowered the ammo count of all ordnance drops throughout the game, both initial and random. Below are the results of setting the initial rocket ordnance to respawn compared to the results of setting it to never respawn. It literally works like this as far as I can tell. Place all of your ordnance drops on your map, one of them being an initial rocket launcher ordnance. If the rocket launcher ordnance is set to respawn at any time interval, your other ordnance will all have the higher ammo counts. If you set the Initial rocket ordnance to never respawn, your other ordnance will all have the lower ammo counts. There may be other nuances or weapons that this works for, but I haven't fully tested it. I also haven't tried it on any non-Ravine maps. If you do exactly what is in the paragraph above, it will work as I've described. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with the spawned weapon at all, for it works whether the spawned weapon is there or not. I’ve often felt that the amount of ammo in initial and random drops was too high. This set-up significantly lowers those ammo counts. I’ve tried this on my new map as well and achieved the exact same results. I haven’t gone through and checked to see if the rocket launcher is the only initial spawn that causes this sort of effect. I did the same thing with the Sniper Initial drop on Camber, but it did not have this effect on the other ordnance drops.
erm nothings come up but if you have found this out then i will love you for ever, thats the main reason why i dont use ordanance drops because they drop with a huge amount of amo and i thought it was stupid you can change it
Fixed it. I tried using the database function in the editor, but it didn't show up. I just made the info into an image.
With Initial Ordnance drops, the only thing you are allowed to change about the weapon is whether it respawns throughout the duration of the game and how often that is. What I'm saying is that if you set the rockets to respawn at intervals during the game, all the ordnance drop weapons will have more ammo than if you set the rockets to only show up at the beginning of the game and never respawn. When I set the initial rocket ordnance to respawn at 180 seconds or any other duration, the rest of my ordnance had more ammo than I wanted. When I set the initial rocket ordnance to never respawn, the rest of my ordnance drops had less ammo and could hold a maximum ammo count that was less than before (see the sniper info. in the graphic).
oh right so the first weapon you put down, for ordanance you put to 180 and the rest of the ordinance you put down will have less amo when they come down?
this is a very cool discovery, lee. I too, have found that initial ordinances can have too much ammo. too bad we can't directly control each value like you would assume. with the trick that you found, did setting another two ordinances on top of each other or side by side have anything to do w/ it? Was the delayed spawn an ordinance or a weapon pickup?
No, I'm not sure if it's the first weapon or not, and it is when the rocket initial drop is set to never respawn that the other weapon ordnance drops have less. As far as I can tell, though I haven't fully tested it, it only works with rockets. I tried it with the sniper initial drop and it didn't change anything. Someone with more time than I have will have to experiment and find out if this is valid with any other weapons beside the rockets.
I didn't stack any ordnance on top of one another or side by side. The extra rocket I set to the delayed spawn was a normal weapon spawn, not ordnance and only included because I wanted a rocket to spawn at intervals throughout the game. It has nothing to do with the lowering of the ammo counts of the ordnance drops though, because it worked whether or not that extra weapon was there or not. I have to imagine that some other peoples' maps already have this feature. All it requires, as far as I can tell, is that a rocket initial ordnance drop be set to never respawn. I might just be the first (or not) to have noticed the ammo count change.
I'm rather confused, but also incredibly intrigued. I'll have to have you explain to me this in Halo some time. It's difficult to understand with so little context for me, personally.
It literally works like this as far as I can tell. Place all of your ordnance drops on your map, one of them being an initial rocket launcher ordnance. If the rocket launcher ordnance is set to respawn at any time interval, your other ordnance will all have the higher ammo counts. If you set the Initial rocket ordnance to never respawn, your other ordnance will all have the lower ammo counts. There may be other nuances or weapons that this works for, but I haven't fully tested it. I also haven't tried it on any non-Ravine maps. If you do exactly what is in the paragraph above, it will work as I've described.
Sweet. Seems like a built in balancing system to counter rockets so far. I'd be interested to learn more as we play with this theory.
My first thought is that this is not better than you expected, but actually just a bug that you uncovered (or more precisely, an undocumented behavior at this point). It means nothing, because it is a behavior that has never been documented. What if they fixed it? Then your map breaks. On the other hand, if they had documented it, then you can expect it to not change. I would never forge a map using something like this.
You know... you could always just edit your map later if they did 'fix' it. I'm sure it is documented since all of their official maps use initial ordinance and some don't respawn. They probably edited it just for that, like the SAW's that drop on Exile.
If you've ever set a rocket launcher initial drop to never respawn, you've already used this. If what you are saying is true, then any map that has an initial rocket launcher ordnance drop set to never respawn would be altered should they decide to "fix" it. Are there any official maps that meet that criteria? If so, they would be altered (broken) due to any such "fix". I'm just about 100% confident that such a "fix" will never be made. I would forge each and every map using something like this as long as it made sense for the map, and I'd also sleep comfortably at night knowing that they will never fix it and that if they did fix it, it wouldn't greatly change any of my creations beyond being easily revised. While your initial thought is that this is a bug, my initial thought is that it may be purposeful. If you're right, then there is a concern. If I'm right, there is little concern. I do understand your concern about it being an undocumented behavior, but that isn't a cause for immediate dire concern. Not all things undocumented are things that are necessarily going to be "fixed", particularly if such a fix would alter thousands of already-created maps.
Yes, you can... Let me get this correct. The behavior manifests only when the same weapon type is spawned on the map using a combination of both IOD and weapon spawn. Am I correct?
It literally works like this as far as I can tell. Place all of your ordnance drops on your map, one of them being an initial rocket launcher ordnance. If the rocket launcher ordnance is set to respawn at any time interval, your other ordnance will all have the higher ammo counts. If you set the Initial rocket ordnance to never respawn, your other ordnance will all have the lower ammo counts. There may be other nuances or weapons that this works for, but I haven't fully tested it. I also haven't tried it on any non-Ravine maps. If you do exactly what is in the paragraph above, it will work as I've described. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with the spawned weapon at all, for it works whether the spawned weapon is there or not.
So as long as you have rockets on the map set to "never" all of the other weapons will have less ammo? Cool
I wonder if this will still work if I spawn the Rockets outside of the map, and far enough away that the Ordnance Drop indicator doesn't show up?...