I've played a lot of these over the years and would like to have my hand in helping one avoid the common pitfalls I see. Impulse is no stranger to issues. The framework itself seems to have an unfortunate reputation of being simply a HL2 flavored Rust knockoff. Which is unfortunate because the simplistic design and modification capabilities of Impulse presents plenty of opportunities for unique features and innovative role-play experiences.
My concerns are many, but I believe they can be prevented early. Once an Impulse server starts to gain traction with a certain niche in the community, it never really recovers from its reputation. I know everyone yaps about Synapse and I know it has it's FAIR share of issues, but I believe there's a lot that could be gained from fostering inspiration from its broader concepts.
One such concern is loot. I won't lie, I am not familiar with the inner workings of the Impulse framework, so I won't pretend to know what I'm talking about with the systems. But what I can say for certain is that I've spent about an hour of gameplay on the server, and so far I've amassed enough gunpowder to evaporate a small country.
Gunpowder should, in my opinion, impossible to find in loot containers. It should be a craftable item, around level 5 of crafting.
The ingredients of gunpowder are saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur (these are the real ingredients).
- Saltpeter's natural source is guano, typically of bats, but it can be synthesized. I suggest saltpeter, or guano, to be found in zombie/xen life tunnels or similar environments. Suggested to be marked illegal.
- Charcoal is a no brainer. Craft/cook wood into charcoal. It would likely have to yield an extremely minuscule amount of xp to avoid power grinding. Suggested to be marked legal.
- Sulfur is a tricky one. I suggest either caves/tunnels or industrial/waste areas. Suggested to be marked illegal.
With realistic proportions, gunpowder's recipe would be : 3 Saltpeter, 1 Charcoal, 1 Sulfur. This change would make gunpowder exceptionally rare and encourage different play-styles than loot goblin -> rebel. If there's one thing I hate, it's HL2RP servers that are actually just Rust. These new items (saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur) could also have other uses. Such as charcoal creating gas mask filters and purifying dirty water.
With that also comes the concern of hoarding. A simple solution for that is to have the "footlockers" that are for illegal item storage be exclusive to 63 criminal trespass areas such as out-lands or sewers, because realistically/logically nobody would be able to keep anything hidden from the combine in their trunk.Legal items should be the only thing allowed to be stored anywhere in the actual city/combine controlled area itself.
Perhaps a happy medium could be compromised on lockable containers that could be hidden in areas of the city that are generally out of the way or uncommon to visit, and have a lock placed on them. The only way to access the contents being to pick the lock or enter the correct key.Of course, Civil Protection would be able to destroy these containers were they found.
And on the note of Civil Protection.The behavior associated with Civil Protection is less of a disciplined police force and more of highschool bullies. This should be addressed and outright punished by superiors, as the unwarranted abuse of citizens naturally leads to more discontent citizens willing to defect and rise against their oppressors. And I believe the Combine would know this.
So, allow the superiors to judge whether a citizen deserves additional punishment or if their subordinate is being too abusive, punish them instead. It should be the duty of superiors to keep their subordinates in line and well behaved.
Furtheryap; I believe the Civil Protection to often act robotic and inhuman. Which I find frustrating, seeing as they often have little to no cybernetics which would enforce this behavior and are (in universe) just as desperate if not more-so than their civilian counterparts, and thus would naturally have some sympathy for them. I have yet to figure out a solution to this, but I believe it would partially be helped by encouragement from upper ranks to treat civilians well and a strong separation (and rivalry) between Civil Protection and the Overwatch Transhuman Arms (combine soldiers).
These are merely 3 of the ideas I present, though I have many more. Mostly focused around improving behavior of the common player and implementing unique features with minimal implementation effort.
My concerns are many, but I believe they can be prevented early. Once an Impulse server starts to gain traction with a certain niche in the community, it never really recovers from its reputation. I know everyone yaps about Synapse and I know it has it's FAIR share of issues, but I believe there's a lot that could be gained from fostering inspiration from its broader concepts.
One such concern is loot. I won't lie, I am not familiar with the inner workings of the Impulse framework, so I won't pretend to know what I'm talking about with the systems. But what I can say for certain is that I've spent about an hour of gameplay on the server, and so far I've amassed enough gunpowder to evaporate a small country.
Gunpowder should, in my opinion, impossible to find in loot containers. It should be a craftable item, around level 5 of crafting.
The ingredients of gunpowder are saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur (these are the real ingredients).
- Saltpeter's natural source is guano, typically of bats, but it can be synthesized. I suggest saltpeter, or guano, to be found in zombie/xen life tunnels or similar environments. Suggested to be marked illegal.
- Charcoal is a no brainer. Craft/cook wood into charcoal. It would likely have to yield an extremely minuscule amount of xp to avoid power grinding. Suggested to be marked legal.
- Sulfur is a tricky one. I suggest either caves/tunnels or industrial/waste areas. Suggested to be marked illegal.
With realistic proportions, gunpowder's recipe would be : 3 Saltpeter, 1 Charcoal, 1 Sulfur. This change would make gunpowder exceptionally rare and encourage different play-styles than loot goblin -> rebel. If there's one thing I hate, it's HL2RP servers that are actually just Rust. These new items (saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur) could also have other uses. Such as charcoal creating gas mask filters and purifying dirty water.
With that also comes the concern of hoarding. A simple solution for that is to have the "footlockers" that are for illegal item storage be exclusive to 63 criminal trespass areas such as out-lands or sewers, because realistically/logically nobody would be able to keep anything hidden from the combine in their trunk.Legal items should be the only thing allowed to be stored anywhere in the actual city/combine controlled area itself.
Perhaps a happy medium could be compromised on lockable containers that could be hidden in areas of the city that are generally out of the way or uncommon to visit, and have a lock placed on them. The only way to access the contents being to pick the lock or enter the correct key.Of course, Civil Protection would be able to destroy these containers were they found.
And on the note of Civil Protection.The behavior associated with Civil Protection is less of a disciplined police force and more of highschool bullies. This should be addressed and outright punished by superiors, as the unwarranted abuse of citizens naturally leads to more discontent citizens willing to defect and rise against their oppressors. And I believe the Combine would know this.
So, allow the superiors to judge whether a citizen deserves additional punishment or if their subordinate is being too abusive, punish them instead. It should be the duty of superiors to keep their subordinates in line and well behaved.
Furtheryap; I believe the Civil Protection to often act robotic and inhuman. Which I find frustrating, seeing as they often have little to no cybernetics which would enforce this behavior and are (in universe) just as desperate if not more-so than their civilian counterparts, and thus would naturally have some sympathy for them. I have yet to figure out a solution to this, but I believe it would partially be helped by encouragement from upper ranks to treat civilians well and a strong separation (and rivalry) between Civil Protection and the Overwatch Transhuman Arms (combine soldiers).
These are merely 3 of the ideas I present, though I have many more. Mostly focused around improving behavior of the common player and implementing unique features with minimal implementation effort.
