This idea comes from a mod where the only change to rollers is that the baby rollers do 50 damage instead of 100.

That would put a clear seperation between each set of rollers. Heavy rollers are considerably stronger than regular rollers. But regular rollers and baby rollers have little difference. There really is not much call for "rollers". You usually buy heavy's or baby's. At 50 damage they will still kill anything in a pit but require a bit more accuracy on the side of a mountain. Especially if the guy has a mag.

I think this would give a clear purpose for each set of rollers.

i agree. when the 'baby' class of something still does enough to kill
a heavily shielded player in 1 touch, it's a bit off-balance.

Both sides of the coin are a problem..
on one side, Baby rollers should be just that... tiny, and weak.
eg. a swarm of 10 that are 1/4 the modelsize and do 5-10 each.

and on the other side. the shields in the default pack are a bit short on defence.
As anyone that has played the classic 2D game knows, shields did rather
well. But on S3D, the Heaviest solid shield is cracked 60-70% with only
a baby-missile.

Who feels like playing the 2d for a few days, to get a good idea of thier
levels? Maybe they can suggest some new limits?

the heaviest solid shield takes 15% damage from a baby missile; but actually the "small" shield takes 120% (100% from the explosion & 20 from the projectile impact, with result of destroying the shield in a shot & damaging the player at the same time)

EDIT: removed a word & fixed a missing parenthesis, & changed 20% of solid shield to 15%

Ah.. so i see now. Just tested the Default in Beta-2 build compiled today.
Did exactly 20% to the Heavy-Shield.
Which is a lot for a bbm on something that is classed as 'heavy'.

But the standard shield being shattered by a BBM isn't worth the price.
6.6k cost destroyed in 1 touch by a basic weapon(20% from a tracer)

If reduced to 50 damage, baby rollers will still kill any magged or light shielded player in a pit. And an accurate shot will still kill a magged player on the side of a hill. But it will reduce baby rollers to what they should be, baby rollers. No more real easy kills, and no more errant single rollers killing. That is what "rollers" should be used for. Just my 2 cents.

sigh, if only deathbal would play more sniper mod

I keep getting the sneaky feeling that there's players in the mains that
are trying to spread rumors.. They're telling the beginners that Mods
are Lame, are Hack-jobs, and not as fun.

Now i cannot confirm this, but i've seen an extreme drop in players
trying mods in the last 6 months.. yet the mains are still full.

almost all of the weapon-related changes that players have been
suggesting(or begging for) have already been solved.. it's just that
no-one's brave enough to try something new in order to see them.

I would play them... if I had a good enough internet connection to download them..... and if I even played online.

and i keep getting the sneaky feeling that some modders seems to constantly try to derail offtopic any suggestion about ballance on main.

have you ever thought that *gasp* people might like the gameplay of main besides few issues?

almost the totality of the mods does not limit themself to correct the flaws of main, but they also insert custom additions; usually the longer developed the mod is, the more radical changes will be; i don't speak about simply few weapons ballances, but the ideas itself that the mod's being made.

many mod had their "golden age"; a phase where lot of people were interested in, after they simply changed, or the userbase changed and people started losing interest again.

"main" (beslides slight changes) remained basically the same over the time; with it's own advantages & disadvantages; but it seems by number that it's the favourite game by the users.

the excuse "people don't play mods because they are not official" doesn't stand, or at least, the argument, is not strong enought; for few reasons:
-by fact: scavenger, apoc & few other mods have had their "golden age" where they were more popular than main, but they changed over the time & lost popularity
-by choice: before, the server list had no distinctions between a sever & another, and the officials, due to their ip, were placed on the bottom; since there is no reference anywhere besides the forums that those are supposed to be the official servers; someone could have picked another server from the list (i can assure you that most of the new people doesn't even notice that there is a column for the mod name, in the list)
-by popularity: many people (including myself) tends to join games where already few players are present, the officials, having a quite big constant userbase, will only attract more people because people are playing it

said that, if this thread keeps going offtopic, i'm asking to a moderator to split it (since post 6 perhaps?)

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i'm personally fine with the suggestion to reduce the baby rollers damage, largely due to the fact that it was me testing it in the first place

Lets say I go to my favorite italian restaurant. I ask for coke but they only have Pepsi. So I always drink the Pepsi. I suggest to the waiter they consider getting Coke. He then suggests I go try the Chinese restaurant across the street, where they serve Coke.

just to make a quick point about the "golden age", its summer right now, some people have lives, vacations, sports, a job, etc.
Also, there seems to be a stock/mods rift going on, and with some advertising (a simple, note in the help file, or a on server "play more mods" could raise awareness). My personal pie-in-the-sky dream would be a multi-mod tournament.
Back to the subject of all this, I agree that baby weapons should fit their names.

i'm not referring just to the actual situation, i'm referring to a much larger time span (3+ years)

for example, the peak of popularity of scavenger hunt was approximately from august to october 2006

apoc had it's golden age between september 2005 & february 2006

the simply fact that those popularity periods existed, means that people actually tried mods & played mods different from main; but, unlike main, they didn't succeed to maintain a constant userbase over the time/versions.

the theory of the changes, is just a factor, many more are involved to determine wich mod is played more.

all of this discussion was made with 1 point: this thread is about ballance discussion over main, i cannot find any thread in the last 10 main's ballance suggestion where someone keeps insisting to play other mods; stating such advice once or twice is ok, but after a continous and perpetrated repetition (towards the same peerson even), i started to get the doubt that it's intentional to drive the threads off topic.

now, can this thread be split from all the offtopic discussion and have it moved to a more appropriate forum?

most of us did comment on the subject at hand, and, sort of related to it, instead of reducing the roller power, what about the roller amount?

i don't think that reducing the number of rollers is the correct way to go; rollers get spawned with a small magnitude of casuality, the ground itself contains few irregularities wich ephatizes this starting condition; reducing the number of rollers will make more to subscebtible the randomness of the event (a roller running into a tank) and not just make it more rare.

i feel that making kills more related to casuality instead of deterministic is not compatible with the gameplay line of main, the same shot in the same place should produce the same results, not a fluke instead of a kill just because you're unlucky & the rollers got spawned few millimiters on the side

I could see that argument if someone wanted to reduce the amount in normal rollers, but for baby rollers, it is sort of the point of them to be less effective, that is why they are baby rollers, it would cause more of a gap between them and normal rollers, making the price of normal rollers go up, and that of the baby rollers go down. Which would then create a weapon more fit for those low on cash, but balanced such that they can't just lob them about and expect to get rich.