looking at the factions today i began to think about how different they really are.

dummies are plastic, and do not bleed. robots are similar.
all of the human factions, however, just seem to have varying amounts of armor. no other technical differences besides that and perhaps jetpack power. browncoats are basically super heavy coalition, but with a different color scheme. ronin are coalition -helmets. it's like i'm choosing between more versions of the coalition clone.

what i propose is some sort of differential attribute for each faction. for instance, the less-armored ronin could have a bonus to weapon damage or reloading rate. dummies could be more resistant to energy weapons. coalition could be more resistant to ballistic weapons. browncoats could have a slower reload time but an additional bonus to heavy weapons. all factions would gain a small overall bonus to their own faction's weapons.

thoughts on this? i'm sure i'm not the only one who's thought of this concept.

Things like weapon damage are not attributes of the weapons, but of the particles impacting at this velocity with this sharpness with this mass, so you can't really change that. In fact, you can't really change any of those things but by changing the weapons themselves. That said, I think this idea is somewhat dumb. Do different militaries on earth magically have faster reloading time, more damage from ballistic weapons, etc? No, they just specialize in certain tactics depending on training.

Shook with his Bunkers and Brains mod should be able to do this however

Some are more perceptive than others, etc.
Does that count?

coa should generally be more resistant with very weak vertical jetting power. ronin should be weaker with powerful, smoketastic jets. browncoats should have some kind of ability to add variation, i think. or i suppose just be superheavies with interesting wounds, but that is kinda boring.
oh, i forgot. regen. regen should be implemented on human actors. each time enough health for an entire wound (and all associated emissions) is regained, the gibwoundlimit should be raised. it would be nice if that could be added into the engine, actually, so differences in entry and exit wound could be detected. the regen should obviously be very slow, but that can be balanced later.

And again we are arguing realism versus gameplay. What he suggested (and you verbalized) is a perfectly reasonable and commonly accepted game mechanic. You pick specific classes with specific traits because they meet a play style of yours.

A perfectly good example of this is COD:WAW; Nazi Zombies. Look at some of the power-ups! In a game touted for its realism and accuracy, they put in trait adjustments that impact exactly what you have vocalized: Reload speed and damage dealt.

The only problem is that these traits are wholly within the design desires of the content creator. In terms of vanilla content, I cannot imagine it being that difficult for TLB to add some kind of function that says "if unit is associated with this faction, decrease shakerange/impulsevel/roundcount/et al."

Honestly, his suggestion is not unreasonable and--as I have illustrated--is fairly common

thanks for the replies, everyone.

in terms of realism, i was thinking that the reload speed would be affected by the kind of armour. ronin tend to be less armoured, browncoats are essentially bulky scuba suits w/ jetpacks. if anything, i believe that the faction's weapons would be more usable (hence gaining a slight ROF/reload bonus) by the said faction's actors.

it wouldn't be like some magical attribute that allows certain actors to reload crazy fast - it would have to do with the faction's style of training/armor contrictiveness, etc.

i do however see how weapons cannot really be modified in this manner (as of yet anyway), so that dampens the concept a bit.

EDIT:
to clarify, i'm talking in purely VANILLA terms right now.

A lot of your ideas don't mesh well with such a physics-based game.

I think regeneration would go nicely with browncoats. It fits the whole super-soldier thing.

Dunno about other human actors though. I realize regeneration has been a big fad in every game since Halo: CE, but do we really need it everywhere?
Of course, it's a matter of taste, but I prefer medi-bots and the like.

The way I see them when playing

Dummies: practically headshot-proof
Coalition: make you shoot everything they have on them before becoming exposed
Ronin: nothing really, they just explode a lot (which is why they're so fun)

organisms generally heal themselves over time, so engineered soldiers should do it over less time. i can understand ronin not regenerating (and in that case they should have proper medpacks, or at least clotting packs. but coalition should definitely have quick clotting and health regeneration. browncoats possibly even more so.

I think Zombies 09 had regeneration down perfectly. Not enough to overcome serious bleeding, but patched up minor wounds (unless I'm mistaken). Also their downed state is neat, and should seriously go vanilla.

woo free press coverage.

anyway, rambling argument

not to stress it enough, WOUNDS SHOULD BE BOTH DIFFERENT AND DRAMATIC FOR EACH FACTION.
blackbots need smoke, sparks, fire, the lot.
whitebots should have sparks and misc blue energy, maybe dangerous. exit wounds should have cabling sticking out.
dummies should have small plastics fires upon exit, and maybe some small energy flashes.
humans need more accentuated effects, or just more widespread use of randomised flesh and blood.
that adds more graphical differentiation.

gameplay differentiation should obviously come from the actors and weapons/
-blackbots should seem shambly. jetting provides speed and should give a good mix of lateral and vertical flight, but should produce some crazy smoke, and maybe some small blast debris on burst. walking is currently fine, if a bit slow. they should be resistant to bullets, and not lose very much health from bleeding on entry wounds. impulse damage being a bit higher would be nice, to give an impression of shitty innards. weapons should be powerful and deliberate.
-whitebots should seem solid and tireless. jetting would provide good all around cover, and the robot would be quite fast, however not too resilient. health lost from arcing energy on exit wounds. medium impulse resistance. weapons should seem futuristic, but probably be based on rail or coil technology, considering the dummies have energy weapons.
-dummies should be impact resistant but take very little in the way of wounds. i should be able to cut them up with an assault rifle easily, if i can get them. fast in all aspects, but not very powerful vertical or lateral (one of the two) jets. energy based mostly high ROF weapons.
-ronin should be the opposite of dummies, taking little impulse to shred but quite a few bullets. weapons and diversity should be where these guys shine (the actors should be piss weak). RPC, molotov+frag grenades, planted timed explosives made of dynamite, 4 barrel shotguns made of two modified old side by sides, and a modular M4. old style weapons with new twists. heck, land mines. bear traps. bowling ball stuffed with C4. whatever. easy to kill, but able to dish out a lot of hilariously improvised damage. shambly power suits would be nice too. flamethrowers. ideas ideas ideas. oh yeah, shitty jets that burn stuff. bad everythign coverage. balance that with a grapple. done.
-the coalition should be slightly more resilient than the ronin, the light should be about on par, be able to take less hits directly but clot faster and have slow regen. the heavy should be that, but can take more hits and more impulse. weapons should be efficient, but not too powerful. make an assault rifle that makes you want to conserve ammo for gods sake. flak, ♥♥♥♥ yes. big cannons and shotguns. smokey, kinda gas fire looking jets. good vertical coverage. possibly activatable drag chutes for not dying upon jetting up so high. maybe just really nice jet precision. mostly like the current jets, just less sparks.
-undead should have piss weak actors and brutal weapons. grapeshot, mines, suicide bombers, crossbows with bolts that become crosses of angry metal, catapults, cannons. really really weak actors, with a that isnt a jetpack, but is lua based. it makes it muuuuch better devs, take note.

thats enough for now. someone do something about this. content devs officially have something to do.

edit: i think i may have beaten miles.

beaten miles? not quite. but i agree with pretty much everything you just said.

for weapons the blackbots could have a super high fire rate machinegun with a smallish clip and a long reload

whitebots long ranged in general with many different weapons designed to keep enemies at a distance, possibly a stun gun ala darkstorm, or an energy ball gun with accelerating rounds that did more damage the longer the ball was in the air.

i completely agree with you on the ronin weapons, but their weapons shouldnt just be "old fashioned" they should be beat up looking and kinda just welded together, instead of just M16, M1600. maybe a kind of gutted / or scavenged coaltion assualt rifle with longer barrel, different looking clips, etc.

agree on coalition, you pretty much covered everything

undead should have some other kind of dreadnaughtesque thing which the zombies would hide behind until they could unload there powerful arsenal.

All that needs to be done is a fancy Lua script attached to the actors that modifies damages based on their mass and velocity or something like that.