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Generally not a good idea. Players learn and expect to deal with monsters consistently, and play levels to face them in new situations. Just bumping up monster's health arbitrarily can make the player feel cheated.
It's better to use more monsters, combinations of monsters, or just tougher monsters... rather than increasing health on weaker ones. If your goal is to make the player shoot twice, 2 grunts or a grunt and a dog are more interesting to fight than a single grunt with twice the health anyway. Also, Quake's pain system is kind of 'meh', having more health just means you see how lame pain is. Grunts have 30hp... but giving them 300hp doesn't make them ten times harder, you just use more ammo on them while you keep knocking them onto the ground. I was having this conversation earlier tonight with gotshun.
My premise was, when a monster encounters US, we have varied health! Why shouldn't monsters have varied health as well. I told him that if I mapped and had a nightmare skill in 2016, you better believe monster would not be so "routine". I also felt monsters should do more damage. We were just chitchatting up Quake idea's and design, that's all. You might be interested in Seven's SMC for Darkplaces then: there's an option to set the monsters to vary in size, with an additional option to have their health vary according to their size. Among many other options, there's also one to make them more accurate depending on your skill setting.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I am totally aware of how much of a risk I'm taking by changing monster health. I'll probably post a beta of the map at some point to get a feel for how people like/dislike my changes, but i'm going to hope they go down well. I like my encounters how they are now, at least for how I play, and they don't feel spongy or weird so hopefully others agree.
As a side note: Why is the rocketeer wearing red armour, but less healthy than the green-armour wearing grenadier? I can understand from a visual perspective; red = danger/alert and rocketeers are obviously supposed to take your attention. But still... Poor guys must have low health underneath all that armour :( Because their armor isn't necessarily the same as yours? At any rate, if you really need to rationalize it, you could tell yourself that since they carry a heavy payload, they need to wear light armor to retain some mobility.
Also, don't these guys come from Quoth? So it's Preach who you should be asking about that... ;) I also changed health to one enemy.. These are just my opinions*
Pyros are more fun to fight against when they are a bit more tougher. Otherwise they are rather too easy to kill, since they don't have much range in their flames. If they have more health that will make them more dangerous. They should have at least as much health as ogres or even more, since they don't more that quickly. Quake3 decided that Red = Rockets, Green = Grenades... thus are the Grunts color coded to the terror of dichromats everywhere.
I believe Grenade Grunts have slightly more HP because they often splash damage themselves fighting in medium ranges and interior areas. Rocket Grunts are meant to be at a distance and you often plink at them with a shotgun, higher HP just makes them a chore. Speaking of Quoth, that's one of the best examples of a good mod ruined by giving monsters way too much HP for no damn good reason. I hated it in Unreal when the monsters seemed to have random health. I just felt like "am I shooting this guy right? Have I got to hit it in the head or something?". Part of what makes Quake's combat "flow" is the fact that semi-experienced players know exactly how many shots will spank that monster, and they're thinking ahead to their next target before their current target goes down. If you don't know when that knight is going to die, then the flow is broken and things just start to feel a big bogged down and annoying.
Knowing exactly how many shots you need to kill an enemy is good for ammo conservation also.
Enforcers and knights: one SSG shot followed by one SG shot. You save one shell per kill. That was one of the things that really bothers me about AD. Dropping grunts in one shot just feels wrong. That's really what I've been trying to address, compensating for the increased damage the SG has by making lower health enemies more similar to how they're "supposed" (read: usually are, not necessarily better) to be.
The RL grunt issue is a bit different. Their purpose obviously is to be used at a long range, as that's where their weapon's tracking ability is most obvious & useful. But my map is small and enclosed, but I want to get the most out of the base-themed assets as possible... hence, tweaking them to be more effective at close range. I do worry that I am scratching the edge of sponge there, but if they do turn out to be troublesome then I can always ctrl+f my That is also why some maps should try out different things how to introduce new enemies. How much shells, how many rockets etc. some enemies takes, especially if some enemies are immune to specific weapons. If I remember right defenders are a bit more immune to rockets and they take 2 shots.. and was the eliminator more immune to cells/plasma.. There is more enemies that are immune to certain ammos, and I think that is only a good thing.
Health should be consistent. Slight tweaks for one enclosed area might be ok if it helps achieve a certain fight length or prevent an RL Grunt from killing himself too often.
Yes. Immunity to certain ammo is a good thing. Kinda miffed that droles are immune to shells since its so dang satisfying to blast them with the DB Shorgun and watch em fall in the most satisfying death animation ever. Still makes it fun when one corners you and you switch to the Widowmaker and pow you lose. Considering giving this a try in the latest Mark V site
Paste this in the console in Mark V: > install http://www.simonoc.com/files/ad/ad_v1_50final.zip It'll download the ad installation and unzip it where it is supposed to go. Easy installation without the Quake Injector, may be helpful to those who are Quake illiterate. /Congrats on the release! Me and my friend discussed about the different types of secrets, and he meantion "what about multi-part gun secrets? like the unmaker in doom 64"
Surely it sounds very interesting, giving more motivation to look up secrets, especially if maps are larger and often have so many secrets. That is why it is good to have variety. I have no personal experience about that gun, whether or not it is even worth of talk about under this topic, just wanted to mention it as an option for the future updates. But look at all those gibs* That would be really fun, right?
Replaying swampy in 1.5 this time. Nearly done, got purple key, RL, 22/25 secrets. But I haven't found a single book . They're still there, right?
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