Sorry for the typo, will go fix it on my copy.

As for the color issue, you aren't having the same problem as
http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60173&start=344
are you? 

I changed "color" to "skin" in the FGD for light_postlight and light_tubelight, and all was good.

Thanks! :) 

of all the threads the bot could have posted on... 

I'm hoping it's pertinent because Quoth Part 3 is about to be released ... ? 

The JPEG artifacts in the otherwise great "stars" skybox were bugging me, so here is a fixed version where I filtered them out using GIMP:

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/misc/stars2.zip 

how to use that? 

Never mind, found the earlier posts. 

Knight melee attack range (should be when it hit the player, not from miles away).

Drole melee attack range (ditto)

Grenade Enforcer shotgun attack speed (should be less than instantaneous)

Bob Model (this is Quake not kiddie robot TV show).

...these are all broken / bugged. Everything else seems to work. Kthxbye. 

would break balance on existing maps. 

I guess I agree re drole/knight melee

but fuck, leave Bob alone. 

is pretty tough and always seemed a bit unfair for such a grunt, on the other hand it adds some challenge to a group of opponents which is otherwise not very dangerous. 

Would still be very powerful even if the enforcer didn't insta-fire. What are the damage stats for them anyway?? Do any new monsters do LESS ranged damage than the most powerful Vanilla Quake ranged attacks??

Don't forget they have grenades, are tougher, and supported by all the new base enemy too.

Bobs are gay, SCIENTIFIC FACT. They just don't look Quakey enough (most of the other new monsters do). They're annoying to fight but TBH a fixed model that's slightly larger than 3 pixels would fix that anyway. 

I doubt Preach will want to make any changes like that (nor would I) because they would unbalance older maps.

That's not to say I don't agree with some of these. My biggest regret was that all the new monsters are so strong. 

My biggest regret was that all the new monsters are so strong.

Because players are so used to "normal" monsters, because they knows very well how to own them, because players are so experimented now... all these may explain why new monsters are so strong, and why this create a real new challenge for players...

And it does not prevent mappers from using "normal" monster for weakest player in easy skill ;) 

Because not everybody is as skilled as the next one. Even seasoned players. A map should be balanced for everyone, and not punish "weaker" or casual players (admittedly, I made that mistake myself for a while).

All things considered, the Quoth monsters have to seen as supplements, like the occasional fiend or shambler for instance, not replacements for the regular enemies. But in quite a few maps, they are used predominantely in favor of the old ones, which, in the end, just makes the maps very hard and not fun. It's bad design, in my view.

Happens in other games, too. See the ZDoom bestiary, for example. Many of those monsters are terribly unbalanced and, as such, their often great potential is ruined. 

I agree with your instincts on which monsters could be better balanced, but I think some of the fixes need to be different.

Knight melee attack range (should be when it hit the player, not from miles away).

I assume this is for the death guard. The slow overhead swing has quite a long range, but the regular attack has the same range as normal quake knights/death knights. I feel the latter attack is the problem, and so something else makes them harder to fight in melee than death knights. There will be a tweak to the thing I blame in the upcoming patch. Fans of the existing balance will find nightmare unchanged.

Drole melee attack range (ditto)

I think the problem is that the attack is often unavoidable even when you have space to manoeuvre. Droles have a shorter reach than shamblers, so I think monster run speed is to blame. I have an idea on how to give players an "out" without changing either run speed or melee range, but I need to test it first(it might not even be technically feasible).

Enforcer shotgun was tweaked in Quoth 2 to be a bit less dangerous, it was a known issue that we couldn't find a happy solution for. I have had one thought inspired by the death guard business, but again it needs some testing.

We already made a replacement bob model - it's called a sentinel : -P 

We already made a replacement bob model - it's called a sentinel : -P

Yeah... except Bobs are fast, mobile and rapidly firing, and Sentinels are pretty much floating spikeshooters. 

I suspect its the damage being caused too early in the animation of their melee as opposed to the actual range of it.

Playing against them I tend to think I've got a few frames before they'll hit me since the mesh isn't at the extent of its sword swing yet - but then get hit.

Don't mind the Drole though. You let that thing get close to you it's your own fault.

For the shotgun it'd help to telegraph it a bit more - playing a sound a bit earlier would add some very good 'oh shit!' moments and allow player to try and scramble out of the way, taking more damage.

As to enemy balance in general, it's a tricky one. Everyone likes shiny new stuff, especially when they're demons and monsters, shiny with slipgater blood.

So its hard not to get carried away and go too far. On an incremental mod like Qouth you can get stuck and be unable to tweak gameplay because of earlier maps without pissing people off... personally I'd just stomp all previous maps and deal with the backlash... imagine all the glorious map reworks!

In all seriousness though, making the monsters better balanced isn't going to hurt balance as much as you'd suspect. Typically this only breaks things when you make monsters tougher or weapons weaker - essentially the same thing.

Monster are made to die, not to kill the player. 

And B0b... I'm not a massive fan of the mesh either. Maybe removing the eyes would help.

I really liked the 40's robot in Rubicon2 and that didn't feel out of place.

Completely subjective though, and you can't please everyone. 

How much "balance" would be broken if their shotgun blast was split into, say, 6 consecutive shots, and the pre-attack wind-up was made longer?

This would effectively make them chaingun Enforcers... which sounds pretty badass. 

Sentinels are not replacement bobs - bobs are fun to fight, sentinels are not.