Turret friendly fire [poll]

[bobdaduck]

Does anybody like being killed by their own team's turrets?

Should turrets killing you be turned off, and if so, should being able to kill your own team's turrets be turned off also?

DEfeinitly not liked its very unhealthy for the game

team turrets are supposed to help you defend not act like hostile turrets and kill you trying to defend your base making it so you cant defend properly if thats the intent then you might as well make it hostile turret

also for t hose who voted it down but posted no reason why it should be allowed your vote is basicly invalidated because you cant defend why it should stay.

[Skybax]

It should stay because it’s good and not at all a huge problem like you keep saying it is

It should stay because it’s good and not at all a huge problem like you keep saying it is

so the because I said so argument with no valid reason behind it

[Little_Apple]

As my opinion is invalid if I don't post, I’ll do my best to explain my choice. I cannot remember a single time friendly turret fire made any difference in any serious competitive game of Bitfighter. Ever. Maybe if competitive dueling emperor’s revenge CTF maps with infinitely spawning test items were the trendy style of map to play then I could see how it would become an issue, but they ain’t. Single turret shots do so little damage on their own that a single stray shot hitting a teammate barely makes any difference when a stream of shots are being aimbotted to the other team. If your base happens to be full of turrets and test/resource items, then thats a problem with the map. Not the game. If you still happen to find yourself in the unfortunate situation of having a test item grab the attention of your turrets, you can simply avoid any unwanted damage by staying away from the test item. You know exactly where they will shoot. It’s not hard. Under normal gameplay circumstances I think friendly fire in general in the game’s current state is a nonissue.

As my opinion is invalid if I don't post, I’ll do my best to explain my choice. I cannot remember a single time friendly turret fire made any difference in any serious competitive game of Bitfighter. Ever. Maybe if competitive dueling emperor’s revenge CTF maps with infinitely spawning test items were the trendy style of map to play then I could see how it would become an issue, but they ain’t. Single turret shots do so little damage on their own that a single stray shot hitting a teammate barely makes any difference when a stream of shots are being aimbotted to the other team. If your base happens to be full of turrets and test/resource items, then thats a problem with the map. Not the game. If you still happen to find yourself in the unfortunate situation of having a test item grab the attention of your turrets, you can simply avoid any unwanted damage by staying away from the test item. You know exactly where they will shoot. It’s not hard. Under normal gameplay circumstances I think friendly fire in general in the game’s current state is a nonissue.

good thoughts I would say though sometimes when your playing random maps you cant always rely on the 2 turrets defending your base to not be guarding the cramped hallway with a test object at the end the in rhat regard (basicly saying you cant rely on all map designs being good) alot of player maps will be chosen to not be played due to friednly fire making them not as fun due to defending being more difficult.

[Little_Apple]

Turrets are not your primary line of defense. That would be, you know, defenders. Players. Turrets are not supposed to be something you rely on. And if certain maps are chosen not to be played due to friendly fire, then they are bad maps and should not be played. This is not a problem.

True but one problem I have with friednly turrets as I said is they are meant to defend your base from your oppenents not kil you making it so you cant defend. (as situational as it is

[Skybax]

amgine should record all future games and see how long it takes until a turret actually kills someone with friendly fire

I mean even if it doesnt kill you it shooting you outright puts you at a distavantage if a enemy decides to attack

I'm honestly surprised by the reactions on this poll. Is it some huge deal? No. Has it decided an outcome of a game? Probably not. Is it annoying and irritating to lose health (which is already so preciously limited) when a turret decides to go nuts over a nearby TestItem? ABSOLUTELY!

Look, obviously it's not some big deal. If removing it is going to take significant person hours or be a hassle to delete from the code then sure, don't bother. But dodging own turret fire while also evading enemy is actually not terribly easy (since it's usually not on the forefront of our minds), nor is it particularly enjoyable. It doesn't add anything to the game except a minor sting of annoyance when you lose already precious health from it or even straight up die when frantically looking for a health pack. It also doesn't align with most of the rest of the game having friendly fire disabled.

What's even the argument for keeping it? Aside from "it's not a big deal."

While we're on the subject, it would be great to not take damage from team mines. Destroy the mine, sure, have a bounce-back effect, perhaps, but why are we losing half our health from something that's supposed to be an asset toward the team? Sure, it's kind of funny to nail a teammate with a mine or use on a novelty map, but in regular gameplay, I'm not a fan.

As for being able to destroy the turrets, yeah I think that should stay. If we can build up the turrets ourselves with repair or engineer then we should be able to destroy them too. It's good to have that flexibility I think.

My one question is: If a team turret shoots a burst, and we didn't take damage from it, would the bounce back still occur? I can see arguments for this both ways, assuming the friendly fire modification occurred.

Also changing it
snt a huge hastle its actully just changing one value for team damage from true to false its literrly a 60 second patch.

[bobdaduck]

Amgine is right, making turrets no longer kill you would be changing the word "true" on one line of code to "false", the same goes for mines. You'd still be able to shoot your turrets down (which for friendly fire fans, would still lend to careful/competitive play, right? Since you don't want your bullets accidentally killing your turret?) so for me I do not see any downside to changing it, and I'd like to (which is why it comes up every so often lol)

I'll write a friendly fire script for skybax, you can run it as a global levelgen script and then see how much weight your arguments still hold

Another slighly harder fix would be to make it so they only shoot ships.

im not sure if there is a good reason they shoot test items though and it may break some older maps.

[Skybax]

I never said that I think all fire should be friendly fire. Bitfighter would devolve into a chaotic mess if friendly phasers could kill.

However I do think that turret fire and mines should continue to damage everyone.

Turrets not only because it definitely adds to the "fast and frenetic" gameplay that Bitfighter is known for, but I'm pretty sure there are some maps designed with testItems and resourceItems close to turrets for the exact reason.

And mines because it's a heckin explosive device. And it's easily seen by friendlies.

The arguments against changing things that have been longstanding features of the game also fall incredibly flat. The amount of times that a game has been even slightly impacted by "griefers" laying mines just for friendly fire are minuscule. People grief more by destroying their own teams turrets and forcefields, bringing flags to the enemy team, and literally blocking passageways with their ships.

Just adding my little opinion...

I believe we should always be able to shoot friendly turrets. As mentioned above, since we have the power to repair it, we should be able to destroy them aswell. Also allows us to fully *control* turrets/forcefield, say they aren't helping us in a certain situation.

However I do think that turret fire and mines should continue to damage everyone.

Turrets not only because it definitely adds to the "fast and frenetic" gameplay that Bitfighter is known for, but I'm pretty sure there are some maps designed with testItems and resourceItems close to turrets for the exact reason.

I'm confused, what does this have to do with friendly fire toward players? I'm all for keeping turrets attracted to test items and resource items, but I don't see how this relates to damaging players.

Additionally, my counter to the "this feature would break some maps" argument is usually that lots of updates break a few maps and if the update is good for the long-term health of the game, then that should be the priority, as maps can usually be adjusted. In this case, I don't even know of any maps outside of maybe dungeons where friendly fire from your own turrets is a desired objective. Heck, I don't even know any dungeons that would want this... why not just use an enemy or hostile turret?

And mines because it's a heckin explosive device. And it's easily seen by friendlies.

I can understand mine FF being more of a contentious debate than turret FF. But like, bursts are basically projectile grenades and they don't impact teammates. There's already a good amount of suspension of disbelief for various aspects of the game... just take whatever reason we make up for why bursts don't damage teammates and apply it for mines.

I have a few reasons to oppose friendly fire on mines. Griefing is not one of them. I agree there are far more impactful ways to grief besides mines, and there are also ways to easily combat mine griefing as well. My simple reason is that in all the weapons in Bitfighter, none of them deal damage to teammates... except for mines. Aligning mines with the rest of the weapons in regard to friendly fire damage seems logical to me. And I think logical is great for more enjoyable gameplay and accessibility to new users.

But if you want more than just what's logical: Well, it's honestly pretty cumbersome to play with mines. Teammates going in and out of a base are constantly blowing them up, and they're volatile enough to trigger nearby mines just by exploding nearby or a teammate being knocked into one. They're also easily countered with a couple of bursts. I get that some of those features are probably intentional, to ensure they aren't too powerful, but my point is that there's no need to also throw teammate damage into the equation. It's too much.

It's not just accidental collisions either. Check out 1:52 of this video. As soon as I saw that team mine I knew I was screwed. Low enough health that I would die if I contacted it, low enough energy that I couldn't use shield to protect myself from it, and close enough proximity that if I shot it when coming around the corner I would be impacted by the effects of the blast. Of course, I died before reaching it so in this case it was moot, but I remember thinking at the time, it feels really awkward that I had to proactively think about how I was going to bypass something that by all accounts was a team asset. Now, maybe this was a rare case, but I think we've all had moments where we've been screwed by an otherwise well-placed team mine because we didn't have the energy to shield through it or time to shoot it accurately from a safe distance. To me, that feels broken.

Slightly related but what if in addition to not damaging team mates alleys could not ignite mines Trough contact or trough shooting.)

That players would be able to mine a base for defense and not have to worry about losing attacking potentiol by going around them and friendly teamates would no longer have to worry about dying to friendly mines.

I agree heavilty with basicly everything sky_lark said removing turret friednly fire is better for the long term health of the game.

Yeah, I was thinking about that as well. Why do team mines even explode when teammates collide with them? But as I thought about it more, it would probably make mines too overpowered if they were only set off by opponents. Would make the mechanic a bit of a nuisance if every time you entered someone else's base it was smothered with mines everywhere.

Anyway, I'm going to shut up about mines. I do still think it's a defect that teammates can be negatively impacted by something that is clearly intended to be a team asset, but I don't want to stray too off-topic from ducky's topic.

I'm still rather surprised by the lack of support for disabling turret friendly fire. What is the motivating argument to keep it in the game aside from "it's not a big deal"? Has anyone ever been damaged by a friendly turret's crossfire and thought "hey, I'm really glad that's a part of the game, makes it feel more fun"?

[Santiago ZAP]

While i'd like for a level option for "Disable friendly turret fire" (Meaning, friendly fire is the default) for maps with engineer especially, its not that big of a deal most of the time, maps like DnD with huge ammouns of resources would definitely benefit from this, but I think we're so used to it for it to even matter.

Shooting your own turrets, on the other hand, is a MUST, especially in engineer maps, you know how enemies leave turrets/FFs with low enough health as to not drop the TestItem, or to have you remove it since you cant place another Forcefield? Imagine that pain x100, attacking own Turrets is a must.

Team mines are kinda mixed though, Not only can they serously grief your own team sometimes as sky_lark mentioned, but it is done accidentally most of the time, especially in maps like CTF when you're running with your flag at 10% hp no energy and your fellow teammates left a mine in your own flag as a way to defend it, oof fam.
Maybie they could still detonate on teammates while doing no damage/knockback? No idea here, I agree with most of what sky_lark said though.

[bobdaduck]

So far the main arguments in favor of your turrets killing you I've seen are
1- "it makes the game more crazy"
2 -"it is not impactful"
3 -"it encourages more strategic play"

My rebuttal to each:
1) This is clearly a bad principle because you can't apply it. You know what else would make the game more frenetic? The entire map getting carpeted in mines/asteroids without warning at random. Would people like playing a map like that? Maybe, if it was designed well enough, some would enjoy the challenge. But we're talking features; what if by default with no way to disable it this just happened on every map? Would we keep new players? Would you even bother to play competitive maps?
2) obviously it is because it keeps coming up. Speaking personally I would rather kill all turrets on my own team than have them up. At my peak, I was killed by my team's turrets far more than any player in the community was killing me.
3) ok, my strategy is "kill my turrets because they're a detriment rather than an asset", now what?

maps like DnD with huge ammouns of resources would definitely benefit from this, but I think we're so used to it for it to even matter.

I don't play DnD much. What aspect of DnD involves team turrets killing their own players, and what's stopping it from just using enemy turrets instead?

[Quartz]

All I know is, there was no friendly fire damage from turrets in Zap!. No one complained. In Bitfighter there is, and some people complain. The goal should be the most happy players. The end.

[raptor]

I'm slowly opening up to this idea, but it has a lot of historical momentum. I looked back at the very first commit of the Zap! code in our repository and turrets were still friendly fire:

https://github.com/bitfighter/bitfighte ... ns.cpp#L44

Back in 2009 that commit shows turret friendly fire as true.

I dont know honestly im defenitly for no damage to teamates trough mines but being unable to detonate mines at all if your on the same team seems to appealing.

Mines primary use are meant to be defensive either using them to escape when being chased OR defending your base from enemy ships lets look at bolth.

In terms of teamates not being able to set off mines to escape it setups up a more dynamic game play a enemy ship could rush in and put a mine in a hallway to prevent a enemy ship from chasing ( or the ship that is bieng chased for that matter) though uncommen I could see a poorly placed mine getting detonating prematurly and blowing up the shup trying to escape.

For Base defense there are two major problem. enemy ships and friednly fire. mines are meant to defend key strategic points regardless if its a forcefeild a flag choke point or a turret. often as stated ships fighting another ( or shooting randomly) will set off mines which were meant to defend bases either killing ships knocking ships back from key defensive points or allowing ships to get in key important points.
the other problem is friendly ships. in most cases you want to be able to put mines on key points or impotant resources to defend it however that creates a problem in that enemy ships who want to defend that key object must first break the mine or take significant amounts of damage for example mining a forcefeild to keep it defended or because they need to repair it. in the latter case of mines in key locations often it creates a hinderence because while it does slow incoming enemys ships who are trying to invade it prevents ally ships ffrom being able to attack which positionally creates a distavantage as it gives times more for enemy ships to gain space and offesive avtantage over enemy ships if ally ships could fly over freidly mines without detnoating them they could be able to deep there base defended while beiong able to attack and while I know its a weak point mines are very underutilized at this time the draw backs being greater then the benifits makes them not desirable to use.

amgine, I don't disagree with what you're saying, but if team mines couldn't even be detonated by teammates then you could pretty much just spam the map with them and it would be a very unpleasant experience as players on both sides would be wading through mines getting anywhere. Good luck chasing someone either, as soon as they've retreated through a couple mines they are pretty much gone.

Quartz/Raptor, I was not aware that team turrets did not have friendly fire in Zap. I had thought it had always been on since inception? Unfortunately my mac no longer supports zap or else I would go check.

[bobdaduck]

Quartz/Raptor, I was not aware that team turrets did not have friendly fire in Zap. I had thought it had always been on since inception? Unfortunately my mac no longer supports zap or else I would go check.

No, turrets didn't have friendly fire in zap. You couldn't shoot down your own turrets either.

The community is undeciced on this maybe should we call for a vote on if it should be toggable tobe on or off?

the main draw back I could see with this is players wouldnt know what the turret settings are from map to map.

so generally I just want turet friendly fire to be gone.

as bob said you couldnt shoot your own turrets in ZAP or have friednly fire to them what im wondering is could we revert it to ZAP status where you cant shoot or take friednly fire from your turrets UNLESS they are enigeered?

[Skybax]

No, turrets didn't have friendly fire in zap. You couldn't shoot down your own turrets either.

raptor just looked at the oldest code he could find and said that they did lol

[bobdaduck]

No, turrets didn't have friendly fire in zap. You couldn't shoot down your own turrets either.

raptor just looked at the oldest code he could find and said that they did lol

Could definitely be- the source code bitfighter forked from was not actually the final version of Zap!, it was several releases previous. I have the Zap! windows installer if you want to see for yourself.

[raptor]

Could definitely be- the source code bitfighter forked from was not actually the final version of Zap!, it was several releases previous. I have the Zap! windows installer if you want to see for yourself.

Interesting. I did not know that. Was Zap! still releasing after Bitfighter was a thing?

I don't think so. Bitfighter came out in January 2008 according to the releases page? InstantAction didn't debut until March 2008, and by then the GarageGames focus was on Z.A.P. for the platform.

I honestly don't even remember them updating the game after I had started playing in 2005, one of my big frustrations at that time period (exacerbated by being a young dumb kid with little understanding of how the world worked) was that they weren't updating the game at all. Maybe if they made updates server-side, but I don't think they updated the client after like 2005 or early 2006.

The community is undeciced on this maybe should we call for a vote on if it should be toggable tobe on or off?

I would rather they just pick a version and stick with it so it's not confusing like you pointed out.

Personally, I am yet to hear a single convincing argument for why friendly fire from team turrets should stay, other than it's not high on the priority list to be fixed of course.

Why shouldnt friendly turrets not damage from your team but only if they are not engineered and give a slight design change to show they are engineered ( maybe make it a box instead of round)

I don't see the harm in being able to destroy your own team's turrets, even if friendly fire on turrets to players is disabled. I can see use cases where you don't want your turrets firing at TestItems or ResourceItems for a period of time.

The only real case of harm would be griefing/trolling, but there are mechanics for mitigating that (ie. kicking).

Isnt a bad thing that random fire will destroy your own turrets though notably if there are there is a fire fight going on near the turret in addition to the problem that it might randomly fire on you and kill you?

I just wonder if it would be better to make them not take random damage from teamates notabby with AOE weapons like burst it would be quite possible to accidently take your turrets down if they were undestroyable exepct engieered turrets which might want to be taken down to be moved.