Sounds interesting enough. I’ve used manhacks in the past and they have their issues.
The exploding types often get destroyed by zombies before they actually explode. I might wish all the explosive manhacks detonate upon hit, let’s say 80-95% of the time. Insert your preferred detonation chance percentage here. Perhaps the homemade IED manhack could explode with 100% certainty. On the other hand, should we have homemade versions of all manhack types then (EMP, incendiary, acid etc.)? Too much hassle?
Manhack vs. broken manhack (all types) weights are utterly wrong. Broken ones weigh 10x more…
About renaming: I suggest we keep them all named either drones OR manhacks, and not mix them up. It makes the searching and handling easier. Although the simple bladed manhack could be renamed to ‘manhack drone’. We must think about the ease of search. All types should be found with the search word ‘drone’ or ‘manhack’.
Would be better if there were only 2-3 types (say, small bomb drone and large bomb drone) and they’d ask for a bomb item on deployment, then take its name (becoming “incendiary grenade drone” or “dynamite drone”).
Bomb drone code already understands using all items with explosion_iuse, all that needs to be done would be the deployment code in place_monster_iuse to give the drone an item from the inventory and a nickname.
Drones would be better. Manhack refers to a specific HL2 bot that hacks people (up). Bomb drones (grenade “manhacks”) aren’t manhacks.
This is what they did originally, activating their timers so that they should be right next to you when they detonate, but people complained that grenadiers were guaranteed killers and were OP. Hacks should still be able to target things, but because of their nerfed targeting mechanism they can either be man-moded to death or be ran away from (their algorithm actually tries to place you so that if you run away you end up just outside of the explosion range).
As such I’m not so sure about making them slower; they already are actively trying to miss you, and if they slow down any then they essentially become a non-threat to the player (even with a perfect targeting algorithm) who will just be able to go “oh, a drone runs away and laughs”. Remember that players can run, which essentially gives them 200 speed for all intents and purposes while running away.
For the on-contact issue keep in mind that any changes to hacks apply against you as well; grenadiers will throw them at you and if you don’t want them exploding on contact with your face then they shouldn’t be exploding on contact with a zombies (though the targeting algorithm could probably be changed slightly so that they tried to maintain a distance of 2 right up until the very last moment to make them a little less vulnerable to things just trying to nom/whack their face).
And yeah, weight/volume seems kinda mixed up there; generally I always figured it should be approximately the size/weight of the ammo it is carrying plus a little bit more, and if they aren’t then that’s something that needs to get fixed (though the broken thing is probably part of the corpse processing code, and as such might not have such an easy fix).
While we’re on the topic of manhacks, those things really are bastards to hit. You pretty much have snowball’s chance in hell of hitting it with melee, and unless you’re a trained sniper, you also have no chance of shooting it and doing any damage. But thats just me. Mr “I’ve never survived past Day 10 and im probably being laughed at for it”
Pfft. They’re easy to shoot down. Just don’t snapshot them but spend time to aim properly. Use an accurate and quick-aim firearm. Any pistol, basically.
Were manhacks buffed? I was trying to butcher a turretor something in version ~4800 when I got hit 3-4 times by a grenadier I couldn’t see. The damage was very little, the pain was 100+, so I ignored the explosions until I realized wasn’t going to get my butchering done.