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Hello,

generally speaking, a flag alter the technical characterize and further the tactical capabilities of a tank. We should think about what exactly alter the specific flag. Positive flags improving one specific capability. Obviously tiny makes much more easier to survive on a rouge battlefield. A lot of flags are perfectly defined and balanced. But bad flags ... I think bad flags could mostly erased. Even some good flag could could suffer a adjustment. And more team-flags are welcome. But Team affecting more than 1 tank. the only team-flag presently (beside the colored) is genocide. And one word more, bzflag is for gaming human together with another human, that involves the game is based on your sensitivity and feeling. Thats why flags that could damage the feeling for the game are not good, like alter gravity.

My suggestions:

good flags

extra bullet - a lot of player counting bullets, so 1 extra makes life easier
jump- an old stuff of mine, building restricting your driving path, so a jump flag allow to jump over on non jumping server, even on jump-enabled server to jump to the 2. stage
useless- no word

bad flags- i don't need this, i'm bad enough

team flags

poison- never kill this poison guy, or all of your team dying (is an old suggestion from spacemann spiff), maybe some disadvantages like obesity
thief -fire rate like the other tanks and same range, or only to steal the colored flag
genocide- add wide angle because if he kill all he have to see everbody

There's already a jumping flag.

Useless? What about it. That one already exists too.

Extra bullet has already been suggested.

Hi blast,

My aim was not just to offer new flags.
I tried to define why making flags flag on so unique, what changing a flag regarding to the battle. My conclusion is flags improving one specific capability .
This is little different to the definition in the bzflag-wiki, but the consequence is huge.

In my view bzflag do not need any bad flags at all. Why? They don't improve anything, just a pain. I understand the reason for bad flags to prevent to much grabbing of flags, on the other hand only few servers enabling bad flags. If you could accept this new understanding of flags than adjust of the remaining flag are easy.

In general i would make team-flags making tanks big.
Thief, i would use it as team-flag, to steal the colored opponents flag, big only destroyable from without flag.
I would add poison, as well big.

You see it is a whole concept.

From now only some adjustments are necessarily.
Useless is in my opinion a bad flag.
And Jump should bring the king immediately on top of the hill (better known as GU-map)

If you are just talking about tactics, then I do not see why you put this in the Enhancements section?

I know English isn't your native language, but it's VERY hard to understand what you are talking about. Perhaps you could have one of your English speaking friends to proofread your ideas before you post them, specially if you are intending them to open a discussion on tactics.

As for bad flags, servers don't have to use them, that is what +f good is for

Bad flags are supposed to be a pain, that's why they're there. They're there to provide an obstacle. We don't say to take out death physics because they're annoying, same with bad flags. However, I do think it would be interesting to add more flags that affect an entire team in some way, like genocide.

Thanks Jeff that you are answering at first to my post. Even in my tongue it is often hardly to understand for a third party (sometimes for myself if i read my post later), when not finished with the idea.

I tried to approached several topics:

1. I try to find a answer for the question "Why making flags bzflag so unique"

2. What providing "bad flags" to the game

3. What are constraints relating to the game flow

4. How to reorganized team flags

5. Which flags could improve from adjustments



to 1. Flags alter a specific tactical capability, it is acting like a teacher.

to 2. Bad flags do not contribute any positive attitude to bzflag, thats why i suggest to withdraw them, despite to the first impression they are funny.

to 3. Via bzflag humans interacting with humans, thats why any value (like gravity) what interfere the feeling into the game should avoided.

to 4. Beside the colored flags, i would threat the flags which could affect the whole team or the colored flag as team flag. Genocide, Poison and thief.

to 5. Almost all good flags are coherently,
only jump brake their inner logic on jump-enabled-servers.
Thief use to deliver the colored-flag with low fire rate and longer range, and/or only to steal the colored flag.
Without bad flag, some of its features could used for balancing the team flags. Grabbing a team-flag making the tank obesity, everybody see the delicate tank.
I hope you will undrstand the benefits, i only try to make the good better.

cheers rak64

I think bad flags are pretty cool. Sometimes they can even work to your advantage. Obesity can be good on jumping skills maps, and Wide Angle is one of my personal favorite flags, next maybe only to Stealth. They help keep things even, if a map has bad and good flags, there's always that slight risk of getting something bad when you drive over a flag, proventing flagshopping

I don't mind bad flags very much, but when you have to kill someone, die, or get the antidote flag to drop it they pretty much suck.

Like QT said, bad flags are used to create a curve in the map. Yes, you get a bad flag and then die, but that is part of bzflag.

Solution: Go to a map w/o bad flags

Quantum Tank wrote:Bad flags are supposed to be a pain, that's why they're there. They're there to provide an obstacle. We don't say to take out death physics because they're annoying, same with bad flags. However, I do think it would be interesting to add more flags that affect an entire team in some way, like genocide.

There is at least one server in which the geno flag works in reverse, i.e. if someone of the blue team hits a green team member with geno, the entire green team dies.

That sounds like one of L4m3r's plugin, maybe the RiskyGeno one.

yosefk wrote:There is at least one server in which the geno flag works in reverse, i.e. if someone of the blue team hits a green team member with geno, the entire green team dies.

How is that in reverse? Isn't that how geno usually works?

scorchgeek wrote:

yosefk wrote:There is at least one server in which the geno flag works in reverse, i.e. if someone of the blue team hits a green team member with geno, the entire green team dies.

How is that in reverse? Isn't that how geno usually works?

It Isn't real clear, but the person with geno is the green team in the example. More clearly it would be:

A green player has geno. A blue player kills the geno carrier. Green team dies. Hence the name of the plugin, RiskyGeno because it makes geno work both ways.

Exactly this behavior was requested year ago by spacemanSpiff. He called it Posion Flag. But it was rejected like nearly every idea regarding flags. It make sense to have a poison flag, it make sense to give the jump-flag-holder a extra capability, and even it make sense not to have bad flags.

joevano wrote:

scorchgeek wrote:

yosefk wrote:There is at least one server in which the geno flag works in reverse, i.e. if someone of the blue team hits a green team member with geno, the entire green team dies.

How is that in reverse? Isn't that how geno usually works?

It Isn't real clear, but the person with geno is the green team in the example. More clearly it would be:

A green player has geno. A blue player kills the geno carrier. Green team dies. Hence the name of the plugin, RiskyGeno because it makes geno work both ways.

Thanks. Once it was pointed out to me, I see perfectly what it was supposed to say

This is bullshit (sry) because it makes Geno more powerfull.
If using >poison< flag, than the holder can attract the other the team to kill him. So he is clearly the victm hero.
AND it has a clear goal, check the flag of the opponents, not kill blindly.
chears sussi