Are we making good use of the combat sims?

At the Bonafacio Dore Ahern Morris intersection ( I hesitate to call it the Welcome Area) earlier today I got the impression that people may not be aware of the recreational opportunity afforded them by the Rausch sim and the two adjacent combat sim areas, or the weapons testing sim.

I am not likely to be skillful enough to be a good combatant but I would probably like to watch some good battles.

Has anyone rented the facility and held a proper battle yet? Do you have to rent them to join the groups and be able to use the local spawn points?

i don't believe they have to be rented, just join a color, and start shooting.

Alrighty I went there, and while I reading the combat notecard, some combat enthusiast shot me and sent me home, which was still my old home where I used to own land.

When you haven't owned land, your homespot is where you first entered the world after leaving OI, so am have been led to understand. For most folks who too noobish, it's the WA.

Once you buy land and set your home to that parcel, and then decide to sell it, your home stays at your old parcel. That sucks.

At any rate, the proper procedure would be to join either the red or blue combat team before you go to the combat sim. The team names are Red Team and Blue Team, and you can right click your AV, select Group from the pie menu, then select search, put in Red Team or Blue Team as search terms, then join, if you have an open slot. Easier to do than to describe, as is true with many menu based computer actions.

Now - I don't have any open group slots. Are they increasing the limits in 1.7?
I guess I can quit the Mac owners group since I don't have a Mac.
I hate quiting the old groups I joined not long after I started, like the Ladies of Second Life, even though the group never does anything and doesn't even have a purpose in the charter.
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I got shot again, after having joined the blue team and set my home spot appropriately. Getting shot is ok, that is the way of things in a combat sim.

What is not ok is that when I reappeared in the blue team parcel my gun was gone, my animation was stuck in the gun holding position, and I was not properly connected to the sim and needed to restart.

However, prior to that time, I did get to use my gravity gun to pick the shoothead, I mean fellow combatant, up in the air and try to whack him onto the ground a few times. So that balances out getting disconnected a bit.

------ Addenda ------

There were people there shooting (at me, among others) who didn't know about joining the team groups and setting their home to the local sim spawn point. This suggests more publicity is needed to increase the use and enjoyment of the combat sims.

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Was I totally off base on the bit about renting them?

They dont have to be rented, but they CAN be. The idea is to have two opposing teams rent the space and have it all to themselves.

I like going out there, its not that well known yet, but you do have to keep your guard up. And, its a lot cooler than visiting Jessie.

Sue, it is a sandbox, so since your home is there, build yourself a nice secure bunker that can be re-rezzed everyday and squat it.

This "Rausch" sim isn't appearing on my list... is it down or something? I wanted to check it out =0

[EDIT]

Nevermind found them with Find

Wowzers! I think I could like this place! I have a strong desire to make a Gundam or mobile suit now and bring it into Rausch! >_>

Q's:

-Do all guns do the same amount of damage?
--If not, then what's stopping people from making one hit kill guns?
--If so, then why have guns at all?
-I noticed someone with a sphere around him... is he protected from bullets?
--If so, can he shoot out from it? If so, isn't that unfair?
--If not, is it just so he could build without dying?
-Can we randomly kill everyone?
-I died when someone shot me a couple times, but my HP never went down... huh?

Thanks

Kujila...

No.
Nothing.
To kill another.
Maybe.
Probably.
Perhaps.
Yes.
Lag induced instant death.


I think the main thing that is frowned on in the combat sims is the use of unattended killer drones and really bad push that cause you to relog.

The sphere is a shield. It is supposed to keep you from getting hurt, though you can still die if you are wearing and moving (I believe). It can also be set to attack whoever attacks you while you are wearing it.

I got killed a number of times and had to restart several of them, even though the teleport home on die worked properly.

The little blue dots on the minimaps that should show you your objects weren't working for me, leaving me a rather good push all physical non-avatar objects around that I couldn't locate.

What is the preventive approach to dealing with the Hand of Satan?

The Hand of Satan did a weird thing, I saw blackness and nothing else but my name, my avatar and gun wasn't visible. My green dot on the minimap appeared and moved, but I couldn't tell any other way. Couldn't teleport, couldn't attach anything, couldn't modify a script in an attachment because I couldn't see anything.

If I set my home to the combat sim, can I later set it back to the Welcome area when I'm done?

Im not sure, but I think not. I guess the home location difficulties are solved when you buy land or join a group that holds land. Another minor disadvantage of a basic account I suppose.

I think I would report abuse against a weapon like this, sounds pretty brutal and over the top.

Ah drat, I shant set my home there then I suppose =[

The Lindens could create a group that is open join, give it a parcel of land at the Welcome Area, and thus enable folks to reset their home point to the Welcome Area, without making any changes to the program.

That would be dandy =)

My experience in other more combat oriented virtusl worlds says to me that combat in SL needs a complete and total rethink and unless this happens it will never get more mainstream appeal amongst SL.

There are many problems the design, organisation, health structure, lack of incentive, lack of purpose and the way in which SL runs (remember the great but almost unworkable chinatown combat project) what make combat a minority interest in SL.

Saying this however makes me realise that other than the combat sims, I am behind on my knowing abut anything better that anyone has invented in SL. So if theres a combat game inside SL or some thing I have missed and you know about it, post it here, thanks

BTW I have a substantial property literally across the border line from Rausch so I do go there regularly

Rausch is now part of three adjacent sandbox sims south of the mainland. The part of the grid where Rausch used to be is now supposed to be a void sim, I think I read.

Hmm, people are shooting nearby.

Sigh, while in the forums, still in the spawn point, unarmed, standing still, wearing a blue satin dress, I was shot and disconnected to where I have to restart, and there isn't even anyone else in all three combat sims online, unless being disconnected has left me unable to get a good reading of other avatar's presence on the maps.

So, what determines the strength of said gun?

A guy there gave me a shield and a phantom script, I understand the phantom exploit is soon to be fixed.

He put out some dummies, and I shot them with the gun he gave me, and they blew up real nicely with lots of guts and such flying everywhere. It was fun.


I got my folder of freebie weapons, and finally have a place to shoot them at people without too much worry about getting in trouble.

I did get one guy annoyed last night with by my super duper object pusher. It does a good job of finding objects because it uses a lot of scripts in separate objects at different angles to each scan a small part of the surroundings, and tries to push them at the maximum force possible. It doesn't spawn any following pushers so it's not close to being an all out hi-tech push machine. This pusher seems to successfully not push avatars, the guy who got annoyed was in a vehicle. So my object pusher needs some llDie commands put in various places and a position report routine as well so I don't leave it out by accident. Once he stopped trying to shoot me as punishment and sent me an IM to tell me what the problem was he was able to help me find the pusher so I could get rid of it.

Well, at any rate, I just had some fun shooting and being shot at. I would say that people who want to have fun with weapons and fighting in SL need to not compare it to other platforms and see what it lacks but instead see what it can do and try to figure out how to have fun with that.

One thing seems pretty clear to me, you can't have much fun if use instant death to everyone weapons or make yourself invulnerable.

--------------------------------- Addenda ------------------------------------


The near total lack of objects in the combat sims may give you much better FPS than normal, even better than the regular sandbox sims which can give you nice results but sometimes get full of both plain objects and lots of scripts and physics objects and bog down.

You many find that you can increase your draw distance, in my case out at the combat Sims I was able to set my draw distance at maximum, 512, and still get 70 or more FPS.

BUT - one would want to remember to set it back down before teleporting to somewhere like the WA or it will take forever for things to load and that can bog you down so much that just getting the preference screen open to reduce the draw to normal can be a pain.

Right. There ought to be some rules in place or whatnot.

Well , one can choose to either appear at one's home location when the program starts or at the last location you were at. So to appear at the WA, one just has to go there before logging out, and then set the preferences general tab to start at the last location you were at. It's easy enough, but I have trouble remembering to do anything systematic and useful like that.

They can make us young looking and give the abilty to fly and stuff like that but they don't have a substitute for a memory yet.

Actually they could let us have user selected program startup and shutdown scripts to serve as a memory substitute, but we don't even get to set our own customized default scripts for objects we create, so I wouldn't count on that happening anytime soon.

The Dore-Ahern-Morris-Bonafacio location could be referred to as the DAMB spot, the "B" is silent.

Oh I just realized that the Luskwood group I'm in has a start point plot set aside ("Group Owned Land" section of the SL site) I just have to go and hunt it down via coordinates... I am generally in Lusk all the time any ways, so that alleviates my spawn-problem I guess

ya. its on the little deck thingy near Liam's tower.. Turn on property lines and you can find it. It's like, directly below a hanging lamp, I think.

If my computer were up to spec I'd probably rent out both sims for a day and have a rousing battle.

The problem, of course, is people showing up at random with Instant-Kill weapons and 'Super Duper Lag Sheilds". But that'll be worked out.

Right. I didn't know/think about using property lines, I actually just typed in the exact coordinants from the "Group Owned Land" section and followed the red beacon =)