I'm working on getting a bunch of new sounds into Star Sonata 2, and one of the ones I was working on tonight was a radar ping sound. Getting it in was easy enough, but as I sat there in my test galaxy, spamming the hotkey and hearing the ping over and over again, I realized that there would probably be a lot of people sitting in Sol doing the exact same thing on a regular basis, just to annoy other people.

So I've made it so for C2, you hear your own radar ping at 100% volume, and other people hear it at only 25% volume and converted the radar ping electric cost to be a charging module that takes 40 / (tech + 5) seconds to charge to reduce the Spamming. So something like 6+ seconds charge time to ping a tech 0 radar, but only 1.6 seconds to charge a tech 20 radar. I figure if anyone with a tech 20 radar is Spamming Sol, then maybe people would remember and go kill them later.

We could always make it so you can only hear just own own radar ping, but that seems like it would take all the fun out of it, so I hope this solution works well enough and that as it is, it doesn't get overly abused so that we have to take it out. It's pretty cool hearing that somewhere to your right, somebody is pinging his radar.

Maybe it's just because it's late, but I actually facepalmed. Please don't put a charge time on pinging. In the heat of PvP I am constantly riding the ping hotkey and from what it sounds like, the tech 11 Fsearcher would no longer be able to maintain constant ping if this went in. There are all kinds of fixes to this that won't affect gameplay; for example, you could simply not play the ping sound to others if the same source already pinged too recently.

Seers can ping and not be seen if done right.

And, most people have their sound at 0% anyways.

another nerf to stealth classes >.<

Oooh pinging radar, you so random.

Why try to change something that works? :/

Because he's bored. I think this is cool but its going to encourage sound whoring when fighting seers >.<

/me imagines people with Turtle Beaches maxed volume removing all sound files but ping and engine sounds.

- Making Ping radars charging is a logical step as we are getting everything "precharged". That is good and I like it as it makes sense.

- Using the charging to limit the annoyance of repeated 'ping' sounds is a very bad idea especially if you take sol as example.
Cosmetic reasons should not affect your gameplay if possible or if they don't add a signifcant increase in "fun".

If you want to reduce possible abuse of repeated pings:

- for special gals like sol (no PvP) just reduce the the volume of the ping sound overall

- make an option, which is hotkeyable, to toggle ping sounds on and off

If those options do not suit you tell me what you don't like on them and I'll come up with new solutions (I didn't put much thought into it as you probably won't read this ever).

Eh, this is fine. I usually listen to dubstep anyways.

Even on the tech 11 radar, the ping charge time is only 2.5 seconds, and the visibility boost lasts for 3 seconds. You also get the noise when the radar is charged telling you to ping again, so potentially, this can make your pinging a lot more efficient. And as I said, tech 20 radars are only 1.6 seconds. Surely you don't want to ping more often than that -- there isn't any reason to.

If you are worried about people being annoyed by other players in sol, then the galaxy itself is the problem, not radar pings or anything else.

You should probably start disabling a bunch of stuff in AI protected gals that don't allow attacking. Instead of adding charging to every item under the sun.

I love the idea and im not worried about 1,6sec for t20 cos ping itself lasts longer XD .
"- Making Ping radars charging is a logical step as we are getting everything "precharged". That is good and I like it as it makes sense.
GO JeffL!

Jeff, precharging is shiny and new. That doesn't mean you need to wedge it into everything you can find, regardless of how much sense it makes. The radars are fine now, just make the sound restricted to activating for other players once every 3 seconds or something. Besides, with the hotkeyable slave items you've talked about so much, I could just make a massive swarm with t20 passive radars and trigger each hotkey in turn if I really wanted to spam Sol.

Of course, I would be more likely to just put some Shockwaves on a zerker, since about 3 people in all of SS actually use sound, lol.