A list of suggestions for Dinogen Online by Penguin1, categorized by type. Any suggestions that get implemented, please remove from here because it will serve no purpose on this list.
All numbers provided are suggestions and of course the developer(s) and game balance has the final say.
"Importance" is a subjective rating from Peng.
Weapons & Weapon Mods[]
Bayonet barrel attachment for assault rifles:[]
Description: The bayonet attachment would give the player a lunging attack that propels them forward in the direction of aim. This would give it much better reach than most melee weapons, but also leave them vulnerable if the attack does not kill the intended target.
Purpose: Assault rifles have a miniature version of Shotguns and Launchers in the Barrel slot. This would be a miniature melee weapon.
Importance: Not important. Just something fun to have.
Implementation: Would be switched with the T key much like the M320 and Masterkey.
Thermobaric Ammo attachment for RPG and SMAW:[]
Description: The real SMAW can mount SMAW-NE (Novel Explosive) thermobaric rounds. The real RPG-7 has the TBG-7V thermobaric round. These would fall under a "Thermobaric" Ammo upgrade for both launchers.
Purpose: Incorporate real-life exotic weapons and keep the lighter launchers relevant even when heavier ones are unlocked.
Importance: Not important. Just fun and flavorful.
Implementation: Thermobaric rounds deal slightly more damage and have a much larger radius, but create a visible, harmless fuel cloud for a few seconds on impact, and only then explode. So players have a good chance to dodge it.
Flare Gun[]
Description: Handgun that shoots a small fireball.
Purpose: Single-shot weapon that blinds and burns.
Importance: Useful against dinosaurs. Also can provide flavor to Scenario Editor cutscenes.
Implementation: Handgun with a single-shot clip, and minimal spare ammo. Low accuracy, no penetration, very high damage (150+) and range. Leaves a very small but intense patch of fire on impact, and blinds the struck target much like a flashbang (but does not stun).
Plasma Thrower as Survival-Only Weapon:[]
Description: It's a short-ranged weapon with a big clip and an absurd amount of damage, on par with the minigun. Project MARAUDER went places.
Purpose: If the Railgun is a crossbow on steroids, the Minigun is an LMG on steroids and the TAC/M82/Intervention are sniper rifles on steroids, this is the flamethrower/shotgun on steroids.
Importance: Not important. Just fun.
Implementation: A reskinned flamethrower with green flames.
Equipment and Hand Grenades[]
Tear Gas Grenade[]
Description: Lingering tear gas that makes it difficult to enter a guarded chokepoint.
Purpose: Area denial weapon. More reliable than the Incendiary Grenade (whose flames are short-lived and random) or the mines (easily set off prematurely).
Importance: A nice tactical option to have.
Implementation: Grenade has a delay of 3 seconds and produces a small, translucent tear gas cloud that lasts for about 10 seconds. Anything moving through it is stunned for 2 seconds, but only once (to prevent stunlock). Ammo box does not let you carry multiple at once, similar to Incendiary and Molotov grenades. It does not block or blur sight like the Smoke Grenade does.
Optical Camo Equipment[]
Description: A vest with active camouflage that lets you become stealthy.
Purpose: Allows sneaking up on an enemy or objective, which is normally very difficult outside of Hardcore mode. Also can make stealth-based Scenarios a lot more interesting.
Importance: Another nice tactical option. Not as useful in Hardcore, of course. Kind of like the opposite of the Motion Detector.
Implementation: Consumable equipment with 2 or 3 uses. Each use makes the user's body translucent, and they do not show up on the minimap or display their healthbar while it is active. Duration is 10 seconds or until the user fires a weapon. Bots will ignore a camouflaged character until they come close.
Protective Mask Equipment[]
Description: A high-tech mask with an air filter, IR goggles, and flash protection.
Purpose: Status protection.
Importance: Another nice tactical option. Synergizes well with Smoke Grenades and other potential smoke weapons.
Implementation: Passive equipment like the Blast Vest, Dino Vest or Kevlar Vest. Makes the user immune to stun, blind and flame. Also immune to poison aftereffects, but not the initial damage. User can see enemies in smoke clouds and will not have their sight blurred when in smoke.
Fuel Can Equipment[]
Description: A large can full of flammable fuel.
Purpose: Allows setting a trap or enhancing fire damage.
Importance: Fun to have and mess around with, probably a niche use case.
Implementation: One-use consumable equipment. Scatters a fuel puddle around the user that evaporates within 30 seconds if not ignited. When the fuel puddle contacts flames, it ignites into even more flames.
Caltrops Equipment[]
Description: A large collection of small spiky metal pieces that always face at least one spike up.
Purpose: Area denial and anti-pursuit. Like a landmine, but less lethal and longer-lasting.
Importance: Fun to have, not terribly important.
Implementation: One-use consumable equipment. Scatters 4 to 6 "caltrops" objects in a wide area around the user, which activate after one second (to avoid hitting the user). Anything that steps on them takes a small amount of damage and is stunned for 1 second, also removing that caltrops object. Caltrops cannot be hit by bullets, but are easily destroyed by melee attacks, fire or explosives.
Defusal Kit[]
Description: A toolbox full of wirecutters, pliers and electrical meters.
Purpose: Support tool for Destruction game mode, situational counter to landmines and grenades.
Importance: Fun to have. Use cases are niche.
Implementation: When equipped, the user can plant and defuse bombs in half the time. Also when equipped, the user will not automatically set off motion-triggered mines. The user can also manually "fire" the defusal kit (with a low fire rate), and the effect of that is that hostile grenades, equipment and landmines in a small radius around them are removed without exploding.
Disassembly Tool Equipment (Survival)[]
Description: A toolkit designed to pull apart turrets.
Purpose: Remove your own turrets in Survival without letting the enemy overrun your position.
Importance: Very important, there seems to be no reasonable alternative right now.
Implementation: Similar to the Repair Tool, it is a melee-range tool with infinite uses. It costs $0 to purchase. When used on a turret that they own, the user must stand still with the tool equipped for 5 seconds before the turret is removed (otherwise, it is interrupted), and they are refunded fraction of the cash spent on the turret. The delay is to prevent accidental use, or a possible exploit where the turret is disassembled during attack right before it dies.
Airstrike Flare (Survival)[]
Description: A flare that calls in a bombing run.
Purpose: A last-ditch defensive option. Also fun to goof around with. The logic involved could also be useful in the Scenario Editor.
Importance: Useful to spice up later waves of Survival and provide a money sink when players are earning tons of cash.
Implementation: Very expensive equipment slot item, on the order of $10k-30k for both purchases and reloads. Cannot be reloaded from an Ammo Drop. When placed, it will spawn extremely high-damaging explosions in a linear pattern in about 10 seconds. The direction of the line depends on the direction the user is facing when the flare is placed. Self-damage is not only possible, but very likely.
Several possible varieties:
- Bombing Run- Standard explosives.
- Napalm Strike- bombs leave fire. Costs more.
- Smoke Drop- bombs do minimal damage, leave smoke. Costs less, arrives faster.
- Cluster Bomb- bombs are guided, each one locks onto a separate target. Costs a lot more.
- MOAB (Mother of all bombs)- clears the screen. Costs even more, possibly even $100,000.
Turrets and Mounted Weapons[]
Mortar Mounted Weapon (Survival)[]
Description: Light indirect fire artillery.
Purpose: Provides long-range fire support that, unlike the TOW, will not prematurely detonate if an enemy is in the way. Also seems like an interesting addition for Scenarios.
Importance: Very important for players, to hit stationary priority targets such as militia TOWs, while they are being rushed by many mobile enemies.
Implementation: Mounted weapon, costs $20k. Fires moderately damaging explosive rounds anywhere on the map, with a 3-8 second delay to impact depending on distance, so it takes some skill to hit moving targets. Has a long minimum range in which it cannot fire, about the length of the screen.
Smoke Mortar Mounted Weapon (Survival)[]
Description: As above, but with smoke.
Purpose: Provides cover for allies against ranged fire.
Importance: Possibly even more useful than the mortar.
Implementation: The mortar, but with smoke grenade warheads. Costs $10k.
C-RAM Turret (Survival)[]
Description: Anti-air, anti-explosive Phalanx CIWS.
Purpose: An alternative to the Trophy System (longer-lasting but less powerful), and a last-ditch defense against helicopters (and other future flying enemies).
Importance: Fills an important niche of defense against militia explosive and helicopter spam, especially when there's too many helicopters at once for SAMs to deal with.
Implementation: Costs $10k. Fires a chain gun at short range (same or shorter than Flamethrower turret). First function is to deal very heavy damage to flying enemies within this range. Second function is that the chain gun will take a split second to destroy enemy explosive projectiles within its range. It will reliably stop a single explosive before it can be hit by it, but will be overwhelmed by multiple explosives at once, or fail to defend a target that is on the edge of its range. Will prioritize helicopters over explosives (to avoid getting stunlocked by multiple Apache rockets).
Dazzler Turret (Survival)[]
Description: Nonlethal support turret armed with a multispectrum EM beam that overloads both biological and electronic senses.
Purpose: Stalls strong single enemies, but not effective against crowds.
Importance: Fills an importance niche of defense against the likes of T-rexes and juggernauts.
Implementation: Costs $10k. Fast-firing turret that deals no damage and stuns a ground or air enemy at about the same range as a sentry gun. Requires LOS against ground enemies, but not air enemies. Has no area of effect, and stun only lasts as long as its fire delay, so it only affects one enemy at a time. Also multiple will naturally have a tendency to focus on a single target to redundant effect, and this is fine because it discourages spamming these.
Vehicles[]
Medivac Helicopter (Survival)[]
Description: A transport helicopter loaded with medical staff and equipment.
Purpose: Mobile healer.
Importance: Useful tactical alternative if players' attack helicopters aren't working well.
Implementation: Unarmed helicopter, costs $10k, has a healing radius similar to but smaller than the Health box. Flies around the owner and tends to move towards injured players so they are just within its range.
M6 Linebacker (Survival)[]
Description: Bradley IFV armed with dual stingers and an M2 Browning.
Purpose: Anti-air and fire support vehicle.
Importance: Important for later waves vs militia because SAMs and TOWs die too easily at this point.
Implementation: Takes up a non-tank vehicle limit slot. Heavy armor, on par with the LAV-25. Has two seats: driver/machinegun, dual stingers. Stingers lock on faster than usual against air targets. When the Stingers are manned, the M6's radar will also relay data to SAM turrets so that they can fire on helicopters near the M6, no matter how far away they are.
M132 Flamethrower (Survival)[]
Description: An up-armored M113 APC armed with M2 Browning and flamethrower.
Purpose: Crowd control frontline vehicle and battle taxi.
Importance: Useful alternative to the tank, but not essential.
Implementation: Takes up a non-tank vehicle limit slot. Heavy armor, on par with or slightly better than the LAV-25. Has six seats: driver/machinegun, flamethrower, four passengers. Flamethrower is the same as the handheld version, but has three times as much ammunition per clip.
M163 Vulcan (Survival)[]
Description: An open-topped M113 with an M168 Minigun.
Purpose: An alternative to the LAV-25. Even deadlier, but at the cost of fragility and limited seat space.
Importance: Not that important, but it is very cool.
Implementation: Takes up a non-tank vehicle limit slot. Light armor, on par with the jeep. Has two seats: driver/machinegun and a suped-up minigun. Hits harder than the LAV-25 but will die very quickly to return fire. It absolutely needs cover and support. Might deal extra damage to air targets, to reflect its original role as an anti-air vehicle.
Jets (Survival)[]
Description: A new class of vehicles, that lasts temporarily but are powerful and cannot be killed.
Purpose: Heavy, last-ditch fire support. A way to use up excess money in later survival waves, and also fun to mess around with.
Importance: Fun to have, not essential. Very useful for Scenarios too.
Implementation: Expensive ($5k for cheapest all the way up to $30k for the strongest). Each takes up a helicopter slot, or could take up their own slot (say, 1 jet maximum). They take some time to arrive on station, and will patrol the area where they were summoned, leaving after a duration (fuel limit), or after a number of attacks (runs out of ammo). By design, they should rarely be able to last beyond one wave.
To avoid screen clutter, reduce implementation time and look super cool, they'll show up as slightly blurry shadows. Their projectiles will zoom out as they travel to make it look like they are fired from above the camera viewer. Also for easier balancing, they would have roughly the same loiter time and only one weapon type.
Possible types of jet, from least to most expensive:
- A10 Warthog- Slow arrival time, fires gatling gun at ground targets in strafing linear attacks. Annoys players with its sound.
- MQ9 Reaper- Slow arrival time, fires missiles at ground targets.
- F18 Hornet- Medium arrival time, fires JDAMs with big blast radius at ground targets.
- F15 Eagle- Fast arrival time, fires missiles at air targets at long range and high rate.
- F16 Falcon- Medium arrival time, fires missiles at air and ground targets (normal rate and range).
Survival Enemies[]
Description: Late-game enemies with unusual abilities that start showing up at waves 30+.
Purpose: Reduces powercreep as player survival choices expand, adds variety to later waves, encourages strategizing.
Importance: Not that important, but fun to have.
Militia Enemies[]
Hazmat Juggernauts: Juggernaut wearing a hazmat suit. Slower than even normal juggernauts, but immune to flames, poison, smoke.
Stealth Militia: Regular militia who appear translucent, do not show up on minimap and do not show their healthbars.
Militia Artillery Barrage: Up to twice per wave, the announcer will warn that an artillery barrage is coming, and what type it is, and the area around the tactical crate will display a visual warning as well. After 5-10 seconds (random), the area around the tactical crate will be blanketed with smoke, stun grenades or tear gas grenades. This deals no damage, to be fair to turrets and briefly AFK players, but will disrupt turtling players from their defenses and incentivize players to wear the Protective Mask equipment.
Militia Laser Designator: An otherwise unarmed militia who points a visible laser at a player's location from slightly beyond normal visual range and through walls (60/70m). If uninterrupted for 5 seconds, a JDAM will drop on the lasered location (with a few seconds' travel time), dealing massive damage. If stunned or hit by smoke, his timer will reset.
Militia Riot Team: Two militia who are programmed to stay together. One carries a riot shield and approaches the nearest player. The other follows closely behind the riot shield militia and fires a normal weapon. Easily stopped with explosives or flame, but it does force players with normal guns to flank or melee them. Can also come in a Juggernaut version.
Militia Blackhawk Drop: A UH-60 flies towards the players and instead of dropping a turret like the Little Bird and Sea Knight, spawns 4-6 militia over the span of 8 seconds.
Paradropped Vehicles: Militia mraps and growlers are instead paradropped in late waves (30+) to make them more of a threat rather than easy kills as they currently are. They spawn in Dino egg locations and are initially unable to move or shoot for several seconds, then able to shoot but not move while they land, then behave normally
Additional things from other suggestions:
The Smoke Mortar, Medivac Helicopter, M132 Flamethrower and C-RAM Turret would all be reasonable additions to militia forces in Survival.
Dinosaur Enemies[]
Flying Dinosaurs- Yes. They can go over walls now. Pterodactyls and the like. Targetable by SAMs and C-RAM.
Stealth Dinosaurs- "Clever Girl!" Compies or velociraptors that appear translucent, do not show up on minimap and do not show healthbars.
Burrowing Dinosaurs- A single compy or velociraptor quickly burrows out of a random empty space over the course of two seconds, ignoring spawn protection. Not very dangerous, but will keep players on edge.
Indominus Invinciblis Rex- The ultimate genetically engineered predator. Same health, damage and speed as a savage T-rex, but is stealthed like stealth dinosaurs, immune to stun, smoke and flame, regenerates health slowly even when taking damage, can't be locked on, and fires needles like a needlesaurus when not in melee. Has a special announcement and shows up in a wave by itself, just because it is that nasty.
Cosmetics[]
Dinosaur Customization[]
Description: Shard purchases to change dinosaur characters' appearances, including feathers (paleologically accurate!), hats, different coloration, body paint patterns, bone crests, etc.
Purpose: Give additional stuff to spend shards on, look cool, differentiate your dino from others.
Importance: Just fun to have. Also I really want a top hat on my velociraptor. Give me the hat. GIVE ME THE HAT.
Implementation: Each type once purchased, should be available for all dinos and can have presets for each dinosaur type, much like we can mix and match human cosmetics for each class.
Fullbody Costumes:[]
Description: More dramatically different costumes that still fit Dinogen's themes: Hazmat suit, EOD armor, Ghillie Suit, Land Warrior, WW2 Uniform, WW1 Uniform, Vietnam War Uniform.
Purpose & importance: As above.
Implementation: Each would be split into a Body and a Headgear option.
Balancing[]
Extend Tyrant game mode[]
Description: Whoever kills the T-rex becomes the new T-rex. The first player to reach a specified kill count (through T-Rex kills) wins.
Importance: Pretty important, considering Tyrant is one of the least popular game modes right now because it is incredibly short and strongly favors the humans.
Balance Evolution game defaults[]
Description: Shorten the Evolution timer to something more reasonable like 5 minutes and increase the # of kills needed in later evolutionary phases (after velociraptor).
Importance: Evolution heavily favors the dinosaurs even at the start of the game, and is also unpopular for this reason.
Replace Raptor Hunt with Raptor Hide and Seek in servers[]
Description: Same as the pre-set game (hardcore + jungle cover).
Importance: Would make Raptor Hunt way more interesting than a "humans shoot the raptors like mad for 5 minutes until the raptors are dead."
Ban AI Mines[]
Description: Prevent the enemy AI from equipping claymores or bouncing betties. C4 might be okay.
Importance: They keep blowing themselves and their team up by throwing mines in the way of incoming fire.
Misc[]
Dino Dragging[]
Some dinosaur bots can be set to drag their human target back to a nest instead of killing them. The dragged human cannot be targeted until it is released and will scream frequently. I figure it's a fun bit of flavor that may spice up scenarios, survival, story mode or even make for its own game mode.
Reserve Vehicle[]
The ability to reserve the driver's seat of a vehicle in survival. How it would work: current driver uses chat command to reserve vehicle and leaves. For the next 30 seconds after the command, no one else may enter the driver's seat either directly or through seat switching. Instead they will enter a passenger's seat. Cool down of a few minutes per person to prevent abuse. Also, this same function would apply 5 seconds after purchasing a vehicle, so only the buyer can drive it immediately.
Weapon restriction options[]
Description: New setting for custom or custom survival games, to allow or disallow weapon categories (assault rifle, melee, shotgun, etc).
Purpose: I want to have a crazy game mode where humans run around with only melee weapons and slap each other silly.
Importance: Just for fun. May help with weapon balance testing.
Implementation: Would not apply to presets, to minimize abuse. Obviously, all weapon categories are allowed by default.
"Clever Girl"[]
Importance: Just for fun.
Any time a human is within 10m of a Velociraptor, anything they say in chat is replaced with "Clever Girl".
[]
Importance: Useful for team multiplayer or survival, and seems pretty easy to implement.
There are four voice commands accessible by pressing the C-key. There's room on the interface for two more. I propose the following:
5: Request Retreat. "Fall back!" "Get to Cover!" "Find Shelter!" Telling teammates to fall back can be useful, it beats losing the squad. Bot players nearby could react by retreating from the nearest enemy briefly.
6: Request Flank Support. "They're flanking us!" "They're in our back lines!" "The enemy went around us, get them!" This is a great way to warn of dinosaur eggs in survival, the enemy hitting an objective in Destruction/Domination/CTF, or just a surprise attack in Team Deathmatch. It might be too difficult for bots to have an appropriate reaction to this command given that it is contextual, but that's okay.
Scenario Ideas[]
For my own use:
1) Gun Range
2) Tank Battle
3) Stealth Demo
4) C&C Generals Colonel Burton Mission
5) C&C Generals Survival: USA vs GLA
6) C&C Generals Survival: USA vs China
7) C&C Generals Survival: China vs USA
8) C&C Generals Survival: China vs GLA
9) C&C Generals Survival GLA vs USA
10) C&C Generals Survival GLA vs China