Talk:Shotgun guy

I just made changes to the "Tactical analysis" section.  Because some of the edits are similar to edits that have been reverted in the past, I'll try to explain some of what I had in mind.

Things I changed:

• Perhaps it is a can of worms to talk about third-party levels in this kind of section.  That said, Most stock levels (and many third-party levels which would imitate them) is certainly not equivalent to many third-party levels.  The overwhelming majority of third-party levels have no design balance whatsoever, and therefore pay scant attention to the exact locations of monsters (there are startling exceptions, obviously, such as BLACKTWR.WAD).

• Killing two sergeants with one shell is hardly a routine occurrence, given that they have 60 total hit points and the average damage per shotgun blast is 63 (or much less than that, if you aren't standing close enough).  Three kills at a time is quite rare (glancing at m_random.c, it doesn't even look possible when all three are uninjured), and more than three at a time cannot occur.

• I expanded the monster infighting section, which made it sound like the sergeant's only advantage over the trooper was a higher hit point total.

• The sergeant's lack of melee attacks has already been mentioned in the previous section.

• Sentences like "The sergeant will engage in infighting against all other monsters, including other sergeants", while nearly accurate, are IMHO usually pedantic to include because they would be identical for all creatures with hitscan attacks and identical for all creatures with projectile attacks.  Exceptions should of course be noted when they occur (lost souls, arch-viles, pain elementals, the Icon, and Commander Keen).

Things I didn't change:

• I still think that vertical auto-aiming is occasionally an important part of solo play (WARHOUSE.WAD comes to mind).  It is especially relevant to hitscan enemies because they can retaliate easily, and for some reason I think of sergeants as being the main example in OEM levels, though I don't have any numbers to prove that.  I guess I'll just wait and add it to a general tutorial article (whenever there are some).

• I greatly toned down the "UV means more shells" statement.  The Thing statistics do seem to support my point in episode I.  (Is it my imagination or are an awful lot of WAD authors really infatuated with the SSG, sometimes to the point of "updating" a previously released level only by adding SSGs, leaving the fatal texture bugs in place?)

Ryan W 08:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)