Mod Ideas/Sentry Weapons

Description

A new exec function (bind) that deploys a little beacon. Several seconds after the beacon comes to rest on a surface it deploys a Sentry Weapon that would be a tripod with the weapon you had selected at tiem of deploying the beacon on top. it would then shoot at all of your enemies until it is destroyed.

Features

New Bind: A new bind that tosses a little beacon out infront of you, you deploys the Sentry Weapon after comign to rest.
Weapon: The Weapon on the tripod would be the weapon you had selected when you tossed the beacon.
AI: The Sentry Weapon would shoot at any of the deployer's enemies it sees (choosing one target at a time).
Health: You can destroy a Sentry Weapon by shooting it with any weapon, just as you would harm an enemy pawn. By default a new Sentry Weaponwould have 50 health, and possibly have 2 other new binds for raising or lowering the next Sentry Weapon you deploy's health, in incriments of 25, but for each 25 health you give the Sentry Weapon, you loose 10 health (or shield if you have it) when you toss it.
Hack?: Possibly an optional feature (on/off in config menu) to allow people to hack an enemy Sentry Weapon, turning it to their own team (or self in DM).
Limits: To keep the game from becoming to insane and spammy, there could be limits implemented, like when you respawn you have # (number specified in mut config) Beacons that you can deploy. Plus, there could be other limits, like only # Sentry Weapons can be in the game at a time (once the limit is hit, nobody can use their beacons until an existing Sentry Weapon is destroyed), each team coudl have a limit of 2/3 of the game limit (or a unique number).
Pickups: With the Beacon limit on respawn, people will want a way to get more beacons, im sure... so possibly when you die, if you have leftover beacons, they are scattered around your corpse as pickups for anybody to loot. These could also be used as respawnign pickups for mappers to use, to make a new mape more interesting.

Notes

I (Blaaguuu) may start coding on this in the near future... I wanted to post the idea here to see what you folks think of it, and mayeb get some good feedback and suggestions

Comments

Mychaeel: Great idea. Sounds like something that could be very useful in almost any sort of team game.

Tarquin: Yup!

MythOpus: LoL. From ChaosUT no ?

Wormbo: Yup, Chaos UT has a "turret launcher" and AFAIK they are going to re-implement it in Chaos UT 2: Evolution.

MythOpus: Can you feel the love ? Ya, baby!

Blaaguuu: I have never played Chaos UT, so i have no idea how their sentry functioned... did it use the weapon you have selected, like this? Also, i have never tried coding anything quite like this... so anyone have suggestions on where to start? should i extend the actor class, or what? i waas thinkign maybe using a pawn for it... but i dunno if that woudl be best...

ZxAnPhOrIaN: Chaos UT is a 1337 mod with new weapons, powerups, etc. It even was included in the GOTY edition of UT!

dUc0N: Sounds good. Another couple ideas for you:

Make them sticky - Set it up where if you put it on the ground, it spawns a tripod-style weapon, but you could also shoot them onto ceilings and walls for a weapon that looks like it's meant to be there.
Limit ammo - I'd recommend setting an ammo limit per sentry. Maybe when a player destroys one it does no explosion damage, but if it shoots out all its ammo, then it explodes roughly the size of a standard rocket? shock combo? bigger?

Mr Evil: This isn't that far off what I did for the 'Sentinel' automatic cannons: http://www.cheese83.freeserve.co.uk/unreal/woe.htm

The Chaos UT2 team will be basing their turrets on this code too.

MythOpus: I was wondering if, you Mr Evil, or anyone else who has a working turret system can make a sort of tutorial on how to make a basic turret that fires on enemy players and such. This shall be a great help to me, and anyone else who is trying to make their own turret...