Chill out guys, if someone takes a shot at you personally it's best just to ignore it, or let one of the devs/admins know if it's really uncalled for/provacative.
Back on topic, I've been tossing around ideas for ejection systems for awhile. I like the time limit idea, basically, this is how it would work with regards to our coding system:
Because we have a way of turning gravity off for vehicles, we would still leave gravity on for players so they could walk around in cap ships. However, that causes a problem for ejecting because if we just jump out of a vehicle, the player will freefall. Therefore, in this environment the player would need to eject with some sort of vehicle, fortunately BF2142 already has this built in with the pod system found in the APCs, so this should be relatively easy to implement. The pod mesh would be invisible (or maybe in the form of a little backpack or something) and when activated, the pod would shoot out of the craft with an initial velocity which would taper to zero in all directions (accomplished using a "thruster belt" or something like that). I would give them absolutely zero manuevering options so they would need someone else to come to them. Also, to reduce the number of people bailing just before being killed by someone in a dogfight with them, I would suggest a 1-2 second launch delay on the ejection seat. In other words, it would take 1-2 seconds to eject after the key has been pressed.
I like the idea of a timer and have kept it in mind with all of my ideas. I think that the timer should be about 45 seconds to 1 minute, no longer, and if the player isn't picked up by a nearby cap ship, rescue shuttle, or killed by enemy guns/fighters by the time the timer runs out, the player's "life support" will cease to function and they will lose health steadily untill they die.
I also like the beacon idea, and I also like the idea to have the beacon to be seen by both sides. It could function similar to the revive symbol in standard BF2142, but it would be visible by both sides and the symbol would be different depending on whose side the stranded pilot is on (rebel symbol for rebel pilots, etc.). I would also like to see a visual effect on the stranded pilot himself such as a blinking light or something.
The issue of how the pilot would be rescued still needs some thought. The problem here is that as soon as the pilot exits the escape module he begins freefall, I think a python solution might be in order here, but that remains to be seen and depends on our coders.
Closed Alpha Test & Deth..
