ACF General Guidelines - nrlulz/ACF GitHub Wiki
This page will show the official guidelines for balanced combat with ACF- you don't have to use them, but not using them removes the challenge and balance of using ACF. ACF is all about the balance between firepower, mobility, and protection, you must sacrifice one to have two. Non-combat vehicles are exempt, you can do whatever with them and ACF.
Building:
-Since the introduction of clientside camera controller, there is now no disadvantage to camera control (the previous challenge between cam and non-cam was input lag), so the guidelines need to change accordingly to help balance it out. New pod guidelines:
If your vehicle is cam controlled, you have a few options:
-If you want to use a laid flat pod, you must possess a turret hole in the hull roof. This way, protecting your turret will be required unless you want to be blown to hell. A hole will only add a couple of props and will even save you some weight. Be reasonable and realistic, don't put a pinhole in hull roof.
-If you wish to use a vanilla seat (airboat jeep etc), it must reside only in the turret.
-If you want no turret hole and a pod only in the hull, you must use an acf seat/breen chair that is upright with no more angle than 45 degrees.
-Turret holes must have an open-air connection to the inside of the tank. No props can block the ring.
-If you have no turret, and the gun is in a casemate arrangement (partially under armor, meaning you need a large empty space for traverse and elevation--like a StuG--and are taking an actual penalty in internal volume for the arrangement), you can use a small pod as long as it's tilted less than 45 degrees back.
These changes will hopefully help eliminate overpowered faux turret tanks, and add incentive to more varied designs.
For NON camera control vehicles, you can use any seat model in the vehicle as they usually require to be in the turret regardless.
-All aircraft must use acf seat/breen chair.
-Don't clip any acf components or seats inside of each other, like seats inside of the gun, engine inside of ammo, and joining engines at the crankshaft. Stuff can touch, but not be inside each other. Remember, be wary of your main gun when it elevates, as the breech often moves down into the hull, which can clip components there.
-"Overlapping" is decided by the smallest possible interpretation, so there are no complaints or confusion. Overlaps of 1-2% aren't considered a big deal. If questionable ask admins.
-Don't use setMass to control armor characteristics or circumvent your vehicle's total weight
-Don't fading door your internal components
-Don't put anything under world, use setang aim, spawners, etc.
-Try to keep your weight reasonable, balance typically plateaus at 60 tons, after that and it will become a slugging match
-Keep your vehicle's design reasonable, don't make a tank with an unarmored turret, or a 50 ton fighter jet, things like that.
-Use a reasonable amount of physical components. Invest time in weld-parenting (parenting physical armor), and don't really use more than 12 total wheels. Wheels are the laggiest part of a tank.
The following rules apply to all vehicles of any type
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Using the E2 functions
E:Propdraw/E:propnotsolidis not allowed on any components of your vehicle, including armor/props -- Only use it for detail props -
Visual clipping your wheels to make them invisible to acf shells is illegal.
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Vehicles should be remotely killable, exploits are severely discouraged. Giant 30m thick armor boxes are not fun to fight.
Combat:
-Don't stick your guns inside each others' tanks at point blank
-If someone has flipped, try not to be rude and shoot them while they're recovering
-Don't use player tracking or any kind of radar/entity tracking
-Fire control systems are fine, but keep it reasonable, don't make an auto-tracking 100% accurate orbital spergebeam