FFAmod Recommended Settings

The mod is compiled to run the recommended settings as the default. You don’t have to set any mod cvars (except perhaps the MOTD cvars) if you want the recommended settings.

I strongly recommend sticking with the default settings. I have played JK2, Jedimod, and Jediplus a lot and spent a lot of that time working with other players to determine the most balanced settings for saber play. Note, I did not say the most fun settings, but the most balanced. That is, these settings provide for a number of different gameplay styles, each requiring skill, but none having a significant advantage over the other. If you use the defaults, you should not have to insist on battling players with exactly the same saber configuration that you want to use in order to have a fair fight.

I wont give a detailed, blow-by-blow analysis of each of the settings, but let me illustrate with a few cases.

Multiple Saber Blades.

It is very much fun to play with dual sabers or dual bladed sabers. However,

each saber blade does damage. A player with two double bladed sabers has a heck of an advantage over a player with a single blade. The default settings for FFAmod provide a balance for this situation in the following way:

	With only a single blade you have access to the blue, yellow and red stances. These stances have the most powerful attacks.
	With multiple blades you can have a single dual bladed saber or two single bladed sabers. Your blade advantage is thus limited to two-to-one rather than a possible four-to-one advantage!
	With multiple blades you can only use the orange and purple styles. These are styles have weaker attacks.

As a result of these restrictions, the most effective single blade saber style and the most effective multi-blade styles neatly divide into what I can the Obi-Wan style (traditional jedi) and the Darth Maul style (spinning, leaping attacks). Single bladed players using the Obi-Wan style and multi-bladed players using the Darth Maul style are quite well balanced and you can have a very interesting match testing the two styles against each other.

On the other hand, if you allow all blade combinations to use all saber styles (and you can do this if you want with FFAmod), then everyone will play with dual dual-bladed sabers (or be dead quickly) and madly cycle through all five styles.

Saber Blocking

Saber blocking occurs when you throw your saber at a player who's saber is defending (i.e. they are not attacking). When this happens, your saber will be blocked and knocked to the ground. The saber will remain on the ground for a random amount of time and then return to you. During the time the saber is knocked down: the saber remains off, you cannot use force, and you are defenceless save to run lick heck to avoid attack.

Saber blocking is a counter to players who do nothing but stand away and throw their saber. With saber blocking, saber throwing should only be done when you know that your opponent is exposed to an attack.

This makes saber throwing more balanced with other types of saber attack.

Jetpack

The jetpack is normally configured to consume 5 units of fuel for every second that it is on. This added "realism" is intended to limit the abuse of the jetpack. While the jetpack is on, you cannot ignite your saber nor use force powers (by default).

Message of the Day

You can set a 16 line MOTD, one line per cvar mod_motdX (X=1,...16). This message will be sent to players when they first join battle or when a new map starts. This MOTD will not be displayed until they actually join battle so you don't have to worry about the time they might spend fiddling with their setup. The message disappears after a short time.