[Crimson_Fox]

Originally Posted by dacomb So there are never any kits in the game short of the occasional randomly spawned kit?

No, all the items are the same except the safe room medkits. Those are replaced with pain pills.

Originally Posted by dacomb I don't mind if the players have a starting kit... it's the kits every 100 yards throughout the map that's silly. I don't even mind 1 defib in the safe room that forces the player to choose between defib or kit potentially leaving one kit behind. Personally, I don't mind if the survivors make it to the saferoom... So long as it's a fair and balanced game...

I completely agree about excessive medkits. In fact, other than the safe room medkits, I had them completely disabled in my L4D1 server. The problem I find with L4D2 is that you can no longer prevent the medkits from spawning with a cvar and there is yet to be a plugin that prevents all random medkits. I don't want to prevent some of the medkits only to have one team get an unfair advantage because they didn't get the same amount of kits as the other. I figured I'd try this approach since I can guarantee both teams will not get starting medkits, thereby keeping things fair for both.

I don't mind survivors making it to the safe room as much as them always using the same strategy to do it: go the shortest path as quickly as possible. I don't feel that rushing itself is the problem but rather that the alternatives are not nearly as effective. By replacing starting medkits, rushing is made more difficult. The idea is that by making other strategies closer in terms of effectiveness, it gives the survivors an incentive to try different ones.

Originally Posted by dacomb So far all the plugins that strip survivors of everything seem as unbalanced as the vanilla versus mode. For my part, I've been trying to find the best balance of SI tweaks in my config along with various plugins to provide an intense game where the survivors can rush if they want but can still be stopped by an organized attacked.

I'm right there with you bud. Two of my favorite plugins is Ghost Fly and Infected Character Select. They allow the infected to react quicker to opportunities and coordinate better. This makes them more effective without nerfing the survivors or buffing the infected.

Originally Posted by dacomb Really the only problem I've seen is when there's 4 or sometimes 6 kits 3/4 of the way to safe room... The Parish Map 2 comes to mind... Anyway, I like the idea of your plugin but it would be nice if there were someway to have control over the overall placement of kits and pills and such.

So would I! If there was a plugin that consistently removed all the medkits I'd be one of the first to load it. =)

Originally Posted by dacomb The Scavenge Remix plugin comes to mind but I'm not sure if the concept could be applied to Health related items.

It's not quite the same. Gas cans are pre-placed items, that can be changed pretty easily. So can pre-placed medkits. The problem is that the director can spawn medkits dynamically- those are harder to change. There was talk over at Crow's Annoying Item Remover about using a new feature where items can be changed as the director spawns them. That has a lot of potential, but meanwhile I figure I'd work on a couple of other ideas of my own.

I figure worst case I can give it a crack if it's not ready by the time I'm done.