Had fighters of both flavours and a Screamer underneath it, no dice. Replay attached.

Complete Annihilation test-4682

It's buggy to boot, but I've always seen screamers take it down.

now I haven't looked at the replay (at work) but did you actually load the screamer with missiles?

Yep, it had 5 missiles. edit: just noticed that the replay is not, in fact, attached. Will re-attach tonight.

Owl is a bad unit. It floats outside of the rest of the game as it can only be hit by a handful of things and doesn't have much use anyway.

Well, you could say the same thing about nukes... come to think of it, the anti-nuke would make sense as the one and only weapon that can shoot down stratospheric aircraft like the Owl. But then you'd have to add a 1 at the beginning of the price tag, or else a Logos player would be able to scout with impunity until rather late in the game for only 800 metal.

... crap, now my mind is spitballing ideas where Logos' nuke launcher is replaced by a stratocraft factory, and Nova gets multiple warheads to choose from at their nuke launcher to compensate. Give Logos a bomber-stratocraft, a nuke-kamikaze stratocraft, and a scout-stratocraft (the owl) while Nova gets a nuclear missile, a capture-missile (with a teeny blast radius meant for capturing non-moving Saktoths), and a scouting missile that plants invisible spy towers with five-minute lifespans in a wide radius around the area where it hits. All of which is only preventable by the anti-nuke.

I'll shut up now.

edit: either way, the Owl doesn't seem to work.

The same thing applies to nukes. Though with nukes their role is to be able to destroy a base by killing a building with a precision strike lategame.

Owl on the other hand is much cheaper than nuke and doesn't affect the game nearly as much. The counters to it are an afterthought. If there were lots of satellites with counter systems and more ground interaction it would be fine as satellites would be incorporated as an important part of the game design.

satellite lab coming soon to theatres near you

This is another of cars poorly thought out ideas, you can tell them, they dont integrate with the rest of the game at all and are mostly just tacked-on, often using totally new, unique and mostly arbitrary dynamics. His 'burrowing' is the same (lucky, its only on chicken faction).

Ironically this (and burrowing) was origionally my idea, and precisely as something resembling a satellite lab!

The origional concept was that you would get a satellite control centre, which would be able to reveal areas of the map for an energy cost, or to build units, which would be shot down by antinukes (possibly anywhere on the map, possibly only within radius). It would be a bit like SC's com sat, and was meant to serve as a possible hard counter to cloaking. This was also meant to encourage earlier, more versatile antinukes, back when nuke rushing was a problem. We've fixed most of these problems though so a lot of that is no longer applicable.

There might be other satellites, such as a laser satellite (this eventually became the lazor/Starlight) which would make up for arms lack of a tacnuke.

The burrowing, FYI, was just meant to be something like the current Egg (but without such ugh micro). Just a moving pop-up, with a very visible damagemod when not firing.

We let this slide because its just an intel thing and not likely to ruin games, but ive always advocated for its removal. Its a silly unit and a bad mechanic.

At least it gets people talking about it outside 2 devs, as you see in this discussion.


Starcraft Terran magic map sight = boring. Shooting a ball out of the sky = fun.


This could still be interesting and viable, and Pxtl even gave some good ideas above. We already have a sputnik-like model for it to start with.

If Owl were removed I'd know that at least there's a framework in place to do some of the stuff suggested here (including my satellite widget which lets you select it from the ground). No hard feelings.

All the counters to owl cost more than the owl itself.

On the other hand... screamer is stupidly useful other than owl... and owl is slow and only gives LoS, it cant damage you.

somebody code up my orbital weapons idea for arm, and i promise I'll make a couple models to fill out te range of satellites and make a satellite fac.

I really shouldn't be making this many promises >_>
hopefully I can make good on them all.

You need someone to code weapons? I'm surprised; the only blueprints I have laying around for such things are quite complex. Show me what you want.

MidKnight, don't code/model anything right away and add it. Adding a whole new factory and game domain should be discussed on a wiki page on the CA site. If it isn't chances are it will end up as a tacked on unit like the current owl that noone uses because it is ignored as far as balance is concerned so therefor UP.

this is why people dont take CA seriously

the cartoony fx and loadscreens are why people dont take ca seriously

it dosnt LOOK serious

lol can you shut up about the fx ??

XTA/NOTA are equally as "cartoony" (cant even use that term because they arent cartoony) if not worse at times

and load screens can be easily changed they need a revamp anywayz.

i'm shocked! the loadscreens are the best bit of CA!!!

if you change them i'll leave forever and have to play BA =(

people "don't take ca seriously" because of stupid game concepts etc. everybody i've spoken to has really liked the loadscreens and the effects so????

How dare you categorize XTA and NOTA in the same pair you banana republic supporter. NOTA effects will never lag, while your lua lags. Xta loves making everything look dramatic and terribly awesome. You have alot of nerve to insult by sayings it may be worse at times, when your still using default explosions, finish your mod effects first, then you might be better.