Gameplay issues

[SirMaverick]

1. Communism discourages expanding and encourages porcing

Resources are shared. You have a disadvantage if you don't share your work. Communism promotes team work.

With communism mode, expanding is still encouraged as a collective but for the newbies it just means that they can sit in their little corner while the pros struggle with diminished metal income.

Its a nice option but newbs really break it. As long as its not default though I don't see a problem.

Player who sit in their corner are a problem with every game setup. This is not a problem created by communism mode.

[SirMaverick]

Whats so wrong with micro then?? Automate it if you cant handle it, whatever, but dont dumb down the units just because of that...

You can disable the micro widgets.They aren't very clever, every experienced player can micro better. They just help to lower the disadvantages of new players. I see most of them just selecting their units and clicking attack on one unit.

Don't you want a challenge even when playing new players? Don't you want an interesting game that is not a newbie bashing that ends after 5 minutes?

[Gota]

Whats so wrong with micro then?? Automate it if you cant handle it, whatever, but dont dumb down the units just because of that...

You can disable the micro widgets.They aren't very clever, every experienced player can micro better. They just help to lower the disadvantages of new players. I see most of them just selecting their units and clicking attack on one unit.

Don't you want a challenge even when playing new players? Don't you want an interesting game that is not a newbie bashing that ends after 5 minutes?

Let me play the devil's advocate.
Noob bash is a result of a non existing ranking and balance system.
And obviously you did not add the micro widgets with the plan to remove them when there is a better ranking and matchmaking system.

Another possible issue is that by adding these widgets you might be prolonging the time it would have taken these noobs to learn to micro their units.

[Licho]

Atm they dont help newbies at all because they need "fight" command to activate..

Which is of course never used by most players..

[Regret]

Atm they dont help newbies at all because they need "fight" command to activate..

Which is of course never used by most players..

Oh the superior reasoning.

[SirMaverick]

IMO the main thing about ca is the Issue at start where you have a huge selection of starts(many labs that cost the same) while not enough time to scout and decide on a course of action,based on the enemies actions,making it very random and out of the control of the player.

Every start can be countered.
And: You should not react on the enemy actions, you should force the enemy to react on yours.

Visually i personnaly dislike the default cursor cause it is rounded and feels clumsy.

I never look at the cursor or take any notice of it. I often don't even recognize the difference between CA and other mods. I concentrate on the game.

Final thing is that i think CA needs to stop making balance changes at all and only deal with adding missing units to labs and finishing the grand design.

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 14#p374714

Balance changes need to be tested over months so changing something and than reverting after a week will not get you very far(sometimes units that seemed oped or underpowered will become balanced once the game is more or less streamlines (people find optimal solutions to many different situations).

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 65#p374765
OP/UP units won't get balanced by themselves.

[Regret]

You should not react on the enemy actions

Damn. Are you taking your pills?

[SirMaverick]

Let me play the devil's advocate.
Noob bash is a result of a non existing ranking and balance system.

No balance can prevent that in a game an experienced player and a new player might fight against each other.

Another possible issue is that by adding these widgets you might be prolonging the time it would have taken these noobs to learn to micro their units.

Maybe. But you get better results for microing yourself. A fact you have with or without the widgets.

[SirMaverick]

You should not react on the enemy actions, you should force the enemy to react on yours.

Damn. Are you taking your pills?

Out of stock. Gonna buy some tomorrow.

[Gota]

CA is perfect

K my mistake.You don't have to counter my points I was just telling you what i dislike as a player when playing CA.
Since i understand CA is interested in actually getting more players now..
You can do whatever you want with this.

[Google_Frog]

1) early scouting

Yes I agree this is an issue - too many options and not enough time to scout. This is especially apparent in planetwars where people often coop on same lab..

I agree we should try to prevent boost on units and only allow it on units..

I'm not sure about this, in 1v1s there seems to be enough time to scout. You can't scout to see what factory they're about to start but neither can they.

There are a lot of consequences of removing unit boost. Firstly it will prevent the most effective and extreme rushes, pw, rocko, bd etc... I'm not sure if this is a good idea because 1v1s have shown that a reasonably normal start can counter these rushes. Secondly this means that a commander can assist a factory without using up boost. The only thing boost can now be spent on is turrets and economy, this means that turret rush will be much more viable.

2) lab reclaim

This is just a gameplay preference, i never reclaim lab, i keep both. Perhaps there is more general reclaim problem - reclaim gives you 100% metal back.

I think 100% reclaim in general is a problem. Don't build storage, build fusions. Fusions with 100% reclaim store metal and they create metal with overdrive. It also allows you to reclaim an army once the enemy has hardcounters to it with the best example being aircraft. We could drop the reclaim down to 75% to keep fast unit switching open as an option but not without it's metal costs. I know that currently switching has E costs but that's not quite enough.

[Licho]

I now consider disabling boost assist on allies and slowing it down a bit (20%) ..
In team games on cramped maps (typical for planetwars), this gives both team some chance to scout.

[Regret]

I now consider disabling boost assist on allies and slowing it down a bit (20%) ..
In team games on cramped maps (typical for planetwars), this gives both team some chance to scout.

Your balancing methods are amazing!

Play a game => get owned by x in a game => nerf x

Boost is not a problem, playing cramped games is a problem.

[Licho]

My balancing methods? Do you realize this has been talked about for 10 months by the CA devs and i was initially against any boost restrictions?

But as planetwars cannot avoid playing with many people on cramped map, we need better solution.

And I changed my opinion several days ago when I was on attacking side that cooped to get brawlers and won games quickly, alienating newbies. It has nothing to do with "being owned", stop being so self centered lol..

[Regret]

My balancing methods? Do you realize this has been talked about for 10 months by the CA devs and i was initially against any boost restrictions?

But as planetwars cannot avoid playing with many people on cramped map, we need better solution.

And I changed my opinion several days ago when I was on attacking side that cooped to get brawlers and won games quickly, alienating newbies. It has nothing to do with "being owned", stop being so self centered lol..

You contradict yourself very well!

Newbs getting owned has nothing to do with "being owned"?

As a sidenote: you are trying to fix stacked games by changing game balance. Which is stupid at best.

[lurker]

Noobs getting owned by a longtime player has nothing to do with a dev nerfing out of a hissy fit when they get owned, correct.

Why can't planetwars avoid it? There aren't enough big maps?

[Gota]

Its not about stacked teams.
It a general design decision that alters gameplay in a certain predictable way.
By allowing boost you make the buildtime/movement speed higher thus making scouting at the start of the game less effective.
That coupled with a larger diversity at the beginning of the game means a double blow vs predictability and the effectiveness of scouting.

If you have a larger amount of options at the beginning you can counter that by allowing boost to only work with turrets and regular structures.
This will make it easier to have longer starts or much easier to defend positions at the beginning when you still dont know what to expect.

The stacking of players or imbalanced teams are a different issue all together.

[Pxtl]

The thing to remember is that, unless a boost-assisted rush happens, an LLT and an MT can handle just about any rush-attack. Even with boost, a player is going to have a hard time pushing out a serious force that can't be brought down by LLT+MT+Comm, much less that with any units you have ready at the time.

Most CA games start the same as a BA game - with jeffies/peewees/fleas trying to take down whatever they can.

This is why boost-assisted rush is a problem. That goes out the window and you get the "guess what the other guy is going to throw at you" problem. But this gets fixed by using the "disable boost on armed units" option. ALternately, you could create a "disable boost on allied units" option, but the first option has the double-advantage that also stops boost-commrushes.

Yes, factories have weaknesses - the Arm veh lab is missing an antiswarmer. Veh labs have weak anti-air. These things will make it a little harder for you, but not enough to throw the game one way or another... and scouting will work at findout out what to do about them (ie - tacbots means you have to defend your cliffs)

[Neddie]

1. Impulse is overpowered on some maps, it should be overriden just like wind etc

If you need to override the map, don't play on it.

I really doubt that gravity values on most maps were set with balance in mind, they're more along the lines of "cool, floating shrapenel". Those maps weren't made for CA anyway. The widely varing gravity values make impulse based weapons impossible to balance so should definatly be overriden.

I know a few map makers, myself included, who knew exactly what we were doing when we set our gravity values. Different values don't make impulse impossible to balance, they make play slightly different on different maps, which is why you would have different maps to begin with. A flat override is foolish and lazy, a override with a controlled range of values is less so but still such.

You build your balance around a normative planet type, and a normative player count, then you expand the model to encompass a range covering a supermajority of planet types and player counts. From there, if people wish to experience greatly different balance through using a non-standard planet type or player distribution that is entirely their concern. It is not your responsibility as a developer to limit the range of possibility to some generic standard, it is your responsibility to establish a standard baseline.

[Regret]

Noobs getting owned by a longtime player has nothing to do with a dev nerfing out of a hissy fit when they get owned, correct.

Strawman.

Why can't planetwars avoid it? There aren't enough big maps?

There are enough maps, but too many players, and planetwars for CA has a failed design. There is only one server, there is no limit of players per map, and there is not an equal (or at least close) representation of skilled players in CA playerbase for pure core/arm teams. Hence why arm got stacked so horribly last planetwars galaxy.

I know a few map makers, myself included, who knew exactly what we were doing when we set our gravity values.

I bet you totally knew that someday would come a balance change for impulse to be x value in y mod so you precisely knew what to set the gravity to.