NOTA 1.82

[thelawenforcer]

ive said it before, and im going to say it again. vehicle artillery needs to be high traj only. They can waste big army on their own. Once a critical mass is reached they just rape.

[==Troy==]

same is true for vashps and mostly any other powerful long range unit...

[thelawenforcer]

no, vashps are ok these days. sure if they have like 20 vashps and u have no aa they will rape, but the fact is that veh arty is more of a siege weapon meant to break stalemates. they are quite good on their own though, and can deal shitloads of damages once u reach a critical number of 20 or so (them on their own that is). if they had only high traj, they would be almost totally helpless without support and in close range, which, imo, is the more desirable gameplay.

[==Troy==]

using same reasoning you could use those 20 vashps to pretty much rape any kbot AA.

As you might have guessed, I have the same hatred for vashps as you do for arty.

[thelawenforcer]

its a much bigger investment and takes along time to get 20 vashps. also, a good anti air combination totally rapes it and u basicly win if they go all-in vashps.

anyway, back to artillery. I dont know if the new collision spheres that make hits do alot more damage though( i noticed this with guardians too ). I know that people think that arty should be able to low traj on realism terms, but imo, gameplay should trump realism.

[Thor]

I'm sure the collision sphere thing has made them more powerful. I still don't know if that change was a bug or an intentional change.

The reason I liked artillery firing on low trajectory isn't so much realism as it is wanting to avoid the sort of ludicrous kinds of situation that you get with high trajectory only, where you have a group of units raining artillery down on themselves because they can't point their guns down. To me that breaks suspension of disbelief. Gameplay wise, artillery are supposed to be a soft counter to massed kbots. They're also one of the few tech 1 units that can fight back against dominators/fidos. They need low trajectory to be where it is to do both of those things.

[thelawenforcer]

cant you make them not fire at units that are within a certain range instead then? and low traj doesnt help them fight doms/fidos in any way, it just helps them rape advancing kbot armies of hammers/rockos.

[Thor]

There's no way to do minimum range, but I wouldn't really want to anyway. I'd rather lower turret turnrate to make them worse at point blank range.

Low traj does help tremendously against fidos, less against doms since they have more range obviously, but at the very least it forces them to be more careful and stay at max range. Raping kbot armies is sort of the point of artillery. They were never intended to be something only used to break stalemates.

[thelawenforcer]

it seems to me that it should play more of a support role, whilst atm, its fairly handy on its own and can sometimes be dealing the main core of the damage.

perhaps theres a way to make the projectile it fires different whether its on low traj or high traj. the low traj one could have less splash and damage, whilst the high traj stays the way it is? this seems to be the best compromise no?

[Thor]

It would be easy enough to do that, but I'd rather wait for the hitbox issue to be fixed first.

[Johannes]

http://springrts.com/mantis/view.php?id=2102#c5490

[thelawenforcer]

tnx johannes :)

[thelawenforcer]

that said, its not like arty werent a problem pre hitbox issue :s

[Thor]

http://springrts.com/mantis/view.php?id=2102#c5490

ah, that sucks. thanks for the link, johannes.

that said, its not like arty werent a problem pre hitbox issue :s

I'm not really sure that they were a problem. Massed artillery required no micro and was maybe effective against a few builds like ak/morty, but in the end a regular thud/hammer kbot army easily came out on top against unsupported artillery. I feel that artillery played an important part in the t1 metagame, where you transitioned from more mobile armies to less mobile ones. Core at least have the leveler, but a nerf would really damage the arm's ability to deal with kbot armies.

[thelawenforcer]

i dont think having a weaker low traj attack will compromise that shift, but it will make the midgame slightly more dynamic rather than revolving entirely around artillery. you should be trying to get a balance in terms of army support units composition. atm, its a case of more artillery is almost never a bad thing.

[Johannes]

http://springrts.com/mantis/view.php?id=2102#c5490

ah, that sucks. thanks for the link, johannes.

Why does it suck anymore? Just include that gadget and everything'll be fine

[Thor]

It just should've been fixed engine side. There's no justifiable reason for them to be changing default values for 3do's. All it does is screw up those older ta mods who use them. Any new mod is going to use s3o anyway.

I had to make the gadget take into account airplanes and custom collision types, but other than that it works. I'd still rather not have to use it since it means if you wanted to adjust a units hitsphere you'd have to use the gadget rather than the unit fbi.

[Thor]

Here's the new version: http://www.springfiles.com/show_file.php?id=2804

I put it on rapid this time. I don't have the rights to update the autohost though.

Changelog:

v1.634

-Fixed oversized unit hitspheres
-Fixed floating metal extractor hitbox location
-Mobile artillery turret turn rate lowered
-Pelican metal and energy cost increased 5%

Artillery are more vulnerable at point blank range now, it's much easier for peewees or whatever to wreak havoc among them if they get in close.

[Umrug]

Core hover scouts are slightly OP now (don't know about ARM ones), they make hovertanks obsolete. Also saw destroyer killed by 5 hover scouts, etc.

Not clear the intended usage for the new small Arm ship - 850 m is too expensive for scouting, and it dies to anything.

[Godde]

Core hover scouts are slightly OP now (don't know about ARM ones), they make hovertanks obsolete. Also saw destroyer killed by 5 hover scouts, etc.

Core Hoverscout got the same speed as core destroyers and arm light destroyers so scouts cant really chase down destroyers.
Hovertanks got longer range and almost the same speed so hoverscouts cant really chase them down.

Not clear the intended usage for the new small Arm ship - 850 m is too expensive for scouting, and it dies to anything.

The Arm Excalibur cost 1209 metal. The Core mandau blade cost 864.
Excalibur is alot better then the crusader destroyer against subs as it is faster and have more torpedoes. It can outmanouver hovers since it is so fast. Against mandau blades it is able to hold because of its torpedoes. It can stand up to equal mass of core destroyers under favourable circumstances.

Personally i prefer making crusaders instead Excaliburs because they got better AA and can outmicro all other other lowercost ships but when I wanna feel safe I make Excaliburs to deter mandau blades and submarines.