NOTA 1.82

[PepeAmpere]

spawn bug for sinleplayer - in springlobby skirmish or via .exe with spring 95.0

(sad noone noticed in public testing in last weeks)

Its minor bug, i can fix it, but not worth of new stable release, because:

• NOTA currently stay at 94.1 and wait for 96.0.
• Suggested way of playing/testing skirmish is hosting game via notalobby (no matter which engine you choose, game starts correctly).

Anyway thx for reporting it and thx knorke for a link.

[MasterZH]

Will you update (unit) stats on our homepage?

! all features get 5x more hitpoints

Is this some kind of joke? Do you mean "! pop-up weapons(CORE:Toaster,Viper),! static and mobile antinukes, advanced metal makers..." have now 5-times more health? Toaster>(2077x5)=10385 health?!? or am i reading it wrong...

! all refuel times tripled

Isnt this a bit overkill? They will spent more time on ground refueling then in air fighting...

Grayhound shoot range decreased (800 -> 675)(-15%)

So snipers, mortys, levelers have (almost) same range as our favorite range "sniper" tank? And 25range difference between grayhound and goliath??? You are kidding me... grayhound/fido already miss 50% shots even on flat surface with few wrecks... its already damm hard to use them and do any significant dmg to armor-whores but this... I want to see any1 try kitting with 25range difference...

Fido shoot range decreased (750 -> 625)

Ohh so those pure robots without armor now need to get in range of 550dmg/per shot monsters to try something... i see what you did there... (goli need just 2 shots to kill fido right?)

Conquistador all weapons damage lowered -20 %

I dont know... may i ask why

[PepeAmpere]

Will you update (unit) stats on our homepage?

Oh yeah! Sorry! I still move it in front of me :) There was no time for it :)

! all features get 5x more hitpoints

Is this some kind of joke? Do you mean "! pop-up weapons(CORE:Toaster,Viper),! static and mobile antinukes, advanced metal makers..." have now 5-times more health? Toaster>(2077x5)=10385 health?!? or am i reading it wrong...

No no no, dont worry, in result it means wrecke dont get some engine-prepared value like 10-20% HP of source unit. It just fast fix of problem that wreckes were destroyed very easy in prev versions + spring 94.1+, there was almost nothing to reclaim. In combination with smaller spheres of all units and wreckes its now possible to use dead units as obsatacles and increase the role of reclaim and make possible to ressurect again (both kind of broken by Spring 94.1)

Generaly 5x is not really much, if you imagine result hp is between 50%-100% of HP of source unit.

Change in last months is this:

• Spring 91.0 + NOTA 1.76: normal HP for deads, "random" crazy big spheres for deads
• Spring 94.1 + NOTA 1.76: really low HP for deads, generaly big spehres for deads
• Spring 94.1/95.0 + NOTA 1.80: a bit more then normal HP for deads, normal spheres for deads

! all refuel times tripled

Isnt this a bit overkill? They will spent more time on ground refueling then in air fighting...

Check it, time isnt such long. And btw, flying not fighting plane dont use much fuel, so time in the air is still in majority.

More in dev discussion.

Grayhound shoot range decreased (800 -> 675)(-15%)

So snipers, mortys, levelers have (almost) same range as our favorite range "sniper" tank? And 25range difference between grayhound and goliath??? You are kidding me... grayhound/fido already miss 50% shots even on flat surface with few wrecks... its already damm hard to use them and do any significant dmg to armor-whores but this... I want to see any1 try kitting with 25range difference...

Fido shoot range decreased (750 -> 625)

Ohh so those pure robots without armor now need to get in range of 550dmg/per shot monsters to try something... i see what you did there... (goli need just 2 shots to kill fido right?)

Both changes proposed by Thor, there are tons of testing time + thinking before this change and generaly the price decrease should balance the range nerf and reason is to prevent range domminance (arty-like non-contact style of play) of anti-armor units owner.

Long detailed discussion about it in dev discussion.

Conquistador all weapons damage lowered -20 %

I dont know... may i ask why

Similar reasons for this change as anti-armor range nerf above.

[MasterZH]

....the price decrease should balance the range nerf and reason is to prevent range domminance (arty-like non-contact style of play) of anti-armor units owner.

Ok so i know this is not the right place but as those changes i am referring to are already in effect in latest nota version i will bring it to more "open field(here)" - to discuss. (also its messy to have conversation in google docs style)

So you are saying they had "too much range?" Isnt 1 of biggest arm features "range"? Now greyhound look like "Indian" T1,5 tank with machine gun. Will nota devs fix things by allowing more spam? This dont sound like NOTA... You didnt balance range you totally remove it!
You are referring to arty style but grayhound cant fire over hills and even small obstacles on overally flat battlefield are fatal! Their rate of fire cant keep up with increasing spam in late game and ANY battlefield after few mins of fighting is becoming non-usable for them. Before they had chance to kill armored units behind spam but now i really doubt it.


Rockos can keep grayhounds away, a.k.s can feed hungry grayhound cannons, and goliaths can get even closer almost aligned with rest of forces.

Congratulations you just removed grayhound from building list of 90% of players. (except moon quartet of course)

[Draven]

WTF is with the change to greyhound and fido range! WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF MIND FUCKING BLOWN IS ALL I CAN SAY. What a great way to get units that are hardly used anyway to be used more. NERFT THEM LOL. GH now has same (basically) range as Goli LOL LOL LOL ROFLOL!!!!!

[PepeAmpere]

The basic idea is right i think, maybe the values are not perfect, i can agree with it.

Future move in this place can be

• decsreasing model size (and hitsphere) OR
• adding few HP OR
• lower reload OR
• again decrease price

If nothing prove, there is still possible to move settings back, but im almost sure range would never be 800 again, i can imagine 750.

[Godde]

Now I'm sort of out of the loop but I don't see why you have to change so much balance seemingly out of the blue.

• ! static and mobile antinukes, advanced metal makers and closeable factories of both sides gets 4x bigger damage resistance when closed, solars 2x bigger then before (=> 6x total)

I don't really see why any of this is necessary. Do you think that antinukes were too easy to kill?

• ! all features get 5x more hitpoints

This is a very big gameplay change. Personally I have noticed quite alot of bugs where units end up inside wrecks being untargetable. We will have to see how common this is in 94.1 and future spring engine versions with the new unit collision volumes.

[*] default burn time increased (450 -> 600)

Units rarely die from burning so I guess its fine if its more significant since it felt mostly graphical before.

AIR

• ! all refuel times tripled
• ! repair rate of airpads and carriers decreased by 75 % (800 -> 200) and airfields by 33 % (300 -> 200)

This also seems to come right out of the blue. Strong air have been the staple of NOTA and now you have to perform micro to repair your airplanes?

[*] rest air-bombs has generaly 150% area of effect to compensate smaller hitspheres of targets and preserve old balance (Hellfish, Vashp, Wing, Centurion, Thunder, Shadow)

50% seems alot and it shouldn't be applied equally to all units if you want to counteract the effect of smaller hitspheres.
If you want to "maintain" the balance then you should calculate the median radius change from all units and then add that radius to all AoE bombs equally.

[*] Tornado/Voodoo and Hawk/Vamp get flares (salvo 1, reload 0.1, effeciency 0.7, delay 0.1)
[*] Hawk/Vamp - HP lowered to 75 % (450/440 -> 338/330), stay stealth but cloak cost increased 4x (7 -> 28) and its default OFF

Also some big balance changes.

GROUND

• Indian +20 % acceleration (0.018 -> 0.0216)
• Indian -20 % (weaker) rear armor (1.6 -> 1.92 = 160% recieved dmg -> 192% recieved dmg)
• Indian +10 % damage (340 -> 374)
• Panther build time increased +15 % (4453 -> 5121 = 0:22 -> 0:25)
• Bulldog +10 % fire range (500 -> 550) and bigger mass (2000 -> 2500)
• Bulldog build time lowered on 75 % (14661 -> 10995), which means 73 -> 54 seconds with full resources income (35 for Indian, 42 for Goliath)
• fat tanks (Reaper, Bulldog, Goliath) able to crush cheap tech1, Krogoth, Pod and Bug Queen are able to crush all tech1

Also big balance changes.

[*] Grayhound shoot range decreased (800 -> 675) and price decreased by 20 % (M: 577 -> 462, E: 3805 -> 3044)
[*] Fido shoot range decreased (750 -> 625) and price decreased by 20 % (M: 308 -> 246, E: 3056 -> 2445)

These are some even more major changes. I liked the gameplay that greyhounds promoted. Greyhounds were expensive while you had to struggle to keep them alive and build up a force that could kill enemy spam and actually reach the Goliaths. The Greyhounds will face attrition from vehicle artillery, air, Dominators and rocket artillery. Even though there have been a major price cut they are gone have to go toe to toe with Goliaths in their range and any spam near the Goliaths will still prevent them from actually engaging the Goliaths.

[*] Pyro, Zeus, Warrior, H.A.K. moved to Medium armor class where they should belong (from crazy places they were before)[/list][/list][/list]

What is the role of the Warrior and the HAK? Are they supposed to replace Peewees and AKs? Going from light armour class to medium might just do that as they are gonna take alot less damage from alot of stuff.
I thought that Warriors and HAKs were supposed to be heavier and slower variants that excelled later in the game rather than being an outright upgrade.

I'm very conservative with NOTA balance. I think it have been fine in most cases and that Core and ARM have their differences. However it doesn't feel like the factions are getting differentiated by these updates but rather that they approach eachother in similarities.
But I guess that since both PepeAmpere and Thor is doing this together that you have a vision for the game.
It seems that you want to make all units viable and add more units to NOTA. I'm not sure I want that because I think NOTA balance is just fine as is but the changes could turn out for the better.

[Thor]

A lot of these changes have been in the test versions for a while, so I'm a bit surprised at such strong reactions. Some of the changes are my ideas and some are Pepe's. Ultimately Pepe is the one who implemented everything, so I can't speak to all the changes. Some may be too extreme, but the fastest way to zero in on the best balance imo is to make a larger change and then dial it back if necessary, rather than doing lots of small incremental changes.

The greyhound/fido change was my idea. You can read the reasoning on the google docs page so I won't repost the whole thing here. While the values may need tweaking I think the general idea was sound. I thought greyhounds were really boring tactically to use and to fight against (in that if you used them right you never really interacted directly with the enemy units), and it felt like they broke the game's internal logic in that they had the attributes of an artillery unit without the decreased mobility, which felt completely broken to me, although yes, there were still ways to deal with them (air, rocket arty). The -20% cost should make them viable as a main battle tank kind of unit. No, they're not a hard counter to goliaths anymore, but they're a lot more effective against regular armies, and there's still the penetrator. The idea wasn't to nerf them so much as to change their role from sniper tank to battle/skirmish tank. With the reduced range and cost their usefulness will be a bit less variable depending on map type (moon vs porc).

Conquistador all weapons damage lowered -20 %

I dont know... may i ask why

it's been this way since somewhere around 1.79g or so. Before that Core and Arm cruisers had about identical theoretical dps but in practice the core cruiser missed 1/2 to 2/3 of shots. Core sea wasn't really viable in large part because of this. And in Arm mirror matches, most game outcomes were determined by the railgun cruiser because it was so damn good against destroyers, which to me should be more the role of capital ships. I think the sea gameplay has really benefited from this change.

AIR

• ! all refuel times tripled
• ! repair rate of airpads and carriers decreased by 75 % (800 -> 200) and airfields by 33 % (300 -> 200)

This also seems to come right out of the blue. Strong air have been the staple of NOTA and now you have to perform micro to repair your airplanes?

This change has been in since 1.79p. I know it sounds like a really drastic change, but I don't think it's as bad as it sounds. It does slow down how frequently you can do airstrikes, but most of the wait time between strikes has always been on the travel time to and from the target. This just increases the time by about 10-15 seconds, depending on the unit. It does mean that massing air is a bit more expensive because of the extra ~800 metal you'll have to spend on airpads. I can see how it could potentially be more of an annoying change than anything though, but I thought it seemed ok from what I played.

[*] Tornado/Voodoo and Hawk/Vamp get flares (salvo 1, reload 0.1, effeciency 0.7, delay 0.1)
[*] Hawk/Vamp - HP lowered to 75 % (450/440 -> 338/330), stay stealth but cloak cost increased 4x (7 -> 28) and its default OFF

Also some big balance changes.

The tornado/voodoo were way worse than t1 fighters before, and there was no reason you would ever have wanted to build them in any circumstances (well, unless there was no land to build an airport I guess). The hawks/vamps may be a little bit too powerful now with the flares at current settings, but it can always be tweaked back a bit. In terms of gameplay, the idea was to differentiate stealth fighters and interceptors a bit, since it felt like the stealth fighter with its high hp kind of eclipsed the interceptor's role as a more heavily armed fighter and bomber killer.

GROUND

• Indian +20 % acceleration (0.018 -> 0.0216)
• Indian -20 % (weaker) rear armor (1.6 -> 1.92 = 160% recieved dmg -> 192% recieved dmg)
• Indian +10 % damage (340 -> 374)
• Panther build time increased +15 % (4453 -> 5121 = 0:22 -> 0:25)
• Bulldog +10 % fire range (500 -> 550) and bigger mass (2000 -> 2500)
• Bulldog build time lowered on 75 % (14661 -> 10995), which means 73 -> 54 seconds with full resources income (35 for Indian, 42 for Goliath)
• fat tanks (Reaper, Bulldog, Goliath) able to crush cheap tech1, Krogoth, Pod and Bug Queen are able to crush all tech1

Also big balance changes.

I don't know if the indian needed that buff or not, but I think the bulldog change was definitely a good one. There are so many hard counters to bulldogs that I can't see it being a problem.

[*] Pyro, Zeus, Warrior, H.A.K. moved to Medium armor class where they should belong (from crazy places they were before)[/list][/list][/list]

What is the role of the Warrior and the HAK? Are they supposed to replace Peewees and AKs? Going from light armour class to medium might just do that as they are gonna take alot less damage from alot of stuff.
I thought that Warriors and HAKs were supposed to be heavier and slower variants that excelled later in the game rather than being an outright upgrade.

I'm with you on this one. I could see the argument for zeus having medium armor, although I'm not sure I would agree with it, but for the others it's a really drastic change that also seems arbitrary. In terms of consistency, it's weird because no infantry sized kbots (until now) have armor. Only the largest kbots (crabes, sumos, cans, oddities, raptors) and tanks have armor. If they did need to be tougher, why not increase hp instead of changing armor category? This will make lasers and emgs terrible against these units, and mean you need to use rockets or heavy lasers against them. It feels arbitrary.

Splinter (core sabot transportable tower) damage increased (460 -> 690) and fixed basic default dmg

This change also worries me a bit and I'm not sure it was really necessary. Splinter 1 shotting hammers/rockos seems a bit overkill, and it also seems like it might take away from the uniqueness of the Arm rocketbox by giving the Core an equally useful equivalent. The default damage being lower was actually intentional since all railgun/gauss/sabot type weapons did reduced damage to buildings.

I'm very conservative with NOTA balance. I think it have been fine in most cases and that Core and ARM have their differences. However it doesn't feel like the factions are getting differentiated by these updates but rather that they approach eachother in similarities.
But I guess that since both PepeAmpere and Thor is doing this together that you have a vision for the game.
It seems that you want to make all units viable and add more units to NOTA. I'm not sure I want that because I think NOTA balance is just fine as is but the changes could turn out for the better.

I think that's a valid criticism that the factions are becoming a bit more similar, at least regarding the greyhound/fido change. That wasn't the goal, but I think rather a side effect. One of the main principles of nota was always internal consistency, in that weapons, ranges, and armor types should be consistent between units, and greyhounds have bothered me for a long time because they didn't really adhere to the same rules as other units (that is, it was a fast unit on a medium sized tank chassis yet somehow it had way, way more range than the longest ranged tanks). I didn't like how it affected gameplay, but I can see how you could like the struggle to build up a critical mass while facing attrition from air and arty. So while the grayhound's unique combination of range and speed did make the factions more different, I feel like it did so in a way that compromised the consistency of the game and led to situations that just felt broken, when you did get that critical mass up.

I don't see anything wrong with making nonviable units viable (such as seaplane fighters), as long as they remain niche units that don't seriously impact the overall game balance. I tend to be pretty conservative myself when it comes to the game, and I know Pepe is too, but I guess everybody has their own definition of what that means. It's true that trying too hard to perfectly balance everything can have the result of making it feel bland and uninteresting, but I don't think that's in danger of happening yet to nota.

[MasterZH]

I am not going to quote every single post as before and before. It seems i dont understand logic pepe is changing things in nota or i am missing some part of my brain. I like that you guys finally decided to push nota forward but even after proper sleep today i cant understand WTH just happened.

Before i was speaking about Grayhounds very limited use and unequal balance in even produce race with core player.(with advantage of old cool 800 range) Because for 65% of maps Goliaths has more utilization and plasma-gun curved trajectory together with more easy fighting strategy, HP, price, etc.. Still GH had a chance with much harder micro or eco/production superiority.

"critical mass of units" in nota can result in huge impact on actual battlefield and if there is no counter-"CM" some1 get definitely rolled over. In this moments any mistake is extreme as both armies control huge amount of firepower.(in case its not hill to hill porc fight) NOTA unique game mechanics add lot of deeper differences between units and very interesting course of game. Thats the most awesome thing about NOTA for me and what make it special. I cant imagine why you guys think something was "broken" as you can say same thing with(referring to "CM" or "look thats broken too!"):

Snipers: Get 20+snipers with bunch of other units and if you avoid artillery stand-off you can pwn anything. Tanks, kbots, nothing will stand a chance vs such huge DMG/s and snipers big range.

Panthers: Get 20+ group of this unit and not even wall of rockos can stop you as they can only fire and then are dead. Its ultimate independent stealth army of your dreams with included AA as bonus.

Dominators: Get 20+ and with 1000range you can pwn any static defense, any army as they are extremely mobile. Get some spam support and you can just march straight to enemy base.

Drones: Get 20+ and if its not totally open map you can climb any hill even with few guardians/laser turrets and continue rolling.

Merls: Get 20+ (haha small joke you will never get 20 xD) and you can kill any T2 force even if its moving light speed. Its like nuke on the way: if you dont kill it in 10mins, it will shred everything valuable and kill you from other side of the map.

Bombers: Get 200+ (i mean 20-30) and no airforce will stop you from reaching your goal!

Penetrators: Get 5 with air superiority and congrats, you are officially new boss of Nazi-Lazer-SS-Kampftruppen! Sieg Heil!

I know not the best examples but same as dominator is not very dominant(lol) in small groups it became... ehm... as thor would say "broken" in huge numbers.

Enough talk lets go "draven" style:
I was dissatisfied before but now i will just self-d every grayhound i produce as sign of protest. Feel free to report me or ban me but i will not let GH die as poor T1,5 spam tank!

[Thor]

I suddenly feel like I'm in a hostage negotiation Please don't self d your greyhounds. If you're right and this change sucks, the best way to show that is to use the units to the best of your ability and post the replays. Yes, I think that critical mass greyhounds were very different from critical mass dominators, snipers, or any other unit. A fundamental trade-off in nota for land units is that high range comes with low speed. That's what makes the interaction between peewees and thuds or medium tanks and mobile artillery interesting. Greyhounds completely violated this principle, and the only reason it wasn't more of a problem is that they had such high cost and low hp that it was difficult to build up a force of them. But once you did, in my opinion, they broke the game. Don't underestimate the effect of -20% cost. That's pretty huge. Yes, greyhounds are more comparable now to other tanks like indian and goliath, but that was kind of the point. They still outrange any other tank, and they now have far better dps than any other tank, so don't write them off. They will dominate less in huge numbers, and they will face more attrition than before, but they'll also be more useful from the get-go.

[PepeAmpere]

I support Thor in this. Lets try it, prove our stupidity and then we can talk about it later. Generaly this get us another info about possibilites of unit. And remember, Grayhound was never the prime counter unit for Goliath. Look for other units (Bulldog, Penetrator,...)

[MasterZH]

So it look like its only penetrator now.

Then i hope you will remodel and rename grayhound to something else in the future to prevent confusion and let GH die in peace.

[smoth]

oh wow, hey guys, fwiw, I like the new ui in that shot, I will have to go try the latest!

[MasterZH]

Hello guys so 1 more day to doomsday...
ehm i mean new year! Yea! I lost my job same as last 20 games of nota. Nothing is going as it supposed to... lets hope for better future. Wishing you prosperity, good health and happiness in the New Year! And of course lot of free endorphines and cool nota games.


1920x1080 1,2MB ~ 90% image quality

Just for fun HERE is original shot. (goliath had missing texture same as core commander...no idea why)

PF 2014

[zer_ver]

That's a snug pic. Good holidays!

[Robban98422]

Is there any solution for the spawn bug in NOTA 1.80 ?

I have spring 96.0

We set up i game but there is no commander nor a "command center"?

Also TASclient

[Forboding Angel]

1.80 is not spring 96 compatible. Use spring 94.1

[bigFluff]

Is there an estimate as to when NOTA will be updated to work with the latest spring.exe (spring 96.0) ???

I was just getting used to the new (I think improved) changes in NOTA 1.80, then "poof!" spring 96.0 upgrade killed everything!

Do I really have to go back to playing XTA ???

Cheers!

[PepeAmpere]

Is there an estimate as to when NOTA will be updated to work with the latest spring.exe (spring 96.0) ???

I was just getting used to the new (I think improved) changes in NOTA 1.80, then "poof!" spring 96.0 upgrade killed everything!

Do I really have to go back to playing XTA ???

Cheers!

You dont have to, just use spring 94.1. Where is problem?

[zer_ver]

NOTA has multithreading (ASIM) support which spring 96.0 does not implement. 94 will therefore offer a better gaming experience, and remember that you can have 94 and 96 installed at the same time.

Also try Google for "NOTA 1.80+".