NEW CHICKENS!

[jennington]

I think it's good to have a very hard difficulty level to keep it challenging. It's not impossible. We also beat it yesterday on LLTAComplexV2. We did have metalmult on though (after dying painfully with no mult), but it was still very hard with 2-3 players. We lost a few dozen games with that amount. 5 players was the magic number, and it wasn't that hard after we had secured our territory...

Which leads me to my point. I watched a replay of that game to take epic screenshots of our nuclear war at the end, but it turned out the whole replay was borked. It's close to what really happened but definitely goes wrong at some point... So no nuclear war

Infolog of the replay: http://pastebin.com/mf78b2a7

The replay is attached.

+ A few screenshots that I managed to take, in case someone's interested:

[MidKnight]

THIS IS THE NEXT CLOVERFIELD!

[SirMaverick]

Which leads me to my point. I watched a replay of that game to take epic screenshots of our nuclear war at the end, but it turned out the whole replay was borked. It's close to what really happened but definitely goes wrong at some point... So no nuclear war

I uploaded it too. Try if that works.
http://replays.adune.nl/?1617

[Jazcash]

Don't even think about posting again without your old avatar.

[luckywaldo7]

Mmmmm chicken screenshots soo tasty with outline widget.

Seeing the map edge ruins the effect a bit in the first screenshot. The second one is brilliant though.

Ill watch the replay when I get a chance.

[jennington]

I uploaded it too. Try if that works.
http://replays.adune.nl/?1617

Nope, borked as well, at least when I watch it.



Yeah, not a good shot, it just shows how the replay fails. As participants remember, there were dozens of mushroom clouds at this point... Lots of other things are off, too. If you looked at the infolog, you probably noticed lots of error messages, mostly caused by chickens. I wonder if the broken chickens broke the replay as well..?

JAZ, you really should consider a quote or something when talking to someone specific. If you meant me, I'm sorry for your loss. I'd miss it too if I were you

[Saktoth]

I love those huge coral-like clusters of spires. CA chickens is so epic (okay, epicly laggy for some people just also just epicly epic).

[1v0ry_k1ng]

[quote="Regret"][quote="1v0ry_k1ng"]dude, im all for hard games but these chickens are kinda hard in a way that isnt fun.[/quote]
Yep, just played a few games, currently the balance is terrible.[/quote]

encase you failed to read this, only I didnt notice a response

to clarify, its not the difficulty thats the problem, its the pattern of attacks. the problem is:

IT ATTACKS TO EARLY

NEEDS TO BE FEWER (BUT BIGGER) WAVES, SO THERE IS TIME TO COUNTERATTACK BETWEEN

LESS WAVES OF SOLID SPECIALISTS

SLOWER INTRODUCTION TO SPECIALISTS (IE, GRADUAL INFLUX INTO WAVES)

BETTER MIX OF SPECIALISTS (IE, HOPPERS APPEARING EARLIER, FEW RANGED AND ARTY DUDES IN EARLY WAVES)

THE ARTY STRUCTURE NEEDS COMPLETE REHAUL, ESPECIALLY ITS FX.

EARLIER APPEARANCE OF ALL TERRAIN DUDES

NO WAVE MADE ENTIRELY OF THE SUICIDE DUDES

and so on

also: beating chickens on a chicken map dosnt mean shit. Im sure a retarded baby could beat chickens on a map designed purely to allow dribbly noobs to beat chickens. its how it plays on actuall maps thats important, right ?

[Neddie]

Participants in the #ca channel, such as Saktoth, have stressed their preference for homogeneous specialist waves.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

I have a preffrence for shit not being terrible

[SirMaverick]

I uploaded it too. Try if that works.
http://replays.adune.nl/?1617

Nope, borked as well, at least when I watch it.

Watched it too. No air is built and the silos aren't finished. Replay is broken.

also: beating chickens on a chicken map dosnt mean shit.

They were beaten on non chicken maps, too.

[Saktoth]

Chicken nuggets is made for BA chickens, and is very restricted on metal (it expects huge MM econ). It actually has way less metal than a regular map. Also, the ramps arent even as high or long as the ones on LLTA complex. I suspect it may be harder than LLTA complex with metalmult would be.

Specialist waves are good. You can use krows and bombers easily, until a wave of spore shooters, pigeons or talons appears, then its run back behind the shields. Then when the arty waves comes, you better get those air units back out there to deal with them. Same with the chicken air- air is meant to be able to penetrate your defense and do some damage in the rear, but if thats happening every single wave you wont last long. If you only get a few air units every wave, why bother, the AA will clean their clocks, save the unit count. With arty, again, you need a huge amount of arty to crack a shield, them often being relatively undefended means you have a chance to go out there and kill them with your units (which, if they were covered with spore shooters, you couldnt).

As for huge waves of dodos: Why not? Because they blow eachother up? They're actually meant to blow eachother around into the enemy base, over their walls, which they do actually do sometimes (though we need a better way to make this happen more often because its fricking hilarious).

However, there should be some mixing (like shields need to be mixed more).

[CarRepairer]

Added Blimpy the Dodo Bomber to the roster.

[Argh]

Specialist waves are good.

Personally, I think they're very boring and formulaic, gameplay-wise. I'd rather see a mix of units using their special abilities, and just see more harder, high-end guys towards the end. It's a lot cooler feeling, if you have to deal with multiple types of enemies, who can each cause different problems, imo, like the Chicken Tank, which can shoot over the heads of rushing packs of Soldiers (oh, wait, none of you have ever played the P.U.R.E. demo).

[Saktoth]

Because you havent released it?

Seriously though, its much better if you can sometimes use your air, and sometimes use your land units, and sometimes have to rely on shields and defenses- rather than having everything tested at once, so you can adjust your strategies. You only need to adapt more than one strategy if they change theirs.

[CarRepairer]

What if you put the diverse groups into only the hardest chicken AIs?

[luckywaldo7]

Maybe try mixing the waves themselves up a bit. Have some ways that are more diverse and some that are specialist waves.

[bobthedinosaur]

just wanted to say.
Mega chickens...
Yeah... they are real.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantoraptor

[smokingwreckage]

Yeah, I kinda like the specialist waves, it means you're always scrambling for the next big counter, but if you time it just right you can clean up ungodly amounts of chickens. Lots of fun, IMO.

Also, the specialist waves can create really harsh "crunch" if you don't deal with them quickly enough. For example, if the Lobbers knock down your defensive lines right before a Dodo swarm.... or if a Dodo swarm cleans up your spammed KBots and you can't chase the Lobbers down... of if you're on the back foot and a bunch of toads park near your base so every damn chicken gets shield cover as it charges in...


Dodo waves are frikkin' hilarious, especially with grav-turrets thrown into the mix, you never know when allied defences are going to throw hyperactive explosive alien greeblies into your base.

[Sgt Doom]

I'd llike to see more options, similar to BA's chickens.