Balance derail from BA model replacements

[Johannes]

Nobody said it's a huge deal or would break the game...

How is Harrier pics or Falcrums comment about balance btw :/

[smoth]

Oh please. Ok here is the deal you are going from abstract shapes to something that makes SENSE,


Origonal:
triangle with 3 poles which fire 3 lasers forward.
. . . If the weapons reflected the model they would only fire forward in very limited angle.

NEW:
large forward laser with 2 large side mounted sponsons.
It actually could fire down and forward as the original did. along with on the sides and behind!

BETTER and WINNING.

seriously, if you keep the original style it can only fire forward. this one can fire on the sides as well.

[luckywaldo7]

People acting like it would be a huge deal.

It might change Krow balance a bit but would hardly break the game.

A big deal would be if a model changed flash/gator balance.

A tier 2 rarely used niche unit having altered firing behavior will have very little/no effect on how BA is played.

Get off your high horse BA isn't Starcraft.

I didn't explain myself much but that was pretty much my line of thought. There are so many variables in Spring that even balance tuned over years will have a range of uncertainty, and I am sure that small changes to firing arc are still within that range.

i think TFC made very clear statement about BAR/BA*mods. or bob changed his mind and he wants to make own game (what would be best imo)

I think Bob actually stated earlier in the thread that he didn't want to continue using the BA name anyway. Which makes certain sense, "Balanced Annihilation" describes the game pretty well but doesn't really work well for marketing outside spring. Mostly because it is a bit tacky to have "Balanced" in your RTS's title.

[Petah]

How about we wait until the model are in game, and we can actually test the balance, and then complain/fix it instead of making useless assumptions.

k thx bye.

[Johannes]

How about we wait until the model are in game, and we can actually test the balance, and then complain/fix it instead of making useless assumptions.

k thx bye.

That makes little sense, when it's already fully done it's a much bigger annoyance to tweak a model. Unless the fix would be just widening the firearcs to angles the turrets can't reach (current Krow is like that, the guns always point at a randomest direction) which is easy but kinda meh.

There's not much assumptions here anyway... Just comparison of how the old Krow fires, and how the new one looks like it would fire. Which is about easily visible facts. Whether or not you care about this, the (small) difference is the same either way.

[Wombat]

i just started wondering wtf are ppl doing in BA threads if they clearly hate it and didnt play since... long time lol. and they are always first to talk crap about balance

[smoth]

i just started wondering wtf are ppl doing in BA threads if they clearly hate it and didnt play since... long time lol. and they are always first to talk crap about balance

People hate ba
think the balance is bad
Make discussion on why balance is not good.

you don't think there is a connection?

let me make it more obvious.

People don't like ba because it has retarded balance and users protecting fundamentally broken gameplay. These are obstacles for said people and if cleared said people may be interested in playing.

In other words they are stating why it is they dislike ba in the hopes it gets fixed because as it stands ba is not something they would want to play.

[Wombat]

for me its obvious that normal person would realise long time ago such things wont be changed. since they still come here, i think they just want to hate a bit coz ba is more popular than their game

[SinbadEV]

for me its obvious that normal person would realise long time ago such things wont be changed. since they still come here, i think they just want to hate a bit coz ba is more popular than their game

I agree with smoth on this one as far as "reasoning" is concerned and Wombat on "potential results".

Also, since we're in the process of derailing and making recommendations for games we don't even play... I think when the models are released they should call it "BAHD-Remix" and we should get somebody to make us some bit-pop/techno re-imaginings of the classic TA Soundtrack.

[Wombat]

People don't like ba because it has retarded balance

oh wait, forgot to add. my fav quote. group of haters say ba balance is retarded.

since majority is right, i dont think its the ba balance that is the most retarded

[smoth]

You really are going to do the you hate ba because your game is less popular line? I can only guess this is a barb at gundam being that you are currently chatting with me.

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... ar#p464810

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... ar#p192242

Yawn, be more original or at least prove that you are around for any period of time.

The same goes for the CA team. They are not threatened by ba. because that is what you are implying that the other projects are somehow threatened. Which is really a weak rebuttal.

Content developers of other projects have issues with ba because of the following:
Sloppy damage classes.
The nonsensical damage classes lead to large scale confusion. These need to be sorted and organized into classes all other games with damage classes have done this. It is standard rts genre stuff. Most ba players are screwed for months and they have to GUESS what damages what unless they are someone like me who can read the weapons and classes only to get confused by the lack of coherency in them.
Example: flashes can barely hurt a storage structure yet a factory can blowup and easily wax said storage structure.

Sloppy collision
just using whatever spring assigns instead of proper collision shapes. Only a handful of units have had this done. Doing this could make weapon paths for firing clearer. nothing like having a hover factory block my llt even though it is flat as hell. Other rts games including ota avoided this by allowing units to fire through one another. In spring units cannot do this and thus such collision is very important.


Visual gripes(while they may seem unimportant they matter)
Ancient models
The game uses old assed 3do models which really are largely like walking piles of scrap. They have a basic silhouette sure but that is only because we have looked at the same unit shapes for 10+ years and even then I still forget what is what. The models do not really have very clear texturing which hurts unit differentiation. Many times tons of units are moving together removing the benefit of the silhouettes so texturing + better models would largely help gameplay.

I played AA for years before you ever joined this community. The balance never got better. Instead the current lead just hacked the balance based on user feedback instead of sitting down and organizing things. Sure, stripping the ridiculous damage classes out and sorting them into actual classifications would break balance but you guys could easily sort that within a few versions. Then threads won't be about people arguing how blah blah is op instead it could be about tweaking their damage classes which is much cleaner.

the collision shapes might take a day or so to do and are also easily done. hell dreadknight warrior wrote some code to update collisions so popups, solars etc can actually have collisions that change when they CLOSE OR OPEN

Simply acting like people raising issue with ba is because of butthurt is weak. It is why BA is still largely a circle jerk of old guys who know the schizophrenic balance. They don't want it to change because they will lose their "edge." Fact of the matter is if they ARE that good then they can regain said edge in a few weeks. Hiding behind mysticism is the defense of the weak minded.

[Wombat]

my only question is why would any devs come here and raise these issues in the game they dont play ? becouse they want to help ? then they should create proper code for that.

TFC said long time ago BA is done but ppl still come and spew their nonsense.

[smoth]

my only question is why would any devs come here and raise these issues in the game they dont play ?

Mainly because we see stuff that is obviously wrong and know what is needed to fix it but are confounded by how the players/devs leave them rot inside ba. I spec/play BA from time to time man and when I do I get frustrated by how it has all these things wrong with it that really need to be addressed. Funny how I do generally do things to help ba out(was doing models, but ya'll didn't want that so I stopped.) Offered to redo the effects to optimize particle count, largely was told go ahead and it likely won't be used. What have YOU done?

because they want to help ?

I have my own stuff to do with my own project so I cannot just drop what I am doing to help ba. However when I see things that I can at least point someone in the right direction on, I do point them out.

then they should create proper code for that.

Gundam has the code for a damage class system, it is there for the taking. I even have code to grab the classes and do colors on the weapons to clearly show classes. I have code that can show what type of units something target etc. PUBLIC DOMAIN CODE.

Wombat, the amount you don't know is pretty huge. Players largely don't understand what the engine can do or what is available. You guys struggle and fight within the parameters of ba while those of us who know better are confounded by the things you are forced to struggle with. It's like watching someone drive a screw in with a hammer.

[Wombat]

yes. i did nothing. thats why i dont spam threads what should be done.

i dont know anything about models u wanted to make for ba so i wont comment that.

i know there is shittons of code that would fix most/all of ba issues. would u like to change/copy+paste code of ~350 units ? i think not. u think one TFC would like to do it? i think not. time to accept this fact.

[smoth]

i know there is shittons of code that would fix most/all of ba issues. would u like to change/copy+paste code of ~350 units ? i think not.

I do frequent changes to the units of gundam, it isn't that hard. Luafied easily >350 features. Want to keep acting like editing a text file is some mystic art? Because it isn't. Am I going to devote an evening to fixing ba for people who consistently give me shit, mock my work and generally laze about while mocking those who do the work? no.

u think one TFC would like to do it? i think not. time to accept this fact.

It just takes going through and doing them one at a time. For unit collision shapes many of them are the same or similar. Not hard at all. Damage classes are equally simple. just copy paste operations once you take the time to sort the classes

seriously, you are making excuses based on ignorance.

[Wombat]

no im making excuses based on fact that TFC apperently doesnt have to to improve BA, or even play it. u managed to lua 350 units ? congratz. others might not have so much time.

dunno who mocks ur work so wont comment this one either.

[smoth]

no im making excuses based on fact that TFC apparently doesn't have to to improve BA, or even play it. u managed to lua 350 units ? congrats. others might not have so much time.

>350 features. Units are easier as there are scripts for that. I am not saying FTC. I am saying any of you guys can do this. It isn't hard. ESP since the code is there.

dunno who mocks ur work so wont comment this one either.

OT: I did reply to your post in the release thread btw.

[SinbadEV]

Just curious... are those of you who are not working on TA variants as they include assets extracted from a commercial game willing to start working on TA variants if they are exclusively populated by "fan art" models and not extracted content?

[Johannes]

Are you ?

[SinbadEV]

Are you ?

Oh... I wasn't avoiding modding or playing TA variants because of IP issues... I own a legal copy, I live in Canada, and I'm not the one distributing the extracted assets... I don't mod anymore because I'm lazy.