I think the commander as it is is a bad game mechanic

[Forboding Angel]

Lol... decades? Umm, no. The OTA comm was nothing like the BA comm.

In the grand scheme of things, comms dropping a corpse worth 2k metal is a very recent development.

[Silentwings]

It's slightly less than 10 years old. Admittedly a small fraction of human history, but old enough to predate almost all current players, as well as the current state the of most other BA units.

Also, and somewhat important for non-novice players - it's 2.5k.

[tzaeru]

Commander gameplay (exactly how it is) is pretty much BA's spine, it is it's DNA. If you think the commander is a bad game mechanic then, no offense, I really think BA is not the game for you.

Game mechanics can surely be fine-tuned. I didn't suggest removing the commander or rendering him fully useless.

That said, yes, sometimes I do wonder if BA is a game for me, since it's just often not really very strategical or even that tactical. As it is, it's mostly two things:
If you play 1v1, it's commander micro. If you play large team games, it's pre-learned eco build queues with little variation. That's what BA is. Small team games would be a little different, but almost no one plays those. Now neither of the aforementioned two things were the charm of BA to me when I first started, but now after having spent long enough with it, those things are what BA boils down to. It's unfortunate, because there's also a lot of other things in BA. There's a hundred units to play around with, to counter each other with, terrain features, expansion skirmishes, information warfare, so many things which, frankly, don't really tend to decide the average game.

It's like tennis players coming to a chess forum and claiming that the king is bad gameplay mechanic and should be changed.

No, it's like a chess player coming to a chess forum to say that he thinks that Castling is a bad game mechanic or that pawns getting to move 2 squares in start of the game is bad. I'd argue that if chess was played by but a some hundred players, it'd be fairly trivial to change those things upon a consensus.

Don't try to make it look like I'm not a BA player or have no idea of how it is.

If you have major concerns like this one and want them changed then I think it is appropriate to do this in a fork of BA. It would be fair to the BA community and out of respect for the BA heritage to not experiment with current BA which is basically in a stable state since some years with only occasional minor adjustments. This is how we like it.

From my view, the fact that BA's not attracting new players and has trouble keeping players interested in actually playing (let's face it - by now, BA's mainly used as a glorified social media platform, with the amount of specs far outweighting the amount of actual players in peak hours) should be argument enough that there's a need for more than just minor adjustments. BA could be made tactically and strategically a lot more diverse and interesting. I don't see how that's a bad thing for BA's heritage, actually, it's the opposite; BA was created because it was felt that gameplay diversity and balance were not good. BA strived to provide many venues of RTS action.

I'd say it's very much in the spirit of BA's heritage to make changes that allow more nuanced gameplay.

- how do I killed T3 unit when I am still T1 ? -> commander

You've already lost the game if you're T1 while T3 units are rolled against you.

Also, no one suggested removing dgun.

- i need to use 2k worth unit to kill commander, it the game over ? no -> commander wreck allow the owner of the commander to recover if it get the metal if he is into defense usually.

In team games, this mechanic lets a single player make or break the whole match in early stages.

Those stuffs have been though out decades ago for a reason. You only pin point a particular scenario (dsd, and btw that is a 2v2 map) that is not relevant to the the game...

No, they've been added by hobbyists as experiments upon the transition from OTA and OTA mods to AA and BA because they seemed like cool things to have with the then-current knowledge. If these things hadn't been introduced, no one would miss them either and I dare to bet that BA would have at least the same amount of players as now.

If we imagined that commander dropped say, 1000 metal, and someone suggested that "hey, we should increase it to 2500", I have hard time believing that the community would be particularly excited about the prospect.

[Forboding Angel]

And that ^^^ Is literally everything I wanted to say but didn't know how to put into words.

[tzaeru]

To add to my post above, I am totally ok with:
- Commander being the most powerful early-game constructor unit.
- Commander being used to reinforce control of a frontline both as a combat unit and as a constructor.
- Commander dgun.
- Commander dropping enough metal to make it appealing to protect the wreck or to target it in early game.
- Commander explosion being visually appealing and impactful enough to affect the gameplay if the timing of is good.

What I'm not so OK with is:
- Commander self-d for metal being basically mandatory in medium and large team games.
- No option to use commander as a base enchanter rather than as a frontline unit in small games (it might be impossible to balance this for 1v1 at least for kbot maps where vehicle cons can't outpace comm).
- The ease of combombing a whole frontline.
- Commander being faster than a T1con kbot combined with having almost 4x the building power.
- The ease with which a total of 5k metal can be lost to the opponent team by a single player's mistake.

[ympale]

Please stop fucking up BA already.

Please, elaborate? Or were you just trolling?

Commander gameplay (exactly how it is) is pretty much BA's spine, it is it's DNA. If you think the commander is a bad game mechanic then, no offense, I really think BA is not the game for you. It's like tennis players coming to a chess forum and claiming that the king is bad gameplay mechanic and should be changed.
If you have major concerns like this one and want them changed then I think it is appropriate to do this in a fork of BA. It would be fair to the BA community and out of respect for the BA heritage to not experiment with current BA which is basically in a stable state since some years with only occasional minor adjustments. This is how we like it.

tl;dr
What klap said...

BA comm as it is just now is source of "Balanced Annihilation's" balance issues, think about it. Did you notice how bad it sounds to have an Annihilation-like game that has issues with the commander unit?(?!)

However, forking into BAR and BAL(egacy)..... Ehhmmm.....

Another sarcastic thread.
For the serious players, start ask yourself the questions:
- how do I killed T3 unit when I am still T1 ? -> commander
- i need to use 2k worth unit to kill commander, it the game over ? no -> commander wreck allow the owner of the commander to recover if it get the metal if he is into defense usually. That is the other way around stands usually if the owner of the commander was the attackant. Eventually it helps the players being the closest to to the wreck to use the metal. It participate to do the game more interesting.
Those stuffs have been though out decades ago for a reason. You only pin point a particular scenario (dsd, and btw that is a 2v2 map) that is not relevant to the the game...
*snip*

Sarcastic thread?

Honestly, I doubt that any of these three did read the OP, and I have a feeling I'm not alone. RTFOP should be basic human decency, but sometimes, you just wonder if it shouldn't be made an official rule, and not complying with it might even be a misdemeanor offense, since it often indicates that the user in question didn't bother to read the etiquette...


OK, time to move to the actually relevant part of the post.

This, too, is very true. Commander is one of those things which makes BA unique amongst other modern RTS. Taking unique things out would be the last thing we want to do. And there's a chance for some epic story telling from all them wild combombs, coms surviving rushes with 1% hp, etc.

So, I'd never want to see comms go away as a crucial part of the game.

Annihilation-like games are kinda supposed to rise and fall with the commander unit, 'if you aren't dead with the comm going boom, you might as well be' is how it usually goes, and is, unlike the comm sacrifice for eco, intuitive. But you seem to already know that, hence the thread... Maybe somebody read and will understand better?

Which brings me to another point I've been saying forever. Instead of having mass nanoturrets, give factory and con bp a large boost. Honestly, there isn't anything cool about having to build 20 nanoturrets to support a single factory.

You do have a point there, but I'm not sure how to even begin to tackle that without having a single factory stall the early eco, or morphing the factories to the more BP versions of themselves... Then again, many factories/engineers/nanoturrets is kinda recommended (and often more efficient, in that order) solution to BP deficit in Annihilation...

- i need to use 2k worth unit to kill commander, it the game over ? no -> commander wreck allow the owner of the commander to recover if it get the metal if he is into defense usually.

In team games, this mechanic lets a single player make or break the whole match in early stages.

If we imagined that commander dropped say, 1000 metal, and someone suggested that "hey, we should increase it to 2500", I have hard time believing that the community would be particularly excited about the prospect.

Well, if the comm metal drop is here to stay, then the 1000-1500 metal isn't bad idea to consider...

Realistically, a comm explosion shouldn't be any more forceful than the combined force of an energy and a metal storage facility blowing up.

The fluff surrounding the comm explosion was always that the backpack was volatile. But consider what the commander is capable of. +2/+40 and 1000/1000 storage. That is massively dwarfed by 2 storage buildings, 2 solars and a mex.

An argument could be made that the Dgun bla bla bla bla, though, so there is that.

My REAL point is that it would make a lot more sense if the comm explosion was no more than a fusion.

A slightly smaller size than now would be pretty nice. Like, keep players able to punish inattention via a good bomb, just not quite as easily as now.

Shouldn't the explosion be, say, combined explosion of at least a fusion and two metal makers?
Stupid question time: how hard would making a multitude of death-nuke ranges be, like, have a widest radius, lowest damage circle, then inside a smaller, additional damage circle, and finally, even smaller, even more additional localized damage range?

To add to my post above, I am totally ok with:
- Commander being the most powerful early-game constructor unit.
- Commander being used to reinforce control of a frontline both as a combat unit and as a constructor.
- Commander dgun.
- Commander explosion being visually appealing and impactful enough to affect the gameplay if the timing of is good.
- Commander dropping enough metal to make it appealing to protect the wreck or to target it in early game.

What I'm not so OK with is:
- Commander self-d for metal being basically mandatory in medium and large team games.
- No option to use commander as a base enchanter rather than as a frontline unit in small games (it might be impossible to balance this for 1v1 at least for kbot maps where vehicle cons can't outpace comm).
- The ease of combombing a whole frontline.
- Commander being faster than a T1con kbot combined with having almost 4x the building power.
- The ease with which a total of 5k metal can be lost to the opponent team by a single player's mistake.

These are all reasons why I proposed the canges in speed, tankyness, and the comm self-d changes

Of course it's possible: that's how it works in Total Annihilation and almost all other spring games except ba.

Also, thank you, good to know that, however, it seems like the total removal of the comm wreck isn't the popular option, so, it also probably means that this falls out of question...

[Forboding Angel]

Stupid question time: how hard would making a multitude of death-nuke ranges be, like, have a widest radius, lowest damage circle, then inside a smaller, additional damage circle, and finally, even smaller, even more additional localized damage range?

This engine does this already via the edgeeffectiveness tag.
https://github.com/Balanced-Annihilatio ... s.lua#L468

Currently, the explosion does 25% of it's maximum damage at the maximum distance of it's aoe (720 elmos) which is still 12,500 damage.

Here is an idea. Why not have a comm explosion with a gigantic radius of like 2000 or something crazy like that, edgeeffectiveness of like 0.5 (default iirc), damage of 1000. That way the explosion has a lot of power right where he dies, and a highly damaging effect over a long range, but probably won't just instagib anything within that range? You could even use speed as a way to control the speed of the shockwave and match it with a ceg (Years ago I did something similar with evo's nukes).

[Silentwings]

Currently, the explosion does 25% of it's maximum damage at the maximum distance of it's aoe

Obviously that is wrong.

Yes, this claim is obviously wrong, to anyone who actually plays BA. The correct formula for the damage falloff curve, which is non-linear and at max range ends at 0%, is found by seeking out the edgeEffectiveness tag on https://springrts.com/wiki/Gamedev:WeaponDefs.

For the mathematically challenged, there is a cute graph of damage falloff for various eE values at https://springrts.com/mediawiki/images/ ... veness.png


Note: some related posts in this thread were removed due to Felony 7.

[Forboding Angel]

In my experience the falloff has always been pretty predictably linear (In other words, the results have been pretty close or spot on to what I was expecting to see).

Therefore, a weapon that does 50k damage, with an aoe of 720 and an edgeeffectiveness of 0.25... At 719 the amount of damage dealt will be roughly 12,500. Perhaps in this case, the damage numbers are large enough to have a more notable effect when compared to a normal weapon damage of like 100 or something.

That's assuming that the comm isn't being flown in an atlas, as there is a gadget that alters the damage output when the commander is being transported.

But that's why we test, and then we test, and then we test some more. Not everyone knows every single unit/weapondef tag by heart. Sometimes things change between engine versions as well, so in your testing you end up spending a lot of time reading the wiki. Any number discrepency would be caught by testing, and curves aside, it doesn't detract from the original point that the comm explosion could be change to have a lot of effect still, but not such an effect that it effectively R.I.P.s the game.

[Silentwings]

a weapon that does 50k damage, with an aoe of 720 and an edgeeffectiveness of 0.25... At 719 the amount of damage dealt will be roughly 12,500

50000 * (720-719) / (720 - 719*0.25) = 92.5497

[klapmongool]

Please stop fucking up BA already.

Please, elaborate? Or were you just trolling?

This reply was aimed at not only this thread, but also many other threads made in this subforum over the past years. In this, and all those other threads, people discuss and propose changes to BA while showing how little they know of BA. This is horrible to see happening when you played it as much as some of us around here did. BA is far from perfect, don't get me wrong (it is still, imho, the best RTS available). It is just painful to see people draw their conclusions based on a massive lack of understanding of the game. At the same time I don't have the skills or the resources to contribute to developing BA myself. So I can only ask people to stop fucking up BA (please).

[Forboding Angel]

a weapon that does 50k damage, with an aoe of 720 and an edgeeffectiveness of 0.25... At 719 the amount of damage dealt will be roughly 12,500

50000 * (720-719) / (720 - 719*0.25) = 92.5497

You aren't understanding what I was saying. The math is obviously wrong, but that doesn't negate the validity of what I said. The point is having a large explosion that does not that much damage in a really large area, so that the damage done is extensive (but doesn't kill everything it hits, but it doesn't take out half the map when a commander explodes.

50000 -> 92 is a GIGANTIC falloff. 720 elmos is a very short distance. The initial damage and falloff of that damage is so severe that it negates the point of having it in the first place, imo.

@klap, at the risk of being really rude (as you have been to me, repeatedly), how many spring games have you built from literal scratch? How many spring games have you been involved in developing? I played AA/BA for years, much longer than you. BA hasn't changed much over the years. But warc took BA in a not good direction which has netted all of the major issues that we see today.

My point is that I am more than qualified to offer suggestions to any project using this engine, as I have more experience and knowledge of this engine and creating a game for it than you will ever hope to learn. Just because I don't join in on the clusterfuck 8v8 dsd games that happen don't mean that I don't play BA ever. BA happens to have very good AI support. Moreover, the problems talked about here are not difficult to imagine or talk about in the abstract, and BA isn't the only game to have ever run up against some of these problems and dealt with them.

So kindly, post rebuttals to the ideas I and others have put forth, or be quiet.

Silentwings, you're being petty as well, and you know it. You are using ad hominem in a roundabout way. Stop. Post rebuttals and have a discussion, post your own ideas, or sit down and be quiet.

[Silentwings]

What I'm not so OK with is:
(1) Commander self-d for metal being basically mandatory in medium and large team games.
(2) The ease with which a total of 5k metal can be lost to the opponent team by a single player's mistake.

Kind of agree with (1) but only because it impacts on the team-com-ends game mode; would be cleaner if game end conditions could be independent of who blew their coms. I don't care that it's ~mandatory in large games - there is a wealth of strategic choice (elsewhere) in BA. Ideological attachment to "the com should be kept alive" is also not worth anything imo.
(2) is a necessary component of viewtopic.php?f=44&t=36307#p582822 imo. Remove it and you have less randomness, but you lose a lot of entertainment. Your other points in the list have never bothered me.

You aren't understanding ... The point is ... You are using ad hominem in a roundabout way ...

Although I do understand the suggestion fully, after pointing out that your quoted numbers are wrong by a factor of 140 (which seems astonishing, rather than petty...) I have no further comment to make on it. I think it is not a particularly bad idea, nor a particularly good one.

Whilst I am happy to help on technical matters, when they come up, these days I am also happy not to spend much thought on BA balance.

Ad hominem refers to an attack on someones character or motives. It does not normally extend to fixing someones arithmetic.

BA happens to have very good AI support.

It does ?! which AIs exactly? Split discussion to viewtopic.php?f=44&t=36322&p=582905#p582905

[ympale]

This engine does this already via the edgeeffectiveness tag.
https://github.com/Balanced-Annihilatio ... s.lua#L468

Currently, the explosion does 25% of it's maximum damage at the maximum distance of it's aoe (720 elmos) which is still 12,500 damage.

Yes, this claim is obviously wrong, to anyone who actually plays BA. The correct formula for the damage falloff curve, which is non-linear and at max range ends at 0%, is found by seeking out the edgeEffectiveness tag on https://springrts.com/wiki/Gamedev:WeaponDefs.

For the mathematically challenged, there is a cute graph of damage falloff for various eE values at https://springrts.com/mediawiki/images/ ... veness.png

In my experience the falloff has always been pretty predictably linear (In other words, the results have been pretty close or spot on to what I was expecting to see).

Therefore, a weapon that does 50k damage, with an aoe of 720 and an edgeeffectiveness of 0.25... At 719 the amount of damage dealt will be roughly 12,500. Perhaps in this case, the damage numbers are large enough to have a more notable effect when compared to a normal weapon damage of like 100 or something.

That's assuming that the comm isn't being flown in an atlas, as there is a gadget that alters the damage output when the commander is being transported.

But that's why we test, and then we test, and then we test some more. Not everyone knows every single unit/weapondef tag by heart. Sometimes things change between engine versions as well, so in your testing you end up spending a lot of time reading the wiki. Any number discrepency would be caught by testing, and curves aside, it doesn't detract from the original point that the comm explosion could be change to have a lot of effect still, but not such an effect that it effectively R.I.P.s the game.

50000 * (720-719) / (720 - 719*0.25) = 92.5497

You aren't understanding what I was saying. The math is obviously wrong, but that doesn't negate the validity of what I said. The point is having a large explosion that does not that much damage in a really large area, so that the damage done is extensive (but doesn't kill everything it hits, but it doesn't take out half the map when a commander explodes.

50000 -> 92 is a GIGANTIC falloff. 720 elmos is a very short distance. The initial damage and falloff of that damage is so severe that it negates the point of having it in the first place, imo.

As weirdly as it sounds, thank you for your fight, I found it quite insightful!

If I'm reading it correctly, then both of you have a point. The falloff is non-linear, yes, however, at the value of 0.25, the non-linearity is little more than cosmetic. I proposed the idea of multiple blast radii because I thought it would be hard to achieve the effect I was after, but now, I think that increasing the falloff value to at least 0.8, if not the 0.9 would be close enough. So, in other words, the combomb at basically melee range could instagib pretty much anything, while the furthest edge would have damage of stiff fart...

Another, crazy idea might be increasing radius drastically, maybe even to the radius of the whole map, and the falloff to something absurd, like 0.99999. The idea behind this is that comm going boom should be something the entire planet feels, so, not only there is a highly damaging localised ultra-nuke going off, outside of this is steep slope of falloff damage that devolves into a creep across the map that does ridiculously small damage, like, everything gets hit by at least 1 damage (the solars should definitively hide).

Here is an idea. Why not have a comm explosion with a gigantic radius of like 2000 or something crazy like that, edgeeffectiveness of like 0.5 (default iirc), damage of 1000. That way the explosion has a lot of power right where he dies, and a highly damaging effect over a long range, but probably won't just instagib anything within that range? You could even use speed as a way to control the speed of the shockwave and match it with a ceg (Years ago I did something similar with evo's nukes).

@klap, at the risk of being really rude (as you have been to me, repeatedly), how many spring games have you built from literal scratch? How many spring games have you been involved in developing? I played AA/BA for years, much longer than you. BA hasn't changed much over the years. But warc took BA in a not good direction which has netted all of the major issues that we see today.

My point is that I am more than qualified to offer suggestions to any project using this engine, as I have more experience and knowledge of this engine and creating a game for it than you will ever hope to learn. Just because I don't join in on the clusterfuck 8v8 dsd games that happen don't mean that I don't play BA ever. BA happens to have very good AI support. Moreover, the problems talked about here are not difficult to imagine or talk about in the abstract, and BA isn't the only game to have ever run up against some of these problems and dealt with them.

This might go into off-topic for a bit, and I'm sorry if I might sound inappropriately, but to be honest, I might have an idea why the steam page reviews are mixed, and all 6 of evoRTS hosts in SpringLobby list are empty all the time, since I didn't enjoy it either. Don't get me wrong, it might be a good game, however, I think the greatest issue is that players have no idea what they are supposed to do. I personally expected something that at least somewhat resembles TA when I was testing the game, but I ran into cluelessness in the first minute, with the lack of mexes IIRC.

So even if you might be well qualified to develop a game, you might not be as qualified to develop BA, which as different goals and game design.

What I'm not so OK with is:
(1) Commander self-d for metal being basically mandatory in medium and large team games.
(2) The ease with which a total of 5k metal can be lost to the opponent team by a single player's mistake.

Kind of agree with (1) but only because it impacts on the team-com-ends game mode; would be cleaner if game end conditions could be independent of who blew their coms. I don't care that it's ~mandatory in large games - there is a wealth of strategic choice (elsewhere) in BA. Ideological attachment to "the com should be kept alive" is also not worth anything imo.
(2) is a necessary component of viewtopic.php?f=44&t=36307#p582822 imo. Remove it and you have less randomness, but you lose a lot of entertainment. Your other points in the list have never bothered me.

One of the important parts of good game design is that everything tries to communicate it's purpose at least somewhat clearly. The game design of Annihilation games puts great importance into the comm, and therefore, it should communicate this. To me it seems tzaeru created this thread because he noticed that the greatest issues BA has right now is with the comm. And that leaving Balanced Annihilation's Commanders broken while tip-toeing around that and trying to fix everything else around is slow process of "fucking up BA", whereas this overhaul of comm, maybe with what I suggested, is probably drastic change which however should have effect of stopping the before-mentioned process, could make the BA more attractive for OTA players, etc.

And yes, forking might be a solution, but forking a test/dev/beta build with the overhauled comm first might be wiser idea...

[Johannes]

That said, yes, sometimes I do wonder if BA is a game for me, since it's just often not really very strategical or even that tactical. As it is, it's mostly two things:
If you play 1v1, it's commander micro. If you play large team games, it's pre-learned eco build queues with little variation. That's what BA is. Small team games would be a little different, but almost no one plays those. Now neither of the aforementioned two things were the charm of BA to me when I first started, but now after having spent long enough with it, those things are what BA boils down to. It's unfortunate, because there's also a lot of other things in BA. There's a hundred units to play around with, to counter each other with, terrain features, expansion skirmishes, information warfare, so many things which, frankly, don't really tend to decide the average game.

1v1 totally depends on the map how commander-centered it is.

Big games rely on pre-learned eco builds most of all because of social convention. You could do different econ than the usual 3-mextex, by sharing metal extensively btwn the team (both plans involving comm self-d's and not). If you had a teamgame where there was proper coordination, trust and chain of command, you could do a lot besides the usual. But as a single player, you can't just switch from the conventional way and expect to succeed too well if nobody else supports or understands what you're doing. Ie. the lack of variation is a result of culture more than game mechanics.
Ofc, you could force people including you to come up with new builds for a while by revamping the mechanics, but it wouldn't last too long until you'd reach a new standard convention on how to play.

[Johannes]

In my opinion com metal could be tested at 1500 and 2000 however it needs intensive testing and no other simultaneous changes during this process.

There is very fundamental skill and technique built into the current com metal value as it stands, it is a strong and unique mechanic that really emphasises the risk versus reward playstyle choices of players to the extreme. 2500 drives gameplay and places incredible value on commanders - making them truely live up to their envisioned role as the decisive heart of the game.

There are glaring bugs which should come first on the list of fixes eg disable air collision to finally stop commanders and cons flying across the map and fixing transports. Nothing else in BA needs changing, and any changes should always be tested 1 at a time.

For example 150,000 simulteanous changes would be stupid, so lets hope no one does that.

I think if you're doing anything but fixing glaring bugs, it just may make a lot more sense to do the 150k of them at once. Now, you should retain old BA as is while you do that...

But if you wanna change the core concepts of the game, you shouldn't do it one at a time but several big changes at once, and package it as a new game.

A lot of the fine tuning in the past years has not done any good to the game, I feel. Is the game actually better now that stumpy has lower Hp than before or Bulldog has more Hp?

Though I haven't played much in many years, and don't know the most recent developments, it feels like the more things change the more they stay the same. A step forward is matched with another two backward.

If I could I'd pick the BA / engine version from 2009 or so over the current one. It may be worse in many ways but equally it would have a lot of pluses over today's version. Sure, I could go and install that but it'd be a hassle, more so to get anyone to play it with me.


Designing a new BA-like game where you change several base concepts in a way that makes sense, all at the ssame time, would be interesting if done by a smart guy. Inevitably it wouldn't play just as you'd imagined it, but chances are it'd be fun. But hobbling forward one random change at a time, rarely improves anything. If you feel something is shit in the game you just played, consider if it can be fixed with just a map change. That way you don't have to give up the option to play the kind of match that frustrated you 5 mins ago.

[klapmongool]

a weapon that does 50k damage, with an aoe of 720 and an edgeeffectiveness of 0.25... At 719 the amount of damage dealt will be roughly 12,500

@klap, at the risk of being really rude (as you have been to me, repeatedly), how many spring games have you built from literal scratch? How many spring games have you been involved in developing? I played AA/BA for years, much longer than you. BA hasn't changed much over the years. But warc took BA in a not good direction which has netted all of the major issues that we see today.

My point is that I am more than qualified to offer suggestions to any project using this engine, as I have more experience and knowledge of this engine and creating a game for it than you will ever hope to learn. Just because I don't join in on the clusterfuck 8v8 dsd games that happen don't mean that I don't play BA ever. BA happens to have very good AI support. Moreover, the problems talked about here are not difficult to imagine or talk about in the abstract, and BA isn't the only game to have ever run up against some of these problems and dealt with them.

So kindly, post rebuttals to the ideas I and others have put forth, or be quiet.

Silentwings, you're being petty as well, and you know it. You are using ad hominem in a roundabout way. Stop. Post rebuttals and have a discussion, post your own ideas, or sit down and be quiet.

Shots fired! I'm not sure if you know the people you have played with for all those years anymore. I made my point clear enough.

[Ares]

Just because I don't join in on the clusterfuck 8v8 dsd games that happen don't mean that I don't play BA ever.

Forbs I've never seen you in 1v1, 2v2 or 8v8, all I see is you making changes.

Without playing or spectating you do not have a grasp of the fundamental gameplay mechanics or metagame at a competitive level. Your engine knowledge is fine but it doesnt "qualify" you to arbitarily outrank the likes of Silentwings, Nixtux, VBS and Kap - especially when you think a comwreck has 2000 metal.

Even Total Annihilation had nuke exploding commanders. All changes should be debated with the community on the forum like this before being added.

As it stands a small handful of discord admins have free reign to pass their uncontested opinions by just proposing changes to Flow. This "balance by the back door" is how 1000 undebated balance changes have already made it through.

BA doesn't need change, it needs polish.

[MasterBel2]

@Ares, can I give you some advice? If you want to challenge the current setup, do it in another thread, it'll honestly be easier for a serious discussion to be made on it and therefore easier for change to happen if you can convince people it's necessary. I can't say that I currently have an opinion on how I think BA should be managed, but I definitely think that if you're going to discuss it, please discuss it in a dedicated serious discussion instead of what will generally end up less than helpful to the current conversation.

The other thing, if you want to add something to this conversation, add it! You play a lot of games, therefore you should have an opinion on what should be done, or why nothing should be done. If you give your point of view and show some supporting reasons, it makes it much easier to consider.