Where does/will AA differ from BA? - Page 4

Where does/will AA differ from BA?

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Gota
Posts: 7151
Joined: 11 Jan 2008, 16:55

Re: Where does/will AA differ from BA?

Post by Gota »

I am sure many will agree with you.
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Pxtl
Posts: 6112
Joined: 23 Oct 2004, 01:43

Re: Where does/will AA differ from BA?

Post by Pxtl »

Forboding Angel wrote:In CA nanotowers are replacements.

In AA they were always assistance.

In CA you are punished in cost if you don't use nanotowers. In AA nanotowers were very much optional. There is a pretty big difference there, and it changes the gameplay by a heck of a lot.
Umm, what? I'm pretty sure that, cost-wise, nanotowers are about even to the simpler constructors (the basic bot and basic vehicle).

Either way, this is no the place for a CA flamewar.

First of all, Caydr, your impression of BA is wrong. It's even less porcy than you think. Guardians are never ever ever used in BA except by noobs. They're so overpriced that it's usually better to go L2 and buy mobile artillery. Even the L1 mobile artillery is rarely seen - it is usually only built to crack an HLT, but a well-nano'd HLT can shrug off the arty while some raiders pwn it.

Anyways, I have to echo the sentiments here - you should try a game or two of CA (and NOTA), simply to give you an alternate perspective.

I do have to agree that OTA stats seems really, really slow in Spring, but I have to run some tests. The last time I played Hardcore Annihilation, I spent most of the game screaming at my units "MOVE YOU MORONS! MOVE!". And HA uses OTA unit speeds and values.
pintle
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Joined: 19 Dec 2005, 16:01

Re: Where does/will AA differ from BA?

Post by pintle »

Pxtl wrote:Guardians are never ever ever used in BA except by noobs. They're so overpriced that it's usually better to go L2 and buy mobile artillery.
I remember watching Day compush across geyser and build a guardian in the middle, thereby defeating Andy (may have been the other way round).

It is obscenely overpriced, but in the right situation, particularly in a 1v1 (no cb), they can be very decisive.
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Gota
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Re: Where does/will AA differ from BA?

Post by Gota »

Heh...
Out of hundreds of 1v1 games i remember perhaps in 2 the guardian was used...
Also the 1 time i remember using a guardian was vs Andy on cooper(cooper is probably the most guardian happy map in spring)and I was already winning..
pintle
Posts: 1763
Joined: 19 Dec 2005, 16:01

Re: Where does/will AA differ from BA?

Post by pintle »

What I was hinting at, is that it has such a range (and indirect fire) advantage over other stuff that is around at that game phase (it offers much faster return on investment than teching to arti) that it can be an excellent unit despite its appalling cost efficiency: the extreme statline can compensate if given the right context.
Google_Frog
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Re: Where does/will AA differ from BA?

Post by Google_Frog »

Cephei wrote:i need to speak out to the RPS issue.

in my opinion RPS is a bad thing, it causes weird things to happen, for example rocket troopers in CnC 3 taking less damage from tanks. i think game balance should be achieved through natural cause and effect of what weapon does what. specialized damage types or resistance is ( in my opinion ) bad game design. then again i think that starcraft is terribly overrated, so i might be the only one that actually thinks this way. thankfully i don't care :)

dawn of war 2 for example is cluttered with damage resistance that don't even make sense. the wraithlord mounted brightlance does less damage than the platform mounted version, although they are the same weapon. on a different info, the tabletop ( where 40k originated ) does not have any RPS element at all, weapons have stats like strength or accuracy and that's it. they are more or less effective against certain targets because of an organic way of design, or because they have the traits they have, i know i can't really tell this any better.
maybe like this: there is no damage difference if i chose to fire my tanks main barrel at another tank or some infantry. in fact, most tank mounted weapons are powerful enough to kill infantry instantly without a chance to resist or armor mitigation ( there is a rule, if the weapons strength is twice as much as the targets armor, then the target is instantly killed on hit ). and guess what, the tabletop is awesome ( although expensive :< ).

RPS is a tool that can be used to finetune design flaws that can't be resolved in another way. anti air weaponry for example, normally airplanes fly way to high for any conventional weapon system to hit them. but if you give anti air towers the range they'd need to be an organic counter to aircraft ( and on a different note, make aircraft fly as high proportionally as they would in real combat ) they would have an insane amount of range if fired on ground targets. so you either need to have them reduce their range on ground targets, or reduce damage into uselessness, or make aircrafts fly lower and subsequently lower the anti air weapons range too; anyway all of them are RPS solutions that can't be resolved in another way, and if you only use it to finetune stuff, i'm fine with it. but full scale RPS gameplay design just plays stupid. i feel alienated if infantry survives tank shells or aircraft bombs because they are anti air / anti tank, ESPECIALLY if the generic soldier dies from that.

the really great thing about OTA has always been the freedom to utilize weird and strange strategies, that are not hardcoded into the engine. ie. manually using torp bombers to bomb land targets or the now overused combomb.

i think RPS would destroy the OTA flair
You seem to be equation damage resistances with RPS. As and example CA has RPS without damage resistances.
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Caydr
Omnidouche
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Joined: 16 Oct 2004, 19:40

Re: Where does/will AA differ from BA?

Post by Caydr »

Damage resistance/boost is just the easiest, most common copout by programmers who call themselves game developers.

RPS is something you just start to see everywhere the more experienced you are as a "gamer". FPSs have it, RPGs have it, a lot of games have it, and it's not always a bad thing. For instance, Fire Emblem uses it as a central element and it's actually very interesting for gameplay. Advance Wars uses it to some extent but it's much more of a TA-style balance game, where, yes anti-air is good for anti-air but it's also good for anti-infantry, and bombers can still kill anti-air 1v1 if you have the element of surprise.

FPSs like Team Fortress have it, but again because of the variety of "units" and weapons it is beneficial to gameplay.

Unfortunately in a game the size of TA, when very much RPS creeps in, it has the effect of rendering entire sections of the tech tree obsolete since they aren't part of the RPS.
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