Balanced Annihilation V6.0 - Page 3

Balanced Annihilation V6.0

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kiki
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by kiki »

I will prove someday that castro + dragon flames = death lulx
Saktoth
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by Saktoth »

FATBOY - Costs about the same, has the same HP, has less AoE but a bit more range than the Goliath. But it has only slightly more than a third of the DPS (a third!). This is AFTER its buffs.
JUNO - This thing rawks. Makes minefields useless. I was totally radar-denied one game with junos. Ive heard stories of killing coms while they were walking through friends minefields with junos. But they arent combat units, which means 90% of people will go 'why build it?'.
FREAKER - Rocks. I see it used. I use it whenever i go core kbot.
DRAWGON MAW - Is actually stealthed, so theres absolutely no reason to stick it under a castro. Its not a bad choice for arty-immunity. But it sucks pretty hard at, you know, killing stuff.
CASTRO - Costs half the price of the sneaky pete. The sneaky pete drains 40 e 65 when cloaked, the castro only 25e. Castro has 960 HP, pete 712. The petes jamming range is 500 though, while the castros is 360. Thats enough though, and if you just want to jam a hlt and a few llt's, its all you need. Id usually rather the castro TBH as i usually throw up a jammer in the face of artillery bombardment, and in that situation you want them cheap and fast.
EXPLOITER - People use these. Early on its best to expand regular mexes (To get your m econ into gear) but afterwards, it makes you practically unraidable. Ive seen it used to excellent effect on comet.
YokoZar
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by YokoZar »

Evil4Zerggin wrote:Dragon's Maw: Can be good sometimes when your enemy spaem arty. However, its short range (410, versus 435 for a LLT) limits its utility as a turret. Flame isn't the most accurate thing in the world either.
Dragon's maw are REALLY good at chokepoints - much better than a comparable amount of LLT or double LLT. They're also helpfully extremely resistant to things that outrange them (slashers, artillery), so they at the very least buy you a lot more time then other static defenses.
Exploiter: The exploiter actually extracts less metal (10% less for the regular, 12.5% less for the moho) than the regular mex. Plus it takes longer to build, which means that you miss out on more metal waiting for the mex to finish. Overall, I think most people prefer to build a regular mex and then LLTs where (or if) they want them.
Moho exploiters have higher DPS then Doomsday devices. Less range, but if you augment them with toasters or something else for range you can have better defense than anything.
DZHIBRISH
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by DZHIBRISH »

I think all the defensive structures between the llt an hlt should recieve a small buildspeed boost.
the dragon maw should be either removed or changed to give it a certain role that other turrets dont serve...
YokoZar
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by YokoZar »

DZHIBRISH wrote:I think all the defensive structures between the llt an hlt should recieve a small buildspeed boost.
the dragon maw should be either removed or changed to give it a certain role that other turrets dont serve...
It already has that role - protecting a choke point where you're giving up on killing their artillery. This is a rather common role actually.
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kiki
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by kiki »

Saktoth wrote:DRAWGON MAW - Is actually stealthed, so theres absolutely no reason to stick it under a castro. Its not a bad choice for arty-immunity. But it sucks pretty hard at, you know, killing stuff.
castro is for hlt and radar, and maybe defenders etc.
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Pxtl
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Re: Why?

Post by Pxtl »

Evil4Zerggin wrote: As for the Fatboy, it did get buffed recently. Probably people tried to use it as a front-liner, got owned because of its high cost and mediocre hit points, and decided it was worthless. (Although people still try to use Goliaths as front-liners...)
Curious: what is the actual function of the Goli and the Fatboy? Mobile anti-swarm defense? I rarely use either of them.
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MR.D
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by MR.D »

Goli and Fatboy are for knocking down defences quick, and smashing groups of smaller "lighter" units, and ranged support.

They can be used for main assault but only in numbers greater than 3 if you want them to survive.

Use cheap units like Weasel or AK in front as fodder, and a couple support units like crocs or reapers for a golli, and you're golden.
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CarRepairer
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The Commander Thread

Post by CarRepairer »

I am hoping to start a constructive discussion on commanders.

Commanders are unique. They cannot be built. Once they are dead they may be resurrected but the odds of this during a battle are slim. Even heroes in Warcraft 3 can be rebuilt in your base immediately upon their death.

Commanders are immensely powerful. Their dgun kills any unit in the game. Their death results in a nuclear blast.

These two things are the cause for the spawning of strategies such as commbombing (sacrificing your comm to destroy a bunch of stuff) and commnampping (stealing someone else's comm with a transport to destroy a bunch of stuff). There have been much heated debates over these issues.

I don't like these strategies because they are special, one-time "missions" that take away the RTS feel of TA/spring. They become like campaigns. They work, or they fail, and can result in the ending of the game. Thus the battle becomes centered around the "comm mission" and not the more open-ended base and army building and rebuilding which an RTS is all about.

There are two reasons for having a comm. First, obviously, he is your starting "tech-zero" amphibious construction kbot. Second, less obviously, he is there to prevent early rushes from ending the game (while still allowing them to be vital strategies for hurting an enemy's economy). His dgun and HP ensure that you can rush, hurt your enemy badly, but never finish them off entirely so the game may continue.

Solutions:

Comm-ends games. They discourage commbombing. Widgets went around this by auto-sharing your units before your comm dies. Lineage aims to solve that by exploding all units built by anything built by that comm. Still, while comm-ends discourages commbombing, it encourages commnapping, so it's not a solution to the above.

EMP Mutator: http://www.unknown-files.net/spring/359 ... lation_58/ Now this I like. It retains the comm's anti-rush concept and prevents all those other issues I dislike.

Now I know there are people who like the above strats. But there are plenty of self-destructing units out there that don't complicate the game like the commander does. Isn't the whole point of an RTS to allow you to try strategies and missions over and over again, in different ways? Isn't that what makes a large battle fun? Otherwise, the game isn't a battle but an all-or-nothing campaign mission.

Please discuss.

Edit: How did my post get in here? It was meant for general discussion because it refers to all *TA mods.
Last edited by CarRepairer on 04 Jan 2008, 18:12, edited 1 time in total.
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Machiosabre
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Re: The Commander Thread

Post by Machiosabre »

in before GENERAL DISCUSSION and SPRING ISNT TA

hey who moved this? you ruined it!
Last edited by Machiosabre on 04 Jan 2008, 18:08, edited 1 time in total.
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Peet
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Re: The Commander Thread

Post by Peet »

Oh right, theres a merge feature now :D
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NOiZE
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Re: The Commander Thread

Post by NOiZE »

CarRepairer wrote:stuff about commanders
Welcome to Total Annihilation. In fact its the Commander combined with Game Ends (lineage mode now) which makes TA brilliant!
Saktoth
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by Saktoth »

Whichever mod stuck this in the BA thread is doing Car and the community a great disservice. I was all ready to chew out Car over this because he should KNOW that BA isnt into revolutionary change and he should KNOW that BA isnt into deviating from such a strong OTA dynamic and he should KNOW that the BA is never going to impliment such changes and he should KNOW that the BA thread isnt the place for this discussion. Not to mention it applies to all OTA based mods and somewhat to others (Gundam and Evo RTS spring to mind) not just BA and its insulting to move it to the BA thread, as if BA is the only mod anyone wishes to discuss this issue in (Car originally brought this topic up in the #CA channel).

And the mod that moved this should know that too. O_o
[Krogoth86]
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by [Krogoth86] »

I've had a look at the Krow script and I think I've fixed the "I flip up my wings even when flying" issue:
http://www.file-upload.net/download-592 ... pt.7z.html

I also noticed something else. You might want to remove that Bogus_Missile weapon from the minelayers as it makes them just shoot that nearly no damage bolts instead of the anti-mine burst when seeing a mine (you have to give an attack command by yourself to make it fire)...
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Evil4Zerggin
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Re: Why?

Post by Evil4Zerggin »

Pxtl wrote:
Evil4Zerggin wrote: As for the Fatboy, it did get buffed recently. Probably people tried to use it as a front-liner, got owned because of its high cost and mediocre hit points, and decided it was worthless. (Although people still try to use Goliaths as front-liners...)
Curious: what is the actual function of the Goli and the Fatboy? Mobile anti-swarm defense? I rarely use either of them.
Pretty much. If the enemy spaem T1, especially Stumpy/Raider, it can be a good idea to build a couple. Individually they have a lot of hit points, but they cost too much to be viable front-liners. You also don't want to use only Goli/Fatboy; chances are that even with the hueg splash a few stragglers will make it past your fire and you'll want a couple precision units to take them out before they close and your Goli/Fatboy starts harming your own units with their splash.

For the duration of T2, your main line should be Reapers. They have 70% of the hit points of the Goli at less than half the cost and are much more agile. By the time you have the econ to make Goli spaem effective, you might as well go T3 and build Shiva instead, which have the same weapon + Dominator rocket, and are cheaper, faster, more manueverable, tougher, better slope tolerance, and amphibious. The only problem is that they have a rather damaging death explosion.

If you're ARM kbots, you could try the recently-buffed Zeus as your frontline. It's not as tough as the Reaper, but it's the best they've got as far as something to soak damage.

Regarding the commander: I really don't like the commander, for many of the same reasons as CarRepairer; in fact, I would say it's my least favorite unit after LRPCs. However, I'm willing to live with it, and I'm going to have to, at least as far as BA is concerned.

It appears that only the Fido's direct-fire weapon got the range buff. Is this intentional? Or is there some scripting thing I'm unaware of?
Last edited by Evil4Zerggin on 05 Jan 2008, 03:06, edited 1 time in total.
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Stealth870
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by Stealth870 »

Hmm, is anyone else getting some nasty pathfinding bugs? Don't know if its BA or 0.76 but aircraft seems to have issues moving to certain tall areas of a map, and go in opposite directions as ordered. My bulldogs were sent to a NE corner of a map and insteadalso went the other way. :shock:
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kiki
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by kiki »

hmm, not here, sounds like some weird bug you have just yourself.

A commander has become an essential part of the spring-style rts. There is some unit that builds all of your other units. Other rts's start out with some conbots. However, a combat commander that is really powerful is important imo. This is a ta mod, but I think upgradable coms are a necessary feature of a well thought out commander system. CA is on its way in that aspect.

WHO MERGED THAT COM THREAD? *humble anger, just enough to hurt but not get banned*
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MR.D
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by MR.D »

btw, another important reason to use Fleas instead of just spies.

Fleas force popup defences to open, taking away that added Armor modifier for when they're closed.

Spies can't do that, unless you want to decloak or EMP that defence, but even EMPing it doesn't get you around that Armor bonus when its closed.

And did I mention that they're dirt cheap, and disctact the enemy and make heavier units waste shots while you move your real units up to fight with? k, just checking.

Each have their own perks, but I'll stick to fleas k thx.
Saktoth
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by Saktoth »

Wait, 'another'?

Flea/Jeffy/Weasel spam is great, dont get me wrong. Its all kinds of wonderful for so many things. But both spies and fleas are valid to use as spotters.

Spies are more reliable though- you'll never have to rely on radar again. And there is something about EMP'ing his Anni, or his little army of reapers/bulldogs or his penetrators or sumos, then murdering it with sumos/snipers that is much more gratifying than any amount of friendly fire a flea/jeffy/weasel spam might cause. You can just pound him to death from range and if he ever gathers up to send a sortie against you or makes something that can out-range you, you can EMP it. Its a really solid strategy.
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NOiZE
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Re: Balanced Annihilation V6.0

Post by NOiZE »

[Krogoth86] wrote:I've had a look at the Krow script and I think I've fixed the "I flip up my wings even when flying" issue:
http://www.file-upload.net/download-592 ... pt.7z.html
Thanks!
[Krogoth86] wrote: I also noticed something else. You might want to remove that Bogus_Missile weapon from the minelayers as it makes them just shoot that nearly no damage bolts instead of the anti-mine burst when seeing a mine (you have to give an attack command by yourself to make it fire)...
Well i dont see how that would actually help, as mines are stealth and cloaked, so not even minelayers will see them.
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