Absolute Annihilation 2.11

[Pxtl]

reduced autoheal for building, but not removed i can live with. And a slightly longer timer for units, say a minute or two i can live with.

but waiting 5 minutes for it to kicking it just stupid. it will make games slower and add mindless tedium having to assign cons to repair everything.

nothing needs changing tbh, but as usual caydr has been influenced by people who dont even play the game...

I've never posted a single suggestion in the EE thread, and i play it as often as you play AA forboding - once in a blue moon.

I agree - 2 minutes delay tops, and then scale the amount to the health of the unit, so that it takes another 3 to regain full health.

[Egarwaen]

I agree - 2 minutes delay tops, and then scale the amount to the health of the unit, so that it takes another 3 to regain full health.

That makes sense. It's very rare that you'll get five minutes of downtime on any unit. If you do manage to swing it, you should be rewarded.

Hm. One possible balance thing that occurred to me: air repair pads. Even assuming that the related bugs were fixed, would anyone use them? Would it be worth re-introducing a single-pad structure if it could be built quickly and cheaply? (So you can throw one up just behind your defences)

[Cabbage]

hopefully this is a truth, a 2+ hour skirmish is ruidiclious.... they should never cross a 2 hour mark, ever.

Since when has a proper AA game ever lasted 2 hours? The only time i can think of is when i decided to spec some noobs on speedmetal, go make some food and come back to them porcing up in their respective starting areas.

a long game of AA lasts around 40 minutes, and thats a large team game. How do i know this? Becuase i actualy play it, everyday assuming im not down the pub or something...

2+ hour games is just another random figure you've come up with.

i can't belive some of the non-existant issues that have been bought up, autorepair, OP L3, OP defences - this is all just a big joke, but the problem is caydr takes note. One or two people who don't even play the damn mod claim there is a problem, fail to show any evidence (show me a replay) and things change for the worse. It's all bollocks.

Edit: And FA, i never claimed you didn't play AA, i often played with you as you're well aware. I said that you don't play NOW which is completely accurate. The reason i don't post on the EE forums isn't becuase im crap at it, its becuase i don't like EE, i just don't find it any fun. If i was to play it enough, i'd be able to hold my own against most, but thats not going to happen because i don't enjoy it.

[Pxtl]

I agree - 2 minutes delay tops, and then scale the amount to the health of the unit, so that it takes another 3 to regain full health.

That makes sense. It's very rare that you'll get five minutes of downtime on any unit. If you do manage to swing it, you should be rewarded.

Hm. One possible balance thing that occurred to me: air repair pads. Even assuming that the related bugs were fixed, would anyone use them? Would it be worth re-introducing a single-pad structure if it could be built quickly and cheaply? (So you can throw one up just behind your defences)

Good god I want the single pads back so badly - why are the quad pads in existence anyways? I mean, if you want a field of them you can just use block-building.

And yes, 2-hour games only seem to happen on hyper-porc maps like SpeedMetal and Castles. A normal game should be under an hour. Mind you, I have had stimulating, chaotic, intensely violent games on Castles that do run for hours... but usually the length was caused by a long stalemate (his nukes and orcones kept me from developing my economy to the intensity needed to crack him, and my arsenal of LRPCs keep him turtled within his castle where his economic expansion is limited by space). As such, auto-regen should be timed to be reasonable within a normal game length. A unit that heals in half an hour is preposterous given that many games will be over before then. If autoheal is to be that weak, it may as well not exist at all - it would just be another obscure, often-forgotten rule that only clanner-nerds know about and normal players find surprising and confusing, and AA has far too many of those already.

[Egarwaen]

Good god I want the single pads back so badly - why are the quad pads in existence anyways? I mean, if you want a field of them you can just use block-building.

Uh... I think they're one of Uberhack's fixes for OTA, aren't they? I vaguely remember that the air repair pad in OTA was hideously overcosted for what it did.

[Dragon45]

Lathan, get on sometime and we'll have a game on the same team...


there are a *lot* of weird subtelties that juts dont make sense until you've figured them out...

[Egarwaen]

Lathan, get on sometime and we'll have a game on the same team...


there are a *lot* of weird subtelties that juts dont make sense until you've figured them out...

Is this "stuff that should be in a manual" subtleties or "weird emergent gameplay properties" subtleties?

[Dragon45]

A manual? You think the game is that vanilla plain? This is TA, not starcraft. There is no rock paper scissors balance, no oneway to do anything; nothing that is the only option in a given situation. Ever. Everything that's so awesome (dareisay beautiful?) about Spring and AA is emergent; its why people get turned off so easily when they have little actual experience with it.

[BigSteve]

10 min auto repair is waaaay to long, 10 mins in a game of aa is a long time, and it wont make games faster or less porcy, how can anyone possibly think that?
it just means its gonna be longer before your units can go back to battle which surely means a slower less dynamic game, 2 mins tops or leave it the way it is ^^

[Dragon45]

I agree with Steve - there is nothing wrong with the way it is right now. If the Gaat or whatever was at 200 health right after an almost-succesful attack, you can guaruntee that the enemy will not sit aorund and let it be at low health; they'll be definately repairing it anyway. Its not going to magically climb up to full health in a minute.

That being said, a huge plus for autoheal is so that you dont have to worry about repairing a building, if say, a bunch of Missile Towers around your base misfire when a flare-dropping airplane group flies over head, those missiel hit ground structures, and suddenly, most of th ebuildings in your base are minus 50 HP or so. Repairing that would be a pain in the ass even with grouprepair; that's the sort of stupid micro that autoheal is good at fixing. Or say if artil acts stupid and suddenly you have random shells in your base for a second or two.

Having a long delay before heal kicks in sorta kills these benefits.

Additionally, when the peewee / weasel is behind enemy lines raiding and gets damaged and then autoheals - awesome! the tard defender didnt finish off a frigging PEEWEE; it DESERVES to have full health after a bit of time.

[det]

I say 10 minutes, then a Fast repair.

Also, I think it would be advantageous is Autoheal on buildings was removed altogether. It's not that difficult to set a con to patrol in your base if it matters that much to you.

There is a better way to accomplish this in spring.

1) Select one or more cons.
2) Turn repeat on.
3) Shift-Select one or more areas for the cons to repair.

They will make sure everything in those areas are always repaired.

Personally, I like the idea of disabling autoheal entirely. It is more strategic to only be able to heal units where you have con power. Also, it is easy enough to do that there is little micro benefit of autoheal.

[Kixxe]

Personally, I like the idea of disabling autoheal entirely. It is more strategic to only be able to heal units where you have con power. Also, it is easy enough to do that there is little micro benefit of autoheal.

:D!

nothing needs changing tbh, but as usual caydr has been influenced by people who dont even play the game...

My name is kixxe, i play spring. Hello.

Its not going to magically climb up to full health in a minute.

No, their only gonna magically have 600 more hp in a minute. 2 minutes 1200. I think HLT's have like.. 1700 hp?

[Machiosabre]

In principle, of cource it adds some extra gameplay in having to work if you would want to repair everything, although it does make attacks a bit less usefull, retreats less usefull, and defences far away from your base less usefull in comparison to those close in your base- this makes AA less "porcy" and adds strategy in general? I'd say the opposite is true.

[Kixxe]

But in contrast, every attack i waste on you that dosent kill anything is useless after 2 minutes. Which means that instead of wasting my attacks, i should rather build a larger attack force, proably of higher level. So i defend myself in and tech up. Porcy.

Besides, both ATTACK and DEFENSE is hamperd by this, reamber? Retreating is still usefull, but now you acually gotta support your units with repair units, and why is defence far away from your base less usefull? Esayer to get a con over there? Wow, what a diffrence.



Hell, this might give air cons a purpose except build level 2 air!

[det]

Hell, this might give air cons a purpose except build level 2 air!

I was thinking the same thing.

[Machiosabre]

I'm just saying, if you look at a single unit level say an Hlt, this does make defence worse and if you look at someone porcing, he will have a little harder time but if you look at someone trying to expand he'll get farther away from his base in areas where things tend to get attacked more it'll be a lot harder to hold, not just because of the distance cons have to travel but because they'll start dying( oh, and especially air cons).

I'd say porcing takes a little blow from this and expanding a bigger one since your units out in the field will be worth less.

You can't honestly say this change wont discourage expansion.

[KDR_11k]

I'd say no regeneration on defense structures, moderate idle regeneration and long time-to-idle for unarmed structures and constructors and low idle regeneration with slightly longer than current time-to-idle for attack units?

[Kixxe]

I'm just saying, if you look at a single unit level say an Hlt, this does make defence worse and if you look at someone porcing, he will have a little harder time but if you look at someone trying to expand he'll get farther away from his base in areas where things tend to get attacked more it'll be a lot harder to hold, not just because of the distance cons have to travel but because they'll start dying( oh, and especially air cons).

I'd say porcing takes a little blow from this and expanding a bigger one since your units out in the field will be worth less.

You can't honestly say this change wont discourage expansion.

It does discourage expanding. by a tiny bit. It forces you to have units to repair your structures if the enemy keeps them under pressure, which means that a smaller base is essayer to repair and a bigger spread out base is harder to manage. That's how it should be anyway, there should be some obvious noob advantages with porcing, but past that state it's no major problem. In fact, since it makes defending harder, it adds new strategies to the game!

What, cons die? build more next time, he attacked your support then slowly drained your defences. Maybe build some of the super ranged nanotowers in the back of your defence line and let the patrol to repair, reclaim and assist your front line. Your cons are slow? That airlab might be pretty useless after antiswarm/bomber turrets come in place, except maybe for the air con to repair your stuff, or even better, transport the support units to the front line! sup com style! :D If raiders are picking off your cons, build a couple of hammer/peewees to defend em... Now it's units backing up the support that's backing up the units and the defense! Doesn't it sound sweeeet?

See, all the drawback forces you to use support and therefore adds a strategic depth to the game!



Again, right now if i damage something, but does not kill it, my attack is starts to become useless after 10 seconds, and suddenly everything i have damaged suddenly has 600 more in HP in 1 minute. With this delay prolonged, my attack damage will stay long enough for my next wave of forces to benefit from it, if the defender dosen't support his stuctures to keep em alive that is. This is why i want 3-5 minute delay BTW. And before you say that buildings should only be affected, units are often used as defence to.

If you really want, we can have the smaller 2 minute delay on specific units, such as scouts and Infantry k-bots, possibly hammers...

[KDR_11k]

Random bad and totally unbalanced idea: L3 mobile LRAA unit.

[Machiosabre]

well it does sound fun and deep, but you'd have to put an awfull lot of work into it, so you have to wonder if it's still cost-effective to expand.