Absolute Annihilation 2.11

Drone_Fragger · Post by **Drone_Fragger** » 12 Sep 2006, 20:51

3 minutes sounds better. And add back in the "Whale" Submersible aircraft carrier, and the Core Amphobous air-pad.

Caydr · Post by **Caydr** » 12 Sep 2006, 20:56

5 is a good round number, I like it. Whale is never coming back from the abyss.

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 12 Sep 2006, 21:01

What about a fairly large aircraft that... functioned as an aircraft carrier and ran out of fuel in about ten minutes?

Zagupi · Post by **Zagupi** » 12 Sep 2006, 21:04

Btw, I can't see range indicators in jammer towers or antinukes before they are built. Even if I zoom out a lot. Someone said that you could. Is that incorrect information, or do I have a problem of some sort?
(edit)
Are the range indicators a missing feature that needs to be added, or is it already present?

KDR_11k · Post by **KDR_11k** » 12 Sep 2006, 21:08

I think limited fuel should result in a cost reduction for air, after all those air pads cost extra.

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 12 Sep 2006, 21:11

I agree with that point...

Caydr · Post by **Caydr** » 12 Sep 2006, 21:18

Zagupi wrote:Btw, I can't see range indicators in jammer towers or antinukes before they are built. Even if I zoom out a lot. Someone said that you could. Is that incorrect information, or do I have a problem of some sort?
(edit)
Are the range indicators a missing feature that needs to be added, or is it already present?

They're incorrect, but I could probably trick the engine into displaying these by giving them dummy weapons with the same range as their jamming. Added to todo.

Zagupi · Post by **Zagupi** » 12 Sep 2006, 21:22

Excellent!

Caydr · Post by **Caydr** » 12 Sep 2006, 21:38

The circles are there now, and I like them so much I'm going to do some for radars as well!

What's really cool is that the jamming/radar effect is affected the same way by terrain as weapons are, so it actually shows you accurately what will be jammed, regardless of mountains, etc.

~~~

I'll leave the fuel thing as a note for the next version, I think. It wouldn't take too long to do, but I don't want to overwhelm people with too many major changes at once.

~~~~

There's a new Spring test release in the dev forum, it looks like they're getting close. I might post an AA beta today sometime that'll work with it.

NEWSBOT3 · Post by **NEWSBOT3** » 12 Sep 2006, 22:01

\o/ give us a beta :)

Hellspawn · Post by **Hellspawn** » 12 Sep 2006, 22:10

That air idea will make air being used less though. We want that?

esteroth12 · Post by **esteroth12** » 12 Sep 2006, 22:21

5 minutes is a long time... with a single airpad, you get air repair (remember, auto repair is gone) which is useful, and you can keep the planes...

consider this a nurf to Brawlers

Machiosabre · Post by **Machiosabre** » 12 Sep 2006, 22:34

I think the fuel idea is cool, but it seems like it would only affect patrolling fighters anyway, so I think think it's really worth the bother. it might be more fun for a few special units, or maybe if it were used in a way to affect range more.
Like whenever units are within range of the pad they have full fuel and can only go out for a certain time, and thus a certain area so you'd have different types of planes for different ranges, so you'd have to make airbases in different parts of the map in order to use air.
It'd add some more strategy in a sence of killing an airbase in one part of the map to clear it from certain aircraft rather than killing a pad and stopping patrolling planes after a few minutes and not affecting airstrike capacity at all.
Come to think of it this might be better some real world mod.

Erom · Post by **Erom** » 12 Sep 2006, 22:46

esteroth12 wrote:consider this a nurf to Brawlers

Not really. It's unlikely a Brawler will live the 5 minutes required to run out of fuel - they will be thrown en masse into the fray before then. What will run out of fuel, however, is the fighters patrolling to protect you from brawlers.

What it would do, in effect, is make air assaults have a time limit to them (nerf) but also create temporary fluxating holes in a persons air defense net (buff). Overall not a big change to air tactics.

LordMatt · Post by **LordMatt** » 12 Sep 2006, 23:00

I'm not in favor of fuel limited planes because of the nerf to fighter patrols, and because planes seem to like to fly around a good bit before finding a place to land when they are built, wasting fuel. Also it's unOTAlike

Just think of planes as having onboard reactors for power. Also most air assults are relatively short, unless the opponent forgot to build AA, in which case they deserve to lose anyway.

KDR_11k · Post by **KDR_11k** » 12 Sep 2006, 23:14

Hm, how about 30 seconds to 1 minute of fuel for attack planes but in turn they don't get ripped up as easily by ground based AA? So an average bombing run against a base with average anti-air defenses will have about half the bombers returning, maybe even more but you need to have airbases very close to the target you wish to attack and each attack is very short? You'd need tons of airfields to service a large number of bombers and preparing for a strike at any position would take much longer. Gunships, fighters and transports should be exempt from this, that's just pointless tedium. Come to think of it... Maybe gunships could have a lot of fuel but firing depletes it pretty quickly so a gunship assault wouldn't be sustainable for too long. There could even be a single-strike fighter that can shoot only once before its fuel is depleted but causes a LOT of damage (air-to-air short range screamer?).

I think limited fuel could be explored in a variant/mutator.

Egarwaen · Post by **Egarwaen** » 12 Sep 2006, 23:21

Caydr wrote:What's really cool is that the jamming/radar effect is affected the same way by terrain as weapons are, so it actually shows you accurately what will be jammed, regardless of mountains, etc.

You sure about that? Last time I checked, jammers weren't affected by terrain, but radar was.

I like the fuel idea, as it imposes an additional cost on people who use aircraft (particularly gunships) to back up combat units and defensive lines. Maybe 5 minutes for fighters, 3 for gunships? It shouldn't change the way you use them offensively in the slightest, as any aircraft used to attack will either wipe out your enemy or be destroyed in well less than three minutes, but it would be a minor nerf to defensive air use, which I think is a good idea.

I'm not sure that L2 defences need a nerf. Maybe a slight cost nerf on the pop-ups. But if your enemy's managed to build up an area with Vipers/Pitbulls, BLoDs, flak, and LRMTs, it's either time to move to L3 and start using some mechs to draw fire while you swarm him to pieces, go around, or nuke the bugger.

Min3mat · Post by **Min3mat** » 12 Sep 2006, 23:27

well you can extensively use scripts now (i think)
if fuel = 0
then
-20% firepower
-20% speed
-10% health

would be interesting, but yeah i think that this should be shoved aside into a mutator variant too.

Hellspawn · Post by **Hellspawn** » 12 Sep 2006, 23:47

Egarwaen wrote: I'm not sure that L2 defences need a nerf. Maybe a slight cost nerf on the pop-ups. But if your enemy's managed to build up an area with Vipers/Pitbulls, BLoDs, flak, and LRMTs, it's either time to move to L3 and start using some mechs to draw fire while you swarm him to pieces, go around, or nuke the bugger.

You are forgeting enemy will ahve units around his defence aswell, meaning you will need like 2 times more units then him to actually come to his base.

IMO once you get lvl 2 defence up there is no way you can out-swarm enemy (if game is pretty evenly).

It's more like atack part of map, secure that area, build defence in that area, reclaim metal, repeat.

KDR_11k · Post by **KDR_11k** » 12 Sep 2006, 23:48

That would require script-side fuel instead of using the tags. The tags also cause a fuel counter to be displayed in the GUI which you'd lose this way.

Spring RTS Engine

Absolute Annihilation 2.11