Balanced Annihilation v4.7 !!

[LordMatt]

being able to reproduce it will make it easier to fix that bug...

I played a game today where this bug happened. When watching the demo, it appears stealth fighters (but not other aircraft) get locked into a loop that causes them to climb higher and higher. They'll do the same thing in the horizontal direction, going off screen quite a ways, but they can be ordered back onto the map from there. In the vertical direction giving them orders appears to have no effect, they just keep doing the same maneuver over and over again.

What exactly starts this process was unclear to me, but to replicate the bug it is probably sufficient to build a bunch of hawks, set them on a patrol route in an area with some terrain relief and let them fly around for a while. One might induce the bug faster by attacking the patrolling planes with some other stealth fighters, causing them to do more maneuvers. Whatever event causes this exactly seems to have a relatively low probability of occurring, but once it occurs the plane continues climbing indefinitely. The bug seems to happen in most games that have a lot of stealth fighters flying around for a long time.

[Neddie]

Yes, I had a game which desynced due to this in combination with some T3 units firing up at them.

[Klopper]

Shouldn't anti-air always choose the most "valuable" target? So why does it keep firing at a single off-screen fighter even when massive airraids are coming in?

[ZellSF]

Maybe that fighter was the most valuable target to the game? I doubt writing a way for the game to figure out the most valuable target as well as a human can is something the Spring developers, or anyone, would bother to do.

[hunterw]

probably not, but it'd be nice if flak aimed at clusters of planes instead of single ones

would probably require somewhat extensive code though

[MR.D]

Some general bitches about spring(not just AA/BA)

My biggest beef is when a plane is shot down, but not killed, the smoking plane becomes invincible as it crashes to the ground, and the whole time all your AA guns are still shooting at this dead plane.

Alot of the time that dead plane still has active LOS, such as the Radar planes and fighters, so it keeps uncovering LOS into a base even though its dead.. annoying.

Planes need to become a "non-target" after they've been killed, not un-destorable decoys that still draw AA fire.

Another thing that bothers me is how all weapons fire at the most valuable metal cost units first, there should be a difference between how guns pick what target to shoot at first.

That might be another thing to bring value to a TARGETING FACILITY, make weapons shoot on a first come first serve basis regardless of metal costs untill a Target Facility is built.

[Peet]

Planes need to become a "non-target" after they've been killed, not un-destorable decoys that still draw AA fire.

Not sure about b/aa, but in xta they explode with considerable force when they land, often on your base.

And they're not invincible, they take just a couple more shots to destroy.

[Lippy]

My biggest beef is when a plane is shot down, but not killed, the smoking plane becomes invincible as it crashes to the ground, and the whole time all your AA guns are still shooting at this dead plane.

Not true! You can blow planes up that are smoking and coming to the ground. Try flying bombers over flak a few times, some will lose all their life and start falling, only to be finished off by the flak before it hits the ground.

Alot of the time that dead plane still has active LOS, such as the Radar planes and fighters, so it keeps uncovering LOS into a base even though its dead.. annoying.

Well i think you answered your own question:

...plane is shot down, but not killed...

While its falling, it is not yet "dead" and so still has LOS

Planes need to become a "non-target" after they've been killed, not un-destorable decoys that still draw AA fire.

Arguable, but I like the way these decoys draw fire, allowing others behind to pass. AA is very powerful in BA anyway...

That might be another thing to bring value to a TARGETING FACILITY, make weapons shoot on a first come first serve basis regardless of metal costs untill a Target Facility is built.

I like it! +1

[hunterw]

Not sure about b/aa, but in xta they explode with considerable force when they land, often on your base.

And they're not invincible, they take just a couple more shots to destroy.

They aren't invincible, but they DO regenerate hit points every X ticks, meaning if only one or two AA towers are shooting at it, they will never do enough damage to kill it.

[Saktoth]

Shouldn't anti-air always choose the most "valuable" target? So why does it keep firing at a single off-screen fighter even when massive airraids are coming in?

Once it has a target, it will keep shooting at that target until it is dead, out of range (Horizontal, not vertical, spring has crappy vertical range detection... IE none at all), or you tell it to stop. Eventually its gonna lock its sights on the off-screen fighter, and just keep shooting at it.

BTW, ive also seen this happen to a seaplane fighter as well (In that Tangerine replay that Hunter posted a while back). Yes, Seaplane fighters have the drag, maxaileron, maxbank, maxelevator, maxpitch, maxrudder, mygravity, wingangle, wingdrag variables as well. I think that prettymuch confirms it- its a fluke in the new plane physics. Since this bug is so hard to reproduce its probably best to just remove these variables entirely.

[LordMatt]

My biggest beef is when a plane is shot down, but not killed, the smoking plane becomes invincible as it crashes to the ground, and the whole time all your AA guns are still shooting at this dead plane.

Alot of the time that dead plane still has active LOS, such as the Radar planes and fighters, so it keeps uncovering LOS into a base even though its dead.. annoying.

Planes need to become a "non-target" after they've been killed, not un-destorable decoys that still draw AA fire.

Plane behavior is fine kthxbye.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

tbh I dont think any of that is a problem except for the defences targetting the shot down plane. making them so they arent automaticly targeted once shot down would be a good plan.

[DemO]

On topic of air...Tired was very very right about hawks/vamps being overpowered and following their nerf they are still very overpowered. Try spam 15-30 of them on any map and you can cause mass havoc to an enemy base - gunships will get raped in a quarter of the time that it takes for the fighters to die and the fighters will take out flak/anti bomber/mt/etc in practically no time if you have 6-8 vamps/hawks on the job..

Not to mention comm ends games, where 25 vamps will kill 2 comms with ease regardless if their surrounded by anti air or not. Vamps/Hawks take much longer to kill off due to their flares, their spaced flying pattern (unlike gunships that fly close together even when told to fly in line formation) and their maneuverability/speed.

This needs to be fixed.

[Machiosabre]

I think it's great that lvl2 fighters take a while to kill with aa, so you can send em after patrolling or retreating planes, and that really shouldn't be nerfed.

they just need to do like 1 damage standard and special damages for all aircraft and maybe lvl1 aa.
who would seriously care that they don't damage ground worth a damn, nobody cares that antinukes don't kill ground.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

would I be wrong suggesting that fighters shouldnt be very effective VS ground? they are anti air units. they shouldnt pwn ground. just change their default missles to do a similar damage output to ground as a single slasher missle, and have an anti air tag so they still pwn air maybe?

[DemO]

Thats the point...currently they rip the shizzle out of ground units and structures.

[jackalope]

Why are anti nukes so weak? It's such an expensive structure to build and takes so long and all it does is sit there and is ONLY useful if your enemy actually manages to build a nuke and ammo for it. Anti nuke should be manually fireable and do ground damage tbh.

[Lippy]

Why are anti nukes so weak? It's such an expensive structure to build and takes so long and all it does is sit there and is ONLY useful if your enemy actually manages to build a nuke and ammo for it. Anti nuke should be manually fireable and do ground damage tbh.

Lol... and then have a anti-anti-nuke! Which will be pretty useless, just sitting there, so they should make i able to fire at ground, which leads to anti-anti-anti-nuke, which will in itself be pretty useless, just sitting there, so they should make i able to fire at ground, which leads to anti-anti-anti-anti-nuke, which will in itself be pretty useless, just sitting there......

[MR.D]

Anti nuke should be manually fireable and do ground damage tbh.

bad idea IMO, I mean seriously... wtf?

[Machiosabre]

I heard the word gullible isn't in the dictionary, you should check.