NOTA 1.82 - Page 4

NOTA 1.82

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j5mello
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Post by j5mello »

also can i ask what the command tank for i think arm does???
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rattle
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Post by rattle »

Lots of damage I think.
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Thor
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Post by Thor »

Thanks for the detailed list, rattle, I'll look through all those things. I didn't know about that sweepfire tag, I'll have to try it out. It sounds like just what we originally had in mind for the flying wing, where the laser would scorch its way through the ground from one target to the next, like Supcom's monkeylord.

The command tank is a version of the regular greyhound tank with I think a better gun and radar. You have a chance of getting one every time you build a greyhound.
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rattle
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Post by rattle »

You're welcome. I just happen to notice stuff like that while being bad at playing...

Yes that tag is rather new, SJ added it some days ago.


I noticed that the number texture on the grayhound is random, haven't had the command variant though. :?
j5mello
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Post by j5mello »

first time i built its thats what i got :)
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rattle
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Post by rattle »

Found another one (which is in BOTA as well)...
Jethro: left RL fires, left flare shows up, right tube recoils and the other way around.
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Quanto042
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Post by Quanto042 »

rattle wrote:Found another one (which is in BOTA as well)...
Jethro: left RL fires, left flare shows up, right tube recoils and the other way around.
Oh wow, i just checked, and ur right :X


Would using the script from another mod do the trick???
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smoth
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Post by smoth »

the script just calls the wrong peicename post the script and I or another person here will fix it for you.
j5mello
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Post by j5mello »

Another thing can you guys check all your cloaked units and make sure they have stealth. Im 90% sure that spy bots don't have it which makes them useless for spy duty.

also any other plans for this? such as addressing the power of Costal guns?
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Thor
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Post by Thor »

The spies don't have stealth, which was a concious decision we made. The idea is that they're something you use when your enemy's relying too heavily on jamming. The radius on jammers is big enough that it should theoretically be easy enough to get inside it without getting shot, by "transferring" your spy from your jammer to his. Admittedly, probably no one has ever bothered to do this in a real game. I'm a bit reluctant to make spies stealth though because then they either have complete free access to one's entire base, or we would have to implement a special detector unit which would be just one more complication.

Version 1.2 is going to have some pretty big changes and additions. For one, seaplanes are back in. Unlike their heavier land-based counterparts, they are extremely fast and perfect for hit-and-run attacks, but are also much more lightly armored. They'll have their own underwater refueling stations, meaning they'll be most useful on maps where you can't or can't afford to build a foward base for air refueling.

As for balance, one of the most important things we're doing is reworking heavy tanks. In 1.11 late game can just devolve to both sides wielding armies of massed heavy tanks with a few anti-air and missile launchers thrown in. This will be fixed by making heavy tanks more of a support unit. Basically they will be better at what they do (heavy fire support for your medium tanks) while being much more vulnerable to anti-armor weapons (rockets, beam weapons, gauss cannons, aircraft, etc.) than they previously were. Building too many in relation to your other units becomes less cost-effective as they will be more likely to be killed by aircraft or rocket kbots before they can earn back their cost.

Level 1 kbots are another subject of change. All are now generally quite a bit more cost-effective than before, which should make a kbot start more practical. Now you have more of an interesting choice: speed (vehicles) or cost-effectiveness (kbots). Of course, an added danger to using kbots is the risk from air attack. A couple hellfish can really ruin your kbot army's day, and they're very affordable as well. Not to mention napalm bombers...

Are coastal guns really overpowered? In the games I've seen them used against ground units, they've been mostly ineffective. Their terrible accuracy prevents them from being anything more than a slight nuisance even over long periods of time against an immobile army. They are much more dangerous if your enemy can get one up in range of your base, but they're still so expensive and weak that I don't see it as a problem. It only takes two bombers to take one out, and the cost of building it probably will far outstrip the cost of what it manages to destroy before you find a way to kill it.
pintle
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Post by pintle »

just a personal preferance, but maybe in your planned nerf of heavy tanks, reduce their dps as opposed to their survivability. I generally use bulldogs (play arm 95% of the time) as meat shields to get los for the bigger guns, and perceive the role of close support to be that of samsons/penetrators/lugers/gunships.

As i said, just a preferance...
j5mello
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Post by j5mello »

the stationary ones are a pain because even with inaccuracy if u move clumps of units chances are the shot will... glance(?)... into other units.

I brought up the idea of (like real costal guns) they have a fixed arc so that they can only protect a certain wedge of territory but thats just my crazy (and recent reality mod binge) mind coming up with stuff.

I guess i bring them up because regardless of whether or not ships are used the Costal guns still show up in games. that seems like it shouldn't happen as to me the Guns should be something along the line of Depthcharge launchers, where u only build them if ur dealing with the units it was designed to combat. Again thats just my personal opinion.
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Thor
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Post by Thor »

pintle, I'll keep that in mind. Heavy tanks will still be adequate meat shields as long as your enemy isn't using large numbers of rocket kbots. Also, bulldogs will probably be more of a meat shield kind of tank than the reaper or goliath.

j5mello, I agree that the coastal guns don't belong on land battles. That was one of the reasons we for a while weren't even going to have coastal guns - I didn't think there was a good enough way to make them good against ships without being a powerful land force also. I think the solution in game does work pretty well - to make them really weak and give them terrible accuracy with a tiny area of effect. I think that the vast majority of the times you see them in game on land battles they do not make up for their high cost, and their owner is wasting money. Even so, I agree that they are far too common on land maps, but all I can do is make sure they aren't cost-effective. I can't stop people from wasting their money on them, as they seem to always do. The fixed arc idea is a very good one I think. We had discussed the idea as well a while ago, and it may be worth revisiting at some point. I think the reason we didn't implement it was simply that there's no visual hint on the gun models of any restriction, so any limit would feel arbitrary and unfair. At some point maybe we'll get around to remodelling the guns to give them some kind of fixed structure so that a limited arc will visually make sense and be more intuitive to the player.
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Fanger
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Post by Fanger »

just make them only target ships.. problem solved...
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Pxtl
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Post by Pxtl »

Well, are there any other units that are as big as the boats? If not, then it's pretty simple: make it too inaccurate to hit anything smaller than a boat, and too small blast radius and ROF to be used against groups of infantry. Like using a Penetrator to fight Peewees. If you have anything the size of a boat that is on land that can get into firing range of the antinaval cannon, then you might have a problem - but there aren't too many such units. It could be used against land units - it would be functionally a slightly-inaccurate annihilator (but slightly is enough to miss most lesser targets).
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Fanger
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Post by Fanger »

no it does not have to be that complicated, you can easily set them up to ONLY fire at ships..

and before anyone goes but the fluff, the flak, ONLY fires at aircraft, think of the coastal guns as flak for ships.. just make them not fire at anything but ships.. bam problem solved the only way then they could be used against land targets was if they were then told to force fire...
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Thor
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Post by Thor »

Pxtl, what you described is basically how the guns are right now. It works pretty well. The only landunits anywhere near the size of ships are buildings and krogoths, so that's not too much of a problem. The stupid thing is, that people build them anyway, regardless of their effectiveness.

Fanger, I think the difference between flak and these guns is that no one expects flak to shoot at ground, whereas they do expect a coastal gun to shoot at anything that comes into its range, ship or not. For example what happens if a transport hovercraft comes in range? All it would take is one lucky shot but your gun refuses to fire. "Sorry sir, but we were told only to fire on ships, and that vessel is clearly a hovercraft. You'll have to find someone else to shoot at it." I just don't want to put those kinds of arbitrary restrictions on things..
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Pxtl
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Post by Pxtl »

Thor wrote:...whereas they do expect a coastal gun to shoot at anything that comes into its range, ship or not. For example what happens if a transport hovercraft comes in range? All it would take is one lucky shot but your gun refuses to fire. "Sorry sir, but we were told only to fire on ships, and that vessel is clearly a hovercraft. You'll have to find someone else to shoot at it." I just don't want to put those kinds of arbitrary restrictions on things..
I agree. This has always been my big problem with AA/BA - the weaponry is completely counterintuitive. You have lasers blasting the hell out of planes and barely scratching them, cannons that do extra damage to boats, etc. Some missiles shoot air, some don't. Unless you read the changelogs and suchlike, you'd never learn these things. We don't notice because we're used to it.

Personally, I think the most intuitive way to do specifically antinaval defenses is to use weapons that are specific to water - like the coastal depthcharge launchers in BA. Of course, there is no weapon that makes sense as a weapon that can only attack ships - torpedos can kill subs, and cannons can fire to land.

Alternately, I had an old idea of using coloured weapons to denote weaknesses/strengths. Weapons with X-coloured lights on them are weak to X-coloured projectiles, while units with X-coloured shields have some sort of resistence (the shield may be intangible, just for show) to X-coloured projectiles. So you make flak gree and give flak-resistent-planes a green shield, give boats blue lights on them and make antinaval cannons fire blue projectiles, etc.
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Fanger
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Post by Fanger »

Or, hover craft comes into range, and the coastal guns targetting system has so much difficulty locking onto such a small target that the targetting crew decides not to even try..
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MadRat
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Post by MadRat »

Maybe you should lobby for a towaterweapon tag for something like that. Units on/in the water should be treated like they are under a special categorical state, sort of like how the air units are treated. It would cure some of your headaches.
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