Next version of AA

[REVENGE]

You can perform version math like nullsoft:

"Why WinAMP 5? Because 2 + 3 = 5!"

[hunterw]

werent you already going to call AA something different?

didnt you already have a wbsite named whatever it was you were changing it to?





just name it that this is the color of urine

[Caydr]

Abolition was supposed to be the name of the supermod that I was working on, a merger of AA, AWS, GEM, and several mutators, all packaged seamlessly and balanced. The crazy part is, it's actually playable... not quite balanced yet but definitely enjoyable. Sounds made up, but it's true. I was planning to add a couple other third party races as well if I could locate their authors and get permission.

Abolition, right, because I'm removing the barriers between mods. It did in fact make sense...

Anyway I don't have time for a project of that size anymore, not until I get a shift change anyway. I need to get each mod completed and polished one at a time, then merge them when they're all stable.

Next version of AA will be very rough. I can already see I probably won't have enough time to get it completely tested if things continue to go as they are now. Hopefully I'll get a beta out by Wednesday and a finished version out by the following Monday.

I haven't decided whether I'll implement CA/BA/WhateverElse-A changes yet since first I don't want to look like I'm just ripping other people off and second I haven't played either of them so I don't know if/how they'll fit with the changes I already have in place.

I would certainly like to improve the explosions and other effects a bit if I can, but tbh I don't know what's possible yet and I would prefer to do as much of the work as possible on my own even if that means a lesser-quality end result. This is all about learning for me, and if I'm going to be able to make my version of AWS and the GEM mod look good, I'll need to know how to do those things on my own.

The next version will almost certainly not closely resemble the previous versions. I'm trying to take the mod in a different direction - up to now, I've been keeping things as they are even if there's no good reason, simply because "that's how Cavedog left it, and this is supposed to be an enhancement of TA, not a new game entirely." I don't know how you'll all react to the changes, but let me give you some examples.

PARTIAL CHANGELOG, SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE PRIOR TO RELEASE

Commanders are now 2-3x faster at building than they were before. This accelerates the early game significantly and keeps the Commander as a more important unit for a longer period of time, hopefully eliminating some of the desire to commbomb. Also they are as much as 10+ times faster at repairing, for instance. You won't want to lose him, hopefully.

Arm's mex is cheaper while core's mex is actually more like a regular building now. It has significant armor, and also costs enough that you don't want to lose them very much. At the same time they're not so expensive it slows down expansion very much.

Factories at L1 are significantly faster-built - this is in addition to commanders being faster builders.

One geothermal generates energy but has a switch to turn into a powerful metal maker as well, while th eother geothermal just creates energy and is faster and cheaper to build, but is not as efficient.

Arm's minelayer is now a quasi-FARK unit, but at the expense of losing nanotowers.

Core no longer gets combat engineers, but gets exclusive access to resurrector units - and these resurrectors are signficiantly faster at rezzing than old ones.

Arm gets early access to hovers (comm menu) but does not get heavy rocket launching ones or transports, while core gets the Halberd heavy laser hover.

Core can no longer build decoy commanders.

Arm can now build decoy fusions again, and they're set up in such a way they're worth using.

Seismic detectors have a significantly smaller range but are much cheaper, and arm's can cloak.

Arm's fusions are now much less powerful and far cheaper, making them more flexible, while core's has much more armor and has a greater output.

Arm's spy is now a highly powerful EMP bomb when self-destructed, while core's is a mini-nuke.

Core's Hurricane bomber now drops twice as many bombs, they are each half as powerful, and they spread over a wide area. Hurricanes do less overall damage than Phoenixes, but they are much more effective at attacking units. Phoenixes also have a pretty decent anti-air defense weapon.

D-Guns can now be fired freely, regardless of blocking friendlies, just like in TA

Arm's advanced fusions have a high output, while core's advanced fusions now produce a lot of metal as well as energy.

Behemoth geothermal plasma battery is now much more powerful and has a longer range, but is high trajectory only - it's now much more useful while not being overpowered as units get close.

FARKS, when self-destructed, heal a significant amount of damage to units around them. When just destroyed, they still heal but not very much.

Flagships now have bertha cannons.

L1 constructors are faster to be built.

Core's plasma deflector is now a plasma absorber - it takes only a small amount of damage from each shot, and it sucks plasma in - generating massive amounts of energy comparable to the cost it takes to fire each shot (from LRPC, etc). No, can't be exploited by friendly fire.

Core's rader tower and sonar are hardened structures but they lose dragon eyes.

All wrecks have lower values, reducing the fear of attacking someone only to strengthen their economy

Rockos/Hammers (and counterparts) now have better defined roles and work better together.

Thud is now "more" all-terrain than regular kbots, but not as good as spiders, just like in TA.

All artillery-type plasma (luger, guardian, millennium, etc, but not bulldog, goliath, stumpy, flash, etc) is now affected by plasma deflectors/absorbers.

Many new and improved groundscars

New/returning units, many roles changed or made better defined

I'm trying to make low tech units still useful at high tech, while keeping super tech useful

Arm no longer gets amphibious construction vehicles (early hovers instead)

.... A lot more .... Hopefully good stuff. Besides what's above there are many partially-done changes, changes which may not be completed in time for release, and changes I'd like to keep to myself for the time being. And a few horrible puns you'll lose your lunch on the first time you build them.

If anyone wants to help, there are TWO things I just don't have the skills to do on my own, both to do with LUA.

First: I need a way to define what the default action is when a wreck is mouseover'd with a unit which has both the rez and reclaim ability. I need the unit to reclaim by default.

Second: I need a way to run a COB sequence when self-destruct is triggered, and have that sequence end and another begin if/when self-destruct is cancelled.

Both of those are necessary for some really interesting things I'd like to do.

[Foxomaniac]

I just shat bricks.

Epic changes O.o.

[Caydr]

There's still a lot of other stuff that's only part-done. What's above is fully functional.

[Forboding Angel]

Caydr, as far as fx go, dl funta, blow some shit up, then look in the weapons files and then in gamedata/explosions directory. Itm will prolly me self explanatory for the most part.

[Sleksa]

your changelog looks like raped annihilation more than classic annihilation.

The repair speed changes will make the commander invincible via nanoshielding ;/

[Caydr]

Define "nanoshielding", my idea of what nanoshielding is shouldn't be affected by changes to repair rates.

[Sleksa]

Define "nanoshielding", my idea of what nanoshielding is shouldn't be affected by changes to repair rates.

1)
commander nanoshields against 3 rockos by putting repeat on and laying down a mstorage

2)
laughable buildpseed of mstorage coupled with its insane HP gets accidentally the m-storage built against a group consisting of 6 rockos now.

3)
the commander puts repeat on repair/guard on the metal storage with the commander and goes to the fridge/toilet while the enemy shoots the invincible mstorage with a group now consisting of 25 rockos

4) ????

5) profit

[Caydr]

Subject to change.

Nanoshielding is the act of building things behind yourself and then running away, then repeat, in order to block the majority of incoming fire from behind a commander. Correct?

What's been changed by 10x or whatever I said is the repair rate, which is independent of the build rate. This means, for instance, your commander has the repairing power of approximately 30 standard construction kbots. (it's something like 2500 now versus the 80 of kbots). Comms now have a build speed of 450, which is 50% greater than their old standard speed of 300. So they're now by far the fastest building unit - however if you were able to do this nanoshielding thing before, a 50% increase will not dramatically alter your ability to do so I think. Right?

Or maybe I've got it wrong and nanoshielding refers to something different now. Explain?


~~~~

Edit:

Ah, so it's metal storage. Does this happen often with other structures or just metal storage due to their rather high HP to cost value?

No sarcasm here, what prevents you from just running past the storage or using artillery?

Is it an issue that could be corrected by increasing metal storage cost?

[Sleksa]

No sarcasm here, what prevents you from just running past the storage or using artillery?

running past might be hard in maps like brazillian battlefield, if you just lay down the mstore on the passage.

and the comm still has a Dgun and the power to build llts to stop the swarming.

also there is little idea in making artillery since guardian costs insane amounts of metal ( guardian is ~1000 metal, mstore is ~ 100 metal), and the artillery tank shots are blocked by the mstorage's height.

[Caydr]

I see... so it sounds like the problem is with exploitable buildings in general? Why don't I just shrink the height of some of the bigger ones where reasonable?

[Forboding Angel]

caydr, you could just make the wreckage have low damage, so that force firing on the wreckage destroys it quickly. Or jsut make that particular wreckage non blocking.

Regardless, this is not a valid reason to not go forward with your plans. There is a myriad of ways to overcome small issues like this.

[SinbadEV]

soo... like when we used to build farms to make walls in WC2?

[Caydr]

Wreckage will probably have 25% HP of the original unit (standard is 50 iirc), 35% metal value of original unit (standard is 60+ iirc), and crushed will have 25% of both the above values.

IMO wreckage is a brilliant idea but from the beginning it's been done wrong. It should be a bonus, not a hindrance. It blocks pathfinding too often, and imo more importantly when you attack it makes you think, "if I don't totally decimate him and gain full control of the area, he will probably come out with MORE metal than he started with, and I'll have no army."

It should make sense to make surgical strikes to attack a single target for instance, or to take out a powerful defense one gun at a time if nothing else can be done. Right now, you must have a total victory or it's a total defeat. It's been like this since OTA. When I regenerated all the wreckage values like 2 years ago somewhere around version 1.2 I'd guess, I reduced the values and I immediately noticed an improvement. I had wanted to reduce them further but never had the opportunity.

[Pxtl]

So the idea is: ARM is actually different from CORE. Neat concept, but I worry about the "This map is better for ARM" effect. Plus, I hope that you'll consider remodelling/resizing buildings where appropriate - while the Core mex does look bigger and heavier than the Arm one (and thus, the "Core mex is real building, Arm's is not makes sense) I'm not sure that's true about the Radar towers, or other similar "it's a real building for Core" units.

Still, the whole "factions are radically different from each other" thing works better in games that have more than two factions.

Is Core going to get any special way to defend Comms, since they have no decoys? Like a hyper-armored comm-bunker that regenerates so fast it's practically indestructible, but eats energy like mad to do so? After all, AA's comms are pretty lightly armoured, and some people do play game-ends.

Also, since AA is becoming radically different from either OTA or the new BA standard - please tell me you'll be including all of this information in tooltips. For example, all units with deflectable artillery should somewhere include "artillery" in their description, so that the "anti-artillery defense" is obvious.

[Forboding Angel]

Is Core going to get any special way to defend Comms, since they have no decoys? Like a hyper-armored comm-bunker that regenerates so fast it's practically indestructible, but eats energy like mad to do so? After all, AA's comms are pretty lightly armoured, and some people do play game-ends.

I know this is jsut an example but I'mma harp on the faulty thinking just because it bugs me.

In your above example... Why would anyone use it? It's way to expensive, and makes you comm completely useless. The faulty thinking here is that just because something has a massive downside is that it's balanced, and lends to gameplay. That is not the way it is. Give something such a massive downside and no one will use it. <- Simple truth.

Caydr. Looking good dude. So far I think you're heading in a very nice direction.

[KDR_11k]

From what I recall nanoshielding just requires the building to be spawned, no? Wasn't it just about the building absorbing a full shot even if it's at 0% completion? That doesn't sound like buildspeed or repairspeed affect it.

[quantum]

I don't think nanoshielding is a huge issue. CA has nigh-invulnerable insta-nanoshields in the form of terraforming, and it doesn't really create gameplay problems. That said, nanoshielding introduces some boring micro.

[Saktoth]

Id be more worried about invincible llt's. Good luck ever, ever, ever killing anything the com is repairing. Artillery/Samson = useless with com around.