BA Chicken Defense V2.56 (BA7.81)

[TheFatController]

especially if:
any chance of sorting out some of the AI bugs please?

I'll look into easy / very easy next version.

As for the AI bugs these are issues in springs path finding, i'll see if a simple fix can be achieved however I want to avoid complex calculations on chicken movement as this will slow everything down.

[KaiserJ]

i played your chicken square, it was good fun! just figured i'd let you know i was working on something



btw... when i use the "initial start box" option, it seems like most of the nests spawn in the start but there are still always a few that will spawn randomly (like when i was testing this map last night)

great to see frequent updates though!

[TheFatController]

That map looks sweet

I played through a game on 'Easy' with 'Easy' queen one player and no extra metal or grace in 1.44, I do admit it was not in the least bit easy so going to have to tone it down a bit next version I think

Here's the replay if anyone's interested:
http://replays.adune.nl/?418

[TheFatController]

1.46 Changelog
- Lowered queenfire damage to gunships a bit
- Added the new chickens to the chicken armour class
- Burrows are no longer included in the chicken count
- New code to scale the size of waves depending on number of players
- Added some new code to nudge and clean up stuck chickens
- Raised impulse on basilisk acid goo, raised damage to features
- Raised reclaim time & mass on advanced chicken swarmers
- Raised advanced Dodo HP a bit
- Fixed dgun not hitting queen (does around 15,000 damage), added some custom chicken collisionspheres

Download: http://spring.jobjol.nl/show_file.php?id=1586

Please report any new lua errors here!

[vampi2]

Damn, bad forum.Sorry

[KaiserJ]

http://spring.jobjol.nl/show_file.php?id=1582

here's the "finished" product, i'd love to see what you guys think, because i'm planning on doing a few variations (one specifically for solo, and one that's for a large team of 6 or more)

seems to work great for me though... for solo play, i do a 280 second grace period on easy chickens, and tend to get raped by around the time the emp artillery starts hitting me (i blame my own lack of skills rather than the map in that respect)

-how is the metal / wind setup? should there be more, or less?
-is flattening the hills by the base a good idea? (to put towers onto etc)

btw chicken square is good fun, played it with my buddy on saturday afternoon. cheers!

(ps i must be doing something right, 40 downloads of jobjol since i made it last week, for an unadvertised map no less very encouraging.)

*edit* heh now that i look on the lobby, i see you are already ingame in chickenfarm. hope you enjoy!

[TheFatController]

It's sweet, the map looks really good I like the contrast on the base area vs ever more unfriendly alien landscape

Variations would be cool, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to do a better defend the middle map than chickensquare (i was thinking a flattish one with an outer circle of mesas with the players in the middle, so you defended the gaps between them)

The metal seemed fine as there isn't a huge amount of room for safe metalmaker farming, you could maybe put a few lighter patches on the desert ground just outside the base area to reward a bit of expansion.

As for hills yeah a few flat sections so strategicly placed turrets can shoot over eachother is cool, the only risk on a map that features flattops would be a burrow landing one one and lots of stuck chickens

The problem with Chickensquare is that i made the ramps up to the base far too long then realised that chickens could climb every cliff unless it was stupidly tall which isn't a problem other than there's bumps in the heightmap which makes their walk animation look bad

[racoon97]

Hi, TheFatController
I would like just send my congratulations for this mod. I spent a lot of time to play with this BA Chickens Mod. Thank you, Thank you so much !!!!
And please continue to support this mod as soon as possible.

[TheFatController]

I've found a bug!

Thanks to monohouse for reporting, when using always startbox and having the startbox right on the edge of the map chickens can sometimes spawn outside the map which then produces a screen full of CreateUnit errors and stops additional chickens.

I'm fixing it now (should be easy) and will be removing all previous versions from jobjol following 1.47, apologies!

[TheFatController]

1.47 Changelog
- Fixed a bug where chickens spawned off the side of the map and caused lua error spam
- Hopefully made a few more of the lua functions a bit more robust
- Improved the effect on lobber goo

Download: http://spring.jobjol.nl/show_file.php?id=1591

[el_matarife]

Can you add an "always avoid startboxes" method of chicken spawning? It would be pretty useful on maps where you wanted chickens to spawn all around you or for FFA since you can't do odd shaped boxes. (Since you'd need a cross shaped box to make chickens surround 4 players in an FFA w/ players in the corners for instance.)

[TheFatController]

1.48 Changelog
- Improvements to chicken targeting code.
- Fixed advanced dodo model, increased its effectiveness slightly.
- Improved Cockatrice and Alpha Cockatrice script so they don't stop attacking ground units when aircraft are nearby.
- Added some more custom hitspheres to the remaining chickens.
- Lowered Talon's speed slightly.
- Removed BA's metalmaker sounds.
- Krow's two kinds of laser are now counted as the same weapon for the purpose of Queen resistance.

Download: http://spring.jobjol.nl/show_file.php?id=1597


If the Metalmaker sounds change is important to anyone the solution will have to be an optional widget (to make the noises), no idea why anyone would want this though as they're the sole reason I keep spring sound volume turned down.

Also check out this video
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rYDEsztf1yk&fmt=18

[TheFatController]

1.49 Changelog
- Raised Mod LosMipLevel to 2 & AirLosMipLevel to 4, should noticeably reduce cpu usage in large games. (See: viewtopic.php?p=319949)

Download: http://spring.jobjol.nl/show_file.php?id=1601

[Umrug]

Hello!
First, thank you TheFatController for this excellent, excellent mod! I've had a lot of fun with it, so do my friends. Please keep up the great work.

1. A little complaint: I've got killed several times on Easy and Very Easy levels, even though we were 3 people on a good map. I think you might want to take a look at that - very easy should be for real beginners to get acquainted with the mod, and I'm no beginner, oh no.

2. Chainsaws and Packos (not sure about mobile AA or CORE units) stopped hitting flying chickens, this must be definitely fixed. You can make the damage low if you think thats necessary, but now they are just missing, which looks like bug. (Flacs work fine).

3. Basilisks have something wrong going on with their hitspheres - some units do not target them at all (Bulldogs), some miss them once in a while, some behave oddly (sometimes shooting - sometimes not) like pitbulls. IMHO basilisk is currently way overpowered.

4. A suggestion - what about some long-range AA unit like Screamer - spawning rarely as part of burrow defense, and firing rare, but long-range and powerful shots? Would make players feel a bit less comfortable...

KaiserJ - thanks for the map! Its almost perfect!

Suggestions:
1. I find it hardly playable in BA because of the hills next to base entrances - you can only put very limited amount of defense units between them, without expanding down to the sand, which is not always possible. Though, in NOTA and CA the map plays really good. Oh, wait, I think NOTA Montros cant climb down the passes, well, not too important.

2. Minor - is it possible to reverse the map so that players base it at the South? Strange request, I find that some people (including me) prefer to play while looking north because of TA camera behavior. (Yes I know how to use the other camera modes, its not the same)

Yay! thanks!

[TheFatController]

1.50 Changelog
- New Loadscreen to celebrate 1.50.
- Raised default burrow count to 30, default chicken count to 300.
- Raised DPS on Alpha Cockatrice slightly.
- Raised DPS on Advanced Spiker.
- Made Hard queen slightly harder.
- Made Basilisk weapon a bit less effective.
- Fixed hitspheres on Claw, Talon, Basilisk.
- Chickens will now ignore armoured defenses when closed.
- Fiddled with Chicken behaviour a bit.
- Easy & Very Easy are now easier.

Download: http://spring.jobjol.nl/show_file.php?id=1603

This should resolve your issues with hitspheres - they were unintended. I found the new Very Easy to be extremely easy in a test game played at 3.0 speed, only 266 chicken kills before the queen arrived with 1 player (would be higher with more players) should be fine to get people used to the units.

[SwiftSpear]

What's the current algorithm regarding burrows, spawning, and queen attacks? It seems most players have adapted a strategy of ignoring burrows entirely, as it's seen as not economical to attack as opposed to just defending. I think it's fine to want to run a defensive strategy, but the game should really make it feasible to use any intelligent strategy, as long as it's well executed and economically feasible.

[Otherside]

What's the current algorithm regarding burrows, spawning, and queen attacks? It seems most players have adapted a strategy of ignoring burrows entirely, as it's seen as not economical to attack as opposed to just defending. I think it's fine to want to run a defensive strategy, but the game should really make it feasible to use any intelligent strategy, as long as it's well executed and economically feasible.

play with metal makers and moho's disabled forced expansion

[Umrug]

TheFatController, thanks a lot, thats a response! We've tried the Very Easy, yes, its really very easy now. Also, air hitspheres seem to work. (BTW queen is still a challenge - it was on queen difficulty: normal)
Thanks!

[YHCIR]

I dunno if this is a bug or intentional, but on very hard the little speedy bombs can outrun most defences, LLT, flamers, doomsday, HLT, sabots, all have a very very hard time hitting them.

[imbaczek]

i guess that's the point, it's very hard after all.