Balancing OTA like mods/games

[Gota]

I want to talk about balancing issues in OTA mods that rely on OTA as their basis for balance.
I will refer to OTA in several cases because of the fact that BA and other ota mods are and were influenced greatly by it and are an extension of it.

Missile Towers:
In BA The main defensive turret is the llt as opposed to OTA where it was the missile tower than could shoot land and air targets.
This effects the game in the following manner:
In BA air becomes a win or lose choice meaning,if you go air you either lose badly or win easily.
If the enemy notices you are building air (imagine a 1v1)he will build AA which will totally negate all your air attack plans if he does not notice your going air you will most likely to devastate his base/defenses/units because he will not spend resources on AA if he is not sure you have air to avoid being crushed by land forces if his opponent went land and had more resources cause he did not build AA nor air.

So air/land strategies do not involve any pushing and pulling,where one player can take the lead but than lose it and than regain it etc,like it happens with land battles.
All air requires,is to just choose when to go air at start and hope not to get scouted otherwise your dead.

If missile towers are the main defensive turret and can shoot both land and air it means That going air no longer involves winning cause u made one good choice and were lucky but becomes more like land battles I.E requires skill for a prolonged period of time in the game.

Combombs/comnaps/air drops:
Same here....
If the main defensive structure only shoots at land
Players will tend to not build AA until they see the first air unit at which time it might be too late and they will get combombed/comnapped or get a drop on them...
This is again a luck based strategy.
A player in team 1 (in a team game)cannot guess what his enemy is doing because there are many players(lets not talk about how good players should be able to guess whats happening because frankly that rarely happens especially in team games)so he will not build AA until he sees the first air unit or his allies see one.
This makes combombing comnapping and air dropping a very very lucrative strategy that is far more centralized than it should be because it requires much less skill than trying to outmaneuver your enemy's forces with your own and push him back.

All this is solved if the main turret is a turret that shoots both air and land.
Drops,comnaps and combombs are still possible but much less common and require more skillfull play by the players.

Air
Air in ota based mods,is very simplistic compared to how it was in OTA.
The main air unit is The fighter.why?
Because the fighter is the toughest air to air unit for cost thus he who has more will have bigger chances of assuming control over airspace.
So...
How do fighters in spring ota based mods fair against fighters in OTA?
In OTA fighters were much more microable and required much more skill and unit control than in spring OTA mods.
In OTA fighters were microed(they behaved differently than in spring which allowed them to be more microable) and were played with,almost like land units.
IN spring,fighters are almost impossible to micro,they have huge turning arches which means they are clumsy and get into places you don't want them and its impossible to control a group of fighters because they scatter and get hit by AA and other sources of fire.
The only way to do something with fighters is to set them on patrol to defend a line or set them on patrol towards and enemy line of fighters and hope your fighters will win since you cannot do much to help them.

[Otherside]

promote SA more instead of trying to get BA to change there ways

[Regret]

This makes combombing comnapping and air dropping a very very lucrative strategy that is far more centralized than it should be because it requires much less skill than trying to outmaneuver your enemy's forces with your own and push him back.

Ignoring the other bullshit I just read through in your post, this sums up your ignorance pretty well.

[Teutooni]

*sigh*

When you mean BA say BA, not 'OTA based mods'. CA doesn't have any of the problems you described, except perhaps air behaviour (or lack of hawkdancing), and neither has XTA.

But yeah... Missile towers should imo be able to hit land. OTA fighter behaviour, however, seems unintended. If you let fighters fight unmicroed in OTA they behave similar to fighters in Spring.

[Gota]

true but it doesn't matter if it was done on purpose...Its still more fun.
Xta has other issues...mainly the fact that Missile towers actually suck pretty bad unless your playing 4v4 on a 8x8 map.
The whole gunship/bomber/missile tower balance is off IMO but you cant fix it unless you allow fighters to be more microable.

[Google_Frog]

Is how good a game is directly proportional to how similar it is to OTA?

[Otherside]

[Gota]

Is how good a game is directly proportional to how similar it is to OTA?

Oh you wanna start this shit?CA sux!

I was just mentioning some differences that's all.

[Regret]

Oh you wanna start this shit?

I want to talk about balancing issues in OTA mods that rely on OTA as their basis for balance.
I will refer to OTA in several cases because of the fact that BA and other ota mods are and were influenced greatly by it and are an extension of it.

Missile Towers:
In BA The main defensive turret is the llt as opposed to OTA where it was the missile tower than could shoot land and air targets.
This effects the game in the following manner:
In BA air becomes a win or lose choice meaning,if you go air you either lose badly or win easily.
If the enemy notices you are building air (imagine a 1v1)he will build AA which will totally negate all your air attack plans if he does not notice your going air you will most likely to devastate his base/defenses/units because he will not spend resources on AA if he is not sure you have air to avoid being crushed by land forces if his opponent went land and had more resources cause he did not build AA nor air.

So air/land strategies do not involve any pushing and pulling,where one player can take the lead but than lose it and than regain it etc,like it happens with land battles.
All air requires,is to just choose when to go air at start and hope not to get scouted otherwise your dead.

If missile towers are the main defensive turret and can shoot both land and air it means That going air no longer involves winning cause u made one good choice and were lucky but becomes more like land battles I.E requires skill for a prolonged period of time in the game.

Combombs/comnaps/air drops:
Same here....
If the main defensive structure only shoots at land
Players will tend to not build AA until they see the first air unit at which time it might be too late and they will get combombed/comnapped or get a drop on them...
This is again a luck based strategy.
A player in team 1 (in a team game)cannot guess what his enemy is doing because there are many players(lets not talk about how good players should be able to guess whats happening because frankly that rarely happens especially in team games)so he will not build AA until he sees the first air unit or his allies see one.
This makes combombing comnapping and air dropping a very very lucrative strategy that is far more centralized than it should be because it requires much less skill than trying to outmaneuver your enemy's forces with your own and push him back.

All this is solved if the main turret is a turret that shoots both air and land.
Drops,comnaps and combombs are still possible but much less common and require more skillfull play by the players.

Air
Air in ota based mods,is very simplistic compared to how it was in OTA.
The main air unit is The fighter.why?
Because the fighter is the toughest air to air unit for cost thus he who has more will have bigger chances of assuming control over airspace.
So...
How do fighters in spring ota based mods fair against fighters in OTA?
In OTA fighters were much more microable and required much more skill and unit control than in spring OTA mods.
In OTA fighters were microed(they behaved differently than in spring which allowed them to be more microable) and were played with,almost like land units.
IN spring,fighters are almost impossible to micro,they have huge turning arches which means they are clumsy and get into places you don't want them and its impossible to control a group of fighters because they scatter and get hit by AA and other sources of fire.
The only way to do something with fighters is to set them on patrol to defend a line or set them on patrol towards and enemy line of fighters and hope your fighters will win since you cannot do much to help them.

I hereby laughed out loud.

[Google_Frog]

Well I agree with the gist of things. Basically you've said hardcouter strats/factories are bad, which I agree with, and air/ground MT helps fix this. Then you've said air combat is too random which I agree with but I don't think adding micro is the way to fix that.

[Gota]

It's not adding micro it's taking back control over air units and their movement instead of it being chaotic.
The moment fighter play becomes better air becomes 10x times more awesome and fun to play with.

[SirArtturi]

I must agree all what GOTA is saying... I think it's even silly to argue against it.

However this fact doesn't exclude the other possible solutions for a gg...

[[LBF]Vache]

Regret i think if you read a bit carefully you'll see basic is not saying killing your 10 ennemies with combomb/nap alone is easy and requires no skills.

Just that air defense is based on guessing and luck because you construct an unit wich depending on the outcome of the game, will toggle between 1.Totally Useless shit / 2. Mega usefull shiznit

But what am i doing, assuming you're not here to troll ....

[bashar]

This makes combombing comnapping and air dropping a very very lucrative strategy that is far more centralized than it should be because it requires much less skill than trying to outmaneuver your enemy's forces with your own and push him back.

Ignoring the other bullshit I just read through in your post, this sums up your ignorance pretty well.

Feeling hurt by Gota point of view?

[Regret]

Feeling hurt by Gota point of view?

Not at all.

[Sleksa]

no wonder you never win on comet ~~

[Pressure Line]

If you bring back MT as main dfens tower, all it does is change air from being a "sometimes pwn, sometimes fail" option into a "always fail" option. I'm not sure how that makes for better play.

[Gota]

Think harder.
It's all about basic stats after this..which is not an issue.
In BA it's a core design issue.
You can try and find artificial ways of going around the problems in BA like making transports slower,making air labs cheap so they are always built or stopping com transport or making it only transportable using t2 transports...
All kinds of set ups that usually change the game upside down and also detract form available playing options.
MT's along side fighter change allow for air starts,interesting air micro,less risky air land interaction,while keeping combombs air drops and making comnaps harder to do but still viable.

[Neddie]

All means of balance are artificial, implemented through the design. I briefly considered releasing a mutator for BA where T1 air transports were normally much more durable, promoting their general use, and when they picked up Commanders they were heavily penalized, due to the need to link-up with and in a stable manner transport the technologically complex and volatile Commander. This would be no more artificial than tweaking turn rate, merely considerably more inventive.

[Gota]

Well first of all transports can be used pretty good in ba and second of all why should the commander be penalized?It's completely unintuitive and breaks game reasoning.
Call it what it is i see it as artificial and i oppose giving specific units special attributes that do not apply to all else...well at least as less as possible.
From an OTA standpoint...
I mean..i am here to enjoy OTA like gameplay.