Fix that (balancing)

[TheMightyOne]

I agree TMO, however,

if i beat you with my superior micro you say "it's all about micro" but if i play vs babbs/janid/pintle/floris/ray etc. i'm not able to just outmicro them, their skills equals mine

:p

oh yea, sorry, forgot to replace your name with sabutai

[1v0ry_k1ng]

nobody microed xta towards unit-micromanagement its just that players realized that you can achieve more if you micro better. i'm pretty sure that if we had a time machine our current vets would beat all the v0.66 (or whatever version it was SY last released) pros, because they know how to micro units right.

actually, in terms of compush micro alot has been changed in favour of it since even v7.

coms regen HP over time now - they didnt used to, and most the time one player lost a compush simply because his com slowly got weaned down by stray missles - now, coms and missle lines are more resilient, especially after morph.

defences were made significantly less effective since v7, especially the HLT and popup. previously, t1 was quickly redundant as HLTs were rushed foward and the teamgame was all about the t2 rush.

morph gives commander much stronger regen and repair, making com micro extremely rewarding. previously com became fairly redundant later game unless you had the E to stay cloaked on the move.

[knorke]

the maps played also changed. for example small divide was very popular. because of the trees missle units + com does (did) not as good there.

[TheMightyOne]

nobody microed xta towards unit-micromanagement its just that players realized that you can achieve more if you micro better. i'm pretty sure that if we had a time machine our current vets would beat all the v0.66 (or whatever version it was SY last released) pros, because they know how to micro units right.

actually, in terms of compush micro alot has been changed in favour of it since even v7.

coms regen HP over time now - they didnt used to, and most the time one player lost a compush simply because his com slowly got weaned down by stray missles - now, coms and missle lines are more resilient, especially after morph.

defences were made significantly less effective since v7, especially the HLT and popup. previously, t1 was quickly redundant as HLTs were rushed foward and the teamgame was all about the t2 rush.

morph gives commander much stronger regen and repair, making com micro extremely rewarding. previously com became fairly redundant later game unless you had the E to stay cloaked on the move.

you're right, but it doesn't make all the other things i've said false.

micro is important if you want to play competetively but nobody is trying to replace strategic thinking with it. i have to remind you, it's an RTS. if you want more strategic thinking play "panzer general 2" which is also a great game. name me 1 of the new, popular RTSes where micro wouldnt improve your gameplay.

i still think its the changes made to xta are minor in comparisson to the changes of the players styles. look at sabutai, he barely uses his com at front line and still he manages to pwn a bigger part of our commnity. same goes for ray though he is using his com more than sab.

p.s. 2 years ago or so i suggested removing autorepair altogether from all units but the whole xta comminty was against it. you were part of it then, ik. so why whine now?

[mongus]

can we split this topic? (and erase this)

commanders having faster hp regen is not good imo. (if not balanced correctly)

Thats one element that nerfs compush. if you have to be more carefull with your hp, its more likely you be less able to take risks, and get away with it (regen later). Or at least must take the risk when its worth it, and not all the time.

buffing too much some unit, that is micro biased, changes the balance towards it.

And in general i think xta hp regen has gone up, i may be mistaken.
This has lots of impact in the game too, and in the value each unit has.

Its VERY possible, to abort an attack, let the units heal, then charge again.

This takes little time, units take little time to heal. ...
the fact we dont do that, is we are used to the other way. and have not realized this.



what ik said, about commander, does have an impact if you compare 66se to current. imo.

[babbles]

stop comparing xta to versions a long long time ago

[Noruas]

I find it interesting when they compare old xtas to new xtas or vise versa, they don't even have their facts right. coms regen did not go up to make it more immune to missiles, missiles damage rate was almost cut in half,

[mongus]

What i mean about IK is that the improvements for the commander show in the gameplay.





On HP regen, seems its broken.

Commander never stops regenerating health.
at 4hp/s, even when it has been hit.

later, when 25 secs have passed since its been hit, it regenerates at 14hp/s and stays stable.

commander has this tags:
HealTime = 100
AutoHeal = 4
repairspeed = 300
reclaimspeed = 300
terraformspeed = 600
capturespeed = 900

e: I was confused about upgrade names, was using u2 com stats. first arm upgrade is arm_ucommander , first core is corucom. fixed now.


Upgraded commander has:
HealTime = 50
AutoHeal = 6
repairspeed = 400
reclaimspeed = 400
resurrectspeed = 0
terraformspeed = 660
capturespeed = 1350

and...
never stops regenerating at 6hp/s, and then jumps to... 16 hp/s .

normal units seem to take 20s to start regen at all, then heal at 10hp/s

normal units have HealTime = 30 only tag.

E: yes i know nothing of those tags, assumed healtime was used. thanks for the clarification.
and not trying to alarm anyone, just testing.


u3 com does 17 then 27
u4 does 25 then 35. (lol u4 is inmune to zipper freaker :p )

In some "older" versions, commander waited 20 secs to regen, but then did it at around 40hp/s O_O ... in other versions it did at 10hp/s no autoheal here.

[Tobi]

HealTime isn't a tag understood by Spring.

+10 hp/s idle auto heal after 20 seconds is the default for the IdleTime and IdleAutoHeal tags.

So the only strange thing in your post is that although the upgraded comm has AutoHeal=12, it auto heals only with +6 hp/s. (should have been +12 hp/s)


Just for reference, the tags that exist related to this are AutoHeal (default 0), IdleTime (default 20 sec) and IdleAutoHeal (default +10 hp/s).

AutoHeal specifies how much the unit regenerates in all circumstances. IdleAutoHeal specifies how much (more) the unit regenerates after it's been idle for IdleTime frames.

[AF]

Most of my skills are strategy based not micromanagement based. I can do some micromanagement but it is not a strong skill of mine.

Its not that micromanagement is important, its that it is necessary. All my playing skills are useless in XTA because of micromanagement, and I've seen the trend continue for a long time, Im just baffled that its where it currently is now.

It's extremely frustrating

[FaerieWithBoots]

I never experienced the 'old' XTA. To me XTA is keeping units alive so they can autoheal. It is one of XTA's unique gameplay elements.
The discussion about changing this is more about what you want XTA to be then if it is balanced or not.
Fafiac unit heal can stay the same. It makes the early game interesting, because you are really trying to get your units out of an attack alive. The only issue i have related to autheal is the Weasel Hp, they are to easy to retreat and get autoheal sometimes. But thats a different discussion.

[babbles]

the Weasel Hp, they are to easy to retreat and get autoheal sometimes.

[manolo_]

Most of my skills are strategy based not micromanagement based. I can do some micromanagement but it is not a strong skill of mine.

Its not that micromanagement is important, its that it is necessary. All my playing skills are useless in XTA because of micromanagement, and I've seen the trend continue for a long time, Im just baffled that its where it currently is now.

It's extremely frustrating

i like the microing, if u want macro play BA

[Gota]

Most of my skills are strategy based not micromanagement based. I can do some micromanagement but it is not a strong skill of mine.

Its not that micromanagement is important, its that it is necessary. All my playing skills are useless in XTA because of micromanagement, and I've seen the trend continue for a long time, Im just baffled that its where it currently is now.

It's extremely frustrating

i like the microing, if u want macro play BA

If you want Macro play Supcom.

[JohannesH]

Most of my skills are strategy based not micromanagement based. I can do some micromanagement but it is not a strong skill of mine.

Its not that micromanagement is important, its that it is necessary. All my playing skills are useless in XTA because of micromanagement, and I've seen the trend continue for a long time, Im just baffled that its where it currently is now.

It's extremely frustrating

Micro is necessary in any rts with half decent opponets... Thats like saying youre a strategically good hockey player who just doesnt know how to skate.

[Gota]

Most of my skills are strategy based not micromanagement based. I can do some micromanagement but it is not a strong skill of mine.

Its not that micromanagement is important, its that it is necessary. All my playing skills are useless in XTA because of micromanagement, and I've seen the trend continue for a long time, Im just baffled that its where it currently is now.

It's extremely frustrating

Micro is necessary in any rts with half decent opponets... Thats like saying youre a strategically good hockey player who just doesnt know how to skate.

Yes I think some definitions were a bit intermixed.
Any real time rts involves at least some micro.
I guerss micro in this discussion means above average need of clicking and actions(while controling small unit amounts)as oppose to say a turn based rts where your supposedly spend more effort on assesing the situation that actually giving out commands.
And macro is the control of big unit numbers focusing more on positioning and unit choice.

[AF]

I like microing aswell to a point, I can do it sometimes, but normally my strengths are mid game and later, but I rarely survive early game without being crippled by the commander and his swarm or a tonne of AKs

But right now its at such an extreme that the balance between macro and micro is waaaaaaay shifted over to micro, and has been shifting further this way progressively over time.

Right now gameplay tends to focus more and more around a central front in a compact area of the map between 2 groups or frontiers of units, more often than not involving a commander repairing a line of units

I would say that BA is likely a 40/60 in favour of macro, for average games, whereas XTA is 30/70 in favour of micro and has been progressively moving towards 20/80, if only for the near halt in development.

Of course if I was playing XTA everyday I would totally disagree with this, its different when your inside looking out to if your outside looking in.

[FaerieWithBoots]

The "commander and his gang of skirmishers" type of gameplay is typical for XTA multiplayer. And one of the reasons i like 1v1s more then big multiplayer games. Try to macro you base and raiding partys at the same time with microing your storms. The player who can multitask best will win Ie look at how high level Starcraft players play. They manage to multitask 10 times as much without a user friendly GUI
Fortunatly, in XTA 1v1 battles you'll see a more diverse sort of gameplay. (also a lot of spam) But, again, XTA is a mod that is supposed to favor micro intensive gameplay. You could argue if this should be 40/60, 10/90 or whatever (to put like AF did) it still is a micro oriented game. If you'd ask me id go for a 40/60 (favoring micro) approach.

Another point:
The type of game you┬┤ll get is mostly dependent on the map you play, so you dont like a certain type of game? try some other maps.
If you put 8 players on a relatively small map you'll see a 2 walls of samsons from top to bottom with 8 commanders evenly devided over them XD Play a bigger map, or maps were there are more routes to the other players base.

With the current XTA balancetest2 version the commander-samson repair game is allready nerfed a bit (flash rapes samsonlines if they can get in)

[AF]

Really this is me trying to avoid a flotilla of AF widgets, and the horrendous pain that would be unleashed by me spending a few days working on fixing my handicaps

Really the obvious answer to this style of gameplay is not an improvement of microamanagement skill, but an improvement of micromanagement capacity, and humans are not the only means of expanding that capacity, its just that XTA players have chosen not to meddle just yet. (welll, hehehe, or at leasst some XTA players have chosen not to publicly meddle just yet)

[TheMightyOne]

Micro is necessary in any rts with half decent opponets...

thats exactly what AF is failing to realize here (no offence)

Its not that micromanagement is important, its that it is necessary.

yes, it is necessary. but only if you're fighting me or any other vet. fight a player whose micro isn't good either and suddenly it becomes unimportant and strategies and tactics kick harder in.

some changes been listed already but i stay with my former opinion. all of those changes are minor and what we see now are NOT the effects of those changes but effects of players tactics evolving and their understanding of the game.

i havent witnessed it with my own eyes but ive heard stories of the old days where you countered an LLT with an HLT and the HLT with a popup and the games tended to last 2h avarage. about what kind of micro are we talking here if those used to be porc wars? then v7 came over and ppl spammed crashers, suddenly the LLT wasnt such a big deal. then in v8 people realized that 3 domis were the perfect counter for an HLT and now if somebody builds a popup we just dgun it. i'm aware i exaggarate a bit but all in all it shows the evolution that took place imo.