What do you want to see more of in CA? - Page 7

What do you want to see more of in CA?

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jeykey
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by jeykey »

d_b wrote: (and the artwork).
artwork is great !
SirMaverick
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by SirMaverick »

d_b wrote:EDIT: I want to see a chiliui that can be ported to the local widgets or to other mods without copying ca's entire luaui directory.
It's 1 file and 1 sub directory, not he entire directory for the framework.
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Pxtl
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Pxtl »

d_b

While I love CA and think it's a lot of fun, I'm inclined to agree - the lion's share of CA units have no "magic" to them. Obviously, magic that requires micro is not always appropriate, but simple things like flame and grav weapons, auto-regen, all-terrain - that kind of stuff is low-micro and adds a lot to the game. I'd love to see more. Turn the Core nuke into a black-hole generator. Give one of the Logos land units (Reaper maybe?) the ability to lay those impulse-mines their special bomber has. Give the Veh arty stun and fire.

That's part of the reason I want to see Capture converted into a weapon and reassign the Arm Cons to rez - give some mobile units capture-weapons in place of their current gear.

Then again, CA is too stable for this. Maybe 1Fac?
Saktoth
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Saktoth »

Pxtl wrote:d_b

While I love CA and think it's a lot of fun, I'm inclined to agree - the lion's share of CA units have no "magic" to them. Obviously, magic that requires micro is not always appropriate, but simple things like flame and grav weapons, auto-regen, all-terrain - that kind of stuff is low-micro and adds a lot to the game. I'd love to see more. Turn the Core nuke into a black-hole generator. Give one of the Logos land units (Reaper maybe?) the ability to lay those impulse-mines their special bomber has. Give the Veh arty stun and fire.

That's part of the reason I want to see Capture converted into a weapon and reassign the Arm Cons to rez - give some mobile units capture-weapons in place of their current gear.

Then again, CA is too stable for this. Maybe 1Fac?
CA has more of this stuff than any other game, how much can you want!

Nukes have really impressive explosions. Would be a shame to replace that.
Google_Frog
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Google_Frog »

I think magic is useful but overrated. I would preffer a game where all the units have unique base abilities (hp, speed, damage, aoe, reload, turn rate, etc...) than a game with very similar units and different spells for each. I think a game full of magic would be less interesting than the game you can play with arm bots.

That said more magic where appropriate isn't bad as long as it's doesn't add much more micro. But then there's the definition of magic. Is damagemod magic? Does the slasher static while firing count as magic? When you get down to it there is a sliding scale of 'magicness' which is probably based on how obvious the ability is. Not every unit has to have overt magic.

When you get down to it magic does not make a unit. You can't slap a gravity gun on anything if it doesn't have the stats to make the unit work. For example jump is a big part of Can but Can would not be Can without it's HP, DPS and range.

So I think your request is "more differentiation for units using some underused abilities" which my answer is that kind of thing is being added in 1faction. CA is mostly stable. Specifically:

Maackeybot factory is fiddled with. Riot is a large AOE no range unit, storm has a bit more range and Thud has shield.

In 1faction there will be a factory with most of the all terrain units as well as some more all terrain to flesh out unit roles. Such as Jumping AA and Spider Crabe.

Auto-Regen could be added to units as an ability, point out some units it would work on. Flame and Grav could be used more but again they need a unit to use them. The general issue with adding abilities is that the current unit set works reasonably well so drastically changing any of the existing units would detract from the game.

A black hole generator is probably unbalancable with Spring's crazy physics although with 1faction's missile factory there is room to add many interesting weapons. If you can provide a model for a unit that would use a black hole generator it can be tried. (maybe Goliath)

I don't like capture and rezz on cons. Capture on cons breaks the very early raiding game (ie fleas and jeffy) while rezz on cons does not require enough choice to use as you can switch between either at will. I would like capture weaponry which may not be permanent, RA2 style Uri could be used or maybe something like timed capture. Rezz would work well on a unit that is dedicated to rezzing, this way people would have to think "I would really like to rezz that karg", control the corpse and make a rezz unit instead of just rezzing with their conswarm. If Sak has his way 1faction will have no capture or rezz.

Anyway 1faction needs a few more ideas. The current bots is a bit of a problem with about 3.5 factories worth of units and not enough roles to make 4. Some specific ideas would be helpful. The current model lineup looks something like this.

Unused models:
  • Stumpy
  • Jeffy
  • Samson
  • Morty
  • Golden Morty
  • One of Razorback or Karg
  • Maybe some air models.
Goliath needs a better role than it's current one. So does sumo probably.

Sea is currently up in the air and there are no models designated to it.
Saktoth
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Saktoth »

  • Stumpy wouldnt fit mr.d's models, we have enough vehicles.
  • Jeffy Ditto, though probably more easily adapted to mr.d style if we really need another model.
  • Samson Ditto.
  • Morty Hammer? I dislike the hammer model.
  • Golden Morty Barely a reskin.
  • One of Razorback or Karg or both!
  • Kodachi
  • Merl (Remember, merl could be a dedicated AA unit or constructor or explosion truck or we could even stick a cannon in there- models are versatile).
Goliath needs to be a proper tank buster or go back to massive AoE support style. Lose the flamer IMO.

Sumo needs GRAV GUN! JUGGERNUT! Fun unit.

Sea has a con, a ship (aa ship currently but could serve any role) that are definitely staying, and a few third parties (vette, battleship, carrier, etc). We can flesh this out if we can tex crems models into 4 base ship models which can be expanded into 2-3 models each for a full compliment of ships. We can stick any weapons on there we like.

The real problem we have is raiders, I'm sick of raider monocultures. Sometimes you need a fast unit, which means spaem 1 unit. I'd like two raider units in every factory that work in synergy with eachother. Currently raiders are all accurate high RoF same range samish speed samish HP. Id like something more like the ravager/leveler or mumbo/bulldog relationship, where they make up for eachothers flaws. The problem with this is you'll probably end up with a bunch of 'light assaults' and 'light riots' essentually.

The alternative is to speed up the current assault/riot/skirm etc unit set so the game stays dynamic and slow down/jeffify the raiders.

Currently thinking:
Spherebot:
Melee/Ranged spherebot
The melee bot (big glowing halberd with lups trail) is a sort of light assault but good as anti-unit if it can close, but easily skirmished even by other raiders. Raped by antiswarms, roaches, etc. The ranged spherebot is a longer ranged raider (like gator) that can keep them at bay.
OR
Flea/Tick/Spherebot
Flea to scout, spot and harass, Spherebot to raid, tick to take care of other raiders (since Spherebot). Basically the current setup. There is at least some synergy here, since spherebot is quite weak to other units and tick (+ flea intel) helps with this.

Veh:
Ravagator/Weasel
Make Gator a mini-ravager, with an slow moving inaccurate projectile (possibly a grenade, that bounces on the ground so persuing enemies can run over it). Give weasel an accurate weapon to help vs faster moving units.

Ravaweasel/RiotGator
Give weasel the anti-building weapon, and the gator a weapon good primarily vs other units and less HP (or something) so llts rape it.

Maackeybot:
Pyro/Rocket Bandit
Not sure here. What is the pyro bad at? The weapon velocity change made it way better vs mobiles, while its still reasonable as anti-heavy and can damage multiple targets as antiswarm. I was thinking like a mini-janus type rocket bandit to help the pyro, but perhaps we may need to introduce a weakness into the pyro (such as bumping up the inaccuracy again). The thing is, the pyro used to work really well with the can with the can punching a hole and the pyros going through (though, it seems, not so much as it used to). Either way, a lighter, scoutier unit to spot for the pyro is important.

Gauss Bandit/Something
Basically taking the Gremlins gun (The cloaky raider goes elsewhere, probably spiderbot). This cant go with the Pyro since Gauss and Flame are actually really similar. Again though, whats the weakness?

Bandit/Roach
Same as current, bandit also has problems with mobiles, but less than spherebot. Roach helps with this. The thing is, this combo is really hard to use.

Orphan ideas:
A raider that sets a unit on fire and runs away to let it burn, rather than doing actual damage, paired with a unit for finishing them off after they've burnt out.
A Grav Gun unit (Probably better as riot).
Google_Frog
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Google_Frog »

I like Hammer, much better model for that unit imo.

Hover should have Sprint Assault instead of shield.

Sumo could have Grav gun, no reason it couldn't.

I think Merl can stay in tanks. There are at least 3 ideas for vlaunch missile units (eg DOT (I want something like KP pointers), para, homing, different range etc.. )

Regarding raiders I would preffer to speed up other units than add many raiders. Factories should have a few raider options each but we should not recreate the entire game in raider form, if you do that we may as well have sped other units up.

Spherebots: I think they're fine, they have 3 raiders. Flea for scouting and killing high reload units, spherebot for DPSand tick for AOE. It works.

Maackeybots: They need another raider. Clogger can sort of act as a scout and high reload spoofer. Roach does not have the synergy of tick. AK could have gauss (or mini flame throwers) and another unit could be added for a bit more range + damage, maybe Storm model with less range and more DPS?

AT: The problem with AT raiding is no units that cost under 200. This makes them unusable at the very start of 1v1s. Arguably they have 3 'raiders' which are all not particularly fast or good at raiding. Spy which can scout and kill heavies, Pyro which is decent riot and Venom as emp. 2 of these are EMP though. If AT had a Zipper replacement with super speed the AT raider lineup may be complete.

Veh: Weasel can act as a good raider. It beats undefended expansion and a few raiders and is very good against long reload heavies. It's speed is a big advantage. The problem with veh is that Gator is too much of an all round unit, I think it is the source of the monoculture. Nerf gator a bit and change the focus to anti-building.

Tank: Tank has Panther which would be monospammed if anyone can get the tank start off the ground. Add new raider ideas here.

Hover: Hover raider combined the bad parts of gator and weasel. Twice as expensive as weasel so fails at scouting. Less expensive than gator so doesn't have OP weight. Hover raiders need fixing. A sprint raider could work here to fit with the general hover theme.
Saktoth
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Saktoth »

I like Hammer, much better model for that unit imo.
Next to my beautiful spherebots? Especially after they get de-whitified (I want to restore to WiE's tex with some brighter teamcolour, so it matches mr.d/cremuss/azaremoths stuff)? I dont think so. I'd make a spherebot for it (with the spherebot carrying the cannon on his back, bent over) but morty fits there.
Hover should have Sprint Assault instead of shield.
Ya.
Sumo could have Grav gun, no reason it couldn't.
Instead or as well?
I think Merl can stay in tanks. There are at least 3 ideas for vlaunch missile units (eg DOT (I want something like KP pointers), para, homing, different range etc.. )
Overkill. Stick it in vehs. The other facs need good arty too. If we want two AA units we can stick wheels on it or the flak. For DoT style, i was thinking napalm missile in the missile fac.
Regarding raiders I would preffer to speed up other units than add many raiders. Factories should have a few raider options each but we should not recreate the entire game in raider form, if you do that we may as well have sped other units up.
I am leaning increasingly this direction. But what to do with raiders then? Just slow them right down and have them as weakish units? We can still add more units if we do this, in fact, it would be easier to add more units because we dont need to worry about 'assault' and 'riot' raiders.
Maackeybots: They need another raider. Clogger can sort of act as a scout and high reload spoofer. Roach does not have the synergy of tick. AK could have gauss (or mini flame throwers) and another unit could be added for a bit more range + damage, maybe Storm model with less range and more DPS?
We can adapt the maackeybot, give him a missile on his back or something. We have enough unique base models among the maackeybots for most anything if we reuse the legs and make new torsos.
AT: The problem with AT raiding is no units that cost under 200. This makes them unusable at the very start of 1v1s. Arguably they have 3 'raiders' which are all not particularly fast or good at raiding. Spy which can scout and kill heavies, Pyro which is decent riot and Venom as emp. 2 of these are EMP though. If AT had a Zipper replacement with super speed the AT raider lineup may be complete.
I'd rather add a cloak raider to replace gremlin, and go with spy/snipers cloak.
Veh: Weasel can act as a good raider. It beats undefended expansion and a few raiders and is very good against long reload heavies. It's speed is a big advantage. The problem with veh is that Gator is too much of an all round unit, I think it is the source of the monoculture. Nerf gator a bit and change the focus to anti-building.
Thats a big change, and it becomes a miniravager.
Hover: Hover raider combined the bad parts of gator and weasel. Twice as expensive as weasel so fails at scouting. Less expensive than gator so doesn't have OP weight. Hover raiders need fixing. A sprint raider could work here to fit with the general hover theme.
Im really worried about armourd and sprinting hovers, it just feels like they will completely blitz through ships and murderize the land.
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Pxtl
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Pxtl »

Concussion mines on the weasel. Then you'd have nice synergy, using weasels to lay down concussion mines and Gators to fight, so the weasels cover their exit (or their own). Make it stockpile-based, with a simple "draw curve" behavior for laying out a line of them. Since stockpiling mines isn't free, this means weasels can also function as the cheap raider as well, if they have an empty stockpile.

And yes, I agree that "magic" shouldn't be tedious, or be used for differentiating two units that otherwise fill the same role. I just think it's sad when you see the fun, crazy stuff in the Tank lab or the Walker lab - there are a half-dozen things you can say about the Pyro (flaming, jumping, chain-exploding, flame-resistent raider), and nothing really much to say about, say, the Stumpy (or whatever it's called in CA).

edit: I don't see anything wrong with hovers blitzing through ships to hit the land as long as the land player could stop them with a handful of well-placed LLTs. Remember those hovers can only land at the handful of hover-friendly beaches. As long as it's not like BA where the hovers can pwn the naval player himself.
Last edited by Pxtl on 06 Feb 2010, 15:14, edited 2 times in total.
Google_Frog
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Google_Frog »

Well you need baseline units like the stumpy.

With the weasel I do not want to change it. The unit works well and it's weight and speed are like a special ability.
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Pxtl
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Pxtl »

That's why I suggested it as a stockpile thing - since the player has to pay for loading a weasel up with mines, you can keep the baseline-weasel as is, and attacking with a mine-loaded weasel is an expensive gamble. You can tweak the balance with the stockpile price.
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triton
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by triton »

Today i played a 3vs3 on dsd and people were complaining about using panthers and cloggers, they said that it was cheating to use it.

I'd like to have you're opinion, and if these units are op, plz do something.
Saktoth
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Saktoth »

triton wrote:Today i played a 3vs3 on dsd and people were complaining about using panthers and cloggers, they said that it was cheating to use it.

I'd like to have you're opinion, and if these units are op, plz do something.
Due to the EMP change in the engine, panthers EMP lasts something like 3 times longer than it should. We need to fix this and release a new stable, ASAP.

Cloggers are not cheating, but spamming them until it breaks someone CPU probably is. There may be some weirdness with terraform im not aware of though.
SirMaverick
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by SirMaverick »

triton wrote:Today i played a 3vs3 on dsd and people were complaining about using panthers and cloggers, they said that it was cheating to use it.
Those units are part of CA. Using them is not a cheat.

Saktoth already responded on the op part.
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Tribulex
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Tribulex »

imo if you want to crash someone dont use cloggers just write a code that infinitely spams drawings. if you have a good comp it will do 1 of 2 things. either crash people in the game, or completely lag out and crash the host.
SirMaverick
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by SirMaverick »

d_b wrote:imo if you want to crash someone dont use cloggers just write a code that infinitely spams drawings. if you have a good comp it will do 1 of 2 things. either crash people in the game, or completely lag out and crash the host.
Crash due to draw spam have been fixed in pre 0.81 versions (spring bug, not driver issues). Lag will occur, depending on host bandwidth.
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Mav
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Mav »

Ok, so I have tried to get into CA many times. My complaints aren't so much with gameplay as with community.

Here's how things went down tonight:

Join a CA game.
Sit around waiting for all the CA players to ready up.
No one is ready except me.
Listen to Google Frog and Saktoth describe some issue they're having.
Still enough people to play.
No one is ready still.
Listen to more develoment stuff.
Something about ud.canRestore = false
More dev stuff.
10 minutes have passed. I leave.
15 minutes later the game still has enough to play and no one is playing.

If this were a single occasion, I'd be willing to let it slip. However, this is a fairly normal thing.

Why do I continue to play BA? Because I can join a game and play in minutes. I've not had the experience with CA so far.

Ironically, in the time it took me to type this another BA game is readied-up and starting.
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CarRepairer
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by CarRepairer »

Mav wrote:Ok, so I have tried to get into CA many times. My complaints aren't so much with gameplay as with community.

Here's how things went down tonight:

Join a CA game.
Sit around waiting for all the CA players to ready up.
No one is ready except me.
Listen to Google Frog and Saktoth describe some issue they're having.
Still enough people to play.
No one is ready still.
Listen to more develoment stuff.
Something about ud.canRestore = false
More dev stuff.
10 minutes have passed. I leave.
15 minutes later the game still has enough to play and no one is playing.

If this were a single occasion, I'd be willing to let it slip. However, this is a fairly normal thing.

Why do I continue to play BA? Because I can join a game and play in minutes. I've not had the experience with CA so far.

Ironically, in the time it took me to type this another BA game is readied-up and starting.
I can understand your frustration. CA players idle in the CA autohost for hours while doing other things because are so used to CA games being a rare thing. It's hard to get games going because it doesn't have 10% of the playerbase that BA has. Use springie's !manage command it will auto-spec people who are afk for a certain amount of time and get the game going really quick with the people who are there and ready.
Saktoth
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by Saktoth »

You dont play CA because we dont have players. Self-perpetuating right there.

The problem isnt because the community 'doesnt ready' or 'chats in the lobby' or 'just specs'. When we do this, its because we arent playing, or are waiting for more players (Often, we have uneven numbers of players). We often use the CA game as an extra #CA channel, and we often spec when we CANT play (like when we dev or when we are doing other stuff) because we care about CA and like watching games even when we arent available to play.

But do not mistake idle players for potential players. The problem is just not enough players. We're acutely aware of this issue.
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knorke
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Re: What do you want to see more of in CA?

Post by knorke »

well, stop idling in battlerooms imo.
say someone wants to play ca and he finally finds a game with 3 players.
"oh, cool 2v2!" he thinks.
but everybody is afk/doesnt want to play.
gay.
that happens a few times and well, yeah...

other way around its bad too.
someone willing to play joins an autohost but everybody think he ist just afk anyway.
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