NOTA 1.82

[forest_devil]

lawenforcer. mobile flak i find tends to be much more effective vs air.

about 10 of then in patrol at crucial points will severly damage enemy enemy bomber assaults ( and vasps incidently)

[Gone]

There's a hole in air gameplay? Meh... didn't notice that. Too busy with major sea manuevers... Besides a couple of flaks can make bomber runs costly. I think several AA cruisers might be able to actually stop one. Besides... if major bomber runs come up then make interceptors. They seem to be effective against slow moving air units.

I think the new update relieved some stress on torpedo bombers. Though i find Anti-Sub operations ANNOYING. Is it me or are some air units actually becoming rare sights.

It seems that most NOTA games now go to small supreme island and other big water maps etc. etc. Its going to take a miracle to see another Tempest or Dire Strights map coming into play now. Though the majority of NOTA players have seemingly lost ineterest. It could possibly be true or i play at exactly the worst time possible. Which is weekends as usual.

Sea gameplay to summarize it is "I have teh bigest ship!"
Air gameplay is practically nonexistant
Ground gameplay.... I've seen wave after wave of kbots and tanks get crushed by a couple of guardian/punisher.
Kbots generally stays on T1 for nearly the entire length of the game. The majority tends to be Hammers/Thuds or Rockos/Storms

[afrossen]

the issues i have atm;
I dont like the spam hammer/thud thing, they are fast enough to walk back and deal with most attacks. this is most notable when they (artillery) are attacked by infantry. Infantry should be the logical counter. They are slightly faster but not fast enough to close them down if the hammers fall back, the hammers will only lose if the armies are small. by the time you get to the decent sized armies that you see ingame, hammers win even standing still (i tested 100h v 200pw which is roughly equal metal but the pw take longer to make). the same applies to zippers etc.
I think the hammers should be made a bit more inaccurate or slower to build slightly or the fast units, like pw and zippers should be quicker to build

I agree that battle cruisers are a better choice to build than cruisers, i'd like to see them used as the intermediate stage in sea battles before bc
also subs are not useful enough atm. They are a good counter to a bc but only if its relatively alone, and there are so many destroyers in every sea battle that doesnt happen. I would like to see them be very quick to make, or be cloaked from sonar when still so they could be used to ambush better

Air is underused, wings are quite crap just now, i think the nerf hit them too hard. Torp bombers continue to be a waste of time for me, much like the subs are. they miss a lot, take a long time to make and die easy. What i would really like to see is them having the ammo to launch more than one torp before heading home, that way at least you could guide them back without them dropping their torps and no longer following move orders. or you could just make them more flak resistant and turn faster.
I like bombers not being hit by missiles, its a very good feature. i would also like to see some dive bombers

also sabot still sucks, too short ranged and easy to kill
i think thats all

[thelawenforcer]

vashps are too resilient to missile attacks imo. not to mention your anti air tend to all shoot at one, so even if ur well covered, u can still lose a big chunk of your army, and then your enemy micros his vashps to exit after their first run he will probably only lose 1 or two.

[==Troy==]

build miniguns and flak, do not build purely missiles. Missiles are good too shoot down scouts or lonely planes, not to deal with masses.


afrossen : subs are fine, thuds are fine, infantry is fine. NOTA is not BA, they have different uses. BA logic will not work.

[Scikar]

I don't really like the sonar changes. Before subs on the edge of their range wouldn't be detected by destroyers. While destroyer sonar range was reduced at the same time, it's now longer than the sub torpedo range which makes it impossible for a sub to attack and survive unless you eliminate every single destroyer first. If you have the surface forces to do that then you usually have the surface forces to kill everything else as well. At least before you could start the engagement and then keep your subs on the edge of the battle while your opponent was distracted.

Flak I think is a bit silly. To actually cause a problem for strat bombers with flak requires building a considerable mass of flak a good distance from your base. In principle I like this, it's refreshing to be able to make attacks from the air without it being a complete suicide attack. However, while I don't think flak should be stopping strategic bombers outright, it ought to at least thin out bomber formations, reducing the damage on your labs.

The low flying aircraft are the complete opposite though. Missiles often overkill against the ground attack planes, annihilating the first plane and then getting destroyed by the followers while reloading. Flak on the other hand is devastating to the low flying planes. I find it almost impossible to keep torpedo bombers alive. It's not just a case of having 50% of them return and most of those heavily damaged, as happens when you use Vashps on a defended tank column or a strats on a base. You lose all of them. Every time.

I think the way forward with this is to reduce the projectile speed and tracking speed of flak significantly, but increase its AoE. Reduce the turnspeed of strategic bombers a bit to compensate. This way flak will struggle to hit the low flyers, though the odd hit will still kill the occasional plane so it's not worthless, while allowing it to wear down strategic bombers a bit more.

[thelawenforcer]

i think theres a balance problem with the long range fighters. They are just way way way better than their ground attack bomber counter parts.

I cant really think of any instance where the hellfish is better tahn the toadfoot/vashp.

LRF's are faster, can attack for longer, have more health and can essentially negate good air defense's due to their long range attack. Ive seen 6-7 toadfoots go thru walls of AA: Flak, MG's and Missile towers to get their shots on the high value target behind it. Fighters arent really that effective unless you have them half the map in front of what your trying to defend...

NOTA is a great mod, but as with any reimagining of gameplay, there are some pretty serious balance issues in some places.

[afrossen]

==Troy== : I sure as hell dont want NOTA to be anything like BA. If you think infantry is fine then address the points i made, Don't just say any change would make it into BA, why should hammers beat peewees without even having to move?. I want to see hammer spam be a 2nd class tactic, as it used to be in the old days.

[thelawenforcer]

i reckon afrossen is right. hammers are the backbone of the army and thats fine, but they are a bit too good. Perhaps making them walk a bit slower would make the other units or a good mix work better against them (like it should really)

[==Troy==]

hammers usually get owned by morties, and when they try to charge - get into the line of LLTs. They also regularly fail to AOE weapons, ever tried to mix reapers with levelers against them?

from my POV, NOTA is not a 1-tech game. You have enough time and money to get at least 2 techs, kbot + air, kbot + veh, veh + air.

From this, the light infantry is good for raiding and scouting, but they are effectively jeffies, which I did not see used so much in a proper battle.

Hammers are meant to own troops, storms are against vehs,there are their counterparts in other techpaths too, too many variables to just say "hammers are too strong with infantry, pewees are underused" Its just most of the games are done in standard head-on and spam same tech.

edit : or even easier, arty simply rapes hammers.

[afrossen]

as i'm sure you'll be shocked to hear, arty rapes anything at a distance. As does air when where is no AA. All as it should be, but thats not the point we're making. I'm not saying hammer kill everything in any battle i'm saying they are more powerful for the cost than any other kbot which leads to them being used to the exclusion of other units, stifling variety and creative play.

also jeffies are an excellent unit and used often all through a game.

[thelawenforcer]

i wonder if u did a skirmish. 1000m of pure hammers vs 1000m of 5peewee/ak, 3 thud, 1 storm. the pure hammers are allowed to be micro'd backwards. imo, the mixed army should win that if the fight happens on a plain. but im not sure reality fits my opinion in this case.

[Gone]

I noticed in the unbuilt units that core has the spitfire... a rapid fire flak gun.... is there any reason to not put it in? Cause quite frankly... it would add an interesting aspect to the game

Edit: If the spitfire goes in for core can arm have that long-range missile? and to even it up a bit throw an aoe XD

[==Troy==]

@ thelaw

One point. Hammers are anti-infantry. They WILL rape ANY kind of t1 infantry, NO MATTER how much you mix it. Its their purpose.

The mix which you suggest in BA terms :
=====
5 jeffies
3 flash
1 t1 arty

vs pure flashes.
=====


I take that thud/hammer are equal of course.


IMO, from what I have played NOTA, hammer never was a problem. Its used a lot in a kbot/kbot battle, but it is it's purpose, nothing else. You will be dumb to go hammers against vehs, since THAT is where you need to use mixes of at least 2 hammers/1 storm.


Change your example into equal mix of thuds + levelers + some tanks mixed in, or even arty.


The purpose of storm is for kbot to defend against veh
The purpose of hammer is for kbot to assault kbot
The purpose of peewee is early scouting + raiding undefended bases

At least this is from my understanding of the game. And this is how most of the games are played. All of these units see their time, when it is needed. Just most of the games are dumb kbot/kbot line battles.

[Gota]

So if rocko are anti veh and hammer anti kbot than all u use are those 2 in most cases.
Scouting with pw is very unpractical since most of the enemy's things are in his commander tower range and by the time pw get anywhere they'll be cought by enemy units.
Many kbots are practically useless so are many of the vehicle units.

IMO raiding units are not fast enough if u consider the fact com has huge range and the price of the raiding units and other units.

[thelawenforcer]

Your wrong troy.

Thuds/Hammers are not 'anti kbot'. That is not their description, at least not the same way that storms/rockos are 'antitank'.

Hammers = Light Artillery = Light damage from moderate range.

Also, peewees arent the best raiding/scouting troops either, thats fleas for scouting, zippers for raiding.

Its the line vs line battles that we are trying to change...

Id like to make another suggestion : Make Pillagers/Core equilvalent only able to shoot in High Traj. If you manage to get your infantry in range of undefended artillery, it shouldnt be raped by artillery in low traj shooting mode.

[==Troy==]

@ thelaw.

Who is wrong and who is right can only decide the mod maintainer.

I base my opinion on "what is actually used" rather than "how the description tells"

rockos can rape equivalent amount of t1 tanks, and even t2 tanks, hammers dominate the infantry, there is nothing wrong with that, NOTA is about lines in any way. Many units are underused, I agree, but this is mostly due to people not actually noticing use of snipers (very frequent) or morties/llt combos. There are many support troops which will increase your effectiveness, but, people fail to use them, and then come here to whine that hammers are used purely for most of the games.

@ Gota

then do not scout with 1 peewee, comtowers have very long reloads.

[Thor]

Hammers/Thuds are indeed intended to be anti-kbot. It's true that the description of light artillery is misleading.

[thelawenforcer]

ok.

what about the air stuff? specifically the hellfish toad and vashps.

[nightcold]

Hammers/Thuds are indeed intended to be anti-kbot. It's true that the description of light artillery is misleading.

hummmm...well they seem to be great against well.......EVERYTHING!!!

i personaly would like 2 see ground armies less centered around thuds/hammers.....when the game is centered around long ranged units blasting each other/everything from a-far.....some of the strategy/magic is lost....games become more about who has the most thuds on the field..sure snipers/mortars give some extra harassment(due to superior ranges), but it just make thud spam any more strategic/tactical/fun/sexy

i would like 2 see the peewee/ak play more of a role in big battles....like give them alot more armor and speed(and even more dps), so they can rush Hammers/Thuds even in larger concentrations...this would add ant-Hammers/Thuds rushes into the and equation....and maybe even anti-peewee/ak int as well (zeus???)