NOTA 1.82

[Thor]

Good point about the issue of mobile vs stationary AA.

A commander only game mode is probably a good idea. We played around with the idea a while back. At least two problems arise when you have commanders only however. First is that due to the nature of air in nota, t1 aircraft can be easily used to assassinate commanders. This could be solved perhaps by making cloaking easy to afford. The second problem is thornier and is related to the buildtree. If you leave the buildtree for the commander as it basically is, then his ability to make defenses means he's invaluable at the front for constructing plasma cannons and the like. However he's also the only unit you have access to capable of making factories or other base buildings unless you're willing to sink 1200 metal into a nanotower. It plays very bad like this. I'm thinking the best way to solve this problem is not to give the commander access to defenses beyond the same basic laser and machine gun turrets regular cons have. That would mean you could only build strong defenses when and where you build a nanotower. That could be a problem on ship maps however since you would have no access to coastal guns.

If you want to see how it plays with com's with a full buildtree, play the commander and base mode with both sides deleting their base at the beginning. It really plays surprisingly bad.

[nightcold]

well iv played commander and base mode in single player alot(be4 i started playing online)....my major beef with it was that you got major defensive building at key spots of the map (far away from base)...resulting in long long long games...

well what you can do is not give any factory building to the comander's build list...forceing him to build a nano tower as part of the starting ritual of the game(maybe do something similar to Ca with the starting build bost and resources)...but doing all that makes me wounder, how is that any diffrent from what the game is now... :/ ...maybe you can make the commander the only one able to build nano towers, makeing him rather important...loseing your commander would me loseing all further opportunities for expantion & rebuilding a base after ur old one has been whiped out...

humm maybe you can let a nano build a certain amount of factories, forceing the player 2 expand...meh, might lead to longer games....

also, i can't emphasize enough the thud spam issue......i just lost a game today simply because the other guy was able to out-produce me in thuds(and my alli failed me, that's a diffren story)...imo games should have more things going on in terms of unit role conflicts(resulting in tactical/strategic thinking) than who has the most amount of thuds on the feild & supporting units... hey if enough people are complaining about it...they might be on to something...hell look at air and sea(ok fine, just sea), you success is not dependent on how much of a certain unit you have out

[Gone]

If he outproduced you why didnt you produce a standard thud killer? Geez i can't emphasize how much you need to break free from thud spams.

Edit: If you're going to complain about most units not being better, take to the skies and take advantage of that aa problem lawenforcer keeps complaining about and use toadfoots/hellfish/vasps. VERY EFFECTIVE
And sea pretty much depends on the amount of ships you have. Trust me .
Hint Hint. You can overwhelm anyship with a destroyer

[Gota]

I wanna say that Flash and Gator are utter crap.
they are worthless even on comet 1v1...
Comet catcher is Suppose to be the best map for light fast units like the flash and gator yet even on it they suck against stoompeh for cost.
I seems that on a flat map in a 1v1 the best combo is stoompeh/raider and rocko/storm spam and some air support...
I proclaim now that flash and gator are practically Useless and i challenge anyone to prove me wrong(I'd be happy if you do).

Flash and gator need to be faster than they are now IMO.

This is from spectating and playing a few NOTA(not many) games though they were with some good players.
Again,please prove me wrong.

If I am at it than i think Pyro are also pretty dam crap and so are cans and SUMO.

Can and SUMO are extremely slow,this means they have to compensate with HP and DMG substantially,cause they are indeed very very slow.
ATM they barely make worth versus other units that are way faster...how can this be right?unless hammers/thuds have some special DMG versus SUMO?
I obviously might be wrong but I dont think I am.

[the great zamboni]

adding plasma shields would ruin the games balance....plasma shields would eliminate all counters to porking ....nota games would start lasting for 3 hours instead of 30-min to 90 mins they do now(it si alot already)

anyway....plasma shields dont lokk soo good in game...

Can you put plasma shields on as a mod option?

Optional. Off as standard if ye will it.

Could I grab that mutator from you thesleepless, or is it off limits?

[Gone]

Gota...
Pyros use fire...
Effective against kbots if close enough.
So far the only usefulness of it imo is in spacebug games until a spitter comes out.

You need more sumos and cans to take on a full thud/hammer line.
Until then might i recomend crabes? or raptor IVs? Really good at smashing through the line. Other than that i suppose sumos and cans are more effective against slower units. Or some odd defence out there. I did have a couple of sumos wreck an entire defence i had once.

[Gota]

does it make sense that youll need higher metal value of sumos against units that move way faster like thuds?
Not only are Sumos/cans slower they also cant beat faster units for the same metal value?
If the Sumo is to be balanced it needs to eat thuds of much higher metal value than itself.
Cans are even more extreme since they have very short range.
Cans and Sumos need more HP,way more,IMO.

Pyro Is horrible and you told us why.It cant reach anything before it dies..Pyros Need to be way faster just like flash and gator do unless they are meant to play a different role than being a fast attack unit but ATM they cant fill any role.

You recommended the several units that are usefull problem is many others have no role and are basiclly noob traps ATM.

Like I wrote I saw Thewalenforcer play a 1v1 versus Godde on cometcatcher.
Thewal naturally thought that on such an open map flash would be better than stumpy at least for some time at the beginning but he was fooled by the bad balance and lost.
He was microing fine and it was obvious there was nothing he could do because the fact he started flash and godde started straight out stumpy doomed him from the beginning.

This is a classical noob trap.

[nightcold]

gota has a point....

well what i c as a problem here is that lawn has been playing nota for sometime now(from what i can see)...and even till now he has not gotten a full feel for nota...i personaly don't think he is to blame here...nota is a very complicated game...and just the other game i discovered how devastating levelers can be to thuds(yet arm has no equivalent to levelers in nota)...it is clear that the creaters have this deep complex balance they are not telling anyone(do i smell sadist???)...well for starters they can make a better build description(for exmple it should say that strategic bombers are best for takeing out a fortified base...basicly the role and balance of each unit,i think, just saying strategic bombers is not enough)...also something else we can do is set up both a short and accessible guide(just to help people just passing by this game understand it, they dont like reading too much 4 a game that they might play) and a deep long one that spells alot of things out for us(we can creat a thread here to start gathering and debating information)

when your community does not know what's what..it will creates some problems

[Gone]

Pyro Is horrible and you told us why.It cant reach anything before it dies..

Might i recomend them in a spacebugs game? They tend to be op in large groups until a spitter is spawned.

Oh yeah and not to go off topic but, when was the gator compared to the flash? i thought it was flash vs intimidator.

[Gota]

Instigator?

[Thor]

I think a lot of this comes down to perception over what a unit's role is supposed to be. Flash isn't intended to be in the same role as Stumpy but faster. It's a light tank with light (not armor piercing) weapons, and it is armored but with very low hp, so it's going to be very bad against other tanks (stumpy does full damage to medium armor, half to heavy, and heavy tanks do full damage to both armor types). The intended role for flashes is to raid, to fight light infantry kbots, or in numbers, to overwhelm or outflank kbot battle lines. You're right though that in current version the light tanks aren't terribly useful. As you mentioned earlier, peewee's/ak's are fairly useless, and those are what light tanks are best against. I think a speed increase for peewee/ak is a good idea, but with maybe a firepower decrease to go with it to keep them from being unmanageable.

Pyro's are great for airdropping someone's base. That's their main use.

Sumo's need to have valkyries putting them where they need to be. They're great not just for cheese airdrops like pyros, but for killing t1 battlelines in my experience.

Cans I will give you are 99.9% useless. Sumo's are better in every way. The only reason I can imagine to build a can is if you want to do an airdrop and only have t1 transports. I have seen them used this way to win a game.

[Gota]

Airdrop Pyros?You serious?unless an air transport is free of charge of course.
Air transports cost resources and micromanaging airdrops is very demanding while other units do not demand this.
If a unit demands an airdrop than that air drop is part of the unit's balance hence the unit itself should go down in price both for the air transports price and the fact u need to waste so much micro time on setting up an air drop.

AK and PW need a buff without any nerfing IMO.
You need to find a time during a battle where they will be the best choice ATM there is none which means they need a very serious buff.

An airdrop for a Sumo is more acceptable since its much more expensive than a pyro but still...an airdrop is very demanding and hard to pull off especially if the enemy has a bit of aa...If air transports were especially good it would make sense but they aren't.
A sumo+vakyrie price is higher than the price in thuds you'd need to kill the sumo in a face to face battle...
I still think the Can AND the Sumo need a major buffage.

[==Troy==]

Pewee and AK are meant to do the same role as flashes, they are raiders, and in big enough numbers, they will be able to give you the result.

I have seen people getting rushed with 20 or so pewees, and most of their mexes being killed, while they could kill 4-6 thuds.

Can is useless, agreed totally, but Sumo provides you a meatshield. It has NOTHING to do with the firepower, all it is is a walking wall, use it wisely in that sence. Put vulnerable units behind it, and let it just steamroll the enemy line. Dominators work really well at the back of a sumo, use your imagination to top that up.

Pyros are perfect for assasination missions, especially early, before your enemy manages to get any decent AA. Being able to find a hole in his AA is a skill, not a nerfed unit.


Tbh, most of the t1 balanced is perfectly fine at the moment, there is nothing needing to drastically change, I would, at most, agree for the PW/AK speed buff + DPS nerf change, but that would be at most something to test, rather than keep.

Most of those who complaing about balance of one unit vs another just misunderstand the role of it, and, fail to use it correctly.


What I would want to really see is t2 balance, since, as it is now, many t2 units are too useless to perform any real task, and t2 fight ends up in "who spams more strat bombers".

[Gota]

Troy I beg of you to play some 1v1 NOTA games versus me.

[nightcold]

ok one thing bothers me here, if Cans and Sumo are useless...why are we even haveing them in game.....the only reason they seem to be in there is because they are TA units, dose nota rlly need such blind TA worship...(hey this unit was in ta, and we are a ta mod...lets thorw it in, why not)

anyway it seems that pyro, cans and sumo fill up the same role(and i dont think being air dropped is such a great role to have in game)

most people don't understand the balance, ffs lets set up a a guide and trim some of the fat so the game becomes a bit easier to learn and understand

also, zuses are useless...

Sumo are sure as hell expensive for just being walls

[Thor]

Not all units are created equal. Pyro is a niche unit. It has a specific role and it's very effective at that.

Sumo's are hard to fight with only t1 units in my experience. The only way to fight them is to stay out of their range, which is not always easy to do.

Troy, if you don't mind, what are your suggestions for t2 balance? I agree with you that it's the weaker part of the game.

[Gota]

What is the pyros niche role?

[==Troy==]

What is the pyros niche role?

They have damage buff against buildings. Comtowers melt really fast if you manage to get pyros next to them.


Thor, I do not have much experience with t2 to be able to realistically judge the role of a unit, and how well it performs it. I just get overall feeling that t2 battle usually ends up in quite boring game endings, either outspam your enemy, or build start bombers, although I could be wrong here.


It would be really helpful if you were to summarise the intended role for each t2 unit (and t1 while at it ) that would reduce the complaints about units being unbalanced by a fair bit, I guess, as it is now, most units are failing, because people do not know where they are useful.

[Umrug]

Thor, I worship you for the buildpics!!!!
Let me say it again - you are the hero, you made my day, you are the f$%*ing best man ever!

Also, nice to see that Basic has finally got interest in some quality mods Its strange though I didn't see him ingame, not even once? Please, Basic, do not create unnecessary flame before you play a bit, and watch some games.

Pyros are really good as they are. Their niche is airdrops, and damn, they are perfect at it.

Cans seem to be useless. Sumo's I've seen used, as well as have used myself, imo they are not so bad. They shine at hilly maps with complex terrain (MooxQ20x for example), where you can use them to get over that last 1m of defended slope, just to soak up the dmg from defences.

Current balance issues I have:
1) lack of anti-hammer unit for ARM t1 (Core - levellers and morty)
2) Toadfoots and Vashps are a bit OP. They are practically a must-have unit on any type of map and battle situation. Imo making t1 mobile aa a bit better would solve the problem - several people above have detailed some good ideas (i.e. less dmg + 2 times faster reload for t1 aa missiles)

[Gota]

Umrug I play many mods I wish you'd calm down a bit and yourself play some other mods as well.

about sumo-I find it a bit weird that youd mention sumo as being good on hilly terrain since it shoots a straight up weapon,and anything with an arched weapon would do even better than straight shooting weapons on hilly maps.