OTA Balance as default?

[SwiftSpear]

noone, pronounced "nuney": has no known definition.

[Zoombie]

Huh....

Wird.

[Molloy]

... and the balance issues with OTA (someone with more expertise could detail them better than I) could then be properly examined and ironed out.

Already done. The product of that examination and ironing is called XTA. At least in the SYs view.

You've misinterpreted what I was trying to say there. What I'm saying is OTA for Spring is not faithful to Cavedog's OTA. By ironing out the balance I meant that they get it as close to the way it worked in the original engine.

XTA is like a totally different game from OTA. And one that lots of people aren't a fan of. Hence it's minimal impact on the TA scene when it came out. The SY's were practically the only people that played it. I think by having a rebalanced mod for Spring as standard sort of cops out on the engines original aim; to create a perfect replica of OTA in a new engine. That's what we were promised originally. I can go hunt for the thread on TAU if you don't believe me.

[NOiZE]

well there IS a OTA mod AVAILIBLE for spring

[SwiftSpear]

... and the balance issues with OTA (someone with more expertise could detail them better than I) could then be properly examined and ironed out.

Already done. The product of that examination and ironing is called XTA. At least in the SYs view.

You've misinterpreted what I was trying to say there. What I'm saying is OTA for Spring is not faithful to Cavedog's OTA. By ironing out the balance I meant that they get it as close to the way it worked in the original engine.

XTA is like a totally different game from OTA. And one that lots of people aren't a fan of. Hence it's minimal impact on the TA scene when it came out. The SY's were practically the only people that played it. I think by having a rebalanced mod for Spring as standard sort of cops out on the engines original aim; to create a perfect replica of OTA in a new engine. That's what we were promised originally. I can go hunt for the thread on TAU if you don't believe me.

We're well aware of the purist OTA fans that aren't pleased with XTA, and the fact of the matter is that the people that matter decided they can stuff it long ago. SY's made the game SY's decide what mod to include. Every game has it's purists who just can't or won't get used to new additions, and therefore protest against them, but the fact of the matter is that good developers won't bother trying to appease naysayers. Spring with XTA has tonnes of players, and the other mods attract players to. Dispite the fact that they are really loud and belive themselfs to be very important, people who want spring to perfectly mimic OTA are the VAST minority, and their opinions are just as relevent as all the hardcore XTA players. We're here to, and we support what the SY's are doing, so go gripe about something else, because no one cares here.

[Kixxe]

You've misinterpreted what I was trying to say there. What I'm saying is OTA for Spring is not faithful to Cavedog's OTA. By ironing out the balance I meant that they get it as close to the way it worked in the original engine.

XTA is like a totally different game from OTA. And one that lots of people aren't a fan of. Hence it's minimal impact on the TA scene when it came out. The SY's were practically the only people that played it. I think by having a rebalanced mod for Spring as standard sort of cops out on the engines original aim; to create a perfect replica of OTA in a new engine. That's what we were promised originally. I can go hunt for the thread on TAU if you don't believe me.

...Why does the defult mod matter so much? If you want to play OTA, you can make a mod thats "faithful to Cavedog's OTA." or play the normal OTA while you wait. AA survived without needing to be defult, why would't this "Cavedog's OTA." be any diffrent?

I don't think anyone has qwals of stopping you making a mod fun to play, and if it's good and fun to play, then pepole will play it. I think XTA is fun, therefore, i play. I think AA is fun, therefore, i play it to. I personaly think that OTA is unbalanced, therefore, it's not even installed.

If OTA veterans want to play their favorite game in full blown 3D with mucho effects and shit, why would it matter so much if it's not deafult?

[NOiZE]

let's look in from a different angle..

if OTA was the default mod would you all be playing XTA now?

[SwiftSpear]

let's look in from a different angle..

if OTA was the default mod would you all be playing XTA now?

No, we'd all be playing AA like we currently are.

[NOiZE]

really OTA isn't that unbalanced in spring... as units no longer can shoot trough each other that fixed a lot of the issueses

[aGorm]

Id be on XTA still. I like it.

aGorm

[FizWizz]

If OTA were the default mod, I'd still be crossing my fingers and hoping for a game of UH (or FF). I do plead guilty to having played AA and XTA, but when you are surrounded by it, it's a bit hard not to.

[BadMan]

OTA wasn't unbalanced, it just required somethign called unit control to take full advantage of units. Even in ota with sam swarms, they weren't the kill all unit. Units like mavs, rockos, bulldogs, all own the crap out of sams, def the mavs. Sure the sams out range them, but on large scale and into mid game, sams can't shoot over wrek, mavs could (to a point), so using the torn battlefield to your advantage and mavs and bulldogs would own cuz they were able to get close w/o taking many hits. That and massive hawks owned all.

Anyway, the OTA mod "as is" on spring isn't a good one. Sure it has the unit tweaks, but thats it. You can't control planes in spring like you could in OTA. (Hawk can't dance anymore, can't linebomb anymore)

That, and many maps for spring has no balance whatsoever. Hell a 16x16 map was medium for ota cuz ota had 40x40+ maps. The ota balance needs to be retweaked for spring.

Some things that might come into consideration:
1. BB range. Since most spring maps are <16x16, it might be worthwhile into looking at ota bb range and scaling it down in spring due to many maps being smaller than ota maps.
2. Sams/Slashers. Since they were the bread and butter unit and no longer can be due to spring, they might need a little tweaking.
3. Flashes. In ota, this was the overpowered lv 1 unit. Nothing dished out more damage over time than a flash (for lv 1 of course). That, and it had decent speed and armor making it a great raid/rush unit. Instigator? A joke of a counter unit; however, still pretty good at rushing. Perhaps lower damage/armor for the flash.
4. Core Navy. Mmmmm...Core had the better navy. Warlord anyone? That, and they also have the levi.
5. Fibbers! I am not sure if this bug still exists in spring, but fibbed subs were the shiznat. For all you otaers, u know what the bug is, for all you that don't....heh...too bad.
6. Necros. Well, Arm doesn't have a res bot, but thats ok. I just wanted to point out that in ota, the necro had a script bug where it would res a unit, but not heal it before moving to the next. The unit would be stuck at a shread of life.
7. Only the comm auto-healed. This is how it should be. I dislike how spring has the auto heal, it seems to be a bit too fast for my taste. For ota for spring, no units should auto heal, just the commander, and maybe he needs an auto heal boost.

There are other bugs, but spring fixed those (sparking, cloning of units)

Well, like I said before, if you want some help with some ota balance, I would like to help.

[zwzsg]

That reminds me I should update my OTA mod for Spring someday. I need to add that armor.txt for proper custom damage support. I need to use those new tag to disable every auto-heal save for the commanders. I need to change all the MaxSlope. I wish I could convince the coders that interpreting MaxSlope as an angle in degree is wrong, and that it should be the height difference between lowest and highest point. But that failed. So I have to change all maxslope values in all FBI and moveinfo.tdf, so ingame they seem more like they used to be in TA.

Maybe I could try pretend that I'm waiting for the Spring coders to add toggle for fire-through and free radar targetting?

And I strongly dislike XTA and play it only because I'm forced to!

[FizWizz]

There there, zwzsg[edit]omfg... I actually spelled it right...[/edit]... I feel your pain

[PauloMorfeo]

... I need to use those new tag to disable every auto-heal save for the commanders. ...

I would vote all but builders instead. If the builder is inactive, it is expectable that it will repair himself (although this may bring possible balance issues).

[Molloy]

People are getting needlessly aggressive here. It's true that I'm a TA purist but I'm not taking anything away from what the SY's have created. They made OTA about 10x better than it already was with the Demo Recorder. I have more respect for them than anybody in the community.

I'm just kind of surprised that an engine that started out purely for 3D replays of OTA demo recordings cannot be more geared towards a faithful replica of OTA gameplay.

I mean, you could go "rebalancing" OTA by changing the BB's range and fiddling with armour but then it wouldn't be OTA anymore. It'd be a rebalance mod. The fact is that Spring as it stands isn't capabable of making a faithful replica of OTA. Which I find kind of dissapointing.

As zwzsg says, the reason XTA is getting played is because it is default. I feel that if OTA were default you'd see tons of players coming in from TA, examining the differences and lobbying to get them fixed. But as everbody played XTA now (which few would bother playing if it weren't default) OTA will never get running properly on this engine.

[Min3mat]

it used to be. but xta has new stuff and is changing and improving all the time. :'( AA and UH are too so tbh the only reason OTA is going to be useful is the (AWESOME) single player missions. however how will u get spring to use OTA when running the missions???

[FizWizz]

not to rain on OTA's parade, but BSR made the missions UH compatible too in Total Annihilation, so it would be just as easy to do for Spring.

[SinbadEV]

I think ZW should fix the OTA mod, because my problem with the OTA mod is that it's not like playing OTA, even ignoring the fact that I can't make huge fields of rocket towers for a propper anti-everything defence because they shoot eachother now, just doesn't feel right... I still prefer it for the most part... but I miss the REZ/CON farks when I play it...

[Das Bruce]

Molloy,

To make it an exact replica of OTA but with a 3D veiw is missing the point of Spring. An exact replica would waste all the amazing things the new engine can do, if you want an exact replica go play OTA.