Boost Rushing

[SirMaverick]

Without boost it's the same situation. Build speed is changed on both sides.

Not at all, without boost you land and have to slowly and manually make turrets, allowing the defending com to escape and spam turrets back or make skirms / arty at their fac.

Ok, but only if you compare it to a situation where the defender already used all its boost.

No comms on light transports. Make heavy transport cost 600 so it is not boostable.

You know who easy it is to kill a light transport? Com dies instantly. If they can start with a light transport you can start with a fighter. Now that is exactly the same discussion as in BA.

Making com not atlas transportable solves a lot of this issue.

Build defender, build fighter. If you don't like com being transportable play a different mod. (BA discussion)

It doesnt rule out the inventive but otherwise still rather cheesy com drop or island hopping strategies: It just costs more.

Why change other things just to solve a different problem? That introduce more "flaws" than it solves.

Note that boost is currently, what, 750 or so?

600

The other option, as i see it, is just to restrict boost to only economic structures

In chicken games I start boosting a anti-swarm.

We could of course restrict boost [...] from working beyond a certain radius around your start position, etc etc.

I still disagree about problems but that is a change I'd except. (1/4 of map size?)

A lot of possible solutions that dont require changes to elsewhere in the game or to standard play and openings.

100% Ack.

Wouldn't it just be less awkward to make labs cost less build power..Also much simpler.

Not simpler, against standards and you would complain more about the non-existing problem of lab switches.

[Google_Frog]

http://trac.caspring.org/ticket/1722
Read the thread (especially Basic). A lot of this discussion is touching on things already discussed so will serve as good background.

As for things like Jack and Stardust rush removal of boost may be a good idea. Maybe just removal of transporting Commander. I am not sure, it needs more discussion.

[Yogzototh]

Personally, i would prefer a VERY short timespan for boost.
Make it disappear after, say, 20 seconds. The time should be just enough to walk to your mexes if you start a little away from them, and quickly build whatever you need. Maybe make the boost not disappear all at once, but, like, you lose 5% of your max boost every second after 10 seconds ingame. So by 30 seconds it is all gone. Because really, boost is there to help you build your base, you are not supposed to conserve it for any longer than it takes to build the base.

The option to just make com not atlas-transportable is also quite fine by me, though it doesnt completely solve the less important issues, like cowalking on smaller maps or like the fact that regular drops are underused anyway, and not being able to put an awesome combat support unit without having to make an expensive trans is not all good.

Speakng of which, one of the reason the air transports are underused is that they have absolutely ridiculoudly low HP, could we maybe buff them, like ALOT?

[luckywaldo7]

Ah that was just the ticket I was looking for.

Removal of transporting commanders isn't needed, imho, as that would not matter on blue bend.

And I will not allow anyone saying that is a problem with blue bend because that map is effing awesome.

[Pxtl]

Not that Boost is very elegant in the first place, anyway (boost + facplop do seem kinda awkward to begin with).

This is why I like nanotower plop and just starting with more resources. While it's not as fast and fun as boost to plop down nanotowers to assist your initial construction, it means you simplify the opening deployment mechanics to a single sysem (plops) instead of 2 separate devices.

"To start, you can (for free and instantly) build the factory of your choice and 2 nanotowers". Or something like that. The nanos then help you build your initial structures quickly until you burn through your starting resources... of course, a smart player would then reclaim the nanotowers, so that is a flaw.

That said, I'm not convinced that it fixes anything - you could probably still do a boostrush using a plopped nanotower, since you could use it to defend whatever you're building as your offensive turret.

I still think un-atlasable comms is the best solution. Com-transporting creates a long list of PITA gameplay features in BA, so it's no surprise it occurs in CA too. Either way, one feature I'd want if coms were made un-atlasable would be increasing the cost of the heavy to exceed a single player's boost. Remember that transport/comm rushing could still be done in a teamgame if atlas-boostrushing were removed - one player burns his boost on a transport and then moves all the others into offensive position.

And I think boost-rushing is just something you're going to have to learn to live with on maps where you're starting a quick walk from the enemy.

[Edible]

Ok, but only if you compare it to a situation where the defender already used all its boost.

Realistically unless you are doing it back to them, at 30s or whatever in the game anyone sane is out of boost.

Build defender, build fighter. If you don't like com being transportable play a different mod. (BA discussion)

There is no defense that adequately protects against jack rush, comdrop and BD rush, if you know whats coming you can stop it, but in most situations it can be pulled off or at least too close to effectively stop in the case of the dawn or jack if you do scout it.

The problem is it reduces a nice complex and fun game to startbuild paper scissors rock.

[CarRepairer]

There is an alternative option that I created a long long time ago called Limited Boost. It allows only boosting stuff without a weapon. Building an LLT, heatray, assisting factories? Normal speed. Building a mex or solar? Boosted speed. No one's even mentioned it once in this thread.

[Neddie]

I don't remember encountering limited boost in game. I'm sure a lack of experience with the mechanic is key to the general oversight here.

[Pxtl]

I'm not sure the jack/BD rush wouldn't be a problem with out any boost at all.

I don't think anybody likes the limitboost option - at that point your start is so constrained you may as well just give the player the starting gear - have CA automatically cap the 3 mexes nearest to the start-point and plonk a solar and LLT next to each of them.

[SirMaverick]

Build defender, build fighter. If you don't like com being transportable play a different mod. (BA discussion)

There is no defense that adequately protects against jack rush, comdrop and BD rush, if you know whats coming you can stop it, but in most situations it can be pulled off or at least too close to effectively stop in the case of the dawn or jack if you do scout it.

Don't mix topics. Def / fighter protect against com drop, that's what I was talking about. Defender also protects against small raiders. So they are quite common.

For the rest: scouting is a key. If you have a powerful unit in your base then it's too late.

There is an alternative option that I created a long long time ago called Limited Boost.

That was mentioned here. Not with that name, but the idea and why it's not optimal.

[CarRepairer]

Code: Select all

key  = "limitboost",
name = "Limited Boost",
desc = "Boost mode only commander cannot boostbuild anything with a weapon (uses normal build instead).",

I don't think anybody likes the limitboost option - at that point your start is so constrained you may as well just give the player the starting gear - have CA automatically cap the 3 mexes nearest to the start-point and plonk a solar and LLT next to each of them.

That's too bad. Limitboost allows you to boostbuild mexes, windmills, solars, nanotower, (you can even build an LLT, it just won't be instant) you can plop your factory, and there you go, you have a working base. While it disallows you to drop into your enemy base and plop some defense turrets in it. I don't see the problem.

[Pxtl]

At this point I'm contemplating something bizarre - ditch the comm altogether. Fac-in-a-box + automatic no-user deployment of the gear I described above - 1 mex on each of the 3 nearest metal patches, 1 solar next to each patch, and 1 LLT next to those. + 2 MTs that appear next to the fac-in-the-box after deployment.

Complete automatic base deployment - only user input is where and what factory.

[Otherside]

ive been stating the problem ever since boost was implemented.

thank fuck it finally got some recognition.

Boost rush has no place in the game and is cheesy making the game blind rps from the first second.

[CarRepairer]

At this point I'm contemplating something bizarre - ditch the comm altogether. Fac-in-a-box + automatic no-user deployment of the gear I described above - 1 mex on each of the 3 nearest metal patches, 1 solar next to each patch, and 1 LLT next to those. + 2 MTs that appear next to the fac-in-the-box after deployment.

Complete automatic base deployment - only user input is where and what factory.

Fac-in-a-box is silly looking. Facplop replaces it.

What if there are less than 3 mex spots next to the starting spot? What if the automatic LLT placement fails and it starts in bad spot behind some bump?

Too complex for it to work perfectly, and it has to work perfectly every time otherwise some starting spots will be gimped.

[KaiserJ]

maybe you dudes need some CA specific maps

(not talking about boostrush, but about some of the alternatives like facplop and fac-in-a-box)

does anyone actually like playing maps with cloudy metal anyways? i find it to be a bit overly complicated and much prefer "spot" type metal; just throwing it out there to see

[scifi]

Boost heh well i tryed once with maackey iirc disabling boost to try and see how it was the gameplay, it felt slower A LOT SLOWER,

CA balance evolved with boost, its fast and more fun.

Boost is already half of what it was, what hapens now it requires team work to get it done properly. (it isnt that bad of a strategy)

i still say the problem is Comunism, a player with no mexes still has the shared income of the other players. Im not saying remove comunism but maybe fix it a bit, since removing is out of the question the new OD pylon economy wouldnt exist.

is total metal income shared equaly by players???, or is it the old 30%of income thats only shared?????

if its total income id sugest reverting to old 30% sharing sistem

[Edible]

Don't mix topics. Def / fighter protect against com drop, that's what I was talking about. Defender also protects against small raiders. So they are quite common.

For the rest: scouting is a key. If you have a powerful unit in your base then it's too late.

My point is, you do not have the starting res/time to scout for jack / BD and be ready for it, and get a defender / fighter up as well as getting your basic resource collecting up.

You can counter maybe 1 or 2 different types of rushes, but picking which ones is basically a gamble. This leads to paper scissors rock issues in the early game.

[SirMaverick]

My point is, you do not have the starting res/time to scout for jack / BD and be ready for it, and get a defender / fighter up as well as getting your basic resource collecting up.

You can counter maybe 1 or 2 different types of rushes, but picking which ones is basically a gamble. This leads to paper scissors rock issues in the early game.

This doesn't change without boost. You are able to spend the same amount of resources while he is rushing e.g. jack. If boost or not, you have same build power + resources. In fact, due to reduced build power (no boost, normal res) and same move speed at the time the jack is at your base you have spend less resources compared to a boosted start base (EDIT: this only counts for boost left at the time jack is finished).

[luckywaldo7]

^ What he said. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to boost a scout faster than he can boost a can/bd/whatever.

The issue being discussed about boost is the instant-antiswarms in enemy bases.

[JohannesH]

^ What he said. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to boost a scout faster than he can boost a can/bd/whatever.

The timings of a scout and combat unit are much closer with boost than without, the buildtime difference is smaller? Even if there still is enough time to react nevertheless.