two major XTA gripes

[DavetheBrave]

okay lets be serious now
if you build loads of missile towers youll be at an economic disadvantage against the guy who built a weasel early on and sent his comm/cons to build useful stuff.
Setting weasels to patrol defensively doesnt prevent your mexes from getting owned and anyone whos got half a braincell or 2 mins experience with XTA would know that. By the time you kill the weasel with your patrol half of your metal and wind is gone.
The ONLY real choice is sending weasels yourself and hoping your comm will dgun the enemy's quicker than him!
sure, sending other lvl1 units is also effective but nowhere near as good as the super-fast, super-quick-repairing, super-cost-effective,super-powerful-laser-equipped weasels/jeffys.

and necros/farks are ridiculously overpowered, put them to build a vulcan and they will consume 5k (YES FIVE THOUSAND) energy per SECOND. Dont even try to tell me this is not way too high! they are expensive but they are by FAR the cheapest workertime for your buck, and since they can rez ANYTHING very quickly, it just makes them a necessity in any late game. People who rely on millions of con planes clearly havent evolved from OTA. send a con plane and a necro on a transport and voila, you saved yourself 30 planes and you can rez shizzle!

Please dont try to argue against the fact that these units are extremely overpowered beyond reason!

First of all, 4 missile towers is not "loads". They are very cheap, fast to build, and they have great range for defending against jeffies/freakers. Radar is also very important early on(and in the whole game), as well as using your comm effectively(placing him well, leading the target with the dgun). Some mexes are going to get killed, but they dont take long to rebuild.... Xta is eXtreme TA. Every little choice counts. Also, all Strategy games are about taking the offensive. You should always send units early on(in any mod). Rushing is certainly the only way to try to stop SJ's or Gpox' rapid expansion of the economy .

About Farks:

They do build ridiculously fast, certainly. What maps are you playing? On the maps I play, I would almost never think of building a vulcan. Realize that if you build too many farks, they will strain your economy and you will end up stalling. Personally, I love the lvl 2 gameplay in that farks stimulate.

XTA certainly has a different balance than most mods(It is not perfect either). It is the most intense mod I have ever played. The only real problem I have is the Krogoth...but usually you can prevent that .

[Maelstrom]

Anything, when set to build a vulcan, will consume more than it should. A simple lvl1 const. Kbot was consuming 400E while building a vulcan for me once, and I was in the middle of a nanostall at the time. Vulcans are not a good building to run compariosns on.

Farks/necros can not res anything. Wreakage that has turned to rubble cannot be ressurected. And with the huge guns in late game, most things will get turned to dust. And ressing, while quick for lvl1 units, is not quick AT ALL when trying to res a goliath.

And if you cant counter Weasles, then you have no place here talking about balance.

[krogothe]

First of all, 4 missile towers is not "loads". They are very cheap, fast to build, and they have great range for defending against jeffies/freakers. Radar is also very important early on

Building radars, missile towers, mexes etc takes time and resources far greater than what is required by building a single weasel. A game where the counter for a type unit is more expensive than the units themselves is not balanced.

They do build ridiculously fast, certainly. What maps are you playing? .

Farks are not just for building vulcans. they are there for assisting and building any and everything in late game. Why pay more for all the other con units in bulk when you can get one con unit and assist it with the farks at a fraction of the price? In any map farks are a must in late game!

Farks/necros can not res anything. Wreakage that has turned to rubble cannot be ressurected

I have played this game before, in case you havent noticed, but if you look in late games youll see that most of the stuff worth rezzing in fact doesnt get turned to rubble. no one gives a single solitary tiny droplet of shit about pewees getting turned to dust, which they do. In case you havent played TA before, heavy, useful units dont get turned to dust most of them time. That and the idea that you can rez a krog/goliath/whatever for free faster than you can build one shows that youre the one that shouldnt have a place talking here about balance...

Anything, when set to build a vulcan, will consume more than it should. A simple lvl1 const. Kbot was consuming 400E while building a vulcan for me once, and I was in the middle of a nanostall at the time. Vulcans are not a good building to run compariosns on.

Then please show me a building comparision that doesnt have the fark build 10.8x faster than a con kbot or faster than any other unit by a factor of 2-3....



Balanced units simply mean you CHOOSE wheter to use them or not.
if you HAVE to build certain units in order to NOT BE DISADVANTAGED, then those units ARE NOT BALANCED. Get it right people!
If you play on pretty much any map that is not huge and dont make weasels, youll be at a disadvantage. If you play pretty much any game over the 30-60 min mark and dont make farks, youll be at a disadvantage, very especially on metal maps.

Of course you might enjoy playing with weasels/farks. That doesnt make them balanced. I enjoy XTA, that doesnt make it balanced. I basically ONLY play XTA, it IS the most balanced mod TAS can offer IMO, but those units are not at all balanced, and therefore I cant see any outstanding reason for it to remain unbalanced as such...

[Maelstrom]

I never, EVER build weasles. Yet I still manage to go alright in game.

And you said farks can res everything, when they cant. I was simply correcting you.

MT's are usefull against anything. They are very good against ANYTHING that is lvl1, except for the units that out range them. If you do not build MT's, you will be dissadvantaged, not just against rushes.

Your idea that you should be able to build anything you want, and still have a chance of winning is flawed. You NEED to have some units. There is no going around that. If you could win with any strategy against any other strategy, the game would suck.

This applies to Farks as well. They are there. Use them. They are not cheap. They are not quick to build. They are really only viable late game because of this. And really, you have to have builder swarms, otherwise nothing will get built.

Heavy units dont get turned to dust. I know that. But they take ages to res. I said that quite clearly. The only thing that farks can res quickly is peewees, which you apparently dont care about anyway.

And Farks deserve to build 10 times faster than a lvl1 const Kbot. Look at this, taken straight from the units FBI files:

Code: Select all

Name            FARK    Construction KBot

BuildCostEnergy 25752   1928    = 13.3 times more
BuildCostMetal  1200    120     = 10 times more
BuildTime       29564   4478    = 6.6 times more

WorkerTime      860     80      = 10.75 times more

Anything that costs 10 times as much kinda deserves to be 10 times better.

[krogothe]

I never, EVER build weasles. Yet I still manage to go alright in game.

Play on any non huge-mountain-chain map against good players and try not weaseling. Watch the replay after and see who was doing better by the 3rd minute: You with a couple destroyed mexes/winds and resouces wasted on defenses or the other guy who simply made the weasel and built up his economy/army while you were on the defensive...

On a small map, before you make your first MT a weasel will be popping your mexes and wind, as they are so quick. Youll never kill it unless you d-gun it, which if youre playing against a decent guy wont happen. He will either wedge it on your buildings so you cant d-gun it or outrun your comm and wreak havoc elsewhere...


rezzing makes it 20+ times better, as you are well aware i hope
and just because something takes a while to rez doesnt mean its not incredibly powerful. Then you have to take into account that a fark is faster and can build lvl2 stuff too...

You dont build just lvl1 units do you? Big heavy lvl2 units take time to build, but you do anyway, and if you could build them for free and faster with a factory called fark which only costs 1000 metal and can move about and repair stuff and build buildings you would right?

I didnt say any strategy wins is balance. But being forced down certain paths is not balanced, if all kbots were suddenly 3x more powerful making vehicles a stupid choice im sure youd cry unbalanced, as would everyone else. The same applies to farks, they are far too good compared to all other units...

MTs are not at all necessary for an advantage. I find samsoms miles better since they are mobile and tougher, so that weasels cant run that easily from them. But weasels are still almost an assault tank. Fast, cheap scout units shouldnt be able to kill most lvl1 units and buildings on its own. Am i wrong?

[Maelstrom]

I do play small maps alot. I never weasle. And neither does my opponent. We rush with other vehicles. Also, jeffy's(weasles and jeffys are almost identical, so i used jeffys as they are arm), are not cheap compared to the other tanks.

Code: Select all

Name            Jeffy   Flash   Stumpy

BuildCostEnergy 1692    1044    1246
BuildCostMetal  111     127     165
BuildTime       4395    1676    2404

MaxDamage       650     820     992

They take twice as long to build than the Stumpy, and almost 3 times as long as a Flash. They are slightly cheaper in Energy, but only slightly. They cost more 400-600 more metal than the Stumpy and Flash. They are also significantly weaker that both other tanks.

Really, their OLNY advantage is their speed. This can be easily countered with MT's, which as stated earlier, should be build as just general everything defence anyway.

I can usually get AT LEAST 2 MT's up before the first raider appears in my base, as well as a few army units. This is because the raiders have to TRAVEL, which takes time, no matter how fast it is. And if I lose a few Winds, who really cares? They are cheap. I can suck up the wrekage, as well as the wrekage of the raiders. Infact, I think I will come out at an advantage.

And I also find sampsons better. But untill you get your sampsons, you have to use MT's. And you wouldnt defend your base with JUST sampsons would you?

[Min3mat]

sammies cost a LOT of metal. great for defending ur convees whilst they expand ur base, crap at early defense, awesome if well microed in swarms.

[krogothe]

Sammies only cost about 2x more than a MT, and being twice as tough and mobile i think its a great deal!

[Min3mat]

MT do slightly more damage. Sammies are good but expensive, useful for defending builders but MT are far better to defend with.