Spring version of Anteer Strait

[zoggop]

Hmm, I haven't yet encountered any aliens. Maybe the game didn't last long enough.

However, I do have some minor quibbles regarding balance. The North start has three metal spots all on the flat ground, whereas the other two starts each have two on the flat, and one on the hill (which can't be accessed with vehicles).

I noticed that the areas where TA would not be playable in the S and E edges are just there and perfectly accessible here. It's probably not really an issue on a sea map like this with such large wide open spaces, but technically the lower two starts have more space behind them, for better or worse. I really have no idea what the best way to deal with OTA's freaky playable map sizes is. On another map I tried using a typemap to just block off those areas, but that seemed pretty sloppy, and without a visual cue as to where the barrier is, it was a little confusing to play on.

[Jools]

I agree. I wanted to make those icebergs like in ota, but they get much lower in spring and look more like rocks in water and not icebergs. However, I used the exact heightmap from ota, so it's the same. It just behaves differently in spring.

It would be possible to stretch the icebergs more, but that would also make the ones where players start higher, and therefore not accessible even with kbots (the hills can still be accessed by kbots but not by xta commander; however commander has such large build radius so he can build the mexxes from below).

In new version the icebergs should be a bit higher though. But to be honest I'd want them even sharper and higher, like cliffs. I didn't easily manage to do that in carrara.

[Jools]

I actually considered making a gadget where you can easily cease-fire the gaia team (the aliens), but then I thought I was overcomplicating things.

But they have some basic behaviour:

* When being shot at, go to the nearest alien (to take cover)

* They start with fire orders = hold fire and move orders stay ground. As players kill alien units, they will gradually change those.

* They ally the nearest player if he has units close enough. The distance is controlled by a map option called join distance.

* I also had implemented a feature where if two aliens get ordered to attack each other (after joining different teams), they would cancel the allience and both go back to the alien team. But I removed this feature as I felt it would just annoy people :)

[Jools]

The whole idea with the aliens is to make it worthwhile to control land and sea area. Otherwise, since there is metal in so few places, people would just sit back and tech on their island.

But you can also just turn off the aliens (or even meteors) completely in map options and play the map that way.

[zoggop]

Hahaha I <3 the alien mutiny feature.

[Jools]

Yeah it sounds nice as a concept, but I think people would rage quit if it happened to them.

[zoggop]

If you want to watch, Jools, here's a replay of a three player game (two humans, one RAI), with aliens on simple ally mode. They (the aliens) never really came into play much. The funniest part is the two battle mechs hanging out in the corner.

http://ge.tt/8cIV21D

[Jools]

Thanks for posting.

The aliens are supposed to join the nearest player: apparently this has been disabled in balanced annihilation. I'll see if I can work to fix it somehow in the next version of the map.