Final Frontier 1.18 (Website and first FF-map released)

[Optimus Prime]

You wont have any super-uber-units.

*cough* Flying hotdog of death. *cough*

what is for you a super unit? Is it a very strong unit? An unbalanced one? A very expensive one?
For me its an unbalanced one and sorry, but if you want me to say that the titan is unbalanced than i just call you a noob who has lost to many games against a person who was playing with you.
Fact is that the titan is much to expensive for its strength. You can kill a Titan with about 15% of its cost if you use its counter units OR with 70% by using other Battleships (which are not counter units).
A titan costs 148000 metal.
You can kill a Titan with 40 lvl 2 Gunships which cost 20000 metal (13.5% metal of a titan)
You can kill a Titan with 5 Thunderlancers which cost 120000 metal and 2 or 3 survive (thats 81% metal of titan and you still have at least 2 left).
That are only some ways to destroy one but i guess that you are just not experienced enough to prepare for that.
Normally if you see someone building a titan, the player who builds one knows, that he is much better than you and he just wants to play with you. A good player who is equal to you wouldnt spent so much time in a production that will slow his whole attack force and eco for 15 or 20 mins. at least. You need a lvl 4 yard which needs about 5 mins to build (if you have the metal) and than you need the ship which needs a lot more time and metal. During this time your enemy is much weaker than you and if you scout this, you can destroy him with ease. For the money you get about 6 brodsides and that should be a big advantage.
Another counter aspect are the piledrivers. You get 3 Piledrivers for one titan and three Piledrivers are better in any way. You get 6 anti fighter turrets (titan has only 3) and much more Health and firepower. So the titan is more some kind of fun or if you know that your enemy is turtling and not attacking you. Sure its not useless, but a mixed fleet for the same money is stronger in any way.
The only advantage is that you have one unit which you can repair if it survives and it survives often, but its slow and you can only attack or defend at one position.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I don't recall the original FF making use of much in terms of RPS balance.

*shrug*

I never said that i want to make ota FF for spring, i want to make it better and use all i can to do so. That includes new units, better effects and sounds, grafics and a different balance.

[Min3mat]

Well, if you are really up for balancing all the races its fine by me :)
i wish someone would challenge me for KoFF :s

[Nemo]

Optimus, I'm aware that its fantastically expensive. I haven't lost many games of FF becuase I find it mind numbingly boring to play - hence why I made my own rebalance.

I call the titan a super-uber unit because its got the full 16 weapons, and a disgusting amount of health. You suffer from the classic unit maker "well, I can make it as big and powerful as I want, as long as I make it expensive, right?" Wrong. It contributes nothing to gameplay. It is a spectacle, nothing more. The Core already have a super unit - the planet killer. Why on earth do they need yet another?

You admit to the Titan being so expensive that it never shows up in normal play. Then why have it? Why do you throw these toys in for the Speedmetal players? The ODS teleporter? The Titan? The turret that was added so that Core could more easily porc up to the Titan? A "Long range guided missle craft" ? Come on, the Longbow is in there for a reason. If you want it to fire over things, give it a bigger cruisealt.

Its great that the titan can die to 15% of its cost. I'm sure the Planetkiller can die to even less % of its cost. Why do you need yet another Krogoth-esque unit? Its pointless, in every sense of the word. Read the design forums on TAU sometime. They have valuble information. One of the biggest lessons is that units should only be added if they fill a unique niche. What niche does the Titan fill? The krogoth role? Well, silly me, thinking that there was already *an entire class of ships* that filled this role. The capital ships were gamebreakers in OTA:FF. You never saw more than 1 broadside in a single attack, or if you did, only in the largest, longest games. The Broadside was the arm's 'krogoth' unit. The core had the more powerful Planetkiller. Both sides had a slew of other, smaller units, each fulfilling a specific role.


The way FF is currently balanced, the game revolves around a 'no attack period' - not by agreement of the players, but because a handful of turrets can defeat an infinite number of level 1 ships, and then the 'building time' reminicant of so many noob games in OTA, and finally the clash of lots of ships with too much health kicking each other around. The most complicated skill is a single move order, perhaps a few attack orders. Raiding is impossible. There is no such thing as a short FF game.

Please. That isn't a game, its a show. I wish some of the original FF crew would play this, and let you know how it compares to their original game design ideas.

This current system is an improvement only if you're a SpeedMetal addict.

Something to note - most FF maps in OTA were NOT metal maps. They were normal patches. Yes, *shock* FF was playable and was even designed to be played on a normal map. Right now, FF is nowhere near playable on a normal map, unless you count sitting and building up to mohomakers/resource generators as fast as you can as playable.

Look - you're not making the balance better. At all. You're building a game that not only encourages the "metalmap->porc->uberunits/huge swarms of slightly less uber units" style of play, but DEMANDS it.

Maybe its just me, but that gets old quickly. A gimick wears out far sooner than solid gameplay does, and FF's player counts reflect this.

Meh. Good luck with the third race, its a lot of work and I'm sure the models will be very pretty.

[Min3mat]

FF balance is OK actually for small maps like asteriod battle. lots of expansion and raiding, although micro is non existant really as u cannot get the damn missile ships to do what u want even on hold pos :) still pretty good fun!

[Optimus Prime]

Nemo if you dont like normal FF no one forces you to play it, but a lot of people like it and love it as it is. You like fast rush games, thats ok, but dont tell me to change FF only cause you want it this way.
I never play a metal map and i have a lot of fights from short after the start to the end of the game which can be very long. I really dont see where you have a problem...
You tell me to delete the extra units but thats a total annihilation paradoxon. TA is a game with TONS of units. The main aspekt of TA was and is the number of different units. Look at OTA, XTA or AA. You have about 5 units for the same function in nearly every mod. It increases the variety and thats good.
I ask you why do you need the Broadside when there is the Thunderlancer. Why you need the Piledriver when there is the Deathhand, why the Warspite when there is the Starburst, why the Dragon when there is the Ironangel?I could reduce that to less than the half of the existing units and you would have still all functions you have now. For AA you would only need 50 units or less.
Sorry, but we want two different games and therefore there are 2 different versions I think thats good, but let this FF like it is and do your own one

[smokingwreckage]

I thought Spring FF actually started up MUCH faster than TA FF because of the quicker build times. I remember TAFF as taking a frickin' AGE to build a single ship.

Boring.

[monohouse]

I think the sounds in FF could use a little help.

[Zoombie]

I actually like the somewhat slower pace of FF. But it dose get a little dull, and thats why there is...er...

Speeding up the game?

[mecha]

I concur with smokingwreckage, Playing Ta FF the build times were significantly longer than what they are today. Personally I like the way FF is today.

Just need some bigger defensive structures in late game. The antimatter ray could made more impressive (to give it that "lashing the earth with arcs of chaotic plasma, as if the sun itself had reached out in rage and smote the earth asunder" sort of look)

Just imagine a group of death hands cruising along untill this huge effing beam takes one out completely making it instantly blow into pieces (no slow death so you get that "holy sh*t" exclamation from the other player)

crazy mutterings of an unbalanced mind maybe... but it'd be impressive!

[mecha]

Talking about artillery, could the ranges of the Core and Arm artillery pieces be increased by about 30% to give them a bit more efficacy. Especially since the larger ship weapons are starting to dwarf everything apart from acheron battlestations in terms of range and fire power.

It would also be great to have a projectile defence unit such as the one in AA. This could either be a mobile or static unit, If its possible to incorporate a limited, regenerating version of each into soem of the larger ships to simulate shield usage that would be cool too. Perhaps with a massive energy usage penalty :)

On the other hand, the projectile defence units could be like the glaive (really slow defence unit) except weaponless... used as a sort of mobile screen which would force the attacking player to have to 'break through' the line of battle rather than shell from afar.

How do those projectile defence buildings in AA work anyway? What do they let through and what don't they?

[Optimus Prime]

sorry, but that is not possible as far as i know.
Reason is easy: the shield ONLY blocks plasmashells and in FF only some few arm units like the bearcat and wildcat (small gunships) use them. You cant block lasers or weapons which use models like the plasma from arm.
Please correct me if i m wrong...

[Nemo]

I actually like the somewhat slower pace of FF. But it dose get a little dull, and thats why there is...er...

Speeding up the game?

Which is why you should play Low Fat FF

Gogogo!

It won't work unless you have 1.14 installed though, I suppose I should fix that.

[Nemo]

You tell me to delete the extra units but thats a total annihilation paradoxon. TA is a game with TONS of units. The main aspect of TA was and is the number of different units. Look at OTA, XTA or AA. You have about 5 units for the same function in nearly every mod. It increases the variety and thats good.

Wrong. Every unit in OTA or XTA or AA has a specific role. Name one redundant unit in AA and prove that its redundant to caydr, and it'll be pulled. There are lots of units because there are so many potentially different situations. However, NONE of them are pointlessly redundant, as the titan or the superturret or FirstStrike are. All of these roles are *already filled* by other units.

*shrug* The basic problem is that the current setup of FF has attracted precisely the players who play metalmaps only on AA, who don't want to play a proper game and yell when people rush them. So when I change FF to be less porc friendly and to encourage raids, the SpeedMetalers of FF ask why on earth anyone would want that.

But hey, it leaves more time for AATA work, I can't say I'm too bothered.

[Guessmyname]

I agree with Nemo

[Optimus Prime]

You tell me to delete the extra units but thats a total annihilation paradoxon. TA is a game with TONS of units. The main aspect of TA was and is the number of different units. Look at OTA, XTA or AA. You have about 5 units for the same function in nearly every mod. It increases the variety and thats good.

Wrong. Every unit in OTA or XTA or AA has a specific role. Name one redundant unit in AA and prove that its redundant to caydr, and it'll be pulled. There are lots of units because there are so many potentially different situations. However, NONE of them are pointlessly redundant, as the titan or the superturret or FirstStrike are. All of these roles are *already filled* by other units.

*shrug* The basic problem is that the current setup of FF has attracted precisely the players who play metalmaps only on AA, who don't want to play a proper game and yell when people rush them. So when I change FF to be less porc friendly and to encourage raids, the SpeedMetalers of FF ask why on earth anyone would want that.

But hey, it leaves more time for AATA work, I can't say I'm too bothered.

sorry when i say that, but you are REALLY REALLY REALLY a BIG FF noob and should play some games with GOOD players on normal maps.
Firststrike useless? The Firststrike is the ONLY unit with an artillery role and the biggest range. It is the ONLY unit which can shoot over other units (with titan) and has a bigger range than 90% of defense structures.
The Super turret is the ONLY turret with a bigger range than the firststrike and the titan, so you need it for a perfect defense.
The Titan is perhaps not the best solution when you have a big combined fleet, but it is a good fun unit which can defend or attack a whole base alone.
Please dont mess with a mod you dont know. So make your own thread for "your" low fat FF and discuss your advantages there and not here. Thx a lot -.-

[Drone_Fragger]

Actually, you could learn some things from Low Fat FF. Hes rduced the FAt that is Bloated costs. Sure, You pointed out to me that Defences, Fighters and such like are balenced cost wise, But the costs are incredibly bloated. I mean, The Lvl1 Defence costs nearly 400 metal. Seeing as in AA it would be 120-ish, thats a lot. This really wouldn't be so bad, But mexxes still only give AA or OTA values, Meaning you need 3 times as many mexxes to provide a Reasonable econamy for your base. And taking into account that most people Can't expand to 3 times what they already have because there isn't any metal spots left, Enemy defences or otherwise, It really does slow the game down.

Therfore, A price slash on pretty much everythign by 2/3 seems in order.

[mecha]

Frankly I don't agree with nemo

But thats why he (nemo) has his own version to play. Perhaps if he developed it in such a way that it improved the sights and sounds of FF that would be good. But I don't think moving to a nanoblobs type game will improve on the visual spectacle of large ships and light shows already present that helps make FF great.

So what if there are heaps of units... one players preference is different from anothers and two ARM players will invariably use different unit combinations against one-another. A one unit- one role system generally leads to a one-unit one-strategy game (freaker-raid, brawler raid anyone?). Variety is good, and improves the game visually.

Nemo don't flame FF since you obviously thought it was good enough to develop your your own mod from.

The basic problem is that the current setup of FF has attracted precisely the players who play metalmaps only on AA, who don't want to play a proper game and yell when people rush them.

I mean what kind of sweeping generic statement is that? Seriously is low fat FF going to make these players you talk of like raiding anymore? Find other people to play against dude.

Perhaps the metal costs could come down, but the build times are about right

[Optimus Prime]

Actually, you could learn some things from Low Fat FF. Hes rduced the FAt that is Bloated costs. Sure, You pointed out to me that Defences, Fighters and such like are balenced cost wise, But the costs are incredibly bloated. I mean, The Lvl1 Defence costs nearly 400 metal. Seeing as in AA it would be 120-ish, thats a lot. This really wouldn't be so bad, But mexxes still only give AA or OTA values, Meaning you need 3 times as many mexxes to provide a Reasonable econamy for your base. And taking into account that most people Can't expand to 3 times what they already have because there isn't any metal spots left, Enemy defences or otherwise, It really does slow the game down.

Therfore, A price slash on pretty much everythign by 2/3 seems in order.

FF:
normal metalextractor: ExtractsMetal=0.00167;
moho metalextractor: ExtractsMetal=0.017;
Commander: Metaloutput: 10 !

AA:
normal metalextractor: ExtractsMetal=0.001;
moho metalextractor: ExtractsMetal=0.005;
Commander: Metaloutput: 1

[Xcrist]

Nemo wrote:

Something to note - most FF maps in OTA were NOT metal maps. They were normal patches. Yes, *shock* FF was playable and was even designed to be played on a normal map. Right now, FF is nowhere near playable on a normal map, unless you count sitting and building up to mohomakers/resource generators as fast as you can as playable.

It seems that u never played FF-Surrounded or FF-AsteroidBattle. In my opinion speed metal is a metal map because u get 20 metal/extractor and can build as much mines as u want. A normal map can have spots or areas, that doesnt matter as long as u cant get more metal unless u spread out. And in both maps u can only build up to 8 extractors if u play a 4 vs 4.
And if u build level 3 mines FF is playable on every map(we played it a long time on comet catcher for example and decided for our own maps that metal spots in space are a bit strange).
XCrist

[Drone_Fragger]

Actually, you could learn some things from Low Fat FF. Hes rduced the FAt that is Bloated costs. Sure, You pointed out to me that Defences, Fighters and such like are balenced cost wise, But the costs are incredibly bloated. I mean, The Lvl1 Defence costs nearly 400 metal. Seeing as in AA it would be 120-ish, thats a lot. This really wouldn't be so bad, But mexxes still only give AA or OTA values, Meaning you need 3 times as many mexxes to provide a Reasonable econamy for your base. And taking into account that most people Can't expand to 3 times what they already have because there isn't any metal spots left, Enemy defences or otherwise, It really does slow the game down.

Therfore, A price slash on pretty much everythign by 2/3 seems in order.

FF:
normal metalextractor: ExtractsMetal=0.00167;
moho metalextractor: ExtractsMetal=0.017;
Commander: Metaloutput: 10 !

AA:
normal metalextractor: ExtractsMetal=0.001;
moho metalextractor: ExtractsMetal=0.005;
Commander: Metaloutput: 1

The differance between Mexes isn;t really that great. You get one and a half times the metal, But that still makes things About 2 times more expensive