Spring RTS Engine

Yeah, I noticed that. It's massively annoying and unintuitive. I put my DPS Gadget into the messing-about build, it was hilariously awful what I saw. I would make getting rid of things like that a priority, frankly.

Once you know the laser falloff its cool, makes for more interesting micro

"Once you know" means it's just another counterintuitive nub-trap, like Weasels that magically can't damage certain things. This isn't fun, this is a collection of traps. No wonder we have a retention problem. This kind of stuff basically makes "pro" players have a huge inherent advantage.

On the KBOT issue, I think making them considerably cheaper would probably be a good short-term fix. I think that both KBOTs and vehicles should be good starts, just for different reasons. You'd go KBOT to play defensively in the short term, swarm in later game, vehicle to play offensively from the start, but with higher costs in late game, so there would be a real point in mixing both as you hit midgame.

Pure was stuffed full of armour types when I last looked.

It has five, and only three of them matter all that much. And there's nothing in the game that just plain can't hurt other stuff at all- if I wanted something to be burly, I just gave it more hitpoints. Honestly, I was thinking of eliminating them entirely, it was a legacy of early attempts to do certain types of balance, and I have better tools if I really want to do armor simulation now. Not that I intend to- that's too much noise in the system for the game design, which isn't intended to mirror real life that closely. Maybe another game about modern warfare someday, medieval war for sure.

The more important thing is the way that facing affects damage on tanks, which is, I admit, less than perfectly intuitive, but does create some useful dynamics... on a few units, not like BA, which still has Spring's default crazy-ass armor system. I mean, if it's a tank, and looks like a tank, it behaves like a tank, in terms of damage. And even that, at least in my book, would get chucked in a heartbeat, if I thought it was a major issue, in terms of player confusion.

That said, it makes BA look incredibly confused and cluttered, even as things stand. No wonder people just leave it the hell alone, other than minor stat changes; it's so confusing that it's hard to see where inputs and outputs do things.

Google_Frog wrote:Pure was stuffed full of armour types when I last looked.

Armour types are not universally unintuitive. In fact, with visual indicators or even basic reasoning they are often quite intuitive.

Do you really think Spring's player retention has anything to do with the fact laser weapons and tank armor system is like it is?I mean it might, but don't you think there are much much bigger issues in Spring that scare of newbies?I mean newbies don't even know about the special damages in BA why would they not play cause of them?

What do you mean scouts cant deal dmg to certain things?you mean to air units?
If a game has armor types without visual indicators or some nice tooltip like say in warc3 its a bit frustrating IMO although i don't think it will effect newbie retention much if at all.

neddiedrow wrote:

Google_Frog wrote:Pure was stuffed full of armour types when I last looked.

Armour types are not universally unintuitive. In fact, with visual indicators or even basic reasoning they are often quite intuitive.

I agree, armour types can work. But they have to stay consistent with good visual indicators. Weapons which look the same should have the same damage proportion against units that look the same. For example all shell type shots may do double damage against tanks. They are unintuitive once they have poor visual indication and consistency. In Spring it is easy to lose consistency as weapon damage against every armour type is set per weapon.

Argh wrote:Yeah, I noticed that. It's massively annoying and unintuitive. I put my DPS Gadget into the messing-about build, it was hilariously awful what I saw. I would make getting rid of things like that a priority, frankly.

Yep, and at max range it makes gheytors useless and turns flash/stumps into epic gheytor killers if you micro them well enough.

LLT and gaat guns are very nerfed by it as well, however, it's most notable on the gaat.

SCOUTING
Weasel +5% Max speed

MEDIUM TANK
Raider -10% buildtime or/and increase shot velocity by 10%
Stumpy -4% hp

KBOTS
Warrior -8% buildtime
AK/PEEWEE no changes atm but id really wants to decrease e cost, increase metal cost, and buff a bit mass and hp

ARTY
Shellshocker, Wolverine decrease flight time of art shell by decreasing angle to 45o, increase range and hp 10%

T2 AA
Flakker/Cobra +25% dps
Copperhead, Phalanx, Archangel, Manticore +5% range
Archangel +20% dps

T2 AIR
Vamp/Hawk -10 dps
Rapier/Brawler +20% hp
T2 bombers speed -10%

T2 LAB
Vehicule/Kbots T2 Factory -20% energie and metal cost
Vehicule/Kbots T2 Constructor +20% hp and buildpower

DEFENCE
Dragons claw +33% hp
Guardian/Punisher increase low trajectory dps by 40%, high trajectory dps by 20%
Screamer/Mercury -15% E and M for -15% cost (till we find a better way to balance it

MINE
Podger/Spoiler can cloak now for 50 e/s and can move cloaked for 250 e/s
Light mines dealt +20% damages and cost -20% energy
Heavy mines dealt -20% damages and cost -20% energy

Id like to add a kbot minelayer (not sure)

QG
Commander Wreckage is 1500 metal
Commander Explosion -20% Area of effect

ECO
Core Wind Generator +30% hp
Core Solar, Arm Solar swapped costs

SUGGESTIONS :

- For Screamer/Mercury a special script that makes each target a different unit, prioritizing particularry the nasty stuff like T2 bombers and krows/liche would do much better

- Buff mercury/screamer damage vs krow a LOT

- Copperhead, Phalanx, Archangel, Manticore +15% range

- Hover with heavy usefull units
should be expensive as hell, hovers are very useful in mixed battles.

- L2 ship with catapult's weapon, for large aoe shore bombardment

- Bertha ships

- Sea nanos(engineers) are too good?

BUG AND THINGS TO CHANGES

PROB
when units go away from los units shouldnt be able to run after it, spring keeps memory for like 2 minutes.

SOLUTION
make a feature requestand ask for it to be defined by the mod the timer before the unit loses track of the other
something like 10-20 secs should be good

HALF-DEAD SUGGESTIONS

- less efficient metal makers here is braindamage idea :
Metal makers should not have constant efficiency, they should get exponential decreasing efficiency as you build them, the first will have current efficiency ( or a bit more ), any successive metal maker will produce less, for example the second will make 1*0.9 the second 0.9*0.9 the third 0.81*0.9 the fourth 0.729*0.9 using 0.9 the 10th metal maker will produce only 33% of the original, this will let players make few metal makers to burn excess energy but making a lot of them will result in inefficiency, so sustaining a big economy solely on metal makers will be much harder.

- Hover with torpedo (but may be op units cause torpedo cant kill hovers)

- Floating shield

- Mobile shield

T1/T2 lab idea : after a lab spammed enough units (example 15k-20k metal used for veh T1 factory) THIS factory become a nice T1/T2 factory, for free, instant changes (we would use a new model for it) being capable to spam T1 and T2 units. We wouldnt change anything else, T2 factory would still cost same and it wouldnt be so usefull for 8vs8 games BUT for small team games it would be nice, T1 kbots would be able to be T1/T2 factory but not T1/T2/T3, for kbots factory and air factory it would be a different amount of metal, and maybe we'll need to make shared ressource required to make lab have "xp" to be T1/T2 or T2/T3(for T2 kbots lab).


Here is changelog between ba 7.04 and new ba, this changelog is not finished, its what we have after 10000 lines of arguing with 12-15 players who are interested by improving ba, ill start making changes in few days, after we discussed a bit more.
I am not sure it will be usefull to post this on forum, but maybe ill have few interesting comments..

SCOUTING
Weasel +5% Max speed

Why not just increase damage by a tiny increment (like 35-->37) instead? keeps the contrast of speeds between them.

can we make a TA clone sub forum? so when some one is like "new mod!" and they mean modified BA, AA, XTA, SUPERTA then they can post it in there?

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:

SCOUTING
Weasel +5% Max speed

Why not just increase damage by a tiny increment (like 35-->37) instead? keeps the contrast of speeds between them.

If you're going to increase speed you should decrease damage, imo.

good job.

increasing weasel damages instead of increasing speed would be a possibility, but atm i think increasing slighly speed is better.

What do u think about mines and minelayer?

What do u think about screamer/mercury?

Do u think that increasing raiders shot velocity would make balance between stumpy and raider better?

Maybe i should just decrease T2 fighters special damages versus T2 bombers?

bobthedinosaur wrote:can we make a TA clone sub forum? so when some one is like "new mod!" and they mean modified BA, AA, XTA, SUPERTA then they can post it in there?

as long as BA goes in there too. its a clone of AA, remember?

What do u think about screamer/mercury?

kinda useless mostly... costs more metal than antinuke, and one doesnt take out more than one airplane... if lucky

reload time should be like 2x faster... or shoot two shots is short period of time, and then load longer

It takes more than 1 plane per hit due to its bug(edit: BIG) aoe. Its good for is taking out enemy fighterscreen/forcing it back but not much else.

I don't think it was ever intended to be anything other than a SAM Guardian. It is intended for area-control - you build it on the front line to assist in your air-war and harass his patrollers, not as a real defense.

Expecting it to be an anti-Krow defense is wrong. If you want that, buff the Chainsaw.

Didn't the screamer get a special optional script that would give it a randomized delay or something?

Are jethros/crashers still AA only? If they are, make them target ground too...