Spring RTS Engine

Not its current state! Dgun needs fixing and radar range back to OTA. Also panthers/flashes need a slight nerf.

+1 on radars
+1 on nerfing panthers
-1 on flashes, they're fine now, gators still pwn
+1 on nerfing both
-0 on nerfing bulldogs
+1 on nerfing all AA so air units don't die like flies - add fuel and/or ammo for planes if necessary

Personally, I'm not convinced that gators are equals to flashes - they don't have the maneuverability to make use of their superior range, which means they ofen move too close to a flash thus getting themselves emgd. Maybe they could accellerate & turn slightly quicker? Before it was gator spam ftw, now it seems to be flash spam ftw...

I think flashes are better than gators. But only slightly. And I think it should stay that way. I think the game would lose some variety if every arm unit had a corresponding core unit which was basically the same. I've always thought Arm was supposed to be better at fast raiders, and core was better at slow heavy hitters. Like tremors and reapers. Or even raiders - maybe they could be buffed to help counter the flash advantage?.

And Kbots vehicle balance seems to have fallen heavily in favour of vehicles. It used to be that everyone went kbots, and if you tried vehicles you were in trouble. Now it is the opposite. And personally kbots are somehow cooler than vehicles.

Oh and a tip if you are playing sea - many people seem to be underestimating the effectiveness of hovers. I have done quite well in recent games on mixed land/sea maps by mainly spamming hovers. I guess one of the drawbacks of hovers is that they are kind of a level 1 tech not buildable by the commander. And that you can't get to level 2 tech using them. Often on if I'm building hovers I build a vehicle plant, several cons and maybe a couple tanks if I need them for defence against early raids, and then build a hover factory and reclaim the original factory at the same time. This minimised the economic set back of requiring two factories to get hovers, but means you are now 2 factories away from level 2.....

Acidd_UK wrote:Personally, I'm not convinced that gators are equals to flashes - they don't have the maneuverability to make use of their superior range, which means they ofen move too close to a flash thus getting themselves emgd. Maybe they could accellerate & turn slightly quicker? Before it was gator spam ftw, now it seems to be flash spam ftw...

We already had flash vs instigator discussion, they are nearly even, many even say perfectly balanced.

I'll join Hellspawn on that point.

As for weakening anti-air units... I would have to say that I consider the Mercury/Screamer balanced and, indeed, necessary. Virtually all the other methods of countering air avaliable from land and sea, save for hovers, may need a close evaluation. The level two anti-air K-bot serves a strong role - but it is incredibly effective. I remember games in which a handful of those supplemented with the same number of Jethros allowed me to essentially leave no Flak or MT on the frontlines of a battle. Of course, I must mention that if you think the current status of air units acceptable Caydr, don't change it without considering all views.

Ima interject with my dirty XTA-fed opinion. AA air is badly underpowered. Ok so you don't want the typhoon rushing gameplay of xta, fine; I would suggest either nerfin AA or upping planes hp, and y'all learn to set hawks or vamps patrolling around all the areas of the map you can without losing them. I know i play very little AA, but the games i have participated in/specced have involved barely any air vs ground combat (apart from fighter com killing occaisionally) and absolutely no air to air combat.

The battle for air superiority is one of my favourite parts of big team games of xta (more so now that we have the anti-air kbot nerf) and i am under the impression that it is undervalued in AA

Hellspawn wrote:

Acidd_UK wrote:Personally, I'm not convinced that gators are equals to flashes - they don't have the maneuverability to make use of their superior range, which means they ofen move too close to a flash thus getting themselves emgd. Maybe they could accellerate & turn slightly quicker? Before it was gator spam ftw, now it seems to be flash spam ftw...

We already had flash vs instigator discussion, they are nearly even, many even say perfectly balanced.

they are balanced against each other perfectly, but they both still dominate game too much. Prehaps 5%hp drop for both would help?

Hovers would also rox if they had lvl2 builder availible with adv cons kbot tech tree and low bt .

Hellspawn wrote: We already had flash vs instigator discussion, they are nearly even, many even say perfectly balanced.

Makes no difference to me, since I'm an arm player. However I would support a slight nerf of both flash and gator if it meant that stumpies/raiders were used more for attacking a hardened (several llts) target while flash/gators were used for more lightly defended ones. Maybe stumpies/raiders just need a cost decrease. Or what Gineko said.

Also, why not let hovers build advanced labs, vehicle at least, but maybe some others too?

Why not let hovers build both kbot Adv Kbot and adv Veh plants? and make hover lab buildable by Comm? This could lead to some interesting gameplay...

I believe that Hovers should either remain as presented or develop until a full-fledged independent tree. I don't like the idea of using Hovers to tech up in another three - and honestly more Hovers is a noble suggestion.

As to Flash/Gator balance, they seemed balanced against each other.

However, they don't seem balanced against everything else.

It seems that, given infinite resources, it is better in almost every case to build an arbitrarily large number of Flashes than it is to build the same cost's worth of Stumpies. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so... generally, I believe that given infinite resources, it should always be better to build the heavier unit than the lighter one, and that it should be a matter of resource shortages or need for speed or maneuverability that drives you to lighter units.

Maybe the ideal balance would be that flashes are better if you have smaller numbers of them. But if you have larger numbers, then flashes get in each other way. Whereas a squad of stumpies costing the same amount of metal should be able to bring more firepower to bear, by having more firepower per unit, and by being able to shoot over each other.

ginekolog wrote: they are balanced against each other perfectly, but they both still dominate game too much. Prehaps 5%hp drop for both would help?

Hovers would also rox if they had lvl2 builder availible with adv cons kbot tech tree and low bt .

It might. However, IMO its hard to balanced all units vs each other, there will always be some unit dominating, unless you go after paper,rock,scissor(sp?) system. From my point of view I much more prefare to see flash/instigator for dominating unit then slower stumpies. Faster units make game more dynamic and less boring.

Also I think all vehicles are usefull (flashes/intigator just happen to be most usefull for spamming/rushing), except stumpies. So maybe make stumpies a bit better.

Hellspawn wrote:It might. However, IMO its hard to balanced all units vs each other, there will always be some unit dominating, unless you go after paper,rock,scissor(sp?) system. From my point of view I much more prefare to see flash/instigator for dominating unit then slower stumpies. Faster units make game more dynamic and less boring.

The problem is that pretty much every game I've played for a while now has come down to Flash spam. It would be nicer if alternative strategies were more viable, leading to some variation. I miss Kbots

Nothing is perfect. Thus, AA will never be perfectly balanced. I guess continuing to develop it is just a question of when Caydr sees that it's good enough.
There will always be some people who are not satisfied with it.

El Capitano wrote:

Hellspawn wrote:It might. However, IMO its hard to balanced all units vs each other, there will always be some unit dominating, unless you go after paper,rock,scissor(sp?) system. From my point of view I much more prefare to see flash/instigator for dominating unit then slower stumpies. Faster units make game more dynamic and less boring.

The problem is that pretty much every game I've played for a while now has come down to Flash spam. It would be nicer if alternative strategies were more viable, leading to some variation. I miss Kbots

Play bots map then.

[/quote]
Play bots map then.[/quote]

what is a bot map? vehicles own at all maps. (well maybe not all sea maps)

isnt it a fact that all arm vs arm games on vehicle maps are flash spam only until t2?
in a core vs core game other units are used, too but in an arm mirror there are only flashes.
so obviously flashes need to get back to the 2.21 stats.

/me votes for a radical caydr - like t1 remake