Absolute Annihilation: Spring 1.46

[Min3mat]

all im saying is play continues in team games ^^

[Deathblane]

all im saying is play continues in team games ^^

I've been kicked form a game before for using a tactic like that, and no, it wasn't agains ta bunch of noobs, iirc it was Noize and someone else.

[wizard8873]

just try to play as fair as possible. if anyone combombs and its on continues, just kick the person if you really want to. granted it doesnt mean you get back your forces but whoever takes that player now has a lot more ground to watch over and its harder for him to cover everything even with the combined economy. also, fighting two players instead of one also is harder. sure you can hold back the forces but if they attack at the same time and you're focusing more on one area, then the other player can get through more easily.

[NOiZE]

commbombing is a valid tactic

[wizard8873]

i know its a valid tactic. im just saying if it really bothers people but they dont want to play comm ends, kicking can deter people as well.

[NOiZE]

Let's talk about Sea Balance!

IMO destroyers are too good, or Cruisers too weak

Also Advanced submarines are too strong imo

[Deathblane]

Do you mean the heavy adv subs or the sub-killer adv subs?

Personally I've not really played many water games due to the Tordpedo Bomber issue.

[ginekolog]

just reduce comm explosion to XTA lvl and this is no longer issue. Simple as that.

ATM sea is adv sub spam (+bombardnemt ships). Improve antisub submarines and torpedo bombers.

Ground war and air is very good atm, no big balance problems.

[Caydr]

Would someone like to nominate a unit for a weapon overhaul? Any unit that's not widely used or which could use a boost would be a good choice.

[Pxtl]

just reduce comm explosion to XTA lvl and this is no longer issue. Simple as that.

ATM sea is adv sub spam (+bombardnemt ships). Improve antisub submarines and torpedo bombers.

Ground war and air is very good atm, no big balance problems.

I posted earlier, the problem isn't the weakness of the sub killer, but the presence of the L3 sub. The L1 sub is the raw damage-dealer, the L2 sub is the agile sub-killer, and the L3 sub just destroys everything it sees - there is no mobile unit that can beat it in a stand-up fight. Imho, the L3 sub should be completely revamped into a mobile long-ranged torpedo-launcher. Something that dies fast to close combat, but can outrange every torpedo/depthcharge unit except the L2 launcher.

[Soulless1]

Would someone like to nominate a unit for a weapon overhaul? Any unit that's not widely used or which could use a boost would be a good choice.

Yeah alright - though this is less any particular unit as the weapon itself:

depth charges

the way they currently work basically means they're a torpedo with a funny-looking projectile.

I think they should be more like the underwater equivalent of flak weapons; ie, instead of firing a slow RoF homing weapon, they should fire a fairly innaccurate weapon and have a blast radius (perhaps with some impulse too) underwater. That would serve to both make them different from torpedos and would deter sub-massing, while not really making them any better against individual subs.

If they were given some impulse power too (forgive me, I don't know much about how throwing affects underwater units) maybe it could knock the subs around as well and thus inhibit their shooting - acting as something of a suppression weapon...

This would mean that subs would still be great support for surface units and would also be good an a sniper/assassination/raiding playstyle (especially on units without depthcharge launchers), but players would be much more careful about massing them (cos of the blast effect) and attacking depthcharge-equipped units head on.



P.S. Something to be considered separately:
Actually, if something like this was implemented, I suppose it might even be fair to move subs further into the assassin playstyle by giving them cloaking (NOT stealth though, so you could still target sonar blobs), allowing them to hit and run effectively. Obviously this is a rather radiacal idea and would require another look at other aspects of subs, but it would seem to put them in a more suitable support/raiding role like in real life...

[Egarwaen]

On the Comm Ends thing: there's a difference between commbombing and exploits. The way it should work is that you die if you ever lack a Commander, and Commanders should be un-res-able, un-trade-able, and un-capture-able.

Still doesn't prevent the "give all your stuff to an ally and then go boom" strategy, but that's, at worst, annoying.

[Min3mat]

As i said. You can com switch.
L3 Subs are insane, i think that they need a higher buildtime (this will hit hardest as massing buildpower in sea fac's is hard). The cost etc is OKish IMO.
Depth charge launchers getting a weapon overhaul would be SO awesome!

[Pxtl]

On the Comm Ends thing: there's a difference between commbombing and exploits. The way it should work is that you die if you ever lack a Commander, and Commanders should be un-res-able, un-trade-able, and un-capture-able.

Still doesn't prevent the "give all your stuff to an ally and then go boom" strategy, but that's, at worst, annoying.

I think the fundamental problem here is the Comm Bomb. The more I think about it, the more I wonder WTF the point is, besides preventing commrush. In "game ends" it just damages the attacking force - which I suppose is nice for an FFA. In "continues" it ruins the gameplay. But in DeathMatch? It means that winning is very, very costly.

Nobody remembers the deathmatch mode - it wasn't very popular. You only got points for killing other comms, and comms respawned (but you lost everything when they died). Deathmatch meant that if a player got too strong to fight with armies, you could commrush him back into the stone age with repeated comm-attacks. This would brutalize his base, but it would give him a minblowingly huge score.

Imho, the CommBomb should be reduced to very weak _except_ against other Commanders, for whom it should be quite lethal. Unless somebody wants to bring Deathmatch mode back.

Edit: btw, I keep finding my comms get killed by nuclear explosions. I thought they were supposed to have enough health to survive a nuking (or a moho geothermal exploding). I think what's happening is that, even if they survive, the shockwave is blowing them off the map. Caydr, any plans to fix this?

[Pxtl]

depth charges

I like your idea, but in that case I'd give the Destroyers a torpedo launcher instead of depthcharge launchers. Remember that at L1, destroyers are effectively your only mobile anti-sub unit. Relegating them to a low-damage/high blast-radius weapon would be bad. However, I like the idea for the surface-based depthcharge launchers and the cruisers.

[Egarwaen]

I think the fundamental problem here is the Comm Bomb. The more I think about it, the more I wonder WTF the point is, besides preventing commrush. In "game ends" it just damages the attacking force - which I suppose is nice for an FFA. In "continues" it ruins the gameplay. But in DeathMatch? It means that winning is very, very costly.

I think the game design case for "game ends" makes sense. It's a balancing factor for teamgames. Sure, you take out an entire enemy... But you lose your entire attacking force, which you then need time and resources to rebuild, allowing your enemies to get back on their feet, or maybe even counterattack.

It doesn't often work out like this, but in the games I've played, that seems to be more because of unbalanced teams than because of a fundamental flaw in the game design. (One player's 'carrying' a team, they attract all the attention, they get stomped, everyone else is screwed.)

Imho, the CommBomb should be reduced to very weak _except_ against other Commanders, for whom it should be quite lethal. Unless somebody wants to bring Deathmatch mode back.

Or make it so that it's very weak against buildings but devastating against mobile units. That seems to keep the "army go boom" balance factor for team games, but removes the commbomb defence/economy-buster.

Edit: btw, I keep finding my comms get killed by nuclear explosions. I thought they were supposed to have enough health to survive a nuking (or a moho geothermal exploding). I think what's happening is that, even if they survive, the shockwave is blowing them off the map. Caydr, any plans to fix this?

Are they getting blown into the explosion of something else?

[Min3mat]

nuke = com kill
the way it should be
com should really be cloaked or at the least moving about by the time nukes are out. scouting a com then going for a kill should be viable IMO

[BigSteve]

The comm is the best unit in game, he doesnt need rez ability, thats what rez bots are for. Hed be overpowered if he could rezz.

On the sibject of comm bombing...
hush... no one cares anymore... its been debated a million times... go start another thread so this one doesnt get chocked up with crappy comm bomb argument babble

[Deathblane]

Yeah we should get back to discussing sea-warfare. Soulless's idea sounded pretty good, and was (if I understand it correctly) to change the depth-charge from a sort of homing torpedo to a flack style gun, with the same or similar damage but an AoE and possible some impulse to break up those huge sub-packs that dominate nowadays.

Random question, but is the L1 destroyer supposed to act like a ww2 esq anti-sub escort or is it supposed to be replaced in that role by L2 cruisers (resources permitting)?

[Caydr]

Funny you should mention this, I'd been contemplating a sort of shock torpedo with a large AoE. All it would do is damage or destroy subs in a medium radius. Maybe Cruisers or anti-air ships would have them...