Egarwaen wrote:
Except you're wrong. It's more expensive, it's more fragile, and it's barely faster than a Sumo.
[...]
You shouldn't get Fusion Farms on any sane map. If you do... Bomber time!
#1, mobile bertha, I know its more espensive, it makes sense to make it that way... but its sooo sooo soooooo much more effective since it can move with an army, move when spotted by peepers, etc. its well worth the extra 10-15% to spend to make a mobile one... LRPC's, should never be mounted on tanks or boats, or anything mobile... the ONLY exception I could see, would be a railway cannon type gun... but that would be challenging to implement, code, and put in the game..
#2, Fusion Farms... that was how it had ALWAYS been done, and they were ALWAYS vulnerable to bombers... the new "uber" powerplants... have shields, cloak, etc... are smaller in numbers.. don't chain react into domino type effect detonations.. etc. not to mention you need only about 1/10th the land sq. footage, acreage, elmoage, kilometerage whatever, space.. to build them in effectively. and since they can be built in a more concentrated area, you can get layers of overlapping anti-air, anti-nuke, and anti-tank defense stacked up, and guard it to the teeth.... it actually ruins some of the strategy of:
a- (defense) "defend the front door with the army and hope he leaves the power in the back alone and leave it only defended by flak?? or let the towers defend the front, and guard my resources, my lifeline, with the army and run to the front door if needed.."
and then throws out some of the more interesting offensive options..
b- (offense) "well.. if I sneak an army of amphibious tanks and hovercraft upside the hill and fire on the last fusion on the farm.. it'll draw a huge chunk of his army though his fusions (bombs).. then I bomb them.. the fusions with aircraft or nukes, and let the fusions blow up MOST of his units in the process, not to mention strip him of the VITAL power he needs to fire his weapons.., and then run my main army in the front door..."
thats a planned, coordinated, well thought out, attack....
but when you can settle them ALL by going, "I'll build (4) 5k+power fusions in a square, defend them on the 1 side by both the army and the towers... build a wall of un-moveable dragons teeth, walls, etc on the back.. and just move foward with bertha cannons on tracks til he's dead.." it ruins some of the fun factor.... lol.. off topic kinda, but remember when they decided to put an annihilator cannon on the alien fusions? lolololol.... they were forward annihilators, with shields, cloaking, infinate tracking speed, fast refire, blew up like nukes, and on top of ALL THAT, gave 5,000 energy... lol
but again, with the bertha cannons... they blow up BIG when they die, the tanks.. really don't... the other part was, well... the bertha cannon is a TARGET for the enemy.. I can "intimidate" him into bull-charging it.. (leave a hole in the main defense line, in front of the bertha/intimidator and put about 4 sumos on each side of the hole.. LET him walk through the hole, let him fire on the bertha, while he's firing move the sumos to fill the hole on the d-line and trap his army INSIDE a catch-net of defensive crap.... then let him kill the LRPC and run any defense near it away, thus stunting his army's advance cause a big chunk will die with the LRPC's explosion, and moving the small defensive force back on him as he tries to retreat through the sumo line...... and using my main army to counter attack soon after...
that theory is gone with mobiles... simply because, a- nobody tries to run an army at one... it moves.... and walks them into an obvious trap... and die too easily to aircraft... and they don't blow everything up like a real LRPC.
I've got LOTS of old strategy I've tried to use on the "NEW" spring TA... AA... and most of its mods... but none of it works...
why?
all the units and mods have been tailored to the PowerGamer, the brute force method.
The only other person I've ever seen REALLY attempt a completely different style of gameplay.. yer all gonna hate this.. was min3mat.
his methods were not very skilled, no. He couldn't out resource you, no.
but he could win with level 1 almost every time, because he kept you on your toes..
(note this would never work in REAL OTA cause of his exploit of the auto-repair of Spring...) He would push hundreds of level 1 units as fast as he could on HUGE patrol patterns all over your side of the map, everywhere, and knew that the arm tanks flashes etc. could out-run core... and when they out ran them, after a small period ~10 seconds, they would start to heal, and within about ~10 more, WOULD be healed, and return to fight, full hitpoints.. with no micro-management on his part... theinitial first attack, he would guard over himself and not let his tanks die to your commander d-gun, but firing the d-gun was your ultimate downfall... it took all of your energy, and early on (late game too) energy is
very important... thus stunting any kinda early game production you might have, and giving him the upper hand, wether he killed your metal income, factory, or powerplants...

he did perfect that strategy.. and it did work. I'll give him that. He beat me with it 4 games in a row on both TA Spring's OTA, XTA, and AA v 1.2x
but alas, lately... I dunno... I've just seen too many people go.. "such and such strategy beats me bla bla bla" and then say "make xx unit so it can counter it".. and its done.. then there is 1 less strategy in the game... then the other guy does the same, minus another strategy...
around AA 1.4 or so, alot of people were talking "paper/rock/scissors" as 3 options to fight, "k-bot/tank/air" namely because each class of unit could do everything, LRPC, anti-air, ECM type attacks, brute force, L1, L2, and L3 units.. etc.. ...
now.. to fight the strategy seems to be a mix of them all (k-bot/tank/air) sure thats good.... and but dwindled to 2 options.. "cheap or powergamer" with cheap being re-claim the commy, com-bombing, nuking, LRPC rushing, etc. and power-gaming being porcing like a madman with 5k resource machines, gobs of construction everything, radar jammers, and LRPC hell.. sigh... its like punching a punching bag full of nails without gloves... the only way to beat it, if not join it, is to be cheap, and get a baseball bat.
when TA was played back in my day with the old skool software rendered graphics on <500 mhz machines.... 1997-2001, yeah, it was hella crazy fun, you never knew ANYTHING about what your opponent would do, how he would fight, or how to counter it... the options were endless...
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to sum all of that^ book up.... I simply think:
AA has pushed the limits TOO far, to TOO many extremes.. making a multi-strategy game, a blur of 2 underlying options...
the only way I see to fix it...
1- remove all the "extra" technology stuff (repulser towers [.. these might be fun to see in a different scenario though], jammers, mobile LRPC, and the ilk...
2- tone down the EXTREMES of Level 1, 2, and 3 differences... and only reduce the costs about half as much as the nerf bat reduction...
I.E.
make level 1 tanks like they used to be, annoying. costs the same.
level 2 more powerful slower... but not MUCH better than level 1,
say, 1 level 2 can kill ~2-3 level 1's on average... costs 4-6x level 1
level 3 the biggest and the baddest yes.. but not gods.. (yes I would even nerf kroggy)
say 1 level 3 can kill ~3-4 level 2's or 8-12 level 1's... costs 5-10x of level 2
then, you'd see these armies of units running at eachother with the level 1's level 2's and level 3's sharing the battlefiled, and all having their purpose...
when the armies hit eachother and fought... rubble would pile up everywhere, things like bulldogs would have more use cause there is hoards of rubble to crush, etc... and not just for 1 unit....
the other thing that would happen... since defenses aren't uber on the field.. and you can't defend the huge farm of fusions with 1 defensive choke point... multiple front attacks (strategy! OH NOES!)... more than 1 army running around? ahhh too much!.... (scarcasim...)
I've tried to offer my advice on how to "better" the gaming expirence on many different games, many different mods, on many different occasions..
Battlezone 1 and 2, TA, Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, Warhammer 40k, Freelancer, Quake, Quake2, Doom, Hexen, Heretic, Hexen2, Space Empires, Glactic Civlizations, Master of Magic, Red Alert, Red Alert 2, Counterstrike, Gloom, Empire Earth, Dungeon Siege, Civilization, EVE, Krush Kill n' Destroy (KKND), MW2, MW3, MW4, netmech, Simcity, god the list never ends... (and these are JUST some of the games after ~1995) I could list games for like... I dunno, months... I've played thousands of games, and helped or at least, attempted to mod or create levels, mosters, enemies for nearly them all...
and every time I try to offer my input, there are a few people who hear me, kixxie for example... but the majority of the community is hard-headed, and stubborn, and dosen't listen... sigh... I dunno... I'm not gonna care a lick if you ignore my suggestions, or take them 100% and follow them... hell... I don't even care if you consider them or just blow me off... its happened probably ~200+ times in the last 10 years.. and I've gotten used to it..
I'm just gonna end with... I've tried to help. I may be a little "behind" on the current AA release, and whining in general... but I'm trying to help. thats all. take it how you will, use it how you will... I'm gonna go make some features or maybe go play EE or Oblivion.