Spring RTS Engine

neddiedrow wrote:BOTA is fun, but... well, if you want OTA, I'd say you're setting your sights pretty low.

I know that. I play Spring a lot. I'm not picking a mod for myself, I'm picking a mod for a bunch of my friends who want to meet online and play a game without having to completely re-learn everything.

XTA or BA

and pretty much anything TA related dusnt stray far from the tree mainly has to do with balance

Forget BA! In a matter of 10 seconds you'll see drawings of penis, balls, lols, and in less then a minute a kick.

AntiElite wrote:Forget BA! In a matter of 10 seconds you'll see drawings of penis, balls, lols, and in less then a minute a kick.

And that pretty much sums BA up in a nutshell.

Yes yes it's all BA's fault

It has nothing to do with players, I'm sure if these same players and hosts were on Spring:1944 everything would be perfect

Depends on how much nasty Lua is hidden in the mod

Draw a penis -> "Player has lost connection"

Nice idea KDR, ill incorporate that into all mods I can get my hands on.

Okay, checking back, we played BOTA.

Played many, many rounds of BOTA. And pretty much decided that BOTA has too many nasty surprises for OTA players. We played some games on Mars, some on Sands of War, and some on Sherwood. All of them FFA. I've mentioned some of this before, but some of this is new:

Things we liked:
1) More units are useful. None of this "spaem crasher" business. That part of BOTA is seriously incredibly beautiful. We have really, really diverse armies.
2) Cheap L2 factories. Good to be able to have an early L2.
3) Gunfighters are cool.
4) Pretty models.

Things we didn't like:
1) Seriously, the combat transports. First off, they're a staggering surprise. Second, they're overpowered. I transported some rockos on SOW, and the rockos were totally forgettable next to the transports.
2) Subs. I see what they were trying to do with the instagib subs, but first off - it's a huge surprise for an OTA player (WTF sub health???) and second, they're just not good enough against destroyers.
3) Craters. Cratered battlefields make tank-attacks impossible.

And found some bugs:
1) BLODs kill friendlies.
2) Boats have the "slow moving with con order" bug.
3) I don't know if it's just that his arm takes forever to raise, but I couldn't get the corcomm to fire his laser. Had to dgun all adversaries.

Not to bash BOTA (if it's what you're looking for, more power to you) but it's not really working out for us.

Is Classic TA 5.6 better? To make it clear: we LIKE the rebalanced units. We just don't like the surprises. It's one thing to adjust the stats to make a unit more useful, it's another to completely change it into something totally new.

Or should I be working on my own "No Suprises Rebalanced OTA" based on BOTA?

Id suggest trying an older version of BOTA, 1.3 (no fire through friendlies) or 1.4 (fire through friendlies). these are much closer to OTA+CC and are basically just across the board range buffs and moveinfo fixes.

So, wait, 1.5 was a step in the wrong direction? >_>

Wish ppl told me that when I was testing it with everyone! >_<

having a version of 1.3 that actually worked (the spiders, roaches, and a few other t2 units seem to have some sort of issue with 0.75b2, not really sure what, gives you a "MOD Error" crashbug

I wonder how CA would fair on the OTA engine? xD

well, considering none of the lua based stuff would work.. and a bunch of other awesome things.. youd have some work ahead of you to port it over..

I uninstalled my OTA o.o;
along with 25 GBs of games to give myself mem0rz

Aaaand with the discovery that Zeuses shoot each other, making them useless, I'm giving up on BOTA. Does Classic TA work better? Or am I going to find the same bugs?

You mean Zeuses shoot each other in the back? Have you tested SVN? That allows collidefriendly=0 on hitscan weapons.

KDR_11k wrote:You mean Zeuses shoot each other in the back? Have you tested SVN? That allows collidefriendly=0 on hitscan weapons.

Have not tested using SVN. Probably would solve it, but then I have to wait for SVN version.

Anybody got a good guide for XTA units for OTA players? I'm starting to think that playing these smaller, unsupported mods is a loser's game.

http://www.xtaforever.com/forum/index.p ... ,46.0.html

The dragon's teeth elements of the guide are made somewhat redundant by changes in targetting behaivour since IK wrote the guide, but it is otherwise pretty solid.

It does somewhat rely on the idea of an aa bot/com push start, which i personally detest, althought it is a viable strategy.

Aside from some of the arm t2 bots, the xta unit set is pretty intuitive: longer range/high dps units tend to have less health, there are no semi-random damage classes; all weapons do standard damage to all units, apart from sniper vs com (damage reduction) and artillery units vs sea (damage increase) but these would only be noticeable to a none noob anyway.

Due to XTA's smaller community, we are generally pretty welcoming to new players, and the majority of us are more than willing to answer a newbies questions or guide them through a few games

/j #xta helps new players a hell of a lot as well

That's effectively a guide to play TA, which my friends already know. I was looking more for a guide that tells OTA players what to expect in XTA. Stuff like "OMG, your Golis are HUUUUGE!" and the wierd Comm build-tree ("wtf, comm maek adv facs?") - I haven't played XTA since v7. Does it have shoot-through-friendlies? Cratering? Impact?

Units do not fire through friendlies, weapons create craters, explosive weapons more noticeably so, and i am not sure what you mean about impact. Perhaps impulse? Explosions create a shockwave which physically moves units, if that is what you mean (try a roach in the middle of some peewees )

Tbh OTA had some serious balance problems, about 65% of the units were useless, and stuff like line bombing/hawk dancing/lul ur mizzile dnt hit mai pelicans on wator!1 make me feel that making direct comparisons in terms of cost etc isn't really appropriate.

Off the top of my head, here are some of the major differences which may catch you out:

T1 gunships, they can drop a com in seconds, do not equate these to ba/ca t1 gunships they are far more lethal

Sumo/Golly are massively exaggerated and in both cost and effectiveness compared to ota

Freaker and Zipper are t1, and flea is t2 (awesome swarm unit)

AA bots target ground, they function much like samson/slasher (flak also targets ground, high ROF and good AOE make them great anti swarm)

Leveller is a t2 flame tank

Warrior is t2, and an excellent skirmisher/raider

Both F.A.R.K. and Necro can resurrect, have extremely powerful nanolathes, and a limited build menu (Necro has access to greatly superior defences than F.A.R.K.)

Spiders fire a constant beam, as opposed to a single shot, making them much more viable, although they require a fair amount of micro to be effective

Penetrator fires a constant beam (think ota one fired like a sniper, just with a really shitty aim speed)

Antinuke is cloakable

LLTs are a lot more expensive than in b/ca and dont really stand up to a t1 force of anything other than a few peewee/ak at all, they are point defense and nothing more.

Moho mines cost 300e/tick to run

Core get access to the minifusion with t2 builders, whereas Arm get the mobile fusion from the t2 vehicle lab. This is the crux of the faction differention, and marks quite a departure from ota tbh. In order of total energy produced (and cost): mini/mobile fus --> Cloakable fus --> Full fus

Core has a vastly superior economy, as they get necros and minifusion from 1 lab, and also have better defensive structures, the annihilator aside. Arm are far more mobile than core, and have much better raiding units than core does (fleas, warriors and panthers). Arm t2 kbots are extremely powerful and versatile, but it is difficult to maintain an adequate energy output to power the mohos necessary to build them without access to mobile fusions; you are forced to invest a lump sum into a cloakable or full fusion, or mass vunerable t1 economy. Your ability to grow exponentially is drastically impaired by going t2 Arm bots, you really need to push for a quick kill if you decide to do this.

Hrm this post is getting way longer than I intended, suffice to say XTA places more emphasis on intelligent choice and use of units than on scrabbling to outproduce your opponent and smash into his llts with a horde of t1 units. The reason i would suggest it is closer to OTA than other derivative mods is that it doesnt include a host of uberhack units and structures: arm have no t3, there are no shield generators, commandos, nuke bombers etc, and this coupled with the lack of a multitude of armour classes gives a far greater degree of "what you see is what you get" in your units.

Sry for long post