Spring RTS Engine

Well, 1-faction could be implemented as a mutator to see how players like it.

A more immediate question, brought up above:

Mobile shield/jammers getting axed from facs? Available by morph only?

That's a bit of a shocker.

i see CA as more of a playground for testing new ideas and experimentation with pushing spring to it's limits, and then more.
I enjoy playing it from time to time, but I don't ever really see it being a polished product to be played as one would normally play a competitive RTS.

The main reason for this is "TOO MANY COOKS"
CA lacks direction...

People have been complaining that CA doesn't include player opinions in its development cycle.

I think CA includes player opinion too much in it's development cycle...

if CA wants to be a real game (which i'm not necessarily saying it should, i think it's great as an experimental testbed) then i think it needs a single or small group of directors to focus the project. people need to sit down and plan out what it should like, and then organise people with the skills to make it happen.



personally i think there are too many factories. i'd like to see some of them amalgamated so we have more choice of units to build from our factories based on what happens during the game

i'm open to the One faction idea, but either way i think it needs to be planned out properly first.

Disagree with 1 faction. Neddiedrow says it better than I could.
A third faction might be interesting, but probably totally unfeasible, unless CA actually

Regret wrote:#
# Auto-skirmish / micro for raiders / auto mex dumbs the game down

Disagree, It allows for more focus on strategy, and less bogging down in unit micromanagement.

Pxtl wrote:2) More excitement in the dull factories.
Nearly every unit in the Tactical Walker factory and the Tank factory has a special power. Many of the units in the Infantry factories have special powers. Meanwhile, the vehicle factories are painfully dull - the Arm lab doesn't even have diversity as an excuse, lacking a riot vehicle or an assault vehicle - it's all still BA-with-glitz. Make the Shellshocker a stun-artillery or something. Turn the Janus into fast-attack riot vehicle. Something. Anything. Give a unit a "Sprint" command so that the Zipper isn't the only unit in the whole game with that ability.

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

Some suggestions from a newbie. Probably don't belong in this thread, but I don't know where else to post

I was introduced to CA/spring by a friend and had never heard of TA previously, and I've still never gotten around to playing other mods. I know most people would probably come in more informed, but.. well, newbie accessibility could be enhanced.

I'm not sure if i even really support this, but maybe making morphing factories? like infantry factory can morph into tactical walker factory? I don't know how that would effect flat balancing, but it would give some more options for switching from t1 to t2. and given units morph, defenses morph, etc- why not?

Regret wrote:

1. 't1' veh cons, and some other veh units rotate like boats, it adds nothing just makes you fight with the pathfinding
   - agree
2. Turrets on tanks rotate ridiculously slow
   - agree
3. Auto-skirmish / micro for raiders / auto mex dumbs the game down
   - disagree
4. Bombers are bugged and cant be controlled after bombing.
   - agree
5. Aircraft repair is bugged (the autoland cant be overriden) and it is still set by default to land at 30%
   - this is for *suggestions* not bugs
6. Radars are still bugged and after they are build they turn on, then off and it takes several seconds for them to work again.
   - again with a bug
7. Storages have to be spammed, they should give a lot more storage and cost more, a single storage is useless
   - agree
8. Communism discourages expanding and encourages porcing
   - this is a statement of your opinion. its not even a suggestion. even so, I disagree

Karotte wrote:
1. Delete Models with BA Style and remake it (it doesnt look good)
- agree, is in the works
3. add a amphibius ship and a submarine which can come up. (see surpreme commander)
- agree its actually a very old ticket in trac and I was just thinking that this could be easily done with an instant-morph and some animations the other day.
4. Made two models of every unit (high and low Polygon), so there would it possible to make very round faces for strong PC's
- disagree unless you want to do them yourself, of course.
5. (Dont know if that is for Mods) remake the Trees. They looks terrible
this is a map issue. mods do not control the features on the maps

1-faction: agree

thesleepless wrote:personally i think there are too many factories. i'd like to see some of them amalgamated so we have more choice of units to build from our factories based on what happens during the game

- disagree. factories are cheap and can be switched pretty easily.

Gota wrote: I suggest removing all ip units and making one faction.
- agree but this does not need to be suggested. It is one of CA's main goals.
***edit***
And renaming to something not *A

As a freindly reminder I will reiterate that this thread is for suggestions, *not* bugs and suggestions of things already underway.
Lengthy discussion is also discouraged.
Especially of things that are off-topic

kittunz wrote: I'm not sure if i even really support this, but maybe making morphing factories? like infantry factory can morph into tactical walker factory? I don't know how that would effect flat balancing, but it would give some more options for switching from t1 to t2. and given units morph, defenses morph, etc- why not?

This would make perfect sense, as gameplay effect should be pretty much same as reclaiming and building a new one.
please, only 'I agree' and 'I disagree,' possibly with 3 or 4 words saying why.


My suggestion: stop units jumping out of factories, so having several would actually make your nanos more efficient.

JohannesH wrote:My suggestion: stop units jumping out of factories, so having several would actually make your nanos more efficient.

Sorry but this is a purposeful design decision. Without getting into a discussion I'll explain briefly: Before this was made, players were severely penalized for building many smaller units, but not larger units. Your theory on efficiency only applies to those small units, while large units are not affected by this effect. So it would not be a motivator to build more factories, but rather to build larger units instead (a benefit as you'd save money on factories). If you wish to discuss further, start a new thread.

There is no purpose in saying only "i agree" or "i disagree".

Agree on morphing factories. No metal-cost, but non-trivial time during transition so players can't just switch willy-nilly.

I think the point of "I agree" vs. "I disagree" is that the people who are actually reading these suggestions and may actually do some work to implement them can quickly see which ideas are popular.

2) More excitement in the dull factories.
Nearly every unit in the Tactical Walker factory and the Tank factory has a special power. Many of the units in the Infantry factories have special powers. Meanwhile, the vehicle factories are painfully dull - the Arm lab doesn't even have diversity as an excuse, lacking a riot vehicle or an assault vehicle - it's all still BA-with-glitz. Make the Shellshocker a stun-artillery or something. Turn the Janus into fast-attack riot vehicle. Something. Anything. Give a unit a "Sprint" command so that the Zipper isn't the only unit in the whole game with that ability.

My point was this is very hard to do with the current identical vehicle factories. For example what if you give Flash Sprint? Then what does Core get? If core gets a boost to some other unit 'as compensation' (eg Ravager) then in teamgames people will techshare to make an army of Ravager + Flash. If Gator is buffed in a different way (eg general combat ability) then people won't make Flash in teamgames because teamgames are generally very close. If it's a large map people will spam Flash until there's a bit of defence then techshare to Gator.

This same problem occured with Banshee + Bladewing vs Rapier. Core Gunship factory was just plain worse compared to Banshee + Bladewing, so at one stage Rapier was very powerful. Now Bladewing is UP and dies to anything that can hit air very easily, a potentially interesting unit has been nerfed because there is no counterpart.

The same thing might even be happening with Firestorm being > Arm Area Bomber with the EMP bomber.

How is this not discussion? Please, start a new thread if you want to discuss.
Clarification of a suggestion.

maackey wrote:

Regret wrote:

1. 't1' veh cons, and some other veh units rotate like boats, it adds nothing just makes you fight with the pathfinding
   - agree
2. Turrets on tanks rotate ridiculously slow
   - agree
3. Auto-skirmish / micro for raiders / auto mex dumbs the game down
   - disagree
4. Bombers are bugged and cant be controlled after bombing.
   - agree
5. Aircraft repair is bugged (the autoland cant be overriden) and it is still set by default to land at 30%
   - this is for *suggestions* not bugs
6. Radars are still bugged and after they are build they turn on, then off and it takes several seconds for them to work again.
   - again with a bug
7. Storages have to be spammed, they should give a lot more storage and cost more, a single storage is useless
   - agree
8. Communism discourages expanding and encourages porcing
   - this is a statement of your opinion. its not even a suggestion. even so, I disagree

Karotte wrote:
1. Delete Models with BA Style and remake it (it doesnt look good)
- agree, is in the works
3. add a amphibius ship and a submarine which can come up. (see surpreme commander)
- agree its actually a very old ticket in trac and I was just thinking that this could be easily done with an instant-morph and some animations the other day.
4. Made two models of every unit (high and low Polygon), so there would it possible to make very round faces for strong PC's
- disagree unless you want to do them yourself, of course.
5. (Dont know if that is for Mods) remake the Trees. They looks terrible
this is a map issue. mods do not control the features on the maps

1-faction: agree

thesleepless wrote:personally i think there are too many factories. i'd like to see some of them amalgamated so we have more choice of units to build from our factories based on what happens during the game

- disagree. factories are cheap and can be switched pretty easily.

Gota wrote: I suggest removing all ip units and making one faction.
- agree but this does not need to be suggested. It is one of CA's main goals.
***edit***
And renaming to something not *A

As a freindly reminder I will reiterate that this thread is for suggestions, *not* bugs and suggestions of things already underway.
Lengthy discussion is also discouraged.
Especially of things that are off-topic

You dumb or playing dumb?I meant remove them now.

Pxtl wrote: I think the point of "I agree" vs. "I disagree" is that the people who are actually reading these suggestions and may actually do some work to implement them can quickly see which ideas are popular.

EXACTLY

this is a map issue. mods do not control the features on the maps

Just a quick note on this: it is 100% possible to replace all of the trees with Features / Units at game start, using Lua. Games are only stuck with ugly trees by choice, basically.

In fact CA is replacing all those trees atm, we are just using some sucky trees from s44 or some s44 map i think :)

Um, was this a suggestion? I certainly hope it wasn't discussion!

I suggest that you stop limiting discussion which can produce valuable feedback / ideas.

It's irrational to create a thread for suggestions expecting another thread for every suggestion to discuss it.

Regret wrote:I suggest that you stop limiting discussion which can produce valuable feedback / ideas.

It's irrational to create a thread for suggestions expecting another thread for every suggestion to discuss it.

Yes.
I propose that we first discuss and suggest suggestions about how this thread should be ran and only than should we start discussing and suggesting stuff about CA.

Keep in mind that the people who made this thread are primarily interested in your yes/no.

Now, I'm not a CA dev, so this is just guessing, but I imagine that you could probably phrase a "comment" like this:

if it's a "No", but with elaborat reasons: try and keep the reasons brief (and use small text), and put the "I Disagree" in bold so that the developers can spot it easily.

If it's a "Yes, but..." then re-phrase it as a new suggestion. If people like your amended suggestion better than the original, they can say "I agree" to yours.

Suggestion: build a "brilliant talk" Widget to replace the Console. I have this on my to-do list for P.U.R.E., and I thought I'd share the concept.

1. No console at all.

2. If you receive a Message, then it's displayed either on the right-hand or left-hand side of the screen above the lower bar / buttons (I was planning this with P.U.R.E.'s fixed UI, mind you) depending on context.

Ally Chat shows a colored talk balloon (their team color) on the right, that, if clicked, takes you to the location they issued the talk from. No need for markers, basically, just type "omg being raided!" (which, if this caught on, would quickly become "OBR", and all team-mates can immediately see the problem and respond to you!

Global Chat does not have a location assigned, but shows on the right.

Units Stuck / Idle shows up on the left, and like Chat, you can click on it and immediately go to the Unit's location.

Anything that isn't in these categories that is vital to gameplay should be defined as "right" or "left" displays, etc. (I have things like that, like not having enough M for transformations, etc.).

Anyhow... I know that developing this will be hard, without having a fixed UI, but I think it's a cool idea and wanted to share it, since it may be a while before I can deploy it myself (and then it will be tailored for my game's UI requirements). I am getting rid of my static Console, as it just wastes space 90% of the time, and I thought that this might be a better solution. Perhaps this can be a call through Chilly, so that it automatically gets along with the current window positions? That'd be neat.

And yes, I know that a lot of this functionality has been done before... I just think it needs to be concentrated in one place, to save screen real-estate and make it more powerful.

itt: argh fails at agree or disagree

suggestion: CA needs to become a dictatorship

Can i retract my disagree against the 1 faction? I'm uncertain of my feelings after reading the thread on it. Depends how well planned implementation is.

Another quasi-noob suggestion- do we *really* need all of the different constructor units? hover/amphib/naval- could be one unit. Partly that's the amphib vs hover issue i've seen raised a lot, but I don't think i've ever built naval cons- either used one of the others, or a flying constructor.

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:itt: argh fails at agree or disagree

suggestion: CA needs to become a dictatorship

half agree.
Not dictatorship but a more defined hierarchy with 1 top guy that has veto power over anything and several others that are heads of departments like gfx balance advertisement and they would have veto power in those departments.
Under them will be the regular contributors.
Heads of departments can vote to kick head guy with a very large majority and regular contributors can vote out heads of departments with a very large majority.