Spring RTS Engine

I'll say it once again, keep a civil tongue in your mouths, for all that is logical!

Both sides have become militaristic. Here is the raw, as best as I can say it after three days awake.

A very small minority of people who have ever played Final Frontier still play it. Out of that select group, a significant faction did not enjoy the gradual transformation of the game and offered input which was rebuffed as the player base for Final Frontier stagnated.

When I joined Spring, I knew three people personally who liked Final Frontier. None of them still do. Savvy the example?

The consistent refusal of Optimus to consider, and of the would-be contributors to desist lead to an uncomfortable flame war. Both sides are at fault, to some degree.

A coalition of very skilled and players and modders presented a multi-faceted and complex case for the reform of Final Frontier, among them Fang, smoth and Min3Mat. They also offered their services to balancing the mod. These were consistently and categorically ignored by Optimus. I'll not say who threw the first stone of insult, but I remember a particular blase comment that sent the mod thread apart and cracked it wide open.

In conclusion, the flamefest was a mutual construct between a mod developer and a group of individuals who were attempting to contribute. There was no out and out offensive stance, and any attempt to blame a particular person or group is fallacious, insulting and immature.

i think i said it more than 10 times now -.-
i ignore no one as long as he is able to show me FACTS IN GAME and not here in forum. If you dont have the time (not more than 30 mins) to show me whats wrong by hosting, joining a game or showing me a replay, why should i work for many hours and later there is another unit found, which no one used, but it was still doing all that, what all were searching for?
Is this so difficult do understand
To the gameplay, there you cant discuss with a win for one side because this is a question of oppinion. Some like rounded strat games, some real time, some like fast games, some like slow games.
As you can see in the other FF thread, Min3 and Death are making a 100% different FF game - so its not just some tweaks but the whole game will be played different.

Some suggestions would be rather difficult to show in game, e.g. the proposal to have the tech level of a unit not determine its size (i.e. larger ships are available in the L1 factory and there are high tech L3 fighters as well). You have rock-paper-scissors based on the size but the rock is a late game unit.

thats right, something like this cant be shown ig.
But i think it would look very odd if you could build a big ship our of a tiny factory (think of krog out of a kbot lab). Also there has to be some kind of growing with the time, else it wouldnt be interesting.
Also the system is designed that you can counter all of the actual tech level. And to prevent the win of the person who first reached lvl 3 i made it so that lvl 3 can be owned by lvl 1 and 2.
I dont say that its perfect and i will work on after my test and some more work on the other mod, but the system itself is good in my point of view and shouldnt be changed too much.

Optimus Prime wrote:thats right, something like this cant be shown ig.
But i think it would look very odd if you could build a big ship our of a tiny factory (think of krog out of a kbot lab)

Have it as a floating pad instead of ring. That might work

yes that would work, but would it be good?
I personally dont know any game, where you are able to build the biggest units right from the start and i think there is a reason for that.

*shrugs* looks fine in Independance Wars, but then that's TA.

It's worth a try at least

think of this :

- a normal lvl 3 ship costs 10k metal.
- in level 1 you get about 30 metal
-> you would need a very long time to build such a ship and during this time you have nothing to do
-> every good player would wait until he reaches the metal income of the normal lvl 3 level
-> noobs wouldnt do so and therefore they would think there is something wrong with FF eco

i dont know Independance Wars, but i guess that you dont have units which cost more than 100 times the metal than another unit - in FF the sizes of units are very different so its the best to grow with time and you are forced to build an eco which is good enough for the actual tech level.

You can ask min3 if he wants to implement this, but i guess that he thinks the same as me in at least this point. Teching should be some kind of tactic too in my oppinion, so you have the chance of attacking or teching, or a mix of both.
But if you really love your idea, you can easily make such a version yourself, just take the sidedata.tdf file and make all lvl 3 units buildable at lvl 1. It would cost you 20 mins of time and you can test it with KDR or someone else to see, if it has a chance.

Edit: if more people want such an option in the mod, i can make such a variant like in AA. Wouldnt be difficult... but atm i dont have any time for developing. Wait at least 2 weeks so you have time to test it yourself.

The idea was to have low tech fighters and capital ships in the earlier factories with high tech counterpieces available in the better factories (but still having the same ship classes available).

In TA the hawk is smaller than the freedom fighter but more effective and expensive, you could have L1 capitals be big tin cans around one or two large weapons while the L3 capitals would be efficient constructions that have every square inch covered with armor and weapons. So they'd be comparable in size but the higher tech means more stuff in that size.

Of course higher tech could also mean a size increase but within the unit class so you'd get e.g. larger fighters that retain (or increase) their maneuvrability and speed but cost a lot more than the old T1 fighters and are more effective at their job.

Higher tech could also mean less pronounced weaknesses so e.g. a T3 capital ship that is meant for destroying capital ships still has a few anti-fighter/bomber turrets that can take care of quite a few low tech fighters but are overwhelmed with T2 or 3 attackers.

Or perhaps, the tech 1 factories don't build T1 captial ships, but destroyers, they'll be the big boys of T1.
In tech 2, you move up to cruisers, bigger and more powerful.
Then in tech 3 you get the battleships and dreadnaugts.

The fighters of T1 be small, weak mosquito-like things.
In tech 2, they get a bit more sting.
In tech 3, they become something akin to a hawk and are overwhelming in packs.


And please, keep you're replies flame-free, I don't want this thread to get locked as well.

i must say the way ppl have gone on extensively about this is annoying
1: this is FF, although that is a interesting idea it wouldn't work for the gameplay opty / me and day / nemo have in mind
2: GEM ffs? sexy models and Caydr has spent a long long time on it so i can only assume it will PWN (again, different from FF but still fun)
it may not be a perfect example but it does have sort of lvl 1 corvettes or something with very specific fire arcs etc and there will be more powerful fighters as well as a array of movemtn classes (figthing with land / air and then weapons that go imbetween)
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/GEM