With new features and stuff I'm learning about, it's finally becoming a possibility to more closely emulate OTA gameplay and use Spring's features as extras, rather than necessities. For instance, while it is perhaps pretty to have every single unit leave a crater, it is very CPU intensive and detrimental to gameplay in some cases. Blast marks alone are more than enough to show that "something died or exploded here".
Generally I don't think that every single weapon should impact the map's appearance though. An EMG, if left firing at a location for 60 seconds, will leave a crater. That's sillyness. It is excessive and makes truly momentous things, like a nuke impact, look like everyday stuff. A nuke impact should be "HOLY CRAP!!!" material, not "huh. another nuke." I want these to be Planet Busters, like from Alpha Centauri. Something that's used to obliterate indiscriminately and leave every other player feeling nervous.
A nuke should not just be used as a base destroyer, it should be area denial as well. You don't want to get invaded? Obliterate the road leading to your base!!! You want to invade that person? Airdrop or go amphibious or build hover transports! This isn't a game, it's a WAR!
Absolute Annihilation 2.11
Moderator: Moderators
You're comparing Hitler to a mod developer for a game. You are comparing killing people to not allowing them to play a computer game the way they want to.Buggi wrote:People who enjoy speedmetal are mearly playing a different game than the larger average crowd.
There is no better way of playing. Just completely different games. Like comparing Everquest to, say, Starcraft. Completely different.
To put something in place that goes against the way they ENJOY the game, you'll only serve to isolate/remove them from the entire scene. And while it may seem like a good idea, Hitler had a similar idea.
Think about that for a moment.
Think about *THAT* for a moment, or two.
Egarwaen wrote:You still do.Caydr wrote:In OTA you had to do things like have repair patrols, even just one or two units patrolling a defense line would help a great deal.
If you rely on autoheal to put your defence line back together after an assault, you will die.
Autoheal's good because it means that sporadic artillery bombardment (by, say, a plasma cannon) isn't an instant victory over defences. You have to focus your fire, try to pick off specific targets, then follow up with assaults. Remove autoheal and porcing + plasma cannon creep suddenly becomes an awesome offensive strategy.
The situations being used to justify removing autoheal simply never occur in-game.
Q. F. F. T.
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Wolf-In-Exile
- Posts: 497
- Joined: 21 Nov 2005, 13:40
Stripping autoheal will make for a much longer game.
Having to build a Aircraft Plant just to make ConAircraft diverts precious resources from other concerns, and takes more time to effect repairs as well, because you have to repair units one by one.
Plus it adds to the unit count and takes up more ingame resources, and it also adds more micro, which is a bad thing.
All in all, it means less efficiency across the board.
As it is now, you could worry less about repairing your units and buildings and get a Aircraft Plant up at your leisure, or until your ground con-units are free to repair those Bulldogs.
No autoheal in OTA was fine, as the balance in OTA is vastly different from what AA has.
Higher metal collection rates meant more resources to play around with, and aircraft just felt cheaper and easier to build and deploy.
ConAircraft swarms are notorious in OTA, but I haven't seen anyone do that now; most rely on FARKs or Adv. con vehicles now.
Having to build a Aircraft Plant just to make ConAircraft diverts precious resources from other concerns, and takes more time to effect repairs as well, because you have to repair units one by one.
Plus it adds to the unit count and takes up more ingame resources, and it also adds more micro, which is a bad thing.
All in all, it means less efficiency across the board.
As it is now, you could worry less about repairing your units and buildings and get a Aircraft Plant up at your leisure, or until your ground con-units are free to repair those Bulldogs.
No autoheal in OTA was fine, as the balance in OTA is vastly different from what AA has.
Higher metal collection rates meant more resources to play around with, and aircraft just felt cheaper and easier to build and deploy.
ConAircraft swarms are notorious in OTA, but I haven't seen anyone do that now; most rely on FARKs or Adv. con vehicles now.
Not true, but it doesn't really matter.Higher metal collection rates (in OTA) meant more resources to play around with
I do not believe that the increase in micromanagement will be significant. You will go from building something, to building something and assigning a patrol. There is a difference between micromanagement and careful management. In an ideal OTA base, you'd have 3 or so constructors walking the perimeter and through the most important areas to ensure that they were kept at top condition. These constructors might also be called upon in emergencies to perform specific tasks or whatever. This is not what I call micromanagement, it's just managing upkeep. If you want to be highly aggressive, you might not assign a patrol and just hope you catch anything in time to repair it with your commander. If you were a more careful (read: not porc, but just more careful) you might devote more resources to upkeep.
Many turn-based games have this kind of concept. Real-time games have had this as well, up until it was decided to dumb things down and have everything be completely automated except for a big red button that says "attack stuff", which the player would occasionally be allowed to press if he or she jumped through hoops to the game designer's satisfaction.
Autorepair will not be gone entirely, it will just take longer to kick in. I haven't worked it out yet, but I might even have it act more quickly once it starts. So, instead of:
wait 30 seconds
autorepair at 5 HP
10 minutes later autorepair is done
it might be:
wait 5 minutes
autorepair at 10 hp
5 minutes later autorepair is done
Don't Panic.
Contrary to popular opinion, I do have a certain amount of common sense. Although I usually cave to popular opinion since I want the community to be a driving factor behind this mod, I am also capable of making decisions on my own. If the autorepair changes are not good for gameplay - which I am capable of deciding through my regular testing - the idea will be scrapped.
Finished half my todo list since my last post, but it was mostly simple stuff. The simple stuff is what makes a lot of the difference, but there's also a lot of more complex things like modifying scripts and, of course, the massive naval overhaul. But generally things are coming along smoothly. Should be able to finish the work and testing by the end of the month at the latest.
Posting a video here to see one of the changes I'm most excited about seeing in action... it's uploading now.
~~~~
Ok, it's uploaded. Video is entitled: LZ is HOT!
20 Stumpies, 20 Atlases and one well-defended enemy forward base! Who shall prevail!
http://files.filefront.com/LZ_IS_HOTwmv ... einfo.html 4.91 mb
(filefront's the best I can do from my laptop, sorry)
Enemy base consists of: 6 Defenders, 1 Jethro, 6 Stumpies, 2 Flash, 2 LLTs, a kbot lab, and a radar tower. Possibly some other stuff, but that's the minimum there was.
Survival from the combat drop is 17/20 transports and stumpies.
1 airdropped stumpy survives the confrontation with a sliver of health remaining, and 10 of the air transports escape to safety.
~~~~
Ran the test again, this time giving the atlases a sequence of orders: load stumpies, unload stumpies, move out of combat zone. Doing this all before they got shot at, 14 of the airlifters survived and 13 of the tanks! That's out of 20!
As you can see, one of my goals with this next version is to make airlifting units closer (or even INTO) the battle, more possible with greater survivability. This has been achieved by using a series of changes:
First, the atlases were equipped with a single-fire (10 second reload) flare. Peepers/Finks now have a 20-second reload and only .5 efficiency, meaning that only half of the flares will be effective. This means you won't be able to indefinitely screen against mercuries with a couple of scout planes. Radar planes have had their reload and effectiveness reduced as well, but not to nearly the same extent - they are still very good at providing recon in dangerous areas.
Second, atlases have been made less expensive and had their maneuvering improved. Their cruising altitude has also been reduced so that, like real transport aircraft today, they will not be easily shot at until they are close (unless you have fighters).
Third, air plants have been made more affordable by reducing their metal cost by 100. Fighters have had a corresponding increase of 10% to all their costs so that spamming fighters won't be too much easier. This doesn't amount to much, but if you build 15 fighters you'll have paid the difference.
Don't worry, these level 1 air transports aren't going to be invading your airspace without any way to defend against them. For instance, their flare will only shoot one time every 10 seconds, and their HP is still very low so that many laser and other direct-fire weapons will take a bit of their advantage away. Fighters or just a good number of anti-air guns (especially flak) will keep them away very effectively.
This is just one of many changes for the better you'll see in the next version of AA.
~~~~
Ok, it's uploaded. Video is entitled: LZ is HOT!
20 Stumpies, 20 Atlases and one well-defended enemy forward base! Who shall prevail!
http://files.filefront.com/LZ_IS_HOTwmv ... einfo.html 4.91 mb
(filefront's the best I can do from my laptop, sorry)
Enemy base consists of: 6 Defenders, 1 Jethro, 6 Stumpies, 2 Flash, 2 LLTs, a kbot lab, and a radar tower. Possibly some other stuff, but that's the minimum there was.
Survival from the combat drop is 17/20 transports and stumpies.
1 airdropped stumpy survives the confrontation with a sliver of health remaining, and 10 of the air transports escape to safety.
~~~~
Ran the test again, this time giving the atlases a sequence of orders: load stumpies, unload stumpies, move out of combat zone. Doing this all before they got shot at, 14 of the airlifters survived and 13 of the tanks! That's out of 20!
As you can see, one of my goals with this next version is to make airlifting units closer (or even INTO) the battle, more possible with greater survivability. This has been achieved by using a series of changes:
First, the atlases were equipped with a single-fire (10 second reload) flare. Peepers/Finks now have a 20-second reload and only .5 efficiency, meaning that only half of the flares will be effective. This means you won't be able to indefinitely screen against mercuries with a couple of scout planes. Radar planes have had their reload and effectiveness reduced as well, but not to nearly the same extent - they are still very good at providing recon in dangerous areas.
Second, atlases have been made less expensive and had their maneuvering improved. Their cruising altitude has also been reduced so that, like real transport aircraft today, they will not be easily shot at until they are close (unless you have fighters).
Third, air plants have been made more affordable by reducing their metal cost by 100. Fighters have had a corresponding increase of 10% to all their costs so that spamming fighters won't be too much easier. This doesn't amount to much, but if you build 15 fighters you'll have paid the difference.
Don't worry, these level 1 air transports aren't going to be invading your airspace without any way to defend against them. For instance, their flare will only shoot one time every 10 seconds, and their HP is still very low so that many laser and other direct-fire weapons will take a bit of their advantage away. Fighters or just a good number of anti-air guns (especially flak) will keep them away very effectively.
This is just one of many changes for the better you'll see in the next version of AA.
I've always thought of autorepair as something that deals with occassional non-combat damage (e.g. anti-air missiles coming down again and other stuff that causes small one-time amounts of damage to the rear parts of your base). 5 minutes may be a bit long, maybe closer to 1 minute and 0.1% health healed per second (and maybe limited to "civilian" buildings and units). No autoheal for small things (with less than 1000HP in this case). You'd have to repair combat damage but you won't have a building keep the damage from a misfire.
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Wolf-In-Exile
- Posts: 497
- Joined: 21 Nov 2005, 13:40
Hmm, I remember the collection rates were on average 2 to 3.5 depending on the map.... Now they're between 1-2.Not true, but it doesn't really matter.Quote:
Higher metal collection rates (in OTA) meant more resources to play around with
In OTA, I'd have ConVehicles patrolling my defenses and a cloud of ConAircraft patrolling my base structures, but in AA I find myself alot less inclined to do so since the pace of the game is much faster, and every Con unit I have is devoted to setting up defences on forward outposts or resource structures
Also, games are usually finished before hitting the 350 unit mark unless there's more than 6 players and on maps like Greenfields.
Turn-based games are different as they are much more complex, so some level of automation is necessary.
Hey, we all know you've common sense; if anything I posted implied otherwise, my apologies.
I can't speak for everyone here, but i'm talking from a fellow modder's point of view as well, and i've had experience in game balance before so i'm not pulling these out of my ass. :p
How about a compromise on the autorepair issue:
If possible, make units that gain a certain level of veterancy get autorepair, maybe at 0.5, then a slightly increased rate at 1.5?
But whatever you decide Caydr, i'll roll with it. :)
Nice work with the transports, that's a very impressive video.
Combat drops..... mmmm. Now this I really like. Reminds me alot of the Supreme Commander demo where the huge transport ships deploy in the contested LZ. In short, awesome stuff.
Using patrol to repair an area is a poor interface left over from OTA. There is a better alternative in Spring called area repair. If you drag repair, it will create a circle to select an area. All damaged units in that area will be repaired. If you want to assign the cons to always repair damaged untis in that area, you can turn on repeat first. You can even shift-drag-repair multiple areas, so you arent limited to a single circle. To recap:Egarwaen wrote:Except doesn't the constructor patrol AI suck right now?Caydr wrote:You will go from building something, to building something and assigning a patrol.
1) Select one or more cons.
2) Turn repeat on.
3) Shift-Repair-Drag one or more areas for the cons to repair.
QFFT
No autoheal in OTA was fine, as the balance in OTA is vastly different from what AA has.
Caydr really NOONE not even noobs wants that change i think its one of the more awesome things about spring!
Also...wtf did you do to my scout planes O.O 20 sec reload? maybe increasing the reload time by say 2-3 secs but that...that takes the piss
Don't particularly like the airtransport changes either, if i wanted combat drops i'd play EE >.>
Are you actually going to make any changes other than these insane, undiscussed, spur of the moment changes. And are you going to listen to reason???
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Drone_Fragger
- Posts: 1341
- Joined: 04 Dec 2005, 15:49
Krogoth has a groupai for KAI which generates a text file with values of units it's quite usefull
The overall value Score is based by type, and is best compared with two units of similar uses (eg not anti-air ship vs flame kbot)
Their ranges, speeds, damage and costs should be fairly similar for best results and if the units have special damage like anti-air or two weapons because of trajectory or on-off status then this value is affected drastically
The DPS shown is an average of the DPS against all targets and therefore might not be completely accurate for anti-air units, but it is consistent.
it can show things like this:
Storm: Estimated Overall value: 568.245 Rocko: Estimated Overall value: 505.093
Thud: Estimated Overall value: 307.858 Hammer: Estimated Overall value: 346.2
Instigator: Estimated Overall value: 517.49 Flash: Estimated Overall value: 356.653
the txt file can be found here:
http://members.home.nl/sangers/ModStatsAA211.txt
The overall value Score is based by type, and is best compared with two units of similar uses (eg not anti-air ship vs flame kbot)
Their ranges, speeds, damage and costs should be fairly similar for best results and if the units have special damage like anti-air or two weapons because of trajectory or on-off status then this value is affected drastically
The DPS shown is an average of the DPS against all targets and therefore might not be completely accurate for anti-air units, but it is consistent.
it can show things like this:
Storm: Estimated Overall value: 568.245 Rocko: Estimated Overall value: 505.093
Thud: Estimated Overall value: 307.858 Hammer: Estimated Overall value: 346.2
Instigator: Estimated Overall value: 517.49 Flash: Estimated Overall value: 356.653
the txt file can be found here:
http://members.home.nl/sangers/ModStatsAA211.txt
Yes. Autoheal just make a porcer's job that much more hand's free. If it's off repeated waves against a defensive line might be more effective, or at least force the other player to divert cons to repairing, in which case you could attack them to prevent repairs.Caydr wrote:Ho ho, that was a bad one.
But autoheal is definitely going to get turned off. Stuff that's damaged to 2% health should remain as such. It's really frustrating to have a punisher or something get down to 5 HP, then you return a minute later to finish the job and find that it's at 1500 HP without even being repaired.