Absolute Annihilation 2.11

[Egarwaen]

But land-based Bertha versus LRPC ship? The land-based one wins, I guarantee it. In my experience, the land-based guns seem to be unusually accurate at pegging large ships (Which include Battleships, Flagships, and, surprise, the LRPC ships!). Whereas shooting an enemy Bertha emplacement? The shots go all over unless you have LOS, basically.

Heh, remember the discussion about Bertha XP a few pages back? Bets that that's what's happening here? Ships have an absurd metal cost, so I'm willing to bet that a Bertha that taps one gets an absurd amount of XP.

Now that I mention it, I think I'll have to test this... Could be the return of the Sniper Bertha.

Also, the Core Tac nuke launcher is the Catalyst, the Arm static EMP nuke is the Detonator, and the Arm mobile EMP nuke is the Aegis, but used to be the Requiter.

As for FPS mode, it was fixed for lasers. Vipers use a dumbfire rocket like Rockos, and those things will keep going (following the laws of physics) until they hit something and explode. This is fine normally, since the Rocko's rocket is so slow, but can be abused in FPS mode with a faster rocket.

[Machiosabre]

I wasn't talking about the fps spring fix, I meant a specific fix in AA, for vipers

Viper is no longer useable as artillery if aimed at
the sky

this one^

[KDR_11k]

No, dumbfire rockets, like missiles, have a timer and when that expires they drop to the ground (unfortunately burnblow gets ignored). The timer is independent of the weapon range.

[Caydr]

I wasn't talking about the fps spring fix, I meant a specific fix in AA, for vipers

Viper is no longer useable as artillery if aimed at
the sky

this one^

I did this by giving them a slight wobble, I think.

[Caydr]

A while back someone posted about water structures being missing from either amphibious constructors, hover constructors, or commander build menus.

Now I go to check on this... for the life of me I can't figure out what's missing. Either I've already fixed it and forgotten, or I'm looking for the wrong thing. Does anyone remember?

[KDR_11k]

It was the amph con. I think a while back it couldn't build ANY naval structures.

[Caydr]

Just checked them, they appear to be fine. :S

~~~

Ok, found the problem. It was a typo further on in the build menu which was overwriting the tidal gens.

Here's the latest changelog:

Removed some unused weapon entries
Eliminated impact physics for all common weapons
Liche nuke AoE increased to 256 (128), damage vs superweapons fixed
Maverick damage per hit reduced to 75, switched to buckshot (10),
reloadtime increased to 3 (0.985), has less accuracy and wide spray,
AoE increased to 12 (8); effective DPS is now 250 (300)
Sniper weapon bug fixed, it now only hits one target rather than an
entire row, minimum distance from enemy units for cloaking to work
increased to 80 (72)
EMP missile paralyzetime increased to 30 (20), range increased to
6000 (4500)
Adjusted anti-nuke properties so they shouldn't have occasional
problems intercepting nukes anymore
Commander explosion damage doubled (25000->50000)
All massive explosions now leave larger, deeper craters
Plasma battery low trajectory fire now have normal (larger) AoE
Movable nanotower bug fixed, they should also no longer attempt
to repair or reclaim things beyond their nano range
Beamer damage increased to 28 (27) per "zing"
Vehicle factory metal cost reduced 100
Twilight minimum cloaking distance from enemy units increased to
48 (30)
Morty buildtime reduced by about 1200 units (6400->5200)
Commander wreck metal value reduced (15000->3500)
Arm Lancet logo fixed
Arm Moho Geothermal energy output reduced to 1250 (compared with
Core's 1000 output)
Prude HP increased to 12500 (8000), energy storage set to 1500 (0),
metal cost reduced 10% (1176->1058), energy cost reduced 25%
(32307->24230)
Behemoth HP increased to 7500 (5000) and no longer targets aircraft
Moho metal extractor extraction rate increased to 0.004 (0.0035)
Advanced construction vehicle build rate increased to 250 (200)
Arm moho metal extractor can now cloak for 50 energy and is always
radar-invisible; description changed to reflect this
Packo description changed to "Pop-Up Missile Battery"; SAM changed
to "Hardened Missile Battery"; Circular Saw and Eradicator changed
to "Medium-Range Missile Battery"; All related special damage
values removed
Flare efficiency (0.9->0.8) and launching rate (0.9->1.5) reduced
on AWACS aircraft
Flare dropping rate on Peeper reduced to 5 (3), efficiency reduced
to 0.75 (0.9)
Pitbull, Viper weapon AoE increased to 24 (16)
Construction aircraft workertime reduced to 45 (50), advanced
construction aircraft to 80 (100), construction seaplane to 100
(200)
Construction seaplane metal cost reduced 100 (330->230), energy
cost reduced 10000 (19000->9000), build time by 10000 (30000->
20000)
Radar tower detection ranges reduced
Basic fighter energy cost increased 30%, metal cost increased 20%,
buildtime increased 10%
Basic air transport energy cost reduced 50%, metal cost reduced 40%,
buildtime reduced 30%, HP increased 10%, "single-use" flares added
Paralyzers should now be more effective
Flak range increased 10%
Stumpy, Raider HP and range increased 50 units, rate of fire reduced
25%, damage increased 30%
Blade energy cost increased 25%, metal cost increased 10%, buildtime
increased 5%, HP reduced 50 units
Flash turning/accel/brake increased 10%, metal cost reduced 5%
Recluse HP reduced 50 units
Thud HP increased to 900 (870)
Rapier, plasma battery, leveler groundflash size reduced
Level 2 aircraft plant energy cost increased by 10000 (22000->32000)
Default explosions disabled for most small weapons
Maverick holster/unholster animation speed boosted
Flash/Gator aiming rate increased (~150->200/175 respective)
Fixed erroneous spelling of "BlackHydra" armor category in many
different weapon files (big thanks to TradeMark)
Fixed erroneous special damage entries in Dragon's Maw and Dragon's
Claw weapon entries (more thanks to TradeMark)
Bladewing metal cost increased by 6, energy cost increased by 250
Gunship brake rate reduced 25%, acceleration reduced 20%, speed
reduced 15%, rotation reduced 10%
Juno should now function properly, it won't randomly fail to damage
radar-related structures and units, AoE increased to 2048 (1280),
pulse cruising altitude increased fourfold
Warrior metal cost increased by 40 (208->248), buildtime increased
by 400 (4104->4504), HP reduced by 175 (1475->1300), speed
increased by 0.2 (1.3->1.5)
Leveller weapon AoE increased to 144 (128)
Intruder wake bug fixed, is no longer upright regardless of terrain
Banisher now aims a bit upward to fire, similar to Mercury
Construction vehicle build distance increased, construction kbot
build distance decreased
Merl, Diplomat HP increased 500 (~2500->3000), rocket AoE decreased
to 64/72 respectively (160), rocket damage increased to 1000/1300
respectively (800/900), range increased to 1215/1240 respectively
(1150)
Diplomat rocket reload time increased to 20 (16)
Tremor reload time decreased to 0.4 (0.5), accuracy reduced to 1400
(1000)
All artillery rebalanced for lower trajectory firing at long range,
higher trajectory firing at close range
Arm moho mine HP decreased to 2500 (3000), core moho mine HP
increased to 3500 (2500) and damage is now multiplied by 0.25
when closed (0.4)
Flash/Peewee EMG weapons seperated into two different classes
Peewee range increased to 180 (176)
Flash range increased to 190 (176)
Instigator damage per second reduced to 97 (107)
AK damage per second increased to 87 (79)
Commander laser damage versus L1 air transports increased to 180
(125)
Metal extractors in (A) fixed
Units removed: hyper radars, bertha ships, bertha tanks, orcone,
krogtaar, artillery hovers, aegis
Depthcharge launchers added to commander build menus
Laser and EMG weapon graphics improved
Core LLT made the same height as Arm LLT
Beamer turret height increased to halfway in-between Core HLLT's
two turrets
Jethro recoil on wrong barrel fixed
Marauder death and self-d explosions reduced
Removed a TON of unused graphics
Removed extra loading screen bloat
All vehicle speed, acceleration, braking, and turnrate values
increased by 10%
All corpse metal values normalized to 70% metal, 50% hitpoints,
all heap metal values normalized to 35% metal, 20% hitpoints;
all corpses and heaps put into one file (even more thanks to
TradeMark)
Arm amphibious construction vehicle, construction hovercraft
build menu bugs fixed in standard, (H), (A)
Amphibious construction vehicle build menus corrected in (F)

Here's my todo:

Buff firestorm
Fix behemoth firing sequence
add wreckage for corvettes
fix flame weapon graphics (borked by new spring version)
improve shield generators
give all metal makers a cost in metal, and increase moho metal makers' metal cost
increase advanced torpedo launcher range, make "sniper" sub have slightly less range
Increase Raven model size by 1x1
Increase Commander mass so it doesn't fly so far from explosions
Boost torpedo plane damage
Indicate units having autorepair in their unit description
Increase Annihilator energy cost significantly, decrease its armor protection when closed by a little
increase fusion costs by 25%
make advanced fusions cheaper - 25% more expensive than regular fusions, 50% greater output?
increase advanced radar build time and costs
reduce hovercraft platform costs
remove depthcharge from hovercraft, revert support ship, fix naval balance
make radar jammer towers more in line with their mobile counterparts
fix the goddamn AA site and unit guide
add KBOT and VEHICLE tags where they're missing
Add Commando and anti-air kbots
check amphibious complex balance
check amphibious unit cost/benefit vs hovercraft
Increase delay time before units/structures autorepair to 1 minute
Rebalance L3 with fewer units in mind
add totally mysterious new arm unit

A patch will not be possible for this version, there is too much changed/added/removed content to maintain sync. The good news is, the entire package is under 6mb and will be patchable in the future just as v2.00 was. I've removed a tremendous amount of OTA graphics data that is no longer used (explosion animations, TAMEC map graphics, etc). In all, there are now fewer than 20 additional AA-only graphics included in the package. That's down from... I don't know, maybe about 200 or more.

[Drone_Fragger]

on the adv fusions, 50% costlier and 100% more production seems about right.

[NOiZE]

also can you make flares visable?

[Drone_Fragger]

Could you make a Flare using vehicle? That sits in combat shooting up flares that attaract enemy missle fire?

[Caydr]

That's impossible drone.

AFAIK flares are visible. Why wouldn't they be? What needs to be done to make them visible?

I got the additional AA-only textures down to 3. Turns out the Razorback is the only unit with non-TA textures. And there were actually over 900 textures... all of them unusued.

[Pxtl]

I have to say, most of the changes sound fantastic except for the removed units (i've always thought more = better - if people want a short unitlist they play XTA - but that's a personal taste). The only changes that really cought my eye are the following ones:

give all metal makers a cost in metal, and increase moho metal makers' metal cost
make advanced fusions cheaper - 25% more expensive than regular fusions, 50% greater output?
remove depthcharge from hovercraft

I've always liked that metalmakers are all-energy to build. It means that a player in metalstall can quickly put up metalmakers to respond to the problem, instead of the painful micromanagement of shutting down other production projects with the intent to restart them later.

An advanced fusion that is only 1.5x a fusion is a pointless unit - that's nearly the same as just building 2 fusions. Advanced fusions are crucial for when a severely space-limited map goes into late-game - and like it or not, AA is popular for space-limited chokepoint maps like Castles. I'd go with 1 adv. fusion = 4 normal fusions, but at 2-3x fusion cost but with only 2x armour and a nukedeath, so that they are a liability similar to the advanced geotherm.

That, and why remove the depthcharge from hovercraft? I've always thought that was a good idea - even if the AA hover could be reduced to a freakishly, pathetically weak deptchcharge, it's nice to have a <L2 alternative to the torpedo bomber, particularly because of the wide, hazardous flying styles of bombers. If the problem is that it's the Anti-Air hover, why not give the DC to the scout-hover or something?

Everything else on that freakishly long changelog sounds better than sex though.

I was thinking that, because so many AA units have hidden treasures (like the "Turn off to bunker" that BLODs and Core mohos have) that most normal players don't know about, might it be nice for some of us to help update the descriptions? Just with short little blurbs about hidden tricks some untis may have (like Plasma turrets having "High trajectory bombardment mode. Extra damage vs. naval units"). I mean, how long can descriptions get?

edit: I'd be damn careful with the Banishers - a player who's good with recon could make them a God unit now that they're higher-trajectory.

[Min3mat]

The changes are even more vast now, you really should learn to release smaller changes
still don't like the losing of autorepair
and nerfing of conplanes
and removal of orcone
and fact that sea is still not balanced
and a few more but overall going to be a pretty nice patch i think. now...advance wars and GEM? >;D

[NOiZE]

can someone make a screenshot of a peeper dropping a flare, or some other unit, i never saw those flares...

[Neddie]

can someone make a screenshot of a peeper dropping a flare, or some other unit, i never saw those flares...

They're invisible, usually.

[Egarwaen]

Basic fighter energy cost increased 30%, metal cost increased 20%, buildtime increased 10%

I'm still not sure this is necessary.

Increase Annihilator energy cost significantly, decrease its armor protection when closed by a little

GOOD.

check amphibious unit cost/benefit vs hovercraft

GOOD. I can help with that if you want.

add totally mysterious new arm unit

To make up for the loss of the Aegis?

[KlavoHunter]

Again - Caydr, why are the LRPC ships coming out? Those totally need to STAY.

I'd like to hear your reasoning for them being gone.

[LordMatt]

A while back someone posted about water structures being missing from either amphibious constructors, hover constructors, or commander build menus.

...

Ok, found the problem. It was a typo further on in the build menu which was overwriting the tidal gens.

That was me, thanks for fixing it!

[LathanStanley]

I just love how we have 1 person running the show for EVERYONE!..

hats off to Cadyr and all the HARD work...

seriously, you can't complain...

[Caydr]

LRPC ships are leaving AA because water already has the firepower advantage and the ability to fire a great distance inland. I'm also just trying to simplify things and bring AA back to its OTA roots.