Spring RTS Engine

IMO here are the changes Kernel Panic needs.

1. Bits shoot thru friendlies.
2. Bytes have more HP in response to #1.
3. The projectiles that Pointers shoot should move faster (maybe swap with a missle).
4. The object Pointers shoot should leave a trail.
5. Buildings build faster.
6. Buildings have less HP (not too much less).
7. Change kill priority from buildings to units.

IMO here are the changes Kernel Panic SHOULDN'T HAVE.

1. Unit corpses.
2. Turrets (unless they are only allowed to be build on geos).

A few ideas I'm interested in seeing (if they are any good)

1. Kernel can defend itself.
2. Pointers built from sockets.

An Idea I want to put forward.

A new building! I think there should be like a mini EMP silo!

It would get built on vents and can shoot EMP missiles at incoming enemies (not fire-at-will), only have a small range tho (maybe about the width of between the elevated part and the edge of the map on marble) but not such a long cooldown/powerup and shoots the missile quickly.

@Boirunner, how big are each of the squares in marble madness? I'm been doing a bit of map making lately and I'd like to know.

3. The projectiles that Pointers shoot should move faster (maybe swap with a missle).

This is very feasible. Use trajectoryheight to control of the weapons arc (Check the wiki i updated the entry on trajectoryheight).

That doesn't aim properly when the target is not at the same height as your unit.

Boirunner? Are you still running this mod and just too busy with studying to post in the thread or have you lost interest completely?

He is studing.

Yes but that shouldn't take so much time that he can't spend 5 minutes posting in his own thread.

The mod, as it is, is basically what I had imagined from the start. A strong unit, a weak unit, an artillery, and building expansions on specified places. I've played it, and I think it's fun. There are some things to be fixed, like the arty-in-normal-gravity thing, which i am planning to do. But right now I have tests, so I would do it in march.

So if any of you - well, KDR really - made changes that you think are good, and don't go completely against the spirit of KP, I'll gladly take the version and release it. Lacking that, the work on the mod will continue starting march 13.

Thank you all for your help and support, this has been great fun. I shouldn't have started the mod so short before my tests, but I really only did a XTA mutator to have some fun with, this thing has risen boyond any expectations of mine. But I'm not complaining.

By the way, blog-style: Multivariable calculus and predicate calculus are my metaphorical female dog, physics went alright, and on monday I'm doing digital design. So wish me luck

I can relate, I wasn't able to make the mine model because I was busy with exams at the time.

Even with fixed gravity the pointer is a unit nobody likes. I don't think anyone but me ever builds them. In my testing versions I've turned the thing into a direct fire cannon unit which at least gives them some use against moving targets. High arc artillery sucks in KP, by the time the shots arrive the battle is long over and the target has moved elsewhere so their only use is wrecking buildings and builders but even that can be done by normal units just by swarming the building to prevent it from building anything and waiting a few minutes. Being able to destroy buildings with all units in reasonable time does help the game IMO, its silly that such a fast mod has buildings that are almost invincible.

I'd advise against taking my test versions and releasing them unmodified, I don't think they are properly balanced yet.

I think pointers should be turned in area attack artillery, like tremors, and buildings should be easier to kill.

Tried that, area bombardement pointers are pretty useless or overpowered since they either kill bits in one shot or barely scratch bytes and still don't hit jack.

KDR_11k wrote:Tried that, area bombardement pointers are pretty useless or overpowered since they either kill bits in one shot or barely scratch bytes and still don't hit jack.

And if you change the way they shot, maybe shooting a lot faster or having its shots have a big blast radius?

manored wrote:

KDR_11k wrote:Tried that, area bombardement pointers are pretty useless or overpowered since they either kill bits in one shot or barely scratch bytes and still don't hit jack.

And if you change the way they shot, maybe shooting a lot faster or having its shots have a big blast radius?

If an area-attack unit is desired, it would have to be a different kind of unit. The pointer is long ranged so it _forces_ the enemy to come out and play. Because of that power, it must be very weak otherwise. A unit that is both outranging and outpowering (and area-attack allows you to boost the combat effectiveness of artillery a hundredfold in against a horde) then it becomes a superunit.

Area-attack would be doable, but not for the pointer.

How about suicide units? They take out a swarm of bits but not much else?

That would be cool, I think no other mod has done that yet.
it could be called divide by zero

knorke wrote:That would be cool, I think no other mod has done that yet.
it could be called divide by zero

You either never played TA based mods or played but never survided long enough to get to tech 2 on them...

Divide by zero is too long. And Caydr tried to do something similar with a core kamekaze-car in AA, but it was found to be overpowered.

The problem is that such a unit must be carefully balanced. If it moves too quickly, it can charge past enemy fire and clobber the bits. If it moves too slowly, it dies before getting into detonation range.

The big trick is that it must do most of its damage as impact, not as damage - impact damage is disproportionately more significant against smaller units. And there must be some sort of hyper-accurate (against fast-moving targets) long-ranged unit that can pick them off easily to defend your bits (that was the problem in Spring - only such unit at L1 is the samtruck).

So, what do you call a unit that flips bits? XOR?

ops. crawling bombs come to mind
they are balanced in ota mods, i guess a similiar unit could be balanced here.
you could always sacrifice some bits to stop it which also forces the enemy to move around.

so boirunner, are you saying that the current version you would like to be kept as unmodified and all modifications after this to be mutators so we can preserve the origonal concept?

knorke wrote:ops. crawling bombs come to mind
they are balanced in ota mods, i guess a similiar unit could be balanced here.
you could always sacrifice some bits to stop it which also forces the enemy to move around.

Well, the crawling bomb is different in every mod - remember how slow they were in OTA?

manored wrote:

KDR_11k wrote:Tried that, area bombardement pointers are pretty useless or overpowered since they either kill bits in one shot or barely scratch bytes and still don't hit jack.

And if you change the way they shot, maybe shooting a lot faster or having its shots have a big blast radius?

The decision is still how much damage it should do. Area bombardement that merely weakens bits? Area bombardement that rapes everything that can't run away fast enough?

The current test has the pointer shoot a single target with a high precision, high damage projectile but it shoots very slowly and takes a long time to build. Also the test folder on my HD has the pointer only shoot while immobile and open the moment it stops. It's balanced roughly like the AT guns in Company of Heroes. You can get about two for the buildtime of a byte. They'll do severe damage against everything but since they only hit one bit per shopt you need a meatshield for them.