Spring RTS Engine

in my brief experience with it, battles seem to revolve too much around one's rooks.
The Fortress and the multiple Lords also detracts from the mosh-pit experience.

NTAI tets build 5 works with nanoblobz the last tiem I checked, it builds lots of sheep and wolves, I'd have modified the build tree to hardcode it to build others btu I onyl had nanoblobz 0.1 at hand.

The wolf thing is only because there is no algorithm to select the most appropriate unit it just selects the first unit it comes across.

Now, these are just some thoughts at this time... everything is alway up for grabs, and I will playtest thoroughly before 0.3 is released, so if you don't like a particular "take" on this, don't sweat it, because I may not like it either and may end up doing things totally differently.

-halve knight heal speed

Knights are going to be very, very carefully re-thought, on a lot of levels, as are Rooks. Wolves and Sheep will basically be very similar, with only minor differences.

-sack zeus off

Done. I'm building some custom models, actually.

-give archer arrows a (buff)

Done, more or less. Bigger AOE, different damage buffs against various units (they will not kill Sheep with a single hit, but two will, for example) and more spread so that they kill areas, not individuals.

-Make the comm missile (better)

I am thinking about that one- it's a tricky issue that goes to the core of early game, and I will consider it.

-Make it so lords cannot be built

Some people liked it... why don't you? You weren't terribly specific, and I'd like to hear your opinion- I am fairly neutral on this topic, and will listen to all sides.

-reduce the size of rooks by 30%

Actually... I think rooks will be larger in the final build. Why? Because I'm going to make it so that you need multiple Knights to kill one, statistically, and you won't be able to spam them out like you can now. I was very unhappy with the "hordes of Rooks" basically turning the central battle into a continuous, non-nuanced explosion-fest, with interlaced Rooks basically killing everything else, including each other. Not that I mind the sheer death, mind you... just the fact that micro plays no part once production reaches a certain point. I really don't like games where the player has very few decisions to make other than boosting the economy... and the patrol paths out've factories

-make wolves have a (different gun)

Wolves will get owned by Knights and Rooks, no matter what they're armed with. That's an inherent part of the basic game design, so keep that in mind. Wolves will own Archers and raid Sheep. That's how it's supposed to work... and it basically does. But the current Wolves are not effective enough to be anything but mobile radars, in human hands, and will be made effective enough that a "wolfpack" will be a real threat to an isolated Rook. So, no matter what the gun looks like in the end... expect it to be more effective.

-make rooks suck more against knights

Instead of going that route, I'm going to make Rooks bigger, eat more resources, and be slower- think of them as mobile towers. That'll end up having a similar effect. They're going to own more Knights per Rook, but will have a practical saturation limit (as opposed to the current ones, which actually get more effective if you put them together, because of interlocking fields of fire).

-allow pyros to kill pyros, zeus to kills zeus and knights to kill knights

Knights do kill Knights... just not well. Again, it's a balance thing. And Arm Knights don't hurt Arm Knights, and vice-versa, because of the friendly-fire issue. There are other solutions, though, and I will take care of that.

-scrap the factory

Yup, they're gone. Unit beamers are much more cool anyhow (as well as being evil).

-make the fortifications (much more buffed)

That would, unless I radically changed the weapons, make them just about invulnerable The AI has enough problems with them now- have you tried making multiple layers of them and putting Archers and Wolves behind them? I've been rather tempted to just take them out and put in something else... like... say... mines... hehehe

-give the big overlords (a different weapon combo that makes them more effective)

Did you not bother watching the replays? I put them up to educate you... At the end, two Demons and an Overlord completely hemmed in a KAIBlob army, without dying, while killing... I dunno how much stuff... and keeping even more stuff occupied while Archers killed them. I could give them more effective offense, but I'd be really, really tempted to halve their hitpoints then, so that they stay balanced. Otherwise, porcing until they're built is the game. Which sounds like a nub matchup, not a real game I'd want to play. I don't think you really want that, either, but think through the implications... and watch that replay with FizWiz if you're still not convinced. I'm not totally against changing their weapon combos, btw... just their total effectiveness. The Overlord, for example, has a rather buggy script that doesn't allow it to fire often enough... I'm not happy with that, but I'm building new models/scripts anyhow, so I'll make them work right.

-reduce the incidence of chain reactions with knights

Done. Didn't like that, and decided that it's a bug, not a feature. It really nerfed Knights far too much.

-increase radar range on wolves by 25-50%

It's already 1000. Does it REALLY need to be larger? There's nothing like them in XTA other than the truely ridiculous radar planes...

-take away the big boom on overlords

Nah... that means if some llama's building a super-weapon in a nub porc, and I kill it, then they lose. Wahhh. People who're uncomfortable with risk should just build something safe, like hordes of Knights

I am not a big believer in super-weapons, unless they are truely game-ending- if I ever have a nuke in a game, it'll just end the game for the losing side, period- none of this baby-nuke stuff that most games have.

I hate games that allow people to porc well- it was bad enough in TA, where ground combat was a lesson in futility after midgame, and nobody who knew what they were doing actually built things like Krogs, because compared to aircraft and nukes, they were inefficient killers. That was uber-lame, and I'm not happy with the way that XTA has, thus far, not addressed that very well (although it is better than OTA, in some respects). In some ways, NanoBlob 0.2 has the same problems- floods of units from KAIBlob or the Fortresses might as well be walls, even though they're technically mobile... that sucks, and I don't like it.

I do not like it when tactical micromanagement (such as my commando raids with Knights, which if you watch the replays are almost purely human-controlled) doesn't have a decisive impact on games. That's the biggest area of pure suck in 0.2, and I'll be the first to say it- it's not the only area of pure suck, but it's the worst part.

Expect that to be addressed- in 0.3, I will make tactical micromanagement much more important, and remove the factories... unit beamers will, instead, put an "army block" onto the field, allowing players to put a mass right near the front lines without any wait... and making area control both more possible... and more vital. I do not expect KAIBlob, in its current form, to play it very well at all... but then you can re-adjust it- heck, if you can teach it to make and "throw" unit-blocks like a person would, it'd be downright cool!

At any rate... don't spaz if my first thoughts on all of this aren't your cup o' tea... as you probably realise at this point, I take game designs through a lot of testing/polish/testing cycles in between releases, where possible, to get things clean, and I will be very much focusing on "fun factor" elements for this build. I've been enjoying working on Nanoblobs, because it's a very clean design, unlike a monster like XTA, and it's allowing me to focus on essential elements effectively, instead of being lost in a great muddle of details...

Cool, i agree with your unit interactions, and RPS balance, but you still take KAI too much as a basis for the balance.
3 knights will punch thru a wall of dragon teeth ridiculously quick!, and an overlord gets owned by just a few knights too!

The fortifications arent weak for their cost, its just they eat up too many units from the limit (single sole most importat strategical consideration in this game), so making them bigger, and more expensive would make them viable. in the games ive played they never stopped me well at all, the mass waller gets way less units and gets owned in the end.

In Human V human matches the SINGLE, SOLE and ONLY purpose ive seen for overlords is to make them go boom as near as possible to the enemy base! They get killed really easily by a group of knights, try it youself!

The problem with making wolves weak is that there is a unit limit, so its good to give them a good late-game ability (radar) to keep them from being obsolete (last thing youd ever want in this sort of gameplay).


Now the lord building issue:
1- it makes you kill your sheep as you upgrade them to lords once you hit the unit cap. Its not a choice, you have to do it to remain competitive in the economy. Lack of choice reduces the fun factor and balance.
2-The lords big explosion is fine for a single lord, but once you have lots of them (you have to as explained in no1), you get huge chain reactions in your base. I know people think "ooo its a drawback to having a good economy" but it simply isnt a fun thing to be spreading hundreds of comms around with minucious care all the time just so your base wont chain react.
3-The lords big boom makes it a better unit for suicide bombing than the overlord, since its cheaper, faster (i think) and harder to see (people cant pick it off as easily)
4-having a lot of lords means they cant be very powerful individually, which isnt as cool as seeing your lone lord defending your base frantically
5-Since builders cannot build lords, losing all your lords mean you are terribly disadvantaged, while losing 499 lords but having one survivor means you will be MUCH better off in the long run. Takes out the strategic goal of sniping the enemy lord, plus makes you wanna give up when you cant build anymore lords and the enemy can use his single one to spawn an army and have 2x your resources and 100x your buildspeed.

The size reduction of the rooks is purely physical, the costs can (and should) go up, its just that they block each others field of view WAY too easily.

these are my opinions anyways, feel free to disagree

methinks Krogothe hit it on the head for all points. The Overlord is good as it is though, it makes a good battle-line pusher, but you can lose it quickly if you don't take care to protect it. About walls and the unit limit though, is there a problem with ratcheting the unit limit up? On a small map like Ashap Plateu, 500 is good, but if you bust out a game on Castles you may need 1000, and on Comet Catcher 2000. Would that be too CPU intensive?

[edit]

Argh wrote:...I'm building some custom models, actually.

Can't wait![/edit]

Thanks for the clarifications on those points, folks, I'll definately take all of that into consideration

Something you might enjoy playing with: try setting a negative impulsefactor in the weapon.tdf. With single fire weapons, at least, a direct hit throws the struck unit directly towards the firing unit.

Lots of fun can be had with this <.<

I'm still trying to make it work with lasers/beamlasers for the 'tractor beam' effect.

Mmmm... tractors... thanks- yet another weird-fun toy to play with

To clarify: impulse is calculated based on damage and area of effect. It is then multiplied by the impulsefactor. So, my weapon that does 100 damage, with 100 AoE, and -10 impulse factor, will tug units backwards gently with one shot, but hurl them past my firing unit with a short volley...a full autofire burst (.05 reload time <_<) will rocket the targeted unit into a nearby wall, killing it.

Soooo... can you apply impulsefactor on weapons whose damage is zero, or do you end up with divide-by-zero errors... or just doesn't work? Darnit, work cannot end soon enough.

negative impulse + EMP damage =

yeay they will be easy meat for the pyros! :D

The bombs are nutz, I lost around 800 knights in one boom.