Absolute Annihilation 2.3 Beta 2

[bamb]

Hello Caydr.

Maybe AA - as it has been - should stop the old direction and evolve to something different. Like that Abolition mod. It seems like BA fills the niche where AA once was, and it does it nicely.

Just a suggestion. I feel it could have the best of both worlds. BA would be the stable conservative very tested competitive TA-like mod for serious play and AA/Abolition a big mod in the making. Nobody is saying you shouldn't do AA or anyone else shouldn't "compete" with mods I guess. Dunno.


Keep on working, you've made some quality stuff. Where's the modeling going atm?
We need a thumbs up emoticon!

[LordMatt]

listen to as many opinions as possible - from both noobs and elites.

Please name one case in which the opinion of a noob should take precedence over the opinion of a skilled player.

[Neddie]

When that noob is an elite player in disguise?

Yeah, we would be hardpressed to find a case.

[imbaczek]

A good game is easy to learn and hard to master; as such, a noob complaining that the game is hard to learn is worth listening to. Not much else, though.

[LordMatt]

A good game is easy to learn and hard to master; as such, a noob complaining that the game is hard to learn is worth listening to. Not much else, though.

That isn't really mod related though. Only way you could deal with that is in depth tutorial or fewer units (not a good idea).

[jellyman]

Please name one case in which the opinion of a noob should take precedence over the opinion of a skilled player.

Never. I do not mean 'listen to' as 'do what they say'. I mean 'listen to' as in 'understand what they say', and then go ahead and do what you think is best.

[bamb]

A good game is easy to learn and hard to master; as such, a noob complaining that the game is hard to learn is worth listening to. Not much else, though.

That isn't really mod related though. Only way you could deal with that is in depth tutorial or fewer units (not a good idea).

There are many more sides to this. For example units that look distinctively different, buildings that are intuitive etc etc. For pros these don't matter as they know everything so well...

With balance it necessarily doesn't have that much to do though.

[Pxtl]

A game that requires you read through the accumulated 10 years of changelogs to find out what each unit is for (like the antinaval properties of Guardians) is not n00b-friendly.

[Caydr]

That's true about shore batteries, but they're a rare case that is pretty much unavoidable.

I don't see what you mean about AA requiring reading of changelogs... unit descriptions should basically tell you what a unit does. In a perfect world, I'd like to be able to make tooltips or "More Info" buttons for units that outlines their strengths and weaknesses, but alas, we have a GUI that can't be mod-defined.

[j5mello]

Its your mod. Everyone has a different view of balance. I think missile towers should hit both air and land. You don't. But neither of us is wrong. There is no such thing as a perfect balance that will suit everyone. My advice is to try and listen to as many opinions as possible - from both noobs and elites. Try to understand why they have their opinions. Let these opinions contribute as much as possible to your knowledge of how the mod works and how it is played. And then do what you think and believe is best for the mod.

[Noruas]

Caydr, are you sure you do not want commander shooter included in the next version of AA?

[Caydr]

Commander shooter?

[Noruas]

LET ME REFRESH YOUR MEMORY

I did this entirely because i was bored, its only 26kb, and can be included into the next AA version extremly easily, http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=3810
but it isnt that good, but then again anything 26kb, isnt usually good.

...Eh.... I'm not sure I can include that.... my.... er.... mouse... is.... lagging......

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Commander_Shooter
the wiki even has pictures! If your interested, just look for the beta on unknown files and complain to supernoob to host a game with 6 people playing!

[LOrDo]

omfg. He dosn't know of THE Com Shooter?

BURN HIM AT THE STAKE!



PS: http://www.unknown-files.net/index.php? ... &dlid=2099
Play with C mode.

[Caydr]

No.

2.3 Beta 1 is now available:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ta-aa/ ... 3Beta1.zip

It's 100% untested, but I wanted to post this before the weekend because I'm probably going to be pretty busy. It should be, uh, reasonably... not unplayable.

Thanks go to Noize for the improved Commander scripts. About the changelog, um, sorry for the lack of detail.

Here's a quick summary:
The major identified flaws in 2.23 have been corrected.

Several units have also been removed... these include:
D-Maw - not in Core's style, IMHO. I might reconsider this... it's just omitted from the build tree at the moment.
Decoy Fusion - Lots of people whine that it's not of much use because it can be easily differentiated from the real one thanks to the "value" thing.
Dominator - Gave its role to morty

...And possibly, though not probably, others.

I've expanded seaplane build menus so they're back to OTA:AA style - they can build everything L2 con airs and L2 con subs can build.

Build menus have been completely reorganized. They follow this pattern:
Factories
Nano Turrets
Resource
Storage
Detection
Anti-Air
Short range
Medium range
Long range
Fortifications
Mines
Superweapons

In factory menus, they are similar:

Builders
Engineers/Assisters
Rezzers
General Purpose
Artillery
Anti-air
Crawling Bombs
Special Purpose
Anti-Nuke

In Air factories, it's a little different:

Builders
Gunships
Fighters
Bombers
Scouts/AWACS
Transports
Special

Blade, the flak-resistant gunship, is now a Stealth Gunship. Seemed more Armish to me, and how dumb is the idea of "flak resistant"... honestly... come on.

Banshee speed, HP, DPS boosted, energy cost reduced

Bomb AoE reduced, helping to clarify the difference in role between bomber and gunship

Fixed COAX_TORPEDO typo

Switched to single-shot EMG sound effect

Increased bomber cruise altitude, reduced their LoS

Increased con seaplane footprint size so it better reflects their actual size

Reduced con hover footprint, see above

Zipper description changed to "advanced raider" from... something else

Naval engineer changed to "naval combat engineer"

Con ships now move and accelerate more like destroyers and other L1 ships

Morty now has high trajectory toggle

Seismic detector physical size reduced to make them a less easy target, detection radius increased a little, costs reduced (I think)

Seaplane factory min water depth reduced, so they don't need like a mile of water beneath them before you'll be allowed to build em

Increased repulsor energy use on deflection

Got improved commander scripts off Noize

Reduced global "general" impulsefactor by half

Fighters *should* now have a slightly wider possible firing arc, allowing them to shoot at stuff on their first pass more easily

Some plasma, EMG, and laser visual effects changed

Catapult's walking animation slowed down a bit

Generally nerfed anti-air by whatever seemed appropriate at the time... I'll look into this more closely later

Nerfed flash and gator a little

Buffed stumpy and raider a little

Increased samson/slasher firepower very very slightly

Improved the general tank range system a lot... as in, it's no longer arbitrary cavedog stats anymore

DT can be run over again (I think...)

Tremor weapon and unit stats made more sensible

And a lot more stuff I just didn't have time to document or that I forgot about

[Dragon45]

Listening to everyone's opinion is precisely what landed Absolute Annihilation in the shithole it has been in for the past three versions. The problem si that newbies complain about balance. That's not something that they should fucking worry about. Let the vets deal with it. Newbies should be complaining and smoothness, usability, and bugs. Not fucking balance.


Balance is something that is grown in to. Something extremely unbalanced to the point of deserving radical change (as has been brought about by every ver of AA) would definitely be pointed out by a vet. But guess who "pointed out the balance bugs" - yep, newbies! By definition they are unqualified.

No offense Caydr, but that was your big mistake. Elitism sounds immoral, but it has its place.

[imbaczek]

So, BA has been almost completely ignored, right?

[MR.D]

Had a small issue installing this, it wouldn't show up in the mods list.
I had to remove previous AA versions, and do a reinstall of Spring and the b2 update to get it to show as AA2.3-beta1 instead of AA 2.23.

[Caydr]

No, BA has not been ignored. I read through its thread and implemented quite a few of the ideas, though not necessarily in identical ways. I also read through the AA thread and the AA forum... almost everything I thought sounded good was done, and the handful of other things are on my todo for sometime today.

I'll check my req's and replaces MRD, thanks.

[el_matarife]

I was hoping this version would fix the kludge range rings, no luck. Guess there's always beta 2.

One question about th morty, the AOE on its shot is so tiny I'm not sure high trajectory mode will be worth anything on smaller targets like LLTs, HLLTs, even HLTs are pretty small. Given the fact it won't be 100% accurate, I'm thinking everyone is going to still use low trajectory all the time.