Absolute Annihilation: Spring[old]

[Zenka]

The first render will never be perfect the way you want it.
It reminds me of the time I rendered the 'interior of the bomber' scene in the trailer I once made. I took me 16 hour of rendering on three computers, for 1 min of video.
I wasn't perfect, but I didn't had any time to redo it.

As for lvl 3 air. I don't think it's nessicairy. the lvl 2 will do just fine.
They are balanced very well, exept we need a lvl 2 AA k-bot.
However (and this goes outside the mod), planes fly like crap in Sring. As Noise mentioned somewhere, they need to be less ground-bound. (meaning they won't fly parralel to the ground).
In maps such as Azure Rempart, Castles, or any map with high walls, they crash against it. (and/or through it)

[Caydr]

Only about a dozen units got cut during the port.

[smoth]

wasn't there also a series of wall available in the old AA?

[Caydr]

Yeah, they're cut. They don't work in Spring... weapon impacts are messy on objects that can't be considered vaguely spherical. The deflectors do a better job and are fairer, I think.

[smoth]

ah, I get you.

Thanks, I was wondering what happened.

[Isaactoo]

Yeah, they're cut. They don't work in Spring... weapon impacts are messy on objects that can't be considered vaguely spherical. The deflectors do a better job and are fairer, I think.

Features now use yardmaps for weapon/unit collisions, try KuroTA v0.47's Fortification walls, they work well.

[Caydr]

changelog updated

[Neuralize]

I felt the flak/gunship relationship was pretty balanced. :/

[Kelson]

Even with the changes, 50 brawlers took out 10 flaks with half surviving. I dunno about you, but I don't normally put over 10 flaks down in a spot even if I know someone is using a lot of brawlers. Before, I ran tests with half that number of brawlers against 10 flaks and the brawlers took out a majority of flaks before dying off. 25 brawlers = 7.5k metal, ~ same as 10 flaks.

[BigSteve]

If you let your opponent get 50 brawlers in a game, you deserve to get your ass kicked,
Mix flak with other kinds of aa its much more effective, the small turrets that the comm builds + flak are surprisingly very effective, even better mix flak with fighters too.
I usually build 3 or 4 flaks around my important stuff and back it up with other aa and it seems to do well, I do this wether or not I know if my opponent has brawlers.
I do agree brawlers need to be nerfed slightly, but not to the scale you have suggested caydr, that seems like a very serious reduction in effectiveness.
Maybe just a speed reduction and slight hp decrease like to 90% maybe I dunno, any other suggestions?

[Chocapic]

i suggesnt only to increase the flak damage to bralwers, sinse the only issue here is flak -> brawler, and it doesnt mess around with all the other things we're used to

[BigSteve]

Not sure about the increase in fusion health, those things can take a
fair amount of punishment as is, and they shouldnt really be super stong, its a power station after all I suppose, it should a little vulnerable to burning hot plasma hehe

A nuke bomber doesnt even reduce an advanced fusion to less than half of its hit points also,

Oh yer I played a game today and level1 kbots were very effective against a brawler attack, 5 brawlers and around 6 jethros plus 5 defender towers, the brawlers lost, I lost a couple of bots and towers, Flak isnt the only defence against brawlers, kbots seem to do a good job, and you can move them, just gotta mix up your aa I think...

[Zenka]

I hardly ever have problems with brawler forces (note on hardly, there was one time that BigSteve here thought that brawlers were more important then his base). However, If you look at my base on such a stage in game, there are more flaggers then brawlers.

I do have trouble with ground attacks, mostly becouse SOMEONE still haven't fixed the anni. if you go in on FPS, you are on the very bottom of the turret. So objects easy block the LOS of it. This makes the anni less effective.
note: not only in FPS ofcourse.

Anni's are very effective against large amount of brawlers when they fly close together.

[Caydr]

K, fine fine fine fine fine and FINE! I'm now setting Annis and bluelaser on DDMs to target non-air exclusively.

[MR.D]

good man, annihilators are nice vs some of the heavier aircraft such as CROW or Liche, but its silly that they can track fast moving aircraft.
Id say that reducing the traverse speed on the Annihilator turret would be a good additional fix as well.

It would be nice to have the LOS raised on the high standing turrets though, berthas and large guns(annihilator) seem to have some small issues shooting over lower units, vulcans in particular have some LOS issues, even though they likely a hated unit they should work better.

[Kelson]

If you let your opponent get 50 brawlers in a game, you deserve to get your ass kicked,

As you should well know, if you're allies are fending off the enemy - you can EASILY swarm brawlers. I seem to recall you doing that in a number of games The enemy might be pushing back your allies, but it doesn't matter because they're using ground troops which have a huge number of counters. Brawlers pretty much only have 1 - flak. That, in itself, is rather unfortunate.

For the same cost at 50 brawlers, you could make 15 bulldogs. Ask yourself, would they fight even half as well against a prepared enemy as 50 brawlers would? You should know the answer to this as well. There are too many counters to bulldogs for them to be a 1-man army (hell, 50 brawlers would tear 15 bulldogs to shreds - and they're much, much faster)

Mix flak with other kinds of aa its much more effective, the small turrets that the comm builds + flak are surprisingly very effective, even better mix flak with fighters too.

Having tested them seperately, I can say the small turrets do jack damage to brawlers. I can't imagine they would be any more effective with flak around - except as meat shields. And I think that is the fundamental problem, if the brawlers are targetting well and spread out, they rape everything. Keep in mind that the only suitable non-aircraft brawler defense IS flak and it isn't mobile and it is seriously expensive (almost the cost of a bulldog)...

I usually build 3 or 4 flaks around my important stuff and back it up with other aa and it seems to do well, I do this wether or not I know if my opponent has brawlers.

You also tend to have very small bases as you tend to get air units. When we played the 4v4 PD game, your base spread out and, as you admitted, despite your flak - if the brawlers had attacked you...game over for you. Ground units, meanwhile, had a lot of attrition to go through before reaching important stuff. The attritionary damage is almost nothing to brawlers unless they're flying over flaks.

I do agree brawlers need to be nerfed slightly, but not to the scale you have suggested caydr, that seems like a very serious reduction in effectiveness.
Maybe just a speed reduction and slight hp decrease like to 90% maybe I dunno, any other suggestions?

I didn't test 50 brawlers vs 10 flaks before. Caydr tested it WITH the changes - which means even being weakened that much, they still killed an equal resource share of flaks. That was unexpected to me, since I expected that the brawlers would be trashed by 10 flaks - that seems to be everyone's though on this as well, that the more flak the exponentially greater number of brawlers needed. Who gets quite a few more than 10 flak in one area though? It is very easy to get 50 brawlers up - they're useful in a lot of roles - base defense, offense, roving patrols, support. Being that they fly past enemies and/or ground debris they have a LOT of funtionality. Do you know why people don't use the level 1 gunship much after people know they have air? Regular antiair is effective against it. That makes them a specially used unit since they need to avoid that. Brawlers don't care - 20 brawlers will, almost guaranteed, take out any army by themselves because even mobile flak is pretty useless against them (and while I'm willing to believe you'll build 8-10 mobile flaks with your army, BigSteve, I've never seen it actually done - max of 5 so far).

Flaks, imo, should be vastly superior to brawlers. Otherwise, like now, you see spammed brawlers raping flak and then the base. I've spammed avengers before to provide an anti-air brawlers can't touch, but they still destroyed my bases before dying. In the test, I put 20 avengers up against 10 brawlers (avengers had radar, were patrolling in front of the fusions). The _10_ brawlers killed 4 (300 hp left on the 5th) of 6 fusions before dying - despite 2:1 odds. Seems ridiculously effective to me, but what do I know.

Even with 10 flak protecting 3 fusions, 16 brawlers killed a fusion. With 20 brawlers, 6 of the 10 flak died. Granted, we all love our super strong air units. Isn't it enough that they're highly mobile and untouched by 90% of weapons in the game though? Should they really be capable of dishing out so much damage for so long because they're so hard for even DEDICATED antiair to kill. I don't normally build 10 flaks anywhere and 20 brawlers cost far less than that - guess what unit I plan to be spamming now.

[Min3mat]

well avengers shouldn't be a great counter to brawlies coz they are lvl1 and very spammable. but i think the new changes are definately for the better :)

[BigSteve]

Errr did we lose that game when the opposition was spamming brawlers?, err no, Once they have been used once brawlers effectiveness seriously decreases as fighters and aa are produced to counter.
Getting brawlers early leaves you very open to a ground assault, I do agree they need to be nerfed slightly but the I think you are going a little over the top with the problems you say they cause kelson,
And just test the level 1 stuff with flak, you'll be surpised...

I agree they are an extremely versatile unit, maybe a slight cost increase could be inrtoduced?

And yes I did swarm brawlers as my allys were fending off the enemies, and it got us back into a game which was looking grim for our team, but as flak and other aa started goin up I couldnt use my brawlers really effectively...

I still dont understand how you dont acknowledge fighters as a counter for brawlers...fighters soften them up before they hit your flak and its game over for the brawlers, you just gotta patrol around your base, get the brawlers before they near their target...

[Kelson]

Once they have been used once brawlers effectiveness seriously decreases as fighters and aa are produced to counter.

And you think that had anything to do with the avengers (test showed pretty ineffective) or very limited antiair you had? I think you're failing to remember he simply stopped using them - they sat overtop his base raping everything that attacked. It wasn't that he _couldn't_ kill you, it was that he may not have realized it and/or not wanted to do it that way. It had nothing to do with your ability to fend off his brawlers (because that wasn't high enough). He had enough brawlers and fighters to almost kill a bantha pretty much before it got to his base - and he intercepted it pretty close to his base!

And regarding the ground assault, again - team mates can take care of that problem. Furthermore, once you have 4-6 brawlers...just use them as defense the same way you keep insisting people should be building avengers/hawks and lots of flak everywhere to try to make sure brawlers don't rape them - attack the troops well out from your base, if they make it to your base, they'll be so weakened even light defenses will crush them. Seen it done again and again....

Also, I try not to acknowledge fighters as good anti-brawler defense since YOU NEED TO GET FACTORIES to get that defense. Unlike defending against, say, a goliath which has lots of ways to kill - one shouldn't be forced to get fighters just to block one or two types of attacks , getting a structure (Flak) that is only useful against gunships (kills others, but doesn't do it effectively) is also pretty...eh

Now, I don't care which way the balance goes. I saw brawlers as a spectator repeatedly turn the entire way the game was going. Repeatedly. They destroy armies, invade and destroy resources, destroy antiair all the time... the cost to stop 12 brawlers is a lot, lot higher than the cost of 12 brawlers - cost benefit analysis. I plan to get brawlers from now on because they are -that good-. My tests showed them destroying their equivalent in flak resources constantly - which means you'd need to at LEAST double the brawler investment with flaks in order to effectively counter them (assuming you weren't just porcing in your base - many players have a main and expansion which requires two flak'd locations since brawlers can pick and choose which to attack.

And, again, to clarify - I didn't think brawlers were broken and/or too strong before I spectated games in which they were used. The drastic amount they changed those games was pretty ridiculous. I've seen, repeatedly, winning teams with antiair get raped by brawlers. That is the only reason I'm saying all this - I think, if I've got good momentum and I'm careful with placing antiair, I should be able to counter brawlers without losing units - similar to stopping goliaths with the right defenses. I'd argue that ability doesn't exist even now (50 brawlers, again, isn't that many...I've repeatedly attacked with waves of 80 hammers (2/3 the cost of brawlers...works out to be about the same metal investment)).

[Min3mat]

BUT there are oppurtinity costs (isnt econmics great? excuse to argue ^-^)
u go Air then u will lose MC, are weak to attacks and have low buildpower. i mean lvl1 air are freaking crap let alone lvl2. i quite like sneaky usage of brawlers midgame, and with scouts u can simply avoid havy AA and go right for the underbelly of ur opponent ^-^