Spring RTS Engine

Egarwaen wrote:Agreed. Vehicles kinda get screwed once L3 rolls out. With Air, at least you have options that can go toe-to-toe with them. Sure, vehicles can, cost-for-cost, but don't most L3 units have significantly better mobility?

The Advanced Fusion seems a poor trade-off. Does anyone ever build those?

What? Adv. Kbots can't make Advanced Fusions? What do adv. air plants get?

Pxtl wrote:What? Adv. Kbots can't make Advanced Fusions? What do adv. air plants get?

Advanced Construction KBots can build Experimental Gantries.
Advanced Construction Vehicles can build Advanced Fusion Reactors.
Advanced Construction Aircraft can build Seaplane Platforms.

Seaplane Platforms and Experimental Gantries both get you units that are a step up from what you've already got.

Advanced Fusions do seem to have an economic advantage, but can you really make them and capitalize on them fast enough to make a difference when your opponent's gone L2 Kbots and is heading for L3?

Egarwaen wrote:

Pxtl wrote:What? Adv. Kbots can't make Advanced Fusions? What do adv. air plants get?

Advanced Fusions do seem to have an economic advantage, but can you really make them and capitalize on them fast enough to make a difference when your opponent's gone L2 Kbots and is heading for L3?

Idunno, a buzzsaw? If vehicles are gonna get special buildings, I'd put more than just one - for example, if BLODs, RFLRPCs and LR-SAMs required L2 vehicles, you'd see a real debate over whether to go kbot or tank.

Welllll.... dunno about the BLoDs, but the other two might be doable.

Kargeneths look pretty stupid climbing hills, I agree, but Core needs an all-terrain mech if Arm gets one. If someone has a better solution, by all means tell me and it could very well get done.

I'll think about this L3-through-vehicle thing a bit, maybe work something out.

Hover Commanders (as a mutator) will be included in the release that has the anti-air kbots. How many people here plan on playing it?

Caydr wrote:Welllll.... dunno about the BLoDs, but the other two might be doable.

I'm not sure that'd be enough. Mercs/Screamers might be an incentive, but I think you'd just see more flak spam and more L2 air. How many games really last long enough for Vulcans/Buzzsaws to be trotted out? I've seen them exactly twice.

On a lot of maps, it really isn't a problem. If there's lots of flat ground, you can fight of L3 with L2 vehicles. (Penetrators/Demolishers or Goliaths seem to work wonders) If there isn't a lot of flat ground, you need KBots anyway. It's just kind of odd that KBots open up this massive jump in power, while vehicles only give you a more efficient fusion that blows up like a nuke.

Hover Commanders (as a mutator) will be included in the release that has the anti-air kbots. How many people here plan on playing it?

I'd give it a try. I think it'd work well on maps like Center Rock.

Please don't take the ability to build Mercuries/Screamers from Kbots :s

And if you decide to give vehacles the ability to build L3 gantries, please please please dont strip it from kbots :s

What about a lvl3 Vehicle plant?

There has to be some super heavy tanks worthy of being in such a group, add in some Mechslayers, the Campbell, some nice ATV tanks, or maybe a tank that uses some of the Naval type cannons?

2 or 3 new LVL3 class tanks would be good enough for an extended Vehicle lab, you can put the Mobile nukes and the Mobile LRPC's into this factory as well and strip those fromt he Kbot3 labs.

^well, that seems like a bit of a task..


IMO the best soluton would be to add soem sort of new defencve structure only vehicles can build, like a BLoD mkII, somthing that could realy give mechs a run for their money. Prehaps some colour other than blue though...

hmm, the above three posts sound an awful lot NOT like avoiding superfluous and redundant units.

FireCrack wrote:IMO the best soluton would be to add soem sort of new defencve structure only vehicles can build, like a BLoD mkII, somthing that could realy give mechs a run for their money. Prehaps some colour other than blue though...

Pink!

Hm... Something like:

Experimental Kbot Gantry:
Krogoth/Orcone
Krogtaar/Bantha
Karganeth/Razorback
Shiva/Marauder
Catapult/

Experimental Vehicle Gantry:
SomeSortOfKickAssTankOfTehRageAndBoom/Mobile Tacnuke
MLRPC/MLRPC

Mmm.. I dunno. It'd be only 5 minutes of work to do, but the volume of pissed off emails from people who only build kbots and think I removed MLRPCs and Mobile Tacnukes sorta outweigh the benefits (are there any?).

Three New Issues:

How do you guys think Shiva/Marauder stand up? I don't have much chance to play, but the few games I have worked in this last week haven't had either of these units in play at any time. Myself, I think Marauders are great. Very armish. Fast, strong guns, moderate HP. Maybe costs are too high to be worth it or something, I haven't taken a close look. I admit, Shiva isn't anything really spectacular, but it does amphibious assaults nicely. Marauder is Maverick's big brother, Shiva is sort of a cross between a Goliath and a Diplomat, both of these being among Core's strongest attack units.

Speaking of Diplomats... With the improvements made to artillery units, I can see Diplomats, Merls, and *possibly* Dominators being left in the dust. I'm considering a decent HP boost to Dips and Merls, maybe about 30%, to make them more of a specialized unit made for dealing with plasma guns and other long ranged heavy weapons. Maybe give them a very high crushstrength and a really high HP (2x of current?) with a speed reduction, so they can survive while under fire for good amount of time. Maybe make them capable of *barely* surving a direct BLoD hit? I see this as a way of making vehicles more appealing.

Mobile Tacnuke launcher doesn't sit very well with me in its current form. Even assuming that EMP was fixed and could be set to do, say, 30 seconds of paralyzing damage, I'd rather they more closely resembled the Catapult. Maybe they could be set to have a 10-second reload heavy v-launch rocket. Range similar to Catapult, medium-small AoE (like 384 or so, kinda like nuke bombers), and no weapon stockpiling, no weapon costs. The rocket would be highly precise, so it'd be a good base-buster. The question is, what countermeasures could there be? Does it really matter? After all, Catapults have no clear and defined countermeasure. Planes would do the trick, as with all slow-moving units.

I had a game today where I tried using the new cruise missiles and was really disappointed with them. I think that they'd be great set back to the way they were until the longer stun time can be implemented, since they don't seem to be very effective now. I had a mixed force of fatboys and peewees, and by the time my troops made it to the enemy's fortifications they were already powering up again. If you won't change them back to doing regular damage, maybe you could increase their blast radius to try and counter their low stun time.

As far as the mobile tac nuke launchers go, I think that you should keep these as they are. The long missile build time and the fact that the vehicles are so incredibly fragile helps to balance them in my opinion, and I think it helps to distinguish them from the catapult. To counter them, just throw a bunch of aircraft at them or any relatively fast unit... they move so slowly that you can see them coming from a mile off, giving players plenty of time to prepare. If you do manage to take out your opponent's mobile tac nuke, s/he's lost a ton of time invested in building the missiles and moving the tac nuke plodding towards your base!

I've used the Shiva or Maurader (the underwater one!) once or twice in the last week, and remember them as being effective but having glitchy pathfinding in the water. I think that's more a problem with Spring than anything else, though. The mechs also seemed to be kind of weak for their cost, but I guess they make up for it by being amphibious.

As an aside, defenses in AA seem to be getting pretty strong. I'm not saying that I think they're overpowered or in need of nerfing, but I think they could be if they're buffed any further.

Yeah, been waiting for that one, too. Much fun in store

I love the shiva and marauder, though the shivas really too slow underwater, maybe its torso should stay above water and have a little engine on its back or something like a pelican.

I don't think a lvl3 vehicle factory would be any good with just artillery units.
Maybe if the mobile tachion and the banisher got a boost vs lvl3 they could be in there, or without the lvl 3 they could just get a boost vs lvl3 anyway , for a bunch of extra metal or somethin.

maybe you could model the shiva/marauder as a kind of 'advanced gimp/pelican' - you could give the shiva a low RoF advanced torp launcher which fires out of its missile racks while underwater, and make the marauder travel along the surface with say a low RoF flak gun or something.
You'd probably have to increase their costs a little to do that, but it would make the units slightly more unique as well as following on from the previous tech.

About commanders...

can't the dgun and blast, range and damage be like XTA..? Commbombing isn't really much of a issue there..

Now the submarines are deeper in the water (why?) it looks quite silly when they are being built..

Soulless1 wrote:maybe you could model the shiva/marauder as a kind of 'advanced gimp/pelican' - you could give the shiva a low RoF advanced torp launcher which fires out of its missile racks while underwater, and make the marauder travel along the surface with say a low RoF flak gun or something.
You'd probably have to increase their costs a little to do that, but it would make the units slightly more unique as well as following on from the previous tech.

I think that's a good point. For Core, three amphib assault units are all just big heavy tanks (the Croc, the Poison Arrow, and the Shiva). They're all just like various resizings of the Goliath - the only thing different is that the Shiva is a kbot and has secondary missiles.

I think the vehicle tech 3 could be a good idea, although vehicles aren't screwed as soon as tech 3 pops up a while few gollys/lightning tanks make a good dent, they are at a slight disadvantage.
Id say if you did introduce the lev 3 vehicle plant it should be more expensive than the kbot lev 3 lab and have a smaller selection of units to build i.e 2 or 3 and no atv vehicles,
Atv is the one of the main reasons I tend to go kbots, I prefer the manauvarability and speed as a pose to the heavier armour and fire power afforded by vehicles.
Atv vehicles would negate that advantage.

I like the idea about the merls and dips caydr, although I wouldnt make the arm launcher too powerful as maybe core should be left as the side with the big base/defence busting specialists ie Tremor/arty?

One other thought I had was to restore the core cruise missile to an explosive one while keeping the arm as emp, this for me would run nicely with the theme of each race, arms finesse / Core's Brute force
It would be a nice little variation I feel.
Obviously youd have to keep the core range down if they aren't interceptable so they have to be built on the front lines as a pose to deep within a base so they can actually be taken out.

Anyway thx for 1.46 it rocks as always ^^