Spring RTS Engine

Hi there!

I am looking for a mod, that allows for epic games: say a few days, a week, a month or more. High Level structures, big buildings, large maps. TAWP e.g. has at least Level 3 structures and things like a shild generator, that can protect valuable structures.

Is there something out there that provides the basis for a game against AAI (best non-cheating AI atm?) lasting longer than 1-2 hours?

Thanks for your help and suggestions.
Mr L.

Not quite sure. If you play your cards right in any mod you can have quite an "epic" battle.. Cough speedmetal -____-

Maybe gundam or EE, those are fairly fastpaced and use lots of units. Both focus on strategy, the master plan, commandings SQUADS and not single units.

Although hero units in Gundam should be commanded to the best of your microing ability.

Good luck in your choice.

Thanks for your fast reply. I was hoping for a mod, that maybe builds a bit slowlier than usual, no massproduction ftw. I deem it impossible to have a game vs. a non-cheating AI lasting longer than a few hours, even if you give it time to build a lot. Once the first EMP Stunner/Nuclear structure is up it forces me to attack and utterly crush the poor AI. I would like an epic game with a bit more "positioning" and less fastpaced rushing. The AI probably would have to learn or generally be changed for that to accomplish.

A structure so unbreakable that even about 10-15 Goliaths + support could not run through it easily. Normally this amount should suffice for any base raid agaist the AI in late game (up to 2 hrs). Hope it's clearer now what I am looking for.

I have seen a person v person match last six hours due to a stalemate of skill...

*shrugs*

Can't help you much there. I tried, though

this thread reminds me of a map for OTA

it is intended for AI play...the player starts on the south end alone with an easy checkpoint to guard, and ~8 AIs start on the north end in big open field (all allied)

it was a metal map iirc...i'd porc up and let it run overnight to see if the AIs could ever break through.

i bet someone might make that map for you, its kinda fun to porc up against 8 AI's (well...back when i was 11)

NOTA would be my suggestion

no nukes in gundam you have to crush the ai with units, anything powerful has to be microed and the epic com will protect the ai base as long as it has something around it. Gundam has turrets you can build on extremely steep cliffs with a commander that is huge, armed heavily and flying. However, at the moment the project is geared more to play for about 1-2 hours not days. I can see a match for 4-5 because I have played that but at that point you have all of the highest tech stuff so there is no later tech(yet) that you can get. So gundam is probably not what you want.

EE may be better as far as the tech thing goes but it focuses more on forward moving forces and expansion. not very porcy but it does have a lot of units and is pretty nice for longer games with units that really shine at 3-4 hour mark..

maybe simbase can do it for you? it is a project that revolves around porcing someone to death.


However, week long games of spring do not happen due to desync. Also, the ais are not good enough at base building to porc half as well as they need to. You need a map with highly porcy terrain and an ai that understands what to build and how much. You need something that like speedmetal with walls instead of water and NO SPEEDBOOST with LOW metal and wind.

NOTA

NOTA is ur best bet, no lvl3 sheilds though.

if you want games to last forever it nota, you will want to disable game winners like nuke cannons and orbital lasers.

Frankly, I must ask why would want to play a game for a week...I mean...Sleep anyone?

(Ironic I should bring that up, as I am right now undergoing training in Not Sleeping for profit and pleasure)

But, yeah, EE is great on bigger maps. If you really want a crazy go nuts epic game, play EE Epic on a big map. Now THAT is crazy!

Final Frontier. I hear that takes an hour to get a harrassment force up.

THAT is cold.

Although, I'd have to say EE.

Wow, now that's some useful evaluation, thank you all guys for your kind replies. :)

I will have a look at all your suggestions and report back in a few weeks. The reason why I am looking for epic games is that it has different aspects of strategy than rushing and basebusting within a few hours. Of course I would rely on SAVE/LOAD features, no epic game is feasible without it. Thanks for reminding me that Spring cannot load a game yet, I thought the latest version 75b2 would have this basic feature implemented by now, but I misread the changelog of 75b1 on a quick browse. Can the "resync" as you call it be done in the future or is it too complicated/timeconsuming to code into?

Surely the units of basic spring aren't really suitable for epic games and the AIs, as mentioned in my first post, probably aren't either (they could learn though?). In Spring after 30minutes vs. any AI I have 50-100 Adv. AirCon units up building my stuff pretty fast. Thus I am looking for Level 3..4..5..10-structures, that take quite some time to be build.

What I also would like to see are large maps, where the AI would actually fight for metal spots (strategic points on the map) that could well be responsible for the outcome of the match - instead Fusions and Moho Metal Makers allow you to stay in your base and expand slowly. Creeping forward can be nice, but being forced to fight spots can also be. And not just 10 equally looking metal spots, but also terrain that'll give you a favourable position. I haven't found maps providing for this kind of strategy at all. One of my favourites because there are so few is (though small) Island Paradise: has 4 spots of geothermal vents plus metal and an adequate amount of hills, metal spots in the corners and good space to attack and defend.

And could you guys do me a favour and explain to me: metal map and porc? You mean a metal map has lots of metal spots opposed to others where metal is rare? And to porc means to build stationary units to defend a spot?

Have a nice sunny day!



edit: I read the description of NOTAv1.31 and it sounds really good. I have a thing for good descriptions though.

Spring can save and load but its AIs cannot (the AI API doesn't handle it properly).

I think what you'd need would be some kind of special play-forever mod and I don't think there's enough demand to justify making it. You might want to look into games like Sim City, The Settlers and Anno 1701, those are more for long-term play.

Metalmap means a map that's entirely composed of metal (i.e. you can build a mex almost anywhere and make huge clusters of them), porc means playing entirely defensive.

Linebacker wrote:
And could you guys do me a favour and explain to me: metal map and porc? You mean a metal map has lots of metal spots opposed to others where metal is rare? And to porc means to build stationary units to defend a spot?

metal map means a map that is all metal - everywhere is a big ass metal spot

and yes porc means that

[XIII]Roxas wrote:THAT is cold.

Although, I'd have to say EE.

EE is fast paced..

NOTA on the 7 islands map if your best bet for an all day game, though no AI plays it properly. to be honest, you could have a 12 hour game of anything in a FFA on 7 islands though

No AI you say?

I was about to ask how to get rid of this error:
AAI 0.761 running mod NOTA131.sd7
Mod config file AI\AAI\cfg\mod\NOTA131.cfg not found

AAI lacks hub support so it wont work with NOT anyway even if you got a working NOT config file.