Spring RTS Engine

Hi everybody,

Today begins a new mod, since Balanced Annihilation has become stagnant.
As Balanced Annihilation did with Absolute Annihilation few years ago, I dont want to change everything in BA for this new project.
I just want to make a better balance, keeping BA gameplay for the first step.

Then I will begin to bring some good XTA, SA and CA ideas, keeping a solid gameplay trying to not fuck up the good things in BA's balance.
I think that all good players agree that BA has many OP moves and units.
Since BA was created, many people worked on interesting projects like Complete Annihilation, XTA, Supreme Annihilation. (The projects I know well.)

Actually Complete Annihilation is a most interesting project, with some amazing gameplay ideas.
Supreme annihilation has some good balance ideas.
XTA is very interesting for microing few units and for the way you can use you're commander. (Whereas in BA if its allowed you self-d your com
to have metal in big games and gameplay is more about SPAM more than the opponents.)

BA has had nothing new in many years, people only try to maintain it, changes in finesse.

BUT 80% players still play BA and many players play BA ONLY.
Why?

Because in BA you don't have to wait for hours to start a game, gameplay is solid and simple, with tons of moves; before you get 100, 200 hours ingame, sometimes more (sometimes never) you have many moves to try before finding the OP moves.

But when you find OP moves, the game become boring, or at least less interesting.
IMO all good players admit that :

T2 is impossible to get in 99% PRO games.
COMBOMB is OP.
T2 air is OP.
WATER versus GROUND is kinda fucked.

Its only few examples but i think we will easily agree on more OP moves.

I dont want to make a new SA (one man's project). I dont want a new CA (too many people can decide and modify the game). I dont want a new XTA (kitch as hell and so slow etc..)

I want a new BA.

The new BA would be 80% old BA and 20% new ideas.
I only want to balance BA better and maybe if we have enough devs improve graphics, and bring some ideas from others mod if mods
owners allow it.

This new project is called Pro Annihilation atm (you can give suggestion for a name too..), and i think many people may follow me as I want to bring nubs and the pro community into this mod.

By improving lategame for big porcy 8vs8 (new ba has to be good for nubs community too).
By improving early games and small games.
By bringing more possibility in free for all games.

I wouldn't decide alone for the new changes to make, but I don't want an overly democratic project either.
Only 1 or 2 leaders and 4-7 people will help balance choices, and with the first version we wouldn't have too many changes. (And i don't want to spam new versions.)

I made this topic as many ideas and modification projects are discussed here.

ALSO I'd like to admin on this topic and be able to erase damn trolly answer. Is it possible?


FIRST QUESTION : who wants to help me with this project?
Atm i think many players would help me but i may needs some devs to do some changes, maybe its time to start changing models..

FIRST STEP : trying to agree on all OP moves, and trying to find best way to balance them.

SECOND STEP : think about best ideas CA XTA and SA have, then grab them into BA gameplay without screwing it, for example :
- morph commander to make it usefull when you reached T2 level
- mobile shields
- fix balance for war between air/water and ground/water should needs some new building or units to be really good, we should watch SA and CA for suggestions.

PLZ keep this topic clean dont send useless comments, i dont want to waste my time and energy for nothing.

You wanted a serious post here goes, enjoy.

triton wrote:FIRST QUESTION : who wants to help me with this project?

What do you have beyond about a page and a half of ides? What do you bring to the table beyond some awesome idea that we have over 9000 of? What makes your project so special that it requires the further sapping of resources in this community? Why not just make suggestions to ba, there is already a team, who knows maybe they will recruit you.

Of course we can always use another flavor of TA, it isn't like there are not 5 ta based projects still being worked on. After all it isn't bland or fucking rediculous that we have so many people who want to make thier own balanced version over I don't know working together instead of wasting a bunch of fucking time.

triton wrote:FIRST STEP : trying to agree on all OP moves, and trying to find best way to balance them.

This isn't chess, there aren't any OP MOVEs. Maybe some imbalances but shit, why not make some balance sugg....oh wait I already said that.

triton wrote:SECOND STEP : think about best ideas CA XTA and SA

why not help those projects instead of yet another exercise in ego flexing?

triton wrote:needs some new building or units to be really good, we should watch SA and CA for suggestions.

Or maybe you should help thm

Please keep it clean, smoth -- Moderation

he just wants to discuss about making good mod by combining existing mods ideas... nothing to do with "ego flexing". since he cant change the existing mods, the only way to do something is to make own mod. so, here we are...

be cool.

yes he can it is really easy, it is called make a fucking mutator. Oh wait..

I wont argue for hours i have better things to do but :
- I think its time to change ba faster than ba's owners do
- I am a very good BA player
- Me and the guy who help me are best 8vs8, ffa and 1vs1 players so we know what we are talking about.
- I know many autohost owners and i think they will like my new BA balance, so i have a chance.
- It's not about ego, my ego is boosted when i fuck girls and when they say : I love u after (or during) act.
- I am just trying to change ba since too long, since it wasnt on forum u never saw this...

Nothing wrong with writing a fork. A mutator for BA is trivial to make, if the ideas are good then I'm sure you can get it merged into BA.

As to the balance stuff, random opinion (since that's all I have time to contribute to a *A, besides Pylon Wars atm):

T2 is impossible to get in 99% PRO games.

Yeah, because T1 static defenses suck for cost, so you pretty much can't hold T1 rushes off and establish the equilibrium needed to get to T2- it's down to rush play every time 1v1, unless the map is huge. This isn't exactly new news, and every time I bring it up, people shush me, even though that is the obvious solution. Allowing some porc to work, like it did in OTA, isn't necessarily bad. The whole, "static D-Fenz just backs up mobile stuff" was, and is, an idiotic fantasy. For the cost of a LLT and some DTs, I can buy several things that can both defend about as well and raid...

COMBOMB is OP.

Duh. Lots of fixes possible, these were discussed, then largely ignored.

T2 air is OP.

No, the real problem is that it's too fast to T1 air. Maybe costs are off a bit, but it's mainly a problem of timing, not power. A small change in the time it takes to go Air would create a very different sequence of play at the high end.

WATER versus GROUND is kinda fucked.

Well, yeah. Water should behave a lot differently than it does. This isn't new news. Steal ideas from NOTA, people who play it love the Sea balance.


Basically, this is all stuff that's not new news... so, actually fix it, and then maybe if it's really an improvement people will want it merged back into BA... and voila, you're playing a better game.

Mind if I ask what is your BA playing nick Argh?

triton wrote: - I think its time to change ba faster than ba's owners do

this won't last long lol

triton wrote: - I am a very good BA player

mkay.

triton wrote: - Me and the guy who help me are best 8vs8, ffa and 1vs1 players so we know what we are talking about.

you think you do, sure.

triton wrote: - I know many autohost owners and i think they will like my new BA balance, so i have a chance.

So you are making a mutator? What are you doing?

triton wrote: - It's not about ego, my ego is boosted when i fuck girls and when they say : I love u after (or during) act.

What are you 12? Here is a bro-tip. Even ugly people have babies, that means that even UGLY PEOPLE GET LAID.. that means getting laid is easy.

triton wrote: - I am just trying to change ba since too long, since it wasnt on forum u never saw this...

So because they won't see your wisdom, you start your own mod.. i have not seen this before.

Make it as a mutator, seriously. If people like your changes then there is a good chance that they'll make it into BA proper (and if your changes aren't 100% sucky, I might actually play it - I haven't played *A since AA 1.47, so you have a lot to live up to).

triton wrote: - I am just trying to change ba since too long, since it wasnt on forum u never saw this...

then you should just, you know, DO IT. anyone can fiddle the stats of a TA mod: ffs Gota maintains SA, and he can barely put a coherent sentence together. And if you are just pinching Lua stuff from CA thats all trivial to adapt. Rebalancing is text monkeying, if you need help with that then you have bigger issues than internet tanks and planes.

as for commbombing, JUST BUILD SOME AA FFS.

seriously, forb and argh are speaking the truth random noob idea guy.

Maybe it will be integrated into BA but when these changes have been discussed in the past the answer has been not that they are necessarily bad changes, but that they are "beyond the scope of BA".

And theres pretty much no question whether Triton is better as a player than the BA devs.

I have met tons of good players who cannot do what I do better. A better player does not a dev make.

again, he wants a mod to ba he should make a mutator not an entirely separate project.

I support this effort.
Good Luck.
A mutator might be a good idea.

smoth wrote:I have met tons of good players who cannot do what I do better. A better player does not a dev make.

again, he wants a mod to ba he should make a mutator not an entirely separate project.

I am not a dev ok, but i know balance problem better than many devs so i just needs help to change some things.

Why cant i make an entirly separate project? Dont u see that ba stopped being really improved since years??? I want to lead this project to make changes happens and listen to the guy i like i dont want to be bothered by people i think they wouldnt help, also i dont expect much help from that forum, i just wanted to make that project official.

I am not a dev ok, but i know balance problem better than many devs so i just needs help to change some things.

Well, you're just changing some text files, unless you get serious about the combomb stuff, which isn't so trivial.

You can open the unit / weapon files with notepad, though, and pretty much for what you want to do... just erase everything but the /units and /weapons folder, open up modinfo.fbi and change the name, add a dependency line that requires BA, and voila, you have a mutator to test balance ideas with.

And in terms of separate project... by all means, go right ahead. It's just that most of what you're talking about as "major changes" involve no new code, and just some minor changes to a few numbers here and there. From a pro player's perspective, that's all hot stuff. But it's not like you're going to make new models, or sounds, etc., you don't have those skills and nobody wants to do that kind of work for a self-proclaimed "balance guy", because that's just not interesting. No offense meant- you may be the best balancer ever. But that isn't game design.

try to add some unit like mobile deflector or other to ba else dev some code, can be difficult.

and, argh when you have a face like that; go hidding that horrible !!

triton wrote: Dont u see that ba stopped being really improved since years???

Umm no, ba was updated not that long ago. For someone who knows so much...





as far as what xeriot is describing.

not really, that sort of work is elementary. Argh isn't exaggerating.

shouldnt this be in the BA forum?

xeriot wrote:try to add some unit like mobile deflector or other to ba else dev some code, can be difficult.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Difficult? Yeah. No. Gtfo.

Oh and btw, you can add new units in mutators. In fact, you can do pretty much everything you want in a mutator. Fact: Every version of AA WAS a mutator.