Spring RTS Engine

Hi

i put my first version of my "mod" rebalanced on fileuniverso for free testing. PLEASE BEFORE flaming try it out and test it more than one time and try to disconnect from the "I build only this unit untill i win" thought - u will lose against one who is more flexible and knows for which unit which is good for.
Here the readme:

"Balancechanges for Version 0.91

- Vulcan and Buzzsaw shoot a bit faster and have a slightly higher accuracy (10%)
- Cans are a bit slower (from 1.3 to 1.2)
- fixed Bug that Reapers couldnt shoot
- Goliaths a bit more Damage and HP

2 Klasses of Armor:

heavy Armor: (to counter with Flamers and Lighnings - double Damage)

CORREAP=
ARMBULL=
CORSUMO=
CORCAN=

super heavy Armor: (to counter with Annihilators [stationary, mobile], Snipers, Doomsdayweapons and Canlasers - triple Damage)

CORGOL=
CORKROG=

normal: (normal Damage)

all other units


most wrecks of mobile Units have been changed to heaps. So you can attack easier in big masses


Mobile Units:

- Commanders much more HP
- Krogoth and Goliath less HP (much) (still the best units if you have no counter)
- Goliath less Damage
- Bulldog and Reaper more Damage
- Panther more HP
- mobile Fusionreactor (Arm) more HP (nearly doubled)
- a lot of Units higher Damage
- Artillery and Rockets higher Range (longer than all defensive Structures)
- Range of Annihilator and Doomsday reduced
- Damage of Annihilator and Doomsday reduced against Airunits
- Doomsday and Annihilatordamage changed
- Maverick more HP and Damage, but more expensive
- Sniper, Raven some more HP
- Raven a bit more accurate now
- Sumo range reduced, damage increased
- Canlaser has a different color now to show, that its an extraweapon against super heavy armor
- Speed of some Units changed (for example Zeus faster a bit)
- Lvl 1 Missilevehicles more Damage, HP and Burstmode (more expensive too)
- increased LOS for some Units
- Prices of most Units changed (most time not more than 10%-20%)
- buildtime changed a bit for changed units

Air:

- most Units more HP (to compensate higher damage of groundunits)
- transports much more HP and higher costs
- brawler a bit less damage

Stationary Units:

- LLT stronger (Range, Damage and HP increased)
- most Units more HP
- defensive Structures more HP and most more Damage
- Lvl 2 Konstructionbuildings higher workertime (from 200 to 300)
- CorGant higher workertime (from 400 to 500)
- some Prices changed (for example most Turrets are more expensive now)
- Nukebuildings (offensive ones) doubled Prices and Buildtime
- Range for Doomsday and Annihilator reduced

some changes semms to be senseless. For example 4 Mavericks win against a Goliath or so, but you need to know, that in XTA its impossible for nonballistic weapons to shoot over other Units and so, less strong Units are everytime better than a lot of weak Units. Test it in big Numbers (100 Units or more) and you will see that i m right

Goal of this "mod" is to put A LOT more tactic to the game. With the stronger Defensetowers its not so easy to attack a well defended base, but with the higher range of Artillery and Rockets you can force your enemy to come out of his base. And with the different Armorclasses unitspamming of only one or two types should be killed. Another fine tactic are Airtransports who are much stronger now..."

to find at http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=1649

Well, you probably fixed the kroggie issue... but you also removed core's mid game viability... Goli don't have a chance now. Belive it or not, remove the krogoth and the XTA goli is acctually really balanced for it's price and build time. Expecially before fusions. Maby speed up reapers or something because your core has no penetrator beam counter, and the only core unit that uses penetrator beams is the kroggie.

please test it before flaming -.-. I testet it with a friend and Gols are still very good. Believe it or not.
If there are more ppl saying that gols are to weak AFTER testing them, i will change em, but not before some testgames.

Edit: you didnt get the point: I want to FORCE players to build more than one unittype. Penetrators you can counter with Sumos, Reapers, Artillery or Aircrafts.

Kinda good...

Slashers are a bit overpowerd for being level 1 unit... i mean, 3 of em can almost kill flashes and stuff on one hit.

Can's are to fast, or pyros are to slow. Pyros suposed to be fast attack, and can's are almost as fast as em!

Reaper don't fire.

Good job on goliaths HP, but have you thougt of it's cost effiancy vs reapers? I don't know, the new changes may make the goliath obsolete.

Krogoths are still awesome and pricewhorthy. (means that they should stay that way.)

Where is the changes on flak?

You went a litthe overboard with the commander. You must be able to kill it with level 1 units. It's slim to imposibole right now.

You dubbled price of nuke building without adding more damage???

can't think of anymore at the moment,

some changes semms to be senseless. For example 4 Mavericks win against a Goliath or so, but you need to know, that in XTA its impossible for nonballistic weapons to shoot over other Units and so, less strong Units are everytime better than a lot of weak Units. Test it in big Numbers (100 Units or more) and you will see that i m right Wink

Ehh? The problem with that qwation is that most maps are open enought to support a large front. Meaning that strong stuff like goliaths are only good in chokes, where they can act as massive unit blockers. Problem is, that they are stuck between the enemy and to have to clumsly turn around while artillery is bombing the crap out of em.

Oh, and i have'nt played it online yet... or tested arm

Goli aren't "very good" in XTA, you expect me to belive you severly nerfed them and they are still viable? why the hell did you double the price of nukes? They were already exorbitantly expensive to the point where they were nearly a suicidal risk to build (considering how useless they are if your opponent has antinuke, which build really fast already), and they cost INSANE ammounts of energy too keep active.

Also, testing once with your buddies doesn't quantify a balanced build. I didn't really even start understanding XTA balance until I had practically mastered the game. You don't really understand the balance of a game unless you've played it a million times to the point where you know intuitively "hey, I don't think I'll build any goli because they are a compleatly useless unit now" simply from seeing them in action hundreds of times before.

Kixxe: slashers also cost more then they did before. I don't nessicarly see that as a bad thing... In XTA you need to push up L2 tech to access the mid teir combat units (piros, cans, warriors and zues), makeing decent intermediary units could probably add another dynamic to the game...

Kixxe wrote:Kinda good...

Slashers are a bit overpowerd for being level 1 unit... i mean, 3 of em can almost kill flashes and stuff on one hit.

Can's are to fast, or pyros are to slow. Pyros suposed to be fast attack, and can's are almost as fast as em!

Reaper don't fire.

Good job on goliaths HP, but have you thougt of it's cost effiancy vs reapers? I don't know, the new changes may make the goliath obsolete.

Krogoths are still awesome and pricewhorthy. (means that they should stay that way.)

Where is the changes on flak?

You went a litthe overboard with the commander. You must be able to kill it with level 1 units. It's slim to imposibole right now.

You dubbled price of nuke building without adding more damage???

can't think of anymore at the moment,

some changes semms to be senseless. For example 4 Mavericks win against a Goliath or so, but you need to know, that in XTA its impossible for nonballistic weapons to shoot over other Units and so, less strong Units are everytime better than a lot of weak Units. Test it in big Numbers (100 Units or more) and you will see that i m right Wink

Ehh? The problem with that qwation is that most maps are open enought to support a large front. Meaning that strong stuff like goliaths are only good in chokes, where they can act as massive unit blockers. Problem is, that they are stuck between the enemy and to have to clumsly turn around while artillery is bombing the crap out of em.

Oh, and i have'nt played it online yet... or tested arm

- hm Reapers dont fire? o.O wtf! I ll try to fix that!

- hm Cans have Speed 1.3 and Pyros 2.0. isnt that slow/fast enough?

- I ll doubled the price of Nukebuilding because I think they produce nukes very fast and if you have this building before your Opponent has an antinukebuilding, the game is over. I just want to make them possible in the later game. Nukes cost the same as in XTA.

- I ll make a look on Gols vs Reap but know that Gols are Super Heavy Armor and Reapers Heavy, so if you only build Reapers and your opponent builds Counterunits Gols would be the better choice cause they need different Counterunits.

- to the Commander Changes: no I think they are Ok now cause you simply can kill a Commander with taking his energy out. My mainthoughts to these Changes were, that it shall be not so easy, to rush the commander in his base (and destroy his whole Buildings) in some seconds when you dont have all the time an eye on the commander or with Brawlers.

- SwiftSpear i play all the time Core in the Internet and I ll build Gols in 2 of 3 games (in the rest i tech to krogs) and i win nearly all the time with them. Perhaps you dont know how to use them or my opponents are all Noobs. But ill check it out again.
(I compared the values of reaper and Gols and I must see that Gols are really a bit too weak now. I ll change that)
And I dont doubled the price of Nukes. Only the Buildingprice is doubled. Like if the Kroggrantprice would be doubled, that wouldnt unbalance the Krogoths.
I know that testing with my buddy isnt all a balanced game need, so i put this file online

- I will make Vulks and Buzzs a bit more usefull for next Version.

Edit:
K new Version is online - http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=1649
but how can i delete my old Version? o.O

Balancechanges for Version 0.91:

- Vulcan and Buzzsaw shoot a bit faster and have a slightly higher accuracy (10%)
- Cans are a bit slower (from 1.3 to 1.2)
- fixed Bug that Reapers couldnt shoot
- Goliaths a bit more Damage and HP

you need 2000+ energy to build nukes. And the building is has a TON of buildtime already.

Antinukes are _much_ cheaper, and dont bug down economy once they are build (compared to nukes needing a big fusion for themselves (i.e. another 10k metal))

Sure, IF the enemy builds a fusion (or 5 geos) and scouts your exact position and you build close enough to be wasted,before you get an anitnuke, the game is over. But if that wasnt possible, nukes would be pointless.

Building them (and the energy support) robs the economy of enough ressources for an air swarm or a decent ground attack force, so its not like a nuke is a win-win deal.

yes thats true, but I think its more fun and interesting, to win with Units and not with building a Nukethrower and than u need no more tactic just sit in ur base and build DT in masses.
I know that thats over the top, but a nukegame shall be only one of the last options. Perhaps if more ppl think so, I put them to their normal costs even if i hate Nukegames -.-

Im fine with nukes being exspensive... if they just did some fucking damage!

You can't stop anything with nukes. Hell, i've seen fusion plants that where 2 goliaths from ground zero survive.
They are slow and won't even kill the important thingeys you want to kill. Like krogoths. Even if you lower Krogoths health you need atleast 5 (right now 10 nukes those nothing)nukes to kill the krogoth. There is a reson for mobile antinukes. So you can protect from nukes.

Nuclear wepons are fucking nukes. You know, destroy a whole town in 2 minutes and speard radioactive materia for generations to come?

Optimus Prime wrote:yes thats true, but I think its more fun and interesting, to win with Units and not with building a Nukethrower and than u need no more tactic just sit in ur base and build DT in masses.
I know that thats over the top, but a nukegame shall be only one of the last options. Perhaps if more ppl think so, I put them to their normal costs even if i hate Nukegames -.-

Nuke game can't work as a last option, Antinuke outproduce nukes in speed, build in a fraction of the time already in XTA, and require a fraction of the economy to maintain at full production. To use nukes as a "last option" you already need to be outproducing your opponents economy by such an embarrasing ammount that you could have easily rolled them over with any unit ages ago. Winning a game by outproducing your opponents antinuke is an utter humiliation tactic.

If you are aiming at a balanced game you can't just double the expense of an assault force while leaving the direct counter just as affordible as ever. By making the nuke expensive and keeping the antinuke cheap you basicly just made them both useless. Only someone seriously mentally lacking would try beating an opponent in the nuke race with such an exorbidantly over expensive nuclear silo.

If you plan on destroying the functionality of more units why not just save the trouble and remove them all together instead, at least that way new players who haven't looked at the build specifications won't accidentally screw themselfs over by building things that look cool and powerful but are acctually compleatly useless.

Kixxe wrote:...Nuclear wepons are fucking nukes. You know, destroy a whole town in 2 minutes and speard radioactive materia for generations to come?

Technically, thermonuclear bombs (H-Bombs) have practically no residual radiation, but they still do make a really big boom and SHOULD flatten bases when they hit.

why completely useless? I changed nothing on nukes! Only the building is more expensive.
It costs 10k metal and a Fusisonreactor costs 12k. I dont see where you speak of exorbitant costs.
You all flame of a thing that is used very rare and if you build 5 Silos, which are very much and normaly no one has enough antinukes to defend them you only spend 25k metal more than in XTA. Thats less than a Krogoth and you can destroy the base of your enemy easyly from your base.
And Nukes are powerfull, but TA is in the far future and the armor of the Vehicles is stronger than a normal tank on earth, so dont mess them with the Nukes of the 2nd world war.

simple fact: you NEED at least 2 nukes fired on every target to kill stuff.
A direct hit wont kill most defenses, wont kill fusions, will marginally hurt ground assault forces....
I can count the number of nuke attacks that were successful in the last 20 games i played one one finger.
That was because i just _forgot_ to build a anitnuke, because usually nobody bothers building this useless stuff. And the one nuke hit, did kill some stuff but my fusion (singular) still survived. So i threw all my construction units behind a antinuke, and build it (and the first antimissile) before the enemy had the next nuke ready. It was close, but still fast enough.

Optimus Prime wrote:why completely useless? I changed nothing on nukes! Only the building is more expensive.
It costs 10k metal and a Fusisonreactor costs 12k. I dont see where you speak of exorbitant costs.
You all flame of a thing that is used very rare and if you build 5 Silos, which are very much and normaly no one has enough antinukes to defend them you only spend 25k metal more than in XTA. Thats less than a Krogoth and you can destroy the base of your enemy easyly from your base.
And Nukes are powerfull, but TA is in the far future and the armor of the Vehicles is stronger than a normal tank on earth, so dont mess them with the Nukes of the 2nd world war.

Because you changed something from reasonably high risk and marginal rushability to extreamly high risk with basicly no rushability. Players don't rush fusion reactors because they are too expensive, now you can't realisticly even hope to push out a nuke silo before antinuke is up. I don't know if you realize this, but how much metal and buildtime a unit or structure takes massively modifies when it becomes realisticly available in the game.

Either way, in the last 20 games I'ves seen players get nukes in I've seen the nukes do 10000 metal worth of damage maby 3 times. Most people counter the nuke right after the first one hits, or have had the antinuke up already for a while.

I'm not saying I don't agree that it's lame to lose to nukes in the early game, but what I am saying is that you can't just double values and expect the game to come out balanced on the other end. You really can't just manipulate variables to make something compleatly useless in a balance mod because you don't like it. Useless units/structures are the mark of a bad game. Either remove it or make it work the way you want it to. A nuke silo at double the price is useless on a playing feild with XTA balance or anything similar.

I think the reason why its so rare that players lose against nukes is that a nukewin isnt fun and destroys a lot of hard work, so no one even tries to build some. But I played some games with someone who know how to use them and I lost quiete fast.
Sure if u fire your first Nuke if its ready, thats not really clever cause one single shot doesnt destroy much, but if u wait untill you have 4 or 5 nukes, you can destroy a lot stuff. And know that if the nukes hit their targets, its nearly all the time the mainbase, i mean fusions, mohometalmaker and so on while normal Attacks at first need to destroy the DTs.
And to speak about balancing, in OTA I think a Nuklearsilo costs more than 10k metal too and its not stronger than in XTA and it isnt useless. You only see so few of them because a lot of people think its lame and they want to see cool fights with Units.

But ok i ll look that i change something. Perhaps making Antinukebuildings more expensive or Nukes stronger. Dont know yet, any suggestions?

Optimus Prime wrote:I think the reason why its so rare that players lose against nukes is that a nukewin isnt fun and destroys a lot of hard work, so no one even tries to build some. But I played some games with someone who know how to use them and I lost quiete fast.
Sure if u fire your first Nuke if its ready, thats not really clever cause one single shot doesnt destroy much, but if u wait untill you have 4 or 5 nukes, you can destroy a lot stuff. And know that if the nukes hit their targets, its nearly all the time the mainbase, i mean fusions, mohometalmaker and so on while normal Attacks at first need to destroy the DTs.
And to speak about balancing, in OTA I think a Nuklearsilo costs more than 10k metal too and its not stronger than in XTA and it isnt useless. You only see so few of them because a lot of people think its lame and they want to see cool fights with Units.

But ok i ll look that i change something. Perhaps making Antinukebuildings more expensive or Nukes stronger. Dont know yet, any suggestions?

Simple. Make nukes freking awesome(strong), and reduce the cost of the nuke building. Antinukes should build at the speed of 1/3 normal nukes, since at that rate they will have troulbe to build enoug't anti aginst a SERIUS nuker.

OR make nukes faster and more damage, so they can take out unit instead of bases!

Also, mind you, OTA nukes did damage. They killed everything. Pepole said WOW when a closed popup could ALMOST survive a direct hit from nukes. They where feared.

AND there is other ways to win a "cheap" victory. Berthas, lot's of em. Or Brawler swarms. These reqwire no skill to use em, are absolutley DEVISTATING if used right, and have no "anti" wepon agsint em.

Optimus Prime wrote:I think the reason why its so rare that players lose against nukes is that a nukewin isnt fun and destroys a lot of hard work, so no one even tries to build some. But I played some games with someone who know how to use them and I lost quiete fast.
Sure if u fire your first Nuke if its ready, thats not really clever cause one single shot doesnt destroy much, but if u wait untill you have 4 or 5 nukes, you can destroy a lot stuff. And know that if the nukes hit their targets, its nearly all the time the mainbase, i mean fusions, mohometalmaker and so on while normal Attacks at first need to destroy the DTs.
And to speak about balancing, in OTA I think a Nuklearsilo costs more than 10k metal too and its not stronger than in XTA and it isnt useless. You only see so few of them because a lot of people think its lame and they want to see cool fights with Units.

But ok i ll look that i change something. Perhaps making Antinukebuildings more expensive or Nukes stronger. Dont know yet, any suggestions?

Either or is a fine option. The current nuke cost pushes them WAY later into the game then you would normally see them in XTA, thus either the antinuke needs to be less attractive until later, or the off chance that your nuke acctually does pay off it needs to be absolutly devistating.

For a nuke with twice the destructive effect, I might grab a silo just in case I can manage to take out my opponents nuke silo and then fry his fusions at the first oppertunity, but it just costs too much for the current powered nuke until pretty much after the krogoth massing stage.

You could also explore changing the nuclear advantage between arm and core... give arm silos much smaller energy requirements and core nukes more damage, or any range of possible variables to tweaks, like explosion radius, explosion damage, projectile movement speed (faster moving nukes could be much more effective against mobile forces), or even rate of missile production

IMO a nuke should kill almost everything in one shot, except the commander, krogoth, and those pop-up units in their "bunkered" form.

Just for the sake of it: i had once a doomsday on one of the islands in shoretoshore, and forgot to build an antinuke on it, so the enemy just sank the island (awsome tactic. btw, because its a valuable first line of defense, so it being 20feet under water was quite annoying.)

That closed doomsday, without any repairs, survived 9(!) hits on the island without going into red. in the end, it was about 1/3rd under water, but still half the health...

Thats whenever i go nukes i dont even try attacking before i have 4 silos ready. If i only have 1 up, even if the enemy forgot he can build antinuke before i can offset my ressource spending into the silo.
A shot with a single nuke silo is just giving away your advantage, and reminding your opponent to order more antinukes/stockpile more missiles/ect.

I tested the following and i fired in a line of bulldogs and nearly all died directly (they have nearly 8k HPs and are the strongest Armunit):

Damage doubled from 2900 to 5800
increasec buildtime of nuke from 60 to 80
increasec buildtime for antinuke from 20 to 30
decreased area of effect from 1000 to 900

and as i guess it will be too strong. -.-
Is there a way, to modify a Nukes area of effect so that only in the middle of the area it does full damage and than only the half and at the edges only 10% or so. I tried the edgeeffectiveness, but that doesnt really help.