Spring RTS Engine

It's not logical to keep an unit unmodified that is so op that it has become "cowardous" to use it. Do we want to:
— Give it shorter range
— Make it fire less often
— Make it explode larger so units repairing it die
— Make it explode so violently it leaves no wreck, so it cannot be easily resurrected
— Give it less HP so it can be easier killed?

- triple the costs

remove it from the game

I have no idea how the vulcan in XTA works, but here is an idea.

Give it an accuracy of 750, areaofeffect 250 (maybe larger), damage like 25.

Essentially you give it a new and useful role as saturation, but ensure that it's existence won't immediately negate the existence of opponents.

It already works as an area saturation weapon due to its lack of precision.

I think the whole "race to build the expensive superweapon and win" is bad gameplay.

It shouldn't outrange berthas.


XTA vulcan is

35000 M (taking into account energy->metal conversion)
500000+ buildtime
9800 HP

7800 weapon range
3000+ DPS
6000 E/S to fire
accuracy 1000
has toggleable high trajectory mode

it costs about 5-6x as much as a bertha, has twice the hp, +64% range, 16x the dps (and energy cost).

Force fire it on the middle of the enemy base, and a minute later his concentrated economy (construction units, fusions, mohos) is dead. All without leaving the safety of your own base.

The point here is to make it a saturation artillery weapon. I'm not sure you understand the idea of saturation.

Basically you make overall damage output small, but that small damage affects a large area, so it takes time for it to do it's work, instead of just being an iWin weapon.

In other words, make it balanced and useful at the same time, and give it an appropriate price tag.

But Vulcan and Buzzsaw have been part of XTA since the beginning, we cannot just remove such an integral unit. If we lose such a central unit we lose ourselves.

But Vulcan has been changed a lot since it was introduced TA:CC in 1998, where it was so costly that it was a noobtrap: invest the same metal into units and you kill the opponent before he has completed the unit. Also in TA:CC both vulcan and bertha fire with more accuracy, but while this makes bertha better, it makes the vulcan worse; because if you blind-fire you destroy only one spot over and over again.

Buzzsaw has half the fire rate of vulcan but the fire rate is usually limited by your energy production anyway. Not sure it that's the best solution. Also if we nerf vulcan too much people will just build 10 berthas instead.

Long games can reach a state where no progress is made.
It can be fun to attack with massive waves of T2 tanks,bots or planes but when even those stop working...then what?
It is good to have a weapon that can still make a difference because eventually every game has to come to an end.
Buzzsaw/Vulcan fill that role.
Both are imo not OP in an even game.
While firing they need almost two advanced fusions to feed them with energy and they damage themselfs, too.
Sometimes they do not even get completed.

The only "cowardous" thing is how they get used sometimes:
When a game is already decided and the situation is now uneven.
That has nothing to do with the unit and is more a "problem" of players.
Sometimes people are unable or unhappy to win with an eco&army twice as big as the opponent team: It must be at least ten times as big. Game balance should not be changed based on such matches.

Looking at an ancient computers browsing history is awesome.

Hi, btw :D :D :D

And what the hell am i doing here...

In my experience just go kill your opponent while he builds a Vulcan. If he can do this savely than you had lost anyway.

I have nothing else to say on this topic.

|> Manualize Ammonition supply via a AmmonitionboxUnit that can chain explode (and by bipedal or wheels slow nature cant get fast enough to the gun to to be consumed)

|> Overheat the barrels - which enforces a cooldown (faster if near river, thus lower, thus shielding more terrain by mountain)

|> Make Chainsawbullets hit themselves and travell back to the barell if the collide with something in middair..

|> Introduce Power Surges, which damage power plants.. and chainsaw introduces those..

Why are these noobs posting? they know nothing about the mod yet they post like they had actually something useful to say.

go play BA noobs. shush!

anyways,

Jools, there are two things you can do with the vulcan.

either change the cost and buildtime so it matches such a powerfull weapon
( do take note of the original values of the weapon, about cost and dps to calculate new values ).

or return it back to what it used to be, just a softener, a pressure weapon, i mean it used to do MUCH less damage in xta as first given to us. you needed 2 or 3 to actually do some strong damage.
However when you have one, its a pita to play for your enemy, small buildings like metal extractor die from time to time and it is a burden to build them over again. (im talking to you by experience of being under fire of such a vulcan), same with solars and such.

It was more than anything a psicological weapon, and personally i think it should stay like that ( roll back the changes ).

raaar wrote:it costs about 5-6x as much as a bertha, has twice the hp, +64% range, 16x the dps (and energy cost).

looooooooool

that alone... just FIVE TIMES THE VALUE, yet 16x THE DPS.
noruas was drunk when he changed this.

If the vulcan was once a weak pea gun, that was before my time. I know that in OTA it's very powerful, but it's also very costly and it cant wreck a base since it's too accurate => all shots land in same place, and there is no point destroying a fusion 10 times after it is destroyed. It also had shorter range than bertha.

In the first version of XTA I think both bertha and vulcan had damages nerfed by about 66%, and were made less accurate. But that was really early in XTA I think. I think it would be very drastic to reverse those changes now. At some point vulcan's range was increased beyond the Berthas, I think that's one thing we could maybe reverse, even though it's a big change.

In OTA the Bertha was kind of OP, so XTA did this. Überhack instead introduced shields.

I don't know if changing buildtime helps: people will just use more constructors to help build it. Unless those could be capped somehow.