Spring RTS Engine

Some people think I'm too negative so here's a list of all the things I like about Spring. :)

The multiplayer client is clean and simple to use. There's no silly win/loss or ranking system that you have to worry about. In Phoenix Worx, GBL and Boneyards you used to see people avoiding playing the pros, and hunting newbies to get better ranks. It was such a contrived system. Here you simply have a rough guide to tell you if someone has a decent amount of experience and no stupid e-penis stats to brag about. If you're a good player then your peers and the demo watching public will know - having some token symbol by your nick is pointless.

The configurable settings in the battleroom (and in game) give you alot of control over where each player is started on the map, and who's on what team. Gets rid of alot of the confusion you get in TA.

Maps are downloadable through the client (from lightening fast severs). In TA very few third party maps got any play. Which meant the same 10 Cavedog maps got played day in day out. Every now and then a new map might get popular and you'd get this really fresh period where the pros worked out the best techniques before it all got stale again. With Spring this is constantly happening instead of in rare occasions as was with TA.

Mods are accessible through the client and are played by plenty of people. UH saw a tiny bit of multiplayer play at one stage but other than that nobody every played TA mods online. This is a real improvement.

Now, onto the actual game. I've been playing Absolute Annihilation (I'll have to have more time with XTA before I know what the hell I'm doing).

The missle towers are gone but LLT's and HLT's have been nicely upgraded to compensate. The balance is pretty good though. They don't have TOO much armour.

The new artillery units (both lv1 and lv2) are a godsend. Now that the HLT's are so punchy a few of them at a choke point (with lots of wreckage) make it horribly difficult to get through with lv1 tanks. But the artillery means that everybody still has to keep a good balance of offense/defence rather than just porcing. And you don't have to spend 1500 metal on a Punisher/Guardian every time you want to grab a bit of territory on a heavily defended front line.

Assisted building with construction units is so much smoother than TA. Getting con vehs to guard a factory is a breeze, they don't get in the way, you don't have to wall them in with Solars and DT's. And assist building rows of fusions and MMM's works wonderfully. In TA the assisting construction units would stand on the construction sites of everything you were trying to build. Now they're actually aware they're in the way and move. Genius! You can tell 10 construction vehicles to guard construction of a Big Bertha and not be bombarded with 50 million "Construction Vehicle Can't Get There!" messages. For that I am truly grateful.

Advancement up the tech tree is smoother (if you build a con veh lab, you can go straight to advanced kbots). Your Commander can build air defence. And crucially the advanced tanks and kbots are actually worth building now.

Having things like lv1 amphibious tanks and lv1 gunships gives you alot more tactical options at the early game stage. I'm not sure how effective these units are yet but they're certainly interesting.

I'd have more but I haven't been playing very long. I'm off for a game to rectify that situation.

You're not trying to beat my record of having started more threads and written more posts than anyone on this forum are you?

On a lighter note:

*AF hands over Molloy a special 60's cookie for positive attitude, it oozes with psychadelic rythm*

I used to be a bit compulsive about the TAUniverse UBB. Ran out of things to discuss in the end.

I don't think you have anything to worry about. I just don't have the endurance. Just look at that. I'm barely in the top 20 anymore.

3800 posts in the last 6 years at TAU compared to my 3590 here in around 10 months.....

Well, about 2500 of those were over a 10 month period. Still, that's some impressive spamming. My hat goes off to you Sir.

AF wrote:3800 posts in the last 6 years at TAU compared to my 3590 here in around 10 months.....

Rest assured, you have no posting equal.

Wonderful post malloy. Good to see you getting a bit more experience with the game.

As far as the balance of aa goes, you came at a good time. Up until 1.43 core had been getting the shaft like crazy.

A lot more people influence Caydr's balancing act than just caydr himself. Myself and decimator (to name a small portion of the people that actually communicate with caydr on a regular basis) are among that goup, however caydr of course makes all the final decisions and makes it happen and does a damn fine job of it too.

There are a few more balance issues left, but none of them are major, mainly just pains in the ass, but nothing that is all that important to gameplay.

Caydr, has a very specific vision of how he wants AA to be. Myself and deci and others try to take that into account when we suggest balance changes. AA is most definately not OTA, however, it is my belief that aa has risen above what ota ever was. In aa every unit has a purpose, and trying out new strats won't immediately lose the game for you. IT is not a mod of clicking faster, it is a mod of tactics and cunning as well as brute force and offers the most fun gameplay of any rts ever (IMO).

Anyway, good stuff. Please remember to be polite (I have to remind myself and be reminded at times hehehe) to the others in tas and on this board. We have come a long way and I believe the community is slowly mending itself to become a knit group. Slowly, but surely imo.

AA balance will be shifting for a while. there are always people who have a diffrent view.

And indeed, things like build guarding goes smoother then OTA. Things like drag, box dragging, spacing are really things that makes it easyer for you. Drawling lines and marks on the map is wonderfull.

Actually the only thing I wish it was better is the planes. They are too earth-bound as Noize once nicely said. They have problems with steep mountains: They crash against it or through it. If an unit is on the edge and in range of the plane, they fire against the mountain and damaging theirselfs.

Oh well, Spring has come a long way since it first released. And great things are comming.

Ofcourse, the best thing by far is: YOU can contribute. If you don't like it: change it, and see what others think about it. If you don't like a model, recreate it. If you don't like the units can't shoot through eachother, well, take an year time and alter the code. If you don't like the balance, ultimatly: make you're own mod.

This has a downside however. This comes to our attention lately and we are upset by it. New people. In the good and bad way of it. It's nice that more people play it. more people are interest in it. heck, you arn't even surprised there are 100 players on a workday evening. Remember we were happy with 60+ on saturday? Someone (I think it was Alantai) once happily said: 'I see new people every day'. Heck, he ment me with that as well.
Lately some people are annoyed by the newcomers. They are comming so fast, we can't teach them how things go around here. They bring in their own habbits, own point of views, own ways of dealing with eachother. the 'STFU noob'-style of chat isn't rare anymore. That was diffrently some while ago, where we patiently explaind the game to newcomers.

An example was just today (I won't go in detail). Someone in the lobbie was mocking over stuff he wanted to see diffrently in Spring. When Betalord entred, he didn't know who he was. Fairly quickly someone mentioned it to him. So he turned his conversation towards him, who repleyed patiently. However, the newcomer didn't had a strain of respect in his voice. He wasn't very appreciative toward him. Someone corrected him with the old style humour of Spring: 'O hail Betalord'. I could just smile as result. The diffrence between the veteran and the newcomer.

No wonder people gets angry at some newbies. They don't feel involved at all. It's like they are playing Counter-Strike. Just to win, just to pwn. And ofcourse they fail at it. No way you can entrer and win. TA is a very complex game (I tend to look towards it like GO:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(board_game)).

Some newcomers don't respect the rest of the player at all. They leave without saying anything mid game, they spam the lobbie, just talk rubbish, or some other get-noize-over-here sort of behavior.
Some tend to see it as 'an other game', they players as: 'a bunch of basterds'.

Moderators arn't here to mute and kick, they are asked as result of our* desperate actions to manage the growing community. Which is based on old OTA players, who loved TA for years and feel united with eachother.

The same thing goes for the forum. Remember Forboding Angel and the community threat? See other posts where poeple call for good order and decent way of discussion. There is a diffrence between the old cummunity humour (Das Bruce being the extremest example) and aiming to hurt someones feelings to get your way.

To long of a post, this is become. And has become total off topic. Well, it might tribute to a solution.
If anyone feel insulted in any way: It isn't my intention. Just a rant of my point of view to this problem.

*difine our? that's tricky, but you'll understand me.