Battlezone 2.5

[Zamu]

I understand the concerns behind changing up the scrap costs. I think I should change the terms I'm using, as my vernacular may be a little confusing. I'm trying to fight the dampened effectiveness of expensive units due to their costly nature (they're hiding behind expensive building requirements too!), and scrap hang times. When I say slow, I am mostly talking about the extensive hangtime at the beginning of the game that requires you to wait around for scrap (less than 2 extractors), and the crippling effects that hangtime can have if you get knocked off your feet. The expensiveness of everything means it can be pretty hard to recover mid to late game if you lose too many extractors, and managing them becomes more of a chore than I'm comfortable with. Both in terms of gameplay and metagame flexibility.

Shadow Knight, going through your list:
- Scrap capacity dramatically increased. More chance to fight back if the opponent holds most of the map
Already done. Scrap limit is currently 100.

- Buildings more expensive, but have a lot more health. It shouldn't be feasible to kill a building alone. Also gives repair trucks more of a use because buildings aren't getting one-shot
I think buildings will be fairly middle of the road as far as cost goes. I don't want to make them useless, but I am doing everything I can to keep from influencing the player to turtle. The mod may end up having very few static buildings, but buffing up the recycler health is pretty much guaranteed.

- Units are cheaper overall. Makes it more feasible to attack the opponent without tower crawling for efficiency
Already done, being balanced at the moment. Going to model some hoverscavs and make the shift to a pool-free style of play. 100% agree with your reasoning, and its cause for spamming cheap units.

- Ammo capacity on units increased. Goes hand in hand with tougher buildings and more units on the battlefield
Went the other direction with this actually, see below.

- All weapons tweaked. Tending towards the more destructive side of things with a total overhaul of a couple choice weapons (MAG for example). More weapons were to be added as well to add more specialisation towards specific armor types
Being done now. Starting with base weapons. I'm then going to evaluate each weapon's role on the battlefield, and examine where I can inject some creative new weapons into the game.
Ammo variables have been cut in half. They started out doubled, but the increase in ammo capacity combined with the low TTK(high damage) makes you a living god. The lower TTK also means that the ammo spent killing something is a lot less, so I may be looking at numbers instead of thinking: 'Old gun with 600 bullets kills 1.5 things, new gun with 250 bullets kills 3'.

- Defensive buildings and units significantly more dangerous. In vanilla BZ2 turrets and guardians are almost entirely unused except by the AI (which doesn't have to pay for them). This was also going to alter gun towers and spires to be more expensive but many times more powerful than in vanilla
Already done for the deployable defenses. Ratts/Gaurds are beast, but still capable of being taken down. Really good early game defense. As of right now, I'm feeling killing buildings should be an achievable task by normal vehicles, but the task would be better suited for a vehicle designed to kill buildings. This is to both encourage mixed unit tactics, and to provide a way to break through a really strong line of defense. I guess that is my way of saying bombers are coming back.

- Pilots have more health and are equipped with weapons on par with regular vehicle weapons (although on the lower end of the power scale). Whose stupid idea was it that infantry are equipped with weapons that struggle to kill other pilots in a world where it's extremely likely that they'll be fighting tanks? They shouldn't be strong enough to do serious damage to a vehicle, but certainly they should be strong enough to not be negligible
Not sure how I feel about this, though I think it's mostly my personal preference. (But, I messed around with the APC today. Not going to lie, the thing is pretty damn useless.)

Before I can start making serious mechanics and balance changes, I need to get two things done: Bring all vanilla assets to the new starting point for balance, and remove pools from normal gameplay. Once I do that, Phase 2 of development can begin. Enjoying your feedback so far. Thanks!

[Ded10c]

There is a hoverscav model already used in 1.3. I think it may be one of the Greenheart or Commando variants somewhere.

[Red Spot]

No offense but it seems you dont want a 'BZ 2.5' but a MPI-recy variant, which is cool but is far from a wellbalanced game that can properly be played in every gamemode.

[General BlackDragon]

Yes, it is.

[Zamu]

far from a wellbalanced game that can properly be played in every gamemode.

I have fairly big plans for this mod, but am staying focused on completing the foundations and working my way up from there. The mod is going to be built around PVP multiplayer balance, which will transfer to IA with the proper coding and usage of the AIP. This mod will slowly grow into something completely distinguished from the base game. It will use its own maps, its own art assets, new sounds, new races, etc. However, I have not brought these things up for discussion because I am not yet at that stage of development. Until I have a working prototype of my game mechanics structure, all larger future plans are fairly irrelevant.


This update is slightly belated because of the issues I had after the creation of my hoverscav model. It was having trouble loading properly on other people's computers. Anyway, here is the untextured model:


The design is what you might expect: The BZ2 scavenger design mixed with elements of the NSDF scavenger from BZ1. General Blackdragon has told me that it looks similar to the one currently in 1.3. I don't find that surprising, but as stated above I would like to use as many of my own assets as possible. With that said, GBD and I both agree that the design is fairly uninspired, so this model may not end up being in the mod once a replacement is completed.

Other things are developing nicely as well. Balance and scrap cost are still being worked on. They will be touched upon in a later update.


P.S. I played EPIC with GBD. It's really impressive. I'll definitely be playing more of it during my downtime

[DarkCobra262]

far from a wellbalanced game that can properly be played in every gamemode.

I have fairly big plans for this mod, but am staying focused on completing the foundations and working my way up from there. The mod is going to be built around PVP multiplayer balance, which will transfer to IA with the proper coding and usage of the AIP. This mod will slowly grow into something completely distinguished from the base game. It will use its own maps, its own art assets, new sounds, new races, etc. However, I have not brought these things up for discussion because I am not yet at that stage of development. Until I have a working prototype of my game mechanics structure, all larger future plans are fairly irrelevant.


This update is slightly belated because of the issues I had after the creation of my hoverscav model. It was having trouble loading properly on other people's computers. Anyway, here is the untextured model:


The design is what you might expect: The BZ2 scavenger design mixed with elements of the NSDF scavenger from BZ1. General Blackdragon has told me that it looks similar to the one currently in 1.3. I don't find that surprising, but as stated above I would like to use as many of my own assets as possible. With that said, GBD and I both agree that the design is fairly uninspired, so this model may not end up being in the mod once a replacement is completed.

Other things are developing nicely as well. Balance and scrap cost are still being worked on. They will be touched upon in a later update.


P.S. I played EPIC with GBD. It's really impressive. I'll definitely be playing more of it during my downtime

Glad he found someone new to teach, he knows what he's doing so listen to him! But otherwise, interesting model, I'm not really all that great of modeller and definitely unreliable to finish a single thing (as GBD sure knows).. but yeah, good luck, I'll be watching the progress!

[MrTwosheds]

Figure out how to do (normals) smoothing before proceeding much further with making your models or you will find yourself re-making them all over again fairly soon.

[blue banana]

If I may add my input on this:

I have wanted something like this for years. Although I am content with how BZ2 is right now, I know it can be much more better. BZ1 and BZ2 are FPS/RTS games- I feel the FPS element is perfected, however the RTS side is rather cruddy. Classic strategy games (Starcraft, Civilization, etc.) have many, many ways to play. However, in BZ2 (and especially in BZ1) I see that those who play offensively usually win the games, and those who play defensively usually lose. In short: make gun towers stronger, give turrets a reason to be built, give buildings more health, and so on. I see that some of this is already completed, but theres more.

When I played, a huge part of multiplayer gameplay was that "initial dogfight". If you win the fight between the starting units, you are given a huge advantage. I believe a huge reason for this is reaching pools and scrap further away, which is why I think the necessity for pools should be toned down a bit. Scavengers should be able to collect scrap faster, whether scavenging or deployed on a pool, and expenses should be balanced. Right now it really isnt, a scout costing 50 and a tank costing 55.

As with new and modified weapons- get the Thumper back. It is an amazing weapon and fun to use. I dont know if it is possible, but it should be since BZ2 terrain files are similar to BZ1 .trn files. You should also refine the MAG, it lost that punch it once had. Switching the Pop Gun over to the ISDF is a good idea too, or just simply giving both races it. The Laser seems backwards also, I think having the rapid-fire version on unmorphed (ISDF too) vehicles and having the higher damage/slower fire rate on morphed ships (ISDF assault).

Some things I would like to see are these:

• When a player is in the command bunker, all players can see their position, exactly like BZ1. Sure, they may be a pilot, but they are also exposed.
• Lives. I may be over my head with BZ1, but giving players another thing to watch out for (themselves) just adds to the fun.
• Pilots!! In BZ1, you had a finite amount of pilots (ships you can build) and had to build a barracks to build more ships. I say we add something similar, but not the same, to BZ2. Pilots would basically be another "scrap" bar, where they start out with 10 or so, and every 30 seconds or so, they get another. The training center could be built to double or triple the speed of pilot regeneration.

If you guys need help, I can probably do something.

EDIT: A good title for this could be Battlezone 2: 15th Anniversary Mod. I presume the game was released 15 years ago, although it probably is a big title to live up to.

[General BlackDragon]

Thumper has been in 1.3 since PB4a.

[MrTwosheds]

Lives. I may be over my head with BZ1, but giving players another thing to watch out for (themselves) just adds to the fun.

You can limit the number of lives...but its not very useful in multi-play as it applies to all players rather than any specific individual, Eg: the game ends after one player dies 7 times and/or if 7 players die once each.
It can be fun in a 1vs1 as long as you like very short games where the first dogfight really does win the game.
The problem with lives and limited pilots, is what does the game do with a player who has no body? or a joiner when there are no lives left, It was much simpler in bz1 where every player was their own team and dead meant that you had lost.

[Red Spot]

Its pointless to argue about the wishes of the modder 2Sheds. I've already pointed out his design has some (serious) flaws.
As it is there is a small group of players that activelly play 'online' and those that actually tend to play the competitive games wont go for this as it favors the turtle/basebuilder (in the words of the 'vets'; go play the sims if you want to build).

Each his/her own, I just hope Zamu realises what he actually wants to achieve.

[MrTwosheds]

Well I think he should make what he wants to, but he just needs to figure out what he can do and what he cannot. Bz2 isn't Bz1 and does not work the same way, the lives thing would probably require considerable recoding of the game or at least a very complicated set of new dll's.
I do think he should spend some time playing strat The various types of game in Bz2 (1vs1, 2vs2, 3vs3, 5vs5, FFA, Mpi & instant) are all played with very different tactics and styles. A mod may work very well in MPI and 1vs1 but be a total disaster in all the other modes.

You will find very few strat players who think the defensive units are underpowered, quite the opposite.

[General BlackDragon]

Ya'll keep forgetting the Lives thing has already been created in bz2

[blue banana]

It is supportive and productive to give Zamu ideas about his mod, since we may give him ideas he never thought of. Of course, if he doesn't want ideas coming in he can always say so.

[Red Spot]

You will find very few strat players who think the defensive units are underpowered, quite the opposite.

Thats exactly why I said what I said. Most games seem to think the same, as most games want to prevent stalemate situations where you simply cant break a defense with your (lacking) offense.
But imo its best Zamu finds this out for himself if he doesnt want to accept us telling him so. It would be easy to experience by simply playing ST with the GH-recy, or something else with all the extra units/buildings.