Battlezone Forums

The 'Vet Strat Recycler Variant' is a development created with the aid of the 1.3 strat community. It seeks to address the following issues:

• Make commanders jobs easier, by allowing certain things (like pods and empties) to build more quickly. Certain things are cheaper or more effective.
• Allow for a greater amount of strategic and tactical choices, many weapons that are rarely ever used now have some tweaks made to them to allow for more varied gameplay.
• Improve ISDF and Scion Balance, all tweaks are done tastefully, try out lancer and multilock/wasp and tell me how it floats your boat.

To Install this Variant

Delete any existing "VSR Variant" or "VSR Dev" folders from your addon folder (if they are present)

Download: http://zeroangel.overminddl1.com/testin ... -Beta2.zip

Extract this file into your addon folder and you should now be able to select the recycler variant in multiplayer.


Changes to VSR Beta 2 include:

- All changes from VSR Beta 1, in addition...

GLOBAL CHANGES:

- Armories now drop all modified weapons in addition to them being moddable onto ships
- Turrets (built by commander) will pack up in 0.8 seconds instead of 3 seconds.
- Empty scouts (modded) will cost 30 scrap instead of 35, time to build increased by 2 seconds
- Full Scouts (unmodded) will now costs 40
- Experimental scav settings applied to try and fix scavengers getting stuck in buildings

ISDF

- Tag, leader round speed increased, easier to use.
- Tag damage to L (ie: tank) armor increased by 20%, damage to H (ie: building, assault unit) armor increased by 50%.
- ISDF Mortars (all types), now cost 25 scrap to build from the armory
- Mortar, visual/fx tweaks by MrTwoSheds
- Pulse Stab, no longer damages unit that's firing it
- Prox mine rate of fire increased by 25%
- Comet Cruise, damage, health and speed increased, armor upgraded from N to H. Ammo consumption reduced by 30%

SCION

- Scion missiles, tech requirements lowered
- Lancer (modded) cost lowered to 60
- Lancer (morphed) now turns and strafes faster
- Stingers, are faster and do more damage vs heavy armor.
- Swarm Launcher, now avoids hitting terrain
- Sonic wave no longer launches heavy units, but can still push them reasonably well.
- Acid Cloud DPS halved, lifespan doubled, armor class upgraded to H. Acid clouds will no longer destroy other acid cloud munitions, allowing for damage stacking. AI Units can now attack the acid cloud munition. The acid cloud ordnance now has shot variance so acid clouds fired at the same target will spread out. Ammo cost reduced.

These are the types of balance type fixes sorely missing from 1.3 proper. I am glad you are taking the time to do what no one else who complained about the balance would do. I hope these changes make it into 1.3. The entire point of rec variants is to allow for testing changes and the deprecation those pesky simple tech tree replacement mods like Battlestrat. This is an excellent case of the former where so far every other rec has been of the ladder.

Don't allow this variant selection in MPI even though it was designed for strat. The AI bomber prioritizes closeness, and will target the acid cloud dropped in the middle of the base. The double longevity would give the bomber more time to target. I once destroyed the enemy recycler with their own bomber using splinters.

Other than that, yes very good balancing.

pretty much all of it is in G66, though

Zax wrote:Don't allow this variant selection in MPI even though it was designed for strat. The AI bomber prioritizes closeness, and will target the acid cloud dropped in the middle of the base. The double longevity would give the bomber more time to target. I once destroyed the enemy recycler with their own bomber using splinters.

Other than that, yes very good balancing.

Easily fixable if someone could provide me the name of the ODF setting to have the AIP ignore given object.

What's this AI Rights? so it bombs itself if you use acid cloud, so what. Lol!
I like playing it in mpi, so will others.
Its not an aip issue really, you can either set the mine so that no AI units shoot it or all of em do.
There are tweaks for individual units, to enable or disable mine shooting, maybe the bomber should not bomb mines.

MrTwosheds wrote:What's this AI Rights? so it bombs itself if you use acid cloud, so what. Lol!
I like playing it in mpi, so will others.
Its not an aip issue really, you can either set the mine so that no AI units shoot it or all of em do.
There are tweaks for individual units, to enable or disable mine shooting, maybe the bomber should not bomb mines.

That is what you should do, but I think mines are considered buildings which is why the bomber paints them. You would want bombers to ignore mines and splinters anyway, which would fix that issue entirely.

You can't just disable AI shooting of the acid cloud, they would be a cheap way to just rain absolute death on the enemy then.

I think it should be a strat only variant, then you wouldn't have to balance it for AIPs at all.

I don't see how balance against the AI is a big enough issue to stop everyone trying it out in MPI, the AI isn't actually going to complain about it is it? Mpi is a laugh, the insane rec variant has fountain, you can blow the whole base up in one drive-by, having it bomb itself occasionally just adds to the comedy.

Zax wrote:I think it should be a strat only variant, then you wouldn't have to balance it for AIPs at all.

I thought there was a way to prevent any given unit/building from being targeted by an AIP. Bomber attacks are controlled by AIPs, and while the engine considers mines to be buildings, and buildings to be attackable. It appears an oversight for mines to be targeted for bomber attacks, and most certainly a bug. The workaround to the bug is to simply put something into the ODF that says 'AIPs do not attack this plz', it would be a simple fix.

I don't get why something has to be made 'strat only' when it certainly adds a lot of things that can be beneficial in MPI games as well. Making useless weapons and units useful seems like something that would be beneficial to MPI players too, as would 3-second pods, faster empties, etc. It would be a lot truer to the core and spirit of the game than double sp sabres, 35 scrap modded empty tanks and things like 'light rocket tanks'.

Zero Angel wrote:

Zax wrote:I think it should be a strat only variant, then you wouldn't have to balance it for AIPs at all.

I thought there was a way to prevent any given unit/building from being targeted by an AIP. Bomber attacks are controlled by AIPs, and while the engine considers mines to be buildings, and buildings to be attackable. It appears an oversight for mines to be targeted for bomber attacks, and most certainly a bug. The workaround to the bug is to simply put something into the ODF that says 'AIPs do not attack this plz', it would be a simple fix.

I don't get why something has to be made 'strat only' when it certainly adds a lot of things that can be beneficial in MPI games as well. Making useless weapons and units useful seems like something that would be beneficial to MPI players too, as would 3-second pods, faster empties, etc. It would be a lot truer to the core and spirit of the game than double sp sabres, 35 scrap modded empty tanks and things like 'light rocket tanks'.

One could argue dual SP sabres are more in the spirit of the battlezone lineage

I poured through the change logs and couldnt find anything that said that there was a way to have a given object get ignored by the AIPs. Thats strange, I thought I seen something about that but I guess I'm wrong.

Bomber are only partially controlled by the aip, you can tell them what to attack, but if you don't they just do their own thing.
You could try putting
NonWingmanProcessAttackMines = false into the bomber odf. I have no idea if it will work on that unit though.

I distinctly recall a flag to tell something to be ignored by the AIP. Just not what the flag is.

Link is dead.
Please reup?

This is an old version. The current version will be available at bz2maps.us.