Battlezone 2.5

[MrTwosheds]

Intelligence is a players most powerful weapon, AI's need big guns to equal things up.

[Nielk1]

...if he doesnt want to accept us telling him so...

I wonder if you really understand what the rest of us are saying and not just implying a meaning that agrees with what you are saying despite what we are saying being nearly entirely, if not entirely, unrelated in thought or tact.

[Zamu]

There seems to be some serious miscommunication going on.

I think people may have interpreted Blue Banana's post as my own? There also seems to be a poster maliciously attacking my intelligence... for words I didn't say?

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...
...deployable defenses. Ratts/Gaurds are beast, but still capable of being taken down.

^^^Deployable defenses are designed to keep players from rushing and winning at the 7 minute mark. Mid and High tier units that are specialized in the destruction of defenses destroy them with ease.
Gun turrets are slightly cheaper, but more easily destroyed. Repeating what I said above: I am doing everything I can to keep from influencing the player to turtle. This mod is designed to expand on unit strategy and map control strategy to create a deeper metagame. If you want to sit around and build a base, be my guest, but you will lose 100% of the time.


I want your feeback. If you want to say something like "Scrap changes may effect the game in a way you dont expect", or "That model could be better" or "Watch out the engine limitations may prevent you from doing X", I want to hear that. An open dialogue with the community will make this mod the best it can be. I am experienced in mod development and am mature enough to look at problems and ambitions objectively. You're not going to hurt my feelings if you say something isn't right.

However. If you want to make baseless, overarching claims about my intelligence concerning changes that have not and will not be made (and have not even been mentioned), then consider not posting, because you will be disregarded. My feelings will not be hurt, and you will ultimately be wasting other poster's time.


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Weapon balancing is almost complete. I have been using the editor to simulate battles, which has been helpful in fine tuning the way each weapon works. It has also helped me diagnose the roles of each unit, and how to counterbalance them with new units and changes. I feel that Scion is in need of some variety.
Will update more as things develop. A playable alpha may not be too far away.

[Nielk1]

Yep, exactly, you want our feedback and are not ignoring it like Redspot implied.

You might find this intersting if you didn't already know.
The starting turrets are extra-slow because they were being used to rush the enemy base.


Mobile defenses in general present a dangerous situation where you can inch your force a bit at a time, deploying the defense ahead of another, but within it's range, thus walking the semi-mobile emplacements toward the enemy base. This is basicly a turtle attack, similar in practice to a serviced assault. The interesting thing to note is that stock turrets are no longer effective for rushing after the first early steps of the game, and even trying to walk them to the enemy base as I described would result in the enemy easy destroying them with their either fixed defensive structures or minor attacks.

Here are some things I learned from MRVP:

• The Scrapper/Scrappy Recycler which replaced the Scavanger with a hover collector that had to drop off its load, a silo structure that could be built anywhere and served as a possible dropoff point, and a Pool Driller unit that would convert a scrap pool into a loose scrap "fountain" that could be upgraded to accelerate production speed, was the first and simplest recycler in MRVP. Use of this Recycler resulted in nauseatingly slow early game and ridiculously fast late game. The scrap generation speed was slow early on even for the basic units, but in the end, with 10 hover scavs taking loose off the scrap fountains that had just prior been far too slow, you could have a force of 50 assault tanks quite quickly. The ability to build storage was also a factor in these limits, as income did not suppose scrap hold.
• The Fat Boy Recycler which replaced scavengers with a limited count mobile scrap breeder unit (that could also pick up loose) and gave a pool deployable service bay that gave ammo at full rate but hull at a greatly diminished rate, had far harder to understand effects. It was entirely lost on the players that the scrap breeders were meant to be babysat in some way, else they enter the field and get destroyed and possibly take their scrap hold with them (they were basically mobile extractors) and instead this was considered a bug, not even a design flaw. It was barely noticed that in this case the "extractors" produced scrap simultaneously rather than 1 at a time, given the frustration of watching them, and even while the game ran faster due to this it felt slower. The usefulness of the service pylons (deployed on pools) was never understood, as they allowed one to use a pool as a choke point with turrets or units using high ammo use weapons but were only used rarely. All in all, that test showed that mobile extractors that need to be watched were a major pain rather than a new factor (though, some contributing factor may have been missed, or some adjustment that could make it palatable or even fun).
• The Self Defending Extractors Recycler, or SDE Rec, was arguably the worst of the bunch (oh just wait till the next one), but not for the expected reasons. The normal extractor was given a single point defense laser, and the upgraded extractor was given a point defense laser per each of its 4 sides (so that at most 2 could fire on 1 target at once). As a result, units that would normally just pass by the extractor were pulled into combat with it, destroying it in most cases. It was in fact quite surprising how often AI units, under AI or Human command pass by an enemy extractor.
• Finally (for this post at least), the Silo Recycler, that made the rec's two scrap silos independently destroyable as well as attaching silos to the tops of scavengers was the worst in testing. This was probably because it was never balanced to have reasonable hull values on the given new silos. The destroyable recycler silos allowed a simple rush to cripple a team if they could be destroyed with no constructor or scrap income to replace them. Additionally, as the silos on the extractors supplied 75% of their hold, it was easy to eliminate them while leaving the enemy having the pool capped and the remaining 5 storage. This meant that the player could not just recap the pools but was forced to either destroy his own extractor to recap it, or labor to get a constructor on the scene to re-add the silo.

MRVP was designed to make localized major changes to evaluate how the gameplay changed to later apply those lessons in new race design, however, the lessons might be useful for you as well.

[Red Spot]

...if he doesnt want to accept us telling him so...

I wonder if you really understand what the rest of us are saying and not just implying a meaning that agrees with what you are saying despite what we are saying being nearly entirely, if not entirely, unrelated in thought or tact.

If you're so good at knowing everything as you so like to show everywhere, why is that you cant read a comment in context even when it has something quoted in that reply? Perhaps you dont understand .. drop the perhaps though.
Btw, you're really the last that should talk about tact!

[Zero Angel]

Zamu, you have some interesting ideas regarding game mechanics that I happen to agree with and like.
You should add me on steam 'zeroangelmk1'. I'd like to beta test whatever you can come with.

[MrTwosheds]

You might find this intersting if you didn't already know.
The starting turrets are extra-slow because they were being used to rush the enemy base.

This was only partially successful, a player really determined to win asap can still do this. There isn't much you can do about people who value the win more than playing the game, other than choose to not play them.

[Red Devil]

in the intro, you'll see that the Scions use a charge weapon, plus the original stinger was a charge weapon, so maybe give that back to them (isdf slackers hardly ever uses it anyways).

also, i've been testing recyclers with 50 scrapHold so that the AI can build scouts to defend themselves when they have no pools, but that also throws off the balance ((maulers with one pool? i think not..) so i'm making some scouts for the AI to use that cost 40. that way, everybody loses.

[S.cavA.rmyG.en]

seems as I don't have much els to do and I would like to get back in to moding I am looking forward to helping.
I know a good bit about ODFs, some modling, and just a small bit of AIP editing.
heres a link to my steam http://steamcommunity.com/actions/Searc ... &x=17&y=13

[S.cavA.rmyG.en]

throws off the balance ((maulers with one pool? i think not..) so i'm making some scouts for the AI to use that cost 40. that way, everybody loses.

wasent the Idea to add more options to small resorce bases to make the game run faster and better?

[Zero Angel]

You might find this intersting if you didn't already know.
The starting turrets are extra-slow because they were being used to rush the enemy base.

This was only partially successful, a player really determined to win asap can still do this. There isn't much you can do about people who value the win more than playing the game, other than choose to not play them.

I believe GSH and Ken's philosophy on this was 'dont hate the player, hate the game' -- which is a reasonable foundation to base fixes upon, since the former philosophy is little else but empty complaining and the latter philosophy can actually do something. The best thing you can do in this case is to find a way to eliminate this by making the means to do this unprofitable (e.g. via a recycler variant). VSR did this by reducing the recycle value of starting turrets even further, and make them also inferior to buildable turrets, since the only reason that starting rats should exist is to prevent early game camping and rushing -- feedback from some players has indicated that starting rats actually were not preferred, even with these nerfs done to them (and so they are disabled by default), just as recdef was not preferred in most FE games (though the later implementations of recdef were much improved over the first implementation which used sniper turrets). In the case of classic BZ2 and VSR, the team's commander must make a choice about whether to go for early defense or go for early tech -- you could not use the starting rats to push your advantage of an already dominant position (which throws balance even more in favor of the stronger team, which is a mechanic that encourages one-sided games)

[Nielk1]

It should be noted that the starting turrets are part of the starting selected units and is configured by the host in 1.3

[Zero Angel]

I'll tell you why I like your proposed changes:

-Reduction and re-balancing of scrap costs
Because players should not have to starve in order to tech up. Now it seems to conflict with most RTS metagame types and actually seems weird as the choice or RTS-type games has either been prioritizing offense or tech, the fact is that teching can happen very quickly and in 'bursts' leads to the team that has temporary advantages caused by tactics to tech up too quickly, which is a shame because I believe that the midgame is the most fun part of BZ2 and rushing to endgame voids this.

-Removal of treads from all utility vehicles, converted to hovering units. Builders converted as well
Also reasonable due to physics problems that treaded vehicles experience.

-Reduced size of non-essential buildings, more compact essential buildings
Hard to say how well this can work, and I don't completely understand the philosophy behind it. Larger bases require larger defensive networks which can be a good thing, as it allows for opportunity base hits (via blind spots) and also for commanders to slow teching a bit in order to set up a defense network. Scion commanders for example, prefer compacted base setups because (1) It's easier/faster with less chance of the builder dying enroute to a build location, and (2) Spreading out means that you need more defensive units to cover the blind spots in your base.

-Revision of tech tree, with possible reversion to BZ1's 'if you can pay for it, you can have it'
This could be interesting to see.

-Removal of treaded military units, replaced with hover equivalents or new units
Again, probably better because treaded physics dont work as well as they possibly could. Though I hear this is being worked on.

-Mortar rebalances
Not sure what you mean by this but I would like to see.

-Power and building changes
I'd like to know more about this. Though it will probably just come as a result of your other things.

TL;DR: A mod that mixes the good from BZ1 with the good from BZ2, hopefully to create the go-to platform for competitive play.
What do you think? Would you play it?

I would like to try it. I've heard good things about BZ1, and I think it would be important for there to be a mod that captures the 'spirit' of BZ1 without necessarily trying to put BZ1 itself into the BZ2 engine.

[Nielk1]

Getting rid of treads because those units have issues related to the engine might be unwise given an engine fix would resolve those problems in the future.

You can make everything hover but deployables like a recycler, unless you wish to make the recycler need to deploy on something ala-bz1, then you can.

[GSH]

Ideas are fine, implementation is the hard part. The one thing I don't like is the name. If you really think that Battlezone 1 is superior -- and that's a personal feeling -- then don't try to say that a "Battlezone 2.5" is more like Battlezone 1. Sorry, Battlezone II's designers had their say in what they wanted to make, and it wasn't Battlezone 1 with larger assets. Some people still think BZ2's designers pissed in their cornflakes and want revenge. Just live and let live, and pick a name that doesn't unnecessarily try and annoy everyone who does like Battlezone II.

Same with people trying to make a "Battlezone 3" - you don't own that name.

-- GSH