Let's trade barriers for vets.
Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2016 11:19 am
We've lost a lot of veteran Annihilation players over the years, who can be quoted saying, "I don't enjoy fighting turrets."
When I first started playing the Annihilation mod, you could lob a nuke into a room, and pretty much guarantee that nothing would be left to shoot you when you walked in... "Nuke spam" was considered clearing 4 rooms with nukes on your way to and from the flag. Very rarely did you see GOOD defense, that could survive a nuke. The best defense was a good offense. Teams who knew how to play, with nothing more than spawn items, would usually triumph over teams who required high explosives and sniper weapons to win (this is why I usually lost, but it was still enjoyable).
Then the pitchfork was invented and changed the game, completely. Blast walls sunken into the ground could only be destroyed by particle beams (specifically turret killer mode, because it bypasses the traditional method of projectiles causing damage). They were used to cover turrets, and since you couldn't kill the turret while it was covered, veterans began to despise the mod. I enjoyed it for awhile because building over powered defenses made me think I was actually good at the game.
To compound the issue, c3J97 increased the maxDamage of barriers from 2.5 to 25. So it takes 100% charge + 100% charge to kill them instead of just a single 20% charge beam...
Then BR Owner increased the maxDamage of barriers to 30 (100% charge + 100% charge + 40% charge).
Crow reduced the maxDamage of barriers to 20 (100% charge + 60% charge).
Obviously, a simple solution would be to reinstall an old version of the mod, but then we'd lose everything we've come to love, such as arenas, Legendz admin, and stats tracking (I don't actually like any of those things, but you all seem to).
Rather than undoing all of that, I suggest we insert a simple deploy check to every movement pitchfork makes... With one line of code, we can prevent barriers from occupying the same space as another object... Thus, you won't be able to sink your barriers into the ground, or into walls, or even cover turrets at all, with them. Barriers will become barriers again (used for blocking doorways or building structures), and turret covers will become useless (and therefor removed). You'll still be able to deploy a platform, then fork it up into the sky, but you won't be able to hide it under the ground, or in a ceiling.
Since this will expose the turrets to explosives, as they are in most mods, I recommend making them slightly stronger... In my mod, it takes several discs or 1 mortar to disable, 2 mortars to destroy... Therefor, it's a good idea to spread them apart, rather than deploy them as close to one another as possible. I think that's a pretty fair balance, and might convince some vets like Kilroy to start playing Annihilation again... What do you guys think?
When I first started playing the Annihilation mod, you could lob a nuke into a room, and pretty much guarantee that nothing would be left to shoot you when you walked in... "Nuke spam" was considered clearing 4 rooms with nukes on your way to and from the flag. Very rarely did you see GOOD defense, that could survive a nuke. The best defense was a good offense. Teams who knew how to play, with nothing more than spawn items, would usually triumph over teams who required high explosives and sniper weapons to win (this is why I usually lost, but it was still enjoyable).
Then the pitchfork was invented and changed the game, completely. Blast walls sunken into the ground could only be destroyed by particle beams (specifically turret killer mode, because it bypasses the traditional method of projectiles causing damage). They were used to cover turrets, and since you couldn't kill the turret while it was covered, veterans began to despise the mod. I enjoyed it for awhile because building over powered defenses made me think I was actually good at the game.
To compound the issue, c3J97 increased the maxDamage of barriers from 2.5 to 25. So it takes 100% charge + 100% charge to kill them instead of just a single 20% charge beam...
Then BR Owner increased the maxDamage of barriers to 30 (100% charge + 100% charge + 40% charge).
Crow reduced the maxDamage of barriers to 20 (100% charge + 60% charge).
Obviously, a simple solution would be to reinstall an old version of the mod, but then we'd lose everything we've come to love, such as arenas, Legendz admin, and stats tracking (I don't actually like any of those things, but you all seem to).
Rather than undoing all of that, I suggest we insert a simple deploy check to every movement pitchfork makes... With one line of code, we can prevent barriers from occupying the same space as another object... Thus, you won't be able to sink your barriers into the ground, or into walls, or even cover turrets at all, with them. Barriers will become barriers again (used for blocking doorways or building structures), and turret covers will become useless (and therefor removed). You'll still be able to deploy a platform, then fork it up into the sky, but you won't be able to hide it under the ground, or in a ceiling.
Since this will expose the turrets to explosives, as they are in most mods, I recommend making them slightly stronger... In my mod, it takes several discs or 1 mortar to disable, 2 mortars to destroy... Therefor, it's a good idea to spread them apart, rather than deploy them as close to one another as possible. I think that's a pretty fair balance, and might convince some vets like Kilroy to start playing Annihilation again... What do you guys think?