PA Alpha Build 51853

Discussion in 'Support!' started by garat, August 10, 2013.

  1. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

    Messages:
    3,344
    Likes Received:
    5,376
    Build 51853

    - NUKES! And anti-nukes are in the game. This brings much more interesting decision making and higher stakes mid to late game. A single nuke will not take out a commander. Multiple nukes will. The balance on these are first pass, so expect a bit of change on them especialliy in the coming weeks. Currently they are advanced fabber builder and commander builder. The commander building them is a mistake. Enjoy it while you can. :)
    - Huge number of fixes large and small, including a few perf improvements on the client, such as LOD on particle emmiters. Should help during heavy combat.
    - Mouse behavior should be much more consistent and reliable in game overall. Toggle selection (ctrl) now supported, Un-select (ctrl+shift) now supported, toggling in general now suppoted. ESC clears selection.
    - Pathing: Flocking behaviors have been implemented. When moving large groups of ground units, you should see them attempt to form better informal squads of troops, rather than long strings of units that tend to get picked off.
    - AI now respects metal spots when building
    - Number of new selection keybinds for units, factories, idle builders, etc.
    - Air no longer creates wreckage
    - Artillery units (mobile) should be a little more selective about targeting
    - Tanks should return their turrets to default position after a bit
    - Air units flight path involves much less circling now.
    - T2 costs more to get to now. Should slow down the intial tech rush a bit.
    - Walls have a physics block now, so they should act a little more to prevent pathing.
    - Known Issues (big ones):
    - Random Tropical planets can end up being a bit rocky.
    - Planets that are mostly water can be challenging to play on currently
  2. KNight

    KNight Post Master General

    Messages:
    7,681
    Likes Received:
    3,268
    Why are mostly water planets challenging specifically? ;p

    Mike
  3. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

    Messages:
    3,344
    Likes Received:
    5,376
    Mostly due to the fact that there are almost no start points (which is problematic) and building a full naval only base leaves out some pretty important units.
  4. mushroomars

    mushroomars Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    1,655
    Likes Received:
    319
    I read "[Nukes]... are a Commander builder" as "The Commander is capable of building nuclear missiles". I chuckled at the thought of the Commander fabbing up a Nuke and then just chucking it at the enemy.

    But seriously now: Awesome, awesome awesome work. Water planets might only be challenging to play on now that Nukes are in-game, I've had quite a bit of fun with them. I'm glad for flocking, less micro means more fun.

    My only criticism is Air units no longer creating wreckage. The only thing abnormal about their wreckage was that it floated on water, aside from that it worked pretty well, better than the original wrecks that phased through the ground.

    Looking forward to every patch now, it's great to see the game progressing more and more. It's also fun to learn from your guys' posts and insights, I hope to see more of the nitty gritty tech if any of Uber has the time.
  5. Raevn

    Raevn Moderator Alumni

    Messages:
    4,226
    Likes Received:
    4,324
    Size of Update: ~15MB

    Other Changes
    • New Strategic Icons for Nuke Launcher, Anti Nuke Launcher, Nuclear Missile, Anti Nuke Missile
    • Build Icon for Anti-Nuke missile
    • Addition of the following orbital units (not playable yet): Defense Satellite, Mining Platform, Orbital Fighter, Solar Array
    • Planet editor planets now have random names (submitted by players in the $140+ Kickstarter tier).
    • New brushes for planets:
      • 5 for Metal worlds
      • 9 for Lava worlds
    • Updated look for Lava Worlds
    • Lava.PNG
    • Updated look for Metal Worlds
    • Metal.PNG
    • Nuclear Missile Launcher & Anti Nuke Launcher now buildable by Commander
    • Most T1 structures (except for Radar, Pelter and Land Barrier) now buildable by T2 fabricators
    • Build menu now has scroll arrows
    Unit Changes
    T2 Air Factory
    Metal Cost: 1650 => 3300

    T2 Bot Factory
    Metal Cost: 2750 => 5500

    T2 Naval Factory
    Metal Cost: 3300 => 6600

    T2 Vehicle Factory
    Metal Cost: 2750 => 5410

    T2 Missile Ship
    Altered missile firing stages

    T1 Bomber
    Weapon now has spread fire attribute

    T2 Nuke
    Metal Cost: 10800 => 5410
    Health: 2000 => 1500

    T2 Nuke Missile
    Metal Cost: 32400
    Damage: 1 => 11000
    Splash damage: 1 => 11000
    Splash radius: 10
    Flight path changed
    (Only collides with ground)

    T2 Anti Nuke
    Now has buildable projectile
    Health: 5000 => 3500
    Sight Range: 110 => 100
    Max Range: 600 => 200

    T2 Anti Nuke Missile
    Metal Cost: 17280
    Damage: 1
    Max Velocity: 80 => 200
    Flight path changed

    T1 Air Defense
    Metal Cost: 300 => 200

    Modders
    See PA Modding Changes for a list of changes that affect mods.

    Bug Fixes
    FS#1675 - Team only chat only accepts left shift
    FS#1766 - Nuclear Missile Launcher not wireframe at start of construction
    FS#1834 - right clicking while placing a structure issues a move command

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: August 14, 2013
  6. infuscoletum

    infuscoletum Active Member

    Messages:
    606
    Likes Received:
    37
    Right before I head off to work :cry: does the mouse selection toggle work with box selection? If it does you should put a toggle for the unit catagory to be selected ;) :mrgreen:
  7. jacoby6000

    jacoby6000 Member

    Messages:
    105
    Likes Received:
    8
    I don't know if this was ever reported, but I cba to write a bug report (dunno how) but if a metal spot is too deep underwater, you can't build a metal extractor on it, because the water depth is deeper than the metal spot snapping distance.
  8. techvert

    techvert New Member

    Messages:
    21
    Likes Received:
    0
    Does this mean there have been changes to how start points are calculated? I've been trying to find good island seeds to play on and they have been working pretty well for the most part.

    Only issue I've had is with seeds that have too many tiny islands with 0 mass points, increasing the risk you only get spawn options on those points.
  9. hygieia

    hygieia New Member

    Messages:
    16
    Likes Received:
    0
    I just took out the AI commander with 1 nuke.. Need to try more times to make sure he wasn't damaged already, but it seems the nukes do too much dmg?
  10. cwarner7264

    cwarner7264 Moderator Alumni

    Messages:
    4,460
    Likes Received:
    5,390
    Oh joys - I'm out of action this weekend due to moving house! Looks like I'm dependent on Twitch and Youtube for a bit to see how these nukes looks :D
  11. mushroomars

    mushroomars Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    1,655
    Likes Received:
    319
    Luckily Nuke Launchers have low health, high cost, and Nukes themselves take forever to build. I tried to play a "nuclear war" once the patch came out, and even with +1000 metal income and an assload of Fabbers assisting and building more nukes launchers, it still took forever to build one nuke, time which my enemy could have spent destroying me with T2 Bombers, navy or an expanded land force.

    However he was rushing nukes too, and I won the nukerush because he entirely neglected eco expansion.

    Overall I don't think Nukes will matter unless there is a massive Stalemate or there is fighting across multiple planets. They just take too long to build.

    Also, Nuke Defenses just prove the previous argument that it's just easier to blow up your enemy's nuke launchers than build countermeasures. An antinuke is nice for your energy farms and your Commander, but aside from that, a few T2 Bombers, T2 Bots or some forward Catapults or Stingrays will do the job much quicker, with much less hassle, and with more positive side-effects (demolishing your enemy's base being one of these side effects).

    On that topic, I strongly dislike the nerf to T2 and I hope that a proper T2 will exist in/by Beta, more of a TA T2 than a SupCom T2/T3.
  12. Target6

    Target6 New Member

    Messages:
    8
    Likes Received:
    0
    Speaking of nukes... I was wondering if the fact that the building animation is sideways is the expected behavior or not.
    It looks weird to me (well... I was expecting it to be bottom-to-top instead of outside-to-inside), but it might be intended.

    Attached Files:

  13. bgolus

    bgolus Uber Alumni

    Messages:
    1,481
    Likes Received:
    2,299
    Working as expected, but not as intended. The build effect works by going from the "ground plane" (local zero) to the top of a model in its local space. Missiles are built upright, so they're actually on their side. The build line also starts half way through the missile rather than through it.

    I plan on doing a pass on the build effects to fix this so it starts from the visual base and always goes up, but it didn't get in for this patch.
  14. glinkot

    glinkot Active Member

    Messages:
    250
    Likes Received:
    28
    Just had a few games. In my most recent game with hexafelonius I had probably my first truly 'unplayable' speed. The simulation crawled. Building each thing took many minutes and moving tanks over to a base normally 1 min away took probably 10 or more minutes of real time!

    As hexa said in the game, perhaps its the pathfinding. Is it (O)n^2 or something? It felt like it. It'll be great when it works (and perhaps it isn't the culprit) but something is!
  15. doud

    doud Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    922
    Likes Received:
    568
    Same here, but at the same time, noticed a really nice improvement in pathfinding especially with Tanks.
  16. YourLocalMadSci

    YourLocalMadSci Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    766
    Likes Received:
    762
    On a different note, those metal planets are coming along nicely:

    [​IMG]
  17. battletech

    battletech Member

    Messages:
    45
    Likes Received:
    5
    I found that fabricators can not assist Nuke launchers with there building of missiles.
    Had a nuke making a missile for 10 min, with positive eco, and it didn't finish.
    From what i have seen the nuke has unlimited range as there is no red circle for it, like a catapult.

    One other odd thing is that I can not use key commands to build. If i press a key to build something it will not let me place it on the ground.
  18. alexanderhaensch

    alexanderhaensch New Member

    Messages:
    7
    Likes Received:
    0
    any changes to the coherence stability in Linux?
  19. Raevn

    Raevn Moderator Alumni

    Messages:
    4,226
    Likes Received:
    4,324
  20. Ringworm

    Ringworm Active Member

    Messages:
    245
    Likes Received:
    81
    Heh, just looked at raevn's list of Planet Names.
    Kudos to planet "Plop" :D

Share This Page