Let's trade barriers for vets.

Which do you prefer?

Easily destroyable base style defenses.
2
17%
Original Annihilation style defenses, buried under barriers that could be destroyed.
4
33%
Annihilation Legendz style defenses that can be buried under sunken, nearly indestructible barriers.
6
50%
 
Total votes: 12

perrinoia
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Let's trade barriers for vets.

Post by perrinoia »

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?
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Firelord
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Re: Let's trade barriers for vets.

Post by Firelord »

The pitchfork has now been around longer than the original version of Anni was. I would bet that the majority of people that play regularly now didn't even experience Annihilation before the pitchfork. This is what the mod is now and it does not need to change back. Broadside and Scarabrae are probably the only maps where the inside D can be close to impenetrable. Just about every other map people always get through if the teams are balanced. What you're going to see without proper turret barriers is constant rape if the skill of one team is greater than the other. A team with average skill's only chance to maintain power and inventories against a better team is to set defense. Most people don't even use blastwalls to cover lasers anymore. The most common D set up is lasers under a platform and jumppad which can be killed with enough explosives.
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KILROY
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Re: Let's trade barriers for vets.

Post by KILROY »

I stated this on Perr's df forum and I'll state it again here:
Tribes is getting boring, due to servers hosting the same maps over and over. As for Anni in Tribes, I gave up on that mod long ago, it's turret warfare, not team warfare. When you can place more defense than players on both teams, it's no longer the players doing the gamming, it's the defense.
AnniDv6
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Re: Let's trade barriers for vets.

Post by AnniDv6 »

[quote="Firelord"][/quote]

Pretty much this. I would guess that we would lose a lot more people who like to set defense and fight against the current style of defense versus gaining people who haven't played in a long time. With the current pacing of the game you would see serious amounts of base rape and missions capped out within minutes if you were to severely weaken defense.
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KILROY
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Re: Let's trade barriers for vets.

Post by KILROY »

I understand the meaning of this, and I agree with defenses, but when you can place more defense just on one side, than the amount of players on both teams, you are now defeating the purpose of the meaning behind what Tribes was created for: TEAM WARFARE.

Defenses do play a major role in helping to defend one's base against the enemy. That is why the base foundation of the game had ion turrets, plasma turrets, and some maps, rocket turrets. These played a part on each scenario of a map, but the players is what the game is about, not all the type of deployables that can be used within game.

If the map got capped out early, then one team had better skilled players then the other. That was why the next map the teams were balanced out automatically by the server, instead of today when the new map starts, you get to choose which side to join and play on, which makes the teams unbalanced, and why players rage quit some of the times. The only time you weren't auto placed by the server to balance out the teams per map play was when you played in tourney mode.

Getting back to the basic's of what the game is about is what I'm defending here as a first generation veteran of this game. Someone with the skills to build defenses with the amount that is available, and if they had the time without the enemy attacking, could probably set enough that would take half the time of the map in order for the enemy to just take that out. This amount of defense is defeating the purpose behind the meaning of what CTF is. This could also be a reason of why a bunch of the older generation of players are not around anymore.
perrinoia
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Re: Let's trade barriers for vets.

Post by perrinoia »

Maybe the solution is decreased item limits, then?

As for balanced teams, that's another topic:
http://www.br.thelandofoz.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6858
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DaJ4ck3L
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Re: Let's trade barriers for vets.

Post by DaJ4ck3L »

interesting lol
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perrinoia
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Re: Let's trade barriers for vets.

Post by perrinoia »

Ghost wrote:It's the god damn lasers! Fuck those things mang.
Those are the only turrets that are stupid as shit.
Every other piece of D is fine.
Lasers are way to ghey, but like death stated above, we would lose to many players if you change anything too drastically.
I completely disagree... I find neurobashers to be the bane of my existence. I can't fucking move when the enemy team deploys 2 or 3 of those fuckers.
Ghost wrote:I really wanna know who made the laser turrets/ made them OP as fuck.
Whoever it was is forever a faggot in my book. (Sry, not sry)
That shit is retarded. They shoot like 30 fucking feet and you can put them so close together that it's a one hit kill when your in the vicinity.
That would be Scavenger. Laser turrets have remained basically the same since Annihilation v1.0. What has changed, is how they get buried under barriers that are nearly indestructible. What's funny, is how the damage level of those barriers was derived from the damage value of vortex turrets in a buggy version of Annihilation, where players would actually bury laser turrets behind vortex turrets! Since they look the same, and were deployed almost on the same spot, the vortex turret would take the damage and protect the laser turret. It was insane. Then some dickhead thought it would be a good idea to make blastwalls, jumppads and platforms that strong, so you could cover more than one laser turret with one object!
Ghost wrote:If you changed the damage of the lasers to 999999 for a day, I doubt anyone would even notice.
I don't doubt that.
Ghost wrote:Moral of my rage fueled rant: lower laser damage/ set their deploy position check farther from eachother so you cock guzzlers stop burying insta kill sniping turrets under a sea of deployable platforms and jump pads.

Or maybe gone their range down a lot so they only shoot like 4 feet but can still protect flags and doorways.
They're actually one of the slowest turrets to target enemies... However, unlike the other turrets, they don't have a resting position... So they remain looking in the direction they last fired, and therefor instantly shoot you if you approach from the same direction repeatedly. Instead, you should attack them from different directions each time, so you can get more shots off before they shoot you.
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The Boloblur
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Re: Let's trade barriers for vets.

Post by The Boloblur »

Personally, I think what needs to happen is to just lower the maxdamage. I do agree that it can be annoying to fight turrets. But, really the only vets that are still around are all the vets that could destroy pretty much any defense that a team could create. But if you wanted to nerf it down, I would recommend 1) Give the turrets a rest position and maybe give them damage fall off on the range of the shot.(This way people who spawn boost are still more likely to be stopped. (Not sure if I remember right, but didn't the turrets used to have energy levels like a player? We could implement something like that to lessen the chances of being shot when there are multiple people killing base defense)


But, I am very definitely with Perrin that the Neuro bashers really need to be nerfed.
perrinoia
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Re: Let's trade barriers for vets.

Post by perrinoia »

Turrets do have an energy level. You can shock them with builder grenades, if they aren't buried, and they won't shoot you for a little while.
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