Scion Rights!

[Jwk the Hemp Monkey]

*cha-clunk*

ooo, I think that round was loaded single-handedly

Edit : i just came back from testing a out the new  and *improved* scion walker.

Its shockingly hoote, excuse for lack of a better term.

I thought the 'jolting head' thing was a FEATURE. It made it cool and fun to ride the thing, and mastering double blast cannon in dms was a skill i was proud off, the feeling of intensity, fear and excitment when charging though an enemy base was huge when the enemy guntowers came into range, it was one of the best moments of the game.


and now its ruined.

The '' bug '' of the head bobing mauler (and now i think about it, gsh is the *only* person i have heard say its anything other than really cool) should be reinstated.
This new 'totallybalenced head ontop of a spindly legged walker thats charging at the speed of a scout on crack' (yeah...doesnt make sense to me either) is ...well...

it has no soul.

[IceWendigo]

"Blink is godly, it's amazing, all the scion shortcomings put together (range problems, early game problems, scout firepower, lack of pool supression, etc) are worth that one weapon. "

I hope that one can win by choosing among several balanced tactics/units  , if a single unit or tech(blink) is godly and almost a requirement to have a chance to win, however great it is to have this unit or tech the the game becomes not as interesting  as when there are a variety of tactics for you to choose from, and for the adversairy to predict or adapt/counter (rock, paper, scisors, being more interesting than paper,paper,paper   ).

[DarkFox]

Scions have a basic choice between a mauler rush, and teching to blink. To get to the stronghold, they have the choice of using quill/defl scouts as a staging point, or sentries as a staging point. Sentries are less effective, but get you to your final tech quicker.
After blink or the mauler is achieved, one can then tech to the overseer allowing you arc/gauss/blink warriors, titans, and archers, of which the most useful is the warrior.

If you ask me, this is *far* more 'choice' than the ISDF tech tree, which basically involves only 2 real choices - whether to bother with SP/laser tanks or not, and whether to go bomber bay or blast first (blast being the pretty obvious choice).

[IceWendigo]

DarkFox, you have mentioned in another post that you think Scions are ok vs ISDF   (when you are playing them  :p   ) , but, should we
eventually come to the conclusion that the Scions could benefit form small improvements to enhance race balance...{i.e. if you humored me }

...What units and tech would you improve slightly?  
What are the unit(s) that most experienced Scion players really avoid building  most of the time? :s
What are the techs(upgrade[not default]) that most experienced Scion players nearly never use to equip a ship in a real game situation? :s

From what you mention, if any improvements would be good, I presume these should not affect the mauler, scout, warrior (and now guardian[40]   ) units nor the quill,def,arc,gauss,blink, techs which are already very good as is..    

"whether to go bomber bay or blast first (blast being the pretty obvious choice)."
Speaking of choosing blast over bombers, do you think the bombs fall too slowly? (considering I'm not much of a pilot myself and that I can easily shoot a bomb down to my own dismay   ).

[Dirty Rooster]

This bears on the scion disadvantage thread, so I want to
comment on the 1.3 bomber.
It is noticeably faster than in 1.2, and this means MORE BOMBS.

I may be wrong, but the turnaround time between bombing and
getting back to base, rearming and getting out to bomb again seems
to be much faster than in 1.2
I haven't tested this conclusively because it 'seemed' very
noticable in my cursory test.

[BZ FeebleEffort]

Now you guys begin to see my frustration?!

DF and I and otehrs tried for months to point out what was resulting to game balance from "Improved AI" and from "not thought out" weapon or balance tweaks(some I suggested myself to be fair)...THEN..the soup was already messed up(Ofensive/Defensive balance god knows what ISDF vs Scion was like)But then ALL Balance issues were squelched, thats whn my concern about 1.3 grew, and my caring about 1.3 fell.

Now...we prolly got a hell of a mess.

DF was in the closed Beta with some of us, and his concerns and learned observations were given little attention...I only hope, *IF* Nathan reappears, that this time SOMEONE listens to good and respected advise and these issues get resolved.

I respect DF judgement above all when it comes to Scions. lets hope, those that matter in those decisions value it as well.

[Avatar]

Where's the smiley for "slapping myself in the face"?

*sigh*

Nobody understands how this all worked.  Let me try to explain by posting Ken's signature tag from BZ1...  now where is that...  oh, here it is..

If, late at night, you leave your door unlocked and computer running, every now and then a Code Elf will come in and fix your code.  While this is often beneficial, you should always remember that Code Elves sometimes have a different notion of "fix" than you do.  As your project hurtles towards its release date, when nights grow long and tempers short, you should not leave yourself logged in, lest you find an unexpected new "feature" when you arrive the next morning.
...
Ken Miller, the resident Code Elf on the Battlezone Team, says "thanks" to everyone who deserves it.  They know who they are.

Now let me explain how development works, worked, is still working, will work in the future....

Nathan is a network guru who's not completely afraid to take on other aspects of the code.  Obviously he's more comfortable with the netcode than any other part but he's delved into just about ever aspect of BZ2 short of AI pathing.  Nathan is a 'one step at a time', 'show me the money', logical and methodical coder.  I believe he IS the driving force behind the patch and to my knowledge is the one who's put in the most bug-fixing time.

Ken is a 'code elf' by his own terms.  He likes particles, rendering, and other visual aspects of the game.  He's a tinkerer, an experimenter, and likes to add 'features' until something breaks.  He's fixed some things, broken others, fixed them again, lather, rinse, repeat....

As an example of what this does to the patching process:
For 1.2 Ken added some cool effects to the building of new units by the Recy/Factory.  What it ended up doing was randomly cause parts of units to 'stretch' back to the build point, even if they crossed the map.  Ken then got busy on other projects and BARELY made it back in time to fix the problem.   It was very close, and I believe it took some Wil help to get him back for it.

Anyway, for 1.3 both were working from a shared code base.  They each added things for various reasons.  Some things came from tester-found bugs, some from suggestions.  Some things came via new ideas from other Pandemic projects, and may have been experimental from the get-go.   Some things may have been things they wanted to do from the beginning, and some were influenced by Wil Stahl so as to remain true to the original vision of BZ2.

The thing is...

pay attention here...

you NEVER ask Nathan to fix something Ken did any more than you ask Ken to fix something Nathan did.  They don't exactly overlap in their areas of expertise, and I know from experience that backtracking through someone else's code is an exercise in pain sometimes.

Now Nathan can be terse.  He can be stubborn.  He can be willful.  You know what?  I think he's earned the right to be.  I've never found him especially talkative (unlike me) or especially rude, just blunt and to the point.  I like that.

Ken can be creative.  He can be imaginative.  I've had some VERY cool converstions with him about "might be" things.  This is not always good for bug fixing, or when as he says the "deadline gets close", but it always revves my creative engine and gets me going.

Both are necessary for things to be accomplished, and both contribute in their own ways.  

And both deserve a HELL of a lot of gratitude from this group for all this work.

***

Now...

The Mauler head bob was cool, it's easy enough to put back.  Trivial.  Don't worry about it.  Lots more complex things were handled by community members without bothering Ken or Nathan.

Ship handling and physics, weapons balance, tougher to do and definately NOT Ken or Nathan's bag.  WE need to test and decide these things WITHOUT bringing them into it until we all pretty much agree that we have what's wanted.  We'll never get 100% to agree on anything, but moving things back towards 1.2 OR tweaking them slowly is a good start.

Now, I personally think we should hammer on bugs.  Bugs, bugs, bugs.  Don't worry about physics, eye candy, performance, or anything that could be in an ODF/XSI patch the Community could do.  If we can come up with something like that, fine, but the important thing about 1.3 is stability, warp, and AV's.  Pound them out of the engine and the rest will follow fairly easily or can be done AFTER we completely lose Ken and Nathan.

Which could have already happened for all we know, but I'm hoping not.

Dinnertime.  

-Av-

[SilverB1rd]

Balance does not require Nathan(GSH) and in fact Nathan does not want to do balance at all, he laft that for the public beta and it is now

I'd like to see another release of the Exp Rec with some of the new changes people are posting about here.

[DarkFox]

Speaking of balancing scions, the main thing they need right now is for sonic wave to be fixed back to it's old pushing ability. In 1.3 it has trouble pushing builders, constructors, maulers and walkers.

The scion weapons which are never used are the lancer, esp. multilock missiles, seeker mines, resin mortars, and static charge. If balance is looked at, these are the units/weapons that need boosts.

The archer could do with a boost if acid cloud is taken down in future, which in all honesty I don't think it should be, seen as how the emit mine can be destroyed before it does any damage.

Finally, combat gauss guns also eat too much ammo to be a good choice over ionguns. This isn't really too big a deal though.

I personally don't think any major changes should be made to the 1.2 values. That being said, scions are unique in having some weapons that are *completely* obselete at present, such as resin mortars or multilock.

[Jwk the Hemp Monkey]

I understand the points made about Nathan and Ken.

however, being 'blunt' to some people is being very 'rude' to others. I do not see any reason for being 'blunt'. I have seen people get Fired from their Jobs in a polite fassion. So this so called ''its ok because hes been around for ages , so therefore can be rude...and its not rudeness *really*...its him..um..being...blunt?'' is rubbish.

anyway, scions...

the scion sonic wave looks ulgy. and it does not work as it used to...its way to powerful against tracked vechiles now (more so than before) and ...it just looks wrong, this thick flat opaque ''waves'' look horrible, the eariler thinner translucent version was much nicer.

[technoid]

The scion weapons which are never used are the lancer, esp. multilock missiles, seeker mines, resin mortars, and static charge. If balance is looked at, these are the units/weapons that need boosts.

I personally don't think any major changes should be made to the 1.2 values. That being said, scions are unique in having some weapons that are *completely* obselete at present, such as resin mortars or multilock.

[/size]

WASPS:  I've already suggested downsizing these big-ass missiles (assault multilock) some threads ago in private and public beta.  They basically get in each other's way, easily targetable due to size, easily destroyed by direct fire or splashdamage due to weak health and just too "unrealistically" launched from Lancer's itty bitty missile tube, because of said size.

MULTILOCK: Make their trajectory physics behave as they did in FE.  Might work better.  I do hate the recycling triple lock.  You tend to lose time AND timing when focusing when to let go at the same time you are trying to keep aim on target.  

SEEKERS:  I've said awhile back to make them faster and a bit stronger healthwise (not damage-wise).  You know, kinda like the spherical hoverbots in StarWars.

RESIN:  Maybe a wider splash area, I dunno.

STATIC:  Longer reach maybe?  Being that this is a melee-type weapon, it would be somewhat difficult to use in a warpy environment, which is why not many use it I think.  

My 2 cents (or 2 sense).

[Jwk the Hemp Monkey]

The FE multi-lock rocks lol. I loved clicking repeatedly ..it ended up firing random salvos of missiles, and looked auesom.

the wasps? i agree, always had the same opinon. I personally think some kind of comet cruise, but faster, less damaging, and if possiable...make it fly up like 30m into the air...and then when it gets to the target it would 'dive'.

I remember seeing in FE comet cruise fly upwards from a rocket tank to hit this nasty cerberi flying thing.

all the other things?

Seekers, yes..faster...better armour. Mabey a little more kick back. To mak e it a worthy 'running away' weapon.

For static..i tihnk it needs redesigning. I was thinking perhaps that it would fire a sort of 'popper missile', very short range, and with no sound affects or visuall affects it would 'look' like the blue spikes were doing the damage,

the fire properties would have to be edited heavily to make it convincing.

Oh...and can someone PLEASE fix the emp-stream sound affects??!? its got the popper sound, that sounds hoote, and does not fit the weapon at all, the old sound affect as perfect.

[PhoeniX-FlamE]

i know some1 we can ask for some sounds...

now, static causes ALOT of troubles for me and i know for others as well..
at least in 1.2.. i havnt tried it in 1.3 yet

the biggest problem with static charge that after 1 use it'll look like everytime there is static on something else... sometimes u'll see static on ships, or buildings , or pods and even weapon powerups which absoultly cant do static charge..

its very very annoying and i hate whoever uses static cause it *Ammo*s up the game...

im talking about 1.2 here not 1.3 so if its fixed ignore all of this
and maybe giving them a lil bit radious dmg and enchant the dmg can be cool
although i find it hard to belive some will use it over blink

[Avatar]

I understand the points made about Nathan and Ken.

however, being 'blunt' to some people is being very 'rude' to others. I do not see any reason for being 'blunt'. I have seen people get Fired from their Jobs in a polite fassion. So this so called ''its ok because hes been around for ages , so therefore can be rude...and its not rudeness *really*...its him..um..being...blunt?'' is rubbish.

It's very hard to convey emotions on the Internet.  Too many people are lost without the emotional subtext.  That's why that whole bank of smileys exists when posting, to help get some emotion into the message....

Then again given all the bull Nathan's received in the past I'm suprised he even reads this stuff...

The scion weapons which are never used are the lancer, esp. multilock missiles, seeker mines, resin mortars, and static charge. If balance is looked at, these are the units/weapons that need boosts.

Nobody uses Lancers???  They're such good anti-Turret anti-MB units!  Well, against AI, pardon my "Strat Ignorance".  I suppose human-placed Turrets are more protected but still...  I'd rather have a Lancer sitting in my base than a Turret when the MB's roll in.

Well, we have some excellent weaponsmiths here.  Put them to work on delicately tweaking these things.

As to the Scion Late Game we've suggested adding a unit or two to the top end.  Personally I like the Gorgon from GAIPS but that's just me...  

-Av-

[BulDog]

hi guys. i'm new here can you tell me all what i need to konow