Sometimes I feel like the research updates serve no purpose other than to confuse the longtime players of the mod.
Lose the defensive attitude and find some modelers and animators that you can bribe with sex or beer in exchange for some updates worth committing.
The hell must have frozen over, but yes, while i dont oppose trying new shit out, putting this much additional content to vehicles while infatntry is still a mess seems really bizzare to say the least.
Ok, since no one else will say it, I will. Just stop.stop where you are. Fix the bugs, screw the changing stuff for the sake of oh look, I haven't messed with this, let's see what this does. Cannon shells on heavies have a serious bug where half your shells go flying off in a tangent, never hitting their target. Bleed maps end not at -1, but some rediculous number. While the bleed thing is purely cosmetic, we didn't have this before, so somehow you created this bug. The cannon shells are a HUGE issue in a heated firefight, and they only appeared after spartacus started changing stuff. This may just be coincidence and may be more aligned with changes in the code, but it exists and is a problem. Continuing to change stuff without fixing bugs you are coding is just bad programming period.
It's most noticeable on the BE heavy, but it happens on all tanks. You got a good point. I can't argue with that. I was going to post that cannon bug, but I felt compelled to test a bit before I threw it at Candles & Friends. It seems to be affected by cannon damage & speed, but I may have been losing my mind after all the necessary restarts.
Its happens at certain directions. I can get it to happen 85% of the shots with aiming at different points on the map. Up/Down angle doesn't seems to effect it.
There's one bug where the direction is a bit "off" and another one where one of the cannons FLIES THE FUCK OFF to a side. They might be remnants of the recoil code not working anymore, causing them to trigger by some race condition or some shit like that. Regarding the issue with the ticket number, the good news is that it's easy to fix. The bad news is that I don't want to do the easy fix because I'm trying to figure out if there's a further underlying problem.
@ImSpartacus Keep up the good work. If your pissing off FN your doing it right. I know some people are pissed "How dare you make a useless weapon like plasma useful" But shit seems pretty balanced and fun as of this last patch. Research is all over the place so it's pretty nice seeing some variety from map to map.
Boy's you know shit gets serious when Docrabbit gets kind of angry about empires and gets all loud in the forum. So spartacus I hope a clear message has been sent for you to do your job better. Thanks.
So u don't take this personally, this is not an attack on Spartacus or Candles. As people, I consider them both friends. I want you both to do well. That is why I posted what I did. I love the fact that you are both trying to elevate the game to new dimensions. It's what inspired me to start mapping publicly for the game (instead of just for local family games) after many years of just playing. I myself have been guilty of putting off tiny issues (or so I thought) in bugs in programs in the past only to have it later rise up and cause a major setback in flow. Bugs are like icebergs, until you know exactly where it is, there may be major stuff floating below the surface you didn't even know about. The tank spin recently was a major issue for most, less but still a hindrance for those 3-phasers who knew how to counteract the spin. But now you know what it does, and you wouldn't have known it without the change. It was kinda funny in some aspect, watching everyone spin out of control, but was also disheartening for some who found it impossible to control. So, to sum it all up, don't stop thinking of ways to improve the game, just be aware of things that break, then set those right before going forward.
Yes hold off on Laser Towers and Death Blossom. Stop trying to make turrets a major offensive weapon. They should be defensive and lower range. Having one a MG turret keep a whole team at bay from half way across a map is just ridiculous. Oh and nubs have no idea how to deal with MG turrets. ML turrets should be a deterrent for begin and mid game with little impact on end game. MG's are useful end game but not ML's. Play both sides, don't just assume you are an awesome NF com when you never lose. Assume you fucked something up that pisses off BE players. Right now playing BE on any commander map is like playing NF on escort. You have a 10% chance of winning and only if you do it quickly. It will encourage more rushing tactics early game and one try attacks that if they fail - "who cares, we were going to lose" attitudes. Oh and PLAY BE to understand what is screwed. Don't say "See BE won - it's balanced". Spartacus stop calling yourself a programmer. Just because you can change a number in a text file and rely on a programmer to debug the error, doesn't mean you programmed anything. It's just insulting to anyone who writes code for a living. Although you are qualified now to work for Microsoft as a SW Architect. Try changing those numbers by a smaller increment. Not some random increment going from 10 to 50 then dumping it on us without testing. And yes - you do deserve some rage since you don't know any rules about releasing code, alpha and beta testing, and good documentation on what you did and how it impacts everything. I still believe that this game can be balanced. I have played games very similar with different types of units that did a very good job of balancing. One unit has longer range, and less damage, another has higher speed and more rapid fire - BALANCEABLE. In real life - programmers use peer reviews to validate changes before implementing them. They document what they plan to do before writing any code. They test (prototype) things before a customer ever sees it. A designer uses their end customers to learn more of how things actually work rather than how they want them to work. They collect requirements and they are not their own customer. They get approval before making changes. And they fix bugs.
Ok, I'll do this one time. It's really hard to make a post like the one below and still sound respectful, but I'll do my best. I joke a lot. It's just in my nature. I'm crazy like that. When I say things like the above comment, they are jokes. I'm not a programmer. I don't think I have ever used that term to describe myself. It sounds like using terms like "repro" was insulting to you. From my experiences, that's a tester term. Plain and simple, I try to repro bugs as best I can because I value the time of those that have to fix them (coughcandlescough). This is a team effort. Relatively "large" changes are actually intentional, oddly enough. In a nut shell, changes have to be large enough to cause changes in behavior or else bad things happen. In my line of work, it's called the "7% rule" (health plan design changes have to be at least 7% away from their previous values to cause a behavioral changes), but I'm sure that there are many many other names. The alternative is not suitable because you end up with part of your population that isn't behaving properly in the short term. This is where you run into legitimate instances of, "Spartacus is abusing the changes that only he knows about!" - not because something is secret, but because each change is too small to notice. Aside from like two minor releases, my changes go up almost a week before a pre-agreed upon release date for both testing and feedback from the entire team. I can't even take credit for such a structure because it wasn't my idea, although I stand behind it. I get that this process isn't fool-proof, but I think it's pretty close to the optimal release process given constrained resources.
