Non-bug Feedback Request

[Type98]

Hmm, it sounds like the Hurricane is being used more as a direct fire weapon whether is was its intended role or not.

IMO, whatever replaces the mortar on the Hurricane has to be able too:

1)Clear deployables as fast as possible to open up multiple fronts on the map against the defenders. Direct fire weapon platforms can't keep up with new deployment as fast as mortars.

2) Disrupt deploying/piled up defenders/attackers. Time between space artillery is a bit too long and don't have the precision or flexibility.

3) Counter battery.

IMO the Thor version of the mortar is currently simply too hard to use compared to the Hurricane.

[yurch]

Well, of course the hurricane is easier, it is overpowered after all.

If the hurricane were never there, people would have figured out how to use the thor or other mortars for these applications instead. Right now the hurricane is so one size fits all and one-hit-thor killing power considered so important I don't think other people even look at the other craft.

Have you tried the paladin or other small caliber mortar for rapid turret clearing? It's got less range and you have to be more accurate, but it fires its rounds at smaller trajectories and reloads very quickly. If deployables must be cleared faster than this, I question your strategies.

[Type98]

Have you tried the paladin or other small caliber mortar for rapid turret clearing? It's got less range and you have to be more accurate, but it fires its rounds at smaller trajectories and reloads very quickly. If deployables must be cleared faster than this, I question your strategies. [Razz]

Been there, done that too.

As to strategy, to each his own .

[yurch]

I'm actually finding I like the paladin for this. Killed a thor with it too - will investigate.

[yurch]

That caliber of mortar is not a bad weapon. It reloads very fast, and has enough to it to kill light vehicles and thor on rare occasion. Hurricane might be interesting with a 20 shell loadout in this caliber. Will mean more shooting and more accurate fire but maybe a lesser degree of universal oppression. Edit: or not, just tried a mod. With that rate of fire, it's real messy.

[ April 14, 2006, 11:42 PM: Message edited by: yurch ]

[Kurtz]

A comparision of the hover vehicles, emphasis is mine:

H1 Hover Tank - Generation A (Tempest)

Most Liveships have already lost the ability to construct military-grade hover craft, but a few have retained enough knowledge to build at least the simpler specimens, such as the lightly armed Tempest. This light attack craft compensates for low armor with high mobility, and is armed with a 10mm ion gun - a pale imitation of the large caliber "Hellbore" ion beam weapons that used to serve as the mainstay for fighting forces in The Rim. The Tempest's hover propulsion system is nearly as advanced as its higher-tech predecessors'; it uses fine particles of anti-matter for repulsion against any underlying surface, allowing it to operate equally well in atmosphere or vacuum.

However, its control of this process is crude compared with its ancestors so steep slopes and rough ground can often obstruct the Tempest.

H2 Hover Tank - Generation D (Hurricane)

The H2 works on similar principles as the H1 described above. The H2 was evolved for a direct support role, its hover propulsion and heavy armor allowing it to keep pace with front-line troops and bring its high explosive, direct-fire artillery rounds to bear on the enemy. The Hurricane is traditionally used against dug-in infantry or enemy structures and fortifications.

Non-recoiling wepons on a hover platforms makes more sense, the Hurri moves quite a bit when firing. Maybe the plasma mortar would fit better on a tracked chassis as some kind of assault gun. It's intended role is to keep pace with front-line troops and bring its high explosive, direct-fire artillery rounds to bear on the enemy, but right now it outpaces all other vehicles.

Right now, you can have a good plan, along comes a Hurricane and all your planning is gone with the wind, forcing you to deploy a Hurri to counter the enemy's Hurri.

It feels a bit weird that the Hurri usually survives a ATGM hit. The only thing I find difficult is rough terrain or fine manouvering.

Anyway, this is an availability issue, not a fault in the system. But it would be nice to see other versions of the Tempest - maybe with ATGMs? Low armour, high speed and non-recoiling weapons makes sense as a recon hovercraft.

(I haven't checked to see if the armour is different between the two hovercrafts).

[aittam]

high caliber mortars should be slower or weaker, i prefer fast light vehicles but yestasterday night i got a very hard time not being able to spot the mortar in time; redeployed on his ass and whiped out with four atgm

[Kurtz]

From the 0.9.43 release notes:

Slightly reduced armor for Hurricane

maybe the Hurricane deserves a separate thread, at least it's the most debated vehicle.

[cool breeze]

I play as Zamuel42. I almost never pay hurricanes, but I don't think they are to powerful or too numerous, but I could be wrong. I think Hurricanes are a super tank with weak armor but I think its ok becasue they can be defeated by landing very near them ith fast vehicle and driving at it or by team orth with thors. I like that a team has to start working together very quickly to deal with the Hurricane. I dont think 7 times is too many time for this to happen, and I imagine some Hurricanes usually get taken out by solo effort.

I think coordinated team that used 3 ion Thors in the beggining of the match will beat the team that uses 3 Hurricanes in the beginning, pereferably until they are gone.

I have been burnng Hurricanes with 1 shot120mm AP sometimes lately

And Hurricanes have the dissadvantage of bad preformance if staying under sensor jammers

[ April 15, 2006, 01:47 AM: Message edited by: cool breeze ]

[yurch]

Originally posted by Kurtz:

Right now, you can have a good plan, along comes a Hurricane and all your planning is gone with the wind, forcing you to deploy a Hurri to counter the enemy's Hurri.

Argh! Puns!!@#$

Anyway, I think huri is 150 front armor (= apollo front) and 70 everywhere else (top, rear, sides...). Tempest is 100 (= apollo side) everywhere except 50 rear. Unless these physicalobjectgroup files don't update with the patch. I seem to think it was 180ish front for huri before.

The Hurricane is traditionally used against dug-in infantry or enemy structures and fortifications.

I wasn't aware the thor and apollo fell into that category.

[poesel]

Non-hurricane remarks:

While in observer or deploy mode it would be nice to be able to 'click to move' on the minimap.

You don't get a death message if you drive on a mine (it took me 2 thors to notice the mines...)

Another nice to have would be a 'fog of war' overlay on the tactical map where you could see the areas your teammembers can oversee. Sometimes I thought an area was clear and then dropped on heaps of enemys.

The deploy phase could be used to do some strategy talk but the 4 line display is rather short and those with long loading times will see nothing. A large collapsible message box where messages don't disappear would be a solution.

The server list could display the remaining time of the scenario so you wouldn't join a game that lasted only a minute.

And lastly: this thread is already unreadable for newcomers. Please create subcategories in this forum so that we can have threads with one topic.

[yurch]

You can ctrl-click on the ground or minimap to move around in observer mode.

[Kurtz]

Poesel71: you can see the remaining scenario time from the server list, but you have to scroll right.

[Kurtz]

Originally posted by RIPper_SVK:

now take this a bit to the extreme. the defenders could cover a sustantial portion of the map with turrets. ...

so i think limiting defenders DZ at the start would be usefull too.

This seems to be a scenario option. Look at the Single player tab, there is an option for deployment zone size. Just as in CTF games.

The option is there, but we haven't had a chance to use different settings yet.

[Allan Wotherspoon]

I'd like to see a Tempest with a 20mm gun. Now that would be fast and deadly...

[aittam]

again on point and damage: yesterday night i scored about 20 hits with ATGM and only 4 killings, but all the others damaged vehicles either suiceded or were taken off shortly after by allied MBT, not whineing 'cause i had fun but still I think that each contribution should be acknoledged

[Kurtz]

The points is a mystery to me. But I have observed that I get high points when using a Hermes. But that seems to be because of the accurate gun (hits > misses) and high number of kills - without my intervention!

I agree that all damage should be counted. If I set a Thor turret on fire, I usually don't bother to kill the vehicle, it's out of action anyway.

[cool breeze]

The 120mm thors are rare so it would be nice if youd try and kill em or keep em from extracting when on my team. But I do the same thing until there is noone else to shoot.

[aittam]

if the tactical situation allows it I usually finish a mbt not a recon vehicle, another suggestion is to eliminate promptly the tag from a killed vehicle, sometimes is not so obviuos to uderstand who's dead and who's damaged only

[Kurtz]

If I cripple them, they're out of the game longer. The bots have to wait before extracting (do bots extract?) or killing themselves. Humans can kill themselves instantly or wait for extraction.

I usually try to kill vehicles, but sometimes crippling them is the only thing you can do.

I was thinkg about another feature: "keep off the grass" signs

Sometimes I dig trenches to make it harder for the enemy to pass. Of course, my own bots can't resist this and usually tries to go over the obstacle, ridiculing themselves in the process.

[poesel]

Its also not clear to me when or why you get points. I'd rather have a datailed list of: what and how have I killed/crippled or got killed/cripples by. 'how' means: whith which vehicle did I achieve what.

Ammo selection:

Sometimes the game doesn't get a keystroke so I cannot blindly choose the ammo type - I always have to take a look. Please show the ammo type near the aiming cross when you change the type. You also shouldn't be able to switch to an empty slot.

Mark the minefields in the tac display. If you deploy you don't know which areas you already have covered. Doubly so if two players are deploying.

Oh, and a hurricane remark: I like the way the hovercraft moves and the recoil effect is great. Still, this thing is too strong on scenarios with much space. More icebergs or more rocks would help balance the maps.

Another thing would be to only allow the hurricane to fire if it sits tight (while pressing 'x'). That would make it more like a moveable artillery. Would spoil the recoil effect, though.

[Drusus]

The problem with Hurricane: the gun is simply too strong. The developers have (or beta testers, can't remember), that the guns are not first shot killers because this makes gameplay more interesting. But the plasma mortar is just that, a first shot killer. Only exception is Thor front. And maybe Thor generally, because getting direct hits isn't that easy. The Thor is still very much vulnerable. But on the other hand you can score kills at ranges over 400m (target to explosion range) against softer targets. I self killed myself once at the range of ~460 so I know... And this was on the Raid map, meaning the atmosphere should make the mortar pretty much useless (another dev/beta remark).

Ok, so Hurricane has a great first shot kill chance. You might say that it is compensated by the fact that it has a long reload time. Which could be true if the vehicle would need to reload in the beginning of the fight. Now it is just right click - left click - burning vehicle. Except if the enemy is using Thor. Then it is only ~25% chance of a burning vehicle.

Ok, so the gun is a bit too powerful. But the real problem is that if the player using the Hurricane plays carefully, he has about zero chance of getting killed himself. While still being pretty much the most lethal player on the field. Stay at around 2000-3000m and move constantly. When damaged, immediately extract. And if there is somehow too much enemy resistance somewhere, switch to indirect fire role. I tried this and lost only one Hurricane in the 25mins of fighting. That was because careless shooting resulting in self suicide. BTW I think I encountered some kind of a bug when shooting to the side of my hurricane while moving. I hit my own vehicle somehow. I had manual range set to 4000+m and shot upwards to that eastern hill on the Raid map.

About the controls: Please make it possible to have 'sticky' e key. Press once and you get into the gunner mode, another press and back to the outside view. At the moment things get interesting when you are trying to move forward, zoom and change ammo simultaneously. My keyboard can't actually handle w, e and r being pressed at the same time. I have moved reload to r and t. No way I am going to move my hand away from the mouse or movement controls. I don't know if there is any rational reason for not allowing on/off pressing. As an option, ofcourse.

[yurch]

I think that the shrapnel for hurricane/artillery rounds might be going through the large raid buildings. I've lost a few paladins to explosions I swear were directed at someone on the other side of the building.

On sticky keys, it'd be nice to have a continuous-fire as well.

[aittam]

no continuos fire it will advantage beam weapons -imho-

about beam: shouldn't tha mbt have a shorter reloading time or the light tank a longer one? someting related to the energy cells they carry..........

[yurch]

Muddling the interface is a very bad way to balance anything. All it does is annoy players. I can fire ion, 76mm, or 20mm at nearly maximum rate already, it just means I have to wear my mouse and fingers out to do so.

If I really wanted to make life easier I can probably get around the interface by getting mouse/joystick software that allows for repeat-fire or just do something odd like bind fire to mousewheel. The game can't stop that.

If the ion is unbalanced, you change the ion.

And I'm definitely one of the opinion the ion doesn't need any further help. Two players using it in conjunction is very hard to stop. Nearly every dropship spotted within something rediculous like 6-7km vaporizes, how's that for efficient AA - I think it takes 13 shots if they all hit in the same area, which is very easy for two people. Three players in thors with ions is downright dangerous and will steamroll an opposing team if they don't take immediate measures to stop them. The bots using the thors aren't very indicative of the ion's power, which is why I think so many players ignore them.