2/24 Tremradio impressions?

[Risujin]

First of all, a big thank you to Dasprid for posting the notes! Get them here if you missed the broadcast and/or can't understand a word he says:
http://dev.dasprids.de/downloads/tremradio/tremradio_2007-02-24.notes.txt

To sum up the changes (not mentioning all of the bug fixes in SVN):
-- "even more fantastic HUD for the humans"

-- "Trooper model"
I saw screenshots on Overflow's website. It looks very nice, will it replace Sarge or how will that work?

-- "voice command effects"
v51!

-- "Currently you don't have to think much as an alien, you simply choose the highest class available and then you go and hunt down the humans. In Tremulous one dot two, you will have to have a better teamplay."
Tremulous servers are not well known for teamplay ... this could go down badly. Are the good players out there going to restrict themselves to clan matches or fume in anger as their useless teammates cost them game after game?

-- "The new Basilisk will have an healing aura like the Tyrant. Together with this change, the booster will loose its ability to increase the regeneration."
So now instead of healing in base I need to chase down the most useless class in the game...

-- "Basilisk should no longer poison the humans, but slow them down like when they are on creep, but the muddling aim thing should stay ... Then the grab time will be increased, so humans cannot get out of the grab so quick anymore."
This would go a long way to helping Adv. Basis.

-- "The Marauder won't get that much changes, but it's zapping range will be increased"
Isn't it long enough already?

-- "give the pounce of the goon some more use. Instead of just hurting and knocking a human, its aim will get randomized"
... because what we need now is more powerful goons. :-?

-- "Also the Tyrant's slash width will be reduced."
... but not length? 1.1.0 Tyrants slash from across the room.

-- "To make the [Tyrant] charge more use, it get some knockback on multiple targets."

-- "removing the granger spit"

-- "When a turret has an alien in sight and is loaded, it stops aiming, but continues to track in the same direction it had been moving in"
We don't need dumber turrets. It's easy enough to kill one as a dretch.

-- "new trigger elements ... animated map objects will be able to play a loop"
Mappers rejoice!

-- "custom map layout system"
TJW's layout in SVN. It can only be used by server ops. The server must be restarted with cheats to modify layouts.

-- "When you decone a structure, it won't get removed immediately, but marked as deconned structure."
You can try out marked deconstruction on SVN servers. Thanks to kevlarman you can build inside of marked buildables.

[kevlarman]

First of all, a big thank you to Dasprid for posting the notes! Get them here if you missed the broadcast and/or can't understand a word he says:
http://dev.dasprids.de/files/tremradio/tremradio_2007-02-24.notes.txt

you get used to the accent after 3 or 4 shows.

-- "Currently you don't have to think much as an alien, you simply choose the highest class available and then you go and hunt down the humans. In Tremulous one dot two, you will have to have a better teamplay."
Tremulous servers are not well known for teamplay ... this could go down badly. Are the good players out there going to restrict themselves to clan matches or fume in anger as their useless teammates cost them game after game?

we already fume in anger as our useless teammates cost us the game, so not much change.

-- "The new Basilisk will have an healing aura like the Tyrant. Together with this change, the booster will loose its ability to increase the regeneration."
So now instead of healing in base I need to chase down the most useless class in the game...
-- "Basilisk should no longer poison the humans, but slow them down like when they are on creep, but the muddling aim thing should stay ... Then the grab time will be increased, so humans cannot get out of the grab so quick anymore."
This would go a long way to helping Adv. Basis.

basilisk is no longer the most useless class in the game (i would say marauders are useless, because without regen they go down very easily, and they don't have the huge damage that dragoons do, but i've seen marauders dominate even with the nerfed regen). aside from the benefit of healing allied players, basilisks are the only class that doesn't need to return to creep to heal, and their regen has been significantly buffed (2hp/sec with a 2x aura on a regular basi, 3hp/sec with a 3x aura on adv. (yes that's right, 9hp/sec)), and gas has gone from being completely useless to ensuring the death of any single human not wearing a bsuit if the basi has no help, and being extremely helpful against even groups of bsuits as larger aliens take out the now helpless humans.

-- "The Marauder won't get that much changes, but it's zapping range will be increased"
Isn't it long enough already?

currently zap does less than half the damage of swipe, and the range isn't enough to justify using it.

-- "Also the Tyrant's slash width will be reduced."
... but not length? 1.1.0 Tyrants slash from across the room.

i think he meant tyrant slash range, it's nerfed to adv. goon range on trem.tjw.org, he also mentioned dretch health being reduced to 20 when on trem.tjw.org it was actually buffed to 30 (and 35 at one point)

-- "When a turret has an alien in sight and is loaded, it stops aiming, but continues to track in the same direction it had been moving in"
We don't need dumber turrets. It's easy enough to kill one as a dretch.

(emphasis mine) i think the general idea is to make it harder for humans to draw out the game until sudden death or the time limit when they are at a disadvantage.

[holyknight]

ooooooooooh, sounds nice! Can't wait for it to be finished!
   

[Risujin]

we already fume in anger as our useless teammates cost us the game, so not much change.

This is true in many cases. Of course Tremulous is ideally a team-oriented game but when you penalize players for simply having poor teammates it can be very frustrating. I added features to Balance mod which allow an expert player to dominate a game, even with useless teammates/feeders. With the devolution, evolve-to-builder, telenode teleports, and blaster buffs you can play Balance mod essentially single player.

basilisk is no longer the most useless class in the game (i would say marauders are useless, because without regen they go down very easily, and they don't have the huge damage that dragoons do, but i've seen marauders dominate even with the nerfed regen). aside from the benefit of healing allied players, basilisks are the only class that doesn't need to return to creep to heal, and their regen has been significantly buffed (2hp/sec with a 2x aura on a regular basi, 3hp/sec with a 3x aura on adv. (yes that's right, 9hp/sec)), and gas has gone from being completely useless to ensuring the death of any single human not wearing a bsuit if the basi has no help, and being extremely helpful against even groups of bsuits as larger aliens take out the now helpless humans.

Heal only on creep is in 1.2?!!
Oh that makes the game painful... then again, maybe with a change of strategy it wouldn't be so bad. Aliens will now have to keep a forward egg and after SD, if it goes down, Aliens are screwed. :roll:

currently zap does less than half the damage of swipe, and the range isn't enough to justify using it.

O rly? Zap is an Adv. Mara's best friend. It's the only reason I use a Mara at all... I wouldn't boost zap but perhaps buff the base Mara some instead.

i think he meant tyrant slash range, it's nerfed to adv. goon range on trem.tjw.org, he also mentioned dretch health being reduced to 20 when on trem.tjw.org it was actually buffed to 30 (and 35 at one point)

In Balance mod I have had Tyrant, Goon and Mara ranges nerfed significantly and had good results. With unlagged you don't need that cheat range anymore.

i think the general idea is to make it harder for humans to draw out the game until sudden death or the time limit when they are at a disadvantage.

Good idea in principle but how does dumbing the turrets help this? Once they are pointed in the right direction, that's that. Something like the Bile Dretch goes a long way in breaking campers, in rev 16 it is perfect.

[Seffylight]

Keep your bile dretch out of my base Tremulous, thanks.

All of the changes for 1.2 get a thumbs-up from Seffy.

[n00b pl0x]

One team bile dretch run on a human base with a high ceiling and no more human base. :| bile is fun, but not balanced.

[Norfenstein]

Keep in mind some of these things are experimental ideas that we're not set on, or may not survive beta testing.

"Better teamplay" - The goal is to make all of the classes useful, even when a more expensive class is available. I think there's naturally going to more opportunity for teamplay, but I certainly don't want to make it more necessary.

Booster losing healing aura - The more I consider it the less I mind the overlap between basilisk healing aura and the booster. Probably won't happen. The tyrant won't have the aura though, I don't know if that was mentioned or not. The gas change is an example of a new opportunity for teamwork.

Removing granger spit - Also probably won't happen because I expect everyone will hate not having it (especially since it's actually sort of useful now).

Tyrant width reduction - This is correct. Width is basically how easy it is to hit with a melee attack, and my biggest problem with the tyrant was it was far too hard to survive them at close range. There's more skill involved now. The new trample is pretty nice too.

Dretch health - Will probably stay at 30.

Pounce affecting human aim - This might be neat but it's not necessary, and it might not even get tested if we don't have time.

Zap changes - I think Dasprid got confused on this one since what he described sounds like how the zap currently works. What we really want - and think aliens really need - is for the zap to function as a true area-affect weapon. So if turrets get clumped together too much the zap can hit all of them together. Details are still being worked out, but I think this will be one of the biggest gameplay changes.

Turrets - Still working out the details on this too, but I think it's going to be the biggest and most necessary change to the balance. Basically, I wanted turrets to be better individually, worse when grouped together (the zap change will help here too), and generally more flexible for humans. But we can't just make them more powerful because they're already effectively unfair to aliens. They're too weak individually, but as solid walls that don't have to aim there's just no good way to deal with them. However we do it there has to be some element of skill in dodging turret fire and given that we can then actually improve their firing range, aiming speed, and/or damage. Hopefully this will make turrets better for both teams.

Honestly, I'm expecting many people to hate a lot of the gameplay changes, mostly because the people still playing Tremulous are the ones that've gotten used to the current balance. Please give the new balance a chance for long enough (I'd say at least a month) before writing treatises on why it sucks. After that, please do. If you want a head start you can preview a lot of the changes on tjw's server already, just remember it's all still in development.

[Rawr]

-- "removing the granger spit"

 :cry:  :cry:  :cry:
WRYYYYYY!!!

[temple]

All of the changes sound fine.

However...

I think 2 major changes would suit Tremulous perfectly fine.

1) Delay tyrant slash speed.  Give tyrants 2 slashes at current speed, then have a .5 or .7 second delay before the next 2 slashes.  Currently, tyrants can slash slash slash slash or trample slash slash to kill a battle uit.  Also, I could run at some turrets and slash away at bunch then run/trample out.  This would allow tyrants to still be tanks but not tanks and most the damaging alien class of all.

2) Decrease human movement speed based on gear.  
Light armor should have no speed decrease
Helmet and light armor slightly less speed
Helmet+light armor+any backpack and the battlesuit should have a noticeable speed decrease.
This will make sprint needed in combat and allow aliens to kill them in a laggier environment.  Currently, running around is too effective and really damning with lag.  People should think about evasion more so than just  reflexively moving to induce less response time against aliens.  Factor in a group of 2 or 3 humans all sprinting around and it becomes frustrating for aliens to land a solid hit without being instant gibbed.

That or decrease movement speed to crouch speed when back peddling.  Either or.

[n00b pl0x]

leave human movement speed the way it is. im kindof impartial on the tyrant thing tho. imagine trying to chase down a pouncing goon even slower than humans walk now.

[player1]

That I have to agree with. It feels nice and Quake-like, to the average n00b. At least knowing that WASD, C & Space work the way I think they should helps me out a little (when I'm a human). Maybe a little reduction as above, but like 2%, or 5%. No more than ten, please.

Reducing tyrant slash width or speed could help to balance stage three a little, but maybe I'm just not experienced enough. Seems like you can't go toe-to-toe with anything much bigger than advanced mara. Painsaw, maybe? I stay about thirty paces away, and shoot at their backs when they attack something else. Or else run away.

Oh, and I like granger spit. I don't know if it works, but it makes me feel better. Isn't it supposed to slow humans down (like a freeze-gun)? I think, if anything, the advanced granger should have acid/poison spit, and the advanced ckit should have a melee move or EMPcharge, useful against dretches. But then again, I think a lot of things.

Oh, yeah, stuff I do like. Increased alien electrical attack against turrets, if turrets could then be improved (add rotate turret to engineer menu).

Tyrant losing healing aura for basi would definitely increase basi usefulness. But I sure would miss getting punted off the top of the ATCS bunker by impatient tyros.

[Rawr]

I personally, am a professional granger. Don't take away my spit

It will harm the Extreme Granger Games  D:  D:  D:

[Mopatop]

gettin rid of the spit will get rid of annoying battle grangers who will block an entrance to the humans base and try and snipe turrets.

[next_ghost]

gettin rid of the spit will get rid of annoying battle grangers who will block an entrance to the humans base and try and snipe turrets.

And also let more jettards into alien bases. There's one good use for the spit: keeping jettards grounded.

[gareth]

Sounds good, as long as it is well tested.

[Stof]

Possible simple fix for the Powergranger syndrom. Make the granger pay with its health each time he uses the spit. Combined with the new regen rules it'll truly make the noobs more aware that such attack is for controled environments and most often, near the alien base

[::ThePredator]

If you do the basi healing thing it would be best if the basis show up on the radar (yellow dot?) to make them easier to find.

[Norfenstein]

1) Delay tyrant slash speed.  Give tyrants 2 slashes at current speed, then have a .5 or .7 second delay before the next 2 slashes.

I'm not convinced the tyrant is balanced yet. If it's not the slash repeat rate will probably be the next thing to get changed (range shouldn't really go down given the size of the model, and I want the damage to stay at 100). I don't think it needs anything more complicated than a number tweak, though your idea is neat.

2) Decrease human movement speed based on gear.

Humans already have a hard enough time getting around maps, and aliens have plenty of means to boost their speed or even slow down humans when they need to. Try out the new basilisk gas if you haven't yet. I don't really know what you mean by "reflexively moving to induce less response time against aliens" -- sounds like dodging to me, which humans should be better at if anything.

About the granger spit:
Apparently it was supposed to, all along, slow humans down and now it does (in the development version), making it not quite useless. I think this is dumb because aliens already have a class specifically designed for limiting humans' movement. You could make the case that creep and trappers already make the basilisk less special, but the spit happens to do the same thing to the dragoon and its range attack, which, again, is supposed to be something special enough to have to wait till stage 2 and pay 4 frags for.

Okay fine, it's a quirk, but:

Grangers should not be fighting humans. They cost nothing to go so there's no immediate disincentive to feed madly. And they will feed, because they're slow and fat with low health. Worse than that we all know they have a tendency to accomplish little besides getting in the way of classes that are actually meant to fight humans.

The simple reality is that if grangers need a toy to play with then building as aliens isn't what it could be. If the alien base is complete and isn't being attacked, the grangers' job should moving things forward to support their teammates, not getting in the way by quixotically spitting on turrets. I don't see any reason to shift the granger's focus away from building.

It's not breaking the balance, however, and the game doesn't have to be perfectly streamlined (it's not otherwise anyway), so unless enough other people also want it gone I'm not going to bring it up again.

[treminator]

Anybody actually have a hard copy of the entire show in AAC, mp3 or something?  I'm out getting gutter pillow drunk during those GMT radio hours.  I got broadband.  Hook a brother up.

[DASPRiD]

treminator: http://dev.dasprids.de/tremradio/

[holyknight]

lol @ Norfenstein
you are being too serious

[temple]

2) Decrease human movement speed based on gear.

Humans already have a hard enough time getting around maps, and aliens have plenty of means to boost their speed or even slow down humans when they need to. Try out the new basilisk gas if you haven't yet. I don't really know what you mean by "reflexively moving to induce less response time against aliens" -- sounds like dodging to me, which humans should be better at if anything.

With lag, a human can run around and hold down fire (especially when sprinting) and become virtually unhitable for a goon or mara.  Due to lag, they will fill the area with bullets and do damage without aiming at all.  There is nothing tactical about it.  

That's why humans shouldn't be able to move as fast when heavily armored.  

Just make backpedaling reduce movement speed to crouch speed and it would be balanced.  That way, a skilled human can still 'dodge' but they have to be more careful about it instead of inducing lag to make themselves impossible to hit.  

I used to do all the time in World of Warcraft.  The Rogue class can sprint similarly to how humans sprint.  Use spring and just swing away, you could lag around your opponent and be basically unhittable.  I consider it exploiting lag instead of using tactics.

[kevlarman]

2) Decrease human movement speed based on gear.

Humans already have a hard enough time getting around maps, and aliens have plenty of means to boost their speed or even slow down humans when they need to. Try out the new basilisk gas if you haven't yet. I don't really know what you mean by "reflexively moving to induce less response time against aliens" -- sounds like dodging to me, which humans should be better at if anything.

With lag, a human can run around and hold down fire (especially when sprinting) and become virtually unhitable for a goon or mara.  Due to lag, they will fill the area with bullets and do damage without aiming at all.  There is nothing tactical about it.  

That's why humans shouldn't be able to move as fast when heavily armored.  

Just make backpedaling reduce movement speed to crouch speed and it would be balanced.  That way, a skilled human can still 'dodge' but they have to be more careful about it instead of inducing lag to make themselves impossible to hit.  

I used to do all the time in World of Warcraft.  The Rogue class can sprint similarly to how humans sprint.  Use spring and just swing away, you could lag around your opponent and be basically unhittable.  I consider it exploiting lag instead of using tactics.

world of warcraft often gets client to server latencies upwards of a second, and range/facing calculations are done against server positions, making it impossible to guess where another player will be or move to that position even if you could. in tremulous, your latency is much less, and much more constant, making it very possible to lead your target. also, with unlagged hittests are done against the position you see them in, if you aim for a human, and you bite, you will hit.

[temple]

world of warcraft often gets client to server latencies upwards of a second, and range/facing calculations are done against server positions, making it impossible to guess where another player will be or move to that position even if you could. in tremulous, your latency is much less, and much more constant, making it very possible to lead your target. also, with unlagged hittests are done against the position you see them in, if you aim for a human, and you bite, you will hit.

Will Unlagged be apart of the 1.20?

[kevlarman]

world of warcraft often gets client to server latencies upwards of a second, and range/facing calculations are done against server positions, making it impossible to guess where another player will be or move to that position even if you could. in tremulous, your latency is much less, and much more constant, making it very possible to lead your target. also, with unlagged hittests are done against the position you see them in, if you aim for a human, and you bite, you will hit.

Will Unlagged be apart of the 1.20?

apart != a part </grammar>
and yes it will be, welcome to 3 months ago.

[::ThePredator]

Will anything be done to make sudden death more balanced? Most of the time aliens win SD because of regenerating structures.

[Seffylight]

world of warcraft often gets client to server latencies upwards of a second, and range/facing calculations are done against server positions, making it impossible to guess where another player will be or move to that position even if you could. in tremulous, your latency is much less, and much more constant, making it very possible to lead your target. also, with unlagged hittests are done against the position you see them in, if you aim for a human, and you bite, you will hit.

Will Unlagged be apart of the 1.20?

apart != a part </grammar>
and yes it will be, welcome to 3 months ago.

Lmfao.

[Undeference]

1.2 != 1.20

[treminator]

treminator: http://dev.dasprids.de/tremradio/

sweetness. Thx. I even get 135 KB/s from here to Germany dl'ing some.  These internet tubes are just awesome!

[Norfenstein]

lol @ Norfenstein
you are being too serious

That's my job. It involves much vigorous hand-waving.

Will anything be done to make sudden death more balanced? Most of the time aliens win SD because of regenerating structures.

We haven't discussed it. SD has always been an awkward hack and I hope the balance will eventually make it very rare instead of kind of important. The best thing to do is probably to change it to immediately nuke all structures and give people a countdown to death that goes up when they kill something. You know, make it actually sudden.