TJW new version of Tremulous

[DarkRogue]

nah have seen norf with blaster. He makes it look like a friggin sniper rifle

Overheating might work though I think it may come down to keeping it spammible still as an issue. The biggest issue with chaingun and BS is the accuracy. IT's rare to see people use chaingun in light armor since it cuts back on your mobility, BS on the other hand seems to fix how the cg is fired. Or at least that's the common belief: before BS - crouch to retain control of the weapon.

Another possibility might be reducing the damage ratio per bullet. Not sure what the current hp loss per bullet is but perhaps if it was 3/4 or 1/2 of what it currently is it'd be less lame to see entire teams of chainsuits.

[Stof]

nah have seen norf with blaster. He makes it look like a friggin sniper rifle

Overheating might work though I think it may come down to keeping it spammible still as an issue. The biggest issue with chaingun and BS is the accuracy. IT's rare to see people use chaingun in light armor since it cuts back on your mobility, BS on the other hand seems to fix how the cg is fired. Or at least that's the common belief: before BS - crouch to retain control of the weapon.

Another possibility might be reducing the damage ratio per bullet. Not sure what the current hp loss per bullet is but perhaps if it was 3/4 or 1/2 of what it currently is it'd be less lame to see entire teams of chainsuits.

It'ss only 75DPS!!! If you reduce it like that, it'd be better to fight aliens with a rifle.

Reduce it in 1/2 : weapon plain sucks!
Reduce it in 3/4 : nearly same DPS than lasgun and exactly the same damage total without a batery pack. At that point you know what to do.

Thinking on the issue, I'd say that the chaingun is FINE as it is. Increase spread will greatly reduce the damage at range to the point that lasgun and rifle are much better. Reduce also it's effectiveness in close range will make the weapon plain useless. In fact, humans use the chaingun mainly for it's effectivemeness in CQB I'd say. The fact that aliens are often chased and killed with it is probably a byproduct of the fact that humans are still equipped with it when comes the time to chase them. Lasgun is a as good a weapon for that role if the target has some advance

[temple]

Norfenstein
I can't disagree more. Tremulous was broken. "Balance" was only achieved by sacrificing fun, which to me is unacceptable. And I don't think it's possible for you to accurately predict how these changes will affect them game when even I can't do so all the time. We're not afraid to change things we've already changed when it's obvious they're not working, or even when they could just be better. That alone should indicate that none of us know exactly how 1.2 will turn out.
I'm not buying it.
Tyrants were the only thing broken in 1.10.  Everything else is debatable.  

Changes are welcome but nerfs have to be dealt with better.  I think too much is hinging on marauders and basilisks.
 
Norfenstein  
Not survive as much and allow humans to advance better (or just play with different strategies)? With funds earned from destroying structures, dying won't matter as much for aliens, and before now everyone was complaining about humans camping in their bases. Now you're complaining about them advancing too much?
The problem is that aliens are close ranged and once they retreat, its hard to regain position against long range attackers.  

Its fine line between encouraging humans and taking away their risk.

Norfenstein
We do not want alien "offense" to be "waiting outside the human base". And that's the only thing we've taken away with reducing regeneration outside of creep.
Humans get medikits and armor.  Aliens get basilisks.  

Aliens have to risk a forward egg just to regenerate.
Aliens lose build points to regenerate that could be used to defend their weak base.
Aliens have to spend 1-2 evos for mobile regeneration.
Aliens lose a possible attacker for regeneration.
Aliens mobile regeneration cannot defend itself or escape as well as other classes.
If a forward egg is hid on the ceiling, you can't reach it to regenerate.  
If a forward egg is made available for the team to regenerate from, its in plan sight of human attackers.
Alien radar doesn't say teammates, so they have to track down or follow
basilisks around.  

Humans don't have risks like that.
Humans don't have to use build points outside of the base.
Humans don't have to send a defenseless bulider across the map.  
Humans don't have to pay credits to regenerate (the basilisk cost evolution points).
Humans get free, rechargable, instant use regeneration.
Humans don't have to specific use any gear just for their teammates sake.  
Medikits are actually better than alien regeneration right now because it works when you want and a lot faster.  

Norfenstein
You haven't made the connection between the turret change (including the most recent one) and marauders being base attackers yet?
This is where we are breaking down.

Turrets can't shoot through each other.  But I'm a marauder and jumping, all turrets in range can shoot me.  Turrets have longer range and more damage.  So jumping is actually killing me.  When I played a marauder, I would damage structures, barely escape once turrets shooting, and the human team would just repair.  Nothing changed.  It was just a waste of time and risking 2-3 evolutions on my part.  When I played aliens, we rushed the human base plenty of times but we weren't able to kill structures consistently.  I'm not even factoring in defenders.  

If they had a tesla or defensive computer, the knockback would kick me around before I could get started.  

How can marauders counter that?

Norfenstein
Pounce first, chomp. I see great goon players do this already and it's almost as overpowered as flying headbites.
I hope you made a mistake when you said flying headbites.  

What they do is pounce and chomp while flying.  The chomp cancels any pounce damage.  That's what makes it balanced.

You underestimate the human team.  If you have ever played a goon versus a Stage 2 human with helmet/light armor and a pulse rifle, there is no question why you need pounce and chomp. Humans run fast. You can't can't catch them and kill them without pouncing and headbiting them. If its an open area, dragoons and marauders are really at a disadvantage against fleet-footed humans.  And humans can sprint, making it damn near impossible to catch them.  That's the reality right now, these changes make it worse.  

You could use a basilisk but it would get team killed. If it dies, there goes your regeneration.  

Norfenstein
I think I can justify every one of them (or could when they were made, it's not like I can remember everything we've done). Many of the new feature are indeed "wouldn't it be cool" because we're trying to make the game more fun. Fun requires balance and balance is worthless without fun.
A lot of people are having  fun right now.  These changes are taking away fun from the aliens at the expense of improving humans.  Its cutting off your nose to spite your ear.  

Norfenstein
We're taking this extremely seriously. No change is made simply on a whim, I do in fact have to justify changes to the other devs, and I don't do so with just with my extensive experience, but with acutal. The community isn't going to be divided and destroyed because of changes because we already don't all play together. Many people pick one or two servers on which they play exclusively and we have over a hundred servers. Our exchanges don't seem to be getting anywhere, temple, so I'm going to stop on my end until more changes have been made for you to comment on.

The gods must be crazy.

[temple]

It'ss only 75DPS!!! If you reduce it like that, it'd be better to fight aliens with a rifle.

I thought chaingun was 100 DPS, according to SatGNU wiki.

[Stof]

I thought chaingun was 100 DPS, according to SatGNU wiki.

According to the bricosoft wiki, it is 75 DPS. And I think I'm the one who filled in the data myself

And according to that: http://svn.icculus.org/tremulous/trunk/src/game/tremulous.h?rev=888&view=markup

Code: [Select]

#define CHAINGUN_PRICE              400
#define CHAINGUN_BULLETS            300
#define CHAINGUN_REPEAT             80
#define CHAINGUN_K_SCALE            1.0f
#define CHAINGUN_SPREAD             1000
#define CHAINGUN_DMG                HDM(6)


6 * 80 / 1000 = 75

I'm right. But I might have misrepresented the meaning of the REPEAT value.

[Norfenstein]

Consider the chaingun+bs combo as beeing an entirely new S3 weapon

I s'pose there's nothing better to do... because

The biggest issue with chaingun and BS is the accuracy. IT's rare to see people use chaingun in light armor since it cuts back on your mobility, BS on the other hand seems to fix how the cg is fired. Or at least that's the common belief: before BS - crouch to retain control of the weapon.

...before stage 3 you can't run with it and get the most out of it. It's okay that it takes on a new dimension at stage 3; lower stages are supposed to be more defensive anyway. So the chainsuit solution can't consist of changing the spread only (as I've found out). Just lowering the damage just means it will take longer to kill things, which doesn't actually solve the problem (increasing spread makes killing small things take longer, but that's irrelevant because it's meant for big aliens).

The fact that aliens are often chased and killed with it is probably a byproduct of the fact that humans are still equipped with it when comes the time to chase them. Lasgun is a as good a weapon for that role if the target has some advance

I... don't think so. Lasgun is 45 dps pretty much guaranteed (since it's perfectly accurate... it used to have the same firing rate and I think damage as the rifle and was wildly overpowered because of its accuracy and constant fire) and the chaingun is 75 dps, which is I think enough to make up for the spread against big aliens at chasing range. It's like a hitscan pulse rifle. Lowering its spread will make it even better for chasing and I think not make it useless in close quarters if aliens can do something to counter it. In fact my idea is to force aliens to turn around and fight if they're not already far enough away, because they'll have better odds up close trying to kill the chaingunner if they have the skill advantage.

Just a thought, have the chaingun heat up and overheat?

Similar to spinup/spindown (and a suggestion I made when I first started playing Tremulous ) in that it effectively lowers the damage by reducing the time it can fire. I was thinking it'd be better if skill was involved (on the part of both the alien and human) in cutting off damage.

As for a possible change for the chaingun, what about spin up time and forcing the player to stop firing if it takes some damage. For example, more than 20 pts of damage at a time stuns you slightly and makes you start the spin up procedure again.

This is along the lines of what I was thinking, but playing with hard values like 20 and a fixed spinup time makes balancing hard and us balancers uncomfortable. So I thought, maybe: have the chaingun just cut out for a number of milliseconds directly proportional to damage taken. But to be significant this might have to be a rather large time of not firing, which I imagine would feel a little silly conceptually. So I concluded that having damage knock the human's aim around would accomplish basically the same thing (small damage would effectively make the chaingun spread larger for a moment, big damage would actually disorient the human if was firing at the time it was taken).

To temple: I'm not going to debate the changes made up utill now with you anymore, but I can disabuse you of some things:

What they do is pounce and chomp while flying. The chomp cancels any pounce damage. That's what makes it balanced.

That's what made it unacceptable regardless of balance. Using the pounce is what makes the dragoon fun, so it should be what the dragoon uses to attack. One-hundred damage for a pounce plus 160 damage for a headbite is very obviously overpowered, but forcing players to choose between an easier and more fun to use 100-damage pounce and a harder to use, less fun 160-damage flying headbite was not a choice I wanted players to have to make. Add on top of that that the bite cancelling pounce damage was completely unobvious to seemingly everyone, and convinced apparently everyone that the bite was the only useful attack of the goon. This no longer the case. You can still "pounce and chomp", just not chomp while pouncing. If tjw's 5-year old son can use it effectively I think you can too.

A lot of people are having fun right now. These changes are taking away fun from the aliens at the expense of improving humans. Its cutting off your nose to spite your ear.

You sound like the only one unable to adjust.

[Plague Bringer]

I'm with temple on this one, I'm not going to repeat any of his points, but

These changes are taking away fun from the aliens at the expense of improving humans. Its cutting off your nose to spite your ear.

[Ceaser342]

I side with temple and plague.  The aliens have been screwed.

[Stof]

(... chaingun ...)

There is quite a lot to talk about the chaingun.

As for comparing it to the lasgun to chase alien, it's simply a matter of the relative alien size while you are chasing. Against small aliens or medium sized aliens that have some good advance on you, it's worse than lasgun. Against big aliens it's somewhat better. Lowering too much the damage/accuracy might very well make the lasgun a plain better weapon for chasing aliens. Still, the chaingun has more chances to keep you alive in CQB. Unfortunately, you are talking about greatly reducing the chaingun usage in CQB so I guess it would be better to change nothing on it's damage potential at range.

As for the knockdown effect when hit, you can maybe make it like in Metroid Prime where quite often, a strong hit will completly disturb your ability to fire back. Represented by Samus wildly moving her arms around, partly protecting her head with her hand. With good visual feedback, you can easily make it happen and make it believable.

PS: as for those who wait for the battlesuit to use the chaingun, it's not like the knockback effect when firing is hard to fight back with careful mouse movements Slightly less accurate of course, but not as bad as most think.

[temple]

To temple: I'm not going to debate the changes made up utill now with you anymore, but I can disabuse you of some things:

What they do is pounce and chomp while flying. The chomp cancels any pounce damage. That's what makes it balanced.

That's what made it unacceptable regardless of balance. Using the pounce is what makes the dragoon fun, so it should be what the dragoon uses to attack. One-hundred damage for a pounce plus 160 damage for a headbite is very obviously overpowered, but forcing players to choose between an easier and more fun to use 100-damage pounce and a harder to use, less fun 160-damage flying headbite was not a choice I wanted players to have to make. Add on top of that that the bite cancelling pounce damage was completely unobvious to seemingly everyone, and convinced apparently everyone that the bite was the only useful attack of the goon. This no longer the case. You can still "pounce and chomp", just not chomp while pouncing. If tjw's 5-year old son can use it effectively I think you can too.

You don't sound like you play dragoons at a high level.  Pounce is a weapon that also happens to be a fast means of transportation. In Stage 1, pounce is definitely a weapon.  Pounce helps finish people off or an alternative strategy when you can't land a chomp on a fast moving human.  But its preferable to use chump when possible because it deals 120 damage to the head and only affected by helmets or battlesuits (as opposed to 100 damage that is negated by both light armor/helmet or battlesuits).  

On top of that, the chomp width is lowered.  So it will be even harder.  You are killing a once useful class and saying 'I can't adjust'.

[Undeference]

Most of the arguments here are total bs, probably from the fact that there will be change. Playing one or two games with some proposed, unfinished changes will not give you an idea of fun or balance. Many of the changes require playing different from how people have been playing for a year. In order to actually know whether a change is more fun or more balanced, you have to learn how to play with that change, just like you learned to play in the first place.

That takes more time than 1 or 2 matches, and it takes more than conceptual argument over the proposed changes. If you have a better idea than "your changes suck" or "this is overpowered, fix it", "don't nerf this", etc., etc., people would be more than happy to read about it. People, however, are a bit less than happy to read the mostly pointless arguing.

[n00b pl0x]

i complained a lot at first, but after watching temple make a fool of himself over the changes, i decided not to do the same.

i trust the devs will do a good job making 1.2 more balanced than 1.1.

[temple]

Most of the arguments here are total bs, probably from the fact that there will be change. Playing one or two games with some proposed, unfinished changes will not give you an idea of fun or balance. Many of the changes require playing different from how people have been playing for a year. In order to actually know whether a change is more fun or more balanced, you have to learn how to play with that change, just like you learned to play in the first place.

That takes more time than 1 or 2 matches, and it takes more than conceptual argument over the proposed changes. If you have a better idea than "your changes suck" or "this is overpowered, fix it", "don't nerf this", etc., etc., people would be more than happy to read about it. People, however, are a bit less than happy to read the mostly pointless arguing.

I've laid out a lot of arguments with clear meanings and anecdotes.  I took a lot of time to try to be clear and avoided being antagonistic.  I've play more than 1-2 matches.  I've played with TJW and Norf.  I've specifically played marauders and basilisks.  I could be like everyone and else and just say 'SHIT CHANGES'. But I'm trying to help Norf see what I'm saying.  


Have you played the changes?

[kevlarman]

To temple: I'm not going to debate the changes made up utill now with you anymore, but I can disabuse you of some things:

What they do is pounce and chomp while flying. The chomp cancels any pounce damage. That's what makes it balanced.

That's what made it unacceptable regardless of balance. Using the pounce is what makes the dragoon fun, so it should be what the dragoon uses to attack. One-hundred damage for a pounce plus 160 damage for a headbite is very obviously overpowered, but forcing players to choose between an easier and more fun to use 100-damage pounce and a harder to use, less fun 160-damage flying headbite was not a choice I wanted players to have to make. Add on top of that that the bite cancelling pounce damage was completely unobvious to seemingly everyone, and convinced apparently everyone that the bite was the only useful attack of the goon. This no longer the case. You can still "pounce and chomp", just not chomp while pouncing. If tjw's 5-year old son can use it effectively I think you can too.

You don't sound like you play dragoons at a high level.  Pounce is a weapon that also happens to be a fast means of transportation. In Stage 1, pounce is definitely a weapon.  Pounce helps finish people off or an alternative strategy when you can't land a chomp on a fast moving human.  But its preferable to use chump when possible because it deals 120 damage to the head and only affected by helmets or battlesuits (as opposed to 100 damage that is negated by both light armor/helmet or battlesuits).  

On top of that, the chomp width is lowered.  So it will be even harder.  You are killing a once useful class and saying 'I can't adjust'.

that change has been up on pretty much every server since tjw's admin system became the standard, i don't know why you complain about it now.

[temple]

To temple: I'm not going to debate the changes made up utill now with you anymore, but I can disabuse you of some things:

What they do is pounce and chomp while flying. The chomp cancels any pounce damage. That's what makes it balanced.

That's what made it unacceptable regardless of balance. Using the pounce is what makes the dragoon fun, so it should be what the dragoon uses to attack. One-hundred damage for a pounce plus 160 damage for a headbite is very obviously overpowered, but forcing players to choose between an easier and more fun to use 100-damage pounce and a harder to use, less fun 160-damage flying headbite was not a choice I wanted players to have to make. Add on top of that that the bite cancelling pounce damage was completely unobvious to seemingly everyone, and convinced apparently everyone that the bite was the only useful attack of the goon. This no longer the case. You can still "pounce and chomp", just not chomp while pouncing. If tjw's 5-year old son can use it effectively I think you can too.

You don't sound like you play dragoons at a high level.  Pounce is a weapon that also happens to be a fast means of transportation. In Stage 1, pounce is definitely a weapon.  Pounce helps finish people off or an alternative strategy when you can't land a chomp on a fast moving human.  But its preferable to use chump when possible because it deals 120 damage to the head and only affected by helmets or battlesuits (as opposed to 100 damage that is negated by both light armor/helmet or battlesuits).  

On top of that, the chomp width is lowered.  So it will be even harder.  You are killing a once useful class and saying 'I can't adjust'.

that change has been up on pretty much every server since tjw's admin system became the standard, i don't know why you complain about it now.

Right now, goons are not physically able to chomp when pouncing.  The mechanism you are thinking of is chomp canceling pounce damage, which I'm fine with.  I don't like way that goons have to land before chomping on 1.20.

[Norfenstein]

I tried the goon again today, since lately I've been focusing on other aliens that have changed recently and wanted to see for myself if temple had a good point about it. In one-on-one fights in reasonably favorable locations, I was owning chainsuits with the pounce. My conclusion: I need to stop wasting time replying to you now before I start to get uncivil. I do appreciate your politeness though, but we are not getting anywhere. You're critiquing an unfinished product whose final state you can't predict. And you're not even using accurate information to do so.

[AKAnotu]

after being off for a day or two, i'm jumping back in
and i'm making more organized posts, so the sensibillity kicks in
i agree with temple 100%
btw,i'm going to state an objection, give a norfenstein like answer, then debate that, as most of my criticizims have been taken

ALIEN OFFENSIVENESS..ESS
Aliens have been screwed attackwise, they need something as an offensive breaker (or whatever the name is)
tyrant trample has been made better (definately! SQUISH!) and offense does not mean "camp outside the human base"
so what does offense mean? throw your hard earnd evos at the unstoppable death machine base? maras aren't the only answer. I have an equasion for you mara+zap+walljump-turret damage-camping human (what's the rush, aliens cant attack with nerfed regen)-reactor's ultimate god tesla hp whore attack=dead mara+dead alien base(because of the credits the human got)=UNbalanced game.

ALIEN REGENERATION LACK OF....REGENERATION-NESS....ness..end underline
alien regen is nerfed, making base attacks a suicide run, forward eggs are easily taken down, and basilisks dont fit in the role as a healer, as they are a stealthy ninja assasin, not a support role like another granger!
basilisks healing is fine, you can defend the eggs, and grangers can still run away
so, who's defending the egg? the dead alien bodies from the overpowered  turrets? another math equasion dead aliens+egg near human base+camping and chasing creds=sawed egg. no comment.

this was not meant as a beta, and is not finished, so no comment.
why release it then? to cause complaints like this? this seems to be the only plausible reason. whoa! i just noticed that this computer has weird up and down arrow keys! lets make that the centerpiece of a new crappy homemade computer model! when people hate it, we'll say it's unfinished. GENIUS! (it really has funky keys tho)

humans are overpowered
not so! aliens just require more teamwork, are easier to kill, their map traveling abilities aren't what you expect, they are more easily killed, have crappy regen and crappy comeuppance for it, and have more specific roles!
what's the difference? nothing noticeable!




i know i came off as a little harsh, but i believe that with some tweaks this can be a fun new version of trem, but seriously.

[temple]

I tried the goon again today, since lately I've been focusing on other aliens that have changed recently and wanted to see for myself if temple had a good point about it. In one-on-one fights in reasonably favorable locations, I was owning chainsuits with the pounce. My conclusion: I need to stop wasting time replying to you now before I start to get uncivil. I do appreciate your politeness though, but we are not getting anywhere. You're critiquing an unfinished product whose final state you can't predict. And you're not even using accurate information to do so.

I can only be as accurate as I'm provided information.

All I have to say is when I played humans, there was no fear in my heart.  None.  The only thing I possibly feared was running out of credits and a double-team by Stage 2 aliens with a fresh poison buff.  I KNEW I was going to win because I spent enough time losing on aliens to learn their weaknesses and was able to exploit them.

Poison is nice now.  I will give you that.

[kevlarman]

Right now, goons are not physically able to chomp when pouncing.  The mechanism you are thinking of is chomp canceling pounce damage, which I'm fine with.  I don't like way that goons have to land before chomping on 1.20.

no, goons weren't able to chomp in midpounce in every single one of tjw's qvms, and since up until very recently that was the most popular qvm to use on servers not deserted by their admins, it has been like that forever on almost every server.

[n00b pl0x]

i dont see why chomping midpounce is so important anyways. the only server i ever do it is r1's server because his 99 dmg pounce sucks.

[temple]

Right now, goons are not physically able to chomp when pouncing.  The mechanism you are thinking of is chomp canceling pounce damage, which I'm fine with.  I don't like way that goons have to land before chomping on 1.20.

no, goons weren't able to chomp in midpounce in every single one of tjw's qvms, and since up until very recently that was the most popular qvm to use on servers not deserted by their admins, it has been like that forever on almost every server.

Can't think of a server I've played on, other than TJW, where I can't chomp midpounce.

edit: This is a new change, cause its on the changelog from trem.tjw.org.

[kevlarman]

Can't think of a server I've played on, other than TJW, where I can't chomp midpounce.

just because you think you're chomping doesn't mean you really are.

edit: This is a new change, cause its on the changelog from trem.tjw.org.

from http://tjw.org/tremulous/old/tremulous-svn809.patch, dated august 11th

Code: [Select]

+  // no bite during pounce
+  if( ( pm->ps->weapon == WP_ALEVEL3 || pm->ps->weapon == WP_ALEVEL3_UPG )
+    && ( pm->cmd.buttons & BUTTON_ATTACK )
+    && ( pm->ps->pm_flags & PMF_CHARGE ) )
+  {
+    return;
+  }
edit: i fail at bbcode
edit3: found earlier evidence of that change.
edit5(?): don't ask

[Catalyc]

The no chomp while pouncing change has indeed been there for a while now to help balance s1 vs s1. It seems like it wasn't because the client was required to download a new pk3 to remove the chomp sound that was played, although it actually only did pounce damage.
I agree with Norf: Dragoon pounce pretty much owns right now.

The regen change was also made a while ago and up untill these threads came up most people who initially complained about it (and actually kept on playing instead of just quitting) got over it when they realized that Adv Basi heals as fast as a booster. A decent Adv Basi is quite hard to kill whenever its not doing anything suicidal, and its the perfect class to zerg rush mass driver users. Its pretty much a support unit available for anyone who doesn't have enough frags to get a goon or mara+ but wants to really help their team advance.

One less attacker? I say one less annoying dretch blocking the big aliens while trying to be useful in s3.

TBH, I think you guys are having trouble adapting your 1.1 strategies for the changes, it's meant to be played differently. Its not actually 'released' yet, and its likely that things will change some more. In the time I've been around the Trem community, balance changes for the next version were always available on a server for pretty much public testing. I see no reason why this should change now.

[Mispeled]

I like the changes a lot. For games 5-7 people or so per team, I think it's very well balanced. I haven't been able to play any larger games than that yet, but the balance starts to break down when teams get much smaller than that.

[Norfenstein]

why release it then? to cause complaints like this?

It's important to me that the people I debate use good logic. This  is flawed logic. "Releasing" an alpha version (it's one server, with the patch incidentally being available to other servers that already think it's fun and good enough to use, with no announcement calling for beta testers), has not caused any complaints. You have chosen to complain. I'll take feedback on an alpha version; some people can understand the development process and contribute constructively. Others, apparently, cannot.

For the record, on tjw's server in this first week of April (so far as his stats have been updated) aliens have won 44 games, humans have won 38, and there have been 7 draws. I'm not sure when it was last reset (couldn't be more than a few weeks ago), and 224 data points isn't enough to draw a confident conclusion from, but the overall balance graph for our working version is tending far far better towards exactly balanced than 1.1 ever did. Compare.

[Diggs]

I've got to respect Norf and TJW for keeping the developement process open to all.  Norf is taking great effort to answer questions, explain some of the reasoning and accept input.  Things are just in a R & D mode (pre-alpha) and not even beta yet.  I haven't played enough games yet to offer valid opinions, but I would like to request that the change logs (http://tremulous.tjw.org/) be kept as current as possible.  That would really help correlate some of the things players see in-game with changes made.

It's good to see some decent player counts on tjw's server.  It shows people are interested.

[cephas]

For the record, on tjw's server in this first week of April (so far as his stats have been updated) aliens have won 44 games, humans have won 38, and there have been 7 draws. I'm not sure when it was last reset (couldn't be more than a few weeks ago), and 224 data points isn't enough to draw a confident conclusion from, but the overall balance graph for our working version is tending far far better towards exactly balanced than 1.1 ever did. Compare.

I have to agree with Diggs.  Props for the open development strategy.  I got a lot of help in setting up a development environment in IRC (I have some ideas I want to try out).  That said, the entire syscall incompatibility issue is a pain: I think it broke the in-game menus.

I like some of the changes (the lucy alt is now useful, pounce just looks better with knockback, and the new tyrant charge sounds interesting, but I haven't had a chance to try it out).  The aliens being tied to creep is not something I'm particularly fond of at the moment, but we'll see how that goes - it might be better with a slightly faster regen on creep, which would make sense but not change play too much.  I do agree that the reaction to some of the proposed changes are a bit 'knee-jerk'ish.  It never hurts to try something on a single server.

I'll see if I can run some statistics over the numbers you have.  Is that data available anywhere?

[Ceaser342]

Bases sieges are now almost impossible.  All it takes is 2 humans with helmets to run out and suicide on the basi and the rest of the team to come out in force kill the aliens and own there base.  

However if your aliens with humans camping outside your base your screwed.  Unlagged makes the MD god.  You got 2 MD's and a lasgun.  The moment the door opens you have 64 damage right off the bat plus what ever the lasgun is doing.  This plus no chomp and pounce and no regen makes the goon useless.  

Dretch isn't worth crap because of the MD.  Basi is out too.  Marauder has the best chance however its low HP plus nerfed regen means it needs to make the kills quick.  This pattern is even worse if humans are S2 or S3 due to armor.  So your stuck in your base.   If you attack in numbers sure you kill the humans.  Now you have 2 options wait for them to come back or suicide into there base.  Hmm not alot of options there.

Now we go from fun 25 minute tug of war games.  To 5 to 10 minute games of alien rape if the human team is any sort of compenant.

I understand these are alpha and fairly far along but right now I can not see this trend of nerfing aliens going anywhere.  Balance is not about the units which were balanced pretty well its the players.  Any game with a pro in it is unbalanced already if they join.  Hurting the aliens does not help.  The only thing I've seen done to humans to balance this is the chaingun spread and turret warm up.  Those don't matter unless your a dretch.    [/b]

[Plague Bringer]

Takes twice as long to do anything with a luci also. Twice as long to fully charge a primary, and twice the length between secondary shots. The luci went from a tank to a seige weapon that needs heavy cover from anything larger then an ant.

[Superpie]

Only noobs need cover, anyone with half a mind can go out and perform a complete hostile takeover with a luci.