I feel like something of a pretender or charlatan to put my petty name here to complete this triforce. But I happened to have some thoughts and I feel that insight never hurts.
Tremulous is a unique kind of game. It's advertised as such because it blends RTS elements with FPS. However, it shares the uninspired type of dev cycle that FPS games get. Freeware shooters like nexuiz or ut4 are open-ended in that there are lots of maps, weapons, powerups, and various gametypes such that the game is never exhausted. You can DM with friends or something and then when you notice that you have enough people in the server, switch to CTF and go another six hours. You never play one single thing long enough to "solve" it, so the gameplay is fresh for a long time.
Thus to release a game like that, you basically release it and then leave it alone. When bugs crop up, you fix them, but you've provided the essentials (maps, weapons, gametypes) to form a community of fragging.
In Tremulous, we largely stagnated to ATCS. Remember, in Tremulous there is only one gametype. Team elimination, if you will. Here we already have one fewer factor in gameplay freshness than a regular FPS. Therefore the community will get bored that much faster.
The community had its own problem of tending to cut down the maps to just ATCS. I still don't know what the exact reason is. ATCS may be easier on the eyes because it's so bland, or easy to understand and start playing, or just fastest to load on Polish computers. This would further reduce boredom on top of only having one gametype.
Actually, that's not true; I think I do know the reason. We tended to perceive ATCS as the most balanced arena. Places like the Lair were what, 60/40? 55/45? The fact that ATCS was grinded so much more than other maps made us more sure about its balance. However, map balance itself is a non-entity. Layout balance is the big thing. Default Transit layout games would result in either 1 minute games or <servertimelimit> games.
Also on the point of balance, largely servers played the same game, but certain things like SST's (contain your laughter and bear with me) higher BPs or lagged/unlagged, these things affect balance. It *would* affect balance to play nonstandard layouts. You can change the whole face of a map just by switching bases around. Well, except for ATCS or other symmetrical examples.
About balance in general:
For an infinitesimal timing, S1 H > S1 A until a heavy alien arrives. Then ofc S1 A > S1 H. S2 means more to humans than it does to aliens, because the powerhouse that is the goon is the same. So the goon loses parity against now-helmeted humans. In general S3 A vs S3 H is fucked, and should be congratulated as a point in the game that resembles a conventional shooter in that it's just a party. However, on a map like ATCS, range and AOE of humans will tend to overtake aliens, whose huge size (as a function of their power) in areas of low maneuverability has hampered their mobility even more. This brings me to the main difference in the way H and A play the game.
Because the S2 human has great economy against the goon powerhouse (a human being 310 credits, under two dretch kills' worth, and 310/2000 being a possible 15.5% of bank; and a goon being 3 evos, 3 naked kills' worth, and 3/9 being a possible 33.3% of bank, these are not proportionate), a key human strategy will be to work as a boa constrictor against the aliens. Every dretch feed valuable as it provides real funds to bring down goons. Every goon kill furthering the tilt of the alien star players. By sheer attrition the humans seek to withstand the aliens' aggressive charges until they can walk into the alien base being assailed by nothing but a web of obnoxious spiders and some green roach spitting while typing asldkfjalskdfjalskjfdla;skdjf. This is the only way to play a protracted game as humans. There are other ways to play, but they involve short games based on lucky psaw routes to eggs and lack of grangers. Also, if you can just kill your enemy with rifles before they can goon (in 1 minute), that's a way. But it isn't a full game.
Because the aliens lose aggressive windows as time goes on, they would prefer to smash the humans in a blitz campaign. Thus if you use unrestrained aggression successfully from the beginning and out-tech the humans, they don't have their chance to beat you in a game of prophylaxis because you simply presented too many threats and they succumb. If on the other hand you're dying more often than killing, you turn to desperation windows of base backstabs and lucky flanks/accumulated gangrapes. This is bad because your human opponents are playing a game where they minimize their mistakes and capitalize on each of yours. Even if you make no mistakes, they're trying to minimize theirs so that they can let the natural human balance give them a marginal advantage for victory. But if your early aggression didn't really snowball, you have to rely on the humans fucking up.
The last timing for S3 aliens is when they're fighting S3 humans and have banked up enough evos for that one storm attack. That's a really bad place to be in. In a public game, it's different because the balance of larger team sizes combined with the idiocy of public human players means that S3 aliens have actually lots of food in the form of naked lucifer cannons and chainsuit rifles. But in a real match, that aggression has to pay off so that by the time SD comes, humans are just barely still S2 or something and you can wither their base with hard work and lots of screaming goon around the corner sniping action.
It may be possible to infuse RTS elements into other gametypes and still call the game Tremulous. In other words, perhaps not as far as the instagib human only server, but what about that Domination server and the coop vs AI mods? These things can all liven gameplay.
Crouching sucked a little bit, but it's just the humans final way of maximizing their effectiveness in a safe, stranglehold victory. This is because the S1 window is the first, but also the biggest, opportunity for alien aggression. Balancing the game, balance changes, balance mods, none of it's necessary. More maps and layouts only. The old SST market for supersize games needs supersize maps. New gametypes need maps designed just for them. Layouts need to incorporate lessons of the game's history. The fact that the teams play differently isn't a complaint, but it means that it has to be handled differently than a homogenous FPS where everyone runs the same speed and can use the same infinite bag of weapons.
As far as I remember.
