1.04 Changes
matso
Master of Patches Join Date: 2002-11-05 Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
Master of Patches Join Date: 2002-11-05 Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
<div class="IPBDescription">Exploits, bugs and balance.</div> For those to lazy to look at the new page directly, here is the changelog:
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Here's the change list that is now entering testing for NS v1.04. The contents are subject to change further, but this will likely be very close to contents of the patch:
- Fixed "stopcommandermode" exploit (allowed aliens to look like marines and fire marine weaponry)
- Changed max machine gun ammo to 250 (used to be 300, though it would only display 250)
- Fixed commander weapon exploit (using lastinv). Weapon commands in general (drop, switch, last) won't work for commanders.
- 3rd party entities are never propagated to client (ie, adminmod_ entities). This could fix an occasional crash (thanks Alfred)
- Moved auto-concession on unfair teams into server variable (mp_autoconcede: if set to greater then 0, then if teams are ever different by this many players, that smaller team loses immediately)
- Dead players can now talk to their teammates in both casual and tourny mode (needed to prevent team from getting an advantage by using external voice program in CAL)
- Fixed problem where ammo could be picked up while holding mines
- Aliens without any hives no longer take damage when the server is in tournament mode
- Add more triggers (for Psychostats and 3rd party program support)
- Added "player built x" (for commander and aliens)
- Added "recycled x"
- Added "started research x"
- Added "cancelled research x"
- Update to use StormTrooper's recent notes
- Fixed visual problem where advanced armory had weird build circle
- Reduced radius of acid rocket splash from 200 to 165
- Reduced shotgun cost from 20 to 17
- Reduced welder damage from 10 to 7
- Armory can now give out ammo while upgrading to advanced armory (more intuitive)
- Increased cost of infantry portal from 15 to 22
- Increased cost of phase gate from 20 to 25
- Decreased health of phase gate from 3500 to 2000
- Increased scan cost from 1 to 3
- Reduced siege cannon range from 1250 to 1100
NOTES:
- The green circle that appears when the siege cannon is selected by the commander is using the old range, but this will be fixed in v1.1.
- This is the value siege range was for most of our internal playtesting (hence the bast and hera issues that suddenly arrived with v1.0)
- Siege cannon targets now must be sighted to be hit (in view of friendly player or scanned by commander)
- Hives now spawn with full health instead of having to heal up to full health on spawn
- Fix bug where advanced turret factories don't have full health
- Acid rocket showing damage icon when not taking damage? Range working right?
- The advanced armory now has 2400 health instead of 1500 (same as regular armory, this is a fixed bug, not a balance change)
- Fixed bug where tournament mode caused some damage to be reduced more then it should be (acid rocket vs. any alien structures)
- Fixed bug where hive would sometimes play wound sound/animation when it got hit but didn't take damage
- Removed lingering "organic" damage type for acid rocket and spore cloud (fixes bug where acid rocket wasn't doing damage properly to organic structures)
- Aliens no longer donate their points back to their team resource pool when they leave the team (exploitable)
- Fixed non-visible motion sensor and proximity "blips" (linux only)
- Defense chambers no longer heal themselves
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The most important fixes, apart from the skin-exploit and ready-room exploit fix, is a slight fade nerf, a rushing nerf and a huge siege nerf.
Lets see, IP+IP+Obs+Armory now costs 95, 10 pts more than previous, and the need to build two phase gates at 25 rather than 20 means a max rush now costs 20 resources more than previous. In an 8v8 game with its intial income of about 30, that's 45 seconds worth of income. And with the hitpoints of a phasegate almost halved, it will go down FAST to a couple of skulks chewing on it ... lets see, dps for a skulk is 75/0.6 = 125 hits/sec, so it will take a single skulk 16 secs to take it down, rather than the 28 seconds it took previously.
That the siege range was going to come down was a given. 1250 to 1100 is an 11% reduction. That in itself will remove the from-spawn siege in bast, and will (probably) remove the ability to hit resource spots from the spawn location as well. It will also remove the double-siege spots from hera and nothing. There may be a possible double-siege in tanith still, but in any case, the requirement for sighting targets will make that point moot.
The acid rocket splash range coming down is welcome. It's a 21% reduction, so it will be harder to splash down marines around the corner.
There are two non-cowered points in the above though, both relating to large (>9v9) and small (<6v6) games, where the spawn rate of aliens and the resource income makes large/small games shift in balance a lot. Marines will have an even harder time in small games (in 4v4, the extra cost of IP's will hurt) and will still be able to use the extreme resource income and spawn rate advantage in larger games. However, it will be much easier for aliens to break hive lockdowns now - hell, you can even build stuff in siege areas now, as long as the marines doesn't know its there, and with the increased scan cost, getting the siege to fire on chambers in vents is a bit costly.
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Here's the change list that is now entering testing for NS v1.04. The contents are subject to change further, but this will likely be very close to contents of the patch:
- Fixed "stopcommandermode" exploit (allowed aliens to look like marines and fire marine weaponry)
- Changed max machine gun ammo to 250 (used to be 300, though it would only display 250)
- Fixed commander weapon exploit (using lastinv). Weapon commands in general (drop, switch, last) won't work for commanders.
- 3rd party entities are never propagated to client (ie, adminmod_ entities). This could fix an occasional crash (thanks Alfred)
- Moved auto-concession on unfair teams into server variable (mp_autoconcede: if set to greater then 0, then if teams are ever different by this many players, that smaller team loses immediately)
- Dead players can now talk to their teammates in both casual and tourny mode (needed to prevent team from getting an advantage by using external voice program in CAL)
- Fixed problem where ammo could be picked up while holding mines
- Aliens without any hives no longer take damage when the server is in tournament mode
- Add more triggers (for Psychostats and 3rd party program support)
- Added "player built x" (for commander and aliens)
- Added "recycled x"
- Added "started research x"
- Added "cancelled research x"
- Update to use StormTrooper's recent notes
- Fixed visual problem where advanced armory had weird build circle
- Reduced radius of acid rocket splash from 200 to 165
- Reduced shotgun cost from 20 to 17
- Reduced welder damage from 10 to 7
- Armory can now give out ammo while upgrading to advanced armory (more intuitive)
- Increased cost of infantry portal from 15 to 22
- Increased cost of phase gate from 20 to 25
- Decreased health of phase gate from 3500 to 2000
- Increased scan cost from 1 to 3
- Reduced siege cannon range from 1250 to 1100
NOTES:
- The green circle that appears when the siege cannon is selected by the commander is using the old range, but this will be fixed in v1.1.
- This is the value siege range was for most of our internal playtesting (hence the bast and hera issues that suddenly arrived with v1.0)
- Siege cannon targets now must be sighted to be hit (in view of friendly player or scanned by commander)
- Hives now spawn with full health instead of having to heal up to full health on spawn
- Fix bug where advanced turret factories don't have full health
- Acid rocket showing damage icon when not taking damage? Range working right?
- The advanced armory now has 2400 health instead of 1500 (same as regular armory, this is a fixed bug, not a balance change)
- Fixed bug where tournament mode caused some damage to be reduced more then it should be (acid rocket vs. any alien structures)
- Fixed bug where hive would sometimes play wound sound/animation when it got hit but didn't take damage
- Removed lingering "organic" damage type for acid rocket and spore cloud (fixes bug where acid rocket wasn't doing damage properly to organic structures)
- Aliens no longer donate their points back to their team resource pool when they leave the team (exploitable)
- Fixed non-visible motion sensor and proximity "blips" (linux only)
- Defense chambers no longer heal themselves
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The most important fixes, apart from the skin-exploit and ready-room exploit fix, is a slight fade nerf, a rushing nerf and a huge siege nerf.
Lets see, IP+IP+Obs+Armory now costs 95, 10 pts more than previous, and the need to build two phase gates at 25 rather than 20 means a max rush now costs 20 resources more than previous. In an 8v8 game with its intial income of about 30, that's 45 seconds worth of income. And with the hitpoints of a phasegate almost halved, it will go down FAST to a couple of skulks chewing on it ... lets see, dps for a skulk is 75/0.6 = 125 hits/sec, so it will take a single skulk 16 secs to take it down, rather than the 28 seconds it took previously.
That the siege range was going to come down was a given. 1250 to 1100 is an 11% reduction. That in itself will remove the from-spawn siege in bast, and will (probably) remove the ability to hit resource spots from the spawn location as well. It will also remove the double-siege spots from hera and nothing. There may be a possible double-siege in tanith still, but in any case, the requirement for sighting targets will make that point moot.
The acid rocket splash range coming down is welcome. It's a 21% reduction, so it will be harder to splash down marines around the corner.
There are two non-cowered points in the above though, both relating to large (>9v9) and small (<6v6) games, where the spawn rate of aliens and the resource income makes large/small games shift in balance a lot. Marines will have an even harder time in small games (in 4v4, the extra cost of IP's will hurt) and will still be able to use the extreme resource income and spawn rate advantage in larger games. However, it will be much easier for aliens to break hive lockdowns now - hell, you can even build stuff in siege areas now, as long as the marines doesn't know its there, and with the increased scan cost, getting the siege to fire on chambers in vents is a bit costly.
Comments
That is saddening... is there a 100% fool proof way of upgrading a Turret factory?
Bart
Overall I think the changes are good. They might have gone to far with the phasegate changes though, both increasing cost and lowering hitpoints is a bit much, this will really hurt marine expansion during the first few minutes... and loosing a phasegate will hurt so **obscenity** much is not even funny. I think either decreasing hitpoints OR increasing cost is enough, both is to much.
I also think it's BAD that they are ignoring the HMG rushes and spawnrates. These were the two things that really needed fixing. HMG rushes will still be as easy to pull of, maybe slightly harder with the increased scannerswep cost, but HMG's still own skulks, and 2 HMG's is more then enough to kill an entire alien team. I think armslab should be a requirement to upgrade to advanced armory.
I also hope they do something about alien respawn time, it will still be easy to spawncamp...
I'll be interested to know when a seige cannon stop fireing... when the target is dead or the Los/ping stops? and how far is 1150???
I agree that phase gates may have been over compensated against, I thought the balance between both sides was closer, (I actually though it was in the aliens favour once they got the second hive..) I personaly though the fade/lurk umbra cobination was the biggest problem in the game, and there was nothing done about that, I also though the acid rockets range and accuracy made it the best ranged weapon ( as it seems to have no range, does any one know what was meant by <<Acid rocket showing damage icon when not taking damage? Range working right?>>
I'll also be interested to see what the splash decrease in the splash damage area of effect does...
And what is this <<Removed lingering "organic" damage type for acid rocket and spore cloud (fixes bug where acid rocket wasn't doing damage properly to organic structures)>> mean???
I pesonaly thought adding some inacuracy to the Fades acid rocket would have been better, even posibly makeing it a trajectory weapon..
Bart
I'm sure I have more to say but this will do for now..
Doh! Yeah if a ping is used does the seige cannon target the closest target first or the target closest to the centre of the ping???
Last I checked, HMG's were SUPPOSED to be able to own skulks. So please don't complain about that. HMG rushes? WTH is this complaint? That the marines are using HMG's a good ways into the game to rush? Give me a break!
The other changes we'll see though. Only time will tell. Alien respawn times may need to be decreased... but not by much.
The block on the left is the seige's new range; on the right is the seige's old range. Both blocks are the size of a fade. Note my extreme efficiency in R_speed usage <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
As you can see, it's not a huge decrease, but it's enough to remove the double-seiging points, which is exactly what this was inteded for. IN-game, those blocks are about 4 marine widths apart. For you hard core peoples out there, I can e-mail you the map if you like.
So meh.
Bart
Btw: Thanks Legionnaired
Here's another view of just how much area is being cut out. Note that the ranges were taken from the center of the block, not the edges.
Again, note my 1337 R_speeds <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
- Reduced welder damage from 10 to 7<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The welder was said to do 14 damage, and its cost is 10.... so does this mean the damage is going from 14-7 (damage typo?) or that the cost is going from 10-7 (cost typo)?....
Last I checked, HMG's were SUPPOSED to be able to own skulks. So please don't complain about that. HMG rushes? WTH is this complaint? That the marines are using HMG's a good ways into the game to rush? Give me a break!
The other changes we'll see though. Only time will tell. Alien respawn times may need to be decreased... but not by much.
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They SHOULD own skulks, but then they SHOULDN'T be an early game weapon. You can get HMG's 2MIN into the game if you WANT to. It's VERY hard to stop a marine rush with HMG's if they know what they are doing.
Ask the top CB clan in europe how they have managed to win all their games. They don't have very good marine tactics, they hardly even expand, they just upgrade HMG's and OWN the alien team before they have time to get the second hive up. I'm a european player, but i've been watching most replay with american clans, and know for a fact that european players are just as skilled (if not more so) then american players. I know how this game works, and right now, HMG's comes into play to fast.
Flayra == win
I do however agree the alien-to-marine exploit needs to be fixed fast..
Can they now not heal another D chamber? Or cannot heal itself?
Because, one feature is gone -> self healing, less rp to build, less effective building when built alone. Or faster build time..something like it.
Can they now not heal another D chamber? Or cannot heal itself?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It means a defence chamber cannot heal another defence chamber.
<b>Edit:</b> Nope, it means a defense chamber won't heal itself. It will still heal other nearby structures, including other defense chambers.
I do however agree the alien-to-marine exploit needs to be fixed fast..<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
IIS NOT THAT BIG OF A NERF! ITS NOT A NERF AT ALL!
Give a marine a 9 rp jetpack, have him sit of a rafter, and watch the fireworks. As for the range, look at the pics, it's not that big.
<ul>
<li>A lone D chamber now will not regain HPs, but two or more and they will heal each other.
<li>Hives still take just as long to become operational. The change means that it is just as hard to kill a just-dropped hive as it is to kill a fully functional one.
<li>The HMG has 400 rounds, half-life can only display up to 250. This patch only affects the LMG.
</ul>
And a tip about unupgradeable turret factories: If you move your viewing area so you can barely see the tf, you can usually click on it for upgrades. This works most of the time because the problem with upgrading them is caused by entities in the ceiling. At least that's the rumor I heard. Getting a sidelong view on the tf has worked for me most of the time.
- once the hive completes it's at full health instead of at half health.
or:
- at the beginning of the game the first hive has full health instead of half health.
Or, quite possibly, both.
- once the hive completes it's at full health instead of at half health.
or:
- at the beginning of the game the first hive has full health instead of half health.
Or, quite possibly, both.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
My understanding was the patch did the former.
I also thought the latter was already true?
Also, I'm dismayed that Flayra hasn't re-enabled the swapping of teams in 1.04. It really is annoying when teams become really unbalanced during a game and they can't be evened out like in CS.
I think the idea behind it is to force the marnes to have one spawn portal at the start of the game, just as the Kharaa do. If the marines choose to build a second Infantry Portal, they may be paying for it later in the early game.
-Ryan!
"I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simply beasts. I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue."
-- Oscar Wilde
sieging is (was) teh pwn!!!<!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> Besides I was quite polite during my reign, I never sieged the last hive <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Equation of current value:
<!--emo&::siege::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/siege.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='siege.gif'><!--endemo--> < <!--emo&::sentry::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/turret.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='turret.gif'><!--endemo-->
sounds to me as if this patch would just be a further benifit for aliens...hell it was well balanced in 1.03 in my opinion... doublesiegespots could easily be kept if the aliens expanded there earlier... processing for example..it's a fricken resspot there, the marines are most likely to go there, so just get them damn OC's up:P
Maybe they should change the manual and claim that newbies are better off being alien the first time instead of marine... cause then they're almost guaranteed to win anyways;P
[grunts]