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Hi everyone, just a quick notice to mention that the version of the IPB forum software that we are using was updated to the latest version 4.3.5 today! The maintenance has now been completed and services are running again as normal, just in case you were wondering about the downtime earlier. Cheers! [blurb]The Invision Power Board software has been updated to version 4.3.5![/blurb] [thumb]custom_thumb_ipb.png[/thumb]

Red Alert: A Path Beyond Update General Stealth shaders have been re-enabled, and there is now an option to disable them if they are hindering your performance (Extended Options -> Effect Shaders Enabled) Infantry Grenadier No longer available to Allies No longer available without a Barracks Price down (200 -> 160) Mechanic Health down (70 -> 60) Speed up (7 -> 7.5) Rocket Soldiers LAW back to being non-tracking and 100m/s LAW/RPG splash damage up (22.5 -> 25), radius up (6 -> 6.5m) Spy Soviet players will see a Soviet flag when targeting him even when he is inside a vehicle. Shotgunners Inaccuracy down (3 -> 2.5) Vehicles If you kill a vehicle that has the "instant pilot death" property (planes and naval units that aren't beached), you now get credited for killing its pilot and passengers. Chrono Tank Can now be purchased on Tech Level 5 maps for 2400 credits. Acts as a tank destroyer (it stands a better chance than a Medium Tank when facing down a Mammoth Tank) and a building harasser (while its anti-building power is merely on par with a Medium Tank's, shifting lets it evade base defenses and take attack and escape routes that other vehicles cannot) Press Q to open the overhead map, then left-click on a destination to chronoshift there. You can only shift to places that are within 250 metres of you (this range is shown by the white circle around your map icon) and are free of any obstacles, and after shifting you will not be able to shift again for another 30 seconds. APC Points value increased (75 -> 100; now equal to Light Tank) Minelayer Fixed 2 AT mines leaving heavy tanks on 1 HP. MRJ Price down (1200 -> 600) MGG (and variants) Windows no longer have the opposite shader settings that they should, so now they actually reflect like other windows. Phase Tank Price down (2000 -> 1600) Is now visible on radar. Gunboat/Destroyer Now have the same property as subs/LSTs, where being in open waters prevents the pilot from ejecting and causes the pilot to instantly die when the vehicle dies. Bobbing animation now includes them rocking from side to side slightly (1 degree) Gunboat range up (105 -> 110m) LST Radar dish is animated again. Lowered target bone so that flame towers aren't so prone to missing against it. Should no longer explode and instantly kill you if you eject while not fully inside a beaching zone. Attack Sub/Missile Sub When surfaced, they should no longer explode and instantly kill you if you eject while not fully inside a beaching zone. (They'll still kill you if eject when submerged though. So don't.) Attack Sub range up (110 -> 120m) Attack Sub projectile speed down (75 -> 50m) Hind Band-aided the terrible unwrap on the tail rotor. Yak Fixed scaling; it is now half its previous size, and comes to about the same length as a Heavy Tank - which is more accurate to the real-life Yak being about the same length as a T-80. Physical collision box now covers a little more of the wings - though due to the size reduction it still has a smaller collision area than it used to. Health down (300 -> 250) to compensate for the reduced size. Has its old "lenient in-flight hitbox" again to compensate for the reduced size. Homing weapons now home in on the tail of the Yak instead of the nose, so they are better at catching Yaks on the retreat. Build limit up (2 -> 3) since they take up less space on the runway. Maps Reduced random field rocks on various maps Complex Tech Level downgraded; only T3 vehicles are available, but T5 infantry are still available. (Do you really want to see Allies getting Chrono Tanks on a map that's already biased in their favour and would let them do base-to-base warps?) Keep off the Grass Removed the wall near the Soviet OT route/CY. Moved Tesla Coil out to where that wall used to be. Removed Flame Tower from WF side. Moved Refinery Flame Tower closer to the empty field for reasons. Soviet resource field downgraded to ore. (It takes about as long to make a trip as it does on Camos Canyon anyway.) Allied OT now takes a little longer to get ore, to help keep it on more even footing with the reduced Soviet economy. Ridge Racer Ranger physics redone; now heavily based off the standard gameplay Ranger (less flippable), main difference being it has less drag and a less restricted gearbox. Instead of just the original two Allied and Soviet ranger colour schemes, you now have 8 - the 4 standard Ranger camos, 3 of Pyryle's classic colour schemes, and hot pink. Technicians no longer receive damage from falling (a common source of accidental deaths when jumping through the portals due to how fall damage works) or from the finishing-line wall of barrels. Moved the walls backwards at the final turn to make it less obnoxious and less likely to result in pile-ups if multiple people race. Jukebox changed to the old theme song of Fissure: RenAlert Jam. Ridge War Fixed VIS error on roof of Allied storage shack. Seamist Allies now get an additional Light Tank when the 5-minute chinook drop happens. Tesla Coils downgraded to Flame Towers like in older versions of the map. Added environmental sounds (surf+birds) [blurb]EVA: Chrono Tank ready.[/blurb] [thumb]thumb_apb.2.png[/thumb]

Should we just nominate me instead? I can verify if the cane is safe.

Really it's "hold the middle" combined with the middle being too easy to hold, basically required to hold, still being hard to launch an attack from, and then either taking forever to reach to try to break the hold, or taking forever to avoid. On HW, it costs money to get to the icebergs (which seems to turn people off of making the effort no matter how much money grows on trees - see earlier versions of HW) and there are only a select few points the icebergs can be entered from which makes them easy to camp. Avoiding the middle entirely also takes a ludicrous amount of time. On Siege, the ramparts are an incredible defensive position, nigh unassailable at times, and the ways around them are fairly lengthy. But at least there's more than one way around them now - it was such a dull map when your only choices as Allies were ramming headfirst into 10 indestructible Volkovs on ramparts, or taking a Chinook party the other way and losing all 6 of your guys to the 1 Hindkov that decided to stay at home. Under doesn't seem to be at quite the same risk - the map is very small so it takes very little time to attempt to break the hold on the middle, and while vehicles only have one way in, infantry have three - not to mention there's the 2 backdoor base entrances for infantry (killing the rocks just makes one of those harder to use instead of removing them entirely, and there's a 3rd if you count LSTs) as well as the naval factor. I'd say River Raid is closer to that, but I see surprisingly little vitriol directed at the map despite it having been permanently in rotation ever since the introduction of the remake in April 2016, and don't remember much hate for the original version of the map prior to Delta either. I've been long considering opening up the infantry-only cave/beach routes to vehicles to make the map less meatgrindy but at that point it may need base defenses. Pipeline also has a "hold the middle" mechanic in its oils, but - again - is relatively open and small, and it's hard for a team to keep all the middle objectives under control at once because there are plenty of ways to reach them by foot and it doesn't take forever to do so. All three of these maps also don't exactly have the strongest of base defense layouts - and River Raid doesn't have base defenses period. So a team "holding the middle" on them has more incentive to actually press the attack. Meanwhile Siege's defenses are pretty strong, and Hostile Waters may not have any frontal anti-boat defenses but the naval building is very easy to repair and very hard to interrupt repairs on. TL;DR hold the middle, middle being basically unbreakable, bases being hard to attack, and gargantuan map sizes/long travel times is not a good combination. If I can spare the time I might look into recreating the HW play space anew with basic visuals for the sake of testing how it might play if: the distance between bases was smaller the base layout encouraged attacking non-naval buildings for more reasons than just puntos the island layout allowed placement of AA in positions that could actually prevent a chinook from landing the icebergs were smaller and more spaced out so they could still be used as boat cover without suffering the current issue where they create passageways that force boats into single file and prevent them from turning around there was no "hold the middle" element then if it tests well I can try to recycle Raap's HW assets for it or hand it to him and see if he can spice up the visuals. The naval repair bay might even get used for that as a teamed, killable structure so that there's another spot by your island other than just your NY where you can go to sell/repair.