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devilslayersbane

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Everything posted by devilslayersbane

  1. Someone mentioned the M24 chaffee having a hard time penetrating T-34's. While that's true in our universe, it's highly likely that certain ammo types, such as HEAT-FS, APDS, HESH and possibly even APFSDS, which all saw developmental breakthroughs in our real-world late WWII and early Cold War. These rounds saw widespread use during cold-war conflicts and continue to be developed to this day. It would be likely that any M24-like tanks (and it's French, British, and German counterparts) would have been upgraded with a smoothbore 75mm to help support those rounds.
  2. I think the animation needs a little more weight to it. It looks very floaty.
  3. I'm quite partial to the change of adding a defensive weapon the the AAPC. Especially with that lone one in the right-hand image. I don't think that the argument of "oh, this vehicle can only drive and thus isn't fun" is a fair argument for this, though. The Chinook in APB is similar, but what keeps the Chinook fun is the careful balance of the high-risk, high-reward gameplay from a successful drop. The Chinook can't be targeted by Tesla coils, but can be easily seen by ground vehicles. The biggest thing that keeps the Chinook fun though, is it's mobility. It's the heaviest helo in APB but can still easily outrun most ground vehicles that pose a significant threat. The AAPC doesn't have this mobility. But it does have many of the drawbacks that the Chinook has, which skews the balance in favor of the high-risk. The defensive gun, if mildly powerful against the main threat the AAPC faces, can skew that balance back.
  4. This shouldn't be too much of a necro, if it is at all a necro. I finally got the chance to play the first dark souls when the "remaster" came out. Aside from FromSoft cheaping out a bit and not fixing many of the major issues that plagued the multiplayer (chain-backstabs and the like), I love the game. It's a perfect example, for the first half, on how to properly scale your difficulty without "scaling difficultly" that you seen in common AAA RPG's (see Elder scrolls IV, and V, and fallouts 3, NV, and 4). That's not to say that scaling difficulty doesn't have it's place, as it certainly helps keep the game interesting throughout the entire time you're playing when you can wait until level 99 to enter the intended tutorial dungeon. However, Dark Souls doesn't do this for 2 reasons. 1, to let new players know when they're going the wrong way without limiting exploration. 2, to give players a sense of accomplishment for overcoming a previously insurmountable task/challenge. You can even see this escalation in the latter half of the game when the Taurus and Capra demons (2 early game boss fights) become fairly common enemies in the Demon Ruins. It's also visible when you visit early game areas to discover that the enemies haven't leveled with you and are pretty easy to overcome now. Dark souls also avoids the trap of locking off areas by doors (at least at the start), by putting enemies that you aren't ready to deal with in those areas like the skeletons in the graveyard outside of firelink shrine. It's not a perfect game, and you can definitely tell where the budget/time ran out. The Bed of Chaos is less of a boss fight and more of an RNG to hope you don't get yeeted into the void below. There's the great sea of dragon ass in Lost Izalith, and copy pasta enemy placement in the Demon ruins. However, these are relatively minor complaints for an overall great game. There are only 2 points where I see players give up on Dark Souls: Sen's Fortress and the archers in Anor Londo. Sen's fortress is all about trial and error and being aware of your surroundings. It's full of traps and relatively beefy enemies. The Archers in Anor Londo is genuinely frustrating, but is also a lot of trial and error. The important thing is that they can all be overcome without making you, the player lose agency or a need to cheese (read: exploit) the game. Dark souls is one of my favorite games of all time now because of its tough love attitude and surprisingly fair challenge.
  5. Fun fact, if you ask Cortana about clippy, she'll actually talk about him. It's kinda cool.
  6. Sammy, I've been trying to stick up for you in game, but you're testing all of our patience here. Get your act together, grow up a bit. We're all playing the same game/games. Your behavior is unwarranted.
  7. What about instead of a flip phone, change it to the 1980's motorola dynaTAC (of course, a small LCD with something along the lines of "Automated structural repair v1.1" would be nice to have so it's not an exact copy). Of course, there's modeling, texturing, rigging and animating, though I'm sure with the correct placement the existing animation could be used. However, as far as how the repair tool works, I always imagined that the buildings in APB had an automated repair system that needed the ConYard to self activate, due to the individual buildings not having self repair AI (essentially, the ConYard acts as a mainframe controlling all auto-repairs); however, due to using a somewhat flawed parallel connection, it is slower than the wireless repair tool which would would initiate the protocols inside the structure itself (thus giving the technician his name). Finally, of course the engineer can use the automated repair, but his wrench acts a representation of his toolkit to repair buildings. A similar principal takes effect at the service depot, where the auto repairs are actually directed by the vehicles interfacing with the SD much like the repair tool but using the SD's specialized vehicle tools and repair systems.
  8. AZ-Stalker, while I understand your frustration, the colloquialisms that have arisen with the evolution of RenAlert and C&C Reborn into Red Alert: A Path Beyond and Tiberian Sun: Reborn will not be erased by such a move. It almost sounds like you're trying to make it a rule that no one can even mention "Reborn" when referring to TSR. This is something I do not support, though I admit, I could be stretching your meaning a bit. However, your adamant comments make me believe that I am not, especially since the topic at hand is over server rules. You cannot change how people refer to one thing or another (I say pot(ae)to, you say pot(aw)to). The only thing you can do is call it what you want and brush it off if someone doesn't want to call it that. Intentionally derogatory names aside, I'm not at all for speech police and I will leave the community immediately if something like that were to ever arise.
  9. I still have those documents and pushwall, ICE, or anyone who's up for it can send me a PM in order to help update them. Or we could just throw out all of the detailed information about unit stat's altogether and just leave them as-is without. I had a lot of fun creating them. Actually, ICE should still have edit perms. We are still missing many of the vehicle pictures for both documents and on top of that we are also missing an image for the RPG trooper.
  10. This file fixed the issue for me, though the first time it did crash the launcher. Will update if the problem comes back. https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtYA5536lndTgZoMxI7N4wgvGnRyQA
  11. The versions of the launcher post 7.0.2 crash when I try to view the server browser. Visual Studio offered to run a debugger and came up with the following exception and to break the operation when this occurs Running with visual studio did not bring about this error.
  12. In reply to nospoons and those who want a community "made" map. While I feel like this is a good idea, one also has to remember that game design does tend to dictate otherwise. The biggest issue is that we all have our own ideas about what would make a map "good". There are a few maps that I feel are great because of their superior focus on one of the core tenants of APB. Fissure is heavily focused on infantry based combat, so much so that it leaves out all other types. Were the map any larger or smaller, it just wouldn't work out very well. But the map itself is well designed enough to make a short-lived exciting kill-fest that while not many people appreciate because of flamethrowers, should be better due to the recent changes to the medic (though I'm not sure if it's even in rotation). The same thing goes for Ridge war. It's about expansive ground-based combined arms combat. Everything in that map serves to build on that single focus. One could make the argument that air combat negates this, but I disagree. The heavy inclusion of SAM/AA forces air units to supplement ground forces until they have been taken down. The lack of a power plant makes sure that the loss of a single building wouldn't negate this, either. It's a well designed map that really comes down to unit balance after that point. I enjoy siege. I think the only thing it needs is an alternate vehicle route. My suggestion? make a vehicle route along the topside of the castle, the long way of course. It would come with a cost: being more visible, but it's exit should come with a benefit: less vulnerable to base defense fire (e.g. only one FT/PB/Tur should be able to attack at once. It would assist vehicles trying to take down cannons, and still make for interesting gameplay.
  13. What if we made pillboxes/flame towers have be man-able until destroyed? Battlezone II: Combat Commander did this and it would allow players to override the autonomous target prioritization. For example: A HT is rushing an enemy base supported by infantry, and allies are in defensive mode. The Heavy tank is the prioritized target due to the high risk factor as determined by the AI, but the rocket soldiers bought by allies mean that they are much more effective against it, but have reduced effectiveness against infantry. Thus, the soviet infantry have easier targets. However, if the pillbox was able to be manned, the Heavy tank could be prioritized by the rocket dudes, while the soviet infantry could be targeted by the pillbox.
  14. I rarely use snipers. The scopes don't provide enough information to help range the shots and the most I'm ever able to get is a perfectly survivable body shot. Snipers can be annoying, but you're also not talking about the big picture. Snipers are a great diversion to a large rush. Think, about it. The soviets have a large heavy tank rush, a lone soviet sniper makes it to a decent vantage point to start shooting into the allied base. The allies make a perfectly rational, but exploitable, decision to focus on the sniper as the heavy tank rush hasn't been spotted and the sniper can do more immediate damage. The soviets can then use this as an opportune time to steamroll the allied base. A similar effect can be done with the allied sniper.
  15. I want to clarify my point here, as I feel as though some sort of mid-game matchmaking still stands. I have been a part of many games where after the loss of a ref and bar the ENTIRE other team left and DID NOT return after that game. Albeit, that was more common in Gamma, but still, it was really disheartening to see, especially considering I joined the BHP community during Gamma. I see things like the end-game, radar-dome-attached, time-limited vehicle reinforcements. I see that and the drastic increase in infantry-to-vehicle/building damage all as good things. However, those two things will not mitigate the 3-1 player ratio I encountered the other day when I was losing as the soviets. And all it seemed like the allies wanted to do was pick up a spy and killwhore with the vehicles that we bought (I'm looking at you @forg0ten1) which honestly is complete bullshit. If a mid-game autobalance can't be a thing, then why not a volunteer or pity balance then? Like if the player ratio gets past 1.5-1 then the !swap option comes available again. That being said, I still see the ramifications of this potentially being abused where players quit to get certain people on their teams. I feel like @Raap has the better idea with the algorithmic approach, but even that can be manipulated and would need to be made to where if Player A is rank 1 and has a 10000 score lead on ranks 2-10, he won't be placed on teams with ONLY ranks 50-100, thus putting a larger emphasis on score. I also feel as though support roles should play more into score, where healing a building provides maybe 80% of the score of damaging a player/building and getting the "fully repaired" message gives you 60%-70% of the score of killing that building, and I know this would give a bit of an allied bias, but I feel like a bit of a buff to the scores of medics and mechs for healing other players would be good too. Especially for mechs when it comes to healing vehicles that aren't bound to them, which would hopefully encourage ranger-mechs where a mech can get into an area heal the friendly vic, and then get out. Encourage score-whoring, not killwhoring. And to help subdue the allied bias this would give, only raise the scores wrought by this kind of support by 50-60%. Also, maybe some sort of score for selling unbound vehicles to make sure that the soviets get something other than engi/tech spam. Also, I'm not against removing K/D, but I'm also not against just removing it from affecting rank. I kinda went and rambled here, so I did my best to sort my ideas out.
  16. When I ragequit, it's mostly because of 2-3 reasons that make the game not fun for me anymore: 1) I feel as though a player has specifically targeted me to killwhore over and over and said player typically has a high-tier character (tanya or volkov, with the latter being the more infuriating) 2) My team lost 1-2 major structures in the first 5 minutes of the game and now the other team seems to be dragging out the rest of the match for a killwhore session to boost their rank (because kills gets ranks) 3) My team decided to quit leaving me and 2-3 other people trying desperately to defend against 6 or more with none of the admins deciding to balance the teams to any degree. I know that can't always be done, but hell, having more people on a team makes numbers 1 and 2 way less likely to happen. Ultimately my suggestion is to see if there isn't a way to get the bot to balance the teams without making those players start all over from scratch or interrupting a current attack. E.g. you won't be swapped until you die. Then if players return you get swapped back the next time you die (obviously, the latter would make !killme be a bit more abused, but for the most part that's a moot point). It'd also be nice to have some sort of limit on the number of spies. Too many times have I seen a losing soviet team that looks balanced only because of spies. It's very rage inducing.
  17. I feel like the light tank is a bit of a odd choice of tank right now. It has the DPS of the medium tank, but the range and slightly higher profile mean that even if you get the drop on a soviet heavy tank, you will probably end up losing your tank. Light tanks are practically useless outside of small hit and run skirmishes with mammoths, but as a supplement to a med it actually works really well. I've had more luck using a light tank to scout out an enemy, wait for the engagement to begin, and then reinforce the front line with fire support. In the hit and run role, the Phase tank drastically outclasses it in terms of overall usage late game on high-tech maps, but early game, most hit and run attack effects can be achieved with a ranger and rocket soldier which offers the advantage of better maneuverability and a more difficult to spot profile, while still giving you adequate dps legroom. I feel like the LT could use maybe 25-50 more health as unless you're providing the fire support role mentioned above, the risk isn't worth the reward.
  18. Ugh, I'll have to go back to call of duty: infinitely frustrating warfare until this bug is patched!
  19. True enough. It was 1 am when I posted my reply. My comment about the vehicle weapons still stands, however.
  20. Trust me, I didn't honestly believe that a true 1 to 1 lifelike simulation of armor in W3D was possible. I just know that vehicles take more damage in certain locations and was wondering if the same concept could be applied to soldiers as well. (i.e. face shots do 2x, headshots 1.5x, body 1.0x, limbs .75x, etc.) but i digress. This is one of the few shooters that doesn't skimp out on vehicle gameplay complexity for infantry gameplay complexity. I love the vehicle play. Honestly, the biggest improvement I'd see the engine getting would be having switchable weapons for vehicles. That feature would probably make life a ton easier (and harder at the same time).
  21. On the topics of helmets and armor, it'd be kind of cool to see locational damage take armor a step further, where say if you get shot in the vitals (where armor would be on most modern infantry) the armor would reduce the damage dealt to you. Shooting helmets off is cool and all, but most of the time they're strapped on and harder to get off. As far as ballistic protection of the M1 infantry helmet, it is able to stop a 9mm at 100ft and IIRC, it could stop 5.56 and 5.45 at about 300m if the shot hit the helmet at a bit of an angle (around 30 degrees or so). However, both shots left a large dent in the helmet. Helmets also add resistance to fragmentation and (very moderate) resistance to high explosive, but that's mostly with modern helmets. Not the M1 featured in game.
  22. In addition to what Raap said, I think a good "vibrantly colored" world to start off with would be the recently released "Breath of the Wild." While a significantly different game, the stylized design could prove as a good starting point.
  23. Go ahead, shoot for it. I'd definitely love to hear it.
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