Pushwall

And also never going to happen because that's an awful lot of development time just to make a small balance change that nobody called for. Also there are so many reasons this wouldn't work: Surface damage only works if your feet/wheels are touching the surface. Hence why I mentioned before that the "LSTs have anti-vehicle-boarding shields" idea would not be very likely to cause problems if a vehicle/LST collide. Surface damage doesn't belong to a player. "Crush" a Volkov in this way and you get no kill and no points. What about vehicles that already have an animation? How are they going to run multiple animations simultaneously? Now helmets were also uncalled for but the difference is that they were much easier to do since every infantry uses the exact same hitboxes so easy copy/paste, and they didn't have to be a balance change (and they aren't), and they don't have to be added/removed under arbitrary circumstances that require arduous script work when the scripters would much rather work on important things. And they work.

Or in the shocky's case, rolling over a charged shock rifle would probably be akin to rolling over an anti-tank mine, except that it's not hidden like a mine so Allies are just careful to not do that. In Volkov's case, who knows, maybe he can be run over but it wouldn't slow his rampage down much because he's a mechanical man. Trouble is, in both RA and the W3D engine, infantry contact with a vehicle moving at crushing speed is instant death (unless they have the "can't be crushed" flag), there's no damage value for it anywhere here that can be modified as far as I can tell - and even if it can be modified, the "damage" probably gets delivered every frame (so ~60 hits per second) so it'd be pretty hard to find a fine balance in how much crushing attempts should hurt, judging from how the hitbeeps/hitmarks freak out if you appear to run someone over on your end but on the server they're not getting crushed.

You're looking for the wrong game. Just pretend there's a train! That's why I added the entrance to the metro station. Thing is, the city is a war zone and the map takes place past curfew time: The rough translated gist of this, is that it's an order that states that nobody should be outdoors between 22:00 and 08:00, and ignoring this will be punished. So the trains shouldn't be running at this time anyway! And besides, that would add extra development time for not much gain. It takes long enough to revive each of these maps as it is. All the time we could spend putting in nice touches like actual trains means we're not spending that time getting the next map ready, fixing actual problems with existing maps or the game as a whole or even helping other W3D games' development teams with problems that they have!

Can you hit yaks on Lunar Paradox with the snipershotgun or burst-fire medtank?

Made a few changes to Metro since it seems I vastly overestimated the Soviets' ability to rush B cyka blyat spam AP mines and splash2win. Added Soviet rangers. Allied southern Ore Silo is now in a MUCH more exposed position: just behind their wrecked Light Tank. Team-locked doors in tunnels are moved back to the Barracks itself, where they can be shot to damage it. Added a "one-way" exit from the Allied War Factory basement, which drops into the dirt tunnel from above. Dirt tunnels are wider at certain points. Dirt tunnels are lit better. Fixed a VIS error in the Soviet barracks.

It would probably work out in some regards. The only real difference this makes between the teams is that Sergeants/Captains are helmeted but the Soviet equivalents just wear hats, so it'd be another indirect buff to the Allied infantry lines who are generally considered worse in spite of typically better overall stats (for example, the M60 and LAW having noticeably more DPS than the PKM and RPG) because of AP mines and Soviet infantry being more suited to building raids (flamethrower splash, starshina secondary, and Volkov basically being both). Technicians shouldn't really be getting into fights anyway and sniper vs sniper battles won't be impacted. The commandos are an odd one. Volkov is cybernetically augmented and his whole head is clearly metal so he might as well just have a lower headshot multiplier overall to compensate for not having a helmet, and Tanya... an idea I've been playing with for her is giving her 0 armour (because seriously, look at her, that is not armour) but enough extra health to compensate for that against general weapons. But due to the quirks of armour resistance this means Volkov's shotgun, grenadiers and engineers suddenly become more capable of countering her while flamethrowers and kapitans become worse. Tank splash also becomes better against her but she shouldn't be running around in the open anyways. The real issue is thieves who are already getting the short stick in a lot of ways, their lack of a helmet would just nerf them harder. So they might have to get more health to compensate but then that just feels weird. A feature I'd really like if we decide to make helmets helpful, but would probably be really hard to pull off, is tying the existence of the helmet hitbox to the armour bar. So if your armour is depleted your helmet will no longer protect you. But again I don't really want to shake up balance in this area as it hasn't really been called for. I just added this feature because I was inspired by games like Goldeneye 64 (in which you can shoot peoples' helmets clean off but they also completely block the shot in doing so) and CS:GO (shooting people in the helmet gives a REALLY satisfying dink, which is even more satisfying if you're using a weapon that one-shots people through helmets anyway) and it means the framework is there in case we decide to do anything with it in future. Notice how all of the unarmoured infantry have no helmet and thus get exploded really easily.

Problem is that if anyone ever gets around to doing a model for it, it won't make sense. The Strela doesn't have a scope. Alternatively I can just nix both of their tracking altogether and give them a much higher muzzle velocity, that way people just have to lead their shots instead of praying for RNG.

It shouldn't be quite as unfitting with the texture overhaul.

There's nothing in the presets that determines the chance of missiles tracking. The only things that affect it are "Is Tracking" which is a boolean flag that simply says "can this projectile track, yes or no", "Turn Rate" which is a number which determines how fast the missiles turn (which doesn't help if they choose to not turn), and "Random Tracking Scale" which is a number that actually causes the missiles to randomly swerve in flight if set above 0 - this is set to 0 for all of our tracking weapons because it is dumb, except for Lunar Paradox's Drunk Rocket Soldier where its high randoscale is the entire joke, and the Chrono Dust Blower where it doesn't really matter because you're firing 20 tracking projectiles per second anyway, it's just there to make the particle effect spread out more. I think that tracking might be based on if the server thinks you are pointing at the target or not, as well how close to the target bone you're aiming, and since AIs would have 0 delay to the server and aim directly at the target bone, that'd explain why the SAM sites always track - in which case that's a huge pain to deal with.

Hey, looks like 23 of you got one of your wishes. (Actually Metro was already underway at the time this thread was posted. So don't expect the others to come that quickly )

[blurb]Naval refinements and traffic dispersements and urban environments, oh my! Get the latest developments today![/blurb] [thumb]thumb_apb.k.png[/thumb] Red Alert: A Path Beyond Update INFANTRY AK/M16/MP5 damage to boat health up by ~7% (0.35 -> 0.375) AK/M16/MP5 damage to boat armour down by ~29% (0.175 -> 0.125) Remington Slug damage to boat armour down by 50% (0.375 -> 0.1875); DPS now matches primary fire M60/PKM damage to boat health up by 12.5% (0.333... -> 0.375) M60/PKM damage to boat armour down by 25% (0.333... -> 0.25) Redeye/Strela damage to boat armour down by 20% (0.5 -> 0.4) Shock Rifle damage to boat health/armour down by 20% (1.25 -> 1) Shock Rifle damage to submerged sub health/armour up by 20% (1.25 -> 1.5) Flamethrower damage to boat armour down by 20% (0.625 -> 0.5) Basically the gist of all this is these guys will be worse at fending off boats by themselves (except LSTs), but with the assistance of a gunboat/sub/close-quarters LAW breaking the armour for them, this disadvantage fades, especially with the captain and naval artillery. However this does mean all these units have a longer total time-to-kill against boats (except the Destroyer/Missile Sub whose overall anti-boat power remains "unchanged"). This probably won't affect Hostile Waters in its current "rocket men on the bergs every day" phase, but should encourage more of a naval focus on the other naval maps maybe? Clearing Charge cover penetration down to 50% (was 100%); should be a liiittle less OP against clustered groups of hedgehogs now. VEHICLES Gunboat max turret tilt up from 8.75 to 22.5 degrees; it's no longer a TOTAL sitting duck against Hinds but it still has its fair share of blind spots. Destroyer health down from 500 to 450. Missile Sub health up from 200 to 225. Destroyer reload time down from 3 to 2.75 seconds (DPS up by 6.66...%) Destroyer/Missile Sub projectile velocity up from 100 to 200m/s; should be much better at shore bombardments and hitting aircraft. Destroyer/Missile Sub damage to boat health up by 20% (0.375 -> 0.45) Destroyer/Missile Sub damage to boat armour down by 10% (0.25 -> 0.225) AP Mine damage radius down from 10 to 8. AP Mine damage up from 300 to 600. Should cleanly kill Tanyas/engineers now. Longbow damage to aircraft down by 10% (1 -> 0.9); Hinds/Nooks now a 7-shot kill unassisted. Longbow damage to buildings (except base defenses) down by 12.5% (0.2 -> 0.175). BUILDINGS War Factory construction time has been sped up to allow vehicles more time to automatically drive off the construction zone. You should no longer accidentally buy over anything like a V2/OT unless there's a huge pileup already. This should help the bots on RA_CamosCanyon_Bots too. AESTHETICS All infantry worldboxes are slightly larger and properly centered, which should help with the first-person camera clipping issues at certain facings (it's not completely gone at the sides though...) Helmeted infantry (i.e. everything except Technician, Sniper, Tanya, Volkov, Starshina, Kapitan and Thief) now have a helmet hitbox. Since this merely displaces the upper portion of the head hitbox instead of extending upwards to cover the true height of the helmet, and has the same damage multiplier as the head, it doesn't affect gameplay at all - all it does right now is produce metal impact effects. It could easily be changed to have a purpose beyond aesthetics in future if there's a call for it, but I doubt that'll happen. MAPS Some jukeboxes have been altered: Fissure: Eaten Alive replaced with Militant Force Ridge War: Floating replaced with Snake Stormy Valley: Techno Babble removed RA_Metro is back! Here's what's up compared to its Gamma iteration: Tech Level set to 3. No Mammothspam this time around! Jukebox now features Floating (initial track), Eaten Alive, Fire & Ice and Techno Babble. (Hence most of these being kicked off of other maps' jukeboxes.) The streets are now much more heavily lit. Texture overhaul; most of the old textures are replaced with ones used by current maps. Prop overhaul; the old props are replaced by current ones, and bases and alleyways are full of clutter. Removed base defenses. Silos are now spread out, one being on the north side of each base and the other at the south. The north Soviet silo's computer is inaccessible and thus cannot be thieved from. Destructible hedgehogs temporarily block off one of each base's attack routes and funnel traffic at another one. Added an underpass connecting both Barracks to the south side of the map. Added a cargo truck parked somewhere, just because. Added ambient sounds for the river, bushes and utility pole transformers. Kerbs now have invisible collision ramps to smooth out unit movement, making it harder to flip your rangers and ensuring your infantry don't "fall" randomly and lose accuracy when they shouldn't. Added VIS culling. RA_Complex Fixed missing Supply Truck spawners. Reduced snowfall. RA_PacificThreat Allies now have a Pillbox at the front of their base. Fixed some VIS errors pertaining to the ruins west of the Allied base.

Yep. It was still one of the worst performing maps though. Another issue with NBNW in particular, was that the level file that previously existed for it in the Delta SVN back at BHP was really bare bones; presumably CJ or whoever had just made a level from scratch, applied the NBNW terrain and called it a day - there were no trees, no walls, no VIS data, and the only "additions" compared to the original was a semi-circle of hedgehogs around the back of each service depot (so presumably he had the same idea of "push the map boundaries inwards, make LT rush less OP" as I did for Pipeline and RidgeWar). So the VIS and clutter would have had to be redone anyway even if we decided to include it back then. NBNW was the only Gamma map I can remember having a weird Delta pre-release LE file like that, but nowadays it doesn't matter as almost all the content for maps is now placed in the terrain file so I just make LE files from scratch instead of using the old ones and don't have to add much to make them work (besides VIS generation which takes an age).

Because while I could just export the Gamma source file as is, not have to do any more work than just tweaking the pathfinding to work with the new OT, and then call it a day, they would look extremely out of place visually among the other maps, they'd have slideshow performance because of a lack of VIS combined with horrible optimisation issues in the Gamma w3d/max files, and changes brought about by Delta would introduce some gameplay issues (using Bunkers as an example: looking at the current source and creating a 350m sphere around the radar domes, I am pretty sure that MRJs would literally be able to jam from within their own base. Without needing an occupant.) Plus I'm still really not a fan of the pre-Delta philosophy quite a few maps had where bases (particularly Soviet ones) had a ton of open space on all sides making the "LT swarm circle around the edge of the base and never get hit" strat too easy and making it too hard for infantry to sneak around. Before we moved here there was also a stigma around reviving Aircraftkiller's stuff, which we don't have to be weighed down by anymore. I still went ahead with the "from scratch" River Raid remake anyway because it was half-done at that point and I was still challenging myself to make a proper map from scratch. Something I may never do again because holy crap that takes forever. Lunar Paradox is basically a heightmap so that doesn't count. I wasn't about to delay Delta's initial release by another 6 months just to get all the old favourites up to spec and fix their problems; 16 or so maps was enough for the initial release so we've been slowly reintroducing the rest afterwards. Since the initial release, the map editing process has been somewhat streamlined and I'm less clumsy with max now, so some of these big picks might actually not take too long.

I get that that's the point of a PUG but surely there are better ways to do this than to just say "no, fuck you, you don't deserve to play" to new players, people who don't read the forum, people who don't read the chat, or aren't into the game enough to strategise? Why drive that long list of players away from the game? Got another server we can use for this, so they can all play if the time they want/can play coincides with PUG time or...? But then, splitting onto another server when there's enough room on one server for everyone anyway, when most people's decision to join a server is based on how many players are already there, is also a detriment... Another option would be if we had a way to force players that aren't on a list to be neutral spectators during "pug mode", and give them some sort of semi-mute that prevents them from spoiling things in PM/all-chat but still allows them to use their "team chat" (yes, neutral actually has a team chat) to theorise about peoples' plans/point out awesome battles to other specs. But that's not an option right now; the most we can do is give them a real mute, which looks pretty rude and doesn't prevent PMs, and change them to the Ghost Spec character, which still has collision and doesn't "fly". (This I can fix for next patch at least.) There's also the issue that on a lot of maps (particularly the smaller maps where Molotov Hunting was never intended to happen) neutrals spawn under the map and fall to their death.

So what about people who aren't on this list when a game starts, or join midgame? How are they distributed? How do we explain all the "random" team switching to the rando's who don't visit the forums and therefore aren't seeing this?

I'd like to be able to add bots to more maps so people could mess with bots while idling on the empty server waiting for players, but they are in a very experimental stage right now. In particular their biggest problems are overzealousness when it comes to buying vehicles, kills against them counting on stats (meaning easy KD), and their turret rotations being completely bugged out when online. They're still fun though and I applaud @moonsense715 for his work on the new AI.

That's why we now have the "house" radar markers that tell you the direction of the Allied/Soviet bases.

Me too. Kinda need to get another mic before this though.

It's pretty hard to justify having no base defenses on vehicle maps nowadays, because no defenses was a big contributor to why so many maps in earlier versions of the game always boiled down to Allied LT rush = run circles around Soviet base = autowin. (The other main reason being needing donations to get HTs before Gamma, which can still be an issue nowadays if you opt to kap/flame rush at the start, but that's the risk you take.) In River Raid it sort of works because there are very few avenues of attack and the base is closely surrounded by cliffs on all sides preventing LTs from using distance dodging to their advantage. It'd probably work on Metro too for the same reason. TWT and Volcano... ehhhh... RIP Soviets.

It's now baked into the advanced naval structures.

Problem there is scaling health. Objects' health maximums are set in stone, so reducing health would be pointless as people could repair it anyway, and would be detrimental to an attack team if the player count changed during their attack anyway. Oh, you got that NY down to 100/750 health? Too bad, someone left in anger and now the playercount says it should be 650 health, so it's back up to 650/750 health now. Who needs golden wrenches when you can just ragequit? And I get the feeling swapping out the entire building controller for a new one will not fly (last time I remember spawning a building controller midgame it led to a crash), and even if it did, it would fully heal it every time the player count changed anyway. There's a reason the defense logic is handled by replacing the armour class with a different one. Which you can't do with actual buildings because buildings have two armour types: one for the exterior and one for the MCT. I haven't tried using the armour replace script on it but there are clearly 4 things that could happen, ranging from undesirable to nothing: it replaces the exterior armour and not the MCT (meaning repairs and infantry assaults are equally effective at all player counts) it replaces the MCT armour but not the exterior (so it only affects repairs and infantry assaults, and not naval/air rushes) it replaces both armour types with the same new armour type (so the MCT and walls behave identically, either making repairs/infantry assaults completely ineffectual if we choose the exterior armour, or making repairs too easy because a golden wrench works from anywhere if we choose the MCT armour) it doesn't replace any armour (so it just doesn't work) Also, Allies already win too easily by Longbow rushing the sub pen. Scaling its health down as it becomes easier to amass the 5 longbows required for a kill sounds... counterintuitive? Same goes for armour, though to a lesser extent if it follows the same "don't affect limited-ammo units" rule as defenses - but if the LBs fail, the rocket soldier pilots will just have an even easier time finishing the job. Maybe the "rushes too easy to spot" issue can be fixed by fog being even thicker than it already is - but then Longbows become even more overpowered at base destruction - something that is, again, normally not an huge issue (but still something I'll be nerfing with slightly lower building damage) as on other maps it's not too hard to spot an LB rush before it happens and then either intercept with rockets/TTs or just engy-camp the expected building - the latter being the only option here. Maybe the sub pen needs a set of battlements made out of indestructible SAM sites, devised by the Soviets after seeing how incredibly effective the castle is on Siege?

Ah, sorry. I didn't think you meant specifically this map because keeping Engys baseline here without actually getting rid of the Barracks doesn't do anything about the issue of rocket soldiers being gods among men in situations where they can't be hit - which in standard maps is OK because there are hardly any places where that's the case, but here their entire playing field is clifftops that the "ground vehicles" can't hit or drive onto and enemy infantry have trouble reaching.

One of the biggest reasons to keep your Barracks alive is being able to quickly repair your buildings in an emergency. Granted, on this map that's too important since the Engineer doubles as the capture guy - but if Engineers were non-Barracks units on most other maps there'd be a problem. The Barracks is already considerably less important than the War Factory (barring fringe cases like Under and Pipeline) as it is.

An idea building off of what NodGuy said: what if the map did not have a Barracks (making it the ONLY map with buildings to lack one! ...besides Lunar which doesn't really count because its WF has the functions of the Bar/Silo/Hpad also built into it) but Engineers were able to be bought anyway? Not only does that solve the "Barracks got rushed insta-lose" issue for good, but it also stops iceberg campers from having too much impact since the only infantry you get are rifles, techies, sergeants, captains and engineers - especially once I patch naval armour to be more resistant to bullets. They can still get some anti-naval/air weapons from the crates to give them some impact, especially the Allies whose captains can't hit submerged subs, but they can't refill these rapidly enough for people to sit on the icebergs forever ramboing every vehicle that comes their way, due to the crate spawn rate/distance and how they'll have to rush all the way back to their LST every so often to make use of its refill feature if they can't get good crates, which also gives another good reason for people to destroy them which reduces the clutter issue! It wouldn't hamper LST rushes that much either as sergeants/captains/engineers are perfectly viable LST rush infantry - you only miss out on the extra benefits of a medic/flamethrower. I could even put a Missile Silo in the empty space previously occupied by the Barracks, to give LST attacks more presence in spite of the limited infantry. I feel Pacific Threat doesn't really suffer the same issue of what NodGuy said because it only takes about 20 seconds and no transport for you to wade a rifleman over to any annoying rocket soldiers.

I don't get the feeling that the capture logic is the issue, surely if it was then the same people would be put off by Pipeline too...