Pushwall

So here's a test of how a "stream" flamethrower might look. It's actually pretty similar to the current flamethrower so as to not shake things up too much; the full 10 "round" salvo is only slightly more damaging than the current fireball but that's ok because the time between salvos isn't much greater than the reload time for the current flamethrower (3.125 seconds instead of 3). Will definitely need a beefier sound for this if it goes in. I wanted to give it a larger magazine and thus longer burst time but then we run the risk of it basically being a Splash Kapitan. Really the existence of sargs/caps makes it even harder to make these other units unique - another example of this is how if we ever get around to adding Attack Dogs, they'd be competing with the Starshina for the same role - but then we can't really remove sargs/caps because then the Allies would be even more starved for infantry options.

Removing the grenadier from the game again might be a bit much especially since the current one is hardly controversial especially up against the ArtyNader. Maybe make the flamer different if we can't make the behaviour of grenades different? Like, a stream of fire (still long-ranged) instead of a single fireball? Sure, it may not be RAlistic but it would hardly be the first weapon to behave differently to its RA incarnation: Phase Tank fires in salvos of 8, instead of its 2 in RA. Rocket Soldier's anti-tank rockets have been non-tracking for the past 7 years until this patch (and they will probably be non-tracking again next patch anyway), unlike RA where they were tracking. APC and Tesla Tank are notable here for being some of the strongest anti-aircraft options despite not even being able to target aircraft in RA. Of course, basically nothing was able to do that, but these two going from "forbidden from taking this role" to "among the best in this role" is quite a shift. Grenadiers can't throw grenades base-to-base like they could in RA

But he's not supposed to be an anti-infantry unit. If he gets his pistol back, maybe I need to re-buff the formely nerfed small arms vs vechs (especially if Allies lose the Grenadier) so that we don't keep seeing allied armies that consist almost entirely of rocket soldiers because adding anti-infantry to an anti-tank/air/naval unit makes it anti-everything?

Fissure is gone. The map layout makes flamethrowers unstoppable and we cannot balance flamethrowers around this one map otherwise they would be completely worthless everywhere else. But even without flamethrowers the layout is still just painful; in the no-tunnel version you really can't get out of your barracks once a medic team or grenadier team plops their arses down in front of or above it, and in the tunnel version they are way too complicated and that's very bad when using them is required to save half of your silos, plus they are about as wide as the characters themselves which is not good for infantry combat, so those would definitely need to be remade. FoI... well, someone left an "updated" version of FoI lying around and I fixed it up to be used in the game. It looks really neat but does not play well at all and would continue to not play well even if it was, like RockTrap, retooled to be a barracks map (which the updated one originally was too) instead of a domination map. It was split into 3 different "arenas" (forest, graveyard and garden) which you would jump between with teleporters. I'm really not keen on making any more maps from scratch to eliminate the problems these maps have that are innate to their designs, mostly cause it takes bloody forever, so these two maps will likely remain in limbo. I guess I could do a basic modernized version of "old" FoI by frankensteining together parts of new FoI but that's about it. I would not mind seeing some more infantry maps, especially if my suspicions are correct that the MapGuard plugin (which locks certain maps out of the rotation depending on what the player coutn is) is finally working correctly, because nobody wants to get thrown into an infantry map in 10v10. At first my feeling was that people just don't like infantry maps, but when it comes to Delta I think the real problem is that Fissure is broken and domination is not fun, because people don't seem particularly offended by Wasteland or Antlion. His fire rate is once every 3 seconds now, and it was once every 3 seconds a decade ago.

Is this based on yet another imbalanced low-player match? looks back at havoc's stream So it was a 5 allies vs 4 soviets, where Soviets had one afk and Allies had Totd. That's 5v3 or 6v3 depending on how much you think one really good player can accomplish. The map isn't even supposed to show up below 7v7 but apparently everyone left when it came up. Maybe we should wait for an actual balanced game before writing it off... but then again that'll never happen if the mere mention of the map scares everyone off.

Never said the RPG-7 was homing. Besides, if we ever get a new weapon model for the rocket soldier, it most likely will be something that can track, so this is a good opportunity to test how well that'd work.

I only wish; recoil is as simple as it gets, and yet it took quite a while to get it to work - we lack sources for all the weapon animations, so I had to use an importer which screws up the positioning and basically forces you to start from square one, and a lot of the FP weapons don't have the properly separated segments for reloads (like magazines being a separate mesh from the gun to allow them to be individually manipulated) and often trying to fix that causes other animated parts of the weapon to break (this is why the lunar uber captains don't have eyes on their gun in first person).

Yeah, crates have a chance of giving 100 team credits. I tested around with it a bit and the way the base islands are laid out, as @Raap warned in his thread, is a bit too exploitable for chinooks to be fair. So I'm trying T5 infantry instead.

Not with Also Redeye/Strela got their damage boosted here, so their viability vs boats hasn't been hurt nearly as much as a bunch of other units have. The health boost was more for dealing with things that aren't supposed to be engaging boats, making the question of "should I use RPG or Strela vs boats" less of a question, and making boat vs boat combat less rocket-tag-esque.

Yeah, like I said, I didn't want the asset to go to waste even if I tweaked the economy. It still has the raised HP. I could do something more with it down the line, like start out with 4/s and then degrade to 3/2/1 over the course of the match. But I didn't want to take any longer on this patch

Red Alert: A Path Beyond Update General Fixed a bug with tracking weapons that caused the tracking to frequently fail. To further accommodate the tracking fix, a bunch of tracking and formerly-tracking weapons have been amended; see below. If you are equipped with a tracking weapon and aim at a vehicle, you will get a lockon marker showing you what part of the vehicle the rocket will try to home in on. You can no longer access purchase terminals through walls. Scrolling your mousewheel down during gameplay no longer causes the sidebar to be scrolled down 1 unit next time you enter a purchase terminal. This should solve all your quick-buying troubles. Turn-restricted turrets (like the Heavy Tank's) will no longer get "stuck" aiming in a particular direction if you rotate the camera to the other direction through the space that they can't aim at. First-person infantry camera now has 75 FOV instead of 90. Weapon positions may look a little different as a result. First-person hand models of Tanya, Flamethrower and Shock Trooper are now more accurate to the clothes they wear. So flamer/shocky no longer have thief-size gloves and Tanya no longer wears flesh fatigues when using two-handed weapons. M60 now has animated recoil in first person. Fast infantry now properly do the walk animation when holding spacebar. Ranger no longer has side cameras. Ore Trucks have a visible Technician in the driver seat again, and unlike the last time they existed, they don't cause the truck to take extra damage or be damageable by teammates. Fixed smoothing on the Heavy Tank's fuel barrels. Kill icon font should now work properly on all systems. Infantry Grenadier Returned to having armour and 50 health (results in less survivability against fire, electricity, heavy projectiles, machineguns and the Remington, but better survivability against all other small arms and explosive splash damage) Grenades now bounce if they hit anything less than 10 metres away from the user that isn't an enemy unit, similar to how they worked in Beta. This can save you from a lot of accidental self-harm if you're trying to throw grenades from behind cover, though it makes it even more difficult to use grenades for point-blank self-defense (but you should be using the pistol for that anyway). Flamethrower Health up (50 -> 60) Limited-ammo flamethrowers (DM maps etc) have more ammo (5 -> 8 ) Spy/Thief Silenced Beretta damage up (10 -> 12.5) Shotgunners Damage to infantry slightly improved all around (Remington: 20.625 -> 22.5 vs armoured, 27.5 -> 30 vs unarmoured, or +9.1% damage in total. TOZ: 24.375 -> 26.25 vs armoured, 65 -> 70 vs unarmoured, or +7.7% damage in total) Rocket Soldiers M72 LAW now has homing (as it did in Beta). If you don't want to use homing because of cover around you or your target that might get in the way, it still has non-homing missiles on right click. M72 LAW projectile velocity down (100 -> 75m/s) Redeye/Strela now have homing (as they did in earlier versions). Redeye/Strela projectile velocity down (400 -> 150m/s) Redeye/Strela damage down (110 -> 90 Redeye, 80 -> 70 Strela) Redeye/Strela damage multiplier to Yaks raised (0.625 -> 0.75) Redeye/Strela range down (170 -> 160m) No longer have pistols. LAW/RPG splash damage increased (17.5 -> 22.5) Vehicles Naval vessels Rebalanced health, resistances and anti-infantry power. Basically, boats are tougher against most things - mainly in ship vs ship combat - but don't decimate shoreline rocket soldiers quite so hard. Healths: Gunboat health up (300 -> 400) Destroyer health up (450 -> 600) Attack Sub health up (300 -> 400) Missile Sub health up (225 -> 300) LST health up (400 -> 500) Armour multipliers: "Longbow" up (0.8 -> 0.9); 15.6% downgrade (needs 1 more hit to kill all naval units). Damage drops by 75% against submerged subs instead of 87.5%. "Destroyer" (dest+missub) up (0.45 -> 0.5 vs health, 0.225 -> 0.3 vs armour); 10% downgrade. "Artillery" (arty+v2) up (0.9 -> 1 direct, 0 -> 0.5 splash); 2.8% downgrade for V2, 1.8% upgrade for Artillery "AntiAircraft" (redeye+strela) up (0.625 -> 0.8 vs health, 0.5 -> 0.8 vs armour); taking the redeye/strela base damage tweaks into account, this is a 11.6% downgrade for Redeye and 5.5% downgrade for Strela. "Grenade" up (0.4 -> 0.6 vs armour, unchanged vs health); 1.6% downgrade "Fire" (flamer+tower) up (0.5 -> 0.75 vs armour, unchanged vs health); 3.6% downgrade "Hind" up (0.3 -> 0.375); 6.25% downgrade "AntiSub" (depth charge) up vs submerged subs only (1 -> 1.25); 6.25% downgrade "BulletAT" (APC) up (0.5 -> 1 vs health, unchanged vs armour); zero change in effectiveness vs boats, but 60% upgrade vs LSTs "BulletAP" (captain+ranger) up (0.375 -> 0.5 vs health, unchanged vs armour); 16.7% downgrade vs boats, 6.7% upgrade vs LSTs "Electric" and "ElectricTrooper" (shock+TT+coil) up (1 -> 1.25); 6.25% downgrade "C4" down (1.2 -> 1 normally, 1.2 -> 10 vs submerged). Engineer C4 now does 500 damage and thus does not one-shot anything except LSTs or submerged subs; Tanya C4 still one-shots everything except destroyers. Every other weapon, due to not having an adjusted multiplier vs the raised HP of naval units, is effectively downgraded 20% vs LSTs and 25% vs combat vessels. Splash damage vs infantry: Attack Sub down (60 -> 45) Destroyer down (30 -> 25) Missile Sub down (25 -> 20) Destroyer/Missile Sub Projectile velocity down (200 -> 100m/s) No longer has a 25% damage bonus against aircraft (it shouldn't need it now that it can reliably hit them with homing) Range down 10m. Phase Tank Projectile velocity down (100 -> 50m/s) Longbow Projectile velocity down (200 -> 100m/s) Mammoth Tank Tusk missiles projectile velocity down (200 -> 50m/s) Tusk missiles damage down (70 -> 60) Tracking weapons (and targeting of bots/base defenses) now attempt to hit around the top of the main chassis, instead of the very lowest point on the vehicle (which sometimes caused them to hit the ground instead). Suspension should no longer freak out and get you stuck when going off cliffs. Light Tank Max speed down (14 -> 13.5m/s) Ranger Max speed up (17.1 -> 18.7m/s) Turn rate down 20% Takes longer to reach its 3rd gear, so it is slower when accelerating from a full stop or coming out of a tight turn. Chinook Speed up (20 -> 24m/s) Turn rate up 35% Health down (300 -> 225) Yak Rearming rate halved (gains 5 bullets per tick instead of 10) Damage to aircraft up (1.4 -> 1.5) Minimum speed limit is now enforced 2 seconds after cruising mode begins, instead of being enforced instantly. Since acceleration gets enforced before the speed limit, you should no longer have to worry about the possibility of dying during takeoff unless you ACTUALLY crash into something. Minimum speed limit when cruising up from 20m/s to 30m/s. The delayed enforcement of this limit provides FAR more than enough time to get up to speed on an "imperfect" takeoff, so don't worry about that; this stricter speed limit just means you're more likely to die if you crash into the side of a hill/mountain while flying. Death explosion deals 300 AntiAircraft damage within 20 metres. Not a perfect fix for the "Yak crashes harmlessly into Longbow" problem, since it doesn't always explode in midair and doesn't kill Longbows that are in fresh condition (so as to discourage spam suiciding a $800 unit into a $1200 unit), but it's a stopgap until we can get a proper solution. Buildings Airfield Removed the invisible ramp from the end of the runway. This was originally there for the old flight system to give people time to ascend so they don't immediately crash into the ground, but it's been rendered obsolete by the new auto-switching control scheme, and it was also complicating matters for people who tried to land on the end of the runway. Planes parked on the runway when the building is destroyed are no longer able to rearm/repair/sell in mid-flight. Barracks Is no longer weaker on infantry-only maps. Naval factories Naval units now create instantly, which should hopefully prevent boats from getting stuck in each other Bots Ants no longer bunnyhop. Vision cone of human bots is now only 150 degrees (was 270 so they could see mostly behind themselves) Increased weapon inaccuracy. Can't refill in combat anymore. Maps Canyon River Raised terrain around Soviet service depot so you shouldn't get stuck on it anymore. Hostile Waters Gem Silo income down to 2. Neutral Ore Silos now give an instant boost of 100 credits to the first team to capture them, jump-starting your economy a bit so you should still be able to start buying boats at around the same time as before. Tech Level raised to 5 - can now buy Tanya and Volkov. Metro Manhole covers no longer render on top of phase tanks. Fixed a spot where you could jump out of the map. Rock Trap Back in the game! Level geometry is scaled up x2, except for the cave behind the waterfall. Domination points no longer exist. Both teams now have a Barracks and Ore Silo; the Soviet base is where the northeast control point used to be, and the Allied base is where the southwest control point used to be. Like with Fissure, the silo is out of reach of repair tools, but unlike Fissure, it is positioned in such a way that it is easy to defend. The area previously occupied by the southeast control point is now a depot containing very frequently respawning crates containing weapons, C4 (this is normal C4 so it should only be placed on the barracks), max health boosts, radar invisibility, and extra money for your team. These crates will not give character changes, so there are no consequences to snatching up all the crates you can get. Added some extra tunnels to the map; two for each Barracks leading out of the basement, and one in the middle connecting the riverside to the western cliffs. These are more spacious than the tunnels seen on other maps, hopefully providing better infantry combat; other maps with tunnels may receive this treatment in the future. Added "Ammo Clip" (from Renegade) to the jukebox. You can no longer jump off the cliffs overlooking the rivers on the north/west sides of the map. Now supports bots. Siege Terrain lighting levels are more in line with Canyon River's. Shortened range of cannons from 350m to 240m; base-facing cannons can no longer hit the entire base - just the frontal defenses, frontal SD, and a minor main building (Soviet CY/Allied Dome). Added a crag in front of the Allied Barracks to protect it from the Allied-side cannon, so that both base-facing cannons have a roughly equal set of buildings to hit. Moved the pillbox at the Allied side entrance slightly forward. [blurb]Bugfixes abounds in this APB update! Homing weapons, Heavy Tank turrets, boats milling around the Naval Yard, and quick-buyers all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Oh, and there's some balance too. Be sure to check out the full changelog![/blurb] [thumb]thumb_apb.9.png[/thumb]

On a similar front, for the longest time I've really wanted to axe the Thief and merge him into the Spy. Recently the Spy gained an ability that allowed him to deny the Soviets some of their dump money. Nobody has complained about this being too strong for a unit that can avoid base defenses, AP mines, and looks like a Soviet soldier. So it would seem that it is not considered controversial for the Spy to have a Refinery ability that tilts the economy in the Allies' favour (as long as it's not nearly as strong as the Thief's, obviously) instead of the completely useless "here's how much money the Soviets have!" report that he had for the past decade or so prior to this change. So if we were to axe the Thief, the Spy would most likely lose this functionality and gain the ability to steal like, 10-15% of the Soviets' total money at a refinery (compared to a Thief's 50%)? Or maybe slightly more but also have a long "chargeup" at the MCT? It'd also allow us to make use of the AR updated spy logic without multiple units sharing the exact same appearance - give the Spy the same "default" model that the Thief currently has, and let him disguise as any infantry.

Yeah Grenadier is admittedly in a tricky spot. "Now" is disingenuous though - before Delta he always sucked, except for Fissure where he was apparently deemed too broken because when I finally started playing in 1.4, he wasn't even available to buy on Fissure! Though all this did was just bring flamethrowers to the forefront instead, because the issue was not grenadiers, the issue was that the map layout put way too fucking much emphasis on splash damage. The issue with the Grenadier before the attempts to fix him, is that he has always just been a worse Flamethrower. Nobody used him because it is almost impossible to be in a situation where you can't just afford a Flamethrower instead - or even better, a Shock Trooper back when he had the splash of a Flamethrower. The only situations where you could afford a Grenadier but not a Flamethrower was early on in silo-only maps. But in the old days, spending money on infantry period at the start of Metro/Canyon River was a death sentence as it delayed your tanks, and on Forest of Illusion, there was only one piece of cover on the whole map: the church. Hanging around there was the only way a grenadier could ever hope to get in range to hurt someone as going anywhere else would result in being outranged to death - so definitely not worth the investment compared to just waiting for a flamer. In Delta the Grenadier has gone through many iterations to try to make him actually worth using, and a lot of these failed. The initial Delta Grenadier was basically like the old Grenadier except he actually had range (about as much as a shock trooper instead of less than pistols) and his damage against vehicles/building exteriors was no longer merely comparable to the rifle/kapitan. In spite of this, he was still almost never used. At one point I wondered "hey, Volkov is essentially a composite of several different units, what's the Volktillery supposed to be a clone of?" And so the previously forgotten Grenadier found a new lease on life as a "siege infantry" who could throw his grenades about as far as the old Volktillery. This got people to use him... because it wound up making him completely broken. So after that failure, I removed the Grenadier from the game completely while I tried to figure out how to handle him, and to make sure the Soviets still have a "grenadier", the RPG Trooper got renamed to the "Grenadier" (because he has a Rocket Propelled Grenade launcher, see) and instead of a Makarov he had a limited supply of "old-style" frag grenades. The limited grenades were kinda controversial and people were still clamoring for a real Grenadier to come back, so... He found ANOTHER new lease on life: instead of just being a budget Flamethrower, he became more of a "jack of all trades, master of none" hybrid between the Flamethrower and Rocket Soldier; instead of just being worse than the Flamethrower at everything, he now has anti-tank power that's better than the flamer but worse than the RS, his anti-building siege is better than the flamer but worse than the RS, his infiltration is still bad because he doesn't get a weakpoint bonus like flamers do and he's liable to splash himself, and his anti-infantry power is - as you would expect - worse than the flamer but better than the RS. So now your question is probably "how does this deviate from the issue of being a budget unit when you can almost always afford the non-budget unit"? Because unlike a flamethrower or rocket soldier, he is still available when the Barracks is destroyed. Which goes all the way back to you 2 years ago bringing up how Rocket Soldiers were too overpowered to be available without a Barracks (which I can agree on). Of course, one team having more options with a dead building than the other team just doesn't fly, so the Allies got a Grenadier too, which I had also hoped would lead to slightly more diverse infantry loadouts than "rockets, mechs, and nothing else". The newest Grenadier still hasn't been a particularly great success on some of those fronts, but it's still seen the most use of any excluding the overpowered ArtyNader, and has been regarded with hardly any controversy compared to that travesty of a unit. So it's unlikely he'll go into a different role unless someone has a particularly great idea. Next build he's receiving the following changes: he's going back to 50 health with armour instead of 80 with none. This improves his durability against tank splash and all small arms except the Remington and machineguns, but worsens it against fire/tesla weapons and the aforementioned exceptions to the small arms rule. So most importantly he won't have to fear basic infantry, tanks, or his own splash damage as much. just like the old Grenadier, his grenades will bounce if they hit terrain too quickly. Which means that you are at a much lower risk of accidentally hurting yourself when trying to throw around cover (especially combined with the addition of armour). As for not exploding on death: he is not meant to be used in CQC, and this is another part of trying to make him a different unit to the Flamethrower. I am considering backtracking on having him as an Allied unit, but he'd have to become Barracks-required again so that both teams lose equally from losing their Barracks. And we'd have to return to Captains having more ridiculous anti-vehicle damage - the addition of a double-owned, no-barracks explosive unit allowed us to tone down the small arms vs vehicle damage.

Dumps are only 350 now because you can actually get income from things other than dumps. Like the ore silo or damaging/killing enemy units. If dumps were still 700 combined with having global ore silos and combat credits, it'd be even harder to run out of money. Meanwhile, Ore Trucks got their price halved to match the halved dumps. I still don't see why "people actually buy this unit that used to just look pretty on the sidebar and get you mocked for misclicks" is a bad thing, but I understand about the earlygame/lategame thing - perhaps we can return OTs to 1400 but also make players earn twice as much when harvesting. Starting credits exist to allow the initial infantry rush to exist. Do you remember what happened in pre-Gamma on maps that had base defenses? That's right, everyone just sat in their base for 2 whole minutes twiddling their thumbs or maybe trying to form a totem pole in the corner of the WF, because you can't really do anything when your only option is riflemen and there's nothing exposed to shoot. That's boring. Sure, some people still do that depending on the situation and how scared they are of risking their KD, but it's not even close to a 100% thing anymore. With the $350 starting credits, silo income that equates to $120 per minute, and $350 dump, assuming you save your money (which does not necessarily entail twiddling your thumbs) or are able to cause enough havoc with your purchased gren/captain to pay for the cost of the unit, you will end up with about $950 when that dump comes in. Which allows Soviets to get tanks. I can't speak for much older versions but my memories of 1.4 consist largely of Allies winning a very large percentage of their games, because $1 starting credit + $700 dump = everyone on Allied team could buy light tanks/artilleries and nobody on Soviet team could buy anything that stops light tanks unless the whole Soviet team was perfectly coordinated with their donations (only being able to donate for one or two heavy tanks is still not going to do a damn thing against 5-6 lights). But who knows, maybe this would not have been such a major issue if Soviets had a rocket soldier back then. Or maybe it wouldn't have helped because tanks back then had ridiculous splash damage and a ridiculous range advantage over infantry. Volkov's price has been fluctuating above the "old" 1200 for a decade now - it was 1500 in 1.2, 1800 in 1.4 and Gamma, 1500 for large parts of Delta, and 1800 now. And the whole time he has consistently been one-shot headshot sniper bait (aka "making the sniper actually worth buying"), except in Gamma where snipers didn't exist. I don't see how any of this is "recent" stuff and he's been deserving of his high price for most of the way: I can't speak for 1.2 as I was not around for it, but given that his price was lower than later incarnations, his stats were mostly identical to his 1.4 iteration, and shocky had less range than in 1.4 (see the shocky thread), I don't exactly imagine Volkov was viewed unfavourably by those who used him. Perhaps Volkov aficionado @Voe can weigh in. 1.4 Volkov was effectively a shocky with worse damage, but better speed+range+durability and the ability to regen. Gamma Volkov was fucking broken because he was basically the same as in 1.4 except he also had ENGINEER C4. So since his AT cannon could hurt buildings enough for the C4 to take them out, he was effectively a Tanya who didn't have to worry about AP mines, and this was in combination with his old status of being able to put the hurt on vehicles and infantry and regenerate in the field, which was a unique ability for him at the time. Oh and I guess he had binoculars too, because accidentally selecting the wrong weapon on a unit who needs to constantly switch I guess constitutes some sort of balancing act for the rest of his bullshit? (Note that back then, binoculars couldn't even see unit healthbars or make radar markers, so all they could do besides throw off weapon switchers was zoom in.) Delta Volkov, up until the attempts to rebalance him about 2 months ago, was basically 1.4 Volkov again, except regen wasn't exclusive to him anymore. But he still rendered the Shock Trooper almost entirely obsolete, which is what led to the attempts to fix him. The only time I'd say he's been undeserving of his price tag was in early iterations of the attempt to fix him a few months back; in my first attempts, he ended up being a total flop who really had no advantage over the shocky except range. And this whole time (obviously excluding the failed rebalancings), he has consistently been a much more versatile unit than Tanya, who is completely helpless against vehicles (except maybe a V2 that she's able to sneak up and plant C4 on), completely helpess against any infantry that outrange her in the field (which is most of them), cannot do anything against buildings unless they are de-mined, and is more fragile than her pre-Delta iterations - she can actually die in 1v1 situations now.

Going through all the versions I have on hand: .9935, 1.2: Shocky 50m, Rifle 62m (or 50m if you hadn't figured out the bad Renegade mechanic of non-hitscan weapons having more range than the target box suggests, while hitscan weapons are beholden to the target box), Medium Tank 112m (or 90m if you hadn't figured out bad game design). 1.4: Shocky 65m, Rifle 62m (50m), Medium Tank 107m (86m). 2.0 Gamma: Shocky 75m, Rifle 75m (60m), Medium Tank 118m (95m). Now: Shocky 80m, Rifle 90m, Medium Tank 110m. (The bad game design of the Fake News target box is now practically nonexistent and everything has less than 2m more range than the box suggests.) So unless he was some sort of antiveh sniper before .9935, I'm not seeing the range thing. The two times in the builds I have where he does outrange/match range, I don't remember you being around for. Gamma's shock trooper despite gaining more semblance of range became a total joke, because he had to charge his shots and the chargeup timer was maddeningly inconsistent, lag meant it could be anywhere from 0.5 to 1.5 seconds, so hitting infantry became extremely difficult (and luck-based). It's also worth noting that nowadays, he's now only half as outranged by medium tanks as he used to be. For that long span of time between .9935 and 1.2? Outranged by rifles (if they knew about the bad game design of targeting range) and massively outranged by vehicles. His splash is bad because why not actually give all these units different strengths and weaknesses instead of just making the more expensive one the same as the less expensive one but with one weakness removed? Back when "more expensive is better in EVERY way instead of some ways and worse in others" was the design philosophy, the cheaper units were basically never used. It used to be the case that the Shock Trooper was effectively a hitscan Flamethrower due to how ridiculous his splash was and had actual anti-vehicle power, whereas the Flamethrower was effectively a Grenadier who wasn't outranged by pistols and had actual anti-building power. Still, aiming for the legs right now isn't a bad idea as due to the way the current shocky's weapon damage works, it is not affected by limb damage multipliers; if you land a direct hit, you get 25 damage (plus 5 splash if the server feels like being nice and letting your splash work), no matter if it's in the legs, pinky finger, stomach or head. And the legs are certainly easier to hit than the head and give you more chance at splash if you miss (or if you hit).

It's funny how that works. For the longest time, back at the FTP on BHP, we had a "destroyed iron curtain" prop created by Raap (he originally had it on Siege). But curiously no undestroyed iron curtain sitting around anywhere. I've kept the destroyed iron curtain around and used it as a prop on Wasteland. It's only recently that Einstein pointed me to TechnoWars and, lo and behold, the Iron Curtain from that is what Raap based his destroyed iron curtain on. Still, that Iron Curtain itself looks vastly out of date compared to the Chronosphere, doesn't have anywhere reasonable to add an activation terminal, and I'd have to get all the logic set up before I consider adding the pair to a map for real. And I'm certainly not adding one superweapon without the other. Balance.

"Out of order" was caused by MapGuard, a plugin that if it worked properly would render the rotation command irrelevant as it picks the next map at random (and restricts the appearance of maps that are not suitable for whatever the server's player count may be) instead of playing everything in the same order all the time. It's disabled until the issues with the server trying to set the next map to other maps is fixed.

This is with a grenadier though. The point was that the blind spot extends over such a long distance that even the shortest-ranged unit (grenadier) can use it - but people saving their money or driving the truck are going to be using rifle soldiers instead, which have 30m more range and would easily be able to avoid having to enter the positions where they can get splash burned, and don't all have to clump up at the edge of that ridge.

You know what, I'll enable Chinooks just as an experiment. Let's see how things really go with them. If it ends up being a bad idea, hey, it's already a hated map and it's not like it's hard to reverse. I was going to go with enabling Tanya/Volkov instead but this seems like it'll be less controversial than icebergkovs. (And obviously having both of these enabled is just a bit too much.)

Changed Status to Fixed

@Alstar What's all this "no FT blind spot" malarkey, I can get close enough to hit it with a grenadier (though I wouldn't recommend it due to being just at the right range, and I would imagine the same holds true for trying to aim around cover vs the pillbox) so I'm sure rifle soldiers can handle it.

Siege: So with regard to shortening the range of the cannons: I found that I could add a crag in front of the Allied barracks that would render it unhittable by the cannon, that way with the cannons toned down to 240m range, the Allied-side cannon can only hit the front pillbox, turret, SD and dome, while the Soviet-side cannon can only hit the coil, SD and CY. So just some defenses and a minor "main" building. So this way, the cannons retain their original purpose but aren't too absurd at it and the range of stuff they can hit is roughly equal for both teams. I think I'll stick with this approach for the time being. And of course, Alstar's suggestion to tweak the side pillbox position. Maybe I should also move the Gap Generator so that it's in front of the Service Depot and therefore all the frontal base defenses will continue to be in range of the cannon. Hostile Waters: How novel would it be if the crates contained something that gives you a reason to attack instead of camping more crates? Cause here's the thing: if Engineers get removed to stop golden wrench spam that can't be stopped due to the difficulty of getting into the building, what does that mean for the enterprising Engineer LST rear sneaks, a tactic I saw quite a bit on HW in order to take out SAM sites (and other things if flame/pill are gone) before the map got shut down? So I was thinking of adding C4 to the crates with a higher chance of appearing than anything else, to prop up the infantry attack force, cause it's certainly not helping you out if you just sit on the icebergs. Only issue is this would mean that C4 would have to not inflict massive damage on naval units anymore.

So what does seeing this give you? (Please note that this is purely a test of something one of the mad scientists in scripts came up with and is not guaranteed to show up in APB because tracking mortar-rockets are probably insanely OP given the current statistics that the LAW boasts)

I'm sure missile subs going from hitting 0-3 missiles (based on luck) per salvo out of 8 needed to kill a longbow, to hitting 3-6 (based on precision) out of 10 needed to kill a longbow (due to reduced damage), will do wonders for encouraging naval play. I'm certainly not adding more SAMs considering that the most expensive unit on the map will already be starved for things to do outside of scouting and hunting down the enemy's cheapest units when they're alone, something that on non-naval maps is the role of the cheapest vehicle (the ranger) instead of the most expensive one. Leaving the ones that already exist in the middle alone... maybe. Speaking of expensive... would not having the cash to spam hinds every day encourage naval play? And going back to a former point, hinds/longbows are the ultimate counter to chinooks (especially on a map where rocket soldiers can't walk on most of the terrain) so that could be a good call to bring chinooks in too: to give hinds/longbows more to do. But I guess they do usurp LSTs a bit too much.

Why though? Surely we want less SAMs in the middle now that boats can actually handle aircraft and therefore aircraft don't have much left to be relevant for? Unless you mean near the gem silos in which case, sure.