Allow me to ramble on about assorted things in openRA

epice · Post by **epice** » Sat Mar 16, 2013 4:25 pm

Tesla Coil:
I remember in the original Red Alert it could take out 3-4 infantry on a single charge, or a weakened vehicle and then still shoot at something else. As is, it had a charge and used it all instead of a single shot?
Are there plans to correct this or is it being left as-is?

I think the coil needs a serious buff, in Red Alert it was a pretty big threat but now artillery outrage it so its easy enough to take out from a distance. I say give it the charge mechanic and increase its amount of charge.

Longbow:
The longbow needs some kind of a buff, compared to the Mig its not even on the same level. The only advantage is has over the Mig is it can shoot down other aircraft.
I think it needs one or more of the following to be on-par: More ammo, lower cost, faster rate of fire, longer weapon range.
4 mig's can take out a construction yard in 2 passes, 4 longbows cant. (I could be wrong, but at least it takes them considerably longer to do so, and they are extremely vulnerable in the process.)

Personally I'd like to see more ammo, and a faster rate of fire. Remove the "wait" between shots and that will increase the ROF to a good level. More ammo would be good with that, add in longer range and were there.

You can do some amazing stuff with some carefully managed Mig's, and I would like to see the longbow be able to pull off some good moves as well.

Chronosphere/Iron Curtain:
I think the Chronosphere charges a little too fast, maybe bump it up to 3 minutes? I main allies and that thing is absolutely devastating compared to the Iron Curtain. 4 artillery sent on a suicide mission can take out most buildings in the game before you enemy can even react.
Like I have said before, the iron curtain needs some way to pre-select the units to be made invulnerable, its not practical to set your units into the + formation and activate it right outside of your enemies base making the Iron Curtain useless.\

PROTIP: Attempt to chrono a Demo Truck just as its coming out of your enemies War Factory.

Base defenses:
Base defenses should be able to be placed as far away as walls are. I think you can place walls a good 5 cells away from a building, defenses should be the same.

Things placed behind Advanced Power Plants making them untargetable:
This is a glitch right? It's going to be fixed eventually? Mostly people put Missile Silo's behind an Advanced Power plant so you cant target them.

Unit stances:
Units need to start in a different stance then the default. Most things should be in "Defend", V2 should default to "Hold Fire",

Place a small icon next to the health bar to indicate what stance a unit is in? Shield for defense, bullet for attack... I dunno about the others though.

JOo · Post by **JOo** » Sat Mar 16, 2013 7:52 pm

@ Longbows : i agree , needs some sort of buff ...

@ Base defenses: sounds interesting ...

+ ... i would love to see a buff for "medium tanks" ... because it makes currently no sense to build them ... + 1 speed , or a little bit more range could raise the attraction to build one

Post by **Scott_NZ** » Sat Mar 16, 2013 10:34 pm

Tesla Coil already has the charge mechanic.

PersianImmortal · Post by **PersianImmortal** » Sun Mar 17, 2013 3:01 am

JOo wrote: ↑@ Longbows : i agree , needs some sort of buff ...

@ Base defenses: sounds interesting ...

+ ... i would love to see a buff for "medium tanks" ... because it makes currently no sense to build them ... + 1 speed , or a little bit more range could raise the attraction to build one

Quicker build time and lower cost allows for you to outproduce the soviet player. That's what evens the playing field. I do agree on longbows though. They definitely need some sort of damage buff.

I've never had any problems defending against the chrono but I definitely agree that the curtain needs a buff. It doesn't even compare to the chrono except in a few situations.

I believe the Demo truck nerf in the newest release was taken to an extreme and is over the top now it's essentially worthless. Keep the speed, decrease the health slightly, increase build time by 5-6 seconds max and it make it cost 2k. A well microd longbow or mig can take care of the demo very easily and well placed defenses help as well.

The Volkov nerf also should be reverted. It eliminates a great stalemate breaking strat the soviets had which was curtain+apc fulll of volkovs. These could reak havoc on an enemy base and turn the tide in your favor. With the loss of this and the demo I'm not sure how to even break a stalemate as a soviet player against an equally skilled allies player.

I think the Tesla maybe needs a build time reduce to 30 seconds just to give a soviet player a little more flexibility when it comes to defending his base.

epice · Post by **epice** » Sun Mar 17, 2013 4:01 am

I think the Demo Truck just needs a shorter range on it's explosion damage then the regular nuke and it would be fine. I haven't played the newest playtest much so I can't speek for that.

No, the Coil will kill a single infantry and then needs to do a full charge. So to my knowledge its just a one-shot deal right now.'

JOo wrote: ↑+ ... i would love to see a buff for "medium tanks" ... because it makes currently no sense to build them ... + 1 speed , or a little bit more range could raise the attraction to build one

I think medium tanks are ok, maybe a slight buff. My complaint is that Light Tanks are absolutely worthless, NEVER build them myself. Damage is too low, and they die too easily. If you want to explore just build a Ranger. If you want an early attack build Rocket Soldiers.

By the time you build the 15 light tanks you need to take out a power plant you could have made a service depot, 5 medium tanks and have money left over.

Post by **Scott_NZ** » Sun Mar 17, 2013 5:19 am

The Tesla Coil will attack up to 3 times before needing a recharge, as described in the source code here: https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/blob/b ... ckTesla.cs
Infantry by default need a single zap to be killed (thanks to TeslaInstantKills), and the 2 remaining zaps can be spent on other things. Vehicles tend to take more zaps, and usually use up all of the Tesla Coil's charge.
If you think this isn't working properly then make a ticket on Github.

JOo · Post by **JOo** » Sun Mar 17, 2013 1:35 pm

I think medium tanks are ok, maybe a slight buff. My complaint is that Light Tanks are absolutely worthless, NEVER build them myself. Damage is too low, and they die too easily. If you want to explore just build a Ranger. If you want an early attack build Rocket Soldiers.

uuuh ... early attack with rocket soldiers?? serious? ... never seen that before ... and never seen a enemy that is that stupid and cant defend a simple rockettrooper-squad ...

i mean , allies have nothing "serious" to attack , except the artys ... and thats it ...

"light tanks makes sense" ... but only to shoot some pps down ... or distract the enemy ... so he builds maybe defense-towers on wrong spots ...
but a light tank is not a serious "attack" unit ... thats true

jeeps r for defending against single infantery , or tiny groups of them ... and of course for scouting ... but thats it ...
it has a seat to transport a unit ... but we all know that this seat would only makes sense if a engi is sitting there ... but nobody want to be that noob anymore ... so the seat is worthless ...

ive seen back in the days some openra videos , where a guy is using 2 jeeps , with rockettroops inside , and distracting the enemy by microing that group to the enemy orefield and shootn the trucks ... refs ... but thats needs your eyes permanently on that spot ... and more the average micro skills ...

i dont see any "serious" attacker unit for allies anymore ... + the artys needs alot more ressources in the new playtests "because" ... the auto attack in the shroud is nerved ...
so that means , artys needs scouts ... so they can see ! and shoot ! ...
the funny thing is , v2s are not that effected from that nerv ... because their goal is anyway to get close to the enemy buildings ... so they dont need the whole time a scout ... speed is just redicilous , and of course the "1-hit-pp" / "2-hit-ref" damage ...

but im okay with that ... what i wanna see is a buff for medium tanks ... because
!!! "theyre absolutly worthless" !!!

... looks for me that you need a fuckn micro machine to handle allies on the battlefield ...

Edit: btw. you need only 3 light tanks to take out a pp in a good time ...

the "only" reason why people dont see , that the medium tank needs a buff ... is , because nobody builds them anymore , or because they play soviets instead

epice · Post by **epice** » Thu Mar 21, 2013 4:06 pm

I use them all the time, most people just spam artillery.

Surrealistik · Post by **Surrealistik** » Thu Mar 21, 2013 7:31 pm

+1 for Longbow buffs; they're awful. They should get all of the following:

Reduce their build times by 25% to 36 seconds down from 48 seconds.
Reduce their reload times to 0.5 per rocket down from 1 second per rocket. It is insane that it takes 8 full seconds to reload these things from empty!
Reduce their cost by 25% to 1500 down from 2000
Increase their rocket damage vs tanks/heavy armour by 50%. This would allow it to destroy a single Medium Tank while at full rocket capacity (they presently take 12 rockets to destroy).

As for the power plant glitch, it's pure bullshit. Someone _almost_ used that successfully to thwart my 5 arty chrono attack on his silo awhile ago. Speaking of which, hands off my chrono-arty. :p

Disagree with base defenses being buildable up to 5 squares away. I don't think base crawling should be encouraged.

Default stance should be totally selectable and should be on Defend as default.