Stark wrote:Mission scripting creates problems for the AI, particularly enthusiast AI that's probably designed for open multi.
That just means a well scripted missions keeps it to a minimum.
Thanks for getting my point. This DOESN'T HAPPEN ANYMORE.
Ack, sorry, I fail at reading.
Fuck, most RTSs limit the capabilities of units so much it's not funny, whereas in TA most units can at least TRY to do all sorts of shit (fire while moving, go indirect, spam at planes, etc).
Yeah, it's stupid, they put artificial constrains for the sake of "balance" when you can accurately model things like why tanks aren't used against aircraft through their natural capabilities. A tank's rate of fire and turret traverse is too slow to engage fast movers, but that doesn't mean it can't try if desperate. UberHack has an aspect of this, they don't let AA units fire at ground units, which I silly.
This thing is an AA unit, and yet if any enemy infantry try to approach there's no reason why it wouldn't make mincemeat out of them.
Your example is ridiculous; no shit it you win if you have more dollars worth of units. Amazing.
No, my example makes perfect sense even in a situation where both sides have armies worth about the same amount of resources. For a given amount of resources you can makes lots of cheap units or a few expensive ones. It's easier to split your forces if you have more units, and being able to do this gives you flexibility in how you conduct your operations. There are even real life analogues, in WWII the German Panther tank was cost about four times as much as a Panzer IV, yet because a given tank can only be in one place at a time it would have been better for the German war effort that they have stuck with producing Panzer IVs, which were quite adequate for their needs, than switched over to the more expensive Panthers.
This is the concept of proportionality which TA introduced and in my opinion is one of the game's best features.
With the advent of 'hard counters' this simply doesn't work in more 'modern' RTS games, because xyz unit is totally useless against jfk unit and is super-effective against abc unit.
Yeah, it's something to make games more simple and mindless, as well as the programmer's jobs easier, but it greately decreases overall game quality.
A cool thing about TA is that all ammunition is modelled by the in-game engine, rather than just being an animation. That's one of the reasons why units can do so many things. If a unit and a shell are in the same space at the same time the unit takes damage from it, regardless of which side they belong to or what target the shell was meant for. In other games hits tend to be calculated based on various variables, so you either hit the target or you don't. There's never someone with a hilarious story about how they accidentally shot down one of their aircraft with their artillery.
Um... it's the same game. You can't waste your life playing SP with it, though, lol.
I like SP. As it turns out, the mission "Welcome to CORE PRIME", which is a push over on medium difficulty, is a real challenge on hard. The bastards start with a base on a god dammed metal planet, and
they know how to use it, and all you have is a commander and a stargate, either of which will lose you the game if it gets blown up. You have five minutes until the Core forces start arriving, they've always managed to overrun my defences eventually so far. It's a bit frustrating I can't retreat to the very back of the map because that would leave the stupid gate open to attack.
Stark wrote:One of the camera 'options' is usable, but most of them are horrible.
Which one's the usable one? Top-down like in TA?