TR MAX and incentive changes on the test server

[Quovatis]

Greetings Soldiers!

We have a new build up on the Test Server and I just wanted to give you some of the details on what has changed. Please feel free to login to the Test Server and try things out and of course let us know what you think, we plan on leaving the Test Server up all weekend so everybody can try things out. Instructions for accessing the Test Server can be found here.

Terran Max Changes

* Terran maxes in addition to the lock-down ability, now have a secondary ability called Overdrive that is based on a max capacitor and that allows them to move more quickly, fire more quickly, and fire more accurately while active
* This new Overdrive ability is an "all-or-nothing" activation. Once activated it can not be shut-off. It cannot be activated until the capacitor is fully charged. It will deactivate automatically when the capacitor is expended.
* The Overdrive ability is mutually exclusive to the lock-down ability and to the max auto-run ability. While Overdrive is active, the max cannot lock-down, nor can it auto-run. If the max is locked down or auto-running, Overdrive cannot be activated.
* A red shield effect displays around maxes that have Overdrive activated so that friend and foe know it is active.

Incentives Changes

* Battle Experience will be affected by world empire population ratios
* Battle Experience will be affected by zone empire population ratios
* Respawn Timers will be affect by zone empire population ratios
* Acquisition Timers will be affect by zone empire population ratios
* These are all benefits only, granted to under-populated empires, and no penalties are applied in any case to any empire.

Zone Bonuses

For each zone, you have experience, spawn timer, and purchase timer bonuses. These only affect the current zone and are based on that zone's population levels. If the dominating empire does not have at least 50 players on the zone, no zone bonuses are given. So for example, if VS have 95% of the zone with 46 players and NC has 5% with 4 players, that single player doesn't get a bonus because VS only have 46 players, which is 4 short of 50!

If the dominating empire has over 50 players, then the bonus is calculated from a percentage level based on the difference between the high empire and your empire. The percentage levels and bonuses are:

BeginPercent=0% EndPercent=25% ExperienceBonus=50% RespawnBonus=50% PurchaseBonus=40%
BeginPercent=26% EndPercent=50% ExperienceBonus=30% RespawnBonus=35% PurchaseBonus=30%
BeginPercent=51% EndPercent=85% ExperienceBonus=15% RespawnBonus=20% PurchaseBonus=20%
BeginPercent=86% EndPercent=100% ExperienceBonus=0% RespawnBonus=0% PurchaseBonus=0%

The percentage = your empire / high empire. So if NC has 150 players, your TR empire has 90 players, and VS has anywhere under 150, you are 90/150 = 60%. You are in the region between 51% and 85%. That means you get 15% experience bonus, 20% faster respawn, and 20% faster purchase timers. This is only on your current zone though!

And remember, your world experience bonus is added. So in that example if your zone experience bonus is 15% and your world bonus is 50%, you actually get 65% more experience on that zone.

World Bonuses

Right now the only incentive you have for a low global population is an experience bonus. This bonus is the difference between your empire's population and the dominating empire's population, but only if your population is below 33%. So for example, if NC has 60% global pop and TR has 20% global pop, TR gets a 40% exp bonus. However, if NC has 60% global pop and TR has 35% global pop, they get no exp bonus (VS with only 5% would get a 55% bonus though).

The world bonuses don't use the current global population. It refreshes the population values every hour, based on the total amount of play time for each empire during that hour. That's confusing! Because of that, if TR has 10% and NC have 60% during hour 1, TR gets a 50% bonus during hour 2 no matter what their global population is...if they pass NC halfway through hour 2, they still get a bonus because it's using the data from hour 1. They will lose it in hour 3 though.

[Quovatis]

They also buffed the Burster MAX clip size to 40 and removed the pounder secondary fire mode.

As far as the overdrive ability, I feel the current version on the test server is extremely overpowered. The ROF increase is fine, but the foot speed increase is rediculous. They basically have the agility of a cloaker and can keep up with a surging REXO all the while firing at 1.5x normal. This will be worse than the scatmax if it goes live.

[Aut]

So they added something... but didn't add anything else to counter it?

Tipping the scales of balance as usual.

[NeoPhoenixTE]

The TR MAX needed a buff...but this might be a bit extreme..

[Secant]

Oh please go live for a week or two lol - its well deserved after 4 years of GIMPED.

[HanSime]

TR MAXes wern't gimped. The Burster and Pounder were already the best of their kind, as they were the only MAX types that could use indirect fire and had pretty good TTKs.



This new mode will just make the TR into a continuous MAX crash empire. Blood Legion with ubermode? ...

Good thing I unsubbed really. This was the last thing I wanted to see. The sole changes I saw needed was the toning down of the Scat MAX and making the lasers on the Dual Cycler MAX actually aim where you're firing at (!).

When I tested the DC on Markov it did fine. Didn't lock down much apart from defense and just used it as I would a rexo. Just auto run past a few at stairs, turn and spam from behind while your buddies come down to take out the NC/VS firing in the wrong direction. Simple tactics worked. Now imagine doing that with uber speed WHILE FIRING and it'll make any CC hold impossible. Pretty much like how the scats rate of fire made that impossible, but worse because this MAX can get to you before you can surge away.


Awesome... -_____-

[Shoopuf]

Originally Posted by HanSime

This new mode will just make the TR into a continuous MAX crash empire. Blood Legion with ubermode? ...

BL getting recognition for awesome max crashes. Yes! Glad we get noticed even though werner got really boring after gemini launched.

[Quovatis]

Just an update that the most recent build on the test server removed the movement buff from overdrive, leaving only the rate of fire increase.

[HanSime]

Originally Posted by Shoopuf

BL getting recognition for awesome max crashes. Yes! Glad we get noticed even though werner got really boring after gemini launched.

You're happy to be recognised as the lamest outfit of TR Werner?

You weren't known for being particularly smart playing. You were/ARE known for particular straightforward zerging, being predictable on all accounts and on top of it all having absolutely no knowledge on how to deal with enemy opposition, thus resorting to MAXes as the answer to everything and even THEN being humiliated frequently because you forgot people in fleshy suits to open doors or hack CC's... Dropping gens when you outnumber an enemy 8 to 1, spawncamping with MAXes both top and caveside... Really brilliant stuff.





Aren't you doing a good job. You're one of the reasons people got bored of Werner in the final stages of the game and left, pre-merge. =|






I mostly remember you lot for MAX crashing empty bases save me in a cloaker suit, after which I nearly kicked 3/4s of your platoon out on my own, killed or took over/used all your own vehicles/AMSes and only got shot at 90% of hacking the CC back, because the MAX guarding it finally woke up... Kudos. Sorry for not thinking much of your lot, but you're worse than Kosh' VC MAXes. Only Dawn of War on VS out-MAXed your lot on silly MAX numbers and overuse of MAXes.



Awesome isn't exactly the word to describe Blood Legion. Try 'self absorbed', 'self overrating' and 'delusional'. =| Oh and tell Perry to get a hold of himself.

[Quovatis]

Brewko said this patch will be released on Wednesday (the second revision that I outlined).

[Shoopuf]

Wow, someone needs to chill.

And I never experience those things when I played on BL (which was 03 and 04, then 07 and 08). So unless BL got really crappy in those in between years, I pretty much remember awesome armor columns, liberator carpet bombs and incredible cc defenses. I've never seen BL max crash without a softy to open the door, I've never seen BL down tubes or spawns when we had significant pop advantage, and when we rolled our armor into a base and went inside, we all deconned. So you must be talking about the years I was on PS hiatus.

[HanSime]

Primarily 07 and 08, before that you lot weren't so noticable, particularly not outside the zerg, then I'd most likely encounter SR, OC or RO. Who tend to play hard, not all equally smart, but fair.


Blood Legion did that stuff virtually every day or week, ESPECIALLY when the opposition had low population. Especially on Oshur, going straight for the Yazata gen continuously - which btw most TR did there anyway because Bio Labs are so hard to take, against 3 people while having 15-17 people on the cont. =|

I've seen armor collums from BL yes. But the moment they roll into an empty CY the crew gets out, goes for the nearest term and switches to MAXes which had a 3 MAXes to 2 or 1 softie ratio at times. There really wasn't any fun in playing against Blood Legion. You say awesome CC holds, seriously, having 8 locked down MAXes in a CC or gen or in the room outside of it isn't an awesome hold, that's simply boring. An awesome CC defense has one or two MAXes, with fleshies and being severely outnumbered, yet winning. Running into a BL CC defense was more like "Gee. 8 MAXes + 2-4 HA medics behind them. Original." and even then you managed to lose regularly, though more often we were so disgusted with your MAX numbers we'd just ignore for a while.

RO's MAXes didn't spawncamp in caves because we had an agreement - we wouldn't spawncamp, they wouldn't spawncamp regardless of numbers. BL's MAXes had up to 4 MAXes locked down around the cave spawns with extra HA, even at 64+% pop.

Honestly I don't care that much for unsportive and unimaginative people, but you trying to come off as "woot you noticed us because we were being arses, aren't we cool" just to piss off asks for you to be put in your place.

Aren't you the least bit curious on why it was fun to engage OC, RO, SR, BRTD and some other outfits, while it was just boring to engage you because we'd know what you'd do, how you'd do it and that you'd use excessive force at all times? It's because THEY adapted to the situation and keep a fight fun, even if not especially when they had the upper hand anyway. I've always instructed my outfit to keep the game enjoyable for all sides in a conflict, because it's a game. Typically we went outside the zerg, didn't use MAXes at all and only half of us used JH, most Sweepers or Gausses, didn't have medics and were typically outnumbered by 2 or 3 to 1, yet often still won.

You want to see awesome CC holds, you should have conceived some challenges rather than always relying on the hardest hardware around.

Another example though. We held Bastet CC with a Router to CC once with 22% population: one Falcon MAX and 3 fleshies. We had the tower, an AMS at the Router and were continuously stormed by among others Blood Legion, who'd just keep throwing UniMAXes at us - luckily one by one. We purposefully had left the spawns of the base up, because we wanted to know if we could manage through pure skill. Only one of us was a medic, but not advanced. The moment the base turned with 100% NTU, we finally lost the CC and Routerpad to a final MAX crash, while two MAXes were also storming our AMS and several other MAXes and fleshies were taking down the generator. 'Course then they also killed the spawns for some reason while I had killed the LLU ride halfway to Amun... That was what, jan 2008.

On a LLU base, with 75% TR pop.

Awesome, but I very much doubt Blood Legion could have pulled that off because most of your crew can't deal with not having UniMAX. If I recall correctly, 38% of your outfit had either MAXes or UniMAX opposed to 14% of any form of MAX for our outfit, of which only one person was active with Scat MAX... You had the highest MAX percentage of all outfits on Werner - I checked...