Xenoforce03 RC1 V2 Thread - Xenoforce Reborn mod for C&C3: Tiberium Wars

Got it and played it today, here are some things that I saw so far:

1. GDI Kodiaks cannot attack+move

2. Units hit by Scrin Devourer will not retalliate unless manualy ordered to attack them.

3. Nod Salamander cannot be built. (MISSINGUPGRADE:NodSal)

4. Killing an officer type unit of a squad will randomely hinder your base defense to be unable to auto target the remainder of the enemy infantry squad. Must target manualy to finish them off.

5. Picking any doctorine as Nod still displays missing tool tips of what you picked.

6. it seems that buildings just keep getting weaker and weaker to the point where now all basic infantry can jus walk up and 5 shot a power plant. This has become a major balance issue for rushes. Me and a few others have tested that spamming a mass amount of basic infantry at the start of the game will insure an instant win. There is just no stopping the horde from bulldozing your carboard armored buildings at the 1st 5 min of the game. Buildings need more armor and/or HP, end of story.

I did run the test and there are the following issues:

Balance Complaints:

Scrin Disintegrators are very overpowered against GDI players and Scrin players structures on the start of the game because of the unbalance:

Replays No. 1

Scrins Disintegrators against everything in the start :
1 Scrin against 7 GDI; up to 6 GDI (includes with AI and players)
1 Scrin against 7 Scrin; up to 7 Scrin (includes with AI and players)
1 Scrin against 7 Nod; up to 2 Nod (includes with AI and players) Because of the Nod Power Plant with Stealth Generator makes the Scrin Player will go slow down.

Balance Suggestion:

Nod Power Plant should not have Stealth Generators because the Nod disruption tower will already become useless. This allows the Nod players will rely on Power plant with Stealth Generators.

GDI and Nod Power Plant upgrade prerequisites from tech center/lab require needs to get removed!

Erm, yeah, I knew I forgot to mention something (OP Disintigrators from hell).

EDIT:

1. Are GDI Rifleman Officers supposed to generate 30 credits per shot? Seems very odd...

2. Something kept turning my Radar on and off in 3 second intervals for 5 minutes straight on occasion when playing against GDI A.I.

Edited by: Valherran

1. Noted on the Disintigrators - will change.
2. GDI Kodiak will be looked at. I didn't do the coding for it, it was given to me coded.
3. Yes the Salamanders can, I added in the descriptions but apparently they were not placed in the right locations. Salamanders are buildable after you fire the superweapon deploying the Sword and Shield.
4. I have no idea about killing the officer causing an issue, will look at it.
5. Will look at nod tool tips
6. Scrin Devourers causing this issue is weird, will look at it.
7. The armor types for buildings are not currently set properly, it was an oversight on my part. I will fix that.
8. Yes the GDI Officers are supposed to produce that amount of cash. Through play testing it seemed to be a good amount. Does that mean that GDI could mass produce those units for almost nothing? Yea, it does, but they are basic infantry and in this system they won't go far.
9. No idea about the Radar. Thats just weird.
10. Nod power plant is the stealth generator now. It's as simple as that. The structure that used to be the stealth generator now is a time distortion generator, slowing any enemy units that move into it. Great for slowing down aircraft that fly by like Firehawks and Stormriders giving you a better shot at blowing them up.
11. Why do the GDI/NOD power plant upgrade requirement need to be removed? I like them the way they are.

Edited by: azuza001

Well Nod kind of needs it because they generate so much more power compared to the others, I am unsure if GDI needs it. The only thing I can think of for GDI needing theirs removed is to compete with Scrin.

If Nod's Power Plants are the new stealth generators it may cause some balance issues, however further testing will be needed to fully assess that.

I don't think either GDI or NOD need to have their power limiters removed. We removed it from Scrin as a Scrin advantage. To then remove it from GDI and NOD would kind of defeat the purpose. As for NOD's stealth ability it hasn't seemed to be that big a deal so far. Really, just be sure to take some stealth detectors with you. Pitbulls, Orcas, Kodiaks, anything Scrin Air related, and Nod can obviously detect their own stealth abilities. Most fights have these units anyways.

Well I tried the 2.0 release tonight, played a bit as Nod, and saw some things. (will post more when I get time to do more testing)

1. When constructing Legion Avatars or Salamander, the building of these units will automaticaly cancel when the structure jumps up in percentage complete phases. Probably intentional, but kind of annoying.

2. Legion Avatars have lost their movement and attack animations.

3. All Nod infantry that have a Robot/Cyborg officer upgrade automaticaly have the Scorpion Tank sound set.

Edited by: Valherran

1. More like unavoidable, I just could not come up with a way that would not have this problem. This is why the units take so little time to build, it would be unfair to wait 3 minutes for a unit to appear and then 5 seconds before completion the Medusa upgrades and boom, start over. :p
2. I noticed that too, I'm not sure why though. They come back after awhile into a game...... it's just odd.
3. I didn't notice that, I'll look into it.

About #1, what if you used a whole new structure that produces the 3 units, and just have it call in the Memory Matrix via support power, similar to the fleet beacon structure the Scrin uses for Motherships?

Some more things I saw, you may need to put out a hotfix ecase of some of these...

1. Nod machine gunners are doing ridiculous damage to anything they attack, they need to get fixed ASAP.

2. Scrin Ruby Armor refuses to attack a target unless manualy moved within fire range to attack it.

3. Scrin upgrades from the defense tab make them too powerful early making it too easy to rush and win. I recommend you make these upgrades duration based to keep that balanced.

4. Scrin Artillery Platform needs a different weapon explosion effects. The current one causes so much lag when groups of them are spamming. Their on death attack is also OP, it kills everything damn near instantly. I suicided a bunch of these into an enemy base and they and the enemy was crushed in moments.

5. Scrin Bio-Unit 20% Upgrade has a missing tooltip on the completion message.

6. Scrin Harbinger Class Mothership needs fixing. It cannot force fire on ground, it instead uses the default attack animation of the vanilla Mothership and it does nothing. If you tell it to force fire on your own units, it will deploy fighters to attack, but you cannot tell it to stop, they will keep shooting till the target is dead.

7. Scrin Motherships need much faster rate of turning, and less movement speed. They are currently too damn fast, and the rate of turn increase will fix the problem with them sitting idle in one spot too long before moving.

8. All Harvester units are super weak, 2-3 missle shots and they are toast. Kind of unfair for GDI and Nod... Scrin not so much.

9. GDI Zone Trooper Drop Pod support power is kind of flawed. When you deploy them, they almost always get hit by their own shockwave artillery attack, causing them to take longer than they should to deploy. Might be better to have all of the shells fire at once before the pod lands to avoid this.

1. Already looked at. They were doing X2 the damage they were supposed to be doing. Also fixed GDI Gunners, they were doing 20% of the damage they were supposed to be doing.

2. Possibly fixed, not sure. Have looked at, has to do with the units "vision" range and "Fog of War clear" range being wrong.

3. Not gonna happen, has to be this way for the AI to use the system properly. Other things have been done to help deal with this.

4. Have been messing with different effects. As for the Death Attack.... there is no death attack attached to the Scrin Artillery Platform. I just looked at it, I can post up a pic of the code, there isn't one so I'm not sure what your seeing there.

5. will look at.

6. Um... dude it's a carrier ship. Thats all it does. Its doing that because it only has a single weapon, and that weapon is a weapon that tells the fighters where to attack. What can I tell you here, don't tell your units to attack themselves or force fire onto the ground?

7. I personally like them this way. This allows them to move quickly but at the same time it allows quick units like firehawks to be able to out-manuver them. If they could turn on a dime then it would really not be very fair. The Medusa is going to be switched to this system.

8. Yea, they are.

9. Already been dealt with.

As for the Medusa, sure I could do that but that would not be what this is. This is a unit that takes 15 minutes to build. However the unit becomes self sufficient at building itself after a short time. It has all the features of being its own base, it has it's own defensive weapons, it has it's own resource gathering process, it can build its own units. After awhile it completes its process and it becomes a devastating air unit.

Edited by: azuza001

azuza001 wrote: 6. Um... dude it's a carrier ship. Thats all it does. Its doing that because it only has a single weapon, and that weapon is a weapon that tells the fighters where to attack. What can I tell you here, don't tell your units to attack themselves or force fire onto the ground?

Any unit should be able to force fire the ground if you know a stealth unit is nearby, or to force fire the ground on something that is untargetable. You also should be able to stop your own fighters with a single stop command, the coding for this can't be much different from the PACs.

azuza001 wrote: 4. Have been messing with different effects. As for the Death Attack.... there is no death attack attached to the Scrin Artillery Platform. I just looked at it, I can post up a pic of the code, there isn't one so I'm not sure what your seeing there.

Pretty please with sugar on top, refrain from using that EMP effect from now on, it lags so damn bad. And yes, whenever things are close by the Scrin Artillery Platforms, they get hit with this small nova and then die. And before you ask, no, it is not firing the main weapon before dieing.

6. Your right it shouldn't. All I did was copy the code from the PAC. If it's not working right then I don't know what to tell you. As far as force firing at stealthed units, the Harbinger can detect stealth so yea, again I don't know what to tell you.

4. Just for that I'm going to add more EMP effects in. Seriously, it doesn't cause any lag on my machine and my current machine isn't the strongest nowdays (Q6800 processor, 4 gigs ram, Geforce GTX 8800 mobile). But I have been lowering the amount of use's. And again as for the death thing, I will look again but there is absolutly no code in there that I added thats doing it. I don't know what else to say, I've looked for the last 5 minutes. I don't see this effect on my end when it's killed.

There will be a new link in a few hours to a new test RC, all I can say is try that one. :p

Edited by: azuza001

Well, the suiciding Artillery Platforms are gone now. If there is a way to increase range of stealth detection, I would advise doing it for some units, namely the capitol ships for all factions. One thing that is REALLY bugging me about the Nod AI, is that they never stop spamming those damn Stealth Tanks. I have been having issues trying to beat the Brutal Nod AI because all they do is rush those Stealth Tanks right off the bat and just mutilate your base in the 1st 10 min. 1 salvo from one of those is insta-kill to most buildings and heavy units. I tried the same tactic against them, and I had zero trouble killing them in that same amount of time, their damage needs to be nerfed. Oh and the Kodiaks still cannot Attack+Move.

Edited by: Valherran

I will take a look at the damage output that the stealth tank is doing but keep in mind a few things.

Our new balancing system works off of tiers. A stealth tank which for the sake of this comment is Weapon Teir 3. This means that the stealth tank will be able to deal with anything with an armor lvl of 3 or lower with little to no problems. Buildings have teirs too, I just have not gotten into their descriptions to make them obvious. Many early buildings are only teir 1 or 2 so will die pretty quickly to a few stealth tanks. Now take the fact that a stealth tank has massive range and stealth and it's obviously a great seige weapon. The idea of "increasing the range of stealth detect" to counter this units advantage is to me a horrible idea. If we're going to do that why bother with stealth?

If your getting hammered by stealth tanks then you need to get proactive. Run in with some pitbulls, use the scan pulse power to detect them, move in with orcas. Stealth tanks don't last long against Firefly Orcas. Scrin have it even easier. A single Silver Bioarmor can tear a Stealth Tank appart.

The long and the short of it is this.

NOD are the go-to force if you want to be a defensive player. These are the players who want to build massive defensive walls that take out anything that get near them. Their Stealth and speed help make them perfect for hit and run tactics. The Medusa means that you can simply sit in your base until your ready to hit the enemy and enemy players will feel the pressure to continually attack to get in and stop it from becoming complete.

GDI are the go-to force if you want to overrun a player with a massive amount of troops. With all of their drops they have some great mid range and high in units that they get for free. The Trooper Armored units are incredibly hard to deal with unless your using weapons meant to kill them. Their Ion Cannon strike guarantees that you can blow a hole into anyones wall with ease.

Scrin are the go-to force if you simply want the biggest bad ass's on the field under your control. BioArmors are nasty. Capitol Ships are flying fortress's of power. Add to that the simple fact that to destroy a Scrin Base takes a long time and you can seriously be hard to kill. Place some Tiberium Accelerators across the map, if a player does get into your base and starts destroying it its very easy for you to simply start building another base at a different location. Unless your enemy spreads their forces out to try and stop this you can seriously play a very large game of cat-and-mouse while on the defense. With the scrin its all about being hard as ice while attacking and soft as water while being attacked.

I'm not trying to sound defensive on our design choices, but the system itself means that there will be buildings that will be easily destroyed and you can't rely on the building to simply be able to take the hit for awhile as a way to slow the enemy down.

I comepletely understand the designs of the game, no worries there. But I am noticing that the only thing the Nod AI wants to build is an army of Stealth Tanks, and it is most likely because of their massive range and insane damage. And as I said many times before, buildings in general are just so damn weak, and it is quite frustrating.

Well I just got done going over the structures and their descriptions. Many got a small to medium boost in their health. Some got a major boost to their health. A few were dropped in health. The system should be easier to understand, I just did an across the board 5000 HP per teir and put a teir description on the structure. I figure the armor type will work itself out there. :p We'll see.

I also looked at the Stealth Tank again. I increased the load time inbetween vollies, it was a little low compaired to what it is after upgrade. I also lowered the splash radius a bit. We'll see how that affects the unit.

We're looking at a release this week either way. I need a break from this lol. :p

Edited by: azuza001

Saw some more things, a few may already be mentioned:

1. GDI Sphinx has no firing sound.
2. Nod Sector 9 Laser Cannon cannot force fire on the ground.
3. Scrin Portal has no deploy sound still.
4. Scrin Shock Troopers have a slight targeting problem with target vs range.
5. Harvesters are still super weak.

I also found a major exploit with the camera crews attached to GDI and Nod infantry. If you train a bunch of them and force fire the ground, you can generate near infinite credits. I would try and find a way to prevent the camera crews from being able to force fire on the ground while the other infantry units still can. That should fix the problem.

EDIT 3/10/13: Saw some more things that need fixing when I was playing the latest 03 version, some may be already mentioned:

1. GDI Kodiaks cannot Attack+Move
2. Nod Rocket Squads cannot Attack+Move
3. The Scrin support power that turns their units/structures phasey and see-through never seems to end when the AI use it. The building gain like 2000% HP bonus and just take FOREVER to kill. Me and my friends have been avoiding playing against Scrin for that reason alone.
4. The starting units may need to be revised, we have discovered that it is entirely too easy to bum rush an enemy Construction Yard at the start of the game, rendering the player pretty much defeated. switching out some units that have exceptional anti-building damage may balance this out.

Edited by: Valherran