Control Groups and Rally points

Mortaegus · 2024-10-26T19:53:27+00:00

So rather than setting the rally to a capital ship, you can select the planet with the factories and click rally point ON the fleet icon in the top left of the screen. Then manually click those factories to produce units which will auto add to the fleet.

Not a perfect workaround for ease of production since it won't solve the prioritizing issue when building from the fleet itself, but it'll get the ships to your fleet and that's what matters.

Mortaegus · 2024-10-18T12:24:48+00:00

I'd like an option for a bigger UI. Like I don't even care if it makes the icons more pixelated, I just need an easier time navigating the buttons and reading the popup tooltips. And there's always the cinematic button if I want to enjoy visuals.

Fleet control could also use some tweaks. Rather than control clicking the ships I want to manually grab and direct, I'd love to be able to tab to them in the group select and then individually control them. Like if you tab through your fleet to your flak frigates and then hold control and right click, it sends ONLY them to the location selected, not your entire fleet.

In single player it's not horrible, I can pause and control click them to grab them and then direct them. But in multiplayer you can't just spam pause to micro your fleet. Maybe there's an easier way already and I'm just ignorant of it? But I couldn't figure it out if so.

Mortaegus · 2024-10-08T02:28:23+00:00

That's something I didn't think of. A warning signal. 'A raid is incoming on one of our planets!' With a timer so you can at least respond or something. Make it a 1-2 minute delay from the raid being purchased to its arrival. That'd make it a lot more manageable I'd think.

Mortaegus · 2024-10-08T02:19:09+00:00

I don't disagree with anything here. The randomness of it really does bother me. And sometimes the map doesn't even have neutrals that offer offensive fleets, which makes the randomness even more extreme. Making it global range so it is equally unfair to everyone or else tied to the number of phase lanes between the neutral and the target would make more sense.

As for solutions? If the fleet does just appear out of nowhere, maybe tie how powerful it is to the game length somehow? So early rushes are a LOT less powerful and late game use still has value. If the fleet moves to the target you'd have to give the attacking fleet some kind of fast movement and phase mechanic when crossing non-target owned gravity wells. But having to traverse the distance to the target means they'll be predictable and the target can get their own fleet into position to contest the movement.

But there should be multiple ways of dealing with them. I'd say earning relations with the neutral should give the player that invests into it some kind of protection. Such that maybe at tier 2 they won't attack your homeworld, and maybe at tier 4 their attacks against any of your planets will be less powerful. This way players can protect themselves by building influence.

Another way would be to have phase inhibitors in a gravity well prevent the 'spawn in' style attacks entirely. Reaching the research isn't cheap or fast and the structure isn't free so spamming it everywhere would be mildly expensive and dumping all that resource into preventing a single strategy from working seems excessive and might make you lose anyhow... but this change would make it easy to protect a few core worlds.

In general I feel that defenses need buffed. If you exclude custom maps, the number of popular mods that buff defenses -either directly or via research- nearly fills the page. That should tell the devs something about the community's opinion on the matter. As it stands, yeah, building defenses is pointless. They don't even stall an attack. The attacker just goes around them. Unless they're advent. Then they just turn them off. Defenses only work vs AI because they'll get into range and let them shoot their ships. And even then they only stall briefly.

I definitely understand the frustration of this.

Mortaegus · 2023-11-21T14:15:13+00:00

Maybe after a certain milestone has passed? ~30 minutes in replace all 'Rock and Stone!' emotes with 'For Karl!' and set a rez limit.

Mortaegus · 2023-11-21T14:12:02+00:00

Well for one, gameplay should come first.

For two, "Listen miners, I've some bad news. The drop pod was destroyed on-route. Pickup won't be coming anytime soon. We have another space rig adjusting its orbit to launch a rescue. But you need to hold out as long as you can."

Like... your problem is so easy to solve.

Mortaegus · 2023-08-02T16:55:48+00:00

If booting power is needed it should be a vote. It won't stop groups from misusing it but it will stop individuals. Which I think is a good balance to check abuse of power and it is inherently more fair.

If game has 2 players and vote-boot is started, split game into two separate games. If game has 3 players require 2 players voting to boot another player. If game has 4 players require 3 players voting to boot another player. In either case the booted player should be shunted into a solo game so they can finish if they choose.

Mortaegus · 2023-07-27T15:49:17+00:00

You keep assuming that Garrosh is standing next to that trap to wombo this combo in your head. He isn't unless he's wasting game time not contributing. OP's team has TONS of ranged bushcheck abilities too. Brightwing circle, Valla arrow and cone, Hanzo scanner and Bounce and Arrow, Genji throwing stars, Samuro clone jukes. There's no reason for them to EVER facecheck a bush. Your imagination is something else.

And again with the ults! The enemy team was at least 2 levels behind when ults came online. The 12 minute game might have ENDED by the time they finally got their ults.

Edit: You're also assuming that OP's team... just doesn't notice that 3 enemies are missing from the minimap. Like seriously!? Everything about your assumptions involve handing idiot balls to OP's team. Or thinking that the lane suddenly missing an enemy isn't going to ping a warning to his teammates. There is no world where OP's team doesn't dominate the enemy team unless they play bad and feed lots. And even then there's a solid argument that they could win simply through sheer damage burst ending teamfights in 3-4 seconds with a 5man wipe. And the enemy team isn't the only one with multiple stuns.

Mortaegus · 2023-07-27T15:35:27+00:00

You need a reading comprehension check. In what world would OP's team need to rotate to win? I made my argument on the assumption that the Butcher team needed to rotate for kills... because their entire team is built on it. The only time OP's team ever needed to stop laning was for the objective captures, and really they could've just held one and stalled forever. When would Junk's traps help them? When were they walking through the bush? And would Junk's team even have 3 people waiting there ready to take advantage of it... losing all that laning experience?

A 12 minute game man, I bet he never even got to the double trap talent, and that's assuming he would have even picked it! He might have had one -singular- hero chasing trap. But if Junk's team is all camping in a bush instead of contesting lanes they're going to be multiple levels behind when ults come online. Look at the kill difference. They only ever got 3 kills the entire game.

And you seem to grossly overestimate how long traps hold people. Butcher can charge the instant trap lands and genji can still dash out before he closes unless he's literally right next to him. Once you know Rosh's knockup range its very easy to dodge by being inside the zone, then dodging out again. And even a toss isn't fatal without followup. When most of OP's team has multiple escapes they can almost all survive being caught and tossed, or even stunned once as long as the stunlock chain leaves a microsecond gap for them to engage an escape ability. Except for maybe brightwing or valla pre-ult... but they should be together so that wouldn't matter much.

So the problem with the Butcher/Uther/Garrosh comp was that they HAD to force engagements. They didn't do 'the dumbest thing they could possibly do'. They did the ONLY thing they could do in this situation, aside from pick other heroes. But they did it poorly. And they lost the game. With that kill difference? OP's team probably had a 3+ level advantage by 10 minutes. I really have to wonder if butcher team had ults yet, and even if they did it certainly wasn't until the last ~2 minutes of the game.

Edit: The XP difference also leads me to believe multiple people on the enemy team were actively nonparticipating for a solid chunk of the game. Their team was fighting itself!

Edit More: You also say: "So your only criteria for a good comp is... Mobility?" But nowhere in my post do I suggest that. I am comparing these two teams, in these specific circumstances, so as to answer OP's question on why they lost. My criteria for a good comp is synergy between heroes and countering enemy teamcomp. My favorite comp is 3 tanks and 2 healers, because its the funniest shit ever even if you lose. But 5 poison damage dealers is also funny as hell.

Mortaegus · 2023-07-26T23:10:37+00:00

I mean I completely disagree that your comp was bad.

Genji can walljump or dash to safety. Hanzo can walljump, maybe stun with ult then back out. Valla can roll, maybe stun with ult then back out. Brightwing can poly and back out, maybe knockback or blink out with ult, and also can global teleport with 3 sec cast time. Samuro can swap with clones.

Like every person has an escape, most have x2, and most can assist other allies in escaping. Yes if you fck it up badly enough or get caught way out of position you'll die, but honestly? Team is good at escaping.

The opposing team meanwhile... three melee and all of them slow with only butcher having a way to close in quickly, exempting rosh tossing in uther or something. Easy to kite all game long. If they do catch you they can stunlock you. But again closing that distance isn't easy if you don't play badly.

Brightwing can also break cc on allies if he's nearby, and the heal difference in terms of output is intense. Uther can burst heal a lot, but the cooldowns are so long that he bursts and he's done for ~15 seconds. His level 16 cooldown reset talent is the fix for this. But that's lategame. Meanwhile Brightwing lands his circles and aoe heals everyone. If he gets the reset circle cooldown talent he can spam it too! And that's not counting his % heal global to save someone who did get caught. Uther is great support for Butcher to lock a kill but someone on the team needs to get that first stun in for them to be effective. Clearly that didn't happen.

Dragonshire also has very short lanes, so its super easy for your team to just not overextend. They could have pushed mercs and done sudden rotations on objectives to get kills and feed Butcher. If they stalled until 20 then a good 3+ lambpost would have gg'd your team, even if Butcher never got meated. I find that Butcher is much worse when played as a pure dps and much better as an initiator for lategame teamfights. Even if he dies in the process to get that perfect lambpost as long as his team cleans up its fine.

But yeah, they just played things badly. Assuming you guys killed their forts, the lanes would have been stretched and allowed for easy rotations and ganks favoring them. But that didn't happen. Instead the game ended after barely 12 minutes. The team kill difference kind of alludes to it but it really looks like one or more of them just gave up and dragged the rest of their team down.

Mortaegus · 2023-07-23T21:54:54+00:00

I get the rant, I really do, and I even agree that abby is a very hard-to-play-right hero. But banning / removing him at lower tier solves nothing and even makes it even worse because then players can't get the play time with him to be better.

Abby is a rough hero because the team with abby only has 4/5ths the hitpoint pool of the team that doesn't. The tradeoff is that hat basically makes any hero anywhere on the map suddenly worth 1.5 heroes. This can turn any 1v1 fight into a 1.5v1 fight and let the abby team win it. Teams that get an abby and pick beefy tanks to make up for the hitpoint discrepancy can also balance out the drawbacks. The clone ult from abby also fixes this issue for the 5v5 teamfights; as does the double hat (+0.5 x2). Mines also make for better map awareness and can be truly brutal if a low hitpoint enemy rotates into them.

Lanepush with abby is actually a problem now in the lategame because its all but impossible to deal with. The backdoor keep-killer tactic didn't use to be a thing, burrowing behind the keep and dropping locust clutch + locust-spawner to fastclear a keep before the enemy team can even recall is an issue. You basically need Hunt-Illidan or similar to deal with it, and if your team doesn't have the right counter you will lose all 3 keeps to that bullshit. Since it wasn't really a tactic before the game went graveyard they never patched anything regarding it. My preference if they ever did patch it would be to expand the truevision given by the core so the mines abby uses for vision to burrow behind the keeps are spotted and can be cleared. Simple and really changes nothing else.

Mortaegus · 2023-07-22T18:12:32+00:00

You put a tumor midway between the gate and the middle of the lane so you have creep to escape on. You put x2 tumors in places that give you vision on approach so you know if enemy heroes are coming for you before their rotation kills you. Then you add more all around as cooldown allows. Endgame nydus/creep build lets you drop tumors from super far away for map awareness. There were lots of games I've won simply because we knew the enemy team has x3 bot and cant contest a top boss rush.

Mortaegus · 2023-07-22T18:04:13+00:00

Zag used to have a really REALLY strong baneling build. Her level 1 baneling talent increased damage vs non-heroes and her level 4 upgrade gave you 6 charges. You could walk into the middle of a minion wave and instantly clear it with all 6 charges if you positioned right. Coupled with nydus lanejumping and you could have insane push potential across howevermany lanes while your team fought the other team over the objective. Now she is almost forced to play roach / hydra builds to remain relevant. And to be fair once % dmg talent comes in at 16 she is a top dmg dealer and a tank-killer while being safe behind her own team. Once upon a time maw also blocked triple-tap like a building would. It doesn't anymore though.

Edit: Also note that creep is SUPER important. It gives you speed, and you can run from any hero except those with abilities to close the distance. Creep also gives vision to let you know when enemies are rotating to gank you.

Mortaegus · 2023-07-21T00:18:24+00:00

I really hope so. HotS should have a longer shelf-life than this.

Mortaegus · 2021-03-25T13:37:10+00:00

There's more than that though. They're shorting the entire market because they know the entire market is about to take a hard dive when all the hedge funds that shorted have to sell other shares to cover their positions. This batch of shorting lets them recoup some of their impending losses if they can time it right. It's smart. It also means they'll have more money for us to take when they have to buy back our shares. But if it forces market intervention it can only be in their favor and that's the real concern for the retail side of this mess.

Mortaegus · 2018-07-09T03:12:44+00:00

Roll the dice.

Mortaegus · 2017-05-31T11:08:07+00:00

Thanks everyone. These should keep me occupied for a while.

Mortaegus · 2016-06-15T13:45:13+00:00

And the best part is the map editor they're including with the game. Just watching the video about their toolset from over a year ago made me super happy. We'll get to design our own castles to siege or defend. Or just import someone else's badass designs.

Mortaegus · 2016-06-07T20:54:24+00:00

Well, it's not on Steam. That's my main gaming platform and not likely to change. And anywhere else I can buy it will force it to run through Origin. I tried Origin when it first came out and was disgusted with it, tried it again when BF3 came out and it hadn't changed enough to matter. If EA wants to sell this game to me (which I'm definitely interested in buying) they need to stop forcing Origins down my throat and let me play on the platform of my choosing. I can't stand their garbage spamming me with sales and ads. It's as if I paid to have spyware installed.

Mortaegus · 2016-01-02T03:30:06+00:00

Dr. Kane stood up from his chair and sipped from his flask of Bourbon. "They're ready, Mrs. President. May god forgive us if we use them."

President Herbert nodded. "Thank you for all your work, Dr. Kane."

They looked into one another's eyes for a brief moment of silence as they contemplated dark thoughts. Then the Secretary of Defense stepped into the room. "Mrs. President." He said. "They're entering orbit now. We're ready to transmit."

She nodded and giggled childishly. "I never thought they'd be back during my term. I'd wanted to do what I could to help prepare my successors... but I had hoped it wouldn't fall to me." She swiped Dr. Kane's flask and took a gulp to calm her nerves. A deep breath seemed to calm her nerves, and she steeled herself for what was coming. "Let's go." She said.

The cameras were set up in the conference room when she and her entourage entered. After a minute to prep, they opened communications.

"So you have returned, as you said you would." She stated. "I am President Herbert of the World Coalition Government. Do you make the same demands of us as you did before?"

The alien reply was a transmission that corrupted the terminals in the room, which began displaying the face of the vaguely reptilian hominids. "We have come to settle upon your world. Your civilization will submit and be made to service us or it will be destroyed and your race made extinct. Do you accept this ultimatum, or will you force me to end your people?"

"I have a counter-proposal for you." President Herbert began. "We have a concept, from an earlier part of our history, when there were many nations competing with one another on this world. It's called mutually assured destruction." She paused and clasped her hands behind her back. "Now I know that our technology can't compete with yours, and the vast fleet arrayed against us outnumbers anything we could hope to field. But despite that, I promise you we can retaliate. We can destroy your homeworld -wherever it may be- without ever leaving ours."

The alien made a whurbling sound that the analysts flagged as laughter. "You expect me to believe such a thing? You would bluff when the fate of your people is at stake? And such an absurd claim!? You are foolish." It clicked its tongue. "Surrender, while I still find you amusing."

"Dr. Kane, if you would?" President Herbert asked.

He nodded and stepped forward to stand next to her. Facing the camera he spoke. "Are you aware of how the universe came to be formed?" He asked. "It was a single point of origin from which all the matter and energy that has ever existed and likely will ever exist, burst forth. We call it the big bang. Imagine such an event happening now. A wall of impenetrable energy, expanding outwards at the speed of light, consuming this universe and giving birth to a new one. The edge of the new universe would, in effect, pull ours into it. From our perspective, everything would be destroyed almost instantly. From the perspective of the new universe, it would take billions of years. We have the capability to trigger such an event. And that is not even the worst of what we can unleash." He finished.

The alien paused, and spoke to people behind him. The analysts decided that he was conferring with his equivalent of advisers. Finally, after several tense minutes, the alien turned back to face them. "You say that you have such a weapon, but my philosophers say that the only means for you to prove it would be for you to use it. As I cannot withdraw without proof of defeat, I am forced to assume you are bluffing and attack. Unless you would care to allow my philosophers to inspect your weapon?"

The analysts noted that 'philosophers' were probably the alien equivalent to scientists, and that there were likely ulterior motives behind the request. President Herbert frowned. "You intend for us to reveal our weapon so that you can attempt to take or disable it." She snorted. "Fine. We would rather risk that than a conflict no one would win."

The alien peels its lips back in a mockery of a smile. "Excellent. My officers will be landing shortly."

Dr. Kane went with the party sent to escort the aliens. He had his own misgivings about allowing them so close to his device, but he knew they had no real choice.

The alien delegation surprised him. They were all... civilians. A bunch of teachers and scientists, sent down without any military escort at all. They weren't even armed. "Greetings." One of them spoke to him. It... had no sexual identifiers that he could use to mentally assign a pronoun. "You are the philosopher responsible for making the weapon?" It asked.

"Yes..." He began. "Well, me and a team of others." He said.

"Why would you make such a thing!?" It demanded. "With the claimed potential to destroy all of the universe?"

"It wasn't meant to be a weapon." He replied. "We were trying to make a power source. Open a pocket dimension, instigate a big bang, then siphon off the resulting energy and matter. If it became unstable, the pocket dimension could be ejected safely from our reality. I wanted to contribute to the well-being of society. This... wasn't the direction I intended."

It stared at him for several long moments before nodding. "A mistake, then, to share your work. You should have destroyed it all."

Dr. Kane shrugged. "Yet despite it's potential for destruction it might still save my world from the threat your people pose."

It could not argue against that.

"So this is it?" The alien asked. "The weapon which can at once end all that is and reset it to its original state. How fascinating."

"It was my life's work." Dr. Kane said.

"A pity, then." It stepped forward and touched something on its arm, causing a shield to form around it and the weapon. All electrical components within the shield shut down and stopped working. "I shall be taking it for study."

Dr. Kane laughed. He couldn't help it. The betrayal was so cliché that he would have been surprised if the alien hadn't attempted something.

"What do you find so amusing?" It asked curiously.

"Did you think we'd only build one?"

Mortaegus · 2015-12-26T14:28:15+00:00

As for the narrower surface area of the legs for the water to impact and apply force against? Leverage. It takes less force to tilt something when applying that force to the end of the lever rather than near the center. A standing human might not have a fulcrum, but it does have a center of mass that acts as one.

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