A few suggestions

[nesnl]

Here is a list of a few things I have been thinking about. Let me know what you guys think.

First, I want to comment on the speed of planes when carrying the bomb. I feel like the speed of each plane is done by a modifier of its top speed. Something like 75% of the plane's total top speed if it weren't carrying the bomb. I believe this makes the game imbalanced. I think the effect of this is most seen on the map middleground, but you can also see it on the other maps. On the map middleground the main reason I put the tunnel that goes through to the other side of the map underneath the base is so that if a team takes the bomb through that route that they still face the obstacle of bringing the bomb uphill. This in effect balances the fact that you can take the bomb through that route. However, planes like Loopy can climb that distance to the base with the bomb and make a successful drop even when both of the defensive turrets are still alive. While a plane like Explodet cannot make the climb for the most part even if the turrets are not there. If the turrets are there then Explodet can forget about making even half the distance of that climb before meeting its demise. This effect can be seen on any of the maps where you want to make the climb with the slower planes such as getting over the mountain in hills or the building in lostcity.

The solution I feel should be a normalization of speed when a plane has the bomb. It makes sense from a 'realism' stand point in that a bigger plane carrying an equal sized payload as a smaller plane is going to have its maximum speed reduced less than the smaller plane. I know that each plane serves its purpose in the game differently from the others. Explodet is more of a defensive plane in that you can stop an incoming bomb carrier with a well placed rocket. However, even in that case, Loopy can often recover very easily from being knocked back or down, while the bigger planes almost never can recover from being set off track. Maybe the answer isn't to make every plane have the same speed while carrying the bomb, although I would like to see how that would work out. I could see the maximum speed of Loopy with the bomb reduced and the maximum speed of Explodet increased with each plane in between adjusted accordingly.

Second, I think that when making maps I try to think of all the things I can control and change in order to make more interesting maps. As of right now there isn't much under the user control other than the layout of the map. My roommate, Pillars, and I have discussed this a lot and were looking for things we could change in order to make things more interesting and be able to make maps that would involve different types of game play. The main things we came up with were varying the height of the base, more use of turrets in the impact of gameplay, tbd maps that you could transverse the sides, and placement of a central neutral bomb. These weren't all the ideas we came up with, but these were some of the major ones. The first issue of varying the height of the bases is impacted by what I first talked about in that certain planes cannot reach certain heights as easily as other planes. For those of you who tried my first map called blockworld know that I placed the bases at basically the top of the screen and had the bomb at the bottom. It quickly became evident that certain planes were just not well suited for that type of play. After that I decided to try placing it in the middle, as in the map middleground, with better success.

As far as turrets go I would like to see them changed as they are one of the few things that can be used in a map that can drastically affect the course of a game. Instead of doing the classic model of having 4-5 turrets placed right around the base to create a barrage of fire when someone is close, I would like to see them used in a fashion where there is more benefit to destroying turrets as it will create an advantage for that team. I saw a few people mention that when playing middleground by saying things like "Now it actually makes sense to destroy some of these turrets." However, I notice that this sometimes turns into 'turret abuse' on middleground. Right in the beginning of the game people will use grenadier or loopy (with the EM blast / missle combo) to quickly take out of turrets. There are a couple of solutions that I think might work. First, if we could control the health of the turrets in the editor then we could make more strategic turrets harder to kill than other turrets. This, however, creates the problem that it would take an increasing number of bomb blasts to destroy the turret. I still like the idea that a single bomb blast can kill a turret. So maybe the solution is to change the damage modifier of when planes shoot a turret. Maybe reduce the damage done on turrets by planes to 10% of their normal damage or maybe go the way of reducing damage done by planes to 0 as you did with the bases (as was done probably to remedy the suicide bombing runs). This way a team will have to use bombs to destroy turrets. Sure, they will lose a bomb that could have potentially been used on a base, but it will have been done to create a strategic advantage for themselves. I think in the end it is important to change the role of turrets in the game because it is one of the major things that can be put into a map that can drastically affect game play.

Third, I think there should either be a tutorial for each plane or maybe just a "Bio" page for each plane that discusses its different types of attack, advantages / disadvantages, and different methods of how it's best utilized in both 1v1 fighting as well as team games. One of the major things that sticks out in my mind is that the "warp" by miranda does damage, but I was unaware of this for the longest time until Pillars told me about it. I noticed this a lot with the influx of new players in that a lot of them are unaware of not only this function, but also how to best utilize each plane. This idea could also be extended to an information screen that describes all the power-ups and their uses. One of the main issues I see with new players is their behavior with the bomb. A lot of them don't realize that if someone dies with the bomb that they can pick it up (the difference between team specific bombs and neutral bombs should be included). Also I noticed new people still doing suicide runs at the opposing base. It should be noted somewhere that the only thing that does base damage is the bomb. Also, I don't think it's obvious that landing on your own base recharges your health. That would be important to include somewhere as well.

Lastly, I would like to weigh in on the possible "upgrades" for each plane (ie the red, green, blue). I know that a lot has been talked about what each of these upgrades will be, but I think it is important to either create enough differentiation between the upgrades or to include a disadvantage to each advantage that is available. It would be nice if when playing you would have noticeable advantages or disadvantage against various planes in various situations with the different types of upgrades. There is nothing worse than everyone just selecting "repair drone" or "ultracapacitor" because they are the best. This just creates an environment where everyone is the same so therefore it doesn't really change much. I see the ideal situation being where everyone is choosing different combinations and thereby creating a much more fun game.

[Karl]

1) actually you're at 100% speed when you have the big bomb, you simple cannot afterburn. we might play around with slowing down the smaller planes. it's a tough call cause loopy is so fragile that he isnt necessarily the best bomb carrier.

2) we might play around w/ turret health being modifiable. it just sucks not knowing if a turret is an uber turret or not

3) hmmm..

last) this should be solved when all the perks are finally in the game.

[Blank]

for 1, I think you're just noticing the different climb speeds of the planes. Without afterburners, some planes just don't climb. Explodets being one of them.

Problem with "vertical" bombing is planes aren't really designed to go straight up all that well (moreso without afterburners). If there were more gradual vertical maps, it wouldn't be so bad... but on middleground, coming from the wrap around, you're basically "forced" to go almost straight up which planes simply can't do (and I have no idea why I keep trying too -_-). It doesn't help that when attacking from the wrap around, you're getting hit by the turret before you even make your ascent. I think it's doable if you come from the middle (low pass).

2- I was always a fan of lower HP turrets but a turret repair powerup (you'd pick it up, land back at your base and it'd heal a turret/bring a turret back from the dead). Then again, this existed in a pre-repair drone/health on drop environment where landing was more common. I see moddable turret health being a fishy thing cause you end up with problems like Karl said. That said, different kinds of turrets could be kinda cool :E

3 would be nice. 4 agreed with Karl.

[lamsbro]

Nesnl, I agree with you, and by the way middleground is both a beautiful and very well designed map. Regarding the issues you raised:

1) Making all planes viable bomb carriers:
Currently certain planes just make very crappy bomb carriers. Ideally each plane should be a good bomb carrier under certain circumstances. I don't agree that complete speed normalization is the answer, factors like plane abilities, hitpoints, and maneuverability should also be considered. All plane 'bomb carrying viability' might be accomplished by giving each plane different bomb carrying speed modifiers. For example loopy might experience a 25% decrease in speed, explodet might experience no decrease in speed.

On a slightly unrelated note, I think making planes slower when carrying the bomb is better than disabling the afterburners, as afterburners give players an interesting choice between trying to fight through, and trying to speed by.

2) More map maker control
I agree, I think its just a case of lots of things they want to do and not enough time to do them.

Regarding turrets:
In terms of programming its fairly easy to make a bomb hit kill a turret no matter what. I agree with Karl that its important for there to be consistency across maps, and I also think it would be cool if the map maker had more control over turret power. One way to have both is to make the visual of the turret reflect the strength of the turret, for example: What if the size of the turret scaled up based on its strength, or what if there were different turrets (with different graphics) that you could add (weak, average, super)?

3) Better information about the game:
Agree 100%, but what's the best way to solve this? How do we give players the information they need without making them do tedious crap.

A few possibilities:
-little "did you know" pop ups while you're dead
-little description boxes when you are selecting your plane that better describe its abilities and how it works
-improving the tutorial- this is a big topic in its own right, I'll make a separate post

4) All perk viability:
Agree 100% and pretty confident Karl and Lam do too.

[DiogenesDog]

1) Hrm, I don't think all planes SHOULD be good bomb carriers. This is one of the things that adds to plane differentiation, and imo makes the game more fun.

2) Agree, but think this is very low priority. I'd actually even like to see teleporters and boost arrows make a comeback, even though the community mappers basically made me hate them every time I saw them. But used well, I think they can be fun and add some variety.

3) Bleh, I wouldn't want to be able to change turret stats in any way that isn't accompanied by visual feedback. However, having a second type of turret with very different stats could be cool!

4) no opinion because my ****ing apartment still doesn't have internet so I haven't played with perks. My CoD4 experience though leads me to believe that this is going to be an issue no matter what... It's going to be very hard (imo impossible) to balance these so perfectly that every perk is viable in competitive play. I'm not sure if that's a huge deal, though... as long as there are a few that people use and there's some decent variety out there, I'll be happy.

[DiogenesDog]

Oh, and I agree that having tutorials per plane and maybe even a non plane specific "advanced tactics" tutorial would be awesome. Some of the advanced stuff I could see covering:

1) Throttling to make tighter turns.

2) Stalling intentionally to break circle chases.

3) Landing.

4) Maybe some stuff about powerups.

5) Bomb lobbing.