Axis & Allies 2.0 - Balance Mod Discussion

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 4:09 am

Hey y'all,

I've started this thread so that the entire A&A Community can openly discuss what we'd like to see in a potential balance mod, a kind of "A&A 2" so to speak. A chance for us to make all those little changes to things that have irked us about the game for years, and add things that should have been there since the beginning. I've already bounced this idea off of Capt. Kramer and he's willing to make it once we've flushed out all the details.

Personally I value historical accuracy and realism more than anything, and so would like to see changes that meet that regard.

So I guess i'll start us off with probably the first thing that comes to mind:

The Nuke.

Shall we toss it entirely? nerf it against units, but buff it against buildings? Give Russia one too? ???

Staff Sergeant (SSG) Joined: Sep 21, 2007 Posts: 115

All that really needs to be done is remove the nuke and buff up russian special abilities and thats about it units are balanced enough already

Staff Sergeant (SSG) Joined: Sep 21, 2007 Posts: 115

O anni think brit buildings should cost a little more but still have a slight advantge

Major General (MG) Joined: Feb 25, 2009 Posts: 1272

its not gonna happen. never will. A&A will die sooner or later. we tried to mod and patch bullshit b4 and it sucked. not only that no1 wanted to use it. so dont bother

Corporal (CPL) Joined: May 28, 2005 Posts: 75

Sadly have to agree with whitewhore here. Val and a few others tried to get community interested in a improved version. But experience shows that people enjoy the original the most. Sounds like a lot of work for nothing.

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 5:45 pm

As far as I remember it val started adding a shit ton of new concepts, skins, and countries and made it way more complicated than it needed to be. And he gave up before it was even finished? I remember eagerly waiting for it lol. I'm not sure what kind of "interest" he was expecting during the construction process given the state of the community at the time. You can't expect community involvement when your teamspeak is private and the games you play exclusive. That doesn't really encourage people to regularly go check out what's happening on your website

BUT, if the A&A community doesn't want it then I guess it shouldn't happen.

Corporal (CPL) Joined: May 28, 2005 Posts: 75

It almost sounds like your heartbroken about it. Cool

So your conclusion why it wasn't released was that teamspeak was private? jesus!

All I'm saying it's a shit load of work, tweaking, replaying, testing, organizing people, tweaking again, testing, people get tired and don't want to help out after a while, frustration ....and so on...after 5 months this isn't so fun anymore.

But by all means go ahead! ( I just wanted to save you for the frustration..)

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 10:28 pm

I'm just disappointed that people give up so easily. I'm not entirely sure how you gathered "heartbroken" from that.

No, im concluding that valdarez's disappointment with community involvement was irrational given the fact that the community viewed xXx as a lot of pretentious assholes.

I'm very well familiar with the work that goes into creating a mod. I did a bit of play testing and follow HPP for HoI3.

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 5:42 am

I remember anticipating Val's mod too. Somehow it kept on getting delayed and delayed to the point where I never saw any version of it. Perhaps I did, but didn't really see any screenshots so I would have been reluctant to download it anyways.

Just some raw balancing ideas out there, I'll add more later.

Nuke| Increase the experience for it to something higher than 2000 to compensate for its power, something like 5000exp

SAS| Reduce some of the damage numbers, as well as Damage Per Second (DPS)

Great Britain| Change the cost of cheaper tents somehow

Germany| Make some kind of economic research to compensate for their bad economy

USA| Make them research economy too, so that they don't get an economic advantage over other countries

Bombs| Make the average bomb cost more, like 3500 EXP

Japan| Cheaper units to compensate for their shittier units

Recons| Reduce regiment numbers to something like 2 units, to remove recon spam.

Artillery Tank| Reduce specs somehow to make them less imba

Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2011 5:29 pm

valdrez or valentin?

Corporal (CPL) Joined: May 28, 2005 Posts: 75

I saw it and i played several of Val's modes. It had more nations in it and had more graphics. He had done a lot of changes to the balance. Like reducing recons ability to gain exp by reducing units to 2. Added new units to each nations and so on. But the main problem was to tweak this in to a working game. Heck it almost turned it into totally new game, because of all the changes. It sometimes felt strange playing it because you had seen the units before, but they had different powers compare to the original game.

One of the main reason for not release it early was due to that fact that if people don't like right away they won't try it again. In the end not enough clan members and friends want to put in enough hours to help Val out with testing, so he caned the game. I wouldn't blame Val for it. He did a pretty amazing job on it. To bad it didn't finish.

I love you to gurewicz

Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2011 8:50 pm

i would like to see more control over the aircraft, such as control of fighter aircraft attacking ground units, being able to rerout bombers, is this possible???

Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2011 4:59 pm

I would be interesting in contributing toward a mod if you can get some people to commit their time. Not a whole lot of technical knowledge is required. A decent text editor, use of a issue tracker such as mantis, and a svn; which i can setup.

As for "more control over aircraft", I don't believe that is possible. You won't be able to address glitches or unit behavior/game physics.

Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2011 9:09 pm

If you guys decide to further pursue fleshing out the mod, you can count me in for testing and balancing suggestions if u guys need help. And of course, visual aesthetic consultation is always my forte too.

I love this game too much to not contribute. =)

Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2011 9:47 pm

to gauge interest and gather ideas I went ahead and setup an issue tracker for a potential A&A 2.0 mod. Go ahead a register there if you are interested in suggesting ideas, following the discussion, or contributing in some way.

http://www.rtsforce.com/axis/

please only one idea per issue and try to select the appropriate category when "reporting an issue", if possible. Otherwise just select "Axis and Allies Mod (general)". Don't worry about the other fields except for summary and description.

If a few people contribute some time this could possibly happen Wink

Ice you are nominated to harass people in A&A to go there too Razz

Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 2:48 am

I'll start the harassing once I figure out how to use MantisBT. I registered but have no idea what to do next, lol. XD

Interesting thought, wouldn't it be cool if we could get Kramer or someone to continue off of Val's mod? Assuming Val tweaked a lot of stuff already, we can move on and tweak it even more. That way, at least we won't be starting from scratch. I guess the only problem would be finding Val and seeing if he would be interested in letting us work off of it. And then secondly, how to understand what he's already made and how to change it up to suit the needs of the A&A community.

Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 1:17 pm

once registered to suggest new issues use
http://www.rtsforce.com/axis/bug_report_page.php

and view current issues with
http://www.rtsforce.com/axis/view_all_bug_page.php

it will create things like a changelog and roadmap for us, although the changelog will be empty until something is actually completed.. Smile

http://www.rtsforce.com/axis/roadmap_page.php

If memory serves me correctly I believe others have asked val for the mod and he has declined because it is too incomplete... but worth a shot i guess. I do have some coding tools that could tell us what modifications were made.....

there are some cool features about setting up a svn for the mod, although at this point I can't go into much detail as I'm not sure people will commit their time...

But the short version, it would allow multiple mod versions which could be updated directly thru right click menus in windows. If a few files change you don't have to re-download an entire mod, just the changed files.. Installing a given mod could also be done in windows right click, by exporting the files to the correct A&A directory. The only thing that would have to be done manually is removing a mod.

It also happens to be the same tool mod developers would use to sync their work Wink

Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 8:23 pm

Well y'all know i'm available for any testing that may needs be done, as far as the actual modding goes though i'm sure i'm not the most qualified person to be heading that.

Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 9:29 pm

Gurewicz wrote:

Well y'all know i'm available for any testing that may needs be done, as far as the actual modding goes though i'm sure i'm not the most qualified person to be heading that.

Same here

Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 10:19 pm

Did a little tinkering and found out it's possible to expand the online ranks system. Tested and working and ready to be a part of an upcoming mod. Rolling Eyes

Even if only interested in testing or to contribute ideas, please register at http://www.rtsforce.com/axis/