The Energon Pub

News Credits: 226 · by **Burn** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 7:27 am

This is something that's been niggling at the back of my mind for a while.

The length of missions. Take this mission for example.

http://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwar/view_mission.php?mission_id=351061

A REASONABLY balanced battle yet it only lasted just a bit over 3 mins.

Battles win wars ... but sure battles are meant to last more than 3-5 mins!

Now i'm not suggesting the number of turns be increased, but i'd like to see the action times some how recalculated to make it appear the battle goes longer.

Anyone else agree?

Like steve2275 on Facebook · by **steve2275** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 7:39 am

sometimes ur just baddass
id say

News Credits: 3 · by **Archanubis** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 7:52 am

Depends, really.

In real life, yes, land battles do often last longer than 3-5 min. They can take hours, even days.

3-5min, however, is an eternity for an aerial dog fight. Most last only a couple of minutes at the most; the longest dogfight recorded was fought in Veitnam and lasted 10min, but that's an exception. (Of note: no one got shot down in that fight.)

Since HMW missions are usually a mixture of different alt classes; I'd say 3-5 isn't too long or too short. If I recall, there's a limit of 10-20min on these things anyway, so I'm not going to complain too loudly.

Mission times may become longer if/when terrain becomes a factor in the game.

News Credits: 3 · by **LuckytheWonderLlama** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:12 am

Or look at from an RPG point of view:

You can spend an hour playing out a battle and at the end of the hour say "Ok, that was round one! 10 seconds have passed. Now on to round two!"

by **ShockwaveUK** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:24 am

Don't the combatants run away if the battle reaches 20 mins? I'd rather have short battles where the winning team squeezes every xp out of the loosing team than long battles that time out with kills still to be made.

by **Z-z** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 11:19 am

I problem if you ask me is that Strength gives too many bonuses for being increased:
-Considerable more damage compared to most weapons (limited weapon avaibility doesn't help)
-Cheaper in stats compared to getting most weapons (esspecially with the limited selection avaible)
-Higher Strength doing more damage gives more XP/Energon with minimal stats & minimal attacks (one high strength hit can equal many lower strength attacks)
-Higher strength allows more armor protection
-Has more effect at lower levels as folks can't afford all the stats to counter high Strength

One the flip side, in order to counter high Strength:
-Need higher Rank for decent armor
-Need higher Endurance to reduce damage
-Unless you take higher Strength, you are limited on amount of armor taken.

Strength has too much upside & it takes waaay too much stats to effectively counter it.
Personally I would change the amount of armour a character can carry to being based on Endurance BUT with some requirements perhaps from other stats (Iron might require 4 Strength minimum & might reduce Speed by -2 for example)
I would like to point out that I have always found the idea of a motorcycle having 10 tonnes of armor rather strange.

Just my thoughts....

by **chrisjbrandon** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 11:52 am

These are robots fighting, not humans. I'd imagine they have to finish their fight b4 they run out of fuel, and there is no fatigue. That explains the speed of the battles... :-?

News Credits: 226 · by **Burn** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 4:00 pm

They've been at war for millions of years, why now are their skirmishes over in a matter of minutes?

Okay, there's a 10-20 min limit. That's a phsyical limit of sorts. I see the times as simply a cosmetic thing, something to improve the look of the game. The limits can still be in place but just make it look like they last longer. And 3-5 minutes may be a long time for an aerial fight, but the jets wouldn't be pilotted by humans would they?

by **Thanatos Prime** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 5:52 pm

Burn wrote:They've been at war for millions of years, why now are their skirmishes over in a matter of minutes?

Okay, there's a 10-20 min limit. That's a phsyical limit of sorts. I see the times as simply a cosmetic thing, something to improve the look of the game. The limits can still be in place but just make it look like they last longer. And 3-5 minutes may be a long time for an aerial fight, but the jets wouldn't be pilotted by humans would they?

Thinking about what Thunderscream mentioned about terrain. The best way to think is the mission takes place on a completely blank plane. That would account for the time (or lack there of) Nowhere to really hide, just attack, get hit or perhaps avoid.

News Credits: 226 · by **Burn** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 6:44 pm

And has anyone noticed how Zz's post is completely irrelevant to this discussion? :lol:

by **Tammuz** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 6:59 pm

when was the alst time any of you watched one of the cartoons, the battles there lasted about 3-5 minutes, the only battle i recall that lasted longer than that was Galvatron's invasion of cybertron in the rebirth, or the battle a the beginning of Headmasters.

News Credits: 42 · by **Psychout** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 7:07 pm

The battle for Autobot City in the 'toon movie?

I just figured the cons outclassed the autobots with their usual flair.

Of course the problem will always be that if the mission are slowed down, even just to better the text, they would either exceed the time limit more often or every battle would last exactly 20 minutes. Machines thay may be, clockwork they aint.

by **Tammuz** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 7:34 pm

battle don't last 20 minutes though(our bots are just listed as in the mission for 20 minutes), the server works them out in seconds, then multiplies the time stamps up so we get a nice frilly amount of time that we can actually imagine a battle taking place in.

by **chrisjbrandon** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 7:56 pm

Burn wrote:They've been at war for millions of years, why now are their skirmishes over in a matter of minutes?

Very very efficent... :grin:

News Credits: 1 · by **Redimus** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 8:03 pm

I think it's a testiment to what Glyph has done for the game that all we can think of to whinge about now is something as completely irelivent as how long the tfs APPEAR to kill eachother for...

News Credits: 3 · by **LuckytheWonderLlama** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 8:07 pm

Well Burn, looks like you'll just have to play in Daylight Savings Time mode from now on.

Or start accounting for Jet Lag or something?

Oh wait! IN know. We can start timing our missions on BST...

Burn Standard Time

News Credits: 226 · by **Burn** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:08 pm

Redimus wrote:I think it's a testiment to what Glyph has done for the game that all we can think of to whinge about now is something as completely irelivent as how long the tfs APPEAR to kill eachother for...

EXCUSE ME?

No one is whinging! I just find it odd that there can be 20 giant robots fighting and 9 of them can end up in stasis lock in 5 mins.

So I created this thread to raise discussion about it to see if anyone else thought the same and whether it would be worth changing.

No one is criticising what Glyph has done, it's not a complaint at all. It's a discussion. Would you care to join the discussion in the hopes of improving the game or are you content to misinterpret a persons post and criticise them? ;;)

LuckytheWonderLlama wrote:Well Burn, looks like you'll just have to play in Daylight Savings Time mode from now on.

Or start accounting for Jet Lag or something?

Oh wait! IN know. We can start timing our missions on BST...

Burn Standard Time

Have I ever mentioned that 95% of the time I consider you a wanker Lucky? I'm still hanging out to read a post from you that fits into the other 5%.

News Credits: 1 · by **Redimus** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:44 pm

It is honestly something that has never bothered me. And still dosnt.

And to look at it this way.

In football (soccer) games, the match rarly lasts mor than 5 or 10 mins. Why? Cuase if you play it real time, 1: it'll take too long, and 2: for reasons I've never fully grasped, the score is always astronomical.

In short, why not think of one second as one minute instead. There you go, problem solved without any changes to anything. It is after all ONLY a 20 minute (at the most) mission, and in reality no mission takes 20 mins. I for one dont wanna see this particular aspect become more realistic.

Like steve2275 on Facebook · by **steve2275** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 11:16 pm

Redimus' Ego +1 wrote:[color=red]It is honestly something that has never bothered me. And still dosnt.

me neither

News Credits: 3 · by **LuckytheWonderLlama** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 11:39 pm

Burn wrote:
LuckytheWonderLlama wrote:Well Burn, looks like you'll just have to play in Daylight Savings Time mode from now on.

Or start accounting for Jet Lag or something?

Oh wait! IN know. We can start timing our missions on BST...

Burn Standard Time

Have I ever mentioned that 95% of the time I consider you a wanker Lucky? I'm still hanging out to read a post from you that fits into the other 5%.

I swear on the Covenant of Primus, I have absolutely no idea how to take that... :???:

It's Burn... so I know there's an insult somewhere. But is it malicious? Is he having a go at me? Does he know that I know that from the begining he was just thinking out loud...

Literally, right now, that is me in the middle. Southern' Fried Brains.