Battle Tanks 8.80 Public Beta

[Exodus]

Hey guys,

time for new stuff! This time around it's a mechanics update. It potentially will change the way BT is played quite a lot. Not all of this stuff (like the bounty) is final and most likely is going to change, depending on what you guys tell me.

Changelog Beta 1

• Highlights
  • Added Killing and Assist sprees
    
  • Remade the bounty system, it no longer is based on your tank worth, but the kills you make
    
  • Tank armor now also reduces magic damage by the same percentage as physical damage
    
  
  
• Tank Changes
  • Reduced the damage distribution of S.I.C. (Distributor) from 33% to 25%
    
  • S.I.C. and Darkness Sphere now also grant assists
    
  • Reworked Static Charge (Raider), it now triggers when cast a second time, it no longer triggers on damage
    
  • The heal of Shape Memory Alloy (Raider) now takes 1.5s intead of being instant
    
  • Reworked Goblin Synergy (Goblin Shredder) a bit, to make better use of the new armor system
    
  • Orb of Darkness (Darkness Tank) now always stuns, stun time increases with damage
    
  • Removed the mana costs of Missile Battery (Darkness Tank)
    
  • Reduced the pull of Hell Fire (Demon Tank) from 350 to 250
    
  • Reduced the casting time of Devastator Shot (Goliath) from 1.0 to 0.75s
    
  • The animation of Chaos Teleport (Infernal Robot) is no longer interuptable
    
  • Reduced the max stun of Chaos Teleport from 2.5s to 1.5s
    
  
  
• Item Changes
  • Mass Converter now heals more, when you kill a tank
    
  • Negator Pack can no longer be activated, while being netted
    
  • Increased the cooldown of Negator Pack from 15 to 30 seconds
    
  • Troop Command and Advanced Troop Command are now counted as one item for the spawn delay system
    
  • Black Sun Project now gathers mana in a 700 aoe (from 500), but no longer has a passive regeneration
    
  • Black Sun Project now has an toggleable ability, which lets it pause the mana collection
    
  • Reduced the required mana of the Black Sun Project from 400 to 250
    
  
  
• Game Changes
  • Increased the time window for assists from 5s to 7.5s
    
  • Tanks now start with zero armor
    
  • Reduced the heal of Strategic Locations from 25 to 15 HP/s again
    
  • All items and abilities that granted magic resistance, now grant armor instead
    
  • The hero info now shows the tanks DPS instead of the respawn time
    
  • Multikills no longer grant extra gold
    
  • Kicks now always need at least two votes to be successfull
    
  • Kicks are now executed instantly, when enough votes were given
    
  • -income now shows a rough estimation of the next force gold you'll receive
    
  • Skills that apply forced movement no longer work on invulnerable units
    
  • Leavergold is now given out with your passive income over several minutes
    
  
  
• Bug Fixes
  • Fixed Teleport Breakers triggering on disrupted teleports
    
  • Fixed the Camouflage Generator from breaking transparency
    
  • Fixed some cases in which the Black Sun was indestructable
    
  • Fixed Ricochet (Raider) from disabling certain damage detection related triggers (like HitnRun)
    
  • Fixed Orb of Darkness (Darkness Tank) from being affect by several abilities
    
  • Fixed some minor bugs
    
  
  

Changelog Beta 2

• Fixed Heavy Armor (Heavy Tank) from increasing the Heavies resistance against magic damage
  
• Fixed kill suicide kill messages, when an assist was involved
  
• Fixed the assist spree bonus being lower than intended
  
• Fixed the APM counter being too low
  
• Fixed Marines from blocking the Control Point capturing
  
• Fixed some tooltip errors regarding changes made in the last beta
  

Changelog Beta 3

• New Changes
  • Added a new item: Plasma Discharger
    
  • Rebalanced Orb of Darkness (Darkness Tank) damage
    
  • Emergency Repair now increases its heal with each upgrade by 7.5% (instead of only weapons by 10%)
    
  • Emergency Repair now grants bonus armor based on the healed allied tanks
    
  • Kinetic Shield now increases its block with each upgrade by 20% (instead of only weapons by 25%)
    
  • Aura upgrades are now available at the HQ and Aura Creeps no longer require the Troop Command Center
    
  • Tanks now receive half XP for tank and buildings kills when they are dead (was 100%)
    
  • Fixed Black Sun from sometimes not dieing (hopefully for real this time)
    
  • Fixed a rare bug that caused CPTPs to malfunction and caused performance problems
    
  • Fixed Devastator Shot (Goliath) projectiles from being misplaced, when it was shot above forests or cliffs
    
  • Fixed bad kill interaction between Explosives (Exploder skill) and Mines
    
  • Fixed Root (Guard) and Offroad Engine (Goliath) from disabling Burst Armor
    
  • Fixed Conversation (Darkness Tank) sometimes scoring a null kill
    
  • Fixed Explosives from going off on respawn when the tank died during countdown
    
  
  
• Beta Related Changes
  • Killing sprees now automatically end 3 minutes after your last kill
    
  • Multikills now provide a bonus to your current kill streak
    
  • Trader bounty now increases for his trades
    
  • Self and team kills no longer decreases the tank bounty
    
  • Spree text tags are now color coded
    
  • Fixed Trader not having his base Trade ability
    
  • Fixed the new bounty system behavior in Royal Flush mode
    
  
  

Alright, some of this stuff actually needs clarification.

First: the killing / assist sprees

They work mostly like you would expect. The killing spree grows, by getting at least 3 kills in a row, without dieing. Once the killing spree is active, each kill will grant you 5% bonus gold for each kill in the spree. So, if you got 5 kills in a row, you get a 25% extra on the bounty. This bonus is capped at 10 kills or 50%.

The assist spree system is a little different. This spree does not end when you die, but rather when you get a kill. Similiar to the killing spree, it increases the gold you get for assists, for each assist in the current spree. A small but important difference here: each assist grants a 5% bonus on the original bounty of the killed tank. When you normally get an assist, you get 25% of the original bounty for this assist (when there is only one tank who got an assist). Like with the killing sprees, it is capped at 50% bonus, so you can get up to 75% of the original bounty, just with an assist!


The bounty was based on your tank worth until now. The new system bases the bounty on the gold you earn. To be more specific, you now increase your bounty by: killing creeps, tanks, buildings, assist gold and the gold crom CP captures.
A small part of the gold you earn will be added to your own bounty and when you die, your bounty will go down. To make sure, that the bounty won't go into extreme regions, it has upper and lower limits, which are bound to the tank value.

Here are some example values with a tank worth of 10k:

Code:

old bounty:
125 + tank worth / 65 (262g)

new lower boundary:
125 + tank worth / 100 (225g)

new upper boundary:
125 + tank worth / 33 (428g)

The new magic resistance system was created for more clarity and simpler mechanics (so easier for me to code). You now can actually see how much magic resistance you have, by looking at your armor. Since this value was invisible before, it should now be easier to see, how much a tank can actually ... well, tank damage. Since a lot of people actually thought that it already worked that way, it should not take too much getting used to ;) But as a result of that, I had to set the default armor for every tank to 0, otherwise the more expensive tanks would have a ridiculous advantage.
Another advantage for me is, that it is now much easier to create skills and items which utilize magic resistance. Also, those weird stacking rules for magic resistance can now be ignored (half of those were not visible to players, but workarounds in the map code were necessary).


Alright, that's about it. If you got any more questions, just ask. Also, I really really need your feedback on the bounty change, as it is very hard to consider every single possible effect this change might have. So you have to tell me, how it actually works out and if it's better than the old system.


For information about the beta process, please view this thread.

[griffin1987]

Hey,

Really like this huge list of changes! Currently waiting for the beta to start, but I already have some thoughts on this list:

1. It seems to me that the map now encourages ego play stronger. First, you can do more about the game by hunting bad players and ignoring the rest of the game, as you can more easily get +50% spree bonus that way. Second, you will not want to defend a cp as easily anymore, because it would stop your spree. Third, with assists, you will try to hit the target once, and then let the rest of the team do the work, so you don't end up killing it.

2. Darkness tank looks even more overpowered now, IMHO it was already very close to being overpowered before, but with no mana cost to the missile battery and always stun on orb it's too strong for it's cost imho. Missile battery will probably have to tuned down a little bit on damage side (10% or so) and the mana zapping spell would have to be reduced by about 20%. But that's only from the old version + what I read in your changelog, might report back again if anything changes after some beta games.

3. Shape Memory Alloy should still be limited to max hp healed or to max hp per second IMHO.

Besides that, have you fixed the invul black sun bug? I've seen it more often in the past games, so I was wondering if it's still there.

Also, thanks again for all the many cool other fixes and changes, really like!!!

Cheers

[griffin1987]

OKay, finished game, following things so far:

1. Creeps overpowered now?

2. Heavy is buggy, you can't kill him with fast firing weps (try multiple flamer etc, do no damage)

3. money progression seems strange, as if you got mass money in first half of game now and no money later on

4. strategic points are more overpowered now even due to armor system (not been able to confirm, but seemed that way)

5. demon tank and airship also seem bugged wrt how long they can survive

[gozo1985]

Also played that game... Replay is attached. Also theres a conquering bug at around 55min or 1h05min (cant remember) where OmegaRed tried to conquer right CP but the timer was stuck at 5sec. He also build a Beacon, and after some seconds he left the CP and the timer started to run again.

[Exodus]

It's truly strange with the Heavy Tank. His passive has no influence on magic damage, so it shouldn't be a factor. As a matter of fact, I didn't change anything on the Heavy, except the armor, like with any other tank.
Well, time to go bug hunting again. I'll let the beta hosting stop tomorrow, until I figured out, what's going on.

As to your other points:
Creeps don't get this magic resistance, it only applies to tanks, so no changes there. Strategic Points had magic resistance before, so that also remains the same. The other tanks might suffer from the same bug as the Heavy, hard to say until I have found the cause.

[griffin1987]

new thing: APM counter shows 46 instead of 224 now for me, though I don't know which is wrong now

[RaptorXI]

I like all the changes promoting assists and selfless playing. But what are all those floating texts for new stuff about? Eaither add for all tanks or remove them plz. Also there won't change much about the start (950+ range still common on all sides and long range especially on mid, later when teleporter comes in handy everyone switches to ice cannon and poison).
Anyway thank you for still working on this map. Maybe the screenshots will help solving the cp capture problem.

[Exodus]

Alright, Beta 2 is up. Hosting will begin soon™.

Regarding the bounty and spree changes, lets discuss this in a seperate thread.

[Exodus]

And there is the third and most likely last beta (assuming I don't need to apply hotfixes).

[griffin1987]

And there is the third and most likely last beta (assuming I don't need to apply hotfixes).

I hope it won't. Seems like a debug build. I can control complete team and all enemy tanks at start when I'm red. Blue can also control other tanks, and some other people can as well.

[Exodus]

Well, that didn't go as expected ... restarted the third beta now.

[BENNIE.FM]

Hey just played the beta few times noticed a few changes i didn't seem were fair inferno stun 2.5 to 1.5? i think at best lowering it to 2 seconds.

Got 15 kills in a row after that it said my streak ended with out me becoming dead? Just wanted to see if that is correct i guess i didn't get a kill for a few minutes or something which ended the streak ?

Is the titan ulti fixed does it restart when it is selected on a tank who is already under the titan ultimate.

Personally think death tank was fine the way it was think the cost doesn't exactly reflect the tank at the moment.

How much is abit ,regarding the goblin shredder i feel like some changes aren't based around balancing but encouraging the use of different tanks ?

---

One other suggestion not sure how much effort goes into doing this but how about putting the latest change log on the loading screen? so people playing can test changes made instead of just playing the game as per normal , can understand that change logs can sometimes be quiet big but usually 30 seconds gives alot of time to read changes ,not sure if this makes the size of the file larger or what not.

[Prog]

I think the infernal stun nerf is needed, because there AoE stunlock is just too strong, compared to the other lategame alternatives. Lategame was pretty much a question of who hit the better infernal stun first, then the others join for 5-10 seconds stun total which made any counterplay impossible.


The buffs to underused tanks are indeed a bit of an encouragement. This goes together with balance though, because usually only tanks that are on the weaker side are not played. If we overbuffed anything we can nerf it later anyway, but the tanks need to get played first.

[Exodus]

To answer the other questions:

A streak now ends after 3 minutes without a kill.

The Titan ult is fixed, I apperently just forgot to mention it in the changelog.

As you said with the changelog, it's way too long to post it on the loading screen. I think I could only put about one third of it on there. This is why I mention the main points of the changelog on the loading screen, so people have a rough idea of what changed. I know it's not ideal, but it's the best I can do.

[BENNIE.FM]

@Prog definitely agree with what your saying,but i don't think its easy as said then being done regarding the infernals chaos jump.For the following reasons

-Even most pub now don't stand in cp together they all are in the area surrounding the cp.
-Infernal lacks 1vs1 ability if you reduce the stun,because currently when i play infernal i can land a perfect jump do all spells have huge dps and the titan still cast ultimate as opposed to skyfort which can usually kill titan, i know there are many variables in this situation.
-Reduced stun by a whole second will now mean most tanks just escape in many situations (They were still avoiding situations now ) with the 2.5 maximum stun.
-Even though i know its not extremely hard most tanks and players are now more aware of infernal jumps and usually this means the infernal doesn't land a good jump.
-I know i haven't even talked about the aoe but aoe damage of the infernal can be stopped so easily a sky fort keeps bombing no matter what.Simple demon gobo frost robot stun stops the infernal all together.

And yes i do understand what your saying but i feel like the introduction of a cheaper titan means skyfort is sometimes a better option in terms of being able to hold better once the other team gets titan also it doesn't reward a good infernal jump i can imagine i will always be able to get away now big difference between 2.5 and 1.5.

I still think trying 2 second maximum stun will be better.

[BENNIE.FM]

The the bounty is so high now and value it seems to be so high now ?^900 gold for some killing me at 30 min cause of streak?^and a mix of bounty?

[Max]

Well this doesn't shock myself. I think this new bounty thing can open some opportunity of comebacks in some games.

And that's normal that a feeder give less gold when he dies (because he dies a lot) and a guy who is 25-1 gives more gold (bigger reward for killing a guy who doesn't die a lot).

I see it as an "in game balance" : more skilled players who don't feed a lot will give more gold and bad guys who feed a lot will give less bounty. Less ruined games because of a feeder who give 800g for each death because he got gold from assists/force and not from creeps/kills.

I see this change as a positive thing.

[stibi-]

Troop Command and Advanced Troop Command are now counted as one item for the spawn delay system

nope, does not work in 8.80c

[stibi-]

€: at least not all the time i've used it and some1 else had troop commands (+ mortars)
hmm when i think about it ... probably he had mortars only but i'm not 100 % sure

btw did you touch the random tank function? (guess i know the answer but i just have to ask ...)
i've had 15x heli 4x demo 1x medi in my last 20 games XD