BA: BA 10.06: More noob-friendly and fancy!

BA 10.06 update – I don’t even know where to start…

There’s been a lot of things happening lately in the world of BA. First of all, we are finally dropping Balanced Annihilation version 10.06, and hell boy, this one is BIG! The amount of goodies that BA 10.06 brings is beyond any minor update that happened in the last couple of months. Starting from fancy new widgets, through a significant boost in noob-friendliness, ending on awesome new graphic effects and much more. And that is only the tip of an iceberg of great news we have for you, so without further delay, let’s break it down. Enjoy!

~TL;DR – Just give me that download button!

Fancy selected units

Thanks to a widget that was originally developed for BA:Reloaded we are now equipped with a new tool that is both greatly useful and adds a nice graphical touch to the game. It draws team-coloured platters under units you have selected. What is more, different types of units get their own shapes, which helps distinguishing units from each other. Platters are animated and connect if units are close to each other. It’s also customizable, so you can tweak its opacity etc. to suit your taste. This is only one of the neat widgets introduced in BA 10.06, for the full list see: new widgets.

Trees are alive!

Another neat piece of BAR work is now included in the game. New shaders make the trees slowly weave in the wind and when they are damaged, they fall to the ground. It’s just another one of these little details that make up for a great overall gaming experience. As Chris Taylor once said in an interview, this kind of tiny things is what made OTA so outstanding among other RTS’es at the time. This works with the majority of newer maps. You can find many of those in our map packs.

Noob-friendliness in BA?

Yes, we can! We have finally put some effort into making the game more easily accessible for new players. While the game is loading you are going to be presented with tactical tips, unit info, and famous quotes :D. For starters, we put in about 40 tips covering most basic game mechanics and controls. 50 descriptions currently introduced to the game make up for most T1 land mobile units. This knowledge base will grow in the releases to come. What is more, we added some more noob-friendliness in the game itself. When your Commander is getting hurt you are going to see a red vignette around your view. This will make it easier for new players to keep their Coms safe

Balance tweaks

This update introduces some a little bit of balancement as well. The main focus was set here on clearly overpowered units. We introduced Bantha speed reduction, EMP bombers cost increase, some sea balancement and few minor changes. For the full list, check: balance changes.

Promotion

Last two weeks sought a major increase in promotional actions for BA. We now have a brand new Facebook page dedicated for Balanced Annihilation. It’s a place to go if you want to have a close look at what is going on in the world of BA. New maps, real-time announcements and updates are going to be frequently posted there. Like it, share it, and help us spread the word about Balanced Annihilation!

Thank you for testing!

As always, we would like to show our appreciation for helping us test the new version out. We had some awesome large-scale games on test-version again and received tons of useful feedback. This makes our workflow really swift and assures that the coming release is going to live up to your expectations. Due to the sheer size of this update consider reading the full changelog too. You will find even more cool stuff we have done, like the possibility of switching to BAR models, but that is just too much stuff to cover in one post. More details are coming soon

Download BA 10.06

“Dancing with the razors”
Queued units and buildings ghosts

Full changelog:

Balance changes:

Bantha speed reduced 8%, harder to paralyze 30%
EMP bomber more expensive: metal 33%, energy 11%
Prevents paralyzer units attacking anything other than EMP-able units
Dragonteeth and Fortification walls are no long EMP-able
Fixed T2 crawling bombs not blowing on attack commands. (issue on maintenance engines)
Footprints adjusted: armfus 7×4->6×5, armvp 8×6->7×6, corvp 7×7->7×6
Increased Gimp’s torpedos max speed 30% and acceleration 400%
Arm/Core destroyers: Increased default depthcharge damages +25% and decreased damages vs subs -10%
Arm/Core Support Frigates: Disabled AA, enabled surface units targetting. Damages vs subs: 216 (vs 240) and damages vs default and commander: 100 (vs 140)
Arm/Core patrol boats: buffed range (450 -> 700) and damages (+50%) as they now become the only t1 aa ship available.
Reduced Comblast Edgeeffectiveness from 0.40->0.317 Does 3.5k damage to commanders at dgunRange (was 3.850k)
Added a test option “seamex”: underwater|surface (default underwater)

Unbalanced Commanders (when mo_unba is enabled):

Dgun reloadTime reduced by 0.025s at each level (0.9->0.65)
Laser reloadTime reduced by 0.025 at each level, capped at 0.2 (was 0.4)
UWLaser reloadTime reduced by 0.05 at each level, capped at 0.5 (was 1)
Commander BuildSpeed increased by 50 at each level until level 7, then increased by 100 (300->1000)
Commander Shield wont block torpedos anymore

New widgets:

Fancy Selected Units (options widget has various options for it)
Show Builder Queue – Shows ghosted queued up buildings (for all allied teams)
Commander Hurt Vignette – red screen borders when com isn’t in view and gets damaged
Unit Reclaimer (Hover over unit and drag an area-reclaim circle to reclaim all units within)
Auto Cloak Popups – (default disabled) – Auto cloaks Pit Bull and Ambusher

Other:

You can toggle off Highlight Selected Units via options widget
Auto Group: disabled immediate mode (like in 9.46), re-enable it via options widget
EcoStats shows reclaimed metal/energy income (as less vibrant part of the bar)
Unit Outline has thickness slider added to options widget and takes resolution into account
Accurate Comblast and Dgun Range widget. Showing ranges for damage values: 3.5k, 3k, 2k, 1k and 0.
Added “Scroll inversed” toggle to options widget
Loadscreen shows tips, unitinfo and quotes
Ignore Ships vs Shipyard colisions when finished for 15 seconds: No more rotation when exiting lab.
More “RockOnWaves” animations to t1 sea floating buildings (tidals/metalmakers/dragonteeth)
Fixed Air mesh not refreshing when map_waterlevel is used.
Flak and mercury/screamer projectile explosions are visually bigger
Vehicle minimap/overview icon adjusted to match kbots icon design
Trees wave in the wind and fall when they die due to damage (only centain tree types)
Included barmodels modoption (default disabled) Remodeled Units!