7.4X Balance Change Reasoning
Posted: 24 May 2011, 14:39
Given the discussion and varied responses to the balance changes, this post is going to outline the main thoughts/reasoning for each. Each of the changes was discussed amongst the entire BA team, and while sometimes there wasn't 'full agreement', none were reverted.
So without further ado, in the same order as listed in the changelog:
Reduced samson/slasher HP 30% (~1100 -> ~720)
Army compositions of 100% slasher/samson have become common in certain games, mainly because it is very strong due to slasher range, speed and hp. While this is OK it isn't very tactically interesting and it doesn't leave players in a good position to attack defences or T2 units given the low DPS of slashers and the loss of range advantage when fighting HLT/T2 units. What this resulted in was strong early pushes exploiting the range of the slasher/samson quickly reaching stalemates as defences were put up, with the slasher/samson spammers on the enemy team also unable to mount a counterattack.
The aim of reducing HP is to enable pure slasher/samson armies to be chased down and killed before they can reach safety, so that the samson/slasher user is encouraged to mix in higher HP raiders or levelers to cover any retreats, and also to put them in a better position for assaults. The HP nerf was chosen over other possible nerfs as it leaves their AA capabilities mostly untouched.
Reduced HLT HP 30% (~2400 -> ~1680)
There were two primary reasons behind this change. The first is to make defensive lines more fragile in general, especially when they lack any unit backup to provide a HP buffer. The second is to reduce the effectiveness of repair on HLTs, with 30% reduction in HP resulting in 30% reduction in repair rate. As it was it was too easy to repair an HLT with a com or nanos to the point where any enemy attacking the HLT would be dealing little to no damage.
Removed arm EMP bomber
Basically there were too many issues with the EMP bomber that a fixup wouldve changed it into a completely new unit, so instead it was removed. Note that arm still has EMP available at T2 air in the dragonfly.
- Drops 6 bombs dealing 4000 damage each for 24,000 damage total (Too high)
- Bombs have greater AoE than intimidator shells (Too high)
- Reloads in 5 seconds (Too low, especially vs stun time (15 seconds))
- Radar-invisible (Can't see -> Can't hit with AA)
- One of the fastest moving air units (-> long bomb drop distance)
- Very high flying (-> long bomb drop distance)
- Costs 162 metal, 16366 energy (Too cheap)
All fighter HP reduced to 50 (1-hit killed by all antiair)
Change was primarily to nerf the ability for fighters to be used offensively, especially late game when flakkers are present, which should reduce the amount of fighter spam lategame. This will of course greatly nerf the classic tactic of out-fighter-spamming your enemy and winning with an all in, but while that tactic was effective it was very uninteresting and had a snowball effect as the defending team also needed to spam fighters. With less fighter spam present games should have better performance, and players should have more resources to spend on more strategic and interesting options.
The reason for an HP nerf over other nerfs was that it heavily reduces the ability for them to be used offensively in a clear way while not effecting their defensive ability against enemy bombers or gunships. Some people have brought up the point that a fighter screen will die very quickly to ground AA; this is intentional, the higher effectiveness of ground AA on fighters will motivate people to attack even if they may not be able to make it to the enemy base, and puts a greater emphasis on gaining ground outside your base in order to protect your fighter screen, instead of setting up a defensive wall at the front of your base and ecoing/teching in safety.
Reduced bertha/intimidator range (6200/600 -> 4000)
Increased bertha/intimidator range increase with height
Reduces the ability for players to siege an enemies base without first gaining some ground. With 6600 range on initimidators players were able to attack the enemies base from the safety of their own on particular maps, which is not inline with the goal of having players expand and attack.
While the range reduction does reduce the defensive ability of berthas as well, it is not as severe as it appears due to the increased range boost from height (typically present when defending), and the inaccuracy of berthas pre-update at their maximum range.
Anti nukes no longer stockpile, effectively starting with unlimited missiles
Anti nuke energy costs reduced 50% (~60000 -> ~30000)
The metal:energy ratio of anti-nukes was previously very high at 1:40, going to 1:60 for mobile antis. This prevented non-techers from building an anti-nuke in any reasonable amount of time, even if they had the required metal. Reducing the metal:energy ratio brings it inline with the high-end metal:energy ratio of T2 units, which is still above the typical T1 metal:energy ratio of 1:10 which a T1 player would have their energy production configured for.
The stockpile change is primarily to help people rush anti-nukes to defend against a nuke, as they are no longer required to wait the 90 seconds for an anti-nuke to stock after completing the silo. As a secondary effect it also helps against the fairly efficient tactic of using mass nukes (typically arm) to drain the silos of your enemy and win from across the map with a few clicks.
Reduced karganeth missile velocity 50%
Sounds odd, but the intention was to reduce karganeth effectiveness vs air, as the missiles have insufficient velocity to effectively chase fighters. Personally not a fan as its a very indirect way of addressing the problem.
Removed 50% damage reduction from pitbull/viper when closed
Purely to weaken T2 porc, especially when it's being repaired (repair retains full speed while damage reduction is present). As some have mentioned, this damage reduction was very easily circumvented by using scouts or starting building frames at edge of range, so it is not as huge a change as it may seem, while helping make damage dealt more transparent and predictable. Will consider having them permanently stay up if the change remains.
T2 bombers are now precision bombers, dropping fewer bombers over a shorter distance (same single-target damage)
Primary reasoning was to reduce the extremely high effectiveness of T2 bombers against ground armies, the change keeps their single-target damage which means they are as effective as they were at fusion killing, nano killing, com killing, etc.
Teams now have base storage, commander storage now 0/0
Mainly to reduce the punishment on the victim of an enemy combomb on their commander, where the combomber would have built storage to compensate in advance while the victim is reduced to pitiful levels of storage, making it hard to quickly defend/rebuild.
Normalized idle autoheal. 1% hp/second after 30 seconds.
Mainly for convinience, 'idle' in this sense is 'hasn't taken damage in X seconds'. Gives a benefit to those who pull back their units before they die, and also increases the power of high HP units like T3 if the user micros well and retreats instead of mashing them into the enemy.
-----
That's about it for now, hopefully I've convinced a few people that these changes were carefully thought through with specific goals in mind, and should have a positive effect on gameplay. Also keep in mind that the changes aren't intended to solve every problem in BA and that a lot of the balance issues in 7.31 still continue into 7.4X.
So without further ado, in the same order as listed in the changelog:
Reduced samson/slasher HP 30% (~1100 -> ~720)
Army compositions of 100% slasher/samson have become common in certain games, mainly because it is very strong due to slasher range, speed and hp. While this is OK it isn't very tactically interesting and it doesn't leave players in a good position to attack defences or T2 units given the low DPS of slashers and the loss of range advantage when fighting HLT/T2 units. What this resulted in was strong early pushes exploiting the range of the slasher/samson quickly reaching stalemates as defences were put up, with the slasher/samson spammers on the enemy team also unable to mount a counterattack.
The aim of reducing HP is to enable pure slasher/samson armies to be chased down and killed before they can reach safety, so that the samson/slasher user is encouraged to mix in higher HP raiders or levelers to cover any retreats, and also to put them in a better position for assaults. The HP nerf was chosen over other possible nerfs as it leaves their AA capabilities mostly untouched.
Reduced HLT HP 30% (~2400 -> ~1680)
There were two primary reasons behind this change. The first is to make defensive lines more fragile in general, especially when they lack any unit backup to provide a HP buffer. The second is to reduce the effectiveness of repair on HLTs, with 30% reduction in HP resulting in 30% reduction in repair rate. As it was it was too easy to repair an HLT with a com or nanos to the point where any enemy attacking the HLT would be dealing little to no damage.
Removed arm EMP bomber
Basically there were too many issues with the EMP bomber that a fixup wouldve changed it into a completely new unit, so instead it was removed. Note that arm still has EMP available at T2 air in the dragonfly.
- Drops 6 bombs dealing 4000 damage each for 24,000 damage total (Too high)
- Bombs have greater AoE than intimidator shells (Too high)
- Reloads in 5 seconds (Too low, especially vs stun time (15 seconds))
- Radar-invisible (Can't see -> Can't hit with AA)
- One of the fastest moving air units (-> long bomb drop distance)
- Very high flying (-> long bomb drop distance)
- Costs 162 metal, 16366 energy (Too cheap)
All fighter HP reduced to 50 (1-hit killed by all antiair)
Change was primarily to nerf the ability for fighters to be used offensively, especially late game when flakkers are present, which should reduce the amount of fighter spam lategame. This will of course greatly nerf the classic tactic of out-fighter-spamming your enemy and winning with an all in, but while that tactic was effective it was very uninteresting and had a snowball effect as the defending team also needed to spam fighters. With less fighter spam present games should have better performance, and players should have more resources to spend on more strategic and interesting options.
The reason for an HP nerf over other nerfs was that it heavily reduces the ability for them to be used offensively in a clear way while not effecting their defensive ability against enemy bombers or gunships. Some people have brought up the point that a fighter screen will die very quickly to ground AA; this is intentional, the higher effectiveness of ground AA on fighters will motivate people to attack even if they may not be able to make it to the enemy base, and puts a greater emphasis on gaining ground outside your base in order to protect your fighter screen, instead of setting up a defensive wall at the front of your base and ecoing/teching in safety.
Reduced bertha/intimidator range (6200/600 -> 4000)
Increased bertha/intimidator range increase with height
Reduces the ability for players to siege an enemies base without first gaining some ground. With 6600 range on initimidators players were able to attack the enemies base from the safety of their own on particular maps, which is not inline with the goal of having players expand and attack.
While the range reduction does reduce the defensive ability of berthas as well, it is not as severe as it appears due to the increased range boost from height (typically present when defending), and the inaccuracy of berthas pre-update at their maximum range.
Anti nukes no longer stockpile, effectively starting with unlimited missiles
Anti nuke energy costs reduced 50% (~60000 -> ~30000)
The metal:energy ratio of anti-nukes was previously very high at 1:40, going to 1:60 for mobile antis. This prevented non-techers from building an anti-nuke in any reasonable amount of time, even if they had the required metal. Reducing the metal:energy ratio brings it inline with the high-end metal:energy ratio of T2 units, which is still above the typical T1 metal:energy ratio of 1:10 which a T1 player would have their energy production configured for.
The stockpile change is primarily to help people rush anti-nukes to defend against a nuke, as they are no longer required to wait the 90 seconds for an anti-nuke to stock after completing the silo. As a secondary effect it also helps against the fairly efficient tactic of using mass nukes (typically arm) to drain the silos of your enemy and win from across the map with a few clicks.
Reduced karganeth missile velocity 50%
Sounds odd, but the intention was to reduce karganeth effectiveness vs air, as the missiles have insufficient velocity to effectively chase fighters. Personally not a fan as its a very indirect way of addressing the problem.
Removed 50% damage reduction from pitbull/viper when closed
Purely to weaken T2 porc, especially when it's being repaired (repair retains full speed while damage reduction is present). As some have mentioned, this damage reduction was very easily circumvented by using scouts or starting building frames at edge of range, so it is not as huge a change as it may seem, while helping make damage dealt more transparent and predictable. Will consider having them permanently stay up if the change remains.
T2 bombers are now precision bombers, dropping fewer bombers over a shorter distance (same single-target damage)
Primary reasoning was to reduce the extremely high effectiveness of T2 bombers against ground armies, the change keeps their single-target damage which means they are as effective as they were at fusion killing, nano killing, com killing, etc.
Teams now have base storage, commander storage now 0/0
Mainly to reduce the punishment on the victim of an enemy combomb on their commander, where the combomber would have built storage to compensate in advance while the victim is reduced to pitiful levels of storage, making it hard to quickly defend/rebuild.
Normalized idle autoheal. 1% hp/second after 30 seconds.
Mainly for convinience, 'idle' in this sense is 'hasn't taken damage in X seconds'. Gives a benefit to those who pull back their units before they die, and also increases the power of high HP units like T3 if the user micros well and retreats instead of mashing them into the enemy.
-----
That's about it for now, hopefully I've convinced a few people that these changes were carefully thought through with specific goals in mind, and should have a positive effect on gameplay. Also keep in mind that the changes aren't intended to solve every problem in BA and that a lot of the balance issues in 7.31 still continue into 7.4X.