Proposed balance changes - discuss

[pintle]

whatever

an overpowered "swiss knife" will still underperform if you use it as a "hammer".

buffing t1 artillery and rocket kbots won't take away the role of either peewee/flash (better/faster raiders) or t1 missile units (longer range harassment and anti aircraft) and will lead to more satisfying XTA games. It will, however, expose the slight ineffectiveness of commanders and early defenses, which should be fixed with the other modifications mentioned earlier....

i'd look at other units too, zeus may be a bit too strong/cost, luger too ineffective due to inaccuracy, etc..

Satisfying for whom? You want to buff com counters to expose the "weakness" of the com you want to then buff to fix this weakness?

[Jools]

I really think t1 works quite well how it s now. It also hasn't been changed in ages because t1 is microed quite a lot and people depend on knowing it well. With t1 I mean units such as pw,rocko, jethro, hammer, flash, stumpy and samson (and core counterparts). The rocko change wasn't a big deal imo, just something that maybe makes rockos more worthwhile for raiding mexxes (because people started dt:ing them).

I think what units are balanced/op/up depends a lot on which people play, and how they are used. Currently, everyone makes a lot of snipers, which is a good unit, but it can be countered with spam or with air. Earlier we had people say the raven was op, and before that maybe aa-lines. But I don't see a lot of aa-lines used now.

I think many team games have become more static with people going for the eco victory, but I think that is also dependent on play culture and not unit balance.

[raaar]

whatever

an overpowered "swiss knife" will still underperform if you use it as a "hammer".

buffing t1 artillery and rocket kbots won't take away the role of either peewee/flash (better/faster raiders) or t1 missile units (longer range harassment and anti aircraft) and will lead to more satisfying XTA games. It will, however, expose the slight ineffectiveness of commanders and early defenses, which should be fixed with the other modifications mentioned earlier....

i'd look at other units too, zeus may be a bit too strong/cost, luger too ineffective due to inaccuracy, etc..

Satisfying for whom? You want to buff com counters to expose the "weakness" of the com you want to then buff to fix this weakness?

no, the goal here is to improve the game while trying to keep it "XTA", whatever that is. To have more variety by buffing slightly underpowered units which are currently a bit too weak to be more widely used.

you should be asking yourself what would happen if:
- slightly improved t1 artillery and rocket kbots
- slightly faster commanders with a longer range laser but a higher cooldown dgun (not as effective against groups of short ranged units but less vulnerable to being kited by med range ones)
- slightly improved early defenses

how would the game play then? would this really break the game, or even make it worse?

The commander is just one unit, and a relatively vulnerable one after the first few minutes (sometimes it's better to just use decoys and keep the commander hidden in a hole in the back of the base). Balancing units around the fact that they can or can not easily kite commander is asking for them either be underpowered (rocko, morty?) or overpowered otherwise (cof..zeus) ...in the rest of the map, you know, where most of the stuff happens.

i'm not one of the dozen die hard xta fans (i've been working another spring game). This isn't for me. But i've been back to xta recently and played quite a few times and tried to shut up about these issues...but eventually they got to me (again).

People complain about lack of players, but some of it is due to bad game design. It's not just about GUI, models or glowy effects.

if this doesn't make sense to you then forget it. I will.

[knorke]

People complain about lack of players

Who are these people?

[pintle]

you should be asking yourself what would happen if:
- slightly improved t1 artillery and rocket kbots
- slightly faster commanders with a longer range laser but a higher cooldown dgun (not as effective against groups of short ranged units but less vulnerable to being kited by med range ones)
- slightly improved early defenses

how would the game play then? would this really break the game, or even make it worse?

-Thud and Hammer are not artillery. They are plasma kbots. Big difference in role and strengths. Rocko and Storm are the best direct combat t1 bots, dont need buffs.
-Commander would become substantially harder to kill. This would be BAD for 1v1 games.
-More like BA llts? Where you don't ever make a judgement call you just spam them 100% of games? No thanks. Raiding and rushing are a core part of XTA, and this is one of the parts of the game were player skill makes a huge difference, something the other *A mods "cushion" by having spammable llts and other light porc.

Your changes would lower the skill ceiling, make t1 basically "spam rocko". I'm not sure why you want to buff the unit that murders every other t1 unit.

[Jools]

Pintle, come and play!

[Hermuld]

The truth about balance can be found in old forgotten writings:

http://foto.arcor-online.net/palb/alben ... 373030.jpg
http://foto.arcor-online.net/palb/alben ... 343339.jpg
http://foto.arcor-online.net/palb/alben ... 336637.jpg

Sniper shot should eat 3% of sumo health.

[Jools]

Where is the rest of it?

[Hermuld]

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 7&start=36

[Jools]

Coming back to this thread: I think the crabe and garpike torpedoes are unproblematic, as these units lack sonar. You can't kill enemy commander in water with just these units (or raid uw fusions etc), you need also a sonar sub, and this is imo fine.

If I recall from lobby discussions, I think there would be a loose concensus to lower the hp of the zeus a bit. It's now 4200 hp, it was increased from 3100 about a year ago. Maybe 3800 would be a good hp? (decrease by 10%). The reason is just that some people feel that the zeus has a relly huge hp. I think I agree. Of course Core also has units with more hp, but Core is supposed to have lots of heavy and slow units.

Other than this I don't have any balance suggestions any more. I think we're quite good now.

[Hermuld]

-10% zeus hp might be good.

IMO the biggest problem with balance is OPness of t1 big ships. They rape all sea and land units. I'd nerf their dmg and aoe.

[pnöpel]

- other idea was orbital satellites for espionage or warfare, like in "supreme commander". when you can zoom out that far anyway, theres enough room / space for it
- additionaly, if it reminds me right knorke said that even a underground level should be possible, like in command & conquer
- we dont need more units on the ground, expanding in other dimensions, that would be a quantum jump

[Jools]

IMO the biggest problem with balance is OPness of t1 big ships. They rape all sea and land units. I'd nerf their dmg and aoe.

Maybe. But arm crusader core enforcer is basically a popup on a boat, and they have similar values compared to t1 land popups:

Arm Ambusher:
--------------
damage: 368
aoe: 100
range: 1250
reload time: 3.1
buildcost-m:1402
buildcost-e:11775

dmg/min/metalcost: 5.1

Arm Crusader:
-------------
damage: 346
aoe: 96
range: 950
reload time: 5
buildcost-m:898
buildcost-e:4537

dmg/min/metalcost: 5,8

Crusader is better on paper but ambusher has longer range. But the range of ambusher was decreased in the patches, so maybe crusader could be adjusted as well. But lolboats (vanguard) still beat crusader if they come close.

Core has very similar values.

[Jools]

Also, not balance change, but do we want this interface change?

> Cleaned up mouse drag commands in Custom Formations:
-> To give a line command: select command, right click & drag
-> To give a area command: select command, left click and drag
-> To area attack (bombers etc only): press a, press alt, left click and drag

[Jools]

Also, why do solar collectors and wind generators [sic] have a slope tolerance of 10 degrees? Wind generator is a pole, you stick it in ground and it works even if the ground uneven