Balanced Annihilation V6.5

[REVENGE]

Why have any E cost at all?

I forget, is there a reclaimtime tag?

[Dragoon]

Hi there, this is a discussion/rant on how IMO, BA has a couple of important balancing issues.

1. Ships have far too little hp and damage for their cost (very expensive in metal). The Arm cruiser such as the Conqueror has almost the same HP as the heavy tank bulldog, but costs more than 2x more.

Aren't cruisers and ships in general suppose to be much stronger than medium-tiered land units? Ships can only operate in water maps anyways, so IMO they should get more firepower and HP for their cost.

2. Hovercrafts are way overpowered. They are far cheaper than ships, and only slightly more expensive than land tanks. However, most of the hovertanks are just as strong as land tanks, and much faster. Furthermore, they can travel on water, which gives them a huge advantage. In fact, hovercrafts can overpower ships on water maps! On maps such as small supreme battlefield, I am constantly seeing hovercraft armies (not even the strongest type of hovercraft) swarm and overpower navies composed of destroyers/cruisers.

What is the point of even having a navy on a water map if hovercrafts can do the job just as well for far fewer resources?

3. I think goliaths cannons are overpowered...their cannons do more damage than the cannons of battleships (warlords/millenniums). Their cannons also do more damage than the Arm's Fatboy mortar cannon that resembles it.

I looked up its stats on TAS Modit, and it shows that the goliath cannon does 4x more damage than the medium range plasma artillery/heavy tank cannons/battleship & cruiser cannons. This is way too much damage for a unit that has a staggering 7000hp and only costs around 1600 metal. They basically do more damage, has almost 60% more hp, and costs far less than Arm/Core cruisers and does more damage and is far cheaper/cost effective than the battleships.
(again, this shows that the naval units are far underpowered)

4. As the others mentioned, AA defensive structures are a bit weak and some just don't work properly.


Other tidbits:
Perhaps increase the HP of the Arm Annihilator...3000hp makes it way too fragile compared to the 10,000 hp Core Doomsday device. It is a lvl3 base defense structure after all, and should have more hp.

BlueLaserofDeath/Annihilator guns are probably underpowered. I remember killing a goliath in 2 hits with the BLD, but now it takes like over 6 hits to kill a single one.

Increase the range of the medium range stationary artillery (guardians/punishers). I don't see why a popup gun like the toaster would out range the plasma artillery battery...?


*Thanks for moving it to the correct section. I must've missed this thread.

[Gota]

Reply.
There isa far deeper reason for this mess.
First of all Small supreme is a hover map If you want ot be honest not a ship map.If its not a hover map what map is?
Problem is That BA sea battles are not fun...unlike in OTA where they rocked.as a consequence people don't play Sea maps and think hover maps are actually sea maps.
Whats a pure Sea map? a Map with only water just like a a pure land map is a map where there is no water.
If water play was funner in BA people would play more pure sea maps or maps that are strongly inclined to sea gameplay and thus would feel that hovers are more appropriately balanced.Dont forget that to build hovers you need to build 2 labs..and the hover lab is much more expensive than the T1 sea lab.Also a sea player can build a submarine to takeout underwater mexes while hovers cant actually do anything efficient to remove underwater mexes except build a torpedo launcher which is quite a hassle compared to a submarine just moving near a mex.

The fact Guardians are crap in ba is a known issue.
In OTA You couldnt really assist labs like in BA hence there was a bigger chance of someone building a guardian in OTA when he had excess resources.
Guardians where also more powerful...a toaster is a t2 plasma turret that costs more than a guardian and thus needs to be more powerful but It is also underpowered in BA.
What is interesting is that in BA T2 gameplay is porcier than t1 while in OTA It was the other way around,which makes a lot more sense..

If im not mistaken Hovercrafts weremore T2 oriented in OTA which made sure T1 sea battles are preserved in any case...

[[Krogoth86]]

@Dragoon:
I quite disagree on your part about ships...
Well apart from the topic of what type/role ships should be like I cannot agree with your analysis. At first it seems you've mistaken something about the damage a Goliath can deal and what e.g. a battleship does. Battleships have weapons with much more dps and they don't have just one weapon. For cruisers that dps statement is true but they also are multi-role units and can fight subs too. Then there is something you totally ignored: range and speed. Your Goliath is of no use when it's trying to chase something fast (which is what cruisers and even battleships are) with way higher range...

That's also why hovercrafts aren't as superior as you say: With corvettes you have a good unit to deal with them as they have little range in BA and with destroyers and later on T2 units you can just "run away" at high speed while getting some fire on them due to high range. The interesting part about this probably is the beginning where you have to decide if you want to build corvettes to deal with the sure to come hovers or go for destroyers / subs. That's a bit tricky because if you prepare for hovercrafts you're weak to enemy subs which makes sea the most difficult discipline to play in BA imo...

I have to agree though an what you said about the Annihilator and some AA structures. I also suggested increasing its health and doing something about it's damage (as it uses the standard "damage decreases with range which makes it deal just 50% at max range which it definitely will with the first shot and then takes ages to reload). It was rejected though as people think of it just as a tool like the Guardian which is there to be built near enemy defenses and to outrange them. Imo even that view is a bit dumb as any vlaunch tank is better for that job and makes building an Anni impossible. If you manage to do so nevertheless an Anni imo isn't worth the effort anyway...

When talking about AA structures you have to mind the principle that static AA won't stop bombers which is a set gameplay device in BA. It's true though that T1 Sams and Chainsaw/Eradicator are useless crap for their price...

I also won't mind the T3 Mech situation at this moment yet again...

[Pxtl]

And yet, despite how you think Goliaths are OP, they're basically never seen - ever wonder why? Because of certain other stats, like range and speed. The Goliath is slow and not terribly long-ranged. More conventional assault tanks are preferred except for fighting dense swarms (where the Goliath's blast radius comes in) or for tight chokepoints (where the Goliath is more like a turret).

Not realizing this kind of invalidates your whole argument, since it means you're really only considering the "damage" side of the equation. And yes, you will only see boats in mostly-naval or island-oriented maps, because Small Supreme has a big peninsula cutting the ocean in half, meaning that the naval forces are necessarily divided while the hovertank forces can play the whole map. Play a map like Sands of War to see some real naval action.

Hovertanks might be somewhat overpowered, but Small Supreme isn't the map to prove it on - Small Supreme was practically made for hovers.

[Dragoon]

@[Krogoth86]

@Dragoon:
Battleships have weapons with much more dps and they don't have just one weapon. For cruisers that dps statement is true but they also are multi-role units and can fight subs too.

I have taken into account they have more weapons. Even if you add up both cannon shells of the Millennium battleship, it still does less damage than a single goliath shell. And why exactly does a cruiser have nearly 40% less health as a goliath, yet its metal cost is more expensive? As for fighting subs, counter-subs and torpedo planes do a better job at that. Jack of all trades but decent at none.

Then there is something you totally ignored: range and speed. Your Goliath is of no use when it's trying to chase something fast (which is what cruisers and even battleships are) with way higher range...

If something is fast enough to run away from the goliath and still fire at it, then it is probably too weak to do any damage to it. Furthermore, goliaths are usually used for base assaults. If you run away from goliaths attacking you, then your base is dead.

That's also why hovercrafts aren't as superior as you say: With corvettes you have a good unit to deal with them as they have little range in BA and with destroyers and later on T2 units you can just "run away" at high speed while getting some fire on them due to high range.

Again, if you run away from a force attacking your base, you will lose the game. Micro-ing individual units for hit & runs may well work in Starcraft, but not TA - you can't really rely on that to win the game.



@Pxtl

And yet, despite how you think Goliaths are OP, they're basically never seen - ever wonder why? Because of certain other stats, like range and speed. The Goliath is slow and not terribly long-ranged...Not realizing this kind of invalidates your whole argument, since it means you're really only considering the "damage" side of the equation.

The goliath actually does have a good range. It's range is longer than its line of sight, so if you have radar/scouts, you can use it as an artillery. It out ranges the heavy laser towers and does 4x more damage than the other medium range plasma defenses. And it may be slow, but a single one can take out legions of lvl1 units.

The main point is...why do goliaths have a more damaging cannon than a freking battleship? The goliath cannon even does more damage than the experimental black hydra. This not just merely a damage equation, but just a general issue. A gigantic tech3 blackhydra battleship with turrets bigger than the entire goliath tank does less damage than the goliath cannon...

Hovertanks might be somewhat overpowered, but Small Supreme isn't the map to prove it on - Small Supreme was practically made for hovers.

The point is, hovercrafts defeat navies because they have way too much hp for a hover unit and are far more COST effective than any naval unit. Hovercrafts are suppose to full fill a dual purpose role of land and sea attack. They are theoretically suppose to be a "jack of all trades but a master of none." They are not suppose to be more cost effective or stronger than navies in the water, whose sole purpose is to dominate the sea.

[jellyman]

I always thought the big problem with naval balance in BA was the difficulty of defending against early raids.

With land, spend 150 metal to put down 2 llts, combine with a commander, and you have a defence that cannot be easily taken out.

Whereas is sea the lightest defence costs 300 metal and is not particularly good either, and the commander has no defensive capabilities whatsoever (except reclaim the attacker).

Basically a BA sea battle seems to be won or lost within the first few minutes by whoever gets skeeters to the opponents base the fastest.

So whether this is definitely a true understanding of sea balance or not (I haven't played very many sea battles), I'm sure most other BA players share this perception, resulting in sea battles being much less popular.

[Scikar]

You are completely misreading the damage ouput stats. The Goliath cannon deals 900 damage but it only fires once every 3 seconds. The Warlord's plasma cannon deals 450 damage but fires every 0.5 seconds. The Warlord deals three times as much damage as the Goliath, and we haven't even counted the Warlord's laser cannon! The Millenium's cannons deal 300 damage per shot, but each one fires every 0.4 seconds for a combined output of 5 times the damage of the Goliath.

HLT range is irrelevant, it's a T1 defence tower and should not be expected to stop a Goliath. The Pitbull and Viper have more range so there is no problem.

Lastly there are plenty of effective units for stopping Goliaths. Banishers have 50% more speed, more range, cost less and deal 1k damage with each rocket. Arm Penetrators can't fire backwards even though they're faster, but they have much more range and 2.5k base damage. Both of these units are expressly designed to take out heavily armored but slow units like the Goliath. You should be fighting slow units like the Goliath as they cross the map, not waiting for them to arrive before trying to kill them.

The only valid point you've really got here is in ship versus hover balance, though even this is poorly made. You complain that hovers are too powerful despite their multi-role capability, and yet in the same breath deride the cruiser for having too little HP/cost compared the Bulldog despite the fact it's faster, has more range, deals more damage and can attack submarines.

The real issue with hover/ship balance is that as Pxtl pointed out going corvettes can easily cost you the game against a ship player, and going subs/destroyers can easily cost you the game against a hover player. On top of that corvettes can't kill a hover lab that isn't right on the shore and even destroyers don't have too much range, but hovers can always kill shipyards.

[Gota]

You are completely misreading the damage ouput stats. The Goliath cannon deals 900 damage but it only fires once every 3 seconds. The Warlord's plasma cannon deals 450 damage but fires every 0.5 seconds. The Warlord deals three times as much damage as the Goliath, and we haven't even counted the Warlord's laser cannon! The Millenium's cannons deal 300 damage per shot, but each one fires every 0.4 seconds for a combined output of 5 times the damage of the Goliath.

HLT range is irrelevant, it's a T1 defence tower and should not be expected to stop a Goliath. The Pitbull and Viper have more range so there is no problem.

Lastly there are plenty of effective units for stopping Goliaths. Banishers have 50% more speed, more range, cost less and deal 1k damage with each rocket. Arm Penetrators can't fire backwards even though they're faster, but they have much more range and 2.5k base damage. Both of these units are expressly designed to take out heavily armored but slow units like the Goliath. You should be fighting slow units like the Goliath as they cross the map, not waiting for them to arrive before trying to kill them.

The only valid point you've really got here is in ship versus hover balance, though even this is poorly made. You complain that hovers are too powerful despite their multi-role capability, and yet in the same breath deride the cruiser for having too little HP/cost compared the Bulldog despite the fact it's faster, has more range, deals more damage and can attack submarines.

The real issue with hover/ship balance is that as Pxtl pointed out going corvettes can easily cost you the game against a ship player, and going subs/destroyers can easily cost you the game against a hover player. On top of that corvettes can't kill a hover lab that isn't right on the shore and even destroyers don't have too much range, but hovers can always kill shipyards.

But your forgetting underwater labs..

[Scikar]

But your forgetting underwater labs..

No I'm not? The advantage of hovers is that you can use the exact same units you take control of the sea with to raid your opponent's land economy. Underwater labs give you subs and amphibious tanks, neither of which can fight hovers and neither of which can attack both sea and land.

[Pxtl]

Obviously BA is not the place to play with balance, but my opinions on the subject:

1) torpedos (not depth-charges) should hit hovers. Consider switching the destroyer to use torpedoes instead of depth-charges.
2) give the comm a torpedo-launcher so he can help fight rushes. I mean what's the risk? It's not like he can comm-rush under water.

This will make the L1 torp-launcher a viable defense against hovers.

Now, a question for Hover players: when fighting over the water, is there _any_ way to attack underwater units? Do any hovers have the ability to see underwater? I mean, I send out hovers to conquer an enemy resource field, and win... but then how do I get rid of his mexes? I send cons to reclaim them, but the cons can't see them.

[Gota]

Oo
Maybe you shouldn't be making balance suggestions than.
Hovers cant do anything except build a sonar and or a torp launcher.

[Pxtl]

Oo
Maybe you shouldn't be making balance suggestions than.
Hovers cant do anything except build a sonar and or a torp launcher.

I don't usually bring out the hovers until late, when I've already got other technology used for spotting. Recently tried hover-rushing and ran into that problem. So yeah, you just build sonars?

[ginekolog]

hovers are fine. they die to corvetes/cruisers, to gunships as they have shity AA and to ground tanks. They are still usefull to spam and it rox - to have an usefull but not OP hoovers.

What i still miss is amhib AA unit so even amhibs would have their stealhy usage. Now the die to gunships like crap.

[Pxtl]

I'd just make the L1 AA kbots amphibious and add them to the amphib labs. A tiny change - they're rarely used anyways. Then amphib strike forces would have a way to fight defensive L1 gunships.

Still, don't think it would help much anyways, amphibs are rarely used in comparison to hovers and aircraft for invading from water.

[Evil4Zerggin]

Re: Recent posts:

1. Modinfo doesn't tell you everything. For example, the battleship has a scripted reload time--the script was made before ShotX existed, so the 0.4/0.5s reload time actually acts more like a burstrate. The true reload time (for each burst of 3 shots), which is scripted, is about 3.45 for armbats and 3.65 for corbats.

2. You need sonar to see underwater units. So building a sonar with hovercraft will indeed allow you to reclaim underwater mexes.

3. Engine "feature": by default, laser damage (such as CORVETTES) drops off with range, to 50% at max range. So if you're fighting hovers (or anything really) with corvettes, get close.

4. The difficulty of defending sea is that there are three ways to attack you, air, hover, and sub, and no single unit is good at defending more than two of them; most are only good at one.

5. IMX (haven't played in a while though), sea is indeed very rushy. PT rushes can be reclaimed well enough, but you can win most sea battles in about three minutes by rushing a quick vette. Too many people use con start with no defense.

[Gota]

Its cause Vettes are the "main" sea units because they are so powerfull compared to hovers and other ships.
In OTA T1 sea balance was based around the scouts which were both anti air and anti land and were cheap.This allowed for smoother battles because even if you lose a scout its not the end of the world plus there were shore defences,the missile towers that provided good coastal defence if there were also some units around...
all these components made it harder to fail at the begining and made loses and wins more incremental.
Also units had low los and radar coverage wasn't big so it was risky to just go all out and attack unless you somehow know where exactly your opponent's ships are..
In ba Since hovers are tough and sea needs to counter them corvettes were chosen for that and they now deal massive damage so one corvette can blast your shipyard in seconds and since there is no cheap defence to guard your shore like the cheap missile towers,you risk losing expansion time if you build sea defenses .
This all accumulates into a high risk gameplay at sea-like CA's gameplay is..hence it sux.
also subs are a viable start which makes it even worse since it is so hard to scout all these options at the start it becomes very random.
All Ba needs is a floating "llt" to counter the "main" unit just like on land..

[ginekolog]

i play sea all the time and torpedo launcher OR deep charge launchers kill scouts and vets easily. They are very good defense and fall only to microed destroeyer at T1. Use these ppl.

I would agree to haave T1 AA kbots amphibs and buildable by amhib lab.

[Gota]

Amphibs are not used cause they just suck in general.they are underpowered.
Yes off shore def and torpedo launchers are good but also expensive and in some cases may not provide full coverage of your shipyard for example...and or may stagnate you while the other guy pumped a con and while your stalling the con is already moving thereby increasing its usefulness because movement doesn't cost resources.
and if he isn't a fool by the time your torpedo launcher is used your already losing.

[Pxtl]

@Evil4Zerggin - that's why I think the Comm should get a torp launcher, just so can keep the scouts and vettes away from the lab and make sea less rushy.

Not going to happen, of course - BA stability and all that - but I really think it would help get sea maps a little more playable, since the mega-rush start is a big turn off for a lot of players.