Balanced Annihilation Development

[Pako]

Sea is almost perfectly balanced and only part left in BA where porcing is not a feasible option.

[Gota]

BA is not porcy.
I suppose 8v8 on DSD IS porcy but the only way to make BA immune to porc after people over crowed maps is to remove all turrets completely.

[imbaczek]

remove all turrets completely.

which is a fine idea, and one that works very well in e.g. starcraft (where the only turrets are basically llts and defenders.)

[Gota]

Yep,i was thinking of it,I just prefered not to mention that unholy blizzard creation

[Saktoth]

The first problem with sea is that nobody knows how to play it, and nobody is playing it (with det and i gone). You cant fix it if you dont understand it. Correct me if i am wrong, if anyone still plays BA sea, i'd love to give you a game.

The second problem is that there are no really good sea (or ship) maps. Ship maps need...

1. A ship start position. 3 closely clustered mexes with a spot to start shipyard nearby (even if the mexes are on land, the shore should be steep enough to allow the shipyard right next to the shore, shallow enough to allow the com to walk down).
2. One, single, contiguous area of water (Not SSB, not Tangerine).
3. Defensible areas, chokepoints, etc. Not just a massive, flat, open area.
4. If a mixed sea/land map, somewhere to interact with the land players (Shallows etc).

When i designed Scorpio, i tried to do this, but it suffers a bit too much from having the sea players start opposite eachother. They dont engage eachother nearly as much, or as soon, as they should.

There is almost no defense - you've got the comm's beefy nanolathe and and some very expensive defenses that will get pwned by the first destroyer to come along.

A repaired torpedo launcher is incredibly hard to kill, and BP is cheap on sea. 1 TL + 1 con vs a destroyer lasts for 40 seconds or so. Two cons totally outpace a destroyer, and 2 cons + 1 TL costs LESS than the destroyer. A com repaired TL takes 2 minutes to kill.

Why not allow the com to dgun or laser underwater? Or maybe a torp launcher?

1. D-gun, no way. D-gun is already insane vs ships, one good d-gun near the shore and it will turn the game around. Ships are expensive. This of course requires maps with a lot of shore, like SoW, though.

2. Any kind of underwater weapon, and he becomes like a sub. He makes corvettes useless, requiring antisub weaponry to beat him.

But in truth, he already has a (fairly weak) underwater weapon. Its called reclaim. If he is up in your factory with a scout boat you cant kill, just reclaim him (Or better, capture him). You can make a corvette-heavy force run away in terror when you start capturing him from beneath the surface. Anything much more powerful than this, and the commander would be an utter terror.

So how to fix sea?

There are half a dozen options that could be persued, say, turninplace=0 for ships so they become much easier to micro (but in turn, this will change the balance a bit, esp with projectile dodging vs destroyers and subs). But what it really needs is players who understand it.

[JohannesH]

Good sea maps are needed... The interesting thing with sea imo is the different possible tech choices and how to use them in unison. Compared to land where theres usually just the option of going air besides staying on the land factory you started with.



And why is porcing being an option a bad thing?
Also comparing to Starcraft... Theres not only the basic turrets (which sometimes are spammed loads anyway) but also defensive stuff like siege tanks, mines, lurkers, and the maps are much more chokey. Its much porcier game than BA imo but thats not just negative.

[Regret]

The first problem with sea is that nobody knows how to play it, and nobody is playing it (with det and i gone). You cant fix it if you dont understand it.

Ego tripping much? Get out.

[Gota]

Sea is not played enough.
Yes it is played by some good players but not as much as land.
Hovers are not oped.
ON pure sea maps,unlike GoW which can hardly be called a sea map at all,since it doesn't even have sea mexes,hovers are useless.

IMO,the real question is why is sea played so little and what makes it less appealing.
IMO,there are 2 possibilities:
1)it is because sea maps tend to be rock paper compared to land and the land sea air dynamics are less fun when they are accentuated strongly in BA.
sea maps are very unforgiving compared to land maps.
The commander unlike on land maps cannot function as the first defense against rushes and no land defense aside from the expensive hlt can function as defense against ships or hovers(torps and off shore turret fail versus hovers (llt fails versus ships) and are not good defenses unless you already know what the other player started with).
corvettes might be a bad base unit as they are very expensive as oppose to sea scouts(OTA's base sea unit) or flash/land scouts which makes gameplay less fun.
Air is of course useless in 1v1...and is utter crap versus sea.
Perhaps the introduction of torp gunships into t1 can help to smoothen(although with dedicated aa scout ships it is pretty hopeless) the air sea dynamics while having zero impact on land air balance.

2)not enough sea maps.
There are very little quality sea maps....
Mappers have completely abandoned them,both for small games,1v1 and big team games.
perhaps the fact sea maps ignore obstacles versus submarines and just leave huge blank spaces of water both above sea lvl and under sea level as oppose to making small land patches or underwater hills is another reason.

[JohannesH]

Air is definitely not useless vs sea. Theres often not that many scout ships usually before air is spotted. Winds and tidals die to bomber easily, trans is useful when theres different islands to get to, even gunships can work out too.

Of course air doesnt work out if the enemy anticipates it, like on any small map.

And in sea mapping, theres all sorts of things possible that havent been explored at all yet. Just dont place mexes in water, is a good guideline.

[Sausage]

what I don't like about sea is that there is so few boats to chose from and it is slow and boring.

[Gota]

Air is definitely not useless vs sea. Theres often not that many scout ships usually before air is spotted. Winds and tidals die to bomber easily, trans is useful when theres different islands to get to, even gunships can work out too.

Of course air doesnt work out if the enemy anticipates it, like on any small map.

And in sea mapping, theres all sorts of things possible that havent been explored at all yet. Just dont place mexes in water, is a good guideline.

I meant as a continues strategy.
Sure you can use atlas and air con to reclaim,onc in a while but in all cases you cannot win with air versus a competent player.
Once those AA boats come its over.

[JohannesH]

you mean starting air or what? yeah that surely fails, at least if enemy started with sea lab. But how good should an air start be then

[Gota]

you mean starting air or what? yeah that surely fails, at least if enemy started with sea lab. But how good should an air start be then

In BA it probably cant be any better without a major rebalance cause of the fact that AA is dedicated AA.
If air was to become better the game would become much more RPS.
In OTA for example,where air and sea maps are very popular and considered very fun(many of the most popular maps are sea/air maps) the air sea land transition is much smoother cause of universal defenses like the Missile tower.
It can defend versus land,it can defend versus sea cause it has high range and it can defend versus air and hovers.
Subs are weak although sometimes usable.

In BA you have first of all dedicated air defenses and only the samson and slasher are universal defenses and you also have dedicated defenses like the llt that is only good versus land units,namely scouts.
Torps and offshore are also dedicated and are either very powerful versus subs or die without giving dmg versus destroyers and hovers.

IMO these are the main reasons why BA sea and air are not as popular as in say OTA(air in OTA is just much more microable and powerfull especially certain units like bombers and t2 air fighters).
In XTA where AA is not dedicated it just sucks.
Most turrets are pretty bad for cost when played with the same player and map size ratio as BA and the commander is the main defense.
The com and the player numbers and map sizes XTA is usually played on(many players on small maps,probably for the same reason BA DSD is played overcrowded as well) make XTA feel porcier to some.

A nice test owuld be to make torp turrets able to hit hovers.
I bet maps with water would feel much "smoother".

[YokoZar]

Sea shouldn't require very narrowly defined "good sea maps" to be fun. Land maps can vary tremendously, and they all tend to result in pretty good games, especially when resources are standard.


I believe "good sea maps" are the ones that minimize the current problems with sea, such as it being very difficult to defend an open base from scouts. On land you can make 3 LLTs to reasonably destroy jeffies in every corner, but on sea 3 torpedo launchers will cost you a fortune.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

sea needs floating llt

[Saktoth]

Sea shouldn't require very narrowly defined "good sea maps" to be fun. Land maps can vary tremendously, and they all tend to result in pretty good games, especially when resources are standard.

Standard resources, like 3 starting mexes? How many good maps do you know which dont have 3 starting mexes? How many sea maps do you know with 3 starting mexes in/near the sea? Yeah, exactly. Even something this trivial mappers dont get right.

I believe "good sea maps" are the ones that minimize the current problems with sea, such as it being very difficult to defend an open base from scouts.

Scouts are not a problem, how many times do we have to go over this. Capture them. Reclaim them. Ignore them and just finish your damn vette. You can reclaim with a ship con, if you dont have your commander nearby (yes the ship con survives, and you get 100 metal). Ship scouts are bloody awful, flash cost for jeffy power.

On land you can make 3 LLTs to reasonably destroy jeffies in every corner, but on sea 3 torpedo launchers will cost you a fortune.

So many things wrong with what you just said. Firstly, torpedoes go right through allied buildings, you dont need to worry about more than one for full coverage, and their range should cover your whole base, ESPECIALLY vs sea scouts with their pitiful range.

sea needs floating llt

LLT cannot kill a single vette, you would need 2 llts in any area to even begin to be useful defense, and its totally defenseless vs subs. Dont say you need it to kill scout boats- scout boats are pathetic (and can just hide on the other side of your sea fac, so that really you need 3 to kill the scout boat, which means you might as well buy a tl...).

Maybe if you built 2 of them everywhere they might get some play, but its not going to 'fix sea' and make it play like land. Sea mexes require subs and destroyers to raid them, and these units both make sea laser towers completely useless, so defending your sea mexes with sea llts just wont happen. You will only be defending your base using them, and torpedo launcher is better at that just due to the sub issue. The only time an llt would be good to defend your base is if it were immune to subs- IE, ON LAND.

It would require floating mexes to even begin to consider making sea play like land (not saying floating mexes would 'fix' the game either, but they would make it more like land play).

[Hacked]

gota's argument about dedicated air and torps made sense

[1v0ry_k1ng]

floating HLLT/beamer

floating mex made standard. underwater mex made expensive alternative, sort of like metal extractor vs twilight

superfix9000 done

[Saktoth]

gota's argument about dedicated air and torps made sense

Air is brilliant in BA, and vs sea, with torp bombers, possibly too good. Only thing that counters this is scout boat spam (now, as AA, thats something they are good at). There is no problem with air being 'too weak' because of hardcounter relationships, and land-firing defenders would suck vs ships.

Torpedoes vs hovers might be worth considering, but it would mean their only recourse vs subs is to get up onto land (which isnt actually all that bad), or they need torpedo hovers (which means they can raid mexes). This would make hovercraft weaker, which would appease all the people bitching but only make them even more useless on SoW.

floating HLLT/beamer

Sub bait. Only as a hovercraft counter.

floating mex made standard. underwater mex made expensive alternative, sort of like metal extractor vs twilight

Noize said he thinks they look 'ugly' so probably not going to happen. Aesthetics over balance? Still, floaty mexes are not a 1-shot solution to the sea game, CA has them and they dont 'fix' it.

[Gota]

Your talking about t2 air.
And its not brilliant its just that flak in ba is utter crap for cost.
The only 1v1 sea map you actually go t2 is coast to coast remake.

There is nothing brilliant about air if by brilliant you mean useful.
Air is crap but since AA is dedicated people dont make a lot of it until they know the enemy has or will have air thus making an early air attack an effective surprise weapon and even that can only be used rarely.
When AA is built,even the lightest AA which is missile towers t1 air becomes shit immediately.
The somewhat useful t1 air unit is the emp gunship ,for defense,but that's about it.

This is why in team games people immediately go t2 air because t2 air is way more effective for cost while the aa turrets are actually worse for cost and the only way to stop t2 bombers is with fighters.