Niobium wrote: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.
- TFC explicitly says he was not agree with some points. So is TFC not part of the BA team (but since he is doing some job here
http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balatest/timeline/ he should be in ) either you are wrong
- According to
http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balatest/timeline/ you are the one implementing most of the balance changes. I have some doubt you discuss anything with anybody. Does any poeple actually playing BA (not DSD only ofc) was involve into that balance ? Or it is only based on specing DSD ? I assume behe agree with all of this ?
Reduced samson/slasher HP 30% (~1100 -> ~720)
This change wont affect anyone except in some maps where player dont follow recommandation, lets say DSD 8v8 ... (DSD is design for 5v5 max btw). Since dps have not been reduce agais air and since that is all that count for most of players, I can say it is a really minor change (but a huge (and good) change for DSD)
Reduced HLT HP 30% (~2400 -> ~1680)
HLT already is the less cost effective T1 defence unit. Looks like you never heard that tank spam was able rape easily in most of game (except 10v10DSD ofc)
Reducing HLT HP is actaully really bad cause now arm can still easily defend against rocko spam (still the most cost effective t1 def is beamer) whereas core is fucked with low HLT hp and no beamer.
Reverse it
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[b]Removed arm EMP bomber[/b]
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)
Was a really god unit that could prevent t3 spam. It was one of the only unit that is not a click-and-hope-for-the-best unit. Still, it requiers a lot of micro to be used, so it is not OP (since player are not stupid and bring AA with unit. Ofc if you make fighters with 50hp, that is a different story, but I will come back on the fact that 50 hp fighters are the worse change..
Bring it back
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[b]All fighter HP reduced to 50 (1-hit killed by all antiair)[/b]
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.
This will have 2 consequences.
First consequence is that it will be much more difficult to kill key stucture (like Buzzsaw, Anti nuke, etc...) casue if you want to kill a stucture, you have to bring fighter with it so bomber dont get instantaneously kill by t2 fighters. Some grounnd AA will kill them all.
As a reuslt, to counter this, poeple are going to spam even more plane to get their target
Second consequence is about killing other fighter screen: now, t1 air scout have more hp and are much cheaper than T1/T2 fighters.
That means it is extremely usefull and cost effective to spam a lot of them in order to get the hit from other fighter that would kill t1 fighter instantaneouly (but not scout for basic ground AA).
This will result in massive T1 scout spam. Since their are much cheaper this will result in much more unit spam than T2 fighters...
Third consequence which results of two fist. Game will last longer cause a global air nerf increase the eco Fest, thus the spam...
Worse idea of this realease for performance and gameplay reasons, reverse it
Playing just one game with this new version, and everyone find scout spam op already.
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[b]Reduced bertha/intimidator range (6200/600 -> 4000)
Increased bertha/intimidator range increase with height[/b]
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.
I find the idea interesting however... if the range of emp is less than a berta with high ground, that mean that the one which has the high ground can gain ground and spam more berta buy killing ennemy's berta.... Plus since killing them with air is almost impossible if hp50 fighter stays like that (making the game ultra porcy) this could give a really huge advantage on map like throne for exemple.
reverse it OR bring back decent air and increase emp launcher range (EDIT) to match max range of berta
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[b]Anti nukes no longer stockpile, effectively starting with unlimited missiles
Anti nuke energy costs reduced 50% (~60000 -> ~30000)[/b]
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.
Auto stock pile is good cause it save time in microing in not microing it.
Increasing the cost of Anti fuck the balance in all maps (excpt ofc 12v12 DSD....)
Reverse the eco part of the Anti OR make a mode for DSD
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[b]Reduced karganeth missile velocity 50%[/b]
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.
if 50hp fighter stay like that that mean razorback will be awsome figher killer while karganeth is not
Reverse 50hp fighters
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[b]Removed 50% damage reduction from pitbull/viper when closed[/b]
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.
Core has doomstay and core player wont care about that. That just make arm T2 def even worse and unba evenmore that part
Reverse it OR totally rethink arm T2 defence
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[b]T2 bombers are now precision bombers, dropping fewer bombers over a shorter distance (same single-target damage)[/b]
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.
Now only arm can snipe commander with nuke bomber since t2 bomber does not do the work.
I test those bombers, you need almost double T2 bomber to kill Advanced fusion for example
As a result : Arm is much better at air now cause all t2 air suck except nuke bomber, and that bring lot of unba between arm and core.
Second result is
spamming T1 core bomber is most cost effective to kill advanced fusion: yes, more spam, again !
increase dps of t2 bombers
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[b]Teams now have base storage, commander storage now 0/0[/b]
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.
Looks nice, but after a ffa game resing some come I ended with +4k storage after selfD. BuG ? ressource should go to allies and not be stored virtually somewhere.
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[b]Normalized idle autoheal. 1% hp/second after 30 seconds.[/b]
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.
You told this has been discuss with all BA team. I would like to know who actaully agree with it.
You might have notice almost noone is playing this new BA. That is a shame cause there are really some nice work done about graphics, annimation, features, etc. But in the same time, most of the "rebalancing" totally unbalance the game and make it more porcy and more like a "normal RTS" reducing the ability of the special weapons and air unit.
As a conclusion I would say you should discuss this balance changes with poeple that are use to play in order to know if what you are doing is good. Majority is not always right but you could ask poeple like: 8D, kixu, johanes, keijjo, etc....
I hope I have not been to offensive but I really have the feeling those balance thing has been thought for DSD and I wanted to make my point clear.
Thank you for your work :p
