Balanced Annihilation 7.42

[det]

Can you please upload to rapid, thanks.

[Wombat]

hurr, why metal makers dont show any income ?

bring back old mms and mex... another 'fix' that doesnt make much sense...

did u remove armor class ? totally ?

[Jazcash]

Ok so I just played 3 games of this latest version. It's a joke. You're gonna roll back soon ... right guys?

[Floris]

It's a joke indeed, although it's a step in the right direction but way way overdone.

seriously reducing all fighters to 50 hp? sick bastards

[Wombat]

Ok so I just played 3 games of this latest version. It's a joke. You're gonna roll back soon ... right guys?

bah, wanted to start troll after confirimg armor classes... u was faster

seriously, worst... balance... release... ever... cant belive u didnt notice what (positive) influence on the gameplay armor classes got

keep widgets ( no not this mm bullshit), backstage fixes, hlt and samson nerf
game is 10x more enjoyable

dont touch eco plz

felt like playing new game...

[Floris]

I kinda liked the new mm system since I can controll my e consumption better. I would even like to have a 'hover' bar to regulate nano e consumption, so I always will have e to dgun or to fire static defences.

[Pxtl]

Why keep the HLT nerf? If the HLT is OP, buff the T1 artillery, a unit that exists as nothing but the counter to the HLT.

[Gigamez]

It's a joke indeed, although it's a step in the right direction but way way overdone.

seriously reducing all fighters to 50 hp? sick bastards

totally agreed with floris (except "sick bastards", XD).

The purposes of changes are good, but there are some things to fix, in my opinion.

- Commanders are stunnable by a little group of core drones, and this is
unacceptable!
- ALL fightrers have 50HP, less than a single core drone!!! :O My suggestion is to set them to 100HP for t1 fighters, and 170HP for t2 ones.
- without arm paralyzing-bombers there are only core drones. they are too cheap, without a real alternative into arm' army, and they have more HP than any fighters: they're affordable to attach the enemy in ALL cases. Too unbalanced, too powerful.. in my opinion.
- i can't see how new metal makers works. How many Energy are able to tranform in how many metal? :S i don't know, actually.

for now that's all.. i'll write more after more played games :)

[Wombat]

Why keep the HLT nerf? If the HLT is OP, buff the T1 artillery, a unit that exists as nothing but the counter to the HLT.

if it would be up to me, i would remove hlt and few more turrets. also art is useful vs hlt only, i cba to make one use units >>

[Johannes]

Arty is useful vs any t1 turret, it's like a samson with 2x dps against them. And hlt is easiest turret to repair, so in that regard it's least useful vs that.

[Ares]

Had a long ffa sea game on 2 continents. The hp-regen made Reaper's Epoch nigh-unkillable with basic micro on his part, he didn't need to repair it himself. Although, this is an extreme example I'm sure this game play change echo's awkwardly throughout the unit spectrum.

How does proportional hp regen achieve anything other than stacking the odds further in favour of the player with a larger economy/map control/advantage?

[Wombat]

@johan - maybe it is, but i still prefer to rape llt/these dt things/ beamer with stump/raider and use them later again. never seen anyone making arty just to kill beamer.

lets get it straight... first time ever ive seen host owners asking how to downgrade ba...

[Gota]

Had a long ffa sea game on 2 continents. The hp-regen made Reaper's Epoch nigh-unkillable with basic micro on his part, he didn't need to repair it himself. Although, this is an extreme example I'm sure this game play change echo's awkwardly throughout the unit spectrum.

How does proportional hp regen achieve anything other than stacking the odds further in favour of the player with a larger economy/map control/advantage?

Sumo must be godly now..

[Pxtl]

iirc, autoheal was a flat 10hp/s for every unit until it got set to zero, wasn't it?

perhaps just using flat-levels per-tier would be best - it would be consistant that the smaller, weaker units of the tier would be able to rely on autoheal, but the larger ones wouldn't.

Say, 10hp/s for T1, 50hp/s for T2/Comm, and 200hp/s for T3. That means the smallest units of a tier will usually see a 20ish-second idle heal time and the largest units will be about 5-10 minutes.

Just throwing it out there - the numbers are obviously heavily fudged.

[Wombat]

perhaps just using flat-levels per-tier would be best

its better idea, but... i think that not all units need that. for example t1 got rezbots and t1 units usually die fast, so its not needed. another example - sea cons got epic build power (especially naval engineer, which got best BP compared to cost as far as i know)

imo, not all units should have/need 'idle-heal'. t3 and majority of t2 vehs definitely do (lot of hp and they survive longer than t1). not all t2 kbots need that, coz of fark and freaker.

(on side note, units should attack and die, not idle :D)

[Johannes]

The 5hp/sec idleregen, that everyone used to have, did often matter a lot for t1 units. And new and old regens might be pretty close for flash and gator actually.

But it scales for big things much better than for them - if I attack with 15 flashes, 5 survive and avoid conflict for long enough for autoregen to kick in. I get 5*flash hp/100 regen, assuming that all of them got hit, and when any reach full hp the hp gain goes down.
Now compare to 1 golly with roughly same cost, hp, buildtime as those flashes. When it loses same amount of hp as that bunch of flashes did, it can back off and its hp regen rate is still at max, and will remain so until it's at full hp. So any big units benefit a lot from hp regen being tied to hp, not just compared to the old system but compared to nothing having regen as well.

[Pxtl]

perhaps just using flat-levels per-tier would be best

its better idea, but... i think that not all units need that. for example t1 got rezbots and t1 units usually die fast, so its not needed. another example - sea cons got epic build power (especially naval engineer, which got best BP compared to cost as far as i know)

imo, not all units should have/need 'idle-heal'. t3 and majority of t2 vehs definitely do (lot of hp and they survive longer than t1). not all t2 kbots need that, coz of fark and freaker.

(on side note, units should attack and die, not idle :D)

Well, under my system Sea units would see the worst proportionate idle-heal, because sea units are disproportionately large for their level. I mean, a Millenium is at the same level as a Zipper. So for sea, you'd definitely have to bring out some of that massive buildpower rather than let the idle heal handle things.

[klapmongool]

Great balance changes on the fighters, ground AA and samsons! A fix for fighter abuse was long overdue and now we got it. Finally we can go back to playing the game instead of spamming fighterscreens only to be used to run into the nmy fighterscreen. Ofc Floris says he doesnt like that change: that was the only thing he could do. It is time to try some other tactics!

Also it is nice to see that samson spam is no longer as strong as it was. People are now forced to actually mix units.

About the HLT nerf: I agree that it would be better to fix arty instead. HLT's were never really hard to overrun anyway. They still would require a good deal of accompanying DPS and repairing to stop incoming attacks.

The idle autoheal could use some rethinking. Personally i never had a problem with arranging repairs for damaged units. I do not see my tactical gameplay improving in that respect due to this change. I will just reserve less buildpower for repairs... Also i was kinda surprised by the autoheal speed on my commander... too much. Take it down a notch or two.

In general I like this release: great stuff guys, and thanks for the hard work!

[Cheesecan]

Right now only two hosts are running 7.42. You've obviously failed in getting your changes through with the players, so now is the time when you should concede defeat and remove the most heavily criticized changes.

[dansan]

Not directly related to this release, but kind of relevant in terms of "making things transparent" (so sneaking it in here anyway):

I'd like units to have some kind of description / tooltip / whatever that indicates their "special power". Like with (undocumented) armor classes there is hidden damage in some units. For example the HLT is a hidden com killer (as strong against com as pitbul), Penetrator vs. Seadragon/Hydra, Merl/Diplomat is "weak" against com, all Torpedo-Air is strong vs. Krog. I think that's it (?).

I like units having special strength/weakness/armor against others. To take advantage of it, it's necessarily to have it documented. I think it makes the game(play) more attractive. Especially if the game should attract new players.

BTW: same goes for maps: some have ground that is fast for kbots or veh. But there is no way to know about it (except reading map source code or experimental). Having something like the hightmap or M-map that indicates special ground would be nice. It's important for tactics, so I'd like to know about it before the game starts.

Sorry... two feature requests in one posting (possibly in the wrong thread)... what would be the right place for this?