The slightest T1 vs T2 tweak

[tzaeru]

Let's pretext this with a recount of my favorite part in Balanced Annihilation: The strategy involved in determining when you can push with T1, when you need to pull to the defensive, when you need to tech up and when you need to abandon your T1 efforts wholly. This is a strategical element that, I dare to claim, many strategy games lack altogether.

Particularly in smaller games (talking 3v3 to 5v5), if you didn't manage to raid down the opponent early on, there tends to come a moment when your 20 rockos and 25 peewees stand in a line and you wonder if they actually will get through the opponent's line of kiters and LLTs and the odd HLT/so on. This is one of the most crucial and deciding moments in the game after the first 10 minutes. If you choose to attack and fail, you just fed the enemy with a lot of metal. If you choose to push for T2, will the enemy have a chance to break in with T1 units? If you choose to continue amass T1 units, will they actually make the break before the enemy is T2? The thing is, that T2 units are much stronger and will very quickly outclass T1 units after a succesful teching push.

Successful players recognize early these chances in their chosen tactic and are capable of radically changing their approach if the situation demands it.

Still, even though this is one of my favorite moments of the game, I do believe that it is, perhaps, too deciding a moment. That perhaps the right or wrong choice made here should have a slightly higher chance to be rebutted.

Hence, rather than thinking that T2 is too cheap (it is not!) or that the economical viability of T2 needed changing (it doesn't!), I do feel that the strength ratio of T1 units to T2 units could have the slightest of adjustments.

Plainly: Increase the health and damage of most T1 (mobile or both mobile and immobile?) units by a small amount, like 5% at most. Exclude scouts; They already fill their role well. The idea is to not chance the core gameplay at all or make it harder to go T2. Instead the idea is to make T1 units slightly more capable against T2 units to lessen the impact of the snowball effect of choosing a slightly wrong time for not going to T2.

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TL;DR: Give T1 mobile units +1 to 5% more health & damage to make the decision of teching or not teching a slightly less crucial one in small games, while not affecting the core viability of teching in regards to economy and special units or the inner balance of T1 and T2 units.

[jamerlan]

We probably have controversy situation on the sea. T1 guy can spam destroyers and kill your t2 Cruiser fleet with a little bit bigger amount.

[tzaeru]

We probably have controversy situation on the sea. T1 guy can spam destroyers and kill your t2 Cruiser fleet with a little bit bigger amount.

Yeah -- I should have specified that the opening post was really purely about T1 land units, sea and air excluded.

Have destroyers been changed that much?.. Haven't yet had a chance to play much with sea since a few years, but back then cruisers did outclass destroyers by a bunch!

[jamerlan]

>>Give T1 mobile units +1 to 5% more health & damage
it reminds me !xenope: he said smth like: "Welcome to BA where you can't beat AK spam"

What to do with rocket vech for example. Give it 5% stronger AA too? And other AA bots.
When ppl switch to t2 they build smth like fatboy or goliath. +-5% will not help

As for me: water t1 <--> t2 is more unbalanced and better to tweak this area

[tzaeru]

What to do with rocket vech for example. Give it 5% stronger AA too? And other AA bots.

Yes; Obviously the change isn't quite as simple as I made it out to seem. It's rather a discussion of what would principally be ideal. The full details of any actual change need, of course, be carefully thought through.

When ppl switch to t2 they build smth like fatboy or goliath. +-5% will not help

Well, if the game is in a state where the enemy has already built a Goliath, you haven't started T2 yet, and are unable to breach the defenses of the enemy, obviously something has been done very wrong. :P

However, the +5% would help, not by much, but it would make killing the Goliath a tiny bit easier. It also makes T1 not get obsoleted quite so fast when T2 kicks in.

The change is a tiny one. It can be said that it doesn't help anything, but there's no actual big issue to fix. So no big help is needed either. There's a small "issue", which is more a perception of what the ideal game style is, and a simple thought how to add a few seconds more to T1 viability in a match that is on the brink of bursting into T2.

That's the bottomline; Not a big change, not a game-changing change. Just a few seconds more before a medium sized match loses a lot of its T1 viability.

As for me: water t1 <--> t2 is more unbalanced and better to tweak this area

Multiple things can be tweaked at the same time. ;)

[Silentwings]

Multiple things can be tweaked at the same time.

If you don't mind the exponentially increasing difficulty in working out what on the earth the effects of your changes will turn out to be :p

[tzaeru]

Multiple things can be tweaked at the same time.

If you don't mind the exponentially increasing difficulty in working out what on the earth the effects of your changes will turn out to be :p

Hehe, that's true, but.. Can the cross-effect be that big if it's just inter-land and inter-sea?..

*Finds out that Missile Trucks now kill Destroyers*

..Damn it!