Red alert. Soviets vs Allies balance (or lack thereof)

[klaas]

I think they might carry an inherent bias,
as most good players tend to gravitate towards Allies nowadays _because_ of the strength of pillboxes.

The script is not biased, we are the ones that are biased. If it's just the basedefences that cause the imbalace, we will (hopefully) see a different ratio in next release. As FRenzy showed, RAGL season 1 already showed a higher win-rate for Allies. This should include your matches as well (although not the mirror matchups that are still in your survey).

[FiveAces]

I think they might carry an inherent bias,
as most good players tend to gravitate towards Allies nowadays _because_ of the strength of pillboxes.

The script is not biased, we are the ones that are biased. If it's just the basedefences that cause the imbalace, we will (hopefully) see a different ratio in next release. As FRenzy showed, RAGL season 1 already showed a higher win-rate for Allies. This should include your matches as well (although not the mirror matchups that are still in your survey).

This may be true across players, but that's simply because most high-ranked players (eg Medium Tank, Barf) play exclusively Allies,
while the highest-ranked Soviet only player (Murto) did forfeit
and the other one who plays Sovs only is Anjew, who comes from TD and is not that proficient in RA yet.

Anjews matches skew the statistics simply due to a skill gap (no offense intended, I'd experience the same in a TD tourney and he shows great sportsmanship for playing all matches out to the end).

But yea, Allies are stronger right now due to the utterly broken state of base defences.
If we were to alleviate these imbalances, I'm sure the winrates would balance out.

[FRenzy]

This may be true across players, but that's simply because most high-ranked players (eg Medium Tank, Barf) play exclusively Allies,

FiveAces, note that the results are for Season 1, not Season 2. I don't remember what factions were chosen in S1, but I think you are mixing up.

Nevertheless I completely agree with you, and as I stated before, the sample is not perfect ^_^ but the script is here, so if anyone wants to conduct a more precise study and choose a better sample of replays, he's more than welcome ^_^

[Murto the Ray]

As someone who played Soviets at a fairly high level for a decent length of time i don't think there is much imbalance between Allies/Soviets.

The upcoming defence nerf will mean there is more variety in games with Allied factions in them which will be nice to see.

The reall issue is maps. Some maps just favour one faction more than another, specifically maps with many small chokes.

[Doomsday]

6) Soviet advantages. So what do the soviets have that Allies legitimately fear?

APC
Strong unit from early to mid game. I constantly use APCs loaded with rocket soldiers for sniping ore trucks quickly and backing off before enemy can respond. Flamer and Grenadier drops in APC are also nice.

Attack Dog
Very strong scouting unit early game. However it falls off when enemy builds his non-ore truck vehicle.

Grenadier
Early Grenadier rush can be crippling. Successful rush can steal a game easily.

Demo Truck
It's common for a demo truck to trade it's cost efficiently. Ukraine can do some of the most effective one-two punches in RA when they time successful Demo Truck with Parabombs and all-in push backed with Iron Curtain.

Shock Trooper
More range and HP compared to other infantry options. Strong DPS vs anything non-air. I think shockies are hands down the strongest infantry unit ingame.


I think all units listed above are extremely strong Soviet units. Flak Truck, V2, Flame Soldier and Mammoth Tank are also decent units.

A lot of the soviet units require good micro in order to perform at full potential. If game goes late, it will become hard for a player to have enough APM and concentration to use soviet units to their fullest.

[Smitty]

At the risk of sounding like Nate Silver here, there’s no way to get meaningful data from a sample size as small as an RAGL season. Analytics would be cool in the future, but you don’t want to try to make any conclusions without hundreds of games played.

And as 5a pointed out, you have to account for player skill when analyzing. There just aren’t that many players at the top to get good data from (you absolutely have to balance from the top). Add to the fact that it’s hard for us Americans to get games over the work week vs Euros and the data pool is thinned out even more. (Thanks for staying up late Lorry!)

Maybe analytics will have a place in OpenRA later, but for now I think we’re stuck with the eye test. (For now can we all just agree on 600/800/800 for Allied static? )

[klaas]

Maybe the RAGL masters should all play random in the future, so we'll have a pretty decent dataset.

I can do a statistical test, and we'll know if the balance is significantly off ;-). We'll just reduce the cost of the main battle tank of the weakest faction for the season after, and see what happens.

[zinc]

Maybe the RAGL masters should all play random in the future, so we'll have a pretty decent dataset.

Even then, you could have the problem that good players hadn't trained half as much with Soviets. So you may think you are detecting that Soviets are weaker, when really you are just detecting that certain players aren't as well used to them.

If you let it go on for a number of seasons however you would think this wouldn't apply.

[zinc]

I do think that players should learn with allies and that Soviets are more difficult to play. They are also I think more fun to play. However people remember the original game and they want to play Soviets when they are just starting to learn this version for the teslas and mammoth tanks... Solution imo: warn new players about the power of artillery in this version and that Soviets should probably be learned at a later stage.

[zinc]

Advantages for Soviets would include:

The spy plane can mostly find enemy nukes. That means, even if you can't get to it with a regular attack, you can take it out without fail if you have the first nuke. Even if you don't have first nuke, you can protect your own with iron curtain and then a couple of minutes later target and remove their nuke.

Parabombs can also be game winning. (Although hit and miss because of the direction thing.) You can easily take out a nuke in many cases with parabombs and a couple of yaks. Or you can take out artillery and their base defence with it.

Although difficult to say whether it's better than the chronosphere, iron curtain is certainly a kick ass piece of kit. You can ic 3 flak trucks and go take out enemy artillery and/or helis, at the same time as you ic a couple of V2 and target a warfactory or MCV. You may need to finish it off with a few yaks but that's both damage done and the containment of their artillery.