OpenRA

Hey, guys.

People often complain engineers are overpowered, and perhaps Tanyas and Commandos as well. What has been proposed or done to mitigate their power? Are they in need of fixing?
I know there was a capturing delay which was introduced in RA, and that seemed like a good idea.
I know one possible solution was having engineers only capture buildings with health in the red, but that kind of takes away from their flavor.

In RA95 buildings had to be damaged; originally it was by 75%, but because keeping a captured structure was nigh-on impossible (players could easily destroy it, and the AI would sell after the structure was damaged) this was tweaked in The Aftermath to something much lower... although this then was silly in the opposite way, as it almost became too easy to capture things.

I'd say damaging structures to 50% would be a fair trade-off. No more sudden rushes, but a simple enough requirement to not necessitate tedious micromanagement, being careful not to blast the intended structure to bits while damaging it. Of course, this shouldn't apply to neutral objects; they should be capturable in any condition.

For the C&C mod though, damaging structures before capturing shouldn't be required.


As for Tanya/Commando issues, in what sense are they OP?

BaronOfStuff wrote: ↑I'd say damaging structures to 50% would be a fair trade-off. No more sudden rushes, but a simple enough requirement to not necessitate tedious micromanagement, being careful not to blast the intended structure to bits while damaging it. Of course, this shouldn't apply to neutral objects; they should be capturable in any condition.

Agreed; 50% or lower should be the cut off.

We had a discussion a while ago about implementing Generals-style capturing for this. What are your thoughts?

Could work, but it deviates quite a bit from RA.

On the flipside, it does allow for stealthy insertions/infiltrations of Engineers, which is cool, though this could be done via 'traditional means' giving Engineers the ability to damage structures for 50% of their max HP on infiltration.

I will say though that if a Generals approach is taken, two things should be true:

1. Capture time should be faster in proportion to how damaged a structure is.
2. Buildings cannot be sold while being captured.

Additionally, you might consider having multiple Engineers be able to work together to capture a building, reducing the total time taken, though the time reduction per Engineer beyond the first would feature diminishing returns.

Scott_NZ wrote: ↑We had a discussion a while ago about implementing Generals-style capturing for this. What are your thoughts?

I need help with the implementation https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/2274

I dislike the Generals style in here. Way too much away from ANY C&C game except generals. It would only really work with General's other features, which would turn this into Generals.

Should have multi-engineer instead: Two engineers are required to capture a building, one to damage it, one to capture/repair it.

Oh god no, not the Generals method.

I'd prefer if Engineers did a straight 20% damage to a structure that wasn't below the required threshold to capture; that would make players think twice about mindlessly throwing $500 around.

We talked about the original RA model in the past and it won't work with our rules because you need >1 engineer to grab one and allied JEEP has only one slot while soviet APC has 5 seats making this unfair and imbalanced. It is equivalent to simply change the cost of the engineer times something in practice.

Cmd. Matt wrote: ↑We talked about the original RA model in the past and it won't work with our rules because you need >1 engineer to grab one and allied JEEP has only one slot while soviet APC has 5 seats making this unfair and imbalanced. It is equivalent to simply change the cost of the engineer times something in practice.

Perhaps give the Jeep 2 seats? One Engineer deals damage = to 50% of max, other captures at 50% HP or less.

Allies have Chinooks though granted, these don't show up until much later.


As a related aside, I still think giving Engineers a mine detection radius, and the ability to disable mines when outside of transports is a good idea to counter mine spam.

Surrealistik wrote: ↑As a related aside, I still think giving Engineers a mine detection radius, and the ability to disable mines when outside of transports is a good idea to counter mine spam.

I like that idea.

Bridge repair would also be nice, but I'm not sure how easily this can be implemented.

Surrealistik wrote: ↑Bridge repair would also be nice, but I'm not sure how easily this can be implemented.

It is partly done. https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/2619 but chris wants huts instead of just sending the engineer to the bridge.

Very nice!

I do agree with huts or some other similar entry point being a good idea, unless the Engineer could just infiltrate at the bridge end otherwise; I think I would prefer the latter personally.

Having Engineers be able to instantly destroy bridges by entering the 'hut' of an intact bridge, or otherwise infiltrating it might also be nice while giving them more tactical depth.

Surrealistik wrote: ↑ I will say though that if a Generals approach is taken, two things should be true:

1. Capture time should be faster in proportion to how damaged a structure is.
2. Buildings cannot be sold while being captured.

I don't favor the Generals approach. But I think these 2 points are good ideas for RA and CNCand should be applied.

Re: proposal 1. More generally, buildings with higher hitpoints should take longer to capture. So, Construction Yard should have a longer delay until capture than a power plant.