You have a point here; the soviet factions have had powers and units switched out for others and the allies have only had powers added to themYuriMolina wrote: ↑ France Their Gap Generator is Bigger.
Germany Their ChronoShift can teletransport 11 units.
Russia now paradrops 2 tanks, has mad tanks instead of demo trucks
Ukraine always has de demotruck, and instead of paratroopers, it got parabombs.
at England I had seen no change.
News over Faction on Playtest 2015
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Murto the Ray
- Posts: 487
- Joined: Mon Nov 10, 2014 4:34 pm
@PersianImmortal :
yeah , its actually "13 units" ... i agree with that ... and a 3x3-crono (9 units) would have been a more "gentle" balance change
for me the bigger GAP is just a lack of ideas for france ... because the "Mobile GAP" is allready a good addition to the fixed GAP (which every allies faction has) ...
i like the mad-tank as unit ... i would like to see it more on the battlefield tbh ... and theres nothing wrong about rolling 3 massive armored vehicles right into the enemys base ... but , the problem is , it hardly works on any map ... (small maps are stacked with defense structures and for big maps the mad-tanks are too slow .. someone could argue with "let your mate crono them into your enemys base" ... but , what if i play a 1v1 ?)
the problem is , to detect that something is "unbalanced" ... we have to play the playtests first ... but you cant just take the best OpenRA-players ... let them play 2-3 games ... and then call something "balanced or unbalanced" ...
balancing something takes a lot of time/games , different players , mixed teams (not stacked) ... on different maps ... conditions that we never reach on playtests ...
its almost always a new balancing-experience in a new release ... but there is nothing wrong with that , because there will be a next release ....and then another one ... and so on ...
i tell you guys what ... i would love to play a weaker faction ... because focusing on the "core units" ... and trying to win without fancy glamour-units or support powers is imho more fullfilling as rts-player
so , lets just test all the new factions properly , in a full release (because only there you have all the different factors appearing) ... and then we will see what all the people (together) dont like ...
yeah , its actually "13 units" ... i agree with that ... and a 3x3-crono (9 units) would have been a more "gentle" balance change
for me the bigger GAP is just a lack of ideas for france ... because the "Mobile GAP" is allready a good addition to the fixed GAP (which every allies faction has) ...
i like the mad-tank as unit ... i would like to see it more on the battlefield tbh ... and theres nothing wrong about rolling 3 massive armored vehicles right into the enemys base ... but , the problem is , it hardly works on any map ... (small maps are stacked with defense structures and for big maps the mad-tanks are too slow .. someone could argue with "let your mate crono them into your enemys base" ... but , what if i play a 1v1 ?)
the problem is , to detect that something is "unbalanced" ... we have to play the playtests first ... but you cant just take the best OpenRA-players ... let them play 2-3 games ... and then call something "balanced or unbalanced" ...
balancing something takes a lot of time/games , different players , mixed teams (not stacked) ... on different maps ... conditions that we never reach on playtests ...
its almost always a new balancing-experience in a new release ... but there is nothing wrong with that , because there will be a next release ....and then another one ... and so on ...
i tell you guys what ... i would love to play a weaker faction ... because focusing on the "core units" ... and trying to win without fancy glamour-units or support powers is imho more fullfilling as rts-player
so , lets just test all the new factions properly , in a full release (because only there you have all the different factors appearing) ... and then we will see what all the people (together) dont like ...
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Mac The Kid
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2015 12:28 am
The problem I have with this new update is that the units taken away from Allied factions are not vital to achieving an allied victory, Mobile jammers are rarely used ever, chrono tanks are too situational, then phase transports, with the latest update has made the unit nigh useless anyway.
If we have a look at soviets the factions are losing abilities and units that can make, or break a game, Spy planes is almost essential for soviets to find out vital information, as there are no units that can infiltrate an enemy base undetected, Losing a very strong ability.
Then there's nuke trucks, These can cause a game to be won or lost by either team and not having them at your disposal as a soviet limits options for clearing out that heavily defended choke point which cannot be assaulted any other way. I'm sure you've all had that one game of Great Divide where the enemy is stuck in the middle with no real way to fight back.
The Mad tank is a unit I am glad to see gone however, it was too situational and the only way to effectively use it would be with a chronosphere. Causing an almost unstoppable attack. Which is never good.
Now we take a look at the benefits of each factions - Advanced gap generators: if used correctly can effectively blind the enemy team from seeing anything, it is admittedly not the most useful tool.
Advanced Chronospehere: I shouldn't even have to say why this is ridiculous.
Spies: Able to obliterate the power of any enemy, which can be catastrophic, and decide a game, if used correctly.
Soviets: 2 heavy tank reinforcement drop: This may seem good at first, until you realize just how useless heavy tanks are, futile against even a few rocket infantry, any aircraft ever, and all turrets. the only way I can see this being used effectively is to bolster an existing army, or to deploy them near enemy harvesters, and hope the enemy doesn't notice.
Paratroopers: We could do that anyway, Yippee!
Parabombs: Not powerful or reliable enough to make any significant effect on the battlefield. If you're lucky. you might accidently hit a nuke truck with it.
The comparison between the two are fairly damning to the Soviets and it baffles me to think just when I thought allies were too strong, they go ahead and make them more powerful, and hinder Soviet players further.
If we have a look at soviets the factions are losing abilities and units that can make, or break a game, Spy planes is almost essential for soviets to find out vital information, as there are no units that can infiltrate an enemy base undetected, Losing a very strong ability.
Then there's nuke trucks, These can cause a game to be won or lost by either team and not having them at your disposal as a soviet limits options for clearing out that heavily defended choke point which cannot be assaulted any other way. I'm sure you've all had that one game of Great Divide where the enemy is stuck in the middle with no real way to fight back.
The Mad tank is a unit I am glad to see gone however, it was too situational and the only way to effectively use it would be with a chronosphere. Causing an almost unstoppable attack. Which is never good.
Now we take a look at the benefits of each factions - Advanced gap generators: if used correctly can effectively blind the enemy team from seeing anything, it is admittedly not the most useful tool.
Advanced Chronospehere: I shouldn't even have to say why this is ridiculous.
Spies: Able to obliterate the power of any enemy, which can be catastrophic, and decide a game, if used correctly.
Soviets: 2 heavy tank reinforcement drop: This may seem good at first, until you realize just how useless heavy tanks are, futile against even a few rocket infantry, any aircraft ever, and all turrets. the only way I can see this being used effectively is to bolster an existing army, or to deploy them near enemy harvesters, and hope the enemy doesn't notice.
Paratroopers: We could do that anyway, Yippee!
Parabombs: Not powerful or reliable enough to make any significant effect on the battlefield. If you're lucky. you might accidently hit a nuke truck with it.
The comparison between the two are fairly damning to the Soviets and it baffles me to think just when I thought allies were too strong, they go ahead and make them more powerful, and hinder Soviet players further.
today 2 people suggest we should remove "GPS" and give it only 1 allied faction ... because they think giving spyplanes only 1 soviet faction but gps every allied faction is not fair ...
as you can see ... some people think soviet are op ... and other people think allies are op ...
as said , we should first have a release with all the changes , then make tickets for changes with votings ... this is the only civilized way
this is not ment to be 100% balanced right now ... we just have to play games with those factions in order to make it balanced
as you can see ... some people think soviet are op ... and other people think allies are op ...
as said , we should first have a release with all the changes , then make tickets for changes with votings ... this is the only civilized way
this is not ment to be 100% balanced right now ... we just have to play games with those factions in order to make it balanced
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PersianImmortal
- Posts: 157
- Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2012 3:04 am
Or they could just not remove the GPS and spyplane from either faction. Why fix what isn't broken? Both are extremely useful and the removal of the former or latter would substantially nerf both factions. The GPS is a great counter to soviet heavy armor and the spy plane lets soviets actually gather intel in places where they normally couldn't.JOo wrote: ↑today 2 people suggest we should remove "GPS" and give it only 1 allied faction ... because they think giving spyplanes only 1 soviet faction but gps every allied faction is not fair ...
as you can see ... some people think soviet are op ... and other people think allies are op ...
as said , we should first have a release with all the changes , then make tickets for changes with votings ... this is the only civilized way
this is not ment to be 100% balanced right now ... we just have to play games with those factions in order to make it balanced
Secondly as I've said and someone else pointed out the Allied changes are vastly superior to the soviet ones, I'd rather not have to lose my spy plane and get stuck with shit tier mad tanks or get stuck with parabombs that are situational at best early game and virtually worthless late game.
I'm not sure who is incharge of balancing but giving every player or some guy that mostly codes and plays 1-2 games every few months an equal say in things isn't an effective way to balance a game. Wargaming uses super testers when balancing World Of Tanks, Blizzard has their own balancing team and combs over vast amounts of data for Starcraft and WoW. I get that this is a small game but the opinion of OpenRA greats should vastly outweigh what some random person who comments in a github thread thinks.
It's good that there's feedback on these changes, but they were never intended to achieve a perfect balance. They are experimental changes (hence why this is a playtest instead of a full-blown release) and were purposefully kept reasonably simple to keep our options open.
If you'd like to see some things changed, feel free to give concrete suggestions instead of just pointing out what doesn't work.
If you'd like to see some things changed, feel free to give concrete suggestions instead of just pointing out what doesn't work.
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PersianImmortal
- Posts: 157
- Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2012 3:04 am
Pointing out what doesn't work is part of the feedback process, but if it were up to me I'd give Russia the Katyusha Rocket Launcher which would replace the V-2 well allowing it to retain paradrops and a spy plane. The Rocket Launcher would be the Russian answer to allied artillery and be strong against infantry whilst being weak against tanks. It would have a smaller ranger than arty so the Allies retain their advantage in the artillery department.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyusha_rocket_launcher
As for Ukraine i'd give them an air to air MIG allowing them to pick off enemy hinds that are serving as their opponents eyes and ears. I'd buff longbows increasing their speed and damage to allow the allies to maintain their air to air advantage. Ukraine would retain the spy plane and paradrops.
The allies changes I like aside from the possible nerf to GPS which is something essential to allies late game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyusha_rocket_launcher
As for Ukraine i'd give them an air to air MIG allowing them to pick off enemy hinds that are serving as their opponents eyes and ears. I'd buff longbows increasing their speed and damage to allow the allies to maintain their air to air advantage. Ukraine would retain the spy plane and paradrops.
The allies changes I like aside from the possible nerf to GPS which is something essential to allies late game.
@PersianImmortal : MIGs with AA-rockets (as good as it sounds) is not really needet against hinds ... maybe you didnt notice it ... but hinds recently (in our current release) got nerfed with HP and buildtime/price ... and soviets "Mobile Flaktruck" (which every soviet faction has) got buffed and can take out hinds really fast
so the answer to allies hind (or longbow) .. is soviets flak-truck
regarding the "Katyusha Rocket Launcher"
i also came up with the idea to implement a new unit , but for germany ... a single-barrel mammoth-tank (basicly a counterpart to soviets mammoth , just weaker ... same like medium vs heavy) ... and remove light-tank or even the medium tank
it eventually got rejected ... because the idea behind the "factions" is ... to introduce more different gamestlyes ... by shifting the existing content (mostly from the expansion packs) to highlight every faction and at the very most spice it up with new support powers ...
we allread have enough "foreign content" ... like the sniper (theres allready the sword of damocles hanging above him , its just a matter of time until he gets removed ... and eventually the "shock trooper" will take his part) ... and the flak-truck of course ... which is integrated well enough ... that took quite a lot of releases ...
i mostly agree here with the MainDevs Choice of keeping Red Alert -> Red Alert ... and not "Rainbow Alert"
for the GPS stuff ... i wouldnt say "NO" if we remove GPS for certain Allies factions ... but of course there should be a good compensation for that ...
so the answer to allies hind (or longbow) .. is soviets flak-truck
regarding the "Katyusha Rocket Launcher"
i also came up with the idea to implement a new unit , but for germany ... a single-barrel mammoth-tank (basicly a counterpart to soviets mammoth , just weaker ... same like medium vs heavy) ... and remove light-tank or even the medium tank
it eventually got rejected ... because the idea behind the "factions" is ... to introduce more different gamestlyes ... by shifting the existing content (mostly from the expansion packs) to highlight every faction and at the very most spice it up with new support powers ...
we allread have enough "foreign content" ... like the sniper (theres allready the sword of damocles hanging above him , its just a matter of time until he gets removed ... and eventually the "shock trooper" will take his part) ... and the flak-truck of course ... which is integrated well enough ... that took quite a lot of releases ...
i mostly agree here with the MainDevs Choice of keeping Red Alert -> Red Alert ... and not "Rainbow Alert"
for the GPS stuff ... i wouldnt say "NO" if we remove GPS for certain Allies factions ... but of course there should be a good compensation for that ...
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Devastator
- Posts: 22
- Joined: Sun Jun 29, 2014 12:12 pm
Your username just conjured up a vision of multiple tanks merging together to form a giant tank... or robot.Devastator wrote: ↑I like the idea with the ""single-barrel mammoth-tank"". Remove the rockets and it would be a fine new unit for the allies. Or we could give it to one of the two soviet factions instead of the mammoth tank.
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noobmapmaker
- Posts: 1086
- Joined: Wed Dec 10, 2014 11:59 am
i'm kinda sceptical. Logic wise, "Allies" is a faction and those countries (Germany, France, UK) are subfactions. The main faction should have Access to all units. But then it makes no sense to play any subfaction unless for conscious limitations.
Separating Soviets from Russia on the other side is kinda weird, too.
oh well. I guess i'll get used to it.
Separating Soviets from Russia on the other side is kinda weird, too.
oh well. I guess i'll get used to it.
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noobmapmaker
- Posts: 1086
- Joined: Wed Dec 10, 2014 11:59 am
An idea to check balances (not sure if this works):
Setup testruns. Take 3 simple, small maps with certain differences (e.g. lots of ore, little ore, with/without water). Let the AI battle itself for a couple days in various combinations (Ukraine vs France, France vs England, etc)
After some time the winpercentages stabilize and you'll get a notion of a faction being stronger.
Setup testruns. Take 3 simple, small maps with certain differences (e.g. lots of ore, little ore, with/without water). Let the AI battle itself for a couple days in various combinations (Ukraine vs France, France vs England, etc)
After some time the winpercentages stabilize and you'll get a notion of a faction being stronger.
Overall, I think that the factions on this playtest won't affect the gameplay below a certain set of skills. By providing choices that might prove uninteresting the risk could be to alienate a big portion of the median player base. I hope the changes will be carefully deliberated with this in mind when/if factions come with the next release.
Specifically, I agree with the above that the changes to the Soviet factions really feels like a 'meh' and that making the spy plane exclusive to one faction is a problem. What if perhaps there was an enhanced spy plane feature instead of removing it for all but one faction?
If I remember correctly, RA95's factions had more generic perks: http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/196962-comma ... tions-have
Could not some of them be used (not necessarily same values) with factions in OpenRA? From a casual player's point of view such generic traits could possibly strike as more intriguing compared to specific changes that doesn't affect the core gameplay.
Specifically, I agree with the above that the changes to the Soviet factions really feels like a 'meh' and that making the spy plane exclusive to one faction is a problem. What if perhaps there was an enhanced spy plane feature instead of removing it for all but one faction?
If I remember correctly, RA95's factions had more generic perks: http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/196962-comma ... tions-have
Could not some of them be used (not necessarily same values) with factions in OpenRA? From a casual player's point of view such generic traits could possibly strike as more intriguing compared to specific changes that doesn't affect the core gameplay.