MCV Balance Playtesting

[Sire]

The changes look interesting thus far and I look forward to how it develops, but reading the logs there is one thing I immediately disagree with. Parabombs should not be forced to appear only from the south.

I believe the intention is to make them more predictable where the bombs will land and how long it takes to take to the target location, however this will drastically affect what maps are played.

While the classic balancing scenario may be "1v1, East versus West" there are maps with greater player counts and "North versus South" scenarios. Take Tournament Island for example, if I want to parabomb one of the top bases, my Badgers will have to fly over one of the bottom bases. This will result in an advanced warning for the top player (move units out of the way, sell structures, etc.) or even result in the Badgers dropping due to the southern bases AA.

If players want Parabombs to be a little more predictable, perhaps limit it to enter only from 4 directions (North, South, East, West) instead of the current 8 (diagonals).Personally, I am content with the current system as a casual vs AI player, and I don't see many complaints about Parabombs at the moment. (Recent games that I've seen are predominately Allies, and Soviets do not have access to Parabombs.)

If one wants are more insane idea, how about making the Badgers controllable by the player for a short time? The Parabombs can "summon" the Badgers to the battlefield and the player can micro the bombers for optimal effect. The downside to this is the "fire and forget" functionality the current ability has is lost and it may be more difficult to carpet bomb an area, but having controllable badgers can go a long way for more effective bombing runs. (They can be individual Badgers or somehow controlled in formation.)

[OMnom]

The changes look interesting thus far and I look forward to how it develops, but reading the logs there is one thing I immediately disagree with. Parabombs should not be forced to appear only from the south.

I believe the intention is to make them more predictable where the bombs will land and how long it takes to take to the target location, however this will drastically affect what maps are played.

Yeah the intention was to make the parabombs more predictable. Ideally, the bombs would appear from the direction closest to where they were aimed at. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do that, so I settled for the second best solution. You're right that these changes would affect team balance play a lot, so I will leave this one out of the 2v2 and 3v3 maps. I will leave this change in for the 1v1 maps, just to see how it plays out.

[AoAGeneral1]

Directional bombs has been a sort of word to mouth idea bombardment. (no pun intended). There are ideas in making strikes directional such as placing beacon 1 and then beacon 2 would control the direction the plane flies in towards. (Common issue in TD).

[Fortnight]

I was planning on making it so that in overhaul you'd press the parabombs (or paradrops) icon as usual but instead of placing the target beacon immediately you would then get four new icons: Arrive from south, Arrive from north, Arrive from west, Arrive from east.

Then you'd click one of those and actually place the beacon, after which all four directional icons disappear and the plane(s) would arrive from the desired angle.

Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work as desired so I ended up just skipping the diagonal angles so the plane(s) will always come from just top/bottom/left/right. That way it's at least twice as likely the plane(s) will arrive from the desired angle and it won't be able to take as long either (diagonal arrival from the other side of the map can take really long).

I'll admit though that I didn't experiment for too long with the idea of having four new super powers appear when clicking a super power, maybe it's possible in the current engine after all?

For me the preferred method to order an airstrike would be to place two beacons: the second would be the actual target and the first would be used to determine the direction, the plane(s) would first fly over the first and then the second. It's been used in games before and works good.

[AoAGeneral1]

Alternatively you could try going for a click-drag approach for the parabombs. This would allow the planes to come in at any direction. (This was a suggestion from the devs)

[zinc]

To throw out a fantasy suggestion...

How about MCVs would come in two types? You start out with a heavy armour version. (No change to how it is now.) If you want to build more they cost 4000 each. But you can also build a light armour version for 2000. Does the exact same job but with half shields, whether mobile or deployed.

The idea being that you can still base push but it's easier to counter in the early stages, unless you have an army to back it up.

Of course you could pay the 4000 for full shields but that would seriously slow down your build up.

[Minotaur]

To add another fantasy suggestion:
Do not allow multiple mcvs, instead allow up to 3 building cranes(base cost 1500 and +750 for the next each time you build one, preq. Tech Center) for multiple build queues and make expansion point vehicle available instead Mcv. Expansion point could have unused graphics of Command Post(s), be about half the strength of conyard, provide smaller build radius, provides no additional build queue for buildings but doubles as an stronger barracks.

[OMnom]

To throw out a fantasy suggestion...

How about MCVs would come in two types? You start out with a heavy armour version. (No change to how it is now.) If you want to build more they cost 4000 each. But you can also build a light armour version for 2000. Does the exact same job but with half shields, whether mobile or deployed.

The idea being that you can still base push but it's easier to counter in the early stages, unless you have an army to back it up.

Of course you could pay the 4000 for full shields but that would seriously slow down your build up.

People were already complaining about how complicated it was to build the SD, Dome, and Tech center in both defense and production tabs. I think giving this ability to a supply truck clone is feasible, but it honestly would not change much for 3 reasons: 1) either the cheaper or the more expensive MCV will never be built because of diminishing returns, 2) this hurts the defender's MCV, and 3) this doesn't open up any other alternatives to beat basepushing; you still need overwhelming numbers or an MCV to beat an opposing MCV.

To add another fantasy suggestion:
Do not allow multiple mcvs, instead allow up to 3 building cranes(base cost 1500 and +750 for the next each time you build one, preq. Tech Center) for multiple build queues and make expansion point vehicle available instead Mcv. Expansion point could have unused graphics of Command Post(s), be about half the strength of conyard, provide smaller build radius, provides no additional build queue for buildings but doubles as an stronger barracks.

Here's another fantasy suggestion: why don't you go make your own mods and sprites instead of posting them? "Hey this is my idea for x, y and z" is extremely annoying, especially when you start suggesting stuff that is not easy/impossible to do. I don't have the time to make all these complicated "fantasy" suggestions, let alone test them.

[zinc]

I don't think anyone is suggesting you personally have to create experimental maps for such things. People are allowed to throw out ideas, regardless of whether they have the inclination to create test maps for those ideas. If you find it "annoying" I would just suggest you try to relax and not worry about it.

[Doomsday]

Although I do understand Omnom's frustration, it is quite natural for wild ideas to be thrown here as this thread's title is quite misleading. It evolved into Omnom's test build but thread name does not reflect it at all.

[OMnom]

Although I do understand Omnom's frustration, it is quite natural for wild ideas to be thrown here as this thread's thread is quite misleading. It evolved into Omnom's test build but thread name does not reflect it at all.

Changed title.

I don't think anyone is suggesting you personally have to create experimental maps for such things. People are allowed to throw out ideas, regardless of whether they have the inclination to create test maps for those ideas. If you find it "annoying" I would just suggest you try to relax and not worry about it.

This was supposed to be a serious thread with playtesting, not a theorycraft thread. If someone posts an idea, I expect it to at least be possible to be done by yaml with good intentions and rationale. I don't mean to be offensive when I say this, but I don't want any baseless or unsubstantiated ideas littering this thread. There are other threads that these posts can go in.

[zinc]

It didn't seem like the thread was even in use anymore. I thought you had finished your stuff.

[AoAGeneral1]

Its still a thing. Base crawling/creeping will be happening in the next release.