MCV Balance Playtesting
Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 2:33 pm
Please go to page 10 to find the list of final changes.
Brief summary of playtesting
This thread has gotten very convoluted, and the information is all over the place. I've decided to start updating the OP with the updates and bumping the thread, rather than posting the new information in the most recent post.
These are the conclusions we have proof of thus far
-Increasing pillbox price from $400 to $600 decreased the average number of pillboxes in the first 10 minutes by approximately 5. Scaling of pillbox was reduced to about 1 static defense every 30s, on average. Minimal effect on strength of basepushing. Overall spamming decreased.
-Increasing pillbox build time past $600/15s makes it incrementally harder to get T2 tech. Infantry spam is buffed. Early game rushes become very deadly.
-Increasing MCV build time from 32s to 40s makes it harder to get T2 tech, and makes it very difficult to get T3 tech. Eco scaling is delayed, army sizes are larger, and production queues are typically reserved for more refineries/barracks. Increasing MCV build time to 48s slowed the development of economy significantly and made the resulting 1-base army even larger upon moving out.
-Decreasing MCV move speed slows the development of the economy. Similar effects to increased build time of MCV. Slowing MCV to 71 (heavy tank speed) makes it easier to catch the MCV and makes it more difficult to use in an aggressive base push. Slowing MCV to mammoth (60) base speed had similar effects to the 48s MCV, where the eco was signifcantly affected.
-$1600 WF buffs all vehicles in general, and speeds up the economy. This is a viable co-balance to negate the slower economy from 40s/48s MCVs
-Limiting barracks to a maximum of 7 made it easier to defend base pushes. However, by buffing the defender's advantage, games are more likely to develop into static/passive/stalemate situations.
-Moving refineries or barracks to defense tab buffed MCV basepushing by allowing barracks + refineries at the same time. This change also sped the pace of the game up drastically. Using the data from the pillbox price test, moving everything to 1 tab would signicant buff infantry spamming and early rushes due the indirect increase of the pillbox build time (cancel production + build pillbox).
-In general, all changes that protect or create a stronger economy helps support T2 tech, with a marginal effect on T1/pb spam. Making the economy more vulnerable or slower supports T1 spam and makes T2 tech harder to get to. This is inherently affected by map balance as well.
-TabWF edit allows Dome to be built 3m earlier, on average, relative to the current bleed. Tech center is built approximately 2m earlier. The scaling of static defense is, on average, 0.5 lower at all points between the 6-10m range.
-Reduced build time on Dome and Tech center has a minor effect (30s-1m) on the time when the Dome and Tech centers are built, relative to the current bleed. This slightly increases the impact of aircraft and v2/artillery, due to both players having less overall assets when T2 comes into play.
-T2 and T3 tech appears only when players are not fighting each other and when they have already optimized their economy. There is enough evidence to support that the risk of teching is too high compared to the rewards you get. The investment needed for tech to pay off is too high for it to offset the smaller army size, even with the TabEdit.
-Basepushing seems to be kept in check by V2/Artillery and by the speed of the game. Base pushing is the quickest way to dump all of your resources into assets, but it is focused only on 1 location. Trading cost efficiently is one way to stop base pushing. The other way is being able to spend your money
-It is difficult to spend all of your money all of your money in RA. The starting spending rate is $42/sec, with the exception of certain units, which translates to around $2.5k a minute. However, this rate increases with additional scaling, up to $5k/min. In most games, the money distribution will be maxed infantry ($5k/min), 1 war factory ($2.5k/min), and 3 MCVs ($3.6k/min * 2 queues), which adds up to around $14.7k of "maximum" resource spending. For reference, a 6 harvester economy will give you around 10k resources / min.
-$1000 yak, $1100 hind, $1800 LB, and $1700 MiG, +$100 on V2 and artillery. --- minimal effect in most games. Increased unit stats make T3 units more worthwhile to get, relative to their cost and how difficult it is to get there with a solid economy.
Things that still need testing and/or currently undergoing testing:
-TechEdit vs TabEdit with the 40s MCV and $1600 WF -- done.
-Buffed vs unbuffed tech -- done.
-TechEdit and TabEdit on a low eco map -- in progress
-MCV speed reduction with building placement delay -- done (definitely not good)
-Reduced build time of radar dome and tech center -- done
-Tank buffs -- done
-Con yard/MCV in defense tab -- done (very drastic change)
-Pillbox damage adjustments -- done
-Remove all build time reduction modifiers from MCV -- in progress
____
Original post:
As many of you may know, I've been spamming mass MCV games, partly as a new playstyle, but mainly because I wanted to gather enough games to assess whether or not MCVs are in need of a change. I think I've played enough of these games to figure out why MCVs are so good and how to change them properly.
The MCV is very strong because the opportunity cost of an MCV, as a function of strategical value, is lower than all other combat vehicles
Take the ore truck for instance: It takes 27 seconds to build, approximately 5-10 seconds of travel time to an ore patch, and about 2 trips to earn it's money back, which we will generously call 20 seconds. In total, it takes, at most, about 60 seconds for our investment to pay off.
Let's look at the MCV now. It takes 32 seconds to build, and generously speaking, about 30 seconds to travel to a new ore patch to deploy. Assuming you queued up a refinery so that you can place it immediately as you deploy your new MCV, and after accounting for mining time on 1 harvester, it'll take around 120 seconds for our investment in the MCV to pay off for itself.
As a third example, lets look at the Minelayer. It takes $800 / 20 seconds to produce; however, it will most likely take a moderately long time to travel to the enemy's ore patch...lets call this 25 seconds. It may take even longer for your opponent to even set up a refinery at that ore patch, so you'd have to wait anywhere from seconds to 10's of minutes for your opponent to go there. Alternatively, you can mine a strategic pathway, but unless you force your opponent into that path, the time it takes for your investment to pay off is indeterminate. This logic applies to all combat units; there is a significant amount of time that it takes for a combat unit to earn it's value.
Of course, in-game factors will change the timing and how quickly our investment starts to pay off, but for now, lets keep this idea in mind.
Problem #1: The MCV lowers the opportunity cost of all combat units
MCVs travel quicker than infantry. You can have a barracks ready to be placed the moment you deploy your MCV. Therefore, the quickest way to move infantry from point A to point B is to use an MCV to build a forward barracks to start production there. Late game, this applies to vehicles and aircraft as well. The quicker you start using your investments, the quicker you'll be able to get your returns (Note: this does not assume you have to trade cost-effectively to be able to get value from using a unit).
This is all without considering that you can build a pillbox/tesla/flame turret to secure map control, that each additional MCV reduces the build time of all structures by 7%, or that you can build barracks as meatshields for half-the price of a medium tank that also poop out infantry, at a fraction of the time it takes to just make a tank .
Now, I will confess, I love this mechanic, and it should absolutely stay in the game. It's one of the things that makes C&C unique. I've played many RTS's in the past, and this is a mechanic that is more or less unique to RA. But in it's current state, having one unit capable of reducing your opportunity cost, increasing your map control, and increasing your economic potential... its an easily abusable mechanic if you build multiple MCVs, and it pisses off a lot of people.
Problem #2: The opportunity cost of tech units and buildings is too high
Every serious game that is played involves at least getting a 2nd MCV before getting tech. Let's put aside the obvious question of, "How do we make both tech and eco viable" for one moment and take a look at the opportunity cost of getting tech.
Radar dome = $1800 / 44 s. Helipads are $500 /12 s each, and you probably want at least 2 of them. Tech centers are $1500 /35 s. The list goes on for a while. Tech units are expensive, and suffer from the same problems that normal infantry and vehicles do; it takes a significant amount of time for us to get our value back from our units. Not only that, during the time that a player is teching, his economy is going to be at a standstill since you can't build more refineries. The opportunity cost of higher tech is so high that some players opt not to tech at all, and rather invest everything into eco and more units. It's also the same reason why people don't like building mammoth tanks and why people love playing allies; mammoth tanks take forever to get to the front lines, and allies have cheap, quick, and cost-efficient spammable units.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating for the devs to nerf the MCV into oblivion or to buff tech units to the point where you have to get hinds before MCVs. What I hope to have accomplished is to convince people that 1) the MCV needs to be rebalanced and 2) why teching is not as good as getting another MCV. I will now provide 2 ways to balance this in a way that does not involve touching the MCV stats itself. This is important because any stat changes to the MCV will also affect the player who decides to tech before getting additional MCVs; in other words, nerfing any aspect of the MCV will either exacerbate the problem, ruin the effectiveness of the MCV, or will have no effect on the problem.
Solution #1: Increase Build time reduction for tech buildings (radar dome, tech center, IC, and chronosphere) to 15% per additional MCV, to a max of 50%.
This would leave the MCV's strengths alone, but I hope it will buff higher tech enough to the point where it would adequately match up against mass eco/mass map control styles of play. This is seemingly the the most innocent buff, but it'd also might be a dangerous one, since allowing for faster radar dome tech will open the door to mass artillery much more easily. All in all, a possible solution, but not my favorite.
Solution #2: Put the Radar Dome and the Tech Center in the Defensive building tab
Currently, tech and eco are both linked together in one tab...it's impossible to expand your eco to new ore patches and to tech up at the same time. While preventing people to go for both eco and tech at the same time may seem like a good idea, in reality, it's the main reason why defensive building spam is so prevalent.
Remember what I was saying about opportunity cost? When you place a defensive structure down in the middle of a battle, the only opportunity cost you have to worry about is the build time. Base pushing is essentially the quickest way to get value for your money. When I tech, I have to build a radar dome, and I have to wait 20s for 1 artillery to come out, not considering that I also have to move my artillery to the front lines. Not only that, I have to stop developing my eco and stop expanding my map control (technically, you could try to contest the map while teching, but it's very risky vs a base push). In that amount of time, I have enough time to set up a refinery with 1 MCV, and base push with 3 barracks + static defense on a different side of the map. In this case, I'm happy with giving you the tech advantage, because I now have the eco and the map control advantage -- a 2-for-1 deal. Even if I did hold a 2-1 advantage before I tech, it's just giving your opponent some breathing room while they get to solidify their position...these scenarios tend to be the ones with artillery stalemates.
Now let's move tech buildings to the defensive structure tab. Now, my eco advantage is negated because my opponent can build a ref while getting tech at the same time. I Know if he's teching, he can't build pillboxes, so in order for me to abuse this, I have to cut my eco and start base pushing/mass barracks immediately in order to punish him.
Or, lets say he decides to go for map control and tech instead. Since he can't build pillboxes here and is reliant on a mobile army for map control, I should be able to contest his map control advantage with multi pronged attacks without fear of pillboxes popping up like daisies. He'll have to use his mobile army and scale up while he's teching, so he'll have to fight for map control in order to deflect my attacks. During this time, I'd probably just eco with my MCV. In the end, what will most likely occur is that one of us has the eco advantage, while the other has the tech advantage, with both sides having a relatively equal share of map control.
Alternatively, creating a separate "Tech" production tab after building the Service Depot may also work, but could potentially be very tricky to balance.
Brief summary of playtesting
This thread has gotten very convoluted, and the information is all over the place. I've decided to start updating the OP with the updates and bumping the thread, rather than posting the new information in the most recent post.
These are the conclusions we have proof of thus far
-Increasing pillbox price from $400 to $600 decreased the average number of pillboxes in the first 10 minutes by approximately 5. Scaling of pillbox was reduced to about 1 static defense every 30s, on average. Minimal effect on strength of basepushing. Overall spamming decreased.
-Increasing pillbox build time past $600/15s makes it incrementally harder to get T2 tech. Infantry spam is buffed. Early game rushes become very deadly.
-Increasing MCV build time from 32s to 40s makes it harder to get T2 tech, and makes it very difficult to get T3 tech. Eco scaling is delayed, army sizes are larger, and production queues are typically reserved for more refineries/barracks. Increasing MCV build time to 48s slowed the development of economy significantly and made the resulting 1-base army even larger upon moving out.
-Decreasing MCV move speed slows the development of the economy. Similar effects to increased build time of MCV. Slowing MCV to 71 (heavy tank speed) makes it easier to catch the MCV and makes it more difficult to use in an aggressive base push. Slowing MCV to mammoth (60) base speed had similar effects to the 48s MCV, where the eco was signifcantly affected.
-$1600 WF buffs all vehicles in general, and speeds up the economy. This is a viable co-balance to negate the slower economy from 40s/48s MCVs
-Limiting barracks to a maximum of 7 made it easier to defend base pushes. However, by buffing the defender's advantage, games are more likely to develop into static/passive/stalemate situations.
-Moving refineries or barracks to defense tab buffed MCV basepushing by allowing barracks + refineries at the same time. This change also sped the pace of the game up drastically. Using the data from the pillbox price test, moving everything to 1 tab would signicant buff infantry spamming and early rushes due the indirect increase of the pillbox build time (cancel production + build pillbox).
-In general, all changes that protect or create a stronger economy helps support T2 tech, with a marginal effect on T1/pb spam. Making the economy more vulnerable or slower supports T1 spam and makes T2 tech harder to get to. This is inherently affected by map balance as well.
-TabWF edit allows Dome to be built 3m earlier, on average, relative to the current bleed. Tech center is built approximately 2m earlier. The scaling of static defense is, on average, 0.5 lower at all points between the 6-10m range.
-Reduced build time on Dome and Tech center has a minor effect (30s-1m) on the time when the Dome and Tech centers are built, relative to the current bleed. This slightly increases the impact of aircraft and v2/artillery, due to both players having less overall assets when T2 comes into play.
-T2 and T3 tech appears only when players are not fighting each other and when they have already optimized their economy. There is enough evidence to support that the risk of teching is too high compared to the rewards you get. The investment needed for tech to pay off is too high for it to offset the smaller army size, even with the TabEdit.
-Basepushing seems to be kept in check by V2/Artillery and by the speed of the game. Base pushing is the quickest way to dump all of your resources into assets, but it is focused only on 1 location. Trading cost efficiently is one way to stop base pushing. The other way is being able to spend your money
-It is difficult to spend all of your money all of your money in RA. The starting spending rate is $42/sec, with the exception of certain units, which translates to around $2.5k a minute. However, this rate increases with additional scaling, up to $5k/min. In most games, the money distribution will be maxed infantry ($5k/min), 1 war factory ($2.5k/min), and 3 MCVs ($3.6k/min * 2 queues), which adds up to around $14.7k of "maximum" resource spending. For reference, a 6 harvester economy will give you around 10k resources / min.
-$1000 yak, $1100 hind, $1800 LB, and $1700 MiG, +$100 on V2 and artillery. --- minimal effect in most games. Increased unit stats make T3 units more worthwhile to get, relative to their cost and how difficult it is to get there with a solid economy.
Things that still need testing and/or currently undergoing testing:
-TechEdit vs TabEdit with the 40s MCV and $1600 WF -- done.
-Buffed vs unbuffed tech -- done.
-TechEdit and TabEdit on a low eco map -- in progress
-MCV speed reduction with building placement delay -- done (definitely not good)
-Reduced build time of radar dome and tech center -- done
-Tank buffs -- done
-Con yard/MCV in defense tab -- done (very drastic change)
-Pillbox damage adjustments -- done
-Remove all build time reduction modifiers from MCV -- in progress
____
Original post:
As many of you may know, I've been spamming mass MCV games, partly as a new playstyle, but mainly because I wanted to gather enough games to assess whether or not MCVs are in need of a change. I think I've played enough of these games to figure out why MCVs are so good and how to change them properly.
The MCV is very strong because the opportunity cost of an MCV, as a function of strategical value, is lower than all other combat vehicles
Take the ore truck for instance: It takes 27 seconds to build, approximately 5-10 seconds of travel time to an ore patch, and about 2 trips to earn it's money back, which we will generously call 20 seconds. In total, it takes, at most, about 60 seconds for our investment to pay off.
Let's look at the MCV now. It takes 32 seconds to build, and generously speaking, about 30 seconds to travel to a new ore patch to deploy. Assuming you queued up a refinery so that you can place it immediately as you deploy your new MCV, and after accounting for mining time on 1 harvester, it'll take around 120 seconds for our investment in the MCV to pay off for itself.
As a third example, lets look at the Minelayer. It takes $800 / 20 seconds to produce; however, it will most likely take a moderately long time to travel to the enemy's ore patch...lets call this 25 seconds. It may take even longer for your opponent to even set up a refinery at that ore patch, so you'd have to wait anywhere from seconds to 10's of minutes for your opponent to go there. Alternatively, you can mine a strategic pathway, but unless you force your opponent into that path, the time it takes for your investment to pay off is indeterminate. This logic applies to all combat units; there is a significant amount of time that it takes for a combat unit to earn it's value.
Of course, in-game factors will change the timing and how quickly our investment starts to pay off, but for now, lets keep this idea in mind.
Problem #1: The MCV lowers the opportunity cost of all combat units
MCVs travel quicker than infantry. You can have a barracks ready to be placed the moment you deploy your MCV. Therefore, the quickest way to move infantry from point A to point B is to use an MCV to build a forward barracks to start production there. Late game, this applies to vehicles and aircraft as well. The quicker you start using your investments, the quicker you'll be able to get your returns (Note: this does not assume you have to trade cost-effectively to be able to get value from using a unit).
This is all without considering that you can build a pillbox/tesla/flame turret to secure map control, that each additional MCV reduces the build time of all structures by 7%, or that you can build barracks as meatshields for half-the price of a medium tank that also poop out infantry, at a fraction of the time it takes to just make a tank .
Now, I will confess, I love this mechanic, and it should absolutely stay in the game. It's one of the things that makes C&C unique. I've played many RTS's in the past, and this is a mechanic that is more or less unique to RA. But in it's current state, having one unit capable of reducing your opportunity cost, increasing your map control, and increasing your economic potential... its an easily abusable mechanic if you build multiple MCVs, and it pisses off a lot of people.
Problem #2: The opportunity cost of tech units and buildings is too high
Every serious game that is played involves at least getting a 2nd MCV before getting tech. Let's put aside the obvious question of, "How do we make both tech and eco viable" for one moment and take a look at the opportunity cost of getting tech.
Radar dome = $1800 / 44 s. Helipads are $500 /12 s each, and you probably want at least 2 of them. Tech centers are $1500 /35 s. The list goes on for a while. Tech units are expensive, and suffer from the same problems that normal infantry and vehicles do; it takes a significant amount of time for us to get our value back from our units. Not only that, during the time that a player is teching, his economy is going to be at a standstill since you can't build more refineries. The opportunity cost of higher tech is so high that some players opt not to tech at all, and rather invest everything into eco and more units. It's also the same reason why people don't like building mammoth tanks and why people love playing allies; mammoth tanks take forever to get to the front lines, and allies have cheap, quick, and cost-efficient spammable units.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating for the devs to nerf the MCV into oblivion or to buff tech units to the point where you have to get hinds before MCVs. What I hope to have accomplished is to convince people that 1) the MCV needs to be rebalanced and 2) why teching is not as good as getting another MCV. I will now provide 2 ways to balance this in a way that does not involve touching the MCV stats itself. This is important because any stat changes to the MCV will also affect the player who decides to tech before getting additional MCVs; in other words, nerfing any aspect of the MCV will either exacerbate the problem, ruin the effectiveness of the MCV, or will have no effect on the problem.
Solution #1: Increase Build time reduction for tech buildings (radar dome, tech center, IC, and chronosphere) to 15% per additional MCV, to a max of 50%.
This would leave the MCV's strengths alone, but I hope it will buff higher tech enough to the point where it would adequately match up against mass eco/mass map control styles of play. This is seemingly the the most innocent buff, but it'd also might be a dangerous one, since allowing for faster radar dome tech will open the door to mass artillery much more easily. All in all, a possible solution, but not my favorite.
Solution #2: Put the Radar Dome and the Tech Center in the Defensive building tab
Currently, tech and eco are both linked together in one tab...it's impossible to expand your eco to new ore patches and to tech up at the same time. While preventing people to go for both eco and tech at the same time may seem like a good idea, in reality, it's the main reason why defensive building spam is so prevalent.
Remember what I was saying about opportunity cost? When you place a defensive structure down in the middle of a battle, the only opportunity cost you have to worry about is the build time. Base pushing is essentially the quickest way to get value for your money. When I tech, I have to build a radar dome, and I have to wait 20s for 1 artillery to come out, not considering that I also have to move my artillery to the front lines. Not only that, I have to stop developing my eco and stop expanding my map control (technically, you could try to contest the map while teching, but it's very risky vs a base push). In that amount of time, I have enough time to set up a refinery with 1 MCV, and base push with 3 barracks + static defense on a different side of the map. In this case, I'm happy with giving you the tech advantage, because I now have the eco and the map control advantage -- a 2-for-1 deal. Even if I did hold a 2-1 advantage before I tech, it's just giving your opponent some breathing room while they get to solidify their position...these scenarios tend to be the ones with artillery stalemates.
Now let's move tech buildings to the defensive structure tab. Now, my eco advantage is negated because my opponent can build a ref while getting tech at the same time. I Know if he's teching, he can't build pillboxes, so in order for me to abuse this, I have to cut my eco and start base pushing/mass barracks immediately in order to punish him.
Or, lets say he decides to go for map control and tech instead. Since he can't build pillboxes here and is reliant on a mobile army for map control, I should be able to contest his map control advantage with multi pronged attacks without fear of pillboxes popping up like daisies. He'll have to use his mobile army and scale up while he's teching, so he'll have to fight for map control in order to deflect my attacks. During this time, I'd probably just eco with my MCV. In the end, what will most likely occur is that one of us has the eco advantage, while the other has the tech advantage, with both sides having a relatively equal share of map control.
Alternatively, creating a separate "Tech" production tab after building the Service Depot may also work, but could potentially be very tricky to balance.