Blackened wrote: ↑Murto the Ray wrote: ↑Until people can decide on what the issue actually is, testing solutions should be put on hold; its obvious that there isn't only one opinion here.
Bingo. There a so many balance issues and directions this game can go.
Completely disagree. It's by only experimenting with changes that we can figure out what is good and what is bad. If everyone in here tests their solutions and post their results, this discussion would end in weeks instead of months. With only rudimentary coding experience, I've managed to make my own playtest maps with the help of anjew and the github repository.
Assist wrote: ↑I'm confident to say that at least 30% of teams games are won in the first 5 minutes by deploying your MCV inside the enemy base. There is really little skill in that. I think this style should be completely removed from openra engine as it's all about immediately moving your MCV inside enemy main then placing barracks and defence structures in the middle of your enemy base, and game is finished in 5 minutes.
This is more of newer players not knowing what to do against early base pushes. Literally, all you do is 2ref opening and wall them off, while building rocket soldiers and boosting your eco. Worst case, you have to give up your starting position....in which case, moving to a different ore patch is really not the end of the world.
FiveAces wrote: ↑
Blackened's assessment is completely correct: to me, the game feels best when it's about mobility, flanks and raids, and I think I'm not alone in this.
Basepushing is the exact opposite, and hence a playstyle I try to stay away from.
In most RTS, I have to decide what to invest into: Do I want a mobile army or turtle with defenses?
I agree that mobile, constant raiding should be a playstyle that can beat basepushing. My position on this, however, is that I would like both styles of play to be viable. I think it brings a unique dynamic and contrasting styles of play, and forcing people to only play one style does not seem like it would make this game better. Most people play this game with a chess mentality (cost efficient trades), while I play it with a Go/Weiqi (Territory) mentality.
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I've played 4-5 games versus decent players with my radar dome to defense tab edits. So far, putting the Radar Dome in the defense tab and making the SD a prerequisite for Radar has had some positive and negative impacts. Obviously, this needs a lot more testing, but the early results are promising.
Pros
+Game progresses a lot more quickly and fluidly, with tech coming out much sooner, hence being much more useful. So far, Tesla tanks and radar jammers are the the main beneficiaries of this.
+The amount of money it takes to sustain a base push is increased versus tech units. All of my base pushes failed because tech units took away all my money. If I spent more money on base pushes, I would get pushed back by my opponent's tech.
+Combating a base push with higher tech armies is possible since now they are more easily accessible.
+Overall, less static defense on the field because games are quicker and there is less time to build static defense. about 90 s goes into teching for dome and tech center = 6-9 less pillboxes in the game per side by the 10 minute mark.
+With higher tech coming out quicker, we have more mobile armies capable of defeating static defense
+Tech snipes and MCV snipes hurt a lot more, because it's harder to defend without static defense
Cons
- Artillery and V2's are even stronger, and even higher tech units/abilities have difficulties dealing with them.
-Tanks are overshadowed by the effectiveness of artillery units
-Soviets have a difficult time combating air units
-Have not tested the hind/arty/rocket base push versus the faster tech
-Have not tested the changes on different maps
Complaints and Suggestions
-Tech comes out too fast
-Static D spam is not nerfed enough
-Pillbox price is still too low
-This change is too drastic
-Put refineries in defense tab, and put tech/production in the other tab.
-Move everything to 1 tab
-Have not tried out the changes in 2v2 or team game scenarios
If someone can help me fix corrupt replays, I will post the replays of my playtest.
edit: I got two of them to work. Use the following map:
http://resource.openra.net/maps/17592/. There are a lot of mistakes in the games that don't make them "perfect" for play testing, but I hope to show that faster tech is now possible, base pushing is nerfed but still possible, and the overall spam of defensive structures is lower. Both replays are of Soviet mirrors...the allied ones are corrupt and deleted.
Quick Recap
The goal of this experiment was to raise the opportunity cost of MCVS/buildings and to lower the opportunity cost of tech in order to curb the effectiveness of static defense and base pushing. Since MCV's are directly tied to the deployment and effectiveness of buildings, a nerf to one is a nerf to the other.
By moving the radar dome and tech center to the defense tab, the opportunity cost of pillboxes has definitely increased by some degree; if someone wants to keep spamming pillboxes, they're going to fall behind on tech. If someone doesn't build enough pillboxes, they're going to die to a strong attack. In the current game, the opportunity cost for pillboxes, regardless of it's actual monetary cost, is next to or close to zero (i.e, it's always good to be building more pillboxes).
At a glance, increasing the opportunity cost of the pillbox decreases the effectiveness of MCVs, basepushing, and pillboxes. More testing is needed to come to a definite conclusion.
I will also make a separate edit with only pillbox price increase to 600/800 for normal/camo, that way, we can test out the price changes in a vaccuum and not with SoS' other edits.
And since there are several other suggestions that no one is willing to test out for themselves, I'll take the liberty of testing them as well, if it's possible. A lot of the traits people are suggesting to change are very difficult to find on github, specifically, the deploy time of the MCV and how to implement a delay with placing buildings with the MCV...can someone direct me to the right trait or help me make a map with those traits?