Page 9 of 11

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:20 am
by Fortnight
Gunboat

1) Line-of-sight up from 7 to 12. Submarine detection up from 4.0 to 4.5.
2) Now drops 3 Depth Charges at a time instead of 1. Adjusted spread and damage (buffed overall).
3) DepthCharge will no longer cause a water splash if it ends up on the beach or on land.
4) Cannon damage has been reworked so it's more effective vs infantry.

Motivations:

1) Gunboat now works like a proper scout with the same vision as a Longbow/Mig, you can no longer just build a bunch of Destroyers (they have terrible vision) but must bring at least one vulnerable Gunboat along to spot targets for them. Gunboats are also better at detecting submarines so they have a larger role in protecting Destroyers by checking nearby waters for threats.

Also just like with Submarine it now becomes worth while to build a Shipyard just for the scouting capabilities. Sidenote: I had an idea to make Gunboats able to deploy water mines, so they also get a role as naval minelayers. In the end I decided not to but it would certainly make them more useful if they could lay one or two mines before having to reload at a Shipyard.

2) The larger spread helps to quickly take out large groups of submarines (if they are close to each other) but primarily helps to take out moving submarines. In vanilla you can end up chasing fleeing subs for a long time before a Depth Charge actually hits. The total damage has been boosted so that subs are vulnerable when actually detected, though the random throwing and reworked damage falloff of the depth charges makes them a little less powerful than they may appear on paper. Torpedoes turn better and take out Gunboats with just one hit so if the now perma-submerged subs are reached they need to be able to get destroyed in a timely fashion.

3) This is more noticable in overhaul since three of them are thrown out in a random fashion, it's quite possible that one of them ends up on land.

4) Gunboat needs more purpose and now works as being somewhat anti-infantry. I don't really recommend going close to Rocket Soldiers because 5 of their attacks will sink a Gunboat, however in large groups Gunboats can get stuff done. They are only 500 credits per unit after all.

The big change here is the reworked splash damage (proning infantry won't receive reduced damage either). Say you attack a cell with 5 Rocket Soldiers in them. It takes 3 hits to kill the first soldier, then 2 hits to kill the guy standing next to him then finally just 1 hit for the third guy as long as he has been affected by the splash damage from all 5 previous attacks. Eventually you'll get free kills with the attacks due to AOE splash.

Its damage vs wood armor has gone down, vs light armor or concrete it has gone up, vs heavy armor it is about the same (1 Gunboat still loses vs 1 Light Tank).

2inch caliber (single target, ignoring splash)...
[tab]...vs "None" armor: Up from 7.5 to 17.5 (proned infantry: Up from 3.75 to 17.5)
[tab]...vs "Wood" armor: Down from 18.75 to 15.75
[tab]...vs "Light" armor: Up from 18.75 to 26.25
[tab]...vs "Heavy" armor: Down from 25.0 to 24.5
[tab]...vs "Concrete" armor: Up from 12.5 to 17.5

Remember that the numbers are rounded down in OpenRA before reducing any HP.

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 9:58 am
by Fortnight
Destroyer

1) Line-of-sight down from 6 cells to 4 cells. Submarine detection down from 4 cells to 3 cells.
2) Health down from 400 to 270.
3) Movement speed down from 85 to 80.
4) Same weapon reach as classic Destroyer ships. Er, this actually doesn't make any difference right now compared to the current patch.
5) One armament for both air and ground instead of two seperate ones (still has the same DepthCharges as Gunboat).
6) Reworked weapon damage.

Motivations:

1) This places it into the same position as the Missile Sub, strong and long-reaching but near blind on its own. So you need to bring with you a Gunboat for vision, which gives the enemy something vulnerable to first attack in order to then make it easier to deal with the Destroyers themselves. This is similar to the strategy in many games where you need to take out the healer first instead of the main target, except here you take out the spotter. The reduced sub detection buffs Gunboat's role as the fast unit that make sure the waters are safe.

2) We shouldn't have a unit that has such a great attack against all types of terrains (water, land, air, underwater) also be able to take so much damage. My starting point here was to make the Destroyer only just barely able to survive one torpedo, the resulting HP makes it faster to dispose of Destroyers if you are actually able to damage them. For comparison Medium Tank has 450 HP, Light Tank has 220 HP (the three ships have the same armor type as tanks, heavy).

3) A further nerf to the general-purpose Destroyer that makes it harder to dodge torpedoes, escape from bad situations and chase aircraft. In turn it buffs Gunboat as the prime submarine chaser, despite them sinking from just one torpedo.

4) In the next patch of OpenRA the Destroyer's missiles attack range will be nerfed from 9.0 to 7.5 and their follow distance goes down from 10.8 to 9.5. I am not fond of this, not only do I think the range is one of those iconic things that shouldn't be touched but the reason I believe it's 9.0 in the first place is because it should be able to reach a Tesla Coil without it being able to reach the ship (TeslaZap has 8.5 range). Am I wrong?

Since I don't want to mess with the zap range, another thing that feels "iconic" to me, I thought up this different way of balancing Destroyer. Simply make it more vulnerable and depend on other ever more vulnerable units for vision. My version of Destroyer isn't good at attacking everything either (see point 6) so we can afford the long reach. Does it work? Only playtesting can tell. Ramble: I think I generally prefer balancing by changing how stuff works instead of tweaking values, another example of that is the Pillbox proposal that changes how it works instead of increasing its price. I realize it can be too risky to change established mechanics though, we don't want to dismiss any players that like things the way they are.

5) This doesn't matter as much for quick-reload units such as Destroyer but now you can't fire at ground target and then immediately fire at air targets. It helps to make sure the missiles are the same though, instead of flying in slow motion vs ground targets they now have the same speed vs both air and ground. I wanted to compromise the speed but I couldn't really reduce it below 255 without nerfing the Destroyer a lot vs Mig (to sum it up: ground missiles went from 170 movement speed to 255).

Have maxed out HorizontalRateOfTurn to 255 now though, helps against air and isn't really noticable vs non-air targets (same thing as I did with Rocket Soldier).

6) It's been greatly nerfed all around except against light armor and concrete. This helps to make those groups of Destroyers guarding your best ore spots not as annoying and it buffs Cruiser's role as the best anti-building and anti-infantry ship. The Destroyer's damage has been made more reliable though, when it hits aircraft it will always do the same amount of damage (in vanilla there could be some variation).

DStinger (the name for the new combined armament)...
[tab]...vs "None" armor: Down from 9.0 to 2.7 (proned infantry: Down from 4.5 to 1.35)
[tab]...vs "Wood" armor: Down from 22.5 to 4.2
[tab]...vs "Light" armor: Up from 22.5 to 23.1
[tab]...vs "Heavy" armor: Down from 30.0 to 13.5
[tab]...vs "Concrete" armor: Same (15.0)

The damage numbers are rounded down by the game. If you're wondering about the small buff vs light armor I think it's something I experimented with and forgot to restore. It should be the same as the original damage but in practice such a small change makes no difference.

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:11 pm
by Fortnight
Cruiser

1) Cost up from 2400 to 2500.
2) HP up from 800 to 1000. Self heals out of combat to 50% health.
3) Ship movement speed up from 42 to 60.
4) Ship turn speed down from 3 to 2. Same goes for the two turrets mounted on the ship.
5) Line-of-sight up from 7 to 8.
6) Reworked damage and AOE.

Motivations:

1) Not only do the changes warrant a measly extra 100 credits but it also makes it easier to balance the ship against each other. 2 Cruisers = 5 Destroyers = 10 Gunboats.

I do think that in overhaul two Cruisers are worth producing just as much as 5 Destroyers while in vanilla I'd take 5 Destroyers over 2 Cruisers any day of the week. Same with Gunboats, in overhaul you can get a lot of worth out of 10 of them while in vanilla only the special kind of players would intentionally make 10 Gunboats instead of 5 Destroyers.

2) Lets keep it real here, a huge Cruiser ship should have more HP than the Mammoth Tank (900 HP). They both need the highest required tech level but Cruiser cost 500 more credits, is restricted to water and can't attack air units. It needs to be Mammoth Tank's tougher cousin.

3) Too slow movement speed kills the usability of a unit, it bears repeating. Especially if said unit has to travel on water existing only around the edges of a map. Besides, it's water, something really effective at carrying big things relatively fast compared to how fast they would be able to move on land. I guarantee we would see more Cruisers on big maps if they just moved a bit faster.

4) To compensate for making the movement speed non-crippling it now turns slower, making it harder to flee. The turrets also take a bit longer to adjust to new targets. If we absolutely had to bring realism into it it also makes sense for a long and heavy ship to do a 180 slowly on water but once it gets going in a direction its momentum isn't really hindered that much.

5) It can see half of the distance it can fire, meaning it still benefits by being accompanied by a Gunboat but due to the required high tech level, hefty price and the fact that it's defenseless against both air units and regular submarines, I think it deserves to be able to see decently on its own. It'll spot the Tesla Coil just in time to get zapped by it.

6) Have you seen a Cruiser attack a infantry blob in vanilla? It's pretty bad, in an ocean of Rifle Infantry you'll kill maybe five/six at best if you're lucky. Those Cruiser shells may look a whole lot like Artillery shells but they certainly aren't.

In overhaul Cruiser's bombardment role has been buffed. It does greater damage against mainly infantry but also against wood armor. Light armored vehicles are also good recipients. Heavy armor is more resistant though in order to give Destroyer groups something to do when not shooing away aircrafts. 5 Destroyers take down a Mammoth Tank about 3 times faster than 2 Cruisers. On the flip side 2 Cruisers destroy a War Factory about 3 times faster than 5 Destroyers. They are both about the same vs light armor, though the homing missiles help Destroyers to actually find their mark.

I've adjusted the falloff range for the shells so they do more reliable damage, in vanilla it's too much of a lottery (a direct hit does 1000% damage to a building while slightly to the side can leave it nearly unharmed). This especially shows in infantry blobs where there now is a satisfying hole after an attack. Of course it doesn't do the same amount of harm as four Artillery shells would do but you shouldn't be disappointed any more.

8Inch caliber (at an impact about 0.629 cells away from the target)...
[tab]...vs "None" armor: X from 20.25 to 32.16 (proned infantry: X from 10.125 to 16.08)
[tab]...vs "Wood" armor: X from 25.31 to 55.35
[tab]...vs "Light" armor: X from 20.25 to 44.88
[tab]...vs "Heavy" armor: X from 8.43 to 14.96
[tab]...vs "Concrete" armor: X from 33.75 to 74.80

X because these numbers are deceiving. It looks like I've buffed all these greatly but remember that this is ~0.416 cells off target. Take concrete for example, if you hit spot-on in vanilla you would deal 250 damage to concrete (1000% to 1000% to 368% damage within the first 0.0 to 0.2 to 0.4 cells). In overhaul the same hit would deal 85 damage. This is what I meant by "lottery" above, vanilla multiplies the damage by 10 if you get an exact hit while in overhaul a dead-on hit multiplies it by 1. Here's the different falloffs:
[tab]Vanilla Falloff: 1000, 368, 135, 50, 18, 7, 0
[tab]Vanilla Spread: 213 (0.2 cells for each step, in overhaul I used range instead of spread because I think it's easier to work with).
[tab]Overhaul Falloff: 100, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 92, 88, 83, 78, 72, 65, 57, 49, 40, 30, 19, 8, 0
[tab]Overhaul Range: 0c0, 0c64, 0c128, 0c192, 0c256, 0c384, 0c512, 0c640, 0c768, 0c896, 1c0, 1c128, 1c256, 1c384, 1c512, 1c640, 1c768, 1c896, 2c0
I could make a graph to show how this gives better (as in "less random") damage calculation but instead I'll say that it's best demonstrated by seeing it for yourself in-game. Something you can tell from above though is that vanilla's damage AOE is 1.0 cells while in overhaul it's 2.0 cells (at 1.0 cells the overhaul damage is 72%).

Trivia: In overhaul a single Mammoth Tank can almost take out three Cruisers on its own, the last Cruiser will survive with red HP. Of course in a real game the Mammoth Tank shouldn't be able to reach any Cruisers.

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:21 pm
by noobmapmaker
I had some spare time this morning and pasted everything into a word document: FortNightRAOverhaulDocumentation v1. (including the last changes)

I did not copy any conversations, only standalone descriptions by Fortnight. In the document there are links to pages ("PAGE X < link"). Click on "PAGE X" if you want to see any specific conversation, watch a gif or download the image.

Ive said it before but you did an amazing job, Fortnight! Extremely thorough overhaul with lots of thought even into the smallest detail. I assume that it will lead to many github-issues/request for changes to the mainmod.

Also for any aspiring modders it is really insigtfull as you explain and show the current situation and how it is changed.

Again... great work and copying everything into a worddoc was a pleasure to do.

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:46 pm
by Fortnight
Selection order

From:

Buildings (includes defensive structures)
Engineers
Harvesters
Everything else

To:

Buildings
Chinooks or (Water) Transports
Harvesters
Engineers
Everything else (includes defensive structures)

This is how the game decides what to select when you use the selection box by dragging and releasing the left mouse button. For example if your box contains both a Power Plant and a Light Tank the tank will be selected because buildings have lower selection priority than "everything else" in the list.

As you can see from above I've made it so that dedicated transports without attack capabilities have almost the lowest priority. This helps you to select the harvester you just transported over water instead of the transport. It also helps you to select the Engineers you just dropped off with your Chinook instead of the Chinook itself. It of course also helps you to not select the transport itself after dropping off a squad, in vanilla the transports will be selected together with any non-Engineer/non-Harvester units you are dropping off.

I've swapped priority of Engineer and Harvester. If you have an Engineer standing next to a Harvester chances are you want to move the Engineer and not the Harvester.

Perhaps most importantly though I've made sure that defensive structures (for example Tesla Coil) no longer has the same priority as regular buildings so you can select them together with your army to focus-fire with all you've got on a single target during base defense. In vanilla you need to first order your army and then any defensive structures separately.

Sidenote: You can see the size of the naval Transport in overhaul in selection_box.png here below, it's 50% larger than in vanilla. Almost looks like the Harvester would fit in there now.

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:58 pm
by Fortnight
...and they lived Happily ever after

I think that's pretty much everything covered! Just in time. I suspect some details have been forgotten but when they come back to me I'll be sure to make a new post.

It'll be fun to check out tonight's stream, I can't watch it live but I'll do it as soon as I can!

@noobmapmaker: I was just about to get started on making a document with everything in it, I'm grateful that you've already done it for me! :D Thanks!

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 2:48 am
by Blackened
Here's my two cents after playing it on the stream.

I liked the +20 power on conyard and the tech tree change(though I think if someone wants to go to t3 without a wf let them.)

Indifferent to the radar dome change.

Indifferent to kennel change.

Indifferent to the ref changes

for the walls i liked the ruin idea, i didn't like the not being able to sell bit, and liked the less free pieces part. Also non crushable by tracked vehicles was an overstep imo

Indifferent to the conyard husk (the explosion looked nice though)

didn't really get a feel for the new prerequisites. It didn't really come up

Leaning on the positve side for the engineer change. I have my reservations about the unit wandering to repair buildings. I don't like any unit (besides harversters and maybe med/mechanic) to wander around.

Liked the vision changes especially on buildings. Would love to see the building range nerf in the other release. It will indirectly reduce base pushes and make flanking attacks easier if unspotted.

I liked all the changes for dogs expect, can't attack other dogs, the auto target, and that a civilian with a pistol can kill it.

Liked the visual for detect stealth range.

Cleaning graphics is always good

Didn't get a feel for Chinooks. Not sure about taking longer to land though.

Like the parachute chances

Migs with AA are super fun to play with but also pretty OP.

Didn't notice any difference with the yaks tbh.

Didn't notice anything with the hinds/longbow Other than the ability to not attack move(Which if I heard right is a bug)

I think the Larger target radius hurt more than it helped. A few times my infantry would move to engage and took away the inherit defensive advantage due to nature of cells. Also falls back on me not liking my units wandering. I think it can especially hurt when attacking and say south is a defensive line and west is where you want to attack. If your units auto target into that southern position it can really screw you up.(if that makes sense)

Liked the tighter formations from helos not sure about the rest.

helepad changes were fine

didn't really notice the easier selection for rockets in part because of the nerf but i do think it is a good change overall

silos aren't going to be worth it anytime soon unless the adopted the cnc3 method( i.e. acted like walls to stop bullets from hitting something behind it but that's a whole other ball game)

the training time changes definitely made mammoths really good.

i think vision changes to troops were fine.

production reductions from multiple buildings was fine.

Indifferent to the low power change

I think the empty pillboxes seems like a good idea but tips defenses in the soviet favor. Now allies can't defend against an infantry drop unless they saw it coming well in advance. Soviets don't have this problem. They also get a boost on basepushes for the same reason.

New sounds are always good :)

didnt notice the lobby changes for obvious reasons :P

Indifferent to the wf exit cells. Not entirely sure about the 3. blocking wf is pretty easy to take care of even with the 3

not sure about the changes to husks

Very much dislike exploding infantry. UNLESS the unit is designed to explode as their attack they won't get used. I really didn't see a point to building flamethrowers because of this.

not sure about an aircraft crash. It takes 5 hinds(in vanilla not sure in this) to shoot to kill a MCV. 4 hinds in this can crash and kill an MCV.

didnt get a chance to review sonar pulse.

Indifferent to the route badges can come from but i dislike the paratrooper change mostly because grens aren't worth it.

didnt get to see parabombs in action

Indifferent to spy plane changes

Rockets got nerfed too hard. I think the less damage was fine but the attack speed nerf was too much. Couldn't counter tanks at all. They seemed to do okay with the aerial changes.

Uzbekistan is pretty strong but they suffer from MCV snipes too easily. I think Architect should inherit being able to build buildings as well (but should not be required for short game, you don't want one hidden in a camo pillbox)

Additionally, having the heavy turret tied to service depot didnt make sense. WF would be better. Heavy hinds were really good but I'm not sure if OP yet. We didn't really get to see a good counter to them in the stream. Spotters are pretty good but having 1 unit be your only AA and Anti Infantry isn't a good mix.

Indifferent to the civilian related changes, except that selling buildings gives waaaaay to many. Also the whole business about them killing a dog.

Indifferent to the duck and cover

fixed death animations are good!

Indifferent to crates(won't see them in competitive anyways.

didn't get a chance to really see the special buildings changes though i did like recapturable buildings and the small base building area(would consider increasing it by 1)

didnt see the zombie or ant changes

Indifferent to the v2/arty changes

Indifferent to medic/mechanic changes other than the wandering.

gap generations can't truly be tested until next release

didn't get a chance to see radar jammer to good use.

I think the changes to tanks made Heavies a bit OP. Liked the ones to light tanks and not sure about the medium tank changes.

Mammoths are a bit OP

Not sure about the changes to tanya but I felt like she died to easily to tank fire. Even with prone.

Grenadiers aren't worth it with the damage decrease. HP was better where it was before.

As said previously I didn't build a flamethrower because of the explosion mechanic.

Rifles need to be able to attack buildings! This was pretty game breaking. leaning on the positive to the single point attack but the increase in suppressing area.

Not sure about the changes to AA. Stealth detection can easily be explained as why wouldn't they? Having the slower turn speed makes initial placement a problem. (SAMS always deploy facing north)

Indifferent to sniper changes

not sure about the changes to tesla

not sure about changes to chrono tanks. Did like that they got the own missile appearance though.

phase transport became a stealth apc that is now lethal to air. This makes a tanya+phase transport pretty OP.

Indifferent to the flak truck changes.

I like the reduction of demo truck build time. Indifferent to the bounty aspect.

I liked the supply truck change. It gives the unit a minor use.

I think the MAD tank change should make its way into the vanilla release as well.

Indifferent to the repair bay change

Didn't like the changes to shipyard/subpen.

I didn't like the changes for transport either except the changes to how much it can hold. Though I think those values should be played around with.

Submarines are really bad. Like I'd rather have armed civilians than a sub bad. They can't reliably hit anything and now they can't even kill the one building the could attack. I think a torpedo just needs to be slightly slower than a tank bullet. You can still dodge that way but now the chances are much much lower. Also Subs are really stupid and should have their range nerfed. Chances are your sub is going to torpedo a random rock before getting depth charged to the bottom of the ocean. Limiting their range would help fix this.

If you kept one thing it should be that they stay submerged. That makes sense.

didn't get a chance to play around with the missile sub.

Gunboat OP. Too much vision. Way too good at killing subs too.

Destroyers might have got nerfed a bit too much but are in better shape than vanilla

didn't get to see the changes in cruisers myself.

agree with the selection order (I think if you hold shift with your selection box it should ignore the selection order that way if you want an engi to move with rifles or whatever you can grab it in one swipe.)

You put a lot of work into this and while some things i really didn't like I appreciate the time it took to make them. Also there were some things that I absolutely liked!

Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 12:26 pm
by Fortnight
Thanks for the feedback! I've inserted my comments on some things in bold text below:
Blackened wrote: Here's my two cents after playing it on the stream.

I liked the +20 power on conyard and the tech tree change(though I think if someone wants to go to t3 without a wf let them.)

I think the tech tree is very logical at the moment (you go WF into Depot or Dome into Air) but I can see how Depot before WF could open up for a new strategy with early Hijackers. It would only benefit Soviet though, since the Allied Mechanic wouldn't have any vehicles to repair. Uzbekistan would benefit the most since they could get Heavy Turrets and Heavy Hind without needing to invest in WF first.

Indifferent to the radar dome change.

Indifferent to kennel change.

Indifferent to the ref changes

for the walls i liked the ruin idea, i didn't like the not being able to sell bit, and liked the less free pieces part. Also non crushable by tracked vehicles was an overstep imo

The non-crushable thing is so that Allies can use Sandbags to protect themselves from APC-Grenadier rushes, otherwise it would just run it over. Now it at least delays the rush since the Grenadiers have to go out and attack the sandbags, giving a heads up. It also makes an empty APC a bit unfair against a Ranger because a Ranger can't crush walls. I don't think it's an unreasonable change to make all walls non-crushable in order to make them more useful. Most attacks except bullets will still just destroy them in just one attack.

Indifferent to the conyard husk (the explosion looked nice though)

didn't really get a feel for the new prerequisites. It didn't really come up

Leaning on the positve side for the engineer change. I have my reservations about the unit wandering to repair buildings. I don't like any unit (besides harversters and maybe med/mechanic) to wander around.

You can change the Engineer/Medic/Mechanic/Attack Dog stance away from AttackAnything to make them stay put where you tell them to be.

Liked the vision changes especially on buildings. Would love to see the building range nerf in the other release. It will indirectly reduce base pushes and make flanking attacks easier if unspotted.

I liked all the changes for dogs expect, can't attack other dogs, the auto target, and that a civilian with a pistol can kill it.

Poor civilians, let them have some purpose in life! The can't-attack-other-dogs was to prevent two dogs jumping back and forth forever without killing anyone, rendering both useless. I figured it's better that they go after the soldiers in the back instead of be wasted on an infinite loop. The auto-target makes them a much better counter to the very strong Spy (a unit I think people don't use so much because they don't know what it can do, however I hope to change this with the improved descriptions in overhaul). If you want the Attack Dogs to stay you can change their stance away from AttackAnything.

Liked the visual for detect stealth range.

Cleaning graphics is always good

Didn't get a feel for Chinooks. Not sure about taking longer to land though.

I think the landing and take off speed of Chinook in vanilla is so high that it looks silly. It's probably like that because they can land by mistake when being moved, in overhaul you can prevent them from landing by attack-moving however. Also, the slower landing makes it less feasible to successfully land in dangerous places, such as inside the range of a SAM Site. I want those places to be dangerous even for a Chinook. When landing in non-dangerous places it doesn't really matter if it takes a little longer. Besides, the Chinook's movement speed has been buffed, from 112 to 130, so it makes up for the landing delay.

Like the parachute chances

Migs with AA are super fun to play with but also pretty OP.

I think the Migs needs the buff to be a more viable unit. Longbows are much more common than Migs. Migs are still more restricted by anti-air structures than for example Longbow. However, Migs should not have 5 air-to-air missiles, my original intension was that they should have only 2. It will be fixed if I make a new version of overhaul.

Didn't notice any difference with the yaks tbh.

The only changes to Yak are that they react to enemies in a wider area when attack-moving, they are produced faster (30 sec limit), there's a larger chance for the pilot to parachute when the Yak is destroyed and it is easier to click like all aircraft (so the enemy can order attacks on even fast moving aircrafts and so the aircrafts becomes easier to select above infantry blobs.)

Didn't notice anything with the hinds/longbow Other than the ability to not attack move(Which if I heard right is a bug)

They both have changes in their attack sounds (the Longbow sfx change is very discrete), have reworked pilot escape chances, are both capped to 30 sec production, both have a bit changed up/down speed and Longbow turns faster (looks much better with its move speed when changing direction). They also scan for enemies in a larger area when set to AttackAnything (stances are enabled). The attack-move thing isn't a bug but an unfortunate side-effect of the changed aircraft repulsion rate, was needed to not be able to have 10 helicopters in 1 cell.

I think the Larger target radius hurt more than it helped. A few times my infantry would move to engage and took away the inherit defensive advantage due to nature of cells. Also falls back on me not liking my units wandering. I think it can especially hurt when attacking and say south is a defensive line and west is where you want to attack. If your units auto target into that southern position it can really screw you up.(if that makes sense)

More playtesting would be needed before I make up my mind about this, I just want to give the illusion of infantry helping each other out if someone on the edge of the blob is being attacked.

Liked the tighter formations from helos not sure about the rest.

It's nice isn't it, just too bad they removes attack-move.

helepad changes were fine

didn't really notice the easier selection for rockets in part because of the nerf but i do think it is a good change overall

silos aren't going to be worth it anytime soon unless the adopted the cnc3 method( i.e. acted like walls to stop bullets from hitting something behind it but that's a whole other ball game)

I think they might become a thing during the early game as long as you lower the Ore Refinery capacity enough. At least for non-pro players that doesn't constantly build infantry. I wonder how people would feel about 0 capacity for the refinery... :P Or how about needing Ore Silo in order to be able to make a Ore Truck in the War Factory? Hm, that ought to do it. Call me crazy but I'm going to write that one down!

the training time changes definitely made mammoths really good.

i think vision changes to troops were fine.

production reductions from multiple buildings was fine.

Indifferent to the low power change

I think the empty pillboxes seems like a good idea but tips defenses in the soviet favor. Now allies can't defend against an infantry drop unless they saw it coming well in advance. Soviets don't have this problem. They also get a boost on basepushes for the same reason.

On the other hand though Flame Tower isn't as good against infantry as a working Pillbox so that could balance the need of preparation for Pillboxes. I actually worry that a price increase will just make the balance tip the other way. No matter how expensive Pillboxes get people still need to use them at least from time to time. It takes away a lot of credits from other parts of the Allied machinery.[/i]

New sounds are always good :)

didnt notice the lobby changes for obvious reasons :P

Indifferent to the wf exit cells. Not entirely sure about the 3. blocking wf is pretty easy to take care of even with the 3

It's not about being easy for experienced players to deal with, it's about preventing new players from becoming surprised and feeling cheated.

not sure about the changes to husks

Very much dislike exploding infantry. UNLESS the unit is designed to explode as their attack they won't get used. I really didn't see a point to building flamethrowers because of this.

The explosions are very weak in overhaul, almost to the point they don't matter. However since they are in fact there it do add a bit of skill requirement into the usage of the units. Anybody can rush with 5 Grenadiers but a pro will rush with 5 Grenadiers while making sure thay aren't too close to each other. To me it adds that extra bit of depth into the game.

not sure about an aircraft crash. It takes 5 hinds(in vanilla not sure in this) to shoot to kill a MCV. 4 hinds in this can crash and kill an MCV.

Yeah but then it costs the enemy 4 Hinds (5400 credits) for that 1 MCV (2000 credits). To me the crash damage again just rewards good players so that they can make the best out of a bad situation, a bit more depth. Likewise good players are rewarded for their acknowledgement of a dangerous helicopter position and could reposition his units before finishing off the helicopter.

didnt get a chance to review sonar pulse.

Few people do. >_<

Indifferent to the route badges can come from but i dislike the paratrooper change mostly because grens aren't worth it.

They are if you intend to sneak attack buildings, especially now when Rocket Soldiers are nerfed. Grenadiers are much stronger against tanks in overhaul btw, assuming you actually can hit them.

didnt get to see parabombs in action

Indifferent to spy plane changes

Rockets got nerfed too hard. I think the less damage was fine but the attack speed nerf was too much. Couldn't counter tanks at all. They seemed to do okay with the aerial changes.

I can't really add more to what I've already said about Rocket Soldiers in the thread (there will be some stuff in my next post though, which I wrote offline before replying to you). I stick with my belief that they are appropriately nerfed, I think the problem is that people still think of them as a super hero in overhaul. ^^ They are still good, just balanced.

Uzbekistan is pretty strong but they suffer from MCV snipes too easily. I think Architect should inherit being able to build buildings as well (but should not be required for short game, you don't want one hidden in a camo pillbox)

Yeah it's a bit much, I realized that from the stream. They still won't be able to build like a Conn Yard though, my planned solution is to make Architect able to build a new Conn Yard for 3000 credits if the old one is destroyed. As for hiding in Pillboxes, the faction can't make Pillboxes. It's possible if you capture a neutral pillbox though, it'll be fixed as well if I make a new version.

Additionally, having the heavy turret tied to service depot didnt make sense. WF would be better. Heavy hinds were really good but I'm not sure if OP yet. We didn't really get to see a good counter to them in the stream. Spotters are pretty good but having 1 unit be your only AA and Anti Infantry isn't a good mix.

Heavy Turrets are extremely good at taking out vehicles or buildings, even better than a Tesla Coil. Since the Tech Tree is WF into Service Depot it delays the Heavy Turret, being able to make them from just WF would bring them into the game too early. If you get a Heavy Turret into your opponent's ore field that early it is too much. As for Heavy Hinds being OP, if people would just make proper anti-air buildings their burst damage vs buildings aren't a problem. Concerning the Spotter, hybrid things is Uzbekistan's thing and the Spotter is actually a pretty vulnerable unit and it is no where near the SAM Site or AA Gun in terms of anti-air.

Indifferent to the civilian related changes, except that selling buildings gives waaaaay to many. Also the whole business about them killing a dog.

It did get a bit crazy and should be toned down. But it's pretty crazy in vanilla as well, try selling a couple of Advanced Power Plants and most of the time you'll get 8 civs + 1 Rifle Infantry.

Indifferent to the duck and cover

fixed death animations are good!

Indifferent to crates(won't see them in competitive anyways.

didn't get a chance to really see the special buildings changes though i did like recapturable buildings and the small base building area(would consider increasing it by 1)

Can't increase the range by 1 since that makes it possible to build Helipad there. Being able to potentially put 8 Tesla Coils around the buildings should be useful enough.

didnt see the zombie or ant changes

Truly a pity!

Indifferent to the v2/arty changes

Indifferent to medic/mechanic changes other than the wandering.

gap generations can't truly be tested until next release

True. They've changed a lot of things with the traits though so unfortunately version 1 of overhaul won't automatically be compatible with next the OpenRA release.

didn't get a chance to see radar jammer to good use.

I think the changes to tanks made Heavies a bit OP. Liked the ones to light tanks and not sure about the medium tank changes.

Need more playtests for this but as far as I know in vanilla Medium Tanks are considered OP compared to Heavy Tanks. At least by some and after testing things out I had to agree that Medium Tanks have an edge in vanilla.

Mammoths are a bit OP

Nah. See my next post.

Not sure about the changes to tanya but I felt like she died to easily to tank fire. Even with prone.

Shouldn't be that much of a difference but the player needs to keep her away from tanks in the first place. If you want to kill infantry behind the tanks it could be better to flank the group instead of running head-on into the tanks to reach the infantry.

Grenadiers aren't worth it with the damage decrease. HP was better where it was before.

3 Grenadiers take 15 sec to destroy an Advanced Power Plant in overhaul. In vanilla it's 9 sec. Between hearing "your base is under attack" and finding the grenadiers it's already too late to react. And that's with just 480 credits worth of units that requites no tech to obtain. It's not unmotivated to at least give players a chance to react, especially now that Grenadier explosions aren't broken and (above all) with the fact that Allies can no longer just pop a Pillbox to deal with the situation. 5 Grenadiers (800 credits) takes out an Advanced Power Plant in 8 sec. Besides, nerfing Grenadiers a little vs buildings buffs Flamethrower units. They are rarely seen and needs a buff in their role as the prime anti wood armor units.

As said previously I didn't build a flamethrower because of the explosion mechanic.

Rifles need to be able to attack buildings! This was pretty game breaking. leaning on the positive to the single point attack but the increase in suppressing area.

I don't see the difference between the game being over because of barracks being camped compared to the game being over because the barracks are destroyed. If this proves to be a problem in the early or mid game in future tests I'd be happy to change my mind but if the player can't build a barracks elsewhere or produce vehicles or anti-infantry or anything else it seems like it was a fair loss to me.

Not sure about the changes to AA. Stealth detection can easily be explained as why wouldn't they? Having the slower turn speed makes initial placement a problem. (SAMS always deploy facing north)

Ground stealth detection for anti-air makes little sense in my book and I've seen other people caught off guard and surprised by it. You're right about the initial facing being an issue to think about but not enough for me to want to let go of the slower rotation speed... Details such as the direction of base defenses adds another layer to the gameplay, albeit minor. It would be cool if there was a trait to make the SAM Site slowly rotate constantly when it has no target, "to scan the skies".

Indifferent to sniper changes

not sure about the changes to tesla

not sure about changes to chrono tanks. Did like that they got the own missile appearance though.

phase transport became a stealth apc that is now lethal to air. This makes a tanya+phase transport pretty OP.

To idle air (slow missiles). It was a bit stronger than I remembered though (details in my next post). Stealth APC with Tanya inside has always been pretty OP, don't know why it's not used more in vanilla. Especially against expansions. I know overhaul has less stealth detection but it's to make it more worth while building Spy or Mobile Radar Jammer for that purpose on Allies or to spread out some Attack Dogs on Soviet (something only the AI seems to bother with in Red Alert). Maybe another Radar Dome for both vision and detection on if you're up against England? Hehe, anyway I don't think it's that much more OP than it already is in vanilla.

Indifferent to the flak truck changes.

I like the reduction of demo truck build time. Indifferent to the bounty aspect.

I liked the supply truck change. It gives the unit a minor use.

I agree that it's a minor use, thinking about changing it in any future versions to work as a heal tent for infantry. I think that would see more usage.

I think the MAD tank change should make its way into the vanilla release as well.

Thanks!

Indifferent to the repair bay change

Didn't like the changes to shipyard/subpen.

I didn't like the changes for transport either except the changes to how much it can hold. Though I think those values should be played around with.

Submarines are really bad. Like I'd rather have armed civilians than a sub bad. They can't reliably hit anything and now they can't even kill the one building the could attack. I think a torpedo just needs to be slightly slower than a tank bullet. You can still dodge that way but now the chances are much much lower. Also Subs are really stupid and should have their range nerfed. Chances are your sub is going to torpedo a random rock before getting depth charged to the bottom of the ocean. Limiting their range would help fix this.

I think the submarines looked so bad on stream because they were played like vanilla submarines. The navy was what I changed the most in overhaul, since I don't want to repeat myself I can't say much more than to read the navy posts in the thread to find out how they all work together for a changed navy. Though I've commented more on navy stuff that went on in the stream in my next post. As for increasing torpedo speed I don't want to make it impossible to dodge them, it's a fun mechanic for skilled players. Instead they turn better and seek for longer. As for your suggestion to lower the attack range, I did. In vanilla it's 9.0, in overhaul 7.5. The reason why subs (or ships) are much worse against Sub Pen/Shipyard is because I want it to be actually possible to break into waters dominated by subs or enemy ships. It is still very hard, 1 Torpedo takes out 1 Gunboat. But unless surrounded the player could regroup further away. Transport can be used for tanking purposes as well.

If you kept one thing it should be that they stay submerged. That makes sense.

didn't get a chance to play around with the missile sub.

It's funny because the Missile Sub is the unit that I have made the most changes to in overhaul!

Gunboat OP. Too much vision. Way too good at killing subs too.

On the other hand Submarine is way good at killing Gunboat (1 torpedo per Gunboat). Vision's the same as Longbow, 12 cells. Subs have less (9.5) but are completely hidden so that's why they get less (Gunboats can be picked off). I think being able to provide vision is something we can afford to give to the navy in order to make it an actual part of Red Alert on maps other than those that specifically force you to go navy (where players on separate islands). It's just beach vision as well, most of the action happens in the middle of the map. Getting the Gunboat too close to the beach to make full use of its vision also makes it vulnerable against land based attacks, a Gunboat will lose against a Light Tank one-on-one.

Destroyers might have got nerfed a bit too much but are in better shape than vanilla

It's to maintain their good reach, I believe it's important that Destroyers out-reach Tesla Coils. They still have their purpose but no longer will destroy your whole base. They also don't provide much vision themselves so you need to bring with you a Gunboat, giving the enemy a point of weakness to attack if he wants to stop your Destroyers. It's when I heard about the upcoming attack range nerf to Destroyers that I started thinking about how to better balance the unit without touching the missile range. Eventually it lead to overhaul being made. I'm surprised the Destroyers weren't commented on more in the stream.

didn't get to see the changes in cruisers myself.

agree with the selection order (I think if you hold shift with your selection box it should ignore the selection order that way if you want an engi to move with rifles or whatever you can grab it in one swipe.)

Haven't heard about the shift-thing. Sounded useful but when I tried it out it doesn't seem to work (tried Shift/CTRL/ALT). Maybe it worked in the past but broke in some recent patch?

You put a lot of work into this and while some things i really didn't like I appreciate the time it took to make them. Also there were some things that I absolutely liked!

Thanks, I've tried my best! I think the biggest area I've failed in though is making the documentation short... So few people on the stream had read anything.


By the way those things that you absolutely liked, please list them if you haven't already mentioned them all. Same goes for everybody that reads this, please.

I know it's harder to list positives and more risky reputation-wise but to point out exactly what was good is the most important thing to do during playtests. Otherwise it's impossible to know what changes worked and things are bound to stay the same forever.

Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 12:31 pm
by Fortnight
OK, I've finished watching the Monday stream. It was very interesting, thanks a bunch for hosting it SoScared!

I'd like to comment on a few things so everybody put on your reading glasses! :D

Here is the video for those of you that haven't watched it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/125199185
Anyone know how long Twitch keep old videos up? Do we need to archive it somewhere else?

@ 24:14, 45:43, 2:15:15 - You can't attack-move with helicopters:

Yes, I really didn't want to do that but had to in order to prevent "helicopter storm clouds" due to less separation force between the units. Check around 40 min in the video for an example of how close helicopters can fly now. See the "Tighter helicopter formations" post on page 3 for more on that.

Instead you can use AttackAnything with helicopters. I want them to have attack-move back though but it would need a fix in the engine so that they don't keep trying to reach the target destination cell even when they are touching another helicopter that has the same target cell. The problem is that they reach their target but then another helicopter comes and move it away, so it tries to reposition itself and then push the other helicopter away and so on and so on.

This is the same reason why helicopters "kiss each other" in vanilla btw, they keep trying to push each other away to reach their destination. The main motivation for the change is that it fixes reloading issues and removes flight path blocking.

Basically I had to choose between keeping helicopters flawed or sacrificing attack-move. I decided to sacrifice because I wanted to demonstrate how much better you could make helicopter behaviour with a little tweak, the issue with attack-move could always be fixed in actual game code (C#) later. Nobody commented on the improved helicopters though, just the lack of attack-move. D'oh!

Aha, you read the documention at around 02:17:12! Well, almost. ;) Anyway I bet if people saw a side-by-side comparison between vanilla helicopter movement/formations vs how they are in overhaul you'd be stoked. Haha! :drunk:

@ 25:00 - Light Hind and Heavy Hind being hard to tell apart:

They do look pretty similar, I agree. I actually just removed the wings from the regular hind pixel by pixel to make the Light Hind and used some trickery in Gimp to turn the regular Hind's wings from gray to black for the Heavy Hind.

Someone with better skills could make something much better, though I've recently read that apparently the devs don't want new graphics in the official Red Alert mod no matter what? Or did I misunderstand, because it would put the game at risk for stagnation.

Anyway in the heat of battle the audio signature from Light Hind and Heavy Hind should be enough to know what you're dealing with, they do certainly look similar to each other though. If you are only facing one enemy playing as Uzbekistan you at least know he has no regular Hinds.

@ 23:30 - Prerequisites now comes with the buildings, not the faction.

I did this because I think it gives more control, you can for example make it so that you can capture an Allied Barracks and then build Tanya as long as you have any Tech Center (could be Soviet Tech Center). Likewise if you capture Allied Tech Center you can build Tanya from Soviet Barracks. It does add a million buildings though but that means each one could have different graphics some day.

@ 26:40, 27:00, 2:27:25 - Mammoth Tank missiles appearing strong:

They aren't as strong as they seemed, both of them works as 1 additional ballistic on wood/heavy armor and they have very long reload time. The mammoth that got hit by friendly-fire was actually damaged since before from the Rocket Soldiers and was hit by 4 tusk missiles (2 of which gave some splash damage, the other 2 more direct hits).

Also they seemed extra strong right there because he had 5 of them in the same place facing 5 Rocket Soldiers (10000 credits + max tech vs 1500 credits + lowest tech). See the Mammoth Tank post for more.

@ 28:30 - That the French get nothing while England/Germany can attack air units with their special units:

They get a pretty big buff to the Mobile Gap Generator and with the changes in the upcoming patch I think that would become a pretty hot unit along with the movement speed changes in overhaul, especially if Gap shroud were to be reworked to block all aerial vision completely (see the Gap post for more).

But yeah, I agree that right now the French got the short end of the stick. I actually planned to test making their fake constructions cheaper and put a build limit for each of them but I forgot to... Whoops! Imagine though if they were really, really cheap to build but after you've built 1 or 2 of each you can't build any more of them, even if the enemy has destroyed them. I think that would boost the French significantly.

I'd also like to point out that since Rocket Soldiers aren't as reliable vs air now the Allies don't really have decent mobile air defense while Soviet has the Mobile Flak. So this balances things in that aspect. If France would get the mobile gap changes I want next patch they would be able to fire from within the shroud at aircrafts with Rocket Soldiers without the air units being able to see them (as long as there would be no ground units as well of course), which also adds a bit of balancing towards Mobile Flak.

Here's an idea, France could get its own version of Gunboat. It would be exactly the same as a regular Gunboat, just with an added Gap Generator to it? Maybe require an Allied Tech Center first, then it will improve the Gunboats - just like how Soviet Tech Center improves the SAM Site (something nobody discovered on stream).

@ 29:07 - MAD Tank not working on friendly units as well as enemy units:

They do damage friends equally as they damage enemies, it's just that some units were standing further away from the MAD Tank (more DPS in the center) and different armor types receive different amounts of damage. The more rigid something is the better the MAD Tank works on destroying it.

@ 34:20 - Pillbox still costs 400:

I knew this would come up. :D They have been nerfed a lot in many other ways so I don't think a cost increase is warranted any longer (it's still increased by 100 for the Rifle Infantry though).

Biggest nerf is that they can no longer just be placed to push back an attacking infantry blob, from what I've seen that's how they are used most often. Now you need to prepare them before the actual battle. Since they are also weaker it's easier for the enemy to take them out or simply work around them.

My point with this change was to try balancing in a more fun way instead of simply increasing the price, after all there's more strategy involved in planned defenses. Making the structure being used less seems like a risk to shift the imbalance over to Soviet instead, until one day both sides get defense structures so expensive that they are almost never used. See the Pillbox post for more of my reasoning.

A good example at how vulnerable Pillboxes are now against proper measures (heavily armored units) can be found at 38 minutes, notice how much damage a Light Tank does to the Pillbox and that the Pillbox doesn't manage to kill a single Light Tank on its own in all that time.

@ 35:05 - Want usage of civilian structures:

I wanted to make it so that if you sell your structures and get civilians you could make them enter civilian structures for vision. Not much, 3 or 4 cells, but if you put them in all civilian buildings in a village it wouldn't be bad.

Unfortunately this isn't supported by the current OpenRA engine. I think? I actually forgot to experiment with it... (You only get civilians from selling in overhaul btw, except if you sell a Conn Yard in which case you'll also get an Engineer if the HP isn't too low.)

@ 38:20 - Why are there no Light Tank husks?

It's to remove the edge Allies have when blocking Ore Refinery, now the husk won't keep blocking and make new players annoyed so they stop playing the game (since they might not now you can fore-fire husks). Part of my goal with overhaul is to make the game more beginner-friendly so the playerbase never dry up. :P Though right now the number of OpenRA players are going up! :D woo

I also can't remember ever seeing a Mechanic (500 credits) take over a Light Tank so their husks weren't really functional. SoScared: You mention that blocking isn't an issue anymore, I was curious what you meant by that?

@ 40:53 - Better animations for slow deploying defensive structures:

You know, I was going to do that in overhaul but ended up not doing it because it would take so much time and I wasn't sure if you guys would like the slow defensive deployment or not. If the change becomes guaranteed to make it into the official mod I'd be happy to try and help out with that.

It looks especially silly for Tesla Coil because it has a very short "make"-animation. Padding the animation would be the best way but an easy way to fix this problem would be to make some kind of generic "construction crate" that goes down into the ground and then you append the regular make animation after it has sunk all the way down into the ground (the time it takes for the crate to sink would then just need to be adjusted depending on how long the actual make animation is).

@ 41:26 - Can't power down Radar Dome:

There's several reasons for this:
[tab]1) You need to manage your power better now. No easy fix to a low power situation by just shutting down Radar Dome, need to think about your power usage.
[tab]2) Attacking Power Plants gets stronger. This strategy becomes less viable if all it means is the enemy goes without radar for a little while. Likewise due to this you need to take better care of your Power Plants, keep them safe.
[tab]3) Removes the unfair edge that Soviet has compared to Allies (the Soviet can keep Radar Dome offline in the late game while the Allies need to keep it up for the GPS).
[tab]4) Most importantly: You now have to either sell stuff or shut down actual defensive structures to get back power. This means opening up holes for the enemy in your base.
There's a bit more on this in the "Radar Dome" post on page 1. Btw related change: Structures only take twice as long to build during low power, rather than three times in vanilla (unit production times are still tripled). That change was mainly to reduce the strength of an early Grenadier rush a little, since Allies have no such potential.

@ 42:02 - Rocket Soldiers inside Pillbox now fire at aircrafts:

Actually they do in vanilla as well however due to the HorizontalRateOfTurn of the missile and the designated fireports in the Pillbox the missile would most of the time just crash into the ground (garrisoned infantry actually only can fire at certain angles). This bug or glitch (or limitation) in the engine was solved simply by giving the Rocket Soldier's attack 255 in "HorizontalRateOfTurn", meaning it can obtain the desired angle immediately. It doesn't really affect gameplay so there's no harm to have it at 255 (as a bonus such high turn rate won't create any awkward missiles at near-missed air units either, if you know what I mean, they can look like they catch an extra updraft or something).

@ 47:55 - Civilian voices:

SoScared: No that wasn't my voice. :D I spent quite a while to find those male/female death sounds. I think it's good to have them completely seperate from regular infantry death sounds so that the player immediately knows that it's only civilians dying off-screen and there's no proper battle going on. Also it bothered me that killing female civilians gave a male death scream. At first I thought about using Tanya's death scream but that wouldn't be any good, player's would keep thinking their Tanya had been killed.

@ 51:15 - Too strong anti-air with Phase Transport:

Alright I guess their damage could be lowered vs light armor! I actually remembered this incorrectly, I thought it was 3 bursts needed to take down a regular Hind (6 missiles) and not 2... :P However keep in mind that those slow moving missiles should be easy to escape from so you would need to find idle air units to attack (helicopter's new default stance is "return fire" now btw so it could be risky).

Also you are thinking about things from vanilla's mechanics, imagine if this was in the real game. Then people would be aware of this threat if they are facing England and perhaps even build a Spy or Dog to be kept near the helipads. Phase Transport is also max tech while Hind isn't and its new missiles are next to useless against anything that isn't light armor. I've written down that the damage should be lowered though... Good feedback!

@ 53:20 - Why are there wall ruins?

They need to leave ruins so that the enemy can't keep rebuilding walls in the same place after they have been destroyed (walls have no build time in overhaul). It also punishes bad wall placement, you need to plan your base so you have room to expand (adds some strategy). Check out the post about the reworked walls on page one for more.

@ 55:30, 2:29:28 - Uzbekistan's super weapon depends on naval maps:

There are usually some puddles of water on most maps that can be easily reached with an Architect. After production you can just sell the Sub Pen and watch as the enemy goes insane because they can't stop your nuke without somehow first building a naval structure of their own on that spot. If they even realize what is going on, unless you build both of them the enemy has no way of knowing if you have a Missile Silo somewhere or a Nuclear Submarine somewhere. Related sidenote: Spies can detect submarines now, however you would still need naval units yourself to deal damage to it (or nuke the lake yourself).

However yes, I'll admit it's a limitation. Not really an oversight though since I did think about it. ;) But this is again from the perspective of the current vanilla game; if Uzbekistan was in the game map makers would be aware of them and would therefore make sure there is at least some water on their maps. Maybe not all map makers, but the best ones would (haha). Also, the faction only needs water for its second nuke. They can still make a Missile Silo like everybody else so they aren't a fish without water.

@ 56:00 - Architect takes longer to produce so it's harder to contest early Oil Derricks:

This is intentional in order to balance things. It makes it a little harder to reach the other side of the map with your Architect before you finish your first Ore Refinery. I thought that since Uzbekistan has an easy time to expand to other ore patches they should at least be delayed a bit if they decide to contest Oil Derricks.

It also gives the enemy a bit extra time to get Rifle Infantry out to those ore patches if he wants to prevent you from getting your early expansions, since he knows he is up against Uzbekistan he knows this could become a problem.

@ 56:10 - Architect only costs 500 credits:

Actually it's just the first Architect that costs 500 credits, I guess you could say that's your Master Architect.

After the first one they cost 2000 credits per unit (same train time as the cheaper Master Architect though). If all your Architects dies he returns to costing just 500.

This is also for balance purposes, you can expand early but only expand to one place at a time. Unless you pay a lot of credits of course.

@ 56:45, 1:03:48 - "Architect is broken" (as in being overpowered due to being able to build bases everywhere):

It's a little early for that, it's the first playtest. Being able to expand is the primary strength of the faction, it has several disadvantages such as no Iron Curtain, no walls, no early infantry transport and no anti-infantry base defenses (late anti-vehicle base defense).

The Architect is very vulnerable and slow compared to an MCV and he doesn't actually provide building production so if your one and only MCV gets taken out you can't make buildings. So Uzbekistanian players has an advantage early but come late game and your expansions becomes fragile -- take out the Architect and the owner can't build anything there.

Also if you are up against Uzbekistan you normally would know what they are capable off and will therefore try and counter the Architect. An early APC or Ranger could be all you need. Hm, now that I say it out loud I wonder if Uzbekistan might even end up too weak... Though you can still move your original MCV so it should be fine. More playtesting would be nice! :D

I understand it must feel that way but it's a little uncalled for to say that the Architect is "nonsense" around 1:06:05 when the enemy isn't even trying to kill it. It was allowed to run around unguarded the whole time since the enemy didn't know what he was facing on the new faction. The first thing to do in order to shut down Uzbekistan is to just drive up to their Architect and kill it, it has the same health as an Engineer.

@ 1:00:26 - Pillbox being built next to an Architect:

D'oh! Uzbekistan does not have Pillboxes! I can't stress that enough. The reason why it could be built here by FiveAces is because of the reworked prerequisites system, in which you gain the blueprints of the buildings you have captured while the buildings are still standing. The problem is with all these neutral Pillboxes placed on the map that you can capture, these also give blueprints. I actually did discover this in development but didn't think much of it for some reason.

I should have made an exception for ground defense structures so that they don't give blueprints... I mean it's rare to be able to capture those without being killed anyway (basically only possible during low power). This was an oversight on my part and has been added to the TODO list, it needs a fix.

@ 1:03:14, 1:45:35 - Spotter is really strong:

They may seem stronger than they are because the opponent doesn't really know what he is up against and can't build to counter it. Perhaps a small price increase is in order but I can't really tell right now.

Notice btw at around 1:04:26 that Spotters can't attack wood armor (same with Ranger/APC/Rifle Infantry). I'll also point out that when in deployed as an outpost they have exactly the same attack as a Rifle Infantry, just with 6.5 cells of attack range due to the elevation instead of the normal 5.0.

When in lower-vision car form they have access to the stronger mounted weapon, which is exactly the same as the Ranger. (Rangers drive faster, see further and can carry a passanger while Spotter can't have a passanger. Spotter turns faster though, so they can flee more easily and deploy in about the same time regardless of facing direction.)

More trivia: The APC/Ranger/Spotter machine gun actually only has a range of 4.0 cells, meaning Rifle Infantry actually reaches longer with their carbine (this is how it is in vanilla, not an overhaul change).

@ 1:03:30 - Rocket Soldiers are bad:

It's still a really versatile unit but damage-wise they are now on par with their tech level and production cost. I noticed that all other units in the game was used much more now that Rocket Soldiers are nerfed, which was my original intention.

At 2:43:28 SoScared remarks that they are actually still good! The DPS has been nerfed but the actual missile damage is not changed much so a group of Rocket Soldiers still has quite a kick.

@ 1:08:18 - SoScared mentions that I emphasize value (cost) vs damage when I do my balancing:

It's true that I use it as a good base measurement but I also take into account other things such as speed, vulnerability, multi-purpose, tech level and queue blocking.

Let's take my favorite example, the vanilla Rocket Soldier:
[tab]1 of those is a Barracks and 300 credits.
[tab]Meanwhile a Medium Tank is a War Factory, a Service Depot and 850 credits (plus an Ore Refinery and two Power Plants realistically speaking but lets not count those for sake of argument).

However 1 single Rocket Soldier can still dish out more DPS than 1 Medium Tank, both against wood armor and heavy armor. They will win 1-on-1 against a Medium Tank. Building a Medium Tank is also a bigger investment than just credits, it blocks the important vehicle queue needed to make MCVs. Meanwhile on the infantry queue the only thing Rocket Soldier blocks is another Rocket Soldier. ;)

To top it all off the Rocket Soldier can also attack air units. And their attacks are homing, all tanks suffer less damage against moving targets when firing from a distance due to ballistic travel time. There is no other unit in the game that I can make this strong case against, to be blunt I can't think of a single argument to not nerf them besides "they've always been like this".

They do however move slow compared to tanks and are generally more vulnerable, which is why they are still as strong as they are in overhaul. Their DPS is lower due to the longer reload but each individual missile is not much weaker than before, in a group they are just as effective as before against tanks rolling in one by one. They even have 0.5 cells more range in overhaul.

Check out my posts and gifs on the Rocket Soldier earlier in the thread for a bit more on my reasoning, sorry if I'm going on and on about the unit but I think it's important.

@ 1:09:54 - Strong Heavy Hinds:

They have very strong burst damage, that is their thing. On the flip side they are slow and can easily overkill (wasting ammo) so they can be less effective vs infantry than for example a regular Hind. There's also no anti-air structures around since it hasn't been a normal match where both sides know what they are dealing with.

I'd like to point out that regular vanilla Hinds are pretty damn good against buildings as well, especially since they are cheaper than Heavy Hind so you can build more of them for the same credits. Of course the Heavy Hind is still better though, I'm not claiming they are equals damage-wise.

@ 1:10:55 - FiveAces' heads-up to me regarding the Architect's problem in being able to drop off Ore Refineries and defenses:

Thanks! I was aware and I agree that it can be a problem, however I'd love to see some more matches before I make up my mind about the unit. I was actually a little surprised that nobody pointed out that this was the first match with the faction, meaning the enemy didn't know what to expect.

Hopefully there are some more playtesting later in the stream where the other player actively tries to counter the Architect. Hopefully on some map without neutral pillboxes because they are only supposed to have anti-vehicle base defense (and not during the early game). ^_^ Time to unpause and find out!

@ 1:19:38 - Concerning floating due to many Ore Refineries:

This is actually on the TODO list already, to reduce capacity of refinery to just 500. I thought about doing it originally but didn't want to change things too much. I want people to make at least one Ore Silo though, because it adds new strategy to the game: A simpler way to harm your opponents economy. This means you have to position the ore silo in a defendable spot, maybe even wall it off. They hold up to 10k each so if its taken out you could lose a lot of cash. SoScared did get a "silo's needed" at 1:43:57 but there wasn't much production going on at the time so lowering to 500 per refinery might be good to try out.

@ 1:21:10 - Discovery that you can't build Pillboxes now:

Very happy about the map choice, it has no neutral Pillboxes so you'll get to see how the faction is intended to be played. Still no trying to counter your opponent's early expansion though, but I guess that makes sense since both are playing Uzbekistan so you are focusing on your own early expansions.

Glad you guys liked the Engineer's ground blast to take down the center concrete wall a few moments earlier! I was a little worried that you'd think it ruins several maps and argue that it doesn't belong in the game because of it. If that was an issue though it's always possible to add a new type of wall that map makers can use but players can't build, it would work just like Concrete Wall except just look a little different so that players know they can't use the ground blast on it.

@ 1:22:35 - Discovery that Uzbekistan doesn't have any anti-infantry base defense structure:

Indeed, part of the balance to make the Architect balanced. Instead Uzbekistan has their trusty Spotter vehicle or Light Hind for that purpose - however if you build a War Factory early (or Radar Dome into Heipad) you can't spam Ore Refinery everywhere. See how the pieces fit? ;)

This is why the Light Hind has a very short production timer (and have a mention about being "easy to mass produce" in their description) - to balance the fact that they don't have anti-infantry structures. Light Hinds don't have as good line-of-sight as a Spotter Outpost though (or a regular Hind) so you have to balance pros and cons between which one of them you want to use for dealing with infantry (Light Hinds also has less HP than a regular Hind and takes twice as long to kill a Rocket Soldier as a regular Hind, giving them more of a chance to fire their missiles).

However, I messed up a little when finishing overhaul -- I forgot to change the Light Hind's production duration after changing the duration for the Hind (to 30 sec) so due to inheritance the Light Hind's production timer is a bit longer than actually intended. It's not too bad though, not game-breaking, but I've written it down to be fixed if I make another overhaul version.

@ 1:22:50 - Can Engineer's ground blast destroy gems or ore?

No, it only works against walls and mines.

@ 1:23:04 - Can Rifle Infantry destroy Harvesters (and tanks)?

Yes, but their damage vs heavy armor has been nerfed (they can't even touch wood armor, which in a way is a buff when attacking a base since they will prioritize on softer targets instead of wasting bullets on buildings). You still need Rocket Soldiers in the mix, despite their nerf! :)

@ 1:24:25 - Why the name "Uzbekistan"?

Quoted from the first post in the thread: It had the third largest population in the Soviet union and it has the perfect flag as the third Soviet faction in OpenRA."

Also there's just something about countries that end with "stan". ;) It can be shortened to "Uzbek" as well. But the name's not really important in itself and can be changed if people find something better.

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@ 1:25:14 - Supply Tent:

Nice to see it being tested, I really want all units to be useful in the game and being able to deploy the Supply Truck into a tent means it now has a purpose since I've never actually seen anyone transport credits to other players. It's still possible in overhaul though so the feature isn't removed.

I made the tent be a barracks because of Uzbekistan's lack of early-game infantry transport. This way you can pay an extra 500 credits and "transport" (spawn) your Architect to the other side of the map more quickly. At a bit of a risk though, if an enemy picks off the truck the 500 credits crate is dropped (doesn't drop from the tent). I don't know if this is broken or not, needs playtesting. Maybe it's even near useless?

Another idea I had was to make the tent a kind of less vulnerable "medic" (if tent health is boosted, right now it's very fragile). When infantry gets near to the Supply Tent it would heal them, this adds new strategy to the game. You could even make the tent invulnerable and heal enemies as well - that way positioning becomes important and you could "capture" the tent from the enemy by taking the position! It would still time out after a while.

@ 1:30:32 - "Rifle Infantry not attacking structures makes barracks camping so easy that it's stupid":

It's not that much of a difference compared to just keeping your army back a little and attacking any infantry that spawns, or changing targets when one spawns.

The real difference here is that in vanilla you wouldn't be camping the barracks at all because the Rifle Infantry blob would destroy them. At this point in the match you've already won since otherwise your opponent would just build a barracks somewhere else. In a normal game the opponent would surrender but since this is a playtest of something new the match lingers on, which creates the barracks camping situation.

This is also a good demonstration of one of the things that balances the Architect in Uzbekistan, they have no anti-infantry to pop. Russia/Ukraine would be able to pop a Flame Tower to deal with camping and if this game mechanic became a thing in the game (possible Barracks camping) Allied and Uzbekistanian players would be aware of it and adjust their playstyle (prepare a pillboxe next to the barracks and such).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in a proper match where everybody is used to the mechanic you wouldn't be able to get into this situation and if you do it just means you've won fairly -- the opponent simply failed to prevent your army from entering swarming your base.

@ 1:31:58 - "Uzbekistan is unbalanced, borderline ridiculous":

The reason why it appears completely borked is because everyone is used to how the game normally works. If everybody had read the whole thread the faction probably wouldn't seem so bad, I completely understand not reading my huge walls of text though -- it would take so long! But it's the best I can do to motivate everything.

If something seems weird keep in mind that many changes depends on each other. To truly be able to tell if something is unbalanced there need to be more matches where people are used to how all new mechanics work together. I'd like to see people doing things such as trying to prevent Architects from moving freely or prepare several Spotter Outposts around the base for anti-air defense (as you may have noticed just a single Outpost doesn't have very strong anti-air capabilities, they might even need a buff on that area but it's too early to tell. I don't want to make them too good vs air though since they don't need power).

@ 1:45:00 - "So you just spam refineries everywhere":

On this map you're playing 2 Uzbekistan vs 2 Uzbekistan so everybody can spam refineries everywhere, which balances things out. However if you were playing a non-Uzbekistan faction your opponent could build a War Factory and Ranger/APC while you keep spamming refineries, meaning he can pick off your Architect and then proceed to move into your not-so-developed main base. It remains to be seen whether or not Ore Refinery spamming with Architect is a viable strategy in a mixed-faction game where the enemy is fully aware of Uzbekistan's units.

@ 1:47:35 - The spotter is super good (after taking down some air units):

Those are Uzbekistanian Light Hinds, which have low HP and low vision. It would be interesting to see a England vs Uzbekistan match up so Spotter's anti-air capabilities can be tested against more tanky air units. They have better vision as well and should be able to reach the outpost and kill it. The anti-air missiles are actually quite slow and each have various reach so it's easy to react and avoid most of the anti-air damage as well.

Another drawback the spotter outpost has compared to regular anti-air is that while it is attacking ground units it won't be attacking air units. So if you can keep it busy with something you can sweep in with air units without any risk. In short I'd say that Uzbekistan actually have the worst base air defense capabilities out of all factions, especially when you can repair AA Gun and SAM Site (hope someone tries building a SAM Site before the stream is over since it has been reworked as well).

I've noticed that so far mostly (only??) Spotters have been produced, while I agree that they are fun they would all be pretty much hard countered by a single Medium Tank or Heavy Tank. Hope to see how that goes in a future match! :D Contrary to popular belief there is a reason to not only build Spotters, it just works so well right now because the other players also only make those vehicles (and infantry, as vanilla's meta prescribe).

@ 1:49:20 - Got only civilians from selling an Ore Refinery:

That wasn't bad luck, in overhaul you only get civilians from selling in order to remove the lottery factor (Rifle Infantry is worth 100 credits per unit after all, so sometimes you'd end up getting more value from selling than other times). See the "Selling structures" post on page 5 for more on this.

@ 1:53:35 - Camping barracks again:

Aha, it is stated that "it's easy to camp the barracks here" and "what is he going to do?", then immediately you need to pull back because he sent a tank to defend. This demonstrates a bit of the new meta, which has shifted away from infantry being king to both infantry and vehicles being equally important to have. It goes to show that Spotters can be countered by an aware player and while strong early game they do start to fall off a bit come late game (though always with situational purpose, just like for example Ranger in the late game).

@ 1:54:30 - "There's almost no reason to build a Service Depot for Uzbekistan":

Without one they won't have any base defense structure, they won't have Heavy Tank or Mammoth Tank and they won't be able to build a Mechanic to recapture the MCV husk if the one and only Conn Yard gets taken out. If the opponents had taken out FiveAces' Conn Yard he wouldn't have been able to build anything (Architects don't produce things, just place them) and he wouldn't have been able to recapture the MCV Husk (the husk might have been destroyed by the enemy anyway though after they destroyed the Conn Yard). Also let's not forget that Service Depot itself has been buffed in overhaul, it's useful for quickly repairing aircraft.

Hey it actually happened at around 1:58:35, FiveAces discovered that after his Conn Yard was destroyed he couldn't make buildings and couldn't make a Mechanic due to not having a Service Depot. I don't know why he (you, if you're reading this ;) ) thought it was a questionable design decision though, it balances against the advantages Architect has. Sure you can expand fast and easy but you still need to take care of your one and only MCV! Compared to the other factions Uzbekistan actually has a core, part of what makes them unique (it was this thought that made me think of making Architect in the first place). I wouldn't call it a balance flaw, rather the opposite.

@ 1:57:13 - Why Spy Plane is obtained from Soviet Tech Center:

It's my suggestion on how to balance against Allied Tech Center. Russia and Ukraine gets 1 Spy Plane from the first airfield and a the second Spy Plane when they build a Tech Center.

The current leading suggestion to balance against the GPS seems to be to reduce the cooldown of the Spy Plane. I think that makes it a bit too strong early game so I propose this instead, so that Soviet vision gets more equal to the GPS at about the same time when GPS can actually come online.

I overall prefer having 2 Spy Planes because it means you can either use them in two seperate occations or use both at the roughly same time when you really need the extra vision. Being able to reveal more at the same time is not possible if the cooldown is simply reduced.

@ 2:00:12 - Banning Uzbekistan for the rest of the stream after discovering that Architect doesn't work as an actual building producer:

You give up on it only after three games? That's disappointing, not everything is as it appears at first glance. Isn't it a little strange to first complain about the Architect being too strong and then complain when the faction has a flaw to compensate for the Architect being strong? I would also have loved to see you guys trying to play conventionally with them, I think if you had tried playing mostly as normal (meaning much less Spotter focus) you would have discovered more of what Uzbekistan has to offer.

Will you consider visiting Uzbekistan again after reading this post? With some of my reasoning in mind? Going in completely blind without knowing what to expect would make things appear stranger than they are on most anything in life.

I've mentioned it before in the thread that there is an easy way to make the faction more normal: Give back MCV to it + make Architect a bit more expensive and capped at 1 unit (it could also require Radar Dome to be built first, giving players more of a reason to go dome before War Factory for once). To me that would be taking the easy way out though, I really wanted to bring new gameplay to the table.

Alright, Uzbekistan returned with Blackened in the naval match at around 2:34:00, woo. Though his MCV got taken out quickly. D'oh! I guess the problem must be addressed.

@ 02:11:51 - Faster Spy Plane:

Well spotted! It's not because of the Faster game speed setting on the server, the Spy Plane now moves twice as fast. It reduces the random delay that comes with the random direction the plane flies and generally buffs the Soviets a little against the Allied GPS. Check "Spy Plane" on page 4 for more info.

@ 02:12:05 - There's no lag:

The only thing I suspect could cause more lag than usual is the workaround I did in order to get the Attack Dog's sniffing ability to work. Overall it looks pretty good on the lag front! But as mentioned on stream it could be because there aren't that many spectators in-game, more playtests needed to be sure. If lag does become a problem then I think it's easy to fix by sacrificing the sniffing ability.

@ 2:13:45 - Comment on the gap generator's future:

If overhaul was made in the next patch I would have made it so that shroud from Gap completely blocks all vision from aircraft but doesn't block ground vision at all (aircrafts are the prime scouts after all). Just wanted to sneak that in, see "Gap Generator and Mobile Gap Generator" on page 6 for an explanation as to why.

@ 2:14:32 - Hospital (and Biological Lab) is now a "minor base", allowing basically just defensive structures to be built there:

This gives these two structures more desirability and creates hotspots that might actually be contested on the map. The healing was buffed as to make it actually useful. See "The special neutral buildings" on page 6 for more!

@ 2:18:34, 2:21:30 - Migs with anti-air capabilities:

I'd like to stress that I never intended for the Mig's anti-air to be this good. My original intention was that they should only be able to fire two air-to-air missiles before needing to go back to reload, it's not like that right now in overhaul due to engine limitations with two ammo pools. I did figure out a solution while typing "MiG and Yak" on page 2, it has been added to the TODO list.

Please don't be too hasty to declare Mig with anti-air a bad thing, it's been talked about before in the community and as far as I have noticed there are not as many Migs produced compared to Longbows. So Mig needs something to make it more worth getting. Playtests like this are meant to try out new stuff, wouldn't you agree that it's counterproductive to instantly dismiss an idea as soon as it's discovered?

Moz: I dig the launch sound effect too, a cookie to anyone that figures out where I got it from! ;) I've modified it slightly but it should be recognizable.

@ 2:19:43 - Low HP Barracks:

They even have lower HP than in the next patch due to the Rocket Soldier nerf. See "Barracks and Allied Tech Center" on page 7 for more.

@ 2:20:12 - "I chronoported into a crate and it got crushed":

I'm not sure what that means (wasn't shown on the stream, just spoken) but it isn't something I recognize I've done anything with in overhaul. I didn't fiddle with the Chrono Tank's teleportation ability. Maybe you've found a bug in the engine?

@ 2:22:20 - "Where are the MAD Tanks?":

I wanna know that as well! ;) Though they are still situational.

@ 2:26:52 - The easter egg:

Hehe, it's basically just what it looks like. Nothing game changing, just an easter egg. "Ltd." is short for "Limited Company" but I see how it's easy to read it as "lieutenant". "Ltd" is the British equivalent to the American "Inc." for "Incorporated". Since Red Alert is European business lore-wise I picked the British abbreviation.

@ 2:30:25 - "Destroyers doesn't reveal anymore":

They do still have submarine detection, it's just 0.5 cells less range than in vanilla. Gunboat has 0.5 cells more range.

@ 2:34:25 - Water Transport changes:

They are 50% bigger, not faster (in fact they are slower and other things). See "Transport" on page 8 for more.

@ 2:36:35 - Gunboat changes:

They have exactly the same vision as Longbows and Migs (sidenote: Migs have 1 extra cell of vision range in the next patch). Instead of repeating myself on these naval changes I'll just refer to the "Gunboat" post on page 9. As always keep in mind that they work together to create a new balanced and useful navy, individually the changes would make less sense.

@ 2:37:20 - Submarine changes:

Let's not be too hasty to call a unit useless at first glance. They scout a lot more and they do take out Gunboats with just one torpedo (2 for Destroyers) but you can't play them as you typically would in vanilla since Gunboat now has better claws. You have to be more sneaky and generally a lot more careful with positioning (avoid several subs next to each other for example).

You definitely shouldn't just run into the Gunboats with your Submarines without firing your torpedoes like on the stream. If you're sneaky enough you could take out a group of Gunboats before the enemy even knows what hit him. The subs can see and attack further than the Gunboats can detect. Have a look at the "Submarine" post on page 8 for an explanation on how the submarine has been reworked.

Sending a fully loaded Transport at red HP into three nearby Gunboats (2:40:47) isn't recommended either. It's a good way to make Gunboats look better than they are.

The first successful torpedo hit on a Gunboat occurrs at 2:41:39.

@ 2:37:56 - Suggestion that Architect should be able to capture MCV husks:

Interesting idea but that would kind-of change the balancing. The Conn Yard was picked off early here because defensive measures weren't taken, since the faction is brand new and people can't instantly know it by heart.

Although I can see how it can work, if you remove Mechanics then the Architect penalty to walk all the way back in order to get the husk might be enough of a balance against the Architect's usability. They also wouldn't be able to just capture MCV husks but all husks. At least in the current game engine. Also, the husk could have been destroyed by the helicopters as well without any anti-air defence.

I guess the thinking-out-of-the-box solution here would be to give Uzbekistanian Conn Yards a built-in anti-air turret? That could work as long as it doesn't have too much reach. Hm, nah, too strange.

The more I think about it though the more I like the thought of Architect also getting the husk capture ability. I think I'll add it to the TODO.

On third thought: Architect should be able to construct a new Conn Yard for something like 3000 credits if the old one gets taken out! That would get around the problem with the MCV Husk getting destroyed by the enemy and it would allow Uzbekistan to keep their Mechanic (good for quick repairs of damaged Light Hinds during reloading and I do like the fact that they can combo Mechanics with Mammoth Tanks late game, I know it sounds bad but I'm not so sure). It even opens up the risky strategy of selling your Conn Yard in order to rebuild it somewhere else (makes you go without building construction options for a while). Selling a Conn Yard at full health gives you just 500 credits (due to the Engineer you get) so the cost of doing so wouldn't be offset too much either. Come to think of it selling a Conn Yard on Uzbekistan should probably provide an Architect and not an Engineer (it doesn't spawn if you sell at low Conn Yard HP).

@ 2:38:11 - Faster reloading for Hinds:

This shouldn't be so, I haven't changed the reload times for the Hind. Unless... It could have to do with an unintentional side effect of what I did in order to make reloading helicopters not block the aircraft production queue... That's probably the issue, see "Aircraft reload (and Helipad changes)" on page 3.

@ 2:38:32 - Different Hind fire animation:

I have not touched the visuals of regular Hinds, they should fire and turn exactly the same as in vanilla. It's just the separation logic that has been changed.

@ 2:36:06 - Too many civilians:

I didn't think about the actual number of civilians you get from selling a building, especially if you build several Advanced Power Plants just to sell them off. :P I can see the need for that to be lowered, you can kind of use them as meat shields now (especially vs Tesla Coils).

The reason why I didn't think about it is because you often do get the same number of units when selling a building in vanilla. Try selling a few Advanced Power Plants and you'll often get 1 Rifle Infantry + 8 civilians and a few times just get 2 Rifle Infantry. If the Advanced Power Plant is damaged just a little bit you'll always get 1 Rifle Infantry + 8 civilians.

@ 2:41:05 - The War Factory has three exit cells:

This is another push towards making the game more beginner-friendly since blocking now basically only works on Ore Refinery. Besides, look at that garage port. It's wide enough to allow for diagonal exists. See "War Factory exit cells" on page 3 for more.

@ 2:41:28 - "The Service Depot allows for two repairs at the same time":

That isn't true, there must have been a misunderstaning when reading the thread. Only one vehicle can repair at the same time.

@ 2:41:49 - Why can't civilians pick up crates?

This is to prevent neutral civilians to pick up crates accidentally as they walk around randomly, which has actually happened to me once when I was about to get a crate (the civilian gained 1000 credits). It can happen more often i overhaul because now when you destoy a Church an alms crate spawns next to a Priest. Without this change there's a God chance the Priest would wander into the crate.

Besides, you can get promotion crates and duplication crates. It's worth the extra effort to use a proper unit to pick up crates -- especially since all negative crates have been removed from overhaul. So there's no risk, no need to use a disposable civilian. See "crates" on page 5.

@ 2:44:44 - Talk about the Mig anti-air again:

Nice that the Mig air-to-air missiles have grown on you guys! Maybe even FiveAces would agree that they aren't too overpowered if they could only fire two of those per run? It's what I originally intended. You did pick off a Mig with a Longbow just a moment earlier after all so they aren't unstoppable. I'll admit Migs have a high chance of escaping though but that is as intended, it balances against Allies great AA Gun.

@ 2:45:30 - Cruiser changes:

They do indeed actually do damage now! Gunboats are good vs None armor, Destroyers are good vs Light and Heavy armor and Cruiser are good vs None and Wood armor. I spent a long time working on Cruiser in order to actually make it worth building 2 of them instead of 5 Destroyers. Check the "Cruiser" post on page 9 for details.

@ 2:46:05 - Mobile Radar Jammer:

The range is increased so they will still be able to do anything without being at the front of an attack (they are much weaker in overhaul, no longer heavy armor). The movement speed has been increased so they can be repositioned easier and keep up with a moving army. See "Mobile Radar Jammer" on page 6 for more!

Also you noticed that Mobile Radar Jammer now gets veterancy from spies entering an enemy War Factory. In vanilla some units are not covered by the Spy veterancy but in overhaul I've made sure that every infantry/vehicle/aircraft/naval unit are affected by the infiltration. Naval units can now also get veterancy from Spies so infiltrating Sub Pen or Shipyard goes from not-worth-it to kind-of-worth-it (you get both Sonar and naval veterancy).

@ 2:47:11 - Chrono Tank anti-air:

It is said here that the unit's anti-air isn't functional but the functionality is there, just working as intended in order to not be too overpowered. Just like with Phase Transport the Chrono Tank works best against idle air units, hitting moving Migs is not their thing. I want people to build proper air-defense structures, any unit anti-air capabilities are supposed to be more of a bonus (with the exception of Mobile Flak).

@ 2:51:17 - It's hard to get graphical changes through to the offical Red Alert mod:

I learned this after I put that month into making overhaul and to be honest had I known about it beforehand I might not have gotten started. I can understand not wanting to add some kind of new alien monster or something but anything that keeps the look-and-feel of the original game isn't so bad in my book. Basically if you put the new graphics side-by-side to an old graphics and someone that has never played Red Alert before can't tell which one is newer, then it has the same look-and-feel.

It seems like such a self-limiting policy to have, if you can't add new units to the game then how are you supposed to innovate with the third soviet faction? You could just move units around, I suppose it's possible, but it wouldn't make the new faction feel very fresh. No big changes ever, just tweaks here and there. So you put your game at risk for stagnation, know what I mean?

I still have some hopes of my graphics being added into the "bits" folder, it contains loose .shp files. I mean, even if they aren't used by the official game. Modders can then use them for unofficial mods and maps. It's probably the same policy for that folder though... At the very least I hope my fixes of existing graphics doesn't go to waste (Chinook, Longbow, Engineer - see "Cleaned graphics" on page 2). Especially the Engineer fix, I trust you all have seen how silly the Engineer walks when he's going to the right?

@ 2:58:35 - Infantry dodging:

You're right, infantry do auto-dodge vehicles better in overhaul. I might not have mentioned this earlier in the thread, it's written in the description of Rifle Infantry in-game though but I've noticed there's not much description reading on stream.

It went from 75% chance to 80% chance, it's remarkable that you noticed the 5% difference. However I wonder if those 5% do more than they are supposed to, I tried lowering the WarnProbability to 60% at the beginning of making overhaul and noticed that suddenly it was very easy to run over infantry, much easier than what 60% should look like. Especially infantry in groups of 5 would all get run over a lot instead of at least one of them escaping, first I thought the warning is for the whole cell but sometimes they do seem to split?

I decided that having your army run over gives a bad feeling of unfairness so I instead buffed it by 5%. Just making infantry crawl out of the way do help during battle anyway because while they are doing that they stop firing so you always gain something from trying to run them over, even if you fail. If they can't escape somewhere or if you run over them while they are already moving it increases, if not guarantees, a successful crush.

@ 3:00:10 - Pillbox comment:

It's a bit unclear what Moz meant here, did you mean that pillboxes are still (too) strong? Here we see 13 Rifle Infantry and 2 Rocket Soldiers was sent into a camo pillbox, a few at a time, if a Pillbox aren't capable of dealing with such a situation they will never be built. Blackend even did manage to get it down to half HP due to its armor change from heavy to light armor. V2 Rockets take them out in just one shot in overhaul (needs three in vanilla just for a single pillbox).

@ 2:59:43 - Spotter is a strange unit:

It's actually used correctly here though with the outposts inside the base. I realize it looks scary since I've borrowed the Guard Tower graphics from Tiberian Dawn but they aren't near that level of strength, Spotter Outposts have exactly the same DPS on the ground as a single Rifle Infantry.

The unit's two modes have a tradeoff, when deployed they do only 20% of the damage they do in car form but in return they provide vision and anti-air defense. When undeployed their damage increases five times but their vision goes from 10 to 5 (five is standard vehicle line-of-sight, what for example most tanks have).

For comparison Ranger always have 7.875 vision (basically the same as in vanilla, I've changed all vision values to give better cones), always do the same amount of damage as Spotter in car form and Rangers have 170 move speed while Spotter has 149 (APC has 142). Spotters do turn faster but can't carry any passenger.

@ 3:01:55 - Concerning the Nuclear Submarine:

One way to stop it is to scout that Uzbekistan has made a Sub Pen and work towards destroying it before spawning the sub. It also takes a while to submerge, meaning you could pick it off as it spawns if you can. Otherwise yes, it can be tricky to deal with it, at least if the puddle is guarded. Knowing what's going on by scouting the Sub Pen and realizing what unit Uzbekistan could spawn there is the first step though.

I was considering whether or not you should be able to damage Submarines a bit by force-firing the surface of the water but ended up skipping it since Allies doesn't really need more naval power. It's not like the sub is just a couple of meters below the surface anyway, they are further down than they appears to be in-game.

As for the range of the nuke (asked on the stream) it works just like the normal Atom Bomb, meaning global range. (I'll mention that the unit's cost is 4000 credits and Uzbekistan has no Iron Curtain.)

Also someone asked at 3:07:45 if it uses the sprite for the Missile Sub, it doesn't. I took the regular Submarine graphics and extended it manually in pixel-by-pixel, I didn't just stretch the image or anything like that.

@ 3:03:15 - MAD Tank's health:

When undeployed they have 1000 HP but while thumping they only have 333 HP. So you can't really use it effectively head-on and alone like this since there are enemies nearby, it's a unit best used for sneak attacks while the enemy army is away from home.

They do minimal damage to infantry, just enough to make them go prone. The MAD Tank is special in the way that it's the only unit that do more damage to something the more heavily armored it is.

@ 3:05:28 - Why do Uzbekistan have Destroyers?

There is a reason, firstly because they are a hybrid faction. But mainly because they have weak anti-air, this way you can make Destroyers to protect you from air raids. The Spotter Outposts looks great on paper but due to being a non-repairable, light armored vehicle (even though it looks like a structure) they are taken out easily even by aircraft themselves.

Btw I'm surprised nobody has yet noticed the very low line-of-sight of the Destroyer in overhaul, nor the very low damage against buildings. And I hope someone makes a Missile Sub before the stream ends!

@ 3:07:47 - People noticed Uzbekistan has no anti-infantry defense:

Great that people noticed one of the things that balances the Architect! Yes you can rush Uzbekistan's base with infantry early on, Uzbekistanian players would of course be aware of this and need to prepare boots on the ground to defend the base. You can't simply play Uzbekistan as they have done on the stream, if you happily go off to expand you will leave your base open for attacks since you won't have as much credits left over for infantry in the base.

You shouldn't be able to expand to every ore field unguarded either since people playing against Uzbekistan would be aware and try to pick off the Architect if its on its own. I mean you don't send your Engineers by itself to Oil Derricks early on, it would get picked off.

Though I suspect some people have spun the concept of "rushing Uzbekistan early every game before War Factory" into a flaw with the Uzbekistanian faction due to its the lack of anti-infantry base defense. You're thinking based on vanilla's meta. A 500 credits pillbox (400+100 for the infantry inside) means 5 Rifle Infantry that you could keep in your base for defense. It's not as good as a pillbox for sure (neither is Spotter) but early on it doesn't need to be. It's not like the enemy will rush you with pillboxes, it will be infantry vs infantry. Uzbekistan is perfectly capable of defending itself if played right.

@ 3:09:15 - Units survive being inside a destroyed pillbox:

This balances the other pillbox nerfs so that you still dare to put Tanya inside one even though it is destroyed from just one V2 Rocket. Please read "The Pillboxes" on page 3 for my reasoning.

@ 3:12:28 - Too strong Tusk Missiles:

It keeps being said but I still think they have just been reworked to bring the Mammoth into a more reasonable damage range and they opens up more vulnerability against for example air attacks. When launched there is now a window for aircrafts to move in and they do less damage vs big groups of infantry than in vanilla.

They seem strong here because there are 7 Mammoth Tanks attacking. That's 14k credits and the game is practically over already, the enemy has nearly no defense. He attacked with a lesser Mammoth Tank squad a little earlier and it was successfully dealt with. During the stream Mammoths have mostly been built in bulk towards the end game when it's basically already decided who has won, from such "let's end this"-situations I can't really determine balance.

For 14k credits he could have attacked with 11 Heavy Tanks and 2 Spotters as well with the same outcome. Or 15 V2 Rockets... Crunching the numbers Mammoth Tank in overhaul does make sense, check "Mammoth Tank" on page 6 as well as the animated gifs on page 4. I want to make the unit worth building mid-game, not just in the end-game where you have already won.

@ 3:16:12 - Rocket Soldiers can't counter Mammoths:

That's not strictly true thanks to to the slower tusk reload. 5 Rocket Soldiers (1500 credits) will win against 1 Mammoth Tank with two surviving soldiers. Meanwhile in vanilla you also need 5 Rocket Soldiers to beat 1 Mammoth Tank but only one soldier survives.

That is when they are spread out however so the Mammoth can only hit one at a time. The big difference is the potential AOE damage from the tusks, in vanilla the tusks will kill on average 2 Rocket Soldiers in a stack of 5 in one cell (sometimes just 1 dies but then the next tusk will kill 3 due to several soldiers now having red HP). In overhaul the norm is 3 Rocket Soldiers per hit, sometimes 2, depends on if a Rocket Soldier explodes. Btw nobody on stream mentioned the chance to explode on death that Rocket Soldiers has, which is good because it means nobody thought it was broken.

In such case, when the Rocket Soldiers are in one cell, they bring down the Mammoth to yellow HP in vanilla before they all die and to half health in overhaul. What we can make of this is that it's important to spread out your Rocket Soldiers (as always) against a Mammoth Tank but yes they are perfectly capable of countering the Mammoth for less credits, just like in vanilla.

The problem with what you're seeing on stream is that there is a huge group of game-ending Mammoths. The enemy has basically already lost and the mammoths are just dealing the final blow to someone that no longer has a chance to keep up with the needed Rocket Soldier production.

The same group of Mammoths would mop up the same amount of Rocket Soldiers in vanilla. We can't determine that Mammoths are imbalanced because of this skirmish, it's not that unit that brought the player to victory. It just deals the final blow to an already defeated enemy.

I realize I might sound defensive but I put a lot of thought and effort into balancing the Mammoth Tank you see in overhaul. Just want to make sure everybody knows exactly how my reasoning goes when I maintain that no, from what I've seen so far I say it's not broken in overhaul.

@ 3:17:35 - SoScared's tempted to do another stream with overhaul sometime:

Oh nice, I was wondering if things were going to end here. I'm glad you started to see the Rocket Soldiers more and more from my perspective the further into the stream we got.

It would be super interesting to see another playtesting session with Uzbekistan after people have had some time to think about how to counter them. Maybe some of you will even have read this post? I know it turned out extremely long, I'm sorry. I can't help myself even though I know that walls of text usually are just skipped. Short and to-the-point forum posts for the win!

If you gave me a date for the next stream with overhaul I could make some fixes to the faction and overhaul in general. Maybe it could even be made for the next OpenRA patch?

@ 3:23:45 - Can Mobile Radar Jammer guard other units?

Both the Mobile Gap Generator and Mobile Radar Jammer can guard other units in overhaul. Together with their improved range and move speed they now make a pretty good resource to bring with you in an attack. The range increase makes it possible for them to stay back a bit and still be useful and they do need to stay back since they are much more vulnerable now.

Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 12:37 pm
by Fortnight
@ 3:24:25 - High tech units are produced much faster:

In overhaul there is a cap at 30 sec for call units (with a couple of exceptions). This is because I want teching up to be rewarded with better units instead of longer wait times to produce said units. You are already paying more credits for the unit, you shouldn't need to pay so much with time and queue blocking as well. Especially after all that time and credits you have spent on actually teching up.

It also solves part of the problem the game has with floating -- now you can spend credits faster so there's less chance of not making full use of your economy. Especially if you build several War Factories. Read "Training/production time limit" on page 3 for a bit more on the subject.

@ 3:31:45 - Is Demo Truck's nuke less powerful?

I haven't changed anything about the explosion, it's just like in vanilla (it's always been less effective than the real Atom Bomb, also not changed in overhaul).

@ 3:32:50 - How to deal with many Heavy Tanks?

By being prepared. ;) Just kidding but seriously though there wasn't that much defense standing ready. Amassing that many Heavy Tanks does take time, enough time for the enemy to build for example Rocket Soldiers that are, contrary to popular belief, still very effective against tanks in overhaul. There simply was no defense prepared to counter the mass tank strategy, time was spent on other areas (expansions, economy).

The meta's different, in vanilla he could have just started building Rocket Soldiers as soon as the attack came but in overhaul you need to be prepared. Scout the enemy to see what he has got coming for you. On the stream it may look like Orb was beaten by the enemy just mass-producing tanks but in my I notice that the enemy didn't really have much going for him except tank production and Orb could have capitalized on that. I'm not saying it's easy to switch over from thinking like you do in vanilla though.

We once again see Mammoth Tanks coming into play here very late when the match's already been won. If you look at around 3:33:58 you see some of them being repulsed by Rocket Soldiers combined with 2 red HP tanks and 2 red HP turrets, they aren't simply rolling over everything. If you attack non-infantry with a Mammoth the tusk missiles will be on cooldown, giving the Rocket Soldiers time for extra attacks.

@ 3:33:10 - Tanya's less effective:

She is still great at what she does, when needed she can take out huge infantry blobs (as seen at 3:34:11). If there aren't any infantry blobs she can still be put to use with her C4, especially now that she isn't stopped by walls (can blow them up). Chinook + Tanya still works and could become more of a thing now that Tanya isn't needed to mow down as many Rocket Soldiers. While the enemy was making all those tanks Tanya could have been flown around the map, blowing up buildings, so I'd say Tanya still earns her salt. There was no anti-air anywhere, just tank production. A simple Chinook + Engineer combo could have wrecked havoc as well (especially since capturing has been buffed, see "Prerequisites and capturing buildings" on page 1), effectively forcing the enemy away from simply mass-producing tanks.

@ 3:33:35 - Why is he building wire-fence?

Looks like folks haven't realized how fully different walls are in overhaul. ;) Barbed Wire/Sandbags are no longer crushable by anything and they stop all projectiles just like Concrete Wall (Mammoth Tanks can't crush concrete anymore btw, wall countering is for the Engineer/Tanya). This change may not seem realistic but it helps gameplay a whole lot, which I value over realism. It does makes basic walls worth buying even during late game.

I think the general surprise on stream over the fact that he has built wire fence goes to show that they were in need of a buff. Simply nobody builds them in a serious strategic way in vanilla, not even during the early game. Now they have purpose, just like the Supply Truck I want to make everything worth while getting in the game if some situation calls for it. Check "Sandbags, Barbed Wire and Concrete Wall" on page 1 for more!

At 3:53:37 it was discovered that the MCV couldn't crush walls. Ignore the fact that it's just barbed wire and think of what this means for gameplay and strategies. :)

@ 3:35:02 - The game has changed so people need to play a bit differently:

Well said, Moz! I really want to see more playtesting now.

@ 3:36:30 - Next time in april, maybe even later?

That's a long time to wait when you want more right now! But I understand, I'm pleased enough with the fact that you've decided to try it out again. :) If you remember please post in this thread when the time draws near.

-- -- --

There we go. Had to split the post into two posts because the original post got truncated. :oops: Good thing everybody likes reading! :crush:

There was many things that never came up, for example:
[tab]The forever-lasting Oil Derricks (respawns upon destruction).
[tab]No Flamethower units.
[tab]No stronger Parabombs.
[tab]No zombies. :( I like the new zombie sounds.
[tab]Several other things. The biggest being: No Missile Submarine! It's the one unit that differs the most from how it is in vanilla.

All in all I'm satisfied with the stream. Great feedback! Nobody actually complained about Rocket Soldier's slower anti-air missile, nice. Also appreciated the warm words about the Pillbox rework, I do think this would be a better way to go rather than adjusting the price.

If I had one wish for the next stream it would be for more 1v1 matches, even only 1v1 matches if possible. 2v2 or more tend to be chaotic even in vanilla, I can't judge balance changes in a good way unless you play 1v1.

I'd like to thank you all for giving my ideas a chance and hope to see you again next time as well! :D

I know it's a bother but try to skim through these last couple of post if you have a moment to spare. It should explain everything that seemed weird in the stream.

Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 8:02 pm
by Fortnight
Here's the TODO list for version 2 of overhaul if it was ever to be made:

+ Engineer & Architect descriptions need to mention that Forward Command also takes 15 sec to capture (small detail).
+ Every time MiG fires an air-to-air missile 4 should be taken from the ammo pool (meaning it can be used max twice for anti-air before needing to reload).
+ Make Ore Silo attackable by Rifle Infantry/APC/Ranger/Spotter (the only wood armor they will be able to attack, avoid possible bridge blocking exploits).
+ Try lowering Ore Refinery storage to 500 credits. Or maybe rather: Require Ore Silo in order to produce stand-alone Ore Trucks in the War Factory.
+ Make Ore Truck not be slowed when driving on Ore terrain.
+ Make Ore Truck have faster move speed when empty and slower when full, then restore vanilla's move speed of the Heavy Tanks. One round trip from field-to-refinery-to-field should still equal the same time as is needed in vanilla. Reasoning: Makes it less important how close to an ore field you place your first War Factory and it makes it more strategic to attack harvesters when they are full.
+ Adjust the build times of the normal pillboxes so that a normal version takes 10 seconds to make and a camo version takes 20 seconds to make.
+ Remove the added "hovrmis1.aud" sound effect for Mammoth Tank's tusk missiles, use the already-existing "missile7.aud" instead (it's exactly the same).
+ Remove the added "unplayable" game speed option since it breaks the special power timers (for example the cooldown of the Atom Bomb).
+ Mention in Iron Curtain/Chronoshift descriptions that they don't work on infantry and that Chronoshifting APC will remove (kill) any cargo.
+ Experiment with a new zombie spawning when a zombie kills infantry.
+ Make it so that defensive structures (at least anti-ground ones) does not give blueprints. It removes the problem with being able to build pillboxes if you take over a neutral Pillbox on the map.
+ Make Light Hind have the intended 16 sec production time. Current problem is that it inherits "BuildDuration: 1250" from the regular Hind.
+ Make sure Hijackers can hijack the Spotter and MAD Tank vehicle even in deployed form (Outpost/Thumping).
+ Rename "Transport" to something like "Water Transport". Don't change the icon text (space limitations).
+ Change Supply Tent from working as a temporary barracks into a temporary AOE healer of nearby infantry (with reasonable heal rate over time). The heal should be for all factions, even enemies, so it needs to be deployed it in a good place. Make the tent invulnerable and last for 45 seconds so that the enemy can make use of it if he won the battle.
+ Fix the shp graphics of Oil Derrick so that black color is no longer transparent.
+ Rename "Mobile Radar Jammer" to just "Radar Jammer"? Since there is no non-mobile version.
+ Further decrease the HP of Radar Jammer and Mobile Gap Generator so they both go down in 5 attacks from Medium Tank (currently it takes 7).
+ Have a max build limit of 1 for Radar Jammer.
+ Increase HorizontalRateOfTurn to 17 for Mammoth's tusk missiles. It'll make it less likely for them to just spin around their target if it's right next to the tank (already rare but can happen).
+ Clean up the Ranger/APC/Spotter attack so that it's the same as Rifle Infantry, except for the burst and range). The end result already is so in overhaul due to rounding but the yaml code could be cleaned up a bit.
+ Remove the "TakeCover" trait from Giant Ant. It does not prone and shouldn't get the 50% damage reduction.
+ The Destroyer's new missile (DStinger) should have 75% damage vs light armor, not the current 77% (even though gameplay-wise this doesn't make much difference).
+ Experiment with putting civilians into civilian buildings to provide vision, is it possible? Btw I'm aware that they will be renamed to Technician in the next realease, not sure if it's true for all of them? Not too fond of that change (even though it was like that in the original Red Alert game) since I think people will still keep calling them civilians. A technician is basically a type of civilian anyway. Could make people think they have some special purpose in the game, though I suppose it's already like that with Scientist that you can get from selling Tech Center.
+ Lower Phase Transport damage vs light armor so it takes 3 bursts (6 missiles) to take down a regular Hind, not just 2 bursts (4 missiles).
+ Reduce the number of civilians you get when selling a building. At least from the cheaper buildings, such as Advanced Power Plant.
+ Make Architect able to build a new Construction Yard for 3k credits if they have no Conn Yard or MCV. Maybe the normal 2k cost is enough.
+ Make Uzbekistanian Conn Yards spawn an Architect instead of an Engineer when you sell them with over 50% HP.
+ For France the Allied Tech Center should make newly produced Gunboats from French Shipyards work like a Mobile Gap Generator.
+ Lower Gunboat's line-of-sight range from 12.0 to 10.5 (one cell more than a Submarine, half a cell more than a Hind or Yak).
+ Increase SAM rotation rate so that flying in from behind doesn't give too much of an edge.
+ Make the MAD Tank thumping blow up mines.

Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 11:19 pm
by noobmapmaker
Yeah hope SoScared (or another streamer?) is willing to do a second stream!

Its alot to check out and test. Two small things that I think are good:

- 3 exitcells for WF
- different speedreductions for barracks/WF/etc
- the gattlingunsound

But agian, itÅ› so much and sometimes very detailed that it requires another cast. it would help if you join in the stream to give comments and clarify things.

Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:38 am
by Blackened
I think the tech tree is very logical at the moment (you go WF into Depot or Dome into Air) but I can see how Depot before WF could open up for a new strategy with early Hijackers. It would only benefit Soviet though, since the Allied Mechanic wouldn't have any vehicles to repair. Uzbekistan would benefit the most since they could get Heavy Turrets and Heavy Hind without needing to invest in WF first.
I was referring to t3 as being tech center tech. Service depot would be 1.5 but that's semantics. :D
The non-crushable thing is so that Allies can use Sandbags to protect themselves from APC-Grenadier rushes,
I think you've overestimated how much you've nerfed grens. 1 rifle can almost prevent 5 grens from killing a pp/barracks. 2 will stop it from dying. if you let the enemy in your base and or don't scout the enemy at all and suddenly an apc shows up in your base you deserve to lose.
You can change the Engineer/Medic/Mechanic/Attack Dog stance away from AttackAnything to make them stay put where you tell them to be.
I think it would be better if switched the other way. It's much easier to have the default to be that units won't wander and that you can change their stance so that they will. AFAIK you can't set buildings to have units come out with a certain stance. It becomes tedious when you have to change the stance of every unit you produce to get the desired effect.
More playtesting would be needed before I make up my mind about this, I just want to give the illusion of infantry helping each other out if someone on the edge of the blob is being attacked
I've ran a few test and it seems that a lot of the infantry will run from the back ranks straight into the front and get themselves killed, this is possibly because any unit already within the attack range has already engaged and the units responding have to move to an open cell.
I don't see the difference between the game being over because of barracks being camped compared to the game being over because the barracks are destroyed.
it doesn't have much to do with camping a barracks. you can't hold an area with rifles anymore. In the stream against Fiveaces on KOTG I took control of all the expansions but since my rifles couldn't kill his buildings there he was able to just take them back. Rifles are basically damage soaks for anything that can attack a building. You've turned them into RA2 dogs which I don't think is so good.
Details such as the direction of base defenses adds another layer to the gameplay, albeit minor.
not sure I'd call it minor. Any north vs south engagement can almost guarantee a free snipe on something before the sam can rotate.
I think the submarines looked so bad on stream because they were played like vanilla submarines. The navy was what I changed the most in overhaul, since I don't want to repeat myself I can't say much more than to read the navy posts in the thread to find out how they all work together for a changed navy. Though I've commented more on navy stuff that went on in the stream in my next post. As for increasing torpedo speed I don't want to make it impossible to dodge them, it's a fun mechanic for skilled players. Instead they turn better and seek for longer. As for your suggestion to lower the attack range, I did. In vanilla it's 9.0, in overhaul 7.5. The reason why subs (or ships) are much worse against Sub Pen/Shipyard is because I want it to be actually possible to break into waters dominated by subs or enemy ships. It is still very hard, 1 Torpedo takes out 1 Gunboat. But unless surrounded the player could regroup further away. Transport can be used for tanking purposes as well.
I played around with the navy a bit more. 1 gun boat can easily kill a submarine. The gunboat will dodge the torpedo at just one cell away! so unless the sub is literally next to the gunboat and the player has it on hold fire(because the detection range will make the gunboat automatically use depth charges) there is a good chance of the torpedo missing. 2 gunboats, $50 dollars more, are more than enough to counter a sub. Even destroyers have a hard time killing 2 gun boats.

Also Missile subs get countered by gunboats. If they dodge the first missile then the gunboat will kill the missile sub before it recharges. So it seems that everything gets countered by a gunboat now.
Haven't heard about the shift-thing.
I meant more for this to be something that could be added. It currently doesn't exist.


Now about the mammoths. Mammoths currently have more vision that rocket soldiers which means if the rockets are unsupported by better vision they will always lose. But that is a minor detail.

Of course if mammoths go into an enemy base unsupported it would be easily for rockets to overload. The problem really becomes when mammoths are supported. It becomes very difficult to stop because in a mixed group mammoths will never waste their armament.



Off the top of my head I really liked the abilty of the dog.
The mad tank changes.
most of the vision changes to units.
and the Conyard+20 power.

Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2017 10:07 am
by Fortnight
>I think you've overestimated how much you've nerfed grens.

Since a pillbox no longer can be popped for quick defense and structures has much less vision now I think the old grenadiers would have been too good against Allies.

>you can't hold an area with rifles anymore
>I took control of all the expansions


Things work differently in overhaul so if people want to be able to use Rifle Infantry in a certain way that is incompatible with how they now can be used then I totally understand not liking the fact that they can't attack buildings. It boils down to that I don't want mass Rifle Infantry to be as effective on their own.

>Any north vs south engagement can almost guarantee a free snipe on something before the sam can rotate.

You're right, it's too unfair. I'll put "increase SAM rotation rate" into the TODO.

>1 gun boat can easily kill a submarine.

They certainly can, navy aren't supposed to be played like in vanilla. Lowering the detection range for the gunboat would make it a bit easier to hide for the subs, though I'd like more playtests to see how hard it is to hide right now. Changing the navy to become useful (as-in not just be used on forced navy maps) but still be balanced isn't easy. I want Soviet to feel like they can get stuff done but need to be sneaky about it and I want Allies to feel like they can get stuff done if they actually find the subs.

>Even destroyers have a hard time killing 2 gun boats.

My navy rework was to make huge Destroyer blobs not be the ultimate end-all navy tactics. 5000 credits can buy 10 Gunboats, 5 Destroyers or 2 Cruisers and all three of those groups should be just as useful as the other two, just in different ways. 5 subs will have a hard time to hide from 10 Gunboats but at the same time Gunboats on their own are exposed against air attacks. And if the subs do manage to catch the player off guard the 5 subs will sink 10 gunboats in just two attacks (assuming micromanagement is involved so there's no two subs attacking the same target).

>Missile subs get countered by gunboats.

I intended Missile Subs to attack stuff on land and be accompanied by regular subs both for vision and for protection against ships.

>It becomes very difficult to stop because in a mixed group mammoths will never waste their armament.

The missiles will still be put on cooldown every time the mammoth attack something. What you are describing btw is exactly what I want to see, one or two mammoths mixed into an attack mid-game against the enemy army, which naturally will be of equal value and variation unless out-played by the other player. So far all I've seen is super expensive game-ending mammoth groups where the game's winner is already decided. I still see this buff as reasonable in order to make the unit more viable and balanced compared to the vanilla version.

Close to a year later...

Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2018 5:30 pm
by Fortnight
(moved text to the next post on the next page)