OpenRA

While defense stance is hogging most of the feedback out there, it's important to remember that there are a whole slew of additional balance changes out there. Recently Soscared added another balance PR, which introduces several more changes not in the current official playtest. There will be less time to go over these changes when the next playtest comes out, so it would be good to start considering them now.

You can read SoScared's reasoning for the changes here: https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/13790

VEHICLES

Medium/Heavy/Mammoth Tank
Damage vs None: 30%, up from 20%
Damage vs Heavy: 115%, up from 100%
Heavy Tank
HP: 600, up from 550
Mammoth Tank
Added Cloak Detection range: 6
Artillery
Innaccuracy: 1c938, down fromk 2c256 (playtest)
Damage: 230, down from 240 (playtest)
Damage vs None: 80, down from 90 (playtest)
Damage vs Wood: 35, down from 40 (playtest)
Phase/Chrono/Tesla Tank
Production time: 28 sec, down from 33 sec
Chrono/Tesla Tank
HP: 450, up from 400
MCV
Speed: 71, down from 85
Mobile Radar Jammer, Mobile Gap Generator
Speed: 99, up from 85

INFANTRY

Medic
HP: 60, down from 80
Shock Trooper
Cost: $300, down from $400
HP: 50, down from 60
Damage vs Wood 75%, vs Heavy 60%
Tanya
Added Cloak Detection range: 5
Grenadier
Damage vs None: 60% (up from 50%)

AIRCRAFT

MiG/Longbow
Production time: 42 sec, down from 48 sec
Chinook
Speed: 128, up from 112
Vision: 8, down from 10
HP: 140, up from 120
Land/Liftoff speed: 0c58, down from 0c100

NAVAL

Cruiser
Production time: 48 sec, down from 58 sec
Missile Sub
Production time: 42 sec, down from 48 sec

STRUCTURES

Barracks
Cost: $500, up from $400
War Factory
Build-time reduction caps at 50% with 4 structures (100, 75, 60, 50), down from of 7 (100, 85, 75, 65, 60, 55, 50)
Radar Dome
Power-down disables cloak detection
Soviet Tech Center
HP: 800, up from 600
Refinery
Vision range: 5, down from 6

DEFENSIVE STRUCTURES

AAGun/SAM
Removed cloak detection
SAM
Cost: $700, down from $750
Pillbox/C.Pillbox/Flame Tower
Damage vs Light: 50%, down from 60%
Walls
HP: 400, down from 500
Sandbag/Fence
HP: 150, down from 300

SUPPORT POWERS

Paradrops
Chargetime: 5 min, down from 6 min.
Parabombs
Chargetime: 5 min, down from 6 min.
Spy Plane
Chargetime: 2 min 30sec, down from 3 min.

CIVILIAN STRUCTURES

Forward Command
Capturable, grants Base Provider Trait (8c0)
HP: 800
Powercost: 0
Vision Range: 5
Takes Engineer 2x normal cap time
Technology Center
Renamed to Communications Center
Capturable, grants 10c0 vision range
HP: 600

Coupled with the changes already in the official playtest like the $700 camo pillbox, and of course defense stance, this comes out to a HUGE amount of gameplay change in the works for the next release. It's important to have some discussion on this before everything is set in stone. Just remember if you disagree with something, a well reasoned and articulated response will have a better chance of affecting change than, well, you know.

I understand that you want to start a discussion on these, but isn't it a little too late for any meaningful conversation? SoS merged these already...what's done is done, unless I am mistaken and that there will be a 2nd iteration of the playtest.

The majority of these changes are tune-up changes anyways... you'll be able to tell the game is better, but you won't know what the exact changes are. Even the major changes regarding the WF scaling, MCV movement speed, and barracks cost are barely going to have any effect on the first 15m of the game for the majority of the community. All in all, I doubt anyone will have any major objections to what he merged; obviously I disagree with certain numbers here and there, but the changes are going in the right direction, which is what counts.

What's the point of reducing time on cruisers and missile-sub, they suck so much nobody want to build them (exept for trolling).


- "It is still terrible BUT it takes less time for you to have it !"
- "So, I can waste my money faster than before, that's the idea ?"
- " ... "

OFC, the rest is fine, you diden't touch my IC :p

The main change i would like to see is the war factory time slaling.

OMnom wrote: ↑I understand that you want to start a discussion on these, but isn't it a little too late for any meaningful conversation? SoS merged these already...what's done is done, unless I am mistaken and that there will be a 2nd iteration of the playtest.

Of course there will be a 2nd playtest release. Maybe you forgot or just didn't know that last cycle had 2 playtests. When there is discussion, iteratation or polish needed the developers release another. The problem is there may not be a third if everyone isn't constantly playing the new playtests and taking note.

RA playtest participation is quite abysmal compared to all mods. The percentages of advertised playtest games since playtest release has been:
TD: 59%
D2K: 15%
RA: 6%
admittedly d2k is an anomaly
Despite the differences in player numbers (even in active community members) TD has over 600 games in the playtest and RA is around 450.


I'm sorry but comments like this show the real disconnect between the community and the developers.

Is this the right place to talk about possible changes to gps?

Just to note, with the exception to response on the HitShape changes and MGG/MRJ speed-up, all changes in the PR was playtested together in the playtest series, meaning you likely won't see much difference (if any) in gameplay compared to what was experienced in the playtest series. What you saw is what you'll get.

The unknowns are really with the HitShape changes. I pointed out early on, including with the playtest thread, that these values that are dangerously unrefined. AoE damage is mostly related outside the competitive base and thus will have minimal exposure on these threads on top of the limited amount of games on the playtest. I've heard the HitShape 'balance' changes of mine are good enough, but they're probably not. They're just not in the sphere of interest of the competitive base. As of now I believe this includes AoE damage dealt from:

Artillery, SubMissiles and Cruisers.

Parabombs and Nukes are ok'ish but given how easily the Soviet Tech Center being wiped out by parabombs went under the radar I'd put money on that there's more holes out there.

What is the reasoning behind changing artillery?

I would say that parabombs are already very powerful (if a bit hit and miss with direction) so I'm not sure the timing needs to be changed on that.

The default artillery has about twice the damage output which just mush everything with the new hitshapes to pieces. The challenge is also with the artillery inaccuracy as the result will differ with differently sized/shaped hitshapes and the range at which the artillery shoots.

anjew wrote: ↑ TD: 59%

Whoops... that might be me and my friend playing sick pvp matches all day long...

NethIafin wrote: ↑

anjew wrote: ↑ TD: 59%

Whoops... that might be me and my friend playing sick pvp matches all day long...

600 games in one day is a good effort, keep it up! :p

Not sure if it counts as balance change, but I'm currently working on a pull request that will change the way artilleries behave when shooting through the fog. Currently, when arties shoot a building, they magically know when it is destroyed. My patch changes the logic so that they continue to shoot at the frozen image forever, until it is revealed to no longer be there.

https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/13363

SoScared wrote: ↑The default artillery has about twice the damage output which just mush everything with the new hitshapes to pieces. The challenge is also with the artillery inaccuracy as the result will differ with differently sized/shaped hitshapes and the range at which the artillery shoots.

Ive tested your balanced arty ... and it looks like you "just" nerfed it overall

in the current release ... if you try to destroy an advanced powerplant for example ... and have a distance of 6 cell between the arty and the adv. powerplant ... the arty destroys it with 5-6 shots

in current bleed however ... with your changes ... it "always" needs 9 hits , and even if it happens that it gets destroyed at 8 shots (which i didnt see)... its still a nerf compared to the current release

"balancing it" ... for the hitshape-update would mean that i dont see a difference at all

meanwhile you buffed a whole lot of soviet stuff (again) including the heavy tanks hp for example

so according to this statement :

SoScared wrote: ↑The default artillery has about twice the damage output which just mush everything with the new hitshapes to pieces.

the damage must have been maybe 2-3 shots with hitshape-update "without" balancing artys ... and instead of adjusting it back to 5-6 shots (as in the current release) it has been nerfed to 9 shots ... (this is just the adv. powerplant example)

@JOo: Which is why I underscored inaccuracy as one of the big challenges with the Artillery. Because of the hitshapes the damage differential between the release and playtest is with damage output per range which you adjust by fiddling with inaccuracy. Basically the target is larger and there's no way to approach the release behavior without making the inaccuracy look retarded, and then you've basically screwed the artillery over vs everything that's not a building, which tempts you to start playing around with the versus damage values themselves and before you know it you're in balance hell.

Thing is - adding hitshapes changes the way artillery works. You can't have the same damage everywhere because of AoE now effecting the damage to buildings. Different building sizes add to this inequality.

If what @JOo says is taken into account, maybe tweaking some values back a bit helps (i.e. increasing damage vs wood/concrete a bit)?

Make a new clean map with one spawn.

Debug Menu - build everything, place artillery close/far to everything, measure all the damages. Due to inaccuracy, at max range you'll have to run the tests a few times over to get an approximate accurate shots-per-kill count.

Do this on - 1) release, 2) playtest and/or bleed with the default Artillery damage values and 3) bleed with your experimental values.

Now check your new values against defensive structures (one-cell structures), infantry and moving targets in general.

Enjoy!