We could also go full hardcore and add the changes to subs they did in RA3: Subs were always visible through the water and only attackable by specific units that had subcharges.
When Subs surfaced they were attackable by everything.
Only high tech defenses (like Tesla Coil and Prism Towers) were able to attack subs when under surface. Like mentioned above attackable by every defense when surfaced.
But on low HP/red bar they didnt spontanously resurface as they do currently.
Also even though thats hated by pchote but I would add the Sea Scorpion. The reasoning for that I was trying to tell over multiple streams and posts last year when I started my naval maps and my own naval mod tryouts where some got taken over by smitty.
Biggest point was that it just makes balancing naval so much easier and is less frustrating to workaround than with the current units we have. Even though OpenRa stands for the modernizing of the old CnC titles (td and ra mainly) while keeping it as vanilla as possible but as it seems you gotta add something from RA2 that has been programmed to fill the broken spot that was left in RA1.
2018 naval RA balance
The original was just never properly balanced for multiplayer, and I agree there is a need to "bite the bullet" and an add an extra unit to sort out the Soviet lack of naval AA before missile subs.
You build one or two cruisers, and you probably already have a few destroyers to protect them which work well against enemy air. Also cruisers can take quite a bit of punishment.
You build one or two missile subs, however, and actually use them to attack ground targets, and they can be gone very fast to yaks or helis. As long as you get the timing right with a pack of yaks, it's a near instant kill.
Allies can still have a unit advantage with destroyers. There is no need to give Soviets anything that good.
You might perhaps be able to balance with just the original units. For example, you could give a double role to the regular subs; if they have the ability to surface on command and then stand ready to use a flak-type gun on any air targets. (Idea borrowed from the flak sub that was created.)
But then if you do that, there are possible issues from Soviets getting naval AA too early, and also, you risk pissing people off because "they aren't like the subs in original Red Alert". So you may upset people more than just sticking in an extra unit.
You could play with the missile subs' settings but what can you really do? Move them down to the middle tech level? Then that may be unbalanced vs allies. So move both missile subs and cruisers down to the middle tech level? But that's then a significant change away from the original.
You build one or two cruisers, and you probably already have a few destroyers to protect them which work well against enemy air. Also cruisers can take quite a bit of punishment.
You build one or two missile subs, however, and actually use them to attack ground targets, and they can be gone very fast to yaks or helis. As long as you get the timing right with a pack of yaks, it's a near instant kill.
Allies can still have a unit advantage with destroyers. There is no need to give Soviets anything that good.
You might perhaps be able to balance with just the original units. For example, you could give a double role to the regular subs; if they have the ability to surface on command and then stand ready to use a flak-type gun on any air targets. (Idea borrowed from the flak sub that was created.)
But then if you do that, there are possible issues from Soviets getting naval AA too early, and also, you risk pissing people off because "they aren't like the subs in original Red Alert". So you may upset people more than just sticking in an extra unit.
You could play with the missile subs' settings but what can you really do? Move them down to the middle tech level? Then that may be unbalanced vs allies. So move both missile subs and cruisers down to the middle tech level? But that's then a significant change away from the original.
It's important to note that just adding the sea scorpion doesn't make the current balance problems go away. tier 1 would still allies dominated. tier 2 still strongly in their favor (hinds wouldn't be uncontested anymore). Tier 3 would be a bit closer as missile subs would be safer. Sea Scorpion actually makes taking the water back even harder which if soviets do have water is hard enough as it is. Sea scorpion also fucks soviet vs soviet. flak is insta hit and does good damage to light armor which both subs are.
The original game was never balanced that's why so much has changed in openra. We can adjust values of units (lowering the price for example) and still keep with the spirit. Adding the sea scorpion may be the logical conclusion after we've tried everything else. I doubt pchote would be against that. After all the flak truck was added for the same reason. First we need to exhaust the other possibilities.
The original game was never balanced that's why so much has changed in openra. We can adjust values of units (lowering the price for example) and still keep with the spirit. Adding the sea scorpion may be the logical conclusion after we've tried everything else. I doubt pchote would be against that. After all the flak truck was added for the same reason. First we need to exhaust the other possibilities.
Changes like the flak truck, multi-use engineers, bounties, allied hinds were mostly done 5+ years ago, when the game play, game balance, and technical options for solutions were very different to what they are today. I consider these to be good examples of why adding new units or fundamentally different game mechanics are a bad idea.Blackened wrote: ↑Adding the sea scorpion may be the logical conclusion after we've tried everything else. I doubt pchote would be against that. After all the flak truck was added for the same reason.
These changes may indeed have made OpenRA’s RA mod a better game in an isolated sense, but they have made it a bad C&C game. The RA mod has swung too far towards competitive gameplay at the expense of being a good RA remake. I remain very much opposed to any new changes that would take RA even further down this path because history has shown time and again that the community is unwilling (and in some cases extremely hostile) towards any discussion about removing them again in the future. This is a cultural issue, not a balance one. If the community was willing to compromise on undoing some of these old ideas then I would be more willing to compromise on new ones.
Cherry picking that one sentence from the middle of the paragraph and omitting all the surrounding text gives a misleading impression of that FAQ entry. The full text is quite specific about the ways that OpenRA differs from the original, and I feel it is completely compatible with what i wrote above.
If you want to argue on individual points then I you could count the hind switch under “careful rebalancingâ€, but things like the bounties and reusable engineers were specific game mechanic changes that were made to try new ideas rather than to address specific balance concerns.
If you want to argue on individual points then I you could count the hind switch under “careful rebalancingâ€, but things like the bounties and reusable engineers were specific game mechanic changes that were made to try new ideas rather than to address specific balance concerns.
I don't entirely understand this point. Are you saying because players are reluctant to remove things that have become a core part of game play such as bounties, you will refuse to add in new features to fix awful balance (created on behalf of original RA) because people might not want it removed in the future to keep the original RA authenticity?Sleipnir wrote: ↑This is a cultural issue, not a balance one. If the community was willing to compromise on undoing some of these old ideas then I would be more willing to compromise on new ones.
OpenRA's player base is significantly larger than the community here - our opt-in sysinfo database shows that OpenRA is launched at least once a month on more than 12000 unique systems (up to 15000 some months). It can be hard to get a read on what these players think, but two ways to do this are to keep an eye on comments when OpenRA is posted on news sites, and to talk to people in person - in my professional life I have met a surprising number of people who like to play OpenRA with their office mates after work.
A too-common theme I have seen across these are that people like OpenRA in general but feel let down by what they see as arbitrary and unnecessary changes in the RA mod. Hinds and bounties were the most mentioned, followed by the engineers and snipers (before they were removed). Units auto-targeting buildings was also on that list, but is now finally fixed here. How many potential players are put off from taking OpenRA more seriously because of these annoyances? I don't know, but the numbers suggest that it is likely to be significant. It is also shaming to face people IRL who say they are disappointed in your project for reasons that you completely agree with and feel powerless to change.
It wouldn't be appropriate to force through a removal of the problematic features without community support, but I can certainly limit further damage by preventing RA from straying even further in the broad strokes from “proper†C&C gameplay (which I admit means different things to different people) and things that make sense in the RA world. This hasn't required any effort over the last few years because nobody has seriously tried to push anything that would cross this. I expect that fixing some of the long-standing differences would win back some good will, which may then support adding a tastefully chosen naval unit to fill the gap if really necessary.
A too-common theme I have seen across these are that people like OpenRA in general but feel let down by what they see as arbitrary and unnecessary changes in the RA mod. Hinds and bounties were the most mentioned, followed by the engineers and snipers (before they were removed). Units auto-targeting buildings was also on that list, but is now finally fixed here. How many potential players are put off from taking OpenRA more seriously because of these annoyances? I don't know, but the numbers suggest that it is likely to be significant. It is also shaming to face people IRL who say they are disappointed in your project for reasons that you completely agree with and feel powerless to change.
It wouldn't be appropriate to force through a removal of the problematic features without community support, but I can certainly limit further damage by preventing RA from straying even further in the broad strokes from “proper†C&C gameplay (which I admit means different things to different people) and things that make sense in the RA world. This hasn't required any effort over the last few years because nobody has seriously tried to push anything that would cross this. I expect that fixing some of the long-standing differences would win back some good will, which may then support adding a tastefully chosen naval unit to fill the gap if really necessary.
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lawANDorder
- Posts: 140
- Joined: Tue Oct 24, 2017 3:20 pm
Those who want to play the original RA don't need OpenRA's RA mod. If you want the original, you want it 100%.
The apparent paradox of considering gameplay improvements as degradation can not be explained unless somebody speaks out the hypothetical truth that the gameplay does not matter, that the goal is not to unleash RA's full potential but to create a replica of an old game in an open source engine just for the sake of development.
If you think like this, you don't see RA as a game that people actually play but as something that showcases something else that doesn't have anything to do with RA, and that is OpenRA as a engine.
This may be interesting for developers but no casual/competetive gamer needs a rts-engine, they want games that are fun to play.
We don't love the game bc it's RA, we love it bc it's OpenRA's RA! Instead of completely ignoring this and considering those improvements as inherently flawed you should be proud of the game that was created.
The apparent paradox of considering gameplay improvements as degradation can not be explained unless somebody speaks out the hypothetical truth that the gameplay does not matter, that the goal is not to unleash RA's full potential but to create a replica of an old game in an open source engine just for the sake of development.
If you think like this, you don't see RA as a game that people actually play but as something that showcases something else that doesn't have anything to do with RA, and that is OpenRA as a engine.
This may be interesting for developers but no casual/competetive gamer needs a rts-engine, they want games that are fun to play.
We don't love the game bc it's RA, we love it bc it's OpenRA's RA! Instead of completely ignoring this and considering those improvements as inherently flawed you should be proud of the game that was created.
Last edited by lawANDorder on Thu Mar 01, 2018 7:56 pm, edited 3 times in total.
To be clear, my post may come across as more gloomy than perhaps necessary. The overall point is that there is a balance between many stakeholders, and while the competitive community might be loud and is certainly important, it cannot dictate everything and is not even the majority.
I'm not suggesting that all changes are bad. I am only talking about the specific things that in my experience the wider player community takes particular issue with (and which I also dislike). I have seen no evidence that other changes, like the fog, tech tree reorganisation, and even the flak truck are anything but positive. IMO that is probably because these are a natural fit into most people’s expectations of the RA world, and there's no way i'd want to remove those.
Edit: bringing this back to my chain of thought from above:
In this thread people are suggesting that adding a new naval unit is necessary to balance naval to an acceptable competitive level. This exacerbates a known pain point from another important stakeholder in OpenRA, and so I would only be willing to accept this if some of the other long-standing feel-breaking gameplay changes were changed first. This then addresses problems on both sides, and in principle leaves everyone better off.
I'm not suggesting that all changes are bad. I am only talking about the specific things that in my experience the wider player community takes particular issue with (and which I also dislike). I have seen no evidence that other changes, like the fog, tech tree reorganisation, and even the flak truck are anything but positive. IMO that is probably because these are a natural fit into most people’s expectations of the RA world, and there's no way i'd want to remove those.
Edit: bringing this back to my chain of thought from above:
In this thread people are suggesting that adding a new naval unit is necessary to balance naval to an acceptable competitive level. This exacerbates a known pain point from another important stakeholder in OpenRA, and so I would only be willing to accept this if some of the other long-standing feel-breaking gameplay changes were changed first. This then addresses problems on both sides, and in principle leaves everyone better off.
Last edited by Sleipnir on Thu Mar 01, 2018 6:13 pm, edited 3 times in total.
As a competitive player, I'm inclined to agree that certain liberal changes in favor of good gameplay are worth it. I also agree that OpenRA needs to stay true to the feel of the original, and that removing unneeded bells and whistles would help with that.
Allied Hinds are certainly an issue in being untrue not just to the original, but untrue to history as well. I've got some thoughts on this, but considering how things blew up last time I'll keep ideas close to the chest for now.
For the time being, I'd like to focus on bounties. I'm inclined to support keeping bounties as I think they help comeback potential with defenders advantage. That said, we've never really gone in and tested gameplay without them. Now that we've got the remove bounties checkbox, I'd like to see and play some games without them to see how much, if any, balancing needs to be done to remove them.
Allied Hinds are certainly an issue in being untrue not just to the original, but untrue to history as well. I've got some thoughts on this, but considering how things blew up last time I'll keep ideas close to the chest for now.
For the time being, I'd like to focus on bounties. I'm inclined to support keeping bounties as I think they help comeback potential with defenders advantage. That said, we've never really gone in and tested gameplay without them. Now that we've got the remove bounties checkbox, I'd like to see and play some games without them to see how much, if any, balancing needs to be done to remove them.
"Do not trust the balance tzars (Smitty, Orb). They are making the changes either for the wrong reasons, for no reason at all, or just because they can and it makes them feel good." - Alex Jones
Well that has been tested already last year and most testers didnt even noticed it was turned off via modmap.
So if you dont notice it being gone than there is no issue of removing it but than why removing it if there is a check box for it?
I mean Im a sworn enemy of bounties since day 1 but you gotta play a long with the big part of the community that supports it also I got used to it.
I would love engineers taking 5 seconds to capture but being used up because the current engineer mechanic is just braindead shiftclicking.
So if you dont notice it being gone than there is no issue of removing it but than why removing it if there is a check box for it?
I mean Im a sworn enemy of bounties since day 1 but you gotta play a long with the big part of the community that supports it also I got used to it.
I would love engineers taking 5 seconds to capture but being used up because the current engineer mechanic is just braindead shiftclicking.
I kind of agree to LawAndOrder saying whoever wants the truest original RA experience should just go over to our friends at cncnet and play the original online.
That people are "disappointed" because you did not comply 100% with the original while expecting improvements is insanity. Which improvements to keep and which to drop? Everyone could give you a different oppinion on that one.
I think the checkbox-approach is a good one to solve that question satisfactory for everyone. Just give the classic players the option to remove everything which they dont like from openra so they can enjoy the game more.
You might even want to ship different balance-rulesets with the game: "classic" and "modern" and pass authority for modern to the competitive scene. Now everyone is happy.
I'm also not completely opposed to splitting RA into sepearate mods for that purpose, so that discussions on this topic are laid to rest and people may choose what they prefer. It is even likely that the playerbase increases because the separate mods serve different target audiences.
That people are "disappointed" because you did not comply 100% with the original while expecting improvements is insanity. Which improvements to keep and which to drop? Everyone could give you a different oppinion on that one.
I think the checkbox-approach is a good one to solve that question satisfactory for everyone. Just give the classic players the option to remove everything which they dont like from openra so they can enjoy the game more.
You might even want to ship different balance-rulesets with the game: "classic" and "modern" and pass authority for modern to the competitive scene. Now everyone is happy.
I'm also not completely opposed to splitting RA into sepearate mods for that purpose, so that discussions on this topic are laid to rest and people may choose what they prefer. It is even likely that the playerbase increases because the separate mods serve different target audiences.
Check out Dune2k-Advanced on my moddb page!