D2k balancing

Gather a balancing team

Information and discussion for custom maps and mods.
Sircrashalot
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:08 pm

D2k balancing

Post by Sircrashalot »

Hi OpenRa community and D2k lovers,

my plan is to improve the balance of D2k. I need people to help me though. Especially with testing the changes i made. Suggestions are welcome too.

The main problem right now is that Ordos raider trikes are too strong for their cost. They cost 300 (scout trike costs 250) but they are faster and stronger. The other problem is that they dont have a counter other than the combat tank. This often leads to an early imbalance especially with crates or if the spice fields are far from base.

The second problem right now is that infantry units apart from the rocket troopers are useless and a waste of money. Any suggestions here?

What do you guys think about redesigning the factions to be more different?

Greetings
Sircrashalot

UPDATE:
changelog so far:
Ordos Raider trike:
HP reduced from 110 to 100
Weapon changed from HMGo to HMG
Turning rate improved from 10 to 12

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Sleipnir
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Post by Sleipnir »

Unit158 has put a lot of effort into resetting the balancing to more closely reflect the original game: #4600. This has been held up on a fix to the away OpenRA handles reveal ranges #4694 and on having players test this new balance.

I'm sure he would appreciate some help with the balance testing of the new rules.

Sircrashalot
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:08 pm

Post by Sircrashalot »

Seems like its on hold right now.

klaas
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Post by klaas »

I wouldn't mind to help.

I think trikes are to strong in general, the only way to stop a trike rush is making trikes yourself, which means that you have to make trikes right away. Maybe just making them more expensive and weaker vs. infantery is enough to fix this.

The Ordos raider could just be a faster regular trike?

Maybe also the deviator is a bit overpowered, I remember in Dune 2 you only gain control over a unit for a short time, but here you gain full control.

But other than that, I played at most 5 games of D2K, so maybe I should try some more first.

Sircrashalot
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:08 pm

Post by Sircrashalot »

To be honest i would completly redsign the whole thing but iam not in charge. For example i would add more diversity. Like removing all infantry from the harkonnen except the engineer and add a harkonnen trooper with power armor having a gatling gun and a secondary rocket launcher and remove the trike from the light factory. Instead having access to the quad earlier. But that would be a lot of effort and without support its impossible. And i guess Unit wants to recreate D2k more true to the original.

Matt
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Location: Germany

Post by Matt »

With http://d2kplus.com/online/ I believe we should not focus on copying the original which still works, but something modern and fun as done for cnc and ra. Everyone wanting to change the d2k mod has basically free hand. I only care for consistent and well formatted YAML files without redundancy and good naming to make them easy to maintain.

Sircrashalot
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:08 pm

Post by Sircrashalot »

This is a concept i have in mind. Its not final and lots of stuff is still missing (like aircrafts, techtrees, unit stats etc.). Is it possible to use some of the td and ra infantry units for d2k?

Atreides:
Barracks:
Rifleman
Rocket Trooper
Medic
Grenadier
Thumper
Fremen
Engineer

Light factory:
Scout Trike
Flak Trike?
Quad

Heavy factory:
Harvester
Artillery (Siege Tank)
Light Tank
MCV
Sonic Tank


Harkonnen:
Barracks:
Heavy Trooper
Engineer
Thumper?

Light factory:
Harkonnen Quad
Flak Trike?

Heavy factory:
Harvester
Missile Tank
Medium Tank
MCV
Devastator

Ordos:

Barracks:
Flame thrower
Rocket Trooper
Engineer
Sniper
Saboteur
Thumper?

Light factory:
Ordos Raider
Ordos Invisible Raider (maybe just an upgrade for the Raider if that’s possible?)
Flak Trike?

Heavy factory:
Harvester
Siege Tank
Medium Tank
MCV
Deviator

Sircrashalot
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:08 pm

Post by Sircrashalot »


Matt
Posts: 1144
Joined: Tue May 01, 2012 12:21 pm
Location: Germany

Post by Matt »

Please use http://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA to submit patches.

Sircrashalot
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:08 pm

Post by Sircrashalot »

Cmd. Matt wrote: Please use http://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA to submit patches.
My changes are kind of radical. The factions will most likely play very different. I am not sure if the majority of players likes it. Thats why i want to test it first.

Sircrashalot
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:08 pm

Post by Sircrashalot »

I would like to add cnc or ra style building bonus, buildable aircraft units and thumpers being able to attract sand worms.

psydev
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Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:49 am

Post by psydev »

Hey, everyone.
I worked on developing the balance as it stands last year. I acknowledge the game is not mature yet, but if anyone wants to know what I had in mind when creating it, I'm happy to talk about it so please ask. I also did the balancing for CNC.

I haven't been around for the last year because of school and life not allowing me to devote my attention and energy to video games, but I am still a big fan of the Westwood series and think these games have a lot of potential. I actually think D2K has some of the most potential of any of the games and personally I find it really fun to play. I would like to participate in design of a game balance that is interesting and different from RA and CNC.

psydev
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Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:49 am

Post by psydev »

Re: Trikes
I don't personally think Trikes are OP. They happen to be key for Ordos' play style, but are relatively easy to defend against with turrets. If you want to defend against them in the field, a combination of disposable infantry and rocket launchers works. Quads can also deal with them quite well (quads have quite long range and are great vs. vehicles but would benefit from a few sacrificial units in front to protect them; trikes need to get close).

In order to make this defense easier, Harkonnen can build quads early in the game without need of a command center. Atreides were supposed to have grenadiers early-game which were supposed to be able to deal heavy damage to trikes, but would also need close-in protection so that they raider trikes did not kill them first.

There was also talk of making an APC unit. This was proposed for Ordos, but I thought that it might add some diversity to the game if Atreides became a race that relied a bit more on infantry than the other races. If Atreides were the only race with a medic unit, that would fit in nicely, and would also fit their flavour as "good guys". The APC could be made to fight against trikes with a light cannon, or else infantry might be able to shoot from inside them (probably limited to one unit firing a grenade launcher or rocket launcher).

My suggestion is that if anyone wants to nerf trikes, it would be better to reduce their range from 5 to 4 instead of changing their other attributes like damage or cost. If you want to nerf only the raider trike, I would suggest increasing the price rather than changing the stats to make it more like normal trikes. That would accomplish the same effect but would maintain the important diversity between the normal trikes and raider trikes.

psydev
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Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:49 am

Post by psydev »

I like some of the ideas I have heard suggested. For starters, I don't think that a race should have to counter trikes with trikes--there should be other viable options. I like some of the more radical ideas mentioned here. I don't have an opinion on whether we should be radical in changing the game or if we should stick mostly to the original units. I like giving Harkonnen a kind of heavy trooper to replace rocket infantry. That could make for an interesting Harkonnen paradrop. I would suggest a Harkonnen trooper be made very slow but quite powerful vs. both infantry and vehicles. I also think that definitely the deviator should only control units temporarily. If we wanted to change which houses got which artillery units, I would suggest the lighter and longer-range missile tank goes to the Atreides (and maybe Ordos) while the heavier siege tank would go to Harkonnen, since it fits their style of play and flavor more. If we wanted to introduce a flamethrower unit, that would probably work well vs. trikes.

In general I like the idea of giving more diversity to the different houses. I am not against some more radical changes to the game. The original game was pretty awful balance-wise and I don't think that sticking to the original is important except for nostalgia factor, But I would suggest that we keep the general flavour of:
Harkonnen: slow and heavy
Ordos: very fast raids and unorthodox tactics

This paradigm is reflected in the different tanks for each house. In the original bgame the differences were so tiny as to be almost unnoticeable. I made them much more pronounced in this D2K mod, and I think more differences between the houses make the game much more interesting. Since I didn't want to deviate much from the original set of units, or to invent any new units, I felt that the best way to differentiate the races would be to enhance the differences between their tanks. As a result, gameplay styles for each race then centered around them to a great extent. But now that more people are interested in D2K are are proposing making new units, we could make each race a bit more different from each other, and rely less on tanks as defining style of play.

Sircrashalot
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:08 pm

Post by Sircrashalot »

Thanks for you detailed reply. Looking forward to work with you.
I don't personally think Trikes are OP. They happen to be key for Ordos' play style, but are relatively easy to defend against with turrets. If you want to defend against them in the field, a combination of disposable infantry and rocket launchers works. Quads can also deal with them quite well (quads have quite long range and are great vs. vehicles but would benefit from a few sacrificial units in front to protect them; trikes need to get close).
No offense but did you play the current version? I am always up for a game to show you the problem.

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