TD balance thread

Discussion about the game and its default mods.
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AoAGeneral1
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Post by AoAGeneral1 »

Ideas for additional balances. If anyone has any ideas add them here and can discuss them through.

The following are ideas only and not implemented in any version:

Very VERY slightly increase infantry speed. (And I do mean VERY slightly)

The ongoing idea on silos

Flame Tanks: Increase area of effect flamethrowers.

AGT: Increase power consumption from 40 to 50

Harvesters: Very slightly increase HP.

Again, these are all just ideas. The list here doesnt mean I plan to implement them. Just a few ideas really.

----

The following here however I do plan to implement after the December release.

MSAM: Increase reload speed.

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anjew
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Post by anjew »

AoAGeneral1 wrote:
AGT: Increase power consumption from 40 to 50

MSAM: Increase reload speed.
These changes i feel are the most important.
Mass AGT is such a strong strat, hopefully this makes it a bit hard to mass them.
And that MSAM. I thought it was an interesting little trick you could play around with but 2 apaches can dive 1 msam and kill it
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AoAGeneral1
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Post by AoAGeneral1 »

The following is now in the release version:

Infantry stealth detection: Increase sight range of stealth detection to 2 from 1.

MLRS: Reduce price to 1000 from 1200

Repair pad: Repair speed increased. (Interval 15 from 0)

Blue Tiberium: Reduce the value income (60 from 75 per unit)

Infantry evade chance: 75 from 67

Samsites: cost reduced to 700 from 750. Reduced build time (2000 from 2160)

Airstrikes: Increase cool down timer to 3:30 from 3:00.

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The following are ideas only and not in any versions of any kind:

Increase power of AGT to 50 from 40.

MSAM reload time to be faster.

Increase APC damage vs light targets. Increase ground range by 1? (This is to allow them to fight recon bikes)

Recon Bikes. Decrease rocket range by 1? (Still unsure about this one.)

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Post ideas and or comments!
Last edited by AoAGeneral1 on Mon Jan 11, 2016 11:05 am, edited 2 times in total.

fatjake
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Post by fatjake »

First post here, just wanted to express my gratitude for OpenRA. I just got done with a FOUR HOUR skirmish against four AI players on an 8 player map.

I was almost killed off twice, had my second base eliminated twice before the third barely made it, finally giving me the edge to win. I must have been nuked twenty or more times.

I'll read up here and give some suggestions but already the balance is way superior to the original game. Just not being able to build off of the last building forever makes things so much more difficult.

I've been playing as GDI but it's time to try out NOD, they certainly give me some difficulty as an enemy.

I was a young teenager when Tiberian Dawn came out and it coincided with me getting my first PC, it's always been one of my favorite games. Props to OpenRA project for breathing new life into it. I've had no problems with OpenRA on linux and everything from the interface to the gameplay improvements is awesome.

I'll be around these parts

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AoAGeneral1
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Post by AoAGeneral1 »

Aye they did an amazing job at doing so and was really glad to have found them myself xD

Have fun with the mod, beat it against a wall and what have you! Once you have had your fill indeed let them know about balance suggestions or even UI ones as well.

fatjake
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Post by fatjake »

@AoA

I have been playing the hell out of AI skirmishes. TD seems to be more challenging than RA. Strangely, the AI is really inept at dealing with other AI but is persistent when it comes to fighting me.

I sometimes observe all AI skirmises and they are really really stupid. The last one of those I watched was layer upon layer of absurdity and ended up with four AI players all without harvesters, all just sitting there with bases doing nothing...

Is there a resource describing the AI or the relevant parts of the code? I can think of some small behavior changes that would improve skirmish AI immensely.

abcdefg30
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Post by abcdefg30 »

fatjake wrote: Is there a resource describing the AI or the relevant parts of the code? I can think of some small behavior changes that would improve skirmish AI immensely.
The AI is defined in yaml, so you should be able to find it in your OpenRA install: "OpenRA/mods/cnc/rules/ai.yaml".

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AoAGeneral1
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Additional changes discussion

Post by AoAGeneral1 »

----------------

The following are ideas only and not in any versions of any kind:

Increase power of AGT to 50 from 40.

MSAM faster reload to 45 from 100.

Increase APC damage vs light target to 105 from 100.

MLRS attack speed increase to 100 from 140.

Rocket Infantry damage increase to 35 from 30.

MCV Price increase to 4000 from 2000. Build time increase from 0:48 to 1:36.

MCV unit HP increase to 950 from 750. armor type Heavy from Light.

MCV now requires both Command Center and Repair Pad to produce.

Construction yard HP increase to 2000 from 1400.

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Last edited by AoAGeneral1 on Tue Jan 19, 2016 8:40 am, edited 8 times in total.

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anjew
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Post by anjew »

Recon Bikes. Decrease rocket range by 1? (Still unsure about this one.)
Im on the fence about this but things to consider is you will never use it as AA and they will be vulnerable when vsing tanks.
Harvestor price increase to 1200. Refineries price increase to 1700.
I can see Norman rolling in his grave.
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PersianImmortal
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Post by PersianImmortal »

Against the harvester price increase. They are still very good targets. I still go for them whenever i get a chance. The reason why they're being massed is because people have gotten better at micro. If I can keep my army alive by out microing you and gain an econ advantage then I deserve to be able to mass my harvies and win. Maybe we should look into nerfing the McV by increasing its build time?

Recon bikes I'm on the fence about too. They are good AA as they are and if we nerf them they won't be able to do that anymore but I can see why the nerf would be needed.
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anjew
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Post by anjew »

Im more on the fence about the harvester nerf. You are right but at the same time the enemy still deservers the harvesters they get, it will also make harvester killing a very big thing since it will be harder to get more out.

The real problem is the exponential potential of TD. A big building time increase on MCVs would be a better. Having multiple MCVs means multiple defence structures and spamming refineries from one MCV

Hi made a good point about bikes, they already have trouble attacking moving targets, perhaps a range decrease and an increase in projectile speed?
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AoAGeneral1
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Post by AoAGeneral1 »

These are actually really good points and with the bikes decrease in their range I overlooked their AA uses. That would be a bad idea. So the bikes wont get that nerf then.

As for increasing their projectile speed its useful for AA however they become killing machines when it comes to tanks and harvesters. Because you can't outrun the missiles from max range. Moving your harv away from the bikes at max range and the missiles tend to hit the ground. However if you move the bikes close to the harv it will land targets. This promotes by both sides micro. And good micro at that. Increasing the projectile speed would negate that and cause some balance issues. (Specially vs APC units)

The APC I reconsidered and dont like increasing their range. However a small damage boost vs light targets I like better (Except for AA). They are just slightly to weak vs humvees and bikes. A cluster of buggies and hummers can actually kill off a few APCs with rounds of fire and that always grinded me the wrong way.

PersianImmortal makes a good point about the harvesters as well. Perhaps that is a bad idea and such a nerf shouldn't be done. However I do like both of your ideas on the MCV increase. This was a concurrent issue with Zypress in the past but managed to overscore it. But now people are finding very good ways of managing mass MCV plays and taking into affect of massing up defense structures rather easily. While the AGT builds at about 0:50 seconds and is a long time having 4 MCVS means you can get them out extremely fast. Perhaps an MCV nerf of some sort is needed.

Some ides for MCV:

Increase price?
Increase build time to build MCV?
Move tech tree to build MCV to require com center and repair pad?

Original the repair pad was required to build Mammoth tanks in C&C95 due to how powerful they were. However now the repair pad has no structural tech requirement. With how the pad got buffed and is a very useful tool for repairing now it could be strapped with the same MCV requirement plan as RA does. However this could also cause players to make multiple repair pads with several MCVs as well so this issue could wind itself in circles. Perhaps requiring all of the above?

@Fatjake: I am not experience in AI control or how they work but if you can submit a replay I can bring it to the attention of one of the devs.


EDIT: Check the post above for additional post changes made for MCVs

PersianImmortal
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Post by PersianImmortal »

After testing today I'm leaning towards the 4k MCV, 5k is a little bit to much and it felt like it was impossible to get one out. We definitely want to limit MCV spam but 5k was overkill imo.

The MLRS buff so far I think is good, its a rather useless unit as is and it definitely needs to be improved.
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Norman_
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Post by Norman_ »

a list for most xmas release vehicle and air yaml settings

NOTE:
LOOK
THINK
TWEAK
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AoAGeneral1
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Post by AoAGeneral1 »

I dont have a program to open .ods sadly =( but your sig and profile picture made me laugh.

LT Norman.

@PersianImmortal:

Yea thats what I was thinking too. Watching you guys going at it for a bit I noticed the games were rather scrappy which was good but it indeed made getting an MCV just nye impossible. 4k seems to be a good number but will do more testing sometime.

Buffed the MCV armor and hp a bit to make them tough targets and not so vunerable. Give them more value and an extra chance to save. Construction yards also buffed to prevent sniping. (Also it will be the only structure in the game to have heavy armor besides defenses. Was already weird it had wood for armor though made sense for flamethrowers.)

Grenadiers might be getting a buff. It is another underused unit and very hard to manage vs minigunners due to them having the same range. The grenade travel time also leaves them vunerable for extra pot shots. Grenadiers as with flame troopers are to be the counters to mass infantry.

I need some suggestions on Apaches. While I think Apaches are great as taking down structures and certain there has been some discussions that they are abysmal vs other types. Leave me some suggestions!

Silos. Leave suggestions for this one too. Anjew spoke that having a silo to increase the build radius of the MCV just slightly (Sorta like a mobile HQ in a sense) But that it cant chain build. (Like sandbags of C&C95). Sort of a one time build. Still unsure of this.

EDIT: Cleaned up the balance log.

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