Omnom's Experimental Balance Changes

these are separate changes from SoS's playtest

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

Here the 2 replays vs eskimo.

mirror england and germany vs russia

test of chrono tank, and attempt to use the medium tank as mobile concrete tile from my part.
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OMnom
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Post by OMnom »

Overall, in my opinion, these games are 100% more interesting to watch than the current game, and there is so much more potential that has yet to be unlocked. I especially liked how the transitions were smooth and natural; the early game was infantry dependent, then it switched to infantry/vehicles, and then it finally went to vehicles/air, all while keeping the focus on map control and money. In addition, the games seem to develop at a solid pace and keep the "spirit" of command and conquer, unlike my previous TabEdit playtests.

It's too early to say, but the combination of constantly sniping/rebuilding of the expansion refineries, increased power consumption of static defenses, weaker damage output of static defenses, and significantly better/faster T2 units seems to reduce the spamming of static defenses (pillboxes). By presenting a stronger option than spamming pillboxes, or at least an option that is just as strong, there's now some incentive to not spam pillboxes; you can't just use pillbox spam to deal with all of the possible options. Again, it's probably too early for me to say this, but the art of timing, map control, and strategy/tactics are so much easier to see and appreciate when there aren't 50 pillboxes on the field.

One of my biggest concern right now is that Tesla Tanks and Chrono Tanks look too good at T2. It's pretty scary how good Tesla Tanks and Chrono Tanks are against the majority of ground units when microed. I'm gonna defer judgment on this until we get a larger sample size, but I am curious to see if there are other options to beat these two units other than fighting fire with fire, or with air units.

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WhoCares
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Post by WhoCares »

Actually, i'm enjoying myself playtesting it, the downside is as those are first game, my opponent is alwais unawware of the changes or don't give them much attention.

Yesterday night I played another vs Abbarat and I was doing a lot of damage with england mediumT/jammer (microing them a bit better). he was russia had an early radar dome and diden't produce tesla tank. when i asked why, he said because he never uses them and diden't feel using them even if there were available. I answered him that they would be the perfect counter to my tanky blob :

Rocket cound'lt do shit because of the jammer, rifle and heavy cound'lt get the jammer cose was microed to stay behind a tank and infantry blob was the damage dealer + 2 3 artie back line. Tesla wound'nt get jammed, could zap the jammer or the tank from safe distance, could easly flank and snipe the arties.

edit : as well multiple wf is a very very viable option and to quote noobmapmaker "it brings back the tank in game", it's simple i tend now to have same amount of wf than rax. lower price, better tanks, t3 unit at T2 and expention raf are all playing a role in that, it becomes interesting to produce vehicule because the are usefull now, so it's good to produce them faster. The fact not to have to produce ref in build tab allows you to build more wf sooner, you can produce faster the harvester missing in wf and why not at the same time.


the games are a bit odd because your changes open a lot of options and right now for my part i'm focusing of some aspect and as i'm the most experienced with it (every game because my opponent are differents), i get a better response time over them to make some decision more oriented toward the changes than traditional responses.

I do enjoy the changes because i'm the only player crazy enought who is trying to make work fast T3 strategy in the current meta, using the T3 unit sooner as posible. It's very hard to pull off and hight risk (hight reward). So your changes allow me to pull similar strategy without the same risk. In the current meta it is a all in, if i miss my hight tech build/action, I have pretty much no back up, in your version, mistakes are allowed because i can expand, tech and eco at the same time.

I encourage people to try it not to adopt it as it is right now but at least to open their mind about the diversity of gameplay that offers. I alwais hear "Yeah, brainless mass inf + basepush" or "lame and gay turtle artie + aa", it turns out they are the 2 main gamestyles in the current meta and they hate each other, few room for other style as nobody really try to develop them (exept HI but the guy's nuts and gets away with it). So if you would like to put aside your ego and play along to really give a shot to those changes. And even if those are going nowhere, I'm pretty sure you'll get some good game (or at least enjoyable) out of it before getting back to your regular RA style.

Nobody will blame you to get a bit of fun !

edit : game vs noobmapmaker, ukraine mirror, i have gone for fast radar and airfeild to have all powers a soon as posible (not telling that should work, just wanted to test it)
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OMnom
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Post by OMnom »

Was able to get a good amount of games today. Some things I can say for certain:
- The pros of having BlocksProjectiles on tanks far outweighs the cons.

- Many of the new options are built on top of the currently existing options; so while it is possible to invent a new build, the standard eco/MCV usage is still the #1 priority.

- The current meta is still very strong due to a combination of familiarity and ease of use.

-The ability to be able to produce Harvesters from the WF and using an expansion refinery creates a very exploitable timing where you're using 2 queues to produce "one" refinery. The good thing is that this gives players an additional objective to attack, thereby diminishing the importance of the "get your MCV there first." The bad thing is that this timing is very easily exploited with minimal scouting.,,

-Positioning is even more brutal with the buffs to tech and mobile armies. As in that ukraine mirror replay, getting caught unprepared is even more painful with these changes. RA has a lot of surface area that can be attacked, but most armies can't move nearly as quickly as they can be attacked...this is easily exploited on certain maps

For my next release, I'm going to see if I can do anything to redefine the roles of the Minelayer, Ranger, and MAD tank. I'm also going to look into improving the responsiveness of harvesters and infantry units...there might be some kind of yaml workaround to address the latency between your action and when your unit actually listens to you.
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SirCake
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Post by SirCake »

(Improving responsiveness of infantry with lua) @omnom: thats gonna be hard/impossible.

Problem with inf is, that they move from cell A to cell B and can't stop anywhere in between (regardless of stop command orders). In other words, the minimal walking distance is allways 1 cell, never less.

That said, beeing shot at while moving is horrible because the infantryman has to complete his movement before beeing able to return fire (or accept any other order). Worse is getting suppressed/prone because the movement will take even longer. And moving diagonally is also bad, because the distance to travel is 1,41421 times greater than horizontal or vertical movement. -> Allways attack-move vertical or horizontaly.

A way to "fix" this would be to increase infantry speed somewhat or allow Inf to shoot while moving.
But the LUA api doesn't offer any tools you could use to improve anything. (Because you can't target any of the above issues)

gzou
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Post by gzou »

SirCake wrote: Problem with inf is, that they move from cell A to cell B and can't stop anywhere in between (regardless of stop command orders). In other words, the minimal walking distance is allways 1 cell, never less.
Isn't that a bug ? can't that be fixed ? Is it specific to infantry or to all units ?

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FRenzy
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Post by FRenzy »

All units behave like that I think, because position is cell-based.

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AoAGeneral1
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Post by AoAGeneral1 »

gzou wrote:
SirCake wrote: Problem with inf is, that they move from cell A to cell B and can't stop anywhere in between (regardless of stop command orders). In other words, the minimal walking distance is allways 1 cell, never less.
Isn't that a bug ? can't that be fixed ? Is it specific to infantry or to all units ?
This applies to all vehicles. Its more noticable on infantry because five infantry can occupy one cell. One vehicle occupies one cell.

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anjew
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Post by anjew »

gzou wrote:
SirCake wrote: Problem with inf is, that they move from cell A to cell B and can't stop anywhere in between (regardless of stop command orders). In other words, the minimal walking distance is allways 1 cell, never less.
Isn't that a bug ? can't that be fixed ? Is it specific to infantry or to all units ?
I dont know the specifics but you will notice when you you try to fill a cell the infantry will always move into the cell with the same pattern. The first person fills the middle of the cell then the next go to the northern edge and the last two go to the southern edge. (except when they move in unison)
The only way to move less than a cell is exploiting this pattern. And I presume it isnt a bug, more so a limitation. It probably doesnt allow for subcell movements.
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WhoCares
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Post by WhoCares »

Change suggestion :

Alternative ref should have at least 500 cred storage (the capacity of 1 ore truck), in the senario you lose/sell all your primary ref, you have 0 ore stock and your ore trucks don't bring you any money. 500 cred allows at least one ore truck to unload and keeps the game running.

I had a game where my opponent sold his primary ref and his 2 other refs were secondary; result the game was broken because he diden't understand why the ore truck wont unload any longer.

OMnom
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Post by OMnom »

I also found that the Ukraine Dome superpowers are lost when there is no deployed MCV on the field...gonna need to fix that later.

I haven't had much time lately to play, but I did find a WithInfantryBody trait that might be interesting to adjust if I can figure out how to play around with sequences.yaml. It might make infantry more responsive, but I haven't had much time to figure that out.

In terms of the changes I presented in this mod, I believe my next extreme step would be to increase the price of MCVs to $4000, 40s. I think at this point, they're just so cheap for what they give you, but the flow and timing of the game is at a pretty good place IMO. Therefore, I want to try out a vastly more expensive MCV that still builds in 40s to see if this allows for the other options to become more viable. At the moment, the current meta scales too quickly in terms of assets, which is drowning out the new additions I've made. Also, I'm trying to figure out how to stop units from firing into the Shroud automatically to buff the MGG, as well as exploring allowing Ukraine to have more Parabombs.

Also, I will be adding the "Smart" Attack move in response to the new merges. The new merge would allow different types of Attack moves by changing stances. The Defense stance A-move would just attack units/buildings that are capable of returning fire, and the AttackEverything A-move would be the current A-move (attack closest target). I will be doing a rough implementation of this to simulate only the Defense Attack move, not both A-moves. Technically, I could do this with GrantConditionOnDeploy, but I think it'd make everything too confusing.

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WhoCares
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Post by WhoCares »

OMnom wrote: increase the price of MCVs to $4000
I have some things to say about that

1) I also think that mcv are still easy to spam without being a too major risk in a game.

2) Don't fear to have a "TD" effect ?

3) By trying to play hight tech game and "ignore/delay the latest possible" the expention by sd tech i came to the concusion that the original ore patches in most map just allow you to reach middle game allowing you the 3 followings before being depleted :

-Having a big army of low tech unit and no expention.
-Having an average army and expention(s)
-Having full tech but no army and no expention

In order to make the mcv more expensive but saving alternative strat out of being forced to expand too early, isen't it a way to find a balance between raising a bit the mcv price and lowering everything else of few %. Making that way the original ore feild a bit stronger ?

4) If they are so valuable, they need to come with heavy armor in order not to be snipe by any cheap crap as flaktruck, light tank or singles air units.
OMnom wrote: Also, I will be adding the "Smart" Attack ... (all explanation about it)
Awesome, have to say that I have dropped the comportement test because it felt right away that it needed to be a stance to fit well in the game so, count me in to playtest it when you have it ready as a stance !

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anjew
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Post by anjew »

OMnom wrote: I will be adding the "Smart" Attack move in response to the new merges.
Will this just make units attack units instead of buildings? Or will you actually incorporating a priority targeting list for each unit?

WhoCares wrote: 2) Don't fear to have a "TD" effect ?
The eco is so different I dont see this doing much other than stopping MCV spam so maybe people will only use them for expansions instead of frontlines.
I often find i have 4k float by the time I build an MCV.
Also the main clincher in TD is the fact its 1:46 or w/e build time
WhoCares wrote: If they are so valuable, they need to come with heavy armor in order not to be snipe by any cheap crap as flaktruck, light tank or singles air units.
This, though, is very true. The current armour only works because of how disposable MCVs are
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AoAGeneral1
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Post by AoAGeneral1 »

$4000 at 40s you are going to have massive debt issues because its building to fast vs price output.

When you build it and have other things being built (IE: Infantry, other structures) That money in the bank is going to get sucked dry really fast towards the 4000 because 40s is extremely fast to that money amount.

Something like 4000 at 1:00 would compensate this easier. (Same values in TD currently.) Even then im looking to lowering the price while keeping the same build time. (Such as 3600 at 1:00.) For RA If you want 40s your best price point would be $3000. At $3500 you want 50s+

Anjew is right when it comes to the economy difference.

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JuiceBox
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Post by JuiceBox »

Lol TD again... When you next on nom so we can play some games rather than theory crafting ?
"I love the smell of JuiceBoxes in the morning"
LT. COL. Bill Kilgore
Apocalypse Now

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