Redesigning and Balancing TD

[avalach21]

The delay is equal to the width of the map divided by the aircraft speed. Wider maps have longer delays.

Can't we also just increase the speed of the plane? I'm not sure exactly how fast it travels now but if you push it to the brink of what is reasonable.. that should also cut down on the disadvantage

We recently have a conversation with Orb regarding the airstrip. If my understanding of its behaviour is right, then it's just +12 seconds for every unit produced, which means that you simply take this time into account when balancing production times. I.e. if MCV is produced in 60 seconds for GDI, then for Nod it will be 60+12 = 72 seconds. But if you make a custom MCV just for Nod with 48 seconds build time, it becomes the same 60 seconds to build, just 12 of them taken by airplane to come in. Every other unit for Nod is custom which means you don't even need to add custom buildtime unit clones, but just modify their buildtime in yaml.
The disadvantage of this will be when game speed is changed, because I suppose plane timing will still be 12 seconds, but I guess it's a compromise worth taking, and it may be fixed codewise if the plane speed is tied to game speed.

Edit: Everything I said in this post was assuming that the plane spawns on the edge of the map as soon as the vehicle is done building.. which it isn't. Perhaps they should be?

Not sure why the current delay is being implemented the way it is... does the plane spawn one entire map's length away (if we have reversible airstrips, then 1/2 maps length away) so as to ensure if you were to place the airstrip on the left edge of the map, it would still guarantee to spawn out of bounds & out of sight?


If the planes spawn right at the edge of the map (or a few tiles off map) rather than taking a guaranteed 12 or whatever seconds extra.. it will depend on how far your airstrip is from the edge of the map along the x-axis, so the further you are away from the side of the map, the more seconds it adds.

If you could some how do a real time calculation of x-axis distance from the airstrip to the edge of map, translate that into how many seconds that will add until the vehicle is delivered, and then subtract that from the unit's build time, then it could potentially work.. But that wouldn't be a simple YAML tweak... would definitely require some coding I imagine.. but the more I think about it... probably not that hard to implement.

[Mesacer]

The plan is to let the plane come from the edge that is closest, right or left. Also to have the speed a bit faster and have a deacceleration before landing and then accelerate up to the same speed after the landing. Then we can make the delivery a function of the time instead of the map size and it will be easier to balance according to that.

[AoAGeneral1]

Keeping in mind that the planes were a part of Nods balance itself. Despite the extra time for land off people were still able to do bike herasses which were very hard to stop including buggy rushes. The planes mechanic itself allows a constant wave of units to be dropped off if a queue is constantly building.

IE: Queues 5 bikes.
1st bike is completed. 1st plane on the way.
2nd bike is completed. 1st plane is about to drop the bike off. 2nd plane on the way.
3rd bike is completed. 1st plane dropped bike. 2nd plane is about to drop bike off. 3rd plane on the way.

Which means if the queue is stalled or has hiccups the opposing player won't see it due to both build speed timings and the planes dropping the units off. Messing with the planes speeds or timers can be dangerous and would urge testing it first.

[010010]

Yay back too the rules. The Plane Delay still sucks hard. Better let the plane come from the sky like the Nod plane in the Renegade X Mod. Like 5 cells away it drops down. Will fix all issuse in a simple way. After that it needs rebalance.
When it comes too Tech 2 Rushes only Arty and ftanks can do some fast builds. But ltanks have no point to use. Only like mtanks. And they arn´t great agains mtanks. GDI have always 10s sooner the first harv. That means GDI have 700$ early. A Big boost in the beginning. What makes mtank rush always great.

And i am not here for having fun longer.

Ganon needs still to learn the basics. Like changing yaml scripts. Or calculating buildtimes. DUMB!!!

Breaking the rules is the main part here. They call it mod after calling rebalancing it. Means we give a fuck on suck people or gameplay. Just doing what the never play RTS people want.

[ZxGanon]

Yay back too the rules. The Plane Delay still sucks hard. Better let the plane come from the sky like the Nod plane in the Renegade X Mod. Like 5 cells away it drops down. Will fix all issuse in a simple way. After that it needs rebalance.
When it comes too Tech 2 Rushes only Arty and ftanks can do some fast builds. But ltanks have no point to use. Only like mtanks. And they arn´t great agains mtanks. GDI have always 10s sooner the first harv. That means GDI have 700$ early. A Big boost in the beginning. What makes mtank rush always great.

And i am not here for having fun longer.

Ganon needs still to learn the basics. Like changing yaml scripts. Or calculating buildtimes. DUMB!!!

Breaking the rules is the main part here. They call it mod after calling rebalancing it. Means we give a fuck on suck people or gameplay. Just doing what the never play RTS people want.

What the hell are you talking about. I cannot understand a single phrase you just wrote.
Also nice for calling me dumb again.

Also funny that I have never seen you doing anything to imrpove TD in any kind of way just creating this one forgetable mod that was literally nothing worth mentioning.

[Kiraye]

Keeping in mind that the planes were a part of Nods balance itself. Despite the extra time for land off people were still able to do bike herasses which were very hard to stop including buggy rushes. The planes mechanic itself allows a constant wave of units to be dropped off if a queue is constantly building.

IE: Queues 5 bikes.
1st bike is completed. 1st plane on the way.
2nd bike is completed. 1st plane is about to drop the bike off. 2nd plane on the way.
3rd bike is completed. 1st plane dropped bike. 2nd plane is about to drop bike off. 3rd plane on the way.

"The planes mechanic itself allows a constant wave of units to be dropped off if a queue is constantly building."
This is true in essence to all unit production buildings.

The plane mechanic delays actual production by X amount of second (which stated can be between 8 to 17 sec), which overlaps with the next production so it technically adds an initial delay to them and a extra amount to the total build time for a X amount of units(if uninterupted).
So if we take the aformentioned example it will add 8-17 secs (depending on map and starting position) to the 60 seconds (5*12 for bikes) of total build time in bulk 5 queue production = making it 68 to 77 seconds to build 5 bikes without stall in production. So on a small map it adds 1.6 - 3.4 seconds per bike to its base build time (12 seconds) and it will decrease as bigger the bulk production is. With 10 bikes in an uninterupted queue it will only add 0.8 - 1.7 sec per bike. The difference is the X amount of delay will be added to the start of the production cycle. (plus all units arrival is delayed by the X amount so if you build different types, you get them X amount of seconds later)

The effects are:

- Faction neutral units are affected (Harvester, MCVs, plus these are likely not to be bulk produced anyway)
- It punishes stalling in production if the the downtime is more than the time to arrive. (run out of money etc.)
- it is impossible to standardize to all maps (streching to slight disadvantage to big disadvantage depending on map and spawn location)

Which means if the queue is stalled or has hiccups the opposing player won't see it due to both build speed timings and the planes dropping the units off. Messing with the planes speeds or timers can be dangerous and would urge testing it first.

It begs the question: If you have certain units in mind, which will be overperforming, why not add extra seconds to them specifically, rather than to the production overall? Seems way more effective approach.

Anyway I was planning a TD map so I included a modified Airstrip on it. It will behave in a similar fashion as War Factory for now(so no extra build time due to arrivals, can be blocked..yeah, yeah I know it strips it from its uniqueness until the big boys implement a new Delivery mechanic. Also I will add an option in a later revision to make the custom feature of the map toggleable in the options menu)
So it can be tested out, how the absence of the arrival time will affect things. If we won't experience any problems with the removal of it, we can safely assume reducing the planes arrival to 4 seconds (or below) won't be "dangerous".
Just to ease AoA's state of mind I added an extra 2 seconds of build time to the Buggy and Bike.
Link to map:
https://resource.openra.net/maps/29148/

[AoAGeneral1]

You can have multiple cargo planes on the same map. Despite the slight stalls or halts the planes continue to fly onward. In cases such as this units are still delivered closer together for them to pop out.

You didnt need to add 2 seconds. You can consider it as testing purposes.