Balance details

[Per]

After messing around a bit with the stats, I have some questions for balance.

1) Why are some emplacements MEDIUM strength, and others are HARD? The same goes for towers. No, you cannot see the difference between MEDIUM and HARD towers visually. I think this inconsistent, and players cannot take into account inconsistent / random / non-transparent factors of balance. I believe we should move all emplacements and towers to MEDIUM.

2) Rate of Fire upgrades for flamers are 25%. That is a ridiculously powerful upgrade! Is that really intended? Flamers end up shooting 4 times faster once all three upgrades are researched.

3) There are no SOFT strength structures belonging to players. Having a weapon modifier for weapons without targets is, I think, deceptive. We should either retire the use of this strength category, or move some structures to this category. Maybe move the frail looking early towers to SOFT strength, call them something else, and modify the modifiers to match.

[NoQ]

2) Rate of Fire upgrades for flamers are 25%. That is a ridiculously powerful upgrade! Is that really intended? Flamers end up shooting 4 times faster once all three upgrades are researched.

1. It's quite hard to research them though, they appear very rarely.
2. You don't do more incendiary damage by hitting the object twice. So firing 4 times faster at the same target doesn't really provide a 4x bonus to dps. But of course it's still quite significant.

I believe we should move all emplacements and towers to MEDIUM.

I've never seen anybody actually use emplacements (apart from howitzers, of course), so i don't mind. But for arty it's something to think through.

Maybe move the frail looking early towers to SOFT strength, call them something else, and modify the modifiers to match.

This really needs to be sorted out, but we also need to make sure the early mg tower stays functional.

[Per]

If nobody uses most emplacements, should we remove most of them?

BTW, I am annoyed by the duplication of weaponry into separate VTOL versions and cyborg versions, from a quick look they all look almost identical, and I am looking into merging them. This will make it easier to balance the weapons. If anyone see any strong reasons why this should not be done, shout out now.

[bendib]

Because VTOL weapons have historically been more powerful than tank versions, and that extra power makes VTOLs useful when you have no bombs.

[NoQ]

Vtol weapons need to be stronger because they have a huuuuuuuge reload time.
I think cyborg weapons need to be kept separately as well. Decreasing the number of parameters will make the balancing harder, i think.

What needs to be removed is many flavors of bunker machineguns etc.

[Shadow Wolf TJC]

After messing around a bit with the stats, I have some questions for balance.

1) Why are some emplacements MEDIUM strength, and others are HARD? The same goes for towers. No, you cannot see the difference between MEDIUM and HARD towers visually. I think this inconsistent, and players cannot take into account inconsistent / random / non-transparent factors of balance. I believe we should move all emplacements and towers to MEDIUM.

Perhaps all the emplacements and towers could instead be given the HARD structure strength (and their HP reduced if need be) so that they would be as resistant to Flamers as they appear to be (since they look like they're made out of Hardcrete)?

2) Rate of Fire upgrades for flamers are 25%. That is a ridiculously powerful upgrade! Is that really intended? Flamers end up shooting 4 times faster once all three upgrades are researched.

Where does it say that Flamer reload times are reduced by -25% per upgrade? All I'm seeing is that their reload times are being reduced by -15% per upgrade, for a total of -45% after 3 ROF upgrades. I did see that Flamer damage-per-shot and burn damage does increase by +25% per upgrade though.

3) There are no SOFT strength structures belonging to players. Having a weapon modifier for weapons without targets is, I think, deceptive. We should either retire the use of this strength category, or move some structures to this category. Maybe move the frail looking early towers to SOFT strength, call them something else, and modify the modifiers to match.

I agree. The only structure that I spotted that had SOFT structure strength was the Coolant Tower, which is a campaign-only structure.

However, Contingency does make extensive use of the SOFT structure strength, although only as a replacement for a FORTRESS structure strength (which is just as resistant to most weapons as BUNKER strength, except that it's also as resistant to Flamers as HARD strength). Perhaps SOFT structure strength could be used for base structures (such as Factories, Research Facilities, and Power Generators) and Scavenger structures?

If nobody uses most emplacements, should we remove most of them?

I'd personally use emplacements and towers more often if Hardpoints weren't so overpowered compared to them. I mean, why would I bother building a Tank Killer Emplacement, which costs $275, and has only 440 HP, when I could build a Tank Killer Hardpoint, which costs the exact same thing, but has 400 more HP? Why would I bother building a Scourge Missile Tower, which costs $325, and has 620 HP, when I can build a Scourge Missile Hardpoint, which costs only $25 more, and has 200 more HP?

The Emplacements, Towers, Bunkers, and Hardpoints need some serious rebalancing.

[Per]

Where does it say that Flamer reload times are reduced by -25% per upgrade? All I'm seeing is that their reload times are being reduced by -15% per upgrade, for a total of -45% after 3 ROF upgrades. I did see that Flamer damage-per-shot and burn damage does increase by +25% per upgrade though.

Ooops. Copy/paste bug in upgrades conversion!

Well, one less question to consider.

[NoQ]

I guess we'd have many more typos to explore
P.S. there is currently absolutely no balance in the defensive structures, i think. They're just random. Need to re-think it from scratch maybe? Specially i'm looking for defenses extremely resistant to machineguns as one of the ways of countering them. This cannot be achieved via armor as machineguns are mostly ignoring it and break through with the 1/3 minimum damage rule.

[Per]

I think we should remove the 1/3 rule, and figure what needs to changed to re-balance it back after. This will allow much more interesting options going forward.

[NoQ]

Still need to have it working in campaign.
Maybe unhardcode and/or make different threshold for different weapons or even weapon-target pairs?

[Per]

What about I add a minimumDamage field to each weapon?

[NoQ]

We just need a way to reproduce the old campaign behaviour. So maybe add it, but still as percentage, not absolute? Or make upgrades affect it.

P.S. unupgraded single mg will deal 0 damage to viper if the limit is removed.

[Iluvalar]

You can convert all structure to only one weapon modifier AFAIC. It only make sens in single player, where the "builder" can intentionnaly provide the attacker with a specific weak point that could be exploited. Otherwise, there is very few "fun factor" into either choosing the type of structure or the type of weapon to attack. I prefer the paradigm where the structures are only one of the propulsion you can chose from. Of course, keep it in the code, it might be used for mods.


You can merge the borgs weapon and standard turret. However the vtol weapons need to be reloaded and there is no definitive way to balance all the vtols with the same multiplier that I can think of.

[Deus Siddis]

However the vtol weapons need to be reloaded and there is no definitive way to balance all the vtols with the same multiplier that I can think of.

You could probably use the weapon's reload stat as the basis for its VTOL ammo capacity. Faster firing VTOL weapons have more ammo and slower firing ones have less. That should closely mirror the existing weapon balance for ground vehicles.

[effigy]

I guess I've never paid much attention to strength categories before, because I had always assumed that emplacements were considered bunkers (because of their size?).

One way or another, I've expected that towers were weaker than hardpoints, with the slight advantage of being slightly cheaper. Not sure what other purpose they could serve.

If you'd consider converting all direct fire emplacements to bunkers, that'd have my vote. Though, maybe it's time to revisit the idea of designable structures?

I think converting all indirect fire emplacements to medium would be... interesting.

Interesting alarm about flamer ROF. I've found ROF upgrades to be more valuable than damage or accuracy upgrades for everything except lancers, tank killers and scourge.