Because our tests showed that the MRP would be too weak. Giving the MRP only one ROF and one damage upgrade as you suggested would result in a damage per minute against a tracked NP Scorpion body unit of 441. In comparison, the Lancer is doing damage of 1500 per minute against the same unit. If I remember right neither Cannons nor Lancers are getting ROF upgrades in Alpha Campaign. So if you want to stagger the upgrades I would only stagger the damage upgrade. If my calculations are right we should set the base damage of the MRP to 24 and can increase the accuracy to 50. The second damage upgrade would then be given in Alpha 08 and the third in Alpha 11.
Yeah I know the issue though is that we have to maintain constancy we staggered the other weapons upgrades for better progression and to stop weapons getting to strong to fast so we must do the same for the mini rocket pod.
The best way I can think of to handle this is to have the mini rocket pods baseline stats start a little higher so that once you apply 1 damage and 1 rate of fire upgrade the mini rocket pod is doing the damage that it should be at that point in the game and then later on once the other upgrades are applied if the mini rocket pod ends up a little to strong then we can tune those upgrades down a little, and if you didn't want to play with the base stats then you could simply make the first damage and first rate of fire upgrade give a bigger boost either way the effect is the same.
Also bare in mind that even when you apply all possible upgrade that you can have on alpha campaign for the mini rocket pod its still ends up a good deal weaker then the lancer and the heavy cannon once they have had all there upgrades as well, now generally I'm of the opinion that once all possible upgrade are applied the mini rocket pod should probably be equal to the medium cannon, and the lancer and heavy cannon should be equal.
That's no issue for me. Even with insane difficulty, I had never problems to finish a level in time when I used tracked units. During the tests we made, when Berserk Cyborg transcripted the campaign, I always used tracked Lancers and had never any time problems. If we encounter any time problems during rebalancing the campaign we can talk about it but at the moment I see no necessity to adjust the speed of any unit.
The issue I have with tracks is less to do with not having time to do the level and more one of quality of life and pragmatism, tracks are to so slow to be practically useful and are therefore more or less useless and almost never used, the issue with tracks is the same issue that plages many of the weapons in the game they are badly balanced and therefore useless, and as a result rarely used, the adjustments I'm suggesting at the very least help to alleviate that some, it's not an idea solution but under the circumstance it's about the best that can be done, until such time as the speed calculations are reworked so that engine upgrades will actually increase the maximum speed, as i already mention previously originally pumpkin was going to do this by having mk1, mk2, and mk3 propulsion but this is at best a kludge and a bad way to handle the problem more over it's unnecessary if you just fix the engine upgrades.
I know, I suggested some minor changes and I stay by this suggestion but I'm against major changes at the moment.
About the speed and costs discussion, I'm of the opinion of Berserk Cyborg that we should focus first on making several weapons viable choices. I suppose the speed formula is hardcoded so that should be a discussion with more people than us three. And the costs are in my eyes a minor issue if any. We can talk about it after we finished the weapon rebalancing of the campaign. It will take a lot of time rebalancing the campaign when we just focus on weapon rebalancing. If we would start to play around with speed, weight, and costs I suppose we need 5 years or more to finish it. And only if we all three would be able to invest as much time as we invest at the moment and I can't guarantee that this will be the case for me.
Tracks / Medium Cannon / Heavy Cannon
As I wrote above, I still see no necessity for all these changes but I'm also curious about your results.
With regards to playing around with the weight cost speed etc I'm not suggesting that we do this for all units as that would require a load more work which is at this point largely unnecessary I'm only suggesting we do this for problem units.
So for alpha 6 that would be the medium cannon as far as cost, weight and speed go anyway because currently the medium cannon is to expensive to heavy and to slow
with regards to the result of the changes i can make the changes and then upload a custom version of the campaign mod if ya like.
Alpha 6 Artefact 1
the problem I have with your suggestion is that this would mean we have 4 artefacts in one building: Medium Cannon, MRP, Lancer, and Bunker Buster. I think that's too much. With the new artifact "Rocket Technology" we can reduce it to two.
Ok I'm not sure what you are getting at here because currently the research order for the first artefact on alpha 6 is like this
Alpha 6 Artefact 1
What I am proposing is that we do this instead
Alpha 6 Artefact 1
So you see I'm not actually adding anything, I'm actually removing the other mini rocket pod upgrades, and then just rearranging what's left into a more sensible order, now assuming that we make an extra research topic that you have to do before you can research the various rocket weapons then the above would look like this
Alpha 6 Artefact 1
Now I don’t really have an issue with doing that but Berserk Cyborg already said he didn’t really want to do this, now If I'm understanding what you are suggesting correctly, then you want to brake apart artefact 1 into 2 separate artefacts, and personally I'm of the opinion that this is completely unnecessary work for absolutely no gain.
So given that Berserk Cyborg already rejected the idea of doing a Rocket Technology research topic and given that braking apart artefact 1 in to 2 separate artefact would be unnecessary work for no gain, I'm not really sure what your problem is with simply rearranging the research order in to something a bit more sensible ?
Bunker Buster
With your suggested changes the Bunker Buster would be more effective against a tracked Scorpion body unit than the Medium Cannon (DPM of 1330 to 1230). Anti Tank weapons are specialized weapons against tanks that's why they are less effective against Cyborgs and Structures. And the Bunker Buster is a specialized weapon against Structures. So it makes no sense in my eyes to make the Bunker Buster less effective against the targets he was made for and stronger against the targets he was not made for.
think you might have your calculations wrong there because as far as i can tell those values don't take into account accuracy.
Medium Cannon
damage per shot = 64
rate of fire = 30
accuracy = 50%
modifier against tracks = 100
Bunker Buster
damage per shot = 157
rate of fire = 10
accuracy = 70%
modifier against tracks = 100
Scorpion body
armour = 12
now I can never remember where in the calculation the armour goes but i think this is right
damage per minute = damage per shot - target armour x rate of fire / accuracy
so using the values above
Medium Cannon
64 - 12 x 30 / 100 x 50% = 780 damage per minute
Bunker Buster
157 - 12 x 10 / 100 x 70% = 1015 damage per minute
so the damage per minute with of the medium cannon would be 780 not 1230 and the damage per minute of the bunker buster with the values i suggested would in fact be 1015 not 1330
of course this doesn't take into account the modifier for tracks but since the modifier for tracks would be 100 for both the Medium Cannon and Bunker Buster with my suggested values then we can ignore that.
but anyway be that as it may the fact of the matter is currently bunker busters are absolutely useless they can't defend them selves when they are alone due to not doing any damage to enemy units, they are no help in a combined arms attack because there rate of fire is to slow, so they need to be fixed.
if the only issue with the suggested changes is that there damage ends up a little higher then it should be then that's easy enough to solve just turn down the modifiers from 100 to say 90/80 or just slightly reduce it's damage per shot from say 157 to say 100 for example or a combination of the two which ever works best
i get where you are coming from with this but the reality is that bunker busters have to be able to defend them selves and there fore must be able to damage enemy units and they need a faster rate of fire, if they are ever to be practically useful a fire rate of 3 is just way to slow.
if you wanted to take my suggested values and then tweak them down a bit to reduce the damage against vehicles if you think it's to much then by all means do so and then get back to me.
Flamers
Making Flamers a viable choice will be very difficult. It's not only about damage and ROF but especially the way shorter range. Even with the range upgrade we implemented, the range is 5.6 while even the range of the MRP is 7.5. And the ranges of Cannons and Lancers are even longer. So I think from Alpha 06 on the Flamer is obsolete. For structures, you have the Bunker buster, for units, three better weapons, and for Cyborgs, Machine Guns. I see no place for Flamers.
oh i don't know, i actually got them working against the new paradigm units pretty easily by increasing the modifiers for wheels, half-tracks and tracks, to 100 and increasing the damage from 36 to 66.
As far as the whole range thing goes that is a none issue because flames are supposed to be short range, as long as there damage is up to snuff the shorter range is fine, the bigger issue with making flamers viable is there lighter armour, they tend not to last to long in a fire fight because of that so as well as having the damage increased they would need more hp/armour as well.
The biggest issue that flamers have against new paradigm vehicles right now is that the modifiers against wheels, half-tracks and tracks are currently set to low when you consider how low the flamers damage is anyway, having said that looking at the flamers damage is only half the story since it's total damage per minute is actually split between the initial hit and then the burn damage after.
Flamer
damage per shot = 36
rate of fire = 34
accuracy = 90%
periodic damage = 14
periodic damage duration = 50
Scorpion body
armour = 12
Tracked modifier = 60
36 - 12 x 34 / 100 x 90 = 734.4
14 - 12 x 50 = 100
734.4 + 100 = 834.4
834.4 / 100 x 60% = 500.64 damage per minute
so we see that against a tracked scorpion body unit we are actually only doing like 500 damage per minute now I'm not totally sure that is actually right, I'd need to use the cheats build my own tracked scorpion body unit and then have a single flamer force fire on it and just watch what happens but it demonstrates the point the the current damage per shot and the current modifiers vs wheels, half-tracks and tracks is to low.
with the current modifiers that last flamer upgrade you get on alpha 5 needs to increase the flamers damage to like 50 damage per shot and the periodic damage needs to increase to around 25 damage per second as well for it to come even close to performing as well as your other weapons.
with damage per shot value of 52 and periodic damage vale of 25 against a tracked scorpion body unit you should be doing around 1200 damage per minute assuming my math of right.
Flamer
damage per shot = 52
rate of fire = 34
accuracy = 90%
periodic damage = 25
periodic damage duration = 50
Scorpion body
armour = 12
Tracked modifier = 60
52 - 12 x 34 / 100 x 90 = 1224
25 - 12 x 50 = 650
1224 + 650 = 1874 / 100 x 85 = 1124.4
so you see its actually quiet easy and quiet possible to make flamers a viable albeit some what weaker option vs the new paradigm.