whole reballance suggestion

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Deathguise
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

Post by Deathguise »

Watermelon wrote:Also worth mentioning:wz's weapon damage bonus vs certain propulsion is very imbalanced too,maybe we just need more types so the counter system will actually work.
Totally agree on this one, there's just not enough warhead types to do the scope of different weapons justice.
Watermelon wrote:while making rapid-firing-low-damage weapons almost useless,to name some:minipod, assault cannon/gun,early AA guns.
I think machineguns would see a quite a bit more use in multiplayer if they received their Cam2&3 damage upgrades, currently they receive only 3 out of 9 damage upgrades in mp.

Thanks for answering my question, ive noticed its quite easy to reach that design screen limit with multi-turret units and commanders, and when i had a check through the source code i could only find it mentioned for design screen limits.
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

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Because of uslessnes of threshold armor I used Watermelon's sugguestion about proportional armor system
(like in warcraft).If some one can programm suggested changes for test version make them. And I have
a question what is used ski and jump propulsions.
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

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Deathguise wrote: Totally agree on this one, there's just not enough warhead types to do the scope of different weapons justice.
I think machineguns would see a quite a bit more use in multiplayer if they received their Cam2&3 damage upgrades, currently they receive only 3 out of 9 damage upgrades in mp.

Thanks for answering my question, ive noticed its quite easy to reach that design screen limit with multi-turret units and commanders, and when i had a check through the source code i could only find it mentioned for design screen limits.
Perhaps, but you would have to then remove the TwinAssaultGun from MP as well.  I can't imagine the carnage a weapon with the base damage of the T-A-G would do after receiving 9 damage upgrades; even the basic AssaultGun, in the SP campaign, could rape everything but a Vengeance tank.

Or, said another way, I'm all for improving MG in multiplayer, but not to the point of making it the end-all weapon ALA Scourge.
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

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themousemaster wrote:Perhaps, but you would have to then remove the TwinAssaultGun from MP as well.  I can't imagine the carnage a weapon with the base damage of the T-A-G would do after receiving 9 damage upgrades; even the basic AssaultGun, in the SP campaign, could rape everything but a Vengeance tank.

Or, said another way, I'm all for improving MG in multiplayer, but not to the point of making it the end-all weapon ALA Scourge.
Yep this is true, i should of stated this in my previous post but some careful and well thought out modifications to Functions.txt would be required so that their not too powerful(this is already done for the mp incarnations of the rocket slow & howitzer upgrades)

Also and i can only speculate on this matter, one of the major reason why the Mg upgrades, resistance circuits mk2 & mk3 and rocket autoloader mk3 were not included in mp, is due to warzones tech tree being full - and if i remember correctly theres only room for 4 more prerequisites.

I might have to make a quick mod with all the mg damage upgrades available in mp and test some different values in functions.txt.
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

Post by cruise »

Interestingly, ignoring actual armour values, the machine-guns come out very well in the chart of damage over time - if there is a threshold limit of damage that would explain a lot about the behaviour of weaponary in the end-game.

On the topic of it /should/ work, here's my tuppence:

The biggest change I think we need, and I appreciate it's probably a lot of work in the current codebase, is if weapons could have a mix of damage types.

Add a damage type called "penetrating" which ignores the armour calculation.

Higher end MG upgrades could have an increasing proportion of penetrating damage as could other weaponary (like the AT rockets).

Additionally, it's not too much of a stretch to change the damage types to: concussive, penetrating, explosive, heat, energy and delivery type: direct, launched, artillery, chemical [for MG/Laser, Cannon/Rockets, Mortar/Angels and Flamer/Incendiary respectively]) instead of anti-personnel, anti-tank, etc.

Then propulsion types can have varying ratings against delivery types, and the different bodies work better against different damage types with the same calculation as they do now /except/ penetrating damage.

Having the mix of damage types gives a /lot/ more control over what hurts what, and allows upgrades to be more interesting than just "add more damage" - you could have perhaps multiple upgrade paths - one adds more penetrating damage, another more heat damage, another explosive damage, depending on which bodies your opponent is using...
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

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themousemaster wrote: Perhaps, but you would have to then remove the TwinAssaultGun from MP as well.  I can't imagine the carnage a weapon with the base damage of the T-A-G would do after receiving 9 damage upgrades; even the basic AssaultGun, in the SP campaign, could rape everything but a Vengeance tank.

Or, said another way, I'm all for improving MG in multiplayer, but not to the point of making it the end-all weapon ALA Scourge.
I just made a patch to make twin* weapons shoot 2 projectiles instead of one with 'twin mg bullet gfx',so it should double the damage of twin* weapons,though they will still be useless because of the high armor threshold.

Also I sent a patch which changes armor system from threshold to reduction.

it's 1.5% per point,because wz's armor rating/number is alot higher than warcraft's,so 100 armor(fully upgraded dragon has 100-120) will get approximately 78% damage reduction instead of 100 subtraction.

//High end laser
Damage 1900:
old:
damage taken = 1900 - 100 = 1800
new:
damage taken = 1900 * (1 - 78%) = 418

//Low end mg/minipod
Damage 40:
old:
damage taken = 40 - 100 = 1(minimum 1)
new:
damage taken = 40 * (1 - 78%) = 9

This should help low damage weapons while reducing the power of missiles/cannon/laser
tasks postponed until the trunk is relatively stable again.
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

Post by themousemaster »

I'm going to say, the two posts above this one, if taken together, scare me considerably.

Here's why:

The threshold armor method has a critical failure, in that when weapon damage and body point values go skyrocketing, armor becomes a non-issue.

However, the %reduction method has a flaw as well:  it makes all weapons cale the same, so that (to coin an MMO's phrase), the DPS of a weapon is it's single most important factor.

The machine guns, as was stated by the post 2 up from this, have one of the better damage/time ratios in the game, when not counting armor.  If armor is a straight %-reduction method, then whatever rankings the weapons fall into for sustained DPS will be, directly, their exact usefulness rating, witht he only variable being "body type" bonuses; if I remember a previous dicussion on them, however, I was told that their % bonus is applied BEFORE armor calculations, which (when dealing with suitably large %'s, like 78% for dragon reduction), makes their effect far less useful towards the end-game scope, which is where the original threshold's method falled apart as well.

Machineguns, no matter how advanced, should not be decimating Dragon bodies.  1 damage per hit is IMO the ideal for that type of confrontation; IIRC, a fully upgraded Assault gun (as you've mentioned the T-A-G is now just 2 A-G's firing in tandem), does 68 damage.  -78% for dragon armor, and that's 15 dmg per shot; 2 shots at once, and a dragon body takes 30 damage per hit.  Given the ROF of the lategame machineguns, a T-A-G would win a 1v1 encounter with... heck, just about anything.



That's why I mentioned the Lionheart method further up.  It takes the best of both worlds, threshold and %reduction.
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

Post by Deathguise »

themousemaster wrote:(as you've mentioned the T-A-G is now just 2 A-G's firing in tandem)
If the TAG's now just 2 AG's firing in tandem it should have the same firepower rating of the AG which 22 or 42 when fully upgraded, also the reason the TAG has a firepower rating of 35 to 66 is because thats the only way they could make it more powerful than the AG(due to the 240 rpm limit i think).

Its worth mentioning that the accuracy for entire MG line is not exactly stellar with short range =75% and long range = 50% all un-upgradable, i don't know if the new hit/miss system affects this, if it does ignore this.
Last edited by Deathguise on 20 Aug 2007, 22:19, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

Post by bormoth »

:o It wouldn't 100 armor for dragon.Now in my sugguestion(look first post) it has 6 armor that is 32 damage reduction,after all upgrades it would not more then 3 times larger maximum 18 armor witch is 67 damage reductuion.
In my suguestion dragon unit isn't heavy armored.It only has more armor than medium more energy output more wegiht to mount weapons and more hp than medium but not so high atributes as heavy bodies exept armors.
Second why every one think that mg's would be effective for killing dragon unit it's tank.Even without armor it has 50% damage reduction from Mgs and other antipersonal weapons witch are designed for killing cyborgs.
Atlast finished recent changes in wikipedia feel free to look
http://wiki.wz2100.net/development:rebalance_suggestion
Last edited by bormoth on 21 Aug 2007, 07:15, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

Post by Sonsalt »

I think that canons should have a greater range than Mgs
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

Post by cruise »

themousemaster wrote: I'm going to say, the two posts above this one, if taken together, scare me considerably.

Here's why:

The threshold armor method has a critical failure, in that when weapon damage and body point values go skyrocketing, armor becomes a non-issue.

However, the %reduction method has a flaw as well:  it makes all weapons cale the same, so that (to coin an MMO's phrase), the DPS of a weapon is it's single most important factor.

The machine guns, as was stated by the post 2 up from this, have one of the better damage/time ratios in the game, when not counting armor.  If armor is a straight %-reduction method, then whatever rankings the weapons fall into for sustained DPS will be, directly, their exact usefulness rating, witht he only variable being "body type" bonuses; if I remember a previous dicussion on them, however, I was told that their % bonus is applied BEFORE armor calculations, which (when dealing with suitably large %'s, like 78% for dragon reduction), makes their effect far less useful towards the end-game scope, which is where the original threshold's method falled apart as well.

Machineguns, no matter how advanced, should not be decimating Dragon bodies.  1 damage per hit is IMO the ideal for that type of confrontation; IIRC, a fully upgraded Assault gun (as you've mentioned the T-A-G is now just 2 A-G's firing in tandem), does 68 damage.   -78% for dragon armor, and that's 15 dmg per shot; 2 shots at once, and a dragon body takes 30 damage per hit.  Given the ROF of the lategame machineguns, a T-A-G would win a 1v1 encounter with... heck, just about anything.
I must admit that the current setup does make a kind of sense - if you think of a modern day tank you really aren't going to do any damage to that with a machine gun.

A gatling-cannon, like that on the A-10, however, is specifically designed for taking down tanks. So there should be some way for low-damage-per-shot weapons to have an appreciable effect on armoured targets, which is why I suggested the option to have a percentage of penetrating damage that ignores the armour calculations.

I'd like to play WZ with the %-based reduction before I make any further judgements - intuitively I expect it to reduce the variability across weapons - upgrades would be less essential and older technology would fair a bit better against an quicker researchign enemy. Whether that is what will happen I'd have to play to confirm, however.
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

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cruise wrote: I must admit that the current setup does make a kind of sense - if you think of a modern day tank you really aren't going to do any damage to that with a machine gun.

A gatling-cannon, like that on the A-10, however, is specifically designed for taking down tanks. So there should be some way for low-damage-per-shot weapons to have an appreciable effect on armoured targets, which is why I suggested the option to have a percentage of penetrating damage that ignores the armour calculations.

I'd like to play WZ with the %-based reduction before I make any further judgements - intuitively I expect it to reduce the variability across weapons - upgrades would be less essential and older technology would fair a bit better against an quicker researchign enemy. Whether that is what will happen I'd have to play to confirm, however.
threshold-to-reduction patch, against rev 2418
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tasks postponed until the trunk is relatively stable again.
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

Post by bormoth »

Watermelon is it possible to make patch and mode for recent changes in first topic for testing purposes.
I try finish support turrets and upgrades so first test version could be at least hardly playable ???

About cannon range it doesn't seems good change it's radius because it can make some inbalances, but if it would that cannons are too weak, then it would be possible change their range.
Last edited by bormoth on 22 Aug 2007, 08:38, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

Post by Chojun »

Just a very quick side note:  Deprecating weapons through research would serve warzone greatly.  For instance, by the time you get the Heavy Cannon, the Light MG is useless.  By the time you get the Gauss cannon the Heavy Cannon is useless.  So deprecating certain technologies through research will remove the technologies completely and make them unavailable to build.

This will also help the AI since how many times have we seen them build twin-MG vipers late game?  :)
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Re: whole reballance suggestion

Post by Per »

Chojun wrote: Just a very quick side note:  Deprecating weapons through research would serve warzone greatly.  For instance, by the time you get the Heavy Cannon, the Light MG is useless.  By the time you get the Gauss cannon the Heavy Cannon is useless.  So deprecating certain technologies through research will remove the technologies completely and make them unavailable to build.

This will also help the AI since how many times have we seen them build twin-MG vipers late game?  :)
It is not a bad idea, but perhaps they will not be so useless if/when we change the way armour works, and if add greater limitations on weapon placement through weapon size and weight as discussed earlier for limiting multiweapons.
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