Rebalancing WZ: A Modest Proposal

[zydonk]

troman, thanks for taking the trouble to reply at length.

I would like to keep the focus on my main point, however, which is:

Because of the comprehensive nature of WZ's AI, it is possible to play the game in different ways, depending upon the interests and temperament of the individual player. This can be seen in the range of custom maps created over the years for the game: huge rush maps with generous resources and few is any strategic demands; smaller, more complex layouts, where strategy is important and continuous micro-management is needed.

Now, the already available rebalance and AI mods reflect this spread of interest. There are fantastic rush mods with inspired weaponry (rotary flamers, anybody) and tight, locked-down mods, like Aivolution, where watching your friends is as important as watching your enemies.

And this is how it should be. Play a rush game tonight? Then choose a suitable mod. How about a micro strategy game? Pick your mod. In this way, WZ (reference v10) is a core game retaining all the strengths of the original, but amended at will to suit this or that inclination.

I have no reason as yet to amend this argument, if only because it hasn't yet been addressed.

Now, I don't doubt that you have gone to a great deal of trouble in your attempts at rebalancing WZ, but that is really not the point. It's like the old saying: the proof of the pudding lies in the eating. The proof of any rebalance lies always in the gameplay. I don't argue that WZ v10 is perfect, and I never thought it was. I'm reluctant to suggest how it might be improved, if only because I don't know what is involved and just how far changes can be made. But I would argue from this one principle: That the strengths of the game be the focus of any rebalancing. First, WZ is remarkably comprehensive, so there are a huge range of possibilities. (Compare this with Earth 2150 and its derivatives. They were always better balanced, precisely because of the limited weaponry and gameplay modes - it's a rush game pure and simple.)

For example, the end game could be developed. The heavy lasers, for instance, are of limited use, esp in range. Strengthen these weapons and then strengthen the bodies that will be attacked by them. Another idea is to script the AIs to update their base defences. This is an obvious strategy, which would hugely improve the survival of AIs (one of the main reasons for the game petering out too early). You see what I mean?

Your tendency, troman, is to weaken the game. You may believe that winning from a position of weakness has greater worth than winning through a struggle of strength against strength. You tend to limit the range of weapons available and to reduce the effectiveness of those you retain. The abiding feeling when playing the game then is one of frustration and annoyance, not interest and pleasure. That is, playing your WZ is ultimately a negative, rather than a positive, experience.

It's pretty obvious that WZ was conceived as a game that played from strength to strength, that the player was expected to research and upgrade throughout the entire game across a wide range of offensive and defensive options. A good game should last seven/eight play-hours and reach a point where even small gains have to be won through careful persistence. You admit you want to turn WZ into a simple rush game and nothing else. My reply to that is: why don't you play Moon Project. It has some really good mods now and it has never sought to be any more than a rush game, unlike WZ.

As a final comment: delphinio's ntw mod offers far better gameplay than your WZ. I was delighted today to discover that he has released a version for b4.

cheerio

[Troman]

Now, I don't doubt that you have gone to a great deal of trouble in your attempts at rebalancing WZ, but that is really not the point.

Please pay attention in which context it was said. The context was:

It can't be about this or that fiddling with weaponry or research lists. No one wants to change the skins of the units or structures, so why mess with the balance? We all know why: it is easy to do, and given the nature of WZ, it is an intriguing intellectual exercise.

I don't argue that WZ v10 is perfect, and I never thought it was. I'm reluctant to suggest how it might be improved, if only because I don't know what is involved and just how far changes can be made.

Ok, I don't know what happened to the "stop messing with the balance" attitude, but that's good to hear.

But I would argue from this one principle: That the strengths of the game be the focus of any rebalancing. First, WZ is remarkably comprehensive, so there are a huge range of possibilities. (Compare this with Earth 2150 and its derivatives. They were always better balanced, precisely because of the limited weaponry and gameplay modes - it's a rush game pure and simple.)

This is a somewhat vague principle imho.
Let me offer a different one: The main focus is to make sure that all game components are well balanced, sorry for the tautology. Which implies that there are no uber-weapons, which in turn implies that the player will have to show some skills, come up with a strategy to counter its opponent strategy.
But this only explains the what, not the "how". Everyone will have his own opinion about the how and there is no way to please everyone, this is common knowledge among all game and mod makers.
As for Earth 2150, yes, played it, good gfx, but multiplayer game modes are not my cup of tee.

Another idea is to script the AIs to update their base defences. This is an obvious strategy, which would hugely improve the survival of AIs (one of the main reasons for the game petering out too early). You see what I mean?

Yes I see what you mean. I have many ideas concerning AI, not all of them are easy to implement though, so they are sorted by the (usefullness*entertainment/amount of work needed) formula. But we are talking about balance now, so back to the topic.

Your tendency, troman, is to weaken the game.

You see strength is relative and if you strengthen one weapon you weaken the other ones and vice versa. It's like "Is the glass half empty or half full"? You can call it weakening of weapon X, or strengthning of weapon Y. What matters at the end is how effective a weapon is compared to other weapons.

You may believe that winning from a position of weakness has greater worth than winning through a struggle of strength against strength. You tend to limit the range of weapons available and to reduce the effectiveness of those you retain.

First of all keep in mind we are not even half-done with balancing.

Now concerning weakening . What you call weakening is called "balancing".
Yes, some weapons must be weakened, because an RTS game is not a good place for uber-weapons. Weapons like MG or lasers were weakened against tanks only mainly because they are anti-personnel weapons and not anti-tank weapons. But they are more effective against cyborgs now. We are not completely done on it yet.
Lancer was moved up the tech tree, because it was clearly too powerfull for the T1 game. Tracked propulsion made Half-Tracked propulsion completely useless, so it was also moved up the tech tree.

Now about the strengthing. Can you tell me how many good players used mini-pods, mini-rocket artillery, flamers, cyborgs, fortresses, half-tracks, bodies other than viper, cobra, mantis and some others for VTOLs compared to some other technologies? Did anyone use Wyvern or Dragon body at all? Do you know why?

Allright, so much about weakening.

If you feel pleasure and interest from using several uber-weapons and ignoring 90% of other weapons, this is your choice.

You admit you want to turn WZ into a simple rush game and nothing else.

Yes, I admit, it will be another Battle City clone.

My reply to that is: why don't you play Moon Project. It has some really good mods now and it has never sought to be any more than a rush game, unlike WZ.

My reply to that is: Did you know that Warzone is open source? Why don't you start your own project.

Your arguments keep falling apart like a card house, because you are not really trying to be constructive (I have a feeling you don't want to), just keep complaining. It is obvious you are not familiar with the new balancing whatsoever. Maybe the Changelog is not enough and I should write some guide about it. But you can at least try to make yourself familiar with it instead of coming up with vicious arguments, otherwise we are just wasting time and I'm very short on it now.

EDIT:
forgot to reply to

I would like to keep the focus on my main point, however, which is:

I think I answered that with

The fact is both the research tree and especially the game balance were badly broken and they still are.

Instead of having a broken balance as the base I think it's better to fix it and if someone likes the original one he can have it as a MOD. Makes more sense IMHO.

[zydonk]

Maybe the Changelog is not enough and I should write some guide about it.

Please do. I would find that very helpful. (I assume from above that you already have some kind of layout.)

[Troman]

Allright, I might take my time though.
But to make sure we understand each other: I meant kind of a summary to describe the changes that have been made so far from a different perspective (not that you can't understand most of it from the changelog, but whatever); to put everyone in the picture, otherwise I feel this discussion is really becoming a nonsense.

[Deus Siddis]

Warzone's balancing was thoroughly broken. In fact it was amazingly broken in alot of places, like vtol bombs which were so incredibly useless it seemed the only explanation was their stats were chosen by pumpkin at random.

But beyond balance I think their are two other important gameplay aspects you might consider in your hull/engine/weapon stats overhaul, troman. They are:

1) Finding the right balance between Realistic, Manageable and Satisfying weapon ranges. Most RTS's set these way too ridiculously low, which makes for a much too unrealistic and unsatisfying experience. Warzone's artillery has always had impressive range which has added great depth to the game, but the direct fire weapons were still needlessly under ranged.

2) Strategic and Tactical balance beyond using weapon super-specialization against particular unit types to create a system of "hard counters". This might have earned starcraft alot of glory as it offered the simplicity to make it the most balanced game of its day, but it certainly hasn't made starcraft the be-all end-all of RTS with no room left for improvement. And such a form of balancing is not all there was or should be to warzone's balancing and complexity. Also worth noting is warzone is highly tactical, more so than most RTS' out there, so more specialized units are even less called for than in a large scale RTS'.

[Per]

I have been playing a lot of multi-player games since the rebalancing, and I do not understand the argument that rushing is now easier. Place a few hardpoints and bunkers, and rushers are stopped. Try rushing AIvolution players sometime.

There is plenty of rebalancing left to do, such as for VTOLs and the last weapons in the tech tree. Cannons are probably still way too powerful for far too long. Also maybe the minipod should be slightly worse at the start, since with its long range it can attack almost any defensive structure available early game without getting attacked back. But in general the game got a lot more enjoyable after the rebalancing, in my opinion.

[Troman]

1) Finding the right balance between Realistic, Manageable and Satisfying weapon ranges. Most RTS's set these way too ridiculously low, which makes for a much too unrealistic and unsatisfying experience.

If you give weapons the ability to shoot directly from your base to the enemy base (and this will be the case with most maps outthere), many strategical and tactical aspects of the game can suffer a lot. You have to be very carefull with this.
But in any case it would go far beyond the current rebalancing effort, this will require a lot of testing and planning of a different kind.
Rebalancing is a process of balancing weapons and other technologies against each other with the main purpose of resurrecting the unused technologies, what you propose is a different paradigma for the game, I honestly think it must be a separate task.

I'm not against it, I'm not up to the task. If you want weapons to have greater range I suggest you to make a MOD (or ask someone else), and we all can see how well it will work, whether it will be compatible with the hit system, whether it will be compatible with existing maps etc.

2) Strategic and Tactical balance beyond using weapon super-specialization against particular unit types to create a system of "hard counters". This might have earned starcraft alot of glory as it offered the simplicity to make it the most balanced game of its day, but it certainly hasn't made starcraft the be-all end-all of RTS with no room left for improvement. And such a form of balancing is not all there was or should be to warzone's balancing and complexity. Also worth noting is warzone is highly tactical, more so than most RTS' out there, so more specialized units are even less called for than in a large scale RTS'.

I don't know where the fear of hard counters comes from. It is unjustified. Yes, there will be super-specialized weapons, like bunker buster or AA, they were always there. And yes, some weapons must become less general-purpose. Just pumping heavy cannons or spamming arty does not make an RTS game. Strategy comes from the (minimum amount of) complexity. All weapons must have their weak points and some specialization, this is an axiom. Now, how weak this weak point and specialization are, is certainly another question.
There will be both hard and soft counters, like it was always the case with Warzone, but you have to understand that without making some weapons less general-purpose sometimes we can't resurrect tons of the unused technologies (and another reason is Warzone is a strategy game after all).

Generally we have 2 options:

1) to get rid of the unused warhead types and weapons
2) make them usefull

Personally I would prefer not to castrate Warzone.

[Deus Siddis]

If you give weapons the ability to shoot directly from your base to the enemy base (and this will be the case with most maps outthere), many strategical and tactical aspects of the game can suffer a lot. You have to be very carefull with this.

Again it is a balance, so being totally realistic if that too greatly compromises the other desired aspects becomes a problem. The trick is to find a balance between them. So like you said, you do have to be careful.

About the small maps though, you have to remember that I am only talking about direct-fire weapons, not artillery or bombs. So even if your weapons are in range of the enemy base, if there is terrain in the way, you still can't touch them. This isn't Spring with its deformable terrain.

But in any case it would go far beyond the current rebalancing effort, this will require a lot of testing and planning of a different kind.
Rebalancing is a process of balancing weapons and other technologies against each other with the main purpose of resurrecting the unused technologies, what you propose is a different paradigma for the game, I honestly think it must be a separate task.

Well since it would mostly or only affect direct fire weapons, it would affect the balance between direct fire and artillery weapons. But if you think it should wait until after the rebalance then I am fine with that.

I just wouldn't want to wait for the rebalance, bring up the subject again and then hear- "We just did a major rebalancing and what you are proposing would break it, so no thanks."

I'm not against it, I'm not up to the task. If you want weapons to have greater range I suggest you to make a MOD (or ask someone else), and we all can see how well it will work, whether it will be compatible with the hit system, whether it will be compatible with existing maps etc.

So what you are saying is all that would need to be done is make MODs where the weapons' ranges have all been increased by the same percentage and whatever percentage change to the range is the best after alot of testing would be accepted by the WRP team as an official change to trunk for the next release?

(BTW, IMO the hit system is a great part of what makes this viable, by naturally decreasing at least unguided weapon's effectiveness at range).

I don't know where the fear of hard counters comes from. It is unjustified.

When did I say I feared it? I just don't like it at all when all of the weapons are hard counters with hard counters. When there are no versatility focused units- jack of all trade sorts.

Yes, there will be super-specialized weapons, like bunker buster or AA, they were always there.

As long as bunker busters are a good solution against both bunkers and hardpoints (and emplacements of course) and mostly terrible against everything else then I am fine. AA should work on soft ground targets though, that doesn't make sense and never has. Its balance should be its almost entire lack of even light armor piercing or structure demolition versus its ability to hit fast moving targets with greater accuracy than any other weapon system, probably with flak bursts that combine high travel speed with air-bursting splash damage (eventually maybe, I understand this kind of complexity would take considerable work, mostly from the proximity detonating).

The point is very specialized weapons are great. But you also need versatile weapons.

And yes, some weapons must become less general-purpose. Just pumping heavy cannons or spamming arty does not make an RTS game.

Not necessarily. In fact the opposite can be done. You can make overpowered weapons balanced by making them more general purpose by reducing their effectiveness against their main focus.

So then the versatile weapons are no longer about spamming, but fighting forces of unknown composition, protecting specialized units against ambush by their counters, fighting combined arms forces in quarters too restricting for proper maneuvering of more specialized forces, mopping up, etc.

All weapons must have their weak points and some specialization, this is an axiom.

Having no particular strength is a weak point of its own though.

And again specialization doesn't have to come from specific damage modifiers, especially now with the new hit system. So maybe mortars really don't need any damage reduction against vtols, because their speed and drooping trajectory could make it a 1/1000 chance of actually hitting one with each shot. Or maybe you don't need track propulstion or heavy body specific damage reduction for the machin gun line because these targets have an automatic -8 damage reduction and each bullet only does 10. Maybe most guided AT rockets only need specialized damage reduction for structures because their guidance system only tracks vehicles and their shots are too slow to catch up to vtols.

This is the kind of specialization I love- simulated specialization. Because it looks real, feels real and illustrates for the player why the hell his weapons are not working against a particular type of foe without him having to RTFM .

Now, how weak this weak point and specialization are, is certainly another question.
There will be both hard and soft counters, like it was always the case with Warzone, but you have to understand that without making some weapons less general-purpose sometimes we can't resurrect tons of the unused technologies (and another reason is Warzone is a strategy game after all).

As you have seen the fanatical fanboy fans will try and burn you at the stake whether you remove technologies or change them (like specializing them). But maybe some of us more reasonable fans fully comprehend the fact that the game's balance is and was always broken in most of the tech tree, but would rather you just ditched the useless weapons than have the game turn into click fest of microing hard counter units in the effort to make room for them.

Of course if you are making more general purpose weapons more specialized weapons so that unused weapons can fill their roles as more general purpose weapons then I don't have a problem with that idea.

And what does it matter if warzone is a strategy game (let alone the fact that it has tactical and arguably action elements)? I don't understand how the genre is relevant to balance.

Generally we have 2 options:
1) to get rid of the unused warhead types and weapons
2) make them usefull
Personally I would prefer not to castrate Warzone.

What you call castration I call liposuction. If warzone was never balanced, you can't expect that every imbalanced weapon that it had was a good idea if just balanced properly. Some will have to turn out to just be bad ideas which were never fully tested properly because the balance never did work close to completely.

And then there might be other weapons that were cut or are new that should be added because they fill a role. Like plasma artillery, where is the cannon artillery for T3 to offer more damage versus range when compared to missile artillery? Where is there such a role filled in T1 and T2 but not T3?

So there is a third option you didn't mention:

3) intelligently use the above two options to create game with a satisfying and balanced mixture of more versatile and more specialized units using the full ability of the new hit system and other elements of simulation and general damage reduction.

[lav_coyote25]

ya know... all this talk of balancing is truly funny... where - please show me - in real life - does anything "balance" out. you have some with weak weapons and you have some with strong weapons - read sun tzu's take on that...

[zydonk]

troman, I finally responded to your prodding to read the changelog. The main reason I held off was the fear that it would be on one hand too technical, and on the other that I would not be able to comprehend the significance of the gamut of balancing changes. What genuinely surprises me is how few changes, relative to the whole range of assets in WZ, have been made so far. I say this against myself, really. Take the Lancer out and I get to imagine everything has been changed! The weird thing is that, once I can absorb that relocation of the Lancer, the other changes make sense in that context. (Except the Cyborgs. Until their pathfinding really improves, I find they are largely a waste of energy.)

However, that said, I still think it is a mistake to push the Lancer back, as you have done. It now comes way too late in the game, and it can only serve at that stage as a step towards acquiring the Scourge. So, in the interest of economy and logic, you should remove both the Lancer and Tank KIller from the research list altogether. And that leaves a big big hole in the game, doesn't it?

What I propose instead is this, which will give me and those like me something back and will yet satisfy you and those who agree with you. I suggest you restore the Lancer to its original position in the research list, but either weaken it or make it more expensive to produce. Either way has its pros and cons, but I think the former would be better. Many rush maps are glutted with resources, so the extra expense might not figure. As well as this, I propose that the research for the Tank Killer be brought forward to serve as a kind of upgrade to the weaker Lancer (Tho' the TK might itself need to be tweaked; I notice you increased its firepower.). As it is, in v10 as well as b4, the Tank Killer comes too late and too close to the Scourge to be of any intrinsic value. In fact, I usually research it solely to get access to the Scourge.

Thinking about this today made me realise why I find delphinio's mod more agreeable. Like you, he has demoted the Lancer, but in its place - though coming a little later in T2 - he supplies the yummy dual Pulse pillbox. A bit over the top, maybe, but it's like a feast after a famine.

Anyway, think about it, will you.

ciao

[Troman]

Well since it would mostly or only affect direct fire weapons, it would affect the balance between direct fire and artillery weapons.

Deus Siddis, it will affect more than that, there's more than just weapons in the game.

It will inevitably affect tactics and value of weapons and other technologies such as walls as a result, how severely none of us can know until we try.

It might preserve balance of most direct fire weapons (be it even only on the paper - linear dependancy in complex system as Warzone is usually an approximation), although you can't just increase weapon range of all weapons by the same amout imo, while it will work better with some weapons, like cannons and missiles you will have trouble doing so with flamers, but I don't know what exactly you have in mind.

On the technical side, this will break parts of AI, as it uses certain assumptions about the game, which will no longer be true. Besides that parts of the code will have to be altered, since there are some ranges WZ uses internally, which will be invalid, as a result algorithms or parts might have to be rewritten.
As you can see this can become a far more complex task than you might think, so taking this all too lightly would be wrong.

(BTW, IMO the hit system is a great part of what makes this viable, by naturally decreasing at least unguided weapon's effectiveness at range).

It is a technical question. There was a firm evidence of design deficiency of the new hit system, in certain situations the projectiles would fail to make a single hit. I don't know how it will express itself if ranges are increased.

So what you are saying is all that would need to be done is make MODs where the weapons' ranges have all been increased by the same percentage and whatever percentage change to the range is the best after alot of testing would be accepted by the WRP team as an official change to trunk for the next release?

Personally I see two prerequisites for it to become part of the trunk not in form of a MOD, which I think should make sense:
1) It clearly improves the gameplay and WZ fans like it
2) It doesn't break too much stuff, or if it does some dev volunteers to take care of that

I just wouldn't want to wait for the rebalance, bring up the subject again and then hear- "We just did a major rebalancing and what you are proposing would break it, so no thanks."

On the other hand I'm sure you understand we can't buy a pig in a poke, any promices from anyone would be totally inappropriate, until we all see how exactly it affects the game in whole. If you want to achieve something it is you who must show the initiative.

I just don't like it at all when all of the weapons are hard counters with hard counters. When there are no versatility focused units- jack of all trade sorts.

What I don't like is when 95% of all games are won with the same weapon. Yes, game type does matter a lot. A Real Time Strategy game is all about strategy. If your only strategy is to pump more Python Heavy Cannon tanks than your opponent then tic-tac-toe is a more strategic game than Warzone with its praised choice of different weapon types.

I don't know where the fear of hard counters comes from. It is unjustified.

When did I say I feared it?

When you keep expressing your concerns about hard counters, specialization and versatility in many places in your posts in different ways. But how we call it is really not a principal question for me.

So then the versatile weapons are no longer about spamming, but fighting forces of unknown composition, protecting specialized units against ambush by their counters, fighting combined arms forces in quarters too restricting for proper maneuvering of more specialized forces, mopping up, etc.

Can I ask you what mobile units you usually build (/would build) in mp games after the rebalancing and in what proportions?

Having no particular strength is a weak point of its own though.

Theoretically it can be, and as I already said there are many other 'hows' (and hence we must make sure we don't become Krylov's Swan, Pike and Crawfish), when you also take technical aspects into consideration many of those 'hows' become only theoretically possible. To fully implement what your propose a new warhead type and new weapons would be necessary.

A little bit of the technical background.
All weapons have a certain warhead type in Warzone (I made a list on the wiki, but can't find it now, maybe it was lost during wiki convertion), which controls the effectiveness against a certain target, such as anti-tank, anti-personnel, AA, artillery etc. If you want an unspecialized weapon you must add a new warhead type. We can't just take all anti-tank weapons (all cannons, missiles, rockets) and make them do equally well against tanks and cyborgs and bunkers etc. You can treat artillery as such a warhead type, if you will though, there are no targets it would be very uneffective against.

It really is a huge waste of time to argue about something only from the theoretical point of view, when not all sides have the full picture about the issue. Try to make your own rebalancing, think it all out, make your self familiar with the practical aspects, then we can talk again and I think out views will be much more coherent.

So maybe mortars really don't need any damage reduction against vtols[...] Or maybe you don't need track propulstion or heavy body specific damage reduction for the machin gun[...]

Maybe they don't, and in fact mortars cause 100% damage to VTOLs and MG has no heavy body specific damage reduction.

This is the kind of specialization I love- simulated specialization. Because it looks real, feels real and illustrates for the player why the hell his weapons are not working against a particular type of foe without him having to RTFM .

I don't know what your problem is. In fact the game has become much more realistic now. Cannons are anti-tank weapons, do you have to RTFM to understand that they are not anti-personnel weapons and hence are not effective against cyborgs? Same with Bunker Buster (pay attention to the name), AA etc. Or do you have to RTFM to understand that flamer can't easily damage bricks? What is your problem? Or maybe you have to RTFM to understand that later bodies, which cost more and require more research cost and time should have better value than early ones?
I have no time for tilting at windmills.

As you have seen the fanatical fanboy fans will try and burn you at the stake whether you remove technologies or change them (like specializing them). But maybe some of us more reasonable fans fully comprehend the fact that the game's balance is and was always broken in most of the tech tree, but would rather you just ditched the useless weapons than have the game turn into click fest of microing hard counter units in the effort to make room for them.

Ok, this is starting to get ridiculous. Can you tell us how many unit types you have to build now in order to win? For me it is 2-3 instead of 1, what about you?

However, that said, I still think it is a mistake to push the Lancer back, as you have done. It now comes way too late in the game, and it can only serve at that stage as a step towards acquiring the Scourge. So, in the interest of economy and logic, you should remove both the Lancer and Tank KIller from the research list altogether. And that leaves a big big hole in the game, doesn't it?

zydonk, one thing I didn't understand: do you want to have lancer because you like missiles and miss it now or becuase you think there is no other weapon that can properly replace it? This would make a big difference.

As it is, in v10 as well as b4, the Tank Killer comes too late and too close to the Scourge to be of any intrinsic value. In fact, I usually research it solely to get access to the Scourge.

Yes, many of the MK1/MK2 weapons become useless faster that they should. The heavier weapons such as heavy Cannon and Scourge steal all the spotlight from MC and TK for example.

[zydonk]

zydonk, one thing I didn't understand: do you want to have lancer because you like missiles and miss it now or becuase you think there is no other weapon that can properly replace it? This would make a big difference.

troman, actually, I do like the missiles. This is because of the kind of game I play, which is about siting fixed defensive structures so as to channel the rushes into killing zones. Cannons are not much use here: there is only the light cannon structures for much of the early game, with only the low-mid level HPVs to follow. The mini rockets can serve, but only to the point where mid bodied and armed tanks, usu tracked, come into play. The Lancer is really needed at this point, because the med + hvy cannon have to be kept away from what are still relatively weak structures. It's not about having an easy slaughter fest; there's a point through the middle game where the balance of forces becomes pretty precarious. If any of the defensive lines go down then I am buggered. Your aivolution mod really makes that clear, where the group rushes can be overwhelming without a decent mid-range los weapon. Range weapons are less effective at this stage, because the rushes must be broken while they are still approaching.

I take your point that there may well be too many weapons (both types and levels), but I still hold to the principle that we should keep the general spread of the original game (in all areas) and accommodate our wishes to that. On one hand, there is no perfect balance possible, and on the other, allowance has to be made for the variety of playing styles that WZ make possible.

I am only repeating here what I said at the beginning of this topic. I've asked you before to address this subject. I am now able to better appreciate your approach to the game, can you make some attempt to appreciate mine?

[EvilGuru]

If you know what you're doing (hint: have read the tech tree) you can still get lancer quite early on. I suspect your concerns are more of a lack of being able to accomplish this than it being genuinely too far down in the tech tree. Should you really want/need lancer early on in the game, you can get it.

You can get medium cannon even quicker -- often in a team game I will not build any light cannon units and rush straight to medium cannon. In 1v1 matches, however, building light cannon units is a necessity. By the time your enemy is pumping out tracked heavy cannon units (or even medium cannon units) you should have researched lancer.

Upgraded mini-pods (with a fair few upgrades) are also deadly. However, the upgrades are very important.

Light cannon bunkers, plus some research, can do very good job at stopping tanks dead in their tracks.

Regards, Freddie.

[Deus Siddis]

Well since it would mostly or only affect direct fire weapons, it would affect the balance between direct fire and artillery weapons.

Deus Siddis, it will affect more than that, there's more than just weapons in the game.

It will inevitably affect tactics and value of weapons and other technologies such as walls as a result, how severely none of us can know until we try.

It might preserve balance of most direct fire weapons (be it even only on the paper - linear dependancy in complex system as Warzone is usually an approximation), although you can't just increase weapon range of all weapons by the same amout imo, while it will work better with some weapons, like cannons and missiles you will have trouble doing so with flamers, but I don't know what exactly you have in mind.

On the technical side, this will break parts of AI, as it uses certain assumptions about the game, which will no longer be true. Besides that parts of the code will have to be altered, since there are some ranges WZ uses internally, which will be invalid, as a result algorithms or parts might have to be rewritten.
As you can see this can become a far more complex task than you might think, so taking this all too lightly would be wrong.

(BTW, IMO the hit system is a great part of what makes this viable, by naturally decreasing at least unguided weapon's effectiveness at range).

It is a technical question. There was a firm evidence of design deficiency of the new hit system, in certain situations the projectiles would fail to make a single hit. I don't know how it will express itself if ranges are increased.

So what you are saying is all that would need to be done is make MODs where the weapons' ranges have all been increased by the same percentage and whatever percentage change to the range is the best after alot of testing would be accepted by the WRP team as an official change to trunk for the next release?

Personally I see two prerequisites for it to become part of the trunk not in form of a MOD, which I think should make sense:
1) It clearly improves the gameplay and WZ fans like it
2) It doesn't break too much stuff, or if it does some dev volunteers to take care of that

I just wouldn't want to wait for the rebalance, bring up the subject again and then hear- "We just did a major rebalancing and what you are proposing would break it, so no thanks."

On the other hand I'm sure you understand we can't buy a pig in a poke, any promices from anyone would be totally inappropriate, until we all see how exactly it affects the game in whole. If you want to achieve something it is you who must show the initiative.[/quote]

Interesting, some of these variables I was not aware of. When and if I make a mod myself or with others with the purpose of increasing weapon ranges to something that seems more reasonable than those of tradition rts, I will keep these in mind.

I just don't like it at all when all of the weapons are hard counters with hard counters. When there are no versatility focused units- jack of all trade sorts.

What I don't like is when 95% of all games are won with the same weapon. Yes, game type does matter a lot. A Real Time Strategy game is all about strategy. If your only strategy is to pump more Python Heavy Cannon tanks than your opponent then tic-tac-toe is a more strategic game than Warzone with its praised choice of different weapon types.

Using the same strategy or tactics over and over is boring in any genre. Thus any solutions to this problem needn't be limited to those found in other strategy games.

When did I say I feared it?

When you keep expressing your concerns about hard counters, specialization and versatility in many places in your posts in different ways. But how we call it is really not a principal question for me.[/quote]

Fair enough.

So then the versatile weapons are no longer about spamming, but fighting forces of unknown composition, protecting specialized units against ambush by their counters, fighting combined arms forces in quarters too restricting for proper maneuvering of more specialized forces, mopping up, etc.

Can I ask you what mobile units you usually build (/would build) in mp games after the rebalancing and in what proportions?

Of course, but I am unclear on whether you mean old warzone balance, the rebalance in its current WIP state , when the rebalance is complete or my own desired rebalance?

Having no particular strength is a weak point of its own though.

Theoretically it can be, and as I already said there are many other 'hows' (and hence we must make sure we don't become Krylov's Swan, Pike and Crawfish), when you also take technical aspects into consideration many of those 'hows' become only theoretically possible. To fully implement what your propose a new warhead type and new weapons would be necessary

A little bit of the technical background.
All weapons have a certain warhead type in Warzone (I made a list on the wiki, but can't find it now, maybe it was lost during wiki convertion), which controls the effectiveness against a certain target, such as anti-tank, anti-personnel, AA, artillery etc. If you want an unspecialized weapon you must add a new warhead type. We can't just take all anti-tank weapons (all cannons, missiles, rockets) and make them do equally well against tanks and cyborgs and bunkers etc. You can treat artillery as such a warhead type, if you will though, there are no targets it would be very uneffective against.

I was being theoretical on that particular point. In application, lets say cannons would be effective at damaging everything equally. But, they don't do enough overall damage to be significant against a hardpoint or bunker, which are massive and have walls that might be measured in meters of thickness. They cannot aim up, turned fast enough or fire rounds often enough that travel fast enough to hit VTOLs reliably at all. This applies to fast moving ground vehicles to a lesser extent. Infantry and cyborgs are so much smaller than vehicles (especially if they crouched or went prone) that the accuracy of the weapon and slow fire rate once again makes it not very effective.

It really is a huge waste of time to argue about something only from the theoretical point of view, when not all sides have the full picture about the issue. Try to make your own rebalancing, think it all out, make your self familiar with the practical aspects, then we can talk again and I think out views will be much more coherent.

That is possible, but keep in mind that there are very real and practical games out there that have already proven and applied some of these concepts, even if they were not well known or not all of us have played them. So it isn't purely theory and practical igorance.

So maybe mortars really don't need any damage reduction against vtols[...] Or maybe you don't need track propulstion or heavy body specific damage reduction for the machin gun[...]

Maybe they don't, and in fact mortars cause 100% damage to VTOLs and MG has no heavy body specific damage reduction.

Awesome. Actually I meant to say tracks though, not heavy body, sorry.

This is the kind of specialization I love- simulated specialization. Because it looks real, feels real and illustrates for the player why the hell his weapons are not working against a particular type of foe without him having to RTFM .

I don't know what your problem is. In fact the game has become much more realistic now. Cannons are anti-tank weapons, do you have to RTFM to understand that they are not anti-personnel weapons and hence are not effective against cyborgs? Same with Bunker Buster (pay attention to the name), AA etc. Or do you have to RTFM to understand that flamer can't easily damage bricks? What is your problem? Or maybe you have to RTFM to understand that later bodies, which cost more and require more research cost and time should have better value than early ones?
I have no time for tilting at windmills.

There is no need to feel upset or defensive, I was only complaining about the old warzone balance with those remarks. As far as I am concerned, the rebalancing is still in development at might not have fully adjusted for the new hit system and its array of potential benefits.

As you have seen the fanatical fanboy fans will try and burn you at the stake whether you remove technologies or change them (like specializing them). But maybe some of us more reasonable fans fully comprehend the fact that the game's balance is and was always broken in most of the tech tree, but would rather you just ditched the useless weapons than have the game turn into click fest of microing hard counter units in the effort to make room for them.

Ok, this is starting to get ridiculous. Can you tell us how many unit types you have to build now in order to win? For me it is 2-3 instead of 1, what about you?

That should show that having a huge tech tree doesn't help the situation. What counts are how many different but useful and mostly equally useful weapons there are. So removing some of the useless weapons as I suggested in the text you quoted would not harm the goal of making more than 1-3 weapons needed to win a good match. In fact it might help, as reducing the number of weapons or removing the weapons whose purpose is too unusual or nonexistant (plasma cannon?) might be make you work of rebalancing much simpler, easier and more balanced in the end.

[Troman]

I was being theoretical on that particular point.

I'm not here to argue about theory. If you have no more feedback don't clog up the thread please.

In application, lets say cannons would be effective at damaging everything equally. But, they don't do enough overall damage to be significant against a hardpoint or bunker, which are massive and have walls that might be measured in meters of thickness. They cannot aim up, turned fast enough or fire rounds often enough that travel fast enough to hit VTOLs reliably at all. This applies to fast moving ground vehicles to a lesser extent. Infantry and cyborgs are so much smaller than vehicles (especially if they crouched or went prone) that the accuracy of the weapon and slow fire rate once again makes it not very effective.

That's exactly the way cannons are currently balanced.

There is no need to feel upset or defensive

It was a reaction. Look at the action. The word and smiley choice has clearly revealed your mood and attitude. Don't be silly, I can't read your mind to see who you are directing your complains to.

I was only complaining about the old warzone balance with those remarks.

Can you please send an email to Pumpkin instead or start a seperate topic for this and complain there? This post is already full of pointless complaints, misunderstandings, prejudices, nonesense, pointless arguments and unrelated smalltalk.

Using the same strategy or tactics over and over is boring in any genre.

Take a guess why unused technologies are being resurrected.

Thus any solutions to this problem needn't be limited to those found in other strategy games.

The starcraft paranoia is getting annoying. No balancing scheme of any other game is being copied, we are not Blizzard agents who want to take over the game industry or whatever. Furthermore no overhaul of the tech tree is being done, this is not necessary.

That should show that having a huge tech tree doesn't help the situation.

No, what it shows to me is that this huge tech tree is totally out of balance.

What counts are how many different but useful and mostly equally useful weapons there are.

I don't see why all weapons must be equally usefull, it will stay the way it always was in this regard, as I said it is not a complete overhaul, it is a rebalance. If someone likes this idea he is always free to make a MOD.

So removing some of the useless weapons as I suggested in the text you quoted would not harm the goal of making more than 1-3 weapons needed to win a good match.

It is the easiest way to rip out everything that is currently broken. No technology will be removed unless really necessary. Resurrection of most unused technologies will not affect the more mainstream ones.

In fact it might help, as reducing the number of weapons or removing the weapons whose purpose is too unusual or nonexistant (plasma cannon?) might be make you work of rebalancing much simpler, easier [...]

I don't mind if it's hard, but anyway thanks for your concerns. I'm not a big fan of plasma cannon, but I know people who like it a lot.

To sum it up.
I understand everyone wants to have balancing his way, but it obviously can't work. I will keep in mind the suggestions made so far, but they all can't be merged obviously, trade offs will be needed.

I think I replied to all arguments (several times) already and I don't want to repeat myself anymore. So please, don't clog up this topic with any off-topic discussions anymore. If you have something usefull to say that has not been chewed over yet - go ahead, otherwise please restrain yourself.

zydonk: sorry I will get back to your issue, RL stuff...