The 2.2 -> 2.3 Rebalance Thread

[Deus Siddis]

I think what is really needed is to get rid of the Cyborg Transport and intead have a transporation bay you can put on ordinary VTOLS in place of a weapon.

[lav_coyote25]

would have to be superheavy body only i would think...

[Zarel]

Well, I think VTOL MG weapons are going to have to be AP now. And I'm probably going to decrease shot damage and increase the number of shots it can do before needing to reload, so Transport doesn't have as much advantage over VTOL HMG.

[DFStormbringer]

guess ill throw in my 2 cents if anyone cares to listen.
MGs... these guns become overly useless mid to late game in all but enclosed maps... ill not mention how the rotary MG bunker makes a mess on mizamaze but the machine gun is meant to be the anti infantry and anti light vehicle.. yet late game.. any new weapon severely outranged all the MG weapons... even the dual assult gun is totally useless as defence.. and mostly useless as offense as anything toting it is often hammered before it gets in range of scourge cyborgs.
so despite the MOUNTAIN of rate of fire upgrades.. and damage upgrades for bullets.. nobody is really using the bullet driven weapons as they have no range.. so im suguesting a few range increase upgrades late game that pair with the damage upgrades.. "magnum" casings or something.


the crying about late game artillery tie breaking.
whats the main reason it becomes a brick wall? because people have 100+ as defence!
i suguest a building limitation to ALL artillery.. same as there is for factories and research buildings.
say.. 5 of each type. im sorry but thats a total of 25 moarters.. 20 howitzers and 10 rocket launchers.. this is MORE then enough to defend your base against almost all but the nastiest of zerg rushes.
5 of each class total.. would be more of an improvement.. and REALLY force the person to have to stratagize placement and type they use.

EMP... im sorry but i REALLY think this should be put alot sooner in the tech tree.. with a couple range and effect time upgrades to keep it from being OP in the beginning.. but still making a viable defence for most rushes. and the earlier mentioned imposed 5 limit would certainly keep it from causing your defence being impossible to break as it could only tie up 5 vehicles at a time.

the flashlight to pulse lazer upgrading itself on structures and units still needs fixing.

rockets not showing up graphically still needs fixing.

lasers as a whole.. need fixing.
flashlight is totally useless. it auto updates as soon as the pulse comes out.. so no real use comes out of it.
pulse is pratically perfect for an all around weapon.
From here the laser tech tree mostly doubles in power.. but loses half its range and rate of fire to compensate. problem being range is the end all be all late game. not to mention its ROF and range removal pratically makes the DPS for the pulse better in the long run then its later versions.
boost the range of the later versions.. but not TOO much it becomes over powered.

Flamers
become inherently useless even mid game.
anti cyborg and anti bunker.. even in WW2.. the upgraded flamers had INSANE ranges.. starting from the personal flamer with its short room long range. then the upgraded larger personell flamer which was great for taking out and clearning out bunkers from the sides.. had a good range of 50feet easy. then the vehicle and tank mounted flamers which would spew thier chemical mess 150 feet easilly. upgrading the flamers range as it got stronger.. would really make it more viable later game.. and really boosting range on the final version.. and making it vehicle only could keep it viable and keep it from being OP but still a viable anti bunker option and anti cyborg.

flamer upgrades FINALLY upgrading the thermal damage of the incendary weapons is a great start.. a much NEEDED and logical start... for the complaints to AA.. the bullet damage increases late game.. the uranium tipped bullets and what not.. should also give small boosts to the AA guns..they do fire the same bullets after all.

rockets arent useless...they are the end all be all counter to MGs and cannons for the better part of T1.. and a cluster of 7 or more cheap wheeld vehicles can easilly decimate any base and its defences by approaching slowly and staying out of everythings range. this forces you to counter with rockets of your own till you either hammer out the cannon tech and get moarters.. or hammer the rockets and get lancers.

simply put.. the hardest balance issue of this game.. is range.
and though i LOVE ranged units.. spamming longer ranged weapons will always beat out a few specialized turrets and units "meant" to counter it. and the only real way to counter.. is to limit the number of ranged things.. or give the ranged items.. other serious penalties.... in reduced rate of fire.. and significantly weaker defence.. raised cost and research times.. artillery and similar weapons are meant to be SUPPORT.. not primary defence/offence.

Fortresses..
insane research and double insane build cost.. for them to be EASILLY taken down by 2-3 heavy cannons or scourge.. or BBs... becuase this fortress has NO defence rating pratically and has a skunked range. this is a sad sadistic joke.. its better to put 4 heavy cannons in that 2x2 grid then it is to throw down a fortress.. making each of these fortresses useless.. at least give them SOME better range so they have the chance of firing back a couple times before we lose all that resources to a small attack force.

Super Heavy Bodies
like fortresses they have an INSANE research cost.. time.. and build cost.. but thier statistics make them a joke. they specialize in anti flame.. something which nobody uses. has a mediocre at best health boost. boost its natural defences a bit and give them a fair ammount more health OR reduce thier cost and research time to make the body viable in the game as oppsed to "ill research it becuase ive got nothing better to research"

tank traps
these need thier HP doubled at least.. it would greatly disable most truck rushing.. being cheaper then hardcrete it would keep the rushers at bay while giving you valuable time to put up defences of your own while they waste resources on spamming thier attack turrets. and with no upgrades.. once well into T1.. they would become useless as alwyas. perhaps like the mines in other versions.. give them an attack rating where where unlike walls.. they CAN be driven over.. and when they are driven over.. they do damage to the vehicle that hits them... this damage being enough to take out the starting out trucks with one pass? would be better if they could be either transparent.. or invisible to the opposing teams.. to really add to the trap aspect.

[Zarel]

guess ill throw in my 2 cents if anyone cares to listen.
MGs... these guns become overly useless mid to late game in all but enclosed maps... ill not mention how the rotary MG bunker makes a mess on mizamaze but the machine gun is meant to be the anti infantry and anti light vehicle.. yet late game.. any new weapon severely outranged all the MG weapons... even the dual assult gun is totally useless as defence.. and mostly useless as offense as anything toting it is often hammered before it gets in range of scourge cyborgs.
so despite the MOUNTAIN of rate of fire upgrades.. and damage upgrades for bullets.. nobody is really using the bullet driven weapons as they have no range.. so im suguesting a few range increase upgrades late game that pair with the damage upgrades.. "magnum" casings or something.

Machinegun is meant to be replaced by lasers by mid-T3; assault guns are T2 weapons.

the crying about late game artillery tie breaking.
whats the main reason it becomes a brick wall? because people have 100+ as defence!
i suguest a building limitation to ALL artillery.. same as there is for factories and research buildings.
say.. 5 of each type. im sorry but thats a total of 25 moarters.. 20 howitzers and 10 rocket launchers.. this is MORE then enough to defend your base against almost all but the nastiest of zerg rushes.
5 of each class total.. would be more of an improvement.. and REALLY force the person to have to stratagize placement and type they use.

I've been thinking of different ways to do building limitations, but it really does mess with balance a lot. With building limitations, Warzone becomes a totally different game. One of the biggest differences between Warzone and other games is that in Warzone, walls actually do something.

EMP... im sorry but i REALLY think this should be put alot sooner in the tech tree.. with a couple range and effect time upgrades to keep it from being OP in the beginning.. but still making a viable defence for most rushes. and the earlier mentioned imposed 5 limit would certainly keep it from causing your defence being impossible to break as it could only tie up 5 vehicles at a time.

Many people have brought this up. I'll see what I can do.

the flashlight to pulse lazer upgrading itself on structures and units still needs fixing.

What do you mean?

rockets not showing up graphically still needs fixing.

What do you mean?

lasers as a whole.. need fixing.
flashlight is totally useless. it auto updates as soon as the pulse comes out.. so no real use comes out of it.
pulse is pratically perfect for an all around weapon.
From here the laser tech tree mostly doubles in power.. but loses half its range and rate of fire to compensate. problem being range is the end all be all late game. not to mention its ROF and range removal pratically makes the DPS for the pulse better in the long run then its later versions.
boost the range of the later versions.. but not TOO much it becomes over powered.

There are changes planned for the lasers that should make them more balanced. Until then, Pulse Laser works well enough.

Flamers
become inherently useless even mid game.
anti cyborg and anti bunker.. even in WW2.. the upgraded flamers had INSANE ranges.. starting from the personal flamer with its short room long range. then the upgraded larger personell flamer which was great for taking out and clearning out bunkers from the sides.. had a good range of 50feet easy. then the vehicle and tank mounted flamers which would spew thier chemical mess 150 feet easilly. upgrading the flamers range as it got stronger.. would really make it more viable later game.. and really boosting range on the final version.. and making it vehicle only could keep it viable and keep it from being OP but still a viable anti bunker option and anti cyborg.

Flamers generally only work on fast propulsions - cyborgs and hovercraft. On those, flamers should be mostly fine midgame. Walls generally stop them completely, but they make short work of armies that dare venture outside walls.

flamer upgrades FINALLY upgrading the thermal damage of the incendary weapons is a great start.. a much NEEDED and logical start... for the complaints to AA.. the bullet damage increases late game.. the uranium tipped bullets and what not.. should also give small boosts to the AA guns..they do fire the same bullets after all.

The AA guns have their own, separate upgrades.

rockets arent useless...they are the end all be all counter to MGs and cannons for the better part of T1.. and a cluster of 7 or more cheap wheeld vehicles can easilly decimate any base and its defences by approaching slowly and staying out of everythings range. this forces you to counter with rockets of your own till you either hammer out the cannon tech and get moarters.. or hammer the rockets and get lancers.

Or rush them with flamer cyborgs.

simply put.. the hardest balance issue of this game.. is range.
and though i LOVE ranged units.. spamming longer ranged weapons will always beat out a few specialized turrets and units "meant" to counter it. and the only real way to counter.. is to limit the number of ranged things.. or give the ranged items.. other serious penalties.... in reduced rate of fire.. and significantly weaker defence.. raised cost and research times.. artillery and similar weapons are meant to be SUPPORT.. not primary defence/offence.

Nah, fast units generally close long ranges pretty quickly. A flamer hovercraft can chase down and destroy most ranged weapon tanks.

Fortresses..
insane research and double insane build cost.. for them to be EASILLY taken down by 2-3 heavy cannons or scourge.. or BBs... becuase this fortress has NO defence rating pratically and has a skunked range. this is a sad sadistic joke.. its better to put 4 heavy cannons in that 2x2 grid then it is to throw down a fortress.. making each of these fortresses useless.. at least give them SOME better range so they have the chance of firing back a couple times before we lose all that resources to a small attack force.

Granted; fortresses are known to be pretty weak right now. They do have fairly long range, though; much longer than any non-artillery unit - except the cannon fortress, which is a bit longer range than anything else so far.

Super Heavy Bodies
like fortresses they have an INSANE research cost.. time.. and build cost.. but thier statistics make them a joke. they specialize in anti flame.. something which nobody uses. has a mediocre at best health boost. boost its natural defences a bit and give them a fair ammount more health OR reduce thier cost and research time to make the body viable in the game as oppsed to "ill research it becuase ive got nothing better to research"

I'll see what I can do.

tank traps
these need thier HP doubled at least.. it would greatly disable most truck rushing.. being cheaper then hardcrete it would keep the rushers at bay while giving you valuable time to put up defences of your own while they waste resources on spamming thier attack turrets. and with no upgrades.. once well into T1.. they would become useless as alwyas. perhaps like the mines in other versions.. give them an attack rating where where unlike walls.. they CAN be driven over.. and when they are driven over.. they do damage to the vehicle that hits them... this damage being enough to take out the starting out trucks with one pass? would be better if they could be either transparent.. or invisible to the opposing teams.. to really add to the trap aspect.

One idea was to let cyborgs walk past them (ie they only stop tanks), which is a pretty good idea. The problem with tank traps is that they need to be less common than walls (and less powerful), or else they'd probably upset game balance too much.

[Per]

MG stays a pretty decent supplement for your army well into T3 because your rocket/missile buggies are totally useless against cyborgs. It usually stops being useful as an all-round weapon after T1, but if you keep upgrading aggressively you can keep using it well into mid T2 and combine that with superb early AA.

Flamer tech tre - ignore it at your peril. Flamer cyborgs rule T1. VTOL incendiary bombs in T2 are insane. There are things they cannot touch, but that is how it should be.

Cannons - useless. The only shining beacon of hope for someone using the cannon tree is to get to HPV and use HPV VTOLs. (BTW, does HPV have the most annoying sound in the game after oil derricks, or what?)

[Avestron]

The advantages of cannons over other weapons in contemporary times lie almost exclusively in the ammunition.

If you are unable to get rounds down-range as often as other weapons then you had better make sure that the rounds will make up for that.

Cannons generally make up for their lack of rapid fire (though modern rapid fire cannons do exist) through a combination of increased range, increased fire velocity, increased penetration, increased follow-through and increased round utility (exploding shells for example).

Similarly while a machine gun may pepper a target with thousands of rounds - if the armour hardness and effective thickness are too great then they will simply not penetrate - trials of the dragonskin body armour illustrate this fact perfectly.

[Zarel]

MG stays a pretty decent supplement for your army well into T3 because your rocket/missile buggies are totally useless against cyborgs. It usually stops being useful as an all-round weapon after T1, but if you keep upgrading aggressively you can keep using it well into mid T2 and combine that with superb early AA.

Flamer tech tre - ignore it at your peril. Flamer cyborgs rule T1. VTOL incendiary bombs in T2 are insane. There are things they cannot touch, but that is how it should be.

Cannons - useless. The only shining beacon of hope for someone using the cannon tree is to get to HPV and use HPV VTOLs. (BTW, does HPV have the most annoying sound in the game after oil derricks, or what?)

Well, there's also the needle gun and rail gun. And the AC/TACs pretty much destroy everything that goes near them.

As for earlygame cannons, well, LC is the best anti-MG-tower weapon you can get in three research-steps from T1 No Bases. MC and HC are also very good weapons if you want to do an unsubtle "destroy everything that gets in your way" type strategy.

[DFStormbringer]

building limitations on artillery wont ruin ANY ballencing. it will just make it so its never "impossible" to attack and destroy a base.. as opposed to people warring each other at a stale mate with 50+ hellstorms.

as i stated...5 of each still leaves for one hell of a long range defence that would stop all but the most redicilious of ground assaults.
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for the flashlight bug... when the flashlight becomes available.. build a few vehicles wiht the flashlight as its turret.... THEN research the pulse laser... the moment the pulse laser is done being researched.. all your built flashlight vehicles turrets are automatically replaced with pulse lasers.


the rocket graphics bug.. this was ALSO fixed in 1.12 where if you look at screenshots.. you can see that the rockets missiles and what not are ALL missing.. all you can see is thier exhaust.. and flame trails.. but no missile or warhead. 1.12 fixed it where the missiles could finally be seen as they should be.

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yes.. AA guns have thier own upgrades.. but alot are complaining that the AAs still arent strong enough.. adding a small damage boost.. say even 1 point of damage per high end upgrade for the bullets to boost it even further might help out.. yet still cause it to rely on research. i think theres 5 unique damage upgrades late game.. so that only adds 5 points total more damage per shot which might make a difference.
not saying do it.. just offering an idea to a commonly whined about problem.

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fortresses.. dont have "that" long of a range.. scourge missiles out range them.. and they BARELY match heavy cannon range. and as i said.. 3-4 heavy cannon tanks can easily take down any fortress.. where as these same vehicles would be put in check by 4 turrets placed in that same 2x2 grid.
For the time it takes to build and the exorbant ammount of resources it takes to build them..and the research needed to unlock them.. they should HANDS DOWN dominate over what 4 hardpoints can put out.
this is my complaint. like the dragon.. it costs way too much for as useless as it is.
and there a chance for a laser hardpoint?? say particle cannon fortress?

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and my thoughts for the tank traps was they do a % of damage to vehicles based on thier type.

as you said.. cyborgs are unaffected..
hovers should be as well being they hover over it.
wheels.. take 10% damage from hitting them with a MINIMUM damage of 50.. this will kill ANY starting out truck.. and severly damage upgraded ones early on.
half tracks.. 15% damage
tanks.. 20-30% damage..
as i stated earlier these would have to be unseen to the opponent for it to work as an actual trap.. but either be A revealed when hit as to be destroied by the remaining forces.. or B able to be detected by some sort of sensor at very close ranges. this forces more use of mobile radar stations.

just an idea.. obviously a discussion about it is going about..
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i woudlent mind the nexus turret to be available sooner either... smacked wiht the 5 limitation of course as not to OP things... but a few on vehicles.. doing sneak runs to enemy bases to steal tech to try and further advance their own tech tree would just SO open up the game to new strategies and forms of evil.
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las-sat building...
seriously.. such a small blast radious.. able to damage 2-3 buildings at most.. take one out if its a direct hit and its not upgraded enough... only to be replaced 10 seconds later. face it by the time this thing is unlocked.. nobody is really having energy problems. or they would be dead already.
Change it to a wide area EMP cannon from space.. boost its recharge time a bit.. and have wherever it fires.. it shuts down ALL buildings and units in its target area.. friend and foe alike.. and say it shuts these units and buildings down for a full 60 seconds. but takes 10 to recharge.
the buildings are still standing.. so they cant be replaced.. same with units.. and if being pounded.. 60 seconds is more then enough time to stop an attacking force.. or even thier cluster of 30 hellstorms to alow your army to get in and attack.
this will force people to stop building everything clustered togeather and spread it more apart.. thining out thier main defences.. and adding more value to each unit.. hardpoint.. and resource spent.. adding tot he games strategy.

[ClockWork]

5 for each artillery? But what If I have 5 Mortars, but then I research the Pepper Pots. I’ll no longer be able to build them in a strategic place after demolishing them, because they would become obsolete.

And besides, I could still produce lots of Hell Storm tanks, with, or without a structure limit, if I wanted.

[Terminator]

sorry for off topic. but Name of the topic says 2.2 -> 2.3. Right? Is that 2.3 which would be with NEW GUI (betawidget) ?

[Mabsterone]

i think most weapon stats and limits are fine as they are.

vtol need a bit downgrading or just the removment of the hmg ( or downgrade to mg ? ) with the troop transporter
the allrounder weapon makes the vtols a good basis defender against trakced attakcs..which is not a bad thing at all
cannons might need to be a bit more powerfull in comparison to the neourmous amount of research you got to put into them.
..and it would be cool when AA upgrades would benefit from mg upgrades and/or canon ammunition upgrades, whatever is more suitable.

AA needs to be upgraded at all, beefing it up with mg/canon research tech would make it more versatile in usage.
Or just give us a 6th researcher, so there is one spare when you go for t3 weapons in a high power game. So everone can decide to early researchAA without loosing the stream in researchrush for scourge or gauss.

I dont aqgree with limiting the artillery to a low number...there are people like me not playing low power on less oil rig maps and in that games you need a certain amount of artillery to protect your base when you turtle and go for t3 weapons as weapon of choice in field comabt.

I dont agree with beefing up the fortresses... they pretty outrange anything then artillery, the splash damage does help too a lot.
And they just cost 1k+...which equals aprox 2 big t3 tanks ( or 3 ) , that and the none movement, no target pic option of the fortresses makes them good as they are. they can take a big amount of damage in comparison to normal bunkers and walls...and they keep longrange units like pulse/scourge underfire at least, so i think they are fine like they are.
What would be cool would be an additional AA fortress..like mounting a rapid fire quad stormbringer emplacment ?

[Zarel]

sorry for off topic. but Name of the topic says 2.2 -> 2.3. Right? Is that 2.3 which would be with NEW GUI (betawidget) ?

No, Betawidget will be 3.0...

[Kacen]

the rocket graphics bug.. this was ALSO fixed in 1.12 where if you look at screenshots.. you can see that the rockets missiles and what not are ALL missing.. all you can see is thier exhaust.. and flame trails.. but no missile or warhead. 1.12 fixed it where the missiles could finally be seen as they should be.

Erm...

There was never a bug in the rockets/missiles, they always looked like that in Warzone 2100. Rockets always looked like blue energy balls, and lancers/tank killers/scourges always looked like fireballs.

In 1.12 they just changed the rocket/missile graphics to be more realistic.

[DFStormbringer]

it was a bug.. the origional devs even admited it. same with the ripple rockets and the flashlights auto upgrading when the archangels and the pulse lasers where researched.. but being it was sch a minor bug compared to the hell that was pathfinding and the pipeline instability.. they never got around to fixing it.

99% of each of thier updates were mainly them releasing the SP nexus equipment into the mulitplayer games to expand the battles past the lancers... it wasent till thier final update 1.10 that anything "new" even came out which was the super heavy bodies and the fortresses.

and being all the in game maps arent "super oil rich" maps.. 2000+ power is substancial to spend on a 2x2 turrent that gets hosed by a couple BBs or scurge when as i said.. 4 hardpoints in that same 2x2 space have MORE totall hitpoints and far more firepower and usualy far less cost.