2.3 Balance Suggestions

[Dylan Hsu]

Much progress has been made in the beta process of 2.3... Lasers now make sense, and Scourge no longer has almost the same range as mortars. However, I have several key balance suggestions for the final version of 2.3 which are all necessary. Feel free to disagree and elaborate; below are the suggestions and explanations.

Artillery shenanigans

If you've played on any map with sizable oil, you've also probably lasted long enough to produce Ripple Rockets and Archangels. The problem is not their fun factor or their superior range to other artillery. The truth of the matter is that Ripple Rockets, let alone Archies, outperform the other two artillery paths in both range and damage.

The proposal:

• Significantly reduce raw damage of Ripple Rockets, Archangels.
• Increase splash raw damage and radius of Mortars, Howitzers.
• Decrease accuracy of Mortars, Howitzers.
• Allow mortars to shoot while moving (howitzers unchanged).
• Further increase the cost of Archangel and Ripple Rocket turrets and emplacements.

All-round underdogs
(click to see Cannon list)
Cannons suck. They cannot compete with any other weapon path. Rather than broadly improving cannons, each cannon type should be slightly specialized to add effectiveness and appeal to each individual turret. With these changes, cannons will compete with and complement, not supplant, other weapon lines like missiles and MGs.

The proposal:

• Light Cannon: Buff ROF, nerf raw damage. Effective against small targets.
• Medium Cannon: Nerf ROF, 1 second of high damage burn, remove splash, increase velocity. Rename to Destroyer Cannon. Name is tentative. Effective against large, tough targets.
• Heavy Cannon: Significantly increase splash radius and damage, nerf accuracy. Rename to Battle Cannon. Name is tentative. Effective against tightly packed groups of targets.
• Hyper Velocity Cannon: No longer replaces Medium/Destroyer Cannon, increase range, remove splash, increase velocity further, increase rate of fire. Name unchanged. Effective against units with lesser range and small targets.
• Assault/Twin Assault Cannon: Decrease weight, slightly nerf ROF, slightly buff raw damage. Effective at assaults [!]

[Per]

I like the idea of making the various cannons in the cannon tree more varied and specialized. The rocket tree has lots of interesting variations already.

[KukY]

Only things I agree with are these:

• Significantly reduce raw damage of Ripple Rockets, Archangels.
• Increase splash raw damage and radius of Mortars, Howitzers.
• Allow mortars to shoot while moving (howitzers unchanged).

I think cannons are good enough.

[Dylan Hsu]

Does Piercer Cannon sound better for the Medium Cannon replacement?

[Buginator]

I can't really comment on balance issues one way or the other, I just haven't played any games in a long time, and I don't know what is really going on.

I highly suggest you make a mod with said changes, put it in this thread, have other people play it, and if everyone likes it, we can stick it in the game.

[KukY]

-

You could have made it nicer...
Maybe put it in a WZ...

[3drts]

Ripples were fine before lancer upgrades affected them....
Long range, but crappy ROF and damage, good for long seiges in campaign.
Lancers used to be surpassed by heavy cannons in damage output (before their upgrades worked), sometime around the end of campaign 1, early campaign 2.
Thus it was a trade of low weight, salvo fire, long range, vs higher sustained damage output and more hitpoints.
Its been a long time since a heavy cannon tank could put out as much punishment as a lancer tank with similar amounts of research.
I just think the cannons need a damage or ROF buff, perhaps 10% to base damage and rof?

And I am still partial to the idea of either splitting rockets into AT rockets and artillery rockets (with separate upgrade techs), or lumping cannons and howitzers (and mortars?) together when it comes to upgrading them.

A howitzer is just a big cannon after all.
A mortar is just a large bore low velocity cannon.
A cannon is just a gun with a large enough bore to fire explosive shells
but then again, an Anti-Tank rocket/missile isn't much different from a 70mm folding fin rocket fired from a rocket pod (mini-rockets), so I wouldn't suggest grouping machineguns in with cannon upgrades (making a rather generic "projectile weapon damage upgrade" and a "rocket weapon damage upgrade")

Special research into shaped charge warheads for penetrating armor, should not benefit artillery rockets that are just meant to hopefully explode near a target and deal splash damage: Shaped charge warheads should be exclusive to large splash damage, just as Sabot cannon rounds (but not HEAT or HEAP cannon rounds) should be.

We may need to break rockets into two upgrade categories: shaped charge armor penetrators (bunker busters, lancer, TK), and HE fragmentation/splash warheads (mini-rockets, ripples, mini rocket array).
Then lump mortar+howitzer upgrades together.

I think once you separate the damage upgrades you can't have joint ROF upgrades can you?

Its a shame.... the loading system on a 120mm direct fire cannon isn't much different from the loading system on a 155mm indirect fire howitzer, it would be nice if they shared the same ROF upgrades, but an AP sabot is very different from what a howitzer fires, and the damage upgrades shouldn't be the same.

[Dylan Hsu]

Cannon Rebalance Mod v0.1

Cannon rebalance.mod.wz

To test: place in mods\autoload (create the folder) and run Warzone. Try out the new cannon turrets. Cyborgs have not been changed.

Changes
Light Cannon:
ROF changed from 3s to 1.2s.
DMG changed from 35 to 20.

Medium Cannon -> Piercer Cannon:
ROF changed from 4s to 5.5s
Splash R changed from 0.5 to 0.25.
DMG changed from 55 to 20.
Burn time 0.1s.
Burn dmg/s 480.
Burn radius 0.75.
Flight speed changed from 1500 to 1200.
NOTE: Burn damage is significantly reduced by rounding.

Heavy Cannon -> Battle Cannon:
ROF changed from 5s to 7s.
Splash R changed from 1 to 3.5.
DMG changed from 90 to 108.
Splash dmg changed from 30 to 70.
Accuracy decreased from 70/55 to 60/50.

HPV Cannon:
Accuracy increased from 45/55 to 60/80.
DMG changed from 70 to 75.
Splash radius changed to 0.5
Splash dmg changed from 20 to 3.
Flight speed changed from 1800 to 2400.
Can hit air.

Assault Cannon:
Weight decreased from 7500 to 4000.
ROF Changed from 1.6s to 1s.
DMG increased from 55 to 60.
Splash DMG increased from 20 to 30.
Splash R decreased from 0.5 to 0.25.

T Assault Cannon:
Weight decreased from 8500 to 5500.
ROF Changed from 1.6s to 1s.
Splash DMG increased from 15 to 20.
Splash R decreased from 0.5 to 0.25.

[Zarel]

You could have made it nicer...
Maybe put it in a WZ...

It was having problems; he was uploading those files so I could take a look at what the problem was. Scroll down, and you'll see the finished version.

Ripples were fine before lancer upgrades affected them....

Lancer upgrades have always affected them. The problem was that lancer upgrades used to do absolutely nothing. That's one of the reasons why lancers are so overpowered these days...

[Terminator]

tested that mod.... I can say that its far different than current balance.

notes:
- don't like new names (old better)
- heavy cannons splash kill themselves frequently, but its nightmare for cyborgs hordes Oh yea
- medium cannons fire damage very imbalance in the beginning or the game
- seems like assault cannons can do some damage
- light cannon - fine as HPV too

I played with bots, so MP testing required