Whole game rebalance?

[Watermelon]

I just got another idea, only slightly related to the current topic: special-abilities for units. You can give a special ability to your units in the design process. Maybe limit some interesting ones to cyborgs only. Eg cloaking.

dont think special-abilities can be easily implemented,and the current design interface is bad enough with 2 buttons I added...

[einalex]

Sorry but in almost all points i strongly disagree. What you say sounds like "you should change it so that it is like all the others are."

2.Resource system:
You have 4 oil derrick at the start of a game on any? map.Basically every additional oil derrick you control you only have 25% more resource income compare to a 'turtle' player and you'll need to build sparse defensive structure to defend remote oil derrick,in most other RTS games,every 'expansion' you control your income is doubled or maybe tripled,so this greatly encourage 'turtling at main base and tech' and inevitably lengthens the duration per game in wz.

This is a strategy game wich means the more different strategies there are to win the game, the better. the 'turtle' is a strategy. it should be able to win the game with it. depending how good a player does it there should be tactics which can win against a turtle player and other where the turtle player can win. -> rock-paper-scissors.
there should be many different strategies which work good or bad depending what strategies your opponents use.

3.Attack damage/Armor system:
Some weapon type/armor type counters are too 'hard',like machine gun only deals very little damage to bunker and flame weapon only deals 5% damage to 'hardpoint defensive structure'.Also there are some pointless weapon types like bunker buster.

oh come on. again -> rock-paper-scissors
MG against tank, that should do near to zero damage.
there should be different weapons for different purposes. no can-it-all-does-it-all-super weapon

4.The uselessness of VTOL:
I never played MP games online,but I think they are useless in MP unless your opponent is too stupid to build some anti-air units/structures when there is a sign of VTOL massing.They cost alot,deal little damage because of ammo limitation,take forever to rearm and the rearm pad itself costs a fortune...

VTOL could be implemented to get through the turtle players defences for example..

5.The Commanders:
I am not sure what they can do except remotely targeting for artillery units,sort of useless too.In my opinion,the commander should be sort of special unit who can gain experience by commanding(gets experience from the units it leads kill),the commander itself should be either a super unit or a leader type with the ability to inspire nearby units and the experience of a commander should really improve the commander's leadership/firepower or maybe some stats and visual changes.Once killed,they can be rebuilt without experience losses,since this kind of 'miracle' is definately explainable with the technologies in wz time.

inspire: good
protect: good
make more effective: good
and it should be somewhat intelligent and customizable as to different attack modes to give you more time for micromanagement within big or highly diverse combat groups (which should be more effective when handled properly)
that would make it a nice target for your enemy.

My solutions:(noob's who never played MP point of view)
1.Experience transfer system,all units have the ability to transfer/exchange experience level ability,so you can transfer the experience/rank from outdated units to newly built units,thus making ranking/experienced unit preservation more useful and eventually making high level units possible.(not very hard to do in source imo)

I personally don't think the players should care a lot about the survival of there units. its a war game. units die. get over it. _the player should have the time_ to use loads of different strategies (overall strategies, combat strategies, base design and land domination strategies) and it should be rewarded to do so. thats what makes a true strategy game.
keeping your units alive is more like the sims.

2.Maybe 'super neutral oil derrick' in remote locations.(map and data change?)

yeah! loads of em! the more there are, the more (time, ressources, units) you need to control them.

Probably the ppl who plays wz MP regularly/frequently are ideal person for balancing suggestions and such,so correct me if anything listed above doesnt exist in MP or it's total bullsh1t. 

so to summarize all my ramblings:
it would be nice if the player with the better strategy wins. not the one who can click faster/builds unit/building X in the exact perfect nanosecond.

and don't do it like all the others do it.
most strategy games i played until now aren't really strategy games.
if you think about "old classics" like 'chess' or 'go' there are loads of different ways to win the game. and the player who thinks and outsmarts his opponent usually wins.

ok, its a RTS so i guess time management in terms of clicking under stress could be there too.


i hope i didn't steal too much time from you.

thanks for this game.
alex, who was happy to find an RTS which still has diversity in it.

[DevUrandom]

Actually I think currently the player with the most units wins, doesn't he?
At least that's what was my experience when I played against the AI...
Mass MiniPods and you are on the sure side. Perhaps some bunkerbusters or something against bunkers, but otherwise you do a good choice with mass minipods...

[C01eMaN]

@ einalex: we need more ppl like you in this community please! - you inspired me to wright this

i agree with most of the things you said the turtle strategy is probly one of the best "features" in warzone
but once you built your base and destroyed 1 or two others it soon turns into a mass resource rush once ya aquire a few oil derreks from the poor player who you demolished.

imo the vtols are too usefull in multiplayer once you built about 10 or so not only for offensive attacks but defencive too. maybe the price should go up when ppl have more energy... like a tax amount added (any1 ever heared of tax in a game? lol)

i actually think the commander units are really usefull too - but i think they do lack one autotargeting within a certian range.
id like to see a relay point from the repair facilities to the commanders implemented - when i have chance to repair my units i actually forget about them.

another thing id like to see is the patrol command maybe enhanced by if no patrol root set the unit would automatically patrol around its base parimiter.

Actually I think currently the player with the most units wins, doesn't he?

most of the time yes.

i wonder what the game would be like if we had a battle with a set amount of the same units on each team (maybe reinforcements automatically transported in after a certian amount of time each time the units getting stronger - set off with mg viper wheels t1 tech end up with t3 scourage dragon tracks as the last lot of reinforcements) and without the ability to build anything. it could just be a recovery mission for a certian artifact thats at each players base (well lz). we could start with 20 or so units and maybe a few autorepairing hardpoints around the lz

[Watermelon]

Sorry but in almost all points i strongly disagree. What you say sounds like "you should change it so that it is like all the others are."
This is a strategy game wich means the more different strategies there are to win the game, the better. the 'turtle' is a strategy. it should be able to win the game with it. depending how good a player does it there should be tactics which can win against a turtle player and other where the turtle player can win. -> rock-paper-scissors.

turltle is too good in wz imo:
1.defensive building has more hp and equal amount of fire power compare to a more costy tank/cyborg.
2.defensive building can be built anywhere on map(it remains me AOE1:everyone mass peasants and towers in MP,race with the best 'peasant bonus/benefit' wins...)
3.repairing building costs zero.
4.all projectiles in wz were 'homing' whether you believe or not.(I changed it though,need some testing)

there should be many different strategies which work good or bad depending what strategies your opponents use.
oh come on. again -> rock-paper-scissors
MG against tank, that should do near to zero damage.
there should be different weapons for different purposes. no can-it-all-does-it-all-super weapon

strategy diversity is good,but counter system shouldnt be that hard,either too realistic or too unrealistic will hurt the gameplay aspect of a strategy game

VTOL could be implemented to get through the turtle players defences for example..

VTOLs are useless unless you armed them with the imbalance missiles...

inspire: good
protect: good
make more effective: good
and it should be somewhat intelligent and customizable as to different attack modes to give you more time for micromanagement within big or highly diverse combat groups (which should be more effective when handled properly)
that would make it a nice target for your enemy.

current bonus of the commander(according to the source)
1. 5% accuracy per a commander level
2. exp share:all units including the commander itself in a 'command group' gains 1 kill for every unit any group member kills

I personally don't think the players should care a lot about the survival of there units. its a war game. units die. get over it. _the player should have the time_ to use loads of different strategies (overall strategies, combat strategies, base design and land domination strategies) and it should be rewarded to do so. thats what makes a true strategy game.
keeping your units alive is more like the sims.
yeah! loads of em! the more there are, the more (time, ressources, units) you need to control them.

there is still some differences between Strategy game and Real-Time Strategy game,in turn-based strategy every decision is carefully evaluated before proceeding to 'next turn',while in a fast-paced RTS you dont have the time for perfect planning,the key to victory is the quick,effective,decisive decisions.

the unit experience system in wz may not be unique in RTS games,though if we can magnify it with proper balancing,I am confident that it'll become one of the best features wz can offer.

so to summarize all my ramblings:
it would be nice if the player with the better strategy wins. not the one who can click faster/builds unit/building X in the exact perfect nanosecond.

and don't do it like all the others do it.
most strategy games i played until now aren't really strategy games.
if you think about "old classics" like 'chess' or 'go' there are loads of different ways to win the game. and the player who thinks and outsmarts his opponent usually wins.

ok, its a RTS so i guess time management in terms of clicking under stress could be there too.


i hope i didn't steal too much time from you.

thanks for this game.
alex, who was happy to find an RTS which still has diversity in it.

I think the major problem with wz is not 'click-mania' but some game mechanics/balance problems.

[einalex]

concerning turtling: the attacking player can build loads of units which attack in waves. that way you can attack with a lot more units then their is space avaible. that way he can aattack with a lot more units then the defending player can build turrets just because of the avaible space. perhaps turrets and bunkers should get a lot more hp and cost much more.
repairing is only useful when there are no units attacking. otherwise your repairing team is shot to pieces in no time.
plus the turtling player has a very hard time defending oilrigs outside his base. he needs turrets AND mobile units.


in the end it really comes down to who has the ressources. perhaps they shouldn't be that important. but i'll have to test some more here.
i think succes read winning should depend on many different aspects.

and i haven't found a way to spy on the opponent yet. in terms of see what he's doing. since intelligence is essential to chosing the right tactic thats rather bad.

imho one game should last a couple of hours. it has to in order to utilise the potential WZ has in research and technology.
a rush for ressources seems always to lead to total annihilation after a short while


on RTS: yes the difference is definitely the time you have to think. but that shouldn't eradicate the need to think.

i don't think wz is about click mania. but i think making every unit effective against any other unit and by that and other means killing game depth will lead to it.  less complexity -> less thinking -> more click mania

[Troman]

WZ does have complexity, but it is simply not working the way it should.

and i haven't found a way to spy on the opponent yet. in terms of see what he's doing. since intelligence is essential to chosing the right tactic thats rather bad.

There are sensor units, VTOLs and uplink center that will reveal the whole map. But perhaps what WZ is lacking are more specialized units, like a substitution for magic  units used in some other RTS games. Of course it's not 'Magic' it's 'Hi-Tech' in our case. One 'magic' unit is nexus link, but I doubt many people are using it.

[Watermelon]

imo wz tech tree is too huge/complex for a RTS game,it's nearly impossible to balance all these 'components':

3+3+3+3+2 bodies
tons of weapons
weight of components
propulsions

'infinite' number of components combinations

[einalex]

i don't think balance is the right word. since everyone uses the same units. (no races or sth like that.)
there is a need to carefully dose the strengths and weaknesses of every unit and building.
perhaps it would help to start a discussion about that

wz has complexity as far as tech goes.
i don't say it couldn't be more.

but in this case one might have a better chance to make it better.
since there is (hopefully) no need to sell it to as many persons as possible.

[Watermelon]

i don't think balance is the right word. since everyone uses the same units. (no races or sth like that.)
there is a need to carefully dose the strengths and weaknesses of every unit and building.
perhaps it would help to start a discussion about that

wz has complexity as far as tech goes.
i don't say it couldn't be more.

but in this case one might have a better chance to make it better.
since there is (hopefully) no need to sell it to as many persons as possible.

I think 'races' were planned for wz(or there shouldnt be 4 'sets' of light/medium/heavy bodies)

anyways,the bodies are not balanced at all(assuming all players can gain access to all bodies in mp currently)

viper > bug > leopard > black one(couldnt remeber the name)
cobra = scorpion > panther > retribution
python tiger > vengeance
wyrm and dragon are useless

so basically it's pointless to research 'post-T3' bodies after you have mantis.

Weapons weight is ill-balanced too,missile weapons are always 'super-light' thus greatly boost the overall speed of a droid,while all cannons are heavy as hell and make the droid armed with cannons move at about 1/4 the speed of a 'missile droid'.

[Troman]

i don't think balance is the right word. since everyone uses the same units. (no races or sth like that.)

No races but different technology. If someone goes after VTOLs it will be hard to go after some another technology that makes you spend y lot of power to get it (that's at least how I think it should work).

I think 'races' were planned for wz(or there shouldnt be 4 'sets' of light/medium/heavy bodies)

As far as I know no races were planned, different body sets is a result of the campaign storyline.

But ultimately I think it would be a good idea to separate ressearch a bit, so that somewhere in the mid-game we'd have something like races. I think it should be hard to impossible to easily change the direction of the research in the middle of the game. If someone goes after mini-pods->flames->lancers->TK->Scourge, he shouldn't be able to get Heavy Cannon so easily after getting TK or Scourge. For Heavy Cannon he should go after MG->Twin MG->HMG->Light Cannon->Medium Cannon->Heavy Cannon instead.

Better research separation is the key word. Some might not agree, but personally I think this will add depth and it's a good substitution for races, but instead of having 'static' races we will have 'dynamic' races with a theoretical possibility of 'switching' races in the game.

[Watermelon]

No races but different technology. If someone goes after VTOLs it will be hard to go after some another technology that makes you spend y lot of power to get it (that's at least how I think it should work).
As far as I know no races were planned, different body sets is a result of the campaign storyline.

But ultimately I think it would be a good idea to separate ressearch a bit, so that somewhere in the mid-game we'd have something like races. I think it should be hard to impossible to easily change the direction of the research in the middle of the game. If someone goes after mini-pods->flames->lancers->TK->Scourge, he shouldn't be able to get Heavy Cannon so easily after getting TK or Scourge. For Heavy Cannon he should go after MG->Twin MG->HMG->Light Cannon->Medium Cannon->Heavy Cannon instead.

Better research separation is the key word. Some might not agree, but personally I think this will add depth and it's a good substitution for races, but instead of having 'static' races we will have 'dynamic' races with a theoretical possibility of 'switching' races in the game.

yes I agree about the research separation,it can add more diversity to the game,and some research items should be removed/merged imo,e.g:you'll 'unlock' lancer bunker/hardpoint and lancer cyborg as soon as you research 'lancer',instead of having to research them separately one by one.

edit:seems the propulsion costs calc measure makes the late game bodies even more useless...

actual propulsion component costs = [costs of the body] * [costs of the propulsion] / 100;

[DevUrandom]

current bonus of the commander(according to the source)
1. 5% accuracy per a commander level
2. exp share:all units including the commander itself in a 'command group' gains 1 kill for every unit any group member kills

Is 1 accuracy for all units or just for the commander?
Are you sure the code for 2 is actually used? My commander allways is very highlevel while all of his group is nearly at zero.

I think the research seperation is a good idea.

If you are interested, I can tell you how SMAC (which also doesn't really have races) does this:
Different factions have different bonuses (money,social,military,unit-cost,...) and during the game you get different socialengeneering models like democracy,dictatorship,green(ecology),freemarket,...
You have 4 slots (one per type) where you can select 5 different models. (type of government, type of market control, level of control(police) and endtarget are each one slot, each with "nothing" with no boni/mali preselected)
During the game you choose the one which fits your style of play best. You will get different bonuses and mali, depending on what you choose. Later in the game it gets more and more costy to change that (I think proportional to your population).

Maybe something similar could be used here?
Eg you could select a bonus for vtols or defenses or missile weapons which is more costy to change back while the game advances. Maybe you need to send your units back to reconfigure ("upgrade"!)? Maybe all your commanders go "offline" and loose experience when you change the priorities and you need to send them back to the commandcenter?
Or maybe you can at times select only one of several techs, which each gives you a bonus in a specifc part and maybe a malus in another...

[einalex]

I'm in for research separation.

as well for watermelons kill-the-unlock-research idea. because the way its now it only costs time and ressources and makes it less probable to even get to the higher developed technologies because the game has ended long before that

But we have to be careful as to how we do it.
we have to prevent research lines which end up being useles in the middle of the game because others advance further.
and we should allow easy mixing of technologies up to a certain level. otherwise we lose diversity when it comes to attack groups.
the separation could be achieved by making a level of reasearch (depending where you want to make the cut) in all research direction very expensive.

as to the weight of rocket bearing vehicles:
this is a clear advantage over cannon bearing vehicles.
so cannon bearing vehicles should have an advantage in another field, like do more damage (to X)
dunno how it is now.


i had another thought about ressources and turtling etc.
i think it should take significantly longer to build an oil rig and it should be possible to upgrade them.
reasons for both: the player with the most ressources wins. so it should be hard to build 'extensions' and winning shouldn't be directly correlated to how many oil rigs you possess, extensions should be hard to obtain and upgrading an oil rig should be possible but even harder. (and an oilrig of course shouldn't produce oil while being upgraded)

i also thought about switching tactics in game. means sth like this:
first defend and research, then attack.
or
first attack (realize you can't win at the moment) start to defend and build up an army.
or other things like that.

i realized if you want to do this, you have to make defending cheaper than attacking. right now it is the other way round. (at least it feels so. either the computer overruns me with mashinegun vipers or i do so. defending and developping doesn't seem to work at all. (i guess it again comes down to ressources, the attacking party has the oilrigs which means it can build loads of research facilities and do the research faster and without the need to cut back on units))
the defending player usually has less oil rigs which makes it a lot cheaper to attack than to defend.
and thats imho unrealistic AND stupid. the players want to wipe their opponent from the battlefield anyway. there is no need to drive them. if defending was cheaper than attacking you'd have to be a lot more careful how you attack and when to do so.


how do you think about that?

[Troman]

we have to prevent research lines which end up being useles in the middle of the game because others advance further.
and we should allow easy mixing of technologies up to a certain level. otherwise we lose diversity when it comes to attack groups.

Yes, we have to be carefull with that, but it won't be piece'o cake to have both separation and diversity. Maybe we can prevent dead ends by making similar technologies go parallel to each other, like:

Code: Select all

     /---mg------tmg----------hmg-----------lc-----------mc------------hc-----------\
--+                                                                                    ---->
     \----miniPod--<other minipod class weapons>----lancer----tk---scourge------/

Code: Select all

        /-----laser----------------pulse laser---------heavy laser------------\
------+
        \-----needle gun----------rail gun-----------gauss cannon----------/

That's just a rough sketch, to get the idea. And excuse me my ASCII art (Kamaze, can we get a monospaced font for code?).
Following this sketch we could have someone go cannons and then lasers or cannons->guass cannon or minipod/lancer -> lasers etc.

We have to come up with some concept, don't have enough time for brainstorming atm.

the separation could be achieved by making a level of reasearch (depending where you want to make the cut) in all research direction very expensive.

Can you clarify this? I'm not sure I understood.