Whole game rebalance?

[Kamaze]

EDIT: DevUrandom: Done! (Set font-family:monospace; for .code)

[Troman]

I really don't have any special preferances, any font will work, how about Courier for example?

[einalex]

like this:

Code: Select all

      /-----laser(normal cost)---------------pulse laser(VERY costly)--------heavy laser(normal cost)-----------\
------+
      \-----needle gun(normal cost)----------rail gun(VERY costly)-----------gauss cannon(normal cost)----------/

so that in each line of research at approximately the same point you have to invest a lot of ressources. that way you can research some fields to a certain level and have to make a careful choice there.

in any way i'm playing around with uml to get an idea about research and technologies and their possible ups and downs

there is one first step attached. part of the thought is making VTOL avaible rather early in development.

[Watermelon]

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...

if ( [commander level] > [command group member level] ) { acc += [commander level] * 5 }
else { acc += [command group member level] * 5 }

exp share should work unless there is a bug that prevents it from functioning.

Sending units back to reconfigure is not viable since the way wz research works doesnt allow such functions,you'll have to code a new fully working 'assemble factory' to do that(like the one in 'metal fatigue') and innumerable components for each upgrade,which makes upgrade/research even more useless in practice.

I dont think missile weapons should have 'superlight' weight,or everyone will mass lancer/tank killer hover tanks and hitNrun...
Maybe I'll add a counter-missile weapon or give mini rocket the ability to 'intercept' large homing/non-homing missile projectile.

[einalex]

as of now the weapons are unbalanced as can be. machinegun vipers for example. upgrade the bullets to max and mass produce them and win.

in the moment there is an urgent need to rebalance/design the weapon systems. so my little chart takes changed weapons into account. as you can see their research focus is more on reload time and range then on damage wich will make them a rather weak weapon when compared one on one.

[Watermelon]

as of now the weapons are unbalanced as can be. machinegun vipers for example. upgrade the bullets to max and mass produce them and win.

in the moment there is an urgent need to rebalance/design the weapon systems. so my little chart takes changed weapons into account. as you can see their research focus is more on reload time and range then on damage wich will make them a rather weak weapon when compared one on one.

maybe some of the weapon 'types' are too weak for the money you invested in the research items to unlock them.

think mgs have a ROF of 100+ and damage of 10-40? while a cannon has a ROF of 10-15 and damage of 50-200?
so mg's dps is 20-80 and cannon's dps is 12-50...

[DevUrandom]

Ok, here comes another idea to push commanders. (Well, it's really an old one, but recycled.)
What about giving commanders special abilities? Eg when you design your commander, you can also select one of a few researched special abilites, like cloaking, missile-interception lasers, boosted health for groupmembers, ... (The list is really endless.)

[Watermelon]

Ok, here comes another idea to push commanders. (Well, it's really an old one, but recycled.)
What about giving commanders special abilities? Eg when you design your commander, you can also select one of a few researched special abilites, like cloaking, missile-interception lasers, boosted health for groupmembers, ... (The list is really endless.)

cloaking is easy,just add a special flag to make enemy units to ignore this unit when picking up targets,and dont draw this unit if that flag is set to 'true' and current player != unit owner

missile-interception needs a new 'choosetarget' function to ignore all target 'types' except missile projectile,that would probably a bit harder.

maybe damage reduction is better than boosted health,since they are used in attack/damage calculation functions and it's safer than manipulating droid max hit points values directly.

Though I still think none of them will be useful because of the fragileness of the commander droid/turret...

[DevUrandom]

But maybe this would help to promote the commander if we also find something to make it better protectable?

[Watermelon]

But maybe this would help to promote the commander if we also find something to make it better protectable?

maybe,but the problem is when you have a high level commander,the vehicle has command turret on it is probably very outdated and can be destroyed in 1 shot or 2.

[themousemaster]

maybe,but the problem is when you have a high level commander,the vehicle has command turret on it is probably very outdated and can be destroyed in 1 shot or 2.

Sounds like a good type to recycle him for that new Vengeance you just researched ;p.

[Watermelon]

Sounds like a good type to recycle him for that new Vengeance you just researched ;p.

I dont think everyone has a truck builder included in his army to build factory and upgrade it to F3,to recycle/rebuild commander...

[Troman]

like this:

Code: Select all

      /-----laser(normal cost)---------------pulse laser(VERY costly)--------heavy laser(normal cost)-----------\
------+
      \-----needle gun(normal cost)----------rail gun(VERY costly)-----------gauss cannon(normal cost)----------/

so that in each line of research at approximately the same point you have to invest a lot of ressources. that way you can research some fields to a certain level and have to make a careful choice there.

in any way i'm playing around with uml to get an idea about research and technologies and their possible ups and downs

there is one first step attached. part of the thought is making VTOL avaible rather early in development.

I really like the idea of making laser satellite and bunker buster exclusively available to one of the research lines (something like a bonus). I'm not sure about the third one though. I also agree that VTOLs could be made available earlier in the game. Maybe we can make some research line favor VTOLs? Like higher VTOLs speed or additional 'attack runs' or something, to introduce different kinds of bonuses - something for everyone. Unfortunately I don't have much time to deal with it right now.

[DevUrandom]

Troman: Sounds good. Some "VTOL favour" research which boosts all future research in that line and gives a general bonus to your VTOLs... But at the same time it would deactivate all other "x favour" researches, so you can only research one... (Or, additionaly, give a malus on something else? Dunno about that balancing, though.)

Maybe we can fix the commander with a field-upgrade unit, like *someone* suggest some time ago?
The maximum approach on this would that the commander can upgrade itself, but I _really_ am not sure if that wouldn't be completely imba...

[lav_coyote25]

first - we should define the term balancing.

it seems to me that when ever the community starts saying things like balance etc... it invariably ends up in a shooting war.

so - balance of weaponry/tech  =  (insert definition here and thats what we go by).

ok??