default header

Cosmic War

Insomnia Balance

Moderator: JC Denton

Unread postby icycalm » 11 Oct 2017 08:14

Very good balance-related post: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/you- ... st-1121068

ledarsi wrote:Because there is only one faction, and every player can always build any units that they want, it's not really even appropriate to talk about "balance" since it's always a fair contest. The design might be poor which would make it not a very interesting contest, but it can never be an imbalanced game, by definition.

And on the design front PA has made a lot of progress and developed a lot of interesting interactions in the last year. I still think there's a ways to go, but it's now subtle stuff and nothing along the lines of 'this entire dimension/feature is missing.'

The biggest design problem is that air (and orbital) are really not very tactically interesting. Fighter vs fighter is literally just comparing group size, with no tactics whatsoever. What PA needs is to have a robust ground war which determines what happens in the skies, and not having an air war that allows controlling huge land areas, ignoring terrain and sea obstacles when they are an issue.

Every single planet is the same in an air war. That needs to change. Powerful, long range surface to air weapons, and in a perfect world, air staging for flying units that gives them a need for you to control land features instead of totally ignoring them.


I think that adding a couple of carefully-selected units like the Marauder can make the air game more interesting.

The "powerful, long range surface to air weapons" he speaks about are also possible. We can just mod the Legion anti-air to be longer-range, and make it more expensive.

The "air staging" he speaks of is I think air having to land to refuel, etc., which sounds great, but I suspect is not possible with modding.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 11 Oct 2017 08:18

More great stuff from ledarsi, but again I doubt it can be done via modding:

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/you- ... st-1121090

ledarsi wrote:A smaller number of planes which are individually more powerful, and which have logistical needs, act more as air support for ground forces than a skyhorde that descends and obliterates an enemy army by itself.

Air staging would be a huge game changer for aircraft. Bombers would need to go back and forth between a friendly base and the front lines, rather than be ultra-speedy special forces way behind the lines with no dependence on anything except not flying directly into a single enemy formation containing too much AA. Also, air staging lays the foundation for orbital staging units (space carriers/space station bases), which would both be strategically interesting and extremely cool.

Also, making 'orbital planes' instead of surface airplanes would allow vision separation between air and land units. Orbital planes might have huge orbital vision, but zero surface vision, meaning you would need a ground presence in order to spot for your air strikes. You couldn't just send a huge air army directly into an area where you know enemy should be, since they will be unable to spot targets for themselves, and will be shot down by AA they can't see.

I agree that planes which are using air staging and with separated vision can be made vastly more powerful for the same cost. Much larger bomb payloads with bigger explosions, higher damage missiles, etc. But these planes will demand combined arms, since you will be unable to make a massive plane stack and just spam to victory with speed and overwhelming local numbers. Limitations like having finite munitions, and lacking their own vision of ground units, are very important to compensate for their sheer mobility.

Planes need serious limitations that force combined arms. Even reducing their damage or HP can never solve this problem, as this just makes the spam threshold required before the airblob runs away with the entire game even higher.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby Diskraip » 11 Oct 2017 12:12

For the Icarus, I didn't think about it early, but the increase Icarus energy production to 260 from 175 will really good choice.

For the annihilaser bug, just tested at 30% speed sim and everything was fine. But I was alone. Next time I will test with 4+ players.

icycalm wrote:The "powerful, long range surface to air weapons" he speaks about are also possible. We can just mod the Legion anti-air to be longer-range, and make it more expensive.


I think, we need it.

icycalm wrote:The "air staging" he speaks of is I think air having to land to refuel, etc., which sounds great, but I suspect is not possible with modding.


Sounds interesting. I don't confident, but maybe we can set negative energy prodaction to all air units, so if you want domination in air, you need good supply.
Diskraip
 

Unread postby Robomoo » 12 Oct 2017 00:01

I have made the required changes to the mod, and we'll be testing them tomorrow. Hopefully all will go well, and we can play with the new version on Saturday. If there are any problems, we will play with the old version.

I will post details soon.
Image
User avatar
Robomoo
 
Joined: 27 Apr 2015 03:08
Location: United Kingdom

Unread postby icycalm » 12 Oct 2017 00:03

It seems we are in general agreement about the future of the air game, Diskraip. We must experiment further.

For now, let's focus on making the Angel and the Icarus useful. Once that is done, we can add the Marauder. And then we think about what to do next.

In the meantime, if anyone else has any opinions on all this, let us know.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 12 Oct 2017 17:52

Diskraip reports that they tested the Annihilaser further, and there is no problem with it, so that's one less thing to worry about.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby Robomoo » 13 Oct 2017 21:42

The updated mod is ready, but we haven't had time to test it, so we're playing with the older version of the mod tomorrow (the same one that's been up on CMM for several weeks). Just make sure you have your Umbrellas and Avengers ready for the late-game Tyr spam!
Image
User avatar
Robomoo
 
Joined: 27 Apr 2015 03:08
Location: United Kingdom

Unread postby icycalm » 19 Oct 2017 15:54

We will try to have the new version of the mod ready for this Saturday. I can't promise anything, but we will try it. All that remains to be done is to test it, but it's been hard finding the time.

The next change I want to make is to increase the Tyr's cost. Currently, its cost is close to the Helios's, but after some talk with Nosebreaker, it looks like we must increase it by at least 30-50%, or perhaps more. This way, we make it a real T3 unit -- the first T3 unit we have added to the game.

We should probably also do the same to the Legion/T3 fabber that will be building the Tyr.

I say we start with a 30% increase, play for a few weeks, and re-evaluate.

Note that this increase will NOT happen this weekend. The earliest it will happen is next weekend, as long as I have the agreement of most leaders.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 20 Oct 2017 03:41

We've been testing the mod, and it seems okay so far.

We took the Tyr from 40,000 to 52,000 metal (30% increase), and the Legion orbital fabber from 1300 to 2500, so that it's on the same level as the T2 fabbers. Eventually, we'll probably have to increase its build power, to match its increased cost, but for the time being these changes should achieve their main aim, which is to basically nerf the Tyr.

The only thing I wonder about is -- if the Tyr is really as OP as Nosebreaker thinks it is -- how could the Legion team have made such a big mistake? Clopse and elodea and the others have been balancing Legion for over a year now...

Personally, I am not convinced the Tyr is OP, but I am happy to make the changes because they both please Nosebreaker and give me the T3 that I want.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 20 Oct 2017 13:15

Changed the Legion orbital fabber's cost to 1950, which is 50% higher than the MLA fabber's cost. This is to reflect the special status of orbital fabbers in the game, since that is the only layer that has only one fabber (all other layers have two), making that fabber a T1.5 unit, really, as Elite Sardaukar pointed out earlier. So the Legion orbital fabber is not a T3 unit, but a T2.5 unit, really. NOMINALLY, the MLA fabber is T1, and the Legion fabber is T2, but they can build structures of higher tiers than them because Uber decided to not make a second fabber.

So now we have four tiers in the game, even if two of them only have one unit each for the time being (the Legion orbital fabber and the Tyr).

T1 = MLA T1
T2 = Legion T1 (currently only the Legion orbital fabber)
T3 = MLA T2
T4 = Legion T2 (currently only the Tyr)

In the base game, T2 units are referred to as "Advanced" in all the descriptions, so we have created similar terms for all the other tiers, and will eventually be amending the unit descriptions accordingly:

T1 = Basic
T2 = Improved
T3 = Advanced
T4 = Elite

So the Legion orbital fabber's description is as follows: "Improved fabricator - Builds improved orbital satellites and ships."

And the Tyr's description is as follows: "Elite orbital laser - Purifies the surface below with its laser."
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 21 Oct 2017 00:46

The new version of the mod is working (though it's still not up on CMM), and I am 99% sure we will use it tomorrow. These are the new changes:

  • Added Legion orbital fabber and Tyr orbital titan as T2 and T4 units respectively (with the existing T2 becoming T3 as a result), and increased the metal cost of the fabber from 1300 to 1950 and of the Tyr from 40,000 to 52,000
  • Angel build cost decreased from 5500 to 3000
  • Icarus energy production increased from 175 to 260

For the complete, up-to-date list of changes you can refer to the first post in this thread [ > ], and/or the sidebar of the mod's custom lobby:

Screenshot (148).png
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Previous

Return to Cosmic War

cron