376 replies to this topic

[Solais]

It could be interesting balancing mechanic and even viable lore-wise if most, if not all, Foehn units worked on "energy" or "ammo" (after all, Foehn are supposed to be low on resources according to lore), and they would either had to go back to a specific building to "refuel", or have mobile fueling units, like in Earth 2150. (Which in that game was pretty annoying imo, but almost everything in that game was pretty annoying when it came to controlling units and the game, so who knows, it might work out in RA2.) It could come with a whole new kinds of strategies and "objectives", like securing a safe refueling route between your base and the main front, and other infrastructural stuff.

Edited by Solais, 18 February 2018 - 01:14 PM.

[Death_Kitty]

Wow. Got some actual constructive debate. Nice!

 

Removing Magikarp damage from Pters makes them inferior to Wolfhounds in almost every way. Wolves have 300% damage output, can attack air units, are decent against infantry, and are cheaper even without IP. What gives Pters a chance is faster speed and ability to fire on the move, exactly what you considered useless.
 

And you know what: if nerfing an OP unit makes a faction UP/useless, that IS BAD GAME DESIGN. 

Try nerfing Marines in either Starcraft 1 or 2. Wow bad game design.

 

From my point of view the biggest problem with Pters is that they are far too easy to use. A simple move command demands your opponent to micro much more (this applies to other debated units such as Salamanders and Apocs). Pters' overall stat deserves a nerf but is not overwhelmingly OP.

 

Nerfing marines in SC is not remotely comparable. Starting from the fact that they are not OP (in fact, sc2 bio is a bit UP, if terrans are to be believed) Also the way balance works in sc is far different. But I digress...

 

"Wolves have 300% damage output, can attack air units, are decent against infantry, and are cheaper even without IP. What gives Pters a chance is faster speed and ability to fire on the move, exactly what you considered useless" - Well, of you removed the magicarp tendencies, then obviously fire on the move and the speed would be what makes to unit good. and a damage buff would probably be in order. I dont consider FotM useless (never said it, stop misquoting me) I just said removing it:

 

a.) does not solve the base issue: its not the mobility, its the sheer damage output. THAT is the problem. 

b.) makes the unit clunky and un-fun to use

 

What make wolfies different from the ptera is they have half the health, and are an entire weaker armor class. They can be spammed into even moderate amounts of AA, because they don't out DPS it in time and are considerably more squishy to boot. Also pteras are FAR faster then wolfies. 

 

But perhaps you are right about the ptera becoming a more boring wolfie... ok ok. 

 

How about this: 

-can still fire on the move

-speed stays at 26

-AoE removed

-instead now each attack attacks twice... if that makes any sense. Explain: ptera according to the lore/website has 2 pressure batteries yes? Why not make it like the foxtrot/zephyr (but different) (Explanation: 1 battery attacks the target you selected, the other a random target in a small radius. You have your splash, and I have a unit I can consider manageable. 

 

IMHO Foehn is a trainwreck of a faction, and WoC just emphasises it the most. Think of the RTS calculus. WoC relies on an army of flying units, giving them guerilla-tier mobility, with powerhouse firepower and armour. This is not OK. I'd say that giving a healthy nerf to Pteranodon is a good start, but much more rebalancing will be needed. Flying artillery that can move around the map freely, have tanky armor, and obscene firepower? Also, while the Buzzard is a balanced unit by itself, it just happens to cover the weakness of other flying units. Buzzard+Quetzal+Ptera+Alanqua blob can counter each and every threat on the battlefield, all of these have good armor the very least, they all fly. Ground units like Zorbs just add insult to the injury... 

 

Remember General Granger (the Air Force General) from Zero Hour? Combat Chinooks were broken, but at the very least, fixed wing aircraft relied on airfields, giving the general a highly mobile and powerful army, but also a vulnerability that could be exploited mercilessly. I don't think WoC can be addressed with simple nerfs or stat rebalances, without adding a fatal weakness to the faction as a whole to counter the combination of their firepower and mobility. Perhaps binding Pteras and even Quetzals to a helipad-like structure would do the trick?

 

Honestly what would be a good idea would be a research stream: some of the better players playing both with and against foehn so the community has a reference to gauge issues. Ultimately, I agree with you divine, but I don't think this massive rework will happen this patch, so I'm pushing for what I can get. (And even that is meeting fierce resistance) 

 

Ultimately foehn turned into a faction that defines "feature creep". Speeder decided to put most of the new logic's into 1 faction, foehn, and low and behold. Foehn is more than a tad powerful. 

Edited by Death_Kitty, 18 February 2018 - 03:20 PM.

[Tathmesh]

The stem of the problem, has nothing to do with pters.

 

It has to do with Foehn in general. They are asymmetrically balanced which means that whilst all the original factions have dogs and infantry that are weak to dogs - foehn says fuck that, my infantry are immune to dogs but balanced by "I have no dogs". This creates an immediate unbalance in the factions. They are either all fundamentally different as in this sense, or they are all the same - the game is either symmetrically balanced or asymmetrically balanced.

 

Saying that Foehn's OP lategame tools are balanced by the fact that they are very vulnerable early game is not balance. It creates a spiral, there will always be people complaining about how pter spam is overpowered and the damage is too high etc., and when the nerf happens, other people will be complaining about how shitty the early game is to compensate for the nerf.

 

In other words, you will never reach a good level of balance in this state, and the game will only be balanced when the best players play the game, who know how the game works and know all the tricks but this a big middle finger to the new players who will need to learn a completely different playstyle just for a single new faction, only because it is missing dogs and has super-durable infantry and it is likely to make most new players straight up quit from all the bullshit Harbingers, roadrunners and finalize.

 

Solutions:

1) Nerf the health & increase price so that Pters become more like a glass cannon.

2) Decrease price, reduce AOE slightly but maybe increase damage and remove attacking whilst moving (decrease of price should be justified to about $1800) so that they are more like assault helicopter.

3) Reduce speed & AOE, increase health to make it more like a flying tank.

 

 

IMHO Foehn is a trainwreck of a faction, and WoC just emphasises it the most. Think of the RTS calculus. WoC relies on an army of flying units, giving them guerilla-tier mobility, with powerhouse firepower and armour. This is not OK. I'd say that giving a healthy nerf to Pteranodon is a good start, but much more rebalancing will be needed. Flying artillery that can move around the map freely, have tanky armor, and obscene firepower? Also, while the Buzzard is a balanced unit by itself, it just happens to cover the weakness of other flying units. Buzzard+Quetzal+Ptera+Alanqua blob can counter each and every threat on the battlefield, all of these have good armor the very least, they all fly. Ground units like Zorbs just add insult to the injury... 

 

Remember General Granger (the Air Force General) from Zero Hour? Combat Chinooks were broken, but at the very least, fixed wing aircraft relied on airfields, giving the general a highly mobile and powerful army, but also a vulnerability that could be exploited mercilessly. I don't think WoC can be addressed with simple nerfs or stat rebalances, without adding a fatal weakness to the faction as a whole to counter the combination of their firepower and mobility. Perhaps binding Pteras and even Quetzals to a helipad-like structure would do the trick?

This sounds like a good idea. All the Foehn helicopters to be build from a helipad. Perhaps editing the cyberkernel to also be a helipad?
 

 

The asymmetry isn't the core of the issue. Foehn is really only asymmetrical in early game and that's it. When you move onto midgame, the faction "format" is basically identical to every other faction. A T2 unit (e.g. Sweeper, Mirage), a T3 monster tank, a T3 AA, T3 siege, and possibly extra support units like Dragonfly or Diverbee.

 

This isn't like StarCraft 2 where each faction has a radically different method of unit production, or Universe at War.

 

You could probably fix some of Foehn's problems by nerfing their numbers or slightly tweaking mechanics like remove fire-on-the-move or AoE from Pteras.

 

 

Side note, LC is weak in terms of support powers. I understand they're suppose to be a subversive faction, so they don't have flashy, high-damage powers, but they're mostly boring and all of them are useless against a Coronia flier blob. 

 

Coronia can call down a plasma bombing run, summon an entire squad of high-health infantry for less time and money than normal, and make their anti-structure fliers nearly invulnerable for a short time. These are all useful against LC.

 

LC's powers pretty much work exclusively on ground or they're just crap like flame turret. 

 

Someone else suggested this idea, give flame turrets an aura that boosts fire weapon damage. That would make the support power a lot more interesting to use. 

Edited by Tathmesh, 18 February 2018 - 03:01 PM.

[JackoDerp]

Problems with people building deathblobs of Pteranodons was you couldn't put pressure on them before that because Roadrunners were mental and hardcore owned pretty much everything on the ground (Unless you were also Foehn)
 
They're not unbeatable but if you're going to sit there and let a faction build up like that I think you're doing something wrong.
 
The concept of removing Fire-on-the-move from them is interesting, I actually kinda like that.

Side note, LC is weak in terms of support powers. I understand they're suppose to be a subversive faction, so they don't have flashy, high-damage powers, but they're mostly boring and all of them are useless against a Coronia flier blob.

Coronia can call down a plasma bombing run, summon an entire squad of high-health infantry for less time and money than normal, and make their anti-structure fliers nearly invulnerable for a short time. These are all useful against LC.

LC's powers pretty much work exclusively on ground or they're just crap like flame turret.

Someone else suggested this idea, give flame turrets an aura that boosts fire weapon damage. That would make the support power a lot more interesting to use.

I don't see any points of this other than "Flame Turrets suck" which we already knew, but they suck against everyone so it doesn't really matter.
Harbinger is a 3k Mini-Superweapon, so I don't see any problems with that either.

And Latin Confed might struggle against Coronia Aircraft but its not nearly as bad as people seem to be making it out as, they actually have a much harder time against Wolfhounds rather than Pteranodons.

Edited by JackoDerp, 18 February 2018 - 03:58 PM.

[Death_Kitty]

They're not unbeatable but if you're going to sit there and let a faction build up like that I think you're doing something wrong.

 

Easier said than done. 

[Tathmesh]

They're not unbeatable but if you're going to sit there and let a faction build up like that I think you're doing something wrong.

Easier said than done.

RTS games boil down to "get money, stop your opponent from getting money, get a critical mass army, stop opponent from getting a critical mass army"

It is hard and I'm not trying to be mean when I say git gud. Exploiting things like Nighthawk SEAL, Demo Trucks, Duneriders, Jackal Lancer to kill tech, stall the enemy, and deny resources is just part of the game.

Edited by Tathmesh, 18 February 2018 - 04:39 PM.

[TeslaCruiser]

In my mind, there is room to tweak the ptera because sync infantry and roadrunners exist so you can rely on those in smaller maps, which even now is a smart thing to do. Some ideas sound very interesting I hope we get something from this debate.
Also, I'd made this spreadsheet to show the relations between map size/time and sub-factions. The higher the number a SF gets doesn't mean they are op but, in most situations, how versatile they are. Sadly google docs isn't my thing so it is a dumb spreadsheet, hope this can help.

https://docs.google....M43Y/edit#gid=0

 

 

Edited by TeslaCruiser, 18 February 2018 - 04:52 PM.

[XoGamer]

I would say China is moderate at small map, rather than balanced.

 

Average Versatility: 13.58 which is ~~ 14

[PACER]

Wow. Got some actual constructive debate. Nice!
 
But perhaps you are right about the ptera becoming a more boring wolfie... ok ok. 
 
How about this: 
-can still fire on the move
-speed stays at 26
-AoE removed
-instead now each attack attacks twice... if that makes any sense. Explain: ptera according to the lore/website has 2 pressure batteries yes? Why not make it like the foxtrot/zephyr (but different) (Explanation: 1 battery attacks the target you selected, the other a random target in a small radius. You have your splash, and I have a unit I can consider manageable. 

That's equal to the lancer's bounce logic which I suggested two days ago. Interesting enough, I'll see what it looks like in real game versus computer.

[XoGamer]

- nerf: Pteranodon weapon ROF increased from 100 to 110, decreased speed from 24 to 23, strength from 850 to 800, firepower by 10%

good enough for me

Edited by XoGamer, 19 February 2018 - 04:21 PM.

[JackoDerp]

Eh, it seems a little bit much to me but whatever.
 

- nerf: Armadillo strength decreased from 870 to 840

Cool.

 

+ buff: Catastrophe strength increased from 550 to 600

+ buff: Fury Drone price decreased to $550, damage increased from 250 to 300, effectiveness vs vehicles increased by 10-20%

 

Can we just talk about these for the moment, with Pteranodons getting Nerfed I see no logical reason for this Cata buff to remain, since I'm pretty sure it was there just to deal with them anyway.

They're plenty good against everything and very easy to spam as is.

 

As for Fury Drones, I mentioned this when the changelog first released, but they are already very good building killers, and we really didn't need to make them 20% better at that.

The effectiveness vs Vehicles buff is perfectly fine, but could you tone down the anti-structure damage?

[XoGamer]

Eh, it seems a little bit much to me but whatever.
 

- nerf: Armadillo strength decreased from 870 to 840

Cool.

 

+ buff: Catastrophe strength increased from 550 to 600

+ buff: Fury Drone price decreased to $550, damage increased from 250 to 300, effectiveness vs vehicles increased by 10-20%

 

Can we just talk about these for the moment, with Pteranodons getting Nerfed I see no logical reason for this Cata buff to remain, since I'm pretty sure it was there just to deal with them anyway.

They're plenty good against everything and very easy to spam as is.

 

As for Fury Drones, I mentioned this when the changelog first released, but they are already very good building killers, and we really didn't need to make them 20% better at that.

The effectiveness vs Vehicles buff is perfectly fine, but could you tone down the anti-structure damage?

 

I disagree, Catastrophe tanks have been needing a health buff for a long time, they die too easily & LC is already shit in need of more versatility for their forces.

 

Also, read, the buff for effectiveness is for vehicles not for buildings. However to be fair, the damage increase might also seem like too much.

[StolenTech]

 

+ buff: Fury Drone price decreased to $550, damage increased from 250 to 300, effectiveness vs vehicles increased by 10-20%

As for Fury Drones, I mentioned this when the changelog first released, but they are already very good building killers, and we really didn't need to make them 20% better at that.

The effectiveness vs Vehicles buff is perfectly fine, but could you tone down the anti-structure damage?

 

 

 

* change: strength of Allied, Soviet and Epsilon Tier 2 tech access buildings increased by 200
* change: strength of all Tier 3 tech access buildings increased by 300, but 4 Barracudas can still destroy them

 

not gonna lie, both pretty much cancel each other out so it won't change that much.

Edited by StolenTech, 19 February 2018 - 04:40 PM.

[JackoDerp]

 

Also, read, the buff for effectiveness is for vehicles not for buildings. However to be fair, the damage increase might also seem like too much.

 

You're misinterpreting what I said

20% refers to the raw damage buff (250 -> 300)

 

 

not gonna lie, both pretty much cancel each other out so it won't change that much.

 

Well if thats the case then Im pointing out they'd still be too good against buildings

[TeslaCruiser]

The Catastrophe buff makes LC better at what they are supposed to be good.

I would also aim for some way to make LC better early, like the use of a better version of the conscript or a better flaktruck or something.

[BlackAbsence]

The Catastrophe buff makes LC better at what they are supposed to be good.

I would also aim for some way to make LC better early, like the use of a better version of the conscript or a better flaktruck or something.

Like a flak Buggy?

[TeslaCruiser]

something to add anti-infantry power early

[StolenTech]

I find flak tracks and bunkers enough to fend off early foehn rushes and buy me enough time to get T2, which is when soviets in general just get a huge power boost, also terror drones are great for picking foehn infantry and this also emphasizes how important it is to scout foehn players.

[TeslaCruiser]

A more effective counter to allied t1 spam for Latins -small map issue

[JackoDerp]

A more effective counter to allied t1 spam for Latins -small map issue

 

Its called GI IFVs getting fixed.