54 replies to this topic

[Nertea]

Well:

Azagh-Baruk
Cost: 50
Health: 150
Damage: 12/50
Damage Type: Slash
Attack Rate: 1/second

Damage Reduction vs. Slash: 20/70%

Galadhrim
Cost: 140
Heath: 160
Damage: 15/45
Damge Type: Slash
Attack Rate: 1.25/second

Damage Reduction vs. Slash: 40/60%

So... unupgraded, a Dwarf does 7.2 damage per second against the Elf, killing in about 22 seconds. The Elf does 18.75 damage per second, killing in 8. So, the Elf wins by a fair margin when both are unupgraded, which is good considering base-wise, the Elf costs around 5x as much.
With full upgrades, the Dwarf does 20 DPS, killing in 8 seconds. The Elf does 16.25, killing in 9.2 seconds. So, the Dwarf wins, but not by much.

If you take into account that fifth horde member and calcuclate 4 on 5 though, the Dwarves don't come close. 28 seconds for an unupgraded Azagh Baruk unit to kill the Galadhrim, and a mere 6 seconds for the Elves to kill the Dwarves . With upgrades it's a little closer, 10 seconds versus 6.8.

[NewErr]

Hmm Show the the Yoman archers stats ... I still think they are better then elves...

[Taralom]

Oh wow, I never expected such a huge explanation!

Well, I'll just go by your explanation then

[Nertea]

I was bored and curious about the issue myself Hence the detailed explanation.

[Baki]

After playing a bit with Rohan I think I agree with Valaquenta.
I got the feeling that the damage of the Yeoman Archers was really a bit too high. Perhaps it's just me, but one battalion of them nearly took out a battalion of Uruks.
Don't know about the Galadhrim, they are fine as they are imo. If they even become stronger they'll be OP.

And concerning Gollum, he is a bit too expensive imo. Even Hobbits who are much better than him only cost 100, while Gollum costs 150.
So I would suggest reducing his price to 100 at least.

Forgot to mention the Haradrim Archers. I'm not sure but I think they deal out pike damage when they are crushed by charging cavalry. As they are archers now I think you should remove that.

Edited by BakiNoM, 06 March 2010 - 04:57 PM.

[Taralom]

Archers > everyone.
Elites die just as easily as peasants. Just think about it.

[Baki]

Archers > everyone?
Don't think so...

Btw I don't get the point of your post.

[Lauri]

Shoot an arrow at a peasant and an elite soldier... The chance to hit is just the same, the chance that it's a fatal hit is just the same, the only difference is their armor and possible shields.
Also, remember that Rohan has 400 CP, while Isengard has 800 CP.. If one battalion of uruks can kill a battalion of Archers, they'll only need 400 of the CP in uruks and win...

Not a great example, but what I mean is that archers can shoot many arrows before they even come near, and should kill enough to stand a chance when they're near.. if they're both without upgrades, I would say that uruks should win though..

But it's both's responsibility to send more than just a single battalion though

[Baki]

OK I looked up the stats in the INI so you guys get my point.
The Yeoman Archer has a basic damage of 32, while a Gondor Archer deals out 10. That means the Rohan Archer has an attack that is triply stronger (!) than that of the basic Gondor Archer.
Both have the same armour and the same amount of health, yet the Yeomen only cost 50 more.

So the Yeomen even greatly outplay elites like Ithilien Rangers and Galadhrim attack-wise!
I really don't know why EA gave them such an insanely strong attack. Now I hope you agree that their attack should be nerfed.

[Lauri]

;Yeoman damage is doubled because they miss 50%.

Also

HitPercentage = 100 ;When this weapon is used it will hit exactly 50% of the time.
ScatterRadius = 16.0 ;When this weapon misses it can randomly miss by as much as this distance.

So, I think that somebody might've intended them to hit less than others, but do more damage, but I also saw that Gondor Archers have the same HitPercentage and ScatterRadius, and if they've got 3 times less damage, then I'd say it's a simple mistake..

I don't fully know Nertea's intentions though

Edited by Lauri, 06 March 2010 - 09:57 PM.

[Baki]

Well when I first saw that line it irritated me too. But as you said it's a mistake, every archer unit has a hit percentage of 100, that means no arrow will miss the enemy.
And now take into consideration that the Rohan Archer has an attack that does thrice more damage, quite unfair.
Guess that mistake appeared because they had that 50%-miss-thingy in an earlier version of the game...

[Nertea]

All of this is vanilla stuff - I haven't touched anything that this discussion refers to, so it ain't my fault .

There's a lot of stuff re: inaccuracy in the weapon codes, I believe that at some point it played a much larger role in how units behaved, but they took most of it out. Archers have ALWAYS been massively overpowered in RTS games though, all the way back from AoE1.

[Spartan184]

I don't see how it matters. A battalion of Urk Crossbows owns a battalion of Rohirrim, so it sounds pretty fair to me.

Edited by Spartan184, 07 March 2010 - 02:31 AM.

[Nertea]

I halved their damage for the next patch. We'll see how that works out.

[Baki]

The Yeomen or Crossbows?

[Spartan184]

I'm guessing the Yeoman And if it is I don't see why thats needed, never been an issue till now.

Edited by Spartan184, 07 March 2010 - 03:58 PM.

[Nertea]

This is a bit of a problem for me. As I am happy to tell anyone repeately, I kinda loathe BFME's general combat mechanics. Essentially what we have across the board is a trend towards archers and other long-range weapons that is frankly just stupid. Artillery is part of that. Artillery is also difficult to fix, because the evident problem is that it has so much splash and is so accurate. If those two things are changed, then massed archers are going to annihilate anything except mass upgraded cavalry, as artillery has become the supercounter to clustered archers. So to 'fix' catapults, archers kinda need to be fixed.

I used to throw archer accuracy around a lot as a solution to this, but the truth of that is that it has the same overall effect as reducing archer damage (lowering the effective damage per second). This is just nerfing archers into the ground, and I don't think it really helps anymore - then they become underpowered, and they need to be effective against something!

One thing I have been thinking of recently is fiddling with clip sizes. If this was properly managed, it might work well... this would work by giving each archer a "clip" of 15 or so arrows. These can be fired as normal, then they would have to wait a brief period (say 15 seconds) to reload this clip. This would be fine and all, but there are now player UI issues - how does the player tell how much the archers have left in the clip? Without knowing that, you can't accurately predict what your troops can kill, or when to pull them back from the fighting to reload.

[Baki]

At the moment the fire arrow problem looks like the main problem to me, not the archers in general. The upgrade strengthens the attack of archers to an unrealistic grade. It should just make extra damage to buildings, siege units and Ents/Trolls/Mumakil. But not to regular units.
This would at least nerf the archers a bit, and I do believe that it is the fire arrow upgrade what does let them look OP. If you guys would introduce this for the next patch (that would also make the game more realistic) things would become better I think.

And Nertea, are you planning to introduce the Marksmen Upgrade from the old RA mod into TDH? It was really something that I was waiting for (and I bet it's not only me), being unique and not used by any other mod I know, it would make the game much more interesting. And concerning balance, you would have to invest more resources to actually have a force of archers that would be about the same level as the archers in the as-is state.

[Nertea]

Most units actually don't take much bonus damage from fire arrows. Since they do Fire type damage, most units absorb that quite handily (some pikemen take 50% damage, but most take between 1 and 20% ), so it only gives +2 or so to attack. That argument can only be applied to trolls and buildings, who take more (100-300%). Archers in general are just overpowered.

I will not be adding the accuracy upgrade, for like 6 reasons. 2 of which are in my previous post.