#EMP thread

1 messages · Page 3 of 1

bronze nexus
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mine layer is fine
ability does what you need, just plp are too uncomfortable with the apm lol. you could make it automatic and take energy drain and slow the minelayer i guess

stray matrix
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what, you mean the mine sweeper attack thing?
I dunno if it's fine or not, I'm just unironically saying I have absolutely never used it
by the time I have to worry about mines I'm more likely to just juno them then try to get a damn minelayer to the front lines

grim sapphire
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I think i've seen mines do more friendly fire in high level games than i've seen them damage enemies, just from allied units needing to retreat over them while things like arty are firing at the units coincidentally blowing up the mines under the feet of the mines' allies due to splash

bronze nexus
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don't move units where they have to retreat over mines against arty fire then i guess?
it's not like it's something you can't avoid

stray matrix
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just never retreat or lay mines behind a secured line bro
I mean
yeah I guess, but its like
I'm not risking a unit that costs as much as a con on the front lines, so...

grim sapphire
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when it's a defensive minefield big enough to be likely to actually hit any enemies, and you're already forced into a retreat for one reason or another, "just go around" isn't often practical, but we're going pretty off-topic

turbid pebble
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emp launcher only disabling buildinds for 9sec is pretty useless to use

bronze nexus
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True

bronze nexus
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also while we're at it, dedicated aa units should be given emp resist
a good shruiken player early game can just spread their shruikens and emp the t1 aa units(or single t2 aa)

wicked lichen
turbid pebble
wicked lichen
pine adder
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How can we help?

wicked lichen
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if anyone wants to help testing then that's always appreciated, although past a certain point that doesn't scale as preventing duplicate work becomes a job itself

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it's mostly boring science stuff also, needs a comparative analysis mindset, rather than a game one per se (although 'does it feel fun to play' is also a very useful metric)

turbid pebble
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okay, take the time you need, it's not bothering that much people anyways it seems

wicked lichen
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I'd have rather it was out too by now, I promise you :) I've had a lot of time unexpectedly sunk into other BAR subprojects, which has delayed this

proven zephyr
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@wicked lichen anyone notice legged stuff move their legs really fast while EMP'd now (using emp rework). Like, their actual movement speed is pretty low but their legs pedal cartoonishly fast. Especially visible on fiends and other light units.

grim sapphire
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known bug, specifically happens when a unit has move orders at the time it becomes un-stunned. Nobody with knowledge of the correct wizardry has come forward with a fix. Until them, at least it's very funny looking on some units, particularly a pack of sumos or sprinters

wicked lichen
pallid hound
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I don’t mind it. Looks funny and it’s a good additional visual indicator that the unit is slowed.

wicked lichen
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balance patch is awaiting merging! sorry it took a while, -lots- of work & testing went into it, and I had to fix a broken mechanic that somehow, nobody had noticed was utterly shot
as ever, many thanks to Silver Sol for helping with testing & sanity checking things

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ah also, @jagged cosmos , you're apparently the only Webber Enjoyer, so I'm counting on you for feedback on them

jagged cosmos
wicked lichen
jagged cosmos
wicked lichen
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the new mechanic really suits webbers though, so they have had an effective EMP power buff as part of the overhaul & retuning

novel ginkgo
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I could see increasing it a bit, not to 300

jagged cosmos
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@novel ginkgo can we buff Webber reclaim speed to 300 pretty please?
I'll be nice-r no lie.

Also would make them competent at eating enemy units, i love it even if a bit of a gimmick and apm intensive

wicked lichen
jagged cosmos
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ye im op and i abuse spoders. but atm they're just worse rezbots at t2 price

novel ginkgo
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At 300 it becomes more effective at reclaiming wreck fields than combat engineers, main unit to compare it to would be butler.

jagged cosmos
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200? you're driving a hard bargain

wicked lichen
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@novel ginkgo , talking of webbers, one thing I noticed while testing is they prefer to reclaim trees to enemy units IN THOSE TREES that are shooting them. is that amendable in any sane way?

novel ginkgo
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butler has 140 reclaim speed, don't want to go above that by too much, but since webber costs slightly more I'll give it 150

wicked lichen
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sold to the scag at the back
🔨

novel ginkgo
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I'm not sure if there is a way to give webbers priority targeting to enemies instead of wrecks, probably have to mess with engine code for builders

jagged cosmos
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is this solvable with a widget perhaps?

hearty aurora
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Dunno if there is a way via custom hotkeys.

grim sapphire
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Could be a useful toggle for various units, changing what certain commands prioritize, gets into the un-ending automation debate though

novel ginkgo
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If this file is fixed in the latest version: unit_paralyze_damage_limit.lua , and spybots have a paralyzetime of 12, will that be overridden to 10s?

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Should spy emp damage be 30000 with the new 10s and 15s disable? I guess this brings the unit to almost exactly where it was without the emprework option, but the old version seemed way too high

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A few units have negative edge effectiveness, how does this work ingame?

grim sapphire
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for the other questions, @wicked lichen would need to answer. I haven't tested the negative edge values myself, but i believe it results in a more sharp intial dropoff in damage, while the damage near the outside of the aoe radius drops more slowly than with 0% edge

novel ginkgo
grim sapphire
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it's still only ~half the emp damage of live, also with reduced edge

novel ginkgo
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hypothetical example: enemy sends a razorback, you try stunning it with a single spybot emp (30k damage), due to distance likely only get half that (15k) but its still enough to get the unit full stunned for a few seconds, and heavily slowed/disabled for 15s. large amount of value for a single spy. If the spybot has a 15k damage emp, 1 spy would be enough to slow the unit down and disable weapons for a few seconds, and it would take a 2nd spy for a full stun.

grim sapphire
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A nerf to spybots in general is definitely sensible if you want it, we were just trying to roughly reach parity with existing balance, while also making its damage numbers a bit less absurd than live

novel ginkgo
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I think a lower value should be tested, as one of the goals of the emprework is to get away from having emp rely on extreme damage values

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The 6000 previous value was admittingly way too low, combined with the faster emp decay, since against T3 it would fall off very quickly

grim sapphire
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How much do you feel a single spybot should be able to do vs, as main examples, razor, titan, and mammoth? Spybot balance in particular was something we struggled with a lot in our private discussions

wicked lichen
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one sec while I catch up

novel ginkgo
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For razorback and mammoth, I think 1 cripples the unit and the 2nd stuns. Titan would need a highly coordinated trap to get fully stunned, so using 4 spybots to stun one

wicked lichen
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as the over damage went into a X second stun, this just ensures that the bot -did- something, otherwise the faster drain removes it before it can be capitalised on

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there were a lot of games that early T3 steamrolled without threat of spybot tarpitting
I agree it should be lower, but, kind of need to nerf arm t3 speed for that to work

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as a general rule with this, continuous sources are low powered, with enough to add and overcome the faster drain
and burst/single use sources are higher damage, with potential to store that as a slightly longer stun on units that are vulnerable (eg T3)
I was working on something that would potentially allow T3 to be stunned a little longer if needed, but that's mothballed until more playtesting data

wicked lichen
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but that's lab condition, in field you're further away, bots do less

wicked lichen
celest lotus
wicked lichen
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negative resistance also signals that they can hold a proportionately longer max stun time, if the original source allowed it. it's subtle but makes a difference

wicked lichen
wicked lichen
wicked lichen
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we've put a lot of time into testing, playing, replay-watching, and curating feedback - it would really help to put things in game with current numbers to get a baseline to work further from
once this is calibrated, and I think it's fairly close, the ideal next step would be altering other units now that EMP isn't OP, as unfortunately it was the first/last resort counter to a lot of things, and some players resist losing that safety net (understandably)

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mainly, that means arm T3, rauders and razors specifically. otherwise I have the option of maybe altering the max time they can be stunned for upwards, which lets it store a 'buffer' of emp damage, making it exponentially easier to keep under control
that's not my preferred option but feels less wrong than the scope creep of starting to nerf other units, even though it makes sense in context. it's definitely something I want to involve you in moreso when rework is ready, assuming you're amenable to that idea?

wicked lichen
novel ginkgo
# wicked lichen with a lower core and a limited time it can cap, overkill on burst sources doesn...

With old EMP, overkill was necessary as an incomplete stun gave 0 value. With the gradual effect overkill shouldn't be necessary anymore. I probably shouldn't have pushed for emp to decay so quickly, didn't realize how strong that would be on T3, and it made the gradual effect much less relevant that it should be. It would be interesting if somehow T3 emp could decay slower than small unit emp, but I don't think its possible. If a spybot could get a partial stun but that stun stayed for a while it would still be an interesting strategic option.

novel ginkgo
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Maybe its not reasonable to expect players to micro multiple spybots to stun incoming T3 in a real match

wicked lichen
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anything too 'lab condition', eg silo stunning, meant in reality you added a frustrating skill floor to needed countermeasures, which really hurt average lobbies

novel ginkgo
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I think it was 5s stun and 10s disable on antinuke, probably was too small. New values would be 10s+15s disable?

wicked lichen
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about that, yes, it's enough time to zap it, fumble to silo, select and launch, and it to get there on a big map

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as was you had to launch it as the spybot was walking to the silo, which was a -really- close window

novel ginkgo
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As an experiment, I wonder how it would play out if emp didn't stun at all, but decayed very slowly

wicked lichen
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that would require the drain changed to real damage, not percentage

novel ginkgo
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If it took 40s to full decay like it used to, then disable would still be a full 20s

wicked lichen
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pretty sure T3s / high health pool would end up comparatively overpowered again, as the stun is also a EMP buffer

novel ginkgo
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If you set weapons to disable at 33% instead of 50%, you get a 27s disable

wicked lichen
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this is true

novel ginkgo
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For a heavy target emp would drain from it much slower than currently

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For example if you used a spybot to disable/slow, then sent a 2nd one 10s later they would stack

wicked lichen
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EMP drains same rate from t1 as t3, heaviness doesn't change anything in that way
main reason the time thing threw so much out
it is better faster, but it was overcooked and probably unbalanceable where it was, without nerfing units

turbid pebble
wicked lichen
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I mean ... hm. I wonder if the stun could be removed entirely, but the 'overcharge' buffer kept, with a cap on how much a unit could be tarpitted

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that would allow you to keep units in a no fire slow speed zone, with a safe buffer, and still not fully stop them
but, nontrivial change, that's engine overhauling

novel ginkgo
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Something else I'm wonder is if emp has no extreme values, then could emp immunity be replaced with heavy resistance, so that you don't have completely useless units depending on what the opponent sends?

wicked lichen
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it's very possible yes

novel ginkgo
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For example, if thor had a 0.2 paralyze multiplier, you could still use 100 emp bombers to stun it over a while

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but it wouldn't be more effective than 100 normal bombers

wicked lichen
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I did toy with the idea of giving everything a default resistance of say 0.4, as a baseline, and calibrating everything else around that - but it felt too large a change, and I wanted to try without getting the special damage bat out if possible, as that was so variable for every unit
hence I've limited my changes there to T3s only (+the weird mammoth outlier), and as minimally as possible

wicked lichen
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burst/temporary sources being more effective feels better from a gameplay view also, anything you 'spend' and micro you want to have a decent effect from, so it would still have to pack a reasonable clout. I agree ideally, extremes would be nice to avoid

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one thing that was discussed was maybe giving spybots a double tap, eg a high density core without droppoff, and a wider weak 'zap' zone, which would make them less finicky vs high value targets
negative curves sort of approximate that, but getting the sweet spot became -really- high skill in real battles, which was unfair

novel ginkgo
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If spy emp was 15000, and could expect half that ingame from explosion distance, then 7500 emp is enough to apply a 127% stun on a target, I think that 8s+full

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I guess the 15000 would still have a chance of messing up if you only get 5000 out it from a bad placement

wicked lichen
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it was chosen, as was the curve, to try to avoid finnicky behaviour
maybe too much so tbf, as users were overscrutinising

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20K maybe as a baseline?

novel ginkgo
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I think we can try 20k, getting a full stun on a razorback or mammoth would still be difficult with 1 spy

wicked lichen
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related but unrelated, do you feel arm T3 is too fast/effective for cost, or more that core T3 underperforms?

novel ginkgo
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Marauder has been on my watch list for a while, and razorback getting better targeting has made it stronger than it used to be. However, I think players having access to good T3 raiding options helps to make games more interesting, gives more ways for games to play out in the T3 stage

wicked lichen
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that makes sense yes, bland safe games are boring, but it does set up a disparity that core basically needs EMP to try to control, and has nothing comparable itself. I've seen some good games using demons though, so hopefully that will vary somewhat now
they are really weak to spam flanking unfortunately, which razors are not
maybe changing how their attacks work could help them handle spam better, unclear

novel ginkgo
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I'm not really sure what the solution is to that, I think the projectile is considered a moving point when determining collisions but the aoe usually hides that

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On the topic of new units, was the shockwave buildtime fixed already or should I look into it?

grim sapphire
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already fixed

wicked lichen
wicked lichen
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alternatively, maybe a sideways solution for the demon could be slap some rapid and independently targetting lasers on it? normally I'd say 'just support it with sumos', but given the gap it has to fill, it needs to be a little more independant

novel ginkgo
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Improving the weapon behavior would be a much better solution than adding short range lasers, but someone else would have to figure out how to do that

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short range lasers might actually make the issue worse since players will expect it to be the ultimate anti-swarm unit

wicked lichen
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hard agree, that's a sideways idea incase the right solution isn't viable

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well, fire weapons already set up that expectation. there's a lot of 'wtf's going on when ticks et al just ... saunter by

grim sapphire
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I feel like all possible "fixes" for flamethrower weapons in general would either tank framerates, or make even less sense than the current "plasma with a fireball particle effect and some aoe"

wicked lichen
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I suspect there is a good solution somewhere. might be the idea of a smaller flamer with many small scattered points of damage mixed in with the larger gout weapon, -possibly-. would be interesting to try it at some point. probably best to discuss elsewhere though

grim sapphire
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definitely best discussed elsewhere

wicked lichen
novel ginkgo
wicked lichen
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should be there now, sorry doing too much at once
spybot scavs are 99% gut feeling and guesswork, they're meant to be OP, but with the time limit fixed that is less possible, so high alpha only appoximation

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I'll bother Damgam about that one specifically at some point - it might even be academic as users can't make them any more, and I've never seen an AI pop a spybot

novel ginkgo
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Just merged it, lets see how it plays out now

wicked lichen
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emozstonks
thankyou greatly, much appreciated

hearty aurora
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Will try to get some sessions with all the options going in a map rotation basis to get replays from multiple maps later this week. (T2 sea update, EMP rework, Release Candidates)

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and the twitcher and consul tweak defs.

indigo delta
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We just had a lobby hard crash for everyone with release units and emp on. There was also a unit tweak on.

craggy hound
sturdy birch
indigo delta
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We are restarting the lobby with similar settings. We will see if the same issue happens again.

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Maybe we got the tweakdef wrong. It loaded this time.

grim sapphire
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we had a tweakunits in the tweakdef field, nothing to report

wicked lichen
candid harbor
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#⭐｜main message

someone else reporting crashes with emp rework?

candid harbor
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#⭐｜main message
@wicked lichen

unreal pier
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i think what needs to be fixed is spy bot anti nuke emp and emp missile effect for rag/cata

candid harbor
keen walrus
sturdy birch
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Was that Angry_Strawberry on Melting Glacier? Because I was just in that game lol

turbid pebble
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New version seems pretty good from the small test ive done, it will be interesting to try it in live games

jagged cosmos
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@wicked lichen had the opportunity to spam emp spiders finally, i feel they're pretty OK now.
IDK how much has the emp rework influenced it tho, as i liked them before too so im biased, however they're very decent atm. Slightly more movespeed would be good tho like +10 or smth, and it would be a good reclaim unit frfr

wicked lichen
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after playing some (presumably old version) games to try to ensure rework was fine live ¬_¬

pine adder
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I spectated a game where it happened

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Well, I tried to catch up on spectating a game where it happened

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It was at 50 minutes in, when I got there my simulation pretty much froze at 21 mins when stilettos kicked in 😄 I didn't manage to finish catching up

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Anyway don't worry about it, accidents happen and I'm glad we were able to rollback pretty quickly

wicked lichen
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it should be an easy fix, I'll look into it shortly
basically the new resistances system had a leak, related to the time limitation stuff I had to reinvent, which had apparently been broken for years without people noticing

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but sounds like it didn't cause issues until EMPs started flying in non-reworked games, which wasn't something I was testing live... note to self for next time

dim sedge
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4 spies needed to stun a titan will never happen. There will always be units running around and getting 4 to plop next to it will be basically impossible. Usually it is accompanied by a stream of t1

hearty aurora
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@wicked lichen all fixed with regards to the above now?

wicked lichen
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I hope so, new baselines for tuning from hereout
you will find a small gap with 2 emp silos stunning a rag, which closes with veterancy

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if you mean the lag bug, that was fixed yes, and I've PR'd an updated copy of the file that caused it
right now rework is in a half-baked state, so I can't promise anything specific until this file is back in
in theory it will just affect the maximum stun time of units

hearty aurora
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Okay. I shall wait with doing the full rework and other stuff with T2 included lobby til that is all sorted (To help ensure it gives the best replays possible)

wicked lichen
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@novel ginkgo can you pull the updated file when you get a chance? it's been tested by myself & others. ATM rework is half-baked on live.
Thankyou greatly

novel ginkgo
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I can merge it now

wicked lichen
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thankyou greatly. I have a handful of other PRs outstanding also, none urgent, maybe coraca could be
and personally I really want the log noise one dealt with one way or another
I'm still not sure what formal protocol really is for PRs if any, it seems really haphazard

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I see you're on a binge, thankyou immensely

keen walrus
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Is it possible to give units a negative value of emp resistance to make them easier to stun, despite having high hp?

wicked lichen
keen walrus
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sowwy

night oasis
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It seems like paralyser drones are less OP now, with quite a few hits required to paralyse T2 units?

polar cloak
night oasis
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it was a bit annoying when one's 8 Kargoneths would get stunned by a bunch of drones

wicked lichen
jagged cosmos
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im afraid the spybot is too weak against the antinuke as of now, as it stuns it for around 5 seconds, and even with the slowdown effect (which im not sure is applied to the anti) is barrrely enough time for the nuke to land.
It would probably not land successfuly on a larger map, as i've witnessed this in a rosetta game.

wicked lichen
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@jagged cosmos , was that tested in the last few days? as there was a point that the timing system was using an old copy due to an issue
last I tested antis, it was very possible - spybots were specifically calibrated to allow it, as it was a little too skillshot in previous/initial balance set
(also the antis do definitely slow down, but the first shot doesn't show that, it only applies when overnuking)

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best guess, maybe the spybot detonator was too far away from the anti? the closer you get the more charge delivered

jagged cosmos
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it was 9 hours ago, but ill asume choice just did it with the spybot too far away in this case then

wicked lichen
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if it occurs again please give a shout & replay , but that would be my best guess

grim sapphire
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Antis only have 3650 hp, so it would've needed have the anti's center outside the spybot's edge to not get a full stun

grim sapphire
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just did a fresh test on mediterraneum. You only have a few seconds after spybot stun to "safely" fire, but you do have time to reactively nuke from one corner of medi to the other before anti recovers

wicked lichen
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aha, thankyou

grim sapphire
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probably wouldn't be bad to widen the window by 5-10s if possible, but also probably not entirely necessary

wicked lichen
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on super large maps you can also walk the bot towards the anti and start the self D, for a couple more seconds, but if it works without on medi then in theory there's no need any more
technically also possible to launch nuke then stun while the silo is waking up, either way

grim sapphire
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still too tight to comfortably do the play of being a nuker's teammate and saying "hey, i successfully landed an emp, nuke there now", but extremely doable if the emp'er is also the nuker

wicked lichen
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possible on smaller maps, medi, maybe not comfortably. silos already have max stun time exception though, as do all antis, so possible tuning is limited. I'll have a look at it next time I'm in rework

bronze nexus
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Titan should not be ez to emp with spybot, they are arm's final unit

swift bolt
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Has anyone brought up an “emp-removing” mechanic? For example, if you detonate a friendly spy bot and the explosion touched friendly emp’d/stunned units, then a portion of their stun duration would be removed.

stray matrix
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Its really too short lived a mechanic for there to be much value in removing it, I think

bronze nexus
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too specific imo
spy bot is an offensive tool not a support anyways

swift bolt
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It would completely solve this problem without nerfing EMP. EMP is still good for catching run-bys, like it should be. But unstoppable frontline stiletto nonsense will be completely solved (you can’t have a spy bot accompany a dozen marauders for example). Or maybe you could, you would just have to be sneaky with it or use dare I say… strategy… to pre-position it in the enemies base.

Throughout my hundreds of hours playing this game, it boils down to “do I have the response to this potential problem”? Do I have anti nuke? Anti air? Detection…. The list goes on. What is the solution that requires as little change by a developer and not drastically change how the game operates? I would think just add anti EMP to that list of responses to potential problems the player has to prepare for.

Just think. When another thread with this topic appears again next month, the first and only response could be “use friendly spy bots to remove/reduce the stun time”.

swift bolt
wicked lichen
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by the time you got a spybot there it would be mostly gone anyway - and if the spybot is at ground zero, it's stunned too
interesting idea but overcomplicates tbh, especially as EMP is one of the stalemate ending tools, and to allow an undo button nerfs that out of relevance

swift bolt
# wicked lichen by the time you got a spybot there it would be mostly gone anyway - and if the s...

This is a good point. Although EMP isn’t generally a stalemate breaker haha. That may be the original intention but They’re played out like a “someone on my team messed up and let a leak through but hey no worries, You can make mistakes and be totally fine because I have half a dozen shuris that can take care of the problem”. Maybe “unit EMP” is weaker than “structure EMP” and can be reduced/removed in some way? And static defense that uses EMP like the Armada launcher can’t be altered. These I see are proper stalemate breakers. Also, Spy bot immune to EMP??? Thoughts?

stray matrix
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I would play some more because spybots are basically THE counter for roving packs of hounds and sheldons in the mid game
and allows even t1 units to walk up and thwack em down
that's why they're a stalemate ender, they give an opportunity to attack

woven cypress
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Annoyingly strong stalemate breaker when you're playing vehs and on the receiving end

swift bolt
# swift bolt This is a good point. Although EMP isn’t generally a stalemate breaker haha. Tha...

In addition to this. The logic would play out more precisely akin to how we handle nukes. We need a specific amount of anti nuke in order to stop a certain number of nukes. If I hear more incoming nuke commands, I’m gonna build more anti nukes. Same thing with this change. If I stun your units , you then reverse EMP, I need to make sure next time I stun I need to bring more than one spy bot. It’s a constant game of back and forth in strategy which, in my experience, is what makes BAR beyond all reason.

grim sapphire
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Until 1 person realizes "oh wait i can make ICS and spam and the 5 spybots with my opponent's army are all worthless"

swift bolt
grim sapphire
swift bolt
grim sapphire
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Killing enemy spybots with spam would be more cost-effective than trying to compete in an arms race of having more spybots than your opponent, yes.

As for stils without emp rework...you'd be detonating a spybot to cleanse your army for probably 2 seconds until the army gets stunned by another stil

craggy hound
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You don’t even need spam to counter spybots

image.png
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Jar ground firing units in a rough direction is enough

grim sapphire
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That too. Spybots are strong, but very reasonable to counter, which is why i pushed hard for spybots to not receive too major a nerf in emp rework

bronze nexus
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jar?

pine adder
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🫙

wicked lichen
jagged cosmos
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@wicked lichen is the Recluse supposed no not shoot at all if its affected by 35%~ emp? Right now it just sits there doing nothing lmao

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Visual representation
I'm not sure at what values do guns get completely disabled hence the question

image.png
pine adder
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At 50%

grim sapphire
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2% firerate slow per 1% emp bar, up to weapon being fully disabled at 50%.

wicked lichen
woven cypress
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New EMP seems too weak on stilettos vs med tanks and tigers, barely phasing them; and awkwardly strong on grunts as they waddle around with slow emp recovery.

Maybe make the EMP bar decay at an exponential pace instead of linear

wicked lichen
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you need multiple stilettos, people are still trying to solo yolo it. continuous sources need continual application and stilettos have a fairly long runup

woven cypress
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I just know before my tanks would be stunned for like 15 seconds or something from 1 stiletto bomb, and now it barely does anything to my tanks. Nice not having my tanks permastunned, but seems like a drastic step.

Exponential decay is a separate suggestion; just kinda weird watching grunts walk it off for like 10 seconds lol. With exponential decay, can spend more time in the strong slow and less time in the weak slow, less time over all, perhaps comparable effect on total distance lost

wicked lichen
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well 1 bomb wasn't 1 bomb, it was 5 high damage bombs in a row, now it's 3 with better spacing and much less damage each, which decays faster

grim sapphire
#

It's not hard to build a group of stils, and their power is now inline with that

woven cypress
#

In the case of last game I played, it was one explosion of the payload that hit my tanks. Didn't see the timer on them, but it didn't really hinder me much.

Then watched it hit my grunts. 5 second stun, then like 10 seconds of them hustling but not really getting anywhere, trying to get that OS.

wicked lichen
#

grunts have less HP, so they'd stun faster
and a third of a single stiletto attack on a reasonable HP unit ... is not likely to do much, which is fine

woven cypress
#

The stun on the grunts seemed just fine. The slow overall effect is fine, but lasted awkwardly long

grim sapphire
#

The slow is there to compensate for significantly reduced stun times across the board without just plain nerfing all sources of emp

#

Stils are the exception in being heavily nerfed, because they were genuinely completely ruining t2-early t3 gameplay

wicked lichen
#

they were a continuous source with the power of a burst source, and flying, and cheap. busted as heck.

woven cypress
#

If slow decayed slower at first, then increased in decay speed, can have less time spent slowed for same total distance lost. Like, 4/3 seconds of 75% slow is same distance lost as 2 seconds of 50% slow.

grim sapphire
#

The calculations with emp bar would get really convoluted and likely unintuitive, if it's even possible to implement in this way

woven cypress
#

Decay = (base decay rate) + (time since last emp'ed)

wicked lichen
#

that requires changing two really arcane chunks of code, and really not sure it would improve much to try

grim sapphire
#

Getting emp to even apply a scaling slow required breaking and rebuilding...a lot of undocumented stuff

wicked lichen
#

some is still broken as it's just black magic territory
thankfully just cosmetic though

woven cypress
#

nvm takes grunts like 30 seconds to completely recover

grim sapphire
#

Takes all units 30 seconds to fully recover, for 15 seconds of weapon disabled as bar decays, reload slow equivalent to 7.5 more seconds of weapon disabled, and total travel distance reduction equivalent to 15 seconds of stun. This is paired with all emp units receiving significantly reduced stun duration, and most receiving significant reductions to their base damage. For example, shuris do half damage compared to vanilla

woven cypress
#

idk about any of that inner wizardry; im just an ungrateful freeloader. my personal opinion is for a bit more potent emp with faster decay; overall effect is fine

#

weak emp makes it accutely less potent; long decay means slows long after relevant in most situations

grim sapphire
#

Long decay is necessary for sustained emp sources to actually be able to do anything vs high hp targets. Otherwise, it just never accumulates

#

The fast ramp-up of reload slowing in particular is intended to allow emp units to provide value even if they can't manage to stun anything

woven cypress
#

x2 emp damage with x2 decay would offer comparable effect to current modaption, right? would have same amount of time to chain effect, up until stun time (then capped at 20 seconds of opportunity to chain) [and any chaining would be more potent than current]. old stiletto emp lasted straight 10 seconds, annoying af and glad that changed. new cap at 5 is nice . . . but 5 seconds stun + 30 of decaying slow is like 20 seconds of not moving at all -- way more influence than live unmodded.

doubling the slow effects for weapons firing seems to add an additional hidden level of complexity. why not just 1:1 , with a more potent emp?

wicked lichen
#

various reasons but antinukes are one

#

also units with very long reloads still get a first shot off and the emp decays over the time they'd reload anyway

#

I did consider changing it but at this point balance would be hosed again

woven cypress
#

i dont think i noticed the weapon slow in that game, i was just fleeing. it's kinda obnoxious. if a grunt gets hit with a stiletto, it can't shoot for 20 seconds

celest lotus
#

not much point worrying about retaining specific balance point when in the process of doing something new

woven cypress
#

then for next 15 seconds it's doing half damage (on average), so 7.5 seconds of damage lost

grim sapphire
#

grunts probably shouldn't be the thing you're using as a benchmark for balance. they're literally among the easiest possible things to stun and...by the time stils are being made, does it really matter that a few grunts are stunned for a while?

woven cypress
#

1 stiletto = 27.5 seconds of damage lost on a grunt , lol

grim sapphire
#

it also = vastly smaller amount of time of effective damage lost on anything whose individual damage output is relevant at that point in the game

woven cypress
#

true; a solid hit on a ball of tigers was betwen 30-40% ; figure 10 seconds of average 30% dps loss = 3 seconds damage loss

#

(from a single stiletto)

#

2 stilettos hitting them would be 60-80% ; say 70, 23.33 seconds total decal = 8.33 seconds not shooting + 15 seconds of half damage (on average) = 25.83 seconds of damage lost

#

that escalated quickly

#

11.67 seconds of movement lost

grim sapphire
#

In other words: the movement lost from 2 stils is less than what was previously lost from 1, much more commitment is required to maintain emp, and the tigers are immediately able to start repositioning either to spread out more or start falling back to a position with aa coverage, rather than just all being permastunned and dying

#

The stils are altering the tide of a battle without just deciding it, and it has granular scaling based on commitment, rather than a binary "permastunned or not permastunned"

woven cypress
#

yes movement lost fromt getting hit from 2 stils is still less than getting hit from 1 in live; especially considering getting stunned is much more violence of action than getting slowed, and that slow probably won't matter as much after 10 seconds of conflict. don't get me wrong; again I'm glad that it's not just a straight 10 second stun.

But let's make it 3 stils. That's not too unreasonable to make. now we're at at least 7.5 seconds of not being able to shoot, another 15 seconds of 1/2 damage, and 15 seconds of distance lost

#

instead of 1 stil fking ur army (bad) ; a reasonable number of stils fk ur army even harder (also bad)

wicked lichen
woven cypress
grim sapphire
#

it's an exponentially larger investment, even if not a massive one, and 3 still aren't fking your army as hard as 2 on live. More importantly, the person making stils can't afford to send 3+ to multiple parts of the map, particularly if any of them get shot down, while maintaining air superiority

woven cypress
#

I know, I'm not expecting immediate results or anything. Just discussion. The list is long, I know, I know. 😛

celest lotus
#

it doesnt have to be set in stone how easy EMPing an antinuke is, game balance isnt dependant on the specifics of that interaction at all

grim sapphire
#

and if they go super hard on stils, at that point just build flaks because they can actually counter stils on emp rework, or go t3, which they need quite extreme quanitities of stils to stun

#

Mobile aa actually working vs stils (and still working vs shuris as it always has) in emp rework is a massive deal

woven cypress
#

true, does hard to actually deliver a bunch of stils often.

#

t(s). %d(t/s). %d(3/s)
1 1 3
2 3 6
3 6 9
4 10 12
5 15 15
6 21 18
7 28 21
8 36 24
9 45 27
10 55 30
11 66 33
12 78 36
13 91 39
14 105 42 . . .

t(s) = time since last emp'ed, in seconds
%d = total % decayed

#

linear vs exponential emp decay

at 5 seconds, chaining would be identical. exponential means a cap at 14 seconds slow, but it's worse for first few seconds

grim sapphire
grim sapphire
woven cypress
#

ah wait, a single shuri can keep a razorback stunlocked. havent tried titan

grim sapphire
woven cypress
#

im getting 50-70% emp on an anti from 1 stil runby. so maybe about 5 seconds of not shooting. perhaps strong effect if launching several nukes. 2 stils would be at least 15 seconds of not shooting.

grim sapphire
#

emp is generally used to make a single nuke land. mass nuke is a meme strat on most maps

woven cypress
#

if you reduce the rate the anti can fire, that can favor swarming. but meh if you can find them all.

woven cypress
# grim sapphire making emp decay significantly more quickly will result in a secondary source of...

could still happen, regardless of decay speed. just faster decay means more often.

could simplify that interaction: anti-nuke can only work if it's not stunned when the nuke is fired. if it comes online after the nuke is launched, either by becoming unstunned or just finishing a missile, then it will not intercept the oncoming nuke.

A slight nerf to gain some simplicity. (could reduce build time by a second or two to compensate, if needed)

grim sapphire
#

i haven't tested recently to have exact numbers, but currently the anti has something like 15 seconds to "react" from a "normal distance". That would be a very significant nerf to getting your first anti stockpiled in time, and require a lot of changes in the code, i assume, considering there are calculations done for splitting which anti handles what in situations of overnuke targetted in areas where antis overlap

woven cypress
#

right now, 1 stil is significantly nerfed vs anti. 2 stils significantly buffed. was 10 seconds usually sufficient before?

grim sapphire
#

In vanilla, any emp source can stun buildings for 30 seconds because...reasons

#

And by reasons i mean broken code

woven cypress
#

oh, well shucks. prolly reason was for anti, since need it stunned for a while lol. also not as bad if your mex isn't working for 30 seconds

*nvm

turbid pebble
#

Someone did the math on the shuriken? it seems they are lot stronger than before, was it 7 second stun before rework? Now it like 5 sec stun + time for emp to go back to 0%, they seems to have replaced emp bombers now

grim sapphire
#

they deal half damage compared to vanilla, though it's possible that's not enough of a nerf for them in particular, considering how beneficial rework is for them

lucid thistle
grim sapphire
#

thor side lasers and repeat bombing runs from stils are also worth considering "sustained", even if stils fit the definition more loosely

wicked lichen
#

shuris were in a really odd place as they did microbursts of tickle damage, which had to overcome a faster drain rate. the drain rate was turned down again a little though, and it's possible shuris now pile it on too fast, relatively
it is worth noting though, that shuris are the only EMP core has, spybot aside, and they're the faction that need it the most, so nerfing that down has to be done really carefully

hazy zinc
# wicked lichen shuris were in a really odd place as they did microbursts of tickle damage, whic...

Perhaps a bit higher DPS with a lower stun time could help. So it is easier to stun single targets but harder to stun a group.

And yes, core would need something like EMP to close the gap and actually getting into the fight. Another thing could be slime/sticky ground. Another thing could be gravel that is shot behind enemy lines and hinders the movement like dragon teeth but harder to reclaim... But all this is quite a big thing to introduce into the game. Even though it would make CORE tactics and gameplay viable.

A "funny" thing about EMP:
The missiles of Thors do 80 000 Damage stuns for 12s at a cost of 100m
as opposed to "only" 50 000 Damage of the EMP silo. With 35sec stun and for 500 metal.
Thor 1/3 range and 2/3 AOE.
It would be great if you could validate if these numbers make sense.
The Thor rocket (about the cost of a T1 Bomber) seems a bit cheap for the value it provides on a mobile chassis.

grim sapphire
#

the damage numbers are completely irrelevant vs 90% of targets once it's enough to full stun a razorback, which they both other. At that point it's the range, aoe, and % edge that matter

hazy zinc
grim sapphire
#

if they take approximately 3 steps in any direction, it misses

#

don't get me wrong, thors are strong. The missiles are for porc though, unless the person getting emp'd is sleeping

hazy zinc
#

I know. 1 missile is dodged easily if you happen to look at it at the perfect moment.
I mean, if the Thor was not already one of the best T3 in the game it would be another story. But it is a great raiding T3 and this stunning is a huge plus for them.

#

So we agree in all that.

Just the thing with: stun everything, or "just" everything that is T2 is a divination. For the cost of 2 Grunts I'd dare to say that this missile would still be worth it 99% of the time. Just aim at a single LLT and it will be cost-effectively 😉

grim sapphire
#

if the enemy has heavy porc, it is, in fact, a very large plus for them. Otherwise they have no target they'll be hitting

#

*no target they'll be hitting with the missile. they'll be steamrolling plenty of things with their other weapons

hazy zinc
#

Yeah, if they have no target for the EMP missiles they will probably kill it with 1 shot. (You edited your post to fast 😉) But this is not the thing I am concerned about.

It is this easy to use no-brainer with literally no drawbacks or noticable cost. That is put onto an already great unit. EMP is quite frustrating and we all have seen 3+ thors stunning an insane amount of metal. Evading gets hard then.

grim sapphire
#

it's more a general thor complaint than anything which a change to the emp damage of the missile would change, i think

#

honestly though, i haven't played an 8v8 match with emp rework disabled in ages. that would require being in a match that has vanilla stilettos 🤮

hazy zinc
#

As a joke: I start to imagine 10 Shivas with 8k damage mini tactical nukes on their backs.

Funnily enough that would be about the same alpha damage as sharpshooters per metal...

grim sapphire
#

except shivas are neither made of paper nor slower than a sumo

hazy zinc
hazy zinc
grim sapphire
#

i was just pointing out the aside about sharpshooters

#

the side paralyzers and the amount of lighting chaining it does are no more or less excessive. it just comes down to what you consider to be a core part of its identity

#

i think all considerations of changes to emp in vanilla have kinda just stalled, partially since op lobby has swapped over to emp rework

hazy zinc
#

This is quite possible. I don't play OP lobby as much and so I haven't seen often how this interacts with the Thor missiles. But it feels like the stun time stayed the same and then the regen time only adds more usefulness to the missile.

grim sapphire
#

everything with emp was entirely rebalanced.

hazy zinc
#

Kk. Then will look very closely at the Thor EMPs in the next games. Perhaps I just didn't realize how much it changed.

grim sapphire
#

been a little while since i worked on the balancing with hornet, but i believe it's only 5 second stun followed by the debuff as emp decays

#

don't remember the damage and aoe we settled on

hazy zinc
grim sapphire
#

pretty sure you're working with the current-but-vanilla numbers. a lot of "regularly-occuring" lobbies swapped over to emp rework either because it nerfs stiletto or because they genuinely prefer it. i have no idea what the ratio is between those 2 groups of people tbh

hazy zinc
#

In my games it is like 80%? vanilla.
Still I don't like to complain about stuff that is already fixed. That's just counterproductive.

grim sapphire
#

need to go to the 2nd match it finds to see spybot explosion values and emp silo values, most of the other stuff is all directly below the 1st match

grim sapphire
#

so technically this stuff isn't fixed, there's just a common...workaround

hazy zinc
#

Well you already put work into it to make it better. From this moment on it is my own choice if I want to go with the lobsters and EMP rework or not.
Thx for your work.

grim sapphire
#

i mean, i didn't do any of the necessary coding, just helped with testing, theorycrafting, and balance adjustment. Hornet went through hell un-breaking various systems to get the rework actually function the way he wanted it

hazy zinc
#

Still, you did your part, too.
Found it btw. 20 000k damage. 5 seconds and 250AOE instead of 312.
So a Sala and a Parrow will not get stunned 😊

grim sapphire
#

the negative edgeeffectiveness value also makes it do 0 damage a less than the listed aoe, just a trick for changing the slope of damage dropoff

hazy zinc
#

Kk.
Where is the difference to simply reducing the AOE and making the edge effectiveness 0?

grim sapphire
#

there's a formula i don't remember, but the hyper-simplified answer in this ms paint drawing i made with my amazing artistic skills, that red line = damage dropoff with some edge value between 0 and 1, yellow line = dropoff with 0 edge, green line = dropoff with some negative edge value

Untitled.png
#

or in words: negative edge allows for high damage at the epicentre, then more quickly dropping to significantly lower damage values dealt to everything outside the epicentre

hazy zinc
#

Cool thing. So big things need more direct hits while a Tick can still be stunned from further away. I like it!

Hornet and you are doing a lot for this game.

grim sapphire
#

Much appreciated

night oasis
#

Is there a plan to make tac emp work better? Currently it still does 5 sec paralyze, which makes it useless for the use cases it's relevant

turbid pebble
#

i did not like the rework until the last update that made spybots and emp launchers playable again, it's gotten a lot better but there is still issues, it's getting hard to really tell what's still wrong with it, it does feel okay most of the times
but the broken animation makes it feels worst than it's actually it i think for me

-spybots are better against t1 and t2 it seems but worse versus t3 like the razors
-shuriken seems stronger coz they affect the units longer i think overall, need more AA bots to do the job since 1 single hit of shurkien will stop the unit from firing and then the long timer to have them fire back
-emp launcher felt kinda good against units and porc but still a nerf i think against large t3 which is super important use case

wicked lichen
#

I can buff EMP damage against T3 a little more, but it's a hard balance. tac emps should do more than 5 seconds from what I recall, they're a burst source

#

shuriken, it depends what they're fighting really. -possibly- some emp resistence on AA bots could be viable

celest lotus
#

t3 and EMP is in a weird spot to start with.

On one hand you have razors, titans, etc that people say must be counterable with EMP since they'd be unbalanced otherwise.

But then you have Thor, Juggernaut, Behemoth, which are EMP immune since of course it'd be too imbalanced if you could counter a big boy like that with some little EMP unit!

wicked lichen
#

indeed. my stance is speed requires some weakness to emp, so the faster it is the more it should be bothered by it
rauders showed that it was flat out needed in most cases, they're pretty broken

night oasis
#

just a feedback tac emps should be expected for at least 2 stun lock a tac nuke

#

tac emp was never expected to do something against t3 (and it performed poorly if one was going for that)

#

tac emp is a tactical deployment, to counter something or perform a tactical movement on a porced position

grim sapphire
#

Remember that things at >50% emp can't fire. That's an extra 15 seconds of "stun" on buildings

#

Iirc, making sure a building never gets to fire its weapon requires 3 silos to maintain indefinitely. As an example, with 2 silos and no stockpiling beforehand, a lolcannon gets to fire ~2 shots every 30 seconds before stun gets reapplied, and 3rd emp silo removes the ability to fire entirely

night oasis
#

2 on tacnuek is the use case i highlight

wicked lichen
#

2 emps can lock down a lolcannon, slight break in cover until they level up
3 completely shuts one down
as sol said, essentially

night oasis
#

2 on tacnuek is the use case that's relevant in my proposition
if thats the case then good

proven zephyr
#

they have enough range to hit frontline anti as well if you're looking to just remove a position

winter meadow
#

I didn't follow this for a while

#

have some units more EMP resistance now or ? I thought they did yesterday but maybe I'm imagining things

flint monolith
#

I havn't read all this but I read something about units/porc being stunned for 30 sec and should be 10 etc. And it's 30sec because of anti nuke maybe? What if the EMP stun duration scale with the EMP resist? More resistance=lower stun duration. From spies self d etc

wicked lichen
#

it does, effectively. that's less obvious from high spike sources like spybot though

bronze nexus
#

thor seems buffed by the rework. shotgunning a thor with razors used to be possible, now the emp will make the razors start not shooting

#

is emp tac nuke supposed to be 10 seconds only?

#

ah, i guess it's also a movespeed and firing disable for longer. fair enough

wicked lichen
#

thors EMPs were tuned vs bulwarks and such, they're somewhat OP in general tbh

grim sapphire
# wicked lichen thors EMPs were tuned vs bulwarks and such, they're somewhat OP in general tbh

We could probably safely remove the thor emp beam sponson damage bonus in emp rework at this point, as well as maybe either dropping shuri damage a hint more or, probably a better option, bumping their price up a bit. Air players failing to have a set of shuris ready to disable all raids on allies fairly trivially continues to be basically griefing, particularly with emp rework enabled

wicked lichen
#

valid, thor lasers were calibrated before the falloff drop

shuri price is a funny one as they're still made of paper, and a lot they need to stop also packs free AA

grim sapphire
#

Something like ~+10-20% metal cost would only really be felt while an air player is on a small number of t1 mexes, where very small investments in shuris are shutting down quite sizable break-throughs of t1 units without really needing significant micro to keep all the units perma-90+% slowed. Later on, the price of shuris is barely noticeable

#

I'm fairly certain a price increase would have a much larger effect vs t1 raiders than t2+3 raiders, while a dps decrease would be the inverse for a variety of reasons, including the prevalence of aoe aa starting in t2

wicked lichen
#

yus, it would mean more earlier on, certainly

bronze nexus
#

just make shruiken do less emp dmg instead of cost up
more shruiken required means more likely to clump

#

or speed reduction lets them cover less of the map and harder time escaping from fighters

wicked lichen
#

shuri are weird in that they have to fight emp drain, so their dps is effectively X - 0.5% of target's HP, so how much they do varies massively depending on size (and a few misc other factors)
just dropping dps really throws that off, especially if you're trying to tune for early effectiveness, you'll destroy anything later in the foodchain.

a little less speed sounds sane though, along with tidying thor sponsons, will add to my notes

celest lotus
#

Focusing on fine tuning the balance isn't so important when the fundamentals aren't set in stone

#

For example there's MORE random resistances in the rework than in the status quo. When the sensible goal would be the opposite

wicked lichen
#

well, that's the only way around it without changing engine to alter how emp degrades relative to unit HP
there were always odd cases and exceptions in the old too, especially buildings and antinukes

#

alterations to EMP drain speed effectively remove more EMP damage from high HP units per tick than lower HP units

#

and only sane way to offset that, is some emp resistance to compensate, which is mostly invisible to the user and shouldn't feel present, just not 'wtf this unit is immune', 'wtf I can't stun this unit while this one is instastunned', etc

#

old emp just overkilled/overstunned everything as standard, so it never had grey zones to tune

celest lotus
#

Should look through those old exceptions too and decide which of them actually are necessary and sensible.

And getting the fundamentals right would mean that you don't have to manually compensate half of t3 units emp resistance/vulnerability, but that units would as the main rule be vulnerable to emp in direct proportion to their HP. Doesn't seem impossible when you have that grey area of emp effect now.

What exactly are the goals of emp rework?

wicked lichen
#

I cannot change the fundamentals more, the exceptions are working within engine constraints to allow good gameplay while feeling intuitively right to the end user

#

if you remove exceptions you suddenly have units that both brush off emp and others that are really weak to it, or others still that just remove the only things that can counter them, before they can do anything useful. it makes it feel better to play, it's tuning against jank, not adding it

#

goals are essentially 'rebalance to how it would have been if emp was always like this', eg it does more than just nothing, then fully stops units, it's an interactive process with reaction times and some evasions and counterplays possible

it also fixes some balance issues in the process, eg stilletos

celest lotus
#

And what is the goal of emp working like this?

wicked lichen
#

to make emp 'feel better' to play, and less binary

toxic bane
#

To add to the commentary on shuris. They're not cheap, and making them is an almost guaranteed way to lose an air 1v1 against anyone who is competent. And I agree, the scout(hovers etc) units they tend to defend against already kill them very easily.

bronze nexus
#

it is true a number of the dedicated raiding units are basically immune to them

#

X% resist is compounded by the drain rate i assume

#

if there's just 1 sweeper with the hover army you can focus fire the seeker to stun it

#

which laser hover can shoot shuri's?

unreal pier
bronze nexus
#

dang. well good for the harrassing unit bad for the air player xD

wicked lichen
bronze nexus
#

Yeah say hovers if they can be cleanly answered with shruikens then that defeats the purpose of the lab / tactic

wicked lichen
#

also somewhat defeats the point of the shuriken, which is not a fig therefore a risk

turbid pebble
wicked lichen
turbid pebble
# wicked lichen essentially, yes

well you did a pretty good job finding the middle ground then but imo it did buff shuriken by alot against t1/t2, 7secs wasn't that much before, now it takes like 14secs to have the unit fire again

wicked lichen
#

thanks, it was pretty fiddly yes

some cost increase to make shuri less spammable early seems sensible, while also letting them be relevant later, I'm very aware of them being the only (bad, but only) option core have vs rauder popups though

celest lotus
#

what does it mean to be useless against t3? t3 units dont have higher hp pools per cost than frontline units of lower tiers

wicked lichen
#

there's a sort of inertia they have to overcome, which means more are needed for a result. it's less now than it was however, as the drain ramp isn't as steep

celest lotus
#

most of all t3 units are just so expensive that its just reasonable and expected that you need a lot of shuri vs them

#

and a 20% modifier isnt changing that fundamentally

wet hawk
#

It’s not t3 in general. It’s a specific t3 unit.

celest lotus
#

why does a specific unit that by its design would not be very vulnerable to shuriken, need to be vulnerable to them?

wicked lichen
#

relative to initial balance, and gameplay needs

wet hawk
wicked lichen
#

core cannot catch rauders, they're insane, demon helps a bit

celest lotus
#

and if a unit is overpowered, why is emp rework the appropriate venue to address that?

wicked lichen
#

because it all relates. nerfing stilletos meant rauder OP was incredibly obvious

#

and core have no way to handle it other than EMP which means shuri which means they have to remain effective

#

emp is the only tarpitting tool available, of course fast units are part of the balance picture

celest lotus
#

EMP rework shouldn't be about balancing the game at large, but to make the EMP mechanic work better.

If EMP is the only chance to beat something, it's a problem with something, not EMP

wicked lichen
#

there is also the aspect that arm, who have the fast units, also have the majority of EMP, which slows units

#

to an extent, but if that just means emp is fixed but the game is broken, nobody plays it, rework 'fails'

#

core need functional shuri, ideally which aren't OP early, but not UP late

celest lotus
#

why not just include a marauder nerf into EMP rework then lol

wicked lichen
#

and that is why things are as they are with some different emp vulnerability tailoring to make continuous sources stay feeling responsive, otherwise it would just be high burst

that starts to become scope creep, I wanted to balance based just around EMP, and look at larger balance once that was as done as much as it could be

turbid pebble
#

it made it impossible to push on t1 pretty much now

wicked lichen
#

that would mean the air player is pretty behind in figs, your air should support pushes, or the better option, is that the pushes should bring AA

#

which they should anyway ideally, people tend to forget T1 AA exists, you even have the amphib bots for water raids

#

shuriken were always good at stopping raids, but I do appreciate the rework mechanics help them, as it did with webbers

#

unclear how best to counteract though, without making them pretty much useless later in the game, or comparatively highly expensive

I'll experiment with slight power nerfs next time I'm in there, I'd rather that than cost hikes if possible, as quantity matters later to tank/burn AA shots

turbid pebble
#

before we could kill shuriken with ground units, even blitz can't do it now, AA bots are almost useless

wicked lichen
turbid pebble
#

it's not ur fault, you did very well

wicked lichen
#

if there is an air mismatch, then you can also lead raids with say pincers, they tank shuri shots really well, and have AA bots behind. if the player is splitting and microing the shuri and ahead of your air and your air isn't helping, then that's kind of out of scope of EMP balance, and just a game dynamic issue; you're collectively being outplayed

#

early on, every shuri built is a risk to air, generally they can't have many

turbid pebble
#

im not factoring my air player when i say that, i just saying as a player that likes to push the shuriken are way stronger than before even jag with AA bots support are having issue pushing into them but that's just my opinion, some still thinks they are weaker

wicked lichen
#

you are in a way though, because the existence of many shuri means your air player is letting them do it, one way or another

#

I don't disagree with what you're seeing nor that it is frustrating, but that is the way core catch things, as arm stuff is generally faster. it should still be possible to split your units away from the shuri even when slowed, and if they have enough to go right to stunlocking, then it really is a case of your air letting them do it

#

watch replays where it happens and compare your air players

#

you will usually find that any air player who can mass shuri, or gunships, or bombers, has already won air either literally or economically. or they took a huge gamble which paid off.

#

fig fights are very number based things, say 35 figs vs 40 figs, odds are the 40 fig fleet wins with 10 maybe 15 surviving figs, which sets them ahead for the next fight; it really multiplies from small differences, so every shuri is 'not a fig', and thus a risk

turbid pebble
#

i'll try to find my replay so you can see what i mean but basically emp bombers were op coz you could not push into them, shuriken kinda feel the same now and they did not before rework, i never expect my air players to deal with shuriken when i push to kill players, it was possible to have some AA bots with jags and shuriken would die very quickly even on big numbers, now it seems that the air players only need like 40% of shuriken in numbers to achieve the same results as before the rework, so it's a lot easier to react for the air player and a lot harder to push early on

wicked lichen
#

you should though, as shuri mean you're actually in a 2v1, and all else equal -should- lose it

#

I get your point, but I'm still saying this is a meta issue also
however it is also one very hard to tune my way out of as the T1 units have low HP and therefore low 'inertia', small changes matter a lot. might be though that I can use that in some way, maybe make shuriken more costly and less paper, unclear, I'll have to look into it with some 'calibration' tests

wet hawk
#

Make it an emp shotgun instead? That’d make it more effective against larger units and less effective against smaller ones.

#

Inaccuracy, basically

wicked lichen
#

spray and pray shuriken, vunderbar. I really dislike rng solutions but you are right in that it will relate to size/tier indirectly

wet hawk
#

It’s only RNG until it fires so many shots that it becomes statistics.

wicked lichen
#

exactly yes, if I can tune it so it's consistent rather than random, it might work

#

I just don't want a banshee situation where the user is swearing at the damn thing to actually -hit- something

wet hawk
#

The banshee is just undertuned. Needs more firerate or less inaccuracy or both.

wicked lichen
#

they're meant to be bad, gunships early are really powerful if air wins, but the way it's done just feels like it's inept rather than tuned to a purpose

wet hawk
#

What you’re looking for here would look more like a cone-shaped emp blast than a machine gun, I think. It should always hit with a few beams, just by virtue of sheer quantity.

wicked lichen
#

the shuri currently effectively fires a load of tiny beams

#

you can't do 'area' attacks like that, they have to be literal shots, so it does mean machine gun laser functionally

turbid pebble
#

before it was only 7 secs then you would get ur unit back to fight at 100% strength, with rework it's 5 secs and you have an useless unit for another 10 secs or so and if it gets shot at again by 1 shuriken it can go back to being useless again, shuriken were hard before rework but they could be dealt with, right now when a good player uses them they seems too stronk and not worth even trying. But that's only my opinion, some players say they are not stronger, even tho it's all about numbers and it can be looked at and quantified by how much they are stronger/weaker.

wicked lichen
#

they're a little stronger vs t1, about same vs t2, weaker vs T3 - as a huge generalisation
but at the levels where they can just deny a push ... you're in a 2v1, and need your air to help, that's the game

#

as I said you can mitigate with eg pincers, AA bots, positioning even within that limitation

turbid pebble
#

little stronger by how much? it should be ez to tell no?

wicked lichen
#

this is a little like salamanders, in that they're bad when not used in the right way, but when they are and aren't countered, they can seem silly OP

#

as I said I'll do some calibration tests and see how much they're different by

wet hawk
#

Salamanders are really great at skirmishing commanders away, btw.

turbid pebble
#

alright, i mean im not trying to be a pain but i think on this particular situation we should be able to get numbers and not just opinions or feelings, it looks like pure maths to me

wicked lichen
#

agreed, but similarly it is one aspect of a very big picture I have to perform surgery on with alarmingly blunt tools

#

testing a few things atm, unsure if it'll be enough to be useful data, just trying to ballpark for sanity's sake

turbid pebble
#

the simpler tests is to look at how long it takes for units to go from not emped to emped and back to "normal" fighting state on units like t1 AA bots, Jags, Blitz, Grunts. Then maybe have another test where the unit gets shot once again when it's at 50% emp and it should get a pretty accurate % between the 2.
I though the issue was base game emp was too strong, so that's why i find it odd that the rework potentially made it stronger on some instances.
I kinda did those calculation quickly and i think shuriken are roughly about 50% stronger on t1/t2 units but i could be wrong

wicked lichen
#

probably because I had to make them relevant longer, and offset drain. making other things generally weaker to emp is a route but then other things are too OP against them, just for the sake of shuri

what you might find is they were calibrated for a higher drain rate, and now that's not quite as high, are relatively stronger than they should be, especially early where the drain/inertia is least relevant

#

they do feel OTT vs T1 now, yes, I'll look into ways to mitigate without throwing everything else out

#

they will still be a bit better than vanilla, as the mechanic suits the shuriken role well, but not as much as currently

turbid pebble
wicked lichen
#

no need, but thanks, I have literally routines to calibrate this stuff

#

Silver Sol and I spent weeks dialing this in

turbid pebble
#

alright cool, i think it would be interesting to share some numbers on like 5 units that are often getting "shurikened", so people reading the thread get a more accurate idea on the rework, like i said some people think shuriken aren't stronger in any ways when i try to talk about it, like a little benchmark pretty much

wicked lichen
#

what you may find is they don't feel stronger in the cases they encounter them, or their air players just haven't let shuri build up, etc, so effectively, you're both right

turbid pebble
#

i just watched a replay to make sure, on a pawn and a jag, it took 5sec (stun time) + 15 sec to get to 50% and another 15 sec to be at 0%
before it was 7 sec and you would get back ur unit in full fighting shape (fire and movement)
i understand that at 50% the unit can fire back but it is still at a lower fire rate and half speed

so shuriken are about 3x stronger on raiding units at the very least because i only counted when a unit is at 25% it's almost the same as 0% so i only took the time to go from 100% to 25%

the issue to me is that it takes really long for emp to go back down about 30 secs, it wasn't a issue previously because emp was either on or off but now emp is also on when it's not 100%. I understand the engine is limiting you greatly but i don't see how that's not a epic buff to shuriken.

wicked lichen
#

scatterfire on shuris will look weird but is a pretty good way to do it tbh, it has issues vs ticks though, so tuning around that also

turbid pebble
#

i assume you think my numbers are about correct? i think the rework is turning pretty good on most aspects since the lastest update but shuriken really annoy me more each day

wicked lichen
#

probably in some cases yes, but that doesn't remotely mean the weapon is 3x too strong, just -in that case- it's too effective

turbid pebble
#

i only mean 3x buff compared to "base" game emp on those 2 units i tested

wicked lichen
#

I'll let you know when I've updated things, I have a lot concurrent atm and this needs a lot of testing to tune

turbid pebble
#

i kinda understand it's really complicated from ur explainations

wicked lichen
#

as I say, delicate work, blunt tools

#

should be doable though, will let you know when something has changed

grim sapphire
celest lotus
#

Is there a description of what emp rework does exactly? Both the basic mechanism change and the related stat changes.

I could snoop thru the game files but I imagine I'm not the only one interested

wicked lichen
#

"The EMP Rework is an effort to make EMP much more interactive and less binary for all concerned. Instead of EMP either stunning for up to half a minute, or nothing at all, units affected by EMP slowly lose their movement and firing speed, until an eventual stun, which doesn’t last long. Firing speed decays linearly up until 50% EMP charge, where weapons are disabled entirely, but the unit can still move at half speed. Move speed continues to drop until 100% EMP charge, when the unit is stunned for a short time. This sounds complex but becomes intuitive rapidly, and effectively just results in EMP feeling much better to play with."

celest lotus
#

And the changes to individual unit stats?

wicked lichen
#

mostly irrelevant, as the mechanic itself changed so much

#

only major notable change would be stilettos not being fully broken

#

in fact I'd even say numbers are misleading, as higher doesn't mean buff and lower doesn't mean nerf

celest lotus
#

When you use loaded language like stilettos being broken, it just makes me want to see the numbers more

#

Both for the individual unit stats and the base mechanic

wicked lichen
#

everybody agrees they were broken, aside from literally 1 person

#

it's not loaded, it's a statement of fact

bronze nexus
#

just ability to stop many times their cost in units
and superior mobility as a defensive unit

#

1 stilleto itself could insta stun a clump of bulls

north quiver
#

None if these is broken except stellito, it needs a slight nerf

celest lotus
#

but you dont want to tell HOW you made it un-broken cause that would be misleading? cmon

lucid thistle
#

There's a mechanical rework to how emp functions from a fundamental level, the number changes on stilleto won't tell you anything

celest lotus
#

we need numbers for BOTH for how the mechanical change to EMP, and the individual units. "Trust me bro" is not a good enough methodology for game design.

#

if you can understand the numbers, then other people can too

wicked lichen
#

I'm not going to step through everything trying to find 'numbers' for a systemic overhaul, the mechanics I've already explained, the actual details of that are pretty stacked and have lots of reasons for being as they are, that trying to explain will just provoke years of 'but why' questions that eventually end in 'oh, okay then'

#

so yes, trust me bro it is, tbh. it works well and people like it, there are relatively few issues and I think the shuri one is the only actual complaint I've heard since the initial tuning

turbid pebble
#

I think it's fine if you don't show us in details how it's done but having the 'before' and 'after' on some units just to show how it changed gameplay to players and also it would help the discussion about the overall balance on emp rework, coz right now i think almost everyone has no idea how the rework changed the game

#

and it would help to keep up with the updates you do aswell

wicked lichen
#

that is what I did with the 'announcement' microblog post about it, and several places through the thread

after I update it I'll probably do a microblog with some example interactions that are different and explain why, I can't do videos there though

turbid pebble
#

yeah it's probably best to show 2 little videos side by side showing the difference, text format would be more complicated i think

wicked lichen
#

I might be able to do a couple for the thread then link to the thread in the blog if people want something more visual, perhaps

turbid pebble
#

it would help a lot i think, if it's not too much work for you

#

only a few units would be enough, like grunts, jag, razors, maybe flak veh and a bull maybe

celest lotus
#

People can't complain about the specifics if we don't know them, duh. You're preventing others from helping you with this attitude. Letting others go through the details and point out suggestions for improvement is a really basic thing

#

I could go through the stats myself and post them here, but I assume you have already documented them for yourself, I see no reason to not share them

wicked lichen
#

it would be meaningless to dump 'numbers', I assure you, and just add confusion for the most part

pine adder
celest lotus
#

well it's something you should have, and if it doesnt exist it should be made. Anything less is really sloppy

wicked lichen
#

'all emp is rebalanced to feel right with new mechanics', IS the changelog, as I said

#

I don't think I've seen anything like that in BAR anywhere aside from literal stat tweaks

pine adder
celest lotus
#

just compare emp rework stats with main game stats, easy enough

wicked lichen
#

once rework is finalised it could make sense to be more granular with itemising everything, but at this point it would very much be busywork

wicked lichen
pine adder
#

because you've also changed the gadgets that handle EMP damage and its effects, right?

wicked lichen
#

completely, it's all different

pine adder
#

then yeah, just comparing the numbers is gonna be like comparing watts and teslas

celest lotus
#

if you provide the new EMP damage formula etc, then there is context to compare by

#

if i have no info except "emp works better now and feels right", that is more confusing than any numbers

bronze nexus
#

stilletos fire less projectiles right?

pine adder
#

Johannes has a point though, @wicked lichen - I haven't been following the rework closely recently but if you need more hands on board to help out with it, having the changes summarized in a way detailed enough to bring someone up to speed is the only way you can get that help

bronze nexus
#

the change should be explainable and explain concretely what it intended to do. even better if it says X stilletos used to be able to do X, now they do Y

wicked lichen
#

3 vs 5, yes. spread is increased though so they still cover same area

bronze nexus
#

emp drain mechanic isn't that complicated? can explain how many bombs it takes to stun, whether 1 stilleto can keep an X perma stuned

#

which is like the summarized version of numbers(tm)

pine adder
wicked lichen
bronze nexus
#

that's the practical result

wicked lichen
# bronze nexus that's the practical result

that's what I meant about having some fairly typical examples to illustrate differences though, it means more to players than +40%, -20% because that's all relative to something that doesn't apply any more

bronze nexus
#

cause the numbers are more janky but how the units interact ingame describes the important part

#

yeah

wicked lichen
#

indeed, I don't disagree there. it also means players talk about their experiences in response rather than trying to say 'well maybe this number is too high' without realising what that actually does

bronze nexus
#

yeah i agree with that

wicked lichen
#

eg with the first version of this, Zecrus (who knows game deeply) added some changes, but that unbalanced everything and threw so much out in unpredictable ways, and aside from myself and Silver Sol I'd say he's the person who understands this the most

#

so it's incredibly easy to do

bronze nexus
#

i must comment the gradual slowing and stopping all fire rate at 50% is incredibly strong when units are partially emp'd

#

a 50% slow and 100% silence/blind in a moba is op

wicked lichen
#

that's why shuri damage is lower, and webbers relatively also, as the changes suit their nature very well

bronze nexus
#

fits the webber yeah

wicked lichen
#

indeed, it's really good with them, feels very much like they're trapping their prey rather than just 'shooting it then dying before anything useful happens'

#

right, I need to go and do things rather than talking about doing things, so back later on. I'll try to get shuriken looked at in more detail later

bronze nexus
#

i'm not an air player so i don't know shruiken price balance. this mainly affects thor close range lasers and shruikens against larger units

#

medium units do sometimes shoot up and kill shruikens so it's not 100% clear tho

grim sapphire
#

on vanilla, when no other targets are around, pawns in particular are quite effective at killing shuris. blitzes and grunts also decent at it. on emp rework, not so much

lucid thistle
#

Dolphins are also good at shooting down shuris

grim sapphire
#

yeah, anything that shoots pawn peas works (or worked) fairly well, as they move fast enough to hit air enough of the time to be better than having laser dropoff, and also don't have the more aggressive damage penalty vs air that t1 laser units get

toxic bane
celest lotus
wicked lichen
#

I see no point in engaging with you further on this

wicked lichen
turbid pebble
celest lotus
#

Why the condescending attitude? I'm trying to understand how the new system works, but somehow it's bad if people other than you would understand the details of what you're doing. Is "trust me bro" also your pitch for why the rework should be eventually put into the main game?

celest lotus
wicked lichen
#

I do not see anything productive occurring, you seem intent on being hostile and I am not going to waste time humouring it

celest lotus
#

your hostile response prompted my attitude, you can change that at any time

wicked lichen
turbid pebble
wicked lichen
#

it can't be concisely explained and all it would provoke is death by sealioning, I'm not playing that game

turbid pebble
wicked lichen
#

if you want more information than a summary can give, the code exists where all the rest does

wicked lichen
turbid pebble
wicked lichen
celest lotus
#

It's not that many variables to go through is it?

-There's the new slowdown + weapons not firing effect. I assume the slowdown is linear, and reloadtime slowdown is linear 0-1 going 0-50% EMP damage. But I'm not fully sure.
-EMP damage degradation speed is changed - how much?
-changes to EMP units
-changes to EMP resistances of units
-anything I missed

#

the per-unit changes are easy to read, but the code concerning how handling of EMP is changed fundamentally I'm not confident I can always understand right. So that's why it'd be best if you spell it out for us.

#

I'm puzzled really how asking this would be somehow hostile.

wicked lichen
#

I have already explained how that works. it is linear yes.
decay time is 50% faster than vanilla.
I am not itemising every unit this touches in a spreadsheet, it is meaningless as said, never mind ridiculous

#

I and others have already explained several times why 'numbers' are not going to be useful and you insist on it anyway.

if people have legitimate gameplay concerns with rework then they are more than welcome to discuss them here

celest lotus
#

How long is the decay time, is it same for all units?

#

Or does hp / paralysemultiplier / something else effect it

wicked lichen
#

there is no point getting into it more, and I am not going to

celest lotus
#

You couldve just answered the question in the same time as it took to type that response...

wicked lichen
#

no, because then you will find something else to ask, and something else, and then something else. you are not asking in good faith and I am not the only person who thinks so - please just leave the thread alone

unreal pier
#

is there any particular reason why you cant just simplify it like old emp stun like 30 sec new emp full emp time 7 sec disarmed time 10 sec slow time 13 sec? not that this are actual numbers but just example?

celest lotus
#

I am asking in good faith even when Im liking you less and less with your condescending attitude

#

Idk what hidden motive you think I could have

wicked lichen
#

that 'attitude' would be called 'valid reaction'. I have been very diplomatic quite frankly.

wicked lichen
#

even old EMP had exceptions and cases for how it acted, also, there's no one simple answer even there

wicked lichen
hazy zinc
#

just test it.

you will see it.

/cheat
/godmode
/give 100 corbw
/give 10 xx 4

there you go

wicked lichen
#

with something like this it really does boil down to how it 'feels' to play versus any kind of numeric answer, it's a very organic thing

unreal pier
#

i seem to have worded that making it confusing what i wanted to say so old emp was indicated very simple that if unit was stunned it was affected like 30 sec if it got empd now its like unit is empd 7 sec and ??? sec till its fully operational what i would also like to know is how long till its fully operational

wicked lichen
#

it had a maximum stun time on old, which I think was in theory 20 seconds, but that had a bug and wasn't always applied as it should have been (and had been that way for god knows how long)

rework has very low stun times, recovery takes a bit longer, and has a linear decay of effect though that time

#

0-50% charge, weapon fire rate scales to a stop, 0-100%, movement does

unreal pier
#

to clarify give units indicatior that will till how long time till that 89% in example is gone

image.png
turbid pebble
#

it's 30 sec to do back to 0 after the initial stun of 5 sec, on the units i tested : pawn and jag

hazy zinc
#

do you guys have a clock?

honestly try stuff before you ask.

celest lotus
#

If its several ppl wondering the same things, makes sense that a response is in public

#

Than everyone doing their own separate tests.

hazy zinc
#

great make a test and tell it everybods

wicked lichen
night oasis
#

make the emp bar purple or something if the unit cant fire or something and back to blue after it can fire. an indicator when the unit is debuffed is a good idea

#

i can assist on that effort

wicked lichen
#

changing colours is disliked, apparently it's bad enough they already change on full stun vs 'charge'

night oasis
#

the implementation is not as important as just showing the debuff indicator

wicked lichen
#

yeah, agreed, the least contentious (if it's the best or not, who knows) seemed to be putting a marker on the charge bar, which I will likely do

night oasis
turbid pebble
#

any news you can share for the next update? or we should expect it later on next year?

grim sapphire
#

On my end irl stuff + github giving me hell stalled us for a good while, and hornet has had his attention split between his other projects, but the git stuff at least was just fixed yesterday, so we can start progressing again. It (hopefully) won't take much longer to have it ready.

Considering i haven't played many matches in the last few weeks: have op lobby's general feelings on what needs adjustment in emp rework changed since webber meta started? Also, is webber meta still a thing?

turbid pebble
#

op lobby "agreed" to not use emp rework anymore and potentially go back to emp bombers ban
imo currently shuriken reworked are like mini emp bombers, it's the same issue only it moved it to be annoying at 5mins instead of 15mins with emp bombers
players have issues with mod options being randomly ON and OFF and we can't tell what game we are playing also, we kinda never know what options in on or not

#

i pushed for turning off emp rework, it made the game very depressing, any 20ts player can start an air lab and do 5 shuriken and it remove all the work a player can do to win his lane

#

at least with base emp there is a need to have many shuriken and micro to jump between targets, they are a lot more balanced even if they are strong, but the rework is just insane how much stronger it made the emp mechanic

grim sapphire
#

Big oof, sorry to hear it got that bad. Nerf to shuris particularly in early-game was planned, in addition to a nerf to the emp debuff itself, but will definitely consider being more heavy-handed with shuri changes.

Side-question for help deciding how exactly we do it: Do shuris seem way too op all game, or is there a specific phase of the game where they're too strong in particular?

Also, just to clarify, i haven't even specced a match in a week or 2. Are webbers still considered too strong? Or was that only a thing for a few days.

wicked lichen
#

emp rework is still work in progress but there's only so many hours in the day

#

shuri were too strong early, which is something addressed in current draft

turbid pebble
#

i mean it's more a player issue than rework issue, it's just everyone like to turn in on coz they don't like the emp bombers but they don't realize it's still WIP and the gameplay changes it does

wicked lichen
#

EMP rework is also a problematic one in that it takes silly time to test all the layers of interactions with each dev/testing change

bronze nexus
#

what's stronger about shruiken now? the partial stun makes units stop firing sooner?

turbid pebble
#

yeah there is many factors that are kinda complicated but the simple version is 1 shuriken has a lot more impact with rework ON, they do disable a units for much longer and the shot have a lot of more impact and are much quicker
I have op replay to show you, people are used to the imba shuriken so they use them differently now and it doesn't work without rework

#

they start doing work with a single shot and without rework they need 3 or 4 to do something

#

and then it 3x longer to have no emp effect anymore

#

Example, have 1 shuriken send it into a janus, 1 hit the janus is slowed, the shuriken doesn't need to fire more than once and you have a free dgun on a janus
can't do that with base game and this is very strong when you have 10 shurikens

turbid pebble
#

Here is another replay similar situation with emp rework ON

-With rework ON shuriken stun a lot quicker making AA have not time to kill any shuriken before they do start emping units, less shuriken die when emping coz they can go in and out so much faster
-With rework OFF shuriken need more time to start stuning units, giving you more time to retreat ur units and killing the shuriken

Im not even talking about the time that it takes for units to get out of being emped, that also take about 2.5x more time
https://www.beyondallreason.info/replays?gameId=56ad80652a808a8b15804e3aa97f64fe

BAR Replays

Replays of Battles once fought!

grim sapphire
#

Semi-related opinion question for picking people's brains: with emp rework, if both shuris and stils had a max stun time of ~half a second, so they basically couldn't stunlock things, only apply emp debuff, would that likely make them more interesting to play with/against?

turbid pebble
#

It would make more sense for sure, coz a shuriken having 5 secs stun on rework is already good enough compared to the 7sec base game, if you add 20s of another effect after that, it's kinda weird. Probably best to have one or the other, mixing the 2 seem impossible on a 7 sec duration. The whole duration for being slowed and not firing should not be higher than 7 sec if you want to keep balance but then you have the issue with the emp bar being at 0% and the shuriken would need to work at getting a full bar again to stun again.
With base game emp a unit can be at 90% emp so it's able to operate normally but if it gets a single hit again it's back to 7sec. So the whole mechanic is totally different.

#

I like the all or nothing aspect of it more than progressive slow, many aspects of the game are like that, from dgun to bombers on afus or lab, to killing a commander, nuking , chaining nanos turrets or killing converters, ect... It makes the gameplay more interesting imo

stray matrix
grim sapphire
# turbid pebble I like the all or nothing aspect of it more than progressive slow, many aspects ...

2 big parts of the reasoning for emp rework being the way it is are 1. the opinion which was being commonly voiced before it was made that long, hard stuns felt very bad to be on the receiving end of, even if they were objectively undertuned, and 2. that trying to balance certain units like stilettos was an absolute nightmare when it needed to full stun things to be relevant, but couldn't really have those numbers tuned down without it just remaining op vs some units while completely worthless vs others if it was only able to, say, 80% emp them.

With regards to 1. burst emp sources can have a chunk of their stun duration chopped off while remaining valuable, and with 2. units not stunned can be valuably debuffed, making balancing levers far easier to adjust (in theory. Live emp rework's debuff, it could easily be argued, lasts far too long to actually make things feel better and causes a bunch of other balancing problems. Already fixed in version currently being tested.)

#

this also reminds me: did anyone, at literally any point, try to make stils work on emp rework? I can't remember anyone even trying to make them work, so I'm unsure if we over-nerfed them or if people just want to forget they exist...or if people just don't want to make arm t2 air because arm figs

grim sapphire
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Vs t1 and t2, you should generally just need to build 50-100% more stils to largely accomplish the same things, which is arguably still a good value. The intent was to make them tolerable to play against and "just ok" in power, not to delete them from the game entirely

turbid pebble
#

idk people complained about emp being too strong coz there was 1 dude spamming emp bombers every single games for many weeks and he was good at abusing it so it literally broke the game and people mentally, we did emp bombers ban and he left the game. There were complaints about spybots being to strong coz the timer is just too long at 22s but just reduce it to 14s or 12s or whatever. Emp surely has issues but it's not as dumb as it looks, it's really well balanced and interesting mechanic, it's just some values are off, would only need minor incremental tweaks on values, i feel doing a entire rework will take you guys years.
And so the base emp doesn't get "fixed" or improved and the rework won't be playable before many many months
Also it's worth considering that players input can be misleading, they complained about emp being too strong but currently the rework is even stronger for everything expect emp bombers and no one saying anything about it, most players even high level don't realize that currently still...

grim sapphire
#

That last part is a big reason why a lot of the discussion is just done between hornet and myself in DMs, but seeing as i've been less active as of late and op lobby has had lots of time to stew on the current live version of emp rework, figured some extra feedback from some of the op players would be helpful for the tuning.

Sounds like nothing can really be done to make you personally like emp rework on a conceptual level, and i don't know what the exact ratio is of people who like it conceptually vs people who just enable as a modoption as a way to have a button that nerfs stilettos. The people who liked the concept were a lot more vocal before emp rework existed, and the people who dislike the concept less vocal, as is the way of things in any sort of forum.

At the very least, a good few units in next version of emp rework should feel a lot more similar to live's balance than they currently do, so at least you have that to...sort of look forward to?

turbid pebble
#

There is things i like about the rework but im very sad when balance gets broken in the game, so after like 2 months im kinda over it now, i played today without rework and i had a lot more fun instantly, i would not mind if there were like 1 week period of testing rework and then we go back to "normal" game until more feedback are needed but the way things are done currently isn't very fun.

Personally i think the rework could be interesting on T3 units, like 1 spy bot slow the razor down and stop it for firing but it still can move at like 50% speed and you need another spybot to fully disable for 12 or 14 sec or whatever. But currently on t1 and t2 units i think it doesn't feel good.

One idea i have is if emp rework only applied to emp resistance units, so they don't get stunned but only slowed movement and fire rate

grim sapphire
#

I can 100% understand pretty much all your feelings there, and i think next version will be drastically better in regards to most of those things, but for all the time i spend theorycrafting how balance should play out, i'm still some 30 OS clown who's absolutely not an expert in game design. Even if i were more than that, everything tied to emp is basically impossible to get clear data on in any reasonable amount of time (and it's still primarily hornet's project as far as who has the first and last word and who does most of the code wrangling, i just provide a large amount of feedback and testing)

bronze nexus
#

a more pragmatic approach is to just see which effects are strong in game

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50% slow and 100% less firing rate is insane, that's what you get at 50% charge

grim sapphire
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Units will be spending significantly less time at 50+% charge in next version, but i'm aleo personally not opposed to bumping backward the % at which weapons are fully disable

bronze nexus
#

what's different?

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i don't use shruiken much so i d/k their objective strength. but in vanilla version focused fire shruiken was super op too. they will focus on the same target sometimes, if you freeze the aa unit you can keep using them even against light aa

stray matrix
#

shuriken still can basically stop t1 pushes entirely by themselves
depending on number it may not be immediate, but even like 10 or so will stop most major breakthroughs

wicked lichen
# turbid pebble There is things i like about the rework but im very sad when balance gets broken...

a rapid cycle like that unfortunately rarely has useful data, people have kneejerk reactions, hyperfocus a buffed or nerfed unit, it takes a while for normality and actual use to set in. as you say, the loblob -still- don't even fully realise the implications of EMP rebalancing/levelling.

Old emp is literally all or nothing, there is no tuning, it just works or does not, hence why everything had insane overkill. The only way to address that, is a mechanics change to something gradual, and here we are.

The next version will address a lot of what you're saying, it's been in progress for a while, but I've had other development timesinks and Sol has had Real Life to attend to, which removed my main testing source (& rubber duck/sanity checker). I'll try to get it out soon, but as I said before, tuning and testing/calibrating this is very time consuming.

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re shuriken stunning less time ultimately, that's something that's also been tried, and some other mechanics changes I won't bore you with make it more viable to do now. (tl:dr; how EMP ultimately works is engine land, I can't fully change/fix things, only fake it variously, which requires a lot of hoops)

Changing the weapon shutdown percentage is ... not so easy though, mostly because of antinukes and lolcannon. Altering that would require either exceptional treatment which becomes unintuitive to players, or throwing out the possibility to shut down either with skillplays, which players very much like.

pine adder
#

I'm volunteering @turbid pebble for Hornet's next rubber duck acritterduck

wicked lichen
# turbid pebble There is things i like about the rework but im very sad when balance gets broken...

One idea i have is if emp rework only applied to emp resistance units, so they don't get stunned but only slowed movement and fire rate
to address this specifically, that adds to list of 'stuff that acts differently sometimes that players need to remember', which is a list best kept short as possible - and for everything else it also removes the possibility to tune/balance EMP at all, as explained above.

any existing exceptions in EMP rework are based around maintaining a similar feeling baseline of effectiveness / expected behaviour, which is why the player usually won't realise they're there, but without they'd be finding things that 'feel broken'

turbid pebble
pine adder
turbid pebble
# pine adder Well, you have a lot of strong opinions on the EMP rework, so if you want to spe...

Yeah it's probably annoying for the devs i know but im fuming other here with the shuriken honestly, im trying to not flame as best as possible, i get salty about balance issues a lot. I hope my feedback has value since it's coming from real game experiences tho.
Also my arguments are about trying to keep "base" emp game balance and "rework" as close as possible but if it's the goal is to change the emp and have a new balance with the rework, my arguments would be out of place for sure.

If it were not for the shuriken i think i would not have said anything coz spybots are even more OP now ngl xD

celest lotus
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Main issue ppl have with emp is more about the balance usually, rather than the basic mechanism. A better balance for emp weapons can be done with or without the mechanical change the rework is based around, and jury's out on which way actually would be the nicest foundation

wicked lichen
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the next iteration will dial it in even closer hopefully

bronze nexus
#

in other news, paralyzer is becoming popular on supreme isthmus to assist both seas on defense
if it hits, a single shot can stun 3-4 battleship which is gg

wicked lichen
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they're OP vs navy, yes (but what isn't)

lucid thistle
#

i've killed cruisers with fiends...

whole hinge
# bronze nexus in other news, paralyzer is becoming popular on supreme isthmus to assist both s...

paralyzer could create an emp field for like 5 seconds that doesnt instantly slow anything but deals emp damage overtime so very meaty units dont get stunned in 1 second but take a few seconds inside the emp field. So you might be able to maneuver away or at least dont get stunned for the full 20 seconds when your unit is very meaty. So it should still work against buildings and lower tier units.

bronze nexus
#

maybe make the thor missile that
the paralyzer is a bit more expensive and limited

stray matrix
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Paralyzer is one of those toolkit items Armada has that is grossly broken but nobody notices or cares because Armada has so many other broken things to use

sturdy birch
bronze nexus
#

yep. the actual missile is pretty expensive and risk reward but the range is op
range means the porc your build covers squared more area

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and it's safer to pushes than tac nke

wicked lichen
winter meadow
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tac nukes are there just to scare the living shit out of everyone with the insane announcement when it's discovered

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"TACTICAL MISSILE LAUNCHER DETECTED!"

proven zephyr
grim sapphire
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By 0.5, do you by chance mean ~15?

proven zephyr
sturdy birch
# grim sapphire By 0.5, do you by chance mean ~15?

Yeah, it's 0.5 seconds because you're given the warning the instant the missile appears in LoS, so it's been launched already and is about to hit you. :3c I don't think you can react in time to dodge, especially if you don't know where it's aimed.

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To be fair, if it's aimed at the boom geo right next to you, I don't think dodging is going to save you.

keen walrus
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this was quite funny

image.png image.png
grim sapphire
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Emp rework literally has 2 bugs, and both are purely cosmetic

keen walrus
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he was (unknowingly) referring to the base game's emp as buggy
and it made me giggle quite hard

grim sapphire
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Yeah, just wanted to point out that calling it buggy would've been a massive overstatement even if emp rework had been on

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Major parts of vanilla's balance have developed around broken code for emp, so...

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The global cap for max time things could be stunned didn't apply to buildings, which is why 2 emp silos can permastun a building, and why there's plenty of time to aim a nuke after spybotting an antinuke, among many other interactions

wicked lichen
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observer bias in action

turbid pebble
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today i noticed the animation bug is present without rework but it only last for like half a second

wicked lichen
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it'll be ~15 frames

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guessing that's the update time

wicked lichen
#

the other is also fixable but is Black Magic, and also needs the decay rate finalised

celest lotus
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Maybe such things should be changed regardless of whether rework is on or off

grim sapphire
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hornet already fixed the building max emp issue and turned it into a feature toggled on by default to maintain existing interactions

grim sapphire
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there's not much of a list of bugs to compile, at this point just frustration that the code making emp work is a bizarre house of cards which functions around a large set of assumptions which make basically any adjustments related to the mechanic, whether it's even for bar or some other spring game, quite convoluted, if possible at all

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aside from what was already repaired/turned into a feature, it works almost entirely as it should in vanilla bar from a technical standpoint, it's just...fragile and confusing

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i'm certainly curious whether ptaq discovered a new bug in that match though

languid raft
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There at least 8 gadgets dealing with paralysis/stun effects. These should be merged into one imo.

luarules\gadgets\unit_stun_control.lua
luarules\gadgets\unit_stun_script.lua
luarules\gadgets\unit_stun_storage.lua
luarules\gadgets\unit_onlytargetempable.lua
luarules\gadgets\unit_paralyze_damage_limit.lua
luarules\gadgets\unit_paralyze_damage_multiplier.lua
luarules\gadgets\unit_paralyze_on_off.lua
luarules\gadgets\unit_timeslow.lua

vague void
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Or unify the naming convention

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Because we all love maintaining gigantic monolithic files

hazy zinc
languid raft
frosty badger
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The Abductors need to be reworked.
They are instastunning t3s, the meta has now just shifted from stilettoes to abductors

wicked lichen
#

that took long enough. yes, next version considers that

grim sapphire
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Weird that the meta didn't shift when people tried that with abductors months ago

turbid pebble
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we knew about it first day but it's no good to be telling to everyone something is broken
plus shuriken also so broken so it wasn't mandatory to make abductors unless you were arm

grim sapphire
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First few weeks abductors repeatedly died en masse accomplishing little or nothing, at least in the matches i was present for

turbid pebble
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abductors were super op against t3 from day one but only versus t3 coz of the long cooldown but atleast they die to figs really fast so it wasn't 100% broken

grim sapphire
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Platys and mbt were both trying to make it work repeatedly and just weren't getting results

turbid pebble
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i mean with emp rework

grim sapphire
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Ah

turbid pebble
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yeah yeah they kinda balanced in base game

grim sapphire
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Hopefully emp rework next version can be out soon. Brief summary is "it nerfs most emp very substantially in general"

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Will add abductor to the list of extra specific things to put under the magnifying glass

toxic bane
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Now they we've moved to uniformly nerfing what air can do....any thoughts around if that is a good thing?

ivory axle
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Everything that isn't EMP (and even EMP, just not to such a ridiculous extent), for example: bombing, scouting, anti-naval support...

grim sapphire
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Nerfing everything relative to live emp rework. Not necessarily relative to vanilla. Live emp rework just severely undervalues the debuffs added by emp rework

frosty badger
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CC in any game is broken, expecially if it stunlocks

bronze nexus
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It's very good yes

frosty badger
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people dont understand how much of a debuff "cant move, cant shoot" is

bronze nexus
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Esp at higher lvs where people will respond and then you get wreck

sturdy birch
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I miss EMP rework because 90% of the EMP in this game is extremely stupid. Spy bots are op on live, they can stun units that have like 75%-90% EMP resist for almost 20 seconds, they make spiders look like they don't have any resist at all.

And I have no idea why that's acceptable to OP lobby, but if shuris do anything to Razorbacks then they're too op. Then someone forgets release candidates so Stilettos are OP again.

hazy zinc
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just an idea:

could / should the emp resist have an inpact on the EMPed time?
Normal EMP-Time 20sec. EMP resist 90% -> 2sec? (that seems too stronk)
Next solution
Normal EMP-Time 20sec. EMP resist 90% -> 50% EMP-Time is subject to the EMP resist so 50%+50%*90% = 55% EMP-Time -> 11sec sec

grim sapphire
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emp resist already does this in rework, but with a different formula

wicked lichen
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will try to get next edition out soon, been busy with other game aspects

hazy zinc
wicked lichen
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it's subtle so the user doesn't really notice other than it 'doesn't feel wrong'

hazy zinc
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What is the formula?
You already know I love numbers 😉

wicked lichen
#

will look it up later, in the middle of things atm

mental olive
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In the EMP rework, has anything been done (directly or indirectly) to the EMP strength of the Abductor? That thing can two-shot stun a Demon, which seemed stupid strong to so easily stun an expensive T3 unit like that. Ran into it for the first time yesterday and wasn't expecting my Demons to be so easily countered by transport ships. Have you guys considered tuning that down at all in the EMP rework mod? As is they can just stun expensive units and if they're not too heavy, steal and eat them as well for a cheap price. Not sure how easily they die to Marauders, but surprised I don't see them counter raiding units more often with EMP that powerful and 14x the health of a Shuriken to not immediately die to a little AA.

grim sapphire
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Damage untouched relative to vanilla in live emp rework because nobody was spamming them until long after the most recent update to rework. Brought down to a more reasonable value in next version, whenever next version actually is finished

wicked lichen
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that was to let them still perform the 'abducting' role in that rare niche, and it was essentially never used as such (still rarely is but people at least remember it exists now)

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demons are also huge and as such take all of the abductor beam dps, most smaller targets actually waste most of the damage, they're very poor shots

grim sapphire
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gunship fidgeting+long beam duration and whatnot

bronze nexus
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can the beam made to apply one time damage to everything in the beam?

grim sapphire
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To my knowledge? No, but it at least always starts on-target, and beam duration can be reduced...plus i'm pretty sure it 1shot stuns anything it would want to abduct reliably enough even with half damage, aside from needing >1 for mammoths, which seems fair

torpid lodge
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Can't we all agree the game would be boring if it always came down to 'whoever has the better eco wins?' These units are a necessity for game health, and more and more I feel like the devs just kind of stumbled into this situation rather than intentionally designed this. Which, is a little sad because I wish the good parts of the current iteration of the spy bot were more identifiable to both the devs and the overall playerbase.

#

In all of these reworks and balance packs, the opinions of those with thousands of hours in this and similar games seem to be underrepresented. I think this should be addressed before there's major redesigns in this game.

grim sapphire
torpid lodge
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These threads are filled with hyperbole like this: #1192338498989068339 message , good luck managing anything productive when no one agrees on anything. It's almost like we should be making small tweaks and see how they perform in a live environment instead of redesigning entire systems from the groundup while (unintentionally) excluding people who don't like the reworks from your data (because they don't play with them enabled) .

#

If we all approached these discussions with a more tentative mindset, I think we get a lot more done.

wicked lichen
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where applicable that is what I do, as seen in balance pack, but in some cases a clean slate reinterpretation / 'how it would have been balanced if it COULD have been more granular', is the only solution. the way the vanilla EMP is handled basically forces all or nothing, there is no nuance or interactivity possible, beyond stunned or not, and then your unit just sits there waiting to die.

And some particular ambassadors of that were undeniably OP and ruining games, stopping pretty much anything with minimal counterplay possible in enemy territory, at least without potentially insane cost in supporting figs.

torpid lodge
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Good work 👍

north mural
bronze nexus
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abductor is dumb

#

why should a 420 converted metal aircraft be able to perma stun a 1k aa ship

#

should change it to a single target pulse beam maybe with modest aoe

#

it being a sweeping laser makes it have crazy emp against fatter targets and makes it chaotic how much emp dmg a unit will take

#

in vanilla 1 abductor can do about 10k emp dmg (?) to a larger target
that's enough to almost emp a battleship 1 hit or demon in 2 hits

wicked lichen
#

sweeping beam damage types are very inconsistent yes

#

cataphract for example suffers greatly

bronze nexus
#

it does look mildly cool but yeah practical issues

bronze nexus
#

should make a list of how much emp% dmg / how many shruiken take to stun various units. with emp rework on

wicked lichen
#

thats exactly what I'm trying to automate in some way, batch repeatable testing

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initial idea is for EMP rework but it would also be useful for other game balancing tbh

bronze nexus
# 
Trasher: 4 shruiken can stun it with 1 loss. With 3 shruiken you take 2 losses.  7 shruiken can stun 2 trashers with 2-3 losses.
Hovercraft aa: 4 shruiken can stun it with 1 loss. 7 shruiken can stun 2 with 2-3 losses
Nettle: 4 shruiken can stun it taking 2 losses
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7 shruiken cost: 406 9100 14490
2 sweepers cost: 500 9400 7300

#

2 sweepers cost similiar amount as 7 shruikens yet as dedicated aa units they get BODIED

wicked lichen
#

amphib AA I am rapidly reaching the conclusion should have amphib-tier emp resistance

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not least as it helps provide a mobile counter that isn't either reliant on your air, or reliant on nerfing flying emp into the ground (as it has legit need to exist in game, to some extent)

toxic bane
#

I will say...this sounds like it was done in a perfect scenario. Also the amphib units need to be a bit more expensive ....because they are amphib. Not sure what it should be in this case though

bronze nexus
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they should be able to overwhelm it with a lot of shruiken which is then vunerable to enemy figs

#

but like a pack of shruiken incidentally can deal with hover aa is dumb. If you have a nearby ground force it's free metal

bronze nexus
#

shruiken get flanking dmg too, does a lot against fatter targets

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re: @solemn tiger if the enemy navy has 2-3 herring, you can coordinate with your navy player, raid their shipyard and stun any static d

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shuriken can let you punch a comdrop through a nettle
just a super versatile unit, that scales with team coordination

wicked lichen
bronze nexus
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Justa's arguing that air can't fight directly cost effectively against a navy player who builds safe amounts of aa, without accounting for how much utility/value that unit has in other places

#

a torp bomber in a single sea, now that is a dedicated sea unit. it's useless outside the sea. not the case for nuke bomber and shruiken

hardy mountain
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the speed on the shuri is too high should go 280 -) 220 -also the stiletto is worse than abductor so differentiating roles of those two should happen

bronze nexus
#

It seems like shruiken with emp rework are pretty fair against high hp targets like stouts and t1 boats

#

they are very very effective against lower hp raiders and particularly LLT and static without aa cover

hardy mountain
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emp rework would be better if more drastic nerf to general emp dmg- thats why i dont use emp rework right now lol

bronze nexus
#

it really depends how much value you can get with the initial shruiken usage and how strong your opponent air is. also friendly aa to retreat to is OP af, might even bait enemy air to throw a few figs

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damn they are so good against llts, 2 shots disable, 3 shots full stun. if you can coordinate with your ally, they runby 10 grunts and you stun the llt holy

wicked lichen
#

but the mechanic change itself is a big difference, eg you need 1 shuri a unit to properly stun it now, they can't flit about constantly tapping multiple units back to full stun

#

next version of emp rework will likely have less game impact of EMP overall, but, that might cause other issues in turn, eg core being weaker as their stuff is slow and sometimes relies on shuri to catch things

#

I'm compiling more benchmark tests atm, will get cooking after that

candid harbor
#

I do really like the idea of the emp rework and unfortunately I haven't really been able to play many games with it enabled. With that said, I know it's niche, but could the emp-antinuke interaction be made to be roughly as consistent in vanilla? it would just feel really bad to get and anti emp and not get the nuke off due to that specific interaction not being so linear (which imo it should be)

wicked lichen
#

it should be exactly as consistent, it's one of the main calibration tests I use

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only time it might not be is if the spybot isn't close enough to the anti

candid harbor
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ya that's what I mean, there are times that people will build anti and just build like, for example energy converters around it (bad idea but it happens lmao) and in vanilla you can still get the emp ez but without knowing exactly how the interaction is going to pan out with emp rework, imo it's just not worth taking the risk to try to get it even if it would still probably work

bronze nexus
#

I think you always get full bar it's just the timing is stricter since only 11 seconds of full disable

wicked lichen
#

also the anti won't fire until 50% charge remaining

#

people do sometimes forget that and think the 'full stun' window is all that matters

#

you can also get a bit more time by stunning after you give the nuke launch command, rather than first

#

usually only relevant on very long maps though

bronze nexus
#

How does 100%emp stun duration work? For like emp launcher and spybot is it also 1 second?

#

If so that means that stunning lab and Nanos isn't effective anymore

wicked lichen
#

no, only shuri have that low a cap

bronze nexus
#

is emp past full bar also a "bar" that is filled?

wicked lichen
#

generally burst / suicide sources have a longer cap, always been the case in BAR

bronze nexus
#

yep

wicked lichen
#

anything continuous in rework though, is much lower cap than usual

wicked lichen
bronze nexus
#

do you know the drain time from 100-0 of vanilla emp?

wicked lichen
#

you'll have to stopwatch it for comparison, also note the shown time in seconds isn't right

bronze nexus
wicked lichen
#

yup, that's calculated by something assuming a fixed decay value iirc, which isn't correct

#

not part of my code, and unsure it can be changed while gated

bronze nexus
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emp rework timer is actually half what is shown. current max stun is 20 seconds

toxic bane
#

Bit curious, has anyone noticed that emp bombers are useless now? Or just me. I havent seen them used to any effect after nerf. When they do get made I just kill them to prevent them from doing more nothing. Is their non-use the intent?

hardy mountain
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Yeah they weak need buff

wicked lichen
#

in rework or vanilla?

hardy mountain
#

Idk the difference yet lol

toxic bane
#

In rework

wicked lichen
#

they're area suppression, you need a lot to do a full lockdown of everything under them, as you should
single targets abductors will work better for

#

(this is one of the areas that could benefit from real unit comparisions)

toxic bane
#

Ya that theory makes sense..however no one uses them so im still confused. Maybe make attack weaker and radius wider for more specialization?

wicked lichen
#

that works in small numbers of them, but superlate game anything with aoe that wide, with enough of them can oppress -wildly-

toxic bane
#

Would an intended scenario be basically applying a small emp debuff to a large area? Think ball of pawns or something

bronze nexus
#

well they got nerfed from 5 bombs to what, 3?

wicked lichen
#

they're to debuff rather than halt, yes, same argument as against shuriken, they're too good at 'unleaking'
3 bombs, but wider aoe/spread

toxic bane
#

I think 3 and they never hit anything.

bronze nexus
#

stilleto is less for leak and more about wrecking balls

wicked lichen
#

they should hit the area under them well enough .-.

toxic bane
#

They also have terrible maneuverability

wicked lichen
toxic bane
#

Alrighty, well ill try to find a scenario to use them in or something and see

wicked lichen
bronze nexus
#

i dunno i haven't seen them made so can't speak of their performance

toxic bane
#

I've just killed a small number of them while they were trying to be useful and I felt bad

bronze nexus
#

old stilleto no one is arguing that shit was ridiculous. old stilleto one stilleto could stun a control group of bulls

toxic bane
#

It was quite strong

bronze nexus
#

but stilleto unit nerf + emp rework is different.

toxic bane
#

Ah hmm, I thought it was the same option

bronze nexus
#

yeah it is, stilleto the only unit that got nerfed as well tho

wicked lichen
candid harbor
#

I've used em occasionally in vanilla and they're alright, certainly much less effective then before but they still do basically the same thing. One of these days I would like to try using them to emp static aa in a bombing run since they have so much hp now, but I haven't played much recently

wicked lichen
solemn tiger
#

The problem with stiletto now is the price and bp cost. With emp rework on they just do way too little for the price you pay, the only time i use them is for late game static aa emp so my bombers could pass. But they just super expensive and poor manouverability to emp raiding units properly. You can sometimes use 1 on clumped up ships to hel your sea but thats about it

solemn tiger
bronze nexus
#

just line move forward then attack

mild ridge
solemn tiger
# bronze nexus just line move forward then attack

the problem is you want to emp the aa first, so if u engage a small fleet with 1-2 aa ships you wanna focus them first or you just die so even if you line command come in and then still attack 1 ship they clump up and u lose 1-3 shuris to single aa shot depending on the angles and where the other ships are

wicked lichen
#

shuri are glass cannon really, makes them hard to balance especially at all skill levels

wicked lichen
unreal pier
#

i rly havent read this tread much and know what has been talked earlier but if intent is balance/nerf emp then if target is constantly (gets to stunned state) empd then it will stay that way as long as it keep being empd and if it stop (timer runs out) just instantly drop emp to zero and need to start it all over.

bronze nexus