Proposal for adjusting early game meta (1v1, 2v2)

[real goblet]

Edit: after some testing I think the LLT changes and eco hp changes should be addressed at two seperate times so I've updated the post to reflect this

Goal

Make the early game more accessible to new players, and decrease the chances of games stalling out or being outright won from excessive earlygame scout harass.

Proposed changes

I'm just going to quickly detail the stats I propose changing with a brief explanation here. I have a much longer and throughout writeup below for more details.
Finally I included a tweak unit + tweak def script below to test out these proposed changes so you can give feedback from real games.

All proposed changes are just that proposed, final numbers/adjustments should probably be made after much more testing

These changes prevent run-by kills from single scout/light units
For reference this still only puts their health at around half a thug HP wise.

Windmill

This will also prevent new players from accidently making death chains on accident

HP x3 ~600HP

Metal Extractor (base)

HP x3 ~600HP

Solar

Solar is actually much tanker then windmills with its closed armor
This adjustment is to keep some of the solar's innate safety value vs windmill

HP x1.75 ~600HP ~1200EHP

Adv Solar

This keeps Adv Solar tank approximately inline with the cost compared to solar

HP x1.7 ~2000HP ~2200EHP

While I can think of plenty more changes and have no doubt that there could be more added to this list, this is a good basis to start with.
...

How to Install

When making a lobby, select the Adv option menu, there go to the experimental tap, and copy the text in the unit def and unit tweak sections here, to the sections in the client.

Tweak Units

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One final note here, the changes do not include legion or naval currently. While they also might need adjusted the main focus is for land 1v1/2v2, and this keeps the unit defs small.
...

Feedback

I would really any playtest feedback, I've gotten play experience from my group with pretty positive results, and so I'd like to open this up to the community to get more feedback.

I'm mostly interested in how these changes feel, and if they made your average games longer.
The goal is to decrease the chance that your game ends from a couple of scouts, while also preventing heavy turtling from llt spam.
This should shift the average game length to a more even distribution.

I am also interested in the LLT change. I understand that it plays a pretty big role in the game, and I'm on the fence if the power should be moved to the hlt turrets (beamer and twin guard).

While these changes are meant for 1v1 or 2v2 sized lobbies, I could also see this effecting large team games. I'm skeptical that anything here would throw off the blance of 8v8's but if you get a change let me know!

[paper halo]

as a 1v1 player, I like these changes though I don't know how these changes would affect larger team games

I too feel the gripe of the heavy snowball of losing eco to early mass scouts, as a newer player who's focusing on 1v1 gameplay

[meager inlet]

While interesting I wouldn’t want this for the base game. 1v1 balance has been honed over a long period of time. Skill is rewarded in the early game by utilising the most flimsy of units: the scout.
Chaining buildings means you reward the aggressive player over the over ecoer.
Llts are the only ground turret the commander can build. He needs it to compush or else be overwhelmed

[kindred lance]

broadly decent, llt is still needed though
the other thing is simply nerf scout/tick damage, their dps for metal cost is far and away best in the game, and it's insane
that would also help reduce them being used as much late game spam streams, which is another problem

[meager inlet]

Light units all beat scouts

[real goblet]

I feel that right now I've seen a dispropotionate ammount of 1v1/2v2 games, begin and end with scouts. While I appreciate the harass, I dont belive most people start playing 1v1 or start playing 1v1 for the scout micro, and its especially frustrating to never get to the real meat of the game starting with t1 land armies.

The com not having a turret definately would need to be addressed. Currently the LLT and HLT step on eachothers toes quite a bit adding a fair amount of bloat. I think an adjusted form of the HLT might be a good standin for both of them, while still preventing mass spam.

[kindred lance]

only if they can catch them

[meager inlet]

If you move towards the enemy base they have to catch you

[real goblet]

With these changes TTK on mex/eco would change from something like 3 seconds for 50m investment to around 8-9, which gives some very needed counterplay. Many units currently do a sort of run-by of mex/windmills where they never actually have to stop to kill it. Meaning you really cant catch some units no matter what you do.

[kindred lance]

so solution to OP unit is also spam OP unit and hope they send all the OP units to catch yours? O.o

[solemn sedge]

if people lose to scouts then they'll lose to any other splitted army, i don't see what's the point

[meager inlet]

Using the lightest of units is an expression of skill. They die to almost anything else

[kindred lance]

speed it occurs, what point in the game. scouts can literally decide rest of game before a player even has a con out sometimes, if wind stalled or something

[dull vessel]

skill issue

[solemn sedge]

scouts have to travel across the map, you literally can't have less units than your enemy

[real goblet]

The problem isn't the DPS needed to kill the units, its the often finiky micro of dealing with units that you physically cannot catch. Undefended mex/eco will still die pretty easily even with this buff, this just offers some sort of counterplay from the defending player.

[meager inlet]

If you let the enemy run through your undefended mexes or winds you ought to lose them. It’s about scouting, anticipating and manoeuvring

[kindred lance]

have you seen the size of 1v1 maps? it's a war in a shoebox. It's also units at given point, which race in silly quick, outrun anything able to quickly kill them, and wreck your econ all the while

[solemn sedge]

yes i play 1v1 and quite succesfully

[dull vessel]

remember, llt exists (at least in the only real true game)

[solemn sedge]

the only map on my mind that is literally scout wars is great divide, because this one is actually really small

[kindred lance]

so you're indoctrinated into scout juggling being a normal and good thing, with silly fragile econ that a unit of basically any type can not far off oneshot. that doesn't make it good gameplay.

[dull vessel]

ur tweaks directed to give scouts more opportunities

[meager inlet]

On the one hand we have people complaining that early game doesn’t have enough action and want to speed it up and now we have this discussion here wanting to slow everything down considerably

[real goblet]

Yeah but I feel the meta of build LLT everywhere is also not very healthy for the game. LLT is pretty much required currently for dealing with scout harass.

[kindred lance]

scouts should be scouts; intel units, not assassins

[dull vessel]

u want to add antiswarm turret and make llt weaker?

[solemn sedge]

i don't juggle with scouts, i put a few units stronger than scouts defending and go with my business

[meager inlet]

Scouts have many roles, one of them is picking off undefended buildings another is spam

[real goblet]

LLT locking down sections of the map actually has a pretty big factor in how slow the early game is.

[dull vessel]

yeah, so ez to counter them. Turtle style vs agressive style

[meager inlet]

If you build too many llts you won’t have enough units or you expand too slow

[solemn sedge]

i'd like to see how people with this modoption die to literally anything else, especially without llts

[dull vessel]

yep
we will see more fleas deathball killing commander

[solemn sedge]

actually because you don't have llts you can just mass like 15 ticks and really destroy your enemy early

[meager inlet]

Grunts and pawns make short work of ticks

[dull vessel]

so these changes will add more opportunities to scouts as i have said before

[solemn sedge]

grunts and pawns are slower, if you can find a weak spot then would be a gg
would work every time at least vs noobs

[meager inlet]

Build exploiters if you want to expand without dealing with the harassment

[dull vessel]

it's all about style and map.
in fact u don't want naked expand on CCR in all ways for example

[solemn sedge]

yeah without llts exploiters would be super imba

[real goblet]

They would be pretty similar health an dps wise to a HLT + mex still

[solemn sedge]

i don't see you suggested any changes to exploiters? they have same dps as llt and cost just a bit more than mex+llt

[real goblet]

The idea would be to replace large spam of LLT everywhere with maybe a few HLT turrets in chokepoints or strategic positions, while beefier eco would allow actual response from the defending player since you would have to stop to attack eco instead of simply running and gunning, even without llt.

[solemn sedge]

hlts are shit, especially against lots of small units

[real goblet]

I left out the exploiter because its already pretty pricey. I dont really think its too optimal to spam them, 250m vs 90 + 50 for mex and llt for very similar total HP and dps.

[meager inlet]

High hp eco would mean raids would be less successful in general, promoting sim city gameplay

[solemn sedge]

exploiters have their use, they cost less buildpower and add more hp to the mex

[paper halo]

lol it wouldn't, currently eco is paper thin, game would be more balanced if eco had more hp

[real goblet]

High hp is definately relative, an army of units will still kill eco almost instantly, this really only would stop small groups of one or two units.

I might be using HLT wrong, I mean beamer/twinguard, they have pretty similar dps/hp/range to the LLT, but double the cost and some bonus stats.

[dull vessel]

currently game is balanced good

adding something like antiswarm turret like in zk will kill scouts at all imo,
now we have llts that can be easily beated by units other than scouts and in equal resources cost they can beat scouts

[meager inlet]

Game is balanced so that if you overeco you die

[solemn sedge]

beamers and twinguards aren't cheap and only constructors can build them

[dull vessel]

porc is really strong, since that eco is better

[meager inlet]

It rewards the aggressive player

[real goblet]

I guess I should clarify that I think the game is currently "balanced" but I dont really think that its a healthy balance that attracts players to the game.

[meager inlet]

What would attract players? Imo easy to learn but hard to master with a high skill ceiling meets that criteria

[dull vessel]

so u think killing eco and commander with scouts only is the "healthy balance"? XD

just try to play without llts at all
since that nothing can catch scouts

[real goblet]

The paper thin eco is a pretty big deterrent from what I've seen. Many new players are interested in land battles/map control, but you can pretty easily end a game with scouts currently, and totally prevent that part of the game from every happening.

[meager inlet]

The game should be competitive to attract high visibility players. If you are getting killed by scouts build light units and station them around your mexes

[solemn sedge]

no llt is actually a pro strat, so noobs will start to play like randy right off the bat

[meager inlet]

Also perhaps new players shouldn’t be pitted in a 1v1 against high level pros

[real goblet]

As for the commander I think adding the beamer, and maybe doing some adjustments there would probably solve that. The cost isnt really all that different 90 vs 190, which means for every one beamer you would have two LLT. Overall dps would also be pretty similar, the big difference being the cost for building one, and the simplification of having one unit to fill that very similar role instead of two.

[solemn sedge]

yeah, how many of actual noobs would attempt to scout rush anyway?

[meager inlet]

Matchmaking could help here to improve new player experience

[real goblet]

I don't think these changes would make the game uncompetitive, the early scout rush is a pretty unique thing for this game, and often is has a ton of impact or no impact at all.

[solemn sedge]

any rts has rushes

[dull vessel]

no llt is actually hard, especially on CCR

[real goblet]

I see even pretty high OS players fall victim to scouts, or many people in 30+ never make it past the early eco phase because of how oppressive small groups of units can be. While the relative HP increase is pretty big, overall HP is still pretty tiny, and is still far below many T1 units.

[solemn sedge]

well i actually tried it once or twice, somewhat doable but probably not worth it

who are these 30+ people who get destroyed by scouts in 1v1

[real goblet]

All RTS games have rushes, but take like starcraft for example, an equivelent early harass might be a reaper unit, it would take nearly 30 seconds for the reaper to kill 25% of your early eco. While in this game a pawn can kill almost 100% of your power in a few.

[dull vessel]

guess it's their fackup

[solemn sedge]

starcraft literally has zerg rush

[dull vessel]

starcraft isn't the game that we should compare to bar

at first starcraft has different eco system

[waxen kernel]

I think thats a good thing- being able to lose makes the different sections of the game important. If the early game was just build selection then we might as well just skip it and save everyone five minutes.
With that said, scout harrass takes a much lower build investment than pressure builds in other rts games and has a much higher impact

[solemn sedge]

hell starcraft even has cannon rushes

[real goblet]

And if you dont scout it then you should probably die to it. Its really hard to scout literal scouts in this game.

I used starcraft since its a pretty high profile RTS and has a pretty healthy scene.
A more direct comparison might be supreme commander where early eco has a TTK of 20 seconds.

[solemn sedge]

that thread actually reminds me about cannon rush whining, while people with brain cells don't have a problem with it

[dull vessel]

u literally can spam anything in starcraft and still win

[real goblet]

The difference here is there isn't all that much counterplay. The fastest units in the game can easily walk around your line, go into a radar dead zone, or simple outspeed your units. If you dont happen to have a pawn walking off the factory at the right moment, accidently microed too many to the frontlines, or misplaced a llt you can be punished pretty hard. Enough to entirely reset the game.

[waxen kernel]

On a related note, from a low level perspective coming from starcraft, I think a major problem with what makes bar games slow isn’t that LLT are too good, but that radar is.
Vision is a very important part of map control and overall strategy, and radar (coupled with cheap llt spam), to a large extent, eliminates that. Scouts on the map spotting encourage dynamic and aggressive play as players are forced to jostle around vision, and creates mind games around rotations and alternate attack angles.

[solemn sedge]

you always play same or slightly different factions, there is always a counterplay, the dumbest one is just mirroring your opponent

[meager inlet]

If a few scouts win your opponent the game get one single laser and spread your buildings

[solemn sedge]

how about a 1v1 with this modoption
i suggest ship vs sabu

[waxen kernel]

Also, as a sc2 player, I find the comparison to 12pool and cannon rushes disingenuous. Although they also require good micro to respond to, cheeses or early pressure in sc2 require a large cut to your economy that requires you deal a lot of damage to stay in the game, and aren’t a part of standard build orders.

[real goblet]

But it shouldn't really be a feature in the firstplace, just make the system a little fool proof, and focus attention on something else. T1 army micro, positioning units, stuff like that. Even with literally 3x health on mex you can easily pick them off with scouts still.

[dull vessel]

xd, it will be ended in 1 min

[real goblet]

Thats a pretty generous ammount of time

[meager inlet]

Mexes are a representation of map control. If you have nothing else there you should lose the mex

[waxen kernel]

Also, terrain in reaper rushes make them a much less frustrating experience, since there are only two positions they’ll engage from- jump ledge into the main, and front of the natural.
Cannon rushes even moreso, since they’re literally static.
Instead of there being a fragile frontline, there’s a continuity of how deep into controlled territory you are.

[real goblet]

I agree, but I don't think they have to be 200hp to really represent that, the only thing 200hp mex really show is that you have an area that is so secure even scouts cant get in.

[solemn sedge]

well yeah but maybe they'll find something else to complain about

[real goblet]

Yeah its a pretty different game for how quickly you can do eco damage, and how hard it is to cover all sides especially with how ticks can litterally walk around the edges of some maps.

[solemn sedge]

biggest mystery so far is how these changes combined make ticks weaker and not stronger
maybe it's just outside of my capacity to comprehend

[real goblet]

The only possible buff to tick would be removed LLT, but there is a very similar turret already in the game that covers that role.
Like I stated in the original post, there would definately be a power vacuum there, either the beamer/twinguard would need a buff to make them more valuable, or maybe the com could get some buffs to better set them up. Or with testing neither would be required.

[solemn sedge]

ah yes, very similar way more expensive turrets, i'd like to put a beamer next to each of my mex

[real goblet]

The HP buff pretty heavily nerfs small groups of fast units by stopping them from being able to decimate eco before you can respond. Those extra 3-6 seconds is enough to start setting units to head towards the incoming scouts, begin building new eco somewhere else in preparation for the loss, or even reclaiming ticks/grunts.

The beamer is still a pretty cheap unit, its less easy to spam lines of them but they have the value and cost of nearly two llt. Some of your mex would have to be undefended, which is why I say this would add action to the early game, just action that gives a mex or two advantage, not action that ends the game.

[solemn sedge]

those micro gods who can do all of that in 3-6 seconds probably don't have any problem actually covering their ass beforehand

[real goblet]

Killing a mex with the proposed changes gives you about 10 seconds of reaction time, including time of seeing the unit first enter visual range you actually have a perfectly reasonable amount of time to react. I'd recommend giving the modoptions a try, it makes the early game a lot smoother in my opinion.

[solemn sedge]

so do you wanna play 1v1s now
i won't play myself though, my mouse barely works

[real goblet]

I mean I'd love to see a sabutai game with these changes, but I doubt I'll really get anything from me vs him. I'm pretty confident sabutai could comfortably beat me even if I had +200 lol.

[solemn sedge]

i can find someone else

though wasn't the point just that ticks won't kill you in a minute

[real goblet]

I mean if you want to find people to test out the mod options then that would be wonderful.

Ticks trade pretty poorly into pawns/grunts. Their main harass advantage is being able to run in, kill something, and then escape before you can respond or catch up. With virtually no TTK on eco, you usually cant even respond with your own ticks in time.

Removing LLT isnt even the only option, another possibility would be increasing its cost and value a little to decrease how much people spam it. But then It would really be stepping on the beamer's toes.

[solemn sedge]

actually i think my mouse is good enough to play 1v1 with you right now

[meager inlet]

I can play now. Let’s go

@real goblet what’s your ingame name? Please open a lobby

[solemn sedge]

well sabutai just showed that if you have skill issue you are gonna die to any units

[meager inlet]

Having played these tweakdefs I must say that yes it makes the game slower but also less interesting. It removes risk reward choices and at this skill level the outcome was the same

[real goblet]

I'd still like to see players of similar skill level try them out. I think for now the eco changes were a pretty big success, but without a clear change for addressing the LLT vacuum It should be left out for now. I've updated the OP to reflect that change, thanks for you're testing input sabutai.

[solemn sedge]

how was any of it success, you still died to relatively few units, it at most made the game more boring like sabutai said

[real goblet]

It achieved the goals set out above? Scout harass is possible just not simply unreactable. There isnt too much to learn from me v sabutai. It would be boring with vanilla settings

[solemn sedge]

your goal was to not die earlygame, and you still died to other units
if wouldn't have mattered if those were scouts or not

[real goblet]

No my goal was to not die to single units early game. A wave of pawns is fair game

[solemn sedge]

that was barely a wave

you still lost your solars to 1-2 pawns

[real goblet]

The issue is a single pawn or scout making it around or through your line currently can end the game, usually pretty early on, which isn't really fun for anyone. Being unable to fend off pawns from all directions, thats just skill issue, cant balance that.

[meager inlet]

You wouldn’t die to a single scout if you built a laser or had a single unit in your base. You’re just moving everything back a minute

[warm sage]

making eco units tankier would discourage raiding, but this is a game where we reward the player for aggression, tanky eco is counter intuitive to the current paradigm

[kindred lance]

aggression is one thing, losing the game (or being set up to) because literally the cheapest and fastest unit in the game (with highest dps for metal cost?) managed to zip by somewhere, is something else

[cedar tulip]

Well, if you kill a tick after it kills a mex and it is right by your commander so you can rebuild quickly, on a 2.0 mex, you get 30 m from the mex wreck and opponent paid 17 for the tick. If it takes 5 seconds to rebuild, lost 10 metal and all in all it is a loss of about 13 metal for you

That's usually not game ending and your opponent risks losing 17 metal in the process

[torn swan]

Its less the mex being destroyed and losing that metal. The issue that tends to expand on this is that its a First strike effect. This throws off the defending players plans and potentially loses them their constructor which is a bigger multiplier of how long those mexes are down.
If enough damage is done it can throw back the player by multiple minuites.

[meager inlet]

Get a radar and a military unit and your mex won’t die. If you can’t micro get a laser

[real goblet]

I'm currently working on getting data for this to better show my point.

To restate the problem, from what I've observed, there seems to be a large number of games that end within 3-6 minutes due almost entirely to early raiding. This comes from the pretty odd meta that currently defines the earlygame. There are basically two options you have, either try to defend with units or spam LLT on every single one of your extractors/eco. This is not entirely a noob issue either, It seems to effect people mostly in the 15-30 OS range, since that's when people usually have the skill to pull off a scout harass, but not the skill to block it with unit micro. Hilariously It tends to happen less at higher OS not because they are better at blocking it, but because the two players tend to not even attempt a scout harass.

The issue is there is no other real valid option to defend your eco, you can't react to a threat approaching you, there isn't enough time to get a unit out. Many times you cant catch single units walking through your territory because they don't have to ever have to stop. They can do run-by maneuver where the extractor or eco dies before the unit leaves attack range. Many times even if eco is protected by LLT, you can hide units right against buildings, preventing the LLT from being able to even defend.

I don't think that making tankier eco would discourage raiding. Even with x3 health or more you can easily deal significant eco damage in seconds. That amount of hp will allow the other player to atleast react, send units over, or prevent you from being able to kill extractors without stopping. Currently raiding is already discouraged, because of the LLT meta, its pretty inefficient to even attempt scout harass, so many times both players just build safe eco with LLT, and then nothing happens until both sides start making an army. Some combination of less spamable LLT and tankier eco would definately help with that.

The damage calculation is usually a lot higher. The case where a tick or unit kills a mex right next to your commander, first off feels awful. Its the beginning of the game, it's right next to your commander where you'd expect your base to be safest. But like you said, its really not all that damaging, maybe 13-15 metal depending on how fast you react. This situation is more of a noob trap then anything else.

The real issue is thats a pretty rare case, usually you lose mex from the chain you're building with a constructor, usually its not a lone mex, but more like two or three. Reacting isn't really a factor because the most common situation I see is that one unit already being chased by the opponent with some units. In that case your opponent is out the cost of a pawn ~40 metal. You are down 2-3 metal extractors, and the minutes of time it took to build them. Usually this sets you back hundreds of metal, and more importantly, down a lot of BP.

The result is you're behind, you need a couple a of minutes to catch up to where you where, and are less prepared to deal with the next harass when it comes. And you can easily spiral with this, the micro needed from the opponent isn't even all that difficult, and the burden on the defender is pretty crazy.

[cedar tulip]

The burden of defense is high but the rewards for a successful hold are high too

[real goblet]

Can you explain? The reward is usually just you havent lost yet.

[cedar tulip]

You get wrecks and usually better trades

[real goblet]

I disagree, the units usually used add up to maybe 200metal at most, and with how low hp the wrecks usually die leaving nothing for the defender.

A later push, usually big enough to deal with LLT, like a large group of pawns or a few blazes usually gives better trades, but the issue I'm trying to solve here is the game often doesn't even make it to that point.

[cedar tulip]

It can be very sharp on wide open maps, but I think it is a bit better on the smaller maps. Ccr game play has become terrible lately imo.

[real goblet]

Oh yeah on open maps its definitely a worst case scenario, the point of these changes is that its pretty low impact. Usually if you kill eco later in the game, you overkill it. The biggest difference would just be against really early units, and its a pretty flexible slider to play with, so exact hp increase could be adjusted.

I think HP increase is the best since its easy to tune, and has pretty low changes past the initial couple minutes.
But other solutions could be things like

• Nerf scout/light unit stats to make them less of an issue early
• Add shutdown armor to all eco
• Add some sort of anti light unit, fast, high damage, low reload, low dps
• Increase early unit wreck hp to make defending early pushes more reward

[torn swan]

Also a tick in AoE of a exploding mex leaves nothing

[grizzled mortar]

I just want to pop in and say I think the hard counter to early scouts is just get a damn radar. I usually skip scouts completely and go for light tanks/grunts. With a radar I can almost always see the scout coming in time and head it off with my first light tank or grunt. I don't even usually build llts in the base right away because I'd rather have more units. I do ocassionally lose a mex or a wind which is annoying when the scouts outrun me but it's quick to rebuild. While I actually think a bit of an hp buff for wind/t1 mex's might be a good thing I think people just need to make sure and get radar and pay attention to dots to head off the scouts path.

[vague scarab]

This brings up a question I've been meaning to ask anybody who might know. What is the core gameplay philosophy in BAR? Do the developers wish to create a balance between playstyles, or do they want more aggressive play to always be rewarded over careful and methodical progression? Is the tacit assumption among the community and creators that aggressive play is inherently more skillful, and should therefore defeat defensive play in every reasonable instance?

I only ask this because I'm getting many different impressions from the community. While the game's website touts its strategic depth, most players I interact with both accept that aggression is inherently dominant and prefer this fact to remain the case. I personally don't think someone should be given a huge advantage because they spammed some cheap obscenely-fast units early in the game, but that's not the point of my question.

[vague scarab]

Any time I've ever scout rushed I saw their com coming for miles and now that they were out of their base I could just circle around back and blow their shit up. Basically only got stopped by either static defenses or enemy scouts.

[midnight cargo]

map control-based rts + most 1v1 and 2v2 maps being extremely open = there needs to be a way to cheaply punish greedy overexpansion

[kindred lance]

it depends who you ask. generally the longer people are playing BAR the more they think that it's all fine and well that 1 scout can level half an economy single handed
stockholm syndrome tbh

[midnight cargo]

not putting llts at every mex is a strategic decision to cut a corner in exchange for spending those resources elsewhere

[kindred lance]

sure, but llts fall off really quickly in efficiency, and if you llt everything, the player who didn't will just steamroll your front door down with that metal in tanks
you both need to and cannot afford to

[vague scarab]

I still think scouts are disproportionately deadly. I honestly don't know why they even have weapons, they're intel gatherers and dirt cheap lightning-fast ones at that.
Both factions have fast-moving T1 raider vehicles that actually require some investment risk to rush at an enemy early-game.

[kindred lance]

metal for dps, scouts/ticks are best weapons in game and it's not even close

[vague scarab]

It makes sense that lower level units have proportionally better cost efficiency to make up for their lack of other things like range, area of effect and survivability, but I don't see why scouts should even be given the ability to fight back.
They could at least pull a SupCom and make the scouts' weapons so pitiful that they can only successfully kill unarmed weak targets after an extended period of fire.

[kindred lance]

it's understandable that efficiency scales like that yes (although useless overkill wasting firepower is a problem for later units, that's a different discussion), but to that extent it's insane. as you say, scouts should have token weapons at best

[vague scarab]

It seems like the more experienced players have the micro APM and positioning knowledge to at least chase off scout rushes. IDK if it's Stockholm syndrome so much as scout rushing really only being a way to take a big steaming shit on new/casual players.

That's kinda what the OP was saying and I'm having trouble finding an argument against it. It really does just seem like a convenient way for high-APM players to rub new players' noses in their "inferiority".

[kindred lance]

that, and it's starcraft mindset. 'git gud' is not a solution to game design issues - especially when other areas of BAR expressly minimise micro busywork or twitch gameplay needed

[kindred lance]

yes, I agree, and have said so myself before, eg that scouts need nerfs and economy needs to not be made of nitroglass. T1 static is too weak for cost, too, but that's harder to buff without encouraging 'cannon rushing'

[vague scarab]

I have an unofficial balance patch (unit tweak) I play with sometimes, gives T1 defenses 50% more health and the heavy laser turrets 2x or so damage. Doesn't seem overpowered but the testing scope's been limited at best. Hard to get people to play modded games even when unranked.
'git gud' is the fastest way for anyone to get me to immediately stop taking anything they say seriously. They're basically saying "my self-esteem comes from beating people at games" and suggests a deep bias that will majorly affect their perception.

[kindred lance]

I've been debating making something similar myself, which would also boost mex HP, and lower scout/tick dps. I think it'd make for a much better game overall, with single grunt leaks being less meaningful, games would progress more
as is, so much just gets stuck in grunt jockeying phase, as there's no need to tech up & in fact doing so can kill you

[vague scarab]

I can practically hear the irritated keystrokes lol

[real goblet]

Really scout dps is only a problem for windmills/mex, units that have so little hp that it's difficult to react to the threat in time. Buildings like solar or tankier actually have a pretty fair response time to deal with threats.

The idea with this patch was that early game eco, wind and mex, is so weak that it's basically aborts the game a few minutes in, in the middle of basically the most boring phase of the game.

[sacred trench]

I like the idea of teching T1 -> T2 being a more deliberate choice, risk vs reward.

[vague scarab]

I don't want to devalue T1 play, just make scout rushing in particular less reward for its very low risk.

[kindred lance]

this is what gets me most yes. by the time you know it's there, A: your stuff has just been killed, and B: anything you have that can kill the little zoomy shit currently asset stripping you, cannot catch up to it

[real goblet]

Even with 3x hp proposed here a grunt can still kill a mex in 7 seconds or so. I don't believe that's slow enough to really stop mex raiding but it's fast enough to easily cripple someone who doesn't react quickly.

[kindred lance]

a grunt isn't as bad as it is somewhat slower, it's the speed and disproportional dps that makes scouts/ticks so OP
it would be nice to have more time to react to t1 leaks in general though, yes

[vague scarab]

Part of that is the game's scope. It's got a very up-close-and-personal map scale where scouts can usually be at an enemy base in well under 20 seconds from the time they leave the factory. Games like SupCom have the huge size of the maps themselves acting as a buffer against super early rushing.

[real goblet]

Yeah, but grunts/pawns raiding is a big part of the game, I think balancing around fair response times to those threats is a good way to deal with it. Scouts offer very similar dps per metal so changing one will effect the other.

[kindred lance]

this is the other other side to the issue; minimal defenders advantage in BAR, which is compounded again for fast units

[real goblet]

There isn't really a good equivalent to the time to kill in this in Supreme. While the time to get to a base is longer, t1 units killing a mex is something like 25+ seconds. So actually crazy amounts of time to react to eco raiding compared to the 1-2 seconds in bar.

[kindred lance]

with grunts you can usually see them on radar with enough time to react with your own, less so for outlying, but the odd leak is still depressingly crippling. scouts however are already up in your shit before you processed that something was afoot
don't get me wrong the one grunt army you see sometimes is wrong too, that level of fragility locks up the depth that BAR has, but it'd be a lot harder to balance that one out

[waxen kernel]

I think aggressive play should be promoted because it allows for more skill expression and more active play, which at least for me, translates to a more enjoyable game.

1. Aggression means more points of interaction. When players are holed up in their own base or territories, you're essentially playing two separate single player games to solve a integer optimization problem. When players are actively engaging on the map, you get many different points at which strategic (where you position your units, to optimize response times, exploiting chokes to take more favorable engagements, splitting your army for flanks), tactics (arranging your units to take the best fights, controlling what units are taking damage), and multitasking (keeping track of multiple armies at the same time) manifest themselves.
2. There's an implicit argument you're making (<careful and methodical progression>, <because they spammed some cheap obscenely-fast units>) which is that aggressive play is less "strategic", for some definition of strategic, but its really not any less strategic than playing slow. If you decide to make quick units, you're making the <decision> to <prioritize your attention> on <exploiting weak spots> in your opponents defenses.
3. The increased number of meaningful decisions that you make means that active play is more fun, because you get more game out of your time spent playing the game. I think BAR has made the conscious decision to make "macro" as low-attention as possible with streaming, cons, and repeat, because its more enjoyable to spend your time commanding battles and actually engaging in combat over a rote, linear task.
4. Circling back around to point 1, passive play is less strategic, because there's less decisions to be made. Instead of the constant questions and analysis of battle, as well as stressing your executive control, passive play really comes down to a rote integer satisfaction problem, in the question of eco and grid filling, in defense creation

[sacred trench]

Did I detect a shot across the bow of SupCom in #1? 😄

[waxen kernel]

I've never played SupCom, so probably not :p

[sacred trench]

Picture a SimCity focused version of BAR. 😅

[kindred lance]

re 2, it is less strategic. draw a circle of scouts, move them all in, magically some will probably get somewhere and do crippling damage to whatever econ they hit. the defender has to run around like a lunatic trying to catch them, while aggressor apm is minimal. it's far harder to solve than to set up, and that isn't strategy as much as mechanic abuse
it's fair to say 'that is strategy as that's the game', which is correct, but that is also just another form of 'git gud' to address game issues

[real goblet]

I don't think the current game play is unfair or that this type of aggression is unwanted, but it is misplaced. Tactics, reward, and careful control of units should be rewarded more as the game progresses, forgiving small mistakes early is pretty standard for almost all rts games. Bar seems to be pretty unique in how fast small mistakes can end your game. Scouts in undefeated land can remove minutes of progress. Single pawns sneaking in can end games that have barely started.

The idea here is that this mainly only effect the early game, basically keeping the meta past 5 minutes intact.

[kindred lance]

I think partly the experienced players also want something to spend their starcraft-forged APM on, so having some pawns to micro feels right to them

[real goblet]

I'm also pretty unconvinced that this will actually discourage raiding all that much. I'd really like to see some games between experienced players with this patch.

[waxen kernel]

There's two other things which I wanted to talk about but discord ran out of characters, and that's why is skill expression good? (subpoint: what is skill?) and should all games progress in tech?, which I'll write about if I have the time, but my position on the second boils down to "no, because in order for all stages of the game to be meaningful, things that happen at any stage in the game should have an actual chance to kill you."
For reference, I agree with Ship's idea of reducing LLT spam, which may require changes to scouts. That is, the current state of harassment locks down other avenues of game design that would promote more strategic and aggressive play.

The decision to deal crippling early game damage should be a balanced, conscious decision with risks, instead of something that every build can fit in without major changes

[vague scarab]

I appreciate the response! I would like to address a couple of your points:

1. I don't believe aggression to be inherently more or less strategic, and apologize if I implied as much. I do personally believe one shouldn't necessarily be rewarded over the other unless for a very good reason.
2. I don't believe playing defensively or more slowly and deliberately implies passivity or inattention. I think slow and steady should be able to win the race in its own right. Being defensive is only as passive as you make it, and the same is really true for aggression as you can just set some factories to endlessly pump units down a single path into your foe. Baiting your enemy into throwing away their army on an ambush or prioritizing locking down your own territory over gaining new are what I'd consider more defensive play, but far from passive.

Otherwise you make good points and I can see where you're coming from, which is all I could really hope for.

[real goblet]

I do think reworking the scouts value would also be beneficial, removing their DPS in favor of something like more vision, radar, toggable cloak (could be balanced with energy cost), or some other mechanic to give them a scout role would be really nice. I dont tend to see them much after the opening minutes.

[kindred lance]

cloak on t1 would be questionable, unless it's placed by something else (eg minelayers & cameras work okay)

[real goblet]

Sure, I was just referencing some scout mechanics from supreme there lol

[vague scarab]

I'd still use scouts for intel basically every game if they just straight-up removed their weapons.

[kindred lance]

like I said at start of topic, scouts should be scouts, not assassins

[vague scarab]

Giving something that can outrun every other land unit in the game a gun is always going to be a problem simply because you can't really stop it without more of it or a totally comprehensive defensive line.

[real goblet]

I wasn't actually expecting this to be all that controversal when I made the post. From the 1v1 games I watched there seemed to be a lot of frustration with how often games ended from only a couple units harassing eco. And it seemed to be a pretty common problem in almost every elo.

I think its weird to reward aggression with basically a win so early on if the other player misplays or makes small mistakes. I've seen plenty of games where routing a pawn the wrong way or expanding an extra mex or two without LLT just ends the game for the other player. Giving a little more breathing room in the opening will allow more games to reach atleast the army phase, where each player has atleast a small group of units to work with.

Right now its kind of like if you could 6-pool and kill drones like a DT would but with like 2 lings lol.

[kindred lance]

from past discussions also, reactions are from a sliding scale of how new the player is, and how invested they are in the status quo. new players hate it and often hard avoid 1v1 for that reason. people who've gotten over that like when -they- can get obnoxious value from scouts sometimes and are protective of that ability

[kindred lance]

more like every race gets nearly free reapers as standard issue in their builds. oh and the reapers hit like Kerrigan
worse tbh, as reapers were so broken that SC maps are designed to nerf them. BAR maps are a golf course with approaches everywhere

[real goblet]

I have been looking for examples of this in other RTS games, but so far I haven't really found anything similar. Its pretty universal that any big RTS game doesn't allow for game ending strategies in the opening minutes, that don't have a big investment. There is often a pretty big risk vs reward tradeoff, but here a few ticks, or one grunt/pawn can actually end the game, for like 10 mex/seconds investment.

[kindred lance]

there are none that I'm aware of, and I've played RTS' for decades. Literally none. Closest is the reaper.

you mentioned 6 pool and that's a good point, because that does have game ending potential, but is an all-in build, you have really high cost to go down that route. (it is also scoutable)
in BAR you get that ability with no opportunity cost; it's just there.

[real goblet]

Kind of a tangent, but the windmill chain reaction "feature" that happens from paper eco is kinda cruel. It's not obvious that windmills explode, the game actively has hotkeys for new players to build blocks of buildings to save on APM, and doing it results in basically a loss of the game lol.

[kindred lance]

BAR has a lot of noob traps, to some extent that's inevitable given the scale of the game though
it definitely does compound the fragility problem though, literally

[real goblet]

I was hoping to maybe push some NPE and polish type changes, where the goal is to just make the game more approachable, and make the play more standard. The biggest issue that I see is basically this, many people complain about how bad the opening minutes are in the game. Paper eco ends games prematurely (my initial data collection is 22/50 games 30-50 OS from early eco harass, ending the game in <5 minutes), the most common solution to defending eco is to put up LLT on every part of your eco, and then that makes the slow opening even slower. Not to mention that high elo 1v1 basically never reaches t2, my dataset only has 3 games total, and I've never seen a high elo t3 game outside of youtube. Imagine if carriers, battle cruisers, or broodlords were never played in SC because games just didnt last that long lol.

Because eco is paper, you end up with a situation where new players, or low skill players literally cannot react to threats before the game ends, which feels bad for anyone trying to get into the game. Windmills are just a noob trap, either make default placement of them spread out, or nerf their deathweapon significantly (or implement my hp buff 🙂 ).

[vague scarab]

Exploding windmills are definitely weird. Especially since once you know about it you can just add one little sliver of space between them and never worry about it again. The lower density hardly matters in any situation given you'll typically want to upgrade your power production long before filling all available real estate with windmills.

[midnight cargo]

(You can also add spacing to line/grid builds with a keybind)