Balance Candidates Pack

[abstract pawn]

yea if they kept the same range and took repairable damage from junos I think they would be worth the investment

maybe it is just changing juno dmg to be more like legion napalm (only applied though to radar/sonar/mines ticks obviously), with this dmg being enough to kill t1 radar/jammer very quicky (1-2 seconds) but take maybe 5 seconds to kill an adv radar

[wet dirge]

if adv radar sit in your base it less likely will be hit by juno
just add radar range to it
so we can see up to enemy base on most maps

another fun change to adv radar would be penetrating terrain, so it wont be blocked by mountains, would also make this thing viable

[rare orbit]

I suspect the advance radar pricing dates from pre juno era

[rare orbit]

I have a draft juno rework that stuns some things rather than free deletes them, radars included

IMO the ideal final form is for junos never to be needed at all, and all gameplay issues solved another way instead

[rare orbit]

in theory the seismic sensors should do that eventually, there was some talk of a change to how 'out of radar/stealth' stuff would work, and a rework of the mechanics is apparently ideal, but pending details on exactly what that should be

[lucid nymph]

A temporary solution would be to add AA or something to make it more useful

[rare orbit]

if you mean to the seismics? maybe making them act as normal radar within their radius, but that being non-terrain blocking is a weird thing

[ionic sonnet]

++ to making advanced radars great again somehow. A lot of good suggestions

[rare orbit]

it's been on my radar (hurr) for a while, I can add something and see how it plays, but might need reevaluating after the juno rework

[wet dirge]

just give it x2 range...

so people probably will make jammers in base too

[cold needle]

Hot take: Remove junos, and make it so no scout units have an attack. (Only half kidding)

[rare orbit]

I actually agree that scouts should be scouts should be scouts. no weapons. it would massively improve 1v1 uptake too, one reason people avoid it is ticks et al getting everywhere, unless you have the APM of a gnat on crack

juno removal not yet possible, but eventually I hope to get the game to the point it's not needed at all

unfortunately a lot of 1v1 enjoyers seem to consider tick/scout poking a highlight of the gameplay, how much of that is cause and effect though, hard to say

the other reason I want to remove scout weapons is a spam nerf, as it triggers flanking bonuses unduly

and again, ticks are the best spam for doing that...

[hardy phoenix]

Could just make t2 radar into a "radar missile" that works like the scan from starcraft command centers but only shows radar dots not LOS and is still affected by jammers. So you could wombo combo juno>t2 radar missile to get some limited form of guaranteed intel on an area. I definitely feel that the T2 radar needs something other than just a bigger radius to make it stand out.

I enjoyed how supcom omni arrays had dual purpose with a short range stealth detection field, a hefty LOS, and a longer range radar but we already have ICS for cloak detection and I don't think invalidating stealth is something that really fits with BAR as well.

[rare orbit]

hopefully more radius & vision would be fine. 'comsat' is ... questionable as a mechanic, but is one possible solution to one of the needs for spam

[lucid nymph]

You could also merge ICS and advanced radar into one unit

[rare orbit]

no, they're intentionally different and it would block any upwards integration later

[elfin frigate]

I think brightworks did a tweak like this, scouts with no weapons. It made things a bit weird because the scouts can no longer hurt other scouts, you kind of end up with even more scouts everywhere. Units that deal AOE damage like Tzars, Banishers, and Fatboys end up doing more friendly fire.

[rare orbit]

I'd assume that just means people need to expect it and use fixed antispam moreso? his streams are too brief to let people adjust to any metas within them

junos also hard counter literal scoutspam at that stage too

[rare orbit]

@wet dirge , @ionic sonnet , et al, juno rework just pushed to live

will make a thread about it specifically in a moment

[woeful depot]

Adv radar needs 1200-1300 LoS so it can be placed in strategic frontline positions , energy cost of adv radar is just insane , it’s only built when floating resources in the lategame

It’s inconsistency in design that mobile radar has 900 LoS while Adv radar has 820 I think

[spring mantle]

im not sure if rovers and rascals are that big of a problem, given how clunky their turrets and movement are, and overall cost of getting vehs out early
ticks, on the other hand, should not exist :S

[rare orbit]

they're an issue but not as bad. tick ability to shoot all angles though is a major factor in their late game OPness

shooting a unit in the rump lets the starllight that shoots it next do basically double damage

[spring mantle]

was thinking more in regards to 1v1 openings - you either get to deal some damage, or you get a soft contain going, slowing expansion. As long as you dont feed/throw ticks away its easier to get ahead than it is to deal with it, and cortex has no equivalent, so non mirrors are imbalanced. Veh scouts dont create as many problems, because they come out later, are more expensive and clunky
and then theres problem with spam, that everyone seems to complain about. Why not just remove the unit? Or at least add cortex eq of it, if thats out of the question

[wintry wasp]

Someone made a tweakpack with the scouts having no weapons... literally no one made them once they realized 😕 but as part of a larger balancepack it might get some movement

[wintry wasp]

I feel it almost needs to be split into two units - long range radar, and a higher range LOS spotting post t2 beholder type thing maybe

[rare orbit]

one issue with a larger radar radius, is the terrain preview can crap out past a certain area

[modern flare]

Do we want to differentiate arm and core advanced radar?
Example:
Core: more range, resistance to Juno or more hp
Arm: more vision, range not blocked by terrain

Legion: add AA or maybe like a beam of vision: orient radar in a single direction to have more range and vision in that direction ( may not be possible due to orthogonal placing of building)
(Or a rotating beam, that rotates on its own. Would be fun 🤪)

[wintry wasp]

The green range indactor for radars is already very unrelated to actual radar coverage

[rare orbit]

somewhat, but this literally won't draw past a hard line along the preview

[rare orbit]

'more HP' on a non combat unit is not a buff, it's usually flavour at most

[wet dirge]

i don't think it require difference
its a base structure like intruder countermeasure or mex or other things which are fine being identical

probably some minor difference likt 5% health and 5% cost is fine

[rare orbit]

Updates on most recent balance pack draft. Note these still need active playtesting, but I have no more space in coordinator message so people in game are starting to not know the most recent changes.

#1186850950770610207 message latest 0.801 is attached here

Stable:

• Gunships tuned
  Banshee and Hornet especially. Banshee has a shotgun attack that deals impulse, Hornet longer range, weaker & cheaper. Cutlass and Wasp miss their shots less often.
• High alpha damage units now shoot 'less stupidly'.
  They explicitly prefer real targets rather than spam, and (hopefully) try not to shoot too close to your lines. Namely Snipers, Starlights, Banishers, Tzars, Fatboys, Poison Arrows, and Shivas. Note that fight move, as ever, ignores this. Also Mercury and Screamer now have retargetting, thus wasting their stockpile less
• Better lab synergy
  QoL change enabling players to lab hop with fewer hoops. T2 shipyard and air plant on seaplane cons, sea plane lab on T1 aircons. T2 shipyard also on amphib veh cons.

Experimental:
Juggernauts slight cost reduction, to 25k metal. Self-D timer now 7 seconds.
Lolcannons price hiked. Combined with the above, this should improve endgame phase for core T3.
Adv radars improved, with more vision and range. However it seems to cause some UI issues, pending investigation. Sneaky pete cloak cost hiked to 75 to try to limit early unblockable dgunnery. Siesmic sensors also act as radars within their range, -hopefully- mostly unblocked by terrain.
Torpedo bombers harder to use for infinite value vs flak boats. Might not be enough of a nerf, please try to abuse them & test
Halberds given slight boosts to speed, sight and range.
Turtles given more line of sight
Minelayers differentiated more (arm faster, core stronk) and given dragon's maws/claws in their buildlist

Core wind made a little less explodium, touch more HP, and given 50 energy storage. Legion wind has +100 estorage but is still typically fragile. (Note that arm wind still vastly better than both)

Super experimental:
Demons: more HP and speed, less range and dps. Razorbacks slower, but slightly outrange demons. Gives some interplay of the two but might be too razor favoured given they're cheaper, arm has too much long ranged support, and an AFK demon will take excessive damage from a razorback.
Demon into kiting razorback, demon wins with 28% hp (unless razorback has pulled it into a pulsar).
Razorback into kiting demon, demon flees with with ~65% HP.
Both into each other 'afk', demon wins with 60% HP.
2 demons vs 3 razorbacks (same metal cost), winner depends on micro

Liche speed nerfed, allowing T1 fig interactions. More E cost and bp cost; ideally some of this costing would be a reload/weapon stockpile cost, but that's not possible to add via tweak alone. Damage to boats reduced.

Marauders DPS nerfed. Mostly doesn't affect their raiding effectiveness, just what they can trade with when caught (still alarmingly strong for a raider)
Kargs given very minor cost decrease

[elfin frigate]

Turtles can see at last!

[thick inlet]

Cool! Any other improvements for Banishers though?

[ionic quail]

give banisher missles nuke aoe
Make catapult missles track

[dire cypress]

All this sounds reasonable.
Love the 7s Self-D of the Juggernauts. Could be a nice QoL improvement.
What does it mean, that the CORE minelayer is stronk? BP? HP?
I will personally try to just build a minelayer to build dragon maws... Combined with the mini cloaking field and a commander... This could be golden...

[wintry wasp]

I have some doubts on the CoreWwind E storage (feels way to much, since what Basic Solar gives), and Minelayers able to build maws/claws - but will wait to see how it pans out in games 🙂

[marble talon]

did the tweakunits command change? i want to test but i get the following error with 0.74

[spring mantle]

"(...) High alpha damage units now shoot 'less stupidly'.
They explicitly prefer real targets rather than spam, and (hopefully) try not to shoot too close to your lines. Namely Snipers, Starlights, Banishers, Tzars, Poison Arrows, and Shivas. (...)"

does this include fatboy? or is it left out for some reason?

[marble talon]

@rare orbit i dont know if you check this thread regularly, but i also hope this ping is not too disruptive

[cerulean tartan]

remove ==

[marble talon]

❤️

[rare orbit]

includes fatboy yes

[rare orbit]

it really isn't unfortunately, arm wind saves you the cost of an estore (6000 storage) every ~20 winds, cor wind would need 300 storage each to be comparable. Arm wind scaling is vastly better still, these just make other winds 'less bad'

it's likely that base game eventually will have to just normalise wind costs, or close to, I'm just trying to find something less boring to differentiate them instead

[rare orbit]

that version needs the == removed, I can't edit it out of the patch text unfortunately. I do try to set it up so that editing isn't needed but there's a 3 in 4 chance it regresses with each change

[tired tinsel]

e storage takes a lot of bp to build, the incremental gain (think early openers) and bp saving is not bad

for example with air position, who has lots of metal but doesn't want to spend bp to build a storage right away

or navy positio who makes turbines into walk

[thick inlet]

How about the Sprinter buff discussed some time ago?
Welder was also discussed, I do not remember what was the conclusion there - I was proponent of buffing it a bit as it looses badly to Sumo (sth. like Sumo surviving with 67% in 1v1 in longest range)

[rare orbit]

sumos are intended to be stronger in the interaction, especially 1v1

sprinters are ... weird. they do work well in their niche still, problem is people try to use them like fiends

maybe slightly less energy cost

[lucid nymph]

what's their niche, I want ticks but I don't have a tick lab?

[thick inlet]

Yes I think that was the consensus - making them cheaper. The Sumo should definitely win. But with such a huge difference it seems too much. Given the Welder has a lightning weapon perhaps it would make sense to just give it more range, so it it balanced but indirectly

[thick inlet]

Yes essentially. There are reasons why Arm lab is considered worse and Sprinters are imo one of them. For me a lot bigger difference is the Air though - Cor is Vastly better. Mainly the Arm bombers would deserve improvement

[rare orbit]

raiding, leak cleanup sometimes

[wet dirge]

Banisher: 1 second faster reload

--i'd recommend increase in dmg by the same amount (10-15%) instead
they have worst burst damage in game (1000) while theres many units have something like 1050 and survive the banisher hit with thier 5% health
banishers can't even oneshot januses or fiends which takes 15 seconds for one banisher to kill one fiend 🥲

[rare orbit]

banishers have a slight damage buff too iirc, plus retargetting, which helps them massively

the 1 second reload might be a tiny bit too much now, with that, it's hard to tell as not many people build banishers even so

[rare orbit]

@midnight tusk

@unique echo

[rare orbit]

@fierce scaffold mind pinning this too? thanks muchly

[rare orbit]

@ashen tusk

[lucid nymph]

Holy shit mine layers are absolutely bussing now

[rare orbit]

they work well with the juno rework too

I'm hoping to give base game minelayers a mine detection zone too, but that's a way off still

as atm they just can't actually know if mines are there, to clear them, which seems a slight hitch

[tired tinsel]

if your units explody, there are mines

[rare orbit]

🎉

[tepid mortar]

I was predicting that mines would be op in some scenarios like on strait when guy with island in corner need to cooperate with eco to actually de-mine geo sea beach while making offensive. I see that half of air players have problem to cover landing units so juno cooperation will be even harder :> .

[lucid nymph]

You don't need island to Juno a lot of the parh

And frankly it's not that difficult to build your own juno at t3 stage

A lot of dumb bastards still walk marauders into mines

[tired tinsel]

its already coin flip 5050 whether plp ever build juno or not

[lucid nymph]

if I couldn't get away with mine spam, I'm pretty sure my game journalist tier builds and micro would sink me to ten os

I am going to see how far I can abuse mine spam with nerfed juno

[wet dirge]

i don't like krogoth price reduction tbh, it was cool to have one unit with such high cost

i'd rather want to see it more a game ender unit

[junior lodge]

speaking of exploding things, i would have one more minor suggestion; amphib labs should be able to build crawling bombs (all types)

[rare orbit]

the problem is a lot is already changing, and people find it much easier to intuitively understand a price change than a mechanics/ability one

plus it would make core more OP in the superlate game stage, where arm has few to no counters

[rare orbit]

no, they're too easy to afk spam factory into, which is bad gameplay

depth charge carriers might well negate it though, but I'd be deeply hesitant

[rare orbit]

pls do, would help to calibrate, send replays too if you could

juno can probably be cheaper with these changes too, and with the minelayer changes I hope to do (revealing mines around it), mines will be a lone saner to handle, and minelayer should then be a damn good tool rather than half useful unit, half 'flavour'

[dire cypress]

Cheaper Juno?
Yes please!
So the Sneaky Pete CAN be destroyed in early T2... and the Tzar can survive (if you put 100% of your APM and resources into it)

[wet dirge]

$whatwas Siegebreaker

[cerulean tartan]

Siegebreaker is a completely new unit by Hornet iirc

[rare orbit]

re air balance, what do people think is an acceptable trade differential between arm and core fighters? and how much should bigger picture scenario matter to that, eg, arm can get more T2 figs sooner than core, at certain timings/breakpoints?

should seaplane fighters have a longer useful lifetime before being obsoleted by full T2s?

@atomic gull , @lavish goblet , @spring coral

I'm strongly leaning towards needing closer trade parity, timing power spike differentials should probably be dealt with via scouting and (god forbid) some land AA if applicable

[dire cypress]

Is there a way to make tweaks "visible" while playing? Would be cool if there was some king of reminder.
There are enough changes to get easily confused, now.

[glass halo]

If one faction has more air power inately at certain points, and if they have that spike for long enough, they could just abuse that to bomb the enemy, and the enemy could do nothing about it except somehow get a lead earlier then that, or chose another faction.

Or ask their team to build aa.

[rare orbit]

this is partly why I've tried to incrementally add them in layers, addressing specific facets. the tweak itself has something like 'HPB080' at the start, so you can see what version you're on from the preview in chobby

ideally some 'expand code' mode for showing tweaks in the UI may be nice, but probably a mess to code, unsure on how UI integratable it'd be either

[rare orbit]

this partly relates to economy differences, and 'is it a wind map'. also when you get a T2 con really affects spike timings, so it's not cast in stone even so

[glass halo]

AA is super effective, and if built will shut air gameplay down because its only effective targets are behind untouchable aa.

Air's main offensive objective is to remove enemy eco. Eco is behind the frontline so aa can be build without being at risk of death by land. If aa is build at front it can be taken out by land forces allowing air to act there; however, air can not deal enough damage when attacking fronts to justify not just ecoing, bombing or, preventing bombing runs on bases.

I am too out of energy to re format and write down the other reasons, but basicaly this is one of the reasons I think air needs to be able to attack the front effectively.

[rare orbit]

have you tried the reworked gunships in the pack?

[glass halo]

No, I havent even played BAR for awhile. I will hopefuly remember to try that when I do play agian.

How am I ment to activate it?

[thick inlet]

Extra units pack

[rare orbit]

no, it's in my balance pack

but version up there doesn't have latest, will update soon

[glass halo]

Isnt that where all the stuff that just gets thrown in for some reason goes.

So I couldn't have tried the gunships because the latest available one does not have the GS changes in it?

[spring mantle]

i think its kind of weird when functionality of seaplane fighters differs so much from t1 and t2, would be fine if they were simply an in between imo

[rare orbit]

(outdated)

[spring mantle]

are there multiple different air patches?

[rare orbit]

not unless you count air rework, which should never be used with this

[spring mantle]

my bad, i got the 2 confused

[wintry wasp]

I think this is is good to Liche, hopefully see it in a lobby soon 🙂 maybe a bit heavy on the E but we'll see 😄 lol

[rare orbit]

compared to a bomber E to M cost it's proportionately much lower than it should be

ideally I'd like it to have a stockpile cost on the bomb, but for how it'll have to pay at buildtime :P

[wintry wasp]

it'd be nice to have stockpile moved to custom param's so its available for tweakunits

[quasi depot]

but it wouldn't make much sense for a flying plane to draw metal. How do you draw it ? Magic ?

[wintry wasp]

How is metal transferred to your M storage? The games deus ex mechina is resources are available everywhere as needed

[quasi depot]

underground tunnels and tiny worker bots 👀

[rare orbit]

teleportation of e and m somehow exists in BAR, but not units that aren't commanders. the great mystery of our times.

[quasi depot]

is there any moving unit that draws metal ?

never checked if umbrellas did

[wintry wasp]

Thor's draw metal for their stockpiled EMP missile

[quasi depot]

[wintry wasp]

Do not look behind the curtain, for you'll find wibbly wobbly nth dimensional lies ❤️

[quasi depot]

well, at least you could assume the ground is a teleportation matrix

now you have to assume the air is, too

[cerulean tartan]

Is the fighter balance in question the same one we discussed?

[tired tinsel]

(use https://www.base64decode.org/ to read changes)

[tired tinsel]

Sala BP nerf seems oof, unit was already fairly high bp cost for its tier. Though the other stat changes were pretty tame. amphib lab cost and bp increase makes sense for more options

wtf is edgeeffectiveness = -0.75
worse than linear drop off?

[wintry wasp]

There's a graph with line plots which gets posted in academy chat fairly often that shows it
tl;dr, damage falls off faster away from center

[tired tinsel]

yeah i saw that just haven't seen negative yet

[wintry wasp]

Good point, i've not seen negatives either

[wintry wasp]

https://springrts.com/wiki/Gamedev:WeaponDefs#edgeEffectiveness

[tired tinsel]

nuke bomber overnerfed xD. takes as much bp as half an afus

[rare orbit]

I didn't want to give it too strong an E cost, air players usually have a ton of BP by then though

the shaped AoE should make liche just as good against single targets as before, less insane vs clusters

the alternative would be similar AoE shaping but reduced overall bomb damage, which is probably not ideal

[wintry wasp]

reducing overall bomb dmg hurts the breakpoints on sniping labs right?

[rare orbit]

lab sniping is just as effective as it was before, if you target it

indeed it would, which I didn't want to do

I've not tested too heavily for where that puts it with breakpoints though, eg how many tigers, frigates, cruisers etc in a lump now survive vs before

so some further shaping of the curve probably optimal

[wintry wasp]

I always struggle to read this

[rare orbit]

wish I could cap the edge of the aoe somewhat

or have two explosions at once with very different falloffs

[wintry wasp]

heh, make it drop two bombs, that are linked ilke janus rockets, and each is different?

[rare orbit]

would be jank incarnate

also not possible via a tweak

[wintry wasp]

oh, would need 2 weapon mountpoints (or whatever), gawd damnit 😄

[rare orbit]

fighters not changed, it's a can of worms and I can't test it properly in the time I have right now

also makes it harder to evaluate other air changes if something that fundamental is shifted at same time

[rare orbit]

I mean the summary is the better way to read through it, I've tried to put comments in but sometimes things can't be in the right section as I can only define an overload once

and some things are also a 'lies, damn lies and statistics' problem, numbers are tuned for real game impact

and occasionally standins for things I ideally need to do via stockpile cost etc

[tired tinsel]

I mean seeing the exact numbers is a big deal

For stuff that isn't fuzzy tuning

[rare orbit]

indeed, but it can also lead to tunnel vision on one part of a holistic picture. How the unit plays is a lot more relevant than what the percentage change is, but I do appreciate people want to see the details sometimes, exact change is relevant for breakpoints for some interactions

[rare orbit]

rationale was to try to prevent proxy lab rushing without more BP sink first, and maybe make other ideas considered rather than defaulting to mass salamander, but it might be too much in reality. as ever, I need replays to tell really, and not just from strait/basin games

[cursive moth]

Perhaps there could be some type of google docs with all the changes that we just pin to the welcome message?

[rare orbit]

people barely read things on discord, odds of them going elsewhere to feel a little low. however it would be nice to have in one place indefinitely yes

[cursive moth]

We are playing Arrakis lobbies on your changes, but now that there are another changes - it's somewhat hard to keep people informed of new changes

[rare orbit]

that's partly why I did the packs in incremental phases, so people just need to know what's new

but for fully new players to the pack yes, it's a lot of areas at once

[thick inlet]

Did you also lower the cost of Liche? In this pack Dragon is cheaper and Liche is nerfed.. To me Dragon is so much most more powerfull for price..

[rare orbit]

liche is frontloaded damage, delivers immediately, dragon takes time and can be reacted to responsively

liche can potentially wipe several bases as fast as it can fly, dragon is much slower to build and move

it's somewhat differential balance issue as liches probably less used effectively in lower OS/APM lobbies

[thick inlet]

I understand.. but still, I feel the Dragon is really strong.. the Liche not so much, killed quite easily - you can have 11 strat bombers for the price (metal)..

[cerulean tartan]

Dragon easily merked by 10 T2 figs, and flaks can be built in response quite easily too

Liche also merked by 10 T2 figs but flaks cannot be built in response

[rare orbit]

liche can indeed be killed, but usually after it has won a lane or two

dragons take time to deliver value, by which point air can delete them, unless you have already have mass air control. liches can operate in far wider areas much more safely, and often retreat & repeat

this is current balance patch alpha, fighter balance untouched as I can't test it fully in time, but new version of liche nerf included.

The balance pack is intended for use with Release Candidate units, EMP rework, and Juno rework, but will work without those enabled. It is explicitly incompatible with air rework.

remember to download, don't copy from discord

$welcome-message Hornet Balance Pack 0.8a (details and feedback on Discord)$$Platypus in amphib lab, amphib lab cost raised, salas lightly nerfed$$Added Siegebreaker (cor T2 veh), Sentinel and Trident (adv shipyards)$$Gunships tuned, liche slower. Unit Aiming 'AI' mildly improved for high alpha units.$$Ducks in amphib lab, flagships in gantry$$Printers can build T1 jammers$$Tick, Rover and Rascal same fire cost$$Gremlin cloak cost same as spybot$$Better lab/con tech tree synergy$$Naval engies can make walls and T2 torps$$Core dgun now same range as Arm's$$Dragon now 4500 metal$$Battleships: slight range increase. Arm now longer ranged.$$T2 torp launchers: Less metal.$$Thor: EMP cost increased, slight nerf to alpha damage, boost to chaining.$$Arm T2 AA bot: fires much faster. Cor T2 AA bot: increase to speed, range and damage, slight reload buff.$$Gunslinger: general buffs & greater AoE, removed from consul$$Commando: Can build AA, detect stealth units, has EMP resistance, and shoots air units

(updated file due to technical issues mark two overflow boogaloo)

[tepid mortar]

About juno rework, i can agree that t2 radar and t2 jammer can be just stunable but t1 radar costs like 60 M and 630 E, jammer 115 M 5,2k E while junno rocket (only rocket!) cost 200 M and 12k E. Sometimes you have wreck of radar or jamming unit and you can res them cheaper. Mines are different story. You are adding more steps to counter them while they are cheap, easy to use ( just click and drag). If you wanna be fancy, just make that juno blows mine in 50% chance and de cloak them. Right now i dont have solution for mines but i dont think they should be so effective and cheap without hard counters (right now juno is light counter) . The only change what i would make is t2 radar/jammer stunable and juno range 5k.

[tired tinsel]

Dragon seem strong until you realize that it's dps per cost is not good, and t2 fighters annialiat it

[ionic sonnet]

had a chance to try the torpedo plane nerf. It's too much. All it does is ensure they get thrown away into flak for little value

[tired tinsel]

should start by lowering its alpha a bit. angler does have some weakness that the projectiles take time to arrive and overkill, so you can't just nuke 1-2 lone aa ship and keep flying your figs over it without taking losses

[ionic sonnet]

if u want to nerf just tone the damage down a bit, the nerfs to the rest are crazy. you're ensuring a position with many times the income trades for free. it's wild

[tired tinsel]

the point of juno is not to cost kill radars its to create a tactical opportunity.

maybe mines should be simply made more expensive metal wise (40%?). you can reclaim mines later if you want

[cerulean tartan]

I like the proposed change here, makes adv radar and jammer worth building

[tired tinsel]

something like Juno: disables radars/jammers that it hit for 35 seconds. Also disables radars/jammers that enter the radius, for 2 seconds.

prolly should make a seperate thread for juno rework

[cerulean tartan]

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1237999914131132498

[tired tinsel]

oh kk

[elfin frigate]

imo the torp bomber nerf is a step too far, I like the range nerf or at least some kind of range nerf so they have to come in range of T2 AA boats in order to deal damage to them but the additional nerfs to the weapon's attributes seems to make it miss more and since they actually need to trade when attacking with the range nerf the extra nerf on the weapon stats seem a bit over kill.

[rare orbit]

juno will be cheaper, and minelayers themselves a hard counter to mines

[tepid mortar]

especially those swimming once's :>

[tired tinsel]

make minelayer amphib increase cost?

[rare orbit]

entirely possible it's overdone, but I was hoping to leave the damage itself untouched as people are used to that interaction. the proposed 'as it was but worse dps' also means that infinite trade still happens, which is the broken part; just a little more slowly, while also making a specialist unit bad at its job unless pro micro'd

[rare orbit]

the naval engineer is going to get the minelayer's clearance ability (also detection)

[tired tinsel]

used to the interaction of a battleship evaporating to 5-7 anglers?
handling/range change is more different to get used to than dmg

[rare orbit]

people should be able to snipe with torp bombers still, just not expect them to always survive the process

I can try straight damage nerf instead but I think it would be accepted less

[tired tinsel]

i dunno don't have an opinion atm
also you should hide your aa boats in your fleet

other ships can block the shots as the torps travel

[rare orbit]

similarly, if you do mad flight pathing and mid drop turning with the bombers to try to avoid AA, their torps will start off course, and for them to then magically home around half the sea to try to find their target, is a little insane

mixed really, as you need AA forward to help zone, so that's risk/reward choice

[tired tinsel]

can you renable the auto retargeting?

[rare orbit]

technically, but that would be a large buff to mass torp bombers

[tired tinsel]

they overkill a lot anyways

[rare orbit]

I'd have to tune torpedo lifetime quite carefully

[tired tinsel]

yeah that. the torp life time could be reduced prevent crazy full loops or far shots

[rare orbit]

given how clustered boats often are, it wouldn't take too much turning. I suppose they would also collide with wrecks though so, some limitation there

I can experiment when I have more time, I'm wary of making them too magical, but similarly without adequate contesting and fleet defence they should indeed be able to clean boats up very well

hence my trying to make them commital, but leaving the dps alone

[tired tinsel]

@south moss

liche bp 57400-->108400

[rare orbit]

problem is you have to nerf those to make that actually always happen, otherwise they can abort course after firing begins, thus avoid AA, and still expect all torps to hit target. I'll experiment more with less bad handling and maybe retargetting, but the aimed goal is to make them have some benefit from OP micro, but still risk flak range, while also maintaining their prior effectiveness when afk fight moved into a fleet

given they have excessive free out of stat range due to their weapon mechanic, that's a very hard thing to tune

[south moss]

Nice

@rare orbit I LOVE the salamander changes. Just enough.

[tired tinsel]

@rare orbit need to add the muskrat (amphib con) back to amphib lab

[ionic sonnet]

I had a game where I was trying to save sea and after around 10 volleys I had killed 1 ship. I'd suggest putting all atrributes back and just reducing damage. There is no concept of oh just let the squishy plane take a little damage. You can repair boats. Planes just die. The nerf to torpedo retarget is really hard on them as well as the basically end up never hitting anything. I'd also say a lot of the power for them comes from high alpha and get in/get out. If you reduce damage they have to commit more to kill things and risk getting shot down.

On salamanders they do still feel strong, but I'd say they need more playing w/ to see if it's enough. Step in the right direction for sure.

[south moss]

Ooo, a flying Repair ship that has an aeo repair would be interesting. It'd have to have insane air repair, like the air repair lab, though, so it could heal through 1 on 1 air battle.

[tired tinsel]

salamanders seem more reasonable

7.2% hp nerf and 2 speed, 5% more e, and 14% more bp

[rare orbit]

I can try an alternate that does that, yes, if people wanted to test it specifically. the problem I see is that makes a super specialist tool, less raw output, while not addressing the infinite trade value ability. the planes did indeed 'take a little damage' vs flak boats with the nerf I added, in my testing, but that was naturally not real battle

the other possibility is keeping commital handling but allowing retargetting, so a mass torpedo bomb dive attack will overkill much less, and do a collective number on boats, hopefully ensuring better trades at scale, while still solving infinite value hax

I'd probably suggest the latter moreso, otherwise torp bombers become a 'meh' unit if people don't micro/trivia tax, infinite trade if they do, which is usually the opposite direction this should be heading

the last resort option is rework them into more powerful torpedo gunships

(note, that in zero-k, torpedo bombers were inherantly unbalanceable to the degree they were flat out removed)

[rare orbit]

typo, fixed, will be in next update

[rare orbit]

were you trying to evasion bomb them by turning them out of firing range?

[wet dirge]

@rare orbit i guess you should make some excel with "approvals" from top players, and once get most of them just merge the changes.
may be you need separate approval for each change, so it can be merged to game partially

may be not top os, but at least balance guys - Zecrus / Raghna?

[rare orbit]

not that simple, although some parts have been modularly merged already

it also misses that it isn't entirely fixing issues that 'top players' see, understand or care about

I do discuss balance with Zecrus often yes, and that's how things get in

[ionic sonnet]

In this specific example I tried both and they had limited aa so I also just flew directly over the ships too. They still did nothing. I still think this infinite trade idea is not really a thing. Sure, completely uncontested with perfect micro and vision, there's a possibility. I almost never see this occur. The micro is skill expression, and this isn't a bad thing. That's why alpha damage reduction makes more sense to me. Allow for more counter play to occur/ make more planes to do the damage.

[rare orbit]

I'm very surprised by that result then, in tests they still hit all shots unless someone was trying to OP micro them too hard

I agree there should be some micro reward, but not infinite trade. it very much can and does appear in real games unfortunately

as said though, I'll look at them again and see what can be done without changing handling. that might be lower DPS, but smarter retargetting. range will still need to be somewhat reduced as the actual range is absurdly further than it should be due to the weapon mechanics

[cinder sphinx]

Reduce hp by 40 percent but halve reload

[wet dirge]

dont mess with their reload, just add at least a bit damage, so can at least oneshot squishes and T1, instead making 99% damage to everything

[wet dirge]

they are mostly good unit, just a bit weak for their price and thats all
need some slight power boost.

I'd personally prefer them to deal 7% more damage (1070 instead 1000)
and may be small cost discount. though damage boost will be mostly fine

[quasi depot]

watching Baron or LDM streams, it feels like people have abandoned Cortex T2 veh ? While they're having fun "rediscovering" T1 Armada bots and tick balls

it looks like rocket bots are so useful on both sides, both botlabs are fine now. Baron doesn't even whine any more about teammates going T2 Armada bots

but I miss T2 Cortex vehicles

[ionic sonnet]

Also I used the nuke bomber and didn't have any issues with it. Need to do some more testing though. Cost increase looked surprising but seemed fine in practice.

[split storm]

T2 cortex vehicles got ruined by the quaker nerf. And they weren't good to begin with.

[quasi depot]

They also don't have a jaguar equivalent

Jags will kill spam, shuris, and raid bases

Meanwhile players would rather build Cortex amphib lab for salamenders

[hardy phoenix]

Sala is sorta the jag equivalent atm

[quasi depot]

A banisher buff would help

[elfin frigate]

There are some banisher buffs in the balance pack

[quasi depot]

It's Ok if Armada vehs are better. Afterall Cortex bots are better. But the gap is much bigger for vehicles

[elfin frigate]

7.5 to 6.5 reload, 1000 to 1050 damage per shot, better turn rate and tries to retarget the missile if the target was killed.

[quasi depot]

Retargetting such a slow missile may look weird

[split storm]

It's not OK.

[elfin frigate]

Nah, it's actually too fast, it doesn't retarget that well

[quasi depot]

Turning rate is slow though, no ?

[elfin frigate]

Yes, It doesn't do like huge U turns, it just tries to retarget and often just hits the ground anyway

[quasi depot]

Why ? You can't make labs equaly powerful unless you mirror the units anyway

Cortex has slightly better boats, better air, better bots. Armada has better vehicles, defences (Pulsar) and T3.

[rare orbit]

I didn't want to make it too magical, but might well up turn rate or cap max speed to help that

[quasi depot]

it's just that the veh gap and T3 gap are a bit too great. Demon closed some of that gap, it's great

[rare orbit]

siegebreaker also

[rare orbit]

not true, you can have comparable impact without mirror balance
but I grant it's a lot harder to set up

[quasi depot]

yes, you said it : comparable. Not equal. Which is what I want. We agree.

no point tuning it so finely that it's "equal" it'd be impossible to measure that precisely anyway

once it's comparable, the difference is the skill set of the player. This varies much more than the factions capabilities, so very minute changes wouldn't be worth it

[split storm]

I just want artillery back. The seigebreaker isn't what I want.

But no, we had to nerf the already sub-par Cortex vehicles even harder than Armada vehicles.

[rare orbit]

artillery was probably fine as it was, as a unit, just far too cheap

[split storm]

Correct, but instead of increasing cost, we just removed the role entirely.

[rare orbit]

wasn't me, alas. my changes way back made it more committal and costly, but left the actual artillery part of the operation alone

[split storm]

I am well aware it's not you. I'm just frustrated that the justification appears to have been "Well, Cortex will get the siegebreaker sometime in the next decade, so it's fine to ruin Cortex vehicles."

[rare orbit]

they're very different roles, tbh

[split storm]

Now they have neither.

[rare orbit]

some overlap but that's not a bad thing, allows variety of compositions

[junior lodge]

if you want some wild idea for torp bomber: give it a selectable attack mode, similar to hound

Mode 1: bouncing/skip bomb: drops a bomb that bounces above water and hits first ship (large range, unguided, hits only surface ships)
Mode 2: depth charges: drops few depth charges that damage ships and submarines, however, works like classic bomber with no range

[rare orbit]

not possible via tweak, and highly likely to be rejected even if I did

[quasi depot]

Could add a kamikaze mode, but Legion has that too

Maybe kamikaze EMP ?

There's no spy bot of the sea

Maybe too OP, a naval spy bot equivalent should be a sub

[ionic sonnet]

I'm under the impression that the 'op unintended micro' for torpedo bombers is basically a primary feature for them being useful at all. Being able to attack from long range prevents them from just instantly dying to flak/fighters ie throwing them away. Otherwise, we will just make t2 bombers which do the same thing but better.

[dire cypress]

Well there are a million shades of grey between:
OP as fuck and useless.

Let's find a sweet spot. Currently it isn't sweet.

[ionic sonnet]

Ya I think we all agree it's a bit overtuned(myself included)

[prisma bane]

they trade decently into boats even without the bullshit micro thing tbh, it just means you dont get to free delete boats with only 3 of them if they cant outrange flak

[south moss]

I wonder if you could add a buff to wolverines (I think that's the cor vehicle artillery) that increases their cost by 30% but resets them back to the role they and mausers used to have. It'd be cool to see a differential between core and arm veh be that core is the siege units, while arm is the rapid response units.

To go further down this line of thought, the core veh art would be the slow moving, heavy damage artillery we used to know. The mauser we could push further down the road it's already going, make it's turn speed slightly better, it's speed of fire slight better, but reduce it's damage just a hair. So it's a poke and run kind of unit. Harder to kill than core art, but less sweeping damage.

[south moss]

Hornet, I like the Janus changes, but I think it was too much. Can you reset their range? I think there was too many nerfs all at once. The fact you can kite out of the missile now is honestly the perfect nerf, but I don't think they also need their range nerfed on top of it.

Also, not sure the 50 energy storage on core wind was fully flushed out. I think like 5 energy per windmill makes more sense. But 50? That's nuts. I get the logic, but think the whole premise is flawed.

[cerulean tartan]

I mean its balanced compared to the Armada wind, which is still more OP

Janus range nerf is a secret buff for the janus, the lack of range makes such that the missiles are harder to dodge, if they retained their old range then janus missiles could be infinitely dodged with impunity

[wintry wasp]

Also changed the accel & time they will track is 1.5s, i feel it does make them miss more often against a fast reaction i think

range = 360, --380 
startvelocity = 90, --100
flighttime = 1.5, --0?
mygravity = 200, --?
turnrate = 5000, --22000
damage = {
    commanders = 200, --330
},```

[lucid nymph]

still a lot worse than arm wind in terms of metal

[south moss]

Yeah, but that's ok.

[split storm]

It's not ok for a basic economy structure to simply be worse.

[spring mantle]

yeah but maybe it lets you cut corners somewhere else? if theyre more tanky and less explody, maybe you can get away with getting early defense later or something, and same for E cap? like you get some advantage somewhere along the way

[cerulean tartan]

It's okay as long as it's cortex 😉

(this is sarcasm pls fix cortex winds ;_;)

[rare orbit]

the difference in tankiness is relatively minor in the grand scheme, and only helps vs a tick or two really

for core wind to be as cost efficient as arm, it would have to have -300- estore per wind turbine

[spring mantle]

sure, but maybe that lets you squeeze 1 more con out before getting a grunt, i dunno

[rare orbit]

the range reduction means they can't free trade with llts entirely, and have to risk dguns moreso, but as said before it actually makes them a little more likely to hit. they are still very powerful especially in quantity, even with the nerfs, but if enough people really feel the range should be full again then I can try a reversion of that aspect and see how it plays. I've yet to see OP 1v1 replays with the pack where Januses feature, unfortunately

[south moss]

Heard, I'll try to overwhelm front with it one of these days

[rare orbit]

quakers you mean, wolverines are the T1 arty

it would be possible, but I'd rather not 'undo' another base change so directly. even though I do feel arty has a place, especially for core as A: core, but B: they already have the banisher for skirmishing. the quacker should very much be a traditional arty type unit, ideally with appropriate costing

[south moss]

I understand you are hesitant to undo a base change directly, but when the base change that was made was poorly tested, I see no reason we have to stick to a bad tradition. Especially if the majority of the community thinks it was a bad/too far of a change.

[rare orbit]

@wise epoch

note it is alpha, some parts still very experimental
reasoning for some is explained above in the pins and history

[wise epoch]

That's the base64, what about the actual source with specific unitdef changes?

[rare orbit]

I mean, same thing, but I can decode it if you want

[wise epoch]

ah nvm decoder formatted it nicely, didn't expect it to. ty

I think I found a mistake in this def, corkarg gets 425000 buildtime which is almost as high as a jugg and 5.5 times higher than its normal buildtime

[tame hill]

wait does that give liche 20s reload lmao

[rare orbit]

sounds it, the T3 changes are recent, nobody's built a karg since that was added afaik

[rare orbit]

compare a liche to a tacnuke in damage and value, it's actually off the rails bonkers

[wise epoch]

except you can shoot it when it attacks you

[rare orbit]

this stops it doing a backline base tour with minimal support with timed builds

T1 figs usually can't catch it, when it drops out of fog and free deletes your army, then falls back again, you can't stop that in the same way you can a dragon

[wise epoch]

why is gremlin cloak cost quadrupled

[tame hill]

you can stop it with like 6 t1 aa

[rare orbit]

T2 figs have more of a chance, but again not possible to defend all places it might be, especially seafronts

[rare orbit]

they had absurdly low cloaking costs iirc

[wise epoch]

because they're the only cloaked unit that you mass, it's that way for a reason

Was that change made for a gameplay reason or just to make it closer to other cloakable units?

[rare orbit]

both, they were giving starlights essentially free spybot vision

from a non-T2 bot lab, at that

[wise epoch]

yeah that's their main role, what's that have to do with their cloak cost

[rare orbit]

compared to spybots in same role, it was absurdly low. I appreciate they're more likely to be massed, but invisible vision is very OP and should be paid for moreso

you mentioned HLTs, the buildtime was reduced somewhat, it used to be a 30% reduction to put it closer to OTA values, but I think I changed it to something less so as it was too easy to repair with a com

[tame hill]

yeah it's in there twice

ngl I have literally never once thought a gremlin was op

[rare orbit]

core naval HLTs also had a huge buildtime tax btw

identical in all ways to arm, other than hiked buildtime
lots of outlier values like that are also leftovers from 'some point in the past' rather than intentional for balance reasons, and haven't been queried or tested since

[wise epoch]

countermeasure exists for this, it's much different from spybots because they have shit movespeed and shit handling, and cannot stun entire armies. Also starlight pushes are far easier to assault and flank than bot long range t2 like snipers

[tame hill]

yeah I'd say like, 90% of the changes are reasonable to test and unlikely to have much of a game impact, but to say that, well, for example nerfing liche reload to 20s is a well tested "balancing" change is absurd (on top of the other gigantic nerfs). Same with like changing all of the big unit targeting priority, that would absolutely have a huge impact on the entire way the game is played, and imo not in a good way. I don't think spam is very good as is, and I wouldn't like different unit targeting priority for different units, makes them unpredictable

[rare orbit]

I'm not deadset on keeping the gremlin change, or all of it, but it does seem a lot fairer

liche is flat out oppressive for sea players, it turns up from nowhere, deletes your boats for free, then disappears again

I realise that specifically is a problem more likely to happen on strait etc, but any naval map will usually oblige boats to sit in balls staring at each otehr

[tame hill]

it's literally a 5k metal and like 60k energy investment

[rare orbit]

a dragon is 7-8K, but that can be countered before it deletes things, and it certainly won't get away again, 9/10 times

the air changes in the pack are new and not 'locked in', very much trying to find something that works well

every liche bomb is basically a free tac nuke, to have that every 5 seconds is ... mad

[wise epoch]

this is what people are saying though, this is a gigantic grabbag of changes, with no specific goal or change in how the game is played, it's just bandaiding balance issues (in the eyes of some players at least) in random directions. But with this many together there's no way they can be tested properly or develop a meta. Things like changing unit targeting is huge and massively changes how the game will play, changing lab and con buildlists all over, mroe than doubling reload time of units, etc. Any one of these changes could easily tip the entire meta on its head and there are dozens of things this big

[wise epoch]

it's 9 seconds, and it's very much not free, it costs almost 3x a tac nuke, it requires a very expensive lab, fighter support, and lots of micro to use effectively. I think a small nerf is warranted after the dive bug was fixed, but by a few percent, not 120%

[rare orbit]

which is why it makes sense to fix them in one pack, rather than trickle misc changes out over time, ideally with such an event coinciding with a 'season' of some sort potentially

each missile is free, there's no reload or stockpile cost

I agree it's a lot at once, but this was all built up in layers and tested at all stages, on many maps

nor am I saying this is a perfect solution that can't be refined more; it's literally alpha, and sections are explicitly experimental even within that

[rare orbit]

there is a goal, it's to smooth the rough edges, allow better lab synergy, and fix a lot of the 'well it's been like that 20 years so there must be a reason's, which could well be 'it was a typo'

[wise epoch]

I'm not saying you didn't test it on lots of maps. I'm saying that the consequences of changes this broad will only be clear after thousands of games. And because there's no clear design goal in the direction of changes, it will be harder to assess and test everything

[rare orbit]

the changed unit targetting QoL section addresses high alpha units, and those are the sort usually highly micro'd by OP players, but suidical with default handling for most players. this helps the latter not occur as much

it's unclear if an OP player would even notice the difference, in many cases for those, they just wouldn't affect them

agreed it could have some butterfly effects, but that is why testing is being done & sought

I need to be elsewhere, so will have to continue this another time. thanks for spotting the karg typo, will sort that when I can

[wise epoch]

I don't think you realize how massive of a buff that is, not just for noobs but also for good players. It'll make slow pushes with high alpha units basically unstoppable, as scout spam is the most reliable stalling tactic until heavy porc or t3+spam can come to bear

[rare orbit]

that is already the case if they want to do that, but in even stronger form via widgets

[golden lily]

wwhat were the quaker nerfs, i thoughtt we sorted that out witth the increased aoe andd dmg? did someone complain about it? armada was better even witth the buffs but we nerfed it even more lmao

[rare orbit]

this is just a really light preference, essentially

and scouts are still targetted by them, it doesn't make them ignore it

[wise epoch]

that's not an argument, lots of widgets break the game and it's a very well known issue and there are some vague plans to combat it - but even if there weren't, it's not a reason to go "some people have ruined balance with third-party tools, lets lean into it". Like Amojini I'm also not a big fan of the scout spam prevalence in the game, but making all high alpha units just overlook them is not the solution, it'll make one of the most powerful class of units even more powerful, because their main counter is straight up removed

[rare orbit]

that's not what I'm saying. simply that some units should not default to being better not built at all, unless you nanny them constantly / hold fire them pathologically. it's not artificial intelligence, merely less artifical stupidity

they do not overlook scouts either, indeed it's arguable that badtargetcategory line has minimal relevance as engine would prioritise other units instead anyway if it could, I'm debating removing it

[tame hill]

I actually just straight up think scout spam isn't good, as in effective, anymore. Yeah it counters a lot of units, but only at a game state where everything's gone to shit anyway. It is only efficient at countering a very few powerful strategies, that do not have other good counters (for example, defending against sheldons). There have been enough buffs that basically at all stages of the game there is an accessible, powerful, and efficient counter to spam, unless you are already hard losing. And I do prefer spam for giving LOS than anything else - it gives intuitive feedback to attacker and defender about the power levels and flow of the combat

[golden lily]

Hard agree
This is a big problem me and my friends have with bar

until you came on the scene hornet, most units were not built at all for either this reason or just straight uselessness

The problem os that high skill players will get one good commando win for example and say that its balanced and doesnt need changes. Despite the fact its never used normally and has no real use cases

[wise epoch]

I know, but if you have vision then they will ignore scouts in favor of better targets. So this will be an indirect buff to spybots and gremlins as well as a buff to all the high alpha units

[split storm]

That's the way they should behave. If you balance by making units annoying to use, you end up with an annoying game. Which describes Cortex's current state quite well.

[wise epoch]

Yes, I agree. But you can't change that by just turning it off on some units, the balance of the game is built around it being that way. Changing it requires a large intentional design effort around what kind of broader impact that will have on gameplay and compensate accordingly.

[split storm]

There's only one person trying to make that happen. Guess who it is.

[vestal thistle]

why is there a liche nerf lol

how come liche is considered even a little broken jeez

[tame hill]

it's supposedly op against sea, on strait in extreme boost/tempo builds

[ionic sonnet]

The sea players are crying. They don't like it deleting their navy in one shot

[vestal thistle]

Sea is just underdeveloped, its lacks porc, lab versatility etc you shouldnt nerf air because of sea

[ionic sonnet]

Well then....let me talk to you about the torpedo bomber nerf in here too....

[vestal thistle]

just add proper statics and utility to sea

instead of nerfing everything around it

[golden lily]

ive said this already but sea needs some rework and honestly maybe some t3 units other than the flagship in its gantry
atomic bombers arent the issue, its baad Flak ships that are the issue

[steep cosmos]

just how can you come up with liche nerf when core bombers are already better and arm bombers are a joke

also, minelayers building dclaws...

[tacit igloo]

Can you apply multiple tweaks on the same game? I haven’t been able to play these changes yet. But maybe we could create smaller “packages” of tweaks

vehicle rework
Air rework
Cortex eco rework
Sea rework

So players can play with different permutations.

Salamanders are op… but what other option does a Cortex sea player have to do early game damage if those get nerfed? The other amphibious units suck.

Maybe we need amphibious bots, or make the light amphibious tank not suck.

[elfin frigate]

You can't apply multiple unit tweaks, the point of this pack is to combine multiple smaller ones into 1 tweak with all the changes.

[golden lily]

youre hitting the nail accideentally here

I dont even think most of these units that peope say are op are actually op, its just that the other units are from a older time of bar and havent gotten enough of a boost for newer units and maps. tons of units in the game are unused or not really in a good enough role they become niche and rarely ever used.

Comando, gunslinger, thermites, i can go on.
not only do the costs not make sense
the commando being 1200 or thermites being nearly double the recluse
but they arent even strong enough to justify the cost.
See Banishers, Old dragon, Hornets, Thermites Behemoth as well tbh

Dragons were terrible before the rework, now one of the best air units, does that mean they are op?
No, still die to aircraft super fast but fufill its role perfectly. Frankly, tuning needs to be made to EVERY unit. So things start fulfilling their roles properly and the cost reflects that

However thats a pipe dream, Alot of people dont want to change the foundations to bar even if its no longer working well or fun ideally we want every unit to be useable in most scenarios right?
id love to build a commando, but in a game where every unit matters, transports diie to t1 air in like 3 shotts
at t2 theres a air wall of fighters and likely aa
you cant afford to lose expensive units like that,
you need resources to eco as well as build an army, when do i have excess metal throughout the entirety of the t2 phase to build that unit
Even if you do, it can hardly trade metal for metal consistently

[tacit igloo]

Nah that’s my point, I don’t want to build salamanders every game it’s getting boring… but like what else can I do?

It’s exactly your point let’s stop looking at the OP units and make different units better

Like what if we made the pinchers and garpikes 20-30% faster. Maybe I build those now and don’t waste time wasting for my salamanders to drive across the sea. Idk

[lavish goblet]

I / we probably completely agree, but right now it is absolutely game breaking on any sea map with an air deploying this strategy. Currently the best method of ship engagement is large clumps of ships.
The maneuverability of ships is really slow and there is essentially 0 time to avoid an incoming radar sig which may or may not be a nuke bomber, in many replays the time at which you move out of the way, or scramble all the ships and the ships to actually start moving out of the group is so slow that the nuke bomber 99% of the time completely eliminates a player from the game who up to that point was completely winning. All in a handful of uncounterable seconds.

I would 100% prefer having my own better AA option and a fucking herring that takes like 20 hits. It's just a lack of desire I believe from devs to include a more powerful t1 aa ship. But currently the more easier option to pass through seems to be a nerf to the bomber. Unfortunately it has to have some sort of change as right now a player who is completely winning their lane in a hard fought battle can instantly be flipped to losing in a couple of seconds.

On sea this is drastically more potent because it's often a battle of controlling reclaim fields. You can go from a 6k ships vs 4k down to 0 ships vs 4k and now you ahve instantly lost the lane from that point onwards. There is likely a 5-10k metal field being fought over or w.e. No where else does this drastical of a change in power occur so easily with near 0 counter options.

I hope to god we get a better t1 aa option so you can actually play aggressive on sea t1 and potentially win before air comes in and plays the lane for them.

Currently the nerf may be too much, but this is also a test tweak, specifically to determine how to change things and if they work. The people bitching about the changes is actually insane, some changes go to far, some don't, this is what the pack is for, but this absolutely needs a change

[fierce scaffold]

It's just a lack of desire I believe from devs to include a more powerful t1 aa ship.
Can you link me to the previous suggestion thread where you've raised this idea and were met with disagreement?

[lavish goblet]

More something I may have overheard, could be untrue, I don't really know. But the current situation is fairly awful for anyone doing t1 aggression vs an air player aiming to counter them and shift insane amounts of metal. Also the janitor /scumbag removal seems to also point that way

I would probably rephrase that to ' it's easier to pass a number nerf than a new unit'

[fierce scaffold]

Go open one, then, because a whole new unit is way off topic for this one and I think it's a sensible idea worth considering

[elfin frigate]

Yeah there's no chainsaw like sea AA, boat or static so torp bombers and atomic bombers have free reign on T1 and to an extent T2 sea.

T2 AA ships can die for free against the unit they are explicily ment to counter 😅

Even with the Balance pack changes Dark was saying that torp bombers still trade favourably killing AA ships. All vision equal.

[vestal thistle]

Sea lacks alot of static utility

[lavish goblet]

especially at t1

It sucks so bad on a large sea map because against a decent player you likely won't win pre torp/nuke bombers

[frail gulch]

ya sea AA is very potato

but sea also wrecks land stuff

[lavish goblet]

I think that's more a map design issue

[tired tinsel]

T1 sea wrecks t1 land for sure. But sea has weakness of having to make their own t2 lab.

It doesn't justify it but t2 sea is ass overpriced

For t1 With decent micro there's like almost zero point in walking through a water crossing when a navy player had anything nearby.

[vestal thistle]

sea needs

1. t1 Radar jammer
2. t2 radar and radar jammer static
3. Long range aa in t2
4. chainsaw or the 340metal aa equivalent in t1
5. commander should be able to dgun units on the surface like they can dgun air units with dgun target
6. t2 ships need to not get absolutely wrecked by t1 riptide+destroyer
7. fusion cost needs to be reduced
8. theres alot of units that suck because of their weapon type (buccanneer lasers, ellysaw having 2 turret placements hence 1 being out of range of fire while approach or retreat, blackhydra's laser is just a huge downgrade bcz the point of flasgship is sea to land siege)

[tired tinsel]

I don't think com is that weak underwater. Repair on ships op, armada destroyer + com composition. Commander is hidden and a com bom --> win fight you get wreck

[fierce scaffold]

Folks, seriously, new thread.

[tired tinsel]

OK sorry

[fierce scaffold]

@lavish goblet to answer the question you deleted - I'm asking for a new thread for the naval issue specifically because you guys are raising good points that I haven't seen anywhere else and they're going to get lost in this 6k+ chonker, and they're good points independently of whether liche gets crippled or not.

[lavish goblet]

My main point was going to be that I think they do relate well beacuse it directly explains why the nerf is needed and I think that is important context, but yes another thread could be op
Though I am kinda motivation killed for that kinda thing anymore

[paper cypress]

not to forget the metal cost

[tired tinsel]

Sea sort of lacks a chainsaw but you'd have to tune a crazy aa ship to defend liche. 1 liche can just nuke down 1 dragon slayer if you are skimping.

Liche besides being very effective against high value ship target (destroyer, bship, missile ship), it is effective on other tasks perfectly well. Leaks or unsupported push? Com bothering you? It threatens any lab or army on the map if you don't have equal fig and an on point air player.

Angler don't give a shit about static, a few angler 1.5k dmg one shot them

The best you can do is retreat and keep moving, use jammer and make it hard for them to micro cause they don't know exactly where your ships are

When enemy could have a liche you are making 2k in aa ships which don't even protect your land base or a split force, not to mention your teammates. The 2k in aa ships don't help you win the game at all, while the 3k in liche continues to threaten the map and have defensive value.

[tacit igloo]

Here #1240266597437014067 message

[fierce scaffold]

No, https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1224187654329995394

[tacit igloo]

Wow toxic community

/s m8s jeex

[elfin frigate]

They just don't on multiple threads on the same topic.

[cerulean tartan]

@rare orbit
The basic attack of the Siegebreaker feels very strange, I'm unsure if it's supposed to be a laser or a physical projectile. If it's a projectile, do you want me to take a shot at replacing it with a colourised teal railgun projectile instead, or with quick-firing laser akin to HLTs and whatnot?

[rare orbit]

laser essentially, as it follows the dropoff rules, and a projectile too hard to hit

sea stuff, I have a lot of views on and little time currently, but liche's role overall, especially when compared to the other bomber options cost per metal, is oppressive and undercosted (and air players usually have tons of BP by then), question is just finding the right numbers, which this particular set is only the initial step towards, as I say they're new to the pack, and one of the ideas (stockpile cost, a liche makes a free tacnuke bomb essentially and outruns T1 figs even if it's seen before delivering the payloads and instaflipping lanes)

[dire cypress]

Part of the stupidity of the liches is the Auto aiming bomb.
Normal Bombers are nearly a magnitude harder to control. (Insta bombs, while leaving the ground is just 1 example...)

Imagine a bombing run where the ships move and the bomb misses by a bit. Or the bomb isn't dropped...

A slower falling bomb would increase the micro ability against the bomber, too

[rare orbit]

units already have internal targetting priority for some things over others, including scouts being lowest priority, but that can seemingly sometimes change when the unit gets really close. for high-alpha units, that's when they blow themselves up, which is anti-sanity and bad usability.

I need to do more differential tests with the badtargetcategory, but that's the case it is ideally meant to apply in. It's not a magic 'ignore all scouts always', widgets exist for that already; it just tries to ensure they stay lowest priority constantly, rather than mostly. It seems to have had a fairly minimal impact though, so may well be removable. I have no time for a couple of weeks to test much, the recent pack update is my current state so people can keep testing it while I'm largely AFK, and hopefully provide data.

I do emphasise again that the pack is still very much a process rather than an answer, although it has arrived at some good ones in part so far.

[tacit igloo]

sarcasm, my b

[tired tinsel]

the nuke bomber nerf might be too much. The cd nerf alone halves it's throughput, combined with nerfing e-cost, build power, speed, and aoe fall off. it still ends up being viable on straits cause straits is one of the best maps for nuke bomber (2 naval lanes, defends amphibs, lots of surface area to hit land, plentiful energy, people allergic to building flak truck)

[tired tinsel]

(conv cost includes bp in cost calculation)

[elfin frigate]

imo the E and BP costs are justified looking at those numbers pre nerf compared to T2 bombers is bonkers how little the Liche costs in E and BP

[wicked sky]

@rare orbit My advice is NOT to nerf the Liche first, but to give some AA ability similar to a chainsaw, to destroyer or frigate, whichever is more appropiate. This will also keep these aa-enabled T1 ships relevant in the t2 phase and help complement flak ships for overall anti-air defence.
It can also help against shuriken cheese in early T1 sea battles.
Sea planes HP might have to be slightly buffed to compensate, but that can be looked into later. Paradigm shift in making T1 Navy resistant to air.

Or you can include a new T1 AA ship with chainsaw ability. Just like how on land, a T1 con can build this AA defence, you have a mobile AA defence on the seas.

[random forum]

This is clearly another change that's totally custom made for Strait, could be an issue from the map rather than the unit.
Liche isn't an issue on other maps and we had the visit of Blxssom in rotato for a few weeks only doing Liche rush for hunded games to make sure it isn't

[ionic sonnet]

is it only a strait change if you guys dont play maps with water?

[random forum]

We do play maps with water but since no other water map has issues with Liche other than strait and its newly created clone, the change obviously target that map
But anyways what do you know about other maps

[south moss]

Abductor suggested nerf: Energy cost of 1k per stun shot.

[arctic finch]

not that i have too big opinion about liche but first step should been brinning t1 AA ships to same range with each other

[lucid nymph]

blossom doing liche rushes in straits is dogshit too, because it's blossom

[tired tinsel]

plp have done liches on rotation maps it's pretty effective backline strat. Just a really good unit

high mobility-global, bit fragile but enough hp to do it's job, huge impact
tank ball pushing a lane? big Sheldon line pushing the mid? nuke bomber pretty strong.

Ships definitely need an option against liche otherwise you will end up overbalancing it since ships are very vunerable to liche compared to lower cost bots or vehicles who have flak trucks

your nuke bomber should basically never die until the enemy air is competent and reaches t2 figs. after that its not free but you can do sneak hit and runs or try waiting until they throw away their figs

[misty pivot]

So we are not getting veh arty back in the near future?

I feel like a cost increase would be a more viable change

Also nerfing a unit so hard to satisfy the strait players feels unfair

And they still shit on t1 units, maybe even harder than before

[tired tinsel]

i would keep the BP nerf only, reduce cooldown nerf to 12 seconds or something. Very fast impactful units is logical to have high BP since they can arrive on scene very fast
Like how ticks, marauders, and many air units have high bp cost.

Then look into fixing the interaction between liche and navy

[tired tinsel]

on eight horses doesn't a nuke bomber hard win the sea lane if it's still contested?

there's a river which is pretty unrealistic to defend with land aa, no navy player will be on t2

[random forum]

Liche would be nice to have on 8 horses but sea lane is already over when liche could come into play
Also if you do rush liche super fast you die to bombing run

[tired tinsel]

honestly the vanilla version builds pretty fast

same bp cost as 6.4 sabre

i'm pretty sure there a communism way to do it. among just the top lane 2 players

you don't need to rush it with the exact same bo every game. if you scout bombing run you can change path ask for metal feed and build aa. If the t1 bombing run doesn't full kill your t2 lab and nanos the game is actually over.

[tepid mortar]

rotato complained too, the best part is, starlight wasnt nerfed just because you cant rush them that fast due to energy cost to shoot. I was saying same, that you should increase cost. Starlight on max range deals 3,09 more dmg than mauser ( calculating splash is a bit of a problem) and 6,19 on half range, while now cost is only 3,55 higher ...

[random forum]

i mean i can understand comparing 2 units that a fairly the same but mausers and starlight are so different, you wouldn't compare mausers to rocket trucks

[ionic sonnet]

Dsdr enjoyers were complaining as well

[misty pivot]

Fair enough but now they dead

And still shit on t1 while being cheap

And completly irrelevant in t2, imo we created a new gunslinger

[marble talon]

Is there any way to get the entire changelog for this balance pack, @rare orbit ? is the unit tweak string parsable in any way to determine what is included purely from the string alone?

said another way: how do you maintain the string and make sure it includes only intended changes in their current state?

[clever lava]

Liches are not tac nukes. You never build a tac nuke in an emergency. That nuke bomber might only have a life expectancy of seconds to make a difference and it needs to have immediate impact. Having it fly around with a dud for 20 seconds removes a lot of its identity. May as well get the dragon to stop for gas too.

[cerulean tartan]

The string used is a base64 encoded string, it's practically impossible to include the actual contents of the changes inside the string as it would change the contents of said tweaks entirely.

The entire changelog is posted every time hornet updates the balance patch, let me link it

#1186850950770610207 message

This is the welcome message text but it includes the changelog. The actual changelog is in pins I'd imagine, I can't open it as I'm on mobile and Discord mobile has no pins on threads for some fucking reason.

[split storm]

You can also just feed it to a base64 decoder, correct?

Granted you'd then need to compare it to the existing stuff in github

[split storm]

Feed the string to this: https://www.base64decode.org/

[golden lily]

factual

@rare orbit normally super supportive of your balances, the liche isnt one of those times
the problem is with sa, not the litch.

[cerulean tartan]

Armada can have a little nerf, as a treat

[cerulean tartan]

Also I should mention the Siegebreaker received a visual update whereby the default laser no longer shoots little bolts of light, it just fires a 0.1 second burst laser

[thick inlet]

The Liche I am also surprised.. in melat they cost 11 strat bombers. In fact since Dragon was made cheaper I thought it would be the case for Liche as well, certainly didn’t expect a nerf there

[clever lava]

I would like to see balance changes that remove the meta of obvious choice of faction when deciding on faculty. Playing navy : Core. Riptides and destroyers. Always outperform arm. Playing Air: Shurikens and T1 bombers. Outclass and perform Arm in utility and power. Playing 1v1 bots..Core. Surely you don't want such a dominant faction choice. I remember when everyone used to play arm navy cos dolphins were op. That wasn't healthy either. Maybe the reason why people are complaining about the nuke bomber needing to be constantly scrambled to flatten ships is because the core navy is too strong to begin with. A radical idea and by no means a serious one. But just to illustrate a point would be to swap the shuri and banshee between factions. Then you would be faced with the strategic choice when playing Air. Do I go core for strong bombers or do I go arm Shurikens. I'm certain you'd see a more pronounced and healthy balancing of choice when deciding on what faction to play. Implementing balance changes is kind've like AB testing. It's best observed when the changes are binary. This or that. Making huge swathes of changes over a large variety increases the scope beyond a control that allows you to viably identify what has actually provided a positive improvement.

[golden lily]

if we're being honest, shurikens should have always belonged to armada

[tired tinsel]

strat bombers have insane bp costs

[ionic sonnet]

Nah, it's core all day due to terrible reload of arm t2 figs. Not even a choice

[clever lava]

Well whichever, I would still be looking at the meta of choice, identifying the main reasons why and make changes that Harmonize a 50/50 split. I mean the riptides and destroyers of core and the ellysaw having that bogus firing mechanism is such an obvious example I'm actually shocked to see how it hasn't being addressed for the benefit of the game. I feel that is a much better use of man power and focus instead of nerfing a perfectly good bomber in a faction that is second choice for air anyway. I mainly see balance changes as needing to be perfected at the most basic level first. 1v1 and T1 tiers. The wolverine is much more powerful than the shell shocker now. And now ur looking at decreasing the janus firing range by 20%. With an idea of removing it's tracking. That's massive. Also making the unit effectively a waste of metal. I think in the long run it would be much more creative and beneficial to come up with a new vehicle unit to supplement perhaps the cores uninspiring lineup to counter arms more interesting one, instead of dumbing down the units that fufill a unique space. I play arm vehicles because i wouldn't be the only person who thinks core vehicles are boring and lack scope. But Nerfing the janus won't make me choose core more. It will just make me irritated cos a balance change was made that suited the lower standard.

[thick inlet]

Actually - why not cosider going 1 step further - give EMP only to Arm (so Shuri and remove Cor spybot) and only give Rez ability to Cor. That could make the factions balance ld and yet so different.

[cerulean tartan]

That would make it reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally unbalanced

EMP is great and all but rezzing units is literally something that can give you infinite value, restricting it to one faction is not a good idea... at all. There's a reason it was like that originally in TA and BA but was given to both factions for parity.

[steep cosmos]

i like it

[cerulean tartan]

EMP is still massively useful, with a lack of spybots and shurikens Armada gets even more broken in the meta, Armada players can EMP your entire army and pick it off clean, Armada players can EMP your antinuke and nuke you, and you as a Cortex player just sits there and dies

[cerulean tartan]

BA is always available, go play it if you want to try out this type of balance

[steep cosmos]

no

[cerulean tartan]

"Also making the unit effectively a waste of metal."
Welcome to being a Cortex player in the vanilla game. The Balance Candidates pack by Hornet aims to reduce the overuse of certain units in the meta such that other options becomes viable. Liches and Janii are hilariously overused for one or two specific roles to the point where other options get elbowed out entirely.
"cores uninspiring lineup to counter arms more interesting one" This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the gameplay design of both Armada and Cortex. Cortex is the one with more creative units to cover its bases whilst Armada is the faction with the more generalised and jack-of-all-trades units that don't punish you much at all for incorrect usage of them.
"But Nerfing the janus won't make me choose core more. It will just make me irritated cos a balance change was made that suited the lower standard." It's not meant to make you choose Cortex more, it's meant to prevent abusing one unit for infinite trades over and over again with no clear counter to them. By all means, play Armada, but with this unittweaks patch you'll have to play smarter with your choices instead of setting your lab to make janus and stouts on repeat.

[steep cosmos]

he was talking about core vehicles, which are indeed meh, although in some cases are now super op with salamander
core bots is the best lab in the game rn

[celest dune]

we need a thread to discuss the plural of janus

[ionic sonnet]

so there are lots of controversial changes but can we get a collection of a few that aren't and work to release those? Not sure what that takes honestly

[cerulean tartan]

controversial in the sense that a few people feel peeved enough about them as it directly affects their playstyle surrounding a specific unit, or a handful of specific units, and want to express their frustration at why this unit that they previously was able to use is no longer as viable as it once was

In a simple phrase, I feel like a lot of this feels like a kneejerk reaction to being forced to change a safe playstyle and build order

(and most of this seems to come from armada players)

(seriously fellas armada has a lot of cool units, you don't have to use the janus to wipe out fronts, or the liche to wipe out sea, you have other options that you should now use in conjunction with the janus and liche for their respective roles)

((this is also just my opinion, i feel like the balance pack is great, it allows the two factions to open up and diversify quite a bit and I feel less bored playing armada and less shoehorned into tzar rushes as cortex))

[random forum]

Rockets bot and janus are well balanced against each other currently, removing 1 option is just stupid, thx you very much

[cerulean tartan]

Janus with 660 alpha damage (3.8x that of the rocketeer), 2.6x the AOE, and over 2x the DPS as a rocketeer + it tracks missiles and accelerates as it travels at just double the cost

Balanced for sure

[copper bronze]

i heard its rocko meta rn

[tired tinsel]

lol cannon price should be increased. excepting full team coms tournament, and even then (cause you can strategically pool 100% of non-neccesary resources), it's easy to go lol cannon after like 1.2k team income

[wet dirge]

game ender things ideally should go into T3 con i think. but we need 3d model for it.
nuke, afus, lolcannon - all could be moved into T3

this will solve nuke-rush issue (i'd suggest reducing antinuke rate of fire so it only can counter one nuke launched at a a time, so nuke would be a late game things, rather than 8 minute rush all-or-nothing thing)

[tired tinsel]

i don't think nuke rush is so bad. on open maps which are hard to defend it shouldn't be so hard to scout
on back front maps that are narrow 1 anti nuke covers a lot

[thick inlet]

Well on one hand you are saying the game would be broken because Rezing is a massive advantage and in next post you say the EMP would make it broken as its a massive advantage.. my point is - both are massive advantages, if we split them among the factions, wouldn’t it make them both have a certain advantage and thus be balanced actually? It was just a food for thought of course but perhaps something worse considering to make the factions really different 🙂

[random forum]

why are you saying random numbers? Rockets have 100 more range, meaning if you micro well you can kite janus and with 10 rockets you will destroy janus very fast, the rocket bot can eat 1 full janus shot and not die so you can repair them

[ionic sonnet]

The balance pack has a lot of issues. See: torpedo bombers. All I'm saying is If there is agreement on some why not go for those so we can have some movement. Ie. Gunslinger/termite. Putting in a lot of different balance changes isn't usually great as the law of unintended consequence goes pretty hard.

[cerulean tartan]

Tf you mean random numbers these values are pulled directly from the unitdef files inside the game folders

[cerulean tartan]

Rezzing is more brokenly powerful than EMP but EMP is still a very powerful tool in its own right

[ionic sonnet]

I'll put it this way...is there anything in this balance patch that we all agree on? All good if not, then we can continue on bantering about hypotheticals.

[random forum]

You don't seem to be aware janus/rocket matchup is strongly favorable for rockets against players of same skill, that's why i say you used random numbers cause you didn't even include numbers like range, do you play the video game?

[ionic sonnet]

Whistlers are an important part of this. You have vision and range advantage. Not to mention it is much easier to play with the vehicles. Sure if ur micro is good you might be okay, but it takes skill.

[random forum]

it's also very linked to map and lanes on the map, good example is glitters, middle lanes are better with veh but the sides lanes are better with rockets
On koom, bots are favored on all the lanes but armada veh can still make it work pretty well on the 2 "carry" lane, the hill in the middle make thugs push very stronk
Ect...

[random forum]

i will have a replay to show you guys soon;
Classic a very strong armada veh player Versus 8D on Koom currently happening, 8D won with core rockets

It's really not hard to see if something is op or not, you just need to watch top level players play against each other

[thick inlet]

perhaps, but it’s just rezzing, Arm could still reclaim.. overall perhaps equalising the balance

[random forum]

https://www.beyondallreason.info/replays?gameId=515e4b669f475fc1326cf6366079d83e
8D won his lane in about 8-9 mins and completely dominated one of the best janus user currently playing actively

Janus were so strong because of the whistlers, not because of the janus
Now that devs finally fixed Whistlers 1 year latter, the match up is stronger for rockets

So stop doing random Changes to the game, then complain people don't want to test it
Watch the good players play the video game and stop trolling

Thx

[ionic sonnet]

Ya... that whistler change you are talking about isn't in the base game yet right? Also people still win all the time with whistler Janus so my guess is we should leave it alone. The janoos change also nerfs com damage @random forum Thoughts? I don't really like how good they are against coms currently

[random forum]

it's most likely gonna be merged kinda soon, once Zecrus feels comfortable with it, just like previous changes, they usually take a few months to be in main game if op lobby is playing with them as default, which is the case with whistler rework

Janus/stout of course is still very strong but it's mostly against players that don't know what to do against it
main strength of janus is how fast they can try to kill a commander, it's a rush unit, the first few minutes are the most important
can you do real damage before rocket user has enough rockets to start winning the fight?
can you snipe the commander so he cannot repair the rockets anymore ect...

So nerfing his dmg against commander will kill the unit, it's what it is used for mainly

[rare orbit]

alas this is not possible via tweak, and liche is still overtuned with high alpha. needs something of a nerf but not as much as is currently done, and sea in general needs a kick up the arse

[rare orbit]

no, I've seen liches tour backline bases on other maps and free delete the lot. anywhere with boats they're oppressive though, glacial gap good example too, sulphur springs etc

[rare orbit]

I mostly play non-strait(ish) maps, the pack is tested on all of them, including maps that aren't even normal to the game, and balance outliers on the lot are considered. please stop trying to dismiss things as strait specific, very few things truly are, and those would likely also be an issue on other maps if they were 'solved' as hard

[rare orbit]

both, problem is, I can't 'fix sea' via tweak

[golden lily]

true

[rare orbit]

liche alpha compared to dragon is bonkers, with no time to react to it. a T2 air rush will win multiple lanes before the opponent air can do anything, and sea hasn't a prayer of doing so. it's not just a sea issue, but manifests there more strongly

[golden lily]

then slow liche lol, not increease reload time

[rare orbit]

I mean the reason they're 'controversial' is usually 'too effective at fixing an OP unit that a given player really enjoyed abusing and is now being very loud about'

[rare orbit]

both, but the liche still needs to get away somewhat. it having a slower/unique speed helps massively but isn't the whole solution

I agree entirely that the current liche nerf isn't the best possible one, it's still very WiP. ideally it should have a stockpile cost too, but that's not possible via tweak

[random forum]

Liche isn't a issue in OP lobby, if you would play with us you would have seen Blxsson arc story with his liche rush

And anyway all the op players would abuse it if it was op, Blxsson and other Strait spammer really not that good air player at the end of the day

[ionic sonnet]

I agree liche strat is troll and just evidence of an air diff. Said it a million times. It has a strong timing anywhere if you are allowed to get away with it

[wintry wasp]

once Zecrus feels comfortable with it, just like previous changes

Where are these being discussed? 🙂

[arctic finch]

liche is mostly issue in strait and it looks even stronger cause 1 theres not lot of aa ships with fleet 2 aa range sucks on core 3 player skill diff

[tame hill]

I have never been hit my a liche rush and thought "damn that's op it needs to be nerfed" and that's all clyret did for 6 months in 2022

[wintry wasp]

I'd much rather see naval outfitted with proper AA 🙂

[ionic sonnet]

Also you don't make a lot of aa with your fleet because they could be frigates. It's totally okay to lose sea getting 2 or 3 v1 and ur the 1

[random forum]

usually on op discord, there is a thread and he pops up randomly in chat sometimes, to discuss how the changes are doing

[steep cosmos]

he seems to have 50 games total, so...

[random forum]

yeah, won't stop hornet for taking his opinion seriously tho
even tho i provided a game played 2 hours ago that completely destroy the argument that janus are op

i guess you need to actually play the game to balance it and not just go play in all welcome lobbies

[lavish goblet]

I don't think that's exactly true statement, it may not be overly explored on other maps, however even if not, no matter the map if it has air and water and an eco spot this strategy is completely possible by a competent air player and it just simply far too effective. This is also just as potent on Hellas, I'd imagine on pinch point, glacial gap, possibly tempest? tundra.. etc

Like it or not, some maps are overplayed and have extreme timing for build orders and often have players who love figuring that shit out. When done correctly, it's just too potent with next to 0 counter play you can go from 100 to 0. Hard winning lane, to now your team needs to protect you because you are crippled in literally 3 seconds where ships quite literally can't maneuver out of the way.

I think t1 aggression should not be discouraged, but often ships are quite slow to build momentum and killing someone pre 10 is not often possible unless huge skill mismatch. If you have not fully killed them at 10 and this comes out, you likely just lost 5k+ metal units, and a 10k metal reclaim field. All I am after is a nerf to the speed or the bomb drop speed, so that skill expression is highlighted by being able to maneuver ships out of the way while playing aggressive. right now with the couple of seconds warning it's impossible for ships to move out of the way in time

Another option would be to add in a t1 ship with high AA capability so you can actually have a chance. But I would like both ideally. At least land players can have the choice to make flak/chainsaw/sam/nettle or not. I'm stuck with a I believe worse than nettle but costs 2x herring.

[lavish goblet]

Ive had similar air issues on other maps, but usually only against strong air players who often are forced to interact and deal with sea daily.

[random forum]

yeah, im not saying liche isn't strong in Strait, it could be op, i don't play sea so i don't have opinion on it really, it looked very strong to me when i specced
and winning sea is now huge with the new strait version of the map.

I only come here so main game doesn't get fucked by those changes, i had no desire to argue here before i was made aware that this pack will eventually be reviewed to be merged.

[rare orbit]

'OP' players need to stop thinking their view (which rarely agrees) is the One True Experience of the game

it is -completely- possible for a unit to be OP in some skill strata while also being 'meh' at OP level, or in 8v8 compared to 1v1.
and it is also possible to adjust the unit to mitigate the lower down problems while not affecting the top as much
(also note that the toppest skill percentile are by definition the extreme minority of players. that can make them better at exploiting things sometimes though, absolutely, sometimes too much so when compounded with outlier maps like rosetta)

[ionic sonnet]

I think there are too many changes in this pack to be pushed in at one time.

[rare orbit]

probably, some are still experimental, rather than 'locked in', however there is an argument for fixing everything at once and having a 'season' and a relearning point rather than trickling stuff in that lobsters will grumble at all the while

the pack is not ready for that yet though, to clarify, it's still testing things

[ionic sonnet]

Not really. Balancimg many simultaneous changes is rife with complexity

[rare orbit]

that's why it was slowly built up in layers. some parts can be isolated though yes

[random forum]

watch the Replay of janus please
it's not long only 10 mins max
Tell me how janus op after watching it
Every high ts players agree rockets beat janus, at the end of the day that's a fact
janus being op has no support behind it, especially since the whistler nerf

[ionic sonnet]

If the Whistler nerf goes to live then im fine with it. But as is. Janus+whistler still op.

[rare orbit]

rockets are somewhat OP now yes, comparatively, I've never disagreed. my main issue with janus currently is the lack of alpha damage cap to commanders, as most other units have

being able to free delete LLTs is a bit much though, unless the LLT has levelled

[steep cosmos]

plenty of units can delete llts

[rare orbit]

Janus changes might be a little strong in the pack presently, I've not seen enough games heavily featuring them yet

[ionic sonnet]

All if like to see I'd a serious patch with a handful of the changes. Not all of them. And then we might be able to talk about them in any depth. Ex. Rotato ppl could play them and test too

[rare orbit]

trying to cut the pack down then causes the issue of which to keep and then that's an equally contentious mess, also doesn't address all the issues

eg core T3 being comparatively bad (ideally it needs a full rework)

[ionic sonnet]

Just pick a few. It's fine

[steep cosmos]

i fail to see how liche nerf and minelayer dclaws are essential to everything else

[rare orbit]

liche for example also relates to air/gunship changes

minelayer not so much, and that change isn't key, just suits the unit. I might well remove it for deployment with something else I'm doing

[ionic sonnet]

No? Just do the gunship changes then for example

[random forum]

I don't think 8D took even 1 janus shot to his commander
why nerf a unit that's losing his matchup

[rare orbit]

ideally this will end up there eventually, as a proper modoption. for now the pack is still somewhat liberal, and unpruned, and some parts are literally explicitly labelled 'super experimental', which people seem to be arguing against as if they're final

and some things can't be done via tweak, eg giving liche a reload cost

[prisma bane]

because the game isnt purely about the top players, and because it opens space for balancing rocket bots as well

[ionic sonnet]

Ya they are because they can't tell what you are trying to accomplish. Ie pairing it down a bit so it's obvious/digestible

[fierce scaffold]

On the Janus issue - I don't think it's really overpowered as in "there are no answers to it", that's clearly not the case - but I also don't like how it's made bots even more rocket bot-centric.

[rare orbit]

each section of the patch does address a subset though, very few are truly isolated (minelayer about only example, maybe liche if you ignore the bigger arm air picture)

[prisma bane]

yah, rocket bots are not very cool, but they are the only really effective way to deal with janus as bots

[rare orbit]

I will document the patch better though, that could help people accept/understand it

[ionic sonnet]

Do 1 section of the patch at a time. 1

That will help though

[rare orbit]

that's exactly how we got here though. I also really don't want a huge naval gazing phase with each change section that takes 7 years to integrate

[ionic sonnet]

I'm saying this patch is too large to ever happen, some parts are tested, others aren't etc. But not really tested because not enough people have played with them

[random forum]

Takes 2+ months to know if little changes are working or not
but suddently game is supposed to have 100 changes at same time, kinda sus

[rare orbit]

I mean, there's always something that evolves later, but similarly, again the OP lobby is not the One True Testbed, especially as some of these changes are explicitly to deal with issues that 1000APM players don't see or maybe even realise exist at all

they have been tested, but I do agree isolating some might help them be tested moreso, yes

[random forum]

bar doesn't needs much apm, it's not starcraft, most people can play with low apm
the hard thing is to understand what needs to be done and when

[steep cosmos]

whos that mythical 1000 apm player, chisato?

[random forum]

it's probably one of the RTS that needs the less apm to be competing at the top

[ionic sonnet]

Ideally the small balance changes would go through rotato/strait/glitters lobbies for testing etc. Not necessarily testing the maps, but the people that only play those maps

[tired tinsel]

maybe should split up the patch (buff underutilized unit, navy balance patch, op air tweaks)

[random forum]

There is janus/rockets replay i sent, if you think you need apm to make your rockets go back when janus player is going forward idk what to say
it's basic stuff, like using the mouse

[tired tinsel]

i think for most people bots against janus hard. 40 os plus then its fine

[rare orbit]

yes, until higher levels, then it completely does need apm

the controls are specifically low APM friendly, but some units basically require apm to work usefully at all

[tired tinsel]

like you said its race to critical mass of rockets

[steep cosmos]

then how is janus a problem when it's super easy to die with low apm?

[rare orbit]

and some usablity features, eg overkill prevention, are explictly not included in BAR to allow 'skill expression', AKA, APM

[random forum]

isn't it basic stuff to move units back when enemy units with less range move forward to attack?
if you make changes for basic stuff like this, it's super weird

[rare orbit]

if the player is doing nothing except staring at the front line to make their 'not dying' twitches. but the moment they fix their base/econ, unjam that con caught in in winds etc, their front deletes itself in a second

[tired tinsel]

rocket bot is like high os super really good unit

need to like dance it around to always fire without throwing it away (the range isn't that much unlike whistler)

[rare orbit]

if you can nanny units perfectly while 'alt tabbing', eg apm, certain units are vastly more powerful and that completly alters tier balance profiles

[tired tinsel]

and it doesn't provide self vision so you have lower vision alternatives like grunt/scout

[rare orbit]

not to say nerf every unit so that it works with low apm, but try to set up differential balance so that units are less polar, otherwise you end up having to nerf units for the OP lobby that are 'meh' everywhere else
eg dragons

[tired tinsel]

dragons are never op tho

op is the big travel distance + exponential scaling

[rare orbit]

chisato can rush them on rosetta with the right team on a full moon therefore nerf them in all cases, or something

imo issue there is more the map and chisato

[random forum]

it's not apm issue, you just need to play the map enough times to know what you need to build in your base
when that become obvious to you, you have queues on your cons, so you can spend more time looking at the front
knowing when to not look at units is a skill, if you don't look you can pull them back, so you are sure they won't get sniped while you don't look

[steep cosmos]

yeah let's forget all the times zow trolled everyone with rushed dragons

[tired tinsel]

plp aa response not good. there are ton of coordinated strats that will slaughter op randos

after playing op lobby some bit I don't think janus that oppressive. (average skill vs average skil) in vehicle vs vehicle you kind of need them tho
what does cor veh do against janus anyways

[rare orbit]

I mean a smurf smurfing is the issue moreso, again
but people also didn't react properly, nor use the tools available

[steep cosmos]

totally not that a unit is uncounterable in the timings he managed to make it

[rare orbit]

by definition you can counter a dragon more cheaply than it costs to produce it, just needs people to -do- it

[tired tinsel]

dragon does have low bp cost
i mean you just make flak trucks and kite backwards. and when there's no fighters figs can help hit it

[steep cosmos]

well say how to counter it

[rare orbit]

bp cost can certainly be raised if that would help, air players usually have a load though

[steep cosmos]

what flak trucks ppl barely had t2s

[tired tinsel]

then scout it
they are making air lab instead of land t2 right?
for a 4k metal unit a dragon does pretty piss dps

[steep cosmos]

scouting in bar good stuff
with what

[rare orbit]

so it was a scouting failure that it was happening, as well as a failure to prepare. T1 AA eg chainsaws also -very- good against dragons, and you can dgun the things in a pinch

[tired tinsel]

1-2 chainsaw in important location ig
show me replay

[rare orbit]

T2 AA bots in balance pack also very good against dragons, vanilla not so much, loads of T1s are better

[tired tinsel]

prolly should split up the balance pack
(buff underutilized units, navy, air tweak)

[steep cosmos]

sure imma go send some scout planes, nvm that they'll just die

[random forum]

you can't scout dragon

[tired tinsel]

so what was the strat?

[random forum]

unlike other AA units when you can react quickly and make flak to kill them
dragon you need 5-10 mins to react

it's a cheese strat than doesn't even leave wrecks, so no op feed

[tired tinsel]

t1 aa kinda sus but 12 t1 aa bot fanning backwards and kiting not useless

[steep cosmos]

even if you make some aa it'll just kill someone else

[tired tinsel]

so what is the build? how many plp coop

[steep cosmos]

not like aa works against dragon in the first place ofc

[random forum]

it's much harder to explain why dragon op
and you kinda need to understand the last version on dragon was actually balanced unlike the new one

[rare orbit]

the games I saw with it looked like a counterable build if scouted and co-op'd, especially as it was linked to players on maps & positions, could even be blind countered/inferred

I still hold that a liche rushed in the same case would have done far more than a dragon could have

[steep cosmos]

say how to scout it

[tired tinsel]

who is making the dragon? (eco or air or coop)

if you play narrow ass maps where impossible to air scout then well defending the dragon with groundaa should be easier

send reps

dragon has somethings going for it like surprise and ability to create a 2v1 bust open

but the raw impact per cost is low and its slow

if opponent doesn't have map hax you should be able to line back it even with slower aa units

[random forum]

you understand you can't be ready against everthing, i got killed by dragon coming from the other side of the map on flats
Unlike bombers or liche or anything else, you have no options to react
you just have to watch and die

[tired tinsel]

1 dragon?
just fly straight into backline base?

[random forum]

no not 1, like 5 rushed, we have some trolls doing that

you can't know if doing afus or something else, you can not scout in BAR
and that's players that never do bombing run or whatever coz that needs skills and you can fail

[tired tinsel]

yes gunships are different kind of control

honestly if team is going t2 veh i think its pretty easy to defend
with both t2 veh and t2 air lab
with t2 bot lab then its harder

[steep cosmos]

flak doesnt do shit to a dragon

[random forum]

you can't defend with mobile flak

[tired tinsel]

you kite backwards, mobile flak also shits down the fighters so you can use your op 500 dmg a shot figs. wait until the fihgters are zoned out for a sec

[random forum]

only good thing is many t1 AA turrets

[tired tinsel]

thing is mobile flak never dies to random shit

[rare orbit]

thing is somehow they usually have 0 air players themselves

[random forum]

imagine having a unit when t1 AA is the counter and not t2

[rare orbit]

nor can sling metal to someone to quickspam a T2 air lab

[random forum]

it's like killing thors with pop ups

[tired tinsel]

t2 figs take a lot of bp

[steep cosmos]

i wonder how even air players would help when it was your idea to give dragon aa

[rare orbit]

I mean T2 LRAA not terrible vs dragons unless they go right to it and you have nothing else covering

[tired tinsel]

so who is making the dragons?
i don't like lraa they too squishy

[random forum]

you can't react t2 figs in 30 secs, you can't know you need t2 figs at all

[rare orbit]

light AA, not heavy. it's still one-shot by like 20 T2 figs

T1 figs also doable you just need a lot more

[tired tinsel]

just send some reps and we start cooking

[random forum]

maybe create another t2 turret, that can kill dragon

[rare orbit]

can't rally them into it,get a ball and move in. note that the 'what if it comes out of the fog' argument is the same logic that makes timed liche rushes effective too, and reason they have to be nerfed somewhat

[rare orbit]

IMO the T2 LRAA should be longer range maybe and better single target damage, for that reason

[steep cosmos]

how are "timed liche rushes" different from any other bomber rushes?

[rare orbit]

chainsaws still very much a solid counter, they're a T2 AA in a T1 tech tree tbh

[tired tinsel]

liche is better against armies, doesn't leave wrecks, better handling and speed

[random forum]

yeah maybe, something would be nice

[tired tinsel]

t2 strat bomber also take insane bp cost

14700 strat bomber vs 57400 liche

[rare orbit]

liche never misses, can turn instantly after firing, usually survives
also yes vanilla liche BP and E cost insanely low

[random forum]

you guys are against spam but the more reliable counter to dragons is too make 20k metal of t1 AA bots

on repeat on 5 labs

[tired tinsel]

hey i didn't make t2 aa bots so shit

[rare orbit]

I mean it's basically a T3 air unit. I'd not be opposed to dragons being in the gantry, tbh

(I fixed T2 AA bots in pack, they're very good vs dragons)

[tired tinsel]

gantry gaming is so inflexible

[steep cosmos]

so what, liche dies to anything while core t2 bombers can at least survive to bomb

[random forum]

that's nice change but unit is in main game and the counter is in a balance pack that maybe that change will get merged in many months
so doesn't help much

[tired tinsel]

sometimes if you are front you just die without team support
that doesn't make it broken

dragon does have low bp cost drain: 6.06 86

[rare orbit]

please send replays though, would help to see what you're referring to more explicitly. only outlier examples I've seen were chisato rushes, which were badly reacted to

[rare orbit]

agreed both liches and dragons need this altering tbh

[tired tinsel]

i've never seen dragon rush be good in many many games

[steep cosmos]

no shit zow and tx are banned for months

[tired tinsel]

i can see what raikoh are talking about but need reps. since its this difficult to deal with 5x suprise unit
whats the difference then coop 10 min marauder + spam tho

[cerulean tartan]

??? This thread is about the balance pack changes

[rare orbit]

I mean this is like 25k in dragons alone that a few K in T2 figs would completely wipe

[woeful depot]

Janus is fine , liche is fine , please, don’t nerf them

[tired tinsel]

well the dragons are not alone i assume opponent is trying to put t2 figs behind them

[tired tinsel]

have you seen liche on amphib maps?

[rare orbit]

sure but one would assume defenders should have vastly more figs available, nvm defenders advantage and flaks

[tired tinsel]

liche is a huge skill check cause anyone who goes for a t1 bombing run you will instantly kill your team vs liche. or if you don't get fast t2 and match eco

[cerulean tartan]

Show us your faction playtime Club (this is a joke relax)

[steep cosmos]

have you seen liche on land maps?

[tired tinsel]

yes it's good, countered by decent enemy air
but eco going for it is okay too

the thing is most the rotation maps have lots of metal and shitty wind
favours cor economy and air is a weak spot

when you have huge amounts of metal it's easier to spam aa

[rare orbit]

yes, less likely to instantly lane delete but can definitely remove enough to be massively game altering if not outright gameending

[steep cosmos]

go try dsd

[tired tinsel]

liche just needs some control and its good unit

[random forum]

lol liche perfectly fine on rotato how it is, far from being op

[rare orbit]

dsd is not an 'average map'

[tired tinsel]

the unit is 290 speed how you are losing it for free by being greedy is beyond me

[random forum]

just like janus btw, stop being weird

[rare orbit]

rotatos famously skip anything with more water than eight horses

[random forum]

we play some water map, failed negociation, erebos and shit

[tired tinsel]

haven't seen failed negotiation in weeks xD

[random forum]

thoseare the best water maps

[tired tinsel]

im kinda meh about failed negot. weak lane strong lane ewk
erobos interesting

[woeful depot]

Liche is fine as it is , it’s a super situational unit , only popular rushed by Blxssom on strait , dies to t1 -7-8 minutes bomb run deleting him

[random forum]

it's funny how people playing the whole game aren't taken seriuosly when we say liche is balanced

[woeful depot]

Janus super balanced atm as Raikoh said

[random forum]

but a strait spammer is taken seriously

[tired tinsel]

t1 bombing run can be easily held if he just plays less greedy
splitting nanos up and insnta spam nettles on reaction

[steep cosmos]

sulphur, tempest, tropical...

[woeful depot]

Can liche take massive value ? Yes , it’s an AoE unit

[random forum]

I literally gave a replay why janus not op, im sure it won't get watched or acted on it

[tired tinsel]

lol plp not playing tempest and tempest is a sort of shit map

[rare orbit]

I mean same could be said about chisato rushing dragons on rosetta. nobody is saying it's uncounterable, but it is hard to scout and catch up to if you played a more straight air game

[steep cosmos]

apparently i dont play tempest

[rare orbit]

whereas a dragon is a few K more metal investment and easier to out fig

[woeful depot]

Chisato rushing dragons on Rosetta is insta lose against proper enemies

And he knows it , he can tell you how bad dragon rush is by himself

[steep cosmos]

dragons on rosetta are of least concern cus everyone actually has a fuckton of metal to counter it

[random forum]

it's mostly super weird on lane maps imo, unlike other units like t3 or whatever you can defend and get feed from it

it's like a risk free cheese on lane map, very hard to defend

[rare orbit]

how many 'mid tier' games have you watched though, where people have great issues countering janus and freely lose coms to them?

[random forum]

i know that very well, i abuse it myself

[woeful depot]

This is like saying that on Ascendancy spiders op on the hills , yes spiders op on the hills lol .

Yes liche shining against clumps of units.

Janus op against low skill players.

[random forum]

but not the point, you can abuse anything against lower player

[random forum]

yeah, nerf spiders too strong on that map

[woeful depot]

Check my games or Raikoh games and check how many times we die to Janus early

I don’t remember last time I lost to Janus 🤣, rockets op now

[rare orbit]

note the janus changes here do predate the OP rockets

[random forum]

you can't lose with rokets, unless you get 1v2 early on and you behind and can't stop the snowball

[rare orbit]

as a high alpha unit though it really should have a com damage nerf, almost all do, even up to T3 iirc

if someone has an idea for a different way to try differential balance with the unit, I'd also love to hear it

[random forum]

it used to be you could kill rockets by going Arty or Whistler spam

not the case anymore, game already been balanced and janus has been balanced from it

[woeful depot]

Janus best use case is to snipe a commander and to fight stout balls

Janus was way stronger pre-whistler nerf as Janus shines while retreating, so you can’t engage whistlers as Janus protect them

[tired tinsel]

the value of not leaving wreck is huge compared to traditional bomber (rez t2 lab is op af)
also you don't need huge clump anything that is free you will take it

[tame hill]

also mausers were best t2 unit by far so there wasn't a single window of weakness in the entire lab progression

[cerulean tartan]

So basically, what I'm getting from Raikoh and Club is that Armada vehicles T1 is perfectly balanced and doesn't need any changes at all, but rocket bots needs a nerf so that they can be more easily dealt with

Great, Hornet will take those suggestions into consideration

[tired tinsel]

i think rocket bots are kinda strong pushing thugs out. skirmish meta. rocko don't feel like cancer cause you can buy a lot of time with repair against them. and they pretty useless in t2 phase

[woeful depot]

Don’t get me wrong , Janus is the perfect “newbie abuser” unit , but we can’t nerf it just because of that

[random forum]

on glitters if i lane against 2 noobs i usually do janus push and can't end the game at 8-10 mins, or most of the enemy team needs to stop me
it's the best unit to kill a noob or even multiples (up to 3) and against a single good player you lose, so idk how you want to balance it

[steep cosmos]

you counter it by asking in #🎓｜academy-chat

[rare orbit]

ideally, it shouldn't be nerfed as much as nudged so it has less of a power spike to it (at those levels)

[random forum]

people learning the game is the obvious solution to it, you probably can't balance it like you would want

[rare orbit]

ah yes because everyone should be top percentile, because games work that way

the game is a spectrum and ideally should be built accordingly where possible

[random forum]

some 30 ts can stop it very ez, it's not about the number really, it's about where you play, we have very good 30ts in op lobby than can play most of the role good enough that they are competitive against top players

[rare orbit]

you do realise how far above the average that 30 is though?

[random forum]

idk is 30ts really that high?

[rare orbit]

it's probably top 5% of players, maybe less

exact figures aren't published so I can't be sure

at one point someone said it was top 1%, but again, can't verify and the bell curve has grown since then

[random forum]

idk how you can balance such a game for both end of the spectrum

personally i think this game too complicated to do it
even comupdate that was supposed to make game easier for lower end player, i don't think it really did, sure you can't combomb instantly and wipe a front as easy and you don't get 4k metal but people die super fast still, it just removed 1 op trick but there is still so many others

it's same with units i think

[steep cosmos]

30os is like top 7% last they checked
#1161467259471007787 message

the bare minimum knowledge to move a mouse

[rare orbit]

very generally, altering unit price and damage for lower balancing, handling for higher. if timing attacks are the issue then cost and BP etc relevant

[random forum]

TS doesn't tell the full story, there is 20ts dudes that don't die to janus easily or even can win, then you can kill a 35+ ts the next game in 2 mins

[rare orbit]

there are many ways that could explicitly make game generally easier/less frustrating, without affecting highest levels, zero K has a lot of them

[rare orbit]

absolutely, it's overrated as a metric, and does not correlate with game knowledge. I frequently end up telling very high OS players about game mechanics they weren't aware of

or rather, is not the causation, even when there is correlation sometimes

[random forum]

idk, i looked at your patch notes and less range / losing tracking ect means it won't get played anymore against a already losing matchup

[rare orbit]

the changes are mild, they're just not magic missiles
but that was pre rocket, and needs revising

[random forum]

i think range only could be nerfed before core commander dgun range fixed
now that you fixed it you can't change that imo

[woeful depot]

Ye on this balance patch I will never ever build Janus again , just stouts

[steep cosmos]

probably like 8-10% now with inflation

[rare orbit]

core dgun is still 'fucky' mind you, it will glitch sometimes and not fire, but we can't work out why

if anyone isolates the pattern in that please let me know

[woeful depot]

I really like some of the patch changes , just need to also consider rotato , can I have a full list of changes so we can provide feedback from a rotato pov ?

[cerulean tartan]

Pinned messages in this thread

[rare orbit]

I actively do consider rotato, the problem is they don't give replays with it ever

I would love a series of games played with the pack in rotato, would help massively
as would OP say 4v4, 5v5 games

[random forum]

oh rip 😦
but range on janus currently well balanced agaisnt armada dgun range, so -20 is huge, just like nerfing cowboy range would be

[rare orbit]

I will try to do a full writeup series/document on what the changes are meant to fix and what they're grouped with, the batching is somewhat lost in thread form now

a lot of it is fixing OTAisms or old 'core taxes' that are there in game just because they already are. some don't go far enough eg standardising radar & jammer veh speeds shouldn't be contentious, atm core one is pretty glacial

used to be dire even in main game but I managed to speed it up there a little

[random forum]

how can we play with it when we disagree with some huge part of it
we don't even play with single tweak change that not everybody likes

[rare orbit]

I can split it into the core/stable section for rotato usage if it would help, but similarly if everyone likes what I've done, I've fucked up, as people actively exploit some of this stuff

therefore I will always upset people, change always does, especially for something as old as some of these balance/game issues you've been Stockholm'd into for decades

[cerulean tartan]

Who's we?

[rare orbit]

mostly I find a couple of people being loud about a specific change or two that affects their playstyle, or panicing with 'zomg too many changes tl:dr;'

broadly the pack is very well liked, especially the stable part
newer ones have had less testing by definition naturally

[wise epoch]

there's not really a reason to give replays? most of the stuff being discussed here happens in every high-os game, or even any game with just a couple 35+ people

[random forum]

Usually the only tweak that are tested and used, is things that everybody starts to hate because it's abused in the lobby
like emp bombers, whistler, hounds on consul ect and then everyone agrees to use the tweaks to fix the issue

[rare orbit]

so what you're saying is it's an echo chamber that only cares about issues within that lobby? this is a huge part of what the pack has to address too, so isolating it into lobster friendly aspects only misses a lot of the point

I actively want it to work and play at all levels, and will hopefully achieve it, but it's a holistic picture

[random forum]

we would never vote it coz it's too large and not fixing particular issues

probably creating more on his own

[rare orbit]

it is, but I realise I should document it better to show that, to aid understanding

[rare orbit]

all balance does, that's why I get it tested heavily

[tired tinsel]

need to make it smaller, split it up

[random forum]

do you remember how long the counsul tweaks went on for, i think it was like 4 months to get it right and that was only 1 particular thing

[woeful depot]

Issue with this patch so far is that I only see this being played in strait , we need different versions to start rolling to rotato , feels like a whole different game right now

[random forum]

it's impossible to test more than a few things

[woeful depot]

Like as you mentioned core Changes

[rare orbit]

no, it's played in many including rotations (and mutations), and I actively test as widely as possible

[woeful depot]

But keep in mind that we might just totally reject some changes so please be ready for that feedback , is not us being mean or whatsoever

[wise epoch]

No it's not an echo chamber, it's conclusions that are arrived at organically as skilled players encounter strong things and come up with counters, eventually they find the thing that has no reliable counter and it gets abused like crazy until there's a change, e.g. the consul and mauser stuff

[rare orbit]

but strait players are very keen to help develop and improve the game, and have high micro abilities so are useful for testing those aspects. I'm -highly- aware strait is not the whole game and in no way is the pack 'made for strait'

[wise epoch]

you cannot say that and include a 5x liche nerf lol

[rare orbit]

which has been so many times stated as super experimental and trial state only

liche ideally needs less damage vs boats or a role change entirely, since BAR hates special damages

ideally sea rework should consider that specifically, but that's not here yet

[woeful depot]

I am 100% against liche nerf , I can’t remember a single time when I said Omg liche so broken

[steep cosmos]

so if sea is the problem maybe fix sea instead of a fine unit?

[wise epoch]

this is why the high os players aren't playing this pack though - they can immediately tell you without playing it that that's a change that's not needed and will make the unit unusable. Given how big the pack is, how can people be confident that that won't be true for many of the other changes? These need direct input from people who have a deeper understanding of the game and what kind of changes will make sense

[cerulean tartan]

Uh didn't dota 2 have a massive set of sweeping changes to nearly every single hero in the roster a few years back, nearly all of them were positively received as well?

[cold needle]

As a dota 2 player, that happens like every year

[wise epoch]

dota is a many billions of dollars game, they have the resources to very heavily design, build, test, and rebuild all that stuff. We do not have those kinds of resources.

[rare orbit]

it is, but that cannot be done as easily. I'd be completely fine with a liche damage nerf to boats until sea is updated
it's the wrong fix, but is the least wrong

[steep cosmos]

dota also has a fuckton of statistics

and very experienced game designers

[rare orbit]

not needed -for them-, perhaps. again, rotatos almost never play real sea and when they do it's not with experienced sea players, almost always

[cerulean tartan]

I specifically mean the New Frontiers update

[rare orbit]

I am actively trying to get more stats but detailed ones are fairly thin on the ground presently

[wise epoch]

yes, the main reason is that it's underdeveloped compared to land and cannot properly handle certain threats, like liches. This is not an issue that can be fixed by changing air or land units, the changes need to happen to sea. Otherwise the end-result will be that air and ground units regress because of their ability to counter naval units and they become unusable in other contexts.

[random forum]

You know valve have a massive team of devs, wtf are you trolling on about, take a seat, play the game for a few months then come back

[steep cosmos]

and even in dota there were meme patches where some heroes were hilariously broken and some were hilariously shit

[wise epoch]

Yeah every big dota patch is followed by weeks of hotfixes to all the stuff that ends up stupid OP

[tepid mortar]

and that a bit refreshing because you need to keep changing chars which you are playing. I think people want a bit of that too, not just keep spaming janus and whistlers eveery game.

[wise epoch]

hard agree, I'd love to see BAR have less small incremental changes and more large patches that shake up the whole meta instead of a small piece of it

[steep cosmos]

"changing chars" is more about league of legends, these basically gave up on balance and embraced meta

[wise epoch]

but that will be a big process and we'd need a whole design team, instead of just 1 person fielding the complaints of the entire community (zecrus)

[rare orbit]

so how can this be fixed short of 'unfuck sea' (which I agree needs doing?)
in the meantime a liche boat-specific damage modifier seems the least wrong solution

[cerulean tartan]

"play the game" hey man if you think you know the game so massively much better than us because you can afford to play 25 hours a day by all means load up a dev environment and start making PRs to adjust the balance to your liking as you please, since obviously more hours = higher iq here

We don't have to get personal raikoh, because trust me, I can get personal, but for our sake let's keep the discussion on the topic at hand which is hornets balance tweaks, cheers 👍

[steep cosmos]

you can know every little mechanic and still suck

[vestal thistle]

i still like the LoL/Dota 2 patches which have so many changes it makes it worth to play for a month or two as returning player, keeps things exciting bcz ppl will find broken mechanics no matter how hard u try to balance

[tired tinsel]

it kills builds tho if you tweak everything

[random forum]

don't you have 50 games or something, or you have smurf?

[cold needle]

Alright, let's cool it with the personal attacks -- its off-topic for this thread, at a minimum. Keep the discussion related to balance and the balance pack, please.

That's a general warning for everyone, BTW

[wise epoch]

That's the goal, a meta shakeup means people have to be really adaptive and fall back on fundamentals rather than specific meta knowledge. It's super healthy for competitive games imo

[tired tinsel]

liche not strong on popular rotato maps (bismuth, koom, rosetta) they are solar maps which favours cortex

[tired tinsel]

it implies giving up on balance for the sake of making changes of the month

[vestal thistle]

i said this but u guys also have to realize there are no high skilled players making balance decisions to add flare, in dota 2 when icefrog was inactive, the game only had minor changes and tweaks when the community complained. u require someone with good understanding of the game which u only get by being highly skilled at it, simply watching replays/taking feedback etc will just confuse someone without hours and skill in the game. Need to be good to be able to filter out the shitty suggestions

[tired tinsel]

if you change all the time plp will never delve deep into the units]

[wise epoch]

It doesn't imply that at all. Balance is a fickle thing and it can exist in infinite configurations, a stable meta means eventually you are playing the same game over and over because everyone has prepared responses to each action, and that makes it just a slow descent into micro optimization rather than experimentation or an act of creativity. A meta shakeup preserves the fundamentals of the game (usually, sometimes dota changes those too), while tweaking stats, changing roles, buffing or nerfing certain playstyles that the designers think will be more healthy or fun, etc, to allow the entire community to engage in that process of experimentation, learning, creativity, and adaptivity

[cold needle]

I think its more of an expression of balance as a process, rather than a destination. If you only ever make tiny adjustments, then you can easily get stuck in local maxima and can miss the global maximum elsewhere.

[wise epoch]

those are all more interesting states for the game to be in than a predictable one that's a matter of execution proficiency of the same strat by degress that you eventually see in really stable metas

[vestal thistle]

i have seen so many games get balance patches like +0.01% stat buff on certain unit/item and then the entire community's neuron system activates and new meta develops around it

[cold needle]

There's definitely an element of user perception involved, sure. Shadow buffs/nerfs for testing are helpful for that, or just making trivial changes (or fake changes!) to see how people react.

[clever lava]

Me obviously

[vestal thistle]

i think in current state, land is fine, air for me is well rounded enough (except t1 armada air) but Sea is lacking alot of mechanics (which i think hornet is working on now)

[steep cosmos]

also, there is a difference between taking feedback from low level players and having pro players do balancing for them
low skill players generally have no idea what they're doing and would blame all kinds of random stuff, while pro players can pinpoint exactly what goes wrong

[vestal thistle]

also would be helpful to have someone with high skill to filter out suggestions from high os players because too many of them have cooked suggestions. (as for low os suggestions, unless alot of people complain i think its just the learning experience of anygame)

[cold needle]

That's a difference in the quality of feedback between high/low skill players, true. But it doesn't necessarily mean that low-skill players are bad at identifying whether there is a balance issue -- just that their suggested fixes are probably less useful.

So basically what I'm saying is that both high and low skill players can generally provide feedback on "this is imbalanced in games at my level" relatively consistently. High skill players may also have some useful suggestions to fix things. Both are susceptible to biases, especially involving their own preferred playstyles or favorite units (so, aggregation of feedback is important).

[wise epoch]

yeah, need people with the skill to identify problems and the design sense to propose changes that will fix the problem in a way that will help the meta rather than be boring or break the game in other ways.

That's a really rare talent. Most high skill players are not good designers (theres a certain update people might remember), so while they're very good to check if a change will be imba, they're not necessarily any good at proposing a better change

[rare orbit]

strongly agree, this isn't meant to be 'sole solution', more a lot of them at once, but with full expectation that there will likely be resultant issues too, just hopefully 'less wrong' than the current state

[cold needle]

@rare orbit , out of curiosity, did you ever consider adding something like the LRAA tower for sea? Maybe to the missile ship? Might allow for a micro-based solution for nuke bombers

[rare orbit]

I would love to, but cannot via tweak. a proper sea rework is fully needed, but there's a broader issue that seas are rarely at T2 by the time liches rock up to free delete the lane

[arctic finch]

i think we should come to conclusion that some opinions are just wrong

[rare orbit]

arguably, I could make the existing LRAA amphib buildable, and just slap it on the T2 seacons, as a hack

altering the flak boat missile to be a long range single strike shot is also a possibility

[cold needle]

In addition to the current flak, you mean? Might help to address the nuke bomber issues for now, but I suspect it would make the flak ship too broadly useful for promotion to the base game, yeah?

[rare orbit]

sea chainsaw would probably be the optimal anti liche tool, but that assumes your front never moves, 800m a pop is a lot to dot every interval as a 'just in case not dying' tax

[rare orbit]

they already have a missile attack, it's just short ranged. unsure how many you'd need to collectively 1 shot a liche, but to do so might make them too good vs other air units (although torp bombers broken OP)

[cold needle]

I was thinking of that missile, yeah -- IIRC its damage is pretty mediocre? I was considering just turning that single missile into a Mercury shot (same range/damage/cooldown) as a starting point, and checking how well that does

[tame hill]

ya know what would actually be cool (should go in proposed sea reworks instead) getting rid of the sonar on the air units except for the t2 air scout and having a cheap submarine aa or something

[tired tinsel]

it's fine you getting stuck in a 2v1 is normal

its just like if you scout nuke bomber and you are wining hard you have the option
or if you are wining hard you have the option to go blind chainsaw ship

it's not more expensive then 8 herrings

aa ship is a bit overpriced but it is very effective against gunships

[clever lava]

I'm not sure this wouldn't be infact compounding a complex problem already. It would just complicate the rebalancing of sea with the introduction of a unit nerf that could be avoided by the introduction of proper sea responses to air attacks. For example. U nerf the liche then give sea op AA options. Then ur left with an over exaggerated response as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist any more. Leave liche. Sea needs the meta change

[rare orbit]

the idea would be to revert the liche temp sea debuff when sea changes occur

[cold needle]

I like this idea, actually. What if the flak ship was changed into a chainsaw ship and moved to T1? If you need flak, you can still build T2 static flak turrets on sea.

[tame hill]

actually yeah what if we just let the amphib aa bots shoot from underwater and got rid of sonar from the anti sea planes (once again this is probably better in proposed sea reworks)

[rare orbit]

ideally, the rightest solution is harmonise liche effectiveness across all lanes
but that means boat changes, not liche changes, and that's very hard to do, especially soon. so the least wrong is either global handling/efficiency changes, or a sea specific damage nerf, as say skuttles currently have

[rare orbit]

both roles somewhat needed. the AA hover is actually close to what sea needs, problem is it's too short ranged to zone liches, and usually lab walled

[arctic finch]

could you just do the whistler/lasher rework to herring and try out that first?

[wise epoch]

So this is the reason high OS or rotation players don't want to touch this tweak - You agree that the problem only exists in a navy map, but you still roll out a nerf to the unit knowing that it will make it unusable in any other context, just to make things easier for navy. How many other changes in the pack do that? Nobody is going to be able to trust the design behind these with that kind of knowledge

[cold needle]

Isn't it still useful to test such a change and learn what the result is, even if we know that it will not be the ultimate solution? Experiments are meant to inform future decisions, after all

[random forum]

Strait can have it's own tweak, if people only going to play 1 map, it probably should have own balance version so it makes the map better
Just please don't try to force it in rotato, we enjoy the game currently, balance is pretty good, only small changes needed

[rare orbit]

because BAR is highly against 'special damages', meaning a global change is obligated

[wise epoch]

Experiments are great, but they have to be grounded with a particular goal, like "make this unit better defensively". Liche is already extremely niche on land maps - lane maps are hard to do it on, because the lab+unit costs so much, and even if you get it out it dies really quickly to static AA. On maps with dedicated air players they are effectively useless as fighters easily handle them. So we know from this information that even a slight nerf will make them unusable in that context. These nerfs are way more than slight

[rare orbit]

I still fully hold the least wrong fix is a liche specific damage to boats, until boats are less weak to liches

[wise epoch]

No, it means you can't fix sea with a tweak. It needs to get loads of new units and heavy design changes, otherwise you just mess up balance elsewhere to put a bandaid in the gaping wound that is naval balance

[rare orbit]

hence the skuttle like damage reduction to boats, until that occurs

I think I will have to do that despite the 'no special damage' purists, perfect cannot be the enemy of the good, and it is the least wrong solution possible currently. note as said so many times, that this liche change was super experimental, to try to find a holistic solution. it might be that one is impossible, so boat nerfs it is
in any case I'm AFK for a while again. I hope to return to the thread to find data rather than arguments, but so far, not too hopeful

[clever lava]

I would very much like to see Arm navy becoming once more becoming properly competitive at t1. Without having to breed dolphins. The solution could be as simple as giving the arm frigates and destroyer more dps. The bias in choosing core sea over arm I feel is a great identifier for the investigation of a rebalance.

[wise epoch]

What kind of data?

[cerulean tartan]

New units you say?

[rare orbit]

ideally replays from higher level lobbies using the pack (without liche change is fine; I'll attach it here)

[rare orbit]

sea has a lot of holes, it's second class war, and high on my list to fix when sane

[cerulean tartan]

If you need another modeller for extra hands on deck (pun 100% intended) when the time comes, you know where to find me

[wise epoch]

How could that data be useful? There are dozens or hundreds of changes in this tweak, nobody will have the opportunity to focus testing a certain element, or even the knowledge of what to test because there is not a clear changelog. If you want people to test this out you need to make it clearer what has changed, and to direct players to particularly new or experimental changes so that they can give them focused attention.

This tweak is probably too large to do that at this stage, I think you would have to pair it down to get feedback from more players. And you would need to give some confidence to the rotation and high os lobbies that the changes are not going to be directed towards strait or naval gameplay, as that will mean it never gets enabled.

[cerulean tartan]

I mean the changelog is in chronological format, if it's really needed hornet can cut it down to old old versions of the tweak and have at that instead, or lobbies can use the older versions of the tweak directly. That will probably come with the write-up detailing the changes as hornet mentioned he was gonna do

[random forum]

If we have list of all changes, we can probably pick the ones that everyone would love to have and propose a few lists; like "should be in" "maybe"

[tame hill]

this is the text file with the changes

[wise epoch]

That changelog is missing tons of changes and it is not nearly specific enough to give players what they need to test appropriately. Most players will be unable to read or make sense of the tweakdefs, and even I got too annoyed with comparing every single change to the base unitdefs to figure out what actually changed to go through it all, and my understanding of the game and willingness to put in effort for something like this is much higher than most

[wise epoch]

we need this entire tweakdef, but in human readable language and with base value -> new value for every single changed stat. It will not see wider testing without that

[random forum]

Yeah, that won't work indeed, i already gave up 😄

[tame hill]

imo stick like the advanced radar, salamander, and idk, maybe the gunship changes in a pack, those are 3 very independent changes that can probably be tested at the same time

probably uncontroversial changes (I don't sala needs nerf but it seems to be the hot topic of the month)

[random forum]

There is a changelog in the website somewhere, where you see old stats and new one, so players can understand what changed
Couldn't you use that format?
This : https://www.beyondallreason.info/development/changelog
That's very good format

[wise epoch]

that's autogenerated from changes to the unitdefs in the codebase, this is a tweak so it won't run through that system

[random forum]

can't you make a fake one? The devs usually have patch notes on top, explain things in text, then you can read the changes in details, it's good quality patchnotes

[arctic finch]

well did quick look and well having less speed/range/dps compared to cor frigs kinda makes arm frigs bad cause they get kited they and with less range/dps they kinda lose in strait up fight also

[wise epoch]

Yeah zecrus does the precise stat diffs in all his changelogs https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/blob/master/changelog.txt
[Banshee] Reloadtime reduced by 10% (DPS 34->38)
If this was done for this tweak a lot more people would be willing to try it, or as Amojini suggested - try parts of it that are less controversial

[cold needle]

@rare orbit , I went through and did some breakpoint testing for variations of the ARM flak ship weapons, in case you find them useful. Attached are the specific tweaks tested.

Results:

Baseline: ARM flak ship vs Liche
1:1 flyover: Liche survives w/ 142 HP
1:1 hit and run: Liche drops bomb, survives w/1265 HP
2:1 hit and run: Liche drops bomb, dies
3:1 hit and run: Liche drops bomb, dies
4:1 hit and run: Liche dies

ARM flak ship w/ secondary missile range = chainsaw
1:1 flyover: Liche dies
1:1 hit and run: Liche drops bomb, survives w/1268 HP
2:1 hit and run: Liche drops bomb, dies
3:1 hit and run: Liche drops bomb, dies
4:1 hit and run: Liche dies

ARM chainsaw-clone (no flak) ship
1:1 flyover: Liche dies
1:1 hit and run: Liche drops bomb, survives w/257 HP
2:1 hit and run: Liche dies

ARM flak + chainsaw-clone ship
1:1 flyover: Liche dies
1:1 hit and run: Liche drops bomb, dies
2:1 hit and run: Liche dies

ARM mercury-clone (no flak, no stockpile, 12-second cooldown) ship
1:1 flyover: Liche survives w/ 796 HP
1:1 hit and run: Not tested
1:2 hit and run: Liche drops bomb, survives w/ 845 HP
1:3 hit and run: Liche drops bomb, survives w/ 48 HP
1:4 hit and run: Liche dies

ARM flak + mercury-clone ship
1:1 flyover: Liche dies
1:1 hit and run: Liche drops bomb, survives w/ 980 HP
1:2 hit and run: Liche dies

Overall, I think the Chainsaw-clone (no flak) variation felt the best; the Mercury-clone variations were janky as heck, and allowing something with that much range to be mobile would probably be ruinous for air walls anyway.

I did not analyze any cost changes to go along with these, but even if the ship was moved to T1 and kept at the same price, I think there's some promise here (at least enough to start iterating on).

[random forum]

On land flak not the best against liche also, chainsaw is best with some basic AA turrets around so it can kill it fast enough to maybe not drop missile or at least kill it after it sniped the chainsaw. If you only have 1 strong AA it's usually not enough to stop a liche at full hp

[tired tinsel]

1 chainsaw trade with nuke bomber unless its leveled

although if a fig is aggroing the first shot maybe not

[random forum]

depends on los also probably i think since chainsaw has big range but needs the vision so it can focus liche

[tame hill]

chainsaw trades with solo nuke bomber but not if fig and scout escort eats some shots first (i know this from experience)

[wise epoch]

it doesn't win that trade at all, but that makes sense, a 700m tower shouldn't beat a 2200m unit

but a chainsaw with slight supplemental AA can beat a liche, which is what makes them so risky to use invading land, it's difficult to get more than 1-2 shots off in most lobbies

[tame hill]

tbf aa should always trade excessively in value against air units, even more so than static defense normally trades against mobile units

[tame hill]

oh wait I actually don't know if this is true anymore, this happened to me before the air damage standardization

[wise epoch]

yeah static AA performs a lot better for cost than static ground towers, but normal bombers of that value would overwhelm a chainsaw too. The specific values are less important than the reality that liche is killed pretty easily by static aa, so travelling between bases to hit multiple targets usually means it dies

[random forum]

Well, how come Dragon don't care about AA then 🙂

[tame hill]

dragon is our special lil boy ❤️

but in all seriousness imo dragon doesn't really follow the same "rules" as other air units in other ways too, so it's fine if it doesn't interact with static aa the same way

[random forum]

Need very good micro, with both the scouting planes to spot AA which you only have 2 or 3 at best, the figs micro to kill enemy figs, then liche micro to dodge AA turret/figs and hit the right target

Liche micro into enemy base is very hard thing to do and if you fuck it up, you are toasted
That's why player like blxssom or other strait spammer usually use liche as a defence unit, because only enemy air figs can kill the liche, which make the unit super easy to micro

[wise epoch]

dragon probably a little op, but at least its shit movespeed gives players time to prepare for its arrival into their base. The advantage of liche is you can quickly dive in, blow up some high value targets, and get out - but if the other team is well prepared it will be dead

[tired tinsel]

liche safest use is to kill army, and as a followup to t1 bombing that doesn't cripple you

[random forum]

The lack of mobile AA being good against dragon is very weird currently but maybe t2 AA bots can have that role like hornet said he tweaked them

would be nice to have mobile flak good against bombers, figs and mobile AA bots good against single targets
like liche, emp bombers, abductors, dragon

[tired tinsel]

yeah thats an interesting idea

t2 aa bot just get 1 stunned by abductors i think
single t2 aa bots can be liability even if their hp and throughput got buffed

[tame hill]

t2 aa bots are hilariously shit

[tired tinsel]

yeah they actually have zero purpose

[tame hill]

also flak veh actually a bit op imo

[tired tinsel]

yeah super fast effecient 100% aoe

[tame hill]

they're actually better in every way than static flak, which is kind of dumb

and static flak is already very good

[tired tinsel]

static flak can be bombed

on big map a good air palyer can just bomb whoever is unprotected
esp with like seaplane gunships and active scouting

[rare orbit]

that is what I intend to do eventually, with notes as to why

[tired tinsel]

plp are just not refined seaplane build or controlling them

[rare orbit]

thanks greatly for helping, a strong mobile T1 AA might well be what's needed, or at the very least 'floating chainsaw'

[rare orbit]

I did have notes in originally, but had to hack them down for character limit reasons

[rare orbit]

loblobs cherrypicking things they think they want is not the way to go, some issues addressed are not lobster territory and they wouldn't care or agree, even if game as a whole needs it. however as said there might be some merit to making some things modular for testing where possible

'design by committee' really has to be avoided here

for sake of actually getting that data it could also make sense to trim out some elements, even though they're part of the picture and need consideration later. it will be impossible to get something everyone likes, including changing nothing at all

[rare orbit]

pack T2 bots very good vs dragons

[random forum]

that one change i was asking for like 1 year ago to make t2 aa bots good and it's an organic way to make them good against dragon i think, many people been saying t2 aa bots are worthless

it's probably one change that would be pretty easy to try out and ask Zecrus to look at and merge

since Dragon already in the game

[rare orbit]

many of them are like that in isolation, some things already have been merged in, but I don't want to trickle bits in piecemeal, especially with things that interrelate

I'll look at breaking it back into pieces for testing reasons, although rotato lobby kind of missed the boat back when I was doing exactly that

it's only 'too much' as they didn't show interest sooner

(despite my trying to solicit testing, btw. as I keep saying this is in no way a 'strait patch' or anything like it)

[random forum]

Baron (warrior monk) tried to test the tweak making t1 transport not working with commander, the vote passed but it crashed lobby and he's probably never gonna try again to test the tweak
It's really not easy to test tweaks in rotato lobby, you need to be able to explain very quickly before the vote what is it most people need to agree to test it
Saying "whistler nerf" or "emp bomber nerf" is super easy to try but having big changes that doesn't help major gameplay issues that everyone is tired of won't be easy
You probably need to have boss and do dedicated try out lobby, like the AIR REWORK boys have been doing
So they talk to streamers, ask them to make a lobby, people join to try it or simply because there isn't any other lobby to play coz everyone is in that lobby already

[cerulean tartan]

We have people called beta testing leaders who can organise lobbies like these

For example Volshok was fostering some air rework lobbies

But for a tweakunits like this it's unlikely to happen maybe, idk I'm not familiar with how the the beta testing leaders test this stuff

[wise epoch]

You will still only get high os players to participate in that if the changes are limited to a small subset of this, OR if all the changes have a very consistent design direction, like "make t1 bots more asymmetrical" (just an example, I know this tweak doesn't do that)

Having a bunch of unrelated changes in random directions to address separate issues is too hard to communicate quickly to people joining a lobby, and they will get frustrated by unexpected changes, particularly if they have deep familiarity with the units in the base game

[random forum]

Yeah Volshock and Lost have special days to try AIR rework, lobby is always full and they manage to "kill" op lobby so everyone is "forced" to join them
They are pretty smart organizers, Hornet would need something like this to make it work i think

[wise epoch]

Plus, there are already lots of changes in this pack that can be (justifiably) used to write off the rest of the changes, like HLT buildtime buff, liche nerf, and janus nerf

[lavish goblet]

Was this a nerf dedicated solely to open maps!?

[random forum]

what nerf do you mean?

i think dragon doesn't necesarry need a nerf, just a good way to react to them which t2 aa bot could very well be the solution to

[cerulean tartan]

I remember Eural tweaking out in chat in the previous LDM one about figs shooting aid 😭

[lavish goblet]

The irony

[random forum]

I absolutely hate Air rework in its current form but i have to say, they found a good way to test the changes and have a full lobby with every TS ranges on

[lavish goblet]

How can you say that the dragon was op on open map and needed nerf, yet apparantly don't play sea, and then right after tell me liche is fine when for sea there is no real counter? It does the same as you described by the dragon on flats. I have to make 100 herrings and just die?

[random forum]

This is what i say about liche on sea map #1186850950770610207 message

Few times i watched it, i don't think sea players can do much
Even on land map Blxsson is really good at sniping stuff close to the middle of the map and doing back without losing his liche then repairing it

[lavish goblet]

On land often you are spaced out for optimal trades, in sea is somewhat opposite

On land you also have more maneuverability to actually get out of the way and minimize damage

[random forum]

yeah, much better for land
also strait is very big map, the 2 air spawn are so far from eachother, it's kinda harder and more risky to do bombing runs, with the sea and very few land.
Blxsson been bombed on t1 so much before he has anything out and his team flamed him so hard many times, he kinda gave up on doing liche

dude was doing liche on repeat for weeks xD

[lavish goblet]

I don't understand why you can't imagine another sea map that could have this work or does it have to be strait and us non full game players who should just shut up and fuck off from any discussion or balance changes

[random forum]

idk, im not trying to not enter discussion about liche on sea at all
only pointing out, Blxsson can get away more with liche rush on strait cause the map is very large and t1 bombing run are riskier and harder to do, so he gets less punished, i played a few times against him on strait as air, was much much harder than when i played against him on rotato

and also don't nerf units if it's sea that needs more tools to deal with liche, coz no one will test that liche change ever in rotato

Indaclub also said something very true
You wouldn't nerf recluse cause it's very strong on acendency map with the super huge mountain, it's clearly the map design that can make some units much stronger

[tired tinsel]

yeah should adjust sea first

[tacit igloo]

Get rid of liche

[clever lava]

And just to go back to the Janus. We all know Janus pilots don't exactly hand break turn once theyve deployed their missiles. They're cumbersome and slow at best when turning and need support units to help coddle them back to safety. Reducing their range by 20% will essentially make those units Kamikaze units. Their reach along with their slow turning and mobility will just see them die. Hence the waste of metal. I sincerely hope that this change gets vetted sincerely and properly tested. I'm against it but will happily partake in any lobbies offering the patch. And I'll also voice my position on the air rework and say quite flatly. It's terrible and awful. Aircraft should not move slower than land units. And as air spawns are usually finite mex spots switching the eco structure of air to a more metal heavy one as opposed to its current energy dominate makes playing Air a bit unviable and heavy.

[violet geyser]

I don't know how YOU use them, but while "hand brake" remark is just wrong. Any half capable player won't run his Janus straight up your units and do a 180, instead you use them move in a half circle. Basically you maximize on their velocity and turn speed.
That said 20 % is excessive but I can certainly see a world where 8 to 10 % is fair.

[clever lava]

? Of course it's wrong. Because Janus don't spin on the spot and accelerate at great speed out of harms way. They need a wide turning circle. And if you are playing someone competent they are pushing ahead to capitalise on the reload time. Needing the Janus to be 20% closer to most likely a rocket/grunt line. Will most likely see those Janus vulnerable also at the risk of the other units. Also assuming I use the unit this way detracts from the impact that this change may have on, what was it, 93% of the Player base under 30 OS.

[vestal thistle]

Who even decided Janus in suddenly an issue now, when veh meta is dead?

[random forum]

don't make it personnal choice

[elfin frigate]

IMO Janus noob stomp too hard. They can be dealt with with rocket bots and can be punished in a bunch of ways but nothing quite bursts a com like an early janus ball. No other T1 unit comes close to having an alpha strike as they do, they often kill without trading which ends up with 1 player with 5 Janus and the opponent with no units which doesn't seem to happen as often with other units even with large skill differences some trading occurs.

I like Hornet's change to reduce their range and damage vs coms, it makes them less oppressively com snipey and means they need to take hits to delete other units, i.e trade instead of free kill.

[vestal thistle]

If u Nerf Janus range it's just a pounder with slower projectile and worse CC

But ye w/e noob stomp unit = needs Nerf true. By this logic please Nerf shuriken, grunt,ticks,pulsars,rocketbots,tzar,salamander,Sheldon, marauder, razorback,demon,Shiva,orca,eel. I prolly miss other 100 noob stomp units that need nerfing but I'm sure u can address that in balance pack 👍

Noobs also lose commander usually to 3 llts very fast, we should go back to raghna's version of commander update so that llt bonus is removed and there's more room for error with commanders.