#Units should do self damage

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

lime pecan
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From the fatboy needs a rework thread...

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1480908986407452915

One problem with fatboys is pawn/grunt surround can be ineffective because the fatboy can destroy everything at its feet with no downside, as self damage is disabled for all units by default.

This reduces the effectiveness to one of thr counters to heavy units (spam) and reduces the micro requirements of the fatboy/tzar pilot. Adding self damage would require and reward skilled hold fire micro, as well as reward players who damage to get on top of the unit.

These heavy units can already damage eachother, so this change has the most impact when there is only one of these heavy units, but would have less impact if you had many, since they already do friendly fire damage if spam gets in close. As a result, it is a nerf to the most oppressive fatboy (the first one) without punishing the player who likes to make 10.

I think self damage should be enabled for everything, which is consistent with being able to damage ally units. I would bet that many players think self damage already exists.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1480908986407452915/1483671341583438016/armfboy_self_dmg.mp4?ex=69bc18dd&is=69bac75d&hm=c557f8aa38026731ae96b8b8d21590c08b5dc66b2383e1c1748e8e2ea5f77c75&

Here is a video where @smoky ore enabled self damage. Thanks to him for testing things out.

▶ Play video
smoky ore
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Was literally about to make a post about it lol. Ty for doing it for me!

Edit: Was just going to make a post on fatboy do self dmg and maybe Tzar #1480908986407452915 message

dusty cedar
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make it only happen with plasma ngl i dont want my jaguar to chain himself gg

lime pecan
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Plasma and rockets i think.

Does a nuke launcher hurt itself?

smoky ore
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Once this gets 10 votes put it in the community balance patch.

But just do the fatboy suggestion for now. Having all units have friendly fire would be too much a change for now.

celest reef
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All units not self harm themself is a good game design decision, it make single unit hard microed important.

About fatboy, ask for a balance pass on it

severe tapir
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I am running selfdamageOn on for plasma aoe units t2 onwards on my patch

woven gulch
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Might be hard sell, not doing self damage was a pretty clear point on the game design document. While it makes spam counter heavy plasma more, doing self damage makes high aoe units more finnicky

lime pecan
# woven gulch Might be hard sell, not doing self damage was a pretty clear point on the game d...

This doesnt make sense to me. High aoe units already damage eachother, so in a mid or late game this probably doesnt change much. And it makes intuitive sense that if I toss a bomb at my ally, they take damage, so it would follow if I drop a bomb on my feet that should be a problem. Hold fire exists for a reason.

The one edge case I thought about was artillery that you block by accident. A missed shot hitting your own turret and causing some damage os weird, but also players shouldnt build turrets in front of artillery.

woven gulch
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Most people play with like 5-10 apm so hold fire is not really reasonable ask

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It's a reasonable idea but there's also some feels bad part of it. Bar focuses on having more units. Tick spam already very strong.

Basically you could use this or use a different level like make fatboy simply have less hp

steep sigil
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We don't have a minimum firing range implemented so this would not reach the base game (there are other very good reasons to add a minimum range as well, so anyone could explore this, but it's not a small task).

Self damage is tweak-able, so you can add it to your games to test out and explore, for now.

ancient linden
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i mean unit do friendlt fire damage anyway so whats the point of no self damage

woven gulch
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AFAIK most units in starcraft that can self damage have a minimum range

severe tapir
ancient linden
woven gulch
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I meant what does it buff? Any diving strat, so tzar fatboy can't shoot ground in front of it without suffering dmg

ancient linden
severe tapir
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It takes 8 fatboy shots to kill itself I think. If it dies it is your fault for bringing no supporting units with it.
Cant encourage not using compositions of units (I mean, at least I wouldnt but that is what is happening)

woven gulch
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Inb4 never build a janus ever again.

I jest. With or without self dmg you make different balance adjustment

steep sigil
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Yeah we would just rebalance with this change in effect. But see: enormous technical blocker.

lime pecan
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Yeah im not even saying fatboy is op. But no self damage is unintuitive in a friendly fire game. And it feels bad to dive a fatboy with spam and watch it all explode for free. Getting spam in on a slow artillery unit that isnt supported should be rewarding.

If it needs a small buff after then fine.

Dont worry about min range, just set self damage to true.

woven gulch
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Maybe need a miminum range toggle. Most relevant for squishy unit that have big self splash like janus.
Even higher os forget to turn off hold fire. There needs to be a low apm setting

steep sigil
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Autotargeting would respect minimum firing distance. Maybe user targeting would bypass it, or partially bypass, but that's all that comes to mind from a design angle.

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There are different types of "minimum firing distance", also, but mainly just impossible trajectories and self-damage avoidance. There's no reason to try to shoot at an impossible target, but the unit would move away to try to shoot, for instance. The full design layout for min range includes a bunch of unit AI.

lime pecan
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I get what you guys are saying where hold fire micro is tough, but you already need to do that to use Janus and fatboy effectively today. You can already counter Janus by diving with spam and watching them shoot eachother, but only if you get all the way in.

Making this happen to 1 Janus doesnt feel all that different than it happening with 2+ to me. And it rewards active gameplay and thoughtful countering.

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If Janus is too finicky, then just make it so t2 units self damage. I dont think making a fatboy hurt itself is too punishing for people who dont hold fire or support their units. That is the other piece, you dont need to worry about self damage if you adequately support your unit so it doesnt get dove.

tawdry walrus
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BAR tries to make true that "Units should behave like player wants them to so there's no frustration". Hurting itself is probably not what the player wanted so with selfdamage we would need minimum range or do expensive calculations like "will this shot deal more damage to enemies than myself".

Hurting other allied units is of course also not wanted. Units currently do try to not directly shoot allies, but with high aoe units you again run into expensive calculations like above, which aren't feasible or intuitive. And pretty soon the frustration from you units not shooting at all would be greater than the frustration from friendlyfire.

Maybe friendlyfire should also not cause damage, but then there would be silly situations like nuking your own frontlines and such so that's also not cool.

rocky quarry
rocky quarry
rocky quarry
lime pecan
# tawdry walrus BAR tries to make true that "Units should behave like player wants them to so th...

I understand hold fire micro is not normal. Im decent at the game and I dont do it well all the time.

But what I find strange is this intense technical conversation regarding self damage while ignoring the obvious parallel to ally damage.

You are saying obviously the user doesnt want to shoot themselves, so we must create a complicated calculation to determine if they should in fact shoot themselves.

But this is also entirely true of your ally's stuff, and we do none of this calculation. Yes units dont try to actively shoot ally stuff because there is 0 considerations of ally stuff. Fatboy selects target from game logic and shoots at that target. If there is collateral, oh well. Further, if you paused the game before every fatboy shot, even the noobiest of players would likely select a different target than the one auto selected by the game. There is not a lot of intelligence going into fatboy shot ai, it doesnt make sense to act like you need to better capture the intent of the low micro user for this edge case because thats not happening at all for any case.

Another example of this would be energy stalling. No player loads into a game thinking I want to energy stall. So should we design the game so people cant build energy intensive things when they dont have energy production? Of course not. Should we stop noobs from having their fatboys from damaging ally structures? Of course not. Should we stop noobs from getting punished for not protected their fatboys from spam? Suddenly now the answer is a hard coded exception in the game logic? That is just not consistent to me.

In fact if someone has a fatboy that is killing itself. There is a high chance the fatboy is killing their teams stuff because they have bad support and micro. In that case, they are a hazard and their fatboy should die so others can keep their stuff.

lime pecan
# rocky quarry You can’t disable friendly fire otherwise we’ll be calling in attacks on top of ...

I think its a very small set of units that could actually hurt themselves in any meaningful way. And any scenario you come up with where it matters i think the change would he negligible (maybe like melee thugs could do self damage, but in a scenario where a thug is hurting itself, then its allies are also already hurting it, so the dmaage increase from the self damage is very low.

Again the only time this is a significant change is when there is just one of a unit. And situations where one unit can meaningfully hurt itself is like tzar, fatboy, ambassadors and their siblings, shiva, vanguard. (I dont know legion). Hounds have a little aoe too i guess.

Destroyers as well I guess.

rocky quarry
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Yeah probably true. I’m not sure shiva should because it would be a huge nerf

lime pecan
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No because mass Shiva shoot eachother already. You could sim it but I expect the overall ally dmaage doesnt increase by much.

ancient linden
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there are units doing crazy friendlt fire, and there is even thingy for it if you did the most
I play this game for 3 years, and just today i realized there is no self damage

olive trench
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Don’t know how it’s coded but have a feeling self dmg behe would somehow delete itself

severe tapir
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Behe doesnt shoot itself

smoky ore
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@lime pecan You got +10 votes. Post the fatboy self dmg idea in suggestions and feedback, and the community balance patch.

severe tapir
smoky ore
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Yeah for sure, idk how the balance team would feel with all units changed at the same time.

The idea in my head was test fatboy first. Then let's the pieces fall into place with other units.

severe tapir
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It makes sense but it also fucks up balance between factions, you get worse game quality out of that by not going category per category. Up to you guys anyway, this is your stuff

smoky ore
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I'm down to try it on all plasma units that have splash, just thinking the best approach people will accept it.

severe tapir
lime pecan
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I think lots of players think this happens. I had intuited splash damage such that I never considered exactly why pawns dying to fatboy aoe for free felt so wrong.

lime pecan
severe tapir
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Yeah, they do. If you press A instead of S it basically kills itself

tawdry walrus
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Liche no longer dive since a year or so. Same behaviour with settarget or with attack.

smoky ore
smoky ore
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Would be kind of neat idea when a liche has a locked on target it shows on map the same visual as where a nuke launch is heading too.

dusty cedar
sour mauve
lime pecan
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Spam and micro is already promoted by ally damage. If there wasnt friendly fire I would get the resistance. But exempting self is a strange incentive that over rewards unprotected isolated large aoe units. And that condition is created at basically one point in the game, that is right at the t2 transition when techer spams fatboy and tzar. Self damage would have little impact at later stages.

smoky ore
smoky ore
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@lime pecan Can you post this in suggestions and feedback and or the community balanc patch for April? It's qualified for awhile now.

delicate spoke
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I dont think such a fundemental redesign of how the game works belongs in community balance patch

lime pecan
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How is this a fundamental redesign? Aoe attacks damage friendly units, this just adds self. The self exemption is a hard coded override.

delicate spoke
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its gonna change infinite unit interactions and alter balance

severe tapir
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Just a reminder that you dont need approval from devs to run the tweak.
You get more stuff done when you know what is needed and bypass asking to be allowed to do good changes

delicate spoke
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for example ticks will counter janus way harder

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ticks will counter everything way harder infact xd

severe tapir
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Maybe have any other unit apart from a janus like a single rover in your army.
Last time I checked rovers 2shot ticks

delicate spoke
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yeah meta always changes when you change balance and you cant poke with naked janus early on

severe tapir
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Maybe naked janus on repeat shouldnt be a thing, maybe units should support each other and cover weakness through encouraging compositions
Same as naked cent or tzar/fatboy on repeat...
Wild ideas

delicate spoke
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yeah its not a bad idea and could maybe improve the game but I guess I just see it as more of a redesign than a rebalance

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problem is that it would change so much it could discourage how often tweak is on in lobbies

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as long as its a separate tweak from community balance i think its cool

lime pecan
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I would be fine if people needed Janus exempted, but I want to point out that a mono Janus comp is already weak to ticks. They still shoot eachother. Your com or an llt can protect your super early Janus. Strong players can hold fire.

I think community balance patch would he valuable because this change would need to be felt by more people. Right now I think the opposition is overreacting to the change and talking as if im proposing we turn on friendly fire, which would be a huge shift.

If people revile this, take it out of the patch.

smoky ore
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Tbh I think the post you made in community patch doesn't explain it well enough. Better way of presenting it was post the video showcasing the fatboy taking self dmg and the stats change of the fatboy ex. selfdamage = true.