How to balance a game

I'm not sure if uber sees it this way, but as far as I can tell, this is the method employed by many of our balance mod creators on the server. This is just a simple step-by-step method to balancing, and figuring out what is overpowered in a meta, so you can nerf it.

1.Make a basic balance, perhaps kind of like the one we have now.

2.Release a build to the public, looks like uber has done this too, that's two down!

3.Let the balance settle for a while, and see which metas evolve. Dox. Only Dox. Checkmark for uber there!

4.Check to see if your balance meets your standards for diversity and fun. Can't say for uber on this one, but I certainly find the dox spam meta boring as hell.

5.Listen to your community feedback on balance, and take a look at what everyone in the meta is using to see if that feedback makes sense. I hope that's a check for Uber, I mean they must be looking at this stuff, right? Right?

6.Implement Dox-nerfing changes that would improve balance.



Seriously though, it seems to me that this would be the simplest and most effective way to do basic unit balancing, but I don't see uber generally following this kind of procedure. Based on what we've seen in the past, uber makes some changes that might sound good on paper (some have, some really haven't *COUGH* removing the stinger *COUGH*) and then tries to stick with them through increasingly bad metas until they are VERY decisively proven wrong... I hope that given this is a game that is funded by the community, and built for the community, that maybe they could listen to our pleas on balance. Especially given that we're getting competitive ladders soon...

Doxes have been nerfed to hell and back since the original dox buff back in July/August or whenever it was. Not sure why people keep complaining about them. Maybe they are complaining about 1v1s on tiny planets? Because none of the Clan Wars matches so far featured dox spam expect our first one, and we lost lol (and learned our lesson).

The balance isn't *only dox* though... I can't even find you on the current ladder so...?

The current balance is actually *dox first*, coupled with air (leaving out the latter is pretty much suicide unless you have a crazy APM advantage). Tanks slightly later work well as well. Seriously, dox only *isn't* the best option like many say it is. Dox need a *minor* tweak to allow more variety in opening build, and I think naval needs some significant changes as currently it's better to play hard air on a water map (2 t1 bombers destroy a leviathan in one pass...).

That's mainly what I'm getting at, just because if you play 1v1's on small planets with PA stats disabled like I do, then it's just "whoever has that 1 extra metal spot at spawn wins, and dox all the way, then game over in 7 mins."

That's just not true though, dox only is a surefire way to loose against good players. Dox + Air is better than just dox, I'm certain of that. Also *expansion* does work, however needs to be done carefully to not stall production (i.e. only 1 or 2 early fabbers).

I agree that a bad spawn can really hurt early game, another reason to consider air- if you have a poor spawn sneaking a single air fabber off a good way from the fight is a nice way to counteract the situation.

Also when fighting an equal opponent, the added range and health on tanks means they can dissolve dox blobs without taking damage once you reach critical mass- so tanks later game are the way to go usually.

From what your saying I think you have a few issues:
1: Your not playing people of sufficient skill
2: You (or your opponent) have had significantly bad spawns, so building a few custom maps (thanks to Sorian's latest update) could help there.

Dox are very important early game for their raiding ability (and due to the slow roll off time, you *can't* match them at the start with tanks, so that is where I see a balance problem) *however* you also can't negate air. Later game tanks are better than dox imo.

The thing is whilst I agree with you that there are issues with early balance right now, I actually think it's really really close to being good, so we need subtle tweaks....

my biggest problem with dox first at the beginning of the game is it leans heavily on micro play to dodge other dox's shots and harass the enemy but I loved this game back in beta when it was large battles of tanks and dox, micro was good to have at times but not needed if you were good at the macro, atm games are decided during the micro of bombers and dox at the beginning of the game, cutting out the fun of the large macro battles, bases and other things :/

I agree that vehicle first *should* be a viable option for those without the micro reflexes for dox / air. At the moment it isn't... Still I think the changes required to get there are probably very small. We're at a point that I can see the meta totally invalidating bot first again....

That may be the case, and honestly I'm not really playing competitive now, but that's only a small part of my OP. I still have, in general, noticed that Uber's method for balancing is really trying to force certain ideas until it is completely obvious that it isn't going to work. The dox quips was mostly a jab at the dox spam early game meta that we have had for a while, which I honestly think not many people really enjoy. I just want all possible starts to be viable >.<

Balance at least imo is overall in a good place right now. Besides the opening dox spam the possibility for other units really opens up come mid game and will also change based on the map your on. For example I played a game against headcrab where there were lots of choke-points on a relatively small lava planet and we used mainly tanks, hell I even got out some levelers and ended up beating t2 bots(given I had a larger eco too). Besides naval and the dox early game things overall feel great, some tweaking is needed for the final balance (leveler turret rotation plz) and I honestly feel that the dox problem could be solved by making them cost just a bit less than the ant/bolo/whatever its called now. This way the role of a raider is emphasized because you wont have massive armies of them running around compared to tanks. This should shift the opening game to 1-2 bot facs for raiding, air facs for defense/bomber raids, and tanks for just about anything else. One of the main reasons so far as I can tell that doxes are so popular is because you can outnumber the tanks at least 2 to one in most cases that combined with the speed and sight range of the dox make it impossible for a tank only player to properly expand early game.

One of the things to keep in mind to is that we only have one faction in pa, in starcraft the early game is just t1 unit spam and micro as well, it just feels more varied because of the factional differences. Although I don't want pa to be like starcraft at all, it does make for a more interesting early game.

Side note:This should probably be in the balance discussion forum.

I wasn't really discussing the actual balance, it was moreso the way uber seems to have been balancing their game in general. I've just been ticked off with dox recently...

Anyway, if you want my opinion on dox balance, it is that they should be a bit more expensive, a bit slower, and shouldn't be able to shoot air. Then, bring back the stinger.

Now this is the issue with balance, how much is 'a bit'? And also have you considered any one of those changes on their own could be sufficient to make dox balanced? All 3 may simply put dox firmly back in the "may as well just use tanks" box again...

well, considering removing their ability to shoot air, and then adding the stinger back shouldn't be enough to on it's own nerf them to hell, small debuffs in speed and a small increase in cost shouldn't push it too far as far as I can tell. Since making them a little slower won't nerf them much either, and making them a tad more expensive is also not that big of a change.

The thing is if you nerf the aa and add the spinners back you suddenly have less dox because you need the aa that combined with the now higher cost and less speed makes them near useless.

That *may* be true, but these tweaks need to be small as currently tanks and dox aren't that far apart in effectiveness... I mean how much is 'small'?

A 'small' increase in cost could be 1 metal, 5 or maybe even 10 metal (resulting in 46, 50 or 55 metal / dox respectively). At what point does the cost make them even with tanks, at what point do they get less effective? Then you add in a speed reduction- well that will mean you loose *more dox* against tanks before you can get in range. If you reduce the speed by 1, and leave metal where it is that *might be sufficient* on it's own? Certainly you need to think very very carefully about proportions and how they interact.

Final thing re aa: if you remove AA from dox, then you need to build an AA bot instead. How much does that aa bot cost, how long is it's build time? Suddenly you may reduce your effective production rate of bots by 15% per factory due to the higher (?) cost of the AA bot (remember it has to be balanced against the spinner)- so now with no changes to dox at all you have *less bots per second* which would effectively buff tanks *or* you leave yourself totally vulnerable to air attacks.

All I'm saying is you'll need to really think very carefully about these changes, and making more than *1 change at a time* may be too much as you could wildly swing the balance and it's hard to pin down specifically what caused the change. Personally I'd sort out the changes to AA units first and make no other changes and figure out how that plays (as that in of itself gives tanks a small buff). If the dox is still op, then look at *either range or cost* but not both....

I'd love for uber to have a dedicated balance branch for the PTE (when it's not being used) that they update with balance changes as often as they feel they can. There hasn't been to many balance changes recently,just little tweaks that don't help too noticeably.

@emraldis very much with you there. It's ridiculous. I can't even play right now, I'm so disgusted by the multiplayer experience currently. it's all so bland!

I am well aware of the order in which changes should be made, I am working on a balance mod myself. That is also why I left actual numbers out, because I cannot currently tell you the answer. All I know, is that it seems to me that that would be the most effective and interesting option in my opinion.

Well I'd be up for helping test, also probably most of promethean if you need testers?

Before I let anyone down, it's not a dox-balancing mod (I was once again referring to the balance process) but here is our mod page if you're interested, we're gonna release our first public build soon I feel.
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/wip-server-orbital-warfare-overhaul.62878/

That's cool, I'm up for more orbital stuff