[REL][Server Mod] Statera Balance Mod

Statera Balance Mod​

Premise:
The main idea behind Statera is to promote complex unit composition within your armies; armies comprised of one single unit should be wiped out by a equal size (or even smaller size) army of multiple unit types. Units in this mod are meant to help each other out, they are often very well off in their own roles, however lack greatly when used in situations out of their base role. The partial exception to this is the basic units, which are slightly more well rounded when it comes to uses, advanced however are meant to be strictly secondary roles. We're going through quite the trouble to push for diversification among the units and their roles, we've even gone to the depths of changing the roles of each separate dedicated anti-air unit, all are dedicated anti-air however one is for singular units, another for large groups, and etc...

Relationships between each unit type:
Most units fit into their own group nicely, and each unit type (Bots, tanks, air, and naval) have their own twists and main idea behind them. The idea was to diversify, and yet keep all factories viable as your start. Vehicles are the "tanky" group, they are often very slow and deal heavy alpha damage weapons, their dps is often ironically low compared to other unit groups because of a lot of wasted damage, and a low fire rate. Bots are very dps heavy, they often have low damage, but very high ROF. This makes them exceptional raiders, especially with their speed. They can however still deal nice damage when they get close enough because of their high fire rate, they never waste any damage on one single target. Air is very fast and exceptional scouts due to this, they serve a nice support role to your land forces and are fast, heavy damaging, yet very weak and vulnerable units. Naval serves a mainly support role as well, and claiming the seas is great for shoreline bombardment and surprise attacks, they have the longest range of the units but are vulnerable to air based counter attacks.

Relationship between Basic and Advanced:
As stated earlier in the thesis: Basic is the most well rounded of the two, it contains units that are less situational compared to advanced and are normally the bulk of your military force, an example of this is that a couple of them can attack multiple layers as apposed to just one. The Advanced units however are most strictly meant to be very situational and are still seen often in battle, yet of a lower amount than the basic unit group, they are normally meant for support and their roles match as such. Think of advanced as the nails that keep your desk together.

What of orbital?:
Orbital hasn't been mentioned thus far as it's slightly different than the others yet mainly sticks to the same premise. The "basic" orbital, created in the orbital launcher, are the bulk forces you'll see in orbital, similar to vanilla PA. The basic orbital will be mostly contrived of units such as the orbital fighter, fabricator, and transport, as well as the basic radar. The advanced will be less about combat and more so about reconnaissance, as well as high tier, yet flimsy units. (Such as the orbital laser platform) Orbital units will have very fast speed compared to the other unit types (including air), it will have VERY slow acceleration and deceleration however, making orbital a very different layer compared to the others, where your point and click won't be as useful. (This also gives way for some units to have near circular orbits due to the painfully slow deceleration.)

Current Public Version:
1.05

Links to the Mod:

https://github.com/Stuart1998/Statera/

Statera Handbook:

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/wip-server-mod-statera-balance-mod.60342/page-7#post-964761
Pg.1 (Title, Basic Units)

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/wip-server-mod-statera-balance-mod.60342/page-8#post-965745
Pg.2 (Advanced Units)

I can help. I'm not sure if I wanted to do something like this or my own, and my main concept is using the current models to portray the new roles for ease, and I'm planning a factions singleplayer on the side, but I'm interested in this.

I actually think, its food for thought for Uber, not to change their design direction from t2 risk vs reward, but for unit variations.

then there is the realms. Good there are so many. Their direction is different. Still a lot of similar things doing between this and theirs, but I hope to see many mods real soon.

I was going to do something similar myself, although the focus was going to be more on lowering the numbers for everything to make it more grokkable as well as delegating t2 units to niche/support roles.

I'll probably give some input.

Competition, eh?

You're going in a different direction with Tanks and Bots though, so I think the final product will be a matter of preference between yours and ours...


... and the potential half-dozen others that will be started between now and the end of next week.

I'd be happy to help as well.

As much as I would love to build one of these mods myself, I probably shouldn't. Too much on my plate as it is.

Probably should sit down and decide some of the roles, write them down on a notepad or whatever.

I too would like to see a document of proposed changes.

I'd also love to help.

Balanced Annihilation is the name of the most popular TA derived Spring game other than Zero-K, which has left behind many of its roots. A name change would therefore be a good idea. Galactic Obliteration, perhaps?

haha, I know- it was just a WIP name.

We are working on one now.
Oh and some healthy competition is nice, as it'd get us to do our best work.

All who say they'd like to help Ill get back to you later, writing on my friends tiny iPhone... Used to my huge Note S3 :c

I may consider the TA route, where speeds of the separate types will fit more together. As in, there are bots that can be faster than say... The heavier tanks whilst there can still be tanks fast- or faster than bots. (The Flash)

The balance is all susceptible to a LOT of change. So to be honest- who knows how it's going to end up once it's all said and done. I absolutely know the bots will be more maneuverable though. [/quote]

You know, this is what I worried. The community will splinter into these small granules, none of which will be big enough to endure on their own or impact the tournaments and this will leave the balance on the path uber is current taking. Not a bad or wrong path, but a path I don't really prefer. In short I think these mods, however awesome they might be are doomed to fail and die if too many sprout up and none gets enough interest to really be worth playing. I recommend all of you guys sit down together, make compromises, talk this through and then unite as ONE force. Create ONE balance mod, ONE that everyone will play and stand behind. Make its community big enough to have tourneys of its own and give it size that will maybe be noticed by uber and affect the main game. Remember that a whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.

I think one won't be enough. Two are needed. This and the realm balance, or ones following the same paths. One focusing on expanded mechanics and changing the way elements are handled, one focusing on refinement of existing mechanics with most of the balance changes done to stats on individual units.

Even if they did, the same server list will list all the games together. People will all have their personal balance patches, and it will take some getting used to jumping into different games with different stats, but it is basically like minecraft servers, every server will be different but everyone joins them despite it.

Yep, I've created a notepad file Zombie and I put patch notes in, (and another for our general idea on units... Though we haven't really started yet.)

We're using a program, TortoiseSVN to upload and download our changes in the files from each other. It makes it quite easy to revert back to old versions if we screw something up.

A little insight to this mod and it's goal:

I plan on trying to work out ways to make literally every factory in the game needed to win. The basic point is to push for great unit composition, you need to mix unit types. It's to make it difficult to win using soley one factory type. I can't go all tanks and legitimately expect to win against someone using a mixed forces for example. Air and Naval may be a slightly different story (or at least naval) because it's a little difficult to make something next required when there's not always a situation it's applicable to, I can't use naval on a moon for example.

What I hope to make is a very niche unit list, Advanced especially. Advanced may be different from basic in the sense that I don't actually need all types of advanced factories, and so advanced units, to get a good unit composition, but may need all basic factory types to get good unit composition, I just want units to better each other in a sense, where a tank may lack in dps but rule with alpha, a bot may be the opposite. This would mean, together, they could do brutal damage, because they work together to do the maximum amount of damage possible...

This is all open to change however. Ergo- ideas don't always turn out like you think they would.

Something I want to try: make advanced eco and military separate tech paths. If I do it, I'll likely make bots engineers and vehicles more combat oriented. Along that thread, the name combat fabbers make me want them to build walls, turrets, artillery, and radar. So the vehicle fabbers would be combat engineers, and the bot fabbers would build economy.

id love to make a ship factory and boat factory. Or make ships and amphibious bots. Something to mix up naval. That gets farfetched, but that is the type of things I will be working on in my personal scope. I think it is a mod worth trying and seeing how people like it.

honestly, bots work better than subs. Removing any invisibility as if sonar is universal on robots, they work not due to an invisible layer but because of a role. Just like bots don't stand up to tanks, amphibious don't stand up to ships, they can flank them, expand faster, swarm them for a kill or two at the cost of many, but not beat them.

then naval starts will be viable. There will be no disadvantage or limit from a naval start, and no advantage just different focus.

A very good idea, this is why I was a bit iffy on making no overlap on the roles of units. Like making it so there are no heavy bots, no weak tanks, etc... I could go for some overlap as without it'd be too hard early game to compete with certain units I'd imagine.

Anyway, if you'd like to help with the balance mod I'd gladly give you the link to the Nova TS so we can discuss unit roles further with better ease.

I always like the idea of either making the advanced combat fab an aggressive defensive fabricator or a slower area heal unit... Or even make two seperate advanced combat fabs for that role. (I do like the idea of Advanced always being a branch out of a basic unit. Artillery works like this: There's the t1 pelter which is your basic, all round arty, and there's two seperate advanced artillery buildings, the catapult for slow ROF high alpha with tiny AOE for taking out high health units and the opposite with the Lobber, for example.)

lol wonder what it would take to remap the catapult into a t1 nuke. So many ideas had, and now mods are here and I got to do so much work to see what is possible.

I do like 2 variants of t2 arty too.

Was there an update for PTE? I've been having problems hosting since yesterday... I'm at version .66863-main