[WIP] The Realm Community Balance Mod

Don't forget, t2 is not an upgrade. It's filled with your specialist units. So if you see mass air, you'll want to specialise against it

It's not A T1 unit though, is it? It's a lot of the same T1 unit. Seems like you'd want something with massive AoE to deal with such a problem.

However, if you feel T1 is lacking AA then you haven't checked out the Spinner. A dozen of those mixed into your Tanks/Infantry will shred a much larger T1 aircraft force with impunity.

Does that mean you're forced to go Vehicles to counter Air? Not at all. Stingers have AoE on their missiles, so mixing in more into your army composition will help; you just haven't built enough. 10 missile turrets + 15 missile AA bots does not equal 50 air units... not in quantity and certainly not in capital cost either.

Don't skimp on your AA. People will notice it and punish you for it.

Something we forget too often

I don't considter 50 of a unit mass of that unit... that's some of that unit...

50 fighters costs 10,000 metal. Enough for 25 Ants or 100 Dox. With a basic metal extractor only producing 5 metal a second, that is a significant force. Now how much do you want to spend to defend that? You can get 15 Spinners for under 5,000 metal. 15 Spinners should be more then enough to deal with 50 fighters.

The point I am trying to make isn't that air isn't OP, its that people go into this mod with experience and play styles from vanilla PA. If you don't have enough AA, then build more. Try again. If your still getting killed by air 5 games later, that is when we have this discussion again.

I guess, if they cost that much, I thought fighters were the same cost as in the old version. Still, what's T1 AA for then, if it can't even deal with T1 units? My five towers killed maybe 3 fighters in the time it took to kill my comm...

A deterrent; same as a single LLT is a deterrent. Also LLTs shoot air now, so don't forget about that.

A single ground AA tower cost 175 metal. A fighter costs 200 metal. The AA tower shoots every 5 seconds with enough damage to kill a fighter in one hit.

If you were to have a flack tower (600 metal) by your commander, the fighters wouldn't survive the first run.

That's not the experience I was having... Took my towers 2-3 hits to kill fighters...

Edit: Doublepost.

Silly internet.

Hummingbird: "max_health": 75,
Missile tower ammo: "damage": 150,



I'm sorry @emraldis, but I'm not seeing how what you're claiming with missile towers can possibly be true.

Maybe you saw Stingers firing... they take two/three hits to down a single fighter, but they have AoE, making them better against swarming targets. Stingers can of course, also shoot at ground targets, so it makes sense that they're not quite as effective at dealing with single Air targets.

Could have been. It was a pretty big clusterf*** at that point.

Stingers are still cheaper than Hummingbirds by 50 metal.

A t2 factory is really easy to get and flak cannons almost invalidate air all together, t1 is fine for early game air rushes while t2 wipe air out when they mass up late game so I don't the problem...
Also T1 aa is super cheap and has extreme range, so just spamming them with your commander for a while if you know the enemy if going full air is a great idea.

So, fighters have been touted as the be-all end-all of air and from what I've seen, people are using them as a replacement for Bombers, despite them being strictly worse at DPS and durability, yet excelling at speed.

So, there are a few changes I'm testing over the next few days:

• Reduced maneuverability.
• Reduced damage output.
• Increased cost.

I've already had some feedback saying that this is too heavy-handed however, there is method to my madness. Massed fighter spam has become the default choice for the majority of games that I'm viewing or get feedback about. I really want to encourage people to try different strategies and get feedback on things like Orbital, Naval and still more on Ground-based combat. I can't get that feedback if all everyone does is spam fighters.

They have been heavily reduced in their capability for now. They will be brought back up to snuff over time, but for now I'd like to broaden the spectrum of viable tactics... and I can't do that with fighters working the way they are at the moment.

To anyone who wishes to play and test this mod in the Galactic war: I have managed to get it working with it. Now before you jump on it note: This is kind of hack and as such it will break some of the other mods, namely Hotbuild and Unit Database.
Unit Database mod simply doesn't work, nothing can be done there, but hotbuild does partially work. It will still remember all your keybinds, but you will not be able to set up new one. Additionally if you will change your settings while having the Galactic war hack and Hotbuild enabled you will lose ALL your hotbuild keybinds, but just has I have said, If you do not touch the settings you will do fine.
I also cannot guarantee that as long as hack is enabled any of your online games will work unless you also have the server version of the mod installed. This I recommend that you either disable the hack and relaunch the game before proceeding to play online or oyu install the server mod and play with it.

Now, if you are still interested, follow this instructions carefully:

0. Download or update the server mod (DO THIS MANUALLY, the Atomshell PAMM has an outdated version with a CTD Bug), if you haven't already and go into the SRC folder and extract the modinfo.json, PA and UI folders onto a folder named RCBM. This folder doesn't exist yet so create one on your desktop for now.
1. Go into your RCBM folder and open up the modinfo.json file and change the

Code:

"context": "server" into "context": "client"

. Use notepad++ or notepad to do this. Save and exit the notepad.
2. Copy the RCBM folder into "C:\Users\[USER NAME]\AppData\Local\Uber Entertainment\Planetary Annihilation\mods" folder.
2a. If it doesn't exist, download PAMM (any version) and install it, then install any mod (you can then uninstall that mod if you wish).
3. Open up PAMM (if it is already open, refresh it) and there should now be an enabled mod called "The Realm Community Balance", there might even be two if you are unit the Atomshell version (one Server and one Client). Now disable and enable it (or them if you have both visible).
4. Go play galactic war.

IMPORTANT NOTES:
- You are running a server mod as if it were a client mod. This will probably break some things.
- Also the AI is programmed with vanilla balance, expect a difficulty drop in some situations and an difficulty increase in others.
- I also don't know what will happen with the units that are exclusive to the mod (The Peregrine, the stinger and the Artemis). They may or may not work with galactic war.

The ai will not build any of those units, you'll need to go into the ai's programming and modify it to tell it to build them, how often, when, etc...

I can confirm this because Statera can down right break the ai at times due to all the new units it seems.

Sometimes the AI scares me with how many Scorchers it builds; legitimately terrifies me. Seeing a slow-moving radar blob usually only means one thing: pain is coming.

It may not know how to use the new units... but it damn-well knows how to use the ones it does remember it has access to.

Interesting. I've always found scorcher suboptimal. Mostly because they tend to arrive last and be piked off at a distance.