Today

Scathis...

Have you played Statera?

No?

Play it.


We'll see how boring it is. We'll see in 25 days.

The last KotP was actually rather boring. Only about 7 different combat units being used, which is rather boring.

Some people figured out a way. I want to figure out the way that's best for the game overall.
Balance changes are rarely a knee-jerk reaction.

Bingo! Only took 2 posts.

I would highly recommend giving the RCBM a try because you obviously haven't. Specialized T2 is not boring. It's not a limp finish. There's simply more strategy involved.

Power increase is done by quantity of units, rather than having 2 units that can destroy an entire base and a hundred other units.

I find "rush to get T2 because T2 obliterates everything in T1" to be incredibly binary, repetitive, lacking in strategy, and containing a number of fundamental flaws.

When I can take 5 units and say "move forward" and win the game, that's not a lot of strategy. That's build memorization to race to T2 and a move command. That's the very reason why I don't like SupCom "Experimentals." There's simply very little strategy involved with a single unit that destroys everything. You have one option: move forward.

When army power is displaced into a bunch of units, there's more variety and strategy involved. Do I send all of my units in as one large clump? Do I build all of 1 unit? Do I mix it up? Do I split my units up into 2 armies? 1 large and one small? equal size? lots of raiding groups? There's so much more variety with unit quantity rather than mega units (and yes, I'm considering a lot of T2 units to be mega units).

Also, upgraded T2 has a huge fundamental flaw: little opportunity for recovery. I've written about this a lot. With the race to T2 and the crazy exponential growth that comes from it, the player who gets to it first has huge economical growth and an increase in army power. We have seen this time and time and time again throughout PA's history. When there's no opportunity to recover from small mistakes, or lagging behind in the T2 race by 1 minute, it's just a tech race with much less strategy involved. Remember the gunship patch? Games were literally decided because I got to T2 15 seconds before my opponent.

More units = more strategy.

Tech race and 1 unit that can steamroll a base = less strategy and more build memorization.

Uh what? What does knee-jerk reactions have to do with this? Last I heard the reactions to the change have been well thought out and actually explored the how and why of the mechanics of the change.

In fact, it's that insight and exploring of the mechanics at work that resulting in the current implementation we used in the RCBM along with testing and of course no change "stands alone" , when everything is interconnected making one big change can have far reaching effects.

Mike

How do you know I haven't? Do you know what I had for breakfast? Are you spying on me?!
At least make me some bacon if you're going to be spending so much time tracking me. Sheesh.

Everyone had different opinions about what is fun and what they consider strategic. You can complain about it all you want, but in the end I'm going to have to make a decision that's best for the game given the data I have.

The entire reason we're allowing modding is so people like you can go make tweak the game in a hey direction you choose. Isn't that awesome of us?!

What question? Statera? No I haven't played it. I had to figure out what it is first.

So, what's better the statera balance mod or the that other one, the helm balance mud something or other?

Yes, very awesome, I'm so happy you guys have been going through the trouble of hosting servers using our mods /for/ us essentially.

They do the same thing in different ways. Statera has more units than RCBM and is more in line with vanilla in some areas (Bots are fast in Statera and vehicles slow, whereas the opposite is the case in RCBM).

If you already have the atomshell PAMM installed on your current comp then clicking the download button on this link should one or two click install it: http://pa-mods.com/mod-entry.php?mod=com.squishypon3.balancedannihilation

Does everything need to be better or worse than something else? Can't they just be.....different?

Mike

I hate you.

Fine. Statera is better. (Admittedly said with bias)

Depends on what you want, RCBM is essentially the base game with changes to balance, the point is to to try to add as little as possible to get the balance they want (as in adding units only when strictly NEEDED), Statera adds quite a few units, and stems quite far away from the base games balance, so you need to relearn the game a bit more.

Opinions opinions. No balance is the correct one, as you guys have said

You know that fly that keeps on buzzing in your ear? It's really a robot that I control.

Muahahahaaha!

I'll see what I can do about building a new robot that can get you bacon and coffee. That'll be harder to do considering the thousands of miles inbetween us.

I say you haven't tried RCBM because you claim of limp finish. Also, you haven't come out and said that you have.

And it's not a personal opinion of strategy. It's a simple fact. More variety and options and possible moves means more strategy. When I build one unit and say "go" – that requires less strategy than building a proper army composition and coordinating multiple attacks.

Building three units that just moves forward and kills a base is the equivalent of checkers. You have one move option and games are pretty much all the same.

Building an army of mixed composition for the situation at hand and changing up your attack patterns based on the terrain and base is the equivalent of chess, virtually no game is the same and all units have a bunch of different roles and possibilities.

Point being, using a Vanguard? Easy. Little strategy required, just a move command. Using Specialized Units? Lots of strategy as they all have strengths and drawbacks.

RCBM's added 3 units now. Not sure if it will continue, and they still have quite a ways to go if they intend on catching up to us (We add... four? bots, one base defense, two vehicles, and four? aircraft)

I look at RCBM as a less extreme NOTA for PA. Statera is more like the... I'm actually not sure... BA added experimentals along with loads of units, BOTA added nothing... XTA? of PA.

HA!

suck it all of you equalist radicalists! Power increase FTW! I always knew they'd never said anything in the direction of equal units!

As for the rest of this thread and the news it bears:

Isn't that the exact debate we're having?! You guys are silly. I love ya.

Ok. I'm off to bed. Good night! Dream of hordes of Vanguards.... Being wiped out by a few Hornets.

Not true. Garat admitted to being the one who said that.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/today.62131/page-7#post-964853

Does that rule only apply to mods or is it possible for the mods to not be better than vanilla and simply be different?

(Scathis beat me to it, but I don't care, posting anyways to procrastinate cleaning the house before family gets here tomorrow!)

Context is everything, the RCBM and Statera were specifically created to counter what were seen by the creators as deficiencies with the stock balance, each did things differently, it's not really the same thing to compare them against each other, neither one is better at fixing the different things they each fixed.

Think of it like compared an award winning Draft Horse to an Award winning Miniature Horse, sure they're both types of Horses and both won awards, but they won awards for completely different things.

Mike