The lack of all the structure's durability in today's stream

In the 17th live stream, we got to see a lot more combat. One of the things I noticed torwards the end, is that several small bots made quick work of a large structure by a short sustained fire.

I just wanted to discuss this, good or bad.

I think I liked how the buildings go down effectively against an army getting in. First, the structures leave a shell, so you would be able to recollect it and rebuild it pretty cheaply anyhow.

It isn't about what they destroyed, it is about how many things in succession they destroyed, how much overkill they used to destroy it (it would create less salvage), and who won the territory afterwards (who would end up reclaiming it).

It makes for a faster paced game, having smaller units being at least marginally effective and doing at least some damage. It also encourages larger scaled bases since some damage through combat is bound to come from it.

Re: The lack of all the structure's durability in today's st

That's a simple balancing issue that probably has yet to be play tested, I really wouldn't read too deeply into that at this point.

Re: The lack of all the structure's durability in today's st

Re: The lack of all the structure's durability in today's st

Yeah, but I thought it was a good idea, instead of requiring extensive damage, it could be softer but always reclaimable and rebuildable.

Another thought I thought of during the live feed, was how orbital satellites can give line of sight below it. Hopefully there are some anti-orbital weapons you can shoot the things out the sky if they stay above long enough.

Re: The lack of all the structure's durability in today's st

I would guess they would including a counter to satellites. Weather it's taking down the satellite relay or building an orbital unit to destroy it (I'm guessing they would be expensive early game though)

Re: The lack of all the structure's durability in today's st

This thread is the reason Jon keeps having to beat the dead horse.

Re: The lack of all the structure's durability in today's st

Lol, yea not done. Honestly we haven't even really done a first pass balance, too many moving parts at the moment.

Re: The lack of all the structure's durability in today's st

I rarely make threads based on balance. This one wasn't criticising the current balance, which is in fact nonexistance, i get that, they just used whatever default health that was first set for their engine, and I would not be suprised if literally everything had the same health number.

I was just making a comment about an idea that I got while watching it. Both about the pros and cons of structure durability, and of satellites having line of sight (which was released this stream so it isn't guessing into the dark).

Re: The lack of all the structure's durability in today's st

Balance is final, until we change it.™

Re: The lack of all the structure's durability in today's st

To add to what's already been said, if you look at it from the "product on display" perspective, it makes perfect sense(if misleading in certain circumstances) to show it with that kind of skew, you want people to see things happening, to see things have changed when you cut back to the game view from last time. It's appropriately high paced, now whether or not that is appropriate for gameplay is a different matter entirely and we'll all get to help figure that out.

Mike

Re: The lack of all the structure's durability in today's st

I assumed this stuff hadn't been sorted yet. However I have some opinions on how I'd like it to be.

Since my last time posting on here I've been playing a lot of Forged Alliance Forever and it's fantastic, better than TA in most ways, but I hate how quickly units die. And buildings have a lot of armour and the attack units don't. It means the battles are over very quickly (as opposed to the continuous stream in TA) if you don't give them your full attention. There's also a lot less raiding of extractors and power than there is in TA because the buildings take longer to kill and the units die more quickly. The only stuff that's easy to kill quickly in FAF is engineers so people seem to primarily focussed on assassinating build capacity, then power, then metal. In TA it seemed a more even mix of the three.

Re: The lack of all the structure's durability in today's st

High health structures act as a "defender's advantage" to help reduce the impact of early game raids. It's just one of them tweaking points. Since most structures don't have weapons, their health can differ by extreme orders of magnitude without creating any real balance issues (other than confused looks from the play testers).

Generators are one of those things that probably work best if they're pretty squishy. They yearn to have gigantic bullseyes that bring in the gentbots from all over.

Don't forget that everything is always "working as intended". :lol: