Internal Playtest – Balance Build, Social Features Reveal, and More! – 4/4

I'm not bent out of shape. Just trying to set expectations and make sure it's perfectly clear where we are in the current balancing process.

^^ Even if somehow these changes don't work it will certainly be fun to test it all out and figure out what we can do within the update, remember people it took awhile for everyone to figure out how good towers were and how quickly you could rush T2 in the current build

also I look forward to seeing how the longer and more res to build the T2 factory will pan out as it will mean if someone starts a factory and puts to much assistance on it then they will have a limited T1 army/defenses for quite some time also if that is the case then even if you can't destroy them before they get T2 you can harass them into a smaller base, take more of the planet and put more build power on your own T2 factory to catch up or even over take them

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. Enough with speculation for the time being I think, it is getting repetitive now, best just to play the new version and and give constructive feedback! Sadly it is now nearly 11am here in Spain which means no new version this week. Oh well, probably means I will have a more productive weekend

I agree with that point of view, and I see where he is coming from.

However, it's what Brian has to say about "coming back from behind". That's part of the strategy of the game, it's what distinguishes a strategic game from an arena game. There is more depth.

I sympathise with Scathis's point of view.


In an "ideal situation", the game would support sufficient depth to allow players to come back from those situations.

Yes, everything is an economic thing. What I mean is, the game should offer sufficient depth to allow you to fight that guerilla war against an equal opponent.

I also think that PA deserves a technological victory. It should reward "research" in the game.

I agree that the current iteration, where T2 >>>>> T1, and Lots of T1 >>>>>> T1 is bad. However, even if you "fix" the economy, that is always going to be an issue.

TLDR: I agree with the concern. However I think it is better fixed by offering more depth.

I really like some of the changes we saw here, namely the stationary anchors and quadruple advanced economy and cost. I've already explained my view on doxes os I'll stop at that. But about the new orbital here's what I would do: I'd like to add T2 orbital radar and orbital power to the list of stationary orbital structures built by orbital faber. Power makes sense since you will need a lot of it and because It'll be more readily available that way, T2 orbital radar, because that would differentiate between T1 and t2 orbital radar and make t1 useful again. I'm still not a fan of anchors shooting the ground but with them being stationary that is tolerable, especially since they can't see the ground by themselves.

Bu with that orbital is moving into an awesome direction. I'd still like to see aerospace fighters and orbital battleships for attacking fortifications and a way to mine from orbit (orbital t2 mex, that isn't as efficient as ground and can be blocked off by ground mex) and maybe a drop ship factory but other than that, I really like the changes to the orbital.

12:1 ratio seems very exciting. Also very good chance that astraus is relevant which could be big. Planet sieges seems to have got loads better. The snowballing isn't that big of a problem and anyways making the snowballs bustable is way more progress on that front even if the steepness got a little worse, well worth the set back. Current situation where you get an unavoidable slow snowball isn't that good.

"Anchors are now stationary and built only by orbital fabrication bots"

It's about bloody time they did them changes because it was getting stupid at the way they made avengers pretty much pointless as anchors could do their job better but a little slower. but what i do want to know is how many avengers it takes to take out one anchor.

But the changes i don't like are the social changes because as a grumpy bastard.. I have no friends so everyone will know how lonely i am : (

^sarcasm^

there wont be a change to towers? So they still will be very strong vs t1 units?


and whaaat?

Thanks for clarifying the thought process behind the way you balance the game

I really like the changes you make to the orbital layer. If you continue in that direction, orbital might become the unique and fun part of PA that it ought to be.

I also agree with most of the principles Meta outlined.

And while I see now how your approach to balancing might work, I disagree with it in one major point and I believe I am not alone with that:

The change from T1 to T2 should not be as game decidingly important.
You are right: The way you do it, it will be balanced and it might turn out to be an interesting cat and mouse game about when to upgrade to T2 and about trying to catch your opponent with his pants down while he is trying to do the upgrade himself.

But I have a different point of view on how a game like this might work and many others might agree with it.

I tried outlining it in a lengthy but (still somehow (hopefully) concise) way here if you care to read or skim through it: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/why-dont-we-start-directly-in-t2.58523/page-3#post-909350

Edit: And I refer to AWESOMENESS !! That's a good reason to read it, right ?

I've been looking back at the ta eco balance a bit more, and these eco changes do bring it closer to that proportionally...

In ta a solar energy plant gave 20e, whist a fusion gave 1000e (so 50x). Currently in pa t1 pgen is 600 compared to 5000 for t2 (so roughly 8x), increasing t2 pgens to 20k makes it a 32x multiplier which is closer to ta. Remember power only allows you to spend metal essentially.

Also looking at unit costs, 1800m for a t2 tank is also about right so I don't have an issue there. The only thing I disagree on is I think the t2 mex may prove too big a step up. In ta you got about a 3x output from t2 compared to t1 (as we have now), however with these changes it will be 12x which might be too much. On the other hand ta had energy to metal converters to boost the t2 eco so maybe this will work, however my gut feeling would be to keep the metal production rates as is, and just change energy and costs as discussed (it would force more emphasis on map control as metal would be much more valuable). Overall after thinking about it though I don't think these changes are such a bad idea as people think.

Ps thanks for streaming the updates!

Edit Pps: I'm not saying that pa balance needs to follow ta to closely to be good, just that one thing ta did well was balance t1 and t2 and these changes look to achieve a similar balance.

Yay! Someone noticed!
The specular reflections for units and the ground has changed. I also did some work to stabilize the water shore so it drifts less with the view angle and is generally cleaner looking.

For those curious it was a Cook-Torrance style physically based specular with a blinn-phong lobe based on a talk Treyarch gave. It's now a GGX lobe with a mix of a few different papers, though mostly Ready at Dawn's paper on The Order 1886 rendering.
http://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2013-shading-course/rad/s2013_pbs_rad_slides.pdf

The original specular in the concept renderings has a very soft specular shape. The blinn-phong tends to have a much sharper shape so to compensate the specular highlights were toned down, so much so as to almost be non-existent. Further the original version had all specular highlights colored by the diffuse color. This is correct for metal like the units but as we were starting to put specular on the planet surface it didn't look right. To allow for colored and uncolored specular I was going to have to update every specular texture in the game, so I figured I'd look into changing all of the specular calculations at the same time.

The current version might now be too bright on units, but I'm much happier with it than what we had before.

Oh, and one other big fix... an experimental shadow "fix" that should prevent most of the nasty shadow acne artifacts on the planets.

I think this works in theory, as long as all players are on the ball and aware when their opponent(s) is(are) going T2. But in a FFA game where you can't always watch everyone? If only one person rushes T2 and is left alone for a minute or two, BOOM.
I am not a very good player, so this is purely conjecture, but I am excited to see where it takes the game.

Thanks Scathis, I really appreciate you guys getting involved with the community like this.
I hope you don't stop streaming these tests, as I find observing the iterative balance process very interesting. Try not to be too disheartened by some of the responses, this is only natural on the internet...

https://lh3.ggpht.com/-m4kRfOFUED8/Uygl93emWmI/AAAAAAAAF18/0TvPMoctoA8/s1600/giphy.gif

Excellent all around. You guys are really listening and have a great overview of the weaknesses of the current build. I am very happy to see this list of problems and really look forward to see how different experiments tweak around these issues until we find a really sweet spot. It sounds like you envision slamming astroids as the first wave of a ground assault. Does anyone know if this feature has been confirmed for release? And will this clear out air as well? It seems like the major problem with getting a foothold is - the player can swarm the planet with orbital fighters and air bombers, making it impossible to build a tele. I suppose a big ball of fighters and orbital fabs, if the tele builds quick and is tough, could in theory get down a teleported just long enough for a swarm of anti-air bots to go through. What about adding a flak cannon and a t2 laser to the teleporter?

Building astraesus cheap and fast is an EXCELLENT way to make orbital more dynamic. This a great direction, i'm super psyched!

I still have the feeling that you are forcing the game into one or very few directions/solutions. You are using the same strategy as always (building tons of walls for instance) and shaping the game around those assumptions. In my personal view the game was more fun before you started balancing it, even with few units less.

Beside, renaming a simple humble tank into Unit Cannon, and keeping with this farce when everyone is expecting the Unit Cannon to be a very different thing, a gameplay changing asset that will be added to the game sometime in future, one of the main reasons why some backed up the game in the first place, is frankly an insult to our ingenuity.

That's an issue you can't avoid with FFAs, sometimes you're going to get screwed by things you can't control. It's why FFAs are so much more relaxing

Now that I've actually had a bit to to actually think about this, I think I've actually warmed up to it a bit.

If the cost of T2 really is quadrupled throughout (except for the generation) then that really doesn't change the rate at which you can build T2 anything, it just (greatly) increases the cost.

It does, however increase the rate at which T1 factories are built, building and using T1 factories won't even put a dent into the new amount of eco gotten from the T2 structures, so you'll be able to push out a lot more units before thinking about your second T2 factory.

It gets me thinking that if one person in a game focused exclusively on T1 with some T2 thrown in, he'd be able to take out someone focused more on T2 through sheer numbers alone because of the amount of factories that'd be possible, but that's only a guess.

And making the resource generation be slightly off with the production rate makes going T2 at least somewhat more a strategic option, with the increased costs you definitely need more map control do it, but I have a feeling that I'm going to be wishing that the T2 mexes were either kept at their original rate, or only doubled. Again, just a guess.

Going T2 will also require that you make less T1 factories, as you'll need to save up some of your eco generation to be able to afford it without going into the red, which I kind of like, actually.

There may actually be something here - but I don't think it's refined enough quite yet, I look forward to the next playtest.

Oh, also.

Yeah, very much this.
I'll be the first to admit that it was kinda funny at first, but the joke wore out. Fast.

what about the orbital factory?

Maybe that was the wrong term. I used the same one as you did to imply that your post and others (what I believe is the 'average' consensus) are on the same par.

I realise that might not make as much sense as I had intended, squint at it until it does.