(public balance idea spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/document/d/1chSwBLnPT5q9lhM6wIGqt06uuSJoyCr70WynJbnBaBo/edit?usp=sharing ) This thread is for serious and organized discussion about bot balance. Balance can be highly subjective so solid data is encouraged but not required. This will be one of 5 threads. I want the threads to foster intelligent discussion about balance that people may have, and they will require people to post: (you can include multiple changes in one post, but this thread doesn't encourage large reworks) Your vision of what the unit or category of units should perform on the battlefield Exactly what you want to change about the unit or group of units Why you want to change this unit How you think your change will impact the battlefield (optional, yet highly desired) data showing exactly how the new changes affect balance For clarification, these and only these units may be included in proposed balance changes: (Obviously, you can still talk about other unit interactions, like how spinners are ground units but they only shoot air. But spinner changes are reserved for the ground thread) Ignore legion units. Bot units. https://palobby.com/units/table/bots?version=titans https://palobby.com/units/unit/artillery_unit_launcher?version=titans https://palobby.com/units/unit/land_mine?version=titans https://palobby.com/units/unit/bot_support_commander?version=titans https://palobby.com/units/unit/fabrication_bot?version=titans https://palobby.com/units/unit/fabrication_bot_adv?version=titans https://palobby.com/units/unit/bot_factory?version=titans https://palobby.com/units/unit/bot_factory_adv?version=titans https://palobby.com/units/unit/fabrication_bot_combat?version=titans https://palobby.com/units/unit/fabrication_bot_combat_adv?version=titans
Example post found at https://forums.planetaryannihilation.com/threads/2019-air-balance-thread.73324/
The Grenadier 1) This is a specialist mobile siege AoE unit. It's supposed to take out T1 defenses and punish clumped up units. Right now it cant do either, it just misses a lot and dies, not necessarily in that order. 2)How to improve it: Max firing Range increase from 125 to 140 View range increase from 130 to 135/140 (optional, can remain less to facilitate use of scouts, but I recommend keeping it a self reliant unit) Increase full damage radius to from 2 to 3 and splash radius from 6 to 8 3) The grenadier right now is nonviable when used as a single unit army to tackle double laser turrets, and is exposed when targeting single laser turrets. It is impossibly hard to micro it against Tank and bot armies due to it's frontal-only direction of fire. (which, by the way, should probably be included in it's description to comply with WYSIWYG principle) Increasing it's range means it can safely engage with all T1 turrets without ungodly amounts of pinpoint micro that few players below Platinum even know exists. Furthermore, this increase in range, as opposed to a fix of the engine bug that makes it suicide walk into the range of turrets, finally allows the grenadier to fight from a formation. Previously if a player wants to use the grenadier to do some damage to other mobile units, he'd have to either separate it from the formation, or risk loosing other units that are within the firing range of chasing tanks/bots. Furthermore, even when tanks miss the dox/sparks at the rear of the formation, stray shells would often end up hitting the grenadiers, making the whole exercise pointless. Finally the splash radius. Right now the grenadier's Area of Effect has no merit in how the unit is used. When used against armies, the grenadier often targets the closest unit, resulting in the AoE having barley any E in there. Increasing the splash translates to at least some guaranteed damage to tanks, and a risk of clustering your own units, even when the grenadier misses (which is almost always the case since it's projectiles are designed to deviate for the sake of greater AoE) 4) What you can expect is a unit primarily used to aid in raiding and breaking "safe" expansion fortresses. Double laser turrets will finally get a counter, and all of the new players building a grenadier will get at least some work out of the unit before they realize spamming dox is probably the better idea. Higher up the skill level we may even see a couple being included in armies and microed against tanks. Defensive use of grenadiers to counter your opponent's will make for more interesting and dynamic engagements, and less stale turtle cancer. 5) You can expect video clips material from my next twitch stream with commentary and extensive testing.
I don't really like any of the proposed changes in 2. It already outranges turrets, just put attack_range_frac at 1.0 (apparently it defaults 0.85 which is the thing we thought was an engine issue) and firing_standard_deviation to 0. Now it accurately outranges.
The margin is too small for using a raiding force, if you have dox and sparks mixed in there and half of it will walk in range of the turret. furthermore this severely limits the # of grenadiers that can actively fire from a safe distance, meaning they dont scale well. I did a some testing with the altered values, you still want some deviation so that when fighting an army not all gren shots land on that one unfortunate ant while all the rest around it shoot happily at your stuff. Furthermore, you want some leeway to respond to enemy units trying to snipe your grenadiers while you are shooting at the turrets
Lobs **WERE** OP to the point of meta everywhere from gold to Uber. When you have metal to spare, especially early game, they are unparalleled at spitting out units almost 50% faster than a bot factory (due the the bot factory cool-off time of 3 seconds, making the rate of dox production effectively 6 seconds instead of 3). Some Ubers, including me, incorporate them into our late games when we need cannon fodder and a way to spend metal. Having said that, lobs are currently not too viable as an opener unless you have access to a lot of wreckage to reclaim early on in the game since it takes so long to build them without the assistance of a fabber (that should be building metal in the meantime. Balancing the Lob is tricky, as no one wants it to be a better bot factory (as outlined by nimzo) Before anything else i think we need to decide what role the Lob should have: a strictly cheese unit, a ranged dox factory, a defensive anti-artilery/turret sniper?
well it can´t be a better botfactory cause dox are its only buildoption ... and while dox are fairly capable they aren´t the end all be all on spamming a unit i would say .. as for the lob .. yea it is tough ... i do like its idea of yeeting units over cliffs and walls (since we lack multiunittransports of any kind) or torwards an aproaching army were otherwise pelters may be less effective ... i don´t think it should be like the main doxproduction facility but rather a option for at least initialy be capable to circumvent terrainhurdles to be then used for attack were a pelter can only bombard a certain area .. lobs instead can spawn units torwads an area but the units it spawned can be used further .. maybe a different option (or as one you can chose between) for the lob would be instead of dox to lob boombots ... while in that case it would behave a bit like a pelter the difference would be that a army would be able to defend itself against the "artilleryshells" but you still have have the benefit of using the " shells" as units .. basicaly the lob is sorta a defensive structure which however you can use for offense not being bound to turretcreep ... does that make sense?
