I've been playing with the idea of setting up my own balance mod for the past few days and figured it was time to get feedback on the concept. I am not trying to reproduce the balance of TA, nor am I interested in "how it's always been". I'm interested only in making something that I will have fun modding and playing. It is my hope that some of you may have fun along the way too. (on a side note, I can't remember the names of most units, just the role they fill... So I usually refer to them by generic descriptions.) Primary goals. Give players a more stable starting economy and reduce runaway inflation in the mid/late game. Commanders will provide the backbone of the game's starting economy with increased production and storage. Ground control will matter more than Tech for economy. T1 MEX will provide more metal T2 MEX will provide half as much as a T1 and will draw power. Make vehicle, bot, and air factories equally essential to a developed base and army. T1 factories will have more RPS between factories. T1 bombers will have reduced damage, increased AoE (weak vs high health targets) Most vehicles will have increased health, increased damage, decreased fire rate, decreased turret turn speed. (weak vs lots of targets) Dox will have decreased cost, decreased health, but increased DPS (weak vs AoE). All bots will have significantly decreased speed (infantry don't outrun tanks) but they will gain radar stealth to remain effective raiders. Air Scouts will have increased LOS to provide a counter to bot raids (who lack AA). Skitters will have radar, but will not have extended LOS. They can still scout bases and tank armies, but will not gain an advantage over bots. Early game RPS will be offset by giving the commander more defensive structures and the metal/power production to support multiple factories. The goal is that any attack will be more dependent on mixing 2 factory types instead of using all bot, tank, or air. Make T2 units/defenses specialists that do not functionally replace T1 units. T2 units will be rebalanced closer to their T1 counterparts but with more specialized roles. T2 will have counters to T1 of the *same* tech. T2 heavy tanks will have less overkill vs T1 vehicles and more health. T2 assault bots will use fast firing, small splash weapons to counter Dox. T2 sniper bots will be effective anti-tank T2 factories will be cheaper Make defenses more effective vs specific unit types. Pelters will do less damage, fire faster, and have more AoE. Effective vs bots, but more dependant on spotter units than before. Holkins will have longer range and more damage, but less splash. Better for base sieging. Lasers will remain generic enough to defend against all land. Catapults will be tweeked to be better vs tanks than bases or bots. Redesign Nuke-Anti-Nuke relationship so that nukes become cost effective utility weapons instead of game-enders. (might make as a separate mod tied in as a dependency) Allow anti-orbit and anti-pod weapons to target nukes. (Just because all anti-orbit can target the nuke doesn't mean all anti-orbit will be able to hit it.) Anti-Nuke will be cheaper, longer range, and faster reloading. Nukes will do reduced damage. Less effective vs bases, but still effective vs units. Nukes Launchers will be cheaper Nuke Launchers cannot be assisted. Nuke Launchers use lots of energy, but very little metal. Metal cost of nukes is adjusted to keep the build time similar as a current unassisted nuke launcher. I'm actually super happy with the current naval warfare. I'm going to hold off on making orbital changes of my own until we have an idea what Uber is doing there. I don't want to work on anything that might be changing soon. If Uber doesn't change anything for orbital over the next couple months I might try and work with Emraldis on finding a sweet spot that lets my work play nice with OWO. edit: formatting.
T2 metal may be nerfed too hard, I get the concept, but I feel it's be better balanced to be the same, or slightly less metal production than the T1 extractor.. Not sure how I feel about the power drain, make it have more health, and take a bit longer for it to pay for itself. Just my thoughts.
I'm looking at T1 as 12 and T2 as 6. The prices of everything T2 would need to be adjusted, but one of the goals is to make T2 supplement T1 instead of replacing it.
