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

Disclaimer: If people think this post is selfassured. (That other word. Not assured. You know. When you think you're up yourself and all that? People have been throwing it around the forums lately) and if you have an issue, call me out on it via PM.

"Theorycrafting" lead me to believe that the change of T2 from 7:1 to 3:1 was unneeded. Uber is now changing that to a ratio of 12:1.
Theorycrafting lead me to believe that the ubercannon was OP. Uber is now implemented a cooldown on the UC.
Theorycrafting lead me to believe that T1 was not relevant. And Uber agrees.

I then proved those beliefs. Through playing the patch. Through reading other peoples posts on these forums and seeing what they had experienced. Through following the debates on the forums. Through examining the data. The only reason I don't play myself to check different scenarios is because I can't afford a second laptop or a second internet connection.

Please continue to provide these experimental builds. It is beneficial for game development. It's showing off what you're doing. It's probably getting a lot of people interested in the process as we're actually exposed to the process, and in an interactive manner. We can ask questions, we can discuss stuff. Yes, we can get bent of shape at how awful the changes are. The questions then are "Why were those changes made? Why were they deemed to be necessary? Why are they bad? Are they bad, or is it just a direction the community will take some time to get used to?

Please do not be negative towards people who are thinking about the changes you personally have made to the game in pursuit of balance. It isn't relevant whether those people play or not. Historically they have played, they have a lot to do with the community and the discussions that occur in that community. They understand the game (and its fundamental mechanics) well enough to realise the implications. Most importantly, they are thinking, showing an interest and being actively involved in the process.

Sure,they can play the build. And what? Actively confirm or deny their hypotheses, and reach a conclusion? They can watch others play the build and do the same? They can read discussions other people have and do the same again?



I think the issue with "snowballing" is that, if your opponent were to snowball, and you were to discover the snowball too late, there aren't many strategic decisions you can make which will lead to your victory.

It's all very well to balance the game based in an ideal situation where two opponents are equal. But ultimately strategy is about asymmetry. And part of asymmetry is the idea that while 2 player were fighting in an FFA, one player was "snowballing". For the game to be considered a strategy game, it should be possible to play against the snowball and have a reasonable chance of winning, to play against the asymmetric start

So yes, if we feel our opponent in a FFA won by snowballing, and there was no way we could come from behind and win, we're playing an Arena game, not a strategy game, and that's probably because there weren't strategies available.

they changed the tank name many times. This is a joke. They are rubbing it in, but you guys are the ones with very tender mental wounds, I wish there was mental Neosporin. I stopped looking at ingame unit name at this point or might have a mod installed not sure. Either way, the ant is a unit with a cannon, the joke is funny...

It's not so much tender mentality, at least for me it's more seeing Scathis say "Single turrets have the same range as the Unit Cannon" and me thinking "Wait, what? WHAT?!"

that's the commitment to their joke. They couldn't say that with a straight face, luckily they don't need to from across an internet wire. I'm waiting for them to slip up and call it an ant or pounder.

must say. They had a good one this April fools, its lasting the whole update.

I just do not understand how "T2 Rush for the win" is balanced. slowing it down does force a kind of choice for the player. But it means there is only one choice. Do I swarm T1 and hope to get him before T2 is up or do I rush T2 myself. The answer will always be defend until I have T2 then attack. It is no different from how it is now.

I have an idea for an experiment. drop the radar jammers and stealth units in at T2, remove the upgrade units and see how it plays. the tests have been going to extremes of the spectrum but the spectrum is limited to 2 colors. T2 or not to T2. I want more options.

PS, it is sad that the idea of "we may have to just mod the game to get the depth and variety we want." is starting to take hold in the forums.

I am not disappointed by the balance changes. I am disappointed by the general approach that is being tested. It is creating a "race to victory" along a fixed path instead of letting us free form a victory and explore other routes.

Well tbh, I think scathis and the other guys at Uber know what they're doing.

There are certain problems in PA atm that are getting addressed by making T2 more expensive:

- No space in the lategame to build anything
- T2 rushes are mandatory atm
- T1 is too weak in comparison
- Too many ressources lategame

Now, with 4 times the cost and consumption and 4 times the production, all that does is to make one T2 factory worth the same as 4 T2 factories were worth before. This means that you don't have to build that many factories anymore, which addresses the issue of too little space in the lategame.

You need 4 times the T1 economy to support your first T2 factory, which means that there will be 4 times the time to spam T1 units instead of rushing to T2. That will make us see T1 way more than before.

Production will be 4 times the cost, so you'll get 4 times more T1 units for each T2 unit, if I understood that correctly. That means that T2 units are basically nerfed pretty hard in comparison to T1 units. That means that we'll see a lot more T1 units, even when you have reached T2 economy.

But I don't see a problem with that, because that's basically what the community wants. Use T1 as the backbone of your army, and T2 as your elite. If I say it like this, many people will go "But T2 shouldn't be the elite etc."
Anyway, in practice that just means that we'll see a lot of T1 unit blops again, with a few T2 units in between. And if that's the result then it's the right way to go imo.

Now, the timing of the T2 factory might be more crucial than before, but not like many people think.
Because of the high initial cost, once you get to T2 it will be hard to support your first fabbers in building up that T2 eco. In other words, going to T2 is more dangerous and ressource draining than ever before, which makes T1 spam strategies even more appealing. Additionally, losing a T2 eco structure will be as bad as losing 4 of them is right now in the live build, which makes players focussed more on harassment strategies.

All in all, I'm seeing this as a very good and welcome change. It's also addressing the problem of having too many ressources to spend in the lategame, once you're off to other planets. Now you can just spend them 4 times as easy as before.

I for one am very excited about the direction, and to all you doubters I'll just say:
Play it before you judge it.

Greetings

Oh please. Everytime Kestrels are killing me. Every. F*. Time.

This is in the new build we don't have yet (Kestrels and T2 Fighters are getting a big nerf from the looks of things)... so hopefully they won't be the fast game ender they are now.

@arachnis - to add to your post, in the 1v1 planets (The uber ones, the small ones, I think they're 300-400 radius, I could be wrong) I can finish an AI game solely at t1. Maybe I upgrade to T2 to build units to deal with a small amount of AI T2. It barely features however.

I don't even build infernos. I just build tanks, Dox and the odd stinger.

I agree.

I completely agree with you. I'm really excited about these changes too. And to all the others who complain about the changes, I'm sure Uber won't release an unbalanced game, so if they realise that this direction isn't the right way to make a balanced game, then probably they'll find an other solution.

Question: Since the orbital factory model looks eerily familiar to air factory model I'm assuming it's a place holder.. and if that's true is there a model being developed?
Mind showing us a peak at the orbital factory model if their is a model ready to be shown?

I can't wait for the new launcher that'll let us play-test the experimental builds a such. It would really help them to figure out if what they are doing is going to be the correct (or best) path or not.

And the UberBar looks awesome!

Anyone notice T2 power gens are still only 2700 metal? #poketherage

I doubt it's even a change. Kestrels already have difficulty leading their targets, but it doesn't matter much when you have a large group of kestrels attacking a large blob of tanks.

Hmm, I just tried a fun ffa and set myself the rule "only use t1 bots as offensive units". This is would resulted:
http://pastats.com/chart?gameId=81332

The game was very very very laggy in the end, just too many units. So now imagine we have 4x the resources at t2. I would have had 20k units instead of 5k. Those poor servers.
So basically I am wondering if t1 units can be made better by allowing larger numbers alone without killing performance.

Well. Performance isn't done.

We used to have large armies of T1 units back during early beta and things were fine.

We are still working on performance and will continue to work on performance. If you've been around a while you can see that the game has progressively gotten more and more units while getting faster and faster.

Secondly, in our experiment we also had balance changes that make T1 much more capable of winning a game. Namely:

• Uber Cannon's cooldown set to 4 seconds. This has always been our intent, but we're finally getting the UI working so that it's possible to do without it feeling like a bug.
• Shortened the range of the single and double barrel laser turrets.
• Decreased the max damage radius on the artillery turrets and units.
• Increased the speed of all T1 vehicles.

I like the sound of those changes.

Hard to tell from all your other posts.

I kid! I kid!

Don't misunderstand us. Most of us who are complaining (for example me) are not saying that everything you do is wrong. In fact, I agree with most of what you do.
Only certain points such as the change from T1 to T2 being too drastic and T1 being replaced by T2 too much are what we critize.

After all, we all want the same thing. Live in harmony and peace while destroying whole galaxies for fun

sure performance is gonna improve, but those were the changes I wanted to see