What I like about the overall goal of Vanilla balance.

Discussion in 'Balance Discussions' started by pieman2906, August 8, 2014.

  1. pieman2906

    pieman2906 Well-Known Member

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    I'm a big fan of the concept of vehicles being the bread and butter attack units, and bots providing vital utility and support roles. I think this is a nice system that can make all units work, and ideally, be used in unison to work well.

    I like a lot of what air is doing right now, they're mostly in a pretty good place.

    There are a few things I feel would help to solidify these roles, and get bots into an effective place as support and utility, whilst keeping vehicles as the heavy hitters.

    1.Increase the vision of Bots, decrease the vision of vehicles, take the unit role of the skidder, put it with the bots.

    Right now, Tanks are good at doing what they do, head on assault. However, they have so much vision, that they can almost entirely run solo as a unit set. By taking away vision for Tanks, but giving bots much greater vision, we create a situation where Tanks have superior range by far, but can only make effective use of that range when supported by bots or radar to give them the vision they need to hit at their max range.

    Infernos and Vanguards especially dont really need that much range anyway, they're designed to plow into walls, why give them so much vision and, in the case of vanguards, radar, when it doesn't fit with their role?

    The fact that vanguards can see and clear mines on their own also feels kinda wrong, I mean, aren't mines meant to be like, one of the main ways you deal with an extremely bulky unit that needs to close to point blank range? Built in radar definitely feels like something bots should be carrying as utility, rather than giving Vehicles all the big guns, and then also the utility kit to use them as well.

    Moving the scouting ground unit from the Vehicle factory to the Bot factory is simply to re-enforce these roles, since fast scouting, large range, and built in radar are most certainly utility roles, which is what bots are designed to do.

    If Dox have range 80, and Tanks were nerfed to 70 or 60 vision, then Dox would be able to put a serious hurt on Tanks in a 1 on 1 microed match up, despite the Dox having inferiour damage. However, with bot support mixed in, the tanks would then have the vision provided by friendlies to shred Dox apart in the same situation. This creats a situation where both unit types need each other to be most effective, and weaknesses of tanks can be exploited if someone isn't running Bots as support.

    EDIT: Based Uber have delivered on Bot vision range, will have to test this.

    2.Remove the amphibious capabilities from the Dox and Slammer, make specialised units in the bot factory for that role, which are only cost effective with water in mind.

    The Slammer is a really nice unit, but currently, it has some crazy role overlap. The power and range of its torpedos makes it the most effective unit to use in the water by far thanks to its relative speed and deathball ability. Naval units really should be king of the water, otherwise there's not really a point to building them at all. Create a unit that outmatches everything in the water, and is also a pretty decent unit on land? Why would anyone build boats?

    When you use amphibious units, the expectation is that you sacrifice something in exchange for that versatility. This means either making amphibious units more expensive than non-amphib counterparts, or making their stats worse for similar cost. Basically, amphib units should not be a cost effective option unless you are planning to ustilise their particular advantage in versatility. Does that mean we'll have units that are actually useless to build on planets with no water? Yes, but that's the same deal with Naval. Not all units have to be useful in every setting for them to be good units.

    The other problem, is that if amphib capabilities are being factored into the cost and stats of the dox and slammers, then on moons, lava planets etc. bots will not be very cost effective, because you're then spending metal on unit capabilities you don't need. dox being amphibious is only an advantage if there is water to take advantage of.

    3. Naval being underpowered.

    I have less to say about naval, since a lot of the problems with them currently are bug related, and it has been quite a while since they got a balance pass. What I will say is that advanced naval is definitely a step in the right direction, stingrays having brutal AA means that players can't just spam air to dominate water planets, and naval becomes the go-to option in the water, as they should be. Naval units are very limited in where you are able to deploy them, so they can afford to be more powerful than similar units in other unit types. They have intrinsically earned up cost-effectiveness-credit as it were, since being stuck in water is already limitation enough, they can afford to be a little 'OP' from a cost effectiveness standpoint.

    We also have to take into account the existence of all-water planets, which means that many of the vital roles of scouting, harassing etc. need to be provided for in this context where land units aren't usable. I feel air units to a large extent already fulfill this role adequately on water planets however.

    As a side note, the current amphib units, Dox and Slammers, are modeled in such away that they aren't very WYSIWYG. apart from looking at the tooltip, there's nothing about their model that would lead someone to think they can go in water.

    Overall, the vision of what vanilla balance is working towards is really cool, I love the roles different unit types are envisioned to have, especially the potential for interaction between vehicles and bots. I think once we make a few changes to solidify the unit types in their roles, and make their loadouts consistent with said roles, we'll be on our way to a really kickass Balance.
    Last edited: August 8, 2014
    phlogistinator and websterx01 like this.
  2. vorell255

    vorell255 Active Member

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    pieman2906 and brianpurkiss like this.
  3. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    oooooohhhhh. I like that... I'll have to try it out.
  4. pieman2906

    pieman2906 Well-Known Member

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    Super exciting, after Supcom, and bots and tanks just being cosmetic changes, having some marked variety is really nice and refreshing.
  5. philoscience

    philoscience Post Master General

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    I really like the points you make. Giving bots significantly more vision than tanks is an excellent and elegant way to enforce mixed unit synergy. I also totally agree with the balancing of amphibious units - as it is now there is simply no reason to build naval if you can just deathball some slammers. Tweak a unit model and give us a versatile bot that can work on the water or land in a pinch but is never tops on either. I guess the bit about your third point is just that since naval balance is so unfinished, it's hard to work around the rest.
  6. pieman2906

    pieman2906 Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, I feel that Uber is listening to feedback, and looking at replays, and they know what they want to do in terms of balance, but at the same time, i totally understand that the priority right now is POLISH POLISH POLISH.

    After all, a game that launches with slightly shonky balance can still be fun and popular. A game that launches riddled with bugs and shoddy optimisations? Not so much, so Uber's priorities are definitely in the right order I think.

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