[WIP] The Realm Community Balance Mod

Unfortunately, role overlap is something that is just going to happen now and again... at least until we can start modifying the unit models and their various bones and/or adding in new mechanics. The Hornet is going to move more towards a stealth-bomber style of unit which requires a rework of the Intelligence Gathering systems; something we can't currently do. The Kestrel is perhaps a little too tanky at the moment, but only slightly. The Kestrel isn't so much a raider as it is a line breaker and a very punishing threat should you fail to get enough Air defences (or at least that's the intention), so reducing the health too far would be counter-productive.

I'll see what I can do, but both MadSci and myself are busy for a day or so; expect a short lull in productivity.

To me this still feels like a snipe tool

Heh that means copying ubers Hornet is also out of the question since it would do the exact thing as the kestrel: break lines (although this way it would use long range missiles to do so). We need something more interesting. Torpedoes sound interesting, but that would heavily specialize the Hornet.

EDIT:
How about letting the Hornet fire a 5-10 missile salvo of medium ranged, medium damage AGMs that track and hit different targets. Range of missiles should be greater than mobile AA, but shorter than stationary and target priority should be target that can shot air. That way the function of the bomber is to kill anti-air defenses of mobile units to allow strafing runs and bombing of tank columns/infantry squads/narwhals, but the bomber would keep it's vulnerability to dedicated stationary anti-air units and would offer no advantage over the Bumblebee when attacking regular units.

Until Naval has at least had some kind of work done on it (possibly including Submarines being a thing) bombs can already target the anything on the waters surface, making a torpedo launching plane somewhat pointless (other than the cool effect).

Edit: We might try that as a temporary "fix" until we can make it stealth. Currently there is no way to force missiles to track independant targets however, so the real answer would probably be an unguided rocket barrage with no tracking and some standard deviation. However, the rocket barrage is an idea and role that we have pinned for some of our expansion units, so it wouldn't stick around for too long... and then we'd have to start from scratch on the Stealth-Bomber angle. I think it's likely that we'll just let the Hornet stay as a bomber and push the Kestrel away from being an Alpha Strike capable unit.

Wierd. I always though that missiles could track individual targets.

... sort of.
There is a "spread_fire" modifier that is leveraged... but a unit only uses it if the targeted unit is going to be overkilled. So you can't have a load of missiles that all hit seperate targets unless the first one is already dead.

Essentially a unit can only target 1 opponent at a time. Apparently the code to make one unit simultaneously track and fire at multiple targets is a total b**ch to code; at least that's what I was told when last I asked a developer about that ability.

That's actually only true for ballistic weapons...
It's a result of how the skeleton is organized, if there are not enough degrees of freedom, the entire unit is rotated to make up for the missing freedom. Optimizing orientation by multiple targets is actually quite difficult, that would require a lot of additional work.

Forced multi target weapon systems should work for rocket type weapons though. Each rocket can be assigned a different target at the moment of launch and it will steer to the target individually. This isn't possible until server side scripting though. Or until that behavior is provided by Uber.

I think that would be the best thing to do.

Hence why I said

Are you completely sure you can't create custom units models? I'm pretty sure as long as you have 3ds max for the .fbx files it can go through papatran. Not sure about animations though.

As a FYI for people who want to see the mod in action, I've created a category on PA Matches dedicated to videos with The Realm Balance Mod.

Check it out: http://pamatches.com/category/realm-balance-mod/

Our efforts have so far met with failure. Creating new units is apparently more involved than just pushing an fbx through papatran. MadSci has brought this up in various places and it's still a relatively undocumented minefield of potential errors.

If you manage to figure it out, don't sit on the information since there are plenty of people who are itching to add in new unit models (sans animations) just to get proof of concept units working.

Also, I'm not 100% sure whether the server is currently allowing anything more than the shadowing of JSON files, so it wouldn't be something that you could download from the server.

We can in theory create .papa files. However, my experiments so far have not worked. New information released by the devs has enlightened what I was doing wrong, so I will have a stab at it again in the future. However, it is my understanding that the server does not allow us to upload papa files. It only allows us to alter jsons and some of the different UI files. I do not believe we can add an entirely new papa, although we could use a client mod to alter an existing one. I'd rather just be patient and continue on all the other work we have to do first. We can use place-holders while we wait.

I don't believe this is true; we don't currently have any hard restrictions on the type of content files you can shadow in your mods. We have a test mod that someone made internally which replaces the bomb bot model with a cat, and it's a completely new papa.

Granted, it wasn't changed by itself; that test mod also added papas for the cat's materials, and changed the anim_trees json for the bomb bot too. So you should be able to change mesh papas, but the changes might not be completely in isolation.

Thanks for the clarification. We have a model for a new unit all ready to go, so i'll take a shot at converting it and putting it into the game.

Care to release it? @chargrove
Because lulz.

Yep, you can even make files that weren't there originally, entire units I mean. So it makes sense you can shadow .papas out of no where.

Edit: Also I've shadowed much more that .json files, like the build.js and .papa models so that units have their old models once more.

Where is this new information?

OK I tried to tell you this yesterday in person, but you guys had a vanguard meeting and then you left so I will post about it here. I did a thorough orbital test with an AI and then I did another to confirm my findings. I also Did a vanilla test to confirm them. I have found the following issues and bugs:

• Anti-orbital missiles do not work. The fire against an orbital target then begin circling it and they crash the game. I also get the feeling that they extend their maximum range but am not sure since the range fron ground to orbit is a bit wonky.
• Anti-nukes also fire against satellites and begin circling them, but since they do not actually attempt to destroy the satellite they do not crash the game.
• Umbrellas seem to be pinpoint accurate. I send 8 SXX to kill and umbrella and the centre one got hit repeatedly until they all died from AOE. Thin needs some further testing as it only came up in the last test.
• Anchors fail to show the orbital shell, but their targeting at least against air targets works correctly. I hadn't had yesterday to actually confirm this as it cane up in the last test but they don't seem to fire at other orbital units. Another issue with them is that they seem to overwhelm air units and any stray shots that miss the air unit or were in the air after the air unit has been annihilated that hit a ground unit or structure do damage to that unit/structure. I was able to camp a bunch umbrellas above enemies base and destroy their air and ground based orbital factories.
• Solar power plants work now, but they still take movement orders. They don't accelerate, but they still turn in the direction of the movement order.

I will now write another post concerning my suggestions and feelings concering orbital.

That's it for the bugs now for some suggestion and thoughts on orbital:

• I severely dislike that orbital is back T2.5/T3 now. Me and Nano had a discussion on why this was done and if you guys are really afraid that getting off planet is too easy then I would rather see astraeus moved to T2 and orbital returned to T1, otherwise orbital units need to be insanely powerful to justify the cost it takes to get them.
• If astraeus is indeed moved to T2 orbital it needs to be a bit costlier and a lot sturdier, otherwise it will not be used at all. I also recommend that astraeuses be allowed to move naval and air units in order to give them a job that is different than a teleporter because otherwise their usage will be severely limited.
• There is no egg yet, but how about removing the teleporter from the orbital fabber and allowing it to build a Colonisation factory. This factory is basically a T2 factory (I recommend that old bot factory model be reused) but it builds the following units: T1 Tank fabbers, Ants, Spinners, T1 Bot fabbers, Doxen, Stingers, T1 Air fabbers, Fireflies, Hummingbirds, T1 Naval fabbers, Narwhals. Nothing specialised, mostly just basic units, but it builds them quicker than a T1 factory would. This makes it so that you require a beachhead on an enemy planet in order to mass assault them with a teleporter and you still get the early colonisation options you had when astraeuses are T1. Once the scripting layer is exposed this job would obviously fall on the egg.
• Moving on from astraeuses and orbital in general, I feel like the current orbital is an improvement over the vanilla. Everything has it's job and the engagements aren't boring and one dimensional any more. You have a good counter circle here of anchor>artemis>avenger>anchor, every unit has its job and there are no upgrades.
• At first I was against marginalising SXX and I wanted it to remain a super weapon but after actually trying it out I feel that perhaps this was the right thing to do. Otherwise invasions/orbital bombardment would remain as hard as ever.
• After talking to Nano about the future, I am VERY excited hearing how will orbital work.
• Going back to Anchors - I believe they are a bit too fast. They feel like they can catch up to moving avengers. Not good because then avengers can't counter them properly, because they can't outrage the anchors. I think avenger should be slightly faster than anchor.