[WIP] The Realm Community Balance Mod

The SXX isn't as ridiculously powerful and expensive as it is in vanilla. It can be easily killed and with it's low damage it can be dealt with before crippling it's enemy. It's not much different from besieging you with ground artillery. Orbital != T3 in this mod.

The Holkins can cover the whole planet and the only way to stop it is to kill it or cripple there energy. That is why it carries the super weapon status.

I do feel it might be a little too strong for it's cost, but it isn't at the point where you see one every game. It may need a little damage and cost tweak. However the range will stay the same.

Where?

No no, "Where" energy is completely different; also not to be confused with "Were" energy which measures the power level of lycanthropes.

No, I meant in terms of design. I was talking to someone (nanolathe or madsci, can't remember who) and they said they made the holkins a superweapon because it was huge, but they nerfed the SXX (despite the fact that it's pretty big too), and made it no longer a superweapon.

Quotes or it didn't happen.

Seriously though, it's about expectations. A cannon the size of a factory needs to be more than a pee-shooter. The SXX, which is no bigger than any other Adv satellite, does not, and should not be massively more powerful than its contemporaries.

I was talking to you (or madsci during a test game of RCBM), and the SXX is actually bigger than the advanced satellite I'm pretty sure, it's just that most of its size is vertical.

Not much bigger.

In total volume, I think it is a fair bit bigger, actually...

The problem was with recent change. Until the visual update to orbital it wasn't bigger, it was even smaller than the advanced radar satellite, but with the visual overhaul orbital got the SXX was made 2 almost 3 times bigger than is was. It's currently the easily the biggest satellite out there.

Yeah, it's pretty big. It takes up most of the orbital factory IIRC.

Well, it's likely to get a model overhaul by RCBM at some point anyway, since now it's a Keentic Harpoon Platform rather than a space laser. Same for the Avenger, which is now a space "sniper" rather than an orbital fighter.

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On a completely unrelated note,

How's everyone feeling on the balance in RCBM as it stands currently?

Is there anything absolutely critical we've overlooked?

Would anyone say that a particular strategy is overpowered or too difficult to counter at present?

Haven't been home to try it recently

Well like I stated earlier, the holkins could use a debuff, currently invading planets is impossible because of it. If you a few of them and radar coverage on your planet any teleporter going down will immediately be destroyed by them.

The rest at the moment for me anyways feels perfect.

So me and @Arachnis had a couple of games today. It was fun. The last game was him vs @liquius and I took some screenshots, as good as they are with my shitty computer.

Gotta love the scorchers...

That's sort of intentional. How many Holkins do you need to lock the planet down?

By my estimation, to kill a teleporter before it can be built you would need at least 3 Holkins, all of which would need to score close to a direct hit on the teleporter (which is highly unlikely).

Cost for cost you could build 12 teleporters per Holkins... and that's if you don't count the infrastructure cost for energy that you would need for the Holkins to fire.

Kinda true, never really thought that much about it.

Anyways the real problem is on single planet systems, say someone is turtleing really hard and they're building a holkins your options get really thin. You generally have 3 choices
1. Snipe
2. Attack with all forces
3. Die horribly by raining fiery death

It just seems like a holkins being constructed just narrows down your options in what your able to do.

That is kinda the point to them.

Look at the Thumper (the mortar bot). They don't do that much damage, but if I were to start attacking you with them, you then face 2 options. React, or die a slow death. This is the same for the Holkins, but on a much grander scale. When you build one, you are provoking the enemy. If they choose not to react, then they get punished for it.

The balance of them may need tweaking. I have not seen enough games involving Holkins. However I can say that it's possible to comeback after a 10 minute siege from more then one Holkins.

The primary problem isn't exactly the effects of the Holkins but more along the lines on how easy it is to make. 6000 metal just isn't enough of a price.

*Plus the 8 energy generators (2800 M) or 1/2 Adv generator (4000 M) that it requires per Holkins (or per 2 for the adv gen) to keep them functioning efficiently.

We'll look at it, but to be perfectly frank, I've not really seen a single Holkins be anything more than a catalyst to provoke your opponent into attacking. It's not accurate, it doesn't do that much damage and it's a massive energy sink.

A battery of them is more of an issue, but the infrastructure and time needed to set that up is significant enough that I very rarely see more than a single Holkins at any one time.