[WIP] The Realm Community Balance Mod

This is why.

You can't tell me what to do! You're correct by the way - the intention is to be able to pick 'n' mix your mods if you want to, though the two primary use cases we envisage are 'full pack' and 'balance only'.

Aha, see! I'm not making things up.

Alright well that sounds nice, people can get whatever flavor of balance they'd like. Though it sounds like it'd be tedious to update.

Also I hope there'll be a way in the future to allow more than one unitlist.json, shared.js, etc... without then conflicting so that what you guys are imagining would be possible.

We'll hopefully be working with Uber to make sure it's possible

It would be more then a few gunships. The plan (at the moment) is to split it up and have dedicated gunship factories (t1 and t2). Both t1 and t2 factories with have unique fabricators along with at least a couple of gunships.

So, I have thought about it for a while and there are still some things that bother me, even with RCBM (mainly the anti-nuke).
Or maybe not "bother", maybe I'd just do some things differently. Let me tell you how I'd do things, just as some food for thought.

- T2 Gatling:
Replaces the Anti-Nuke. A gatling gun that can shoot at air and nukes. Decent range, high turn rate, high accuracy, high projectile speed, very low damage and a bit of splash. Good against nukes and swarms of airplanes. Not good against airplanes with high health or scouting airplanes (they're just too fast). In conjunction to this, nukes get a health value. One of them is usually not enough to deflect nukes reliably (only if the nuke is flying directly over it and stays in it's range for a long time).

- T2 Boom-Plane: Suicide airplane. Meant to overcome anti-air defenses, weak vs the gatling gun. But they're good vs AA-missile turrets and flak cannons. They "leap" into their enemy before they explode, just like boom bots, but their leap range is higher than the range of flak cannons, that's why they're good against them. But they have very, very low hp and only the speed of fighters. T1 AA-fighters usually rip them to shreds.

- T2 Boom-Bots: They become stealthed and a little bit more expensive.

So, this way we'd have a different anti-nuke structure, which is more fun than the current anti-nuke imo.
Also with all that anti-air stuff, imo air needs a unit to overcome all these anti-air defenses. And because the boom-plane shouldn't just be a flying boom-bot, the boom-bot becomes stealthed.

Greetings

1. Projectiles with health values isn't supported by the engine yet.

2. Entirely possible AFAIK, but remember that the RCBM is going with the minimal effective solution. Will the game be broken without this unit? If not, then it won't go into the RCBM. Will the game be more fun with it? Cool, toss it into an RCEM.

3. They're already T2. A couple of pages ago them being stealthed was discussed, I believe the verdict was something along the lines of "Boom bots are underused ATM, but we'll wait for people to come up with ways to use them first before making changes to them".

It's a nice idea, but what happens when you don't have los on a nuke? Also, when talking about entities (missiles/projectiles) health values don't matter (it's always 1 hit kill). We will eventually get around to playing with nukes again, but it will be a while (and won't be in the base mod).

It is something we have thought about. We might add them in at a later date. I have no idea how we will balance them.

Currently the issue is that they're under used. We want to experiment more to see if we can push up there usage before changing the actual boom bot.

IS there any plans for Galactic War with RCBM or will GW not be something that will be changed at all?

Mercies were highly awesome in Supcom but I feel their role was rather questionable in non-cheesy situations. I think a better PA implementation would be a single-shot (long recharge time) pinpoint bomber.

Depends on how Modding GW develops, right not I think getting the mod to work with GW breaks playing the game outside of GW so it's not something I think we're focused on at the moment.

The biggest issue with Mercies was the balance, they went from clearly OP then way Overnerfed and barely got buffed to the point where they sorta kinda barely worked.

Mike

For the moment it looks like RCBM GW would be fairly broken. We could get it playable, but not to the point where its more fun then playing a skirmish. When/if GW becomes more accessible, I am sure some will peace together an RCBM version.

Just had a really fun game VS ai...I got overwhelmed quick but holding off for a while was fun!

http://pastats.com/chart?gameId=192607

Really, what are you issues? (Please note I haven't really looked into GW modding) I know Stuart got our mod through GW in some way, though new buildings seem to crash the game when firing. (The rocket turret did at least?)

What would be the main problems that would cause it to be broken? You haven't added any buildings as far as I know and most of your changes are variable oriented.

How are you supposed to counter skitters? They seem to just shred everything. LLTs, TLTs, Cougars, Dox, ants, you name it. You can't bomb them to death because they can attack air.

http://pastats.com/replay/14457379581338498710


Dom did little but build skitters for nearly all of that game and I really couldn't do anything about it.

Although Zero-K calls its second air factory the "gunship factory," I think you should probably consider a different name. Gunship is a role for a flying unit meant to destroy ground targets. Skimmers? VTOL factory? This new type of factory is probably going to contain units that aren't, strictly speaking, "gunships" such as if they shoot aircraft, construct buildings, or transport land units.

The key difference seems to be that fixed wing planes must always fly forward in order to stay aloft. Their limited turn rate means they are quite vulnerable to anti-air, since they more or less must always fly through it. However real life, as well as various games including ZK, also include this other type of air unit that can hover in place, strafe, and even kite backwards. Helicopters are the canonical example of this behavior, and on the modern battlefield they are air cavalry, and also serve as one of the primary anti-tank weapons.

I would caution against flying units with a lot of HP. Being flying and mobile is actually a fairly significant amount of protection, since heavy weapons and anti-tank do not work against them. Gunships don't need a lot of HP since they are impervious to many common weapons, and instead can be designed to shark around the edges of the enemy's air defense network to pick off vulnerable units. Unlike a plane, a helicopter gunship can stop flying forward outside the reach of enemy AA, and thus destroy a target within the AA's range without entering it. Easily shot down if they take a few hits, but they can control whether they enter enemy AA in a way that fixed wing planes cannot.

This other factory for aircraft would build helicopter-style, VTOL, hover-in-place, hover-and-fire, units. They can move side to side while shooting, or even backwards. In this regard they behave like land units, which can maneuver in any direction.

Gunships shouldn't be made like "flying tanks" with tons of HP, like flying units but slower and with more HP. Slower, certainly, but making them tanky is unnecessary since they are already flying. Assault gunships lead to just straight up attacking enemy positions fortified with anti-air. And they can't have enough AA to cover everywhere against your entire gunship blob, so as soon as you have enough tanky gunships, you just win, and it's not fun for anyone.

Actually, I think a non-vtol (after the initial build takeoff) aircraft would present cool, unique gameplay mechanics which are not predisposed to being imbalanced. Make it like the Holkins we've talked about previously, where it's not so much a threat that demands all your foe's attention as it is a tool of enragement that goads your opponent's ego. In fact, I think I have the perfect set of qualities for such a plane that must be in flight at all times.

It is tier 2 and costs a fair deal of metal. With a wide turning arc and high maximal velocity, it is not maneuverable. It has a fixed (or nearly so), long-range, rapid-fire Gatling gun on the nose with a low damage projectile with a smidgen of constant cone of fire. Its effectiveness against a single target will increase roughly linearly as it closes the gap. Being fast, it will outrun most, if not all, missiles, and since it cannot stop to repair it should prove no problem if it has a high health, so that quite a few passes are ensured against regions with little air protection. It is a unit with high commitment and satisfactory range of possible return on investment.

The variations that could be given to cone of fire (bloom, inverse bloom, none) and the traits that could be given to its damage are such that I believe it is a worthy template to build off of just as a 'gunship' or 'bomber', yet what would it be called? 'Jet'.

Yes. We know. These are all considerations that we are aware of. However, VTOL/Gunships will not be added to RCBM beyond what is already there. They will be in one of the attendant mods.

Lets just look at Dox vs. Skitter. Dox cost 100 metal, deal 60 dps, have 70 range, and 140 health. A Skitter costs 180 metal, deal 75 dps, have 55 range, and has 300 health.

Skitter's may be a tad on the strong side and I will keep an eye on them, but you should be able to win with an equal metal cost of Dox. I have yet to look at the replay, but I imagine it was a case of one player having a superior economy pumping out units that can do OK in most situations and consistently having the numbers advantage when fighting.

And then what, lose all of your expansions because nothing can keep up with the skitter? Skitters simply cause the match to snowball. He who gets more mex kills can field larger and larger numbers of skitters, getting more and more mex kills.

There is no cost effective way to defend against them. Turtle and you're going to get out-expanded, expand without building defenses and skitters will come in and you can't intercept them because they're the fastest ground unit in the game and they'll easily destroy enough mex to set the game in stone.

See also: Vanilla Dox.

Firstly, lets not get overly dramatic about this. They are not brokenly OP.

If you want to expand all over the planet within the first few minutes, then the risk you take with that is not being able to defend your expansion. If your opponent spots that and gets some easy raiding in, then they are punishing you for your mistake. You are free to do the same thing to them.

Try playing a game where you limit yourself to Skitters. I think you will find that most fights will not go in your favor in terms of metal cost. If you do end up winning every game then we can talk about this again.