Balance Test Mod.

[Ze_PilOt]

The ASF test wasn't very conclusive.

So what do we try next ?
- SAM buffed with AoE + Death damage from ASF ?
- More pricey ASF ?

Whatever you choose, I need numbers, and scripts if possible

[MushrooMars]

Seriously. If you want me to, I can change the hovertank tweak so that the entire unit's body rotates like a turret at the unit's default turn speed, if it looks more pleasing that way.

Not sure what you are talking about. Can you give me a blueprint of the aurora with that ?

Well, I was fooling around with the Blueprints when I made the mod and accidentally set the turret's yaw bone to the UNIT'S bone instead of the turret yaw bone. This caused the entire unit to effectively function as a turret. And it worked fine, the only problem was that the unit's selection box didn't rotate with it, so it looked really weird.

Personally, I think it's less work and it looks better to just leave the units with swiveling turrets.

Edit: I like the idea of SAMs having flak damage.

Edit2: I also thought that you might give incentive for players to do balance testing. ATM, nobody is doing it, and nobody wants to do it. I hosted a few games a while back with Balance Testing, and literally nobody joined. I kept the games open for several hours too. Maybe an Avatar or something for playing the most games with Balance Testing on?

[ColonelSheppard]

SAM AoE sounds nice, i suggest 50% AeO for now?

[dstojkov]

This idea could sound crazy but I was thinking to bring back the air tier like before and allow air crash damage on anti air unit (int swift and asf ) the rest can not crash while flying ( transport, gunship, ... )

[noms]

Sams with a small AoE is a better idea.

What is the status of the naval groundfire issue / HARMs?

[MushrooMars]

I could look into the SIM folder and see if a damage modifier can be applied to submerged units. But it's 9:00 PM here and I have 40 minutes to get ALL of my homework done. I'll see about it tomorrow, if I don't fall asleep before I reach my PC.

But anyways, it seems SAM AoE is popular. I was thinking they would just do full damage with a small AoE, but large flak radius with half damage after the initial target is destroyed would work too. Again, I would post the script myself but school and stuff. If someone else wants to change it, go into the T3 SAM's script and modify the missile projectile's OnLostTarget function so that it changes the AoE and damage of the projectile after it looses its target.

[HEAVY]

I don't see how you can meaningfully reduce the number of ASF on the field without rebalancing most of the air game.

The churn above on changes to SAMs, restorers, bombers is just the beginning of the long change list that would be needed.

Yes, but we shouldn't balance the game around a bug.

Late game lag isn't a bug per se, more of a feature of the design

[pip]

The ASF test wasn't very conclusive.

So what do we try next ?
- SAM buffed with AoE + Death damage from ASF ?
- More pricey ASF ?

Whatever you choose, I need numbers, and scripts if possible

I watched your Seton's game. What it showed was that it was possible to keep the enemy team from air domination over your own map by making stationary defenses. The purple air guy was scared all game to make his ASF fly over the ground or over cruisers. He built shitload of ASF for nothing. The problem is that it's not possible to defend against t2 air over water without floating flaks, so over water, ASF will always be important to protect navies against torp bombers. Cybran and UEF absolutely need ASF to protect their fleet against torp bombers, Gunships, Restorers, etc.
We don't want ASF to be useless either, so it's normal that ASF are still very useful.

There needs to be more test games, and normal ones too, where ASF are built on both sides, to see how many it is possible to stack now. They are supposed to be much less tough to survive, so in time, their number should not be as high as before. If the max number of ASF per player is reduced to 50 from 100 in a normal Seton game, that's already an achievement.

Additional tweaks before changing SAMs into AOE weapon would be to double SAM muzzle velocity speed (60 instead of 30, except Seraphim), so that the missiles track ASF better and faster.
If SAM weapons get a small AOE, like 1 or 1.5, then don't forget to add it to Cruisers and Carriers too.

Lastly, when I watched the Seton game, the game was slowed heavily even before any ASF was built. It's true that it seems to be worse when there are more than 50 of them, but it will never be possible to have fluid 4v4 Seton games, even if nobody builds ASF.
But one thing is certain : reduce, or even remove the smoke trail they leave behind, especially Aeon ones. The UEF ASF seems to use a non smoke FX trail, it should be much less a strain for the game, because the rendering engine suffers a lot from overlapping smoke fx, each being semi transparent (it's the same when lot of trees are burning).
That's probably one of the biggest cause of slowdown produced by flying blobs of ASF.

[-_V_-]

Basically, if you lose air on a large map, you are going to lose the game..

For f*** sake can we stop reading this nonsense over and over.
It's even more damageable when it comes from a good player, cause people really end up believing this BS!

Now most of the time, when you see "It's not balanced" , it equals to "air spots are not balanced". Completely ridiculous

[-_V_-]

I will host such game tonight, I hope "seton players" will join. (they complain that I don't listen to them, but they don't participate at all

I will do my mea culpa, cause i was one of those who said that a lot, and I still didn't try it (yet).
Truth is I don't have time as I barely play anymore.

Other thing we have to acknowledge, is that from quite some months now, we 've been listened to.