T3 arties - noob heaven, need rebalance

[____]

As the option of a T3 arty rework has come up now, I want to take the chance to propose a long-standing idea of mine concerning the range values of T3 arties and the scathis.

My general idea would be to make the ranges different for each major map size. For example, reduce the ranges on 10km maps and increase the ranges for larger maps. For other major maps, which might be edge cases regarding the T3 arty balance (like Seton’s and DG), I suggest fine tuning the values individually.
This change would both solve the “balance arties around one map type” problem, and it would be possible to give the Seton’s and DG players exactly what they want, without breaking the balance on all of the other maps. Overall the idea is to give the balance team more tools to work with, because balancing arties as they are in the current state, seems like a very difficult task. This change might require a lot of work, but it also might make many people happy. Probably many more than just changing the arties as a whole on every map.

Overall however, I would decrease the ranges of the T3 arties. The fundamental purpose of this change would be to make arties more vulnerable to land pushes and therefore let the game revolve around them to a greater extent. To counteract this nerf on the general usability, the overall stats of the arties could be buffed. My goal would be to see them used as more of an aggressive tool, instead of just a bad game ender. We already have game enders, I don’t think we need T3 arties to compete with them, when they could have a much more interesting role.

I am not sure about the last part of this post and I might change my opinion on it in the next days when I have invested more time into thinking about that change. However, I am sure that adjusting the range values based on what map size (or map in the case of the major maps) is present, is the way to go to make as many people as possible happy and to not break the balance everywhere else .

[moses_the_red]

The player who is going to build the arty also has to build shields to protect himself anyway, that amount to 30k mass. And the player who has to defend against the arty also has to build shields anyway, to protect himself against stuff before the arty comes along. Like bombers or a land push. That player sees the arty, and builds extra shields, to a total of 48k mass. The difference is 18k mass, not 44k.

No man, you used 74k mass in shields defending team Ythota in your replay. 44k mass is the *difference* between the mass used shielding the Ythota base and the arty base in your replay.

So yeah, its 44 x 4 = 176k mass.

In a team game, or even a 1v1 game where each players hold 4 bases, you're going to need to spend 176k mass to cover the difference in shielding between your arty team and your ythota team.

[moses_the_red]

You’re never going to create an adjustment to t3 mobile arty that makes it relevant to the real late game unless you plan on making them have a splash of 15 and a range of 280. Either that or nerf the late game tools to irrelevancy, but even that will still lead to games being decided by a single assault.

If you want mobile units to be used at nuke/arty/gameender phase, then you’re going to need to adjust reclaim values of t4 bots. Nothing else (at least nothing reasonable) will cause any significant change in meta.

Personally, I’m totally against changing the reclaim values, especially if it only changes a specific type of unit’s (t4) reclaim percentage while keeping the rest the same.

Also just feel like saying that I play nothing but teamgames and have zero issues with how gameplay shifts in the super late game. I don’t really get this idea that throwing enough t3/t4 at something should always be a solution to every situation (why bother having game enders if it is).

1. T3 arty is not a game ender, its not priced like a game ender, it doesn't have the huge discretionary mass issues that game enders have, if it were a game ender it would be phenomenally overpowered as its currently eclipsing the role of all other game enders.

2. I know not everyone uses mobile units late game, but they do get used and you can end games with them. I see it more as a choice rather than something that you scale out of. You can opt for T3 spam or you can opt for bomber snipes or you can opt for nukes and SMD snipes via tele or bombers or you can choose something else. Lots of viable choices.

3. If you want to reduce defenders advantage, how about speed increases? T3 assault bots are slow as hell, a slight speed increase would greatly increase their value. You close through PD faster, start doing damage sooner and with more health. Consider what bricks would be like if they were as fast as loyalists. I doubt you'd have to do much. Add .3 to mobile artillery .2 to heavy assault and .1 to loyalists and I bet you'll see T3 land used a lot more, and firebases, PD, shields... all of that becomes much less valuable. Tiny stat change, massive impact on real games. If that is what we want, I think speed changes would be ore than enough to get us there while leaving most everything else intact. You could even apply those changes at lower tier units both to ensure that balance across tiers is preserved and to get more rapid gameplay.

[moses_the_red]

As the option of a T3 arty rework has come up now, I want to take the chance to propose a long-standing idea of mine concerning the range values of T3 arties and the scathis.

My general idea would be to make the ranges different for each major map size. For example, reduce the ranges on 10km maps and increase the ranges for larger maps. For other major maps, which might be edge cases regarding the T3 arty balance (like Seton’s and DG), I suggest fine tuning the values individually.
This change would both solve the “balance arties around one map type” problem, and it would be possible to give the Seton’s and DG players exactly what they want, without breaking the balance on all of the other maps. Overall the idea is to give the balance team more tools to work with, because balancing arties as they are in the current state, seems like a very difficult task. This change might require a lot of work, but it also might make many people happy. Probably many more than just changing the arties as a whole on every map.

Overall however, I would decrease the ranges of the T3 arties. The fundamental purpose of this change would be to make arties more vulnerable to land pushes and therefore let the game revolve around them to a greater extent. To counteract this nerf on the general usability, the overall stats of the arties could be buffed. My goal would be to see them used as more of an aggressive tool, instead of just a bad game ender. We already have game enders, I don’t think we need T3 arties to compete with them, when they could have a much more interesting role.

I am not sure about the last part of this post and I might change my opinion on it in the next days when I have invested more time into thinking about that change. However, I am sure that adjusting the range values based on what map size (or map in the case of the major maps) is present, is the way to go to make as many people as possible happy and to not break the balance everywhere else .

I agree that T3 arty needs to change, but changing its ranged based on the map just isn't how it should be done. I think across the board nerfs combined with cost decreases is the best option. I would nerf its damage, splash, range and adjacency buffs and reduce its cost by 20k mass so it can be built more often on more maps. Try to put it at a more reasonable location between T2 arty and game ender with a price to match. Off the top of my head without doing any real research so no one should take this too seriously I'd cut its range by a third, cut its splash according to faction by 2 and reduce its rate of fire by 25%. Since these are drastic changes, I'd also reduce its cost to around 40k, putting it more in line with some of the pricier T4 units.

That would put it at a better spot between T2 arty and game ender. I think the problem with T3 arty is that it was envisioned that people would play 40x40 and 80x80 maps a lot. At that scale, T3 arty is a good midpoint between game ender and t2 arty. The problem is that we don't play those maps, we play 10x10s and 20x20s, so the mid point should be adjusted accordingly.

[moses_the_red]

So ~70k mass minimum to shield a barebones base with eco and two whole factories covered from a single T3 arty with adjacent pgens.

So I tested two things, one what you can do while the opponent is making a t3 arty, and two, how you can stop their first and even second arty WITH ADJACENCY with only 32,400 mass.

To make things even, both sides had only 10 non-capped t3 mex and 4 t3 pgens, and 10 identical sACUs: 9 aeon engineer prebuild, 1 uef engineer prebuild. This leads to a controlled environment; identical economy, identical build power. In the replay, you can see that 2 GCs were constructed (and one even reached the base) in the time it took to not even finish 1 t3 arty. This was done on a typical 10x10 to show usual travel times of EXPs. So already, you can kill 72k mass with 27.5k mass, and have a whole other GC to do damage with. You could even wait for the second one and attack at the same time.

The second test was two parts: 1 arty, and 2 artys. 1 arty (WITH ADJACENCY, ADDING 13k MASS TO TOTAL COST) can not even break through 5 UEF shields, the second weakest in the game. 15k mass STOPS 85k mass. It even covers most the base. More base coverage would at maximum cost 4 more shields, so 12k more mass, still 27k mass stops 84k mass. 2 artys require more clever shield arrangements, even t2 shields. 10 T3 and 4 T2 could stop two arty (WITH ADJACENCY) even with my haphazard shield placement. Again they are UEF shields, second weakest in the game. Imagine if they were Aeon, or Seraphim, or I actually placed the shields carefully instead of like an idiot. Yet still 2 arty is around 165k mass (this includes the 6 t3 pgens) and the shields only total at 32.4k mass.

32.4k vs 165k is so glaringly obvious, that it makes it look like maybe T3 arty needs a BUFF. You may argue that the shields only cover a tiny portion, but imagine 4 of those set ups covering a base. 4 x 32.4k is 129.6k. That will more than likely cover an entire base, AND costs nearly AN ENTIRE MEGALITH LESS IN MASS. Hopefully this is enough to show you why T3 arty is NOT OP, but could be argued to be even underpowered (something I do not believe).

I watched the replay.

Good work on making a test.

The problem is that you spend 32k shielding a very small area, in any game, 1v1 or team, you're going to need much more space shielded like that to stay competitive. And if you look at the cost of shielding that much space, its much more than 32k.

[Blodir]

1. T3 arty is not a game ender, its not priced like a game ender, it doesn't have the huge discretionary mass issues that game enders have, if it were a game ender it would be phenomenally overpowered as its currently eclipsing the role of all other game enders. .

it looks like a game ender, it smells like a game ender, it plays like a game ender. It is a game ender

[IceDreamer]

You’re never going to create an adjustment to t3 mobile arty that makes it relevant to the real late game unless you plan on making them have a splash of 15 and a range of 280. Either that or nerf the late game tools to irrelevancy, but even that will still lead to games being decided by a single assault.

If you want mobile units to be used at nuke/arty/gameender phase, then you’re going to need to adjust reclaim values of t4 bots. Nothing else (at least nothing reasonable) will cause any significant change in meta.

Personally, I’m totally against changing the reclaim values, especially if it only changes a specific type of unit’s (t4) reclaim percentage while keeping the rest the same.

Also just feel like saying that I play nothing but teamgames and have zero issues with how gameplay shifts in the super late game. I don’t really get this idea that throwing enough t3/t4 at something should always be a solution to every situation (why bother having game enders if it is).

All good points. Allow me to address them one at a time, and note I don't actually disagree with much you say here.

Adjusting siege units - It might not work, but I'm unwilling to rule it out until it's actually tested. The idea would be similar to the T3 nerf, which extended the T2 stage, only it would be trying to extend the time T3 forces are used before bases become too tanky to take down... I don't see T3 Mobile Arty used much in casts, even big team-games, that stage of the game where they 'should' appear seems to be over very fast. I believe they aren't very good at punching through shields, or even causing much damage once they do. I would try a number of mixtures of buffing speed, deploy times, DPS, changing fire cycles, perhaps experiment with faction-specific trickiness. Would also bring Spearhead, Resolver, Seraphim long-range mode sniper all into the experiment too. I am by no means saying you're wrong, but I'd love to see it tried.

I've long felt reclaim needs a change, because it does lead to an aggression-punishing game thought pattern. Having a different ratio for T4 is an absolute no-no, I agree that should never happen. But I would definitely like to see a small reduction in the amount, perhaps 10% less. Even more crucially, I feel we should experiment with cutting down the rate of reclaim, perhaps by as much as 75%, to slow down the instant reward a bit, and force you to hang on to a recent battleground longer.

I don't have much of a personal problem with the game shifting into a late-game siege status either, but I won't say that it's not nice to have other options. Particularly, now I think about it and think about the hundreds of games I've played and seen, that stage of the game in T3 that T2 sees between TMD/TML/Shields/PD fighting to let the ground forces in/hold them back, doesn't really happen very often. Not a bad idea to have a section where T3 arty/MML/Shields/PD are fighting to let the T3 bots in/hold them back.

[____]

Off the top of my head without doing any real research so no one should take this too seriously I'd cut its range by a third, cut its splash according to faction by 2 and reduce its rate of fire by 25%.

That sentence alone undermines your entire post and the point you want to make.

[moses_the_red]

Off the top of my head without doing any real research so no one should take this too seriously I'd cut its range by a third, cut its splash according to faction by 2 and reduce its rate of fire by 25%.

That sentence alone undermines your entire post and the point you want to make.

Coming from the guy that wants its range to change depending on the size of the map its played on that really hurts man. =P

[Endranii]

But the guy makes actually a good point. And funny thing his approach works. Just take look at Galance or other mods meant to be played on single map.