Forged Alliance Forever

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-05-06T11:23:33+02:00

Plasma_Wolf wrote:
I believe FunkOff is in fact in charge of the balance.

even better, all his views are spot on (even from a 'I haven't played SupCom in years and just got into and notice lots of quirky stuff' perspective like mine)

Statistics: Posted by Veta — 06 May 2012, 11:23

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-05-06T11:03:39+02:00

I believe FunkOff is in fact in charge of the balance.

Statistics: Posted by Plasma_Wolf — 06 May 2012, 11:03

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-05-05T23:29:06+02:00

excellent post +1

The diamond mod addresses some of this (as well as a few other things like T1 air and ground scouts) and I think in general a lot of things from the Diamond mod could/should be ported over to FAF (although somethings shouldn't).

Whoever is in charge of the balance should ask funk to join them because everything I've read by that guy is extremely well thought out and would vastly improve the game (SCUs and also ACUs with a T4 upgrade being the sole proprietors of T4 tech also makes a lot of sense - every other tier of tech has a transition involved except T4). Also the current balance team is doing a great job debugging/balancing as well.

Statistics: Posted by Veta — 05 May 2012, 23:29

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-05-03T05:58:45+02:00

Oh GODS yes.. I am all for a small boost to T3 mobile arty so it gets used, especially if it can be used against sheilds, but static T3 arty is best as a large-cost item. The worst games I ever played of SupCom2 were turtles mass-producing arty spam. Hellishly lame.

Statistics: Posted by Doompants — 03 May 2012, 05:58

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-05-03T01:00:40+02:00

Lu_Xun_17 wrote:
NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

omg this would make the gameplay so static! I remember those ugly arty fights in sup com 2!
Funk do you realise the changes you give here?!! Did you write this post drunk?
Imagine a +200% on the MML! the T2 one would be even more stronger than the uef T3 MML!
And it's not so hard to produce 10 MML! which makes a definitly good dps as it is now. Same for T3 arties!

Concerning the shilds, there's no "best order" imo. Let's just say they have some different uses... In a lot of situations, the cybran shild is far way more interesting than the seraphim one.

I only agree for reducing the cost of T3 stationary arty, but not by 30%. -15% would be already enough i think.

This^
Go and watch how horrific Supcom 2 is with its packs of micro'd mmls..
Maybe T1 arty could have a 'small' price increase so it would be worth doing more dynamic tank combat than just sending a horde of t1 arty at something.
T3 Arty undoubtedly needs price and buildtime decrease.

Pls get out of here with talk of 'base defence arty'. That is for spammy no-air thermopylae corridor T.A mods, and again, supcom 2..

Statistics: Posted by Crayfish — 03 May 2012, 01:00

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-05-02T23:27:46+02:00

Arty is not weak it is just shields are so cost effective. 3 T3 mobile arty will anhilate an unshielded base in seconds. Once the tipping point is reached and the shields go down its over very quick. Shield are hard to balance because on there own they are fine but stacked they are so cost effective. Funkoffs shield mod is the only solution to this.

Statistics: Posted by noobymcnoobcake — 02 May 2012, 23:27

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-01-27T15:07:18+02:00

I think the original design concept went something like this:

- T1 arty is very good against T1 PD and somewhat good against masses of vehicles and fragile buildings (namely, T1 gens)
- T2 arty is very good against T2 fixed defenses but less good against masses, due to lower rate of fire
- T3 arty is very good against bases and other large targets, but sucks against units. That's fine, because you can build it far away from front lines, into safe territory, and bombard helpless enemy into dust.

Shields are a counter to artillery. You'll get a small advantage in mass if you cover your base with shields as compared to building counter-artillery.

The design fails because:

- there are no T1 shields, making T1 arty comparatively powerful
- T2 shields are omnipresent because they work so well against everything else; protection against arty is an unintended side effect at this point
- from cost perspective building cheap experimentals is faster and more powerful

Missiles are even worse, because they can be countered with anti-missiles in addition to shields. Their supposed advantages are pinpoint accuracy and heavy punch into one spot as compared to artillery which misses and does area damage.

One way of fixing it would be to drop the power of most shields significantly against everything else except artillery (and maybe gunships). When the number of shields on the field drop, the comparative power of artillery grows. That'd require effectively rebalancing the whole game. Even then you'd have to drop the price a little and/or increase damage, to make T3 fixed arty a viable alternative to Monkeylords and Fatboys.

Missiles would probably be easiest fixed by increasing their flight speed a lot and damage a little. Alternatively, if the game allows you to, making them dedicated shieldbreakers would give them a niche.

Statistics: Posted by perkl — 27 Jan 2012, 15:07

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-01-27T02:52:45+02:00

noobymcnoobcake wrote:
The problem with Scathis is its insane cost, low Hp, low speed and low accuracy. If you build it in your main base and then transport it to firebase it WILL be attacked on the way and it WILL die because Cybran have no mobile shields. Then even when it gets there you still got protection problem because its a fire base and Cybran shields suck. If your gonna do as you suggested how about giving it more speed, make it amphibious, make it set up faster. Oh and it looks stupid. like really stupid. I liked 4th dimension mods "Vulcan" much better.
pic here
http://www.moddb.com/mods/4th-dimension-fa/images/in-game-shots1#imagebox

Does salvation really need damage spreading out? its kinda fine as it is. any more spread out and it wont be able to take down any shields whatsoever.

On the other hand I do like the mavor changes because mavor realy aint the game ender it was in vanilla. At the moment it is the worst game ender except the scathis on huge map. And yes Yolna Oss is fine

It was in fact with the help of Optimus Prime that I made this mod. The Vulcan was an amazing change, but it performed a very different role to the Scathis I envision. The way it looks is too subjective to be talked about.

As for Salvation, the idea about spreading out the damage would be so that it CAN'T take down a base full of shields. Like I said, my idea would be to modify it so it takes down incoming swarms of units with a couple of blasts, but a base with 100,000 mass in shields won't go down to it.

Mavor would be the closest thing to the Bertha, except for the accidental thing. Trust me, with that mod enabled Mavor was a total bitch. If you kept your target in sight, the Mavor WOULD KILL IT before it got anywhere near you. We are talking about accuracy ramping up to the point where, at maximum range, it would hit a GC 99 times out of 100 bang on the head. Enemy ACUs didn't stand a chance.

For those of you worrying about 'Base defence Scathis', it had to be 5 or 6 of them, because less than that were too inaccurate to hit anything but a base. ^^

Mavor - Assassin
Scathis - Base Breaker
Salvation - Swarm Destroyer
Yolona Oss - Utter obliteration of anything at all without SMD...

Statistics: Posted by IceDreamer — 27 Jan 2012, 02:52

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-01-25T23:12:39+02:00

The problem with Scathis is its insane cost, low Hp, low speed and low accuracy. If you build it in your main base and then transport it to firebase it WILL be attacked on the way and it WILL die because Cybran have no mobile shields. Then even when it gets there you still got protection problem because its a fire base and Cybran shields suck. If your gonna do as you suggested how about giving it more speed, make it amphibious, make it set up faster. Oh and it looks stupid. like really stupid. I liked 4th dimension mods "Vulcan" much better.
pic here
http://www.moddb.com/mods/4th-dimension-fa/images/in-game-shots1#imagebox

Does salvation really need damage spreading out? its kinda fine as it is. any more spread out and it wont be able to take down any shields whatsoever.

On the other hand I do like the mavor changes because mavor realy aint the game ender it was in vanilla. At the moment it is the worst game ender except the scathis on huge map. And yes Yolna Oss is fine

Statistics: Posted by noobymcnoobcake — 25 Jan 2012, 23:12

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-01-25T22:46:46+02:00

ShadowKnight wrote:
Scathis - Didn't really need many changes, just fiddled around with the numbers so that it was by far the cheapest of the three, but had much shorter range so it had to be moved. Side effect: 5 or 6 of these things made just about the most solid anti-land base defence I have ever seen in a mod...

False advertising! You said base breaker, not land defense

Personally I've always hated artillery as a giant defense turret. (or any kind of long range PD).
You should keep it expensive and deadly to bases.

Hmm, we dont really have a TA-Bertha style weapon in SupCom... inaccurate but one-shots anything it accidentally hits. The sort of psychological pressure that applied was interesting.
Although maybe all the T3 arty should fill that role...

Statistics: Posted by AdmiralZeech — 25 Jan 2012, 22:46

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-01-25T14:43:02+02:00

I shall see if I can dig up some old code from a Mavor Improvement mod I and a few others worked on in the old days. The idea was to turn Mavor into the ultimate sniper artillery, Scathis into the ultimate base-breaker, and Salvation (After being shifted up to T4) into the ultimate unit decimator.

Mavor - Introduced a script which increased the accuracy with each shot fired, to the point that after 30 seconds of firing, it was almost certain to be hitting the target every single shot even at maximum range on an 81km map.

Scathis - Didn't really need many changes, just fiddled around with the numbers so that it was by far the cheapest of the three, but had much shorter range so it had to be moved. Side effect: 5 or 6 of these things made just about the most solid anti-land base defence I have ever seen in a mod...

Salvation - Again, not many changes needed. Shifted it up to T4, fiddled with the costs, and spread out the damage a little more, I believe. I'm a bit hazy on this bit of the mod.

Yolona Oss - Is fine...

What do people think of the ideas above?

Statistics: Posted by IceDreamer — 25 Jan 2012, 14:43

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-01-23T19:10:36+02:00

Leave T1 arty alone agreed there. T1 balance is fine as it is.
MMLs could perhaps do with 50% dps buff but any more and you will just see walls of them each game. They are very good against shields but as soon as a few TMD arrive they very quickly become useless unless the MMLs are Cybran and the TMD is UEF. You should use a mix of MMLs and arty to force opponent to build both TMD and shields. Another option you have is to increase MMLs damage against shields but leave its damage vs normal units alone.

I agree T3 arty is useless but for good reasons. Perhaps reduce cost and range greatly so it got say 400 instead of 750 range and cost 45k mass not 90k. Kind of a fire base weapon and you cant just build a few in your base but actually have to have some map control to use. Anyone agree with this? still probably wont be used much but might make game more interesting sometimes.

Cybran have the BEST T3 arty not the worst because it fires so fast it can decimate T1 swarms, its AOE can hit multiple shield bubbles and its high ROF means less wasted damage and the shields don't have time to recharge between shots. The ED1 is also great if you have the power required. combined with the quick build an nasty T2 pd they have some nice options mid game.

Statistics: Posted by noobymcnoobcake — 23 Jan 2012, 19:10

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-01-23T16:38:05+02:00

Plasma_Wolf wrote:
Also, if you're going to improve the T3 artillery, also improve the Mavor and Scathis (or reduce their cost).

yeah thats the only thing that should be changed, making t3 artillery and game enders a viable alternative to nukes

Statistics: Posted by Kryo — 23 Jan 2012, 16:38

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-01-23T14:06:37+02:00

I don't think the T1 artillery needs a change in cost. I agree with Lu_Xun on the fact that they're not too powerful. In T1, they do a good job but they're not doing a too good job.

At the later levels, they're not going to do a better job.

So don't change them for the sake of relatively improving the static siege units.

Also, if you're going to improve the T3 artillery, also improve the Mavor and Scathis (or reduce their cost).

Statistics: Posted by Plasma_Wolf — 23 Jan 2012, 14:06

Re: The land-based siege weapons

2012-01-23T11:18:44+02:00

FunkOff wrote:
I think a few good changes would be, therefore, as follows:
-Increase all mass costs, energy costs and build times for T1 mobile arty to equal their factions' basic tank costs.
-Increase all MML damage by 200%, to 3x what it is now.
-Increase all T2 Arty rates of fire by 100%, to 2x what it is now.
-Increase all T3 mobile arty damage by 50%, to 1.5x what it is now.
-Reduce the cost of T3 stationary arty by about 30%.

NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

omg this would make the gameplay so static! I remember those ugly arty fights in sup com 2!
Funk do you realise the changes you give here?!! Did you write this post drunk?
Imagine a +200% on the MML! the T2 one would be even more stronger than the uef T3 MML!
And it's not so hard to produce 10 MML! which makes a definitly good dps as it is now. Same for T3 arties!

Concerning the shilds, there's no "best order" imo. Let's just say they have some different uses... In a lot of situations, the cybran shild is far way more interesting than the seraphim one.

I only agree for reducing the cost of T3 stationary arty, but not by 30%. -15% would be already enough i think.

Statistics: Posted by Lu_Xun_17 — 23 Jan 2012, 11:18