Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Veterancy Discussion

2015-01-19T04:42:19+02:00

Personally I fall into the:
Make vet awarded from a unit equivalent to its mass/energy cost value
Increase max hp and regen on vet, but not current hp
Make repairing more cost-efficient so that when vet incentivizes you to keep units alive you actually have a decent way to do so.
Possibly buff some acu upgrades or base acu stats if these changes noticably cut down on ACU aggression (though increasing effectiveness of repair may counteract a bit of this).
If we are going to fix it.

All this said, veterancy seems to have three purposes: first, to increase the value of a unit so that you care more about it surviving, second, to help encourage aggressive acu play, and third, to magnify the strength of a higher tech tier against a lower tech tier.

I'd say it succeeds at the second and utterly fails at the first. It will never succeed at the first if there is no cost effective and intuitively simple way to repair units outside of maybe with experimentals (which already have lots of reasons you want them to survive instead of dying in enemy territory), and perhaps just as importantly, an easy and intuitive way to see if units in your army have actually received veterancy outside of clicking directly on them. Veterancy will probably never incentivize you to keep t1 units alive, but it might for t2 and t3 if you could see at a glance that something had veterancy. As to the third thing it seems to try to accomplish, I'm guessing this does factor in more than I would think, and I would definitely keep it in mind going forward with balance if we change veterancy across the board, but each tech level is already considerably stronger than the previous without veterancy being involved, especially as you get into the later techs where a couple t3 units can take on insane numbers of t2/t1 by virtue of superior range and higher damage, or experimentals which as everyone knows, can pretty much walk through t1/t2 armies and increase in strength instead of being hurt.

It might be worth saving veterancy for the first reason, especially if we fix up repair; the second purpose can be accomplished in other ways related to buffing the acu or its upgrades that would provide more predictability to the game rather than fairly random luck, the third is probably not needed at the later tiers, infact its likely too strong there as it stands, I don't know its exact effect on the t2 vs t1 scale but again direct buffs could compensate for it if need be.

I guess what I am saying in the end is that the current game really does not support veterancy well in the first place, its an interesting idea and we could probably make it into something fun and enjoyable to play with that doesn't become horribly overpowering, but it would require a lot of changes. It might just be easier to lose veterancy entirely and give buffs in its place where buffs are needed; if you only care about veterancy for acus and experimentals then why have a sweeping system across all units and structures that is fairly unintuitive for the opponent, not easily spotted by you, and alternates between completely failing at its purposes and succeeding way too much?

Personally I think we can fix it up a bit, but honestly this isn't the type of game where veterancy of this sort works well, you care about it on your acu, you care about it on experimentals, but i truly doubt many of you care much about it on your t1/t2/t3 units or structures, or even notice it half the time for that matter. GPG has tried to get veterancy right in many different ways, vanilla supcom has very different values from FA, supcom 2 has a fairly different veterancy system in general; but in the end we're dealing with a macro focused game with large armies where you don't value and micro individual troops to the point that a single unit loss matters a great deal to you.

So someone please tell me why we should have veterancy in the first place instead of buffing relevant areas other than "GPG put it in the game so it should be there".

Statistics: Posted by Rogueleader89 — 19 Jan 2015, 04:42

Re: Veterancy Discussion

2015-01-19T01:29:29+02:00

the whole mechanick is broken, its not only about experimental, only on experimental it is most easy see how bad it is, because have much more hp. Give more units that exp need kill dont solve nothing. less tech army would still need be autodestruct, because must have 2x more kill dont change behavior when player would rather destruck own army. And not only behavior, would be better destruct army all time when insta heal would exist.

On acu it is not fun when you lose a game because haha lucky veterancy gain in last 5second... realy. Its unpredictable unlogical and unfair. Also its not satisfactory win because luck, and alive because last time veterancy instant heal gain is luck factor..
It dont need years of balance, units are in general balance whiteout instant heal factor. It is about comparing units in artifical test, and one week of testing that is everithing fine. It change a game, but that change make game better.

I have this theme sophisticate solution here: /viewtopic.php?f=42&t=9118
must add a acu upgrade hp gain, if ppl would agry with that solution, how to prevent nerfing agresive acu gameplay.

Statistics: Posted by Ithilis_Quo — 19 Jan 2015, 01:29

Re: Veterancy Discussion

2015-01-19T01:01:48+02:00

has anyone thought about increasing the amount of kills you need to get a vet? o3o everything here is either about changing the instahel into an regen bonus with an max HP increase or have it base on how much you kill. (from the pages I readed, sorry too many pages to read)

the whole thread is what ice said in last page, one scenario where experimental gets an instahel while on it last leg after murdering a large group of T1 or engi gaining large HP which turns everything around and more.

everything else makes the game more fun, having an ACU that can instahel on the point where it nearly die turning it round or surviving is fun while all other unit vet has really little or no effect since you be spamming them anyway.

i dont know, I havent been able to get a game running long enough to get to T3 never mind T4 but maybe double or 2.5x the amount of kills experimentals have to kill to get a vet or more? pretty much solve your problem without overhauling the whole system which would take a loooooooooooooooong time which could be use on other things.

this whole thread is really base on how quickly experi can get vets like ice said, there's really no denying that, so why not make it longer to get a vet which takes what an hour at most to code? rather then overhaul and balancing which takes what months? years?.

other option is to change how much instahel the experimentals get so its not too big it turns everything around and more and not too small that its pretty much useless.

the instahel is a last chance comeback mechanic for the use of high value units like the ACU and experimental that are front line, up at you game changers, its suppose to be a game changing mechanic which on the ACU is fine it works but on experimentals it does not. its not a broken cheesy mechanic, its a cheesy mechanic that's not broken that makes the game more fun (its make you say "damn you!" and laugh after), its just that it been used on a unit that has drastic effect on the battle which makes it broken. (its a game, lets not take it too seriously to the point you hold an murdering grudge on someone okay?)

not the mechanic fault, its the ones who implemented it fault for not balancing it out with the unit or at least not making it long enough for a giant powerful death dealing machine that's designed to cause massive casualties to the opponent army take a long time to actually get a vet. they prob havent seen the damages it could do to ones T1 and engi army (just the experimentals, ACU cant deal that much dmg).

just a thought.

off topic: damn I write too much.

Statistics: Posted by RebleFox — 19 Jan 2015, 01:01

Re: Veterancy Discussion

2015-01-19T02:35:08+02:00

Mephi wrote:
Summary: If Instaheal gets removed, agressive play gets nerfed.

probably yes and it is dark side of this change. what is negative. But positives are stronger as negative and make game more predictible, and less luck based.

Also agresive ACU gameplay can be buffed with add maximum heal on acu with every acu upgrade. So every upgrade would make acu stronger, and that can perfectly solve negativ of dont have insta heal on acu.

numbers must be calculate and it need balance testing, but something as +- 1,25new max HP for every mass cost on upgrade.
example: gun upgrade 800mass -> 800x1,25= +1000HP, aeon gun 500x1,25=+625hp, T2->720x1,25 = +900hp (+3000hp = 3900hp); t3->+3000hp (+6000 = 9000), uef nano 1200mass=+1500hp, uef personal shield 1500x1,25=+1875hp, sera nano 2000mass=>+2500hp...
(where it can make problem is teleport and RAS /especialy double ras/, because its too expensive, and its not supost to boost acu fight skills, so on ras and teleport number must be total different)

example uef ACU with gun and T2 = 12000 (basic) + 3000(T2) ++ 1000(gun)++900(t2)=16900 hp instead of 15000(as today)
aeon acu with double gun 11000++1250 = 12250hp
sera with nano and gun=11500+6000++2500++1000=21000HP
cybran with laser and gun = 10000++1000++5000=16000hp
or as bonus maximal potential military acu boost:

Spoiler: show

I think this is fair and would negate insta heal on acu, player would make acu more surviable with every upgrade, and that would allow have acu in front, very similar as with instant heal

Statistics: Posted by Ithilis_Quo — 18 Jan 2015, 14:06

Re: Veterancy Discussion

2015-01-18T12:01:05+02:00

If Instahel gets removed agressive ACU-play will be to risky to do. It may be better in Experimental-terms, but how often you see an agressive ACU compared to Exp ?

In the End the Game becomes more static, because nobody wants to push with an ACU with only 10-12k hp, without the Chance of more HP without Timedelay. Sure Increasing the Regen may help but in the Time the ACU regens to a playable amout of HP, the Defender has more than enough time to build PD and Stuff. Then the Push failed and you feeded a lot of mass and are behind.

Summary: If Instaheal gets removed, agressive play gets nerfed.

Statistics: Posted by Mephi — 18 Jan 2015, 12:01

Re: What do you dislike about FA's balance?

2015-01-18T09:01:20+02:00

IceDreamer wrote:
I'm solidly in the
1 - Remove instaheal
2 - Increase max HP
3 - Increase Regen

camp. I also think that doing this to the Experimentals first is the best way to experiment with it.

I'm for:
Veterancy:
1 - Remove instaheal
2 - Increase max HP

Repair:
3 - Make repair more cost-efficient

I'm no fan of insane health regen, or other insta-veterancy bonuses for that matter.

Statistics: Posted by Wakke — 18 Jan 2015, 09:01

Re: Veterancy Discussion

2015-01-18T02:47:51+02:00

Hey, so I thought a little about it, and I have some easy and fast to implement formulas to propose.

Regarding veterancy points : First, you need a mass<->energy equivalency. The simplest one is to say 150 units of energy can become 1 unit of mass via t2 massfab, so the ratio is 150:1. Better players than me can figure out a more refined version of this number.

Then, it's simple : veterancy points from killing something = (mass_cost + energy_cost/mass_energy_equivalency) / (a constant). That constant is just to make the veterancy "point scale" use nice, easy to remember numbers. Then we give every unit a veterancy point scale - I suggest just using the one that is already in use, where "kills" is now a synthetic number.

Let's suppose we want to count killing 1 striker tank as a kill. It costs 56 mass and 266 energy. If mass_energy_equivalency = 150, then the formula looks like 1 (kill) = (56 + 266/150) /(constant). So, constant = 57.

Now, using the same formula, what happens if we kill an ASF? It costs 350 mass and 40k energy. An ASF counts as 10 kills. Ok, seems legit. We could also create 3 versions of the formula, one for each tech level. So a T3 unit, if it kills something, uses the T3 formula. T2, etc. We could even split it into air/land/naval for 9 total formulas. Wouldn't take more than 15 minutes to create all the formula, just decide what your "base unit" for a kill is and go from there.

Regarding the effects of veterancy : that's also simple. It should boost max health, and it should cause the unit to heal fast enough that between 2 and 5 minutes it is back to full health, assuming it starts at 1 HP.

So the new regen rate should be Regen Rate = MAX_Health/(2<->5 * 60). That needs to be playtested. I'm not sure what number is fair. The idea of veterancy should be that in the event your units survive a fight and have some kills, they should heal back to full on their own before the next fight, without having to pay mass. Also, their max HP should now be higher. In any multiplayer battle, you're going to need to start another fight with the same unit within about 2-5 minutes.

Statistics: Posted by BrickedKeyboard — 18 Jan 2015, 02:47

Re: What do you dislike about FA's balance?

2015-01-08T03:14:26+02:00

Neutrino wrote:
-_V_- wrote:Well you either have sudden hp boost or incremental boost with each kill.
Or no current hp boost at all, and either only regen increase, or regen increase plus max hp increase.

No that would be wrong. Regen cant make up for no hp boost, not even double nano.

Or u have to boost regen a lot, but that would probably make things even harder to kill an acu

Statistics: Posted by -_V_- — 08 Jan 2015, 03:14

Re: What do you dislike about FA's balance?

2015-01-06T17:39:56+02:00

I'm solidly in the
1 - Remove instaheal
2 - Increase max HP
3 - Increase Regen

camp. I also think that doing this to the Experimentals first is the best way to experiment with it.

Statistics: Posted by IceDreamer — 06 Jan 2015, 17:39

Re: What do you dislike about FA's balance?

2015-01-06T17:26:54+02:00

-_V_- wrote:
Well you either have sudden hp boost or incremental boost with each kill.

Or no current hp boost at all, and either only regen increase, or regen increase plus max hp increase.

Statistics: Posted by Neutrino — 06 Jan 2015, 17:26

Re: What do you dislike about FA's balance?

2015-01-06T17:24:08+02:00

Well you either have sudden hp boost or incremental boost with each kill.

I'm fairly sure the incremental would cause balance issues , at least when it comes tl ACU and 1v1 games

Statistics: Posted by -_V_- — 06 Jan 2015, 17:24

Re: What do you dislike about FA's balance?

2015-01-06T17:10:07+02:00

IceDreamer wrote:
Just make Experimentals vet slightly differently from other units.

Its nonsystematick, and its not only problem of experimental. On other units its only not so big problem, because have not so big hp and are not affect with so big hp rise. But problem it is same, but only less visible.

Making non systematical solution is way to hell. It would be one excuse to others and on the end of proces it would be only plenty of excuse and game would loosk like Law book thats not good for gameplay.

Statistics: Posted by Ithilis_Quo — 06 Jan 2015, 17:10

Re: What do you dislike about FA's balance?

2015-01-06T17:08:09+02:00

Personally I'm not sure I see any better justification for insta heal on ACU's than on experimentals. While an ACU getting a bunch of insta hp and reversing a loss or forcing a draw might be an exciting turnaround for viewers, it's still a turnaround brought about by a cheezy mechanic that the attacker can't predict and that the only counter to is still to CTRL-K your own units.

I think increasing amounts of regen is a perfectly adequate bonus for veterancy, the insta-heal is downright problematic in the case of experimentals, at the very least contentious (if not also problematic) in the case of ACU's, and inconsequential in all other cases, so the case for doing away with it completely seems strong.

However. Removing it for experimentals and leaving it otherwise unchanged also seems like a reasonable compromise.

Statistics: Posted by Neutrino — 06 Jan 2015, 17:08

Re: What do you dislike about FA's balance?

2015-01-06T16:28:54+02:00

I agree with making a poll on this. I think you are right Ice. But I wonder how many else agree.

Statistics: Posted by Kalvirox — 06 Jan 2015, 16:28

Re: What do you dislike about FA's balance?

2015-01-06T16:19:02+02:00

Let us be honest here, the insta-heal veterancy makes no actual sense, but is only bad for gameplay in one scenario: Experimentals

With the ACU, some might consider it a bit BS, but in general last-second vet makes for really fun gameplay and exciting turnarounds. For normal units, even up to and including the mighty Percival, there's really no problem at all. The issues only arise from Experimental units, and the resulting game behaviour of having to kill all your own units. That's the REAL problem here, one scenario.

So why are we overhauling the whole game when we could just address that ONE scenario. Just make Experimentals vet slightly differently from other units.

Statistics: Posted by IceDreamer — 06 Jan 2015, 16:19