Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-09T03:14:16+02:00

IceDreamer wrote:
a large increase in Experimental BuildTime

I would welcome that!

Statistics: Posted by E8400-CV — 09 Jan 2015, 03:14

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-09T00:41:23+02:00

Just a question, what is the reasoning behind cyb and uef t3 engies being worse than the rest?

If it's because of stations... I don't think that makes a lot of sense. This specialized building should do its job of concentrated buildpower, that's why cyb and uef got a specialized engineering building. Why punish the engies just because of this? Already upgrading hives is a huge pain in the ass because if you wanna do it fast there is some annoying micro involved and hard to tell which stage it's at, otherwise it takes ages. For uef it kind of makes sense since theirs are very mobile, but it's still rather ridiculous in my opinion. It should be a special alternative for extra variety, not a ''haha you have to use this because your t3 engy sucks"

As for the topic at hand, I think the way engymod works right now is very nice, but naval support factories are kind of useless. Tech teleporting makes more strategies viable and it has opened some interesting ways to make ''pretty bases'' in a efficient way by abusing the balls out of adjacency. In my opinion these things increase strategic depth and that is always good.

Statistics: Posted by Ceneraii — 09 Jan 2015, 00:41

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-07T01:43:23+02:00

I don't mean increase them THAT much, I mean more like make Fatboy as strong as Megalith is now, make Megalith a bit stronger, make Colossus as strong as the new Megalith. Roughly twice the cost/power of current.

Statistics: Posted by IceDreamer — 07 Jan 2015, 01:43

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-07T01:26:37+02:00

IceDreamer wrote:
or go even further and increase experimental costs and power across the board to make them truly epic.

this would not be best parth imho.. Ylona and paragon is already trully epick but nearly nevver build because are too expensive.

Exp have already about 6x less build time as same mout mass on T3 land units. When would have build time about 3x less as is now. It would be probably fine.

T3 is for mass more effective as exp (whiteout vet insta heal) so make them build slower will help a lot

Statistics: Posted by Ithilis_Quo — 07 Jan 2015, 01:26

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-07T00:30:04+02:00

I agree almost fully with Zock. The team who built the system in the first place were very careful not to push T2/T3 Engies too hard, and it turns out they were a bit TOO careful. The solution is Zock's: Push the costs down so that efficiency is closer to that of T1 Engineer, keep their low speed. Push the cost of the UEF/Cybran down slightly, so that they hit roughly 13 mass/bp (Still much much worse than Aeon/Sera), push Hive to 11.5 mass/bp rather than 12, and Kennel to 12.5 and cut the air-speed of the Rover in half.

I agree with Zock on some other points too. I'd like to increase the cost of T2 and T3 Naval Factory by about 30% while significantly increasing the bp that comes with it at both levels. I'd also like to increase the cost and build-time of T3 Land Factory too, by about 20%, leaving the bp the same, so that T3 land is slower to hit the field and more costly to 'teleport'. This should give large T2 Armies a bit more time to accumulate.

Those two changes should ALSO be coupled with a large increase in Experimental BuildTime, or go even further and increase experimental costs and power across the board to make them truly epic.

Statistics: Posted by IceDreamer — 07 Jan 2015, 00:30

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-07T00:05:14+02:00

Aulex wrote:
I think another issue is that when you make a t2 factory, you invest mass to get the offensive units from it most of the time. I think a lot of players may feel that if they make that t2 factory they shouldn't be spamming t2 engies, rather offensive units. So i guess Vee's suggestion about t1 facs making other tier engies seems not too bad in respect to the problem, but yea it will make teleporting tech an even bigger issue. We could mix a bit of Vee's suggestion and Deimos's. Have t1 factories within a certain range of the hq be able to produce equivalent tech engies. This is a little overcomplicated and kind of dumb from a design point though. You could also just make them more efficient, also not sure why there is hesitation of making higher tier engies more efficient than lower tier engies. I mean in respect to the game design it may not be coherent, but it will make the gameflow better.

pretty much.

I don't like the range for HQs/Techbuilding at all. It makes it overly complex for a small problem. But i also don't think teleporting tech is bad for the game, rather good, makes t2 viable on many maps, brings strategic decisions where to make your factories and more. Engymod already got less intuitive with the support facs instead of techbuildings, but i don't think changing it up now again is a good idea either, people got used to how it is already, and there is most likely just the same opposition against techbuildings as before.

The big big issue why we didn't make higher tech engies very good in the first place is what i pointed out already: It threatens to make building defence in no time possible, since higher tech engys don't suffer from pathfinding issues as 500 t1 engys and will build things much faster with the same amount of BP. You won't need to prepare for an attack, have 20 t3 engys, GC coming? Just make 20 PD in no time. Strats? Just make some shields and flak in seconds.

This was the biggest concern in engymod and a lot of our time went into preventing that, we nerfed the speed to make it harder to build many defence buildings in different places too fast, we increased buildtime of all higher tech buildings with a formula to take into account movetime of engys, decreased health to make the engys vulnuable while doing that etc.

Another point was that we wanted t1 engys to stay a viable alternative, and that there should be a good reason to make higher tech or t1 engys, or a mix of them, depending on your playstyle/strategy.

It seems to work fine, so maybe this problems are not as dangerous as we though, though maybe they don't occur exactly because of this changes to prevent them.

But as stated in my last post, i think making them as efficient, but keep the speed and higher factory cost disadvantage might improve the situation a bit. Keeping the speed is good, because they are already good at building things, just worse at assisting. With the low speed you can prevent them being too good at building, while still be able to buff their assisting power/efficiency. And it also means t1 engys will be always viable to reclaim, while t2/t3 engys are still very usefull at the frontline and with it at reclaiming, too.

I don't think uef/cyb t3 engys need a buff, rather buff engystations then.

New numbers i'd try:

T2 engy: 130 mass - 10.4 mass/bp
T3 aeon/sera engy: 420 mass - 10.5 mass/bp
T3 uef/cyb engy: no change - 14.67 mass/bp

Hive: 300 mass - 12 mass/bp
Kennel: No number..they were worse than kennels, buff at least to 14.67, but they are hard to balance. Alternatively make uef t3 engy better too, and keep hive relatively bad.

T2 naval HQ and support factory: 50% cost, BT and BP increase. HP can stay the same, they already have too much.

(All HQs have the same BP as support factories for consistency and staying intuitive)

Statistics: Posted by Zock — 07 Jan 2015, 00:05

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-06T19:13:36+02:00

It wasn't me who suggested that As you say it will make teleporting tech a bigger problem, so I don't think that's a very good thing. If you want more higher tech engies to be used I'd give uef/cybran t3 engies a bit of a build power buff, and improve all higher tech engie speed and maybe build range a bit. That would improve the convenience of those units a lot, which may be the main reason why people don't use them. It's also fine as it is now though.

Not sure if tech teleporting is actually a bad thing, but if you wanted to solve that I'd reintroduce the tech buildings instead of HQs and give them a maximum range. Maybe t1 radar range.

Statistics: Posted by Vee — 06 Jan 2015, 19:13

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-06T18:22:40+02:00

I think another issue is that when you make a t2 factory, you invest mass to get the offensive units from it most of the time. I think a lot of players may feel that if they make that t2 factory they shouldn't be spamming t2 engies, rather offensive units. So i guess Vee's suggestion about t1 facs making other tier engies seems not too bad in respect to the problem, but yea it will make teleporting tech an even bigger issue. We could mix a bit of Vee's suggestion and Deimos's. Have t1 factories within a certain range of the hq be able to produce equivalent tech engies. This is a little overcomplicated and kind of dumb from a design point though. You could also just make them more efficient, also not sure why there is hesitation of making higher tier engies more efficient than lower tier engies. I mean in respect to the game design it may not be coherent, but it will make the gameflow better.

Statistics: Posted by Aulex — 06 Jan 2015, 18:22

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-06T14:27:42+02:00

Previous speed was same as t1 engys. They also had much more hp. Making them same efficiency might be worth a try, since you still have the disadvantage of speed/higher factory cost , so t1 engys are still better in some way and you can use them. But they are already quite good, i don't think it would change much.

Statistics: Posted by Zock — 06 Jan 2015, 14:27

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-06T13:14:57+02:00

How about making t2/t3 engies the exact same efficiency as t1 engies? Also what was their previous speed?

Statistics: Posted by Reaper Zwei — 06 Jan 2015, 13:14

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-06T12:51:12+02:00

t3 cyb/uef is 14.67 , not 11.67

Naval facs should maybe get an efficency boost too, given that they can't have adjancency. For frigates it is less of a problem, but for t2 ships, it just takes too long to produce single ships. We didn't push BP too high, because we didn't want that a single factory drains more ressources than you have early in game, but increasing it from 60 to 90, and boosting mass/bp to 12 or 11 might be ok.

About engies i think people do still build engies to assist sometimes, at least i do. But for t2/t3 i would have to spend ressources and time to upgrade my factory, just to get less efficient engys? Better to just make t1, and also much easier to finetune how many you want, especially since im used to judge how many t1 engys i need to spend my mass, but for t2/t3 not really.

It make sence, already ppl build factory only for make fast buildpower, so invest 300mass and spam T1 enginer.

solution can be: allow T1 factory make T2/T3 tier enginer if already have T2/T3 tier HQfactory.

Yes that would work, but it would also amplify the original problem of the thread, and just doesn't make much sense. I don't like it.

But maybe it would be still not ussed, because already the T1 enginer is much more effective for mass/build power coeficient.
change this would be lot of work, but it is a posible to make everything on T1 cost less buildtime and on equivalent change buildpower of T1 engi..

No its very simple, you just make t2/t3 engys cheaper until they are closer in efficiency. Though i don't know if that would really solve the problem. It's also possible to revert the speed nerf for them, but keeping it as disadvantage, in combination with the cost to upgrade your factory, might be good to even out their advantages of higher tech to make them a better alternative to t1 engys, but to keep t1 engys a viable choice too.

Statistics: Posted by Zock — 06 Jan 2015, 12:51

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-06T12:57:54+02:00

Mass per build power:

T1 engi: 52/5 = 10.4
T2 engi: 140/12.5 = 11.2
T3 aeon/sera engi: 440/40 = 11
T3 uef/cybran engi: 440/30 = 11.67 14.67

Hive: 350/25 = 14
Kennel: ?

T1 land fac: 240/20 = 12
T2 land fac: 540/40 = 13.5
T3 land fac: 1290/90 = 14.33

T1 air fac: 210/20 = 10.5
T2 air fac: 510/40 = 12.75
T3 air fac: 1510/120 = 12.58

T1 naval fac: 300/20 = 15
T2 naval fac: 800/60 = 13.33
T3 naval fac: 1600/120 = 13.33

So engies are pretty good compared to factories, even t2/t3 engies, but factories get adjacency, except for naval. It's also interesting that t1 naval factories are worse than t2. Unlike you usually see, t2/t3 factories are better than t1 for spamming frigates (also because with t2/t3 factories you have fewer half built frigates).

I think the main reason that you don't see many t2/t3 engies is because people are making t2/t3 support factories. You don't see big t1 engineer spams either. People pretty much build t1 engies to build their base & reclaim, and then they just spam support factories. When the reclaim runs out they assist their factories with all those engies, but other than that the main way to get more buildpower is more factories.

If you take into account adjacency you see why people make support factories instead of engies. If you make a t2 land fac next to a mex, you get about +0.8 adjacency, which would have cost you 180 mass if you wanted to get that from extra t2 mexes. So effectively you have to subtract that 180 from the cost of the t2 land fac, which puts it at 9 mass per build power. Lets say you have a t3 airfac connected to 3 t3 pgens. That gives +900 power free, which would cost you about 1200. So if you subtract that from the cost of a t3 airfac, it effectively costs only 310 mass, which is just 2.6 mass per build power. Can't beat that with engies.

Statistics: Posted by Vee — 06 Jan 2015, 12:18

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-06T12:05:33+02:00

Zock wrote:
Another factor for this is that you also have to pay the factory upgrade for t2/t3 engies, and that on many maps, you have your "t1 engy factory", but making the same number of BP in t2 or t3 engys needs a lot more attention, because you can't just put one t3 factory to make engys on repeat.

It make sence, already ppl build factory only for make fast buildpower, so invest 300mass and spam T1 enginer.

solution can be: allow T1 factory make T2/T3 tier enginer if already have T2/T3 tier HQfactory.

But maybe it would be still not ussed, because already the T1 enginer is much more effective for mass/build power coeficient.
change this would be lot of work, but it is a posible to make everything on T1 cost less buildtime and on equivalent change buildpower of T1 engi..

Statistics: Posted by Ithilis_Quo — 06 Jan 2015, 12:05

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-06T11:14:52+02:00

what Zoram said about range for HQ.

There are other areas where engymod could be improved though:

1. Navy support factories are not really good due to long buildtime of ships leading to many unfinished ships under construction. An increase of price and BP might be a good idea.

2. t2/t3 engies are still not made very much. We were very carefull with buffing them with the concern that having only t2/t3 engies would make building defence in no time very easy and allows you to react to any thread very fast, thus making the game more turtlish. Maybe we were a bit too carefull, and brining t2/t3 engies closer to the efficiency of t1 engies will make them more popular. Another factor for this is that you also have to pay the factory upgrade for t2/t3 engies, and that on many maps, you have your "t1 engy factory", but making the same number of BP in t2 or t3 engys needs a lot more attention, because you can't just put one t3 factory to make engys on repeat.

Statistics: Posted by Zock — 06 Jan 2015, 11:14

Re: Engymod improvements?

2015-01-06T10:01:47+02:00

DeimosEvotec wrote:
Just out off curiosity what was the concept behind your mod, a qiuck forum search didn't give me good information (this topic was supposed to be about any ideas not just mine, but if you don't want to discuss it it's fine too)

I wasn't meaning to be coy. It just seemed that the direction of the FAF community was firmly in favour of Engie Mod. So I didn't really push any alternatives. I did express reservations in the relevant Engie Mod threads. I thought I had created a thread about an alternative as well. But, it didn't really attract great attention.

The premise of the mod was to separate Technology and Build Power as separate upgrades. Such that there is not HQ or slave relationship. All tech factories would be capable of independently producing units at their respective tech levels.

The primary upgrade path would be a tech upgrade, and function much as it does now. But each factory would have the ability to install "build power modules". An upgrade which would not increase tech level, but rather increase build power and HP. Making the factory, more beefy and produce faster. I had scaled the economic costs to be equivalent to that of adding more engineers.

The difference between an engineer assisted factory and one will a build power boost is that the engineers are basically put "inside the building". Meaning the added HP increase would be equivalent to the upgrade cost in engineers. Similarly, the build power increase would also be equivalent to the upgrade cost in engineers.

The effective difference is that it reduces the factory/engineer combo down to a single unit and reduces the unit cap associated with production. Freeing peoples computers to focus on the rendering of actual combat units. While at the same time being cost neutral with the conventional assisting approach. Upgrade paths were as follows:

T1 goes to T2/BP1
T2/BP1 goes to T2/BP2 or T3/BP1
T2/BP2 goes to T3/BP2
T3/BP1 goes to T3/BP2
T3/BP2 goes to (optional) T3/BP3

Statistics: Posted by Hawkei — 06 Jan 2015, 10:01