Playing around with engineer balance

[Rienzilla]

Hey everyone,

After some discussion on #aeolus and some thinking I made a mod to play around with the balance of engineers, and I would like to know what you guys think of the reasoning and the effect.

In FA, all higher tier units are more efficient at what they do than their lower tier brothers, if you compare it to the invested resources. For all combat units, dps*hp/masscost increases (dramatically) for higher tier units. Also the higher tier units get more features (i.e. better vision, longer range, etc). As a result, people will upgrade their factories and units at some point, because the investment in the higher tier factory will pay off after a while due to more efficient units.

This is true for all units, except the engineer. The buildrate/masscost of engineers decreases for higher tiers. A t1 engineer is therefore by far the best build unit for -anything-. As a result, we see players build hundreds and hundreds of t1 engineers, and they never become obsolete. Apart from the fact that this is conceptually incorrect imo, it results in an extreme burden on the pathfinding and hence game speed.

My idea was that higher tier engineers should become more efficient than lower tier engineers, and that (dedicated) factories should be slightly better unit-builders than their all purpose engineer counterparts. The first preliminary results are in the following mod. Note: only buildrates and buildtimes are modified, so there is no change in the actual unit cost, only in the build power available and required to build it. Changes are for now restricted to cybran land units only, so give it a shot in a cybran only, no air game: it's only to get some comments if a change like this can ever work.

Changes:
- assisting t1 factories with t1 engineers is slightly nerfed
- otherwise t1 gameplay is unchanged
- very significant buffs to the build rate of the t2 engineer (160%) and factory (232%)
- huge buffs to the build rate of the t3 engineer (380%) and land factory (670%)
- nerfs to the build times of t1 (127%), t2 (137%) and t3 (218%)units.

I normalized the build time in seconds to build a unit. So, a t1 factory will build a mantis as fast as a t2 factory will build a rhino, which in turn will be as fast as a t3 factory building a loyalist. Assisting is still worth it, but it is much less efficient than it was before: Per tick of mass, a t3 land factory is a 33% more efficient unit builder than a t1 engineer.

In its current state it may (will) probably make stationary defenses much more powerful, since a t3 engineer can build them very fast, but on the other hand, unit spam is also easier accross all tech levels.

Let me know what you think, the mod is attached.
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Rien

[Rienzilla]

fyi: the complete stats: http://sinas.rename-it.nl/~rien/engyfiddle.pdf

[rootbeer23]

or you can make t2 and t3 engis simply cheaper (mass, energy).

[Rienzilla]

Yep, decreasing costs would also be an option, or both. But mind you that that would make the higher tiers and factories a lot cheaper; If we put it all in costs, the t3 engineer would cost a third of its current mass, and the t3 factory one fifth. That would have a lot of other side effects too.

[rootbeer23]

changing the cost of the high tier factories is not necessary and a cost change for high tier engis is hardly a big thing.

[Rienzilla]

That depends on what you deem necessary.

The fact that a dedicated non-movable unit-builder (a factory) is five times (!) less efficient mass for mass than an all round mobile anything-builder does not make sense at all. The result is that nobody ever builds a higher tier factory, unless it is absolutely necessary from a bumpercar point of view.

[ColonelSheppard]

it's ok, t1 engeneer spam is highly voulnerable, better higher the HP of T2/T3 engi that would make a non-balance problematic thing

[Rienzilla]

Sure, t1 engy spam is somewhat vulnerable to bombers, so some may die if you don't have air dominance and don't pay attention. However, even with this taken into account it is still extremely overpowered compared to all the other engineering options: Mass for mass it is still worth it to go t1 engineers instead of factories even if 80% of your engineers would automatically disappear right after building them. And let's be honest, how many decent games have you seen where people choose to upgrade factories instead of assisting one?

Just give it a try, it may have interesting effects, also in the mex adjacency department. It may make for less t1 engineer spam, less turtling-in-a-base in general, and less useless unit placement micro. (It may also suck terribly, but to find that out if first needs to be played )

[ColonelSheppard]

none but thats not the point, point is that i've see many games where losing the build capacity caused the loss of one player

i dont see the need to nerf t1 engeneer spam, it's ok everybody can do it

[Rienzilla]

Sure, build power is a valuable resource. And in a game where you are able to kill a good deal of your opponent's build power, you get a big advantage.

The fact that 'everyone can do it' only illustrates that t1 engineer spam is not unfair; however it says nothing about whether the t1 engineer is overpowered compared to the rest of the units in the game.

If we give all t1 tanks the dps of a GC it would also be perfectly fair, but the unit would still be hideously overpowered
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Rien