PATCH 3696 RELEASE THREAD

[Exotic_Retard]

look at me posting on the balance forums. much balance terrorise such wow.

eh. when making things like that i ask myself how easy would it be to make a ui mod to abuse that feature. as with many things with OC there will be an optimum use case. either you make it really simple and it is how it is, or if you go the other way you want to make sure its as smooth as possible user experience wise. having oc sub optimum to balance it for example would just lead to people being pissed off. imo supcom is more about fighting the opponent than the ui

well i dont really like the oc either, i feel its kinda what you get when you do a thing then put hotfix on top of hotfix, which makes it into a mess, rather than think about redoing the earlier bits to make it all neat and tidy. but whatever i guess, i bet its like 3% more balanced this way or something

[ZeRenCZ]

why not make it simle? by storage count

1 storage - 400dmg/400e
2 storages - 3000dmg/3000e
3 storages - 8000dmg/8000e
4+ storages - 12000dmg/12000e

it is not perfect, but I think it would be easier to code,

[Tagada]

It's basicly that but it just saves a little bit of energy. Also your proposition won't fix anything because the OC will still need to calculate demage and e drain on hit based on how much hp the unit has. Otherwise you would use like a shit ton if E instead of less just because you have more e storages.


Also 1-1 energy to dmg ratio!? Are you nuts?

[Wesmania]

Wouldn't it be possible to calculate OC damage at firing time based on its intended target rather than actual one? I suppose it could cause inconsistent AOE damage, but is it that much of a problem?

[AdmiralZeech]

When you fire the OC, it will examine the units within the AOE ... ... Energy is drained upon shooting.

There are a number of issues, but I'll just tackle the easiest. How? It doesn't know where the impact will be or what is in the AOE until it's hit. So how can you do any calculations on firing?

This code wasn't easy to put together. It's intricate. And believe me, we had a few different revisions where the design was drain on fire, and a few where it drained on hit. There were upsides and downsides to both.

Here's where I reveal my ignorance. I was under the impression that OC is targeted towards a unit, and it will home in on that unit. (Was that how it used to work?)
I tried firing OC at the ground and whilst it would fire, the OC would miss the targeted point and travel straight ahead.

[IceDreamer]

Here's where I reveal my ignorance. I was under the impression that OC is targeted towards a unit, and it will home in on that unit. (Was that how it used to work?)
I tried firing OC at the ground and whilst it would fire, the OC would miss the targeted point and travel straight ahead.

No, you're right, but remember this is a simulated engine. Yes we know what the target is, but it's surprising how often an unintended victim gets in the way. We had a number of scenarios in testing where you target a clump of T1, and a Brick takes the blast (You didn't have enough E to try and take out the Brick, and now you're facing the T1 which all survived, and an angry Brick who barely noticed the scratch), or where you DO have energy to take the brick, fire, eat a chunk of E, and it hits some random T1 spam. Then there's the fact that if you try and calculate "What's the highest HP in the AOE" not only is that expensive, it's also even more unpredictable because your target is moving and so is everything around it.

There are definitely problems, and it definitely feels odd to me too. But it was tested for a long, long time, and many alternatives were tried. This is just one example of the kind of odd edge cases thrown at the testers.

The only one I thought of that was never tested, because I never even suggested it (It's too "Out there") is two Overcharges. One which takes ~5k E and does low damage in a big AOE, and one that takes more like 25K E, has no AOE, and does much more damage. One balanced for early game, one for late.

[zeroAPM]

What was wrong with the old OC again?

[angus000]

This is a futuristic game, what's so strange about smart wireless energy draining shoots?

What was wrong with the old OC again?

It was op and prevented agressive T2 play, I guess?

[AdmiralZeech]

Here's where I reveal my ignorance. I was under the impression that OC is targeted towards a unit, and it will home in on that unit. (Was that how it used to work?)
I tried firing OC at the ground and whilst it would fire, the OC would miss the targeted point and travel straight ahead.

No, you're right, but remember this is a simulated engine. Yes we know what the target is, but it's surprising how often an unintended victim gets in the way. We had a number of scenarios in testing where you target a clump of T1, and a Brick takes the blast (You didn't have enough E to try and take out the Brick, and now you're facing the T1 which all survived, and an angry Brick who barely noticed the scratch), or where you DO have energy to take the brick, fire, eat a chunk of E, and it hits some random T1 spam. Then there's the fact that if you try and calculate "What's the highest HP in the AOE" not only is that expensive, it's also even more unpredictable because your target is moving and so is everything around it.

Ok then. Well, the reply I originally was going to make was:


"I meant it exactly as I wrote it - the strength of the OC is determined by the unit(s) in the aoe when the command is given. If you want it to be a different strength, target a different unit. This makes the OC more directly logical rather than magical and automatic." (If examining the units in the AOE is expensive, then just consider the targeted unit only.)


I get your point that often stuff gets in the way and the OC does not hit its intended target. But personally I would rather that be the responsibility of the player (due to target choice, making sure the line of fire is clear, etc), rather than a system that unpredictably drains energy in this way.


Hah, maybe there's a chance for fAcTiOn dIveRsiTy!!1! if we give each ACU a different OC system. And then after everyone tries it out, switch them all to the most popular one j/k
Or alternatively, to prevent the odd effect mentioned when multiple SCU's fire their OC at the same time, the SCU OCs are old style, and the ACU OCs are the magical style.

[PsychoBoB]

Or alternatively, to prevent the odd effect mentioned when multiple SCU's fire their OC at the same time, the SCU OCs are old style, and the ACU OCs are the magical style.

This would be a good idea in general. OC change was made to make T2 more viable against ACU but SCUs appear way after the T3 stage. So why not keep the old OC (with maybe small adjustments) for SCUs?