Structure balance

[Apofenas]

This topic is about structure balance between each other and structures vs units balance. Post your own thoughts about it here.

Ground firing to increace range of units: This affects t2 point defences and t3 point defences.

Basicly aeon and uef players have an advantage in pd fight over cybran and seraphim, because they can ground fire on edge of maximal range and increace range for 5-7 points depending of terrain and AOE. Beam weapons that already have disadvantage on uneven terrain, can't do this.

Same goes to t3 pds. Aeon sniper bots that are not supposed to outrange pds, can increace range same way on proper terrain. Same with absolver, but this unit actually supposed to target shields themself instead of shield gens, so no problem here. T3 pds themself have AOE and can ground fire seraphim sniper bots and absolvers that are supposed to outrange pds.

Can this problems be solved somehow? Like with projectile life time, or weapon arch?

Cybran shields. It really makes cybran late game harder. It's very annoying to upgrade shields all the way from ed1 to ed5 to get proper shields. This is also very inefficient - you invest 4260 mass to get 15k shield, while uef invests 3k mass for same HP. Can cybrans actually have ED5 as t3 shield and buildable?

There is also a couple bugs connected with cybran shields:
1) After finishing upgrade, hp on cybran shield restores to 100%, which is used to cheat, by pausing on 99% completed upgrade, to restore HP when it will be needed. Can shields have same hp or % of hp, that they had before upgrade?
2) If cybran ED5 dies, when SCU is put to assist to this shield, it uses auto-rebuild function(if you didn't know), SCU reclaims shield first (instead of building on top of wreck) and rebuilds shield in cost of 1800 mass, which is extremely efficient for rebuilding.

HQ factory: Like with ED5, SCU that assist factory, tries to rebuild it if factory dies. Instead of rebuilding HQ, it rebuilds support factory on top of wreck, so you lose mass,that was in HQ and get support factory, that is useless and has far less mass into it.

T3 artilery: The range is extremely imbalanced. 200 range difference between cybran and aeon artileries, 140 dps difference and accuracy difference for 3600 mass cost difference? Combined with low hp for cybran arty, not enough to survive direct hit of aeon arty and bad cybran shields create huge disadvantage. I think all arties need to have same range. Accuracy and dps would still create advantage for aeon arty over others and disadvantage for cybran, but not as big, as it is right now.

Satelite: Basicly this unit has more DPS/mass than seraphim and cybran artilery. But it can't be adjusted by t3 pgens, so satelite ends up in disadvantage in base killing compare to arties. It also has far worse ability to break through shields.

What I would suggest is absolver effect, so it would have 50-75(enter your number here)% more DPS, but only against shields. In that case this unit would compete with other options and we would see novax unit more often.

Addition:

Upgraded units have same % hp as previous had: For exmple if you upgrade t1-t2 mex, you pay full price for it without discount of t1 mex price. If t1 mex was damaged, the t2 one will be damaged as well with same % of hp. Hovewer, insta heal is a bad solution for that. I think, upgrading structure needs to get regen to be able to restore HP while being upgraded: if t1 mex has 600 hp, while being upgraded for 90 secods with its own power, it needs 6.666 regen per second. If structure, t1 mex in this case, only gets half required mass per second, you get only half regen. That's just an idea. I have a feeling that it's going to be very hard to code.

[Gorton]

I said it in an earlier thread, but at t3 make the ed3 buildable, if possible increasing the price in some way. It's a nice tradeoff imo.
I've spoken for making the novax a better unit before, but i'm not sure that increasing the damage is a good idea. I think more interesting uses could be found with special effects like jamming.

[Apofenas]

I said it in an earlier thread, but at t3 make the ed3 buildable, if possible increasing the price in some way. It's a nice tradeoff imo.

10k shield is not enough to completely absorb aeon t3 arty. I think in this case, it would probably be even better to rework ed to 4 versions of shields instead of 5 (the reason for it is ed4 being excess stage between more or less usefull ed3 and desirable ed5). Ed1 - that has close mass cost and hp/mass to mobile shields, ed2 that is close to uef t2 shield(with same or 1k less hp and close hp/mass), ed3 with 12k shield and ed4 that is close to uef t3 shield. But for me it would still be more reasonable to build completely upgraded shield instead of babysit all of them and manually upgrade even for one stage. But probably there will be mod creators that would make UI, that does it for player, so it's debatable.

[Brute51]

Ground firing to increace range of units: This affects t2 point defences and t3 point defences.
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Can this problems be solved somehow? Like with projectile life time, or weapon arch?
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Projectile lifetime is a viable solution that's already available in game and used on some projectiles (torpedoes for example).

[Ithilis_Quo]

in past i have one suggestion about shield so i post it here.

- let shield linked with Pgens have some advantage as have artilery. no only energy discount. probably faster regeneration shield, or faster reload time.


about cybran shield. In past here was suggestion for posibility to build ED5 imediatly, from ED1. and shield start automatick upgrade every stage.
It will looks liek on shield are 4 posible upgrade ED2/3/4/5 , and after chose upgrade start make first upg ED2 then ed3 etc.. automatick.

T3 arty range differences. I like fraction diversity and different range. And think that can be more range differences in game. cybran have also better land units as aeon, and build preccise big artilery is not a cybran style. Btw is a good when T3 artilery is a game ender? would not be game better when would be effective defense against T3 arty and game would must be end with army instead of creeping?

satelite - not sure if with absolwver effect on satelite would not be OP. It is relative cheap units and after this it change to shield breaker for artilery. what about change speed to be faster units, and give him more area of damage, to be more effective against army ? (+reduce crazy crash damage! on units that is not posible to destroy)

[Apofenas]

T3 arty range differences. I like fraction diversity and different range. And think that can be more range differences in game. cybran have also better land units as aeon, and build preccise big artilery is not a cybran style. Btw is a good when T3 artilery is a game ender? would not be game better when would be effective defense against T3 arty and game would must be end with army instead of creeping?

If you build arty first, and than aeon player builds arty with big delay and starts bombing you from out of range, is that ok? T2 arties have same range, t3 mobile arty also has same range. Why should t3 stationary arties have different? AOE, firing randomness, rate of fire and way damage is done is enough difference.

satelite - not sure if with absolwver effect on satelite would not be OP. It is relative cheap units and after this it change to shield breaker for artilery. what about change speed to be faster units, and give him more area of damage, to be more effective against army ? (+reduce crazy crash damage! on units that is not posible to destroy)

Only way to make it more effective against units is to give it direct buff of DPS, which is not a good thing. What i'm talking about is to give small absolver effect so it would have 300-350 dps to shields to overwhelm shield regen -> more effective against bases, but when it would fire units without hsields, it would only have 200 dps as now.

[Ithilis_Quo]

If you build arty first, and than aeon player builds arty with big delay and starts bombing you from out of range, is that ok? T2 arties have same range, t3 mobile arty also has same range. Why should t3 stationary arties have different? AOE, firing randomness, rate of fire and way damage is done is enough difference.

I think that its ok, you can reclaim your arty and make new on range of aeon arty. It sound stupid, but price would be only 3K mass more what is 5%differences. Cybran T3 arty is much better against army/navy as aeon have 90%more aoe, what can then aeon do? Thay can build super extra expensive salvation = whiteout paragon cant. and cybran would win every artilery fight with scatis. on short range. Its that ok ? yes it is.

i would think that T2 arty and T3 mobile woul be better if would have different range. sniper bots have different range, tanks have different range. Why every fraction cross galaxy would make artilery that have exaktli the same range when work on different principes? fraction diversity. Someone is better against army, antoher against base.

What i dont like is that T3 arty is game ender, and is no effective way how to defeans. its not so funny creep with artilerys instead of use armys. i would like much more if static artilery T2/T3 would be cheaper and would not break well shielded base. and would be for defense instead of for attack as it is now. Artilery shield creep is not funn. its only continual frustration whith shield explode, and if artilery miss when shield go out or not and another shot would be last.

[Apofenas]

Spoiler: show

I think that its ok, you can reclaim your arty and make new on range of aeon arty. It sound stupid, but price would be only 3K mass more what is 5%differences. Cybran T3 arty is much better against army/navy as aeon have 90%more aoe, what can then aeon do? Thay can build super extra expensive salvation = whiteout paragon cant. and cybran would win every artilery fight with scatis. on short range. Its that ok ? yes it is.

i would think that T2 arty and T3 mobile woul be better if would have different range. sniper bots have different range, tanks have different range. Why every fraction cross galaxy would make artilery that have exaktli the same range when work on different principes? fraction diversity. Someone is better against army, antoher against base.

You like faction diversity but then on nomad balance forum rage because nomad acu has 150 dmg every 1.5 sec instead of 100/1. That makes perfect sence. Such strong and very usefull units need to be as much even as possible. Most turtle or turtle breaking stuff have same range, unless it's something unique for faction. T1 pds, t2 pds, t2 arty, t1 arty,, t2 mmls, t3 mobile arty, ect has even range. Yes there are differences with costs, dps, hp, stat tweaks, ect. But range is even in all cases. But than most powerful non-unique turtle weapon has these much differences?

Best stat for t3 stationary arty is dps and accuracy in which aeon is best. AOE for cybran arty is only usefull to kill engineers near factories(say thanks to engy mod here) and sometimes ground fire something underwater, but even in that case enormous firing randomness should be taken into account. Firing at armies is just useless, if anybody would do that, it would be in desperate, but that means arty wouldn't fire cause of inner range ring; it also needs to actually hit unit and if it's under at least t2 mobile shield, than unit gets only ~1k damage, cause arty doesn't have good enough damage.

In arty vs arty such questionable advantage as "vs units" don't matter. Cybran arty vs aeon. Accuracy and dps, arty hp and shield hp - everything is better for aeon. Even in close range aeon arty is far better. That's why i don't see any reason to add here huge range advantage/disadvantage.

[Ithilis_Quo]

You like faction diversity but then on nomad balance forum rage because nomad acu has 150 dmg every 1.5 sec instead of 100/1. That makes perfect sence.

i was never rage about have 150dmg per shot on acu, i was rage for have 93,75 dps on acu, instaed of 100. and have 2400 dps on owercharge instead of 3600. And is big differences when it is on ACU - primar units that everyone everitime use, or on T3 artilery that is use in every hundred game

[Vee]

Agreed on the SCU rebuild bugs.

I think the problem with cybran shields can be sufficiently solved by having a single button that queues up all the upgrades. Because of UI lag it's very annoying to queue up all upgrades. IMO it is actually nice for faction diversity that upgrading to ED5 is less efficient than other factions T3 shields, but when it upgrades it goes to full HP.