Role guidlines for unit balance.

[Larofeticus]

Describe what you would like changed, and why.

Here is the beginning of a proposal for unit balance guidelines to be used to make the balance of units and defensive structures coherent. It is less about specific numbers and more about what the relationships between different units and structures should aim to be.

Tier 1 units:

The role of the Stell is early defense and protection, like a tank from MMO holy trinity. Relatively high armor and hp. Very low mobility. It's unique ability is to diminish the pierce of all bullets that hit it, so in practice it can be used as a mobile wall to reduce damage to more vulnerable targets. More damage than elude, less than merui. More range than elude, less than merui.

The role of elude is mobility. Highest speed and ability to dictate engagements. Lowest damage output, and damage is split between many bullets so very low damage against armored targets. Modest hp, low armor. Good against economy buildings and Be walls, terrible against better walls and other defenses (give all turrets some armor).

The role of merui is precision damage. Highest dps, but in the form of shots that are high damage but low rate of fire to better pierce armor. Lowest hp and no armor. Faster than stell and slower than elude. Special ability is still walk over solids and fire over obstacles.

T1 rock paper scissors: Eludes beat merui by closing range quickly and applying their full dps against unarmored target, Stells beat eludes by armor tanking their damage, and merui beat stells by kiting them (which may require weapon rotation or fire while moving adjustments).

Low tier turrets: The role of breach is low tech defense that buys enough safety that the player has spare attention to tech up. It's rate of fire/bullet damage are tuned to be very effective against eludes, and to be a bit slower to kill stells. No T1 unit outranges it, even with Be ammo. Remove the silicon build cost, and generally cheaper (requiring 500+ drill seconds to build the most basic defensive building is dumpster). Tungsten ammo modifies range, bullet damage, and rate of fire such that it is the best early defense against stells. Be ammo stats and unit stats are tuned such that it can kill at least 3 stells trying to travel through it's full range, (instead of the current can't quite kill even 1).

The role of diffuse is mobility denial and emergency defense while under attack. It's build speed is very fast, like 1 second, but it's expensive relative to its power. Its range is long enough to knockback both elude and stell out of their range, but shorter then merui range.

The role of sublimate is early game AOE defense. (currently, there are no early game counters or punishments to concentrated force) A large sized beam distributes modest damage to all enemy units it hits. No oxide cost, just be silicon and tung.

Bery walls build much faster, to also fill out the emergency defense role. They remain weak and poorly armored. Need to build fast enough to be better than building heat distributors for quick walls.

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Ok. That's as much as I have time to do right now. If this kind of thing is going to be a useful contribution i'll keep going.

Describe the changes you want to propose. Include possible alternatives.

Use a design document to guide balance changes.

[Anuken]

Here is a design question: Do units need to counter each other with rock-paper-scissor mechanics? As I see it, Stells are the least maneuverable and have the least "effective range", so is it really an issue if they can beat all other T1 unit types? Why should e.g. merui units beat stells when merui has the inherent advantage of crossing walls, splash damage and being able to target specific enemy infrastructure over walls?

RPS mechanics make sense when units are considered in a vacuum, but in practice you're usually not making units to directly counter other units (in the campaign, anyway), you're producing them to scout, cross specific terrain or attack specific structures. A unit could theoretically be designed to only attack structures (and hence lose to every other unit type), but it would still be useful if designed properly. I don't think RPS charts are the right way to go here.

[Larofeticus]

This is how things would play out if stell had states to win all combat, and no mobility, as you contemplate:

Assume "in a cost effective manner" as an added condition to every further statement with an *. Yes, spending 4 or 5 times as much to build a big blob of another unit will win the battle against its counter, but (i presume) this is still supposed to be an economy game where production matters and having 5 times more resources to float and waste on a bad attack should win anyway.

Map objectives and victory conditions are fixed locations, so the stell would be used to attack or defend those things. No other unit types could remove the stells from those important positions, only other stells. No units could defend your own important locations except your own stells. There aren't even turrets available that are able to hold back stells in such a scenario*.

So the player strategic choices are cut down to one path: build lots of stells, then go for higher tech. The other 2 unit types don't get used because they can't push a map objective against the stell defenses that are always there*. The single choice gameplay quickly becomes stale.

That is why you need RPS; it prevents the strategic choices from locking down into a single strategy being the only competitive one. You need some kind of T1 capability to push stells off of an important target. And you need some kind of T1 option to prevent stells from slowly rolling up on what you need to defend. With those options available there are at least two viable player choices at any moment; double down on the t1 counter or go for higher tech.

[Anuken]

I don't follow. Even if you are strictly interested in defending - and units are not built strictly for that - stells would not have the advantage. They can't be everywhere at once. They don't have the DPS of turrets.

Why does them having strictly better 1v1 performance against other units make others un-viable? Eludes can, as the name implies, elude stell defenses completely and wreak havoc behind the front lines. Meruis can damage defenses behind cover, doing the same. It doesn't matter if stells have some advantage over them, because these other units have their own perks. It also doesn't matter how good stells are at offense or defense when an area is not reachable by ground, because in that case, other units become your only option.

You have plenty of choices, and while some may not be as balanced as others, it still doesn't descend into a stale "stells vs stells" scenario, because they have serious drawbacks that make them situational.

[Larofeticus]

Normalized for resource cost, stells in your hypothetical scenario and in the current balance are much more effective than turrets. But, in the current game, at the low tech level ALL units are much more effective than turrets for the same reason.

You can't elude a defense if the defense is directly on the thing you need to kill. Merui can't target the ammo ducts of defending units. I'm also not sure what you're arguing against here, because my original position is that merui should be the unit that can choose to engage stell and beat them by using longer range and better mobility.

Not reachable by ground is a campaign only concern. It would be much easier to balance for broad circumstances and then adjust the campaign accordingly. You said that yourself.

Anyway, back on target, please. Are there specific aspects of the proposal that you believe will lead to an outcome you don't want? Specifically which parts and outcomes are those things?

[Anuken]

Normalized for resource cost, stells in your hypothetical scenario and in the current balance are much more effective than turrets.

I didn't say anything about turrets being less effective in my scenario. I said the opposite...?

You can't elude a defense if the defense is directly on the thing you need to kill.

Is that likely? Not in my experience. I can't park units at every single piece of infrastructure I have, and if I tried, they'd be spread too thin.

Merui can't target the ammo ducts of defending units.

That wasn't my point. They don't need to target units one-on-one.

I'm also not sure what you're arguing against here, because my original position is that merui should be the unit that can choose to engage stell and beat them by using longer range and better mobility.

I did not say that I wanted Meruis to be able to beat Stells, however.

Not reachable by ground is a campaign only concern. It would be much easier to balance for broad circumstances and then adjust the campaign accordingly. You said that yourself.

Is it? Sure, you can't assume that bases will have walls or different types of terrain between them, but being able to walk over blocks (which are always there for player structures) will always be an advantage. You can't disregard that. Battles don't happen solely in the campaign with many different terrain types, but they don't happen on flat open plains with no solid blocks, either. You can't say either of these are "the general case".

Are there specific aspects of the proposal that you believe will lead to an outcome you don't want? Specifically which parts and outcomes are those things?

Yes. I don't think a unit being able to beat one by "kiting them" makes sense at all, and I don't think a unit with piercing splash-damage artillery (and more mobility) should be able to have "the highest DPS". It makes Stells even less attractive as an option. I don't see how you expect Meruis to win a fight by "kiting" without very intense micromanagement or manual player control - and neither of those are things I want to encourage.

[Larofeticus]

How about: Speeds: Elude fast, Stell Medium, Merui Slow. Defense: Stell very high armor but lower HP, Elude low armor, Merui no armor Attack: Elude has the same DPS but split betwen 3 shots instead of 2 to be worse at shooting armor, Stell has "standard bullets", Merui has "long range artillery" that does the same DPS as now but with higher damage and lower rate of fire

Given the design decisions you have made, to claim that you don't want to encourage intense micromanagement is absolutely baffling.

[Ilya246]

i don't think it's really possible to introduce RPS mechanics, you have to give each unit a specific different role for the balance to work (else it'd always be adantageous to build 1-2 specific unit types over the remaining one(s)), and i believe that'd actually be incompatible with RPS my own role+ability proposals inspired by siege (trench?) warfare, though this one is a bit old (from 17/05) so don't take it too seriously:

siege line - the line the primary battle is currently happening across quell|disrupt: ROLE: backline siege - bombards enemy positions from the backline of a siege line balance changes: quell/disrupt - may potentially need a health reduction

t3-t5 tanks: ROLE: frontline siege - sits in front of the siege line and prevents the enemy from pushing back while facilitating friendly siege infrastructure (unit healing, turret territory lockdown) expansion; has long range but less than backline siegers` ability proposals: t3 tank - add point defense turrets (+siege mode with a range boost like t4/t5?) t4 tank - siege mode: when immobile for a set amount of time (takes time to get moving again too), deploy a forcefield and apply a multiplier to range t5 tank - siege mode: when immobile for a set amount of time (takes time to get moving again too), deploy a slowdown field which severely slows down enemy units in a large range and apply a multiplier to range

t3-t5 spiders: ROLE: solo-type assault - attacks enemy lines in groups of spider units of the same type on their own, no other support - medium to long range, hit-and-run tactics ability proposals: t4 or t5 spider - (even though i do not really consider this a good ability) health redistributor: drains own health while working, quickly heals nearby units (of the same type?) with less current health than this unit, 100% (or more?) transfer efficiency

other role distribution: FRONTLINE SIEGE - all tiers of tanks, t2 spider, potentially t4 spider BACKLINE SIEGE - t4-t5 flyers, t3 spider SOLO-TYPE ASSAULT - t1-t3 spiders, t5 spider, t1-t3 flyers some units fit into multiple roles, which is intentional

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