Well, I just had a grand old read of the old topic, after getting 3 emails from people asking me to post there, and formulated my opinions on the matter.
Unfortunately, that topic was locked (why on earth lock an on-topic and important post like that?) after everyone had their say, but I feel the need to get my opinions on a few matters out in the open, so here goes:
My take on some of the matters mentioned here:
Opening statement - there is no racial balance in BZ2, and there can never be due to blink.
Any attempt to balance will fail. Ellaboration is provided below in the 'racial balance' subheading....
As deadscion said: "This balance pursuit is useless and never ending, impossible to finish"
Just one example of the never-ending balance arguments we have in BZ2. I earnestly believe it's because the game is not possible to balance in it's current state, due to blink. Again, ellaboration below.
Splinter:
This was done in an effort to break the stalemate that was emerging from the FE long gamestyle. I realise it was radical, but the truth is if a serviced assault is taken out by a team of splinter tanks, with the entire team of both sides in the battle (so 3 escorts for the serviced assault), you can still often make it count by killing the enemy tanks before they get to reload properly. I can see the problems, and it would perhaps have been better if we'd made the splinter cost *all* of the ISDF tank's ammo instead of just half of it.
Blink:
I have a lot of feelings on blink, and as a scion player that rarely builds it (it's stupid) I feel what I say should be worth hearing here....
Blink has 2 main purposes as far as I can see. The first is getting a player around the map, and the second is getting the player out of a fight.
The combination of these two makes a player far too effective. If he wins a dogfight, he's won. If he loses it, he can still blink away, and if there are pods on the scion rec can even blink back and finish his opponent. It's a win-win situation in almost every fight.
As such, I'd be eager to see the blink changed to a chargegun class weapon. It would have to be charged for about 5 seconds before it could be used, and after 5 seconds would continue to eat ammo, meaning it could be used to get around the map, but escaping from dogfights with it would need a lot of forethought.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure the Devs like this idea, and it can't just be ODF'd in (god knows I've tried).
If the devs can't make blink a chargeup weapon, then I have a very simple answer - remove it completely. It's an overpowered weapon, and it causes people to argue all over this 'early game vs late game isdf v scion balance' issue.
Racial balance:
This is an amusing one. The general concensus is that ISDF have the advantage in the early game, whereas blink get's it in the late game. This was, IMO, because the ships were not balanced with 'prevweapon' weaponswitching in mind. Once everyone started using prev and nextweapon keys, the FAF took the scout balance way out. The amusing part is, of course, that:
a: There is no way to make blink anything other than overpowered
b: There is no way to GET to the late game with balanced mix-raced teams
This leads to an inevitable conclusion -
c: There is no way to balance the races.
See, if scions have a chance in the early game, they make it to blink and win. If they don't have a chance in the early game, they can never win. There is no 'balance' there at all, at the moment ISDF are hugely overpowered because they choose whether or not they want the late game to exist. Give scions a chance in the early game, and they in turn become completely overpowered because they get to blink.
It's not racial balance at all, it's racial *imbalance*. Stalemate racial imbalance, I'd say.
The answer, of course, is just to remove blink, then go about balancing the teams (make scion scouts more powerful in the early game, [either tone down MDM, or make EMP push shots away like sonicblast does]). Perhaps blink could be replaced with a 'slide ray' type weapon, like TV made, to increase scion ship speed a little.
Another issue is that scions are not improved in 1.3. In fact, they are much weaker, due to their inability to build/cancel. Voice of my experience here.
Finally, I should mention the rocket-tank spam - WITH blink this is hard to get around. Without blink it would be almost impossible, so I'm of the belief that scions also need some kind of counter to shadower missiles. Giving them VIR would be silly, and I kinda like the idea of a ground-based counter, but it's very hard to think of one, so maybe making the image signature on the warrior MUCH lower would be a good answer instead?
MDM:
Fair in an ISDF v ISDF game - against scions this is another overpowered weapon. The gunspire is too easy to hit, too expensive, too hard to replace (need pools), and the scions have no way of preventing it at the mid-game. An answer that didn't interfere with the mid-game would simply be to give scions access to a counter in the mid-game. I don't personally like the idea of giving them C-curtain, and it'd be pretty hard to protect a spire with it anyway, so I'm going to suggest re-working an existing weapon - perhaps assault EMP - to provide an 'M-laser' that will push away projectiles up to, say, 80m in front of it.
For the sake of getting the ball rolling, I think it'd be worth trying the values as they are, removing blink, and giving scions a little more damage with their plasma.
After testing, we can perhaps experiment with increasing jammer range if shadowers are (as I and PF predict they will be) game-breakers.
~DF
ps. For the sake of covering a little issue, I'd like to address one more thing:
Amusingly enough, after I stat-ed it, I found that over 80% of my games are played as a scion. That has perhaps given some players the impression that they're my best race, which is untrue. I win more reliably when I play as ISDF, which goes leagues to show that there's something wrong.
Unfortunately, that topic was locked (why on earth lock an on-topic and important post like that?) after everyone had their say, but I feel the need to get my opinions on a few matters out in the open, so here goes:
My take on some of the matters mentioned here:
Opening statement - there is no racial balance in BZ2, and there can never be due to blink.
Any attempt to balance will fail. Ellaboration is provided below in the 'racial balance' subheading....
As deadscion said: "This balance pursuit is useless and never ending, impossible to finish"
Just one example of the never-ending balance arguments we have in BZ2. I earnestly believe it's because the game is not possible to balance in it's current state, due to blink. Again, ellaboration below.
Splinter:
This was done in an effort to break the stalemate that was emerging from the FE long gamestyle. I realise it was radical, but the truth is if a serviced assault is taken out by a team of splinter tanks, with the entire team of both sides in the battle (so 3 escorts for the serviced assault), you can still often make it count by killing the enemy tanks before they get to reload properly. I can see the problems, and it would perhaps have been better if we'd made the splinter cost *all* of the ISDF tank's ammo instead of just half of it.
Blink:
I have a lot of feelings on blink, and as a scion player that rarely builds it (it's stupid) I feel what I say should be worth hearing here....
Blink has 2 main purposes as far as I can see. The first is getting a player around the map, and the second is getting the player out of a fight.
The combination of these two makes a player far too effective. If he wins a dogfight, he's won. If he loses it, he can still blink away, and if there are pods on the scion rec can even blink back and finish his opponent. It's a win-win situation in almost every fight.
As such, I'd be eager to see the blink changed to a chargegun class weapon. It would have to be charged for about 5 seconds before it could be used, and after 5 seconds would continue to eat ammo, meaning it could be used to get around the map, but escaping from dogfights with it would need a lot of forethought.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure the Devs like this idea, and it can't just be ODF'd in (god knows I've tried).
If the devs can't make blink a chargeup weapon, then I have a very simple answer - remove it completely. It's an overpowered weapon, and it causes people to argue all over this 'early game vs late game isdf v scion balance' issue.
Racial balance:
This is an amusing one. The general concensus is that ISDF have the advantage in the early game, whereas blink get's it in the late game. This was, IMO, because the ships were not balanced with 'prevweapon' weaponswitching in mind. Once everyone started using prev and nextweapon keys, the FAF took the scout balance way out. The amusing part is, of course, that:
a: There is no way to make blink anything other than overpowered
b: There is no way to GET to the late game with balanced mix-raced teams
This leads to an inevitable conclusion -
c: There is no way to balance the races.
See, if scions have a chance in the early game, they make it to blink and win. If they don't have a chance in the early game, they can never win. There is no 'balance' there at all, at the moment ISDF are hugely overpowered because they choose whether or not they want the late game to exist. Give scions a chance in the early game, and they in turn become completely overpowered because they get to blink.
It's not racial balance at all, it's racial *imbalance*. Stalemate racial imbalance, I'd say.
The answer, of course, is just to remove blink, then go about balancing the teams (make scion scouts more powerful in the early game, [either tone down MDM, or make EMP push shots away like sonicblast does]). Perhaps blink could be replaced with a 'slide ray' type weapon, like TV made, to increase scion ship speed a little.
Another issue is that scions are not improved in 1.3. In fact, they are much weaker, due to their inability to build/cancel. Voice of my experience here.
Finally, I should mention the rocket-tank spam - WITH blink this is hard to get around. Without blink it would be almost impossible, so I'm of the belief that scions also need some kind of counter to shadower missiles. Giving them VIR would be silly, and I kinda like the idea of a ground-based counter, but it's very hard to think of one, so maybe making the image signature on the warrior MUCH lower would be a good answer instead?
MDM:
Fair in an ISDF v ISDF game - against scions this is another overpowered weapon. The gunspire is too easy to hit, too expensive, too hard to replace (need pools), and the scions have no way of preventing it at the mid-game. An answer that didn't interfere with the mid-game would simply be to give scions access to a counter in the mid-game. I don't personally like the idea of giving them C-curtain, and it'd be pretty hard to protect a spire with it anyway, so I'm going to suggest re-working an existing weapon - perhaps assault EMP - to provide an 'M-laser' that will push away projectiles up to, say, 80m in front of it.
For the sake of getting the ball rolling, I think it'd be worth trying the values as they are, removing blink, and giving scions a little more damage with their plasma.
After testing, we can perhaps experiment with increasing jammer range if shadowers are (as I and PF predict they will be) game-breakers.
~DF
ps. For the sake of covering a little issue, I'd like to address one more thing:
QuoteScion can OWN isdf if they play right, you've probably just never seen a good Scion commander and set of thugs. heck, get Darkfox commanding and everyone dies.Actually, I can't own everyone when I'm scions. Experienced ISDF commanders still have me for breakfast, and PF is one such player. Spawn beat me too at one point, though I'm pretty sure I was neglecting the use of blink, so that's worth bearing in mind.
Amusingly enough, after I stat-ed it, I found that over 80% of my games are played as a scion. That has perhaps given some players the impression that they're my best race, which is untrue. I win more reliably when I play as ISDF, which goes leagues to show that there's something wrong.