Balance - since I missed the last topic

[DarkFox]

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:

Scion 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.

[Spawn]

if blink is removed then scions need better specials.  only a few are really worth anything, possibly readd jax (it has messed up req) or improve the existing specials to be better, maybe give scions a jammer mine

shads arent much affected by sheilds, if that could be changed then it could be your solution to warriors

you could make a mag like weapon that drops a starfleet like mcurtain (drop one, sit there and you go flying) to give a blink like effect with a chargegun.  also could make dll detect whatever crapped out the mine and move the ship that distance

[APCs r evil]

I'm very opposed to making EMP Stream deflect projectiles. Only because doing so would no longer allow it to halt weapons fire.

Don't forget the Arc Mine.

[Avatar]

I've got great respect for DF's strat opinions, and am very disappointed that his post was so short...     

Let me start by saying that everyone knows I don't play Strat BUT before you stop reading let me assure you I'm not preaching balance here, just going to point out something.

Everybody thinks of balance as 1=1.  They try to boost or weaken one side or the other, at some predefined point in the game (early, mid, late), so that the power levels are the same.  This can be incorrect thinking when it comes to dual races...  true, the Scions started out as human, but the whole point of them was that they were a 'hit and run' style rebels while the ISDF were the stodgy, overpowered 'establishment'.

I think the important part there was "style".  Rather than suggest more powerful weapons, or equivalent weapons, why not think about the style of each race?

As an example I'll ramble a bit about how the Scions are 'hit and run' and how it affects their style.
Lower visual/heat/radar signatures would fit them, or anything that makes them more stealthy like VERY effective jammers.
Greater speed would fit them, or greater maneuverability/jumping/turning.
Lesser armor fits them, at least in their fast units.
Shields fit them, and it makes no sense that you can't apply them to heavier units and/or buildings...
One-shot weapons fit them (like the mag? in the opening movie that takes out the GT), and energy-based is right on cue. 
Extended Dogfighting does not fit them, but diversionary fights do.
Something like a camoflauge effect would fit them, (dare I suggest a full out 'cloak' ala TRO?)

See?  I read a lot about giving them this or taking away that, but not much that expands them as Scions.  I see more of an attitude that turns them into ISDF with cooler looking paint jobs on their ships...

OK, shutting up now.

-Av-
 

[Angelwing]

@DF, sorry bout that bit heh I'm just remembering that first 1v1 i had with ya - first time I saw Scions being used effectively. ever. (even IF you were incredibly rusty)

I agree with MDM being made weaker (think I mentioned it somewhere?),but not sure on the effects it could have on ISDF v ISDF games. needs much testing obviously.

Blink could be made Chargegun and fire a Magnetshell round that surrounded it, which would also make it work when in the air - but there's so many potential issues with doing that and it'd need A LOT of fine tuning to even work properly that it's probably not worth it. That and it'd be impossible to make it use more ammo over distance, but that's probably impossible to avoid anyway. Could have a go at it, see how it turns out...

That, or remove it and make scion hover ships faster in general to compensate (as they do seem pretty sluggish compared to their ISDF counterparts), and it IS one of their supposed racial attributes, as Av pointed out, so it wouldn't seem too out of place.

[APCs r evil]

On MDM, we could tighten up the Gun Spire's collision box, so shots can only hit what it looks like they could. Or at least make the center a no-hit zone.

[Spawn]

wasnt mdm's ammo usage increased already?

[Zero Angel]

Standard mortars should have an increase in splash damage. Since most people invariably upgrade to MDM's for turret/GT hitting, increasing splash somewhat would make them think twice about upgrading since the mortar would be more effective at taking out heavy assault groups (Defensive) while less effective at point blank SP/Pumm/Mortar/Mcur attacks due to splash damage also being inflicted on the attacker. Slight (~15%) modifications though. It's always better to underestimate a balance change then to overestimate it.

[DarkFox]

ZA - I always use standard mortars for pool-hitting, weapon-switching with chain.
If you don't want to stop firing in between switches, you have to aim at the top of the extractor, and get close enough that your mortar doesn't hit the ground. If the splash damage were increased, this tactic wouldn't be worth it for the health damage I'd take, and I'd switch to using MDMs 100% of the time.

[OvermindDL1]

You do know you could make a recycler choice in 1.3 that would allow you to rebalance the races, like removing blink and giving jax, setting the things AV stated, etc... etc...

[deadscion]

You do know you could make a recycler choice in 1.3 that would allow you to rebalance the races, like removing blink and giving jax, setting the things AV stated, etc... etc...

I agree. If MDM is the main complaint by Scion and Blink is the main complaint by ISDF, then just create a recycler variant with those removed.

This way all stratters who use your server will know you don't support it.

[APCs r evil]

I'm not sure that will work, again, because of the weapon lists in the factories. The only thing I think you could do to get that to work would be tech tree manipulation.. I know that would work for Blink but I'm not sure about MDM.

[deadscion]

In the 1.3 Patch recycler variant this much is possible.

The recycler builds the constructor you tell it to build.

The constructor builds the armory and factory you tell it to build.

The armory and factory build the vehicles/weapons  you tell it to build.

If all of those things have the items removed and are properly renamed, then you have a game condition with no MDM or Blink.

And this is just with PB1 and not the stuff being worked on.

[Spawn]

without blink scion would have no way to stop rocket tanks...

[CmptrWz]

You would have to do something about the weapon list for the customization panels, or the weapons could still be selected that way.