Game version 3741

Nerfing rate of fire or accuracy will result in tmls being massively more oppressive and practically require people to double the mass put into tmd that they already do.

@ftxcommando no because the fix from the patch will make tmd much more effective as they will split up and shoot at different incoming missiles.
And nerfing their base stats would also only be an option if they end up too strong due to this change.

We are speaking single TML, not barrage of missiles from cruisers. A single miss on TML missile means losing t2 power or t2 mex even though you have it protected. Making it so now even though the TMD is better against massive onslaught of missiles it can fuck you up if there is only a single missile coming and you have single TMD that decided to casually miss it's shots against that single TML.

20% would make it a 1 in 25 chance of 2 TMD missing and letting a tml hit your ACU for a snipe. That’s card game RNG mechanics in a macro RTS, it’s just bad.

@nex said in Game version 3741: Sneak peaks:

You could make them miss some of the time (is that what firing randomness does??), so they still go brrrt and just miss 20% of their shots or something. Looks cool + balanced.
Brings back some of the old unpredictability, but in an intentional way

See the videos on Github - these have the same randomness as tech 1 artillery does, but four times the firing rate. It looks epic, but it is really bad at the moment

@ftxcommando said in Game version 3741: Sneak peaks:

That TMD change seems like it hugely shifts the balance of basebreaking back to the defender since TMD is way cheaper than cruisers and part of the reason you could eventually break bases came from the fact dumping a giant line of TMD was never efficient and you had to both waste space so they wouldn’t shoot the same thing and waste buildtime as your engies move from isolated TMD to isolated TMD. It also encouraged slowly breaking TMD since them being spaced out meant all TMD aren’t covered by all other TMD.
This could make it orders of magnitudes more painful to break bases, especially competently shielded ones.

My take on this:

1. It's about navy vs base. This has never been balanced, excepting that "navy should be OP vs land to prevent stalemate".
2. Worse, it's about a specific case of cruiser TML vs base: only two factions have such cruisers anyway. The proper solution vs bases is battleships, or maybe the Aeon missile ship.
3. Aren't cruisers massively OP vs TMD anyway? The biggest issue is when those TMD are shielded too. But this is where battleships are (again) better: they aren't countered by TMD.
4. Cruisers' primary function is AA, and secondary is TMD. Having them able to kill distant mexes etc. is an interesting addition, but having them somewhat cost-effective at destroying base defence too is weird (too many roles).

Hmm... maybe we should have T2 missile ships, or cheaper variants of the T3 subs or something, just for missiles, and remove the cruiser TML completely? That way navy players must choose between building AA and missile-launchers. Otherwise, at least let TMD properly counter cruiser missiles.

The github testing comments mention that you currently need at least 4 buzzkill to defend against 2 Seraphim cruisers, and that after the bug fix you only need 2. However I think this number is both too high and is being misinterpreted to suggest that the TMD become twice as good after the change (against cruisers), with this being used to support nerfs to TMD or buffs to cruisers to the same ratio that could make cruisers even more powerful vs the TMD than they currently are:

• For example, 2 TMD protecting a T2 mex can indefinitely defend that mex against 2 Seraphim cruisers if the cruiser targets the mex and the mex is behind the TMD (this doesnt just happen due poor target selection by the attacker - the defending player may build TMD after the attacker had scouted and it may not be obvious for a short while that the structure blips are TMD; the cruisers may be firing at their max range with the TMD just outside radar range; the attacker may be focusing their APM/attention elsewhere for a while).
• The amount of damage getting through per second from the cruisers over time is also relevant since in some cases the TMD will be shielded, which can help compensate for the 'sometimes missiles get overkilled' issue
• When I tested 3 buzzkill slightly spaced out vs 2 Seraphim cruisers (that were targeting the closest TMD), the buzzkill defended indefinitely. I'm assuming the '4 buzzkill to defend 2 cruisers' result was where the buzzkill are placed right by each other (and players are less likely to do this due to aoe damage being able to hurt both tmd at the same time).
• In some tests, 2 buzzkill could defend against 2 Seraphim cruisers indefinitely (when the cruisers are targeting the TMD)

Therefore a doubling of missile health would mean cruisers would be getting a buff vs TMD when they're already able to use missiles to overwhelm a unit whose sole purpose is meant to be to defend against missiles.

I also dont like the idea of having firing randomness which sounds like it'd be more frustrating to play with than the current overkill bug.

The factions with cruiser missiles have terrible direct fire destroyers for base killing. Forcing them to use BS, especially when one has an incredibly expensive BS that is slow at getting across to do anything is a gigantic faction nerf to a faction that is already just terrible at t2 navy.

Don't forget a cost of cruiser vs cost of TMD. Cruiser is 2k mass, TMD but a 280, and MML being 200 mass. And while everyone seems to be focusing on the navy I would love to see some kind of tests regarding MML considering they already often felt quite underwhelming to use.

Imo MML needs a defo buff. Especially Seraphim one which is just pathetic to use, the second one that struggles is surprisingly Flapjack with Aeon somehow getting by with higher HP pool so they actually are more reliable in getting through. And viper is just viper, they don't care about TMD.

Still the fact that same mass in TMD can now(or maybe it could do the same before) totally shutdown same mass in MML is imo inexcusable as those are the units that are supposed to be used for breaking down enemy FOB's while they are doing piss poor job at that.

Yesterday i had 3 cruiser (sera) shooting at a firebase, the ennemy was able to build 3/4 tmd faster than i was bale to destroy it.
I also have completely lost faith in mml for a while and resigned myself to spam T1 arty instead. That being said tml range allowing it to take out mex/factories from extremely far is still a bane for me

@ftxcommando said in Game version 3741: Sneak peaks:

20% would make it a 1 in 25 chance of 2 TMD missing and letting a tml hit your ACU for a snipe. That’s card game RNG mechanics in a macro RTS, it’s just bad.

Yeah i also think a ROF nerf would be the best way to specifically nerf static(spammable) TMD. Just thought a bit of randomness might do the trick of making it look cooler. But yeah for single missile snipes this is quite bad.

@jip said in Game version 3741: Sneak peaks:

Nerfing rate of fire may be interesting from a balance aspect, but it also makes the game feel a lot more dull. I'd veto that as game lead - the game is supposed to feel reactive and fun. Not dull.

Not sure how bad it would actually look, as they already do shoot quite slowly.
So getting them from 1.8 sec/shot to like 2 sec/shot (sera cruiser ROF) would be a good start and i don't think you'd notice the visual difference.

If they fire to slowly for you, i guess you could double all missile hp and all TMD fire rates.

@e33144211332424 said in Game version 3741: Sneak peaks:

Still the fact that same mass in TMD can now(or maybe it could do the same before) totally shutdown same mass in MML is imo inexcusable as those are the units that are supposed to be used for breaking down enemy FOB's while they are doing piss poor job at that.

The TMD does not shut down the MML as you can just shoot at stuff, that's not under TMD. Also their TMD does 0 damage to your MMLs, so once you get ahead you just snowball their TMDs to death.
I just tested some MML against a TMD. A Buzzkill only gets one shot out if you shoot at it with multiple MML (Other facs get 2 shots out, so Buzzkills kinda weak). So having two MMLs will kill the Buzzkill and your opponent will have spend 56 mass (20% of a TMD because reclaim) for nothing, while you still have 2 full hp MMLs that can now shoot at other stuff.

If they fire to slowly for you, i guess you could double all missile hp and all TMD fire rates

The thought did cross my mind

I'd also like to remind people that this is not a balance discussion thread - this isn't even a balance patch. I'm fixing things that feel underwhelming because the underlying mechanic is broken. if you disagree with the resulting balance - make a topic in the balance section of the forums and discuss it there.

@jip said in Game version 3741: Sneak peaks:

@jcvjcvjcvjcv said in Game version 3741: Sneak peaks:

On the other hand, doesn't this open a can of worms? What about AA overkilling their targets? (Draining all SAMs on a few spyplanes and letting the bombers behind pass, etc.)

The 'can of worms' argument is also considered the 'slippery slope fallacy' - just because we fix one issue and similar issues exist, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't fix this one issue.

As Nex describes - the reason this works is because the amount of damage that TMDs do is uniform. That doesn't apply to other weaponry. Hence even if we'd want to fix this, we couldn't reliably put a 'count' on it. Let alone that it is a property of projectiles that we're using here, not a property of a weapon or unit.

I see my wording of it was poor.

But not letting 15 SAMS fire at a spyplane kinda makes sense too

@jcvjcvjcvjcv Yes the problem is there, but it is there for all units in the game (not just sams) and is basically impossible to fix, as the unit would need perfect knowledge of what is already shooting at its target and what's going to hit etc.
So you basically calculate the game 10 ticks into the future just to see if firing this SAM is necessary. And then you do that for every unit in the game.

And the next sneak peak is available - all about doing damage!

And another sneak peak is available - all about range rings and more frames per second (fps)!

Updated a sneak peak - more performance (in terms of fps) of not just range rings, but also plain vision!

Added the full patch notes at the top, changed title of the topic. All feedback on todays patch is welcome either here, or via discord!

Awesome update, good work everyone!