Reclaim

Jip

@Deribus said in Reclaim:

Map reclaim should experience minimal, if any change.

Changing unit wrecks and leaving wrecks already on the map is not possible.

Maps do the following:

Pull a unit from the game files

Place it where it is intended to be

Kill all units with a script, before you spawn.

If you change the units for a balance patch, because the maps pull the units from the same place, they're still going to be affected by the changes. The only real way to circumvent this would be to create a "new" unit to place on the map without the reclaim changes. That is however, entirely unfeasble for FAF to do.

This is only partially true.

As a proof of concept:

https://gitlab.com/w.b.wijnia/mass-adjustment-proof-of-concept

A mod that allows you to determine the multiplier for initial wreckages and 'dynamic' wreckages. This was only a few lines of code at the right places. I'll not go into details here but you can have a different reclaim value for initial and 'dynamic' wreckages without any of the suggestions.

I'll leave the discussion as to what to do as is.

Tex

I favor (through whatever means necessary to implement), a slight reduction on mass gathered through reclaim, as I am a fan of aggressive gameplay and would like to see mass donations not be game ending and/or not having the giant reclaim fights where you are stuck fighting all or nothing over a reclaim field. As much as I want to say gut it hard, I'll instead just say a 'small' adjustment of 5-10% be tested.

Reducing wreck HP sounds interesting, as destroyed units would lose more $ based on overkill. Giant fights in reclaim fields would do more damage to surrounding wrecks. Higher tier units have more damage, and thus, more overkill potential. Maybe I am reading too much into it, but if tuned too heavily, it might get annoying seeing percies leave no wrecks due to 1600, 1450, (whatever the value is at these days) alpha strike damage, opposed to a bricks measly 150. Also if there is a way to make ACU Overcharge not leave perfect wrecks behind, that would be good. But idk how to do that without breaking OC's energy draw values...

arma473

Can we have Ythotha lightning storms deal damage to reclaim? That was disabled because people like getting reclaim. But being able to send a weapon that by definition WON'T leave reclaim for your opponents actually could be a significant advantage in team games. It would be impossible to "donate" mass with an Ythotha.

(This would also make it basically impossible for the owner to reclaim it to get mass back, unless you could get some engies on "factory attack move" to scoop fast while the storm was happening...)

Psions

@Tex said in Reclaim:

I favor (through whatever means necessary to implement), a slight reduction on mass gathered through reclaim, as I am a fan of aggressive gameplay and would like to see mass donations not be game ending and/or not having the giant reclaim fights where you are stuck fighting all or nothing over a reclaim field. As much as I want to say gut it hard, I'll instead just say a 'small' adjustment of 5-10% be tested.

Reducing wreck HP sounds interesting, as destroyed units would lose more $ based on overkill. Giant fights in reclaim fields would do more damage to surrounding wrecks. Higher tier units have more damage, and thus, more overkill potential. Maybe I am reading too much into it, but if tuned too heavily, it might get annoying seeing percies leave no wrecks due to 1600, 1450, (whatever the value is at these days) alpha strike damage, opposed to a bricks measly 150. Also if there is a way to make ACU Overcharge not leave perfect wrecks behind, that would be good. But idk how to do that without breaking OC's energy draw values...

Aggressive gameplay is not mass donating if units are balanced properly which thye're not currently.

Stating its good because it removes fighting over reclaim fields, and saying you are in favour of aggressive gameplay is contradictory.

Deribus

@Tex the problem I see with reducing wreck HP is that wrecks are only damaged by splash, so high splash low accuracy factions coughcybrancough will get affected much harder than Aeon/Sera and their sniper bots.

Azraaa

@Psions Aggressive Gameplay is mass donating at any level above 1k lol.

One bad attack late - mid game and your basically toast. People forget the game is about having fun, i promise if you reduce reclaim by like 40% gameplay will be so much better because not only can you risk going in for an attack, but if you destory half the base then its worth it because he'll not be able to get the amount he spent back instantly to just rebuild the base. People will be much more aggressive, games wont slow down as much because the attrition will be higher. Games will be more and more action packed later game because you can push into the enemy without being so badly punished just because you lost like 10 T3.

You realize 10 Pervicals is 10k mass in reclaim, thats retarded. Reclaim is one of the reasons this game scales out of control so quickly when you reach lategame because nobody is really losing mass because reclaim is like 81% return in either side so your only losing like 19% of mass collected in the entire fucking game; go do some math on that and you'll see how dumb that is.

Psions

Azraeel, if you're trying to be "aggressive" by attacking the enem'ys main base and essentially raiding it, then the question is not about reclaim, reclaim is an afterthought. Attacking enemy's main base is not exactly "aggressive" gameplay. Aggressive gameplay is spending resources to gain map control. Attack an enemy's main is attempting to "end the game", which inevitably if you fail will yield certain benefits to the defend for a comeback. Its not really worth it, because you're targetting buildings that can be rebuilt instead of the COM which is what you should be targetting to end the game.

If you want to promote raiding on main bases, then HQ and t3 mex should have lower HP, so that leaving them unprotected and raids as you are suggesting are more punishing. "Raiding" of the main bases is fraught with risk, not because of Reclaim, but more of the fact that you are investing lots of mass into it, and probably not going to achieve much, because almost everything is shielded or has high HP.

If reclaim is significantly reduced, then after you've reached t3 then is not much benefit in fighting for map control at all, as by the time you've exploited the mexes you've just won, the enemy could have made a game ender. There is a certain point in the game where even building t3 mex, puts you behind and the mass is better spent into a paragon or mavor.

Put it this way. A capped t3 mex costs 5400 mass and generates 27 income, it takes 200 seconds to pay itself back. For every 100 mass you invest into gaining that mex that's another 5 seconds added.

Lets say on the average map you have 8 safe mex, then that is 216 income, to build a gameender costing 240k average lets say as a rough estimate, that would be roughly 1100 seconds to complete. With the extra 27 income then you'd build it in about 1000 seconds. So you are saving 100 seconds by getting that mex, but then losing 22 seconds to accumulate the mass to build that mex, then another 5 seconds for every 100 mass spend to take that mex, meaning that if you have to spend more than 1500 mass to take that mex, then the investment is not worth it.

The reason why reclaim is important, is because it offsets the investment that you put into taking that area of the map, and in some circumstances is actually more beneficial than the mex itself as the reclaim value generated is more than the initial investment. Reclaim is also good in promoting efficient mass usage of units. If there was no reclaim, then the person with more income has a much greater advantage, than the person who has less income, and the benefit of microing your units more efficiently isn't as great.

Tex

@Deribus That is a good point too, I was only thinking about initial overkill from units like percies.

arma473

But @Tex, initial overkill wouldn't be affected by a reduction in wreck hp. The wreck doesn't even exist until 1+ seconds after the unit dies.

Initial overkill is based on the amount of damage exceeding the unit's hp, divided by the unit's max hp.

The hp of a wreck would be based on the mass value of the reclaim left in it.

We aren't talking about having different hp values for different wrecks, are we? Even if we reduce wreck hp, a strat wreck with 1.7k mass would have exactly 1.7x more hp than a Percival wreck with 1k mass, right?

Tex

@arma473 Oh, cool! Thanks for letting me know. I know little about the mechanics behind this game, just how to build units and attack with them. Was just trying to think through my initial ideas is all. Long story short I just want less mass to be left over after a battle. I was thinking if units destroyed by weapons fire might take proportionately more damage then before, and leave a wreck worth less $. Not so much that wrecks were more fragile.

Tex

This post is deleted!

Jip

@arma473 said in Reclaim:

But @Tex, initial overkill wouldn't be affected by a reduction in wreck hp. The wreck doesn't even exist until 1+ seconds after the unit dies.

Initial overkill is based on the amount of damage exceeding the unit's hp, divided by the unit's max hp.

The hp of a wreck would be based on the mass value of the reclaim left in it.

We aren't talking about having different hp values for different wrecks, are we? Even if we reduce wreck hp, a strat wreck with 1.7k mass would have exactly 1.7x more hp than a Percival wreck with 1k mass, right?

Your last suggestion is not the case as it stands. The wreck has (roughly) as much hp as the original unit did. As an example:

Firing at a t1 artillery into a (uef) t1 (land) factory wreck will cost about 4 - 5% of the mass value, e.g., say 20 mass a shot.
Firing with a t1 artillery into a strategic missile launcher wreck will cost about 4 - 5% of the mass value, e.g., say about 750 mass a shot.

See also this function:

-- from wreckage.lua
--- Create a wreckage prop.
function CreateWreckage(bp, position, orientation, mass, energy, time)
    local bpWreck = bp.Wreckage.Blueprint

    local prop = CreateProp(position, bpWreck)
    prop:SetOrientation(orientation, true)

    prop:SetScale(bp.Display.UniformScale)
    prop:SetPropCollision('Box', bp.CollisionOffsetX, bp.CollisionOffsetY, bp.CollisionOffsetZ, bp.SizeX * 0.5, bp.SizeY * 0.5, bp.SizeZ * 0.5)

    prop:SetMaxHealth(bp.Defense.Health)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    prop:SetHealth(nil, bp.Defense.Health * (bp.Wreckage.HealthMult or 1))
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    prop:SetMaxReclaimValues(time, mass, energy)

    --FIXME: SetVizToNeurals('Intel') is correct here, so you can't see enemy wreckage appearing
    -- under the fog. However the engine has a bug with prop intel that makes the wreckage
    -- never appear at all, even when you drive up to it, so this is disabled for now.
    --prop:SetVizToNeutrals('Intel')
    if not bp.Wreckage.UseCustomMesh then
        prop:SetMesh(bp.Display.MeshBlueprintWrecked)
    end

    -- This field cannot be renamed or the magical native code that detects rebuild bonuses breaks.
    prop.AssociatedBP = bp.Wreckage.IdHook or bp.BlueprintId

    return prop
end

And that value, as an example, is for the colossus the following (0.9):

Wreckage = {
    Blueprint = '/props/DefaultWreckage/DefaultWreckage_prop.bp',
    EnergyMult = 0,
-------------------------
    HealthMult = 0.9,
-------------------------
    MassMult = 0.9,
    ReclaimTimeMultiplier = 1,
    WreckageLayers = {
        Air = false,
        Land = true,
        Seabed = true,
        Sub = true,
        Water = true,
    },
},

And I think this is the same for all units, as that one line is matched in over 494 files and by sampling a few at random they are all related to the wreckage.

edit: I may have not completely understood your message @arma473 , apologies if this was not necessary.

sasin

@Psions said in Reclaim:

I don't think reclaim is the problem. If you want to push bases at little or no risk you just build megalith or shielded mobile artillery. People that complain about mass gifts are those who look at poor late game decision making and then say its bad.

The number one reason T4 units die on push is because of 0 air control and getting bombed.

The number one reason T3 Spam dies on push is that they walk into shielded T4.

As it stands for a defensive base the only broken thing is the T2 artillery as that counters mobile artillery significantly. T2 artillery is already very expensive though.

I'd suggest decreasing T2 artillery fire rate, increasing its dmg so the dps is the same, and making it more accurate. That way T2 artillery is still useful, as a firebase unit and defense against fatty, but its not so broken as to render Mobile artillery useless.

Buffing t2 mobile shields would also greatly assisting sieges.

Also if you are truly spamming t3 armies then why is it so hard to send t1 engi at the back of it to pick up the reclaim?

What happens is people (especially high rated players) are complaining cause they'rein a team game where some random unknown 1000 builds monkeys and feeds 20k mass at a time. The reason they want to remove reclaim is so they don't have to deal with unknown randomers making their life hard.

It has nothing to do with balance.

Reclaim massively rewards aggression as it means you get to reclaim some of the mass you spent on units to win an area, therefore recouping the investment cost. Without it, then to take map control is significantly more costly than it otherwise would be, and this actually favours turtling.

Could not agree with this more. This seems like an idea for a change in response to bad play. You should easily be able to be sending engies while you're on offense to pick up reclaim along the way. People not doing that is just a weird mistake/oversight.

People also shouldn't just faceplant their T4s directly into the enemy, which you see all the time, at least in ratings 1200-1900. Using T4s badly isn't a reason to nerf reclaim, it's a reason to use them better. It's also more interesting if T4s actually stay involved around the map for a while rather than being suicide attackers.

Lastly, the premise that t3/t4 reclaim is fundamentally different than t1 seems flawed to me. If t1 reclaim is healthy, then I'd argue it's the same basic situation. On t1 if you faceplant your whole army into your opponents base and fail at an assault, leaving him all of the reclaim, you likely just lost the game on that play as well. It may be more blatant and feel worse on t4, but 2-3k mass at t1 is just as important as 20k mass on t3/t4.

I think this is an idea to fix a problem that doesn't exist.

FtXCommando

To make a raid of 1 percy worthwhile, I essentially need to kill like 3 t2 mexes. To make a raid of 1 mantis worthwhile, I just need to get like 1 or 2 engies. I wonder why one sees more general raiding than another.

Psions

Actually you'd need to kill 1 capped t2 mex. Which is easier for a percy to kill than a mantis to kill a t1 mex.

t3 mex hp is too high.

arma473

@Psions said in Reclaim:

Azraeel, if you're trying to be "aggressive" by attacking the enem'ys main base and essentially raiding it, then the question is not about reclaim, reclaim is an afterthought. Attacking enemy's main base is not exactly "aggressive" gameplay. Aggressive gameplay is spending resources to gain map control. Attack an enemy's main is attempting to "end the game", which inevitably if you fail will yield certain benefits to the defend for a comeback. Its not really worth it, because you're targetting buildings that can be rebuilt instead of the COM which is what you should be targetting to end the game.

Let's unpack this.

It's not "aggressive" to attack the enemy at his strongest point? That's just not accurate. The word "aggressive" doesn't mean anything if it doesn't include a raid or assault on the enemy main base.

You wrote that attacking an enemy's base is not about reclaim. You wrote that reclaim is not a factor to consider when deciding to attack the enemy base. But you also write that an attack on the enemy's main base should ONLY be done as an attempt to end the game, and that an attack on an enemy's base, when it fails, "will yield certain benefits to the defend for a comeback." What are those benefits, other than reclaim? The only benefit that is guaranteed after a failed attack is reclaim.

It's just not true that a failed attack always means the attacker will have fewer units and therefore be vulnerable to a counter-attack. Hypothetically: I could attack your base with 20 tanks, kill 30 of your tanks and two factories, my tanks die, the attack ends. I now have an advantage in the total number of troops even though my attack failed (you lost 30 tanks + 2 factories, I only lost 20 tanks). In that situation, the only benefit to the defender is reclaim. But what a benefit it is. You can rebuild the 2 factories, scoop fifty (FIFTY!) dead tanks, the game is still going. Take away the reclaim and that attack would have been a major success for me.

Why should we only target commanders to end the game, and not target economy? That's not even true on dual gap. Why would anyone make a nuke if it was pointless to blow up buildings? ACUs can easily dodge nukes.

Your perspective is limited by more than just the fact that you only ever play 1 map.

Psions

Arma aggressive gameplay is rapid expansion and seeking for map control and raiding enemy expansions.

If you are attacking enemy main base that is not generally going to be a raid, that is more an attempt to end the game by crippling the opponent entirely, or killing his com. Reclaim is an afterthought, the big loss if you fail in such an endeavour is the huge amount of mass you invested into the attack.

Reclaim only matters in such endevaours insofar as if you attack like an idiot, you'll be feeding him wrecks, but this doesn't matter whether its t3 or t1, feed is feed. Its just more obvious with t3 and t4, as its a big chunk instead of loads of little chunks. If i fail a strat snipe with 20 strats there's about the same mass left as a monkey.

If you remove reclaim or significantly nerf it, there is less incentive to fight for map control at the t3 stage, as the investment required is just too high as per my previous posts.

TheVVheelboy

@Psions said in Reclaim:

Actually you'd need to kill 1 capped t2 mex. Which is easier for a percy to kill than a mantis to kill a t1 mex.

t3 mex hp is too high.

And with this you just showed how much you don't understand.

Percy is 1.3k mass and leaves 1.05k mass in reclaim. Meaning you need to deal at least 2.35k damage in mass if you lose it.

T2 mex is 900 mass and leaves 720 mass in reclaim not accounting for overkill and aoe, which in case of single percival shouldn't happen. Meaning that at the moment of killing mex you deal only 180 mass damage to your opponent.
Obviously even though it looks bad it's not as bad due to mass damage accumulating with time, but at 6 mass per second it is still gonna take a lot of time to make the percy raid worth while.
So sorry but killing single t2 mex is by no fucking means a good raid, even more if you lose percy in return...

And please, don't give me shit how you are gonna kill the reclaim when we both fully know that you aren't capable of doing it, not to say coming up with the idea of killing off the reclaim in enemy territory.

arma473

@Psions said in Reclaim:

If you are attacking enemy main base that is not generally going to be a raid, that is more an attempt to end the game by crippling the opponent entirely, or killing his com. Reclaim is an afterthought, the big loss if you fail in such an endeavour is the huge amount of mass you invested into the attack.

No. The reason people only attack an enemy base with intent to end the game is precisely BECAUSE they don't want to leave reclaim behind.

If I spend 400 mass to make a little army, and I attack your base, and I kill 600 mass worth of your stuff, that attack could be considered a failure. Not counting reclaim, there was a net 200 mass in my favor. But it would leave about 500-700 mass of reclaim, which means it's a net -400 to me. In general, net negative = bad attack and net positive = good attack.

(The only exception to this is if one team has a lot more income than the other team; in that circumstance, the low-income team can't rely on trades that are 10% more efficient to make up the eco difference. If Team 2 has 150 mass/second and Team 1 has 100 mass/second, then if team 1 is over and over again killing 10 enemy tanks for every 9 that they lose, that's just biding time until Team 1 loses. Whereas if both teams had 100 income, those trades could snowball into an unstoppable advantage for Team 1.)

And the ONLY reason it backfired was because of reclaim.

Take away the reclaim, and that would have been a successful attack (net positive mass for me).

If attacks like that brought success to the attacker, we would see more of them. People would not only attack an enemy base with the intention of destroying it entirely. People would be willing to attack an enemy base "just" to cause more damage than the cost of the attack.

Right now, if someone is trying to attack an enemy base "just" to cause more damage than the cost of the attack, they are primarily using low-cost units (light arty drop) or they are trying to do massive damage (corsairs to snipe all t2 pgens, the value of corsair reclaim will be less than the cost of a terrible power stall)

And the reason for this, it cannot be disputed, is the reclaim mechanic. If you take away reclaim, many attacks that would now be considered failures would be properly classified as success. And many attacks that now are considered to be successful would, without reclaim, properly be considered failures.

Here's the simple math:

Because of the 81% reclaim, the attacker is going to donate 50-80% of the mass of their attacking units (some reclaim will be destroyed during the fight), and the defender is going to recoup 50-80% of the mass that they lose (rebuilding on wrecks and again some reclaim can be destroyed in the fight).

If I attack you with 1k mass, and there was no reclaim, I would only need to do 1001 mass of damage for the attack to be worthwhile. With reclaim, if you're going to get 50% of the mass of my attacking units, now I need to do 1501 damage in order to make an attack by 1k mass of units worthwhile. Except out of the 1501 mass damage i did, it only costs you 750 to repair it. So really, I need to destroy 3001 mass worth of stuff in your base to make the attack worthwhile.

On my side of the ledger, I'm -1000 mass for the cost of the units
On your side of the ledger, you're -3001 mass for the damage done, but +1500 for the value of your own losses, and +500 for the value of my losses. Which means you're -1001 mass overall. If I'm -1000 in order to cause you to be -1001, that's a success for me.

But it's a VERY small success (just 1 mass worth). When you take into account the risks involved (my attack is not guaranteed to be a success, maybe it doesn't do as much damage as I hoped), risking 1000 mass of units for the chance to move the game 1 mass in my favor is actually a terrible investment.

So really, I shouldn't attack with 1k mass worth of units unless I have a very good chance to destroy 4k+ mass of your stuff.

If you take reclaim away, I can justify attacking with 1k mass of units in order to destroy 1001 mass worth of stuff in your base, or with a risk-reward analysis I would want a decent chance of destroying at least 1500 mass. So you can see that 81% reclaim makes a HUGE difference in what kind of attacks/raids on a base are good or bad.

Psions

@JusticeForMantis By that logic killing 2 t1 engi with a mantis is not sufficient cause of the reclaim.

Come on now. Also I said a capped mex, if you can read.

By all means make this change to reclaim, and you will see what I said holding true in 6 months time.