Author Topic: Outpost 2 Game Balancing  (Read 35881 times)

Offline Arklon

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #25 on: November 18, 2016, 05:41:23 PM »
Alternatively, increase the rare ore cost (only rare cost) of EMP missiles. Rare ore often takes the longest to acquire, thus, if missiles had a high rare ore cost, it would be prohibitively expensive to build lots of them.
It's actually really easy to constantly have a surplus of rare ore, even when making expensive Tiger armies. It's common ore that you run out of.

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Alternatively, like in StarCraft 1 with the nuke, produce a "dot" where the missile will land. Thus, the Eden player, will have an idea where it will land and thus can activate just those MDs.
Maybe.

Think of how the Basic Lab disappears from the build list after you build one
No, it disappears after you get the tech that enables Standard Lab.

Offline dave_erald

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #26 on: November 18, 2016, 06:53:09 PM »
...semantics


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Offline lordpalandus

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #27 on: November 19, 2016, 01:48:26 AM »
Hmm. Okay.

Other Balancing Suggestions:

- Remove ConVec Invulnerability when constructing a structure or in the very least make structures under construction take 2x damage. Having an earthquake hit a completed structure should do normal damage, but hitting an incomplete structure should cause much more damage to it. Or getting an RPG to a construction site should do more damage than if it hit a finished structure.

- Improve Garages by:
1) Increasing the rate of repairs by double.
2) Removing the repair cost.
3) Accelerate the animation for loading/unloading vehicles, so that it is much faster to load/unload a vehicle.
- Honestly, the design of the Garage was a bad idea considering the amount of micromanagement the player must do to repair a vehicle. Considering, at the time, C&C had the Service Bay which allowed repairing of vehicles by just driving onto the platform. So with this in mind:
1) Have vehicles automatically repair by just putting the vehicle on the loading pad. Thus, you don't need to fully load them into a slot and instead just have the repair on the outside of the structure. If you had multiple, wounded Tigers, it might make more sense to load them into bays, but a wounded lynx, should be able to repaired quickly enough outside that it wouldn't need to be loaded into a bay.

- Make tracked vehicles move fastest in un-bulldozed terrain, and have wheeled vehicles move fastest on bulldozed terrain. This way, Tigers would get a slight speed boost while travelling long distances, and lynxes would be able go quickly on the "roads" built within a colony. Tracked vehicles in real life generally move slower on actual roads and faster in unpaved areas as their treads can get traction. While also in real life, wheeled vehicles handle actual roads better and are slower in unpaved areas. Not sure on if it is implementable. While half-tracks move at a good pace on both roads and unpaved areas (ie ConVecs)

- Make it so that vehicles are disabled by an EMP missile for the same amount of time as being hit by an EMP turret. While, structures remain disabled for the extra period of time by an EMP missile. This way, the EMP missile would be less effective against vehicles, but remain fully effective against structures. Then the other player wouldn't need a MD-Creep line to get their forces to the enemy base.

- Make it so that any rocket/missile on a launch platform cannot be launched from a recently activated Spaceport. They can only be launched if the spaceport has been online for 10-15 seconds. This way, a Plymouth player with a lot of idled Spaceports with Missiles on them, wouldn't be able to instantly launch the missile unless the Spaceport was online for 10-15 seconds. The logic behind this is that, turning the power back on and sending the people back to the structure would still require some time to get everything turned on, activated, fuel pumped to rockets, other duties finished, etc.

All I gots for now.
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Offline Highlander

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #28 on: November 19, 2016, 05:07:14 PM »
Well, Sirbomber & Arklon - since my suggestion regarding adding missile heads are met with such strong opposition, why dont the two of you comment on my suggestions in regards to balancing Missiles ? It's in the 2nd post after all.


Also, the ESG suggestion you might want to consider Arklon, as it currently does not take all that much for an Eden player to punch a whole in anything Plymouth puts in the way.
Sure you can argue ESG units may fall back, but that also means Eden advances, and eventually you are gonna run out of space to withdraw. When the eventual battle happens, Acid Cloud will be close to twice as effective as ESG.
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Offline dave_erald

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #29 on: November 19, 2016, 07:28:53 PM »
Highlander has a good point about EMP missiles, I wonder if we can all agree on at least one change coming in the form of EMP missile management. Whether that be increasing cost or removing the ability to build more than one spaceport. Increasing the common ore cost per missile is probably the easier of the two to accomplish. Plymouth still gets to strategically use them, but not spam the other player to death

Lordpalandus, the bit about convec invulnerability while building, I've never been in that situation so I couldn't say one way or the other. And unfortunately, finding an effective use for the garage is just an act in futility without hacking the shit out of the game, if it were even possible. It's a good colony builder structure to have, but nill in multiplayer I think.


That just leaves two other things,

    1 - a Plymouth Assault Weapon upgrade say adding splash damage to RPG or extending its range possibly? (I am partial to both as the Thor weapon has a huge leg up late game)

...and 2 - offering EMP to Eden same time as sticky foam. It doesn't offer the corrosive damage that sticky does but it does allow Eden to have a early game immobilizing weapon at its disposal.


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Offline Arklon

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #30 on: November 19, 2016, 10:15:36 PM »
Well, Sirbomber & Arklon - since my suggestion regarding adding missile heads are met with such strong opposition, why dont the two of you comment on my suggestions in regards to balancing Missiles ? It's in the 2nd post after all.

Also, the ESG suggestion you might want to consider Arklon, as it currently does not take all that much for an Eden player to punch a whole in anything Plymouth puts in the way.
Sure you can argue ESG units may fall back, but that also means Eden advances, and eventually you are gonna run out of space to withdraw. When the eventual battle happens, Acid Cloud will be close to twice as effective as ESG.
I had skimmed that post and it was largely yet more StarCraft 2 forum-tier extremely biased suggestions. Some of them are reasonable, like Thor's/Rail Gun range, but on the whole it's a wall of text that amounts to "nerf Eden into the ground, give Plymouth huge buffs", which is laughable when Plymouth is broken in both the early and late game as it is thanks to Eden's weak early/pre-rare game and EMP missiles. I just can't take you seriously, especially not when you're now telling me Plymouth's strongest weapon (which is arguably better than Eden's equivalent once Tigers are in play) should also get a big buff. Plymouth's already very strong early game is going to be buffed by fixing the Stickyfoam upgrade bug as it is.

a Plymouth Assault Weapon upgrade say adding splash damage to RPG or extending its range possibly? (I am partial to both as the Thor weapon has a huge leg up late game)
Splash damage can't be upgraded by techs. In fact, it's not even stored per-player, so it would have to be a built-in change, which would be OP. A quick glance at the relevant code looked like it'd be a bit of a pain to hack in per-player splash damage values.

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offering EMP to Eden same time as sticky foam.
That would be OP, unless maybe the duration was very short (1~2 seconds or so). Stickyfoam doesn't prevent the other units from firing, whereas EMP does, which is a huge difference.

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I really wish we had a unit limiter the way Starcraft did it.
Yeah, one of the problems with balancing OP2 is units don't have variable supply costs, everything is just 1 off of the vehicle limit.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2016, 10:26:18 PM by Arklon »

Offline Sirbomber

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #31 on: November 19, 2016, 11:01:11 PM »
Highlander: I'm going to be blunt here.  You are not providing constructive suggestions.  You're clearly showing Plymouth favoritism as you want to nerf Eden and buff Plymouth, when I think the vast majority of the active player base would tell you Eden is the underpowered colony.  The purpose of balancing is not to make the faction you like to play as more powerful.  Our goal here is to make both colonies unique with their own flavor and style, but on even ground from a competitive point of view.

You have suggested making RPG more powerful (it already out DPS's Rail Gun) and giving it splash damage (as if Plymouth doesn't have enough options for splash damage already) with the justification Plymouth needs it to deal with players entrenched behind walls and Guard Posts - a tactic that I have never seen in my years of high-level play, because it's not viable and a waste of money.  Even if that was a situation that happened, you need to look at how that change would effect the game outside of that one situation.  RPG is a medium-high damage, high rate-of-fire weapon that is a mainstay of Plymouth armies.  Giving a weapon like that splash damage is going to have an exponential effect, allowing Plymouth to decimate armies with relatively little effort.  And although RPG maintains its effectiveness into the late game, it becomes available in the early/mid game.  Eden won't be able to answer that.

You want to buff Rail Gun range, but at the cost of nerfing Thor's Hammer, with the justification that this will make players have to build Rail Guns instead.  This change would not benefit Eden at all; instead you're just making their only decent weapon worse.  This is another suggested change that clearly favors Plymouth.

You also say ESG needs to be buffed, when it can already take off 1/3 of a Lynx's HP in the blink of an eye.  You complain that you can kite with ESG but eventually you run out of room to kite and get overwhelmed.  So basically, your complaint here is, sometimes a few ESG's isn't enough to kill an entire army, and you think that's unfair.  I will not waste my time responding to that argument, because it's absurd.

The only bone you're throwing Eden is assistance in the early game by giving Laser some extra range - which can be completely nullified by a single shot from StickyFoam.  At best, this will force Plymouth players to hold off their rush for a few extra seconds while StickyFoam is researched.

You claim that the ease with which EMP Missiles are spammed is a problem (which it is) but the missile itself is fine - which is untrue.  I've said this dozens of times over the years: the EMP Missile is a superweapon, the only superweapon in the game, to which Eden has no answer.  As Arklon has explained, Eden can (unreliably) defend against missiles, at great expense and operational cost, but they cannot retaliate with their own superweapon.  And not only do you want to not do anything about this, you want to make missiles more powerful, by giving the option to create missiles that can deal a huge amount of damage, hitting anywhere on the map.  In what world is this fair?  What balance problem does this solve?  How would you feel if we gave Eden, say, Acid Cloud Missiles?  I want you to imagine you being forced to watch as missile after missile lands on your Command Center, slowly watching its HP fade away, and you being powerless to do anything about it.  Does that sound fun to you, Highlander?  Didn't think so.

Frankly, based on the rest of your suggestions, it sounds like you don't actually want to ever have to engage the enemy army - you just want to be able to sit back and watch the other player die without them ever being able to land a hit on you.  And if that's what you want, there are plenty of colony games where you can watch the AI clumsily die all over your impenetrable defenses.  But the rest of us are here to make multiplayer fair, competitive, and fun.  If you're not willing to help with that, please just extricate yourself from the conversation.

lordpalandus: Making ConVecs vulnerable during building construction would be tough I think from a technical standpoint - as far as I know, the structure is linked to the ConVec building it but the reverse is not true.  If you delete or otherwise remove/destroy the ConVec during construction, the structure will happily continue to build as if nothing happened.

Dave: I've thought about giving Eden EMP around the time Plymouth gets StickyFoam in the past, and it's tempting, but I worry that it's too powerful for an early-game weapon.  But this might be something worth further testing and experimentation.  Perhaps we should start working on a test map/test techtree to see how much of an effect some of these changes actually would have on the game.
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Offline dave_erald

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #32 on: November 20, 2016, 11:38:40 AM »
So can we agree that there could maybe be two things we can start testing now?


Increase common ore cost to build EMP Missiles => reduce EMP missile spamming (it doesn't impair the ability of the opponent to build multiple spaceports and launch multiple missiles, what it does is causes that person to moderate supplies better forcing less use of the missile)

Give EMP to Eden same time as Plymouth Sticky => counteract how aggressive sticky is early game. Secondly, giving EMP to Eden early means you could give Scorpion sooner and a small researchable speed upgrade as well thus bringing the less used Scorpion back into the game.


And late game would need something adjusted to help Plymouth, Highlander is right in saying Plymouth needs assistance here, but not too much really, and that could come in the form of strengthening something on Plymouth side or reducing something on Eden side.



How about this for later testing
=> increase Rail distance/decrease dmg slightly, and reduce Thor distance.
=> add splash damage to RPG

Thor still maintains its punch and it's splash damage which is huge (32 splash radius, 260 dmg and a refresh rate faster than EMP) so have the firing distance equal to ESG or as close as you can get (ESG distance is 5 so make Thor distance 5 which is all before the distance modifiers supplied by research upgrades). This way retreating ESG tanks can let advancing tanks get chewed up by mines like usual, versly if you try using RPG/EMP tanks to advance that running into a wall of Thor tanks will still prove deadly.

Increasing Rail distance makes this weapon viable late game rather than being forgotten about. Means you can snipe at entrenched EMP/ESG Tanks slowly wittling them away (the thought of this makes me moister than an oyster). Remember that RPG is a 60/40 damage weapon where as Rail is 80/40 so maybe reduce Rail dmg to 60/40?. How about adding splash damage to RPG as a research upgrade same time as Acid Cloud shows up? This would offset the distance advantage of Rail and make up for what Acid Cloud does for Eden. Less damage from Rail means you can still rush them with Sticky lynx and then clobber them with RPG. One other bonus is this would help with the lynx/acid variant that is very good at a advancing/retreating attack tactic that is not always used but very infuriating to deal with.

Both of these last game changes really helps to distinguish the two factions from eachother => Eden as a more technologically advanced nation, and Plymouth as a scrappy ground and pound, explosive, gritty, hardy nation. You can see that influence with the Reinforced Residence, Supernova weapon, Rocket Propelled Grenade, ElectroStatic Grenade mines

Bomber let me look at the tech tree again and then we can start drawing some tests up.



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Offline Highlander

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #33 on: November 20, 2016, 11:45:21 AM »
I had skimmed that post and it was largely yet more StarCraft 2 forum-tier extremely biased suggestions. Some of them are reasonable, like Thor's/Rail Gun range, but on the whole it's a wall of text that amounts to "nerf Eden into the ground, give Plymouth huge buffs", which is laughable when Plymouth is broken in both the early and late game as it is thanks to Eden's weak early/pre-rare game and EMP missiles. I just can't take you seriously, especially not when you're now telling me Plymouth's strongest weapon (which is arguably better than Eden's equivalent once Tigers are in play) should also get a big buff. Plymouth's already very strong early game is going to be buffed by fixing the Stickyfoam upgrade bug as it is.

Well, in the same post I also offered some suggestions to mitigate Missile Spamming - thereby trying to reduce the effectiveness of Plymouth late game.
My arguement is that without Missiles Plymouth will lose to Eden due to Eden's weapons superiority.

ESG < Acid Cloud when it comes to Tigers. Put 1 ESG Tiger and 1 Acid cloud tiger up against each other and see which one comes up on top.
Sure ESG can pull back and let Eden come to then, but when it comes to offensive play or when making a defensive stand at 1 location Acid Cloud will win out because ESG cannot pull back.



Highlander: I'm going to be blunt here.  You are not providing constructive suggestions.  You're clearly showing Plymouth favoritism as you want to nerf Eden and buff Plymouth, when I think the vast majority of the active player base would tell you Eden is the underpowered colony.  The purpose of balancing is not to make the faction you like to play as more powerful.  Our goal here is to make both colonies unique with their own flavor and style, but on even ground from a competitive point of view.

Interesting that both you and Arklon claim I am showing Plymouth favoritism when I haven't played that colony since the days rushing was fun.
Otherwise I agree with your goals - it's just that we (obviously) disagree when it comes to how.

You have suggested making RPG more powerful (it already out DPS's Rail Gun) and giving it splash damage (as if Plymouth doesn't have enough options for splash damage already) with the justification Plymouth needs it to deal with players entrenched behind walls and Guard Posts - a tactic that I have never seen in my years of high-level play, because it's not viable and a waste of money.  Even if that was a situation that happened, you need to look at how that change would effect the game outside of that one situation.  RPG is a medium-high damage, high rate-of-fire weapon that is a mainstay of Plymouth armies.  Giving a weapon like that splash damage is going to have an exponential effect, allowing Plymouth to decimate armies with relatively little effort.  And although RPG maintains its effectiveness into the late game, it becomes available in the early/mid game.  Eden won't be able to answer that.
Well, with the current situation, Plymouth's weapons are still poorer than Eden's. Thors Hammer is stronger than RPG and Acid Cloud is stronger than ESG.
We can of course simply leave RPG as it is, but I'm just pointing out this will favor Eden quite strongly late game.
I also have years of high-level play. That has landed me on the conclusion that it is favorable to be able to commit more vehicles to a battle than your enemy can. Securing your base with walls and GPs makes sense as it free up vehicles. At least for Eden it does. The same strategy doesn't work for Plymouth.


You want to buff Rail Gun range, but at the cost of nerfing Thor's Hammer, with the justification that this will make players have to build Rail Guns instead.  This change would not benefit Eden at all; instead you're just making their only decent weapon worse.  This is another suggested change that clearly favors Plymouth.
It's not meant to be directly beneficial to either colony, it just an idea to make Rail Gun have it's own niche, rather than not being utilized at all.

You also say ESG needs to be buffed, when it can already take off 1/3 of a Lynx's HP in the blink of an eye.  You complain that you can kite with ESG but eventually you run out of room to kite and get overwhelmed.  So basically, your complaint here is, sometimes a few ESG's isn't enough to kill an entire army, and you think that's unfair.  I will not waste my time responding to that argument, because it's absurd.
No, my complaint is Acid > ESG, and eventually when a Plymouth and Acid army clashes Acid will win out.
Never did I mention I want anything to be overpowered.
Anyways, lets agree to disagree. I prefer playing Eden anyways, so this will just work in my favor :)


The only bone you're throwing Eden is assistance in the early game by giving Laser some extra range - which can be completely nullified by a single shot from StickyFoam.  At best, this will force Plymouth players to hold off their rush for a few extra seconds while StickyFoam is researched.
No, it is not nullified that easily, because 1) Plymouth no longer has the possibility to outdistance GP's & 2) Lasers now gain the ability to outdistance Micro's, forcing Plymouth on the defensive initially (Before getting Sticky's). Also with the added range it will become more pushing and pulling between Sticky and Lasers since both can shoot eachother. I also suggested removing Sticky Foams damage to structures (Or structures and Vehicles both)
If you read I also suggested decreasing cost of Lasers that would add strength of nubers compared to Micro's better damage.


You claim that the ease with which EMP Missiles are spammed is a problem (which it is) but the missile itself is fine - which is untrue.  I've said this dozens of times over the years: the EMP Missile is a superweapon, the only superweapon in the game, to which Eden has no answer.  As Arklon has explained, Eden can (unreliably) defend against missiles, at great expense and operational cost, but they cannot retaliate with their own superweapon.  And not only do you want to not do anything about this, you want to make missiles more powerful, by giving the option to create missiles that can deal a huge amount of damage, hitting anywhere on the map.  In what world is this fair?  What balance problem does this solve?  How would you feel if we gave Eden, say, Acid Cloud Missiles?  I want you to imagine you being forced to watch as missile after missile lands on your Command Center, slowly watching its HP fade away, and you being powerless to do anything about it.  Does that sound fun to you, Highlander?  Didn't think so.
I already suggested increasing cost of Missiles and increasing the time between Launch & Impact of missile. (And for Sticky removing damage to Structures or Structures & Vehicles both))
Neither Sticky (If removing Vehicle damage, then none in Sticky's case) nor ESG will deal huge amounts of damage. Sticky will stop vehicles in their tracks. ESG's will only hurt if you drive on the mines. Sit still and damage wont be that great.
Couple both of these missiles with my suggestions toward increased cost and increased Launch/Impact time and I think it could be an interesting option.
The key here is to balance these toward cost so that it adds diversity rather than being overpowering.
Of course Missiles damaging Structures is a bad idea. If you read my whole post coherently instead of picking out parts it might more sense.


Frankly, based on the rest of your suggestions, it sounds like you don't actually want to ever have to engage the enemy army - you just want to be able to sit back and watch the other player die without them ever being able to land a hit on you.  And if that's what you want, there are plenty of colony games where you can watch the AI clumsily die all over your impenetrable defenses.  But the rest of us are here to make multiplayer fair, competitive, and fun.  If you're not willing to help with that, please just extricate yourself from the conversation.
Frankly, there is no need to keep this tone throughout your posts. Like you, I am simply offering my viewpoints on balancing.
You are of course free to disagree with my ideas, but this kind of response is rather uncalled for.
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Offline lordpalandus

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #34 on: November 20, 2016, 04:35:01 PM »
If you wanted to buff up Plymouth late game, encourage the player to build Supernovas. This seems to me, Plymouth's counter to the Thors Hammer Tiger; a fast unit with a massive explosive payload that can decimate several tigers in one blast.

I could understand the whole making Plymouth's weapons better against Guardposts/Walls, if the Eden player was encouraged to build them; they aren't. If Eden Guardposts increased the range of the weapon attached and allowed it to fire over walls, then I could see an Eden player spamming guardposts and walls, and thus then Plymouth would need a counter.

As for the EMP Missile, lore-wise (campaign), Plymouth at that time had very little resources and thus the purpose of it was to disabled the Eden Spaceport to get the RLV so that they could finish up their starship faster. It wasn't meant to be a weapon that could be spammed easily. Factions in the campaign also only ever had one Spaceport and huge resource constraints. Thus, if we wanted to make things balanced, I'd say restrict both players to a single Spaceport. That way EMP Missiles become a strategic one-off weapon for dealing a strategic blow, while the majority of your tanks do the brunt of the work, rather than a spammable "cheesy" tactic.

For the ESG, is it possible to keep laid mines active until destroyed? I recall that ESG mines eventually disappear, and a way to make ESG a little more powerful, would be to keep the mines active until something ran over them. Thus, the Plymouth player could funnel enemies by keeping several active minefields and force them to either go down the path they wanted or take huge damage crossing the minefields. That is one way of buffing the ESG without modifying its damage or other abilities.

For the RPG, the only situation where I'd agree to give RPG splash damage is if RPG had a minimum range. Thus, it could have splash damage, but not be able to hit targets within range of 1-2. So, any short-range unit, ie Laser, could decimate an RPG by getting within its minimum range but still be in trouble if grouped up with multiple units at a distance.

Another way to buff Lasers instead of touching its damage/range is to reduce the cost of Lasers. So if a Microwave Lynx cost 750, a Laser Lynx may cost 600. In a one-to-one battle, Microwave would still win, but as Eden could field more Laser Lynxes, it might be able to counter superior damage with superior numbers.

EDIT:
A way to buff Railgun without affecting it's damage is to allow a projectile to fully travel its range hitting all targets in its path. So if there is 3 lynxes in a row, the railgun hits all 3 if they are all within range.

I notice in these discussions of multiplayer, these things hardly ever come up concerning multiplayer play:
- Spider or Scorpion usage?
- Starflare usage by Eden?
- Starflare and Supernova usage by Plymouth?
- EMP usage by Eden?
- Guardpost usage at all?
- DIRT usage at all?
- Light Tower usage at all?
- Scout usage at all?
- Do players create extra bases or stick to a single base the entire match?

It seems to me that there is a lot of potentially useful units and structures in the game that are not directly related to morale that rarely get discussed in balancing conversations? Why is it? Are these ever used? If they aren't, why not? Perhaps balancing efforts should be more heavily directed at encouraging the usage of the above things, over messing around with the things that do frequently get used. Thoughts?
« Last Edit: November 20, 2016, 05:03:19 PM by lordpalandus »
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Offline Arklon

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #35 on: November 21, 2016, 12:33:40 AM »
Well, in the same post I also offered some suggestions to mitigate Missile Spamming - thereby trying to reduce the effectiveness of Plymouth late game.
My arguement is that without Missiles Plymouth will lose to Eden due to Eden's weapons superiority.

ESG < Acid Cloud when it comes to Tigers. Put 1 ESG Tiger and 1 Acid cloud tiger up against each other and see which one comes up on top.
Sure ESG can pull back and let Eden come to then, but when it comes to offensive play or when making a defensive stand at 1 location Acid Cloud will win out because ESG cannot pull back.
My testing with varying numbers of Tigers has the Acid Tigers surviving with 10~20% HP left (got the same results both with and without upgrades). But this is without moving at all, the worst case scenario for ESG. Factor in how there was so much "wasted" ESG damage in most of these tests, the fact that it affects a 45% larger area than Acid Cloud, and doesn't do friendly damage, and ESG is quite easily better in the general case. In the best case, where ESG is able to attack just ahead of the enemy army and the units in front take maximum damage from driving over all the mines rather than it bring spread over other units, ESG is far and away better than Acid Cloud. You act like you need half the map to retreat over before ESG becomes better, but you only really need maybe 5-10 or so tiles, if that. It's also worth mentioning mines on the ground do stack multiple times on a tile, but I'm not sure what the limit is other than it's at least enough to one-shot a Tiger.

As far as missiles go, there's a reason we're only talking about nerfing them rather than removing them from the game.

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Well, with the current situation, Plymouth's weapons are still poorer than Eden's. Thors Hammer is stronger than RPG and Acid Cloud is stronger than ESG.
Comparing RPG to Thor's Hammer is comparing a common ore-only mid-game weapon to an end-game rare ore-requiring weapon. And Plymouth's weapons being worse than Eden's - really? Aside from Thor's Hammer, that's absolutely not true.

Laser is much worse than Microwave, mostly because Heat Dissipation Systems comes much earlier for Microwave, but even with all upgrades Microwave Lynx beat Laser Lynx. At the very least, Heat Dissipation Systems needs to be available at the same time for Eden as it is for Plymouth. Laser Panther/Tiger vs. Microwave Panther/Tiger has the Laser winning, but that's not an engagement you'll ever see, and those chassis are irrelevant anyway when the main concern with those weapons is the early game. Lasers probably need a damage buff to make them on par with Microwave unless we try giving Eden a weaker version of EMP earlier or something.

Eden's equivalent to RPG, Rail Gun, is handily worse - it can't shoot over walls, and (with upgrades) fires 20% slower while only doing 3% more damage. Rail Gun should get a range buff to compensate for not shooting over walls, and either a raw damage or rate of fire buff (I'm leaning towards the latter) so it has the same average DPS as RPG.

Eden has no answer to Stickyfoam.

I already talked about Acid Cloud vs. ESG, I disagree that Acid is necessarily better.

The state of EvP is basically, the Eden player just has to hold on for dear life with a consistently inferior army until Thor's units are finally out, and then pray he doesn't get missile spammed to death.


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I also have years of high-level play. That has landed me on the conclusion that it is favorable to be able to commit more vehicles to a battle than your enemy can. Securing your base with walls and GPs makes sense as it free up vehicles. At least for Eden it does. The same strategy doesn't work for Plymouth.
The problem with Guard Posts is they do quite a bit of damage to things next to them when they die, one-shotting Lynx. This means you can't use them to defend alongside your army, because they'll end up doing more damage to yourself than the enemy. It might buy some time and soften up the enemy a little bit, but that's about it. Nerfing Thor's range would make GPs more workable for Plymouth in EvP, but I'm also thinking the GP explosion damage should be removed.

As far as walls go, Laser/Microwave is actually the best weapon against those, but they might need late-game range upgrades to not just get killed by every GP around.

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It's not meant to be directly beneficial to either colony, it just an idea to make Rail Gun have it's own niche, rather than not being utilized at all.
But you also want to buff RPG range, so Rail Gun would still just be literally a worse RPG.

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No, it is not nullified that easily, because 1) Plymouth no longer has the possibility to outdistance GP's & 2) Lasers now gain the ability to outdistance Micro's, forcing Plymouth on the defensive initially (Before getting Sticky's). Also with the added range it will become more pushing and pulling between Sticky and Lasers since both can shoot eachother. I also suggested removing Sticky Foams damage to structures (Or structures and Vehicles both)
If you read I also suggested decreasing cost of Lasers that would add strength of nubers compared to Micro's better damage.
I've almost always seen Plymouth wait for some Stickyfoam before they push out, since it's not exactly long after Microwave tech. As far as "pushing and pulling", uh, that involves movement, the thing that Stickyfoam is specifically made to shut down.

Decreasing Laser cost wouldn't be very helpful because it still ties up your production just as much, and extra Vehicle Factories aren't cheap in the early game.

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Neither Sticky (If removing Vehicle damage, then none in Sticky's case) nor ESG will deal huge amounts of damage. Sticky will stop vehicles in their tracks. ESG's will only hurt if you drive on the mines. Sit still and damage wont be that great.
Couple both of these missiles with my suggestions toward increased cost and increased Launch/Impact time and I think it could be an interesting option.
The key here is to balance these toward cost so that it adds diversity rather than being overpowering.
Of course Missiles damaging Structures is a bad idea. If you read my whole post coherently instead of picking out parts it might more sense.
I saw that and it's still way too OP. EMP Missiles are the last thing that needs a buff, especially to that degree.


If you wanted to buff up Plymouth late game, encourage the player to build Supernovas. This seems to me, Plymouth's counter to the Thors Hammer Tiger; a fast unit with a massive explosive payload that can decimate several tigers in one blast.
Good luck with that, Starflares/Supernovas are clearly not skirmishers. They're exclusively used to snipe key structures, which I actually have seen a lot of.

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As for the EMP Missile, lore-wise (campaign), Plymouth at that time had very little resources and thus the purpose of it was to disabled the Eden Spaceport to get the RLV so that they could finish up their starship faster. It wasn't meant to be a weapon that could be spammed easily. Factions in the campaign also only ever had one Spaceport and huge resource constraints. Thus, if we wanted to make things balanced, I'd say restrict both players to a single Spaceport. That way EMP Missiles become a strategic one-off weapon for dealing a strategic blow, while the majority of your tanks do the brunt of the work, rather than a spammable "cheesy" tactic.
I'm not a fan of arbitrary limits like that.

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For the ESG, is it possible to keep laid mines active until destroyed? I recall that ESG mines eventually disappear, and a way to make ESG a little more powerful, would be to keep the mines active until something ran over them. Thus, the Plymouth player could funnel enemies by keeping several active minefields and force them to either go down the path they wanted or take huge damage crossing the minefields. That is one way of buffing the ESG without modifying its damage or other abilities.
That would be way, way, way too OP. You would only need a single ESG to defend.

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For the RPG, the only situation where I'd agree to give RPG splash damage is if RPG had a minimum range. Thus, it could have splash damage, but not be able to hit targets within range of 1-2. So, any short-range unit, ie Laser, could decimate an RPG by getting within its minimum range but still be in trouble if grouped up with multiple units at a distance.
That wouldn't work. Damaged units move slower, and short-ranged units would be taking damage before the RPG receives any, so the RPG would be able to move away from the other unit faster than it could keep up. Plus the RPG could just fire on a tile next to the attacker if it had splash.

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A way to buff Railgun without affecting it's damage is to allow a projectile to fully travel its range hitting all targets in its path. So if there is 3 lynxes in a row, the railgun hits all 3 if they are all within range.
That would make it better than Thor's. Too OP, especially for a mid-game common-only weapon.

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- EMP usage by Eden?
Not sure how you get the idea Eden doesn't use EMP. EMP becomes a core part of any army as soon as it becomes available.
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- DIRT usage at all?
In some of my survivor missions I made DIRTs give a slight amount of structure auto-repair, mostly to make scratch damage from electrical storms less of a pain to deal with.
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- Light Tower usage at all?
They need to give "enemy unit sighted" alerts like Scouts do.
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- Scout usage at all?
I've used them on maps like Pie Chart to alert me to Starflares or whatever being sent in through the back.
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- Do players create extra bases or stick to a single base the entire match?
It's always worth it to grab a second common ore mine, even if your first one is a 3 bar and the second is a 1 bar. Setting up a whole new self-contained base is a pretty huge investment, but on some big Land Rush maps you might get screwed out of nearby rare and don't have much of a choice.

That does bring to mind another really big balancing consideration, the maps themselves, specifically ore placement. La Corrida's ore is pretty balanced just because you're guaranteed so much of it (maybe too much), but Pie Chart is a total crapshoot that becomes a coin flip after the early game based on how RNG treated you as far as ore on the outer edges of the map goes. Randomized resources really shouldn't be a thing in competitive play.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2016, 01:47:22 AM by Arklon »

Offline lordpalandus

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #36 on: November 21, 2016, 12:35:30 PM »
Interesting that you say that Starflares/Supernovas are only used for sniping structures. In campaign, I loved using them to blow up multiple units at once. Two starflares attacking one unit, is usually enough to blow up several panthers, if they are close together. And that is a much more economical way of dealing with large mobs of units. EMP em, then send in the Suicide units. I suppose it may be that I'm just more used to the concept of suicide units being used effectively, as I also really enjoyed them in Dark Reign 1/2 (which was released around the same time).

I'm generally also not a fan of arbitrary limits either, but in most games there is an effective countermeasure that always works reliably. In C&C Tiberium Sun, an effective counter to the Mammoth MK II are Banshees or for the Cyborg Commando are Orca Bombers. In Supreme Commander, anyone can build nukes, but anti-nukes are faster to build and cheaper to mass produce. If MDs properly worked, 10 times out of 10, and properly preventing missiles and meteors from making it to the ground, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. The reality is the MD is finicky, encouraging Eden to build multiples and build MD creep. Both spamming EMP missiles, spamming spaceports, and spamming MDs are cheesy tactics. Either EMP Missiles should be limited in some way or removed entirely... much like No Super Weapons mods in C&C games. When you think of Super Weapons in the two games I listed (C&C and SupCom), in C&C you can only have a single super weapon with an extremely long cooldown on the weapon making it a strategic weapon, while in SupCom a single strategic nuke costs about the same as 2-3 UEF Fatboys and takes about 5x as long to build, whereas the anti-nuke costs less than 1 Fatboy and can have two built in the time it takes to build a strategic nuke. Superweapon logic dictates that the weapon should be strategic and only used sparingly to prevent abuse and cheesy tactics. The EMP is a superweapon, and there is no reliably effective tactic to counter EMP missiles. If Eden say, had a mobile MD unit that had a short-range (4-5 range) attack that could shoot down missiles, then maybe you wouldn't see MD Creep. The EMP missile in Multiplayer is unbalanced because in the campaign you couldn't spam them due to resource cost and colonist requirements... these do not exist in Multiplayer... hence why I'm suggesting a limiting of spaceports. Alternatively... if you could set it where a spaceport can only fire an EMP missile once per 5 minutes, that could help to reduce EMP missile spam, as the player would have to have an ungodly number of spaceports to spam them.

For the ESG comment. No, you'd only need one to re-lay the mines. But if the enemy pushed your position, you'd need more than one ESG unit. Why take the clear path when a tiger can absorb some of the mines to clear a path for the other units to punch a hole through your defenses. No, you'd still need multiple ESGs to discourage players from doing that. This change would make the ESG more a defensive unit than an offensive unit, as the ESG isn't really designed to be a combat unit. This change would help to support them in their role. If permanent mines is too OP then double the duration of mines so that they will fade out eventually.

The RPG example if there is splash damage, then that implies at least two units vs the RPG, as the other would be getting the splash damage. Most games with splash damage doesn't apply splash damage to the primary target, so in a one-to-one battle, splash damage wouldn't be applied. In a two-to-one RPG battle, one of the close range units would close the gap and get within minimum range, damage the RPG enough that it wouldn't be able to escape the more damaged one that was the primary target. But this change would allow multiple close range units to work together to close the gap, but would give RPG units an edge over multiple slower units too close to eachother.

Well, it was just a suggestion for Railgun. It would put the gun in its own niche if it had that effect. If you were afraid it would out-do Thors, then buff Thors damage for highest single target weapon.

Well, I've never seen Eden players use EMP, and when I play campaign, I don't bother with EMP either except to prevent units from moving while I get my Starflares into position. I'd rather build starflares and kamikaze them into a few units over temporarily stunning them... which honestly more often than not, just accidently EMPs my own units that are too close that then become Spider bait. If I'm Plymouth, I'll use EMP so that my Spiders and Scorpions can be used effectively... though hardly see those get used in multiplayer either. (I watch youtube videos of multiplayer for reference)

DIRTs provide auto-repair in Multiplayer? What? (Oh wait, you said your Survivor missions, never mind) In campaign they just reduce all structure damage including Guardposts, making them great for reducing the damage of enemy tanks attacking your buildings or reducing disaster damage.

Would Light Towers and Scouts see more usage if Fog of War was enabled, like it is in most games? Being that you can always see your enemy, scouting/recon is basically unneeded.

For Rare Ores, I find it most annoying when I build a structure, do the research and find out I built my Structure Factory on a 2-bar Rare. For multiplayer, has it ever been considered to have an EDWARD satellite always active for all players?




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Offline Arklon

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #37 on: November 21, 2016, 01:49:33 PM »
Interesting that you say that Starflares/Supernovas are only used for sniping structures. In campaign, I loved using them to blow up multiple units at once. Two starflares attacking one unit, is usually enough to blow up several panthers, if they are close together. And that is a much more economical way of dealing with large mobs of units. EMP em, then send in the Suicide units. I suppose it may be that I'm just more used to the concept of suicide units being used effectively, as I also really enjoyed them in Dark Reign 1/2 (which was released around the same time).
Comparing a (really bad) AI to actual players isn't a good comparison. In MP, your Starflares will get EMP'd/Stickyfoamed and die before they get close. One time I played against someone who did a Supernova-only troll build on a wide open map and even there his goal was to just get a couple past my defenses to kill my CC.

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If MDs properly worked, 10 times out of 10, and properly preventing missiles and meteors from making it to the ground, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. The reality is the MD is finicky, encouraging Eden to build multiples and build MD creep. Both spamming EMP missiles, spamming spaceports, and spamming MDs are cheesy tactics. Either EMP Missiles should be limited in some way or removed entirely... much like No Super Weapons mods in C&C games. When you think of Super Weapons in the two games I listed (C&C and SupCom), in C&C you can only have a single super weapon with an extremely long cooldown on the weapon making it a strategic weapon, while in SupCom a single strategic nuke costs about the same as 2-3 UEF Fatboys and takes about 5x as long to build, whereas the anti-nuke costs less than 1 Fatboy and can have two built in the time it takes to build a strategic nuke. Superweapon logic dictates that the weapon should be strategic and only used sparingly to prevent abuse and cheesy tactics. The EMP is a superweapon, and there is no reliably effective tactic to counter EMP missiles. If Eden say, had a mobile MD unit that had a short-range (4-5 range) attack that could shoot down missiles, then maybe you wouldn't see MD Creep. The EMP missile in Multiplayer is unbalanced because in the campaign you couldn't spam them due to resource cost and colonist requirements... these do not exist in Multiplayer... hence why I'm suggesting a limiting of spaceports. Alternatively... if you could set it where a spaceport can only fire an EMP missile once per 5 minutes, that could help to reduce EMP missile spam, as the player would have to have an ungodly number of spaceports to spam them.
Removing EMP Missiles would make Plymouth late game underpowered. Limiting them to one every 5 minutes would also make them pretty bad. A mobile MD would probably be too good.

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For the ESG comment. No, you'd only need one to re-lay the mines. But if the enemy pushed your position, you'd need more than one ESG unit. Why take the clear path when a tiger can absorb some of the mines to clear a path for the other units to punch a hole through your defenses. No, you'd still need multiple ESGs to discourage players from doing that. This change would make the ESG more a defensive unit than an offensive unit, as the ESG isn't really designed to be a combat unit. This change would help to support them in their role. If permanent mines is too OP then double the duration of mines so that they will fade out eventually.
You realize enemy players can't see the ESG mines, right? And ESG mines stack, so a single ESG laying mines would be one-shotting Tigers all over the place. Horrendous idea.

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The RPG example if there is splash damage, then that implies at least two units vs the RPG, as the other would be getting the splash damage. Most games with splash damage doesn't apply splash damage to the primary target, so in a one-to-one battle, splash damage wouldn't be applied. In a two-to-one RPG battle, one of the close range units would close the gap and get within minimum range, damage the RPG enough that it wouldn't be able to escape the more damaged one that was the primary target. But this change would allow multiple close range units to work together to close the gap, but would give RPG units an edge over multiple slower units too close to eachother.
I don't see how that theorycrafting is supposed to add up. You realize players can manually target them and don't have to just go with whatever target was automatically picked?

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Well, it was just a suggestion for Railgun. It would put the gun in its own niche if it had that effect. If you were afraid it would out-do Thors, then buff Thors damage for highest single target weapon.
Okay, as if your ideas weren't already frankly ridiculous, now they definitely are. At this point in the thread, every single thing that definitely doesn't need a buff has been suggested to be buffed.

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Well, I've never seen Eden players use EMP, and when I play campaign, I don't bother with EMP either except to prevent units from moving while I get my Starflares into position. I'd rather build starflares and kamikaze them into a few units over temporarily stunning them... which honestly more often than not, just accidently EMPs my own units that are too close that then become Spider bait. If I'm Plymouth, I'll use EMP so that my Spiders and Scorpions can be used effectively... though hardly see those get used in multiplayer either. (I watch youtube videos of multiplayer for reference)
Then you're not playing good players, that's the long and short of it. EMP is extremely important. Again, comparing the campaign to MP is a non-sequitur, the AI is so bad you can do things like distract huge attack waves with a single scout forever, no human player would be dumb enough to do that.

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Would Light Towers and Scouts see more usage if Fog of War was enabled, like it is in most games? Being that you can always see your enemy, scouting/recon is basically unneeded.
Fog of war would make MP much better, but it'd be a very complicated hack.

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For Rare Ores, I find it most annoying when I build a structure, do the research and find out I built my Structure Factory on a 2-bar Rare. For multiplayer, has it ever been considered to have an EDWARD satellite always active for all players?
You could make an argument for rare ore beacons being visible before researching the tech to mine them, but free EDWARD? Really?
« Last Edit: November 21, 2016, 03:43:31 PM by Arklon »

Offline dave_erald

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #38 on: November 21, 2016, 02:19:28 PM »
How about this,

Laser Buff to match Microwave.
Acid early, same rate of fire and distance as sticky, same dmg, remove rare ore cost.

Acid is not near same as Esg or Sticky but the area effect can be the same or its close, and this way you are not giving Eden a vehicle disabling weapon early.

And common ore increase for Emp Missiles still sounds like the only option to me
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Offline Arklon

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #39 on: November 21, 2016, 03:11:31 PM »
Acid early, same rate of fire and distance as sticky, same dmg, remove rare ore cost.

Acid is not near same as Esg or Sticky but the area effect can be the same or its close, and this way you are not giving Eden a vehicle disabling weapon early.
Extremely OP. Even more OP than buffing Thor's Hammer.

Offline dave_erald

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #40 on: November 21, 2016, 03:17:02 PM »
Really? Even after slowing down rate of fire and distance?

Alright then. I will admit defeat
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Offline lordpalandus

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #41 on: November 21, 2016, 03:50:01 PM »
(Shrugs shoulders) And this is why I don't play multiplayer in a game that isn't designed for multiplayer.

SupCom anti-nukes are built faster and at a lower cost than nukes. Yes, both structures alone have a build rate of 10 I think, but if you put 10 T3 Engineers supporting an Anti-Nuke structure and 10 on a Nuke Structure, the anti-nukes will be produced faster and at a lower cost; the net consumption of resources per second is much less. If you don't use assistance, then no, you'll never get anything done in a good amount of time. Assisting provides immense benefit, if you are doing it right and have the economy to support it. With a strong enough economy, I have had 40 Support ACUs fill a Nuke Silo completely in less than 5 minutes... then I spammed nukes :P.

I did not know ESG mines stack.

Sure, people can manually target things with RPGs. But the level of micromanagement needed for that to micromanage each unit, is many magnitudes greater than even StarCraft 1.

Some humans are dumb enough, temporarily. If they see a lone unit moving on the minimap, they'll still take the time to see what it is. Can't assume its a scout afterall.

How would you have rare ore beacons visible without having the research completed already OR an EDWARD satellite? Are you seriously saying you enjoy running a surveyor to every single ore to check it when most players turn off all the other colony related stuff? I don't get it. You players hate the colony management but you love using surveyors?

Well suffice to say, I am obviously not qualified to help balance this game. So, I'll just excuse myself from these conversations now.
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Offline Sirbomber

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #42 on: November 21, 2016, 04:20:27 PM »
lordpalandus: If your area of expertise is in the colony management side, we would like to hear more of your ideas on that front.  I think the reason Arklon objected to "all players start with EDWARD" is 1) it lets you see not only what your ore is like, but also your opponent's, which is an unfair knowledge advantage you wouldn't otherwise have and 2) it also alerts you to imminent disasters.  I think a reasonable compromise might be to make rare ore beacons visible from the start of the game and to automatically reveal all beacons within a certain distance around your Command Center?

I understand your frustration with the constant "no no no" but try to understand how exasperating it might be for a multiplayer veteran to hear suggestions for combat unit balance from someone whose only experience is against the AI, which is inept at building effective armies and unable to effectively use the units it does have.
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Offline Arklon

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #43 on: November 21, 2016, 06:08:30 PM »
SupCom anti-nukes are built faster and at a lower cost than nukes. Yes, both structures alone have a build rate of 10 I think, but if you put 10 T3 Engineers supporting an Anti-Nuke structure and 10 on a Nuke Structure, the anti-nukes will be produced faster and at a lower cost; the net consumption of resources per second is much less. If you don't use assistance, then no, you'll never get anything done in a good amount of time. Assisting provides immense benefit, if you are doing it right and have the economy to support it. With a strong enough economy, I have had 40 Support ACUs fill a Nuke Silo completely in less than 5 minutes... then I spammed nukes :P.
Assist in general was nerfed in the expansion, and it was especially heavily nerfed for nukes and anti-nukes where they deliberately made assist do almost nothing. Pre-expansion, you only needed a couple factories, and you could pump out nukes and anti-nukes in a matter of seconds if you had the economy to support it (which was easily achieved since T3 Mass Fabricators and SCU Resource Allocation System were also really OP in the vanilla game, though I don't like how the former got nerfed into the ground), so it was nerfed for good reason.

I think the reason Arklon objected to "all players start with EDWARD" is 1) it lets you see not only what your ore is like, but also your opponent's, which is an unfair knowledge advantage you wouldn't otherwise have and 2) it also alerts you to imminent disasters.
Exactly. Although if we rebalance some of the maps to have static and symmetrical resource distribution, there wouldn't really be any guessing what ore your opponent has.

Offline dave_erald

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #44 on: November 21, 2016, 06:28:06 PM »
And on that note, how does base/ore balancing play in your mind?

One great common ore to start and small crappy ones outside your base?

One sorta okay common and rare at your location, and one great common and great rare ore further out?

Or a bunch of mines at your start and piss on the rest of the map?

I think option number 2
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Offline lordpalandus

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #45 on: November 21, 2016, 06:33:52 PM »
@Sirbomber; Alright, then I'll focus on colony management then... probably make a different thread as this one is about combat balance.

@Arklon; It is true that assisting was nerfed a fair bit with Forged Alliance, compared to Vanilla. However, assisting can be still quite effective. Just need 100 T3 engineers instead of 50? (I believe they nerfed their build rate by 50%) to accomplish the same thing. Alternatively, have those T2 built support towers used to assist instead (for the UEF) of Engineers. My monkeylord rush strategy (build a monkeylord within the first 5 minutes of gameplay) still works in Forged Alliance, though I do need a bit more time before I can field one (6-7 minutes). Generally only gets to the "nuke" stage if its a 20x20+ sized map as it just takes too long to get most units from one end to the other in a timely manner. 
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Offline Arklon

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #46 on: November 21, 2016, 06:36:36 PM »
@Arklon; It is true that assisting was nerfed a fair bit with Forged Alliance, compared to Vanilla. However, assisting can be still quite effective. Just need 100 T3 engineers instead of 50? (I believe they nerfed their build rate by 50%) to accomplish the same thing.
That's the "nerfed in general" part, but it was additionally much more heavily nerfed specifically with nukes/anti-nukes.

Offline dave_erald

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #47 on: November 23, 2016, 01:49:45 PM »
So if we were to change a few small things what would be the best way of distributing test versions,tracking and testing?

Would it be worth adding a section to the OP2 page under the download section showing a test version and a list of instructions/changes?

EDIT => one more thought, would it be possible to depleting ore deposits? Or rather faster than is current or change it to be complete depletion?
« Last Edit: November 23, 2016, 01:59:07 PM by dave_erald »
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Offline Hooman

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #48 on: December 01, 2016, 04:30:08 AM »
You could change mines.txt and set the final amount to 0 to create a mine type that will become depleted. You'd probably want to increase the number of truckloads before it reaches that point. Of course such a change affects the game globally, and I suspect trucks will continue to harvest but carry 0 ore. Might be worth testing.

Distributing stuff for testing is pretty ad-hoc right now. I have no advice to give, though I suspect Sirbomber or Arklon might have some insights.

Offline leeor_net

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Re: Outpost 2 Game Balancing
« Reply #49 on: December 01, 2016, 09:46:33 AM »
Well suffice to say, I am obviously not qualified to help balance this game. So, I'll just excuse myself from these conversations now.

This conversation isn't intended to be heated or to put anybody down. What we're talking about here are two completely different game types. The single player game and the multiplayer games. They have different dynamics so what you're suggesting is reasonable from a single-player point of view.

This conversation is supposed to be fun. Try not to take things personally -- they aren't personal.

lordpalandus: If your area of expertise is in the colony management side, we would like to hear more of your ideas on that front.

... snip ...

I understand your frustration with the constant "no no no" but try to understand how exasperating it might be for a multiplayer veteran to hear suggestions for combat unit balance from someone whose only experience is against the AI, which is inept at building effective armies and unable to effectively use the units it does have.

Thank you, Sirbomber, for explaining the other side of it. I'm personally not a multiplayer veteran, not lately anyway, which is why I've been somewhat quiet on the subject. I had little to offer except for the single player and my biggest issue has been the terrible AI as you stated. Would be nice to have something a little more effective -- is that something the mission developer has to do or does the game provide this?