ChronA

@alre That's odd. I've checked it again on my side and it is definitely working for me. The gazelle takes damage from every shot, hits and misses. So to try to figure this out, a few questions: Are you sure the gazelle isn't taking damage? If it was very far away the arrow might have a very long flight time before the hit registers. Also, if the gazelle is very far away the damage falloff will reduce the damage to low single digits. (At max range each arrow should only do 5 damage, if he is shooting beyond his max range--because that is something units can do when leading a target--it will be even less.) Were you using a citizen soldier archer, or a champion/hero archer? I didn't get a chance to propagate the changes to champions or heroes, so they can still miss. Do you have any other mods enabled in your load order? If so, try disabling them. Are you using the alpha 24 build, or have you upgraded to the a25 preview? I prototyped the mod from a24. Its possible a25 breaks something.

If you want to test this you will probably want to open up a text editor and make some adjustments. I put in the bones of an interesting balance concept with the infantry templates I included. However their main purpose was to demo some of the things one can do with the new features. Thus the ranged infantry in particular are a hodge-podge of different concepts. (Archers have fully deterministic accuracy with the maximum amount of damage falloff allowed. Slingers are fully spread-based with damage falloff starting at 50% of their max range, and skirmishers are 50% spread and 50% deterministic with no falloff.) For my own tastes I would probably drop the archer and skirmisher <AccuracyOverride> down to 0.3 and 0.4 respectively, then bump up the archer's <OptimalRange> to 20. To complete things for multiplayer testing, the changes would also need to be extended to cavalry, champions, and static defense buildings. I didn't have time to work on them yet. If anyone is especially interested in my take, I can probably dedicate a few hours tomorrow to whip a polished version up.

Okay! At some point I've got to stop playing with different stat values on my own and share this darn thing! This mod contains support for a deterministic damage model, via accuracy overrides and distance based exponential damage falloff. It also adds support for directional armor/resistance values. The included unit templates demonstrate the grammar for these features. (I think they also strike an interesting new balance between unit roles... but I'm biased obviously.) Let me know your thoughts. damage_mechanics_mod.zip

@Grapjas Ah, I see what you are saying. Yes, it is possible that my premise is flawed. I don't actually play competitively, so I am drawing from a biased sample of what vocal multiplayers are saying on the forums, and my own inferences from studying unit stats and casted matches. Perhaps I am looking at the wrong games, and in more even matchups people are rallying more. Still, I think it is still valid to acknowledge the merit of a patch that would encourage more volatile games.

Very true. And a good community can often salvage a flawed game by adopting rules of sportsmanship that counteract balance problems. But a craftsperson should strive to produce an ideal product regardless.

I did a bit of experimenting with modifying resource drop distances in A23. I didn't bother with auras or anything: just loosened the leashing on the am-I-close-enough-to-my dropoff-point-yet check. Unless that part of the code has received heavy modifications since then, it should not be hard to implement variable drop distances, and the performance hit should be very-small to non-existent.

Lower damage increases the opportunities for micro; increased damage gives more value to initial positioning. Low damage games have more tendency to snowball, as players will be more able to escape from bad fights before suffering significant damage. Personally I like micro opportunities, but I must say, EA already suffers from a problematic amount of snowballing. RTS is at its most interesting when there is a sustained back and forth (see AOE2 and SC BW). This requires the ability to either trap or immediately kill large numbers of units when they get out of position. EA's pathfinding doesn't really allow much trapping, so buffing melee DPS is probably the better option over all. Edit: But on the other hand, it might also be that slow, grindy fighting has become a staple of 0AD's identity. Changing it to prevent snowballing could alienate current players. In that case nerfing ranged DPS combined with other measures to reduce snowballing might be the better solution... in short, IDK.

If economic parity is adopted as a permanent fixture of the balance design, then yes, adding this feature to the code base would be a good investment of effort. However, my expectation is that this will only be a temporary condition. I'm hopeful (perhaps delusional is the better word) that in another 12 months or so--around release 28 or 29--the core archetypes and balance philosophy will have been refined to the point that they are broadly accepted as finalized. At that point balance discussion can productively move on to civ balancing and economic diversification. And then the skirmishers and the slingers can finally get their speed buffs (with compensatory eco and combat nerfs as necessary) and all will be well with the world again. Of course, besides my insane optimism about the 0AD's future development rate, this plan assumes that finding our desired role definitions for skirms and slingers is not predicated on them having some mobility advantages over archers. I think this is the heart of your concern... and you may very well be right. However I am not yet convinced enough to invest into a major coding project over it.

I support the uniformity of citizen soldier movement stats as a balance testing expedience, for the time being. It is much harder to evaluate which unit types are over or under performing in real games if you also have to account for variations in economic strength as a confounding variable. Would we have realized just how powerful the archer unit archetype is if slingers and skirmishers had retained their mobility driven economic bonuses? Once the project is in mid-to-late beta I will definitely be disappointed if variations in unit mobility are not reintroduced (along with plenty of other civ specific economic bonuses), but for now I think standardization is necessary to keep the project moving forward. I second this sentiment. Given the time period, the gameplay focus should absolutely be on melee infantry. The first thing we should try is (3) adding some inaccuracy to archers. It's what's already been patched in for A25 unless I'm much mistaken. Let's see how it works. If it falls short I think the next best suggestion is (4) damage drop off with range. As of today I've now got the code for this all working, although I'd like to brood on it one more day just to be sure there are no well hidden bugs. I don't like the idea of adding pierce armor to skims or slingers because it doesn't fit their game art and it's dubiously historical. I actually really like this concept. Unfortunately I can also imagine it being a huge PITA for code maintenance, so probably not something likely to win approval.

Indeed. assuming we can scale them all without remaking them (some cannot be imported in blender), which we cannot. And that sunk cost fallacy is precisely why I argue so loudly against adding more civs (and art assets in general) while the game remains in alpha. It is a bad situation when art assets start dictating what is possible in core gameplay and balance decisions. But it is what it is, and we are stuck with it. This very thread is a prime example. A lot of people want pikemen to fit into the role of the tank, but it simply does not fit their art direction. Moreover, the fact that each civ gets exactly one P1 melee infantry unit, and for some civs that one is a pikeman, prevents us from exploring some of the more interesting possibilities for diversifying their role: Making pikemen slow super-tanks doesn't work because (apart from not fitting their in game depiction) lowering their movement speed would nerf the economy of pike civs... Making them melee superiority with high hack resistance but low pierce armor won't work because it would make an anti-cav counter, which the pike civs depend on, too vulnerable to ranged infantry... etc. I don't want to point fingers. It seems to me that everyone working on this project does so out of genuine enthusiasm and good faith. But we should acknowledge that the art contributors, who appear to enjoy an privileged role in the governance of this project, are likewise culpable in an outsized fraction of its balance and gameplay issues. Maybe it is not unreasonable to ask those same contributors for some outsized efforts in service of solving those problems?

Like I've said elsewhere, halving the attack speed of ranged fighting assets (buildings included) would probably improve a lot of balance problems.

I can't actually argue against switching elephant attack damage from hack to pierce. I think that's an indictment of how arbitrary EA's damage types are, more than anything else. More importantly though, I argue that this issue is merely symptomatic of the deeper problem that we've been discussing elsewhere: you guessed it... ranged vs melee balance and static defense vs unit balance. Elephants would have a harder time killing rams if those rams were actually escorted by meat shield to their target. However, no one escorts their rams because there is no unit type with sufficient arrow resistance to dive against static defense and ranged fire support.

Drat, I was afraid that might be the case. Based on my experiments, I think "completely broken" is hyperbolic, but I was definitely seeing more problems with units getting stuck on things. I was hoping there was some other parameter that just needed to be tweaked. I guess it is more complicated than that. Sounds like you think there would be performance costs too? I must say that is disappointing. It's these kinds of unpolished little gameplay details that undermine the appeal of 0 AD to me. Perhaps another solution would be to scale down the models, but with the amount of art assets I'm guessing that would take months of continuous work.

Considering the other changes currently under discussion, I think adjustments to elephants and siege engines are premature. You are going to waste a lot of energy if you start designing solutions to problems that may not even exist any more by the time you implement them. (Or worse, you will create whole new sets of problems for yourself with too many degrees of freedom to know for sure what even caused them.) Better to take things slow and apply your work tactically.

Personally I would like it if <default><Clearance> in simulation/data/pathfinder.xml was bumped up to 1.5 from its current value of 0.8. Right now there are an awful lot of units clipping through each other in melee fights. Increasing the unit separation would make fights more readable, increase the importance of concavity, and would make the range differences of the melee unit types much more apparent and significant.

I'm happy to code in falloff damage as tool for modders to experiment with, but personally I don't think its going to end up being a good fit for EA or any of its spinoffs without major changes to unit AI. Right now ranged units want to start attacking enemies at maximum range, and they will stay at maximum range unless their enemies move towards them or their player orders them to move closer. That means, with damage falloff, ranged units default behavior will cause them to do minimum damage, and additional micro steps are required to make them become effective at their intended role. That would be fine for an RTS in the Blizzard style, but for Ensemble Studios style games (post AoK) I think low level players expect units can be left unsupervised without completely negating their combat performance. But, I could also be wrong about that! It might be a question of fine tuning parameters. I mean, technically the situation I just described already exists with the projectile-spread mechanic. However, either no-one minds, or spread is currently so small and units pack together so tightly that at normal engagement ranges that it's not an issue. Anyway... re: linear vs exponential model: I am leaning toward the exponential. I think elevation range bonuses (and target leading) is going to make linear damage falloff complicated. Exponential ironically should be simpler.

Hm, I could probably add on an "optimal range" option too without much difficulty... Make it so if the distance to the target is beyond the optimal range, the damage delivered is penalized (maybe linearly, maybe logarithmically). Combining that with <AccuracyOverride>1.0</AccuracyOverride> ought to give the behavior you want right?

I agree. I don't think the resilience of attributed to phalangites against ranged infantry had much to do with their gear. While its true that they were heavily armored, its not like heavy spearmen weren't wearing the exact same armor too, with the added advantage of a great big shield. Something worth considering is that in ancient battles, moral and intimidation were much, much more important than they are in modern warfare. Enemies were defeated, not by killing them to the last man, but by convincing them to break and run away. It could be the tight formation of pikemen made it harder to see the casualties inflicted by projectile attack than the looser formations used by other infantry types. Or maybe they were so hemmed in that it was impossible to turn and run away as an individual even if you wanted to. Regardless... I agree that the point is well made. The pikemen models in the game do not look they should by 25% more resistant to ranged attack than the spearmen. This is a case of art design saying one and gameplay saying another.

No. I'd prefer to keep things simple. The system I've set up adds an optional <AccuracyOverride> tag to <Projectile> in templates. If you wanted (for instance) a 20% chance for archers to always hit their intended target, you could set <AccuracyOverride>0.2</AccuracyOverride>. The other 80% of the time it would depend where the projectile lands. If there is no AccuracyOverride, it defaults to 0, and you get the current behavior.

There is no need to change projectile speeds. I am currently working on a script modification that will give support for 100% accurate projectiles (or any other percentage you want). It should be finished in a day or two.

I should state my bias: I don't like when games use attack multipliers to effect their counter networks. I think it makes it harder to construct balance analysis spreadsheets, and it stifles opportunities for creative emergent gameplay by reducing the relative importance of situational gameplay systems. However, I do agree with the plan @wowgetoffyourcellphone is proposing to copy from DE. It is well conceived. Is it within our scope to test a large, general melee-buff or ranged-nerf? I think it's a good idea, but would the community accept it? It would drastically rewrite the state of play. If we have a go, I vote for just doubling RepeatTime on all the ranged units. I really don't like the way that right now you can barely see the attack animations of ranged units because they play so fast. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone Good test, but I agree that 10 Athenian sword cavalry vs 10 Carthaginian archers and 5 spearmen might be the more relevant question. Even more so if the archers were hiding behind buildings, or put 4-6 towers around the archers and see if the cav can still get out alive.

Yes that was my general understanding too. I guess when you put it that way, since archers and slingers also favored broken ground as a natural defense against heavy infantry and cavalry, you could justly say that skirmishers are anti-ranged! However I still think you'd also be equally justified to call archers and slingers anti-skirmisher. (I believe that is called a paradox!) I wish there was a way to represent that terrain interaction systemically, instead of abstracting it out as a goofy damage multiplier bonus... that would sit with me much better. Also, this gives me an idea for a truly eccentric counter cycle: cavalry > skirmishers > archers/slingers > cavalry I doubt the community would accept that, since cavalry beat ranged infantry is like one of the ten commandments of RTS design... but it might be more historically accurate than the other way around.

You thinking an anti-ranged attack damage bonus like in AOK? Kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It seems a bit arbitrary and a bit ahistorical. I mean... IIRC this kind of skirmisher was sometimes used against other ranged infantry, but that seems like that's a case of fighting fire with fire for lack of water. Their gear wasn't really designed to counter archers or slingers, arguably the opposite, but they were nimble and expendable enough to do a job that no one else could, so that's how they were used. I guess you could simulate that by making them cheap, but that would scramble the economic balance. Right I forgot about that item in the changelog. Thanks for the correction.

Patch notes make good arguments in favor of regularized unit speeds, IMO. Unfortunately then I must conclude that BreakfastBurrito is correct: unless their speed or range is nerfed, the archer must remain the king of infantry. That limits their multiplayer-viable direct counters to cavalry, static defense turrets, and artillery engines. Personally I think that means job is done for archer and slingers. It's mainly on whoever is working on cavalry buffs to bring balance to the infantry types. Of course, if it transpires that the way to do that is nerfing all ranged units DPS or something there may be more work to do. The other thing that may be worth considering in the context of archers and ranged units though, is indirect counters. These would be units that can't hurt the archers but neither can the archers hurt them. Right now that's just rams right? But if you gave heavy infantry enough pierce armor they could also qualify. Buildings and static defense could also gain that relationship if you took away the archer's capture attack. Put those together and you could seemingly restrict archers to a much more niche role: skirmisher-slinger-and-villager hunter. That's a pretty radical concept, but maybe not outside our Overton window? Regardless, the main question remains: what role is the javelinist for? Right now it can't be anti-melee-infantry, because that is a job archers already do incidentally in their primary role as ranged superiority weapons. Making javelinist anti-cavalry would be too absurd! Anti elephant they already do, but is too niche. Maybe make them anti-building?

I agree with this. Slingers seem to be in an ok spot in A24, even if they are not as shiny as they were in A23. We could possibly discuss bumping up their range to equal or slightly exceed the archer's, based on historical evidence (with compensatory nerfs), but that should be a much lower priority for this thread than figuring out the javelinist's identity and the archer's counter cycle. I agree. Basically kiting and static defense (which in this context is both actively damage-dealing turrets and normal buildings and walls acting as pathing blockers) both greatly advantage the archer, breaking its intended counter cycles. Fix that and you fix a lot of what is wrong with the ranged unit lines. Question is: are these efforts meant to be part of that generalized fix you are alluding to, or separate?