BreakfastBurrito_007

its funny how geriatrix and some others seem to think everyone gets into trouble with @Norse_Harold so that must have caused vali/berhudar/felfeld to leave. This demonstrates a strong lack of self-awareness. No the common denominator among all of this is the same toxic players.

We should definitely play some water maps so we are forced to make ships to help inform the ship on ship balance. It probably won't be fun, but it would be good navy is balanced upon a27 release.

I'd like to be able to make scout ship in p1. I think given how long p1 usually lasts, having an opportunity to "rush" on water would be nice. I think the details of which ships are too op/ up in navy fights aren't clear yet, but definitely ships need to be be killing fishing ships faster. Currently the best way to kill fishing ships seems to be making multiple ram ships and one arrow ship. Since ram ships take all but 2 hp from fishing ships, you can task ram ships on different fishing ships and use the arrow ship to finish them off. As for the techs I think its nice to have potent techs that make an effect on a particular ship type, that way you actually choose which techs to get according to the naval strategy you are going for instead of just clicking almost everything like eco or land military techs.

Two variables are important for how the range precision affects overkill and unit performance. The ratio of range to target and target spacing (largest for archers), and firing period (biggest for xbows). These are not constant for ranged units so we can be sure that the change will affect some units more than others. I do agree that it will mainly be noticeable when battles are large and congested, but this is by no means a rare thing in 0ad. "on par" was in reference to the overall unit performance and not specifically the damage/walk speed values needed to achieve that parity, my apologies for not being clear.

I didn't suggest that either value has to be greater than or equal to corresponding slinger or skirm values. damage and walk speed are continuous variables here of course. Its good you bring up the crossbows because those are even more challenging to balance. I think real tabasco's thing with range precision could help them reduce overkill a lot.

@chrstgtrare you saying that archers are viable right now? Since sniping has been nerfed archers are now worse than they were before the melee rebalance. Its not a usage issue, people don't snipe because its simply not as effective. This is especially the case when you consider that melee units now do so much more damage and are worth killing. I understand being concerned with increasing walk speed of archers because that was one issue in a24, but there's been plenty of changes with turn times and acceleration since then so there's probably some walk speed increase that can work. @ChronA as for the walk speed, the eco buff it gives can only be as big as the speed buff that we give them. For example gauls already have skirms which walk the fastest, so the eco won't be this drastic change that you suggest.

There is widespread agreement that archers play poorly since the melee rebalance mod. Prior to the melee rebalance, archers were bad unless players sniped with them. The melee rebalance effectively nerfed the extreme combat value of killing ranged units first, and this affected archers disproportionately since sniping was necessary to make them useful. We can always simply add some damage to make the unit on par with slingers and javelins, but there are more creative options that could lead to a better gameplay result. reduce slinger/skirm projetile velocities (this is different to speeding up archer velocities) increase move speed for archers + whatever people can think of

It would be interesting to show cumulative idle time of barracks, stables, and maybe civic centers in the structures tab of the results statistics. It would help inform players on how they can improve in some areas, especially when deciding between 1 by 1 autoqueue or manual batch training. What do you think?

Thats not a valid comparison because crossbow units don't deal pass through damage. to be honest -50% would still be pretty long lol

I think a tutorial covering the basics is all that is needed. Sharing tips and tricks and helping each other learn is part of building a community

lmao welcome back!

This would make it so much easier to build or adjust muscle memory for using hotkeys. If you forget the hotkey or simply forget to use it you'll see the little "h" on the icon and be reminded of it.

Some people actually try to master challenging skills instead of just making the game easier. There's a lot of fun and re-playability in games where you can build skills to beat other players. I'm not against automated features, I just think that ANY automated feature should remain un-optimized so that direct management and application of skill can outperform the automated features. For example, people laugh at how inefficient autoscout is in aoe2. The devs would have an easy time making autoscout highly effective. The reason they don't is so that players can build multitasking and prioritization skills that come with manual scouting.

If I remember correctly this is true with some caveats. His conclusion was that 1 by 1 is most efficient by resources spent and earned by the units trained. However he didn't factor in that accumulating unspent resources is another cost of 1 by 1, at some point in real games (as opposed to a math scenario) it becomes considerably better to make batches of 2-10 so that you can spend resources faster. If you do this your bigger population will cause your eco score curve to be faster than someone doing 1 by 1 even if the 1 by 1 player is getting a better return on investment for each unit he makes. This is what makes progui so op because it makes sure all your resources are spent on the maximum AND most efficient production method (aside from the fact that you can completely avoid having idle time on your production buildings, which even the best players of 0ad can't eliminate).

That would obviously depend on how you implement it.

iphricates was very problematic, its good that there was a nerf. Now I do agree athens could use some other good heroes, and perhaps some justification for their champs coming out of a super expensive building. Also citizen spearmen counter cavalry perfectly well still so I wouldn't worry about that as of the new comm mod.

It was, I just checked it out. unless something went wrong with your installation?

The strategy is more effective for 1200-1400 players who can lessen the performance gap between themselves and a higher level player. This works to some extent even if they defending player has prepared for it because then their boom will be much slower compared to players of their same level. To be honest, its not very relevant to discuss this since the "chicken rush" as I call it seems to be just as effective now as before. Games are fun because of the skills and strategies that you learn to win. There's not much to learn about random arrows, because there is no player control over them. The goal of non-random building AI was to add another aspect of the game for the players to play. On a side note heres an interesting game where H.Herle managed to make archers look good: commands.txt metadata.json

I can't remember that one, but I tried another one against other good players and it worked just fine although I didn't keep all of my cav alive (boo hoo, its still ~60/9 across 4 players). Also there's no need to insult someone who rarely rushes. Thats a good point, I think the whole purpose of the change was to try find a better game mechanic that, if balanced could allow for better gameplay. Just because something is balanced doesn't mean there is no room for improvement. Mercs were balanced before a25 but they played pretty much exactly the same as normal CS, so people decided they could be improved and now they play an interesting role in 0ad games after an alpha of being imbalanced.

It’s true that the building ai was better balanced before the mod, but it was very underdeveloped and led to a very simple gameplay result. It would be foolish to say that random arrows is the best possible building ai system, so it was definitely worth trying something new. Also I’ve seen high skill players avoid losing units to the cc despite the cc shooting the closest unit. These weak cav or infantry then just go back and gather or heal in their own cc. Interesting micro has arisen for both the rusher and defender. The best part of the building arrow change is that there is now an immediate cost to entering building arrow range instead of it being negligible for big armies. The worst part has been how fast units die especially with overlapping ranges.

I'm not sure if autociv mod can do this, but it would be my first suggestion to try.

@Feldfeld thanks for working on these map balances, I'm excited to play "pizza" with balanced wood!

The situation changes when you have 100+ unit battles, some players have complained that everything dies too fast.

In theory you could micro well enough to completely avoid damage from the pikeman. It's really interesting to see the long reach of pikemen play a role here, where before it didnt matter since they did negligible damage anyway. It's nice now to see pikemen and spearmen having different strengths versus cavalry.

@leopard you are playtesting them. Thanks for your efforts. The pikemen here are rank 3, melee units have added damage, armor, and hp with each rank, compared to ranged units which only get accuracy and hp. The strength of melee rankups is acknowledged to be a problem by most players, so there will be some reduction to the rankup bonuses. Try the same scenario with rank 1 units from both types and you'll find it much easier to kill the pikemen.