[DDOS is back]

Yea, it is getting pretty consistent. It's like they know when we are having a good time.

[Balancing the Han civ for A26]

@alre what do you think of approximately these stats for chu-ko-nu:

same range as slingers, fire rate of .7, archer damage (or tweaked to balance), same accuracy as archers, same movement speed as archers. 50 food 40 wood 10 metal, available in p2. chu-ko-nu were the spam kings, they should not be long range or high accuracy.

 

[Balancing the Han civ for A26]

@Yekaterina I think it will be impossible to balance weapon switching, since heavily armored ranged units would be OP compared to other ranged units, especially since they can switch back to melee once attacked by melee. I think the only way to balance them would be to make both weapons bad, or the secondary weapon really bad. 

Also, it would be very hard to counter if both weapons had full damage/ regular unit stats. 

I think the in-game result of these units will be either they are extremely annoying and op, or never used.

 

[Balancing the Han civ for A26]

@Yekaterina

Thats a lot of cavalry bonuses. It is better to have some diversity.

1. I think adding 1.4 hp to all cavalry would be OP. The only hero that adds HP is that ptol one and +40% hp as well but only to pikes, cavalry in general have more hp, and if there are champions involved they would basically turn into fast eles. Perhaps a siege bonus hero or a chu-ko-nu bonus hero would be great alternatives. (Hero can train rank 3 Chu-ko-nu?)
2. I think a better one  for archer cavalry would be +20% speed +25% damage, double damage is pretty one dimensional, and by defualt, archer cavalry are slower than other cavalry. Assuming this does not apply to crossbow units.
3. As for the last one, I think it should be an economic hero, perhaps reducing the cost of ministers, or allowing them some kind of new ability.

@ValihrAnt@Dizaka@chrstgtr

what are your thoughts?

 

[Did someone say improved ship movement?]

1 hour ago, alre said:

I would rather nerf cavalry giving them wide turns than slow acceleration, but it's hard to say without trying.Anyway, I hope that would make cavalry only stronger in the open, which is realistic and adds strategic depth.

Dude perhaps you could lure cavalry to a place where its too tight for them to turn at their faster speed, and surprise them with spearmen.

The main reason I was in support of cav having regular unit movement (no wide turns) at speeds below 10 m/s was for fear of them getting stuck, and because they would behave weird in battles. Physically, wide turns are caused by having more speed, but for gameplay consistency it is better to have turns be either wide or “pinpoint” like in 0ad now.
 

I feel some mild acceleration would be ok where it is just enough to make a difference in gameplay but not so much to be annoying.

 

[proposals for formations]

To click and drag a radius from the center of a circle seems to be a good way to draw the area for attack-ground. This way, a player only needs to locate the center of enemy units, and then drag the radius to the approximate size of the group (direction of radius of course does not matter :D).

[Balancing the Han civ for A26]

@Yekaterina

Overall Han Chinese seem to have all the units of 0ad, plus some of their own unique ones. I think some of them need to be eliminated or be turned to mercenaries. I think fire ship should be eliminated since they already have a heavy warship that can train units. 2 kinds of CS cav are enough for a civ that has so much variety in other areas, swordcav should be a mercenary.

5 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

The mobile crossbow/ bolt shooter... It's way too OP compared to others civs equivalent. Furthermore, many have questioned if this is anachronism.

Somewhere else it was said that it does not need to be packed up. If this were the case, it would need to be carefully balanced.

5 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Switching champions - a fun idea, but might be a bit too expensive to unlock

Also it could be frustrating to other civs who don't have this level of unpredictability

5 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

No medium-ranged unit at all. They have no access to slingers nor javelineers, only archers, which means they are  destined to lose against a javlin civ or slinger civ in a big close battle. Even the Kushite and Carthaginian have javelin cavalry... Historical accuracy prohibits us from giving them javelins or slings but they are required for balancing.

There are two options for closer ranged units:

1. knife/axe throwers mentioned by @ymming: these could be part of the skirmisher class 
2. chu-ko-nu: same range as slingers, fire rate of .7, archer damage (or tweaked to balance), same accuracy as archers. 50 food 40 wood 10 metal, available in p2. chu-ko-nu were the spam kings, they should not be long range or high accuracy.

      (I prefer option 2, since these thrower weapons are not well represented by skirmisher class and seem like the bigger historical stretch)

Champions:

• It was suggested to include swordsmen, but halberd-like things would be a more unique infantry champion. We could make them similar to spear-champions but with damage leaning more toward hack, 3 meter attack range, and a bit slower movement speed than spear-champions.
• In order to show both sides to the crossbow in Han china, their champion could be chariot crossbowmen with the same damage model of Macedonian crossbows. 
• I would argue that Han should be allowed a spear-cav cavalry champion, but perhaps without so many extra perks that you see from seleucids and persians and gauls.

Siege:

• definitely give them rams, everyone needs that versatile and safe option. 
• mobile-boltshooter: if people insist on this, it should be heavily nerfed (slow move speed, low acc, lower pierce armor, and/or expensive)
• mangonel sounds ok

minister sounds good, could be balanced after some play-testing.

 

 

 

[Did someone say improved ship movement?]

@maroder its funny right now people are mad at AoE 4 for having the same ship movement mechanics as AoE2 lol.

[Did someone say improved ship movement?]

57 minutes ago, alre said:

cavalry

That would be awesome in some instances like cinematics, but I worry about how they would move around during a melee fight. I think a few mechanics to allude to the momentum and speed of cavalry would be nice, but we would need to keep in mind the balance and practicality of them in game. 

Perhaps add cavalry acceleration and once they are faster than 10 m/s they do wider turns like what we see with the boats here.

I guess the best way to start would be to add some cavalry acceleration and see what is the next most practical/ logical step.

I think cavalry acceleration would be a good way to nerf cavalry, especially champions that are able to disengage so easily and avoid losses. With cavalry acceleration, a player using spears to defend would have more opportunities to counter them.

champions discussion here by @Dizaka

 

 

[proposals for formations]

I would absolutely rather do less damage against skirms than 0 damage vs pikes if I were using archers, I would count on strong melee or skirms to beat pikes.

the tradeoff is there in my opinion.

[Can player become Gaia?]

I can become gaia by being rushed and then resigning.

Also a mean thing to do is move a bunch of cav into ur allies farms to then resign. It basically just ruins a TG and people will be upset with you.

[proposals for formations]

@Freagarach

This looks really good and could be a great tool to satisfy multiple parties in the "ranged units forced to shoot closest unit debate". People are concerned about melee units losing some of their "meat shield" role, and others are concerned about the "meat shield" role being too important and forced by the game mechanics.

If attack-ground were to do a bit less overall damage, then this would make sense because it is "beyond visual range", and this could provide an important tradeoff between dealing full damage (shooting closest targets) and shooting particular units (attack-ground) at reduced damage output.

[Why should ranged units be forced to attack closest units?]

4 hours ago, ChronA said:

attack ground

There is a good discussion going on about attack-ground in the "proposals for formations" discussion

attack ground, as it exists in the video from that forum would seem to be able to re-instate my original idea as a contender:

• attack ground to shoot target area of enemies
• after scoring a kill during the attack-ground order, unit breaks the attack ground to automatically look for the next closest unit to target.
• less overkill than original idea

Another option:

perhaps attack-ground is already enough of a nerf to the ability of ranged units to shoot "beyond visual range" and would satisfy gameplay balance and the concerns about melee units raised by @Jofursloft

 

[All Civilizations are my favorite.]

I like the visions for the civs, to give them all some unique mechanics. I am particularly interested in this in the shorter term however:
 

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

All Citizen-Soldiers types in every civ have Rank Promotion technologies up to Advanced. 

• Exceptions
  • 1 type of Citizen-Soldier per civ will have an additional promotion tech up to Elite.
  • 1 type of Citizen-Soldier per civ will have no promotion techs.

 

I like this idea, and I feel these upgrades should be more expensive than regular blacksmith upgrades especially the one for elite rank (assuming its the same as "veteran" rank). Perhaps the "elite" upgrade would be more expensive, and add a 10 metal cost to the unit. 

[Why should ranged units be forced to attack closest units?]

14 minutes ago, ChronA said:

Some good idea here... just thought I'd point out as an answer to the original question: Targeting the nearest enemy maximizes damage for ranged units because there is less chance of them missing closer targets due to projectile spread and travel time. It is also protective, because for a ranged units focusing on the closes6t units makes it more likely that they will kill melee opponents that are in a position to do damage before they can do too much of it. And for melee, attacking the nearest unit reduces the chance that they will become stuck getting ravaged by the enemy while trying to reach a target that is out of range or behind an obstruction.

The ideas posted here are for ranged units. 

To understand the balancing situation I give an example: an army of skirms and pikes against an army of spears and archers.

pikes and spears fight in the middle, and the spears die out first because the skirms are doing a lot more damage to the spears than the archers can do to the pikes. Once the spears die, the pikes and skirms can advance and kill the archers.

Now another scenario with the same units: archers target the skirmishers with their longer range and stop the skirmishers from killing the spears as they did in example 1. Now, the spears kill the remaining pikes because the pikes do not do enough damage on their own to overpower the spears.

In 0ad it is effectively not possible to do example 2 in-game, because ranged units will always target melee first. 

Because of the lack of this option for 0ad players, infantry battles come down to: 1. how much damage a melee unit can take, and 2. how much damage a ranged unit can deal.

Does that make sense @ChronA?

 

[Elephants Too Strong Against Stone Walls]

It is true that there is great inaccuracy with elephants in 0ad. But in terms of gameplay, elephants are pretty easy to counter.

A few tips that might make it easier for you:

• focus on getting a large population as fast as you can, this will make it easier to afford everything, and the AI's army will seem smaller if you have many more units.
• skirmishers are a good counter to elephants because they do a lot of pierce damage, and can all attack the elephant at once

[Why should ranged units be forced to attack closest units?]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I think it is drawn out. Corner-drawn rectangle would be pretty ideal.

[Why should ranged units be forced to attack closest units?]

3 minutes ago, Freagarach said:

One might try adding the "Ranged" preferred attack class to ranged units and see how that feels/performs.

I feel like this would be too automatic as well. @Jofursloft's idea is great in my opinion because now there are two ways for melee to be a meat shield: 1 to be in front and stop melee from reaching ranged units, 2 to mix with ranged units and prevent an enemy from isolating them in the "target box".

@wowgetoffyourcellphone @Freagarach does @Jofursloft's idea sound feasible to you?

[Why should ranged units be forced to attack closest units?]

38 minutes ago, Jofursloft said:

I think that this feature would lower the original importance of melee units, which is in fact creating a shield for the shots of the enemy ranged units unless they don't actually reach an enemy unit

If melee unit charging was implemented alongside this, then there would certainly be great ways to use melee beyond the meat shield. I would argue that having both these features would make 0ad combat more fun, more skillful, and more advanced compared to other rts games.

 

[Why should ranged units be forced to attack closest units?]

30 minutes ago, alre said:

it depends on how the algorithm works. if it just searches for the closest unit to the last one killed, that would be the same unit for all your shooters, and after that one, still another unique target, and so on. otherwise we could make things more complicate, but with a computational expense (how else?).

ok @alre, definitely my idea is too much overkill. I think the best one so far is @Jofursloft's as long as it can be done without performance loss.

[Why should ranged units be forced to attack closest units?]

24 minutes ago, Jofursloft said:

I think that shooting the closest unit is something related to a kind of survival instinct for the human being

I thought about this, and also your concern about melee units being less important due to their meat-shield role becoming less automatic.

Do you think a nice way to balance between the two mechanics (1. shooting closest and 2. using your idea, the "targeting-box") would be for ranged units to "panic" at 15% of their total range and ignore the targeting-box so that they can shoot the closest unit?

[Why should ranged units be forced to attack closest units?]

1 minute ago, Jofursloft said:

I think that this feature would lower the original importance of melee units, which is in fact creating a shield for the shots of the enemy ranged units unless they don't actually reach an enemy unit (at that point their main purpose is: kill). Whouldn't letting ranged unit decide what unit shoot by default lead to armies composed by only ranged units?

In 0ad right now infantry battles are decided by which side kills the other's melee first. This means that the melee units that tank the most damage are the most useful, like pikemen. The feature like you mentioned in "magnetic pikemen" would be great as long as it did not did not cause perfomance problems (I don't know if it would or not). 

There are still ways pikes could act as a meat shield rather than a meat magnet:

Ranged units could follow close to pikemen so that they can mooch off of the armor of the pikemen since they would most likely be in the same "targeting-box". In this situation, ranged units are in a location more vulnerable to higher dps melee units like swords. 

The main goals of the changes are to allow more player choice and make the natural behavior of 0ad units less overbearing.

[Why should ranged units be forced to attack closest units?]

4 minutes ago, alre said:

it could lend to overkill

Do you think it would be too much overkill to make it a worthwhile option? Going by the average 0ad army size, it would probably be a lot of overkill on the first and second volleys, but after that not so much, since the "targeted group" would expand out from where the first attack was.

@alre do you agree that it would be beneficial to gameplay?

 

[Why should ranged units be forced to attack closest units?]

@hyperion @Player of 0AD

I agree that performance issues are a primary concern. I was thinking rather than having a filter or smart unit behavior, the ranged units would attack the units closest to where their last target was when they killed it. 

So if a player wanted to attack a particular group of units, he would just choose one, and then the ones next to it would be the next targets. A player could still target the closest enemies by attack-clicking a closer enemy.

If the ranged units are given no order, but are simply set still next to enemies (using "h") then they could default to shooting closest enemies.

[Why should ranged units be forced to attack closest units?]

In previous alphas the idea that units always attack the closest enemy has not been debated much, because recent alphas were about ranged vs ranged balance, for example: "slingers op" of a23. and "archers op" of a24. In these previous alphas, melee units did not matter as much as they do in a25. The gameplay balancing has gotten better, and more complicated since those alphas.

In my opinion, this tendency of the ranged units to shoot the closest enemy results in some balancing issues that are not due to any units particular stats. And if we were able to choose our targets, then the options increase for the player and there are more opportunities for skill to succeed.

My main question is: what part of the game would break if ranged units were able to shoot other units besides the closest enemies?

I welcome debate, but I don't welcome slander.