real_tabasco_sauce

In several previous discussions, forum participants have expressed discontent with the current role of melee in 0ad a26. In general, melee units do substantially less damage than ranged units, while having far greater armor. Because of this, melee units are often more effectively used to "shield" ranged units from other ranged attacks. Crucially, it is melee units durability which makes them strong versus ranged units and not their actual attack. Because of this, many players place low priority on melee upgrades to the point of skipping them entirely. Hack armor is researched to make melee attacks on ranged units weaker, but it is also a low priority tech. The "meat shield" meta is epitomized by the pikemen unit: 2 hack + 3 pierce in 2 seconds is a childish 2.5 dps on an unarmored enemy. Even the champion version is harmless. Meanwhile they have an absurd 10 hack 8 pierce armor before upgrades. It is time for a large scale rework of melee units, and try to name a better place to test this than the community mod. To summarize: infantry melee CS units "standard" armor is 3 hack, 3 pierce (more specialized units deviate slightly from this) Champions are 6h, 6p, with exceptions (ex pikemen) across the board damage has been doubled (extra for pikemen, and special case for macemen) Cavalry melee cavalry deal slightly more damage than their infantry counterpart (in keeping with current design) armor is similar to current values, but with less pierce armor. Ranged cav hack armor is decreased so they still lose vs melee cav. Try it as a mod: Current version: (50% more melee damage, 25% less ranged damage, 3h 3p melee inf armor, +0.5 m/s move speed) Get it on mod.io, might not work for a27. This is based on the community mod (edit: 0.26.4 now), so it is larger than necessary. My apologies. Keep in mind that melee units will still die first due to UnitAI, as they always have. This proposal seeks to enable melee units to be more impactful in battles, so that investing in their upgrades might allow you to defeat enemy melee units first and force a retreat. Stat chart (this is version 1): version 2 is this with -25% all unit damage, and +0.5 melee inf movespeed. melee rebalance CS infantry attack previous armor previous Champion attack armor spear 6h 5p (1.0s) 3h 2.5p (1.0s) 3h 3p 5h 5p spear 12h 10p (1.0s) 6h 5p (1.0s) 6h 6p 8h 8p sword 11h (0.75s) 5.5h (0.75s) 3h 3p 5h 5p sword 22h (0.75s) 11h (0.75s) 6h 6p 8h 8p pike 5h 9p (2.0s) 2h 3p (2.0s) 5h 5p 10h 8p pike 10h 18p (2.0s) 4h 6p (2.0s) 8h 8p 13h 11p axe 12h 4c (1.0s) 6h 2c (1.0s) 2h 3p 4h 5p axe 24h 8c (1.0s) 12h 4c (1.0s) 5h 6p 7h 8p mace 7c 7h (1.0s) 7c (1.0s) 3h 3p 4h 5p mace 14c 14h (1.0s) 14c (1.0s) 6h 6p 6h 6p cavalry (ranged armor) 2h 1p 3h 1p CS cavalry attack previous armor previous champion attack armor spear 7.7h 6.5p (1.25s) 4h 3p (1.25s*) 3h 3p 5h 3p spear 15.5h 13p (1.25) 8h 6p (1.25s) 7h 6p 8h 7p sword 12h (0.75s) 6.5h (0.75s) 3h 2.5p 3h 4p sword 24h (0.75s) 13h (0.75s) 6h 5.5p 7h 9p axe 14h 4.5c (1.0s) 8.7h (1.25s)(cm) 3h 2p 3h 2p axe 28h 8c (1.0s) 13.8h 4.6c (1s) 6h 5p 7h 7p mace 7.5c 7.5 (1.0s) 8c (1.0s) 2h 2p 4h 2p mace 15c 15h (1.0s) 16c (1.0s) 5h 5p 7h 6p

1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 Not sure if you are in favor or not. It seems to me that for some units 1 armor difference is quite a lot, so using .5 makes balancing easier. If you are curious, I am working on the melee rebalance patch. I will probably show some details in a new topic or in the community mod discussion.

I am asking if it is ok by principle, not anything specific.

When designing units, should units always have discrete armor levels, or is it ok to allow units with "2.5" pierce armor. in my mind it seems fine to allow half armor levels, but maybe others think differently?

This was not merged. There is a voting process for community mod merge requests, and some get turned down by the community.

does it include heroes? Imagine spontaneous defeat in regicide XD

haha, restrict it to units and call it "plague" mod. could also increase likeliness of death for idle units, call it obesity mod.

I would say this is ideal as simply an indicator of something taking fire damage. 1. allowing the fire gaia entities to deal damage and spread to other units is in conflict with the existing role of fire damage. 2 concurrent fire systems would be confusing. 2. Starting a forest fire might sound cool on paper, but remember there is only 1 unit that can do this, and it would be incredibly annoying to destroy all your enemy's forests. Basically griefing on steriods. 3. This kind of damage model for fire (spreads between units, ship, buildings and trees) is quite hard to balance and also hard to reconcile in comparison to other mechanics of the game. It seems out of place in other words.

Its not really a build, but a strategy. A very funny strategy. But you are right, it has to be successful or else gg. A success would be destroying the cc and at least fairing well enough against your enemy's forces. If they have enough army and beat you, they can win by immediately attacking u lol.

I find it amusing how, with the resources at their disposal, they made such a graphically terrible game. 0ad outdoes AOE4 by a mile in this regard. Allegedly, you have to play with graphics on low if you want good performance too.

Probably not the level of differentiation you are calling for, but these are two upgrades I designed for slingers. Slinger 1: "Lead Shot" P2 30% more pierce damage 25% more crush damage 20% longer repeat time. Slinger 2: "Longer slings" P3 +5 Range 10% longer prepare time

A really epic move (especially if your enemy has gauls or britons, weak buildings) is to quickly go to phase two, build a noba camp or two, and add clubmen and pikemen. About 20 clubmen is more than enough to destroy the enemy cc. Adding pikemen increases the durability of this group, while archers can sit back and kill the units stopping the clubmen. If you want more mercenaries than the 20 clubs, you can also get the noba skirmishers which are quite good. This can be done really early, but its best at around 9 to 10 minutes. It likely won't work in the late game when both players are full pop.

@Yekaterina 1v1 vs @LetswaveaBook

I agree. To an extent, all melee except for swordsmen and sword cavalry seem like clown units. The "meat shield" meta has 2 parts: melee units are too tanky, melee units deal very little damage (compared to range).

My community mod proposal (the unit upgrades) adds to this differentiation. Currently their primary differentiation is range vs damage, but the accuracies are also at play. I think the ranges are good for now. Changing melee stats as planned in the community mod (much more damage, a little less armor) will probably have an effect on the roles of skirms slingers and archers in fights, so I would like to see the results of that first.

Well, I think scenario editor and exit should be separate from a dropdown. For 1) its not really an "Option", whereas mod selection, language, and settings are all "options". Also, players wishing to leave shouldn't have to do more than one click to leave. I had something like this in mind: Clearing the middle up allows making the top bar and 0ad logo a bit larger too, which is good imo. "exit" and "Scenario editor" can be a different font and color. They can also be vertically stacked next to the wfg logo so that the symmetry at the top is effectively unchanged.

https://gitlab.com/real_tabasco_sauce/0-a-d-community-mod-unit-specific-upgrades/-/compare/main...buildingai2?from_project_id=36954588&straight=false It will need to be rebased when the a27 community mod is live, but this is the branch for building arrows. My hope is that in the first release, it can be merged alongside unit upgrades (https://gitlab.com/real_tabasco_sauce/0-a-d-community-mod-unit-specific-upgrades/-/compare/main...unit_upgrades?from_project_id=36954588&straight=false) and a melee damage and armor adjustment. These three would be pretty big changes, but the idea is they need long term playtesting and any necessary adjustments can be made in following community mod versions.

yep, this is the case, and I was able to figure out the issue. I guess thinking out loud helps lol.

It seems to me that if the preferred class length is 1 (['Humans']), then the only possible preference value is 0 or undefined, where humans get 0 and anything else gets undefined.

is someone familiar with preference values from GetPreference() in Attack.js? It's not clear if values are ascending with increased priority or descending. For instance, my guess is that a tower with a preference class of ['Human'] will give humans a preference of 0 and anything else a preference of 1, but maybe this is wrong.

So @maroder I saw your point about the dropdown menu not being "drop-up" menus, and I agree. However, the placement debate remains, especially if you ever want to add the vanilla backgrounds to the mod. (not sure if there are other constraints here) one solution is to group mod selection, hotkeys, language, and options(settings) underneath a new large dropdown called "options". I would say options is on a similar level of importance as "learn to play" "Single Player" and "Multiplayer". This way, with 4 items, you can have symmetry around the 0ad logo at the top, and leave space for the backgrounds in the middle of the screen. The last thing to consider then is where to put "scenario editor" and "exit". It would make sense to slide them both over to the top right, next to the WFG logo, since they both take you out of the game.

not a youtube video but a video nonetheless: Some users suggest that there are no "tactics" in 0ad, and that battles are too chaotic and fast for player inputs to make a difference. In this video, you can see why that’s not the case. Here @SaidRdz (black) has a moderate upgrade advantage, but is surrounded and quite outnumbered by Blue and red. All three players here are similar in 0ad experience, but @chrstgtr and @Isam f are behind due to a rush. saidOP.mp4 There are certainly tactics and strategic decisions made even in very large fights. The key is that they should be made quickly and precisely if you want to win.

It's the pillars right? The ones with pillars, like the forge in particular, seem slightly taller. I really like the style these buildings have, very cool!

Nah, every shyft account is identical. He logs on with some offensive name and within minutes, he says "donkey". He is too simple to maintain two personas.

The UI explains it well enough imo. If you want, you can just bind them both to the same hotkey.