real_tabasco_sauce

@Feldfeld Is your balancer based off of @badosu's balanced maps? If, so I wonder if we could merge the maps from badosu's mod into feldmap. I have already fixed the badosu balanced maps mod for a26 and a27 and submitted it to mod.io (not yet signed). https://mod.io/g/0ad/m/badosu-balanced-maps If your balancers can work for these maps, I think that would be a major win.

Ok, I think the poll tells us what is more popular. changing pop costs might be too indirect a change. Instead, we will stick to the simple options. I didn't add a "1 and 3" option, but I imagine this would be popular. What I will do is 60 crush (half of previous) and 25 hack splash.

It is pretty loosely 40 minutes. Sometimes it is 36 mins, sometimes, 42, etc. Another thing is that when this happens, it also seems that spectators are sometimes OOS, even though they are not players. It is an interesting problem, since relatively few games reach ~40 minutes.

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5202 This patch is committed for a27, and changes the immortals quite a bit. Rather than reverting them to standard champions like those that many civs have, they are cheaper, weaker, and retain their weapon switching. This allows the Persian player to field a lot more of the immortals. I also removed their speed penalty, which was a little excessive, and slightly reduced their switch time to 6 seconds from 8. I could make this into a community mod patch if you like. It would be worthwhile for testing anyway.

yeah @wowgetoffyourcellphone, personally I would go with either 2 or 3. They may still destroy buildings, its just you need more of them to do this. (which is something achieved by lowering pop cost). certainly the risk would be being able to mass a lot more of them, possibly too many.

Hi everyone, I think most people would agree elephants are in an awkward spot in the latest community mod. They have been given a splash hack attack to improve their utility vs soldiers, and in turn their crush damage for destroying buildings is reduced. Right now, elephants don't feel good enough vs buildings to be used as siege, and they don't feel good enough against soldiers to justify their high cost. There are a number of ways to improve this, but they all involve the unit design somewhat, so I added a poll to gauge popularity and generate some discussion. Add some crush damage back to elephants Reduce elephant population cost to 1, as they are now more of a fighting unit rather than a siege unit (elephant archers also to 1 pop cost) increase elephant hack splash damage.

It seems like it could be a good idea for the future of modding in general, but for the time being I think what @guerringuerrin cooked up is pretty ideal for near-term use in the community mod.

Looks great @guerringuerrin, my only concern would be mod compatibility. Could you just test with a few mods to see if there are any issues. I am not sure if any other mods that make use of that panel.

@guerringuerrin this is the gitlab page for the community mod. https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/tree/main/community-mod?ref_type=heads Feel free to make your own fork and submit a merge request. However, I think the scope of the community mod is really just to modify gameplay aspects. This is why all the simulation files are there, but the gui section is basically empty. That being said, I think it is fine to have a tidy patch notes section, especially since the mod is to be a long term project. If you can submit a merge request, I could edit the contents when the next release comes out.

I never advertised it as a fix. non-random arrows were not broken, just a little lame compared to how they work in other RTS games.

perhaps. We will have to see. I would have a couple of concerns with letting the default arrows be random. I think a lot of people might not realize these consequences: First, if non-random arrows are stronger as deemed by many players, then it could be seen as beneficial to be constantly targeting single units with buildings, which would be a pretty sub-optimal scenario. In addition, we might have to balance buildings both in their capacity to target random units (how they are currently balanced) and in their capacity to target single units (what makes them strong in 26.6). My last point is more on appearance: I don't like the idea of completely changing the way the arrows function upon a click. It just would look and feel clunky and possibly counterintuitive. (Opinion if you can't tell :D) I am certain that the issues a lot of people have with defaulting to the closest unit are really just balance concerns and can be addressed by modifying building arrow count (default and max arrows) and damage. However, if everyone agrees that what @wowgetoffyourcellphone suggests is the best way forward, I would begrudgingly concede.

@Nobbi thanks for the suggestion on changing damage on phase ups. This is also something I have been considering for addressing the issues with building arrows at the moment. I think most would say the arrows are too strong when fully garrisoned and it leads to too much turtling at the moment. You can really see this in p1 when enough units garrisoned can be overly punishing of any attempts to rush. I get that part, but are you saying cavalry archers/ camel archers are too strong now?

yes @leopard I am taking feedback from several longtime players. Unfortunately it is difficult to agree on the path forward on a couple items, in particular the building arrows.

What are ppl thinking for the elephants? I the situation is that they do two things not quite well enough: destroying buildings and attacking units. I think we could either boost their attack damage (either vs buildings or splash, maybe both) OR increase their survivability. I think I mentioned this in another poll, but I am sure this would be fairly easy to agree on.

Yes @chrstgtr melee has always been strong vs ranged units, but crucial difference is that before melee was strong because of its armor. Instead of killing the ranged units it’s just that they would take a long time to die. Then there was a ton of time for the ranged player to retreat. now, the difference is the melee units still die in a similar time, but can actually get kills. The issue is perhaps that they do this too fast. i think a lot of players are not retreating their ranged units because they are used to the ranged units not dying so fast. but yes I think for sure we should either remove armor bonus or damage bonus from melee rank ups.

@chrstgtr The reason I suggested all units + hp was because people argue units in general die too fast. If that issue is specifically ranged units dying too fast to melee, we could either give ranged units a health buff or decrease melee damage a little. I would prefer increasing ranged health, but a smallish damage nerf could also be fine.

I wonder if you could use the in game icons for these buttons instead of text? It might look good to instead use the top right area for each category's entries.

I would say I have seen less cavalry champions and more infantry champions.

I figured I would assemble some of the ideas I have come up with/seen in the multiplayer lobby. Issues with building arrows: CC has too many arrows/too much firepower, especially for village phase. Its basically a fort with less hp. Sentry towers are overused, especially for denying wood lines early on. Turtling is more prevalent, making it more difficult to push with or without siege. change options for building arrows (there is a lot of them, so some subset of these would be good): Decrease CC "max arrows" currently this number is 23, which is 1 less than for fortresses. Decrease CC range from 60 meters to 55 or 50 meters. Decrease sentry tower base range by 10 meters to 50m. Increase sentry tower cost by 25 stone. (change upgrade cost to defense tower too) All buildings with arrows: Decrease pierce damage or fire rate, increase default arrows. The idea here is to make garrisoning less impactful for building effectiveness, keeping the un-garrisoned performance the same. Currently a tower with 5 garrisoned units does 6x the damage of the empty tower. back to random arrows except when focused. Issues with melee rebalance: melee units balloon in strength when ranked up. fights are too quick, units die too quickly. anti-cavalry bonus damage is too strong. Buildings are 12% stronger vs hack. dogs are op. Rams and siege too easy to kill with melee (already been an issue pre-26.6) Change options for melee rebalance: Remove armor or damage bonus for melee infantry rank ups. Increase melee experience to rank up to match ranged units: (100 -> 125 xp for infantry). Add 5% or 10% hp to all units Slightly reduce anti-cavalry bonus, maybe just for spear cavalry. Use +4 hack armor instead of +5 hack armor for buildings. Reduce dog hp (armor is already 1,1) or reduce dog damage Siege +1 or +2 hack armor. Other issues and solutions: Elephants are not very useful. Not good enough vs buildings to make their purchase worthwhile. Increase in direct crush, maybe also slight increase in splash attack. Iphicrates is OP Port a27 iphicrates nerf to community mod: range aura, +2 armor instead of +3. Catapult splash damage is negligible: Increase splash damage OR increase splash radius.

@Fabius I am glad you are happy with the changes so far. As for the catapults, I didn't want to make them too strong at attacking units, so they have a very small splash radius. So, you will really only see the effect with highly bunched units. It is only meant to slightly improve the catapult effectiveness vs infantry.

It is true that it was a bold move, and I realize the mod is dividing the multiplayer lobby to some extent. It has been a year and a half since the last release, and with the meta being so static and dependent on 'sniping', I knew a bold move was needed to thoroughly test these changes if they are to be committed. If I had not added it to the community mod, the changes would either have been abandoned out of fear of imbalance or minimally tested and committed with imbalances. With this bold move, we now have the opportunity to extensively playtest changes and make improvements or remove stuff. I could have instead made a separate mod for smaller scale testing, but I know exactly how that goes, and I know it doesn't work: 5 to 15 players would download and install, barely manage to organize a handful of matches. In that case you either get no idea of the balance and how things are effected, or you get an under sampled set of results, which is often worse. I get that some ppl are unhappy, but I know that this will be an improvement in the long run.

Ok, thanks. I'll keep a look out for similar issues. if you run into it again, let me know.

They are evolving.

ok I just tried the following to reproduce: 1v1 as seleucids, go phase 3, build two sentry towers, garrison sentry towers, garrison cc. Take player 2, train units, capture a tower, garrison, leave tower range. Take player 1, recapture tower, kill enemy occupants. I could not reproduce the issue. @axi what mods were u using? Did you ever click the cc to attack the tower while it was in the hands of your enemy, or did the cc select that target on its own when no other units were nearby?

Or perhaps it could be good to split it into a new upgrade. idk