real_tabasco_sauce

yeah I think its good practice to make patches as concise as possible. So ptolemy nerf and iphicrates nerf probably should have been two patches. its generally good practice, but where to draw the line is debatable. For example, I have both Themistocles and Pericles in the same merge request because they are both weak athenian heroes, and they go together. However, it might have been better off as two patches.

I think the pipeline failing is just because we wait for the merge requests to be approved. I could be wrong here tho. I already have a branch made for balancing cav vs infantry and I'll add it once the next version of the mod releases. You can see the details here: https://gitlab.com/real_tabasco_sauce/0-a-d-community-mod-unit-specific-upgrades/-/commit/e33bc27f79c7e5f3d94ea83c363e711272d33f42 It basically makes reconfigures cavalry balance from scratch: Cav damage equals their infantry counterparts, cav get a 40% health bonus compared to inf (melee: 140hp, ranged: 70hp), infantry +0.5 walkspeed (effects skirms a little more, pikes a little less). I know this is a huge hit to cavalry, but this is intended on being a starting point for balance. We may need to adjust counter-cavalry damage multipliers and perhaps melee cavalry damage. (I could see a 20% or so "mount bonus" being worthwhile for melee cav). Notice that instead of making cav slower, I made infantry faster.

Congratulations @Freagarach!!

Oh yes ur right. I'm not sure how actually "building" the upgrade would work, but it could be nice. Another option would be increase upgrade time, so you have more time to try to deny it.

Another option would be to increase build time of the wood tower. Yes, I agree this shouldn't be possible.

yes, joining gives the error "service unavailable"

nice, a second round just in time for the next community mod release with some balance changes.

ok, so a "transport class" ship could use pretty much the same model as a normal trireme or equivalent ship for gauls, britons, etc. Or at least some slight modifications.

I think we have enough votes to conclude that the ram change and the ptolemy, Iphicrates nerfs do not have enough support. @wraitii does a November 1 release of the next version sound feasible/ideal? Seems like the second round of the tournament will happen soon, so it would be nice to release in time.

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/commits/main

haha yes, some kind of boarding mechanism would be an awesome feature in 0ad. But I am sure it would be very, very difficult to make that happen, especially considering the animations required. Also, I imagine even giving ships turret points would be difficult task, as in that case you have to make compromises in terms of the ship's size compared to the units occupying the turrets. now, one way to simplify the above task to fit 0ad's scope could be to give whatever ship does the "boarding" a capture attack, with some constraints. Even in that case, you already have plenty of conditions/concerns: Does capture attack depend on units garrisoned? should capture be a "recharge" ability? What ships can capture, what civs have access to this ability? How do you stop both ships? Will this be frustrating to players? (likely yes) one concern is that "boarding" could gamble on what units the enemy's ship has garrisoned. I am not sure if this would be good or bad. Don't get me wrong, I do not dislike the idea, it is just that the implementation and balancing both sound difficult.

so you are suggesting training ships on a basic level, light, heavy, scout etcetera, but they can be upgraded individually into other forms of the ship? ex. trireme -> ramming trireme or bireme -> fire ship? interesting suggestion.

yes, I am familiar with the AOE ship system. Fire ships basically serve as melee units in AOE naval battles, the system is simple but entertaining enough to make water fights interesting. The problem is I can't think of an appropriate close-range ship in the 0ad timeframe. Also, it may not be necessary to try something like that.

any ideas @Lion.Kanzen for a couple other "special" ships, I thought about some kind of bolt shooter ship, a variant of the siege ship with a little more speed and bolt shooter style attack.

right, but wouldn't there need to be a way for a player to know if they are up against ramming triremes or non-ramming triremes.

ok, if we did a "ram attack," one could make ram damage proportional (by some function to balance) to the speed of the ship. I think it would also have to be in the form of an technology for some mediterranean civs (which imparts an added metal cost). I think it should also only be possible for certain ship classes, perhaps only triremes, ie ships of the "heavy" class for the following reasons. 1) biremes would probably be too light to ram well, 2)siege ships are too valuable to use this way, 3) most importantly, players need to be able to anticipate what ships can ram them. Unfortunately, that probably means the ships that have access to rams would need a version of the model with a visible ram. <- maybe its not worth it, idk.

yes, I think a naval overhaul in general should be in the works for a27, probably starting with some ship classes instead of just bigger = better. Ideally naval combat should be more diverse (different ships with different qualities), easier to handle like @Philip the Swaggerless said. light, heavy, siege, transport, special where special includes the fireship and maybe the ptol juggernaut. from there we could balance things, add a couple new "special" ships, and maybe implement some ship mechanics of interest.

This could be good, but I think we should avoid adding too many UI buttons/mass action hotkeys. For example, there was also a discussion for some button to garrison all barracks evenly. There is a pretty simple way to do this with the alt or option hotkey, ordering one unit at a time out of a selection to do something. So select 30 or so units, hold option/alt and click each boat that should be garrisoned until no more units are in the selection. (similar to sniping method). I think would it be ideal to decrease the garrison space of fighting boats to 10-20 depending on the ship, and add a dedicated transport ship. This way you would only need to garrison a few units for effective ship battles

oh, also, what are your thoughts on the contribution of the cavalry health and cavalry speed upgrades. In my eyes these are basically blanket buffs to cavalry as a whole. (I already am working on a much better replacement anyway)

yes, I also find that it takes painfully long to get infantry armies where they need to be. Ok, I could start to put these ideas into a branch, which could be a merge request for later.

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IMO, better to have that tanking power be the less damage-dealing unit, hence the original suggestion. Anyway, I guess @chrstgtr is right, we need some nerf to cavalry in general, and there is no better way to experiment than with a mod. So, cavalry have 4 advantages (mobility, damage, armor (generally), and HP) to infantry and 1 setback: not being able to gather resources. From a principle standpoint, I think the main advantage to cavalry should be their mobility, with any HP and armor stats being secondary. Their mobility is already very strong when used to its full potential (skilled player) and in my opinion, this is almost enough to justify their inability to gather. if we want a wholesale cav nerf, making damage equal to their infantry counterparts is a start. Changing armor would effect their balance with infantry and should probably be avoided. Mobility is what makes cavalry cavalry, so ideally this should stay the same (although i would support making infantry a tiny bit faster). So I think damage and health are what should be lowered, who agrees with this? now, we could make all cav do the same damage as their infantry counterparts, which could be a good start. Perhaps we would then want to give a "mounted vantage point" damage increase of 10% to melee cav, but not ranged cav. As for health, currently they are hard-coded to 100 for ranged cav and 160 for melee cav. How about instead, we give cavalry in general a 30 hp "mount bonus" compared to infantry such that ranged cav is 80 and melee cav is 130. From there, we could then balance as needed (like how I suggested with the +1 armor for spearcav, -1 armor for swordcav) how does this strategy sound?

4 hack 3 pierce -> 4 hack 4 pierce armor for spear cav 3 hack 4 pierce -> 3 hack 3 pierce armor for sword cav.

looking towards additional balance changes after the current voted ones are added to 26.3, any thoughts on sword cavalry -1 pierce armor and spear cavalry +1 pierce armor? I have heard players are calling for another spear cav buff and also that the swordcav rush is a little strong. The reasoning would be since spear cav does less damage, it should be slightly more tanky, not just a counter to sword cav. On the flip side, since swordcav do so much more damage, you should be able to kill them more easily. Importantly, this should make defending the han swordcav rush easier without moving the unit to p2.

CCs and colonies have smaller territory increase in p2 and p3, but they are cheaper