real_tabasco_sauce

I would agree with this even in the absence of the healer/temple techs change tbh.

right, it's just the change has been live for 2 days and this complaint is not based on evidence from gameplay, instead just on assumptions. It will take some time for players to change their habits and try something new.

1. how are healers a throwaway unit? the idea is to keep them alive so that you may heal your army. 2. Metal is not a "rare" resource. If you mine it, you get it. 3. The overall cost is much cheaper. 4. Metal has a higher gather rate than farming in the late game.

There should be two costs for this unit, just 100 food makes the unit too conducive to spam. Remember that the previous cost was 250 food.

ok I went ahead and added some merge requests so you can all give thoughts. Here is the link: https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests

Oh, yes I can make a merge request for this. Thanks.

Changelop in writing: #This is a written changelog for additional merges to each version of the community mod. If you would like to review the exact details on each merge, visit this link: https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=merged -0.26.1- !1 Set up gitlab with continuous integration to the mod. -0.26.2- !2 Han farming technologies (village and city phase) fixed. !6 Regicide mode infinite loop from enabling hero garrison fixed. -0.26.3- !4 Move tier 3 blacksmith technologies to the town phase. !5 Healers cost 100 food 25 metal, cheaper temple technologies. !8 Themistocles now provides a wall discount as well as a naval buff, Pericles provides technology discount and soldiers in his aura do not give loot. !10 Civic centers and colonies decreased cost, decreased territory expansion with each age. !11 Axe cavalry buff to hack damage. !12 Change to ptol civ bonus: Ptolemies houses, storehouses, farmsteads +50% build time and -40% capture points. !13 Team Bonuses: Athens get CC technologies -30% cost, -50% research time, Seleucids get CC decreased build time too, Persians get cheaper barracks and stables, Carthage gets -50% mercenary infantry train time. Changelog file: community_mod_changelog.txt

https://gitlab.com/real_tabasco_sauce/0-a-d-community-mod-unit-specific-upgrades/-/compare/main...crossbow_nerf?from_project_id=36954588&straight=false Thoughts?

yes, that tech is a civ bonus, so it is an innate quality of the sparta civ. I think it makes sense as an economic limitation (especially considering their availability in p1). It also distinguishes Sparta from other civs' champion spearmen: very powerful unit, but especially early on, it inhibits the economy. I would be keen to merge this and also the unit_upgrades later, after balance changes. doubling cav pop cost seems problematic, however. I think most players would prefer a general cavalry nerf, involving their damage and health. I think what I will do for this is split up my cavalry nerf branch so that individual changes can be considered independently. (current branch -> damage change branch, health change branch, inf speed branch)

Oh, my mistake.

Would a better alternative be to add fire to the building destruction animation? Like some smoldering fires in the "rubble" after destruction?

This is @borg-'s patch made into a git branch. https://gitlab.com/real_tabasco_sauce/0-a-d-community-mod-unit-specific-upgrades/-/compare/main...sparta?from_project_id=36954588&straight=false I didn't include the "two kings" part because there were issues with regicide, and I also think 1 hero at a time should be held constant for all civs. Certainly some adjustments will need to be made, particularly costs of different units and technologies. The overall idea is to give the spartans a unique champion unit, one strongly tied to their culture. So for this reason they cost 2 pop, 1/2 resources, and are available p1 from the syssition. Such a bold patch would likely not be agreed upon as a patch for a27, but my thoughts are that an open-minded crowd using the community mod would give it a try.

As far as I know, there is no projectile acceleration. I think there is gravity but that doesn't really effect gameplay.

https://gitlab.com/real_tabasco_sauce/0-a-d-community-mod-unit-specific-upgrades/-/compare/main...repeat_times?from_project_id=36954588&straight=false now we just wait on @wraitii :C. I hope nothing bad happened.

overkill is a problem regardless of fire rate. It depends on the number of units attacking 1 enemy, so increasing the damage per projectile just means overkill will be present when fewer numbers attack 1 unit. Actually, overkill turns out to be the biggest problem for archers. Because the engagement distance is longer, the closest unit to the archers is the same one for more units. (compared to say slingers or skirmishers). A while ago I tested this and found that by giving ranged units building AI, archers beat equal numbers of any other ranged unit.

acceleration is there btw. I agree though, accuracy and prepare time belong in "detailed tooltips."

I mean. its not necessarily something you would calculate while playing. You just get a feel for the fire rates of different units. I think fire rate, accuracy, prepare time, and acceleration are all valuable differentiators and I think this is something that shouldn’t be uniform.

I think repeat times are certainly a differentiating factor, even if they only make a small difference to gameplay.

Well for buildings, their fire rate could be reduced a lot and an arrow damage increase would make up for dps, essentially no net difference to gameplay. As for unit repeat times, I think we should keep the change fairly minimal for the reasons mentioned by @Philip the Swaggerless. Something on the order of: skirmishers 1.25 sec to 1.5 sec would probably be noticeable. I could raise everything (maybe except crossbows, pikes) by .25 and then adjust damage accordingly. There may or may not be a need to do this. I think we would have to try it out to really know. If we took that approach, I would be tempted to also slightly slow projectiles down, so that moving targets are not as easily hit.

yeah I guess hitting/missing shots would wind up being more impactful. Not sure if thats a good thing or bad.

Would players of the community mod be interested in a branch to lengthen attack repeat times? Buildings and ranged units could in theory all have slower repeat times which decreases the number of range queries and other calculations needed per second. We could then assess the improvement on performance in TGs. I would design it to minimize any effects on balance. I guess I would first test it on my own to see if there is an improvement before making a merge request.

yes, I would rather discuss balancing CC arrows after this "coming" community mod release. I do think, however, that you could still defend pretty well with only 15 arrows compared to 23. I say "coming" because i'm not sure when @wraitii will be back.

k I'll make it a separate branch to use later if need be. Sentry tower fix can stay.

Yeah, but how often will you have more than 15 soldiers to defend in early game? 15 arrows is enough to deter cav. My main concern is that they have almost as many arrows as forts, which seems like sub-optimal balancing. I could add the changes to a separate branch, so that they could be added if cc dropping does prove to be a problem.

ok I have forks now for moving the army camp to p2 for rome and for giving pikes damage, reducing armor some. If you would like to view them, they are on my fork previously linked. I have a question for you all: Should I add a change to arrow count to the CC_territory cost merge request? (***we already voted on this, hence why I ask you all). currently, CC's max arrows are 1 less than a fortress (23 vs 24). With the change making them cheaper, I think their max arrows should significantly reduced. *this does not in theory effect early defense from rushes because you are usually only able to garrison a few soldiers in the CC for arrows at that time anyway. I propose to lower the max arrows to 15. (and the same for colonies). This should help with concerns of "CC dropping." I will add a fix to sentry towers (<max arrows> should be 4 and not 3, currently the 3rd soldier does not add an additional arrow)