real_tabasco_sauce

well said

There, you said it and I didn't even realize. Why should ranged units be fundamentally more important than melee units? The proposal seeks to address exactly that.

The meat shield is quite literally a shield of meat: heavily armored melee units shield weaker ranged units. People complain about massing large range armies because they only need enough melee to form a shield (30 or 40 pikes is more than enough to shield 80 skirms). This is a direct consequence of how much armor the melee units have and how little damage they do. People complain because ranged units are far more impactful in battle outcomes, end of story. if instead melee units are winning fights, players will get more melee units, melee units will rank up (because they are doing damage), and players will get upgrades for them.

You appear to be over thinking this. Yes, it changes how quickly melee units die, but you are missing one very important point: What units are doing the damage? Currently, melee units do not determine when the meat shield dies. This is exclusively ranged units, and thats a problem. Melee units and ranged units can have any stats determined randomly from 1 to 10000 and the melee units will always die first. simply because of unitAI. Ok, then consider the proposal option 1.

I have made the core problem clear multiple times: Melee units are a damage sponge, and should instead be a source of damage in a given army composition. Meanwhile, you seem very convinced that the goal of this branch is to improve melee combat against ranged units: It is not. In fact, I sought to keep melee vs ranged fights roughly as balanced as they currently are (hence reducing armor). My point with this statement was that it is not melee units' damage that kills ranged units, but instead their armor. Thus, in the presence of one's own ranged units, the melee units contribute very little damage to both melee units and ranged units alike. That is why you never see melee units ranking up. So the real objective for this branch, as I have mentioned previously, is to change melee's role from a focus of being a damage sponge to more of a damage dealer. I am not talking about a melee vs ranged issue, I am talking a core game design issue and as a result, the meat shield issue. I am not sure why you are hyper focused on this relatively unrelated issue, I have even said multiple times that I support increasing speed of melee units but that is a separate discussion. Furthermore, I have even implemented move speed technologies in unit specific upgrades.

Well, frankly its more like a ground-up redesign. The idea is to make this change on a large level. Big changes will feel complicated. Yeah this is something else to address too. Like I said, probably in a different discussion. With the planned introduction to the community mod, it should become clear what other changes would do. I could mention that there are speed techs for spearmen and swordsmen in unit specific upgrades.

just did some testing with @BreakfastBurrito_007, i'll bring swordcav armor down to 2 from 2.5h and the champ spearcav armor down to 6 hack from 7hack.

For 1 it means ranged units can just disengage before too many have been killed by infantry. In addition, it is this excessively long time to kill melee units that causes the meat shield meta. I agree that melee units could use some speed, but that would probably be a separate branch.

look too strong. They lose vs spears in 1:1, and slightly win 1v1 (50/50 melee/ranged composition) without micro. So in battle outcomes its actually a nerf. This was one of my points of contention. 2 hack or 2.5 pierce armor. Playtests will make this more clear. How would you feel about doubling melee infantry damage and leaving cavalry unchanged? Seems like a bad idea to me. There is a cavalry meat shield although it really only happens when 2 cav armies fight. This is due to their armor, not due to their damage. Basically, they massively outlast ranged units instead of killing them quickly. True, I acknowledge this in my first post. However, the key detail is that this allows melee units to be more influential in fights. The reason they rarely rank up currently is because they contribute little damage to battles, and instead act as damage sponges. Ex. Swordsmen currently deal significantly less damage than an archer. This branch makes melee units more interesting to fight with and upgrade: If melee units are dealing significant damage, this opens up more possibilities for fights. For example, army B has fully teched swordsmen, while army A as fully teched pikemen armor. The highly effective swordsmen from B can kill pikemen much faster than they get killed and thus can break through to enemy ranged units. If this engagement happens in a26, the primary deciding factor on who wins the melee fight is actually the ranged units' damage.

Ive never used the map editor, but a workaround could be using some number of the smaller mines. If you want the metal to supply 3000 metal resources, then you can use a clump of 3x1000 metal mines.

Halve armor, no. Just from 5 to 3 for spearmen, swordsmen. Currently, their high armor and low attack makes melee units in general more effective as a damage sponge, even including swordsmen. Doubling attack makes them more effective and interesting, something you want to invest in via upgrades. You have to decrease armor because this would make them OP. It's good that you don't have to guess about the outcomes though, because I have a download available for you to try out these changes: [see top post for both version 1 and 2]

@Adeimantos The objective of the branch is just to make melee globally more powerful, so the changes have to be similar for all units. Specifically so that they have a greater impact on the outcome of battles than before. Ideally, these global changes can be later refined in community mod updates to improve differentiation as you mention as well as balance.

I think the different repeat times are a minor differentiator and they contribute slightly to the look and feel of different units. The dps calc is trivial: D/R so 5.5*1.25 or 25% more. For 12 damage swordcav, this nicely works out to 16 hack per second.

yes, that is a good point. In my experiments swordsmen did beat spearmen, but not by a huge margin. I think their metal cost and lack of cavalry counter make this reasonable. I'd be happy to find time to test it out over the next weekend.

yep

Maybe I should lower 7 hack attack to 6.

yep, here are my general findings There is a lot to test, but the main behaviors are as expected. Swords beat spearmen by a little spearmen better counter cavalry spearcav better counter cavalry ranged units can still kill melee units but take more damage when they catch up pikemen work less well as a meat shield and provide interesting fights because of their range. They are now more balanced in melee+ranged fights Melee units rank up more frequently. so far, nothing is overtly OP, but the possibility remains.

Yes, I guess thats really the main concern. However, when differentiating units with lower armor, it works pretty well. The armor I designed for melee cav is this: spear: 3h 3p sword: 3h 2.5p axe: 3h 2p mace(not in game): 2h 2p

@guerringuerrin I re-uploaded the mod. Now it should include all the changes from community mod 0.26.4 and the new melee changes. I would still disable the real community mod before enabling this. I'd say sniping will still be good, but maybe not as important as it is now. It's hard to say for sure.

here's the branch: https://gitlab.com/real_tabasco_sauce/0-a-d-community-mod-unit-specific-upgrades/-/compare/main...melee_buff?from_project_id=36954588&straight=false

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.