Balance Discussion - Crush, Issues and possible solutions

[DesertRose]

The Crush damage type is a mess because it incorporates three different kinds of attacks:

    Small blunt objects, e.g. stones
    Blunt objects with a lot of mass, e.g. maces
    Anti-Building attacks, e.g. rams

This will always lead to weird gameplay implications. E.g. currently Slingers are more effective against "lightly armored" targets as they should be, but they are also somewhat of a siege unit. Macemen behave more like arsonists with high anti-building damage but low damage against human units, especially heavily armored ones.

How to fix this?

 

Idea 1:

Two "new" damage types: Thump and Crush_new

Slingers deal (mostly) Thump damage, and resistance of units is similar to current Crush Resistance. Low for weakly armored units, significantly higher for heavily armored units. Like 1-5-10 for infantry ranged, infantry melee / champion ranged, champion melee. This tries to simulate that the Sling loses comparably a lot of its lethality against armored targets.

Crush_new is the damage type Macemen and partially Axemen deal. Crush_new resistance would be fairly low, like 1-2-3. This tries to simulate that maces and to a lesser degree axes have so much kinetic energy that armor is a lot less effective against it compared to how well it protects against e.g. swords or arrows.

With two new damage types it would also be easy to incorporate them into Forge techs; Pierce Armor upgrades increase Thump Res, and Hack Armor upgrades increase Crush_new Res.

Siege units get their own special damage type, or a bonus against buildings. E.g. a Ram deals Pierce and Crush_new damage and has a huge bonus against buildings.

One issue with this idea is that very few units would use the Thump damage type. Mostly just Slingers, and maybe Onagers.

 

Idea 2:

Blunt and Piercing

Both Slingers and Macemen deal Blunt damage. Blunt Rest is similar to current Crush Resistance. Macemen also deal a little bit of Piercing to simulate them being good against heavily armored targets. Units would have 0 Piercing Res, and buildings a very high one.

This would also enable the option to make other units relatively good even against heavily armored targets, e.g. Bolt Shooters.

Against, Siege units would either get their own damage type or a damage bonus against buildings.

One issue this idea has is it's hard to decide with Forge Armor upgrade should affect Blunt.

 

Idea 3:

Crush_new

Crush_new Res is something like 1-2-3. Only weapons particularly effective against heavy armor have the Crush_new damage type, e.g. maces. Slingers deal only Pierce damage, but have a bonus damage against ranged units to simulate the Sling being effective against unarmored targets.

Siege units deal either Hack, Pierce or Crush_new damage, and have a damage bonus against buildings.

This doesn't add any new damage types, but has to heavily work with bonus damage.

The issue is if Forge Armor upgrades should affect Crush_new Res, and if so which one.