Either switch back to capture default for units, or significantly lower building hack armor

[Deicide4u]

A fully upgraded swordsman champion still does 1 damage per hit to a CC. It's a waste of time to damage buildings with units, unless you got mace men or axe men.

If I remember correctly, we had a change in A27 community mod that lowered building armor. Why didn't that change stick?

So, either do one or the other. Some people want to see buildings razed to the ground without going to the trouble of making siege rams.

[nifa]

Why not reduce maximum capture points when a building is damaged? It's realistic that e.g. a damaged fortress is easier to capture and it solves the problem you mention. So for example: For every 2 HP a building loses, max. capture points reduce by 1. That would mean a nearly destroyed building is half as difficult to capture as an undamaged one.

[guerringuerrin]

34 minutes ago, nifa said:

Why not reduce maximum capture points when a building is damaged? It's realistic that e.g. a damaged fortress is easier to capture and it solves the problem you mention. So for example: For every 2 HP a building loses, max. capture points reduce by 1. That would mean a nearly destroyed building is half as difficult to capture as an undamaged one.

A damaged building currently has fewer capture regeneration points. So this behavior is more or less already present.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

7 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

If I remember correctly, we had a change in A27 community mod that lowered building armor. Why didn't that change stick?

it wasn't play tested enough and there was lots of mixed opinions on it.

[Atrik]

4 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

A damaged building currently has fewer capture regeneration points. So this behavior is more or less already present.

Haven't found anywhere why capturing buildings would be easier when lowered health. Maybe we're all fooled. Pretty sure it's not about capture regeneration too. You can even read the capture regeneration stats in the capture bar tooltip with a certain mod I forgot the name and see it's unaffected, and it gets the value from the component itself.

[guerringuerrin]

No idea about the technical values, but I’ve tested it and at first glance I can see that the capture bar doesn’t recover as much when the building has lower HP. So I assumed its capture regeneration decreases.

[Thalatta]

2 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

No idea about the technical values, but I’ve tested it and at first glance I can see that the capture bar doesn’t recover as much when the building has lower HP. So I assumed its capture regeneration decreases.

I just tested. For a CC with 3000 HP, to lower capture points from 2500 to 500, 24 Spartiates take around 25 seconds, and the regeneration back to 2500 takes around 1:05 minutes. If the CC HP is lowered first to 235, the 25 seconds become not even 5 seconds, while the 1:05 remains the same. The two capture variables of the structure I know are its capture points and the regeneration rate, both seemingly unchanged with CC HP. What changes, which I don't know which variable is controlling this, is the capture rate (either through a lowering of some "capture resistance", or increase of some "capture attack").

[guerringuerrin]

14 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

I just tested. For a CC with 3000 HP, to lower capture points from 2500 to 500, 24 Spartiates take around 25 seconds, and the regeneration back to 2500 takes around 1:05 minutes. If the CC HP is lowered first to 235, the 25 seconds become not even 5 seconds, while the 1:05 remains the same. The two capture variables of the structure I know are its capture points and the regeneration rate, both seemingly unchanged with CC HP. What changes, which I don't know which variable is controlling this, is the capture rate (either through a lowering of some "capture resistance", or increase of some "capture attack").

Makes sense. With less resistance, capture points drop faster than they regenerate, creating an optical illusion in the capture bar.

[Deicide4u]

52 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

If the CC HP is lowered first to 235, the 25 seconds become not even 5 seconds, while the 1:05 remains the same.

How long it takes for 24 Spartiates to bring down a CC to 235 HP? I'd reckon it's much longer than 25 seconds.

If it takes less time to capture a building outright, why even damage it?

Edited Friday at 10:23 by Deicide4u
typos

[guerringuerrin]

4 hours ago, Atrik said:

Haven't found anywhere why capturing buildings would be easier when lowered health

I think I found the code related to this behavior. Value seems to be hardcoded. It should probably be exposed as a configurable value so it can be adjusted more easily.

Check this line:
// If Health is lower we are more susceptible to capture attacks.
        const cmpHealth = Engine.QueryInterface(target, IID_Health);
        if (cmpHealth)
            total /= 0.1 + 0.9 * cmpHealth.GetHitpoints() / cmpHealth.GetMaxHitpoints();

This is in simulation/helpers/Attack.js

Spoiler

AttackHelper.prototype.GetTotalAttackEffects = function(target, effectData, effectType, bonusMultiplier, cmpResistance)
{
	let total = 0;
	if (!cmpResistance)
		cmpResistance = Engine.QueryInterface(target, IID_Resistance);

	const resistanceStrengths = cmpResistance ? cmpResistance.GetEffectiveResistanceAgainst(effectType) : {};

	if (effectType == "Damage")
		for (const type in effectData.Damage)
			total += effectData.Damage[type] * Math.pow(0.9, resistanceStrengths.Damage ? resistanceStrengths.Damage[type] || 0 : 0);
	else if (effectType == "Capture")
	{
		total = effectData.Capture * Math.pow(0.9, resistanceStrengths.Capture || 0);

		// If Health is lower we are more susceptible to capture attacks.
		const cmpHealth = Engine.QueryInterface(target, IID_Health);
		if (cmpHealth)
			total /= 0.1 + 0.9 * cmpHealth.GetHitpoints() / cmpHealth.GetMaxHitpoints();
	}
	if (effectType != "ApplyStatus")
		return total * bonusMultiplier;

	if (!resistanceStrengths.ApplyStatus)
		return effectData[effectType];

	const result = {};
	for (const statusEffect in effectData[effectType])
	{
		if (!resistanceStrengths.ApplyStatus[statusEffect])
		{
			result[statusEffect] = effectData[effectType][statusEffect];
			continue;
		}

		if (randBool(resistanceStrengths.ApplyStatus[statusEffect].blockChance))
			continue;

		result[statusEffect] = effectData[effectType][statusEffect];

		if (effectData[effectType][statusEffect].Duration)
			result[statusEffect].Duration = effectData[effectType][statusEffect].Duration *
				resistanceStrengths.ApplyStatus[statusEffect].duration;
	}
	return result;

};

[Thalatta]

36 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

How long it takes for 24 Spartiates to bring down a CC to 235 HP? I'd reckon it's much longer than 25 seconds.

If it takes less time to capture a building outright, why even damage it?

All important questions. It takes around 1:45 minutes for 24 Spartiates (not maxed up in experience) to bring CC HP down to around 200. You are right in pointing out “why even damage it?”, but it has its use cases: for 6 Spartiates (or less) the capture bar won't go down, while if the CC HP is lowered to around 200 first (lets say, using a ranged siege engine), they would capture it in less than 15 seconds. Of course, these borderline cases are almost irrelevant, and I think these effects should be made more relevant by balancing things differently.

Before addressing that, I want to come back to "some people want to see buildings razed to the ground without going to the trouble of making siege rams". I think this would be pretty bad, having infantry do what siege engines should do, and not punishing just massing up boring monolithic armies.

Considering all those things (and not changing fundamental things on how garrisons or siege engines work, as I’ve proposed before), I’d make siege engines the only ones (significantly) damaging buildings, and I’d make defensive full HP buildings extremely hard to capture, being this reasonable only after taking some damage. At the same time, this damage doesn’t have to be too much, otherwise just destroying a building would be always preferable. There has to be a sweet spot when the preferred (faster) strategy is to damage the building with siege first and to capture it with infantry immediately after. Both only capture or only destruction should be slower. Only then the use of multiple unit types and some tactics would be rewarded, as it was in reality.

 

Edited Friday at 11:00 by Thalatta
Well, realistically razing buildings to the ground is not what siege engines should mainly do, but most games are kind of like that. I prefer the Total War approach, of course.

[Deicide4u]

34 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

I think this would be pretty bad, having infantry do what siege engines should do, and not punishing just massing up boring monolithic armies.

Right now, we literally have massive monolithic armies, with a sprinkled in ram when there's a Fortress to be razed. This is made possible by the capture mechanic, where you can just take over the enemy buildings without damaging them. It has been nerfed in R28, but it's bad even with the nerf. In the end, you can't nerf what's essentially a broken mechanic.

Why are you against sword infantry being good at razing buildings? It's currently good against rams, why not against buildings? We don't have to touch Fortresses and towers, so that you still need siege to bring them down. But a center of a city (which CC stands for, even if its just one building) shouldn't need siege to destroy it.

37 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

It takes around 1:45 minutes for 24 Spartiates (not maxed up in experience) to bring CC HP down to around 200

That's not realistic for a RTS game, where time matters. I don't have time to watch my 24 expensive champions, one of the strongest units in the game, try to raze a building for almost 2 minutes. Mind you, if you made some rams first, you wouldn't have 24 Spartiates, you'd have maybe 18. Arsenals and rams are expensive.

[guerringuerrin]

11 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

Right now, we literally have massive monolithic armies, with a sprinkled in ram when there's a Fortress to be razed. This is made possible by the capture mechanic, where you can just take over the enemy buildings without damaging them. It has been nerfed in R28, but it's bad even with the nerf. In the end, you can't nerf what's essentially a broken mechanic.

The PR to make capturing more difficult is already done and, hopefully, it can be reviewed and merged for the next release.

I think the capture mechanic is interesting. I wouldn't sacrifice it just to repeat what other RTS games do, where everything boils down to destroying buildings. I think it just needs further polishing and balancing.

 

11 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

Why are you against sword infantry being good at razing buildings? It's currently good against rams, why not against buildings? We don't have to touch Fortresses and towers, so that you still need siege to bring them down. But a center of a city (which CC stands for, even if its just one building) shouldn't need siege to destroy it.

I think it's strange to see a stone building fall to sword attacks. One could instead imagine it being set on fire, which would make more sense especially for wooden buildings, which are already weaker by default.

I think it's good for macemen to keep this role of being effective against buildings. They're weak against units, so the player has a meaningful choice to make, with an associated cost; that adds an interesting layer to the gameplay.

 

1 hour ago, Thalatta said:

There has to be a sweet spot when the preferred (faster) strategy is to damage the building with siege first and to capture it with infantry immediately after. Both only capture or only destruction should be slower. Only then the use of multiple unit types and some tactics would be rewarded, as it was in reality.

I mostly agree with this, finding the right balance is complicated but desirable, so the game doesn't end up excessively favoring turtling either.

[Thalatta]

2 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

Right now, we literally have massive monolithic armies, with a sprinkled in ram when there's a Fortress to be razed. This is made possible by the capture mechanic, where you can just take over the enemy buildings without damaging them. It has been nerfed in R28, but it's bad even with the nerf. In the end, you can't nerf what's essentially a broken mechanic.

Exactly my point. Just that I think the capture mechanic can potentially be fixed, as I mentioned. As @guerringuerrin says, it would be a shame to sacrifice it and just do what others have always done, just because it's easier.

 

2 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

Why are you against sword infantry being good at razing buildings? It's currently good against rams, why not against buildings? We don't have to touch Fortresses and towers, so that you still need siege to bring them down. But a center of a city (which CC stands for, even if its just one building) shouldn't need siege to destroy it.

Well, you never said not to touch Fortresses and Towers to begin with. I think infantry should have an easy time capturing smaller buildings, but I just don’t see why swords should be able to bring them down, this reminds me of that much derided AoE axe guy having a go at a wall. I would hope this game aims at something a bit different. I can’t base any reasoning on swords currently being good against OP rams since it’s quite unclear why this is even the case. If, being generous, one thinks of that as swordsmen having an easier time killing the ram’s crew because of close quarters combat, I see no relation with being good at destroying a building (and I really hope the argument is not that swords chop those things!). Now, infantry eventually setting fire to buildings, that's another matter, and an interesting mechanic to possibly add in the future.

The different mechanics have to have their use cases. As you said before, why would I do this, instead of that? It's just that things have to be tuned in a way that these cases are not extremely rare, but appear all in comparable proportions, to adapt and think what would be best to do. Only one thing being almost always the best thing to do would be extremely boring.

[Emacz]

We have added fire units, and different burning affects in Classical Warfare

[LeJardindEpicure]

12 hours ago, nifa said:

Why not reduce maximum capture points when a building is damaged? It's realistic that e.g. a damaged fortress is easier to capture and it solves the problem you mention. So for example: For every 2 HP a building loses, max. capture points reduce by 1. That would mean a nearly destroyed building is half as difficult to capture as an undamaged one.

Isn't that already the case ??