make bolt-shooters great (and usefull!) again

[JC (naval supremacist)]

Hi all,   (if you dont want to read all, see my boltshooter configuration in green below)

Synopsis : After quick discussions in the lobby between 2 games (not easy to expose all in 1 min). I take the time to justify maybe the best thing to do with bolt-shooters.

Introduction : We all know that 0ad games nowadays start with a grow pop spam to converge later into a battle of champions with a human train of traders in the backyard  .One can think that the only reason is that champions are OP for the price they cost .. It is almost false and it's certainly not the main reason. The mainly reason has nothing to do with those 4 ressources shown on the screen.  It is BRAIN ressource.  Indeed, in a game, one are limited by the number of actions one can operate on the game.  The best the player is, the more he can operates good moves and decisions.  Take even the TOP5 best players, during a battle, none of them will get bored manipulating a set of cavalry + skirmishers + spearman + swordman + archers + siege units (to destroy the nearest ennemy tower). Though, a good CPU will do it very well and over-come an army of champs for the same amount of ressources.

If one extends this fact to its limit, one sees the chariot spam syndrom : A bunch of chariots can do everything even destroy a fortress. Its expensive, its not efficient  .. okay.. but omg, its so EASY for an human brain ..  the ennemy will start to have head aches thinking how he can counter this parad of chariots with a composite army.  In other words, the chariot spammer wins because he had free his brain from lots of operations while the other one will even forget to build, grow or work !

Idea :  to dismiss the champs-spam strategy (which kills the gameplay) one needs at least 1 unit which has some counter value. It means that for a given price, it is better to use the counter unit rather than any other unit . Exemples : spearman vs Champs Cavalery , skirmishers vs Spear Champs , cavalery vs Sword Champs.  By now, NO units can counter Chariot Champs , their long range and fast escape make it very hard for any spear units to reach them (and even more all together !).

Solution : By now, the bolt-shooter might be the only unit which will be able to kill a chariot in a 1v1 . But , unfortunately, a bolt shooter is : expensive , 2 pop using , firing every 5 secs only, weak, slow to move and to deploy ... in other words totaly USELESS as it will impossible for an human brain to use them correctly against any army :  as soon deployed, the chariots fly away, and/or some cheap units came to hack them down in 3 secs. For that price all pragmatic players will buy 2 more champs!

--> So the bolt-shooters should be powered up and become the new OP unit in 0ad21 ?   Certainly not. 

Bolt-shooters should be designed for 1 purpose : 

+ Weaken a bunch of immobil units on a long distance  (basicaly a bunch of firing chariots)

And NOT :

- Destroy any units in an eyeblink (like Roman boltshooters did in an older version)

- Crush down towers and buildings from out-ranged distances

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Therefore , here is my configuration proposition for bolt-shooters :

> bigger range to balance the annoying deployment time (at least bigger range than the chariots)   : 80-90meters (minimum range of 5 meters)

> more pierce attack for a the same given reloading time to balance the cost and the 2 pop : 200-300 pierce / every 5 sec

> no crush damage at all , it should not replace the catapults in destroying buildings : 0 crush

> the arrow has to punish only a bunch of immobil units packed together :  projectil speed has to be lowered and its path should not be straight ( but slightly more like the one of the catapult bullet) , this way, a moving unit will not be killed.

> no splash damage and average accuracy :  its has to be less accurate than an archer but more like a skirmisher

> take less place :  even if their shoot range turns better,  the disposition of many boltshooters should not be too much spread due to lack of space.

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With this configuration, normaly you can create a counter force against army of chariots without replacing an OP unit in 0ad20 by another one in 0ad21.

  The bolt-shooters will be used like a strong defence units (against arrow harasement) for an army of walking soldiers gone for expedition ; it will take back its role as told in history books  : Like the deadly unit behind the troops killing the formations of archers on the first lines of the ennemy !

Good night

 

[feneur]

Quote

> the arrow has to punish only a bunch of immobil units packed together :  projectil speed has to be lowered and its path should not be straight ( but slightly more like the one of the catapult bullet) , this way, a moving unit will not be killed.

> no splash damage and average accuracy :  its has to be less accurate than an archer but more like a skirmisher

Why not let it have splash damage? That way it would certainly help out in weakening groups of units packed together.

[JC (naval supremacist)]

because its an arrow..

But displaying 10 boltshooters in front of the ennemy can start to create the condition of a nice random rain of deadly arrows 

( a bit like skirmishers horses hunting) .   The pleasure will be to create some battery of  10 boltshooters in a way it can be used as an umbrella for an army which wants to hold a position (a bit like a mobil fortress but without its strong walls).

This can add lot of gameplay to 0ad21 as a player which decides to invest into boltshooters takes more risk but it can payback if those boltshooters allow him to hold a postion before, for exemple, start building a new CC  (by now, facing a bunch of chariots makes impossible to build a new CC ).

 

 

[feneur]

Well, considering it's a big arrow, perhaps it can hit more than one person? And seeing as we don't have morale etc, a small amount of hitpoints lost can symbolize the effect of seeing the guy next to you fall down (I guess that could apply for everything to some extent, but sometimes things are needed/must be motivated by gameplay reasons ), or for that matter that you might stumble as you try to get over his dead body or something.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Hmm, I like your thinking for vanilla game. But I will go different direction if and when VisibleGarrisonPointClasses patch is (finally...) committed to the game. Bolt shooter were basically not use on the battlefield very often even by Romans. They were used in sieges and especially in defenses! On walls, on ships, in towers. So... When VisibleGarrisonClasses is committed, I will differentiate the bolt shooter by making it the siege weapon that can:
 

• Pack and move in a cart (I will make stone thrower a stationary siege weapon, like I already do with the Onager, build by soldiers in the field)
• Garrisonable on ship decks, on fortesses, and on walls and towers (stone throwers cannot)

 

This makes them function 100% different from stone thrower and make them a defensive artillery.

 

EDIT: Also, remember there are 2 type of splash damage: area and linear. Bolt shootr have linear "splash" damage already. So maybe make this more useful in some way.

Edited September 22, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[JC (naval supremacist)]

Very glad that boltshoouters will be mounted on fortress and and boats    this will prevent the boat spamming phenomen.

 

That's said,  dont forget to read and underline the current problem:

Problem : Champion chariots are, in pratice, the end-of-the-chain unit.  Which make them OP and creates a situation where any game will converge to chariot spamming (mauryan and seleucids).  This happens because no unit , (in pratice , not in theory) counter them (spear champs will walk in line to them and get killed 1 by 1.. when they try to capture fully garnissoned fortress , chariots will shower them with extra arrows.. if you idle, those chariots will kill your workers before flying away).

Boltshooters are useless and even if they beat chariots in 1v1 , the chariot can still .. capture it !    So I gave specifications in a way that Bolts can counter Chariots WITHOUT turning into the new OP unit (which is very important)

 

 

Another point, once (expensive) bolt shooters will be designed to be the best anti-arrow-spamming unit ,  the sword cav will have a new role (then valuable again) as they can quickly hack-down the boltshooters .

 

bolts > chariots , champs > bolts , chariots > champs.

 

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 minutes ago, JC (naval supremacist) said:

spear champs will walk in line to them and get killed 1 by 1.

Formations, battalions not implemented yet. Once that happens, all the balancing will be different.

 

Not saying your balancing ideas aren't good for the time between now and that.

Edited September 24, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[elexis]

• Bolts were buffed 5 days ago in r18735,

We agreed that bolt shooters were nerfed too much in alpha 19 (r16392) and were not buffed like other siege in alpha 21 (r18037). Thus we decided to give them 25% more attack damage in r18735 and a bit more armor (by giving all siege the same armor). Their range 80m is already more than the one of archers (and equal to the mauryan upgraded ones) and I'm very skeptical about out-ranging things from the gameplay pov. Such things can easily become undestroyable behind some random buildings. or wall of champs.

If bolt shooters are still unviable, they can be buffed a bit more. But first need some testgames...(too bad that someone had uninstalled svn).

• The bolt shooter tech didn't work in previous alphas (r18243), so they get an additional attack bonus.
• About your proposals:

> bigger range to balance the annoying deployment time (at least bigger range than the chariots)   : 80-90meters (minimum range of 5 meters)

It has always been 80m, so always did outrange chariots (76m).

> more pierce attack for a the same given reloading time to balance the cost and the 2 pop : 200-300 pierce / every 5 sec

200-300 pierce / every 5 sec

Right now it's:  <Pierce>150.0</Pierce>     <Crush>25.0</Crush>   <RepeatTime>4000</RepeatTime>

So the current one does 37,5 pierce damage per second, your lowest proposal is 40 pierce damage per second.

> no crush damage at all , it should not replace the catapults in destroying buildings : 0 crush

I don't mind a bit of crush damage, but perhaps it can be shifted a bit more towars pierce damage.
> the arrow has to punish only a bunch of immobil units packed together :  projectil speed has to be lowered and its path should not be straight ( but slightly more like the one of the catapult bullet) , this way, a moving unit will not be killed.

There is the spread factor, some attacks will miss the target. That ballistic trajectory might certainly benefit from some improvements like #4241 or adding collsions with walls and mountains.

> no splash damage and average accuracy :  its has to be less accurate than an archer but more like a skirmisher

Doesn't have splash damage. Spread factor is 2.5, never investigated it.

> take less place :  even if their shoot range turns better,  the disposition of many boltshooters should not be too much spread due to lack of space.

Indeed, the big obstruction size / footprint of siege units makes them really hard to maneuver.

Another issue being that units try 2 paths per second only. If a unit collides with 1 tree, it will wait 500ms before doing anything at all. Those 500ms come from the multiplayermode. It is 200ms (i.e. 5 retries per second) in singleplayer mode (turn length). #3752

[JC (naval supremacist)]

 

Hi elexis,

I did a picture to expose the problem because otherwise people dont catch what im trying to expose.

-> Same pop both sides ( 16 pop )  and almost same cost

-> Guess who gonna win in this battle

1° The Bolt-shooters will barely target the first chariot in their 80m range (stop button seems not working) and the targeted chariot can easily escape

2° The 8 champions will try to defend the silly boltshooters and will be shoot down 1 by 1 in the 76m range of chariots.

3° The 4 champs survivors will go behind the boltshooters to find protection

4° But the chariots will come capture the boltshooters (thx to the min range of Bolts)

5° In the best/worst case, the chariots just move away, speed to the ennemy camp, and kill all workers

6° The slow boltshooters (no more protected and deployed) come back to defend but are destroyed or captured while moving ..

__________________________________________________

Conclusion : with only an equivalent of 37,5 pierce damage (x 4)  there is no way it can face an army of 16 chariots (18 pierce x 16) . The 80m doesnt offer AT ALL the cover required to balance with 1° the slow (and annoying) deployment time , 2°  the messy and large deployment position and 3° the slow walk to the strategic points.   Beside this,  the chariot player will use far less brain ressources to manage all this.

_________________________________________________

SOLUTION :

Now let's have a look here :   Bolt shooters will have 100m range and an equivalent of 50 (at least) pierce per second. The accuracy will be less good but deadly if it hits something within a 10-15m circle.

This configuration will typically punish a bunch-of-immobil-arrow-spammer.  The 8 champs can do their defending job while being under the protective and EFFECTIVE umbrella of boltshooters. This way, the army can join a strategic point on the map without being harrassed all the time.

____________________________________________________________________________

COUNTER  :

Will this create a situation where Bolt-shooters will be the new OP unit of 0AD21 ?   -> No ,  thanks to diversification of army, the ennemy can replace (for the same cost) 6 chariots for 9 sword champs and will try to hack-down the bolt-shooters

The weak armour, the min range, a relatively slow and elliptical projectil path (should be like catapults) of bolt-shooters will make the very weak against sword units. As long as ennemy units move, the bolt-shooters will not be able to hit them.

_______________________

 

A really think that Bolt-shooters should be used like a "moving-castle" so an army using them like an umbrella can hold a strategic position for some times. The fact that Bolt-shooters are nothing else than an huge bow make sense that it out-range anything else. The crush-damage should be totaly removed to prevent them to replace the catapults.

+ viewing 10 deployed bolt-shooters creating a random rain of big arrows on an ennemy army packed together (formation ?) should be very fun

 

[JC (naval supremacist)]

 

The catapults might be a possible answer to boltshooters aswell

Edited October 22, 2016 by JC (naval supremacist)
double post

[Eraser]

If you like bolt shooters, I think you would like to check out what I did to buff siege with Macedonians in the mod I'm doing. Bolt Shooters can be recruited in phase 2, and they also start with hero Demetrius, which gives range and crush to siege.

 

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

What are thoughts of implementing the pass-through damage seen in Age of Kings for the scorpions.  It was always beautiful seeing massed scorpions in pro-matches.

[LordGood]

It was also beautiful to mass helepoleis in the original Age of Empires. All those candy cane bolts flying through the air!

That reminds me, our bolt projectile looks a bit.. lackluster, don't you think?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, LordGood said:

It was also beautiful to mass helepoleis in the original Age of Empires. All those candy cane bolts flying through the air!

That reminds me, our bolt projectile looks a bit.. lackluster, don't you think?

You remind me of how historical wacko first AOE was. (AOEII not much better). lol

 

And yes, all projectiles are hard to see, except catapult rock of course. I think the game need the projectiles to kick dust when they hit the ground or target.

[fatherbushido]

4 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

What are thoughts of implementing the pass-through damage seen in Age of Kings for the scorpions.  It was always beautiful seeing massed scorpions in pro-matches.

If you mean a linear splash damage, it is yet implemented (but not set for any unit).

[elexis]

So we know what to commit after feature freeze :->

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, elexis said:

So we know what to commit after feature freeze :->

      <Splash>
        <Shape>Linear</Shape>
        <Range>8</Range>
        <FriendlyFire>false</FriendlyFire>
        <Hack>0.0</Hack>
        <Pierce>30.0</Pierce>
        <Crush>15.0</Crush>
      </Splash>

I think it look like this. 

[elexis]

Careful with the crush damage, do we want those things to destroy buildings, if so how many should be required?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

22 hours ago, elexis said:

Careful with the crush damage, do we want those things to destroy buildings*, if so how many should be required?

Well, in DE all range siege have some crush attack*. But my actual preference for bolt shooter role is not possible right now, so I wait to balance them until it is possible to dramatically alter their role. Is prudent to not waste time balancing a unit whose role will change completely once a patch is commit to master. In fact, I don't worry much about balance in general until formation fighting is wirtten and committed.

 

Spoiler

* If I was to have carte blanche to redesign the sieging mechanix, I would remove health for buildings entirely and give them siege points, so say a Fortress has 20 siege points and a Barracks has 10 siege points, it take 20 hits with a catapult or battery ram to destroy the Fortress. I know this is simplistic, but I like the simplicity with something like this. Maybe a bolt shooter has 1 siege attack, a catapult has 2 siege attack, and a ram has 3 siege attack. I would say human unit like a Hoplite would only have 1 siege point (getting struck by a catapult rock or siege bolt should be a 1-hit kill, lets be honest). Elephants get 5 or something.

 

Edited November 8, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[fatherbushido]

Aren't your siege points the yet existing capture points ?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

48 minutes ago, fatherbushido said:

Aren't your siege points the yet existing capture points ?

No? Siege points are for siege interaction, not capturing.

[fatherbushido]

Some people thought/think the only attack against buildings should be the capture attack. I wonder if it's not exactly the same concept as the one you described.

 

[Eraser]

On 7/11/2016 at 10:42 AM, elexis said:

Careful with the crush damage, do we want those things to destroy buildings, if so how many should be required?

Well, actual bolt shooters were not meant for buildings. They were meant to decimate large numbers of infantry (and sometimes charging cavalry). A damage bonus against units could do the trick, but that would require lowering champion's armor, if a line of pikes and a pack of charged bolt shooters can't stop a small bunch of happy buffed guys advancing mindlessly, then it will stay pretty useless.

Edited November 8, 2016 by Eraser

[av93]

7 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

  Hide contents

* If I was to have carte blanche to redesign the sieging mechanix, I would remove health for buildings entirely and give them siege points, so say a Fortress has 20 siege points and a Barracks has 10 siege points, it take 20 hits with a catapult or battery ram to destroy the Fortress. I know this is simplistic, but I like the simplicity with something like this. Maybe a bolt shooter has 1 siege attack, a catapult has 2 siege attack, and a ram has 3 siege attack. I would say human unit like a Hoplite would only have 1 siege point (getting struck by a catapult rock or siege bolt should be a 1-hit kill, lets be honest). Elephants get 5 or something.

 

Can't you make a similar concept playing with hp, armours, bonus and penalties?

 

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, av93 said:

Can't you make a similar concept playing with hp, armours, bonus and penalties?

My way is more straightforward, wouldn't you agree? Anyway, it is just a thought exercise, since 0 A.D.'s system is pretty much in solidly place.

Edited November 8, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone