Can or should 0 AD move past melee meat shield+ dps ranged?

[Grapjas]

5 hours ago, Stan` said:

Could be linked to stances?

It could be but I think doing it via a button or formation might be better, otherwise you'd need to make a workaround for melee units if you do it via stances.

[LetswaveaBook]

I have seem some people saying that if melee units deal to much damage, then there is no reason to create ranged troops.

 

As long as ranged troops can kill enemy units faster than melee troops can, there is a reason to add some quantity of ranged troops in your army, even if the difference in damage output is relatively small.

Even though the damage difference between spearmen and archers is fairly small, a composition of 100% spearmen will lose against 90% spearmen and 10% archers.

 

My point is that ranged units are still viable even if the damage difference would be small.

Edited April 6, 2022 by LetswaveaBook

[chrstgtr]

6 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

As long as ranged troops can kill enemy units faster than melee troops can, there is a reason to add some quantity of ranged troops in your army, even if the difference in damage output is relatively small.

One of, if not the biggest, factor on how fast units can kill enemy units is dmg values. The point stands: if a shift is to occur, it will be a delicate balancing act to keep range relevant. 

[Ultimate Aurelian]

4 hours ago, Fabius said:

I am certain Romans were not above hiring mercs, I believe in the parthian wars they had balearic slingers already to great effect. This was the Triumvirate era though, but I am certain they would have already been using them prior. .

For the timeframe i think Syracusan slingers would be a better option; they were used by Rome in the Punic and Macedonian Wars.

Or the Numidian slingers and archers from the siege of Numantia.

Some Italic peoples like Ligurians and Picenes used slings; but i am not sure if they fought in the Roman army at the time.

Edited April 6, 2022 by Ultimate Aurelian

[LetswaveaBook]

19 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

For example, a Helot Slinger for Sparta. Some kind of slinger for the Romans (probably a merc Balearic Slinger).

I dislike this approach. If a faction lacks diversity, just jumping to the solution of giving them slingers makes factions more like each other rather than making those faction truly unique.

Spartans have the Skiritai and Spartiates, yet those units don´t stand out as the units that make Sparta unique.

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

1 hour ago, Ultimate Aurelian said:

For the timeframe i think Syracusan slingers would be a better option; they were used by Rome in the Punic and Macedonian Wars.

 

Surely you mean sicilian slingers

[Ultimate Aurelian]

30 minutes ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

Surely you mean sicilian slingers

Greek colonists in Sicily

 

Edited April 6, 2022 by Ultimate Aurelian

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

12 minutes ago, Ultimate Aurelian said:

Greek colonists in Sicily

 

Not that. Citizens of syracuse were never, acording to ancient sources, employed as anything other than heavy infantry and cavalry. The native Sicel and siculian tribes however did.

[Ultimate Aurelian]

25 minutes ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

Not that. Citizens of syracuse were never, acording to ancient sources, employed as anything other than heavy infantry and cavalry. The native Sicel and siculian tribes however did.

I think it's possible Hieron sent mercenaries or native levies to Rome considering what you said.

Livy does not say what people these slingers where.

 

Quote

For heavy foot and horse, the King (Hieron) knew that the Roman People employed none but Romans and Latins;  but amongst the light-armed auxiliaries, he had seen in the camps of the Romans even foreigners; he had therefore sent a thousand archers and slingers, a force well adapted to cope with Moors and Baliares and other tribes that fought with missiles

 

Polybius describes Peltasts instead of Slingers.

 

Quote

They sent also to king Hiero asking for reinforcements, who sent them five hundred Cretan archers and a thousand peltasts.

 

The confusion could be because they sent slingers with shields.

Edited April 6, 2022 by Ultimate Aurelian

[Stan`]

6 hours ago, Grapjas said:

It could be but I think doing it via a button or formation might be better, otherwise you'd need to make a workaround for melee units if you do it via stances.

IIRC units target the closest unit that matches their prefered class. Which could be somewhat far away. I think it's just not only a dichotomy

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I dislike this approach. If a faction lacks diversity, just jumping to the solution of giving them slingers makes factions more like each other rather than making those faction truly unique.

Spartans have the Skiritai and Spartiates, yet those units don´t stand out as the units that make Sparta unique.

There are numerous ways a civ can be made unique. It doesn't have to be with citizen soldier roster composition. Also, the effort is not even about diversity, nor is this discussion. 

[Philip the Swaggerless]

Some options as I understand them:

Friendly Fire for all ranged units.  Units default to not fire if they may hit a friendly, but can be put on a behavior where they attack anyways.  Seems like the most "realistic" option and it would completely break the DPS/meatshield dichotomy, but it's not desirable as it sounds like it would cause performance issues.

Attack Area/Group:  A good feature I think.  Melee units would no longer be a meatshield. @real_tabasco_sauce Was there ever an answer to the question of will it make melee even less relevant?  Like, once the ranged units are all dead, could you just kite the enemy melee units?

Complete overhaul with hard counters:  Hard to comment on this without knowing what exactly it would look like.

Limited Ammo.  Grapejuice mod had limited ammo, which I thought was quite interesting.  However, I never played any team games with it.  @Grapjas how do you feel about the way the limited ammo concept worked?  Another method which I've seen discussed before was having ranged units fire a number of shots and then have a "cooldown" period to wait before automatically having ammo refilled.  And perhaps there could be a button to force the units to cooldown in between battles so that they started will full ammo.

Here's another question - if we achieved breaking the DPS/Meatshield dichotomy, and melee infantry became the main force of the game, how would you keep the gameplay compelling?  Personally I would love to see melee infantry having a role as the main units, but if mostly all you have to do is send more melee to the clump of soldiers fighting, does that stay interesting?  So I think we would have to adapt the gameplay to make it interesting. Formations bonuses would probably help, such as was mentioned before cavalry charges being strong against scattered infantry, and other things like that.

 

 

[Freagarach]

59 minutes ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

Friendly Fire for all ranged units.  Units default to not fire if they may hit a friendly, but can be put on a behavior where they attack anyways.  Seems like the most "realistic" option and it would completely break the DPS/meatshield dichotomy, but it's not desirable as it sounds like it would cause performance issues.

I would really love to try this in A26+1.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

10 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

Attack Area/Group:  A good feature I think.  Melee units would no longer be a meatshield. @real_tabasco_sauce Was there ever an answer to the question of will it make melee even less relevant?  Like, once the ranged units are all dead, could you just kite the enemy melee units?

@Philip the Swaggerless when ranged units are able to use their full range, much more damage is unlocked, especially with higher ranged units like archers. Currently this damage is largely unused because it's 1: all sent to the meat shield unless you manually intervene and 2: lost to overkill. Getting rid of these losses would make all ranged units much stronger, with archers receiving the biggest benefit. 

The great thing about attack-ground is that it should fit pretty well into the balance of 0ad. The benefit of a volley would be: use full range, damage multiple enemies, with the costs being the proportion of arrows missed, or the whole volley missed due to user error. The attack group feature would basically just be more effective, and likely easier to implement.

I would expect both of these features to increase the importance of melee, owing to more dynamic battles, and more melee surviving since they would be less targeted by ranged units. I imagine after testing these features, some units will be more OP than others using these tactics, but I hope the game won't need to be balanced around either of these features.

I will say attack ground is pretty realistic, basically implementing volleys, but I like both.

Edited April 7, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

Friendly Fire for all ranged units.  Units default to not fire if they may hit a friendly, but can be put on a behavior where they attack anyways.  Seems like the most "realistic" option and it would completely break the DPS/meatshield dichotomy, but it's not desirable as it sounds like

Instead of not firing, what if they just chose targets without nearby friendly soldiers? in general, Im not sure how smoothly this would work in practice.

In short, I am in favor of more directly player-controlled features, but this could be a good behavior solution.

[Philip the Swaggerless]

5 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Instead of not firing, what if they just chose targets without nearby friendly soldiers? in general, Im not sure how smoothly this would work in practice.

Yes,  that is what I meant to say.  They instead shoot someone they can hit without risk. 

[Grapjas]

7 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

Limited Ammo.  Grapejuice mod had limited ammo, which I thought was quite interesting.  However, I never played any team games with it.  @Grapjas how do you feel about the way the limited ammo concept worked?

I'm gonna be honest, i don't play my own mod (only tests). There are a couple of reasons for it. 1. Bots are no challenge 2. I made this mod for others, not for myself. 3. I'm using it as a learning experience.

I haven't experienced a teamgame with players with the mod either, so it's hard to judge. You also can't really isolate and judge the ammo mechanic from the rest that's new in the mod though. e.g. Ranged have much more damage because they now have ammo, and they are generally lightweight so can manoeuvre fast but die easily. And they also have secondary weapons in case they run out of ammo.

I think it's best to leave ammo as an optional thing because i think there is a great divide with people that are against it and in favor for it. It could be fun though if it was a game option you could check, but imo you at least would need to buff their damage and give them secondary weapons too to actually pay off that they have ammo.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Grapjas

[Fabius]

19 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I dislike this approach. If a faction lacks diversity, just jumping to the solution of giving them slingers makes factions more like each other rather than making those faction truly unique.

Spartans have the Skiritai and Spartiates, yet those units don´t stand out as the units that make Sparta unique.

Skiritai do standout, are unique, and do make Sparta unique. Spartiates as well. They may be generic units but the bonuses grant them that uniqueness. This is why I am frustrated that Roman siege bonus was cut down, it made the Roman generic siege units feel unique, and if you couple that with unique unit aesthetic you are sorted.

I do not see anything wrong with a roman slinger, there are multiple factions with two ranged infantry units and some with three, Rome has been stripped of so much already and had nothing given back to it.

 

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, Fabius said:

Skiritai do standout, are unique, and do make Sparta unique. Spartiates as well. They may be generic units but the bonuses grant them that uniqueness. This is why I am frustrated that Roman siege bonus was cut down, it made the Roman generic siege units feel unique, and if you couple that with unique unit aesthetic you are sorted.

I do not see anything wrong with a roman slinger, there are multiple factions with two ranged infantry units and some with three, Rome has been stripped of so much already and had nothing given back to it.

The old siege differences weren’t easily noticeable. I would to bring back full capabilities to the camp, though, which was very noticeable. 
 

I tend to agree that if all the civs all have the same units then things get boring fast. It might make sense to have some civs have primary and auxiliary units. Something like rome gets the base of swords and skirms and has the option of choosing one of archers or slings. This only works once the choices are more or less equal, though, which currently isn’t the case with archers being the worst unit. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

I tend to agree that if all the civs all have the same units then things get boring fast. It might make sense to have some civs have primary and auxiliary units. Something like rome gets the base of swords and skirms and has the option of choosing one of archers or slings. This only works once the choices are more or less equal, though, which currently isn’t the case with archers being the worst unit. 

I would also be interested in maybe a couple other units for other civs in the skiritai "class," more expensive, powerful CS with less eco value. IMO a contender could be axe cav.

[chrstgtr]

42 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I would also be interested in maybe a couple other units for other civs in the skiritai "class," more expensive, powerful CS with less eco value. IMO a contender could be axe cav.

Maybe, sure. My point is that if all civs have all the same units or have all the same “unique” features then nothing is unique. 

Realistically, all civs that existed around the same time period could basically all look the same: some spears, some swords, some cav, some archers, etc. But just because everyone had everything, doesn’t mean the game should look that way too because that would create a boring game. At some point, the game needs to be a game. That is why something like the Roman sword and Greek hoplite should be emphasized whereas some other units should just be left out to some degree

Edited April 7, 2022 by chrstgtr

[Fabius]

5 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

The old siege differences weren’t easily noticeable. I would to bring back full capabilities to the camp, though, which was very noticeable. 
 

I tend to agree that if all the civs all have the same units then things get boring fast. It might make sense to have some civs have primary and auxiliary units. Something like rome gets the base of swords and skirms and has the option of choosing one of archers or slings. This only works once the choices are more or less equal, though, which currently isn’t the case with archers being the worst unit. 

Why not take a leaf from from the Seleucids or Delende Est and make it a choice? Pick either a slinger or an archer. 

[Fabius]

Here is a simple idea to differentiate Roman swordsmen, they use scutum, which gives more protection from missiles, so increase their pierce resistance by 1 or something. Testudo, count it as a debuff such that archers that fire at it have a very low chance of hitting the troops in it. Gladius, give them higher attack speed since they where taught to use the point which is faster to administer than a cut.

[Philip the Swaggerless]

17 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

In short, I am in favor of more directly player-controlled features, but this could be a good behavior solution

I think the ability to attack units within a given area is a desirable feature and I would like to have it.  I just worry that it could backfire. 

I think it is worth a try to see how it would play out. 

[chrstgtr]

39 minutes ago, Fabius said:

Why not take a leaf from from the Seleucids or Delende Est and make it a choice? Pick either a slinger or an archer. 

That’s what I was thinking. I’m sure there are more (options and interesting) ways it can be done, but I def prefer something like that to an alternative where everyone just gets the same roster