Compilation of Balance Issues

[The Founder]

On the other Hand, you just give the enemy time to Rally his Forces, and you can't flee with its 24 movement, so you might doom your army. And if you have enough powerful stacks, you could just overrun the City with the militia.

The Dvar seem particulary strong in the defense, over offenses.
While it is somewhat obfuscated, fortified trenches are de-facto a regeneration upgrade. The only one on a T1 tech even.

If I can steer the discussion a bit, this post stood out to me as being informative if slightly abrasive, but I haven't seen anybody really address any of its points. He has now 3 agreements on his post, which clearly means many take it seriously. I'd like to know what people think about the points he mentioned.

With his Syndicate Path, I disagree.

I've also seen some mention of voidtech phase manipulators and Rift generators being a problem.

That was me.

Is regen still as strong in PF as it was in 3? Damage seems higher over all tbh, and the amount of ranged on the battlefield makes me feel like regen isn't as good. However, you're not alone in saying this. I'm about to add it after this post but again need more opinions.

Still alive, still OP. If anything, it has proliferated with mods allowing that on practically every unit. And nearly even race/secret tech has at least one.
Mentioned it in the post that talked about voidtech

As for some of my own questions, what makes the Guardian Shell in particular so good? Voidtech gets a mod that gives the same bonus(slightly weaker) but ALSO applies to melee and let's units pass through walls. Perhaps that mod should also be included? On that note, should accuracy or evasion mods as a whole be toned down? Need more info here.

Being tagged as Voidtech vs being tagged as Integrated are very different things.

Being tagged as Voidtech means you avoid the Indiscriminate Voidtech effects. Of wich there are not a lot. Mostly they come from negative features.
Being tagged as Integrated means you are subject to the plethora of Synthesis buffs. Both Tactical and Battlefield. With a ton of units getting it for free.

The Phasewalk Module is 5% less and the passing through obstacle part only really helps melee combatants anyway. Voidtech is simply way more melee focussed.
Persdonally I use the shell only to "tag" supporters and maybe melee units. For offense, I of course prefer the targetting one.
That all being said, it is rather hard to comapre to 2 secret Techs, as it is hard to have both and there is a lot surrounding the "tag" that is different.

https://minionsart.github.io/aowp/Pages/Units/DvarUnits.html It still says 10 cosmite there. If it doesn't cost 10 cosmite anymore, I'd consider it much more viable, but I still don't find them worth the 10 cosmite baseline.

The Dvar Ramjet still costs 10 Cosmite if build directly (and none of used as hero Vehicle), like every other T2 Flier.
Compared to other fliers, the cost is not exceptional in the cost department.

 

[The_Acoustic_One]

MP community can mod their balance wishes as much as they like. I'd like them to not corrupt the main game with their narrow minded views about what the game should or shouldn't be.

What do you mean by "corrupt"? Also, who told you that balance MOD is any near good solution?

 

[TomRon]

MP community can mod their balance wishes as much as they like. I'd like them to not corrupt the main game with their narrow minded views about what the game should or shouldn't be.

While I can understand your POW, I don't think a balanced game is bad for SP. While I heavily disagree with swinging the nerf bat too wildly, that's not the only way to achieve some kind of status quo. If everything is "OP", nothing is, and that makes for a more fun experience imo. Right now VT and Synthesis seems to be the "best" secret techs? So buff the others a bit?

Some specific units might need a slight nerf, but the whole point of this thread it's to try to see the bigger picture, which I find a much better alternative to writing threads claiming a specific unit or tech is OP, ESPECIALLY when the one making the claim is only playing single player. All techs and all races can become OP in SP, because time is not a factor. Many of the crazy late game combinations will never happen in MP, and are therefore not a problem in my opinion. But overly powerful tier1 mods might be.

 

[MaitreBouh]

I'm not talking about nerfs and buffs. I'm talking about the philosophy behind. Some people here are already talking about how any regen is supposedly imbalanced. Their arguments though ignores half of what the game offer because it's focused in a very particular mindset imprisoned in a very fleeting meta game inherent to a small community that took too little time for the meta before asking for balance swings.

When you are in a mindset where the game is first supposed unbalanced, then you don't think for solutions, you ask for balance.

And then there is the meta, an equilibrium that would take several months, if not a year, to reach in a game like AoWPF. People don't wait this time. They settle their opinions on a local equilibrium at best, on a trend most often.

These people already broke AoW3 with their requests. For changes catering to what *they* liked or disliked the game to be about. In the end, all these changes never were about balance, they were about selecting the strategies they deemed worthy of being played.

And yet all they are talking about can be changed with mods. So why not modding the game for what *they* call balance and be done with it?

 

[Zaskow]

As for some of my own questions, what makes the Guardian Shell in particular so good? Voidtech gets a mod that gives the same bonus(slightly weaker) but ALSO applies to melee and let's units pass through walls. Perhaps that mod should also be included? On that note, should accuracy or evasion mods as a whole be toned down? Need more info here.

Guardian Shell can be applied on any unit while Void mod applies to infantry only AFAIK.

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

Syndicate and Vanguard do have quite a bit of similarity in playstyle.

Anyway, I see this thread as more "things to be aware of," as opposed to definitive balance statements.

And, yes, some things can be noticed as being far more obvious picks than others.


I am in the minority it seems thinking that Voidtech is not top tier.

Also, I think Synthesis originally had much more of an anti machine/cyborg focus, but that would have made it very situational.

I don't think it is OP at the moment, because alot of the time, in the mp games I have played so far, the player with the good mods or operations etc used those to get into a dominant position, or already was in such a position, and frankly would have done well with other mods too.

For example, I saw a big city fight between White Knighted and Abednego, where Abed was defending with a few Assembly snipers, with the firestorm (?) mod, the one which makes your firearms deal fire damage and hit units next to the target.

Plus he had the range extension mod.

Plus they were all integrated.

So that's an army fully of kitted out snipers.

And against them were Amazons, who lack long range...and this army was mostly Huntresses and Purifiers (who are awesome, but still short range) with a couple of Arborians.

Now, the obvious take away from that is that Snipers are OP, extension mod is OP, Firestorm mod is OP.

And to a degree there is truth in that.

However, I was watching these armies on the strategic map, via an extensive network of monitoring stations and scouts, and an invisible stack, and Abed was massing on WhiteKnighted's borders, and essentially forced White to come to him.

Now in that situation I think Abed would have won even without the firestorm or range extension mods.

Maybe if White had shown up with massed Lancers or Fliers the situation would have been different?


Anyway, in the past, I have said that regen mods are a bit too much, and I still think so. That synthesis tactical op should imho just be 10% hp regen over 2 or 3 turns.

 

[The Founder]

I'm not talking about nerfs and buffs. I'm talking about the philosophy behind. Some people here are already talking about how any regen is supposedly imbalanced. Their arguments though ignores half of what the game offer because it's focused in a very particular mindset imprisoned in a very fleeting meta game inherent to a small community that took too little time for the meta before asking for balance swings.

I am the one that brought up Regeneration as possible problem and I have not yet played a single MP game.

Syndicate and Vanguard do have quite a bit of similarity in playstyle.

Oh, absolutely. They have about teh same amount of melee combatants and same reliance on Ranged Combat and Overwatch.

 

[The_Acoustic_One]

I am the one that brought up Regeneration as possible problem and I have not yet played a single MP game

And that's the problem, because in sp you'll NEVER understand the limits of units/mods/combinations, and in games with AI you just don't need it. Are you sure that giving balance feedback w/o game knowledge is a good idea?

 

[The Founder]

And that's the problem, because in sp you'll NEVER understand the limits of units/mods/combinations, because in games with AI you just don't need it. Are you sure that giving balance feedback w/o game knowledge is a good idea?

I reject your claim that I am incapable of understanding balance issues based on Singleplayer experience.
So your question lacks any logical basis for me and I can not answer it.

 

[mr_stibbons]

While I can understand your POW, I don't think a balanced game is bad for SP. While I heavily disagree with swinging the nerf bat too wildly, that's not the only way to achieve some kind of status quo. If everything is "OP", nothing is, and that makes for a more fun experience imo. Right now VT and Synthesis seems to be the "best" secret techs? So buff the others a bit?

Some specific units might need a slight nerf, but the whole point of this thread it's to try to see the bigger picture, which I find a much better alternative to writing threads claiming a specific unit or tech is OP, ESPECIALLY when the one making the claim is only playing single player. All techs and all races can become OP in SP, because time is not a factor. Many of the crazy late game combinations will never happen in MP, and are therefore not a problem in my opinion. But overly powerful tier1 mods might be.

Balance isn't necessarily bad for single player, but it isn't as all-important as for a competitive multiplayer. Trading away unorthodox play styles, creative ideas, evocative unit and ability designs and general splashiness in favour of a well balanced game is desirable if you want a competitive multiplayer experience, but in my mind it's a pretty bad idea if you're aiming at a primarily single player experience. Plenty of classic strategy games, like Master of Orion, had utterly terrible balance. But you weren't playing online with them much, so no one really cared. Breaking a single player game over your knee can be fun, and if a player doesn't want to use the broken strategy they can just . . . not. There isn't the pressure to take the most powerful option thats available.

Personally, I'm a little disappointed that evolve and mind-control strategies are nerfed so heavily in planetfall compared to AOW3. I know they broke MP something fierce, but it was fun to experiment with them in single player, they were an alternate strategy that really felt different than the normal style of play and it was pretty cool to shepherd your units around until they turned into monsters. It really feels like triumph decided to put balance over fun there, and the way I engage with AOW that strikes me as a mistake.

 

[The Founder]

Personally, I'm a little disappointed that evolve and mind-control strategies are nerfed so heavily in planetfall compared to AOW3. I know they broke MP something fierce, but it was fun to experiment with them in single player, they were an alternate strategy that really felt different than the normal style of play and it was pretty cool to shepherd your units around until they turned into monsters. It really feels like triumph decided to put balance over fun there, and the way I engage with AOW that strikes me as a mistake.

Metamorphosis (XP based Evolution) actually has disadvantages: It resets units Experience, increases the Upkeep, might even disable mods and could take the one ability you actually want from the unit. And of course stuff like evolving into the wrong thing.
A lot of work went into keeping T1+T2 units viable for a long time via modding. Evolution kinda ruins that. Indeed even the Xenoplague evolution tends to ruin that.
Ideally we want a button on the unit to decide if, when and in what direction to evolve.

Edit: And I just had an Idea to control Evolution using mods as go-between:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/controlled-evolution.1247287/

Mindcontrol:
It would be pretty easy to mod Mind Control to keep units around all the time. Indeed I could have sworn I have already seen such a mod, but I can not find it right now.

 

[Calm]

Balance isn't necessarily bad for single player, but it isn't as all-important as for a competitive multiplayer.

Trading away unorthodox play styles, creative ideas, evocative unit and ability designs and general splashiness in favour of a well balanced game is desirable if you want a competitive multiplayer experience, but in my mind it's a pretty bad idea if you're aiming at a primarily single player experience.

What's frustrating is that I don't even think trading away the mad-scientist elements of games is desirable for a balanced game. The reason I mentioned Bisu in my now-deleted comment was to point out that just because a group or community calls itself hardcore, participates in tournaments, etc., does not mean that they actually understand the game, any more than the Starcraft community understood PvZ before Bisu. Isaac Newton, foremost scientist of his age, also spent a considerable amount of his life on alchemy. It's possible (and likely) for everyone to be wrong.

Given that, some humility is in order.

 

[The_Acoustic_One]

What's frustrating is that I don't even think trading away the mad-scientist elements of games is desirable for a balanced game. The reason I mentioned Bisu in my now-deleted comment was to point out that just because a group or community *calls* itself hardcore, participates in tournaments, etc., does not mean that they actually understand the game, any more than the Starcraft community understood PvZ before Bisu. Isaac Newton, foremost scientist of his age, also spent a considerable amount of his life on alchemy. It's possible (and likely) for *everyone* to be wrong.

Given that, some humility is in order.

On the other hand if sc:bw was an sp game there wouldn't be such case at all.

 

[Elgareth]

Mindcontrol:
It would be pretty easy to mod Mind Control to keep units around all the time. Indeed I could have sworn I have already seen such a mod, but I can not find it right now.

There already is Mantra of Control in the Psi weapon tree that perma-controls Units, unless I misunderstand the question, and the Deployable Malware Daemon from Synth does so as well I think.

About the Evolution, yeah, some Change might be nice. I think it's generally fine as it is currently, as it is fairly niche anyway. But the idea about using mods sparked an idea about an Evolution-based new race (though that would overlap a bit with xenoplague).
Basically a race that starts with the usual core, skirmisher and specialist, but can't build other Units, instead they evolve all their higher up Units out of the skirmisher and specialist base, with the core having the Option to evolve into the first skirmisher or specialist himself. This could be realized with the proposed modding method, and some quick-evolve strategic OPs could counteract possible Problems of having your lategame army wiped and no Option to naturally evolve your Units anymore through XP.
(Plus maybe some "Focus Evolution" production Option like science or energy, that instead evolves one random unit inside the colony (or inside the colony's borders) after X production)

About the whole "Who is allowed to speak about Balance?"-Thing... First, AoW: Planetfall is no real competitive game anyway IMHO, too much randomness involved for that. I'm not even talking about the randomness in tactical combat, but the randomness of the strategic map, NPC Placement, quests, attacks, marauder stack types, Landmarks, happyness Events etc. etc. etc. To me, the only real competitive games are completely deterministic ones, as starcraft, overwatch, chess and the like.

Second: Neither SP nor MP Players have enough overview over the diverse situations the game presents. All both sides can state are their personal, subjective Feelings about Balance, so it should be fair game for all sides to state their stance about Balance issues.
An assembly Player might find Synthesis wildly overpowered, since it offers great synergy when playing it with assembly, but also offers great Counters when playing it against assembly.
A Kir'Ko Player instead might find Synthesis really meh, but VoidTech extremely strong, while Syndicate might find Psynumbra way stronger than Xenoplague or whatever.

Furthermore, SP and MP Balance are completely different Things by design, as the ressource bonuses that AI Players get present a completely different set of rules to the flow of the game.

In the end, if there is something that the vast majority of Players, MP and SP, can agree on that might give the devs a clue on where to look deeper into Things to check if something really is out of the ordinary, so a compilation like in this thread is a neat idea IMHO.

 

[Griff_]

From my perspective as an MP player, it seems most of the top tier weapon tree tactical operations are too powerful (aside for firearms and explosive tree maybe). There's usually no reason to use anything else after you get those, and you can get them quite early in the game practically. Acid rain seems the worst offender, cause there seems to be no real counter to it except regeneration (and not all factions have that). The cumulative armor damage alone would make it quite strong.

I also think accuracy and dodge effects should suffer diminishing returns, cause stacking them together makes them exponentially stronger. And perhaps some of the percentages are too big to begin with.

 

[Garresh]

The list is getting a bit long. Does anyone see any units that don't belong on either list? I haven't seen anyone talk about the Engulfer or Harbinger at all.

 

[TomRon]

The Harbinger is awesome. But rather than taking it down a notch, I would like to see the other T4's having the same kind of impact, be it through pure offense, support or other skills. I'd say the Ascended Teacher is in the same ball park because having all your troops survive as long as you win is bloody awesome and makes sacrificing troops a viable strategy...now we just need a selfdestruct mod to complement it.

 

[Garresh]

And that's the problem, because in sp you'll NEVER understand the limits of units/mods/combinations, and in games with AI you just don't need it. Are you sure that giving balance feedback w/o game knowledge is a good idea?

Both sides matter. Something can be a problem in one but not the other, but understanding both is how we achieve the ideal game state.

The addition and balancing of Cosmite likely started as a solution to the t4 spam problem of AOW3 in offline play. Likewise, the addition of mods may have begun as a way to reintroduce the idea of evolving units without being broken in half as seen in PBEM multi-player.

Lots of the biggest advances in this game can be traced to some balance issue in the last game. And those aren't exclusive to online play.

At most I'd say online play is more sensitive to small imbalances, because human players are far quicker to exploit small advantages. But balance is important to offline as well.

 

[MaitreBouh]

Ok, I read the first post again and I'm very concerned because it looks a lot more like opinion about what power any unit should have than actual balance analysis.

So first, how do we talk about balance? Raw power is not a good metric, because it's only one parameter among many others, and especially depending on the situation. The specialty of players is to set up a very specific situation to emphasize the power of the thing they want nerfed, or the weakness of the thing they want buffed. This is not balance, this is taste and opinion and rage posting after a defeat.

First, for the balance of a game to be properly discussed, the meta must have had time to settle. The most basic way the meta will settle is in phases: first, a powerful strategy is discovered that trump all the naive strategies that were first intuited. Second, a new strategy is discovered that beats the first strategy and the naive ones. Third, another strategy is discovered that beats the 2nd and naive strategies, but is beaten by the 1st. Then a meta is mostly settled, with A>B>C>A.

Notice that I'm talking about strategies, not units or mods, because we're playing a strategy game. Now a strategy can revolve around a unit or mod or race, whatever, but it is a strategy first and foremost.

Now there can be imbalances in the game with a strategy that trumps all the others. We are far from here yet.

For now, 2 things are discussed here: some units or mods would somehow be too strong or not enough. But the baseline is not defined. The reference for not strong enough would seem to be "I want to use this unit, but this other unit always feels like a better choice". This kind of discourse relate to the diversity balance part, and is an important matter too, but not to strategy, so it's far less important for multiplayer.

For this diversity balance, what matters is the role of a unit on the battlefield, whether it has a place in a viable strategy or not, and effectiveness/cost ratio, this last one being tied to the first two things.

So now I'll start to dig through the units and mods named in the first thread.

 

[MaitreBouh]

First, what cater to strategic balance. Please tell me if you think a unit or mod should be treated in the other balance category.

We have:
Dvar ramjet
Kirko Engulfer

What I find interesting here is that the ramjet is a direct counter to the engulfer. The ramjet negates every advantage of the engulfer: melee bypass the swarm shield, dvar melee mod bypass the armor, or the rocket murder packs of enemies, aerial melee overwatch is an advantage, and it comes sooner than the engulfer.

Clearly the meta is not settled yet. And I don't think I've seen any more development about strategic imbalances. And when we see that kirko and dvar are both noticed here to be overpowered, and that syndicate and assembly are praised by all players for their strengths, I don't think any strategic imbalance have been discovered yet.

There strategies that are deemed strong, but that's normal to have them, there will always be strong strategies if you try to play competitively. Complaining about strong strategies and advocating for a competitive environment is plain stupid, I can detail why extensively if you're not convinced.

To me the game is good on the strategic balance because it rely on the rock, paper, scissor philosophy that's a baseline for balance. It's more subtle than plain and definite advantage yet, and the composition with secret tech and the two weapons trees ensure you'll always have a solution. In theory at least.

So let's dig in diversity balance because it's what trouble most people here anyway.