Balance crusher detected

[GaryOak]

posted on June 11th, 2011, 1:47 am

Last edited by GaryOak on June 11th, 2011, 2:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

Theres this game I play called C&C generals ( and zero hour )

In this game theres a late-game unit called 'aurora alpha'. Only available when playing as a turtling faction, its a bomber that

1. Has incredible speed in attacking its target, making it invulnerable to weapons fire on its attacking run ( not a bug )
2. Costs half as much as a 6 min countdown superweapon.
3. Hits about half as hard as that superweapon.
4. Will have a another run ready instantly upon return to its airfield

This unit, when built, usually decides the game by itself ( you can actually build an unlimiteed number of em  ).
Theres 2 ways by which its unbalancedness is fixed;

1. 75% of the players agree to play a game by 'pro rules', which simply include the promise that no one will use the aurora unit.
2. The pro players, not playing by any rules, know how to recognise strategies and under all circumstances feel that a player that allowed another player to come to the point where the aurora comes available, should simply have lost the match. If one cannot prevent that faction from surviving till late game tech, one shóuld lose. The entire point on beating the tactic simply concerns preventing its use.

BTW Im not suggesting I know ánything of FO when talking to respected players such as you guys. Just giving an example of how this problem was fixed in another game : )

posted on June 11th, 2011, 3:21 am

Not trying to make you mad at all, 23.  Remember, we discuss ideas on the forums, but we don't want to attack people; but I know that emotions on balancing discussions can run high.  I wasn't trying to belittle you or put words in your mouth.  The goal for me was to summarize where you're coming from.  If I was going to mock you, it would have been something like, "Derrrrrrr, teh Dredd iz overpoweredzs and shuud bee fixed! >:("    Instead, I summarized it how I might have stated the problem.  The summarization was intelligently written and well thought out, was it not?  

I'm sorry if you felt I was putting you down, as that wasn't my intention at all.  I'm taking you very seriously, but of course we can't always get intonation from a forum post.  I also like discussion and debate, and can come off a bit strong to some people.   I'll try and back away from this one if you really want to champion this, but there's just going to be a lot of people challenging this idea, I'm afraid.  Sutee pulls those kinds of strategies all the time, so a lot of us are familiar.  I mean, he's the only one I know who can pull of a Phalanx rush.  *sigh* Hungarians.   You love them, you hate them.  They tend to like rush strategies.  What can I say? (For those of you who don't speak English natively, this is considered an affectionate joke. )

And Myles.  Yeah, I wasn't thinking the E2 when I said that.  I was thinking anything that's a good kiter.  As feds, once you see the V-15 build, going warp ins with a single yard doing about 3 monsoons for auto target tanking and then Intrepids would be better.  You get a fair amount of anti-long rangers and torpedo ships with the warp ins, and by the time they come up to you you're all good.  I suppose you could try Mayson E-IIs with their cap ship torps and green movement.  The other ships in the fleet might get frozen while the E-IIs pound the V-15.  I'm almost never Mayson when i random feds, so I forget just how hard the Mayson E-II hits, but I'm guessing it's still pretty hard.  Hopefully that clarifies my thoughts on that.

Ultimately, the winning team will be the better coordinated one.  The V-15 group just has a better rallying point to stay clustered.  The non-V-15 group has a nice, slow first target that will go down fast if they coordinate.  Give them a taste of their own by freezing them with disruptor bombardment, drain their energy, and trash talk Sutee to get him distracted.  My comments usually involve his mom, but Sutee likes me.   These are all valid tactics when playing the game.

posted on June 11th, 2011, 10:56 am

about getting them out of position: not always easy as if u take advantage of their rushing and expand unopposed then you find that your exp will be close to them (asteroid halma for example). this really depends on the map

about intreps: they are short range and get frozen every time. and the dread will be attacking around the time of the second warpin, and maybe a couple e2s (not spamming e2s from start). you really cant chase the dread with that yet. especially since if u want to keep your e2s in range you cant leave them at range, since they are so slow.

dont get me wrong, im not saying dread rush is op, you can stop it, but it turns the game into something it shouldnt be: kill me 1 second before dread -> u win, leave me alone 1 more second until dread -> i win.

not all of us enjoy such matches, where it comes down to a simple equation of rush or be rolled.

posted on June 11th, 2011, 9:45 pm

I don't like rush matches either.  Boggz and I got quadruple yard S-2 spammed on our side of a 4v4.  But we won!   I'd rather have a nice long game.

posted on June 11th, 2011, 9:58 pm

I don't like rush matches either.  Boggz and I got quadruple yard S-2 spammed on our side of a 4v4.  But we won!   I'd rather have a nice long game.

the difference with s2 spam is that its not 1 unit, u can kill some of the s2s each time. its harder to have loads of effort repaired away, with a dread if u dont destroy it, it repairs and all your effort and lost ships is worth precisely nothing.

maybe if dread could only repair at dread yard, as the dread is bigger than the small yard

posted on June 11th, 2011, 10:03 pm

How's this for a counter; have a Dominion ally and help them get a pair of Dreadnoughts of their own? Dreadnought Vs Dreadnought.

posted on June 11th, 2011, 10:29 pm

How's this for a counter; have a Dominion ally and help them get a pair of Dreadnoughts of their own? Dreadnought Vs Dreadnought.

lol that would be weird, and funny.

posted on June 12th, 2011, 11:50 am

This shouldn`t be the answer to such problems . Mal threw in some counters to the Dreadnought. In my opinion Sangs, E2s and Cehlers are the only really valuable ships against the Dread - B'rels simply die to fast, neggies, Monsoons, well most long range counters are short ranged and therefore have to get in range of the special and as 23 pointed out this is instant death when there are two of those beasts.
Nevertheless I think long ranged units should be able to counter the dread. And the Borg, since they use nothing but dreads from mid game on:D.

posted on June 12th, 2011, 6:50 pm

You know, Taq B'rels will do much better than you might think .  Usually it's hard to mass B'rels in a short amount of time, but the yard, research, and build time of a dreadnought is plenty warning enough .

  Lots of B'rels work really well because the Dread is long ranged and does a lot of it's damage through it's torpedoes (especially the Borg / Klingon ones).  That means they will miss frequently.  Polarize Hull is pretty cool and will stop those B'rel in their tracks, but it won't kill them .

posted on June 12th, 2011, 8:02 pm

You know, Taq B'rels will do much better than you might think .  Usually it's hard to mass B'rels in a short amount of time, but the yard, research, and build time of a dreadnought is plenty warning enough .

   Lots of B'rels work really well because the Dread is long ranged and does a lot of it's damage through it's torpedoes (especially the Borg / Klingon ones).  That means they will miss frequently.  Polarize Hull is pretty cool and will stop those B'rel in their tracks, but it won't kill them .

Id choose kvorts personnally, in the time it takes to build 1 dread i could mass kvorts and his all=ys mining and expansions would be gone and his shortly afterward.

I find dread rushing a selfish tactic its a nice ship to have but its like cube rushing its selfish because your allys have to protect you and them selves untill its ready and it ruins the game when it fails.

Serious mistakes must be made for it to succeed.

posted on June 12th, 2011, 8:04 pm

You'd be surprised how an S-2 rush feels very similar to a dread rush.   They're fast and just strong enough to get out of range, and chasing them means being taken out by all the other S-2s

Fun fact:  The normal polarization ability has a range of 450, so if you stay at max range with both long and medium ranged ships, most of your fleet won't be caught.  I have still found short ranged vessels like the monsoon and intrepid to be invaluable, because they're fast enough to do some raiding, and fast enough to get back up to your base while you wait for the dread to crawl toward your base so it can die.  Sure, they'll be caught in the field, but while auto targeting will focuses on the already frozen ships, the long range ships in your fleet can pound on whatever.  And if they go after the long range ships, then move them away and then you're short range ships are fine because they're not being fired upon.  Losing a monsoon here and there for a chance to win all the marbles isn't a bad trade.

The good news is, there will definitely be changes to how mixed tech will work and no one will have to fret.  Hurray!

posted on June 12th, 2011, 8:54 pm

We are currently in the process to implement a complete new mechanic for mixed-tech. Most of the "background" development for it was done in the last patches, and its game-mechanics implementations should start soon. The Dreadnought will - of course - have a prominent place in mixed-tech and the Dominion - being a race that favors occupation - will have a good deal of mixed-tech too.
Mixed tech might be disabled for a few patches soon as we advance towards its redo, but i'm positive that its a "sooner" rather than a "later"

posted on June 12th, 2011, 9:11 pm

Mixed tech might be disabled for a few patches soon as we advance towards its redo, but i'm positive that its a "sooner" rather than a "later"

Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!

I love mixed-tech, it would be sad to see it go for awhile

posted on June 12th, 2011, 9:12 pm

Fun fact:  The normal polarization ability has a range of 450, so if you stay at max range with both long and medium ranged ships, most of your fleet won't be caught.  I have still found short ranged vessels like the monsoon and intrepid to be invaluable, because they're fast enough to do some raiding, and fast enough to get back up to your base while you wait for the dread to crawl toward your base so it can die.  Sure, they'll be caught in the field, but while auto targeting will focuses on the already frozen ships, the long range ships in your fleet can pound on whatever.  And if they go after the long range ships, then move them away and then you're short range ships are fine because they're not being fired upon.  Losing a monsoon here and there for a chance to win all the marbles isn't a bad trade.

The good news is, there will definitely be changes to how mixed tech will work and no one will have to fret.  Hurray!

crawl towards your base only applies if your base is far from theirs. on some maps if u take advantage of their initial weakness to expand and get map control, u put your forward outpost near to their's. and then they dont have far to crawl to attack and escape. usually they use polar once to get a kill, then the rest to escape from your chase.

with short range ships, they tend not to do huge damage (eg monsoons for tanking). so they can just ignore them while they go for your long range ships, at which point you either let the dread polar your long range ships, or turn your long range ships away, and lose some firepower (eg e2 has forward firing torps). thats if your long range ships escape, as they usually are slow, so you must turn them away that much earlier, losing some firepower even earlier. even if they dont polar the long range ships, they can easily survive, polar the short range ships and get 1 kill at least. and they get a small number of kills over and over again, ranking up, all the while u cant catch them. and the bigger your fleet gets as you excercise your brilliant map control, the more effective polar gets, cos it takes out even more ships per shot.

posted on June 12th, 2011, 10:12 pm

crawl towards your base only applies if your base is far from theirs. on some maps if u take advantage of their initial weakness to expand and get map control, u put your forward outpost near to their's. and then they dont have far to crawl to attack and escape. usually they use polar once to get a kill, then the rest to escape from your chase.

Well, that's the choice you make.  You can just as easily skip early map control, go to your normal expansions while you totally cripple their mining due to the lack of any sizable defense on their part.  Keep in mind that those super slow dominion miners will take forever to make it back to an expansion.  Also, the dominion's allies won't be able to hold of a 2v1 very well.  Raiding is even easier on smaller maps, and on larger maps that 70 speed will really be felt as your fast, short range harassment group zips past to join up what should be a pretty epic dreadnought stomping fleet.

with short range ships, they tend not to do huge damage (eg monsoons for tanking).

Right, they're tanks.   They're not supposed to do a lot of damage.  But with 3 monsoons soaking up some inevitable autotargeting in a 2v2 or 3v3 fleet of other ships that are going to do a lot of damage, you're quickly making gains in the dps race.

It's easy to go back and forth and say "well, if X happens, then Y will probably happen".  For example, if you have those 3 monsoons and the other guy has generixes with their special and some ceahlears with its special, then the dread might never get its special off.  But ultimately, the ships you choose and the strategy you employ matter less than who was better coordinated, and how much the other team capitalized on the weakness of going dreads.

If you guys want a list of how to handle this, it should be like this:

1) During the course of scouting:  Oh look, the Dominion player is going dreads!  What a surprise!:woot:
2) Wow, let's send our fastest ships down there to harass!   (klingons can even pop a few main base miners and quickly replace them)
3) Harassment ensues as there is very little defense.  If there is a shipyard nearby, consider ignoring the few bugs out there and concentrating on the miners.  Remember to coordinate and decide what you are attacking (defensive ships or miners) BEFORE you attack.
4)  While crippling mining, do whatever tech up is necessary to counter the dread, but don't tech up too much.  Ship numbers is key.
5) If the dread even gets out, keep harassing until the dread get past their expansion, then head back up to your built up fleet.
6) It's also ok to let them attack someone's mining (move the miners away first of course) if you feel you need more time.  Only attack once you've come up with your plan and you have the ships you want for the fight.

These might seem pretty basic, but you'd be surprised how people forget some of these things when the game is actually going.  Dreads change the nature of the battle for everyone, so as long as change to meet it and are tightly coordinated with your team, the early dread strat should never work.  It's great against new players who aren't aggressive and let someone build a dread and the supporting ships that are needed to help defend it, but assuming equally experienced teams, it tends to be a risky strategy.