Empires 2.6.1 Released

Discussion in 'News' started by ImSpartacus, Jan 27, 2015.

  1. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    Last edited: Feb 1, 2015
  2. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    Just a small housekeeping release. Nothing too crazy on, just polishing up what's already in the game.


    So DU is just shit. Like DU HMG has the same DPS as rails on paper, but accuracy be cray cray though. Instead of calculating the estimated accuracy, I'll just blindly buff it and hope for the best.

    I forget why I made this change, but it's so insignificant that it can't hurt anything, right? Right?

    I think it was JGF that suggested that HE Cannon oughta flip vehicles or something. Idk if we'll go there, but it couldn't hurt to buff HE Cannon splash. I mean, that's its "thing", you know?

    When I changed UML, I bitched out and neutered it. Instead of giving it its proper cycle time, I gave it an HE Cannon-like splash. We'll tone that down and put UML where it should've been.

    This doesn't need to be changed. Most vehicle weapons in Empires keep around 60s worth of ammo for constant firing (hold trigger down, wait 60s, no more ammoz). With only 20 shots, Bio Cannon has 100s, which is one of the largest ammo pools in the game. And yet, I still hear people complaining about its ammo. So as more of a psychological soothing, we'll bump it to 30 like HE cannon. Now it can fire for a rather ridiculous 150s. Oh my.

    Compo's regen was buffed to a rather ridiculous 3HP/s during the time when all armors received a hefty HP nerf. It's no longer appropriate (and probably wasn't appropriate even then). It may be dropped further to 1.5HP/s or 1HP/s.

    Also as a side note, people keep losing their shit at compo's regen. It's nothing new. I feel like the armor has had regen for at least two years and I think it's completely appropriate for a "composite" of all armors.

    Absorbant was a smidge borked because I forgot that stickies existed, but other than that, it worked pretty much as intented.

    However, people didn't like extreme & strategic armors as much as they claim they do. They all want boring good-against-everything armors (*cough*compo*cough). I'm ok with that.

    So we'll make it a smidge less extreme and a smidge more well rounded.

    I figured regen would be OP when it was rolled back to its 2.41 state since it was considered OP then. It just took a few weeks for people to notice. I don't want to nerf the armor outright, but I'd like to turn it into something a little different. We might get a weak, fast-charging armor some time in the future, but for now, we'll try a stronger, heavier and slower-regening regen.

    I'm really regretting releasing this before the shell simulation bug was fixed. It's just a pain in the ass to do properly when your weapon speeds vary by barely 2x.

    Craig was pretty upset over the last weekend that jeeps can't be as fast as 3 Phase jeeps used to be. I really don't care, so we'll just turn the Standard Jeep engine into a Frankenstein of the best traits of both Turbine & 3 Phase. Shits cray.

    It's bothered me that vehicle parts cost so similar to their weight, but not quite exactly. Engines are really the only thing that's far off from that mark, so we'll fix that now.

    I know it implicitly makes all vehicles slightly cheaper, but we'll deal. Mediums will probably get slightly more expensive soon.

    Just smoothing out the weight curve from the smaller chassis to heavies.

    Also, 3 Phase mediums are really fucking fast. Like has anyone looked into this shit? It's bonkers.

    No one uses Fission, so they won't mind if it gets a tiny buff.

    Coolant feels weak on mediums. Its cooling is really similar to the other engines and that's not ok. We might be tweaking this one further.

    Just bringing everything down about 2 mph on the top end and moving reverse speeds to match the forward speeds.

    Note that 3 Phase is staying at 35 mph. I feel like if you want to spend the extra 20 weight "penalty", you oughta be able to keep pace with the 35 mph CVs. However, I won't be optimizing future handling tests for 3 Phase Heavies. The speed delta that comes from 35 mph really handcuffs what you can do. Slower is always better in this engine.

    Paradox (or someone) asked if we could make heavies more expensive and I figured it wouldn't hurt to time that with the engine cost change.

    Paradox also requested this and I like it. I feel like it makes research choices more important, while also making the dead time between research restarts less damaging since the opportunity cost of a second is diminished. So that's good all around.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2015
  3. LordDz_2

    LordDz_2 Strange things happens here

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    Can you increase the clip size of Bio MG? I feel like 4 clips of 30 shots is a bit little, it felt like that when using it ingame.
     
  4. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    Absorbant so good you guys, you just won't believe it.

    Maybe if all the weapons were hotter, abs would be better, but as it is right now it's pretty much useless even against cannons.
     
  5. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    Healthy absorbant buff, yay.

    Jeeps don't need to be even faster oh my god

    Yay slower heavies!

    OHMYGODWHATTHEFUCK DOUBLE RESERACH TIME

    Mine resists gone, I am sorely disappointed with this.

    Despise LSMG changes.

    Rest idk.
     
  6. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    isnt increasing all research times a buff to all counters?

    it could act the opposite of what was paradox's intention - a noble intention, but thats what the road to hell is plastered with or so they say. anyway, instead of increasing round lenght, it might tip the tides earlier and the game goes down the slippery slope faster if you have bad resarch luck (first pick is pure luck - and especially with almost no indication of what your enemy got as in empires, it doesnt get much better later on either)

    im a fan of counters, dont get me wrong, but they need to be available aswell

    but you will see ...
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2015
  7. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    I really don't like BioMG in general. I outlined my interpretation of its issues here. The tl;dr is that if it meant not ruining the presets and wasting good art, then I'd honestly remove it. Bio and MGs don't mix well.

    Either way, it's only received flat buffs in the last few months, so I don't want to go overboard. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks.

    You very well could be right. Either way, we need to test this kind of thing.

    And as far as counters, there really aren't any significant counters except absorbant/brittle is good/bad against speedy stuff (cannons, MGs) and bad/good against slower stuff (MLs, arty). That's a pretty clear and simple "counter" and I really don't want to get any more complex than that.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2015
  8. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    Could you turn Bio MG into a stack weapon? E.g. First hit does 1 damage, second does 2, third does 4, 8, 16, etc. You could cap it at 5 stacks so it wouldn't be too crazy, but a vehicle that had Bio influence on it would start taking large damage if it kept getting hit. You could tone the rof right down though, so it'd be a slow shot that would work really really well in pairs.

    Of course you'd need to code stacks, so...
     
  9. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    Bio mg would have a better point if you could stack the dot, this would need to be selective for weapons though I feel. If you successfully hit a target with quite a few bullets you could make the dot low but long.

    Or for something that doesn't modify code, make it do like 2 damage but it lasts for 30 seconds. There's quite a bit that can be done so it's not so poop compared to bio ml.

    Edit:darn, ikalx beat me in the post speed. I will say making slow firing mgs is really bad if you have any intention of using them against infantry, hit detection with any amount of lag makes them poop. It's why he mg is almost pointless against infantry. The fact it doesn't seem to take into account any splash damage value you put in really doesn't help it either.

    Something fun I noticed while working with the vehicle mgs is that because of falloff weapons instantly go below the damage value and how all damage rounds down every hit scan weapon is basically damage-1. So take that into consideration when thinking of mg balance.

    Spartacus there's a word you keep using that's missing a z, please fix.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2015
  10. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    ***** pls, the 2.6.0 Absorbant has like >100HP per plate against rails and like >80HP per plate against ER cannon. That's pretty substantial considering 2.6.0 Absorbant weighs 10 weight per plate.

    And if you want to be insanely amazing against the two most popular BE weapons, then you oughta expect a few weaknesses to balance things out.

    Feedback is always appreciated. Predator is a little short on details, but I think I get the gist of it.
     
  11. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    Rpgs took out about 4 plates in 2.6 spart, something that costs absolutely nothing for a team to field. I don't know what they do now, haven't had a chance to look.

    Edit: Looks like rpgs takes about 2.5 plates of abs. Which is quite a bit more fair.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2015
  12. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    I feel like it's ok that there's a risk-reward involved.

    I mean, we have 7 armors in the game, so I think there's plenty of room for some risk-reward options (e.g. absorbant, brittle) among high-skill options (e.g. regen, reflective) and low-skill options (e.g. reactive, budget). The bases are covered. I see no need to make every armor into some complex rock-paper-scissors shenanigans or make every armor into some generic bore-fest on the other side of the spectrum. There's got to be a happy medium in there somewhere and I hope we find it.
     
  13. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    wait wut
     
  14. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    I dunno then, absorbant offered absolutely no defence when closing up on enemies though.
     
  15. Z100000M

    Z100000M Vithered Weteran

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    Have you seriously though that an armor that looses 4 plates when hit by anything thats not a rail was 'as intended'?? Like shit, stickies are not even a factor in this game anymore.

    AR nerf completely justified.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2015
  16. Z100000M

    Z100000M Vithered Weteran

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    So I can take a whole side of with the standart rpg/mortar combo? Don't get me wrong, its better than getting instagibbed, but still, way bad considering abs is only ever going to be used by nf lategame against rails.
     
  17. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    I meant that considering it's supposed to be great against rails or whatever it's slightly ok for it to be not so great against certain things like rpgs, similar to what spartacus was saying. To draw a comparison reactive has 3 times the health of abs yet you tend to have about half the plates compared to abs, so you lose a similar amount of health from rpgs compared to abs. Right?

    1 rpg is about 1.1 plates of reactive, or 130 hp damage. Abs is 2.5 plates, or 100 hp damage from 1 rpg. It's all relative to how many plates you can put on a tank, so for heavy tanks they'll have a similar amount of hp a side once you factor in weight of armor.

    I think it was said that mortars travel faster than rpgs, so mortars do a little less damage then rpgs against abs, or anything with the speed to damage modifier.

    Spartacus I almost agree with that some weaknesses are ok, but something as universal as a gren is really hard to make something weak or strong against. It requires no research time to make a gren, so you can't have it be a hard counter, it'll just make certain items, like abs, rather crap.
     
  18. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    The raw equations don't mention the fact that you can slap six plates of reactive in front of a heavy, but not twelve plates of absorbant. You only need so much armour for the back, which is usually only used when retreating or when flankerino'd.
     
  19. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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  20. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    Steam news? Ingame news? Unless those are taken care of too, you still need to git gud.
     

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