Post weekend feedback of balance mod

Homeworld Remastered Collection Homeworld Remastered Multiplayer
#33

Itā€™s true that the loss of the MS is a near fatal blow to the HW1 player, itā€™s also part of the asymmetric nature developing in HWR. Remember that the HW1 MS as a unit by itself is far superior to the other MSes. It can jump alone and it has dual production. It can produce repair vettes from the start, and support frigates as a tech one research. Giving the HW1 races the ability to call in a new one would just be a really bad idea for that race and the lore behind it. Itā€™s not a volunteer or enlisted Navy commanding that ship, itā€™s the last of your race. Protect it as such.

I would entertain the thought of beefing the overall HP of the MS. We noticed the other day in raw MS+ CCs + Ship Yard that combined HP, the HW1 races are far behind. But I personally could never get behind calling in a replacement MS, or a HW1 SY equilivant. This is one of the key disadvantages of your choice to be HW1 and should be resolved tactically and strategically.

We did, however, account for MS sniping in our balance discussions. The nerf to BCs and buff to GW inhibitors combined were considered due to how easy it was to jump a BC into a GW sitting at the HW1 MS. BC with its own inhibitor and range would pretty much trap the MS unless you had your well positioned far between the BC jump origin and the MS. Now the inhibitor range gives you time to react to an MS snipe.

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#34

Why not just make make a hw1 SY equivalent with only 1 production queue. and limit the ability to only be able to call in one only if the mothership goes down? I donā€™t think that would really break the balance to be honest. When you lose your mothership even as a hw2 player, thereā€™s a very good chance youā€™re not going to come back from it. For all intensive purpose, a battle cruiser is far superior to a hw1 cruiser in terms of its utilitarian roles, it can repair fighters and build on grav wells/fire control towers.

Though to be fair, a come back play for hw1 is more of a wish in the hopes of some more interesting games when playing on large maps. Itā€™s not really my biggest gripe as it stands, (Besides I can mod it in myself for fun) I do agree that the MSā€™s feel pretty weak in terms of health. One battle cruiser or heavy cruiser can still easily kill an MS. (This is partly why I like Cataclysm, because you could upgrade your MSā€™s and they had specially strategic abilities. The loss of that in HW2 always bugged me)

My biggest over all concern is more on the terms of Vaygr and their damage application and how expensive HW2 races are to play, which make them not so viable for HW1 maps. I plan on playing some more, thereā€™s more things I need to experiment with. I guess my largest issues with the hw2 races is that there are so many hoops to jump through to get production going. with only one production queue and the need to build the required facility for the ship class.

#35

All the balancing so far has been with all the settings to normal/medium. @thisquietreverie, maybe take a look at high unit caps and try to carry over some of the good stuff from normal unit caps. I noticed back in march that on high unit caps 2 Shipyards + 1 Mothership may be pretty OP vs just 1 hw1 Mothership.

Regarding hw2 having to spend ru on upgrades while hw1 does not: some of the hw2 upgrade costs are semi-built into hw1 research, or hw1 ships. For example Hiig Ion Frigates cost 700ru, while Kushan Ion Frigates cost 900ru. This isnā€™t universally applied in one specific way, but Iā€™m sure @thisquietreverie has taken this into consideration.

Hiig and Vaygr destroyers will kill each other perfectly every time. Just like Hiig and Vaygr battlecruisers do. Iā€™ve seen several posts with concerns about how Vaygr missiles take more time to hit their targets than say Ion cannons. This is well known and was balanced out with the appropriate damage for Vaygr by Relic back in 2003.

Additionally missiles have a positive and negative aspect that should be pointed out. First, Ion Frigates often overkill a target and waste damage. Extra Vaygr Heavy Missile Frigate missiles will retarget another enemy when their first target dies, so that no damage is wasted (as long as thereā€™s another target nearby). This is the positive aspect. The negative aspect is that Missiles must atleast be half way to their target or they will explode. Generally the positive aspect out weights the negative aspect in practice.

Additionally Vaygr destroyers can be kited with micro against Hiigaran destroyers. A Vaygr destroyer does all its damage in one volley, so it can get in range, fire, and pull out while taking very minimal damage from a Hiigaran destroyer. If this micro is repeated, a Vaygr destroyer can situation-ally beat a Hiig destroyer.

Regarding ship ranges: The main weapons for all destroyers have the same range at 4500. Hiig Ion Frigs and HMF have 4000 range. Kushan and Taiidan Ion Frigs have 4250 range. Hiig Torpedo Frigs have 4500 range.

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#36

Iā€™d like to test those ranges, and the Vaygr destroyers effectiveness. Because from all my experiences, the Hiigaran and the Taiidan seem to shoot farther with their item cannons. Maybe its just me, and those Iā€™m playing with, maybe its got something to do with how we play, its just how it feels regardless.

As for the Hiigaran and Vaygr destroyers killing each other perfectly. I have to wonder about that. When dealing with vaygr destroyers in general they donā€™t give me that much trouble as a HW1 player. The Hw1 destroyers seem more effective than the hw2 destroyers. Iā€™m going to do some more testing on it. Back in 2004 I never complained about balance too much because I was only dealing with Hiigarans as a Vaygr player. HMFS were the core of my fleet most of the time, supported by a mix of laser/missile vets and strike craft. The destroyer still seemed weak compared to the Hiigaran destroyer however.

Additionally, Itā€™s not really the fact that HW2 races have to spend RU on upgrades. that bug me, its all the hoops you gotta go through to start building the ships, another poster in this thread had already pointed this out. Which makes HW2 Races very difficult to manage on HW1 maps.

#37

So you think having to build research mods to build corvette and frigs are big hoops to jump through for HW2 races? Because you get a pretty nifty default frigate with those mods, no research cost required.

You know you got to build the mods for any of the other ships so I think they are pretty small hoops.

It isnā€™t like you are locked in to a specific path, you research upgrades, not each individual tech to open access to the ship (except Vaygr). You donā€™t have to research engines, drives, chassis, guns, ions. Hell it seems like 90% of your offensive power is available with no research at all, just building the required modules.

HW1 races have to build each research ship to get improved research speeds, they have a very limited build queue before any research is completed, every ship unlocked is done so at the cost of tech researched, when going down a path they canā€™t quickly change to a different path due to having to research the requisite techs, each tech has a time and RU cost that differs greatly making it highly costly to get it wrong at the start.

I think all the races have their own hoops to jump through and no one race is better suited to early tactical options thank any other, the hoops are all just different, not bigger or more numerous, at least IMO.

#38

SO much this. Itā€™s really hard to stay adaptive. And the research ships cost so much and take so much time to build I have to stick with a single-node ship for the first half of the match because I canā€™t compete with the HW2 factions that have completely finished establishing their second harvesting operation by the time I finish making my 4th collector.

Theyā€™ve already build 3 squads of cepters by the time Iā€™ve started building mine.

If I donā€™t double up like they do I wonā€™t have a stable economy in the late game to survive and I sure as hell wont be able to support the 5 build queues (one of those being research)

@Battlecry was able to demonstrate to me that he can get going with vaygr so fast with HMF spam that the only way for me to counter it is if I KNOW heā€™s going to do it and start spamming bombers the first second I can. And even then he just made assault frigates and clean them all out before I could kill his carrier. He rebuilt his frigate facility and I just barely had a couple ions out at that point. The ions were barely able to stand up to the HMFs which he had twice as many of than I did.

By the time I started gaining an upper hand he had researched corvettes and his flag ship was throwing out laser vettes. Now I have to switch to assault frigates, which is a losing battle, and I havenā€™t even had a chance to START my own corvette research yet as a counter.

The ONLY way I could see surviving it is if I was playing as Taiidan and had the DFFs to give me the effective HP boost. The HMFs can be spammed faster than my ions and had a much better economy in the long run.

It also didnā€™t help that we were fighting on a dust cloud and several times had my frigates shoot at the wrong enemy because heā€™d send his HMFs into the dust after firing a volley, Iā€™d lose sight of them, and my aggressive units started flying for the next available target which was behind them.

That part Iā€™ll attribute to good micro, but damn do HMFs have a great advantage in a dust cloud when thereā€™s no proxys near by.

#39

@Alpha 1, I have played all the races to this point, each one very extensively with this mod over the past week, I can get pretty much get a good offensive going much earlier as a HW1 player. Nothing about this changes the fact that Homeworld 2 races are more expensive. for instance Vaygr have to spend 4350 RU to get 1 assault frigate out. That doesnā€™t even include the cost of the carriers needed as the extra building platforms (Not to mention replacing the facility that gets destroyed in an early attack with bombers). So Yes to an extent, I do find the hoops a bit on the extreme side, this never bothered me back in the days of Homeworld 2 classic, but since we are now faced with factions that can get ships out much quicker, that have been made more effective, all Iā€™m asking is for some though to be given on this, thatā€™s all. Especially on the HW1 maps.

@Xercodo I donā€™t know why you were out produced or what settings you were playing on. but it seems to me that you didnā€™t get your early game down. I immediatly have my carrier building a research ship and 5 collectors with my MS building 2 controllers, soon as research ship is done, go for fighter drive. and fighter chassis, then from there its on to whatever I think is appropriate, the thing here is that you have 4 production queues right at the start, HW2 races have 2, how you use them is really what matters. What I can say for sure is that HW1 Interceptors and Bombers are at a good advantage, since the hw2 player has to research the speed upgrade for their ceptors to be on par with the HW1 ceptors.

That being said Iā€™d like to get a game going with some people here, feel free to hit me up on steam Iā€™d be happy to do some trial runs against players. Username on Steam is Avetorian

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#40

The upgrade cost might be a problem for hw2 fighters, we are taking a look at it.

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#41

I start with one ship making a collector and a research ship, and the other making a collector and controller.

Once those 4 are done (cause they all seem the finish at nearly the same time), I start researching. and making another 6 collectors and one controller for the expansion. By then Iā€™ve prob researched drive and chassis and am moving on to frigates.

#42

@Xercodo @Avetorian Hereā€™s a tip for you guys:
On most maps, you guys will get a lot better results by just building resource collectors and using your mothership for harvesting at one spot, and your carrier for harvesting at another spot. Controllers should only be used to take a 3rd asteroid patch later in the game, or if you plan to get aggressive and move your mothership and/or carrier towards your opponent. Otherwise your spending 800-900ru at the start of the game on something that your mothership and carrier can do for free.

#43

Yup thatā€™s what the first 2 were for. But yeah I can see how all 12 can work on one field because while one drops off the other mines.

#44

Avetorian and I use our production ships more aggressively, so thatā€™s why his advice mentioned the Controller. We use that approach just fine with HW1 races and generally still outproduce HW2 ones.

#45

Yeah just to re enforce that statement, I generally donā€™t have an issue getting ships out as a HW1 player I was merely pointing out what I generally do. Now thereā€™s something myself and Stormhawk found out when playing against the CPU, expert difficulty ofcourse. We put a hw1 and a hw2 AI against us. The HW1 AI outclassed the HW2 AI in every aspect, the HW2 AI was vaygr. For the most part it got to a point we could have ended the game in about 15 minutes, we decided to just mess around and build up our fleet. After awhile I decided to nuke the Vaygr, since their production was not good. It was the HW1 AI that put up more of a fight. by the time the game ended, my ally out of synced and I continued on. The HW2 AI had only built 260 ships, the HW1 AI had built 1060.

We started with just 1k RUā€™s and normal unit caps, Achievements and bounties were on, I was getting most of the construction awards lol. I was out producing them and out killing them. The reason the HW1 AI built so many is because Iā€™d keep killing them and letting them regroup. until finally I decided to end the game.

And yes, I do play aggressively. I have the controllers and or refineries out because my mothership is moving towards the enemy.

In this game I was playing as Taiidan.

#46

Also mothership, for all races, is the ship that can process rus faster

#47

I think Iā€™m having more fun playing hw2 battles as opposed to hw2 vs hw1 with the mod.

#48

Do you mean you like the way HW2 feels vs HW2 more so than before, or you just donā€™t like HW2 vs HW1 in this mod. I canā€™t tell if this USA partial complement.

#49

I like the way hw2 feels against hw2 in this mod. I guess part of me always has, mod or not.

I donā€™t really like the hw1 versus hw2 feel of itā€¦yet. Iā€™m just not inclined to play against hw1 swarms. They were bad enough in vanilla to deal with when facing a skilled player. In the same hands now with the mod, it feels like too much to handle. Will keep playing to see if I am missing something.

The mod sort of slows down the game which I personally like because it makes for more intense battles. It feels more encouraging of micromanagement.

Though what I have noticed that could use just a teeny bit of a speed increase is the rotational speed of the Hig BC? It feels just a tad bit slow. It feel just a bit too pronounced in its slowness. To be honest, Iā€™m not sure if this was changed at the moment.

#50

After some more games against HW1 races where it seemed hopeless versus swarms, it was not so hopeless.

Donā€™t you guys think that the pace of changes is too fast though? Too much, too fast? Perhaps its just me.

So far, Iā€™m still having fun with it.

#51

Well i pretty much doubt that the game is faster now, we pretty much only did firepower nerfs and hull buffs.
Btw playing defensively with interceptors against hw1 swarms gives a pretty good advantage to hw2

#52

I think he meant how fast the game is being changed, not how fast the game plays after these changes.