Post weekend feedback of balance mod

Homeworld Remastered Collection Homeworld Remastered Multiplayer
#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.

1 Like
#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

3 Likes
#40

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

1 Like
#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.

#53

Oh yeah my bad, read too fast.
Oh well about changes going to fast, devs wanna get rid of that beta label, and so do I hehe

#54

So there thought was that the balance mod would be ā€˜clean slateā€™ as in closer to how it shouldā€™ve released. Many of the changes are changes that had been on the books for months. A lot were waiting on code changes. Remember that youā€™ve seen code changes throughout the life cycle of the beta, but no balance changes except for this mod. Thatā€™s why Iā€™ve tried to press the point that comparing the balance mod to vanilla is a fools errant and to think about the balance mod in terms of the mod.

GBX admitted that little thought was put into balance in for the beginning, they stated that from the start. The unfortunate side effect of taking the time it did to get the balance mod kicked off was players got used to vanilla and creatively found ways to make it work. But many would agree that even HW2c wasnā€™t properly balanced.