Claymore

I want more units in game that use claymore.

Claymore could easily be added regular OKP, however it might be not as good as you like. Claymore's weapon has wide AoE, so it hits multiple targets at once.

Theoretically OKP could be modified to take this into account, however:
1) it's going to be a rough estimation (target units can move while depth charge travels to destination);
2) it will put some extra load on CPUs, so inclusion of such feature is unlikely.

Claymore needs a rework, its AoE means that in shallow water it's just a crawling bomb, it kills itself, while in deep water it's a riot. It needs to just be a proper riot.

RyMarq tried to introduce a third amph unit to complete a raider-riot-skirm triangle, but GoogleFrog didn't like it. This basically stopped development on sea. That was a good path I think, if destroyer and hunter were the skirm and riot (This needs cleaning up, they're a role-mess ATM) and sub the raider, and if a torpedo or gauss skirm were added to hover, that would mean there is a triangle of underwater-domain units in each of the factorys, and a complete lineup against eachother.

The only other option IMO is to pull out the underwater domain almost entirely, make basically everything surface to fire, even subs. This better fits my hatred of 'domains' and targeting restrictions and special damage types more broadly.

When you want to balance sea, then you need a total restart.

There are only 3 facs that can be played on sea maps, thats not alot so, thats why single units have big issues.


Also some units are just like wasted.
In amph fac there are some units that just get never used on total sea maps. (There arent many maps where sea and land arent totay seperated)


For amph the usefull units on sea are: Ducks, Scallops. (Dunks are a bit weaker scallops and scallops are good subs, that also can tank some shots. So get many of them = a good chance to win)
Archer rly never get used. I saw them sometimes on land but not often.
Buoy also never get used, maybe because they dont have any real advantage compared to scallops. (Ok they can hit terraformed urchins but well nothing more)
Grizzly can be used as arty but for some single shots, most of the time it is bether to go for other units like penetrators (bether range) or shielded scallops.
Angler feels like a bad unit because of its reload, i dont use it very often because i have a bether feeling with some razors.
Djinn is just so useless on seamaps, they are very porcy (most of the time) and therefor you cant get it behind the enemy lines what is nearly there only use.

I think the main reason for these units to be useless, or nearly useless is that they dont have real advantages to scallops or ducks, and have to many weaknesses to units that they will face. (Most of the time subs)



Lets look to the hover fac.
Daggers, Claymores, Penetrator and Flail are the main units on total sea map.
Scallpels have low hp so they die fast, and they cant hit subs.
Halbeards can be used, they can pass the defense line and tank some shots, they are doing ok in raiding behind the enemy lines after that. But they never rly break the enemy line.
Mace is a strong unit, but it cant hit subs, so it cant even touch the many forces of your enemy. Also it costs alot and has low hp so it dies fast.

They main issue with the hover fac seems to be that they cant counter subs well expect claymores, but these get countered very easy by static defenses. Ok Penetrator can kill these, but even then the subs can still counter it. 1 or 2 shields make claymores completly useless.



The most used units for the ship fac are Snake, Typhon, Hunter, Serpent, Crusader and Shredder.
Skeeters are good scouts, but they fail to ducks, or any defenses. I think the only thing they can kill are daggers? So for the first 2 mins they are usefull, after that forget it
Enforcer, i saw some people using it, but most of the time people go for Crusaders, which have nearly the same damage/s but higher range. Enforcer does aoe damage but what does it wants to hit with it? 10 Scallops under water? Oh sry it cant hit underwater units.

So ships seems to be the most usefull seafac. (No surprise) But even here we got 2 units that are a bit useless.



While writing this, i think the main problems on sea are a very static gameplay because many units lagg on speed. Or are easy kills for defenses. And there are so many units that just cant be usefull because of subs.
While i was thinking about how some units could be used and they dont look so useless, the only real problem they got is that they cant counter scallops or Serpent or Snake. In total subs.

I was just thinking about that maybe a buff to urchins range and the change that it cant hit units above the water (Hovers/Ships (I know but fuck reality) ) I think that would counter scallops pretty well and make units like Scallops, Hovers or Typhons even more usefull, which are units that need micro and also can counter each other. Even Enforcer would become usefull.
For amphs i would change archer, it is just useles and amph players are always 1 choice down.


Chesti we could may try to work out aome ideas for some other canges. Maybe a total new setup?

I found the amph-hover matchup particulary tricky
What abou re-introducing hovers immunity to torpedos? And rendering all amphs forced to surface if they want to hit them (e. g. with ducks missiles and scallop shoutgun)? Matchup would be much more interesting

quote: Crusader skirmish AI should be removed

Huh? That sounds decidedly wrong.

quote: Because for being arty it has way too good accuracy, and for being a skirm it has wa too big range...

Catapult. Firewalker. Wolverine. Sharpshooter. Crusader. Penetrator. Racketeer.

Wake up, sheeple! They are everywhere!

BSS not included on technical grounds: Grizzly, Buoy (those are assault/skirm, not arti/skirm). Pillager could be very close to this if it could shoot while retreating.

quote: gets rid of defences and most of sea surface units

Now go through the list again.

Any more perspectives on sea balance?

Last time I checked (admittedly a few months, but I'm unaware of balance changes since then) my impression was that:
- Amph has way too few units, and even in those units there was heavy overlap.
- Urchins counters amph quite hard, in that the two work-horse units (duck+scallop) are just walled out entirely. Buoys and Grizzly are possible, but that constitutes a heavy dilution of the amph's strengths.
- Hover has more units, looking more like a complete fac. Mace and scalpel are taken out of the lineup, and claymore added. Daggers can't raid very well with urchins around, but halberds can take that roll admirably. Penetrator does a hell of a lot of work for the fac, countering basically all ships and porc if adequately protected.
- Ships has the weakest raider game, but an immense midgame. Typhoon is a stardust with high mobility that counters all of hover and can run through most urchin positions no problem. They have more issue vs. amph where they can't hit subs, so it's replaced by hunter/snake, which can't assault through urchins so well, making a very porcy game where ships grind them down with crusaders.
- Gunship switches are deadly, mostly because there not many units/statics that shoot up.
- Planes are less useful, though the vulture is an all-star, and wyvern is just silly.

Anir
A few things:
- Buoys have immense regens compared to scallops. They're an assault. They can sit in urchin fire all day without a scratch.
- Djinn is hidden OP, on a large high economy map when you're a slow fac it's incredibly efficient.

RyMarq
Could you list the suggestions you have made?

GF is more or less correct.

The most significant one was the addition of an Underwater skirmisher/ Above Water artillery unit.
I felt that it would even out the amph triangle, and allow more traditional unit balance. Most of the work I did later on was trying to make an acceptable version of this idea.

For more random ideas, I cannot remember them all at this point.

Were I to try to balance sea right now, I would do the following.

1: Either finish triangle for amph, for owl its validity as a single factory. Substantially nerf the duck and scallop underwater. Accept that they cannot be a valid factory on its own, and have the game fun.


2: Grant ships the bonus of an impossibly high base view height as one of their advantages. A significant problem with ships is that they cannot see onto land that they might want to attack.

3: Shift Buoy to be a more assault-like unit with shorter range, and better stats for killing turrets.