Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

[Zerovirus]

Aaaaand we're back. Right, Melinath? (waits with bated breath for reply)

And we need to get stats fixed. The Drone could use higher defense on most terrains, to make him more of a stealth unit.

Also, we need to change resistances up. A lot. The main problem with Steelhive is that it's something of a one-type faction, with one species. Mainline factions usually have 2 or 3 species, at least, making them more variable in terms of resistances and movements.

However, not so with our units. We offer much in terms of fire damage, flight, and cold weakness. And that's pretty much it. The only really viable tactic for use against Steelhive is to play undead, don't use any skeletons, and get lots of dark adepts.

This has to change. I think that the units should have a more varied spectrum of resistances; for example, we could give the melee units like 30% resistance to slash and pierce, and 0% resistance to impact, fire, or cold. The fluff behind this... I dunno, specialized alloy armors? The ranged units could have more resistance to cold but not so much to slash. The Drones wouldn't have many resists and like 50% weakness to cold, but we'd give them more terrain defense to compensate. Maybe 80% in deep water,70% in shallow, and 60% on flat. Hills would be like 40% and mountains 30%.

Also, the whole faction's terrain resists need to change. Steelhive units are a bit fragile for their cost, and I'm thinking of making them so that they have higher defense in forests and hills, so that one wouldn't need to radically change play styles when using Steelhive. Maybe 50% in hills and 60% in forest. Really, now that I think about it, low forest and hill defenses are kinda anathema to Wesnoth tactics.

But all this stuff's rather hypothetical, and it's a long way off. Im'ma gonna run off to start editing (read: learning the bare basics of editing) unit files.

[wesfreak]

i really don't recomend giving 80 def anywhere: if you've seen how many hits a unit with 70 def can dodge, you'll know it's a bad idea. It makes the unit almost unhittable without magic, and there aren't any mages that can go in deep water. well, there's the lich, but that's a lvl 3.

Try making 2 types of steelhive: maybe a kind that's mainly amphibious, like the drone, and a kind for land. or heavy armour and light armour. maybe a neutral type and a chaotic type (all factions have 2 kinds of units with different alignments in default except loyalists)

[Zerovirus]

So.

I figured how to edit unit files. I'm so happppeeeeeee...

Anyways, I made several drastic changes. Steelhive, hopefully, is a bit stronger in terms of gameplay and a bit more balanced.

Most units are 1 gold cheaper now. Also, almost all the units have had their movement and terrain dodge % changed. The flying units are, or should be, weak against melee attacks but more resistant to arcane and cold than the melee ground unit, of which the only one I think is the Slasher. Also changed xp and hp values around by increments of 1 or 2, nothing serious. The higher levels have had their required xp heavily decreased, by 15-20, though. Drones dodge a lot more effectively in aquatic areas now. Amniotes and Choriotes have terrain resists changed. Again.

Play test? I'm hoping this makes them a tiny bit more balanced.

EDIT: I'm considering fusing the Amniote and the Lightshifter. That is to say, so that the Amniote can be a miscellaneous annoyance that isn't really useful in combat at all. They have similar stats as of now, and it'd be interesting to combine village-sitting with camouflage. That, and the fact that there's way too many units on that recruit list. What say ye, peoples?

[wesfreak]

It seems fine to me, as long as you use amniote attack so that there is no insta-lvl lightshifter spam

[melinath]

Also, we need to change resistances up. A lot. The main problem with Steelhive is that it's something of a one-type faction, with one species. Mainline factions usually have 2 or 3 species, at least, making them more variable in terms of resistances and movements.

However, not so with our units. We offer much in terms of fire damage, flight, and cold weakness. And that's pretty much it. The only really viable tactic for use against Steelhive is to play undead, don't use any skeletons, and get lots of dark adepts.

This has to change. I think that the units should have a more varied spectrum of resistances; for example, we could give the melee units like 30% resistance to slash and pierce, and 0% resistance to impact, fire, or cold. The fluff behind this... I dunno, specialized alloy armors? The ranged units could have more resistance to cold but not so much to slash. The Drones wouldn't have many resists and like 50% weakness to cold, but we'd give them more terrain defense to compensate. Maybe 80% in deep water,70% in shallow, and 60% on flat. Hills would be like 40% and mountains 30%.

Also, the whole faction's terrain resists need to change. Steelhive units are a bit fragile for their cost, and I'm thinking of making them so that they have higher defense in forests and hills, so that one wouldn't need to radically change play styles when using Steelhive.

(Emphasis added. )

Okay, I'm back now. For realz. I agree that the units need to be diversified. I also agree that metal alloys that allow for different types of resists would be the way to go.

However, I strongly believe that we need to focus on making this faction unique - making it so that you do need to radically change your play style. People don't want to just do the same thing all the time. (I don't think so, anyway...) On that note, I would like to once again try making the amniote/choriote line unable to attack, and I would definitely like to keep the lightshifter and amniote separate. The Steelhive doesn't have abnormally many units to choose from.

Oh, by the way - it turns out that I can add a custom electrical attack type. I found it out a while ago, but didn't have time to implement it then.

Zero, I'll be giving you a sprite wishlist soon.



For my own ease...
Here are the reports of possible bugs I need to look in to... some may already be fixed:

Spoiler:

the lightshifter regains all its hp after it attacks if in morphed form. i was playing a multiplayer game with steelhive, and the enemy just spammed lightshifters. 8 gold, 15 hp and 50% resists and u need to 1 unit to kill them.

To-do:
-robot traits:

Autotarget: This unit's hit percent is never below 50%.
Gravity Generator: This unit has +1 MP but -10% HP.
Reinforced Hull: This unit has +10% HP but -1 MP.
Energy Channels: This unit deals 1 extra damage per ranged attack.

-improve intro message
-add cybercone threat assessment. As for strenght and leveling speed i just thought that it would be better if the cone didnt get paranoid over any random pinch, but rather turn on its defensive system when the danger is real. --StDrake
-tweak repairer missile positioning.

I don't even have any idea what half this to-do list was about any more. I'll have to reread part of this thread.

1. Lightshifters seem to regain all HPs after leveling up in their disguises (particularly noticeable with the Sentient, Amiote, and Cone.)

2. Chorate flavor text misleading. Rather than say "stronger defenses- 50%", it would be clearer to say "stronger defenses: 50%"

Raise the damage for Oculus's ranged to 6-3 and the Sparkgazer to 11-3. Also, rename the Oculus, Sparkgazer, and Boltstriker's melee attack name to "wingblade" or "bladewing"- whichever you think sounds cooler.

There is a way to tell if a unit is the light shifter or not! When it shifts its movement doesn't change so you just have to search for units with 4 movement and you have found them. This can be fixed but I do have the time to do so... Sorry

Here are suggestions since I was around:

Spoiler:

drone should have 1 movement on flat, otherwise it's pointless as a scout everywhere except places with tons of water

[Zerovirus]

If it's of any help, I actually know how to edit unit files now. I can do some of the basic edit stuff like changing stats and the "bladewing" rename. You'll just need to do the other bits.

Alright if you want to retain the strange gameplay style, sure. I'm gonna have to go into fluff a bit though to more easily define terrain stats. While we're redesigning stats we should remember that your average oculus is a bit bigger than a beachball, and that a slasher is also about that size. Following that reasoning, oculi should have high defense in forests (imagine this flying metal basketball going at 40 mph, while retaining extremely high maneuverability, through dense foliage in a dense forest. And then imagine trying to kill it with wesnoth weaponry.)

EDIT: Also, once we implement the Larva line we'll have a total of 9 recruitable units, out of which 3 will be the main units, 2 will be support, 2 will be distractions, 1 will be the Sentient which is either spammed or never used depending on XP settings, and the Larva line itself whose function is yet to be seen. Doesn't that seem a bit too much?

And get me that sprite wishlist pronto. To the Zeromobile! (I should make that my catchphrase.)

[melinath]

My current interpretation:

Slasher - melee
Oculus - archer
drone - scout
Cybercone - leader
Sentient - freaky unit (with the sentient in mind, we'll have to just balance for a specific xp modifier in mind. If people play on something else, it's their own faults... (Unless there's some way I don't know of to change settings based on xp modifier))
Amniote - enemy movement control
Lightshifter - decoy
Welder - healer
Larva - leader

Larva and Cybercone are both leader lines.... perhaps we could drop the cybercone/merge it with something?

[Zerovirus]

We could drop it. It's only 2 units, and though it does look freaky cool, it's rather inefficient and just an unnecessary weight on one's recruit list that could be filled in theoretically by a Larva... Maybe I could fuse it with the Drone line or something. They're both tube-ish things.

...Nah. Ok then. We'll get rid of the line for now, put it back in maybe if we can find a place for them.

I'm thinking that Amniotes are too slow to be effective unless a player expends all their resources trying to block off the enemy, and then he won't have any money left to recruit combat units with; the movement obstacle was indeed their original goal, but now I'm thinking of them as village guards; maybe give them 30% def on all terrain and 70% on village. We could explain this by them setting up a shield of some sort to protect the village from intruders, which is extremely difficult to penetrate. Maybe this could only take effect by Choriote form; that is, when an Amniote is attacked, it, much like the Cybercone, deploys and becomes permanently rooted to the ground, unable to move. If it's on top of a village, boy howdy you have a village that practically can't even be stolen at the cost of only 1 gold income from it. If not, it has somewhat lower terrain defenses and can be easily terminated.

[melinath]

If you make a dome frame, I can have the unit change appearance on villages.

[Zerovirus]

Discussion time.

What resists or weaknesses should Slasher, Oculus, and Drone have? These are the three primary points of Steelhive's combat triangle and we should get them balanced before we do anything else.

I personally feel that Slasher should be about 30% resistant to pierce and slash, and 10% resistant to crush. No fire or arcane change. I'm not so sure about the cold, though; Dark Adepts rip these guys apart. And we don't have an efficient counter for Dark Adepts at this point.

Oculus has a fire and cold resistant shell, maybe like 15 or 20%, to handle rapidly changing temperatures emitted from its weapon, but low resists to pierce and slash, like 10% or 5%. Maybe a bit of arcane resist too. Not sure about crush resist or weakness.

Drones are highly resistant to cold since they have to travel in cold oceans often. 25% cold resist, but high vulnerability to crush. No resistances to pierce or slash, and 10% weakness to fire.

How's this plan?

EDIT: I'm considering making the Sentient an upgrade path for the Oculus, at like lv3. His base stats will need to be remade to fit, and possibly some rebalance, but I think this might be a better idea for balance than letting it be available as a recruitable and spammable uberunit on low XP settings.

[melinath]

Changelog 0.5.4:
- Updated unit graphics.
- Removed amniote/choriote collide attack
- made choriote battery pulse defense-only, melee and ranged.
- fixed lightshifter movement bug. Total moves will always display as the movement of the unit it's disguised as, but it will never actually have more than 4 movement. People who really pay attention may still notice them, but that's okay.

If anyone notices the reported fullheal bug, please let me know and post a saved game from the newest Steelhive version (0.5.4 as of this writing) because I can't duplicate it.

I personally feel that Slasher should be about 30% resistant to pierce and slash, and 10% resistant to crush. No fire or arcane change. I'm not so sure about the cold, though; Dark Adepts rip these guys apart. And we don't have an efficient counter for Dark Adepts at this point.

I don't think we should think specifically about what unit in the faction would counter a Dark Adept. I'd go for maybe a 0% resist on cold. If the Oculus and Drone have cold resist, they'll be able to handle DAs just fine.

Oculus has a fire and cold resistant shell, maybe like 15 or 20%, to handle rapidly changing temperatures emitted from its weapon, but low resists to pierce and slash, like 10% or 5%. Maybe a bit of arcane resist too. Not sure about crush resist or weakness.

I like this idea. The resistance could increase with levels as better alloys are used etc. I'd suggest maybe a weakness to crush and slash, since this is the most fragile unit. Resist to pierce, since the arrows can pass through a lot of places.

Drones are highly resistant to cold since they have to travel in cold oceans often. 25% cold resist, but high vulnerability to crush. No resistances to pierce or slash, and 10% weakness to fire.

Sounds good. Maybe a slight vulnerability to pierce that goes away with levelups?

[Zerovirus]

Which servers did you upload on?

Alright, new unit resist stats.

Slasher: 25% resist slash
30% resist pierce
10% resist crush
no other changed

Vector & Bladewhirler: 30% resist slash
30% resist pierce
15% resist crush
5% resist arcane
5% resist fire

Vorpal and Fideliant: 30% resist slash
30% resist pierce
20% resist crush
10% resist fire
10% resist arcane

Oculus: 15% resist cold
15% resist fire
10% weakness to crush

Sparkgazer: 20% resist cold
25% resist fire
10% weakness to crush
10% resist slash
10% resist pierce

Boltstriker: 25% resist cold
30% resist fire
15% resist slash
20% resist pierce

Drone: 25% resist cold
15% weakness fire
15% weakness crush

Scout: 30% resist cold
10% weakness fire
10% weakness crush
5% resist pierce

Recon: 30% resist cold
5% weakness fire
10% resist pierce

Now how do I implement this? The current Steelhive uses steelhive.cfg in addons/steelhive_era/units, I don't know how to change it so that each unit has its own custom resists.

Also, I'm considering making the Bladewhirler's attack like 3-12 or 4-10.

[wesfreak]

are you sure you have enough weaknesses for them? they seem to have many resists but very few weaknesses.

[Zerovirus]

Eh, we'll see. If someone can teach me to do custom resists for unit cfgs, I can do most it the balancing work without having to release it onto the servers.

[melinath]

Since 1.8 is coming out soon, I only released the update for 1.7.

How to do custom resists and defense:

# [defense]: describes how likely the unit is to be hit on different terrains. The attribute terrain=defense means that the unit will be hit defense percent of the time in the terrain with name=terrain.
# [resistance]: describes how much damage the unit takes from different types of attacks. The attribute type=resistance makes the unit receive resistance percent of damage, or resist 100-resistance percent of damage from attacks with type=type. So for example, a resistance of fire=110 means, this unit will receive 110% of damage, or have a resistance of -10% as displayed in-game. A value of fire=0 would mean, the unit receives no damage and therefore has a resistance of 100%.

Just stick those in a unit_type tag. Keep in mind, though, that it'd be better to test with humans. (As always. :-p)