Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

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Zerovirus
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by Zerovirus »

With the Welder=> Repairer, that's what I was planning. a 5-3 Weld (fire ranged) attack.

The Drone=>Scout=>Recon line's basic idea is already final. Submerge, Nightstalk(which it gains as Steel Recon), possibly flight. 8 Movement points. These guys have 60% Defense in water, making them the only aquatic unit. They are also scouts and ninjas and assassins combined in one.
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wesfreak
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by wesfreak »

there is a similar unit from the clockwork dwarves. maybe we could base the stats off of that? it uses its blowtorch to shoot one huge ball of fire in melee, i think.
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melinath
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by melinath »

wesfreak wrote:there is a similar unit from the clockwork dwarves. maybe we could base the stats off of that? it uses its blowtorch to shoot one huge ball of fire in melee, i think.
that===not the same thing as a welding torch. Zerovirus already proposed stats. Is there a reason you're suggesting pulling stats off of some random unit instead of suggesting modifications to the one's we've already got?

Zero: 5-3 works; it's a pretty standard melee attack for a support unit. Were you thinking heals +4 or heals +8? We would have to give it weaknesses to compensate for the combination of healing and melee semicompetence. Ground unit, definitely, probably also low hp.
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wesfreak
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by wesfreak »

no particular reason, actually. just thought i'd mention it.

heals 8 at lvl 1 is overpowered. i'd go with heals 4 at lvl 1 and heals 8 at lvl 2.

do you plan on having a non healer/ worse healing branch like with the saurian augur?
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Zerovirus
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by Zerovirus »

Yeah, +4 at Lv1 and +8 at lv2. Ground unit, about maybe 20 HP?
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wesfreak
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by wesfreak »

20 hp is low, even for a healer.

i would say 30 or high 20's.
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Zerovirus
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by Zerovirus »

And on the note of HP, the Steel Slasher has less than the Oculus. In my experience the fighters should have more HP than the archers. So we need to boost every HP in the Slasher line by 15. Is that balanceable, Melinath?
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melinath
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by melinath »

Whoah! Hold your horses, there Zero. In the latest update, the slashers have 37 hp, which is about on line with dwarves. The oculus has 30. (Incidentally, I reduced ground unit base moves to 5... no matter how easily they can move, they shouldn't be as fast as units that fly. We could alternatively give flying units 7 and ground units 6, but then we'd have to reduce the hp on all lines, probably, though this is very theoretical balancing atm.)

My todo list:
1. electric attack effect
2. third oculus attack
3. healer line (once there are graphics)
4. recon line (once there are graphics)

I will get to these probably on Monday. I need to spend some quality time with my drake descriptions.
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Zerovirus
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by Zerovirus »

melinath wrote:Whoah! Hold your horses, there Zero. In the latest update, the slashers have 37 hp, which is about on line with dwarves. The oculus has 30. (Incidentally, I reduced ground unit base moves to 5... no matter how easily they can move, they shouldn't be as fast as units that fly. We could alternatively give flying units 7 and ground units 6, but then we'd have to reduce the hp on all lines, probably, though this is very theoretical balancing atm.)
Oh, okay then. You already updated that. I'm fine with that HP for now. I always thought that the speed was one of the major assets of this faction, so maybe we should tone it down or maybe not. We'll see next time we do playtest. Of course, the Drone line will mitigate the effects of speed tonedown.
melinath wrote: My todo list:
1. electric attack effect
2. third oculus attack
3. healer line (once there are graphics)
4. recon line (once there are graphics)
The third oculus attack is only for the Oculus. With the Lv2, the two attacks kinda get merged into one. Is making the electric attack difficult or have you not had the time to do it recently? Maybe both?
melinath wrote: I will get to these probably on Monday. I need to spend some quality time with my drake descriptions.
I'll have the Steel Sparkgazer Melee by monday. Maybe even the Steel Drone's base image.

It's remarkable what we've accomplished over a bit more than a week.
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melinath
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by melinath »

Making the electric attack is more complicated than other changes. More interesting, but more complicated (and not as interesting as the lightshifter stuff was).

Shifting the speed back up would be easy if you ever want me to do it.

The oculus line: It would be very odd to have two attack lines, one with one attack that's powerful, one with multiple weaker attacks, and then only continue one of them. We should probably either give all of them both versions of attack, or give all of them only one version.

Also, the oculus line is not really an archer line... archer lines deal strictly more damage in ranged combat; the oculus line deals less/about the same. If we want it to be an archer line, we would have to change that.
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Zerovirus
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by Zerovirus »

Like I said, I'm not exactly the best at general knowledge of unit balance. Melinath's probably better at that than I am so if you want to make any stat changes, go ahead man. I would like the Oculus to be an archer line, though, so see if you can get that in shape.

EDIT:
I see you gave the Bladewhirler two attacks. Maybe we should make his new melee a non-berserk attack? So that he can actually be used for long periods of time.
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melinath
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by melinath »

I gave the entire slasher line a slash and a pierce attack. I could remove berserk from the pierce attack in the next update, but it might make the line too powerful. There was a lot of discussion a long time ago about giving ulfserkers and berserkers attack-only berserk or a non-berserk attack, but the conclusion was that it would be too strong. I am not a good enough knalgan player to use the ulfserker properly, but I believe those who can.

Here's a really relevant thread/post:
http://wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=66965#p66965

I put up a new version of Steelhive Era - finally added the electric effect. The oculus line is now definitely an archer line, but it may be too powerful. It's hard to tell until the faction is complete and can be balanced.

EDIT:: Oh, and yes. It's pretty awesome that we got this much done in a week or so. :-)
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wesfreak
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by wesfreak »

there are two units that i know of which have both beserk and a different attack. in one, the damage and strikes is the same for both attacks, and in another it has a regular attack as well as a weaker beserk attack. maybe we could do the opposite and weaken its regular attack, so for defensce the ai has to choose between low retal and high chance of death.
Last edited by wesfreak on August 18th, 2009, 8:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Zerovirus
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by Zerovirus »

Wesfreak may have a good idea there.

With the Oculus line, they might actually be overpowered now that they have the Electric capability. Still, the new updates are really cool. You seem to have fixed the Cybercore bug. The electric attack's little icon thing is... Well, nifty.
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wesfreak
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Re: Steelhive Faction feedback/balancing

Post by wesfreak »

then give them an electric attack and a damage dealing attack, like the elvish sorceress. or reduce the damage.

we could just use a lightning icone, like for delfadore and other non mainline lightning wizards.
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