Unit Balancing!

[Fisherking]

I don't know what is behind some of the changes but so far we have had several units rendered useless by this crap. And yes I mean crap.

Mortars were accurate because they had no real recoil that required them being repositioned. Now you are lucky if they can it an army on the field, but you know they usually miss.

The Steam Ships were turned into carronade frigates without explanation. Several of the Infantry have been nerfed and Austria's Grenzers need rifling to be built but they are not riflemen.

Now the Naval game is undergoing a rock ,paper ,scissors balancing job that it doesn’t need.

I have no trouble with changing ships guns’ range but not for the light guns! Sloops and Brigs already have some unrealistic advantages in speed, other than upwind. Many of the guns are underpowered and have too short a range.

From what I read in Lusted’s update he is making all the ships guns more accurate but the SOLs will have the least accurate and shortest ranges of the three classes of ships. (excepting carronade vessels, I assume) This just is not so and it is an advantage that doesn’t need to be portrayed. Sloops(cutters) and Brigs were to harass trade ships and cutters were used as curriers because they could sail near the wind. They took to their heals if a real fighting ship showed up.

Most of the things done in the name of balance need undoing! It is stilting the tactics and making it into I don’t know what...

The general statement that it is done for game play is bogus. The game played well other than for bugs when it started and now it is just turning to crap.

How can you justify making mortars so inaccurate they have trouble hitting a fort? Their shots are off by hundreds of meters! All indirect fire weapons are turning in to big losers!

If it is all for multiplayer than give them a separate unit set and stop fouling up the single player units!

[Sheogorath]

If it is all for multiplayer than give them a separate unit set and stop fouling up the single player units!

Second.

If my use of internet lingo can be pardoned, let the tourneyfags have their own units. If the spastic Super Smash Brothers/Starcraft crowd wants rock-paper-scissors super-rushing-explosion-tactic games, let them have it. Just roll back the single player units stats to what they used to be.

[Hooahguy]

this is why i love mods

[Sheogorath]

this is why i love mods

The problem with relying on the mods (Darthmod) for example is that oftentimes you end up with unwanted changes. I've heard several people say the same thing about Darthmod. They love the naval and AI changes, but think a lot of the other stuff is annoying.

[econ21]

Mortars were accurate because they had no real recoil that required them being repositioned. Now you are lucky if they can it an army on the field, but you know they usually miss.

...

How can you justify making mortars so inaccurate they have trouble hitting a fort? Their shots are off by hundreds of meters! All indirect fire weapons are turning in to big losers!

I am with you on preferring realism to artificial balancing, but am sceptical about mortars. Indirect fire is surely of its nature less accurate than direct fire? Even in World War 2, mortars were something you fired in the direction of the enemy and hoped you got lucky. Frankly, I suspect mortars in the ETW period were siege weapons only and don't belong in the field battles the game simulates. Hitting a big stationary fort is one thing, deploying them quickly to hit troops on the move quite another. The MP houserule "no mortars" may be good for gameplay AND realism.

[FactionHeir]

The problem with relying on the mods (Darthmod) for example is that oftentimes you end up with unwanted changes. I've heard several people say the same thing about Darthmod. They love the naval and AI changes, but think a lot of the other stuff is annoying.

What he said. Its a shame the modders don't release individual components of changes but just bundle it all in big package and that's it.
I'm guilty of it too, but at least with M2TW you can take a single file and use it, so its not as bad as ETW.

[Hooahguy]

The problem with relying on the mods (Darthmod) for example is that oftentimes you end up with unwanted changes. I've heard several people say the same thing about Darthmod. They love the naval and AI changes, but think a lot of the other stuff is annoying.

true, but i use a bunch of mini mods, like reskin packs, blood mods, and a few other misc mods. most often, the "big mods" can be found broken up, if you look hard enough.

[Husar]

I pretty much agree, they want to rebalance ships so some of them actually get some use they supposedly never got, yet make mortars completely useless.

I'm really looking forward to hour-long battles chasing that AI brigg around with my big ships after it somehow sank my last frigate.

The new effective range of howitzers is also just a hundred meters or so, any further is max range and any closer is below min range.

Having different sets of stats for MP and SP really wouldn't hurt, and fixing the unit stats on the campaign map unit cards wouldn't hurt either, why is it so hard to show the actual stats there?

[Slaists]

I don't know what is behind some of the changes but so far we have had several units rendered useless by this crap. And yes I mean crap.

Mortars were accurate because they had no real recoil that required them being repositioned. Now you are lucky if they can it an army on the field, but you know they usually miss.

The Steam Ships were turned into carronade frigates without explanation. Several of the Infantry have been nerfed and Austria's Grenzers need rifling to be built but they are not riflemen.

Now the Naval game is undergoing a rock ,paper ,scissors balancing job that it doesn’t need.

I have no trouble with changing ships guns’ range but not for the light guns! Sloops and Brigs already have some unrealistic advantages in speed, other than upwind. Many of the guns are underpowered and have too short a range.

From what I read in Lusted’s update he is making all the ships guns more accurate but the SOLs will have the least accurate and shortest ranges of the three classes of ships. (excepting carronade vessels, I assume) This just is not so and it is an advantage that doesn’t need to be portrayed. Sloops(cutters) and Brigs were to harass trade ships and cutters were used as curriers because they could sail near the wind. They took to their heals if a real fighting ship showed up.

Most of the things done in the name of balance need undoing! It is stilting the tactics and making it into I don’t know what...

The general statement that it is done for game play is bogus. The game played well other than for bugs when it started and now it is just turning to crap.

How can you justify making mortars so inaccurate they have trouble hitting a fort? Their shots are off by hundreds of meters! All indirect fire weapons are turning in to big losers!

If it is all for multiplayer than give them a separate unit set and stop fouling up the single player units!

Mortars: as stated above, I believe, they were meant to be siege weapons for most part. However, another fact is worth mentioning: the 'accuracy' (damage versus troops) of indirect weapons improves drastically at larger unit sizes. Which I find historically accurate too. If you have a field swarming with troops (on ultra sized setting), that mortar will hit someone almost with certainty. Maybe not the guy (or spot) you were aiming for, but surely someone standing next to the original target. On the other hand, you have to be quite lucky for it to hit anything on small unit sizes.

Bottom line: the smaller the unit size, the less efficient indirect guns become in the game.
That's not new to TW games either. Even in RTW, missile (archer) lethality went through the roof on huge unit settings whereas it was quite weak for small units.

That having been said, I still find mortars and howizters useful for 'directing' the AI troops towards your straight guns in the middle. 2-4 howitzers behind your lines, can easily 'squash' AI's flanks (by creating 'no-pass' killing fields), making them bunch up in the middle (where your straight guns can rake up killing scores).

As for the naval changes: sigh... I wished they fixed two things only:

1. Ships SHOULD NOT be able to sail against the wind. But that 'thing' they're stubbornly leaving in the game for the sake of 'playability' and speed of battle resolution.
   
2. Ships shouldn't be able to turn as fast as they can in the game. I've seen it suggested in some naval topic posts that one should always make sure to "swing the ship to the other side" so both sides have a go at the enemy (single target). One can do it in the battle, but that's nonsense in real life tactics terms.

[Prussian to the Iron]

and the worst thing about it is that when you click the button to disable atuomatic updates, it stays like that until the next time you start up your computer. so basically, unless you have reflexes better than your computer to turn off auto-updates again before it starts updating the game, youre screwed.

however, im using the AUM mod, which uses its own balancing. unfortunately, i think the patches still effect units.........grrrrrrrrrrr

[Luddite]

Developers seem to have some kind of balance fetish. It is the bane of games today, the cry goes out on forums that faction X has an unfair advantage and developers rush to nerf it and surprise now faction Y is the next whipping boy.

It is unrealistic to try and create a rock paper scissors, if you want games with equality then have identical factions on a featureless map.

As gamers we want variety, but that is always going to create imbalance and no matter how much developers try and prevent it, any beneficial adavantage given to even the smallest numerical change will be magnified in play. It is a holy grail quest to go for both, either clone armies and balance, or variety and imbalance... given the choice I vote imbalance every time.

[Cheetah]

If it is all for multiplayer than give them a separate unit set and stop fouling up the single player units!

I hope you are aware of the fact that your are making up a strawman here. Please check the MP forums (here and elsewhere) and show me the threads in which people requested Jack to rebalance either steamships or the naval game in general. I help you out, you will find none. Yes, mortar rebalancing were requested but mortars were way too accurate before the patch.

I just do not see:
1, Why do you want to create friction where there were none (i.e. setting up SP players vs MP)
2, Why do you think that your point of view is the most important out of all existing point of views.

[Luddite]

Surely it is not a case of SP vs MP. But if changes are implemented more for MP balance it is legimate for those of us who are primarily SP players to express concern as these fundamentally change the campaign experience.

[Zenicetus]

As for the naval changes: sigh... I wished they fixed two things only:

1. Ships SHOULD NOT be able to sail against the wind. But that 'thing' they're stubbornly leaving in the game for the sake of 'playability' and speed of battle resolution.
   
2. Ships shouldn't be able to turn as fast as they can in the game. I've seen it suggested in some naval topic posts that one should always make sure to "swing the ship to the other side" so both sides have a go at the enemy (single target). One can do it in the battle, but that's nonsense in real life tactics terms.

The second problem is a consequence of the first one. If they had modeled sailing more accurately, then ships would turn fairly quickly with the wind astern, and much more slowly when moving the bow across the direction of the wind. A ship with major battle damage to the sails wouldn't be able to get up enough headway to turn across the wind at all, but could still turn with wind astern. The "weather gage" advantage of starting upwind from the enemy would then be tactically meaningful, as it was historically. You wouldn't be able to do these silly turning-in-place tricks to maximize broadsides.

There's another, deeper structural problem that hasn't been mentioned much (I don't think). It's the way the naval battles start out just like the land battles, with the player fleet and enemy fleet heading directly towards each other from opposites sides of the battle space.

In a real sailing environment that would seldom happen. The fleets would be sailing for wind advantage on similar or adjacent tacks (square riggers especially). With the current design, there isn't an opportunity for a traditional "grand battle" to develop with parallel lines pounding away at each other for extended periods, or taking opportunities to break up the battle line (i.e. Trafalgar). The way the battles start out with fleets approaching head-on, is more like the way a fighter plane dogfight develops. It's an initial head-on pass, then maneuver for position, devolving into a chaotic furball.

I don't know how the modders can fix that one, since it looks like a hard-coded aspect of the game design. In a better (IMO) design, there would be sighting of the enemy fleet at longer range, and you'd have time to draw your ships up in whatever formation you wanted, relative to the wind direction, and you'd have some idea of what the enemy fleet could or couldn't do, again relative to the wind direction. It would probably require a larger area for the battles, for one thing. The current design is either a direct copy from the land battles, or just aimed at getting the action started and over with as quickly as possible, so the "action gamers" won't get bored.

[Jack Lusted]

Mortars were accurate because they had no real recoil that required them being repositioned. Now you are lucky if they can it an army on the field, but you know they usually miss.

Mortar accuracy was dropped because they were far too accurate before, though they will be receiving a slight boost to their accuracy in 1.4 as the previous changes went a bit too far.

The Steam Ships were turned into carronade frigates without explanation.

They've always had carronades, and they have carronades in order to give them a lot of firepower.

Several of the Infantry have been nerfed and Austria's Grenzers need rifling to be built but they are not riflemen.

Quite a few units have had their stats changed, any in particular you are referring to? And the Grenzers thing is something that could perhaps be looked at.

Now the Naval game is undergoing a rock ,paper ,scissors balancing job that it doesn’t need.

I have no trouble with changing ships guns’ range but not for the light guns! Sloops and Brigs already have some unrealistic advantages in speed, other than upwind. Many of the guns are underpowered and have too short a range.

No gun has realistic range, damage is being changed for all naval gun types as part of the rebalancing, smaller guns are getting less damage bigger guns are getting more damage.

From what I read in Lusted’s update he is making all the ships guns more accurate but the SOLs will have the least accurate and shortest ranges of the three classes of ships. (excepting carronade vessels, I assume) This just is not so and it is an advantage that doesn’t need to be portrayed. Sloops(cutters) and Brigs were to harass trade ships and cutters were used as curriers because they could sail near the wind. They took to their heals if a real fighting ship showed up.

SOL have a range of 400 compared to 500 for frigates and sloops/brigs. The low accuracy of SOL only hampers them against small targets as other SOL are such big targets it is pretty much impossible not to hit within a certain range.

And we felt that birgs and sloops should have more of a role on the battlefield and for there to be more differences between ship types. Not accurate, but it is what we wanted to have happen to make naval gameplay more interesting for both SP and MP.

How can you justify making mortars so inaccurate they have trouble hitting a fort? Their shots are off by hundreds of meters! All indirect fire weapons are turning in to big losers!

Mortars have a very long range, if their accuracy had not been lowered they would just have continued to dominate in normal land battles.

The new effective range of howitzers is also just a hundred meters or so, any further is max range and any closer is below min range.

The min range for howitzers is being lowered by 100 for 1.4, so their overall effective range will increase.

Having different sets of stats for MP and SP really wouldn't hurt

Unfortunately having seperate stats for MP and SP would require almost double the amount of time spent balancing and testing than is currently spent on them, and that already takes up a large amount of time.

[Cheetah]

Surely it is not a case of SP vs MP. But if changes are implemented more for MP balance it is legimate for those of us who are primarily SP players to express concern as these fundamentally change the campaign experience.

It is legitimate to voice your concerns about unit balance but it is not legitimate, not well grounded and not helpful at all to blame it on the MP players.

The fact is that MP players asked for separate SP vs MP stats long time ago (during MTW2 or perhaps during RTW), even wrote petitions to CA (signed by hundreds of people) but no one listened to them.

[Prussian to the Iron]

i find it funny that mr. Lusted didnt care to respond to:

Developers seem to have some kind of balance fetish. It is the bane of games today, the cry goes out on forums that faction X has an unfair advantage and developers rush to nerf it and surprise now faction Y is the next whipping boy.

It is unrealistic to try and create a rock paper scissors, if you want games with equality then have identical factions on a featureless map.

As gamers we want variety, but that is always going to create imbalance and no matter how much developers try and prevent it, any beneficial adavantage given to even the smallest numerical change will be magnified in play. It is a holy grail quest to go for both, either clone armies and balance, or variety and imbalance... given the choice I vote imbalance every time.

[Jack Lusted]

Developers seem to have some kind of balance fetish. It is the bane of games today, the cry goes out on forums that faction X has an unfair advantage and developers rush to nerf it and surprise now faction Y is the next whipping boy.

It is unrealistic to try and create a rock paper scissors, if you want games with equality then have identical factions on a featureless map.

As gamers we want variety, but that is always going to create imbalance and no matter how much developers try and prevent it, any beneficial adavantage given to even the smallest numerical change will be magnified in play. It is a holy grail quest to go for both, either clone armies and balance, or variety and imbalance... given the choice I vote imbalance every time.

Well I believe you can have varied factions with strength and weaknesses and still have a well balanced game. Many of balance changes made so far have been because units haven't been balanced as well as they could have been.

[Cheetah]

i find it funny that mr. Lusted didnt care to respond to:

I will help out Mr.Lusted here, hope he does not mind it.

It is unrealistic to try and create a rock paper scissors, if you want games with equality then have identical factions on a featureless map.

The fact is that it is not unrealistic. Equality is not the same as featurless maps and clone factions. You can have both a good RPS system and faction variety (not to mention map diversity). RPS requires a basic relationship betwen unit types. Factions still can have variety the point is that weakness in certain unit types should be balanced out by strenght in other types. In other words, you can push factions towards certain roles in the RPS system. The only thing you have to be careful about is that there should be no faction which is strong in all (or in almost all) departments.

edit: Mr.Lusted was faster! ;~p

[TinCow]

And we felt that birgs and sloops should have more of a role on the battlefield and for there to be more differences between ship types. Not accurate, but it is what we wanted to have happen to make naval gameplay more interesting for both SP and MP.

Brigs and sloops were never used in major fleet battles, why are you trying to make that the case in ETW? Those ships were pretty much only used as privateers, coastal raiders, and general merchant interception. They weren't even good enough for scouting missions, frigates were used for those purposes. Anything under 40 guns wasn't used in fleet battles. You are screwing up what was the strongest area of the game to give "more of a role" to units that never had that role in the first place. if you really want to make brigs and sloops important, do something to make them better against trade fleets, since that was pretty much their only purpose.

[edit]An example of this would be to allow fleets controlled only of Brigs and Sloops to attack other fleets without causing a declaration of war. This would mimic their role as privateers and encourage their use against poorly guarded trade spots or wandering, weak fleets that would be naturally vulnerable to privateering.

[Zenicetus]

The fact is that it is not unrealistic. Equality is not the same as featurless maps and clone factions. You can have both a good RPS system and faction variety (not to mention map diversity). RPS requires a basic relationship betwen unit types. Factions still can have variety the point is that weakness in certain unit types should be balanced out by strenght in other types.

That can be valid for a game designed from scratch, like Warcraft or Starcraft, etc. But this is supposed to be a historical wargame, where the interest comes from seeing what the player can do within the historical constraints of the period. Otherwise we'd all just be playing Starcraft.

It's ridiculous to give sloops completely unrealistic gun range and speed, just for the sake of giving them a role in major fleet battles. Sloops were never used that way! They have other roles, in other, more minor battles.

In other words, you can push factions towards certain roles in the RPS system. The only thing you have to be careful about is that there should be no faction which is strong in all (or in almost all) departments.

Why not, if that's the way it was historically? The term "ship of the line" means that the type could survive the pounding in a line of battle against similar powerful ships. Aren't there enough differences in the various larger ships already? Why should sloops and brigs have a role in this type of battle?

And if that's CA's design philosophy, then why are the land battles so different? We don't see cheap, early-game infantry units being given ridiculous range, speed, or other enhancements so they can take on the better-armed, elite units that show up later in the game.

[Sheogorath]

Brigs and sloops were never used in major fleet battles, why are you trying to make that the case in ETW? Those ships were pretty much only used as privateers, coastal raiders, and general merchant interception. They weren't even good enough for scouting missions, frigates were used for those purposes. Anything under 40 guns wasn't used in fleet battles. You are screwing up what was the strongest area of the game to give "more of a role" to units that never had that role in the first place. if you really want to make brigs and sloops important, do something to make them better against trade fleets, since that was pretty much their only purpose.

[edit]An example of this would be to allow fleets controlled only of Brigs and Sloops to attack other fleets without causing a declaration of war. This would mimic their role as privateers and encourage their use against poorly guarded trade spots or wandering, weak fleets that would be naturally vulnerable to privateering.

I was under the impression that fourth-rate frigates DID sometimes take part in line battles.


That is a good suggestion, though about the trade fleets.

[A Very Super Market]

Fifth-rates already have 47 guns....

[TinCow]

I was under the impression that fourth-rate frigates DID sometimes take part in line battles.


That is a good suggestion, though about the trade fleets.

Frigates did not usually stand in the line of battle, but they did so often enough to warrant their inclusion there in the game. I'm not talking about frigates though, I'm talking about Sloops and Brigs. Those ships NEVER stood in the line of battle.

[Husar]

Mortar accuracy was dropped because they were far too accurate before, though they will be receiving a slight boost to their accuracy in 1.4 as the previous changes went a bit too far.
[...]
The min range for howitzers is being lowered by 100 for 1.4, so their overall effective range will increase.

Sounds good to me.

And we felt that birgs and sloops should have more of a role on the battlefield and for there to be more differences between ship types. Not accurate, but it is what we wanted to have happen to make naval gameplay more interesting for both SP and MP.

Well, it's nice that you tried that but now that you know that pretty much noone at least on this forum and the way i understand others, noone on other forums, agrees with it, you can drop it, save yourselves the hassle and make us all happy as well.
Perhaps a few of the balancing guys would like to "balance" the campaign AI/diplomacy.

Unfortunately having seperate stats for MP and SP would require almost double the amount of time spent balancing and testing than is currently spent on them, and that already takes up a large amount of time.

Well, most people don't want any real balance in SP it seems so there wouldn't be all that much of a need to test it thoroughly, it's mostly fine as it is anyway, make a poll about the minor requests players have and do whatever the poll result is, you will make the majority happy and save yourselves a lot of work.
You can then spend all your time balancing out the MP part if you wish, just an idea but since MPers seem to want almost the same as SPers it might not be that big of an issue anyway.

[Karash]

Good idea about the Sloops and Brigs btw...hope Jack read that.

Not that it will change anything.

[Prussian to the Iron]

Well I believe you can have varied factions with strength and weaknesses and still have a well balanced game. Many of balance changes made so far have been because units haven't been balanced as well as they could have been.

haha! touche!

i remember a thread i posted in, in which i posted certain strengths and weaknesses of cavalry, infantry, light infantry, and arty for each of the major factions. if i can find it ill post it here.


i think what we all want is more historical stats at the least. if i play as russia and send my line infantry against british or prussian line infantry, i fully expect myself to recieve a thorough ass-whooping.

[AussieGiant]

To expand on TC's point.

It's just a fundamentally unsound move to try and increase the role of Sloops and Brigs in the tactical battle field.

Instead this should/could be confined to the strategy map as TC has suggested. This would also seem to be a fair less invasive move to the game than dealing with substantial balancing issues in the tactical sphere. Plus be far more believable and relevant. There are a multitude of options even off the top of my head that could make Sloops and Brigs more relevant.

A 36lb cannon being out ranged by a Sloop's main battery for game play reasons...

Game play experience in relation to a series of games based on historical context should be more historical than a-historical (if that is a word). But I think you get my meaning.

If not, then take your CA butt cheeks into TW:Space where there is no uncomfortable issues...like "History" to contend with.

And no one should underestimate the MP gang (tourneyfags) influence.

I'd love to have Lusted address the "reasoning" behind this move.

What's more concerning gentlemen...

Steam is going to give CA such a huge, and I mean massive insight into their fan base.

Once it's confirmed that the majority of players are kids with an attention span of 12 minutes you can bet the bottom dollar that the direction of this franchise will drift further off it's original course than you are already experiencing.

Once I finish the project I'm working on, I'd love to generate enough capital to poach those from CA who would to stay true to the concepts and create a new development house.

[Fisherking]

Thank you for the reply Jack!

Explanations go a long way in making some of these things acceptable, so thanks again.

Though it does not seem too many people are happy with the naval changes as they stand.

By the way the Grenzers are still not recruitable for some reason.

@ Cheetah

I don’t mean to separate everyone into SP/MP.

It is not that I intend to only play the game SP. But I find the balance issue silly. Units should be as close to real as possible and let the chips fall where they may. If a faction is unpopular it just is...

[Durallan]

I would like to thank Jack for posting aswell, considering this game is CA's baby I'm sure some of the comments we make in our frustrations can sometimes be rather upsetting, anyway, I must say that I would really love for sloops and brigs to have some sort of different role because they really don't work out for battles once everyone starts building 6th rates even, the most exciting thing about sloops and brigs is watching them explode :D

Although i must say I have had the AI many many times try to form a battle line with me, but not realising that was the normal way ships battled in that time I've kept trying to break it up and fight them one at a time which is incredibly hard now that they don't follow you where you go, my naval battles are now very challenging!

I suppose the most annoying things about sieges is if you are defending yourself against the AI, it just wants to run up to your forts walls everytime and run for the flag, which makes every defensive fort battle boring because there's no exchange of artillery fire unless you have some mortars, and then you can mostly fight off the units one at a time, so unless there are heavy heavy odds you will win every time, I don't know how you can make the AI smarter sieging but I think it could be improved, I normally don't send units in until I've breached the walls or unless I have no artillery, (which has never happened I make sure I have artillery if I'm sieging) something like that anyways.