Command Centre
Iacto
Join Date: 2010-11-23 Member: 75209Members
Join Date: 2010-11-23 Member: 75209Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Doesn't have enough health</div>So I've played quite a few games since the patch, and I've come across a massive problem which is giving the Aliens quite a lot of free victories, especially with lower player counts (<6). The Command Centre just doesn't have enough health. OR we need welders, so it can be repaired.
So I was in a gather, on Turtle. I was defending a res tower close to base, and got attacked by a Skulk and a Lerk. They killed me, then proceeded to kill everyone spawning and the command centre before anyone could get back to base. We were ahead by quite away, both in tech and RTs, but we lost because they could back-door and kill the CC before anyone could get back home.
So thoughts?
So I was in a gather, on Turtle. I was defending a res tower close to base, and got attacked by a Skulk and a Lerk. They killed me, then proceeded to kill everyone spawning and the command centre before anyone could get back to base. We were ahead by quite away, both in tech and RTs, but we lost because they could back-door and kill the CC before anyone could get back home.
So thoughts?
Comments
Scale the damage done to structures down based on how many players are on the attacking team.
e.g.
1) 6/6 players on the attacking team do 200 base damage each, for 1200 base damage total.
2) 16/16 players on the attacking team do 200 base damage each, for 3200 base damage total.
These are significantly different. In the latter case, the structure would go down much, much faster.
Taking 1) as the standard case:
Damage to structure = base damage * standard number of players / actual number of players
So:
1) Total damage to structure = 1200 * 6 / 6 = 1200
2) Total damage to structure = 3200 * 6 / 16 = 1200
Now they are the same. In any game, the time taken to destroy a structure, assuming the same proportion of attacking players, remains the same regardless of game size.
Credit goes to twiliteblue for actually thinking of this.
I think a big problem that has occurred is that the average game has increased in size (as server performance has improved), without the health and damage numbers having much changed - and when they have changed, it has been to adapt to new realities - but all these realities are subjective and so you're only ever dealing with the most common case (i.e. satisfying the most common complaint), and this is not a robust or sustainable approach.
Scaling damage would be very confusing, as it could take x amount of bile-bombs to kill a turret, but 5 minutes later, the turret goes down to x + 4 instead. How is the player supposed to get a feel for how much damage you can do to structures?
i think the CC health is rather low to encourage actually placing additional CCs. 20 is not cheap, but you should be able to afford it in lategame. and of course there is always beacon, mines, sentries, marines on guard, MAC-repair and you can also leave the CC as a last resort.
granted, i've seen quite some games ending with a "back door" as you call it. then again, if none or only few of those defense measures are taken, i think the commander actually deserves the loss. if everything fails, you usually still have enough time to place a backup CC while the main CC is going down.
personally, i am more concerned with main-base-powernodes. have 1-2 onos rush in to attack it, there is little marines can do... then again, the same thing works with jetpacks against hives. so i guess its different depending on the amount of players, but somehow balanced for both races.
Scaling damage would be very confusing, as it could take x amount of bile-bombs to kill a turret, but 5 minutes later, the turret goes down to x + 4 instead. How is the player supposed to get a feel for how much damage you can do to structures?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's only the case on servers with very volatile player counts (i.e. the playercount changes often and extremely in a single round). I would consider matches in such servers as outliers. Generally speaking, simply because of the way that people are, most of the time you will have a collection of full servers and empty servers, with only a few filling up or emptying out.
Scaling in such a situation is actually beneficial, though. Your damage is halved, but you do have twice as many players; it encourages you to work together, whether that is you and him chomping a power node together, or you chomping down and him watching and covering.
Structure damage is nowhere near as critical as player damage, anyway, because of the relatively very high hitpoints that structures have. Without looking at the code or doing a calculation, can you tell me now exactly how many skulk bites it takes to kill a command centre? I'm guessing no. Could you do the same for a vanilla marine? I'm guessing yes. The latter is obviously more important and critical.
As a beneficial side-effect, it also serves to mildly counter the negative effects of team-stacking: the larger team does less damage to structures.
The game needs to be able to scale, otherwise you are only ever balancing for a single ideal game size, and <b>every other game size is unbalanced</b>. Most players won't be playing the game in a competitive or organised setting, so most games won't have that single game size. Structure damage scaling allows you to balance for that single ideal game size, but <b>also</b>(!) allows for the game to scale <i>reasonably</i> well, allowing the pacing and balance to remain more consistent with different game sizes, and more aligned with the "competitive" games. Structure damage scaling is simply a <b>bonus</b> to pacing and balance consistency.
Game size scaling is the reason for the introduction of the TRes-PRes model, and it seems silly to stop there and keep a half-measure.
but you got a point, ns2-games can be quite different depending on the amounts of people and there is room for scaling-improvement, i just don't think damage/health is the best choice there as it feels quite unnatural to have it changed throughout a match. there might be some other way we haven't thought of yet.
And maybe change bilebomb to corrode and the mac back to a unit instead of a structure (with armor only) macs could survive a bit longer.
Btw. I'm not a fan of this scaling either. Because its unintuitive for the player. And nothing says that the natural change that happens to a game with many players in comparison to a game with few players has to be bad. You don't have to scale something that isn't a problem. Yes, you have to make sure, that it is still balanced. But beside this I do welcome the change, complexity and new game feeling when playing a game with many players. You don't have to scale just for the sake of making everything at anytime the same.
Don't get afraid of the new.
A) Damage to structures is not critical, in the way that damage to players is critical.
B) Most matches will have constant player counts.
How do you not see it as a problem?
For a 6v6 game and for a 12v12 game, the CC goes down twice as fast in the latter game than the former, simply because you have twice as many attacking players. So naturally, backdooring is a much better idea when you have many more players, and that's bad. Games may also end quicker and easier, and that could be good (or bad). But it's dependent on the player count: more players means more backdooring and quicker/easier ends, less players means less backdooring but slower/harder ends. This is not consistent.
By scaling, you have all game sizes have game experiences roughly analogous to the ideal game size. So you can easily set a base-line: The CC should have this much health to discourage backdooring, but only take this much time to destroy by this number of players, for this ideal game size: the other game sizes will have roughly the same disincentive for backdooring and take roughly the same time to end the game.
But the intuitiveness is a point. When you change it dynamically, you should only adjust the health of the command station. All buildings would be too confusing, because:
A) Damage to structures can be critical. Because its the time you need to destroy it is important. Because while chewing on a building you can't surpress the marine team at the same time and in most cases you make yourself vulnerable to enemy attacks. The players learn over time how long it takes to destroy specific buildings and use this knowledge to decide if they should attack it or to first get an ambush ready for the incoming marines.
B) On public servers the player count always changes slightly.
C) It could get boring on a big server, when you suddenly need > 1minute to chew a res tower, because he has way to much health.
Btw. I'm not a fan of this scaling either. Because its unintuitive for the player. And nothing says that the natural change that happens to a game with many players in comparison to a game with few players has to be bad. You don't have to scale something that isn't a problem. Yes, you have to make sure, that it is still balanced. But beside this I do welcome the change, complexity and new game feeling when playing a game with many players. You don't have to scale just for the sake of making everything at anytime the same.
Don't get afraid of the new.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I couldn't have explained it better than Harimau.
A anyone who plays DoTA will tell you how frustrating it was prior to the introduction of anti-backdoor structure "invul" shield. Marines in NS2 are nowhere near as fast as aliens, and often cannot respond to alien blitz quick enough.
You cannot deny that twice the number of players can destroy structures twice as fast, it is a numeric fact. Health of Command Station may be fine for 6v6. But what if the game is a 12 v 12? A CS starts with 5000 effective health (vs anything but Light damage), 6 Gorges (or half the team) can deal (6 x 180 = ) 1080 damage per second. That means 6 Gorges can destroy a Command Station in under 5 seconds!
It would have been a very risky, but powerful all-in attack in a 6v6 game. However, in a 12v12 game, it would pose a much smaller risk for aliens to attempt such a strategy. In 12v12, it would be overpowered. The balance is now broken.
<!--quoteo(post=1901664:date=Feb 10 2012, 02:53 AM:name=_Necro_)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (_Necro_ @ Feb 10 2012, 02:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1901664"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Now I see. Yeah maybe this is a problem. But yesterday I played on a 10vs10 server and this backdoor wasn't a real matter. Because the marine team also had more players to defend the base. Maybe the aliens didn't even try, besides the occasional one skulk who sneaked past our respoint-searching teams.
But the intuitiveness is a point. When you change it dynamically, you should only adjust the health of the command station. All buildings would be too confusing, because:
A) Damage to structures can be critical. Because its the time you need to destroy it is important. Because while chewing on a building you can't surpress the marine team at the same time and in most cases you make yourself vulnerable to enemy attacks. The players learn over time how long it takes to destroy specific buildings and use this knowledge to decide if they should attack it or to first get an ambush ready for the incoming marines.
B) On public servers the player count always changes slightly.
C) It could get boring on a big server, when you suddenly need > 1minute to chew a res tower, because he has way to much health.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think the aliens in that pub game just weren't trying very hard to win. :)
Damage scaling just means that the players need better communication in a team. In large games, eg 12v12, where damage vs structures is halved, you just need another buddy to attack with you, to deal the same damage as in a 6v6.
All structures are important (to various degrees) in NS2, so if your team isn't covering each other or prioritizing their targets, then it's a teamwork problem. Team work will always be a major elements of NS2 gameplay. If health of structures do not scale, then it's very likely that certain elements of the game could be trivialized.
For example, Static Defense will be almost useless. Sentries and Whips cost the same Team Resources, but are killed a lot quicker. Marines will be able to snipe alien structures from range much easier.
A) Damage to structures can be critical. Because its the time you need to destroy it is important. Because while chewing on a building you can't surpress the marine team at the same time and in most cases you make yourself vulnerable to enemy attacks. The players learn over time how long it takes to destroy specific buildings and use this knowledge to decide if they should attack it or to first get an ambush ready for the incoming marines.
B) On public servers the player count always changes slightly.
C) It could get boring on a big server, when you suddenly need > 1minute to chew a res tower, because he has way to much health.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think that scaling the health directly would be even less intuitive, because, for instance, if some structure is at 673/1200 HP with 6v6 players, then you suddenly get an influx of players and the server is now at 9v9, what is its health now? Scaling the health up was my first thought as well but then I ran into the aforementioned problem, where it can be seen that scaling the damage down is a superior approach in many ways.
The problem is applicable to more than just the CC. Structures are purchased with TRes. TRes does not scale with player count. So the number of structures do not scale with player count, so you have to scale something else: scale the health.
A) Any player serious enough to learn exactly how long it takes to kill each structure, will (or should) probably be playing in consistently-sized "competitive" matches anyway (I'm aware that's a gross exaggeration, but it makes sense). Scaling the health wouldn't help this anyway, unless you displayed health numbers above each structure.
B) So the effect will only change slightly.
C) So bring your friends along. The number of RTs hasn't changed.*
*twiliteblue expressed this point more eloquently, though I like to think I did it more succinctly :P