[1591] Ballista Balance Discussion (specifically ballista spawning)

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Just remove ballista spawning all together.

 

Either this, or remove spawning while the ballista is being capped or contested. If ballistas were easier to cap they would be easier to counter. The main problem I run into while trying to cap a ballista is the people constantly spawning while I sit on it. I can reach the ballista via bombs and kill the operators/people guarding them but killing the next ten spawns proves to be too difficult for most everyone and myself.

 

Sorry I'm a bit off topic again but back in classic there was an outpost that was used as a forward spawn point and it could slowly be carried around the map and could be captured by the enemy team.

 

Tunnels already have the purpose of getting your team to the battlefield quickly. There is no point in having people spawn on ballistas, it's a stupid mechanic that makes an already OP and annoying weapon even more powerful.

 

Mod for not respawning at ballistae that are being captured

Mod for bomb bolts doing less damage to players

Shameless self promotion begins.

 

Nice. We can probably get @makmoud98 to host a server running these and see how it plays. Thanks Obi.

 

But it's still as annoying once acquired.

 

But if you make it like 300 gold then it's not even worth it.
Edit: coins

 

Making blobs spawn from ballistas without immunity (or rather, losing it instantly), would be fairly easy to add code-wise from what I've seen. However, as a spawning player, it would kinda suck to spawn then suddenly be murdered :P

 

Better that then having the player who worked hard to reach the ballista and clear it get murdered instantly by people spawning because they are invincible.

 

@ParaLogia Could you put up a poll on whether or not players should be able to respawn at ballistae that are being captured? If there's an overwhelming amount of votes for it, we could have it implemented.

 

I can't definitively answer yes or no, but I think I disagree for the most part. For the attacking team, it's a pain in the ass when enemies keep spawning while you're trying to capture their ballista. On the other hand, it's a nightmare for the defending team if you have a ballista in a difficult to reach place and a random archer happens to start capping it without any way for you to defend.

I think the players that spawn at a ballista are already at a disadvantage, honestly. They can't immediately slash upon spawning, so the attackers should be waiting somewhere above the ballista for an opportunity to stomp-slash the new spawns the moment their spawn protection runs out. The attackers can move, and are flexible; that is not so for the defenders, and, because of that, I think it'd be best to leave ballista spawning as it is now.

There might be something I'm forgetting, of course, so I'll have to think about it a bit more.

 

Actually, I think this is a good a thing. This is because those ballistae in difficult to reach places are going to be the ones that the defending team uses for defending (And ballista camping spam seiging), when the intended purpose of ballistae is attack. Does anybody remember when you couldn't respawn at ballistae that were being captured (back when they used the same capture system as halls), and it was taboo to put them on your own towers?

 

The solution is to shorten the invincibility imo

 

I don't understand why ballistae work as forward spawns, anyway.

Tunnels cost gold to make, so do siege shops, but with coins you basically get infinite spawn points without any risk of resource loss, the only downside is that they can be captured and used against you.

Not to mention, Ballistae are far too spammable, coin gain gets completely out of whack when one team has a dominating player, that one person can suddenly place 2 or 3 ballistae if he gets back to a shop without dying.

RIP enemy base, because of one knight's killstreak, we have enough explosives to erase a continent.

 

What do you suggest? Make ballistas cost gold and have a HUGE gold sink compared to what we have now? Say bye-bye to your tunnels and future siege shops, because you won't have gold left for them, unless you want to win by purely mole digging every game. Not to mention having coins as the reward for "good" players is basically the only thing that sets CTF apart from Take the Halls. What do you suggest next? Make kegs cost gold? They're a pretty deciding factor in a game too, especially when you combine them with kegapults.

Do not try to justify gold as the better resource, because it is non-renewable. You know why people suffer so much from ballista spam on the receiving end (besides them being OP as fuck on high towers)? It's because their team probably didn't have the gold to spend on bomb bolts for whatever reason, so really their only way of fighting back is unavailable. Well, you still have bomb arrows, but let's be real. It's not a very reliable mechanic when you're being bombarded.

I think I'm going to start my own modding project that solves these long-standing issues in ways that make sense. I might be a year late, but I'm very tired of people complaining about the same shit and blaming it on a lack of balance mods. What I'll be doing is changing the role of ballistas, removing their spawning ability, and making a dedicated forward spawn/tunnel combination. You can buy gold, but it costs a shit ton of coins. How does that sound? I have many more issues I would like to fix, with quality of life improvements for builders at the top of the list.

 

Fusing certain things like TTH restock times and research into CTF seems like the best solution to me; one shop can only produce one ballista every X amount of time, has to be researched, so it isn't immediately available. (note: It would still cost coins)

Research doesn't even need to cost anything (and everything can be researched in one game), it just puts a timegate on certain game mechanics, so that the game progresses in an upward curve, getting more and more chaotic until a stalemate is impossible.

There was a mod for this at one point, but it used resources for the research, extra gold or something. I don't think that adding extra costs is necessary. The shop needs to be up for a long time, and now suddenly, destroying a shop has a huge impact on what that team is capable of. Adds an attrition element to the game.

More common items, like arrows/bombs/etc don't need a single cooldown per purchase, instead they can stack up to a certain number.

For example, a first-tier knight shop might have access to 5 bombs before it needs to regenerate, a maxed one could have 10-20 on hand at any given time. This might be a little more geared towards competitive matches though, wouldn't have much of a place in a pub game.