[1591] Ballista Balance Discussion (specifically ballista spawning)

I feel like the research idea would be more "fair" in pub games because things get unlocked automatically instead of through a few dedicated gold miners or kill streakers, but I don't know if a separate shop for each item is really necessary. At the same time there is an extra pressure on builders to constantly expand the home base for each new unlock. I also think that there are hardly enough items and vehicles to add to a good research tree at this point. The only things that really need to be limited are catapults and ballistas (also maybe kegs and trampolines. I'll have to find a way to nerf tramp cannons btw, at least when used with kegs.)

I'll seriously consider the recursive research tree for my mod, especially if I add more siege. You have to admit that there is still a bit of beauty in the simplicity of coins.

 

No, the shops would be as they are now, and would upgrade over time.

Tier one knight shop would have Bombs (x amount of stock at any given time), Tier two would have water bombs/mines, Tier Three would have Kegs. Previously unlocked items would have their stock caps increased with each extra tier.

Builder shops would be maxed out from the start, archer shops would work the same as knight, starting with regular, then water/fire, then bomb.

Siege shops would start with catapult, then ballista/bolt refills, and then the last tier would be a bomb bolt unlock (or perhaps it would unlock the unlock..? You could justify removing the gold cost, TBH, with the new tunnel costs.

I guess boat shops could work the same, not that anyone cares about those. Tunnels would be unchanged, Storage would be unchanged, builder shop would be unchanged.


The shops would upgrade from tier 1-2 after X amount of time, and then after another strech of time, would go to 3. The shop has to be BUILT for it to start researching, and making a new one at any point of the game will start you at tier 1 (for that new shop). Each shop has individual stocks/tiers.

Destroying a team's only tier 3 shop would mean a massive setback for their combat resources.

Side note: Placed shops only start researching after build time has ended.

Side Side Note: You still spend coins, but the shops have limits of how much they can carry at a time! For example, a tier one knight shop may have a 5-10 bomb reserve, and a recharge time of ~15 seconds per stock. This amount could scale to server size, but doesn't need to.

 

Ok that's a lot simpler than what I was thinking, and I like that idea a lot more. The only thing that kinda rubs me the wrong way is the carry limit for the items, but yea, situations where one guy is able to buy kegs for his entire team can take "slippery slope" to a whole new level. I absolutely hated the TTH system where you could only have a certain number of items out on the field at a given time, but I could probably tolerate a system where items begin to automatically restock the second you buy them.

 

So just automatically move the camera to the place where you'll respawn two seconds before it happens, or give the spawned player invincibility but disable attacking during invincibility.
Or shorten the invincibility time to less than than the time it takes to charge a powerslash.
Or remove spawning at ballistas, what happened to tunnels? It's the only thing you need gold for and no one ever uses them.

 

To be completely honest some of the suggested changes (tiered shops), while well thought out and logistically sound and balanced seem unintuitive to me. It would devastate the offensive capabilities of attack builders (who can no longer build viable offensive workshops) and would generally slow down the game (not necessarily a bad thing). It makes no sense to me to forcibly slow down the progression of a single match. It would make early successes less meaningful (you can't buy any of the good stuff yet) and make kill-streaks less useful as a whole, forcing you to wait for the stock to recharge before you can buy anymore kegs/bomb arrows (think of the times when you have 600 coins and want to burn it all on 5 kegs!), while also making it much harder to end games in a single concerted effort/rush, especially early game. It'd also screw over people constantly, imagine the poor noob who just spawned, has exactly 100 coins he's been saving up for 13 lives now, wants to buy 4 bombs, but there is no stock.
Your changes seem very well thought out and very well balanced (+1 to you), but I personally think that workshops are fine as it is. If you wanted to make them more important/devastating if they were destroyed increasing their cost would be the way to go imo (they're very cheap as it is)(although I'd like to see an accompanying increase in the wood return of cutting up logs so that its not impossible to rebuild if you have no tree farm).