Warfare Balance Discussion

[MarkusNemesis]

Okay, so here's the feature list for 0.4v so far.

Price AH-6J to $18,500
Chinook HC4 increased by 2k (Radar beep)
AH-1z increased to 85k (120 flares)
AH-1 (Brit) increased by 2k (Radar beep)
AH-6J to 18k
Price swap MI-24D with Mi-8 Rockets
AT prices Halved
UH-1Y to 20k
BLUFOR launcher prices lowered

Disallow saving of gear outside your current gear level
Ambulance marker text set to "+"
Fuel truck marker set to "F"
Ammo truck set to "A"
Mi-17 Medevac given 120 flares

Thoughts?

[Freeborne]

Looks pretty close.

BAF AH1 also has better rocket complement than AH64D, so take that into account. Those 19x AT rockets are good at taking out factories. 19x HE are good at killing infantry and light vehicles around the base.

With bounties at 35%:
T34 kill = $840 bounty (was 600)
T55 kill = $980 bounty (was 700)
M1A1 kill = $2100 (was 1410)
(plus infantry bounties)

I like the high price of AT in general, but prefer the price was mostly in the ammo itself, and not the launchers.

[MarkusNemesis]

I like the high price of AT in general, but prefer the price was mostly in the ammo itself, and not the launchers.

Stupid launcher pricing was Benny, I oversaw them. I'll be making them similar to that of OPFOR. Launchers are cheap, (except Jav and Metis, they have fancy stuff on them). Dragons and NLAW launchers will be a bit more expensive.

[Kenex05]

I don't know if this would be useful to 'fix' bugged slots, but I have always wanted more slots so I think I might just throw this out. I know Radioman has been saying that the server barely managed to run on 32.

so maybe If you increase playable slots that have no speciality to each side as spare ones, while setting server maximum 32 players only(It is running 32P Warfare most of the time anyway), that would give a chance for players to swap to a working slot hopefully. Anyway, I'd say it would also be nice to test it just to see how the server runs like when it runs with more than 32 players or so.

PS I don't see the DayZ servers with my filter atm, not sure if they are temporarily down or not. Maybe a good chance to test!

[Rob_OFP]

[MarkusNemesis]

Nice features, but do I want more wall spam? Nope.

On a side note, I had to delete the Git repository because it was having a weird error and not letting me commit changes, so I've re-made the repository under a similar name.

[Rob_OFP]

Bases should have a good wall defense. Without the concrete walls i'm seeing individuals obliterate a few buildings without any teamwork needed.

I think a good compromise would be to limit the amount of concrete walls that can be built to protect the most critical components.

[Sky Monster]

Bases should have a good wall defense. Without the concrete walls i'm seeing individuals obliterate a few buildings without any teamwork needed.

And with them you see a whole team struggle to kill 1 factory

I think a good compromise would be to limit the amount of concrete walls that can be built to protect the most critical components.

Limit the amount and make them cost $800 each

[Freeborne]

Damn, that's some nice porn Rob

Although I like the point-to-point wall building, that many concrete walls seems overkill. Maybe use small HESCO walls instead, and reserve (tougher) concrete walls for factories. The factory walls should be built automatically though, and be free.

I actually find that "struggle" is usually the most enjoyable part of Warfare anyway. If we balance the game for the noobs, we just have every game dominated by one or two veteran players. I still find it too easy to kill an entire base with a Shilka, and I can't imagine anyone on the other team finds it 'fun' to have their whole base wiped out in a surprise 30 second attack.

[MarkusNemesis]

On another note.

0.4v will feature time dilation. Benny half-assedly implemented a time dilation script but never used it anywhere, so I'm going to make it properly and have it affect all server-side actions.

When the server is running at shit-for-FPS, buildings take for ever to build, so with time dilation, it'll compensate the lag by making the construction time scale with how long an actual servertime second is.

You can also see this in commander votes, where three real life seconds will translate to 1 server second, so, this means that with time dilation, each "second" will actually be 0.33 seconds.

I'm also making a few optimisations on the lines of removing totally pointless sleeps, eg. "sleep (random 1)" which serve absolutely no purpose but to consume server CPU time.

Another optimisation is to change how camps change hands. Currently, each camp has a script that initializes them, and then sleeps until the town is captured. This means ~(3 x 15) = 45 scripts are sitting idle on the server, plus the 15 scripts for the town capture point, = 60 scripts. What I'll change it to will be that when the town is waiting to be captured (15 scripts sleeping), and when the town changes hands, it'll call a script to go through and change that town's camps ownership also.

These changes are not to change how game mechanics work, but to make them more server-side friendly and make the game APPEAR smoother, as well as hopefully gain some additional performance out of GON's current server hardware.

Thoughts?

Also, the official 0.4v feature list so far is this:

Chinook HC4 increased by 2k (Radar beep)
AH-1z increased to 84k (120 flares)
AH-1 (Brit) increased by 4k (Radar beep, better rockets?)
AH-6J to 18k
Price swap MI-24D with Mi-8 Rockets (Even though tests suggest the Mi-8 is more resilient to engine failure after 1 stinger)
UH-1Y to 20k

Disallow saving of gear outside your current gear level
No-collide campfires
Make porta-loos buildable under the "startegic" menu - Maybe not
Give Stryker MEV a horn (truck horn)
Turn the stryker into a LAV HQ
Make lockpicked vehicles appear on the map
Give OPFOR IEDs - Discuss balance, investigate damage figures.
Make it so aircraft don't spawn towns unless flying < 100 KM/h and at altitudes of < 150m (Get type, if it's a jet, don't trigger, but what script is this?)
Ambulance marker text set to "+"
Fuel truck marker set to "F"
Ammo truck set to "A"
Mi-17 Medevac given 120 flares
Stop selling of base buildings if the HQ is dead
Add more vickers ammo
Implement time dilation for ALL server-side sleeps.
Investigate why limit missile range script runs on all clients when the missile doesn't belong to you.
Make a 40 players version.
Give ambulances a siren (transplant from a life mod) - maybe not.

Fix Init_Camp.sqf to not sit and wait for the camp to be captured.
Fix time dialation Common_GetSleepFPS.sqf

[Xerxes17]

I find that even with walls it's still fairly easy to bring down a factory at range with a tank. You can often lob sabot rounds in accurately, ignoring the walls. Even ATGM defenses are by not much of a worry if you can get a good position.

[Grendel]

Give OPFOR IEDs - Discuss balance, investigate damage figures.

In regards to the IED's, is there any way to make them behave like mines? As in pressure or motion activated instead of just re-skinned satchels.

[MarkusNemesis]

Give OPFOR IEDs - Discuss balance, investigate damage figures.

In regards to the IED's, is there any way to make them behave like mines? As in pressure or motion activated instead of just re-skinned satchels.

No, but you can be creative by planting an IED and then a mine. The IED will hide the mine.

[MarkusNemesis]

Time dilation works!

Even with the server at 3 FPS, the commander vote still counts down 1 second at a time accurately.

All server side "sleep"s are dilated, to ensure a snappier response. This affects building construction time, commander votes and other features.

[Tonmeister.]

Can we have a version for testing an increase in player slots in your current unreleased RE version. As Benny's beta version is currently providing 48 and 56 slots (for a 3 sided warfare) I recommend going for 40 or 48 slots to start with. The degree of Benny's optimization with the current beta is yet to be seen, but I imagine this has partly driven the increase in slots. The results from the time dilation tests you've done is also promising. Finally with the rise in the number of new players to the GoN warfare server I think its reasonable to increase the playable slots and we can test the server and see if it can handle the increased capacity under performance conditions.

What does everyone think?