Openning a can of worms ISDF V SCION fair? vote on it

[Ded10c]

When I play with scions I just get two pools and tell thugs to stay in base. Effective usage of the empty bug allows for quill blink warriors in 12 minutes.

+1 argument for its removal.

[appel]

Me and DarkFox reviewed this thoroughly at a time.

My conclusion was that the races are balanced, when you consider and take everything into account.

But there are periods in the game when the balance is either tipped in favor of ISDF or Scion, it's during these time periods the races can either win or lose, or make it to the next period.

I split these periods up into: Early game, Mid game, Late game and End game.

Early game: ISDF is stronger because of FAF's.
Mid game: ISDF still stronger with it's armory, but later in this period is starting to lose ground to configured warriors. Great scion thugs can be stronger though. ISDF can easily win by hitting base with rocket tank early in this period.
Late game: Scion is dominating with it's blink warriors hitting the field. This is when Scion's most often win a ISDF team.
End game: If a ISDF team can dig in long enough, amass enough force, then ISDF is stronger with it's long range assault units and will wipe the floor with Scion. Scion's simply don't have the damage-release capability that ISDF has at this stage. In 1.3 the improved AI of RCKT and Assault tanks helps ensuring ISDF's superiority, but the main reason is the Atillas assault cannons.

There's not exactly a unbalance. The races are just different at different stages at the game. I think that's fine. But there are also other factors to consider, like the choice of map, and of course players.

[Mattroxx]

Me and DarkFox reviewed this thoroughly at a time.

My conclusion was that the races are balanced, when you consider and take everything into account.

But there are periods in the game when the balance is either tipped in favor of ISDF or Scion, it's during these time periods the races can either win or lose, or make it to the next period.

Exactly. The 2 sides are "fair" even though the balance shifts during the game, and require different tactics. That's what makes it interesting; there's no point in having 2 different races if they are equally balanced all the time.

[Nielk1]

Come up with a way to balance it with the canceling exploit removed.

[MrTwosheds]

I still disagree that the cancelling exploit has anything to do with the "balance" of the races, removing the scraploit would not effect the overall race balance one bit, it would effect the way that some commanders command and improve the balance between player-commanders of differing skill levels. The scaploit just allows a skilled commander to totally crush a less experienced player, rather than just crush them.
A commander with a real need for a bit of extra scrap at certain points can always recycle scavs to achieve their quick 80 scrap when they need it, requires a little bit more planning and control though.

Playing without it makes little difference to the overall game experience, a commander will build more scavs to collect more scrap, making more scrap available to both sides.

[Nielk1]

I agree with you Mr2Sheds but a simple way to put it to those whom say it is a critical part of the balance is "ok then, fix the balance if it is removed".

[SUB-0]

Well this vote has been up long enough for all members of this forum to have viewed and voted on...
the general battlezone comunity feel that ISDF vrs SCION is balanced and fair...maybe this can serve as some kind of precedent

thanx for the diferent perceptions and interpretation

this vote is closed ........................................................................................................................................................



Regards SUB-0

[Red Devil]

pretty sure the empty cancelling exploit is a recent phenomenon, but i may be wrong.

[Zero Angel]

Empty canceling has been around since one point two, but the game mechanics were quite different from today. ISDF had trucks that could recy for 40 (often leading to fast tech center and a healthy supply of tanks in the lategame) and empties that recy'd for 15 -- as well as tons of other things such as spires that were slower to react and dodgable (from arcing hover attacks), warpy chain scouts that stood somewhat of a chance against warriors in lategame and a bunch of other differences to the metagame. Right now empty canceling seems to be the primary defense against the shadower-mcurtain base pin -- but it's a little too effective in that Scions get arc/blink Warriors long before they normally should.

[General BlackDragon]

I think the canceling bug should be fixed.

[MrTwosheds]

Its full effects are most obvious in the ffa game, where it becomes a very powerful way of building base and units much faster than normal. Commanders tend to turtle and generate allot of extra scrap/time by empty cancelling, then emerge with a huge force to crush the other players, who were daft enough to fight for their resources.

[APCs r Evil]

Personally I think of empty cancelling as something of a band-aid, whether it was intentional or not, it helps Scion teams get past a point in the gameplay where they would otherwise be left high and dry. If we remove the band-aid we still have the broken bone to deal with.

Now, maybe I just haven't seen as many people running around as everyone else, but it seems to me we have neither enough people left to fix the broken bone or enough people to dance on the bone and make sure it's healed properly.

[MrTwosheds]

The bone you refer to, are the reasons why nobody really wants to drive sentry's or lancers in strat. They get shot down.

[APCs r Evil]

Yep.

Although I do occasionally use a Gauss Sentry when the situation permits it. That doesn't happen as often as I'd like, though. I've always been a bit of a fan of Sentries. Although Lancers will always be my favorite.. But I ramble.

Anyway, I've pondered over how to improve Sentries and Lancers over the years and I've more or less come up with these reasons why they don't quite cut it in strats.

(1) Sentries fall pretty easily to Shadowers which hit the field roughly the same time as Sentries.

This one can be remedied by reducing the Sentry's image signature, so Shads take longer to lock-on. Or, if Seekers moved faster and had a larger engage range they can obscure line of sight to the Sentry. A Shadower missile that's locked-on to a Seeker mine is not a threat. (I've used them to run from Shadower equipped enemies in stock before, it works... Mostly.)

(1.5) Sentries are also fairly large targets, making them easier to hit with Chain Gun or Laser than the Scion Scouts.

This is mitigated mostly by the fact that both Ion Gun and Gauss Gun are either more powerful or more useful than Chain Gun or Laser. Plus, the Sentry has the potential to use Shields and already has more hull capacity than ISDF Scouts.

(2) Lancers are slow, weak (Hull) and expensive and equipped with weak, inneffective weapons. The only possible; reasonable (Well alright, maybe reasonable isn't the right word.) use for them in stock is as Blink/Wasp suicide bombers, as I believe DarkFox pointed out not that long ago.

This one is simple enough to fix on the Lancer side of things in a number of ways. The Lancer's missiles are another matter entirely and if we try to preserve the Lancer's intended "feel" there's no way we can improve the missiles enough to counter Phantom VIR. We would need to change the code on that one, namely by changing how VIR affects Stingers and or Multilock.

Of course, bringing Sentries and Lancers up to par without overshooting "balance" would be a nightmare these days, and any significant improvements would surely have unintended effects.

[Zero Angel]

Well, there are tons of problems with lancers.
- VIR can nullify all lancer weaponry
- Multilock and WASP have high tech requirements and are good at ... ???
- Lancers are bad at dogfighting due to poor handling and also bad at fighting heavy armor due to ineffective weapons for ranging them.

So yeah, the whole design of the Lancer doctrine was not well designed in the context of contemporary strat (i'm not sure any of the bz2 creators could have envisioned how strat would turn out)

As to sentries, there is nothing wrong with them except for the fact that for a gauss-seeker-stasis sentry (the only one really worth using, since gauss is your only really powerful vs m-curtain) you need 60 (kiln) -> 50 (dower) -> 60 (forge)-- whereas the ISDF missle scout or full scout with chains+vir only needs 30 (power) -> 55 (factory) -> 60 (armory). This may seem like a minor difference but it's actually quite large if you factor in just how easy it is to get a powergen up on 2 pools.