[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [Wesnoth-dev] Drake Revision Reasons
|
From: |
Richard Kettering |
|
Subject: |
Re: [Wesnoth-dev] Drake Revision Reasons |
|
Date: |
Tue, 31 May 2005 14:45:36 -0500 |
On May 30, 2005, at 10:07 PM, Richard S. wrote:
Yesterday, Monday 30th of May, several changes were committed to the
drake faction by Jetryl that we believed were unbalancing to the
faction. These were done without our knowledge or approval, so we have
reverted them back to their previous state. I have written a summary
for each change for why they should not have occurred.
#1 Saurian Tribalist
Changes
Hitpoints 18->27hp
Cost 16-18 gp
Ranged 5-3 Magical -> 7-2 drain
Currently Tribalist occupies a critical important mission profile for
the drakes. It was used primarily as a unit to dislodge high defence
units for the drake faction. It was particularly effective against
certain defence tactic where opponents chose to purchase archers (or
similar projectile secondary units like the thunderer ect.) and place
them on high defence terrain (mountains, forest ect...). Since most
drakes were highly vulnerable to piercing attacks, and were unlikely
to kill or severely damage these defending units, the defending archer
would be able to do often effectively inflict grossly distorted combat
exchanges against drakes (who had poor terrain modifiers anyways).
This was even more so true for the Burner whose main attack is ranged,
which would be countered by a ranged piercing attack. In essence, to
undertake any attack successfully, Drakes had to commit proportionally
more resources than other races to undertake a successful attack.
(this strategy was particularly effective when drakes had -20%, now it
only effects piercing units that do more than 5 damage -> dextrous E.
Archers, O. Archers during night and human archers)
Saurians Tribalists provided a solution to this defence by enabling
the faction to remove them at a lower cost. They did so by being less
vulnerable to damage both in attack and in counterattack. The superior
resistance to pierce weapons (20% more than their drake brethren) and
superior defence, made it more resilient to these attack. Secondly and
most importantly to this change was their ability to actually hit
units in defendable terrain, which was the problem with the other
units. The magical attack enabled a player the ability to dislodge
these defendable units that no other drake unit could do. By changing
it to drain the drakes now have a serious capability hole which can be
exploited by opposing players.
Other negative effects are clearly visible. Drakes have been
consistently hounded about their high cost in comparison to other
factions. Upping the cost to 18 just makes another drake unit that is
at 18 gold, and one less in the 14~16 range.
As for the predicted effects effects of having drain, and increased
HP, this will likely have the exact opposite effects as jetryl
intended. Drain is a powerful effect when it hits, and players will
likely use the unit as a front-line fighter across a wider spectrum of
usage than is the current role that the saurian is used for now. Also
these changes have caused the removal of the icecaster... a curious
change given that these changes are supposed to increase the diversity
of the factions.
Diversity was increased by removing yet another unit with a ranged
magic attack.
Drain is much less useful for any combat than magic, unless said combat
is taking place in very bad defensive conditions for the victim - magic
is often applied in such a way as to kill the enemy within the first
one or two strikes of the effect (for low-level mages, at least, who
cannot endure damage) - thus a unit with "magic" does not lose the
hitpoints they would regain with drain.
This unit has been adjusted to be on a comparable power level to the
elvish shaman. If you want to make him into a special combat unit,
then we should commit to that - and remove "heals" entirely from the
unit.
In fact - you know what? I'm going to do just that. I'll give you
back your saurian magic attack unit, and make the elves more unique in
having a healing capability that others don't. No one ever uses the
tribalist for it's healing, and the elvish shaman looks mighty sad next
to previous state of the tribalist. This saves me several hours of
work in animating the healing frames, which I am not getting paid for.
#2 Drake Clasher
Changes
Melee 6-4 Spear (pierce) -> 8-3 Mace (impact)
Conceptually the drake clasher is different from the rest of the drake
line, as is very clear by its unit description and traits. This is
also quite true for its use in the game. In multiplayer, clashers are
the prime unit used to combat human and elvish units. Its higher than
average resistances for drakes, and its effective melee attacks made
it the prime unit (with saurians) to combat units in these factions.
The spear attack was particularly useful against horsemen, which would
have to risk serious damage if it attempted to attack a clasher.
Nominally the horseman would be a devastating unit against drakes. The
Horseman's pierce allows it to inflict serious damage to drakes, and
the lower hp of the saurians make it an easy target to be picked off
by a horseman (unless it misses).
The alteration of the secondary attack of the Clasher from spear to
mace really is unnecessary and weakens the primary role of the
clasher. Mace attacks (impact) are optimized towards the undead...
however given that the drakes already have several effective units to
attack undead units (burners for instance) there is no need for this
change. Furthermore, the principle strategy for the undead against the
drakes doesn't use units vulnerable to impact. The current main
strategy for Undead is to buy 4~5 Dark adepts, and a horde of Walking
corpses. The dark adepts usually do severe damage to drake units,
while the corpses defend the adepts as blockers and finish off the
weakened drakes. A change to mace will have no effect on this strategy
at all, as none of these units have any weaknesses to impact. Even if
other units do exist, it is preferable to used range fire to kill them
so not to incur damage. Therefore, the prime reason for this change
does not exist. The only other unit that the change to mace could be
effective against is trolls, with no resistances to impact (vs 20 to
pierce and blade). Yet even here firebreathing units are preferable
since many of the other northerner units do not have ranged attacks to
counterattack with.
All this change will do is exacerbated some of faction's weaknesses
vis-a-vis loyalists, which the drakes already have serious problems
with. The change to mace only overlaps the current strengths of the
faction, and opens up new weaknesses. For these reasons we have
decided on revision.
Loyalists have severe problems with drakes, on account of the saurians.
This isn't even a contest - a drake player can beat a loyalist player
almost every single time because of the presence of the saurian
skirmisher.
The drake clasher in the previous revision was not a good unit to use
against horsemen - it was weak to pierce, whereas saurians were
resistant to pierce, and had a vastly inferior movetype and movement
count. It was easily outmaneuvered by cavalry, which, up until the
last release could exploit a time of day weakness to strike harder
during favorable hours.
The drake faction already had a de facto "primary pierce unit" - the
skirmisher. With the changes to the alignment of drakes, this became
even more solidified - compared to clashers he became a much better
unit to use against cavalry. Not only did the skirmisher have a host
of movetype and movement advantages over the Because of the new
movetype, he can be made cheaper, rather than more expensive, as his
effectiveness has been reduced.
However, to make you happy, I'm going to revert this fellow to what he
was before. It was a negligible change, really, for reasons I've
outlined above - he had pierce capability, but no one was using it.
Whatever.
#3 Drake Pierce Resistance
Pierce resistance -10%-> -20%
Had this have gone through with the clasher change, any game between
humans and Drakes would be a completely one sided affair. The
resistance was just changed in 0.9.1 to 10% for precisely these
reasons. At -20% two spearmen in the day could have a reasonable
chance of killing a burner, at -10% its very unlikely. This also
increases the effectiveness of all archers... giving the elvish archer
a 6-4 attack, and the human archer a 8-3 attack. If these revisions
were to remain, the drake faction would become easy prey for factions
with pierce damage overall. Of all these changes, this one would have
had the worst effect on balancing.
That was a completely unintended mistake, made on part of some bad
snafus in my edit of game.cfg - apparently some routine work was done
to it after the change, bringing it to a new version. I checked the
diff in webcvs, saw that none of the routine work (some preprocessor
stuff by Silene) affected the section including the saurian/drakefoot
movetypes, and just copied in the relevant sections. As it turns out,
my copy was more than one revision old, and the previous settings got
copied in.
I'm glad you caught this.
#4 Proposed Movetype changes to saurians
Hill 1-> 2 movement cost, 60->50% defence
Mountain 2->3 movement cost 60% -> 40%defence
The Saurian is a very temperamental race. It sits on a razor edge
where a minor change could upset its delicate balance. Currently
(0.9.1) the skirmisher is overpowered. The most unbalanced strategy
in the current version is the saurian rush where a drake player
essentially buys all skirmishers. For its "combat statistics" the
saurian is an balanced unit. What was unbalanced was its movement. By
utilizing its 7 movement range and skirmishing, the skirmisher just
runs around everything. The unit is exceptional in being able to
evade attacks by dispersion, and then instantly concentrating their
attack on a exposed unit... then dispersing again. Yet, these changes
just cripple a unit that relied more so than almost any other unit on
its defensive modifiers to fight effectively in the game... its combat
statistics were balanced. By diminishing its modifiers on hills and
mountains, essentially these units will be that much less effective,
making its relatively low HP become that much more apparent. Really
the only problem with the saurian skirmisher was its ridiculous
movement that became apparent when combined with skirmishing. This
enabled it to either ignore zocs and evade attack by outrunning its
opponents, or striking critical units deep within enemy territory,
like units weak and recovering. It had little to do with its low
terrain movement costs. So these changes would have little effect on
their unbalanced position today. These alteration will also have
serious effects on the other members of the saurian faction, which did
not have skirmishing ability. These units were never complained about
before, but now will be at a disadvantage, both on terrain and their
movement... thus unbalancing, balanced units.
Our proposed change of increasing its cost from 14->15 gold and
decreasing its movement from 7->6 would have corrected this problem,
without hampering other saurians. This change actually specifically
addressed the problem at hand.
Your proposed change doesn't solve the problem.
The saurian skirmisher's problems stemmed entirely from it's movetype -
it had quite nearly a better movetype than flying, if you disregard
behaviour on water. With 1 move point per tile for forest, swamp,
sand, hills and a relatively low 2 mp for mountains, it could move
anywhere unencumbered - not only that, it could do so and receive great
defensive bonuses for doing so (60%, which is equivalent to some elves
in forest).
Saurians, given their skirmisher ability and movetype, could always be
placed in high defensive terrain at their owner's whim. The only
counters to saurians were either a unit that could pierce this
defensive barrier, which was always present because they could access
such terrain within 5 spaces on nearly any multiplayer map, or the
ability to storm them with numbers (something only available to orcs).
For most races, the relevant magic/marksman using units were very frail
compared to the saurians, and had much worse movetypes in addition to
being slower. In most cases, these would actually prevent the
magic-using unit from entering higher-defense terrain (which would
garner it only 50% defense, not 60% in almost all cases except that of
the elvish druid/shyde).
#5 Glider
Add marksmanship
Currently the drake faction does have a significant problem, its units
are very pricey. Many people have also complained that the Glider is
underpriced as well. So by adding marksmanship to the glider,
essentially the gold cost of the glider will have to increase as
well... and then the drakes will saddled with another high cost unit
further putting it at a numerical disadvantage. Furthermore I do not
see an effective use for this ability. The glider most certainly isn't
a general combat unit. It has limited health, and drake flaws. If
used against other scouts (its likeliest target), marksmanship not so
helpful against the elvish scout (who would counter with arrows), and
doesn't do enough damage to gryphons or cavalry. That leaves bats,
which yes marksmanship would be effective against. Yet as I have said
before, there is no need for them to make the drakes more effective
against Undead.
Elvish scouts receive > 40% defense in forest, hills, and mountains,
and return fire with a paltry 2 arrows. An elvish scout would likely
do more damage attacking with its melee attack against a drake than its
ranged attack, and would have a better chance of hitting. Goblin wolf
riders receive > 40% defense on even more terrains, and move as well as
the glider on everything but water and forest. This change would make
the rather useless attack into a special "focused strike" attack,
allowing drakes to strike at units which had been weakened in combat -
negating the problem of the overbearing damage of the saurian
tribalist, but retaining the ability to hit such units, and even
extending the range of it. You also seem to be forgetting how low an
amount of damage cold does to mermen - drakes currently have no counter
against mermen, but apparently we will leave them that way.
The undead are an odd lot against drakes, as EP has demonstrated
before, they are balanced, but in a rather incendiary way - both
factions have units that do high damage to the opposing side. It seems
to me that the undead have the better side of the bargain, because they
can hire units which are not vulnerable to the preferred damage type of
their opponents, and said units have the magic, cold attack which so
annihilates drakes and saurians. If nothing else, they retard the use
of drakes above level 1, since it is nearly as easy to kill those.
The entire fact of having skeletons which were vulnerable to fire, and
undead which used cold instead of a special
"shadow/whateveryouwanttocallit" damage type is the source of this
whole problem. We could evaporate that if we were willing to make that
change, but nevermind.
In conclusion these changes would have made a drake faction that would
have been seriously crippled when confronted by other factions, with
the exception of the undead. Of particular problem would be against
the humans, which was only remedied in the last release, and now a
regression is occurring again? This makes little sense. The ranged
unit defence tactic would return in full force, with drakes being even
more susceptible to this tactic as they would suffer even more damage
from ranged attack, and having little recourse to it with the removal
of the tribalist as an effective counter. It is our belief that this
would have had a worse effect on balancing than the 9.0 Dwarven
changes, and thus we have committed a full retraction.
In conclusion, these changes would have made a drake faction that no
longer had an inherent advantage over nearly every other faction by
rote of their magic using units.