Balancing Mines
Harimau
Join Date: 2007-12-24 Member: 63250Members
<div class="IPBDescription">(again)</div>Give mines
1) a short explosion delay,
2) a small trigger radius, and
3) decreasing damage with blast radius
(this last one is probably already in, maybe someone can check for me)
Fast and accurate enough aliens should be able to escape most of the damage by running past the edge of the trigger radius, or nullify the mines entirely by triggering an explosion at the edge and summarily escaping.
Obviously, it would be silly to attempt this if you are slow, it would be silly to get too close to the centre of the mine, and it would be silly to move in a tight group in a mine-infested area.
1) a short explosion delay,
2) a small trigger radius, and
3) decreasing damage with blast radius
(this last one is probably already in, maybe someone can check for me)
Fast and accurate enough aliens should be able to escape most of the damage by running past the edge of the trigger radius, or nullify the mines entirely by triggering an explosion at the edge and summarily escaping.
Obviously, it would be silly to attempt this if you are slow, it would be silly to get too close to the centre of the mine, and it would be silly to move in a tight group in a mine-infested area.
Comments
The full damage radius could be slight smaller tho, IMO. Although during early testing stages, the radius was too small, that it never dealt full damage. :)
Any gorge can throw an unconnected cyst into a pile of mines to shut them down (though skulks will want to roof-walk if they don't have the area scouted), and any marine can GL a hydra farm to death (though you'll want good arc skills or just good ARCs for the high ceiling ones).
But it doesn't solve the issue of spam, or rather, the <b>usefulness</b> of spam.
Edit:
HOWEVER, if we have significant TRFK (team res for kill), that leads to natural scaling (more players = more targets (sources of res) and more hunters (collectors of res)), then I think your idea (or Soul_Rider's below) could work very well, and also allow medpacks and ammopacks to scale as well.
As mines are free from the armoury for marines, why not keep that mechanic, but the commander has to schedule mines to the armoury, at a t-res cost per mine. Comm decideds he wants 4 mines placed to protect an IP, so he loads 4 mines to armoury at a cost of X t-res per mine. Marine picks the mines up for free from armoury.
Any gorge can throw an unconnected cyst into a pile of mines to shut them down (though skulks will want to roof-walk if they don't have the area scouted), and any marine can GL a hydra farm to death (though you'll want good arc skills or just good ARCs for the high ceiling ones).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So you think the pres spent to evolve to Gorge, place a cyst and then place a hydra (needless to say if I want to SPAM hydras) is anywhere in the ball park compared to mines? Not only is it not even remotely close, but if you want to keep those hydras you have to have the cyst link to the dynamic infestation. This may work in your hive area or a forward progressed area but not on an assault. Marines can pretty much drop mines wherever they want regardless of any other factor. Nice try though.
Also, mines <b></b><i>MUST DAMAGE MARINES AND THEIR STRUCTURES EQUIVALENT TO ALIENS.</i><u></u> The ability to shoot skulks with absolute safety by standing on a mine is ridiculous, as is the ability to drop mines in combat and hop around on them. Furthermore, suicides from mines should give the kill to the alien who set it off and no points to the marines (or a suicide penalty.) Otherwise you haven't sufficiently penalized players for sitting on mines for safety. Seriously, even if you don't remove mine spam, you absolutely must make mines friendly fire kill marines instantly when detonated and this change needs to go in as soon as possible. The game is basically unplayable once marines get mines at the moment.
Mines cost 10 res. which result in marines spend all their res...i see al ot of marines buying mines instead of shotgun, GL or Flamethrower...which gives fades a good feeling :P
I mean mines getting so fast killed :
1. a gorge shoot one bilebomb and EVERY mine is gone...or spit at it
2. a cyst next to a mine = every mine is gone
3. parasite the mine and hit it like 4-5 times its gone
4. a lerk shoot at it and its gone...
there so many ways to destroy them and marines wasted their res...
I have no idea why so many people crying about them, i mean build 190 was the first time they have been added...take patience.
I saw a alien commander build a line of cysts into marine base and blow up EVERY mine...also whip rush, drifter rush (how the heck did drifters did damage to a command station? it was after 5 seconds at 22% health.)
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That seems reasonable to me, but runs counter to their idea of players buying their own equipment. It also means that the number of mines don't scale with player numbers. In smaller than an "ideal" game, the mine to alien ratio would be higher and therefore more effective; in larger than an "ideal" game, the mine to alien ratio would be smaller and therefore less effective. I think consumables, like the mine, should scale with player numbers.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm not too sure about that, because mines effectiveness is not linear at all. For example if you're fade and take one mine hit you loose some amount of health, take two and you loose twice the amount, nice it's linear, but take three and you're dead. There is a big discontinuity here, it's the most nonlinear thing you can imagine. And there is many situations where you can blink in a mine field without seeing it.
The linear increase of res per player rely on the assumption that everything else scale also linearly, which is probably not always the case, typically in rts games ranged balls deal damage like the area but take damage like the circumference against melee (sc1 marines vs zerlings). A bit off topic here...
<!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->local function Detonate(self)
local hitEntities = GetEntitiesWithMixinForTeamWithinRange("Live", GetEnemyTeamNumber(self:GetTeamNumber()), self:GetOrigin(), kMineDetonateRange)
// RadiusDamage without damage falloff
RadiusDamage(hitEntities, self:GetOrigin(), kMineDetonateRange, kMineDamage, self, true, false)
local params = { surface = "metal" }
params[kEffectHostCoords] = Coords.GetLookIn( self:GetOrigin(), self:GetCoords().zAxis )
self:TriggerEffects("grenade_explode", params)
DestroyEntity(self)
end<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->
We should just add (after the first RadiusDamage):
<!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1--> hitEntities = GetEntitiesWithMixinForTeamWithinRange("Live", self:GetTeamNumber(), self:GetOrigin(), kMineDetonateRange)
RadiusDamage(hitEntities, self:GetOrigin(), kMineDetonateRange, kMineDamage, self, true, false)<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->
And it should work.
It will quickly teach marines to use mines intelligently and make the learning process as fast and least painful to their game experience as possible.
Mines are a valid weapon and should not have a limit in the way a turret does however they should be part of a larger strategy... If a comm wants to blow his res on giving you mines sure.
Long term end of game when rines have the res to spend on mines aliens should have the hive energy to counter with cycts.
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Mines cost 10 res. which result in marines spend all their res...i see al ot of marines buying mines instead of shotgun, GL or Flamethrower...which gives fades a good feeling :P
I mean mines getting so fast killed :
1. a gorge shoot one bilebomb and EVERY mine is gone...or spit at it
2. a cyst next to a mine = every mine is gone
3. parasite the mine and hit it like 4-5 times its gone
4. a lerk shoot at it and its gone...
there so many ways to destroy them and marines wasted their res...
I have no idea why so many people crying about them, i mean build 190 was the first time they have been added...take patience.
I saw a alien commander build a line of cysts into marine base and blow up EVERY mine...also whip rush, drifter rush (how the heck did drifters did damage to a command station? it was after 5 seconds at 22% health.)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You must play marine. :-P
Simply put the amount of mines scattered across the map make impossible for any of these suggested options to be sufficient solutions.
The linear increase of res per player rely on the assumption that everything else scale also linearly, which is probably not always the case, typically in rts games ranged balls deal damage like the area but take damage like the circumference against melee (sc1 marines vs zerlings). A bit off topic here...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's so much simpler than that though.
With more players on the enemy team, you have more potential <b>targets</b>.
With more players on your team, you have potentially more <b>mines</b>.
The game will usually be such that the ratio of the enemy team size to your own team size is 1:1, or close enough as makes little difference.
Therefore, the effectiveness (ratio of mines to targets) scales 1:1 with game size.
Naturally, the fade has more HP, and can tank more than one mine. That's not a consideration here, however. We're only dealing with the number of mines that can be placed, and the number of targets that can be hurt. The mines aren't designed to be anti-fade or anti-onos, except at most as a deterrent. Naturally, mines (low tier) become "less effective" as higher tier aliens come into play. This is by design.
Let's consider a different situation: The commander purchases mines out of the team resource pool (which doesn't scale with the number of players)
With more players on the enemy team, you have more potential <b>targets</b>.
With more players on your team, you <u>do not</u> have potentially more <b>mines</b>, because that number is limited by the income from resource towers which do not change with game size.
The game will usually be such that the ratio of the enemy team size to your own team size is 1:1, or close enough as makes little difference.
But now the effectiveness (ratio of mines to targets) decreases with increasing game size.
The key here is that mines are consumables - you use them once, and they are gone.
This is not the case for sentries. You build the sentries out of the team resource pool - therefore, they are finite in number even as the size of the game increases and decreases. However, they <b>each</b> defend <b>single locations</b>, and the <i>length</i> of their defense is <u>not</u> a <b>one-time use</b>, but <b>indefinite</b>.
Mines cost 10 res. which result in marines spend all their res...i see al ot of marines buying mines instead of shotgun, GL or Flamethrower...which gives fades a good feeling :P
I mean mines getting so fast killed :
1. a gorge shoot one bilebomb and EVERY mine is gone...or spit at it
2. a cyst next to a mine = every mine is gone
3. parasite the mine and hit it like 4-5 times its gone
4. a lerk shoot at it and its gone...
there so many ways to destroy them and marines wasted their res...
I have no idea why so many people crying about them, i mean build 190 was the first time they have been added...take patience.
I saw a alien commander build a line of cysts into marine base and blow up EVERY mine...also whip rush, drifter rush (how the heck did drifters did damage to a command station? it was after 5 seconds at 22% health.)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In theorie there is no problem with destroying mines but reality isn't that easy.
The mines which are placed alone at corners or vents exits are fine. But mines are "spam used" to defend the base or forward bases, where you normaly have more then one sentry in addition to the mines and there is most time a marine around. So shooting the mines as lerk/skulk/gorge is nearly impossible. Dropping a cyst as gorge is somtimes possible but really dangerous. Dropping cysts as comm is pretty much the only thing you can really do. Personally i dont like that tactic that much cause it feels strange, cant really explain why.
But mines are meant to protect Marine structures, right? What if they needed power, the same way a Hydra needs infestation?