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[gameplay] Balance stonethrower
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Authored by borg- on Apr 1 2021, 1:59 AM.

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Summary

Some players have given negative feedback on Stonethrower.

They lost the power to take down units, and the reduction in pierce armor made archers very vulnerable. In tests I did, 50 basic rank archers without an upgrade can take down a stonethrower with just 9 shots.

I tested it on some mp games and it really is true. Elephants are much more viable than stonethrower, can down soldiers, buildings and basically a siege counter.

Basically without being able to down units, Stonethrowe are super units that can be used with all types of units.

Yes, archers must be a little nerfed, but I don't believe in a nerf in damage, just in accuracy, so the power will be basically the same against Stonethrower.

Increasing health seems to be the best alternative as it also increases your resistance against elephants and other melee units.

The increased range means that catapults can fire more safely mainly vs archers. Archer has 60 + 10 (tech), so it's very close to the current number.

Patch proposal:

Stonethrower range from 80 to 100. Same to Quinquereme for consistency.
Stonethrower increased health by 50%.

Test Plan

test if effectiveness is increased.
Test if still easy to shoot with archers.

Diff Detail

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Event Timeline

borg- created this revision.Apr 1 2021, 1:59 AM
borg- requested review of this revision.Apr 1 2021, 1:59 AM
borg- retitled this revision from [gameplay] Change stonethrower/boltshooter to [gameplay] Change stonethrower/boltshooter pierce resistance.Apr 1 2021, 2:02 AM

This'll make it also more resistant to e.g. pikemen?

An increase of 5 resistance levels means a 41% damage reduction or, equivalently, a 69% health increase.
By the way, economic structures have a pierce resistance of only 20.

In tests I did, 50 basic rank archers without an upgrade can take down a stonethrower with just 9 shots.

50 vs 1? Keep in mind 50 archers are a lot more expensive than 1 piece of artillery and that the latter only costs 2 or 3 population.

Nescio retitled this revision from [gameplay] Change stonethrower/boltshooter pierce resistance to [gameplay] +5 pierce resistance for artillery.Apr 1 2021, 11:57 AM

50 vs 1? Keep in mind 50 archers are a lot more expensive than 1 piece of artillery and that the latter only costs 2 or 3 population.

Because of the way units attack the closest solider, those 50 archers would actually only fight a couple of the frontline soldiers, so while this may be 50 v. 1 it would normally be something like five 10 v. 1s happening simultaneously with those 1s being the five closest enemy soldiers that your army focuses on. When you compare the 5 units that would actually be killed vs the one cata that will be killed, the tradeoff is a lot closer in both res cost and men used to kill a unit.

Anyways, it is commonly known that cata (and to a lesser extent bolts) are killed very quickly this alpha, which makes players not want to invest in them. And, because cata/bolts require stone/metal they cannot be spammed on most maps the way citizen soldiers can be. This makes cata/bolts more scarce and less replaceable.

Cata/bolts are also unlike soldiers because killing 2-3 cata can literally stop an entire army from advancing because a group of soldiers can almost never take down a fort/cc without siege. These armies will be stopped even though the attacking army might be convincingly defeating a defending army.

wraitii added a comment.EditedApr 1 2021, 12:34 PM

It seems to me they mostly suffer from the comparison against rams (edit or elephants for that matter), which are extremely annoying to destroy, having 150HP more against Hack damage & infinitely more against pierce damage.

How about double or triple their HP -> harder to defeat with pure swords, but not so hard to defeat with pure archer as rams ?

StoneThrowers also have a range of 90 which is not that much compared to archers (60), when in real life they would infinitely outrange those. I think increasing the range would also make them harder to kill, thus more beneficial. Maybe something like 120?

It seems to me they mostly suffer from the comparison against rams (edit or elephants for that matter), which are extremely annoying to destroy, having 150HP more against Hack damage & infinitely more against pierce damage.

And rams and war elephant are a bit cheaper too, don't need to pack to move, and have more than 3× the damage per second of stone-throwers.

borg- added a comment.Apr 1 2021, 12:51 PM

Increase health and range can be quite interesting. If we keep the current range then I think we should increase the damage.

Increasing the range sounds good, they currently have a fairly small window in which they can actually attack.

borg- updated this revision to Diff 16883.Apr 2 2021, 12:02 AM
borg- retitled this revision from [gameplay] +5 pierce resistance for artillery to [gameplay] Balance stonethrower.
borg- edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)
borg- edited the test plan for this revision. (Show Details)

+5 pierce armor > +50% health
Range increased from 80 to 100.

Definitely agree that the stonethrowers require a buff. They're currently much too vulnerable for how expensive they are and for their damage output. Increasing range should make it riskier for the opponent to try and snipe the stonethrowers. I also like that hp is increased instead of armor as it means that ranged units will still be capable of destroying them, but not as efficiently as melee units, hopefully making it less frustrating for newer players.

wraitii accepted this revision.Apr 28 2021, 9:37 AM

I think this is a no-brainer, and we might even want to buff them further.

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Apr 28 2021, 9:37 AM
This revision was automatically updated to reflect the committed changes.
Owners added a subscriber: Restricted Owners Package.Apr 29 2021, 9:33 AM