Too OP for a flying unit?

[ArchDuke]

The player would easily amass like 10 of these units for 50 food, back them up with heroes and spellcasters, plus anti air, and then good luck stop this wave

 

[Lord Alyx]

You're mostly correct, except for one thing: they are terrible at attacking structures; 18-28 attack averages 23, and considering fortified armor takes 35% of normal attacks you can see where Im going with this

 

[ArchDuke]

The player would just get a few siege units to destroy the structures. I'm not trying to start a huge argument or debate here, just to point out a very obvious flaw

If this unit is used in a campaign by the player it needs to have a build limit or a high food cost or something similar of that nature to make sure its not used in large numbers to destroy the enemy, otherwise it would become a one strategy battle where everyone would do the same thing in order to win with no real way to counter it

 

[Lord Alyx]

Ye, I agree. When I was originally suggesting the concept I assumed that this unit was for the computer to guard their heroes or something of a similar nature, Lord Aiden said bodyguard, so I made those suggestions based on his assumptions, either way I wont be the one playing with or using this unit

 

[ArchDuke]

I see. I just tried something similar in the editor and I saw how easily I could abuse it to my advantage,

balancing is a really complicated thing

 

[Lord Alyx]

Hell yea. Took me a while to get good at it

 

[ArchDuke]

Well worth the time

you seem to know your stuff rather well

 

[Lord Alyx]

Thank you. I see you got your editor skills down as well

 

[ArchDuke]

Ye, but I still have trouble balancing things out, don't know which abilities to use, etc. Get lost something....

 

[Lord Alyx]

Just ask me, I can help you

Please make it specific otherwise I wont be able to assist much

 

[ArchDuke]

Ok since you're so at creating these elite units, I'd like to request your help in creating the stats and abilities of 2 particular units

First I would like to get some suggestions regarding 2 units

How would you create an elite anti-air unit?

What about an elite anti-structure unit?

 

[Lord Alyx]

There are several ways to go about an elite anti air unit.

From your reply I assume you mean a ground based elite anti-air unit.

One method would be to just employ the siege engine; its barrage ability will take care of all your anti air needs.

If for some reason you can’t have a siege engine, (for instance the race you want to have this unit is not technologically advanced, or its just wont fit into the gameplay or whatever) then you there are several other ways to go, I know because I’ve experimented with these things.

First off what exactly do you want? A heavy ~800 or ~1000 hp unit with a strong anti air attack and plenty of armor that has a big food cost, but can go toe to toe with even the mightiest of air unit? Or a medium hp unit that can stand up to most air unit? Although a large HP unit would stand up to more punishment, the medium unit can also take lots of punishment if its health regeneration rate is large.

What kind of abilities do you want it to have? Barrage will not work for every unit. I would suggest slow poison or envenomed weapons or something similar, this works rather well against all but mechanical air units, you could also use the corruption orb’s ability to lower the armor of the flying units to make them easier to destroy. Another ability I’ve seen used is the aerial shackle ability. You could tweak the parasite ability to not spawn a unit and only attack air units and seriously damage non-mechanical air units. I will make more suggestions regarding this later. Also one thing that works well against both mechanical and non-mechanical air unit is slow, so you could make a slow that can only be cast on air unit and it’ll do wonders.

As for anti-structure units; make any unit with a siege attack, if you don’t want it to only have a siege attack give it a normal attack for attack1 (which is used against everything but buildings) and a siege attack for attack2 (which is used only on buildings). Alternatively you could use the demolish ability. You could create an ability that can only target buildings and does damage over time to them (burning them or causing corrosive damage) you could equip your unit with the liquid fire ability and this will do wonders. From my experimentation I recall a very effective solution was creating a riflesman which had 2 attacks; first was his normal piercing attack, the second was a siege type attack where a projectile was fired. The effectiveness of the unit did not come because it was OP, it wasn’t OP, but because you could have like 5 or 6 of these mow down an entire base given that they focused fire and were not eliminated.

 

[ArchDuke]

Ok I guess I see whats good with the anti-structure unit, but about the anti-air, would you personally recommend one strong unit with lots of HP or lots of weaker unit?

 

[Lord Alyx]

It entirely depends on what you’re facing, because while many weaker units are generally better off to defend against a storm of flying units because each has its own attack and has to be attack separately, weaker units can easily get eliminated by several attacks from a strong flying unit (like a frost wyrm or chimera) especially if you’re being swarmed by them. I would recommend a heavier unit for this reason alone, but I’m talking about something with ~700 hp not some 1000 hp juggernaut anti-air tank.

 

[ArchDuke]

What do you think of a 700hp unit with slow poison, a strong attack and costing 4 food?

 

[Lord Alyx]

My suggestion would be to either give it spell immunity and increase its food cost to 5, since most strong air units have a magic attack this will be a hard counter, or alternatively leave it at 4 food, but give it an altered elune's grace ability that reduces magic attacks by like 50%. You should not have a problem being swarmed by frost wyrms or chimeras any longer.

 

[ArchDuke]

What about being swarmed by gargoyles or batriders

 

[Lord Alyx]

lol, the slow poison should take care of that, also you can make elune's grace reduce piercing attacks by a percentage if you're still worried about getting swarmed by light air units.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Hey Phoenix, what if you have to fight against airships, what are your recommendations?

 

[Lord Alyx]

Then you have to ask @Shar Dundred for help and not me



























































Just joking man, I've had an issue like this before actually, what you do is tweak around the dryad's slow poison ability to target mechanical air units, make sure the projectile is a fireball and the buff looks like the airship is on fire and name it whatever name seems appropriate, tweak it so it deals good damage, slows down the attack rate and well as the speed of the airship, this should solve any airship raid problems.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Wow, that was good, at first I thought you were serious then I scrolled down to the real solution. This solution seems really good also. I've heard of all sorts of things from giving towers barrage, making special anti-air auras, having mages that cast starfall that only targets flying units, this is something completely different. It's much easier to implement and seems highly effective.

 

[Lord Alyx]

Thanks Lord Aiden

Had to be real creative with that one, generally to make any mission last a good while you have to prevent the player from using any kind of rush strategy to eliminate the enemy, which means making the defense stronger than the offense at least early in game (upgrades change this balance as the game progresses).

Airships can be a pain because of their mechanical classification which prevent most spells from targeting them, but again with some thought, knowledge of the editor as well as understanding of the gameplay and strategies an easy to implement, workable solution is developed.

 

[Lord Aiden]

I never thought about upgrades like that before. . . some interesting stuff. Since we were on the topic of airships what airships did you use in your campaign attempt? Also what did the counter unit with the modified slow poison look like ?

 

[Lord Alyx]

This was one of the airship models used : ArcaneGunship
As far as the hp and all the data I don't remember the stats of the fully balanced model, but the ones I dealt with in the testing phase had 2000hp, light armor with like 2 or 3 armor, the ground attack was identical to that of the cannon tower but did slightly more damage if I remember correctly ( slow cooldown with 120+ siege damage and a AOE damage radius) and had an attack range of 450 (I remember this because I personally had to tweak it so those airships cant outrange the defenders) while the anti air attack was a faster harpoon like projectile while did ~30 but had a much shorter cooldown again with the range of 450. This variation cost 9 food not to mention lots of gold and lumber, but just 3 of these along with some support could effectively bomb your base into oblivion. One obvious weakness they had was their movement speed.

As far as the counter well you're gonna laugh but it was an tweaked infernal machine with the modified slow poison ability (I think we called the ability "Flare shot"). We lowered its hp to ~600, changed its armor to medium and attack type to piercing and all those things you do to make good anti air units, but the bulk of its stats were the same.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Seriously OP airship, no wonder you had to develop such a counter, awesome stuff, just wanted to clarify one thing: was the weapon range of 450 because of the whole ground vs air water/cliff problem?

 

[Lord Alyx]

???

 

[Lord Aiden]

Well the best way to illustrate this is imagine a base at the edge of a body of water (or a cliff, or a forest), now lets say you're the player the base belongs to and you have a tower or a anti air unit at the very edge, if the air unit out-ranges the tower or the unit it can freely attack/harass it without any kind of retaliation, to avoid this the anti air unit or tower or whatever has to always have a greater range than the air units.

 

[Lord Alyx]

Yes, that's a lot of it, like I said the an attacker can't out range the defender, if he does the defender gets bombed to oblivion with no way of retaliating, at least not from the ground

 

[ArchDuke]

Damn...you should honestly work for Arkain Industries and be shar's adviser, I mean you really know your stuff man, you should finish your campaign

 

[Lord Alyx]

Thanks, but Im only good at the unit creation/balancing as well as ability making

 

[ArchDuke]

well practice makes perfect, also you can get others to help you in area where you lack skill

 

[Lord Alyx]

Maybe in the summer months, when I get more free time.........

 

[disruptive_]

On the ability side of things,

A simple way to direct counter a unit type (such as only ground or air units) without triggers would be using Cloud (Human Ability), and switching the targets accordingly. This ability can silence, prevent attacks and/or reduce movement. This ability is channeled tho, but you could make a simple dummy caster effect.
A modified Drunken Haze (Neutral Hero Ability) can still be used as a direct counter ability, as it allows you to disable attacks (ranged or melee), silence, slow attack and/or slow movement. It also has a possible area of effect. Soul Burn also comes to mind (this one can reduce attack damage, deal damage over time and/or reduce movement), and obviously Cripple, Doom and Purge (but those are boring).

You can make a modified command or devotion aura that passively decreases attack/defense (by pressing the SHIFT key while modifying a given editor value) that targets only air units for instance. A modified Roar ability can also do this effect in the active side of things.

You can modify Phoenix Fire (Human Ability, this one permanently and passively shots missiles at nearby targets every "Cooldown" seconds), so it targets only air units, ie. an advanced gyrocopter that continiously shots its flak cannons (these deal spell damage) to air units.
Fan of Knives also achieves this easy customizable spread missile effect, and can also only target air units if you modify it.

And, as a personal idea that might not even be related too much to your post, you could make an ability that summons, lets say an immobile and perishable tower (but could be anything, for example a great magic ball that shots magic missiles) at the target point that attacks air units, but which attack type is different from the attack type of the caster. Such ability can be achieved by modifying the Healing Ward (Orc Ability, basically allows you to summon a unit in a target point, instead of the classic instant effect) and creating the desired summoned unit.

 

[ArchDuke]

I agree with lots of things you mentioned, but a great deal of abilities (drunk haze, soul burn, silence, etc.) cannot target mechanical units, and this creates a major problem when dealing with airships or other mechanized units.

 

[Lord Alyx]

Phoenix fire will look pretty weird unless the projectile is coming from a tower or something else that doesn't rotate much. But one idea I've thought up of just now would be to put this ability on a tower and have it target airships, from memory I'm certain that it has some sort of damage dealing buff, so although it wont slow down an air unit it can damage it over time. I think phoenix fire wont be able to hit the unit unless the buff is gone though, I'm not sure about it though.


As far as for cloud. You would be surprised at what you can do with this, I've had a dummy unit cast a large size cloud on an area, I've changed the duration to 0 to make it last the whole game, the cloud was modified to slow down the movement speed of air unit. Then I distributed doodads of clouds and fog around the map. The result was basically that every air unit in the region flew much slower, but I think it caused glitches in the game as well.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Interesting idea for cloud, I think the ability is somewhat buggy. Lord Siler tried to make a magic jammer ward with it. (A ward that prevents all users within a good range of it from using magic) I'm not sure how successful the thing was.

 

[ArchDuke]

Have you guys ever thought about the Chimera's range of over 800 against buildings with its corrosive breath upgrade when having the discussion about aerial units?

 

[disruptive_]

I agree with lots of things you mentioned, but a great deal of abilities (drunk haze, soul burn, silence, etc.) cannot target mechanical units, and this creates a major problem when dealing with airships or other mechanized units.

You can change the targets allowed field to suit your needs. Drunken Haze, Soul Burn and Silence have indeed the "Organic" target type, here you just have to tick off that subfield.

Phoenix fire will look pretty weird unless the projectile is coming from a tower or something else that doesn't rotate much. But one idea I've thought up of just now would be to put this ability on a tower and have it target airships, from memory I'm certain that it has some sort of damage dealing buff, so although it wont slow down an air unit it can damage it over time. I think phoenix fire wont be able to hit the unit unless the buff is gone though, I'm not sure about it though.

This is true. But if you give a phoenix fire ability that strikes ground units to an air unit, it will look just as if the air unit is smoothly bombarding the ground.
About the buff thing, this is also correct, but if you don't mind the damage over time effect, just the set the duration to 0.01. You can also add multiple phoenix fire abilities, each with different buffs applied.

 

[Lord Aiden]

@disruptive_ You're right about the pheonix fire striking ground units, in fact its been shown to work before : [Miscellanous / Other] - Heavy bomber prototype

@ArchDuke Yea, that's the one exception to the 450 range rule, I don't play often with the night elves though, I guess you could blitzkrieg bases with the chimaera. . .

 

[ArchDuke]

A BlitzKrieg with Night elves, wtf. . . that just sounds weird

 

[Wark]

Speaking of flying units and custom races, I've had an idea of a race whose town hall is literally a floating wizard's castle.
I want to try it out with no attacks, but with abilities like "monsoon" or a triggered mass-invisibility spell for structures.
Would a floating weather-controlling structure be too OP?

 

[cleavinghammer]

Air units are generally easy to single out and destroy, all the more so if they're big and slow. I suppose it'd depend on how much it costs and how well it can defend itself.

 

[Lord Aiden]

@Wark Whether a floating weather control structure is OP entirely depends on its stats

@cleavinghammer It depends how big and slow something is, plus the armor. If an air unit has its armor changed from light to medium thats like increasing its hp by a factor of 2, and changing its armor type from light to fortified again is similar to increasing its hp, this time by a factor of 3.

 

[Lord Alyx]

[USER=189361]@cleavinghammer It depends how big and slow something is, plus the armor. If an air unit has its armor changed from light to medium thats like increasing its hp by a factor of 2, and changing its armor type from light to fortified again is similar to increasing its hp, this time by a factor of 3.[/USER]

Yes armor changing can have a huge impact on how a unit's hp is impacted by attacks, because of this I would always leave the armor to light and tweak the hp amount rather than the armor type, this way gameplay is more predictable and you don't have anything else to worry about

 

[Lord Aiden]

Interesting, however doesn't this just make the air unit harder to destroy rather than well balanaced?

 

[Lord Alyx]

No because you know the damage multiplication factor that each attack type does to light armor, and you can also adjust the armor amount accordingly to make it well balanced, I can show you what I mean

 

[Lord Aiden]

What exactly do you mean?

 

[Lord Alyx]

If you use light armor you know exactly what does what to your flying unit, you know that piercing and magic do 2x and 1.25x respectfully, but you also know that everything else does 1x, while if you change the armor to fortified or medium other damage types will not other factors of damage. I believe one of the very few exception where I've changed a flying unit's armor type to fortified was with those flying machines I was talking about earlier, and I explained exactly why I did that

 

[Lord Aiden]

I get your argument, but I still think armor needs to be changed in certain cases, just look at destructors from Legend of Arkain

 

[Lord Alyx]

The only unit flying unit where I've changed the armor to fortified in my maps was the flying machine, and that was precisely to make them the perfect counter for air raids, if you read my earlier posts you'd know that the unit could've actually changed the gameplay if it was allowed to attack ground units