Improvements To Armour And Melee Units

    This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to our Cookie Policy.

    • Teburu wrote:

      No. Changes to numbers are just that, changes to numbers. It does not solve any of the underlying issues.
      That underlying issue being that melee vs melee is always undesirable, no matter what the costs of the units themselves, because of the damage your units will receive even if they win?
      (This slows the momentum of any invasion, because your stack will be progressively less and less effective after each battle and take days to recover in between; whereas, arty and air units can deal damage at much higher ratios to what they receive and therefore continue the offensive unhindered.)
      Just checking we're on the same page. Please stop me if there's more to it than that, that you can add.

      Because, I don't think there's a way around that issue without completely redesigning the game mechanics, which I think is undesirable in itself.

      I think you can go some way towards solving it by making all air units very expensive compared to all melee units, and by pushing their availability back by a few days at the start. But there also does have to be a change in the balance between melee and artillery - that is, having a couple of melee unit types that are fast enough to pose a threat to artillery, so that they can't just fire-and-back-off endlessly without protection.

      The other possible change that springs to mind would be to allow melee units to extricate themselves from combat without suffering a massive arbitrary HP penalty - because this is the other major difference between melee battles and artillery/air battles, that favours the latter.

    • WalterChang wrote:

      Teburu wrote:

      Obligatory reminder that making them cheaper does not fix the underlying issue.

      „What underlying issue?“ you might ask? Just read page one of this thread, it has pretty much just been repeating itself since then
      What if... the mobilization costs of armoured units and air units were effectively reversed? What if the unlocking day for air units was pushed back a bit as well?
      Say, an AFV cost 700 Comps and an MBT 850 Comps, while an AH cost 1800 and a SF 2000?
      Also: research cost of ~1400 Rares for AFV, ~1500 for MBT, unlocking Day 2; AHs 1750 Rares at Day 4 and SFs 1900 at Day 5?
      (All infantry units + TDs and MAA costs reduced by about 30% as well)

      Would that give you cause to factor armoured/melee units into your build? No changes to combat values or mechanics, just cost and research timing.

      (I'm just throwing numbers around without much detailed thought, here. Just take those as a starting point.)
      or just build Airplanes yourself to keep out the wolves.
      "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him "

      aka ...The killer formerly known as BuckeyeChamp

    • WalterChang wrote:

      Teburu wrote:

      No. Changes to numbers are just that, changes to numbers. It does not solve any of the underlying issues.
      That underlying issue being that melee vs melee is always undesirable, no matter what the costs of the units themselves, because of the damage your units will receive even if they win?(This slows the momentum of any invasion, because your stack will be progressively less and less effective after each battle and take days to recover in between; whereas, arty and air units can deal damage at much higher ratios to what they receive and therefore continue the offensive unhindered.)
      Just checking we're on the same page. Please stop me if there's more to it than that, that you can add.

      Because, I don't think there's a way around that issue without completely redesigning the game mechanics, which I think is undesirable in itself.

      I think you can go some way towards solving it by making all air units very expensive compared to all melee units, and by pushing their availability back by a few days at the start. But there also does have to be a change in the balance between melee and artillery - that is, having a couple of melee unit types that are fast enough to pose a threat to artillery, so that they can't just fire-and-back-off endlessly without protection.

      The other possible change that springs to mind would be to allow melee units to extricate themselves from combat without suffering a massive arbitrary HP penalty - because this is the other major difference between melee battles and artillery/air battles, that favours the latter.
      Its not even that they take dmg, it already begins at the very fact that units fighting in melee primarily will face other units that also fight in melee and thus making the group of units they are designed to fight also the one group that deals the most dmg to them. Them trading dmg isn't even the issue, the issue is most ground units dealing most of their damage to other ground units. Could be somewhat easily solved by giving ALL units that fight offensively in melee the "lifesteal" that NG currently enjoys Decreasing their cost and increasing price for actual "good" units does not change anything about that; doesn't matter if it is 5 or 10 tanks, Artillery still will kill them all. Ironically cheaper armor units also promote Artillery based playstyle even more, because now having armor stacks as "buffer" becomes even more affordable and since defender is more often than not favored just by virtue of entrenchment being a thing.
      The core of the issue is that Armor is its own worst enemy.
      You want Armor to perform better? Make Melee vs Melee more decisive, or at the very least you need to find a way to have terrain buffs/debuffs and entrenchment not be almost exclusive to fighting in melee in regard to their impact.

      "Because, I don't think there's a way around that issue without completely redesigning the game mechanics," when the very game mechanics themselves are designed in a way that 1.) inherently favors the defending side, 2.) inherently disfavors anyone fighting in melee and 3) inherently reward activity
      I am The Baseline for opinions

    • I do not think that "the devs will make the change that gets them the most gold" statement is a smear on the devs at all. <Note - ok the way I said it there IS a smear. Point taken>

      Maybe we could come up with a better way of stating it (including me)?

      Maybe the statement should be "the change that makes the company more gold would be: <change description here>". It IS a fair statement to lodge a complaint that they are trading too much fun/playability for gold when it is warranted. But gold is an integral part of the game, and players who spend a lot of gold DO have to be dealt with <join them or defeat them>. <Well ... or die!>.

      The more money they make, the more dev time they can put into this. I am 100% ok with this. If they made a perfect game, then went bankrupt a month later - that would not be a good result.

      Taking into consideration the financial impacts of various suggestions should definitely be a part of our discussion.

      There is a comment that making tanks cheaper would not solve the underlying problem. I kind of agree with this. But the problem, imho, would be less severe if tanks were less expensive, both to research and to build. Overhauling the system in some undefined way seems not too good.

    • I'll have to think about Teburu's last post. I am not sure he is quite right.

      Theoretically, if armor units and infantry units were say 10 supplies and 10 components each, then CON would (could?) more resemble real life front lines where I have my melee stacks, the opponent has his melee stacks, and we try to gain a break through.

      The break through would be usually caused by artillery and air power, which would weaken the opponent enough so that a breakthrough could happen, and then territory could be taken.

      The reason why this might work is: you come at me with your artillery / SAM stacks. I come at you with my hordes of melee units. Your artillery would not be able to kill units fast enough, and either artillery units would die, or a LOT of territory would be lost. The point of this exercise (accurate or not? not sure) is that no longer do artillery/SAM stacks rule over everything else (leaving out helicopters for now).

    • then it just same meta all over again.
      arti side will first relia-ing on melee then slowly build up range fire power until the tipping point where they can eat a thousand unit per minute.

      if you continue pushing same idea to the extreme, you better just remove all range unit.

      in my opinion in “balancing” one side shouldn’t need such Extreme adjustment, both side should be approaching compromising point.
      This post was made by Leader of the Church of ROAD

    • One way to think about this topic is that putting any unit-that-can't-be-easily healed into melee combat with hostile units, if there is a viable alternative, means you're likely to flush resources and mobilization time down the toilet (You should use the alternative instead of using melee).

      Flushing resources and mobilization time down the toilet weakens you, compared to players who haven't done that.

      That makes melee a poor choice when viable, non-melee alternatives exist

      Altering how Hospitals work (along with slowing-down indirect-fire units' movement (Maybe give them a can't-be-interrupted-once-started 30 minute pre-firing set-up time?)) is another lever(s) the developers can pull to affect combat alternatives.

      Hospital changes (remove them from the game or *drastically* reducing their healing rates) can turn air-to-ground combat into a form of melee combat (and slowing indirect-fire units movement exposes them to melee combat with their targets).

      Alternatively, hospital change that make hospitals much easier to build and use on melee units near the front lines, could make the melee units more like planes (but I dislike this alternative)

      These make melee the standard choice instead of the almost-always-worse choice.

      This change(s), if implemented, might also motivate adjusting resource production settings or unit costs, and/or mobilization times.

      With all that said, the most important effect would be making @DoD's MLRS units less useful.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by KFGauss ().

    • playbabe wrote:

      for that idea i quite dislike it, spin it around and you’ll get “give melee unit healing boost”
      could better use teb idea with life steal ability, or my idea to just give melee multipier to healing.
      OK - My gut prefers nerfing hospitals over making melee units easier to heal.

      Thinking of combat as something that consumes resources (because nerfed or disabled hospitals don't quickly heal infinite numbers of damaged (air) units over and over again) is more appealing to me.

    • Teburu wrote:

      the very game mechanics themselves are designed in a way that 1.) inherently favors the defending side, 2.) inherently disfavors anyone fighting in melee and 3) inherently reward activity
      3) is true, always has been and always should be. No argument there.

      However, I think there are ways to make 1) and 2) untrue by changing relatively small aspects of the game balance, rather than by redesigning the whole combat system from the ground up.

      The reason I think this is because Call of War is a game with the same underlying mechanics as Conflict of Nations, and melee units are relevant in CoW.

      How do they do this? In CoW there's these things called Light Tanks, which are really fast and will comfortably run down artillery before they can get away (with an active player in charge). In CoN, the closest equivalent unit would probably be the AFV. Light Tanks in CoW can capture territory, so in CoN you'd have to have an infantry unit that's just as fast, to accompany it (Mech Inf fits the bill).

      What should happen when the attacking artillery is charged by LTs is that the artillery player brings anti-tank units forward, to screen the artillery, while the artillery bombards the tanks. Then the defending player brings infantry in to kill the AT guns, and brings his own artillery forward to support the melee battle. The attacking player then brings in anti-infantry units (tanks) to counter, and the defender brings in Anti-tank units to counter-counter the tanks. And so on it goes

      The whole system relies on the units being able to merge successfully into an existing battle in order to share HP and combat values - this is something that probably needs fixing anyway, because it's really annoying when reinforcements get stuck on the outside of a battle due to RNG. It might also benefit from the added ability to withdraw certain units from the fray as and when you want?

      But when it works, you get a series of overlapping attacks and counter attacks using a variety of units. You can also use other fast-moving units to flank around the sides and capture territory to cut off/attack the opponent's reinforcements - side battles. Air units will support the battle on both sides, especially in swatting away the flanking rushes, but anti-air can be used, in turn, to defend against that. Then you've got the strategic units like rockets (missiles) and strategic bombers (HBs) to hit the other guy's airfields and reduce his air support, or to hit his cities and damage his ability to replace the units he's inevitably going to lose when fighting battles.

      The idea is not to make players choose between building artillery or melee or air. The idea is get players using all of it together in combined arms. That's when the game gets most interesting. Making the melee units a lot cheaper than the air and artillery units is important because those are the ones that are going to suffer the most attrition, and will need replacing most often.

      It seems too simple to be true that merely adjusting the balance between speed and bombardment range in a couple of units would make or break the entire melee branch - so maybe there's more to it. But I do believe it's a fundamental requirement that you MUST be able kill artillery with melee units by charging at them. Without that, there can be no balance.

    • WalterChang wrote:

      . . . Air units will support the battle on both sides, . . .
      With everything else generally equal . . .

      In CoN, when a player has air superiority and has air units able to exploit that superiority, their opponent is doomed.

      Indirect-fire (artillery) superiority is more of a mixed bag, but the bottom line is that the melee/ground units facing a competent indirect-fire user are doomed because the indirect fire units can shoot and scoot.

      In both situations, the attacking units destroy their opponent's investments (resources and time) for free - Hospitals heal the air units, and movement speeds keep the the indirect-fire units away from harm.

      In CoW it sounds like the light tanks are the reason indirect-fire-units don't have a movement advantage.

      Is there some aspect of CoW that eliminates air-units' ability to quickly hit-and-heal for free (aka the air units don't die)?

    • KFGauss wrote:

      WalterChang wrote:

      . . . Air units will support the battle on both sides, . . .
      With everything else generally equal . . .
      In CoN, when a player has air superiority and has air units able to exploit that superiority, their opponent is doomed.

      Indirect-fire (artillery) superiority is more of a mixed bag, but the bottom line is that the melee/ground units facing a competent indirect-fire user are doomed because the indirect fire units can shoot and scoot.

      In both situations, the attacking units destroy their opponent's investments (resources and time) for free - Hospitals heal the air units, and movement speeds keep the the indirect-fire units away from harm.

      In CoW it sounds like the light tanks are the reason indirect-fire-units don't have a movement advantage.

      Is there some aspect of CoW that eliminates air-units' ability to quickly hit-and-heal for free (aka the air units don't die)?
      In CoW, planes maybe don't revert to having 15HP when they're grounded? That's the only thing I can think of. I guess that makes quite a difference to healing, but it makes them a total pain in the arse to kill them on the ground with a melee unit!

      I don't think there's anything wrong with having to deny air superiority from your opponent at all costs, though. You can do it with SAMs, MAA and Frigates, even if you are well behind with your ASFs. CoN's anti-air system is a lot more complex (and interesting) than CoW's, where they only have 'point' defence (no SAMs, because it's set in WW2), but both serve their purpose. Because you can deny air superiority without simply having more/better air units, there is a decent balance.

      But if you're using ground/sea units to contest the airspace, then you don't have anything there to attack with - so you have to use ground units for that as well. And that's where the problem is: you can't deny indirect-fire superiority except by having more/better indirect-fire units. You can use air units to break indirect-fire superiority, but that can be nullified with anti-air. So the meta triangle only exists between artillery - air - anti-air, with missiles nudging their way into it on the periphery (perhaps if ground-based BM and CM launchers were made cheaper/easier to build, it would make things more interesting?).

      There is a separate (and well-balanced) meta game between the various melee units, but none of those melee units can actually break into wider meta, because none of them can attack artillery (and obviously they can't attack air, either). The only exception might be SpF, but that doesn't help the others much.

    • I don't think it has hospitals, no. Planes don't revert to 15 HP when they're grounded, so healing is slower. Honestly, I can't remember clearly how the unit healing works - I've got a feeling it's different.

      That doesn't make air superiority any less important. It perhaps makes it less easy to achieve and exploit?

      EDIT:
      If I remember correctly, units heal at Day-change only - by a certain percent that I can't remember. And I think they have to be in a city at Day-change to get the heal-effect. Something like that. I've had a quick look through the CoW Wiki, but I can't find the relevant bit. It's a pretty messy system, where you're rushing all your units to get to a city by midnight! CoN's system is a lot better in this regard.

      EDIT 2:
      The damage system plays into this as well. CoW's is quite different (and I would argue better). For starters, the damage distribution of a stack is clearly shown in the info panel - so you know how much each unit-type will receive each round (give-or-take the 20% RNG). Most importantly, unit-types within a stack will not begin to die off until all of that unit-type gets below 50% HP, however many there are.

      Eg. a unit has 20HP, and there are 5 of them in a stack: 100 HP total. There will still be five of them in the stack until that unit-type is reduced to 50HP or less. At that point they have 10HP each. Now, for every 10HP that unit-type loses, one unit will be lost.

      This allows units to stay alive longer, and it makes it more likely that you can win a battle without losing any individual units. (But you still have to heal them up again before they are useful. And I can't remember how that works / how long it takes.)

      The post was edited 2 times, last by WalterChang ().

    • _Pyth0n_ wrote:

      japan samurai wrote:

      —Armoured units such as TDs should do less damage to Tanks
      Yea because TDs are primarily used against helis right? Or is it planes? I forget :rolleyes:

      japan samurai wrote:

      AFVs should do more defence damage to helicopters and planes
      Um, why? I mean, support units exist for a reason, if I remember correctly. Or are they just ornamental?

      japan samurai wrote:

      TDs need a nerf because their cheap price and relatively high damage against infrantry means that trying to destroy waves and waves of those Tanks can suck for any GH strat player a living hell
      Wait wait, you called T1 damage of 3/4/4.5 high? Considering that you should be fighting armour with 1. planes or helis, or 2. TDs, it seems silly that you'd throw infantry at any armoured target regardless. And if you're that desperate to use infantry to defeat armour (for some odd reason), mech infantry exists as well :|
      Seems like all you want to do is buff your favourite toys, nerf the rest, without caring about the actual balance of the game.

      And Teburu's above point (as he and others clearly stated above multiple times) is valid as well.
      well what else you want me to do? They are “lighy armoured high mobility units” with an attack of 11-12 damage against Armoured units , super cheap units, does +25% atk in cities, and have a hp of 25-28?? What is that? WHY THE HELL GET THE REST OF THE ARMOURED VEHICLES FOR THEN.
      Why? Because its weak to SF? 2 of those TDs are so much better than 1 MBT , so much more spammable that one can have basically >11 of those TDs by day 10. So what if you have dozens of SF, one can even get 3-4 MAA with those TDs. (How i know? My ally did that)
      I was suggesting making it less OP as clearly, that will be the only armoured unit, ONLY one you will ever possibly worth researching in game.
      I know that clearly MAA is thrash and not much, but we are talking about melee vs melee, so I’m saying that clearly the most superior unit is the TD, because the amount of air defence the AFV and CRV has is pretty much useless, along with how the CRV has little HP.


      And support units to fight air units? I mean clearly in early game you will have SAMs, dozens of ASF to constantly keep air cover on litterally , LITTERALLY every unit you have attack enemy fronts

      The post was edited 1 time, last by japan samurai ().

    • WalterChang wrote:

      KFGauss wrote:

      WalterChang wrote:

      . . . Air units will support the battle on both sides, . . .
      With everything else generally equal . . .In CoN, when a player has air superiority and has air units able to exploit that superiority, their opponent is doomed.

      Indirect-fire (artillery) superiority is more of a mixed bag, but the bottom line is that the melee/ground units facing a competent indirect-fire user are doomed because the indirect fire units can shoot and scoot.

      In both situations, the attacking units destroy their opponent's investments (resources and time) for free - Hospitals heal the air units, and movement speeds keep the the indirect-fire units away from harm.

      In CoW it sounds like the light tanks are the reason indirect-fire-units don't have a movement advantage.

      Is there some aspect of CoW that eliminates air-units' ability to quickly hit-and-heal for free (aka the air units don't die)?
      In CoW, planes maybe don't revert to having 15HP when they're grounded? That's the only thing I can think of. I guess that makes quite a difference to healing, but it makes them a total pain in the arse to kill them on the ground with a melee unit!
      I don't think there's anything wrong with having to deny air superiority from your opponent at all costs, though. You can do it with SAMs, MAA and Frigates, even if you are well behind with your ASFs. CoN's anti-air system is a lot more complex (and interesting) than CoW's, where they only have 'point' defence (no SAMs, because it's set in WW2), but both serve their purpose. Because you can deny air superiority without simply having more/better air units, there is a decent balance.

      But if you're using ground/sea units to contest the airspace, then you don't have anything there to attack with - so you have to use ground units for that as well. And that's where the problem is: you can't deny indirect-fire superiority except by having more/better indirect-fire units. You can use air units to break indirect-fire superiority, but that can be nullified with anti-air. So the meta triangle only exists between artillery - air - anti-air, with missiles nudging their way into it on the periphery (perhaps if ground-based BM and CM launchers were made cheaper/easier to build, it would make things more interesting?).

      There is a separate (and well-balanced) meta game between the various melee units, but none of those melee units can actually break into wider meta, because none of them can attack artillery (and obviously they can't attack air, either). The only exception might be SpF, but that doesn't help the others much.
      problem here with lowering plane’s HP on ground means that for every damage they take in the sky, it litterally becomes much easier to heal on the ground. Just like why healing Melee units or ground units in ships early game is so much more efficient.

    • _Pyth0n_ wrote:


      japan samurai wrote:

      TDs need a nerf because their cheap price and relatively high damage against infrantry means that trying to destroy waves and waves of those Tanks can suck for any GH strat player a living hell
      all you want to do is buff your favourite toys, nerf the rest, without caring about the actual balance of the game.
      Yeah, this whole thread is just that.
      Commander Zozo001 :thumbsup:
      humble player