Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta Dragon Balance and suggestions

At this point, The Dragon powers and damage resistance is about right, but the dragon does appear to be overpowered for a few reasons. As of right now it seems like the only thing that can kill a dragon in the hands of a skilled player is another dragon.

1. Jetpack recharge:
The Jetpack recharges constantly and because of that the players can just spam the right click and this allows the dragon to evade EVERYTHING. Me and my opponent would fly right into a large group of anti air units (hunters with bird in the hand, grenadiers, ext.)
and just spam the right click on not even get a scratch. The Jet pack needs a 1 1/2 or 2 second delay after uses before it begins to recharge again. That way the dragon can't avoid everything for too long.

2. Respawn time:
The only thing people have to wait for is 20 recruits. One match I was gathering units in a forward position, then as soon as the dragons were ready for battle I heard "enemy dragon spotted." and I intercepted him and killed his dragon, then he immediately respawned and killed a couple of my units, I killed him again, then this repeats about 5 times and he finally kills me as I was inspecting my army, or lack there of now. The dragon needs a respawn timer of maybe 10-15 seconds or so.

3. Anti air missles are a little slow.
When I fly into a group of grenadiers and such the missile seems to move pretty slow. maybe increase the speed that the missiles travel so they aren't so easy to avoid. Maybe increase the speed by X1.5, even if it is an additional upgrade for imp binoculars for example. The missiles at this moment are just really easy to dodge, you don't need a very quick reaction time to avoid them.

So, if these issues get fixed, the dragon will be a bit more "fair" for the different player types. As of right now the players who want to use the zephyr dragon and focus on just the units and the usual RTS style gameplay, they won't stand a chance if their units can't even hit the dragon!

I'm still looking at other issues, at this moment this is all I have time to post. Let me know what you thinkk.

I haven't played a lot of Dragon versus Dragon combat, so I'm not in a great position to commentate, but a lot of your points are very good.

I don't think that each time you use the jetpack you should have to wait 1.5-2 seconds before using it again, that would probably cripple its legitimate dodging usage. But maybe increase the amount of charge a strafe-dodge uses, and add the 1.5 second cooldown before it recharges once you run out of dodges. That should make it impossible to constantly dodge forever.

I also like the idea of a 10-15 second cooldown for when the Dragon dies. The only downside I can think of to that is if you're attacked early on by an enemy Dragon, before you have much anti-air and the aggressor Dragon kills you, but the 20 recruit cost to respawn would probably cripple you, timer or not.

There IS the issue that if the dragon dies early on then the rest of his units/buildings are at great risk, but that could be where the anti air being a little more effective would come into play. If the missiles traveled a little faster and the jet pack had a slight cool down before it starts to recharge again. Though perhaps just a cool down upon depletion might be a good idea. After I left for work from posting this I did think about the possibility of maybe a 3 second cool down if you run out of charge? Definitely would discourage people from just mashing the right click so much and becoming nearly untouchable.
As things stand at this moment you could have almost as many hunters and grenadiers as you want but you are barely going to scratch a jet-pack-spamming dragon. If you are a good aim, you could easily kill another dragon with any other dragon but that shouldn't be the only sure-way to do it.

also, another idea.
For machinima purposes: I notice that while in dragon form the mouse wheel does not have a function. how about when in dragon form you could use that to rotate the camera around the dragon, let go and it snaps back to normal. If someone wanted to make a fan-made trailer that would help quite a bit. Also good for tutorials. things like that.

Also, Stabbey, I do recall that you mentioned some re balancing that could be made, I do believe that extending the time it takes until you can summon the dragon would be a good idea. Maybe add a few more minutes, let both players build up their defenses and armies before the dragons roll out. In the pvp matches I have done, I was in the lead until his dragon appeared, then i was focusing on killing his dragon (over and over again!) and was just trying to defend what units I had left.

(ALL of these criticisms are coming from one who seen the trailers and thought "You can play as a dragon?! I'm getting it!" I would REALLY like to see a game where you can play as a dragon and have it do well. But I want the dragon to be "fair" and not an annoyance to fight against.)

Well, just played a bit against A.I. and it does seem if there is a ton of grenadiers and a few anti air guns you can get shot down but you are likely going to be able to deal maybe a little TOO much damage. I just drop eye of the patriarch and pillar of flame in a base on frost isles and pretty much all land units just die. the dragon might die but so does the opponents army. that is more costly then the 20 recruits that the opposing player has to pay for the dragon itself. So the guy who used and lost the dragon once is "punished" less then the guy who actually built an army.

20 recruits is pretty cheap.

I know, what I was referring to is if you have, for example, 10 Grenadiers, and the dragon kills all of them, you lose 60 recruits, where 20 for a dragon is ridiculously cheap. The dragon should have a respawn timer so someone with alot of recruits accumulated won't just spam the dragon even death after death.
Just kill 4 hunters with the dragon before dying, and you cost the enemy a lot more recruits then you did spawning your dragon, and you can just summon it again and deal even MORE damage.

Going to have to agree that the dragon needs to either cost more recruits per additional summoning, or have a respawn timer so that you can't just respawn and continue your decimation. The dragon can make or break battles, so losing it should definitely matter. Right now, it can be faster to just die and respawn for the recruit cost instead of flying away and waiting for your HP to recover.