Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta Let's all (respectfully) argue about game balance

Hey folks! I'm sure a lot of people have thoughts on the game's balance at this point. Maybe a single thread where we could argue among ourselves about it would generate a broader picture of any potential balance issues.

However, it’s also quite possible that we’re using these units in the wrong way, we don’t properly understand how to use a unit or there are ways these units could be used much better. Please point out where people can be corrected, or where they haven’t tried certain things, and keep it respectful.

Please also include a Suggested Improvement: for your balance issue.


Now, on to the griping!


Campaign-mode Dragon
To me at least, the base Dragon, with no upgrades to survivability, is weak to the point of uselessness. A handful of Grenadiers will kill it in 5 seconds or less. Same with a group of Hunters.

The Scales of Steel upgrade gives 30% Damage reduction, which helps noticeably (it doesn’t make the Dragon invulnerable. My problem is that it feels mandatory to take this upgrade, and a non-optional option just takes up space on your skillbar.

On the other hand, the population for both skirmish and campaign maps has been inflated quite a bit. This means that death as a Dragon is really cheap – it’s easy to just spawn back in because you have lots of extra recruits, more than you need to win the map. If the population is going to stay that high, maybe a 10 to 15 second cooldown to respawning as a Dragon if you die should be added.

Suggested Improvement: Give the basic campaign Dragon 30% Damage Reduction, and let Scales of Steel stack on top (maybe reduce it to 20% for a total of 50%).

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“A Bird in the Hand” (Hunters)
Hunters are great. They’re cheap, fast, and quick to build. They are the fastest unit in the game, making them excellent for hitting remote areas, they shred Infantry units easily, and they can Teleport to any friendly ground unit on the map en masse. They are countered well by heavily armored units, so they’re not all-powerful. There’s just one problem: “A Bird in the Hand”.

That upgrade lets Hunters hit air units for 150 damage a shot, and it retains the firing speed (1 shot/2 seconds) and 800 range (longer than any air unit’s range). On its own, one Hunter isn’t that big a deal, but in a pack, that 75 DPS each adds up quickly. The Hunter is a pretty solid contender for the best anti-air unit in the game against the Imp Fighter, and the Imp’s anti-ground upgrade is pretty lame compared to the Hunter’s anti-air one.

When mixed in with other units, the Hunter makes it hard for the Campaign-mode Dragon to jump in (the skirmish one is tougher and can survive better).

Math! One hunter can fire a 150 damage missile every 2 seconds, so its damage per second is 75. A group of 4 Hunters have 300 DPS against air units. The Dragon has what, 1150 HP? How long will it take 4 hunters and their 300 DPS to kill the Dragon? 3.83 seconds.

Suggested Improvement: Cut the anti-air damage of the upgrade by 1/3 to 1/2.

(More Math: I'm leaning towards 1/2 if you do NOT give the Dragon a 30% base damage reduction (7.6667 seconds), but if you do, then 1/3 will give the Dragon a respectable 8 seconds of survivability against 4 Hunters.)

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Short Sharp Shock
This skill is very weak. You need 4 Armours using it at once to barely kill a Trooper. All the attackers in the game are ranged, and the range of this attack is small enough that you have to drive right into the middle of a group of smaller units, which is suicidal. Even using the Zeppelin's cloak to get the Armours up close - something which required precise timing and co-ordiantion with the enemy player wasn't that great. The Armours are more effective hanging back and shooting normally, making this skill a waste.

Suggested Improvement: I think this skill needs a damage boost. Increase the damage at point-blank range to I don't know, 250?

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Enhanced Explosives (Grenadiers)
This skill is not worthwhile. The 65 meter radius is barely enough to scratch a Shaman right next to a targeted Shaman. Any shamans immediately behind aren't scratched at all. It's not worthwhile to research, especially with Grenadiers propensity to self-damage each other when in large groups. The enhanced radius is doing more damage to my own troops than the enemy!

For some reason, The 100m radius of Cripple is effective, but the 65m radius of Enhanced Explosives is utterly worthless. Are those radii actually accurate to what's happening?

The identical skill for Bomber Balloons is bugged and DECREASES the radius of the bomber's explosives when researched.

Suggested Improvement: The radius needs to be slightly increased, although not as large as the Shaman's Cripple radius, that would be too much.

* * * * *

Mines (all types)
Mines are not very useful. The mines have a short enemy trigger radius, and there’s so many potential spots to plant the mines that it’s likely that you’re wasting your time and no one will hit them anyway. I watch the AI walked troopers through the one spot between two mines where I hadn't planted one. (It wasn’t deliberate, as they also walked right over the next mine closer down.)

By the time you can research mines, the enemy will always have the possibility to have a counter researched. Ground-based mine detection is based on the Hunter, a cheap common unit which all players start with, and can easily research in an RTS map.

Air-based mine detection is from the Balloon Bomber, which also plants the mines. It’s possible that Imp Fighters or Zeppelins could be researched before the bomber and thus not have air detection, but both those units are already hard counters for bombers in general – and that’s not considering the possibility that Hunters can detect and shoot down air mines all by themselves. Also, air-mines are bugged: They are in fact completely visible to all players, even without invisibility detection.

Sea-based mine planting and detection are handled by Ironclads, and if not, there’s always the Transport’s Minesweeper upgrade that renders sea mines completely worthless. Not to mention that half the maps in 1v1 play have no access between starting naval bases, so there's no incentive to research them at all.

Mines are really easily countered from stuff you can do on the RTS map alone and can only really act as a slight roadbump. They also are more of a defensive weapon, and being on the defensive in this game is a losing proposition.

Suggested Improvement: The cooldown for planting mines needs to be drastically reduced – cut down to 10 seconds, maybe less. 20 seconds in this game is an eternity.

Also increase the trigger radius for land and sea mines, there's just too much space to cover, and the limited proximity detection doesn't help.

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Research: Campaign versus RTS
This one is tricky. The problem is that the upgrades you buy on the Campaign map aren't a big advantage in the RTS map. That is because if you have the base unit, you can easily research everything cheaply, matching the opponent upgrade for upgrade.

That is exacerbated by the inflated population counts, with 7000-8000 Recruits per map, getting all the upgrades is cheap and affordable.

I don't think outright banning research is a good idea either, it means there could be no way to counter. I think the best way to make research matter is to have researching counters come at a hefty cost in the RTS mode.

Suggested Improvement: Drastically increase the recruit cost to purchase upgrades in the campaign's RTS mode by something like 5 times, so instead of something costing you only 20 recruits to research, it costs you 100 - a pretty sizable chunk of income. Probably don't increase the research time, just the cost.

The cheapest upgrade is Armour's Public Transportation at 12 Recruits, at 5X that would cost 60 Recruits, the most expensive is the Imp Bunker Buster at 45, which would cost 225 to research mid-RTS battle.

That should force you to choose between temporary research and unit production, and it increases the value of upgrades you bought on the campaign map.

* * * * *

Seize the capital, get everything?
Getting a capital is important, but if you do it, all the enemy territory and units instantly becomes yours. None of it becomes neutral, none switches sides, none stubbornly holds on and rebels against your regime. The first one to get a capital gains a huge influx of resources and units. The capital alone is worth 10 gold a turn, meaning a lot of units can be built there.

I haven't had the chance to play Campaign against a human, only against the weak strategy map AI, so take this advice with a heap of salt. It probably isn't as easy with an actual human who knows how to defend.

It seems to be that gaining a capital can give a huge, overwhelming advantage in income, troops, and research to the victor, making it only a matter of time to mop up the rest.

Suggested Improvement: Toppling a capital makes all remaining former countries of it turn neutral. This will promote a land grab from the remaining players, and should help balance out the power you get from beating a capital.

-On the "air mines" thing : I used it as a defense mean from my balloon, when an Imps fighter come, launch the mine... I agree, it's not optimal, but every mines can be used like that.

Improvement for mines : 5 sec delay before they are operational and boost in damages and Radius.

I haven't got to try the campaign yet and I'm sure this has already been discussed but I have to say that the Dragon is really next to useless, up to a point that I stopped bothering with it anymore. The dragon is gone in a heap of smoke in a few seconds and the damage it causes is trivial, making the dragon suitable only for base stomping, when it's no longer needed. Really more trouble than it's worth.

If you want a glass cannon approach, make the dragon cause a huge amounts of damage in a short amount of time, but I would really prefer the dragon to be a heavy behemoth that can handle at least a small army. To counter that, greatly increase the cost to summon it and/or add a long cooldown after its gone. Make it at least as destructive as a heavy ship.

Otherwise this unit is a waste of time, which is a shame, as this should be the premise of this game, the reason it should be different from other RTS games.

Here are my thoughts on the balancing of the game.
I will talk less about specific units and more about some more general thoughts that occurred to me.

Campaign Map:
I like the campaign map (even though in the multiplayer variant we get so far, it is clearly somewhat stripped down, due the whole ship/story part missing). AI could do better, though.

Cards:
The cards are a nice touch, but could probably do with some boost to their effectiveness.
I'd rather have fewer cards, that are more powerful. As it is, I gain lots of cards, but don't often feel a need to use them.
Alternatively, give some more possibilities to use cards, e.g. by trading several weak cards to gain stronger ones, or trade 2 cards of one type to get a (random) card of another type. That kind of stuff...

RTS part:
I'm not completely sure about the RTS part.
I don't think it's bad, I just don't think it's great (yet).
Overall, but this is personal preference, I'd like it to be less hectic and less reliant on unit spam and quickly capturing building sites.
To me it creates a certain mismatch between campaign and RTS mode.
You often have to build many more units in the RTS part than what you bring with you from the campaign map (even taking into account that e.g. one infantry on the map gives 3 in the RTS).
It feels a bit strange that the relatively expensive and slow unit production on the campaign map is replaced with the mass-production on steroids we get in the RTS part.
A lower production speed might both make your starting units matter more, as well as emphasize single units more (but this would also mean you'd have to make them more resilient).
It should also give some micromanaging-intesive abilities more use, since you have less units to juggle around.

Dragon Form:
As has been mentioned, the Dragon seems a bit weak. It should not make an unstoppable Juggernaut, but at the moment it's not a glass cannon either, due to it not doing that much damage actually.
It's strength so far seems to be more the passive boosting auras and crowd-control spells, not direct combat.
I'd boost resistance and damage. Not enough to make him destroy whole armies on its own, but enough that he can wreak some havoc to smaller groups at least and not make him be destroyed within a few seconds by any group that contains a few units capable of attacking him.
Also mentioned before: the single target buffing abilities of the dragon seem underpowered given the reliance on numbers in the RTS part.

I agree with most of your points, El Zoido.

The Campaign map AI is lacking at this point.

I definitely think some way to trade in a few cards for a randomly selected new card is a great idea.

The RTS mode is really hectic, and the high population greatly favours the AI. If you forget to be constantly producing for a short time, you will get overrun to the constant stream of units, and lose map control, and once map control is gone, the high population makes it unfeasible to dig in and wear the AI down.

The Dragon's single-target buffs do seem weak given the reliance on masses and masses of units, and the long cooldowns on them. What use is there for the Dragon's Aegis buff when the Shaman's Immunity is just as good and you can have a mass of Shamans? Maybe making all the single-target ones into multi-target would work better.

We've made a number of balancing adjustments which will tone down the pace of the game in addition to a number of other enhancements that take your feedback into account. I just played the build and it's quite a different experience. We'll leave the option to play at the current pace in, but it's going to become an advanced setting - the default pace will now be a lot calmer. We wanted to release the updated game today but an irritating bug is preventing us from doing so. I hope that we'll be able to release it tomorrow.

Thank you again for all the detailed feedback - it makes a difference.

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to test it! We're all looking forward to the new build.

EDIT: Just saw this on the Steam comments thread:




It sounds like some big changes are coming to campaign mode (which was apparently bugged), so it sounds like Research there will be much more important.

Great, can't wait to check it out!

That's amazing. Very excited to see the changes!

Thanks Lar!

Map Design makes Naval units less useful

One issue is that the maps are designed much more for 2v2 than 1v1. This isn’t usually a problem, except when it comes to Naval units. On all the maps I’ve seen, half of them do not allow for naval combat. Two of the ones which do are islands. This is of course only a beta, and hopefully we’re only seeing a few of the final version’s maps, but the ratio of maps where Naval units are useful is troubling.

This makes investing Research Points into naval power on the strategy map and playing naval cards on an unknown map questionable, when you don’t even know if the map will have water, or if it will be USEFUL water.


Recommended Solution: More maps in which it’s possible to go from base to enemy base in 1v1 via the water (Island maps don’t count).

We also need bridges that land units can cross over and water units can pass beneath, just like Swen’s “Land Ahoy” blog said.



Thinking about that, bridges could help a lot. As Swen noticed, bridges are natural choke points, which will help force units together into a potential kill zone, cutting back on the usefulness of mindless unit spam and providing a focus for action. That will force players to seek alternate means of attack, which is a good thing.

Those choke points will suddenly make naval and land mines easier to place and thus immediately more useful.

Fallen Moon is a well-balanced map for naval use. Both main bases can be reached from water, and the center of the map has a lot of resource points that the water can cover, but there’s also a strong land-locked area which allows an advantage for those who can control the land.

Dragon’s Pass would be an almost perfect map if the isthmus in the center had one or two bridges and channels to let water units cross to the other side.

Falcon’s Rocks is really just… ugh. Half the map is taken up by these huge lakes. In theory, that general idea could let you shell enemy bases with a Juggernaut, keep the skies clear of air units with Ironclads, send Transports to any key point you want, they let you control the center of the map… but the execution of the water is really bad, in two reasons. The first one as I said above is that the two lakes are isolated from each other, which is bad. The other reason is that the only Shipyard building points are in the exact center of the map, and the one who controls the map can control both at once. Lose control of the center and you have no way to save any ships in the lakes, no way to build more. That map needs to be opened up, it needs bridges and connections between the lakes, and each of the four bases needs a place to build a shipyard – one that units can board transports on, please.

EDIT: This has now been changed! Purifying Flames has been changed to a Tier 1 Spell and the cost reduced to 5 (and it got a 50% buff to healing. Thanks, Larian!


(Campaign) Purifying Flames too Research point cost expensive for value received

The Dragon has three healing skills: Pillar of restoration, Mass Restoration, and Purifying Flames. The first two are priced about right at 15 Research points each. The first is a long-lasting fire and forget AoE heal. The second is an instant AoE heal.

Purifying Flames is priced at 20 Research points, you need to manually aim it, its duration is shorter than pillar of Restoration, and each shot only heals for as much as Pillar of Restoration does per second. It’s the worst of the three you can use during combat. It requires precision aim, you’re much more vulnerable to all kinds of attacks (since it’s not a fire and forget spell), and it won’t save any units under any but the most minimal incoming fire.

Suggested Improvement: There are two directions you can go with it:

a) Front-line Combat:
Keep the research point cost, but improve the power of the skill so that it can use used on the front lines of combat – increase the amount it heals per shot to something like 400 or more, so it can prop up units under heavy fire.

b) Between-battle healing:
Keep the skill the way it is, but lower the amount of research points it needs to 5 (or 10 at most), and have its role be to top up injured units between fighting, or those who can’t be reached easily by a Shaman (air and water units), or to clear the effects of say, Chemical Warfare (which the AI loves to use all the time).

EDIT: If you were to make it a 5 Research Points spell, it could allow for more varied play, some people might get that first instead of getting Shamans, and spend the spare research points on different Units to delay getting Shamans.

I just tried a match where I skipped Shamans and rushed to Devastators and Siege mode, and I wished that I had Purifying Flames, except that it cost too many points.