Koki on 19/2/2011 at 14:13
So Subjective Effect bitches about the tic-tac-toe in Starcraft while there are seven different types of armor for infantry units alone in CoH, and they affect not only weapon damage, but also accuracy, penetration, suppression and four other things?
Hahaha oh wow.
Eldron on 19/2/2011 at 14:21
Quote Posted by Koki
So Subjective Effect bitches about the tic-tac-toe in Starcraft while there are seven different types of armor for infantry units alone in CoH, and they affect not only weapon damage, but also accuracy, penetration, suppression and four other things?
Hahaha oh wow.
It all becomes what you set your mind to, in this case: not to do, before you even do it.
or in other words "can't be bothered"
SubJeff on 19/2/2011 at 16:36
I guess the difference is CoH is based on things that are tangible so you come to the field with an idea of what's going on. Iirc in C&C even massed infantry can take down tanks.
Nameless Voice on 19/2/2011 at 16:58
They can in most games, though the assumption is that a well-equipped squad of infantry in real life would be able to take out a tank, too. Not easily, but it'd be possible.
Vehicles in Starcraft aren't amazingly strong, but expendability of units is one of the core values of Starcraft IMO.
Vehicles in Dawn of War for example are extremely tough compared to most infantry. Normal infantry with guns can kill them, with difficulty, but it takes a lot of hits. In contrast, special anti-vehicle infantry have no issue taking them down. Dawn of War has one of the most complex damage systems I've seen in an RTS, though, with every unit having a separate damage rating for every type of armour.
SubJeff on 19/2/2011 at 17:43
CoH is akin to DoW as far as I can see (I have DoW2 but I've only played a few missions). I know I'm being lazy not bothering to learn the systems in other RTSs but CoH had an easy in.
That wasn't the point of the tread though, that was just giving a background to why I play CoH and no other RTSs. I only got DoW to play some friends who are into it.
Aaaanyways. catbarf - what you're saying is what is wrong with RTSs. You do what works? Hmmm. In CoH you can build "ghost" tank traps. Incomplete traps still hamper movement. This works, it helps you win, but it's clearly an exploit as it's a banning offence. It's such a hassle reporting exploiters though so it never really happens.
Nameless Voice on 19/2/2011 at 18:29
What you're basically talking about is what's called "cheese" tactics in Starcraft. Using something which it's very hard for the enemy to defend against if they don't know how to counter it. Probably the most widely-known example of this is the zerg rush made famous from SC1, where a zerg player skips on everything to try to produce zerglings (attack units) as fast as possible, ideally before the other player has a single combat unit yet. The thing about such strategies is that they generally work very well against inexperienced players, but better players will scout that it's coming and be prepared for it, and once the cheese fails, you've ruined your long-term economy, so your enemy will be able to easily outproduce you and win without much effort.
At least, that's how it is in Starcraft. Starcraft is known for being very well-balanced, though (SC2 slightly less so than SC1), and Blizzard are very good at patching out exploits and huge game-breakers.
And yes, I keep harping on about Starcraft, but that's because it's the RTS I know best.
Koki on 19/2/2011 at 19:34
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
Dawn of War has one of the most complex damage systems I've seen in an RTS, though, with every unit having a separate damage rating for every type of armour.
CoH is almost exactly the same.
catbarf on 19/2/2011 at 22:57
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Aaaanyways. catbarf - what you're saying is what is wrong with RTSs. You do what works? Hmmm. In CoH you can build "ghost" tank traps. Incomplete traps still hamper movement. This works, it helps you win, but it's clearly an exploit as it's a banning offence. It's such a hassle reporting exploiters though so it never really happens.
That's an exploit, as it's deliberately subverting the game 'rules'. Building a bunch of one kind of unit is not an exploit. The game is designed to let you build whatever you want up to a population limit, and building tons of squads of Pioneers or Riflemen isn't circumventing any normal part of the game. It just strikes me as being a bad sport to say 'No, I don't want you building that unit in those numbers, I quit'.
Eldron on 20/2/2011 at 00:47
Quote Posted by catbarf
That's an exploit, as it's deliberately subverting the game 'rules'. Building a bunch of one kind of unit is not an exploit. The game is designed to let you build whatever you want up to a population limit, and building tons of squads of Pioneers or Riflemen isn't circumventing any normal part of the game. It just strikes me as being a bad sport to say 'No, I don't want you building that unit in those numbers, I quit'.
Which is why blizzard still holds the number one spot, they intend to balance starcraft2 and fix it up for years to come, the same way they did with starcraft.
Bluegrime on 20/2/2011 at 01:24
I played starctaft for quite a while right after brood war came out. And in close to half of my games the winner was the guy who could churn out the most of his races "best" unit and possibly bought more upgrades for them. I've seen many, many more games of starcraft wind up with 200+ hydras/zealots/m&ms fighting in the middle of the map then ones where flanking or actual maneuvers mattered at all. Single unit rushes could almost always destroy a player who spent the same amount of resources in purchasing high tech units or working on exotic strategies.
I don't find it particularly deep but imo even at its basest SC is balanced. I've played all of two RTS that I felt were noticeably unbalanced and both of them are Westwood products. In the RA2 expansion pack Yuri was a Prime example of being completely better at everything, not just having a single spammable unit. The other is the Ordos faction in Emperor: Battle for Dune.. Who by way of being in a remake of RA2 in Dune got some of Yuri's terrible (in a bad for other people way) powers. I haven't played one in several years that had one faction intentionally and categorically better then everyone else on all levels.. With those as a measure of comparison a game that involves cheesing vs counter cheesing isn't unbalanced provided both sides stand a chance against the cheese strategy. ( at least on paper )
I can't speak on CoH tho, maybe Sub Jeff is right about that one.
