Profile of porkloin

Avatar Area

Offline Unknown SteamID unknown
Posts: 356

General Information


Thread: Let's talk pop cap26 Feb 2021, 18:20 PM Jump back to quoted post26 Feb 2021, 09:07 AMStrummingbird Unlimited pop would help the player that gets ahead and starts to roll out mass vehicles first, since they inflict mp-damage without receiving any. vehicle armies will grow much more linearly (only affected by upkeep) as opposed to balanced or inf armies naturally stopping growth (due to upkeep + reinforce). Currently you can see that effect to a minor degree - armies with mass mediums start to float a lot more mp, against armies with balanced comps- which take mp bleed in exchange for map control. The 100 pop limit helps stop the vehicular army from turning that MP saving into even more units, which inflict more bleed more efficiently, snowballing over the nonvehicle army I'm skeptical of whether this makes for good gameplay. with infinite pop maybe players might start suiciding low val squads or leaving them unreinforced to capture after some time, to just maximize a MP-efficient vehicle army. You're forgetting that engineers are additional upkeep to vehicles making their true pop much higher. Higher value vehicles benefit from this mechanic once again since they have better armor values, and bounced shots don't need to be repaired. In: COH2 Balance
Thread: Let's talk pop cap25 Feb 2021, 05:50 AM To explain the 125 more succinctly here is a graph of a critically underdamped differential equation: If you've ever played with one of these: You have an intuitive understanding of critically underdamped movements. The first impulse, i.e. pulling back the spring, determines how far the spring head will travel before coming back. This first impulse is akin to the first 30 minutes of the game. Players armies grow very large in size, but eventually become too big and back swing. Each swing will be slightly less and less though until it completely stabilizes. If I had to guess true manpower income probably tends to stabilize around 65-70 pop. 90% of games don't have enough initial army growth to hit pop-cap before making the first downswing so it's rarely a problem. When games do hit pop-cap though it's like that spring hitting an object instead of naturally coming back and going through it's harmonic motion. Instead of a fun game where things go back and forth, pop-cap creates games where the spring hits an object, loses all momentum, and dies near instantaneously. In: COH2 Balance
Thread: Let's talk pop cap25 Feb 2021, 05:18 AM Jump back to quoted post24 Feb 2021, 22:35 PMkornelm1978 I really loved reading this. I will play devil's advocate. Why do you want arbitrary number of 125 pop cap? I want 1000 pop cap to capitalize on my flow! What would be your answer? 125 would remove the problem for 90% of the games where pop-cap does become a problem, while still preserving a safeguard limit incase of some sort of bug or exploit. It's also hard enough to bring up the topic without massive resistance as you can see, so I'm not asking for anything radically game-changing. Pop tends to be parabolic. Prior to mass armor players are able to maintain a positive manpower income while still reinforcing their squads. Once armor starts hitting critical mass they tend to destroy models faster than the manpower income can replace them and then begins approaching something like a 50 pop army. The pop issue is largely a problem for the player with 4-5 mediums needing, and also having saved the income, for just one extra vehicle and maybe AT-gun to compete with heavies/ultra-mediums. In: COH2 Balance
Thread: Let's talk pop cap22 Feb 2021, 12:06 PM To put things a simply as possible, I think COH2 mechanics need to meet 2 criteria: 1: Armies should become progressively harder to maintain as they grow to provide room for comebacks. 2: Players should never be outright punished for past purchase selections. Upkeep fulfills criteria one. Pop-cap violates criteria 2. I'll be taking a break from this thread now. In: COH2 Balance
Thread: Let's talk pop cap22 Feb 2021, 11:23 AM Jump back to quoted post22 Feb 2021, 10:11 AMSerrith Are you saying that in a typical game with close to max pop, you wont have a combination of at least 2 anti tank guns or tank destroyers regardless of if there is a heavy tank or not? If this is the case, it makes sense why you have problems with pop cap. As a largely 1v1 player 2 dedicated AT guns is generally the ideal amount unless I'm playing USF. I might consider adding a TD if I'm really really struggling with armor. 4, as you purposed earlier, is absurd. The fact that you do not see a reason to maintain key lower tier units in the late game over "more valuable" units says a lot. The fact that you do not see that the current mechanics punish you for keeping lower tier units at pop-cap says that you're not actually assessing the game as it is, but merely disregarding information that indicates that it is not living up to it's ideal state. I'm the guy arguing for mechanics that favor keeping lower tier units. You're the guy arguing that sacrificing them or never building them at all in a high pop game is somehow interesting decision making like in WCIII or something. In: COH2 Balance
Thread: Let's talk pop cap22 Feb 2021, 07:26 AM Jump back to quoted post22 Feb 2021, 07:02 AMSerrith Except that level 1 heroes in warcraft 3 can barely fight off an equal supply amount of basic units. A paladin will trade poorly against a pair of grunts despite the grunts only being 1 more supply. So picking a heavy tank over 3 infantry squads isn't that challenging of a decision? Should COH2 be more or less like WCIII? Remember that this was your original thesis: Taking a heavy tank literally means you are deprived of 3 mainline infantry slots so you have to weigh the cost of fitting it into your composition. If this consideration has never been an issue in your time playing, then you may simply not be at a skill level yet where its become important. If you have ever watched competitive warcraft 3, the entire concept should be familiar to you. I think it's self-evident that a heavy tank or 3 mainlines isn't a very hard decision. The heavy tank forces an additional 3-4 AT units that have little purpose beyond denying your heavy tank. 3 mainlines might offer a tad bit more map control, but are far more likely to bleed you heavily if you're fighting against anything built after the first 5 minutes of the game. This is known as a false decision. There is almost no reason not to build a heavy tank over lower tier units other than an opponent vastly over-invested in AT. In: COH2 Balance
Thread: Let's talk pop cap22 Feb 2021, 05:31 AM Jump back to quoted post22 Feb 2021, 04:44 AMSerrith Problem is that tri hero builds aren't uncommon, micro tax is not suitable as an argument. True experience mechanics can mean that heroes you may want to level are deprived of exp but there are level benchmarks that you want to achieve with most heroes and after that, the experience gain isn't as important so you would expect all players to grab 3 heroes at SOME point in any match longer than 15 minutes. But we do not see this. Instead we sometimes see single hero builds in matches that last 30 minutes, and sometimes tri heroes in 12 minute matches. Okay. So building tigers from t1 should be a-okay balance wise since at most players will only build one or two, and they're sacrificing a whole 2-3 infantry squads to build it. Or you already lost a heavy tank to your opponent and those forces were produced originally to counter it? Or you have been dominating in the tank department while your opponent has stronger infantry so generalist tanks aren't necessary for him? Oh. Well if my heavy forced my opponent to invest 2-3 times the resources into countering it I probably should start pumping infantry since it already did it's job handily. It's not like they'll have much pop left to counter invest with and close the game. In: COH2 Balance
Thread: Let's talk pop cap22 Feb 2021, 04:03 AM Jump back to quoted post22 Feb 2021, 03:10 AMSerrith If we go by your logic, we would expect to see tri-hero builds in just about every game from every player because heroes are supposed to have the highest population to strength ratio. However we do not see this. Instead double or even single hero builds are very common at a professional level. The reasons for this are varied and situational but there are similar elements in CoH. Or it could just be that experience mechanics, and micro taxes reward two hero builds over tri-hero builds for the most common game lengths. For WCIII to be a contradiction we'd have to see something like no-hero builds winning high level games. Not only this but if your opponent is fielding 2 tank destroyers and 2 AT guns, I can assure you that selecting a heavy tank would be a complete waste of resources and infantry would be far more helpful. I suggest that if your opponent is already fielding 2 tank destroyers and 2 AT guns before a heavy is even on the field then your opponent either doesn't know what he's doing, or they've merely confirmed the overwhelming value of heavies with their disproportionate preparation. In: COH2 Balance
Thread: Let's talk pop cap21 Feb 2021, 21:42 PM Jump back to quoted post21 Feb 2021, 16:05 PMthedarkarmadillo I think we should get rid of tech and unit costs. Why are we limiting the game with arbitrary prices of things when we could just have all the units we want at any time? Yeah! We can start by reducing grenade tech costs for soviets! People have been complaining about those for years. In: COH2 Balance
Thread: Let's talk pop cap21 Feb 2021, 21:40 PM Jump back to quoted post21 Feb 2021, 13:27 PMSerrith Taking a heavy tank literally means you are deprived of 3 mainline infantry slots so you have to weigh the cost of fitting it into your composition. If this consideration has never been an issue in your time playing, then you may simply not be at a skill level yet where its become important. If you have ever watched competitive warcraft 3, the entire concept should be familiar to you. No one is deciding that they want another 3 squads of infantry in the late-game because heavy tanks are the best value you can get for your resources and pop. If you've ever watched COH2 you'd realize that you don't start building hero units in the first 5 minutes of the game and then populate your army with lower value units. The entire value composition of armies is reversed. In: COH2 Balance