How to stablise Yuri's Revenge.

[Sedna]

Well, after reading a whole ton of threads hating Yuri, I thought I would post a list of stuff that I think needs fixing.

Initiate - Should have lower HP than the Conscript and GI. Price should also be higher. (A veteran Initiate with Hospital healing powers can kill at least 3-4 tanks at a time.)

Engineer - No changes.

Brute - Strength to demolish vehicles should be reduced.

Lasher Tank - No changes.

Chaos Drone - Should seriously have a limit on how long it can use it's "Red Gas" at a time. (It just sits there and can forever spill it's stupid gas.)

Gattling Tank - Should have slower speed. (This stupid thing is insanely as fast as an IFV.)

Magnetron - Should have the range of half the range of a Prism Tank.

Mastermind - This stupid tank is what is killing us, I can send a whole ton of
Apocalypse Tanks and have them all mind controlled, those not mind controlled will automatically fire upon their mind controlled friends.
Non Mind Controlled tanks should fire on the Mastermind instead of on themselves unless forcibly directed by the player.

Floating Disk - Should not be allowed to suck up Cash from the Refinery, there is no sense in that. To be honest, this UFO doesn't make any sense in the first place, but meh. Should not be allowed to regenerate health either.

Boomer Submarine - We all hate the Boomer Rush, and I hate it too, this Submarine seriously needs to be more expensive, it should also be allowed to be "grabbed" by the Soviet Giant Squid.

Slave Miner - Strength needs to be reduced to the War Miner's strength. I can kill a War Miner with five Black Eagles but it takes ten to kill one Slave Miner.

Grinder - Should only grant half the cost of the destroyed Infantry or Vehicles. Unless I am mistaken, it refunds the full cost.

Bio Reactor - Five garrisonble Slots should be reduced to three. I can use just two of these things to power an entire Yuri base.


Well, it looks like I am deliberately weakening the Yuri Faction with my ideas, but hey, it is damn hard to beat an experience Yuri Player.

[truefeel]

Magnetron - Should have the range of half the range of a Prism Tank.

That would make yuri infact the opposite: underpowered. You have to be carefull with balancing this unit out. Reducing range is needed, but half of a prism tank (and do consider that magnetrons and prism tanks roughly have the same range) would make it very vulnerable against prism tanks and tanks would be able to come up too close. Either way, balancing out the magnetron would also mean balancing out other's sides their respective counters against magnetron, especially prism tanks (reduced splash damage for instance).

Mastermind - This stupid tank is what is killing us, I can send a whole ton of
Apocalypse Tanks and have them all mind controlled, those not mind controlled will automatically fire upon their mind controlled friends.
Non Mind Controlled tanks should fire on the Mastermind instead of on themselves unless forcibly directed by the player.

That is a bug a you probably can't fix; it is nothing to worry much about anyway; better is to give the mastermind a higher overload damage. And lol, plz do not use apoc tanks. Rhinoes are better, really.

Floating Disk - Should not be allowed to suck up Cash from the Refinery, there is no sense in that. To be honest, this UFO doesn't make any sense in the first place, but meh. Should not be allowed to regenerate health either.

A patch is not about making sence, but about balancing. Balancing also means as keeping the original game as intact as possible (which is not possible with the next unit)

Boomer Submarine - We all hate the Boomer Rush, and I hate it too, this Submarine seriously needs to be more expensive, it should also be allowed to be "grabbed" by the Soviet Giant Squid.

That would not change so much, and especially not that it can be grapped by a squid, as a squid is buildable at lab level, a boomer already at radar. This perhaps the only unit that heavily needs to be remaked into practically a new unit (still the same voxel of course). Back when I was busy with a balance patch I made the missiles almost useless (weak, one missile a boomer, far less damage against buildings), made the torpedoes a bit better and reduced the costs heavily. That way boomer rushing has far less effect, but the boomer in return can now fight (fair and square) subs and destroyers costwise.

Slave Miner - Strength needs to be reduced to the War Miner's strength. I can kill a War Miner with five Black Eagles but it takes ten to kill one Slave Miner.

Lol, using black eagles is not a good indicator, although I do agree that the slave miner needs to have a reduced strength.

[Daishi]

The problem with Yuri's Revenge is that Yuri was not an army designed to be on par with the 9 classic armies of RA2. Every piece of his army is just outrageously good at what it does, and it only gets more ridiculous as Yuri techs up.

The major stumbling blocks with balancing YR are this. Yuri's navy is incomplete, Magnetrons have an unintended ability to disrupt incoming tank forces, and the Soviets have no means of stopping Yuri's radar mix until they can access the iron curtain.

The beauty of the Yuri faction is that each unit covers another unit's weakness extremely well, but Yuri can't be balanced until he has genuine weaknesses for the Allies and Soviets to play on during all 3 stages of the game. Currently, his only weaknesses are late game - underpowered naval presence and lack of counters to mass prism/GGIBF, but they're still offset by his bull**** superweapons and the sheer defensive power of his units and base defenses, especially against air units and main battle tanks.

[Fenring]

Just wait til you play Red Alert X. http://www.freedomstudios.net/_misc/ohyeh.gif

[apple23]

Well, after reading a whole ton of threads hating Yuri, I thought I would post a list of stuff that I think needs fixing.
Initiate - Should have lower HP than the Conscript and GI. Price should also be higher. (A veteran Initiate with Hospital healing powers can kill at least 3-4 tanks at a time.)
I agree, and also they should not do 63 damage per hit in a garrison building, when elite GIs in a building do, maybe even less than, 30.
Brute - Strength to demolish vehicles should be reduced.
3 reasons why the brute does not need changing:
1) it was specifically intended to destroy vehicles
2) It is a melee unit, meaning it has to close the full distance to do any damage at all, so yeah of course it's gonna pwn whatever it gets up to. Think of the hulk.
3) Brutes get completely and utterly raped by any kind of small arms fire, like GIs and even conscripts, which you should have mixed up in your tank force anyways for fodder (extremely effective tactic in multiplayer, especially since GIs can deploy and do massive damage to everything)
Chaos Drone - Should seriously have a limit on how long it can use it's "Red Gas" at a time. (It just sits there and can forever spill it's stupid gas.)
Well, who cares if it can sit there forever and spill its gas, if it's so short ranged? Perhaps lower the ROF a bit, but since most every unit outranges it and it's a ridiculously weak unit, I'd say no radical change is needed. You almost never see this unit in the game anyways, as yuri players favor mind control over berserk fury
Gattling Tank - Should have slower speed. (This stupid thing is insanely as fast as an IFV.)
No, actually, gattling tank is slower than both the flak track and the IFV. What needs changing here is the gattling tank's armor and it's damage rate per second, both of which are much better than both the flak track and the IFV. (Especially because it takes 2 shots from black eagles to kill the gattling tank, versus 1 for a flak trak or an IFV.)
Magnetron - Should have the range of half the range of a Prism Tank.
Perhaps not THAT dramatic of a range decrease, as that would be 2 cells LESS than the range of a general tank, effectively making the unit useless, but I agree that it needs shorter range; and perhaps a code that requires it to keep focusing on the target it's attacking, without being able to drop it for another tank.

Mastermind - This stupid tank is what is killing us, I can send a whole ton of
Apocalypse Tanks and have them all mind controlled, those not mind controlled will automatically fire upon their mind controlled friends.
Non Mind Controlled tanks should fire on the Mastermind instead of on themselves unless forcibly directed by the player.

This is where micromanagement is necessary, and it isn't even needed, really. if you just click attack on the mastermind, the apocs will focus on the mastermind and will not even consider other targets around it; it's just one of those weird finicky things about RA2 coding. Besides, prism tanks rape masterminds, as well as GGIBFs and aircraft. Soviets are hopeless against yuri, period.
Floating Disk - Should not be allowed to suck up Cash from the Refinery, there is no sense in that. To be honest, this UFO doesn't make any sense in the first place, but meh. Should not be allowed to regenerate health either.
I personally would just completely exclude the floating disk from yuri's army, and give him an actual airforce (and to be fair I always give soviets full airforce in my mods)
Boomer Submarine - We all hate the Boomer Rush, and I hate it too, this Submarine seriously needs to be more expensive, it should also be allowed to be "grabbed" by the Soviet Giant Squid.
It should cost 2000-2500, however the big problem with boomer rush is that a boomer is the first thing a yuri player can make after getting naval yard/radar up. What really needs changing here is not necessarily the expense, as that doesnt matter, --he probably will not lose the boomer if he rushes-- but it's the tech level at which he has access to them. make them require a battle lab and by then the allied player should have enough naval coverage that boomers are no longer such a threat.
Slave Miner - Strength needs to be reduced to the War Miner's strength. I can kill a War Miner with five Black Eagles but it takes ten to kill one Slave Miner.
Agreed. It should also only have 4 slaves, as the slave miner makes a significant amount more than the other 2 miners.
Grinder - Should only grant half the cost of the destroyed Infantry or Vehicles. Unless I am mistaken, it refunds the full cost.
You know the funny thing about that is they origionally hard-coded the grinder to grant half cost to everything it destroyed. Then for god-knows-what reason, they went back and manually added a new tag (Soylent=; this changes the refund value for grinding a tank) and manually edited this value to equal the full cost of all the vehicles (stayed at half for all infantry for obvious reasons)
Bio Reactor - Five garrisonble Slots should be reduced to three. I can use just two of these things to power an entire Yuri base.
Ah but the thing that makes bio reactors too powerful is not the amount of slots, it's the amount of power each extra slot gives. Make each new slot give 50 extra power (instead of 100) and it will be perfect with 5 slots.
Well, it looks like I am deliberately weakening the Yuri Faction with my ideas, but hey, it is damn hard to beat an experience Yuri Player.
Of course we are deliberately weakening the Yuri faction. He NEEDS weakening!

[Statalyzer]

That is a bug a you probably can't fix;

It's not a bug, it's the normal auto-attack logic.

[truefeel]

I do not think it was the purpose that one of your tank shoots your other tank, wtihout you telling it do so, after tank1 was freed from mind control. That is a bug, of course related to the auto attack logic, but it should be obvious that a tank once freed of mind control should stop firing another tank from the same side.

But I do not think this is such a huge problem; just a little irritation.

This is where micromanagement is necessary, and it isn't even needed, really. if you just click attack on the mastermind, the apocs will focus on the mastermind and will not even consider other targets around it; it's just one of those weird finicky things about RA2 coding. Besides, prism tanks rape masterminds, as well as GGIBFs and aircraft. Soviets are hopeless against yuri, period.apocs are simply too slow for masterminds. Correct me if I am wrong about this, but if I am correct apocs have a lower speed and, about this part I am fairly sure, accelerate and have a lower range then masterminds. Aircraft can be a good counter but sadly yuri players tent to learn good dodging skills and almost always have gattling tanks, in which case you either can't use aircraft or can use aircraft for a bomb-and-get-killed run (which is btw advisable for destroying his battle lab).
And prism tanks do very little damage to masterminds, unless you really have huge numbers. However, a handfull of mirages helps here. About GGI BFs: very usefull but at the same time very risky! I would not recommend it unless you really have a very good tank control.

It should cost 2000-2500, however the big problem with boomer rush is that a boomer is the first thing a yuri player can make after getting naval yard/radar up. What really needs changing here is not necessarily the expense, as that doesnt matter, --he probably will not lose the boomer if he rushes-- but it's the tech level at which he has access to them. make them require a battle lab and by then the allied player should have enough naval coverage that boomers are no longer such a threat.But shifting the boomer to battle lab makes yuri inefficient at naval maps, as other sides have acces to naval units at T1 already. If you do move the boomer to that level, be sure you add atleast one naval unit that can battle subs and destroyers.

Agreed. It should also only have 4 slaves, as the slave miner makes a significant amount more than the other 2 miners.I also was thinking about making the the slave miner from the building tab more expensive then the one from the vehicle tab, b/c the 2 other sides pay, even with selling, more by building refineries. That be would be fair since most online players get more miners by building+selling refineries/building slave miners from the build tab, instead of getting those miners from the vehicles tab; that way they don't have to sacrifice time building tanks. Yuri does have an advantage at this.

The major stumbling blocks with balancing YR are this. Yuri's navy is incomplete, Magnetrons have an unintended ability to disrupt incoming tank forces, and the Soviets have no means of stopping Yuri's radar mix until they can access the iron curtain.

Well, most soviet sides. One side can effectively counter yuri's radar mix: Iraq, although they can't really dominate either at that part, and if yuri hits tech level, he can counter the counter, and he on the other hand does dominate then!

All other sides are useless against yuri. Best thing you can try then is going 0 miners and rush as hard as you can. If he bunkers up you'll probably will not succeed doing any significant damage but you atleast tried.

The beauty of the Yuri faction is that each unit covers another unit's weakness extremely well, but Yuri can't be balanced until he has genuine weaknesses for the Allies and Soviets to play on during all 3 stages of the game. Currently, his only weaknesses are late game - underpowered naval presence and lack of counters to mass prism/GGIBF, but they're still offset by his bull**** superweapons and the sheer defensive power of his units and base defenses, especially against air units and main battle tanks.The yuri side also works completely different then the other sides, relying on mixing units instead of massing one particular unit, It is really difficult to balance that. Weaken too much and yuri is underpowered. Do too little and he still is overpowered. Very difficult to find a good line in this, especially b/c if you gonna change the yuri side, you'll have to change the other sides too and then things can get very subjective: not only will people disagree in the changes in balances, but also how you balance: are you gonna change the other 2 factions to a more mix-strategy like yuri has, or are you gonna change yuri to a more mass-style faction? Very difficult indeed.

[Statalyzer]

That is a bug, of course related to the auto attack logic, but it should be obvious that a tank once freed of mind control should stop firing another tank from the same side.

I think we're talking about two different things.

You said "freed" from mind control. If a tank is mind-controlled, starts firing on a former ally, and then the mind-control is broken, then yes it's a bug if that unit doesn't stop firing at the unit which is now (again) it's friend.

I think he's talking about if you have 4 tanks together and 1 of them gets mind-controlled, the other 3 will turn and fire on that 1 immediately instead of firing at the controlling unit. That's no different than if you paradrop next to a ground unit - all of a sudden there is an adjacent enemy where there was none, so it immediately commences firing at it.

[Fenring]

I do not think it was the purpose that one of your tank shoots your other tank, wtihout you telling it do so, after tank1 was freed from mind control. That is a bug, of course related to the auto attack logic, but it should be obvious that a tank once freed of mind control should stop firing another tank from the same side.
Not if the tank had chosen a target for an attack mission before the mind control link was cleared. The game is working as intended still.

[truefeel]

Not if the tank had chosen a target for an attack mission before the mind control link was cleared. The game is working as intended still.

But the tank does not stop firing when the mind control link is broken. I do not think that is intended. The logic works fine, but this is a loophole the creators of YR did not tought about.

I think we're talking about two different things.

You said "freed" from mind control. If a tank is mind-controlled, starts firing on a former ally, and then the mind-control is broken, then yes it's a bug if that unit doesn't stop firing at the unit which is now (again) it's friend.

I think he's talking about if you have 4 tanks together and 1 of them gets mind-controlled, the other 3 will turn and fire on that 1 immediately instead of firing at the controlling unit. That's no different than if you paradrop next to a ground unit - all of a sudden there is an adjacent enemy where there was none, so it immediately commences firing at it.

Yes, now I see it. sorry for the miscommunication :p. In that case you are right.

[Fenring]

But the tank does not stop firing when the mind control link is broken. I do not think that is intended. The logic works fine, but this is a loophole the creators of YR did not tought about.
No, it still is working correctly. Because it chose the target before it became an ally again, the target is still being classed as a threat and chosen in the unit's threat scan. Put simply, if the AI establishes an object as a threat, it will not cease attacking unless that object is no longer classed as a threat. Since it was chosen already, changing house does not change the threat rating system.

[truefeel]

Since it was chosen already, changing house does not change the threat rating system.

Which normally should in this very particular case, of course logical sence and not code-wise speaking. Like I said, the code works fine, but this is (or better should be) an exception which was not considered. Understand though I am taking the term "bug" at a wide range and looking this through the eye of gameplay.

Not that it is that important; it can just be an annoyance that your tanks keep killing eachother, unless ordered an other task, even though they are freed from mind control. Gameplay-wise that does not make any sence.

[Fenring]

It's not that it wasn't considered, it's that an obscure exception can be difficult to code around or fix. There's quite a lot to the threat system and gathering requirements for actually firing on an opponent automatically. There's a lot of processing and halting that mid-scan would be an extremely daunting task.

[truefeel]

There's a lot of processing and halting that mid-scan would be an extremely daunting task.

The same thing I was thinking, but let's get back on topic :p. I'd like to know how Sedna stands towards our opinions about balancing Yuri.

[Fenring]

Well, you know where I stand. Re-arrange the army. :p

[truefeel]

That is the easy way :p. never take the easy way :p.

[Fenring]

Meh. The easy route paves the way for eye candy and win. :p

[truefeel]

Meh. The easy route paves the way for eye candy and win. :p

You got win and you got win; my win is better :p. making it yourself difficult ftw!

[apple23]

but who cares if fenring makes it difficult for himself... only one who should care is fenring, and well he doesn't care; more modding means more fun :p

[truefeel]

but who cares if fenring makes it difficult for himself... only one who should care is fenring, and well he doesn't care; more modding means more fun :p

I am not telling him to do anything; I am joking around :p.

[Daishi]

That's a lot of tongues. :gnasher:

[Sedna]

Haven't got the time to post any of value yet, busy with last minute homework before holiday ends. So how about this?

http://i49.tinypic.com/2z83yh1.png

Those two are firing at maximum range. So how about reducing it to three quarters the Prism Tank range?

[Fenring]

Then Yuri has no effective tank combat. It isn't the range that causes big issues with the Magnetron anyway. It's the tank juggling and using attack move that causes the issue. If you attack move through, it picks up a tank, drops it, repeats. Because of this, a small group of Magnetrons can keep an entire force at bay very readily and will invariably destroy some in the process.

[truefeel]

Then Yuri has no effective tank combat. It isn't the range that causes big issues with the Magnetron anyway. It's the tank juggling and using attack move that causes the issue. If you attack move through, it picks up a tank, drops it, repeats. Because of this, a small group of Magnetrons can keep an entire force at bay very readily and will invariably destroy some in the process.

A small reducement in range is advisable, but only if the prism tank gets nerved down also.

Getting this unit just right proves to be a huge challenge:dead:.

[Daishi]

Question for the modders: What if the magnetized units were not lifted high enough to be considered airborne during the Magnetron's drag? Perhaps then, tanks and other units could be moved without losing their ability to rotate their turret?

And can there be a longer delay between shots for the dragger?

[truefeel]

Question for the modders: What if the magnetized units were not lifted high enough to be considered airborne during the Magnetron's drag? Perhaps then, tanks and other units could be moved without losing their ability to rotate their turret?

And can there be a longer delay between shots for the dragger?

I could be wrong, but I don't think you can get this idea into practice. Why would you let it rotate its turret anyway? The tank can't use it while being dragged. The only unit that can fire in midair is a BF with infantry inside.

[Daishi]

That's my point, actually, truefeel. I think the mag drag will be perfectly balanced (AND WILL FUNCTION AS INTENDED) if it doesn't disable its victims during the pull. And I assumed that the disabled unit is only prevented from firing because its airborne and its targets are on another plane.

[CrowRbot]

The problem of letting the tank turret move is that the turret is likely made of the same material as the rest of the tank- if the tank body is affected by the Magnetron to the point of being lifted into the air, why wouldn't the turret (as well as the parts which move the turret) also be affected?

[truefeel]

The problem of letting the tank turret move is that the turret is likely made of the same material as the rest of the tank- if the tank body is affected by the Magnetron to the point of being lifted into the air, why wouldn't the turret (as well as the parts which move the turret) also be affected?

But the unit would still be able to fire, which should be towards the magnetron in that case, logical speaking.

That's my point, actually, truefeel. I think the mag drag will be perfectly balanced (AND WILL FUNCTION AS INTENDED) if it doesn't disable its victims during the pull. And I assumed that the disabled unit is only prevented from firing because its airborne and its targets are on another plane.

The unit is certainly considered as an airborne unit; however I do not think that that disables it's ability to fire. Could be wrong though.

[ThePsychoturtle]

Well, after reading a whole ton of threads hating Yuri, I thought I would post a list of stuff that I think needs fixing.

Initiate - Should have lower HP than the Conscript and GI. Price should also be higher. (A veteran Initiate with Hospital healing powers can kill at least 3-4 tanks at a time.)

Engineer - No changes.

Brute - Strength to demolish vehicles should be reduced.

Lasher Tank - No changes.

Chaos Drone - Should seriously have a limit on how long it can use it's "Red Gas" at a time. (It just sits there and can forever spill it's stupid gas.)

Gattling Tank - Should have slower speed. (This stupid thing is insanely as fast as an IFV.)

Magnetron - Should have the range of half the range of a Prism Tank.

Mastermind - This stupid tank is what is killing us, I can send a whole ton of
Apocalypse Tanks and have them all mind controlled, those not mind controlled will automatically fire upon their mind controlled friends.
Non Mind Controlled tanks should fire on the Mastermind instead of on themselves unless forcibly directed by the player.

Floating Disk - Should not be allowed to suck up Cash from the Refinery, there is no sense in that. To be honest, this UFO doesn't make any sense in the first place, but meh. Should not be allowed to regenerate health either.

Boomer Submarine - We all hate the Boomer Rush, and I hate it too, this Submarine seriously needs to be more expensive, it should also be allowed to be "grabbed" by the Soviet Giant Squid.

Slave Miner - Strength needs to be reduced to the War Miner's strength. I can kill a War Miner with five Black Eagles but it takes ten to kill one Slave Miner.

Grinder - Should only grant half the cost of the destroyed Infantry or Vehicles. Unless I am mistaken, it refunds the full cost.

Bio Reactor - Five garrisonble Slots should be reduced to three. I can use just two of these things to power an entire Yuri base.


Well, it looks like I am deliberately weakening the Yuri Faction with my ideas, but hey, it is damn hard to beat an experience Yuri Player.

Some of my ideas about the ideas:
Ok initiate price should stay the same but hitpoints down,or the other way around,price up hit points the same.
Brute has a melee weapon and is easy to kill by a few infantry units or terror drone. All factions always have some brute killers. No changes.
Chaos drone I agree,its annoying. :P
Gattling tank should keep its speed,ifvs are faster. :P
Mags would be weak without good range.
Mastermind: Tanks shoot closest target,can't help it.
Floating disk: Yeah pointless feature. But they should be able to shoot at power structures and powered base defenses,they can only disable it when I try.
Boomer: Its the only Yuri naval unit that is dangerous,it should have some advantages,just make some AA units. I heard pro soviet players should always make a flak track or 2,and allies should get some ifvs for those missles ;).
Grinder refunds full cost of tanks only.
Bio reactor ok for $600 its too good. Reduce to 3 I agree.

[ThePsychoturtle]

''That would make yuri infact the opposite: underpowered. You have to be carefull with balancing this unit out. Reducing range is needed, but half of a prism tank (and do consider that magnetrons and prism tanks roughly have the same range) would make it very vulnerable against prism tanks and tanks would be able to come up too close. Either way, balancing out the magnetron would also mean balancing out other's sides their respective counters against magnetron, especially prism tanks (reduced splash damage for instance).''



''That is a bug a you probably can't fix; it is nothing to worry much about anyway; better is to give the mastermind a higher overload damage. And lol, plz do not use apoc tanks. Rhinoes are better, really.''

Yeah rhinoes are better
Faster,cheaper and you won't cry when a few gets MCed and heads for your base.

[truefeel]

Boomer: Its the only Yuri naval unit that is dangerous,it should have some advantages,just make some AA units. I heard pro soviet players should always make a flak track or 2,and allies should get some ifvs for those missles ;).Does not work; you'll need more then 2 flak tracks. The reason why is simple: say you do have 2 flak tracks and I have a boomer. B/c the boomer is stealth, you are not able to see from where it will be coming. Let's also assume I succesfully scouted your base and can see the flak tracks and all your buildings. Now if you keep your flak tracks together at one point of the base, I can shoot buildings that are not covered. If you spread them out, to cover your whole base, they do not do enough damage and atleast one missile will get through. You can maybe manage it if you can react very fast and keep constant attention to the boomer, leaving you vulnerable to be attack by ground or so. Your best way out of this is by spending more then the yuri player does. A mix of 2 flak tracks/IFVs and 2 subs/destroyers should be a bare minimum Problem: a boomer rush ussually happens under 3 minutes gameplay. You probably will not have the time to build all of that. Keeping a flak cannon ready might buy you a few seconds time, but that'll probably be not enough.

Ultimately, there is not really a standard formula to counter a boomer rush. It comes down to luck and skill. The problem with this one unit is, well, that it is one unit, and it has a too high advantage. You can't speak about a proper naval battle against yuri, b/c in most of the cases he just makes 1 boomer and wins. In the very rare cases he does not do significant damage and the soviet/allied player is able to handle yuri's ground vehicles, the soviet/allied players wins simply b/c subs/dolphins are far more cost/effective then boomers. 2 subs/2destroyers/4dolphins destroy a boomer easily, but that only applies if it gets to massing naval units.

[ThePsychoturtle]

Does not work; you'll need more then 2 flak tracks. The reason why is simple: say you do have 2 flak tracks and I have a boomer. B/c the boomer is stealth, you are not able to see from where it will be coming. Let's also assume I succesfully scouted your base and can see the flak tracks and all your buildings. Now if you keep your flak tracks together at one point of the base, I can shoot buildings that are not covered. If you spread them out, to cover your whole base, they do not do enough damage and atleast one missile will get through. You can maybe manage it if you can react very fast and keep constant attention to the boomer, leaving you vulnerable to be attack by ground or so. Your best way out of this is by spending more then the yuri player does. A mix of 2 flak tracks/IFVs and 2 subs/destroyers should be a bare minimum Problem: a boomer rush ussually happens under 3 minutes gameplay. You probably will not have the time to build all of that. Keeping a flak cannon ready might buy you a few seconds time, but that'll probably be not enough.

Ultimately, there is not really a standard formula to counter a boomer rush. It comes down to luck and skill. The problem with this one unit is, well, that it is one unit, and it has a too high advantage. You can't speak about a proper naval battle against yuri, b/c in most of the cases he just makes 1 boomer and wins. In the very rare cases he does not do significant damage and the soviet/allied player is able to handle yuri's ground vehicles, the soviet/allied players wins simply b/c subs/dolphins are far more cost/effective then boomers. 2 subs/2destroyers/4dolphins destroy a boomer easily, but that only applies if it gets to massing naval units.

Well yes boomer rush takes about 3 min,depending on the BO,so it can catch you off guard,against brutal AI by the time I get a boomer they have a few flak cannons so I have to mass boomers,if the AA defense is weak 1 boomer will do then I sell naval yard,if the opponent decides to go navy but you sold navy,just try to destroy as much land buildings as possible. Boomer rush is too good. it might be a bit harder against Yuri,2 gattling cannons covering everything and you're fine,and 2 gat tanks if you want,for protecting miners but that costs too much already. If your opponent isn't Yuri but masses naval units,after your 1 boomer just switch to ground and make mags gats and lashers,thats what I do.

[Afrikorps]

There is no counter for boomer rush. Initiate should be less powerful but the same price as GIs. Brutes are fine the way they are. You gotta have no tc to get hit by them so the power is justified. Gatt tanks should have less armor and should have decreased accuracy, especially while moving. I actually think every unit should be able to fire on the move, just less accurately. Disks should have either less armor or no health regen. Slave miners should have less health but more than war miners because they serve as buildings as well. I think mags should have the same range as prism tanks and deployed seige choppers. Masterminds are perfect the way they are. Yuri needs a full navy. They should have a main battle vessel congruent with the destroyer and typhoon sub. And they need AA in the seas.

[truefeel]

There is no counter for boomer rush. Initiate should be less powerful but the same price as GIs. Brutes are fine the way they are. You gotta have no tc to get hit by them so the power is justified. Gatt tanks should have less armor and should have decreased accuracy, especially while moving. I actually think every unit should be able to fire on the move, just less accurately. Disks should have either less armor or no health regen. Slave miners should have less health but more than war miners because they serve as buildings as well. I think mags should have the same range as prism tanks and deployed seige choppers. Masterminds are perfect the way they are. Yuri needs a full navy. They should have a main battle vessel congruent with the destroyer and typhoon sub. And they need AA in the seas.

Like I said before in the previous topic, you can balance yuri's naval without adding new units. It just requires alot of tought behind it.

[Afrikorps]

But I think adding other units adds to the gameplay. And would make balancing easier.

[truefeel]

But I think adding other units adds to the gameplay. And would make balancing easier.

Of course it does, but then you are modding :). The focus of this topic is about balancing and only that. Though in my eyes adding units for Yuri's naval would still be acceptable, b/c it is a very complex problem, but regressing from that and instead putting alot of effort into making the boomer the equal of a "full option naval choice" (but balanced!), would be the better choice.

I'm not trying to boost here, but I think I came up in the past with a good concept to solve this problem: essentially making the missiles of boomers practically almost useless would be the first step to do so. Second step would be making boomers cost/effective equally or even slightly better then the sub/destroyer and dolphins/squid classes. Best way I tought was to lower it's price and boosting up its firepower.
I predicted that the end result would have 2 consequences:
1. A hugely crippled boomer rush: the tactic would change from an absolute gamewinning tactic to a low-pressure tactic, b/c boomer missiles (or better missile, b/c I changed the amount to 1) would only do a very small damage. I personally think this is a close to perfect change: you don't remove the tactic itself, but you do make it for less effective.
2. Boomers would actually be able to fight (but not really dominate of course) massed naval battles (Boomers in 1.001 loose that) b/c of their reduced costs and increased effectiveness against T1 and T3 naval fighter classes. On top of that, boomers are more likely to be massed this way, in which case boomer missiles would be again a highly effective tool again b/c a big number of weak missiles make together alot of firepower.

The concept has holes, known and unknown, but I think does can be solved. This way you change the game as minimal as possible yet you attain a good balance.

[Afrikorps]

Seems like a good idea. The price would be about 1250? 1400? Somewhere in that range? Stay at radar level?

[Fenring]

Like I said before in the previous topic, you can balance yuri's naval without adding new units. It just requires alot of tought behind it.
No you can't! Stop deluding yourself. This is just impossible to do effectively. The Boomer, as the sole naval unit, is either too weak or too strong. You need additional units to counterbalance the load. Yuri's Army is full of way too many tech gaps that had to be compensated for with overpowering combinations or too much functionality placed into one unit. It is impossible to properly balance Yuri without additional units and massive nerfs to several of his core units.

[truefeel]

No you can't! Stop deluding yourself. This is just impossible to do effectively. The Boomer, as the sole naval unit, is either too weak or too strong. You need additional units to counterbalance the load. Yuri's Army is full of way too many tech gaps that had to be compensated for with overpowering combinations or too much functionality placed into one unit. It is impossible to properly balance Yuri without additional units and massive nerfs to several of his core units.

Yes you can do it without adding units. I do understand that you would think it is be impossible, b/c the problem is really complex and you can't just draw parallels with the other sides. Not adding units requires you to maintain the assymetric gameplay of the yuri factions, compared to the allieds and soviets who have a rather symmetric gameplay, while balancing it out with those assymetric ways. Difficult and very challenging, but doable! Thinking outside the box is a must though.

Settling with added units would also be acceptable though, like I said, but has a drawback that it alters he game by alot. And that would also not be fun b/c that is way too easy :p.

If you would still think it would not be possible, then that is fine, but be specific plz why you don't think so, by answering my explaination why it would be balanced:

I'm not trying to boost here, but I think I came up in the past with a good concept to solve this problem: essentially making the missiles of boomers practically almost useless would be the first step to do so. Second step would be making boomers cost/effective equally or even slightly better then the sub/destroyer and dolphins/squid classes. Best way I tought was to lower it's price and boosting up its firepower.
I predicted that the end result would have 2 consequences:
1. A hugely crippled boomer rush: the tactic would change from an absolute gamewinning tactic to a low-pressure tactic, b/c boomer missiles (or better missile, b/c I changed the amount to 1) would only do a very small damage. I personally think this is a close to perfect change: you don't remove the tactic itself, but you do make it for less effective.
2. Boomers would actually be able to fight (but not really dominate of course) massed naval battles (Boomers in 1.001 loose that) b/c of their reduced costs and increased effectiveness against T1 and T3 naval fighter classes. On top of that, boomers are more likely to be massed this way, in which case boomer missiles would be again a highly effective tool again b/c a big number of weak missiles make together alot of firepower.

Seems like a good idea. The price would be about 1250? 1400? Somewhere in that range? Stay at radar level?Stays at radar level and a price of 1250 was my idea, yeah. That way you could mass boomers.

[Afrikorps]

I agree with both of you. I believe truefeel about it being doable, but I think adding new units is the better way to go. It doesn't have to be like allies and sovs exactly, but there should not be any gaps. I think the thing that makes yuri sort of fun is that he is so alien to allied and sov players. What army would think of a magnetron idea? And his genetic projects are not too sci-fi, but they are not done to such a drastic scale in real life. (Soldiers may receive implants and such).
But back to the topic, yuri should be balanced. Maybe allies, sovs, and yuri could all specialize in a phase of war. Allies dominate the air, sov land, maybe yuri could be a balanced or more naval threat. Adding certain units and subtracting some others could help in all armies.

[Fenring]

Yes you can do it without adding units. I do understand that you would think it is be impossible, b/c the problem is really complex and you can't just draw parallels with the other sides. Not adding units requires you to maintain the assymetric gameplay of the yuri factions, compared to the allieds and soviets who have a rather symmetric gameplay, while balancing it out with those assymetric ways. Difficult and very challenging, but doable! Thinking outside the box is a must though.

Settling with added units would also be acceptable though, like I said, but has a drawback that it alters he game by alot. And that would also not be fun b/c that is way too easy :p.
Even while adding units to fill the glaring gaps in his tech tree, Yuri does still keep his unusual play style. There will still be Magnetrons, Masterminds and Boomers roaming about, causing destruction and doom. This will not change; the only thing that changes is how effective each is at its given ability. You're well aware that Yuri's largest problem is that a few of his units are a little too good at what they do. I'm sure you also know that nerfing them down will put Yuri at a severe disadvantage when it comes to fighting either of the other two armies since the Allies and Soviets have quite a bit of firepower between the both of them. It's this severe downturn that makes new units almost required in order to close a few of those glaring flaws. The additional forces also pave the way for new avenues that Yuri players can explore.

In this way, games against a good Yuri player are a little less one-sided so there is no clear cut advantage to any one side at any point of the game. That's a far sight better than trying to force non-existent balance into the fray.

[truefeel]

Even while adding units to fill the glaring gaps in his tech tree, Yuri does still keep his unusual play style.

I disagree; filling up the gaps would change the focus of his playstyle to something relatively parallel with allieds and soviets. If that is not the case then you are probably adding useless units which would end up not being used.

I'm sure you also know that nerfing them down will put Yuri at a severe disadvantage when it comes to fighting either of the other two armies since the Allies and Soviets have quite a bit of firepower between the both of them.[QUOTE]

If you would mindlessly nerf them down you would be correct, but not when you analyse everything and think about every possible outcome when balancing out the unit.

[QUOTE]It's this severe downturn that makes new units almost required in order to close a few of those glaring flaws. The additional forces also pave the way for new avenues that Yuri players can explore.


You said it there yourself: ALMOST. IMO opting for a balanced Yuri's Revenge without new units is the best outcome. It's walking the most difficult path, but keeping the game as much as possible intact is I think a good price for that. Furthermore, you don't need new units so that yuri players would explore new ways of gaming: balancing game will automatically make sure of that.

In this way, games against a good Yuri player are a little less one-sided so there is no clear cut advantage to any one side at any point of the game. That's a far sight better than trying to force non-existent balance into the fray.

But in my way you can have the same but without altering the game except for the balance and the balance only. Adding units has imo a too big impact on the game for just balance. A conservative way can give the best outcome, as long as you are willing to go really deep to find a way through the complexity of the gameplay of the different sides. The gaps have their charisma and uniqueness. Removing/filling them would imo be a setback for the game, so I believe that merely altering them, so that they fit in the balance at micro and macro level, is the preferable choice. And yes, it is an existing choice, only very well hidden which you need to uncover. This is more then just idealism: it is difficult to attain realism, and that is good enough for me.

[Afrikorps]

What kind of units would you add fenring? How much wiuld they cost and when would they be available?

[Statalyzer]

If you make the Boomer missiles much weaker against land targets, you blow the point of building a navy for Yuri except to counter Allied/Soviet navies, which both also exist to blast the enemy base from the sea, and both of which can do this quite rapidly if left unhindered.

The problem isn't the damage the missiles do, but how rapidly they can be deployed.

1)Tone down dolphins or else increase the price.

2)Make the squid a Yuri radar unit or basic unit.

3)Make the boomer a Yuri battle lab unit.

Wouldn't perfectly fix everything, but would be pretty close to balanced between the 3 navies. You might have to adjust the squid/boomer slightly. It also makes a lot more sense because the Soviets lost their other mind-control stuff from RA2->YR (cloning vats, yuris, psy sensor) to the Yuri side, so they should have lost the Squid also since it is mind-controlled.

[Fenring]

What kind of units would you add fenring? How much wiuld they cost and when would they be available?
Check my Red Alert X thread. Those are the types of things I add to Yuri while changing quite a lot of his army. I changed Yuri quite a lot in that project though so he's more conventional, but there are some solid ideas in there.

I disagree; filling up the gaps would change the focus of his playstyle to something relatively parallel with allieds and soviets. If that is not the case then you are probably adding useless units which would end up not being used.
In some instances, yes, he would be more paralleling the Allies and Soviets, but only because that's how the balance works in Command and Conquer. Every faction shares similar units that follows the same line of technology unique to that faction. And with Yuri, there are units missing that need to be addressed to bring his laughable army up to par with the Allies and Soviets.

If you would mindlessly nerf them down you would be correct, but not when you analyse everything and think about every possible outcome when balancing out the unit.
It doesn't even need to be "mindless" nerfing to run into the same issue. It's a simple fact that Yuri's forces are laughable in comparison to the Allies and Soviets. It's his combinations that put a dent in good balance. Even minute changes can throw off the entire balance and tip the scale out of his favor a little too much.

You said it there yourself: ALMOST. IMO opting for a balanced Yuri's Revenge without new units is the best outcome. It's walking the most difficult path, but keeping the game as much as possible intact is I think a good price for that. Furthermore, you don't need new units so that yuri players would explore new ways of gaming: balancing game will automatically make sure of that.
Just altering Yuri's units to "be more fair" doesn't eliminate any of his core issues. He will still have a heavy advantage because of his units and how they perform, especially in his unit combos. Yuri has the problem where he's either too strong or too weak; little middleground exists without a few new units to compensate the gaps left behind, especially with his navy.

But in my way you can have the same but without altering the game except for the balance and the balance only. Adding units has imo a too big impact on the game for just balance. A conservative way can give the best outcome, as long as you are willing to go really deep to find a way through the complexity of the gameplay of the different sides. The gaps have their charisma and uniqueness. Removing/filling them would imo be a setback for the game, so I believe that merely altering them, so that they fit in the balance at micro and macro level, is the preferable choice. And yes, it is an existing choice, only very well hidden which you need to uncover. This is more then just idealism: it is difficult to attain realism, and that is good enough for me.
But the problem with the conservative route is that you're merely placing a bandaid on a broken leg. It's not enough to actually fix the problem. That's why new units are absolutely necessary. Just a few though; too many and that does present a problem with redundancy. Yuri's main problem lies with his naval presence and that's where he needs the new forces the most.

[truefeel]

In some instances, yes, he would be more paralleling the Allies and Soviets, but only because that's how the balance works in Command and Conquer. Every faction shares similar units that follows the same line of technology unique to that faction. And with Yuri, there are units missing that need to be addressed to bring his laughable army up to par with the Allies and Soviets.The developers decided to not have parallel factions concerning Yuri. Although I'm not supporting that choice, I think preserving it while achieving a strong balance is more then just possible and desirable.

It doesn't even need to be "mindless" nerfing to run into the same issue. It's a simple fact that Yuri's forces are laughable in comparison to the Allies and Soviets. It's his combinations that put a dent in good balance. Even minute changes can throw off the entire balance and tip the scale out of his favor a little too much.Then you make precise and well tested changes to balance it out. having a risk that imbalance b/c opposite imbalance is not an excuse IMO, especially if that risk can be minimised just be loads of testing.

Just altering Yuri's units to "be more fair" doesn't eliminate any of his core issues. He will still have a heavy advantage because of his units and how they perform, especially in his unit combos. Yuri has the problem where he's either too strong or too weak; little middleground exists without a few new units to compensate the gaps left behind, especially with his navy.And I tell you that that little middleground should be enough to get a strong balance. Just b/c it is difficult to find the balance on the 2 edged sword does not mean finding balance my way is impossible. Yes, mistakes will be made when balancing yuri without adding units, ALOT actually, but that is not a problem at all. By constantly testing, correcting,... you will eventually get there. Yeh he has a laughable army; I'd say let's make from that laughable army a smoothly, perfectly curved army which although assymetrical compared to the other factions, is really balanced towards those factions.

But the problem with the conservative route is that you're merely placing a bandaid on a broken leg. It's not enough to actually fix the problem. That's why new units are absolutely necessary. Just a few though; too many and that does present a problem with redundancy. Yuri's main problem lies with his naval presence and that's where he needs the new forces the most.Not a bandaid on a broken leg. I would rather describe it more as saving the leg instead of amputating it and replacing it with prosthetic, mechanical one. Add units for a balance patch and you never can go back. Furthermore, where are you eventually gonna draw the line? Allieds and soviets also have alot of, smaller, gaps inbetween those 2. It is seducing to start adding units there too b/c you already crossed that border. Eventually it will not be a balanced Yuri's Revenge anymore, but a new game with RA2 graphics. My method on the other hand, while very difficult to get the job done, can attain the same level of balance without taking it that far as adding units. One remark here though: big changes need to be made then, of which the boomer would come out as the most mutated unit. So be carefull about intepreting "conservative": it means here not adding units and not changing units into soemthing completely different, but it does apply that thinking outside the box is allowed and actually supported.

[apple23]

How about this truefeel-- why don't you actually start working on a balance patch to address Yuri's issues, and after a while of tweaking this and that within the boundaries of his current units, you come back to us and tell us if your opinion changes regarding his need for new types of units. All of your arguments supporting your way have been analogies, speculations, and head-in-the-clouds kind of thinking. You haven't yet really gotten down and discussed where and what you're going to change and do as far as making balance in YR...

All of this
Just b/c it is difficult to find the balance on the 2 edged sword does not mean finding balance my way is impossible
and
I would rather describe it more as saving the leg instead of amputating it and replacing it with prosthetic, mechanical one.
crap isn't getting this discussion anywhere; let's get down and talk turkey.

I have to agree with Fenring here though; Yuri's army is particularly bad because of the lack of time and effort put into his army. His faction is, as a whole, incomplete; particularly his navy, but his ground force and his infantry force are also lacking in a few areas. The reason he is OP on land is the magnetron. He is OP in naval (early game at least) because of the Boomer's avaliability in early game. His airforce is all in all balanced, but floating discs have the massive advantage of not needing to reload, having relatively long ranged attack, and relatively good speed and armor for its power and cost.

His lasher tank is puny in comparison to the Rhino Tank, and barely equals the Grizzly Tank. While the Allies have the very powerful Mirage tank at higher tech levels, Yuri has no practical way, besides the magnetron, to compensate for his basic lack of firepower on most levels. Remove the magnetron, and his army is weak.

We need more than just a few "bandaids" to make this game even close to perfectly balanced.


Add units for a balance patch and you never can go back.

Sure you can. It IS your patch, after all...


Furthermore, where are you eventually gonna draw the line?

Where it needs to be drawn. By that I mean what is necessary for balance enough to have a fun and enjoayble game.


So be carefull about intepreting "conservative": it means here not adding units and not changing units into soemthing completely different, but it does apply that thinking outside the box is allowed and actually supported.

You be careful yourself about interpreting conservative; first off you're hardly in a position to tell him what he meant when he said that because, well, you hardly have the same brain as him, but also know that we understand what you mean by this balance level. Obvously for some conformity of balance some heavy changes are necessary, particularly with the soviets' country special untis, of which 3 out of the 4 are relatively useless. Also it is worth noting that your definition of conservative still conforms to Fenring's context without presenting conflict or argument...

[Fenring]

The developers decided to not have parallel factions concerning Yuri. Although I'm not supporting that choice, I think preserving it while achieving a strong balance is more then just possible and desirable.
No, the developers were rushed. There were some unused Yuri concepts that didn't make the cut but would have given Yuri a better feel at the same time. And just checking out some of Yuri's art code just screams unfinished like the Westwood team didn't have enough to finish what they started. But rather, were forced to polish an unfinished product. That's the more likely scenario than "they wanted something different."

Then you make precise and well tested changes to balance it out. having a risk that imbalance b/c opposite imbalance is not an excuse IMO, especially if that risk can be minimised just be loads of testing.
All of the testing doesn't change the fact that Yuri isn't finished. Little tweaks aren't what Yuri's army needs; his army requires massive changes and a huge rescaling of how he plays. New units come huge into play here in toning Yuri's overpowering combinations and evening the playing field.

[apple23]

Fenring, while your argument that Yuri does need a massive rescaling of his strategy and different/new units is valid, I do have to point out here that, looking over to truefeel's point, that WOULD cross the boundaries of a simple balance patch, and would fall in to the category of a balance modification.
A few new units sure, but when you talk of a massive rescaling of his strategy that sounds more like a mod to me.

Also, there was one specific thing in one of Truefeel's earlier posts I wanted to touch base upon:

I think I came up in the past with a good concept to solve this problem: essentially making the missiles of boomers practically almost useless would be the first step to do so. Second step would be making boomers cost/effective equally or even slightly better then the sub/destroyer and dolphins/squid classes. Best way I tought was to lower it's price and boosting up its firepower.
I predicted that the end result would have 2 consequences:
1. A hugely crippled boomer rush: the tactic would change from an absolute gamewinning tactic to a low-pressure tactic, b/c boomer missiles (or better missile, b/c I changed the amount to 1) would only do a very small damage. I personally think this is a close to perfect change: you don't remove the tactic itself, but you do make it for less effective.
2. Boomers would actually be able to fight (but not really dominate of course) massed naval battles (Boomers in 1.001 loose that) b/c of their reduced costs and increased effectiveness against T1 and T3 naval fighter classes. On top of that, boomers are more likely to be massed this way, in which case boomer missiles would be again a highly effective tool again b/c a big number of weak missiles make together alot of firepower.



Now you are right about some things here; yes, making his missiles do insignificant damage DOES defeat the boomer rush, but think about when the playing field levels out in the later game. Boomers are already as they are balanced versus the rest of the factions' naval forces in late game, but with this change in place, yuri is at a massive disadvantage in late game.

While Yuri's boomer subs are busy throwing rocks and pebbles at the enemy's concrete structures, the same enemy is launching aircraft drones and giant missiles and rockets into the Yuri player's base. Yuri doesn't need a boomer nerf, he needs the boomer to be at B lab tech and stay as is and have another unit come in and fill the early tech anti-naval unit role. That unit doesn't even need any form of anti-surface fire, just a form of anti naval and anti-submarine-warfare weapons.

The issue is simply too complex to attempt to mould and shape one single unit that is supposed to fill every applicable naval unit role in one unit, especially considering those roles come at different tech levels, and for a good reason too.

That being said, the main reason why Yuri needs new units to fill needed roles, rather than have all these "one unit does all" units is, simply put, Tech Level Differences. And I mean tech level differences seen when paralleling Yuri's unit roles to the tech levels that other factions get those unit roles in (like the boomer; getting high power anti surface bombardment at radar tech, rather than B lab tech for allies and soviets). At the VERY LEAST, those parameters should parallel between all factions.


Now, for clarity's sake, I am not saying that the balance patch must have so many new units; here I am saying that to achieve any true and proper form of balance, you cannot make just a simple balance patch; you must make a full-blown balance modification.

That isn't to say that a balance patch cannot make Yuri's side a bit more fun to play and a bit more acceptable to play against, but to really tackle many of the core issues that his faction has, you would have to cross over into the modding world.

[truefeel]

Prepare for long post :p.

If you make the Boomer missiles much weaker against land targets, you blow the point of building a navy for Yuri except to counter Allied/Soviet navies, which both also exist to blast the enemy base from the sea, and both of which can do this quite rapidly if left unhindered.


Yes, Yuri will be pushed into a more passive role this way. It's very difficult to change that b/c then it will be impossible to find a strong balance. However, do know that if yuri is forced in such situation and needs to counter allieds/soviet navies, that he has a small advantage b/c boomers would most likely be slightly more cost/effective towards destroyer/sub and maybe dolphin/squid classes. Slightly, but that should be justifiable for the forced passive role. Furthermore, if he is forced into a naval battle he can on his turn use that to his advantage: the boomer missiles, although heavily weakened are still there! If a yuri player is forced to build up a naval army of boomers he too can use those to blow the enemies base, and b/c we are not talking about one boomer but alteast a handfull of boomers, the quantity of boomer missiles would probably be as much a threat as a dreadnaught or aircraft carrier.

That leaves one problem: Allieds and especially soviets go in many cases naval solely to pump out one dreadnaught; as you said that can be a rapid defeat for yuri. I was thinking here in the line of that boomers would do extra damage to that class, so that countering a quick dreadnaught/aircraft carrier is possible.

So overall, the solution would consist of Yuri indeed be passive, b/c it would give disadvantages of he went naval and the other player would not (but that does not apply for pure naval maps!). But if he was forced into doing so, he would have a slight advantage b/c both players would be also be spending money on naval and the boomer would be slightly more cost/effective, with emphasis to slightly, b/c allieds and soviets should then again not be scared off to go naval. I'm also assuming here that the yuri player scouts the other's base and can see that the other player builds naval (which is pretty much a really relevant assumption).

The problem isn't the damage the missiles do, but how rapidly they can be deployed.

1)Tone down dolphins or else increase the price.

2)Make the squid a Yuri radar unit or basic unit.

3)Make the boomer a Yuri battle lab unit.1) Toning down dolphins is something that fits in a more proper balanced Yuri's Revenge, so that is not a problem.

2) IMO: No, absolutely no. That has the same effect as adding units. Infact, adding completely new units would still be a better solution then.

3) Obviously, if 2) can't go throug, this one neither. Better to keep the boomer at radar level and change it radically.

Wouldn't perfectly fix everything, but would be pretty close to balanced between the 3 navies. You might have to adjust the squid/boomer slightly. It also makes a lot more sense because the Soviets lost their other mind-control stuff from RA2->YR (cloning vats, yuris, psy sensor) to the Yuri side, so they should have lost the Squid also since it is mind-controlled.But balancing is not about making sence.

How about this truefeel-- why don't you actually start working on a balance patch to address Yuri's issues, and after a while of tweaking this and that within the boundaries of his current units, you come back to us and tell us if your opinion changes regarding his need for new types of units. All of your arguments supporting your way have been analogies, speculations, and head-in-the-clouds kind of thinking. You haven't yet really gotten down and discussed where and what you're going to change and do as far as making balance in YR...

You surely remember the balance patch from a few years ago?

crap isn't getting this discussion anywhere; let's get down and talk turkey.Fact is also that I actually did went into a more detailed argueing:

'm not trying to boost here, but I think I came up in the past with a good concept to solve this problem: essentially making the missiles of boomers practically almost useless would be the first step to do so. Second step would be making boomers cost/effective equally or even slightly better then the sub/destroyer and dolphins/squid classes. Best way I tought was to lower it's price and boosting up its firepower.
I predicted that the end result would have 2 consequences:
1. A hugely crippled boomer rush: the tactic would change from an absolute gamewinning tactic to a low-pressure tactic, b/c boomer missiles (or better missile, b/c I changed the amount to 1) would only do a very small damage. I personally think this is a close to perfect change: you don't remove the tactic itself, but you do make it for less effective.
2. Boomers would actually be able to fight (but not really dominate of course) massed naval battles (Boomers in 1.001 loose that) b/c of their reduced costs and increased effectiveness against T1 and T3 naval fighter classes. On top of that, boomers are more likely to be massed this way, in which case boomer missiles would be again a highly effective tool again b/c a big number of weak missiles make together alot of firepower.

And note this:

If you would still think it would not be possible, then that is fine, but be specific plz why you don't think so, by answering my explaination why it would be balanced:


This was made after Fenring argued that you need to add units instead of balancing it with the means given by the original game. I explicitly asked there to go specific on units, on which he promptly ignored that in his next post and he went himself into a very generalising argueing. What do you expect then?

I have to agree with Fenring here though; Yuri's army is particularly bad because of the lack of time and effort put into his army. His faction is, as a whole, incomplete; particularly his navy, but his ground force and his infantry force are also lacking in a few areas. The reason he is OP on land is the magnetron. He is OP in naval (early game at least) because of the Boomer's avaliability in early game. His airforce is all in all balanced, but floating discs have the massive advantage of not needing to reload, having relatively long ranged attack, and relatively good speed and armor for its power and cost.

For clarification: I agree that yuri's army is incomplete and that there was not much effort behind it. Where I don't agree with is as fan making yuri's army complete by adding units, b/c nobody would know if that would be the, good or bad, vision of the developers. Adding units would be mutating the, although incomplete, game by far too much. I'm not willing to put my subjective interpretation of how yuri's army should be complete in the form of adding units, and yes I am willing on the other hand to put my subjective interpretation of how Yuri's Revenge should be balanced in the form of how Yuri should be balanced without adding units, b/c that WILL have less a big impact on the game.


His lasher tank is puny in comparison to the Rhino Tank, and barely equals the Grizzly Tank. While the Allies have the very powerful Mirage tank at higher tech levels, Yuri has no practical way, besides the magnetron, to compensate for his basic lack of firepower on most levels. Remove the magnetron, and his army is weak.Lasher tanks on the other hand are a paralllel with the soviet rhino tank, just not a balanced out one. And I really don't know why you are comparing a T1 unit (lasher tank) with a T3 unit (mirage tank). That's not logical. All factions are divided into 3 tiers, so plz compare units from the same tier. And who said we will remove the magnetron (being it really removing it or making to so weak it would be useless)?

We need more than just a few "bandaids" to make this game even close to perfectly balanced.Like I said, I interpret it more as saving the leg instead of replacing it with a prosthetic one. Yuri's incomplete army has concerning gameplay a very unique gameplay. What do you think what will happen if you add units to make him more parallel with other sides? He'll loose a huge portion of that uniqueness. Balancing without adding unit will probably also make him loose a portion of the uniqueness, but not that much. You are right though, we need more then just a few bandaids and I'm personally am willing to go VERY far to balance without adding units, and I truly believe that is possible.

Sure you can. It IS your patch, after all...What I ment there is that if you add units and wire them so that they make Yuri's army be parallel with the other factions, it would be difficult to go back on that decision. You would have to start all over then.

Where it needs to be drawn. By that I mean what is necessary for balance enough to have a fun and enjoayble game.And where it needs to be drawn is HIGHLY subjective. Fenring would choose for adding new units for Yuri. An other person would do the same for Soviets to make them as versatile as allieds and so on. And yes, you can get through all those ways balance.

You be careful yourself about interpreting conservative; first off you're hardly in a position to tell him what he meant when he said that because, well, you hardly have the same brain as him, but also know that we understand what you mean by this balance level. Obvously for some conformity of balance some heavy changes are necessary, particularly with the soviets' country special untis, of which 3 out of the 4 are relatively useless. Also it is worth noting that your definition of conservative still conforms to Fenring's context without presenting conflict or argument...Dude, that was really not necessary. I clarified what I ment with "conservative"; that is not the same as telling him what he ment.

No, the developers were rushed. There were some unused Yuri concepts that didn't make the cut but would have given Yuri a better feel at the same time. And just checking out some of Yuri's art code just screams unfinished like the Westwood team didn't have enough to finish what they started. But rather, were forced to polish an unfinished product. That's the more likely scenario than "they wanted something different."

being rushed is not in conflict with my argument :). They made decisions, yes against their own will, to not add those extra units.

All of the testing doesn't change the fact that Yuri isn't finished. Little tweaks aren't what Yuri's army needs; his army requires massive changes and a huge rescaling of how he plays. New units come huge into play here in toning Yuri's overpowering combinations and evening the playing field.Agreed that yuri is not finished, but that does not mean we have to finish him in order to balance him.

Now you are right about some things here; yes, making his missiles do insignificant damage DOES defeat the boomer rush, but think about when the playing field levels out in the later game. Boomers are already as they are balanced versus the rest of the factions' naval forces in late game, but with this change in place, yuri is at a massive disadvantage in late game.


Boomers will be alot cheaper and thus also massable. The key here is that one boomer would do insignificant damage concerning missiles, but that multiple boomers would do significant damage.

And no, boomers are really not balanced with other naval! 2 subs defeat 1 boomer easily. cost/effective wise the boomer looses to subs, destroyers and dolphins. Maybe not against squids b/c boomers can't be grabbed, but that would be it.

While Yuri's boomer subs are busy throwing rocks and pebbles at the enemy's concrete structures, the same enemy is launching aircraft drones and giant missiles and rockets into the Yuri player's base. Yuri doesn't need a boomer nerf, he needs the boomer to be at B lab tech and stay as is and have another unit come in and fill the early tech anti-naval unit role. That unit doesn't even need any form of anti-surface fire, just a form of anti naval and anti-submarine-warfare weapons.But aircraft carriers are pure siege units which are also far more costly then boomers in my vision. They deserve that, including balance-wise, to have that INDIVIDUAL advantage over the boomer!

That isn't to say that a balance patch cannot make Yuri's side a bit more fun to play and a bit more acceptable to play against, but to really tackle many of the core issues that his faction has, you would have to cross over into the modding world.Ah, but modding is just far more then adding a few more units :p.

Listen, I'll be going into details, but be prepared that it will be a very long part. I'll be adding that to my post later on.

EDIT: I added a document to my post in which I outline how I would take care of the boomer, as example here how I would balance without adding units.

[apple23]

You surely remember the balance patch from a few years ago?

Fact is also that I actually did went into a more detailed argueing:
I believe I mentioned your boomer post as the one exception to my argument... if not my bad. Anyways, point still standing we are NO LONGER talking about symantecs. Also, AFAIK that balance patch you were working on with Daishi never really went anywhere; sorry if I was mistaken there, but AFAIK you never got very far with it, let alone ever really went public with it.
This was made after Fenring argued that you need to add units instead of balancing it with the means given by the original game. I explicitly asked there to go specific on units, on which he promptly ignored that in his next post and he went himself into a very generalising argueing. What do you expect then?
I expected the same kind of post i made-- something to steer the conversation back from generalizations to specifics. You are right that Fenring too has been talking in broad generalizations anyhow.


For clarification: I agree that yuri's army is incomplete and that there was not much effort behind it. Where I don't agree with is as fan making yuri's army complete by adding units, b/c nobody would know if that would be the, good or bad, vision of the developers. Adding units would be mutating the, although incomplete, game by far too much. I'm not willing to put my subjective interpretation of how yuri's army should be complete in the form of adding units, and yes I am willing on the other hand to put my subjective interpretation of how Yuri's Revenge should be balanced in the form of how Yuri should be balanced without adding units, b/c that WILL have less a big impact on the game.

Like I said, I interpret it more as saving the leg instead of replacing it with a prosthetic one. Yuri's incomplete army has concerning gameplay a very unique gameplay. What do you think what will happen if you add units to make him more parallel with other sides? He'll loose a huge portion of that uniqueness. Balancing without adding unit will probably also make him loose a portion of the uniqueness, but not that much. You are right though, we need more then just a few bandaids and I'm personally am willing to go VERY far to balance without adding units, and I truly believe that is possible.

I think i can group these two comments together because they both basically say the same thing in slightly different words, anyways...

Yuri's army is imbalanced and broken mainly because of its imcompletion. You keep making reference to the "saving the broken leg, instead of replacing it" line; how can you "save" the leg, if it was never a complete and whole leg in the first place? Also we aren't replacing the leg, we are filling in the holes and gaps in between that leg, thus restoring its full function, while keeping its conformity and uniqueness as a leg.

I know I am talking in a generalization here, but I have to... as you said it is surprisingly hard to argue specifics against analogies...
Lasher tanks on the other hand are a paralllel with the soviet rhino tank, just not a balanced out one.
Okay no they are not, especially when you take build time multipliers into consideration...

And I really don't know why you are comparing a T1 unit (lasher tank) with a T3 unit (mirage tank).
I'm not. Read between the lines. I will explain below:

That's not logical.
And this is my point. It's not logical that we end up having to match up the T1 lasher tank with the T3 Mirage tank. But we do anyways, because even when both yuri and Allies are at T3, the allies get Mirage tanks, preferrable to Grizzlies in 8/10 situations, but Yuri is stuck with the Lasher from T1 because he doesn't get any real effective mainline tank at the higher tiers. The soviets get the apoc; while it isn't as mobile, it is still useful sometimes. Yuri gets nothing though; he hardly has any effective counter to Mirages anyways.

All factions are divided into 3 tiers, so plz compare units from the same tier.
See point above.

And who said we will remove the magnetron (being it really removing it or making to so weak it would be useless)?

Without the magnetron being overpowered as it is, Yuri's army is drastically less effective, thus the need for something else to bolster his army, particularly at tech level 3. Yuri needs some kind of conventional weaponry at T3.

What I ment there is that if you add units and wire them so that they make Yuri's army be parallel with the other factions, it would be difficult to go back on that decision. You would have to start all over then.

Not really... and who ever said anything about adding enough units to parallel Yuri's faction to the others?

And where it needs to be drawn is HIGHLY subjective. Fenring would choose for adding new units for Yuri. An other person would do the same for Soviets to make them as versatile as allieds and so on. And yes, you can get through all those ways balance.

The line is actually a lot more objective than you may think; trust me, when you start getting into it and start playtesting it, you will get a feel for where exactly that line lies. At that point you just need enough opinions and enough playtesting to get a general consensus to see if everyone agrees.

Dude, that was really not necessary. I clarified what I ment with "conservative"; that is not the same as telling him what he ment.

It doesn't matter what you define conservative as; you were telling Fenring to be careful of what he interpreted conservative as IN HIS OWN CONTEXT. Nobody can possibly understand the context from which he used that word better than the writer himself. Period. End of story.

Agreed that yuri is not finished, but that does not mean we have to finish him in order to balance him.

TBH, it does. How can an unfinished faction be balanced? They kind of go hand in hand, if you think about it...


Boomers will be alot cheaper and thus also massable. The key here is that one boomer would do insignificant damage concerning missiles, but that multiple boomers would do significant damage.

Meh, I can't argue any further because I don't know exactly what value you are giving for the damage the boomer inflicts; knowing that would completely change my perspective on the balance of the scenario.

And no, boomers are really not balanced with other naval! 2 subs defeat 1 boomer easily. cost/effective wise the boomer looses to subs, destroyers and dolphins. Maybe not against squids b/c boomers can't be grabbed, but that would be it.

I didn't say perfectly balanced, and usually we're not talking about 1:1 cost ratio in a battle. Don't forget that Yuri still has a much stronger economy. Putting that aside anyways, there is a reason that 1 boomer (being 2000) loses to 2 subs (being, collectively, 2000), and that is this:

Boomers are not specifically sub-killers. Typhoons ARE. So obviously the specialized sub-killer will be more effective at killing subs than the sub that doesn't specialize in killing subs. Don't forget the whole reason we are nerfing the boomer: he has those giant mega killer rockets that decimate your base. That is his primary role. Boomers aren't supposed to beat Typhoons and Dolphins in 1:1 cost-wise fights. If that would happen, that would only further overpower the unit.

Mutiple roles all crammed into one unit means that the unit has to be more expensive, otherwise it's just not fair for the other factions. Remember that to bombard your (yuri) base, that soviet player also needs a battle lab AND he has to spend an additional 2000 on a dreadnought. Pitch 2 subs and a dreadnought versus 2 boomers, and while the cost is the same and the roles the army serves are the same, the boomers are in this case better on both fronts.

But aircraft carriers are pure siege units which are also far more costly then boomers in my vision. They deserve that, including balance-wise, to have that INDIVIDUAL advantage over the boomer!

See above point.

All in all, I see the merits, the disadvantages, and the interesting and diverse strategy that having one universal naval unit offers. I however think that it will be very difficult to balance. Yuri's ground game, however, is screaming incomplete. You could probably end up getting the boomer just right, but Yuri's ground game needs far too much work to work within the confines of his current units. He simply doesn't have enough conventional firepower to possibly match up with his enemies. Mind control and berserk gas and lifting tanks and such is fun and all, but there is a certain degree of conventional firepower that is still necessary.

Ah, but modding is just far more then adding a few more units :p.Depends on how far you take it. A simple few balance edits and new units can be considered a mod; you don't have to do anything flashy.

[Fenring]

Broad generalizations about what, exactly? :rockbrow:

I've thoroughly looked at YR for a very long time. Especially since I was modding RA2 before YR was even out so I've been modding YR since about day four. I actually played it a bit before modding it, but I was a noob back then and my modding was pretty lame. But, I understand the balance now and understand the faults with all sides, not just Yuri. However, it does seem as though Yuri has more of his own.

It's hard to be really specific without actually diving into changes I've actually made to seperate the bad from the good, and to even out the sides among all tiers and each stage of the game. Some of the things I've done actually contradict a few of your changes, truefeel. Especially how I handled the Boomer, but then again, I saw the importance of new units so I was able to take a new direction with it. That, right there, is the biggest problem with Yuri and no new forces; there's only one direction to go and that's down. There's no other possibility with only what he has already.

New units unlock new avenues with which you can work Yuri's forces. Christ, I went all over the map when it came to how I've handled Yuri.

I'll use the Boomer as the classic example. Being that I added a sub, a shoreline assault ship and an AA ship, I was able to just push the Boomer into a new slot without sacking its base assault power. I was able to easily push the Boomer to lab tech and sack its torpedoes so all it had was missiles for buildings. New units in place, he has no gap to be exploited, he works as a fair navy in all points of the game and even has his own brand of sneak play for the Boomer, which is now more easily countered since it's not in play 3 minutes in. This is the sort of thing I mean when I say Yuri requires new units to be a more balanced army.

[truefeel]

I believe I mentioned your boomer post as the one exception to my argument... if not my bad. Anyways, point still standing we are NO LONGER talking about symantecs. Also, AFAIK that balance patch you were working on with Daishi never really went anywhere; sorry if I was mistaken there, but AFAIK you never got very far with it, let alone ever really went public with it.

The boomer is the hardest part of it all. If you are able to balance that one out, you are able to balance out masterminds, magnetrons, the whole anchelata in short.

The balance did not went anymore due to the simple fact we lost interest. We did not get enough people to test it and Daishi and I had our own lives. However, I still have the rulesmd and all the changes are posted in that thread. I could very easily pick up from where we left.

I expected the same kind of post i made-- something to steer the conversation back from generalizations to specifics. You are right that Fenring too has been talking in broad generalizations anyhow.

I was in the assumption that Fenring did read, but ignored it and went into generalizations, which was against my own will, but I respected his choice to do so. However, I clearly had the will at the start to go into specifics. Still have; the document I provided is the proof of that.

Yuri's army is imbalanced and broken mainly because of its imcompletion. You keep making reference to the "saving the broken leg, instead of replacing it" line; how can you "save" the leg, if it was never a complete and whole leg in the first place? Also we aren't replacing the leg, we are filling in the holes and gaps in between that leg, thus restoring its full function, while keeping its conformity and uniqueness as a leg.

Indeed it was never a whole leg. It was almost not walkable on it, and here we are discussing how to make it properly walkable. And yes, you are replacing the leg b/c it comes down to making Yuri strictly parallel to the other sides, in which Yuri looses his uniqueness. I understand and respect your choice to add units to make balancing less complex, and if any of you will make a balance "patch" this way ever, I would not be so against it. However, I personally would never do so, b/c you simply CAN balance yuri. My example of the boomer being the best example you could possible imagine: balancing it out against 3 classes of naval units + having an overall balance. If it is possible to fill up the biggest gap, then it surely also must be possible to do the same for smaller gaps.

Okay no they are not, especially when you take build time multipliers into consideration...

Now you are talking about the balance, not the parallel. The paralell is they have both a tank which the same characteristics: can only fight ground units, good against vehicles, decent against buildings, weak against infantry and they re T1. How well they are balanced towards eachother has nothing to do with being parallel. Having a parallel though makes balances very easy.

And this is my point. It's not logical that we end up having to match up the T1 lasher tank with the T3 Mirage tank. But we do anyways, because even when both yuri and Allies are at T3, the allies get Mirage tanks, preferrable to Grizzlies in 8/10 situations, but Yuri is stuck with the Lasher from T1 because he doesn't get any real effective mainline tank at the higher tiers. The soviets get the apoc; while it isn't as mobile, it is still useful sometimes. Yuri gets nothing though; he hardly has any effective counter to Mirages anyways.

No good yuri player would ever counter mirages with lasher tanks. If he ever happens to attack with lashers, that would be scrap overs from earlier in the game, but late game he does NOT produce lasher tanks anymore! Yuri uses gatt tanks, floating disks + magnetrons to counter mirage tanks, but he does not build lasher tanks to counter mirages. And yes, the ussual way he has a good counter against mirages (but the late game mix of allieds, mirages-prism tanks- GGI IFVs is a different story).

Without the magnetron being overpowered as it is, Yuri's army is drastically less effective, thus the need for something else to bolster his army, particularly at tech level 3. Yuri needs some kind of conventional weaponry at T3.

So you don't think about the possibility of BALANCING the magnetron?!? "yeh, it's overpowered so it must be removed" --> not logical at all :p.

Not really... and who ever said anything about adding enough units to parallel Yuri's faction to the others?

Fenring and in lesser mather you?

It doesn't matter what you define conservative as; you were telling Fenring to be careful of what he interpreted conservative as IN HIS OWN CONTEXT. Nobody can possibly understand the context from which he used that word better than the writer himself. Period. End of story.

Oh man, you really need to stop making assumptions (b/c it simply is not true; I truly said that from my own context, not his) and you really need to stop worrying about something that even not fenring is worrying about.

TBH, it does. How can an unfinished faction be balanced? They kind of go hand in hand, if you think about it...
Step outside the box, son. You are pinned down on the unfinished caracter of the yuri side. You don't need strict parallels between the factions to have balance. I don't like to point over and over again at the boomer, but you said yourself that my solution could be right. You said it could be right that the biggest gap can be filled without adding units. Step down from your engraved opinion that you need to balance with adding units and look at the bigger picture.

Meh, I can't argue any further because I don't know exactly what value you are giving for the damage the boomer inflicts; knowing that would completely change my perspective on the balance of the scenario.

I somewhere have the rules laying around. I'm not bothered to look now; I'll do that later on.

I didn't say perfectly balanced, and usually we're not talking about 1:1 cost ratio in a battle. Don't forget that Yuri still has a much stronger economy. Putting that aside anyways, there is a reason that 1 boomer (being 2000) loses to 2 subs (being, collectively, 2000), and that is this:

Boomers are not specifically sub-killers. Typhoons ARE. So obviously the specialized sub-killer will be more effective at killing subs than the sub that doesn't specialize in killing subs. Don't forget the whole reason we are nerfing the boomer: he has those giant mega killer rockets that decimate your base. That is his primary role. Boomers aren't supposed to beat Typhoons and Dolphins in 1:1 cost-wise fights. If that would happen, that would only further overpower the unit.

Mutiple roles all crammed into one unit means that the unit has to be more expensive, otherwise it's just not fair for the other factions. Remember that to bombard your (yuri) base, that soviet player also needs a battle lab AND he has to spend an additional 2000 on a dreadnought. Pitch 2 subs and a dreadnought versus 2 boomers, and while the cost is the same and the roles the army serves are the same, the boomers are in this case better on both fronts.

Problem is you can't solve the siege part of the boomer without looking at the "fighter" too. It sounds logical that a boomer is less cost effective b/c it has 2 characteristics, but the sad fact is that it is not balanced that way. Yuri lacks a competitive naval fighter and if you want to tone down the boomer rush, so toning down siege part, you'll have to rise it's value as a naval fighter. There is also a dissonance inbetween our arguments: I talked about it should be, you are talking how it is in the game. Plz correct yourself.

All in all, I see the merits, the disadvantages, and the interesting and diverse strategy that having one universal naval unit offers. I however think that it will be very difficult to balance. Yuri's ground game, however, is screaming incomplete. You could probably end up getting the boomer just right, but Yuri's ground game needs far too much work to work within the confines of his current units. He simply doesn't have enough conventional firepower to possibly match up with his enemies. Mind control and berserk gas and lifting tanks and such is fun and all, but there is a certain degree of conventional firepower that is still necessary.

Now that does not make sence. Your leaving here the door open to balance out 1 universal unit concerning naval to a full sized naval army, while you are still pinned down that even though Yuri's ground troops have far more parallels with Soviet/Allied ground troops, it can't be balanced?!?:wtf:

Depends on how far you take it. A simple few balance edits and new units can be considered a mod; you don't have to do anything flashy.

you take the "simple few balance edits" far too lightly, even if you add units.

I've thoroughly looked at YR for a very long time. Especially since I was modding RA2 before YR was even out so I've been modding YR since about day four. I actually played it a bit before modding it, but I was a noob back then and my modding was pretty lame. But, I understand the balance now and understand the faults with all sides, not just Yuri. However, it does seem as though Yuri has more of his own.

Problem is understand it also to the fullest. So knowing the game is not really an argument here anymore.

I'll use the Boomer as the classic example. Being that I added a sub, a shoreline assault ship and an AA ship, I was able to just push the Boomer into a new slot without sacking its base assault power. I was able to easily push the Boomer to lab tech and sack its torpedoes so all it had was missiles for buildings. New units in place, he has no gap to be exploited, he works as a fair navy in all points of the game and even has his own brand of sneak play for the Boomer, which is now more easily countered since it's not in play 3 minutes in. This is the sort of thing I mean when I say Yuri requires new units to be a more balanced army.

And I tell you I can give Yuri a sub and a siege unit that is quantity-effective concerning it's siege part and make it fully balanced. Heck, I could even turn it even so that Yuri would not even need an AA boat.



Plz fenring, READ my document that I provided in my previous post and react on that! I'd like to step off from this generalizing way of discussing.

[Teron]

I think I may be able to play YR again thanks to some good soul packaging Win for OS X!

Anyway, I'm thinking about a rough, quick and dirty balance mod to be used in luring my friends to play the game again. I'm not aiming for perfect balance, and certain things are very deliberately kept as they are. Here's the changes I intend to test. They focus mainly on fixing the navy:

1. Navy
Move Boomer up to Lab, and turn the Squid into Yuri's basic naval unit. Reduce Dolphin damage. Up Boomer range to match Dreadnought.
(Also perhaps up Boomer torp damage in case nerf-phins rape Squids. How are the Dolphin-Typhoon, Dolphin-Squid, Squid-Destro, Squid-Destro matchups?)

2. Remove range and damage bonuses from BFs
3. Remove Rhino build time modifier
4. Try to do something about the Magnetron. Regardless of whether the tank battle cheesefest gets fixed, I'm interested in upping the thing's damage so it can actually function as a siege weapon.
5. Shorten Siege Chopper deploy/undeploy time to make it more interesting to use.

[truefeel]

1. Navy
Move Boomer up to Lab, and turn the Squid into Yuri's basic naval unit. Reduce Dolphin damage. Up Boomer range to match Dreadnought.
(Also perhaps up Boomer torp damage in case nerf-phins rape Squids. How are the Dolphin-Typhoon, Dolphin-Squid, Squid-Destro, Squid-Destro matchups?)

That would be a too big change. IMO, while I do not support it, adding additional, new units for yuri would be better then giving yuri the squid, which brings me to my second argument: the squid is T3 unint or as I named it my article a "high tech naval fighter" unit, which should be always better then "low tech naval fighter" unit aka the sub and destroyer. If you give the squid to yuri you are forced to turn the squid to a low tech fighter (aka toning it down) and it would also leave soviets without a proper high tech fighter. That's not what you want.

[Statalyzer]

But balancing is not about making sence.

In this case it makes sense and makes things more balanced.

[truefeel]

In this case it makes sense and makes things more balanced.

Yes, but there are multiple ways to balance yuri out and not just one. Soviets always had squids and no other side had the same; it would be really weird to give yuri the squid then. Again: not my choice, but choosing to add new units would then be a better option.

I do agree though it would make the problem much easier. It is just I am so pinned down on my opinion that adding and removing units should be a no-no concerning something that is only ment to add balance :p. Especially b/c I truly believe on top of that it can be achieved my way. A few years back I also believed that adding units would be the best thing to do. I discussed it with piscinex and he came up the idea with making the missiles as weak as possible. A huge change, but it instantly opens the door to balancing the unit out. And piscinex was, as ussually, right. Not b/c he has credibility, but b/c after a deep study I came to the same conclusion as he did.

But no worries, I actually like it when you guys are so hard defending your opinions (which are not bad to be fully clear; just in my eyes not the best ones). Gives me extra motivation to work harder and harder on this problem :p.

[apple23]

anchelata
*facepalm*

it's spelled enchilada...

Indeed it was never a whole leg. It was almost not walkable on it, and here we are discussing how to make it properly walkable. And yes, you are replacing the leg b/c it comes down to making Yuri strictly parallel to the other sides, in which Yuri looses his uniqueness.

You keep saying that adding units to his army automatically means they are exactly parallel to the other factions and thus not unique. NEVER ONCE have either Fenring or myself said ANYTHING about making Yuri parallel to other factions, nor have we even HINTED towards it! Filling gaps in roles does NOT mean we are making them parallel to the roles of the other factions.

I understand and respect your choice to add units to make balancing less complex, and if any of you will make a balance "patch" this way ever, I would not be so against it. However, I personally would never do so, b/c you simply CAN balance yuri. My example of the boomer being the best example you could possible imagine: balancing it out against 3 classes of naval units + having an overall balance. If it is possible to fill up the biggest gap, then it surely also must be possible to do the same for smaller gaps.I'm not saying it's absolutely IMPOSSIBLE, but it's just such a cumbersome task to work within the bounds of an incomplete faction.

This is something that I'm going to have to leave for later. If you actually start that patch back up, then we will see later down the road just how easy, or even possible, it is to balance Yuri using his current unit roles.

Now you are talking about the balance, not the parallel.I WAS TALKING ABOUT BALANCE THE ENTIRE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think you get my point. I wasn't talking about parallel; I could give a **** less about parallel. The point in question here, the point that has been in question since THE BEGINNING OF THIS THREAD, is BALANCE!

I have no idea where you are getting all this "we are making Yuri's army parallel" crap from, but we aren't going to get anywhere if you aren't even understanding the points we're trying to make.

The paralell is they have both a tank which the same characteristics: can only fight ground units, good against vehicles, decent against buildings, weak against infantry and they re T1. How well they are balanced towards eachother has nothing to do with being parallel. Having a parallel though makes balances very easy.yeh bla bla bla I understand that perfectly. PARALLEL is having same roles. BALANCED means they are equally good at what they do, in terms of cost, strength, speed, armor, etc....



No good yuri player would ever counter mirages with lasher tanks. If he ever happens to attack with lashers, that would be scrap overs from earlier in the game, but late game he does NOT produce lasher tanks anymore! Yuri uses gatt tanks, floating disks + magnetrons to counter mirage tanks, but he does not build lasher tanks to counter mirages. And yes, the ussual way he has a good counter against mirages (but the late game mix of allieds, mirages-prism tanks- GGI IFVs is a different story).How in the hell are you supposed to beat an equal value of mirage tanks with magnetrons and gatts and disks? Maybe if you're real heavy on the disks (in which case why the hell would be be attacking with mirages?) that may be practical but think of the numbers here. Mirage tanks are only 1000 a pop. 1 mirage RAPES a gatt tank. 1 mirage RAPES 2 gatt tanks. Magnetrons are nice and they could help even the playing field, but you still need respectable firepower to back those magnetrons up. THAT is where Yuri fails, especially if we give the magnetron ANY sort of nerf.



So you don't think about the possibility of BALANCING the magnetron?!? "yeh, it's overpowered so it must be removed" --> not logical at all :p.I didn't say that. I didn't even say nerf it to uselessness; what I'm saying is if the magnetron is ANY less powerful really, yuri will be left in the realization that he simply doesn't have the backbone left in his army to stand against other factions' forces, especially late game.



Fenring and in lesser mather you?Again, see my above point where I think I was finally able to clear up that you, THIS ENTIRE TIME, have been completely drawing out of thin air the assumption that we are adding units to take away Yuri's uniqueness and to parallel him with other factions. Hell, we could add all sorts of different units to his army; the possibilities are nearly endless, and nobody, especially you, has any say on exactly what roles those units would fill and what they would do.


Oh man, you really need to stop making assumptionsIronic.

(b/c it simply is not true; I truly said that from my own context, not his) and you really need to stop worrying about something that even not fenring is worrying about.and whatever, I guess you're right on that Fen doesn't seem to care.


Step outside the box, son.Again, ironic
You are pinned down on the unfinished caracter of the yuri side.You don't need strict parallels between the factions to have balance.As said before, I NEVER SAID THAT HE DID NEED PARALLELS!!!!!!!!

I don't like to point over and over again at the boomer, but you said yourself that my solution could be right. You said it could be right that the biggest gap can be filled without adding units. But the boomer isn't necessarily the biggest gap in his strategy. See, the boomer fills both the role of a bombardment vessel and an anti-sub vessel. He doesn't do it at cost effectiveness, but he doesn't get to if his unit does 2 things at once. Yes he doesn't have AA, but big deal, subs have little to worry about from aircraft. The ONLY problem at all with the boomer in my eyes is the rush. Prevent that without hindering his late game or making the sub overpowered in late game and the boomer won't be so bad.

It's not so much a gap, as a single unbalanced unit.

Step down from your engraved opinion that you need to balance with adding units and look at the bigger picture.There is a bigger picture that I think you're not seeing. Step down from your engraved opinion that adding units equals making factions parallel and maybe we will get somewhere with this bigger picture.


Problem is you can't solve the siege part of the boomer without looking at the "fighter" too. It sounds logical that a boomer is less cost effective b/c it has 2 characteristics, but the sad fact is that it is not balanced that way. And I know there is more to the issue than simple numbers, but to go beyond that necessitates inclusion of separate units.

Here is why the boomer would fail if the rush isn't so powerful, and why Yuri simple needs more units:

When a Yuri player is fighting for naval dominance, all he can make is boomers, which for their cost aren't as efficient as the soviets' subs. But they have to be more costly, because they are heavy siege units as well. See, the problem with one umbrella unit is that the enemy can create a very specialized army that has one role and does very well at that role, while Yuri and the boomer HAVE to make both roles at the same time; he has no choice, and thus, his army is not specialized and loses in the end.

Yuri lacks a competitive naval fighterThus the need for extra units. You can't make both a competitive naval fighter AND a competitive siege unit in one unit without it being overpowered. End of story. THIS is exactly why he needs more units.

and if you want to tone down the boomer rush, so toning down siege part, you'll have to rise it's value as a naval fighter.But then you have an excellent fighter, and a weak siege unit. Either way, one of the two roles is not being SUFFICIENTLY filled.

There is also a dissonance inbetween our arguments: I talked about it should be, you are talking how it is in the game. Plz correct yourself.This statement here tells me quite clearly that you didn't understand the point of my argument; my point was that the boomer is mostly okay AS-IS, meaning that such a radical change as you proposed is not so necessary; the exception to him being balanced is that he can boomer rush, and the exception stated above that Yuri then lacks a competitive naval fighter.



Now that does not make sence. Your leaving here the door open to balance out 1 universal unit concerning naval to a full sized naval army, while you are still pinned down that even though Yuri's ground troops have far more parallels with Soviet/Allied ground troops, it can't be balanced?!?:wtf:Now that I have had time to think, I really don't think you could ever sufficiently balance the boomer; there were several variable that I wasn't looking at. And balancing Yuri's ground game is actually MORE complex of an issue than the one boomer, because you have lots of units that have odd and unconventional roles, and the only conventional firepower Yuri has is sitting at the lowly Tier 1 (and perhaps the floating disc can be considered conventional firepower).

It's simply laughable that there is only ONE unit in his entire army that is actually particularly geared towards destroying tanks. While he is playing with mind control, mag beams, mutating superweapons, and the like, he has hardly the backbone to actually DAMAGE the enemy. He is certainly great at tripping up the enemy with magnetrons and capturing units with mind control, but he doesn;t have enough backbone to have a presence in the field when the megnetron isn't as much of a threat.

[Fenring]

It's simply laughable that there is only ONE unit in his entire army that is actually particularly geared towards destroying tanks. While he is playing with mind control, mag beams, mutating superweapons, and the like, he has hardly the backbone to actually DAMAGE the enemy. He is certainly great at tripping up the enemy with magnetrons and capturing units with mind control, but he doesn;t have enough backbone to have a presence in the field when the megnetron isn't as much of a threat.
This.

[Teron]

Just a random thought: Robot Tanks? It's not like they're ever used anyway.

[truefeel]

You keep saying that adding units to his army automatically means they are exactly parallel to the other factions and thus not unique. NEVER ONCE have either Fenring or myself said ANYTHING about making Yuri parallel to other factions, nor have we even HINTED towards it! Filling gaps in roles does NOT mean we are making them parallel to the roles of the other factions.Then what is the point of adding units? If you are gonna add units that are not parallel will only crack open more gaps and holes!

I'm not saying it's absolutely IMPOSSIBLE, but it's just such a cumbersome task to work within the bounds of an incomplete faction.

This is something that I'm going to have to leave for later. If you actually start that patch back up, then we will see later down the road just how easy, or even possible, it is to balance Yuri using his current unit roles.And I rather take the cumbersome task then adding units. By now you surely realise you are not gonna be able to convince me otherwise (the same as you are not gonna be convinced of the opposite though)?

I think you get my point. I wasn't talking about parallel; I could give a **** less about parallel. The point in question here, the point that has been in question since THE BEGINNING OF THIS THREAD, is BALANCE!

I have no idea where you are getting all this "we are making Yuri's army parallel" crap from, but we aren't going to get anywhere if you aren't even understanding the points we're trying to make.
I suggest you really read Fenring carefully; he said on order to fill up the holes you'll have to give yuri units that have parallels with the other factions. I was from the assumption b/c you backed him up the whole time that you agreed with this.
However, I really don't see why you are making a fuss about the lasher tank then:wtf:. Lasher tanks would be one of the easiest units to balance out. Infact without BTM they are relatively balanced already, counting up a weakened magnetron.

yeh bla bla bla I understand that perfectly. PARALLEL is having same roles. BALANCED means they are equally good at what they do, in terms of cost, strength, speed, armor, etc....You fricking don't understand. Giving same roles does makes balancing a whole lot easier. So instead of complaining I don't listen to your points, you should listen what I say!

How in the hell are you supposed to beat an equal value of mirage tanks with magnetrons and gatts and disks? Maybe if you're real heavy on the disks (in which case why the hell would be be attacking with mirages?) that may be practical but think of the numbers here. Mirage tanks are only 1000 a pop. 1 mirage RAPES a gatt tank. 1 mirage RAPES 2 gatt tanks. Magnetrons are nice and they could help even the playing field, but you still need respectable firepower to back those magnetrons up. THAT is where Yuri fails, especially if we give the magnetron ANY sort of nerf.Infact, gatt tanks and magnetrons would already be enough to make it as a whole alot more cost effective then mirages. 1 mirage rapes gatt tank, but 1 gatt tank rapes 1 juggled mirage tank. In practice this means if you have 10 mirage tanks, I would have like 7-8 gatt tanks and 3 magnetrons (I like to count out floating disks for just now, just to make it simpler). All I have to do is either waiting you for to attack, in which I'll run: mirage tanks don't have a movable turret and cannot fire on the move. Gatt tanks have both and magnetrons have only the movable turret. What happens: I'll use ctrl +shift with the magnetrons. You'll have 3 of your mirages in the air. The magnetrons will stop for a moment, but ONLY for a moment, they'll move again the second they targetted and "hit" the mirage tank. Mirage tanks in the air not able to fire and are soft targets for gatt tanks. A second later after this happens: the magnetrons will pick up 3 more mirages tanks, very probably different ones this time, and then it goes and on. End result: by the time your mirages tanks actually come close enough to fire, you'll have already been soften up by so much you'll simply loose it.
However, it was REALLY wrong of you to bring up such an irrealistic comparisation. You will never face only mirages from the allied side. If that was the case, however, yuri would win that. The thing that is troublesome for him is massed prism tanks.

I didn't say that. I didn't even say nerf it to uselessness; what I'm saying is if the magnetron is ANY less powerful really, yuri will be left in the realization that he simply doesn't have the backbone left in his army to stand against other factions' forces, especially late game.Now that is a false statement. You just have to nerve by the right amount, keeping it's usefullness and making it balanced.

Again, ironicNo, it's not. I did said that adding units would infact make balancing easier. We both might not be listening so much to eachother, but you my friend are sadly doing a "better" job on that then me.

As said before, I NEVER SAID THAT HE DID NEED PARALLELS!!!!!!!!Ok, I was in assumption that b/c you backed up Fenring that much, which did said so, you agreed with this. however again I do not see the point then of adding units.

But the boomer isn't necessarily the biggest gap in his strategy. See, the boomer fills both the role of a bombardment vessel and an anti-sub vessel. He doesn't do it at cost effectiveness, but he doesn't get to if his unit does 2 things at once. Yes he doesn't have AA, but big deal, subs have little to worry about from aircraft. The ONLY problem at all with the boomer in my eyes is the rush. Prevent that without hindering his late game or making the sub overpowered in late game and the boomer won't be so bad.So that what I mean by stepping outside of the box. You are really caught up the idea that a unit should not be balanced cost-effective as other units b/c the unit has 2 characteristics. That simply blocks every method to balance it out.
In a way you are right though: he does not have be as cost effective for ONE characteristic. Making the siege part highly ineffective for 1 individual unit solves the problem and opens the door to make it as cost effective towards other naval "fighter" units.
And yes, the boomer is certainly the biggest problem, b/c you will have to let it forfill multiple roles AND make those multiple roles be balanced. Yuri ground has many PARALLEL roles with soviet/allied ground, making balancing easier b/c you can now atleast compare the units from the same role.

It's not so much a gap, as a single unbalanced unit.Lol? Joke of the century.

There is a bigger picture that I think you're not seeing. Step down from your engraved opinion that adding units equals making factions parallel and maybe we will get somewhere with this bigger picture.Again: are you gonna add units that is gonna open up extra holes and gaps?? I mean: a flying battle fortress for yuri is not exactly gonna help (take the hint).

When a Yuri player is fighting for naval dominance, all he can make is boomers, which for their cost aren't as efficient as the soviets' subs. But they have to be more costly, because they are heavy siege units as well. See, the problem with one umbrella unit is that the enemy can create a very specialized army that has one role and does very well at that role, while Yuri and the boomer HAVE to make both roles at the same time; he has no choice, and thus, his army is not specialized and loses in the end.=total ignores to what I said before. Did you even bothered to read that document??

Thus the need for extra units. You can't make both a competitive naval fighter AND a competitive siege unit in one unit without it being overpowered. End of story. THIS is exactly why he needs more units.

But then you have an excellent fighter, and a weak siege unit. Either way, one of the two roles is not being SUFFICIENTLY filled.
So you make a competitive fighter and an individually none-competitive fighter? You are failing to see what that means. The only tactic yuri will not be able to is pumping a quick siege unit to lay waste on someone's base, AND if you make the boomer highly effective verses such siege units, you take that tactic away against yuri just only-->BALANCED. I hope you are not gonna complain and whine about; that's a solution that had to be taken.


This statement here tells me quite clearly that you didn't understand the point of my argument; my point was that the boomer is mostly okay AS-IS, meaning that such a radical change as you proposed is not so necessary; tI am gonna correct myself: THIS is the joke of the century. You need to balanced out the boomer against 3 roles. You need such a radical change. Yeh adding units would not lead to that, but the added units themselves are in my eyes more radical then changing only the boomer radically.

he exception to him being balanced is that he can boomer rush, and the exception stated above that Yuri then lacks a competitive naval fighter.ROFL! Ok, I can do that too: a rhino tank is 100% balanced against a grizzly tank except that is more cost/effective. Djeez, where is this going too.

Now that I have had time to think, I really don't think you could ever sufficiently balance the boomer; there were several variable that I wasn't looking at. And balancing Yuri's ground game is actually MORE complex of an issue than the one boomer, because you have lots of units that have odd and unconventional roles, and the only conventional firepower Yuri has is sitting at the lowly Tier 1 (and perhaps the floating disc can be considered conventional firepower).That would apply for ALL sides, not just yuri! Allieds have Battle Fortresses, rocketeers, planes,... . Soviets -iraq- have desolators, have siege choppers, have kirovs,... . By your statement those are all odd and unconventional. Although true, it is totally irrelevant b/c it would apply for all sides. That's what I also meant with adding units that are not-parallel: you are adding just more "lots of units that have odd and unconventional roles".

It's simply laughable that there is only ONE unit in his entire army that is actually particularly geared towards destroying tanks. While he is playing with mind control, mag beams, mutating superweapons, and the like, he has hardly the backbone to actually DAMAGE the enemy. He is certainly great at tripping up the enemy with magnetrons and capturing units with mind control, but he doesn;t have enough backbone to have a presence in the field when the megnetron isn't as much of a threat.That is not true. The magnetron is merely a support unit; it does not, in general, destroy tanks. It only gives such a big support it makes the job of other units, who actually do the destuction, really easy. I like that kind of concept, really. Whereas allieds and soviets are relying on massing units, yuri relies on the quality and not quantity of a unit. I like to keep that too, but in a balanced way. Infact it is easy here: you'll have to change all units of course, but the biggest part of balancing would about nerving the magnetrons in the right way. You need to change just one unit to have alot more balance.

Just a random thought: Robot Tanks? It's not like they're ever used anyway.


Never tought of that :p. The problem is that has so many similarities with the grizzly tank. It can hover and might do something with it on naval, but I really don't like that option b/c it would bring up mroe headaches.

[Teron]

Never tought of that :p. The problem is that has so many similarities with the grizzly tank. It can hover and might do something with it on naval, but I really don't like that option b/c it would bring up mroe headaches.

I was thinking that a slightly modified Robotank might replace Lashers as Yuri's basic tank - it's certainly unique-looking, and fits well with the drone theme, too. Properly done, it solves the problem of a basic marine combat unit, as well, and allows the Boomer to be moved to Lab so it doesn't cause problems. Snatching the Robo for Yuri also frees up the Lasher to be redone as a higher-powered battle tank if it proves necessary. I'm still advocating Squids as a basic/radar level sea combat unit for Yuri. It makes sense with the mind control background, and ups the faction's freak factor wonderfully. And I damn certainly want more freak factor.

[Afrikorps]

I'm no modder but I agree with teron. The squid should be moved to yuri as a naval unit as a radar level unit, debuffed. Put the boomer to lab and have yuri have at least one more boat/sub for early game. Then the sovs should get another T3 boat. And balancing IS supposed to make sense.

[truefeel]

I'm no modder but I agree with teron. The squid should be moved to yuri as a naval unit as a radar level unit, debuffed. Put the boomer to lab and have yuri have at least one more boat/sub for early game. Then the sovs should get another T3 boat. And balancing IS supposed to make sense.

No it is not; atleast not in a game where alot of aspects do not make sence.

[Afrikorps]

So you're saying that the squid being moved to yuri can't be balanced? It should make sense because hard and long thinking goes behind perfect balance. The boomer as is in yr is not balanced because it doesn't make sense for it to be a radar unit, regardless of its cost.

[truefeel]

So you're saying that the squid being moved to yuri can't be balanced? It should make sense because hard and long thinking goes behind perfect balance. The boomer as is in yr is not balanced because it doesn't make sense for it to be a radar unit, regardless of its cost.

i'm saying it is not a good option. Yes, that would open the possibility the achieve balance, but IMO 1) if you would opt for that option then you can just as well add new units instead and 2) you don't need to; the boomer can be balanced just fine. And like I said: you don't have to look so much to making or not; there are many things in the game that don't make sence.

[Afrikorps]

While you are correct in that many things in the game do not make sense, the game's BALANCE should. All imbalances are also things that are not sensible. Like I said, the boomer being a radar unit doesn't make sense. BF range and damage bonuses, the list could go on. the game and tech doesn't have to make sense, but the balance does.

[truefeel]

While you are correct in that many things in the game do not make sense, the game's BALANCE should. All imbalances are also things that are not sensible. Like I said, the boomer being a radar unit doesn't make sense. BF range and damage bonuses, the list could go on. the game and tech doesn't have to make sense, but the balance does.

In that case you can't use the squid either b/c it is a battle lab unit, not a radar unit. Putting it on radar would not make sence either. Again, if you are really that desperate to give yuri another naval unit, add a completely new unit (and for the record, I do not approve both adding units and moving units from one side to the other).

[Afrikorps]

Why doesn't moving it to radar make sense? The squid is very underpowered as a lab unit. I also said you may have to nerf it a little bit maybe in terms or health or something but I think it should be a factor in naval battles.

[truefeel]

Why doesn't moving it to radar make sense? The squid is very underpowered as a lab unit. I also said you may have to nerf it a little bit maybe in terms or health or something but I think it should be a factor in naval battles.

Wow, be very carefull with you are saying there :dismay:. The squid is VERY powerfull against anything that can be grabbed. The only thing it can't fight are boomers and dolphins.
Personally, I think cloning the boomer and only give it torpedoes would be much better already then taking away the squid from the soviets, which simply belongs to Soviets. I can agree with giving yuri a few extra naval units, but taking those from the other factions is IMO an unnecessary change;).

[apple23]

Then what is the point of adding units? If you are gonna add units that are not parallel will only crack open more gaps and holes!

Not necessarily. Just because they aren't parallel dosen't mean I can't fill in a few critical roles that Yuri needs, like a Tier 3 tank destroyer. And don't think about parallels here; there are infinite possibilities. I obviously want some kind of conventional firepower, but I can deliver that firepower in countless different ways, different from the other 2 Tier 3 tank destroyers (mirage and apoc).

And I rather take the cumbersome task then adding units. By now you surely realise you are not gonna be able to convince me otherwise (the same as you are not gonna be convinced of the opposite though)?

Guess there's no convincing you then...

I suggest you really read Fenring carefully; he said on order to fill up the holes you'll have to give yuri units that have parallels with the other factions. I was from the assumption b/c you backed him up the whole time that you agreed with this.
Hmm, I see your point; In any case, let my clarify my stance here:

I don't believe in exact parallels with other factions' units as a medium for achieving balance, however I strongly believe that Yuri as a faction needs more units with conventional firepower; things that do actual damage to the enemy and blow stuff up, particularly at the higher tiers; all his conventional weapons are Tier 1, which is stupid.

However, I really don't see why you are making a fuss about the lasher tank then:wtf:. Lasher tanks would be one of the easiest units to balance out. Infact without BTM they are relatively balanced already, counting up a weakened magnetron.

You completely misunderstood my point. I wasn't necessarily saying the laser tank ITSELF was unbalanced, it was just the fact that the lasher tank is Yuri's only conventional tank fighter, and for its power, it doesn't survive very long.

You fricking don't understand. Giving same roles does makes balancing a whole lot easier. So instead of complaining I don't listen to your points, you should listen what I say!

That was a completely useless line of text to quote. i was simply stating a relatively obvious fact, i wasn't even presenting an argument of any kind, so no response was necessary...

Infact, gatt tanks and magnetrons would already be enough to make it as a whole alot more cost effective then mirages. 1 mirage rapes gatt tank, but 1 gatt tank rapes 1 juggled mirage tank. In practice this means if you have 10 mirage tanks, I would have like 7-8 gatt tanks and 3 magnetrons (I like to count out floating disks for just now, just to make it simpler). All I have to do is either waiting you for to attack, in which I'll run: mirage tanks don't have a movable turret and cannot fire on the move. Gatt tanks have both and magnetrons have only the movable turret. What happens: I'll use ctrl +shift with the magnetrons. You'll have 3 of your mirages in the air. The magnetrons will stop for a moment, but ONLY for a moment, they'll move again the second they targetted and "hit" the mirage tank. Mirage tanks in the air not able to fire and are soft targets for gatt tanks. A second later after this happens: the magnetrons will pick up 3 more mirages tanks, very probably different ones this time, and then it goes and on. End result: by the time your mirages tanks actually come close enough to fire, you'll have already been soften up by so much you'll simply loose it.

I guaruntee if we matched up equal cost in mirage tanks vs gatts and mags I would win with my mirage tanks. While you are lifting those 3, my other 7 will move in and pick off however many gatts i can get. then you lift a few more up, but i still have 3 or 4 more pursuing your gatts. The gatts easily destroyed, the magnetrons are defenseless.

However, it was REALLY wrong of you to bring up such an irrealistic comparisation. You will never face only mirages from the allied side. If that was the case, however, yuri would win that. The thing that is troublesome for him is massed prism tanks.

YOU BROUGHT UP THIS COMPARISON IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!

Yuri uses gatt tanks, floating disks + magnetrons to counter mirage tanks, but he does not build lasher tanks to counter mirages.

I'd also like to note that you basically brought up an irrelevant point here to refute and irrelevant point that I didn't even make. When comparing the lasher to the mirage tank I wasn't even TRYING to compare them on equal terms. I was SPECIFICALLY making an unequal comparison to show that it is riduclous that Yuri doesn't get some conventional unit that can match up to the mirage or the apoc, besides the floating disk.

That DOES bring something else up however; how would you counter APOC tanks? Surely not with magnetrons and gatts, with enough of those things they would just walk right over that army regardless of the magnetrons...

Now that is a false statement. You just have to nerve by the right amount, keeping it's usefullness and making it balanced.

Have fun trying.

No, it's not. I did said that adding units would infact make balancing easier. We both might not be listening so much to eachother, but you my friend are sadly doing a "better" job on that then me.

You'd be amazed what you don't see....

So that what I mean by stepping outside of the box. You are really caught up the idea that a unit should not be balanced cost-effective as other units b/c the unit has 2 characteristics. That simply blocks every method to balance it out.
Well that's the point. If you make it a balanced cost-effective naval fighter, then it gets siege ability for completely free where other factions have to spend money on expensive, vulnerable siege units.

In a way you are right though: he does not have be as cost effective for ONE characteristic. Making the siege part highly ineffective for 1 individual unit solves the problem and opens the door to make it as cost effective towards other naval "fighter" units.

It depends on how badly you nerf it (Why do you keep saying nerve? It's "NERF", as in those soft foamy nerf footballs). If you do it too much, then it is completely overshadowed by the power of the other factions' siege ships. If you don't nerf it enough, then the boomer rush is still viable. Be it less damaging, but still viable.

And yes, the boomer is certainly the biggest problem, b/c you will have to let it forfill multiple roles AND make those multiple roles be balanced. Yuri ground has many PARALLEL roles with soviet/allied ground, making balancing easier b/c you can now atleast compare the units from the same role.

No it doesn't have a lot of parallel roles... Lasher tank -> Grizzly/rhino. Duh. Gatt tank -> IFV/flak Track. Am I missing any more parallel roles between Yuri faction and others? Even if i am, do you get my point?


Again: are you gonna add units that is gonna open up extra holes and gaps?? I mean: a flying battle fortress for yuri is not exactly gonna help (take the hint).

But adding units that aren't PARALLELS doesn't necessarily mean you aren't filling gaps. Hell, that Tier 3 tank destroyer I keep talking about could be an infantry unit, I don't know...

=total ignores to what I said before. Did you even bothered to read that document??

It basically says everything about the boomer you have said here; changes i don't necessarily agree with, because reducing his siege power to insignificance means he is overshadowed in Tier 3 by the other factions' siege units.

So you make a competitive fighter and an individually none-competitive fighter? You are failing to see what that means.
I think you are. Competitive naval fighter = can focus on naval fighting, allowing for BALANCED cost-effectiveness. The siege unit separate from the fighter unit means if you don't need siege and want to focus on naval dominance you can, and then lay siege on his base later. With the boomer you get siege along with it. If you made the boomer cost effective against, say, Typhoon subs, AND granted it siege ability, then that essentially means Yuri is getting the siege part of the unit for free, when other factions have to spend lots of money for expensive and vulnerable siege ships, when Yuri's boomers are neither vulnerable or expensive. If you make his siege that weak that it's insignificant, then you make it a nuisance compared to other siege ships.
The only tactic yuri will not be able to is pumping a quick siege unit to lay waste on someone's base
He will also be MUCH less capable of laying siege on a base in the later game, especially if you take rather drastic measures to decrease his siege power.

AND if you make the boomer highly effective verses such siege units, you take that tactic away against yuri just only-->BALANCED.
So you're saying make the enemy's siege units inneffective against Yuri? What kind of thinking is that?

I hope you are not gonna complain and whine about; that's a solution that had to be taken.

You call this complaining and whining?!? I'd hate to see what you call it when someone is REALLY whining...


I am gonna correct myself: THIS is the joke of the century. You need to balanced out the boomer against 3 roles. You need such a radical change. Yeh adding units would not lead to that, but the added units themselves are in my eyes more radical then changing only the boomer radically.

Yeh I kind of understated in that paragraph what degree of change the boomer needed; I moreover just think that if anything, you're not really going the right way about it...

That would apply for ALL sides, not just yuri!
What? no!

Allieds have Battle Fortresses,
BF = Transport, with units inside that fire out with conventional weapons -> Direct damage -> CONVENTIONAL

rocketeers
Rockie -> Fires bullets -> Basically a mini helicopter -> Direct damage -> CONVENTIONAL

planes
Do I even need to...?

Soviets -iraq- have desolators
I agree the method of delivery is unconventional, but the fact of the matter is, the desolator does direct and immediate physical damage to the enemy; that being, if you didn't know, the basic definition of conventional firepower.

have siege choppers
Basic helicopter in the air -> Shoots bullets -> Direct damage -> CONVENTIONAL
Artillery emplacement on the ground -> fires shells -> Direct damage -> CONVENTIONAL

have kirovs
Drops gigantic devastating bombs -> Direct damage -> CONVENTIONAL

By your statement those are all odd and unconventional
Then you horribly misunderstood my (until now implied) definition of conventional.

See, why Yuri's so unconventional is not because he has unique roles; all factions have that (as you pointed out). He's unconventional because he has so many units that don't actually do direct damage to the enemy. He has the lasher and the gatt tank. The magnetron, while it greatly assists in killing, doesn't kill. The mastermind, yes captures units, but those units can be released unharmed if you're not careful. Yuri simply needs more tough, bonebreaking units to form the core, or the cake of his army, and then the icing, being the mags and masterminds and such, can then be applied to the cake. The cake has to be made first though, because nobody likes having icing alone (well some maybe, but those guys are wierdos). I know it's a strange comparison but I think it gets my point across. Yuri needs a strong core army to support. Right now he doesn't. The magnetron is one of the only reasons Yuri's army isn't pathetic.

Although true, it is totally irrelevant b/c it would apply for all sides. That's what I also meant with adding units that are not-parallel: you are adding just more "lots of units that have odd and unconventional roles".

Aah, but you don't have to... see, for units to fulfill the same ROLES, they have to have similar general uses... like a scout, basic anti infantry, anti tank etc. For them to be PARALLEL the two units in question have to be basically effective against the same units, fill the same roles, and be used in relatively similar manners in battle.

This isn't the BEST example, but it's strong enough:

Take the Mirage and the Apoc for example. Their differences are obvious as black and white. But if you think about it, they have relatively the same role: They are Tier 3 tanks that are very powerful at destroying vehicles. They are obviously, however, not even close to parallel. The mirage tank has light armor, it camoflauges as a tree when still, it is much faster... The apoc is slow, heavy armored, and fights with sheer force. But even when they are used so differently in battle, they, in the end, end up doing the same thing; they destroy tanks. Yes as far as roles they are slightly different, mainly in that the Apoc has the (rarely used anyway) secondary tusk missile, but they mainly do the same thing.

The Rhino and Grizzly, however, are parallels. They have obviously the same roles, they both have "heavy" armor (as defined in rules.ini; this means they take damage like a rhino), and they both shoot basic anti tank shells. They are used in almost the exact same fashion; you just throw them in at the enemy and with TC and skill hope you can come out on top. All in all, despite the Grizzly being less effective and lighter and all, they do the same thing, are used similarly, and have relatively proportional characteristics (proportional to cost that is).

That is not true. The magnetron is merely a support unit; it does not, in general, destroy tanks. It only gives such a big support it makes the job of other units, who actually do the destuction, really easy. I like that kind of concept, really. Whereas allieds and soviets are relying on massing units, yuri relies on the quality and not quantity of a unit. I like to keep that too, but in a balanced way. Infact it is easy here: you'll have to change all units of course, but the biggest part of balancing would about nerving the magnetrons in the right way. You need to change just one unit to have alot more balance.

I wasn't even talking about the magnetron. I was talking about the Lasher. For god's sake, and you're telling me I don't listen and put the dots together?

[truefeel]

Not necessarily. Just because they aren't parallel dosen't mean I can't fill in a few critical roles that Yuri needs, like a Tier 3 tank destroyer. And don't think about parallels here; there are infinite possibilities. I obviously want some kind of conventional firepower, but I can deliver that firepower in countless different ways, different from the other 2 Tier 3 tank destroyers (mirage and apoc).Again that would only lead to more holes. You will make it yourself very difficult to balance that unit.

You completely misunderstood my point. I wasn't necessarily saying the laser tank ITSELF was unbalanced, it was just the fact that the lasher tank is Yuri's only conventional tank fighter, and for its power, it doesn't survive very long.Then you basicilly made an irrelevant point, nothing more nothing less.

That was a completely useless line of text to quote. i was simply stating a relatively obvious fact, i wasn't even presenting an argument of any kind, so no response was necessary...Then why even bringing it up and causing confusion?

I guaruntee if we matched up equal cost in mirage tanks vs gatts and mags I would win with my mirage tanks. While you are lifting those 3, my other 7 will move in and pick off however many gatts i can get. then you lift a few more up, but i still have 3 or 4 more pursuing your gatts. The gatts easily destroyed, the magnetrons are defenseless.*sigh* If I could play online, this would be the time I would ask you to test that with me online to see it for yourself, but you probably now I can't and have tried hard to fix it, without any succes. mirages have WEAK strength and would be torn up by moving and firing gatt tanks. You just need to to trust me on this one: gatt tanks + magnetrons will destroy an equal cost of mirage tanks.

YOU BROUGHT UP THIS COMPARISON IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!Actually, you brought up the mirage tank in the first place, which was all in all an irrelevant point though.

His lasher tank is puny in comparison to the Rhino Tank, and barely equals the Grizzly Tank. While the Allies have the very powerful Mirage tank at higher tech levels, Yuri has no practical way, besides the magnetron, to compensate for his basic lack of firepower on most levels. Remove the magnetron, and his army is weak.

I'd also like to note that you basically brought up an irrelevant point here to refute and irrelevant point that I didn't even make. When comparing the lasher to the mirage tank I wasn't even TRYING to compare them on equal terms. I was SPECIFICALLY making an unequal comparison to show that it is riduclous that Yuri doesn't get some conventional unit that can match up to the mirage or the apoc, besides the floating disk.

That DOES bring something else up however; how would you counter APOC tanks? Surely not with magnetrons and gatts, with enough of those things they would just walk right over that army regardless of the magnetrons...Oh, I would not even need to use magnetrons or any sort of combination. Hell, even floating disks would do the job b/c they can just dodge AA missiles.

Have fun trying.I'll have fun succeeding.

Well that's the point. If you make it a balanced cost-effective naval fighter, then it gets siege ability for completely free where other factions have to spend money on expensive, vulnerable siege units.So you'll have to make one characteristic, the siege part, really weak for just individual unit.

No it doesn't have a lot of parallel roles... Lasher tank -> Grizzly/rhino. Duh. Gatt tank -> IFV/flak Track. Am I missing any more parallel roles between Yuri faction and others? Even if i am, do you get my point?Which are the 2 most used parallels inbetween soviets and allieds (and don't get me now on that that does not count for yuri; those parallels make balancing yuri much easier). And if it are the only ones, then that would be still 2 more then naval.

But adding units that aren't PARALLELS doesn't necessarily mean you aren't filling gaps. Hell, that Tier 3 tank destroyer I keep talking about could be an infantry unit, I don't know...And like I said you'll make the problem much more complex. How would you balance that unit without having even a reference point?

He will also be MUCH less capable of laying siege on a base in the later game, especially if you take rather drastic measures to decrease his siege power.Not true. You only have 3 options for naval maps: No naval at all, only a quick tech up for a siege unit or complete open naval fight. Yuri can only not do the middle one. If option 3 he'll have to mass boomers, in which case he'll also be massing the weak siege unit part, which will lead to quantity-effectiveness. he'll not only be in that case very capable to siege bases, but even more then the other sides would.

So you're saying make the enemy's siege units inneffective against Yuri? What kind of thinking is that?Balance! I hate to throw away tactics, even against just one side, but options are narrow and this seems the only way to do without adding units.

However, you are forgetting the simple fact that this is no less then with the soviets: soviets can very easily counter a fast dreadnaughts/carriers with squids. So I can actually go 2 ways: I can make everyone vulnerable for this tactic, which would mean no extra changes for Yuri and actually also not for allieds (which share the same weakness) and making squids not able grab dreadnaughts, OR I can give every side a good counter for the tactic. That choice remains for me open.

You call this complaining and whining?!? I'd hate to see what you call it when someone is REALLY whining...I am not whining, nor did you. I said that line there just to make sure we will not dwell off more from the main point. That line did not implied you actually did whine, it only prevents the possibility of it.

Yeh I kind of understated in that paragraph what degree of change the boomer needed; I moreover just think that if anything, you're not really going the right way about it...Then explain why and don't come up with "yeh the boomer is balanced except for it's naval fighter and siege part, so it does not really need changes". If you want to criticise my way then that is fine, but do so from the view of balance.

Then you horribly misunderstood my (until now implied) definition of conventional.I can't smell that. You, and perhaps also me, forget that this is written language.

See, why Yuri's so unconventional is not because he has unique roles; all factions have that (as you pointed out). He's unconventional because he has so many units that don't actually do direct damage to the enemy. He has the lasher and the gatt tank. The magnetron, while it greatly assists in killing, doesn't kill. The mastermind, yes captures units, but those units can be released unharmed if you're not careful. Yuri simply needs more tough, bonebreaking units to form the core, or the cake of his army, and then the icing, being the mags and masterminds and such, can then be applied to the cake. The cake has to be made first though, because nobody likes having icing alone (well some maybe, but those guys are wierdos). I know it's a strange comparison but I think it gets my point across. Yuri needs a strong core army to support. Right now he doesn't. The magnetron is one of the only reasons Yuri's army isn't pathetic.That was intended though by the designers (and that obviously was not a rush-taken decision!). You want to change the essence of yuri: being different, attacking different, applying damage on a different way. I don't find that the right solution just for a balance PATCH. I understand your point, but yuri is not so much about bonebreaking, nor does that needs to be for balance only.

Take the Mirage and the Apoc for example. Their differences are obvious as black and white. But if you think about it, they have relatively the same role: They are Tier 3 tanks that are very powerful at destroying vehicles. They are obviously, however, not even close to parallel. The mirage tank has light armor, it camoflauges as a tree when still, it is much faster... The apoc is slow, heavy armored, and fights with sheer force. But even when they are used so differently in battle, they, in the end, end up doing the same thing; they destroy tanks. Yes as far as roles they are slightly different, mainly in that the Apoc has the (rarely used anyway) secondary tusk missile, but they mainly do the same thing.That's all nice and great, but you'll have to ask yourself the question: what does this have to do with balance? I understand your point fully here, being that the 2 do the same on a slightly different method, but that does not say anything about balance.

I wasn't even talking about the magnetron. I was talking about the Lasher. For god's sake, and you're telling me I don't listen and put the dots together?I misunderstood there. I apologies for that. I'll relook at your statement.

It's simply laughable that there is only ONE unit in his entire army that is actually particularly geared towards destroying tanks. While he is playing with mind control, mag beams, mutating superweapons, and the like, he has hardly the backbone to actually DAMAGE the enemy. He is certainly great at tripping up the enemy with magnetrons and capturing units with mind control, but he doesn;t have enough backbone to have a presence in the field when the megnetron isn't as much of a threat.But that is the point of yuri, the essence: yuri is not relying on firepower as backbone, but other tricks like the magnetron. Change that you'll change yuri as a whole, which surely cannot be the intention of even a balance "patch" with new units?

You made a point though there: Balancing out magnetrons needs to be done VERY carefully and very precise, else yuri will rely too much on conventional firepower on which he actually can't rely on. It's doable though, there's just only a small margin for errors.

Guess there's no convincing you then...

What did you expect then? I've always proclaimed balance without adding units and I have until now fiercely defended that. There is no possibility of convincing. Same applies for you. This discussion though has meaning to open up the differences between the visions.

[Fenring]

truefeel, just accept that Apple is right. There are very few good ways to balance Yuri without some new firepower in his army. He has little wiggle room when it comes the amount of strategies he can really use since his core forces really are that weak. He's only effective smashed together and just changing what he has already is not good enough.

So, in case you've missed our point entirely, it is literally impossible to properly balance Yuri's army without additional forces. I'm putting emphasis on the properly since you've missed it before. You can tweak, tweak, tweak but it's just a bandage on a gaping wound. In effect, it's pretty much useless.

[EDIT] Oh, and Apple, don't forget Yuri is just a Soviet defector. Throwing some Soviet ideas into his arsenal leads to some pretty good results. Throw a heavy ass T3 tank into his army, rebalance the Magnetron or change the Magnetron into something else and watch the fireworks. It's greatness in a faction. :p

[truefeel]

truefeel, just accept that Apple is right. There are very few good ways to balance Yuri without some new firepower in his army. He has little wiggle room when it comes the amount of strategies he can really use since his core forces really are that weak. He's only effective smashed together and just changing what he has already is not good enough.


And again: I can and actually will balance the way you deem impossible. Unlike you I am not tempted to take the easy route.

So, in case you've missed our point entirely, it is literally impossible to properly balance Yuri's army without additional forces. I'm putting emphasis on the properly since you've missed it before. You can tweak, tweak, tweak but it's just a bandage on a gaping wound. In effect, it's pretty much useless.

And the case you've missed it, it is literally and totally POSSIBLE to fully balance yuri without adding units. Much better then that plastic leg you want to put in, and it will lead to a minimal loss of the original gameplay. Adding units is fine for a crossover between mod and patch and actually would also be acceptable if there was no other way to balance out, but the simple fact is that although complex, yuri can be balanced without. You want proof? I'll give you that; I'll reboot the balance patch, as soon as my exams are ended, from a few years ago and I'll show you "how much" new units are needed.

[Fenring]

Fully balance is not the same as properly balanced. In order to properly balance Yuri's armor, he needs new firepower. There are no two ways about it; he needs a few units to round out his army properly so he's a more viable and a slightly more conventional contender.

[truefeel]

Fully balance is not the same as properly balanced. In order to properly balance Yuri's armor, he needs new firepower. There are no two ways about it; he needs a few units to round out his army properly so he's a more viable and a slightly more conventional contender.

And here we are: you claiming the one and I the other. This way it'll end into an almost infinite "yes it can, no it can't" game. I'm not willing to put my effort in that, so play that game as long as you want, I am not gonna get back on that unless you do the effort to be specific. One thing you should know though: I am not open to be convinced of your ways of balancing (I am however, if you stay specific, willing to listen). I hope that saves you some effort too.


In as far I am concerned "fully balanced" was for me the same as "propely balanced" (are you really gonna fall over a futile difference in words? djeez...). "Fully" might be wrong choice though (just as much properly would be): There will never be a "full" or "proper" balance, unless all factions are 100% identical. Any mutation of that will be highly depending on the individual his likes and dislikes.

[Fenring]

You want specifics? Fine, I'll give you some goddamn specifics and at the same time relate why I drop the new units where I do, and why in every case. Then it's what I change on Yuri's existing stuff.

I'll start with the infantry since it's a good starting point.

First is everyone's favorite, the Initiate. It's already fairly well rounded and doesn't need any change but one, which is its UC weapon. It fires far too fast and does way too much damage, at double the Allies/Soviets and with a faster ROF, it makes Yuri garrisons a little too good. Knock that back to par with the other teams and the Initiate is good to go.

Second is the Brute. Hands down, best scout and anti-scout in the game. It's fast enough, fairly well armored for a first tier unit, is immune to dog attacks and has the ability to attack everything but air. Being that he's immune to dogs, you cannot anti-scout that well. A Brute will unshroud your base with ease and will also protect that Derrick/Airport with literal impunity.

You can go two ways here and both work pretty well. The first, and easiest option, is to simply make dogs able to strike Brutes. Easy, simple and effective. Yuri retains a unique scout and the Allies/Soviets can anti-scout a lot easier. The second route, which I like a little more, is to bump the Brute to the second tier, drop the cost by 100, and scale the damage to make it a really good fighter. Then I plunk a unique attack dog in its place at the first tier, which then gives Yuri a perfect anti-spy and a well rounded, manageable scout. The anti-spy stuff takes importance later.

However, Yuri's first tier lacks a support unit, namely the venerable anti-aircraft soldier. While not as necessary as other units, an AA soldier opens the door for a few new strategies. Since Yuri will be able to be pressed harder, these may come in handy if you're under attack by, say, Rocketeers and your war factory is tied up with Lasher Tanks. Pump a few of these bad boys out and watch the slaughterfest begin. Naturally, they would be cheaper and less effective than Gattling Tanks but still potent and great backup to, say, Initiates and Brutes.

The Engineer... well, short of working it so it has a unique cameo, nothing really needs to be done here. Same ****, different faction really.

And off to the next tier we go.

First at the second tier is the Yuri Clone. For all intents and purposes, he's well balanced except for his anti-spy ability. Since I make Spies entirely immune to mind control, he loses some of potency and anti-spy will take more effort than leave the trooper and forget. I usually fine tune the deploying ability but its fairly useless anyway.

Second up is the Virus. She's a tough nut to crack sometimes, but there are two possible routes that can be used here. The first is simply removing the acid particle her weapon spawns on kills and leaving her at the second tier. The other route, which I prefer quite a bit, is to leave the acid particle spawn and just move her to their tier to signify her ability. Of all the factions, only Britain has a Sniper. Why should Yuri have a better performing sniper at the same level?

Shockingly, I add no second tier infantry to Yuri's forces. There's really no need for since the roles, at this point, are all filled and perform quite well.

Now for the third tier, which is only one infantry, Yuri Prime. He's a well rounded hero for the most part, might even be considered overpowered but he's really not. I usually replace his presence with something a hell of a lot better, but in the interest of keeping him in place, I usually up the cost to 2500 and add a second mind control link for more evil fun. Since you can have a pair with a Cloning Vats, even more fun. Bear in mind that Tanya and Boris have also been revamped and cost a fun 2500 each as well.

Now, here's where I do add new units. Firstly, I lay out an infiltration unit so he can potentially snag a great stolen tech unit, steal some cash and perform the usual spying functions. Rather than disguise kits like the Allies and Soviets, he relies on cloaking. Just slap sensors on dogs and the problem for that is solved. As noted, the Soviets have a spy of their own.

Secondly, I add a third tier assault soldier since Yuri sorely lacks real firepower. The function is fairly simple: provide heavy backup for tanks and infantry at a medium-high premium. The weapon is up for grabs but I opt for a chaos pulse weapon thing...

And that concludes Yuri's infantry.

So. Here we roll with the vehicles.

First is the ****ing Slave Miner. It is, hands down, the most OP miner in the game for several reasons: two can be produced at the same time, it has obnoxiously heavy armor, it can move right to ore fields so Yuri does not need to stretch and it can be repaired in the midst of battle making your attacks worthless or dragging things out. As such, I move the Slave Miner to tier 3 and place a standard Refinery/Miner combo in its place. This substantially reduces Yuri's economy to a more even level with the other two sides. What the miner actually does or has as an ability is up for debate though.

Now, the Lasher Tank. It is a Grizzly Tank with a faster weapon flight speed. Seriously, compare the stats side by side and it's identical except for the build speed modifier. As such, it performs better than the Allies' Grizzly since it doesn't miss moving targets quite as often. There is an easy way to remedy this however. Remove the build speed modifiers, which are stupid anyway and either reduce the projectile speed on the Lasher Tank or increase them on the Grizzly Tank, Rhino Tank and Apocalypse Tank. There's also my personal favorite, which is to make the Lasher a light tank since it was supposed to be one in the first place. Reduce the armor, cost, damage and increase the ROF and it's still a great basic tank.

Moving on... the Gattling Tank. Seriously, horrendously overpowered without a doubt. When it hits level two and three on its spin up, damage against all targets increases way too much. In effect, a fully spun up Gattling Tank has the ability to knock an Apocalypse down to size fairly easily. Not quite the intended effect methinks. I retool the warheads, making brand new ones for ground and air weapons. Damage at the second and third levels stays at the same level as a newly attacking tank. DPS increases at subsequent levels as it should. The only AA change I really make is lowering damage against infantry so Rocketeers now actually have some effect; Cosmonauts too if they're available to the Soviets. Damage also falls on Drone armor so Terror Drones are quite a lot more useful. The same changes are applied to the Gattling Cannon.

Tier 2, here's where the major changes begin taking shape.

The Chaos Drone, which is pretty much useless in its current form. I don't really mess much with this except for fixing a weapons firing bug where it can 'deploy' its gas through walls but not 'attack' through a wall. I drop the cost to 800 like it was in 1.000 and then make it fire gas when destroyed. You could push it to down to T1 to give it more uses.

Ah, the Magnetron. Everyone's love/hate unit. Love it when you can use it and hate it when it's raping your entire ****ing tank force. The most effective route that I've found is ramming it up to tier 3, increasing the cost and making a viable artillery unit instead of just a tank killer. I leave the range alone but slightly lower the ROF on the tank beam and also remove its ability to attack-move to stop the easy, no brains juggling.

This leaves tier 2 a bit wide open. I take the opporunity to insert a specialty vehicle that uses one of Yuri's devious technologies short of genetic mutation. The vehicle can be anything but it should be a well-rounded support vehicle.

Alright, tier 3. Home to more Yuri powerhouse bull****. I'll start with the Mastermind, which is the most god-awful, rage inducing thing to hit the battlefield in a long time. To make it slightly less irritating, I leave the amount of non-overloading links at three then increase the overload damage at all levels and then decrease the last two so insta-death comes around 22 or 24 instead of 50. By that point though, it will have KO'd itself anyway.

Since Yuri's power has been altered in the way of Masterminds and Magnetrons, he lacks any real punch to either eat through enemy vehicles or rampage a base. This is where a second new vehicle comes into play - a T3 armor killer. The weapon... all up to you but the function is clear - think Apocalypse mixed with Mirage Tank.

The Floating Disc. Holy ****. Just holy ****. This thing is a monster of a unit. Not in armor or attack power but in usability. It's the extra abilities it has that make it so over the top. It can shut down an entire base, power off a lone defense structure, steal money AND rape your base. All in the same go! It's hard to really decide how to approach this nonsense. Usually, I just drop the obnoxious base crippling abilities and make it a well-rounded attack helicopter. Since Yuri has a spy and, now, a tier 3 assault vehicle, the ability removal isn't quite as big of a deal.

Alright... the navy. Yuri's **** of a ****ing navy, if you're even able to call it that with a paltry, and pathetic, two units. WHOOPEE.

Don't mind the Amphib. Transport. I'm focusing on the Boomer and his complete lack of everything else. Since the Boomer comes so early and there's nothing else available, it needs to compensate. As such, dual torpedoes and LR missiles. Right then.

truefeel, if you take your idea of dumbing down the missiles and the cost, you're effectively making Boomers uber sub killers, especially since the Boomer's torpedo tubes fire twice at the same damage rate as Typhoons. Then you make the missiles useful for about 2 minutes of the game because after that, and especially late game, they're ****ing worthless. There's too much it needs to cover for that tier.

So basically... Yuri needs a sub, AA ship and the Boomer needs to be pushed to T3. With the other units in place, Yuri has a well rounded navy and the Boomer does not need to cover but one aspect and that's base raping. You can safely remove the torpedoes and concentrate on LR bombardment. This way, the navies are a lot more even, and Yuri has to wait like the Allies/Soviets do.

Optionally, there's a third new vessel you can use for Yuri, which is a shore clearing vessel or a specialty like the Dolphin or Squid. The choice is up to you really.

Structures and defenses pretty much stay untouched, except for a few things here and there. Like the power boost Bio Reactors have. Price up or lowering the boost the infantry provide... either way is a pretty good route.

The defenses do see a few slight changes. The Gatt Cannon's major change is identical to that of the Gattling Tank. And the Tank Bunker gets moved to post-War Factory instead of right after deploying the construcion yard.

The Allies and Soviets see their fair share of changes as well, but it's not nearly as much, or as drastic, as Yuri's.

With all of the reworking, new units and everything combo'd together, Yuri is still very effective, a little more conventional and he can be taken head on without as much worry from his usual combinations, which either take longer to create or cost a little bit more. Even with the reduced capability, Yuri still has plenty of firepower to keep the battles even. Played plenty of online with a couple of friends and no side had a clear cut advantage.

[truefeel]

You want specifics? Fine, I'll give you some goddamn specifics and at the same time relate why I drop the new units where I do, and why in every case. Then it's what I change on Yuri's existing stuff.You made a huge list of which half is not even complex to solve or did not really were relevant here. However, since you did the effort to post it all, I'll do the effort to reply on all of them. However, due lack of time I can't do all of that at once.



I was thinking about codewise a secondary weapon which can only be used inside buildings (since you can't change the multipliers for one unit/weapon only), of which has, without the multipliers of garrisoning, less high values then it's primary weapon. I think we both can agree this does not need any sort of complex balancing nor added units.

Second is the Brute. Hands down, best scout and anti-scout in the game. It's fast enough, fairly well armored for a first tier unit, is immune to dog attacks and has the ability to attack everything but air. Being that he's immune to dogs, you cannot anti-scout that well. A Brute will unshroud your base with ease and will also protect that Derrick/Airport with literal impunity.There's one very important thing you forget here: a brute is slower then a dog and actually has less range then a dog (if I am correct). What does that mean? If the other player does a bit microing with his dogs a yuri player can never anti-scout with brutes. Furthermore, on maps with tech buildings a yuri player cannot defend his engineers underway to tech buildings b/c of the same problem. Engineers will be eaten and a yuri player cannot counter that with brutes. Same thing counts for soviets and allieds, but b/c brutes are slower then dogs, it is more likely then engineers get "eaten" instead of being "stomped". All in all yuri infact has a disadvantage concerning scouting and getting possible tech buildings, unless they are close to base. If any work needs to be done here, is that brutes should gets very small buffs concerning scouting and protecting derricks, not the other way around. This is also something you can only learn by playing online and is something you'll probably never find by looking at the codes.

However, Yuri's first tier lacks a support unit, namely the venerable anti-aircraft soldier. While not as necessary as other units, an AA soldier opens the door for a few new strategies. Since Yuri will be able to be pressed harder, these may come in handy if you're under attack by, say, Rocketeers and your war factory is tied up with Lasher Tanks. Pump a few of these bad boys out and watch the slaughterfest begin. Naturally, they would be cheaper and less effective than Gattling Tanks but still potent and great backup to, say, Initiates and Brutes.But we are talking about balancing, not unnecessary adding, changing or removing strategies! If you want to make a crossover between a mod and a patch then this a good way to go, but we are talking about a bottom-line balance patch, in which you will have to ask yourself if such changes are necessary? From where I stand I don't see an AA infantry for yuri necessary. He never needed one, so there is no need to add one now.

First at the second tier is the Yuri Clone. For all intents and purposes, he's well balanced except for his anti-spy ability. Since I make Spies entirely immune to mind control, he loses some of potency and anti-spy will take more effort than leave the trooper and forget. I usually fine tune the deploying ability but its fairly useless anyway.I think I can agree on this change.

Second up is the Virus. She's a tough nut to crack sometimes, but there are two possible routes that can be used here. The first is simply removing the acid particle her weapon spawns on kills and leaving her at the second tier. The other route, which I prefer quite a bit, is to leave the acid particle spawn and just move her to their tier to signify her ability. Of all the factions, only Britain has a Sniper. Why should Yuri have a better performing sniper at the same level?the acid particle is not really something that has an impact on the game or balance. I'd say leave it and reduce a bit her range or attack or a combination of both of them. Simple fact why you don't want to remove the acid particle: infantry are not much used against yuri. Exception to this might be desolators, but those are only used in small groups at best.

Shockingly, I add no second tier infantry to Yuri's forces. There's really no need for since the roles, at this point, are all filled and perform quite well.Infantry only have a small role in RA2 and YR (excluding a few of course). There is no need for much changing here.

Now for the third tier, which is only one infantry, Yuri Prime. He's a well rounded hero for the most part, might even be considered overpowered but he's really not. I usually replace his presence with something a hell of a lot better, but in the interest of keeping him in place, I usually up the cost to 2500 and add a second mind control link for more evil fun. Since you can have a pair with a Cloning Vats, even more fun. Bear in mind that Tanya and Boris have also been revamped and cost a fun 2500 each as well.But then again you are making an unnecessary change for a balance patch. If something is ok, keep it the way it is; do not change it so much. From what I learned from online experience is that the Yuri Prime essentially is a pressure tool, but not really overpowered or underpowered. I'd say keep it.

Now, here's where I do add new units. Firstly, I lay out an infiltration unit so he can potentially snag a great stolen tech unit, steal some cash and perform the usual spying functions. Rather than disguise kits like the Allies and Soviets, he relies on cloaking. Just slap sensors on dogs and the problem for that is solved. As noted, the Soviets have a spy of their own.I don't agree with this. Spies and spying are unique to allieds, and soviets and yuri should not share the same. Spying has, suprisingly, only a small impact on the game either way. I can't back myself up after your change.

Secondly, I add a third tier assault soldier since Yuri sorely lacks real firepower. The function is fairly simple: provide heavy backup for tanks and infantry at a medium-high premium. The weapon is up for grabs but I opt for a chaos pulse weapon thing...Soviets and allieds do not have this either. Why would you give yuri then a high tier anti tank soldier? He lags indeed conventional firepower, but he makes that up with other ways. Again a balance patch is not about changing such ways and methods of attacking and defending.

First is the ****ing Slave Miner. It is, hands down, the most OP miner in the game for several reasons: two can be produced at the same time, it has obnoxiously heavy armor, it can move right to ore fields so Yuri does not need to stretch and it can be repaired in the midst of battle making your attacks worthless or dragging things out. As such, I move the Slave Miner to tier 3 and place a standard Refinery/Miner combo in its place. This substantially reduces Yuri's economy to a more even level with the other two sides. What the miner actually does or has as an ability is up for debate though.Soviets and allieds can produce 2 miners at the same time too, building a refinery (selling it afterwards) gives a miner and one from the war factory. What you need to do here is a (small) price and buildtime difference between a slave miner from the construction tab and the vehicle tab. In that way a yuri player face exactly the same choice allieds and soviets need to make: building a slighlty cheaper miner from the war factory but also sacrify time to build tanks or building a slightly more expensive miner from the building tab. Furthermore, you need to reduce it's armour. The slaves should collect ore and gems just slightly slower, not by too much. There are differences inbetween the rate of income of yuri and the other factions, but not so much. Small changes should to do the job just fine and so there is no need for adding a refinery+miner system similar to allieds and soviets.

Now, the Lasher Tank. It is a Grizzly Tank with a faster weapon flight speed. Seriously, compare the stats side by side and it's identical except for the build speed modifier. As such, it performs better than the Allies' Grizzly since it doesn't miss moving targets quite as often. There is an easy way to remedy this however. Remove the build speed modifiers, which are stupid anyway and either reduce the projectile speed on the Lasher Tank or increase them on the Grizzly Tank, Rhino Tank and Apocalypse Tank. There's also my personal favorite, which is to make the Lasher a light tank since it was supposed to be one in the first place. Reduce the armor, cost, damage and increase the ROF and it's still a great basic tank.I can back myself up completely behind this part, even that last suggestion: it would not make such a dramatic change. It is perhaps unneeded but then again it adds gameplay without any big impact on the game.

Moving on... the Gattling Tank. Seriously, horrendously overpowered without a doubt. When it hits level two and three on its spin up, damage against all targets increases way too much. In effect, a fully spun up Gattling Tank has the ability to knock an Apocalypse down to size fairly easily. Not quite the intended effect methinks. I retool the warheads, making brand new ones for ground and air weapons. Damage at the second and third levels stays at the same level as a newly attacking tank. DPS increases at subsequent levels as it should. The only AA change I really make is lowering damage against infantry so Rocketeers now actually have some effect; Cosmonauts too if they're available to the Soviets. Damage also falls on Drone armor so Terror Drones are quite a lot more useful. The same changes are applied to the Gattling Cannon.I am relatively ok with this. Just don't go overboard with nerfing it.

The Chaos Drone, which is pretty much useless in its current form. I don't really mess much with this except for fixing a weapons firing bug where it can 'deploy' its gas through walls but not 'attack' through a wall. I drop the cost to 800 like it was in 1.000 and then make it fire gas when destroyed. You could push it to down to T1 to give it more uses.Believe it or not, I am far more uncertain what to do with this unit then with the boomer and magnetron. On one hand I'd like to see this unit have use and be used ingame, on the other hand this unit has such a low impact on the balance and I think making it usefull would be an unnecessary change. I was thinking about a role where you used once and a while to sneak behind your opponent and gas his tanks up, but I am not really sure I am in the place of determining units role where it is not really needed... .

Ah, the Magnetron. Everyone's love/hate unit. Love it when you can use it and hate it when it's raping your entire ****ing tank force. The most effective route that I've found is ramming it up to tier 3, increasing the cost and making a viable artillery unit instead of just a tank killer. I leave the range alone but slightly lower the ROF on the tank beam and also remove its ability to attack-move to stop the easy, no brains juggling.This will probably one of those units where we will never agree on. I was thinking in the line of small nerfes at all fronts: more costly, less range a higher ROF, but especially less speed and, a higher ROT (Rate Of Turn), a higher fall speed of units so that the opponent can get back control of his units much faster and disabling the ability to lift ships. It is btw not a tank killer, but a support unit. My goal here would be making it's role smaller. It would also fit in my personal view of the game: Tier2 units are support units for massed T1 units. Every side has that (regardless if they are balanced or used alot). In that respect it would really not be fair towards yuri if he does not have a support unit on Tier2 (b/c really, it is infact the only support unit on that level he has). It will be changed though in my (and Daishi's) patch and magnetrons will have a less impact on the game, and I am sure after alot of testing the changes that are needed will be exact.

This leaves tier 2 a bit wide open. I take the opporunity to insert a specialty vehicle that uses one of Yuri's devious technologies short of genetic mutation. The vehicle can be anything but it should be a well-rounded support vehicle.If the magnetron is balanced there will be no need for that. However, looking through your vision it should have the same impact as a plane or a balanced desolator: not the unit that plays the game, but that supports the play of the dominating unit.

Alright, tier 3. Home to more Yuri powerhouse bull****. I'll start with the Mastermind, which is the most god-awful, rage inducing thing to hit the battlefield in a long time. To make it slightly less irritating, I leave the amount of non-overloading links at three then increase the overload damage at all levels and then decrease the last two so insta-death comes around 22 or 24 instead of 50. By that point though, it will have KO'd itself anyway.The real problem though is its speed. Make it slower and in combination with a faster overload would be a fine solution + you make it especially weak against certain units. For soviets I was thinking about their special country units and/or the terror drone. Making cuban terrorists and demo truck mind control immune would be a perfect start: demo trucks, which would be already heavily buffed, would do massive damage if left unchecked. Lifting up the vehicle does not help, b/c it still does damage to units beneath it. Cuban terrorists would not damage eachother anymore and the yuri player will need to use TC to get rid of it save and sound. Russia would be more difficult, so terror drones need to have a bigger impact: gatt tanks would do less damage to it and magnetrons would, with my changes, already be less a threat. I was thinking for allieds planes which do higher damage, although late game allieds are balanced with yuri and prism tanks would neeed to be nerfed also (for various reasons).

Since Yuri's power has been altered in the way of Masterminds and Magnetrons, he lacks any real punch to either eat through enemy vehicles or rampage a base. This is where a second new vehicle comes into play - a T3 armor killer. The weapon... all up to you but the function is clear - think Apocalypse mixed with Mirage Tank.The Floating Disc. Holy ****. Just holy ****. This thing is a monster of a unit. Not in armor or attack power but in usability. It's the extra abilities it has that make it so over the top. It can shut down an entire base, power off a lone defense structure, steal money AND rape your base. All in the same go! It's hard to really decide how to approach this nonsense. Usually, I just drop the obnoxious base crippling abilities and make it a well-rounded attack helicopter. Since Yuri has a spy and, now, a tier 3 assault vehicle, the ability removal isn't quite as big of a deal.It's extra ability is not so much a threat, really not, since good players rely on units and not on their base to counter it. If it got in your base it will be probably be b/c you were not able to counter it with your units. What is the most concerning is that it actually has decent armour, fires on the move and can dodge AA missiles. It needs to be slower, not by too much, but slower. I don't know if flying units have a ROF, but if they have it should also be slower for this unit, to make its hit-'n-run ability less effective.

truefeel, if you take your idea of dumbing down the missiles and the cost, you're effectively making Boomers uber sub killers, especially since the Boomer's torpedo tubes fire twice at the same damage rate as Typhoons. Then you make the missiles useful for about 2 minutes of the game because after that, and especially late game, they're ****ing worthless. There's too much it needs to cover for that tier.You did not paid attention. I specifically said Boomers would only be slighlty more powerfull the subs, but only slightly. Barely enough to make up for its higher tier. And yes, I took into account that boomers have 2 missiles. I also can play with the verses and make it on par with dolphins (which will get nerved) and squids. Really, balancing the boomer with both subs/destroyers and squids/dolphins is soooo easy. Its siege part will be the biggest problem, although not undoable. What I'll do there is shifting the power of the missiles from one individual unit to several ones. In the end there is only 1 drawback: it will not be worth to build boomer solely and only for bombarding a base (for the other sides it is). But if the game gets into a naval fight, missiles will be very usefull, b/c the more boomers you have, the more missiles you will have. So no fenring, they will not be "useful for about 2 minutes of the game because after that, and especially late game, they're ****ing worthless.", it will be actually the other way around. If the game will get into a naval fight, the missiles will be useless if you only have a few boomers, but as the game grows you will need to have more and more boomers and missiles will be quantity-effective.

For the buildings I agree pretty much with you and Stat, and I would like to add one thing: bunkers. Bunkers are really overpowered. If you try to attack yuri begin game he'll just bunker up his base for a relative cheap price and you can't do a thing b/c bunkers are really strong. I would go really drastic here, go as far as cutting it's strength by 50%.

[Statalyzer]

Wow, be very carefull with you are saying there :dismay:. The squid is VERY powerfull against anything that can be grabbed.

Because unlike destroyers, dolphins, and typhoons, the squid has 0 ability to damage naval yards, it ought to be slightly more powerful against sea targets to make up for it.

But then again you are making an unnecessary change for a balance patch. If something is ok, keep it the way it is; do not change it so much. From what I learned from online experience is that the Yuri Prime essentially is a pressure tool, but not really overpowered or underpowered. I'd say keep it.

That's a good point - if it's truly a balance patch and not a gameplay mod, Yuri Prime doesn't need to be changed like, say, initiates & mags & gatts do.

And Fen, do you change Yuri's buildings too? Right now he has a huge advantage in the Gatt Tower that's the same cost as Soviet/Allied air defense but better at defending against air than either PLUS it's a decent land defense also. But he's also at a disadvantage with no cheap defenses to throw down that work without power. Those two might cancel each other out if not for the tank bunker, which doesn't need power AND frees the tank up again after it's used.

And then there's his OP superweaponry as well...

[truefeel]

Because unlike destroyers, dolphins, and typhoons, the squid has 0 ability to damage naval yards, it ought to be slightly more powerful against sea targets to make up for it.

But the naval yard is not the threat, the opponent his naval forces are. if you can dominate the waters b/c you have a better unit cost-effective wise, you would only need 2-3 other, lesser, units (subs) to destroy the naval yard, b/c if you cleared the waters the opponent has nothing on his naval yard: every unit that is none dolphin, none boomer that comes out of the naval yard will be a snack for squids. Hell, I would love the opponent see wasting money that way.

(@Fenny, I'll continue my comments on your post in my previous post).

[Afrikorps]

The game needs to be changed truefeel. That's the problem. Everyone except you believes in that. You want to keep the same game just with different numerical values.

[Fenring]

And Fen, do you change Yuri's buildings too? Right now he has a huge advantage in the Gatt Tower that's the same cost as Soviet/Allied air defense but better at defending against air than either PLUS it's a decent land defense also. But he's also at a disadvantage with no cheap defenses to throw down that work without power. Those two might cancel each other out if not for the tank bunker, which doesn't need power AND frees the tank up again after it's used.
I don't do as much work with the structures and armory as I do the units. They don't feel quite as overpowered in most regards. However, like I noted at the end of my post, I do make changes to the Allies and Soviets and one of those changes is reducing the cost of the AA defense structure so it's a fair bit less than the Gattling Cannon. Although, some people do enjoy the remove ground attack on the Gatt Cannon and then give Yuri a new ground based defense similar to the Pillbox.

And the Tank Bunker... it's a tough nut to crack. It really is. It's hard to balance it so Yuri doesn't gain as much of an advantage defensively without just removing them, which... might not be a bad idea.

And then there's his OP superweaponry as well...
To be quite honest, the only really OP superweapon he has is the mutater. You could just change that by spawning a different Brute that grinds for pretty much no cash. But if you're concerned about the Psychic Dominator... well... if you change it too much, it's just a nuke with no radiation that does less damage.

[truefeel]

The game needs to be changed truefeel. That's the problem. Everyone except you believes in that. You want to keep the same game just with different numerical values.

Not true. I believe the game needs change, but that will only be limited to necessary changes. A balance patch is just about that: changing to game to have a more balanced gameplay, but the impact of the changes should be kept minimal at the same time. I deem new units not the minimal point, b/c the minimal point, in my eyes and with a good balance, are without new units.

That said, you have no idea how much change still would be needed without new units. Essentially almost every unit will be changed into even the very small details. Most of them will only have very small tweaks, others will be almost completely thrown over.

So plz, don't just assume that when I am against new units that I am against necessary change. There's a world of differences inbetween those 2.

Oh fenring, I finished my reply. Check it out.

[Afrikorps]

If tweaking every unit is the way to achieve perfect balance, then that's what I'm all for.

[truefeel]

If tweaking every unit is the way to achieve perfect balance, then that's what I'm all for.

I'm glad you now see that I am not against change ;).

I also like to note that there are several ways to balance: I do recognize Fenring's his ways as a decent mean to get balance. It'll be infact alot easier then mine, but I have a deep grounded believe (heavily funded on facts and strong arguments) that can be done without adding units and this supports the definition of balance patch. I am also convinced that I can obtain the same level of balance as Fenring can with new units.

Furthermore, do realise that perfect balance is in neither case possible. Such thing can only be obtained if all sides are 100% equal. Aside from that, balance is for a part subjective.

To be quite honest, the only really OP superweapon he has is the mutater. You could just change that by spawning a different Brute that grinds for pretty much no cash. But if you're concerned about the Psychic Dominator... well... if you change it too much, it's just a nuke with no radiation that does less damage.

You forget one fact: the dominator works instantly, the weather device and nuke have a delay inbetween firing up and the actual impact, and that delay gives you time to activate your force shield, which you do can't do with the dominator. For the rest the dominator is balanced. However, I heared you can't delay the dominator, else you'll get an IE.

[Statalyzer]

Dominator's smaller explosion is made up for in that it can also control units and that it can't be accurately force-shielded or curtained in defense against.

if you can dominate the waters b/c you have a better unit cost-effective wise, you would only need 2-3 other, lesser, units (subs) to destroy the naval yard, b/c if you cleared the waters the opponent has nothing on his naval yard: every unit that is none dolphin, none boomer that comes out of the naval yard will be a snack for squids. Hell, I would love the opponent see wasting money that way.

Yes but with subs or dolphins you can often break a naval battle stalemate by blowing up the other guy's Naval Yard. And while 2-3 dolphins can insta-kill a yard, but 2-3 SS or DD can take a while if you have repair money, enough for you to build a subs of your own and save the yard.

[truefeel]

Yes but with subs or dolphins you can often break a naval battle stalemate by blowing up the other guy's Naval Yard. And while 2-3 dolphins can insta-kill a yard, but 2-3 SS or DD can take a while if you have repair money, enough for you to build a subs of your own and save the yard.

True, that's a valid point. However, if it ends up in a stalemate, in which case both player have most likely a big naval force already and are afraid of attacking eachother, the impact of loosing the naval yard would be rather small.

Dolphins are a different case, being that they are extremely overpowered. You would probably also never see a squid against allieds, b/c squids are vey weak against dolphins, something that is just not right as they are both T3 units and are of the same class. This is something that needs balancing too. I think squids are ok: they are far more powerfull then destroyers or subs, but that is justified by their one tier higher and for a small part that they can't damage naval yards.

[Statalyzer]

Let's look at it Sovs vs Sovs then - if one side builds all subs and one side builds all squids, the squids should win. But then if you don't blow the Naval Yard, you can't afford to send a Dreadnought, because then one enemy squid can get built and wrap the dreadnought (unless you win the battle so decisively that your surviving units totally surround the Naval Yard such that there isn't a single empty cell for the enemy squid to break out through).

So you want a mixed force that is squid heavy but still includes Typhoons.

[Afrikorps]

How would you balance that out? Take away the ability of dolphins to do extra damage depending on distance? Lowering attack power and giving them more health? What will those changes do to cost? It is also OP because they cost so little.

[truefeel]

Let's look at it Sovs vs Sovs then - if one side builds all subs and one side builds all squids, the squids should win. But then if you don't blow the Naval Yard, you can't afford to send a Dreadnought, because then one enemy squid can get built and wrap the dreadnought (unless you win the battle so decisively that your surviving units totally surround the Naval Yard such that there isn't a single empty cell for the enemy squid to break out through).

So you want a mixed force that is squid heavy but still includes Typhoons.

I get your point, and of course ultimately you'll need some subs to destroy the naval yard, but that is almost just a formality :p. You can just as well build those subs after you won the naval battle (if you do not have any at that point). In most cases, if it gets to a naval battle, you'll probably have some subs left before you had a battle lab.

How would you balance that out? Take away the ability of dolphins to do extra damage depending on distance? Lowering attack power and giving them more health? What will those changes do to cost? It is also OP because they cost so little.


Yeh it's difficult to balance dolphins. The problem is that they become more and more powerfull when both players mass units. Removing the sonic part of its weapons helps, but then again changes the unit by so much... . It is also something I have not much experience with and would need extensively testing before I could get to balance it at all. I think the boomer problem is easier then this. Though I was thinking of buffing the squid against the dolphin so that squids can cost effective fight dolphins.

[Fenring]

You made a huge list of which half is not even complex to solve or did not really were relevant here. However, since you did the effort to post it all, I'll do the effort to reply on all of them. However, due lack of time I can't do all of that at once.
You kinda missed my point. This is most of the changes I make to Yuri's army to balance his forces or mix up the play style.

I was thinking about codewise a secondary weapon which can only be used inside buildings (since you can't change the multipliers for one unit/weapon only), of which has, without the multipliers of garrisoning, less high values then it's primary weapon. I think we both can agree this does not need any sort of complex balancing nor added units.
One slight problem - urban combat is its own system. It's entirely hardcoded except for the weapon's damage and ROF. It's just the damage and ROF that are the issue and nothing else.

There's one very important thing you forget here: a brute is slower then a dog and actually has less range then a dog (if I am correct). What does that mean? If the other player does a bit microing with his dogs a yuri player can never anti-scout with brutes. Furthermore, on maps with tech buildings a yuri player cannot defend his engineers underway to tech buildings b/c of the same problem. Engineers will be eaten and a yuri player cannot counter that with brutes. Same thing counts for soviets and allieds, but b/c brutes are slower then dogs, it is more likely then engineers get "eaten" instead of being "stomped". All in all yuri infact has a disadvantage concerning scouting and getting possible tech buildings, unless they are close to base. If any work needs to be done here, is that brutes should gets very small buffs concerning scouting and protecting derricks, not the other way around. This is also something you can only learn by playing online and is something you'll probably never find by looking at the codes.
The speed is fine. He has enough armor to compensate and he can anti-scout in the right positions, but everyone still has a really good shot at scouting. Even still, the Brute, after a point, loses his usefulness, which is why I actually move it up in the tree and make it better. I add quite a bit of potency to his ability to actually make them worth using a bit later in the game instead of as a scout.

But we are talking about balancing, not unnecessary adding, changing or removing strategies! If you want to make a crossover between a mod and a patch then this a good way to go, but we are talking about a bottom-line balance patch, in which you will have to ask yourself if such changes are necessary? From where I stand I don't see an AA infantry for yuri necessary. He never needed one, so there is no need to add one now.
I explicitly stated I would explain why I add the units I do and why they were necessary. While I can agree this one isn't necessary, it's still a well-rounded addition to Yuri's army that could be put to good use.

the acid particle is not really something that has an impact on the game or balance. I'd say leave it and reduce a bit her range or attack or a combination of both of them. Simple fact why you don't want to remove the acid particle: infantry are not much used against yuri. Exception to this might be desolators, but those are only used in small groups at best.
Then this makes infantry a more viable solution to combating Yuri. Infantry are used for too little in the game and I like changing that.

But then again you are making an unnecessary change for a balance patch. If something is ok, keep it the way it is; do not change it so much. From what I learned from online experience is that the Yuri Prime essentially is a pressure tool, but not really overpowered or underpowered. I'd say keep it.
Who said balance patch? I sure didn't. You know my stance on a 'balance patch.' It's nigh impossible to do correctly. However, I said that I usually change Yuri's hero simply because I can. But to make YP a little better, I just add the MC link, up the cost for fun and call it win.

I don't agree with this. Spies and spying are unique to allieds, and soviets and yuri should not share the same. Spying has, suprisingly, only a small impact on the game either way. I can't back myself up after your change.
See, this is where I do some extra work - espionage. I make it a hell of a lot more useful to spy a barracks, spy a war factory and especially spying a battle lab. Since I completely rework the stolen technology tree, each side would need an infiltration unit to make use of that. Bear in mind, it's not just units that need tweaking... it's also other logic the game uses like... infiltration.

Soviets and allieds do not have this either. Why would you give yuri then a high tier anti tank soldier? He lags indeed conventional firepower, but he makes that up with other ways. Again a balance patch is not about changing such ways and methods of attacking and defending.
The T3 soldier is a support trooper like Chrono Legionnaire. I realize those aren't used but in specific situations, I also noted that the Allies and Soviets receive changes as well and the CLeg would be part of the Allies change log. Anyhow, the new soldier doesn't work as just anti-tank; it's also very good at supporting since that's what it's geared towards... SUPPORT.

Soviets and allieds can produce 2 miners at the same time too, building a refinery (selling it afterwards) gives a miner and one from the war factory. What you need to do here is a (small) price and buildtime difference between a slave miner from the construction tab and the vehicle tab. In that way a yuri player face exactly the same choice allieds and soviets need to make: building a slighlty cheaper miner from the war factory but also sacrify time to build tanks or building a slightly more expensive miner from the building tab. Furthermore, you need to reduce it's armour. The slaves should collect ore and gems just slightly slower, not by too much. There are differences inbetween the rate of income of yuri and the other factions, but not so much. Small changes should to do the job just fine and so there is no need for adding a refinery+miner system similar to allieds and soviets.
While this might be true, it doesn't alter the fact that Yuri can move right up to ore fields without a second thought. No money wasting required and he doesn't need to sell anything either. Not to mention, the time it takes to get one from the buildings tab is quicker than the Allied or Soviet refinery so it gets deployed quicker.

Believe it or not, I am far more uncertain what to do with this unit then with the boomer and magnetron. On one hand I'd like to see this unit have use and be used ingame, on the other hand this unit has such a low impact on the balance and I think making it usefull would be an unnecessary change. I was thinking about a role where you used once and a while to sneak behind your opponent and gas his tanks up, but I am not really sure I am in the place of determining units role where it is not really needed... .
Since it's there, it should have a use. You don't really want something sitting there that doesn't do anything. You may as well use remove it at that point. It's kinda hard to make this more useful, but at least having it fire the chaos gas upon death ensures it has a good chance of doing something.

This will probably one of those units where we will never agree on. I was thinking in the line of small nerfes at all fronts: more costly, less range a higher ROF, but especially less speed and, a higher ROT (Rate Of Turn), a higher fall speed of units so that the opponent can get back control of his units much faster and disabling the ability to lift ships. It is btw not a tank killer, but a support unit. My goal here would be making it's role smaller. It would also fit in my personal view of the game: Tier2 units are support units for massed T1 units. Every side has that (regardless if they are balanced or used alot). In that respect it would really not be fair towards yuri if he does not have a support unit on Tier2 (b/c really, it is infact the only support unit on that level he has). It will be changed though in my (and Daishi's) patch and magnetrons will have a less impact on the game, and I am sure after alot of testing the changes that are needed will be exact.
But the Mag is a little too good at what it does and the way it handles its capability is over the top, which is why I push it up in the tech tree. I make it a viable artillery since it's supposed to be that moreso than a tank killer. That's the one thing about Yuri that makes his army so obnoxious; a select few of his units have too many roles crammed onto it and they're placed in precarious tiers. It's his second tier that I start adding forces in place of units that have since moved. Believe me, I played enough with friends to know this actually works well in place with the other changes. Yuri's second tier is a bit grittier and it gets the job done well.

The real problem though is its speed. Make it slower and in combination with a faster overload would be a fine solution + you make it especially weak against certain units. For soviets I was thinking about their special country units and/or the terror drone. Making cuban terrorists and demo truck mind control immune would be a perfect start: demo trucks, which would be already heavily buffed, would do massive damage if left unchecked. Lifting up the vehicle does not help, b/c it still does damage to units beneath it. Cuban terrorists would not damage eachother anymore and the yuri player will need to use TC to get rid of it save and sound. Russia would be more difficult, so terror drones need to have a bigger impact: gatt tanks would do less damage to it and magnetrons would, with my changes, already be less a threat. I was thinking for allieds planes which do higher damage, although late game allieds are balanced with yuri and prism tanks would neeed to be nerfed also (for various reasons).
I already tweaked the Demo Truck and Terrorist. They're really win units at this point since Demo Trucks are faster, MC immune, a little more armored and do more damage and leave more rad. Oh, and they don't make an announcement. Terrorists receive pretty much the same bonuses except for the radiation and they don't blow each other up as often. I make it so if a Terrorist fires his weapon on his own, he doesn't chain reaction but if he fires his deathweapon OR is killed, he chain reactions. Anyway, for the MM itself, I only really make it KO itself faster since that seems to be its main issue.

It's extra ability is not so much a threat, really not, since good players rely on units and not on their base to counter it. If it got in your base it will be probably be b/c you were not able to counter it with your units. What is the most concerning is that it actually has decent armour, fires on the move and can dodge AA missiles. It needs to be slower, not by too much, but slower. I don't know if flying units have a ROF, but if they have it should also be slower for this unit, to make its hit-'n-run ability less effective.
Only if your opponent uses Discs to attack your units and doesn't sneak them around to your base, where he can either rape your economy, steal money, drastically lower your production or just stop your production, all with near impunity. It's bad enough to have slow production but stealing money at the same time? Come on now... that's a little OTT. Hell, the armor isn't even that much. Just a few AA units and it goes down hard.

You did not paid attention. I specifically said Boomers would only be slighlty more powerfull the subs, but only slightly. Barely enough to make up for its higher tier. And yes, I took into account that boomers have 2 missiles. I also can play with the verses and make it on par with dolphins (which will get nerved) and squids. Really, balancing the boomer with both subs/destroyers and squids/dolphins is soooo easy. Its siege part will be the biggest problem, although not undoable. What I'll do there is shifting the power of the missiles from one individual unit to several ones. In the end there is only 1 drawback: it will not be worth to build boomer solely and only for bombarding a base (for the other sides it is). But if the game gets into a naval fight, missiles will be very usefull, b/c the more boomers you have, the more missiles you will have. So no fenring, they will not be "useful for about 2 minutes of the game because after that, and especially late game, they're ****ing worthless.", it will be actually the other way around. If the game will get into a naval fight, the missiles will be useless if you only have a few boomers, but as the game grows you will need to have more and more boomers and missiles will be quantity-effective.
This is where I cannot agree. Yuri's navy just isn't enough to justify leaving it at one unit. Full featured navy means you don't need to sack the Boomer's power and it remains on par with the Dreadnought and ACC.

I would go really drastic here, go as far as cutting it's strength by 50%.
Alternatively, you could make more weapons just hit tanks in Bunkers.

[truefeel]

The speed is fine. He has enough armor to compensate and he can anti-scout in the right positions, but everyone still has a really good shot at scouting. Even still, the Brute, after a point, loses his usefulness, which is why I actually move it up in the tree and make it better. I add quite a bit of potency to his ability to actually make them worth using a bit later in the game instead of as a scout.The brute always was a scout and it filled that role quite well. It's only problem is that it can't protect engineer just b/c of its speed. I would suggest less strength and more speed.

I explicitly stated I would explain why I add the units I do and why they were necessary. While I can agree this one isn't necessary, it's still a well-rounded addition to Yuri's army that could be put to good use.But it is not necessary and that is the whole point of a balance patch: only changing that what is necessary.

Then this makes infantry a more viable solution to combating Yuri. Infantry are used for too little in the game and I like changing that.Same as above; changing the game so that infantry have a bigger role is not necessary. Infantry always played overall a smaller role in RA2 and YR. Nobody complained about that and nobody deemed it unbalanced. Change only what needs to be changed.

Who said balance patch? I sure didn't. You know my stance on a 'balance patch.' It's nigh impossible to do correctly. However, I said that I usually change Yuri's hero simply because I can. But to make YP a little better, I just add the MC link, up the cost for fun and call it win.I said the whole frickin time I was talking about a balance patch! It was sooo obvious that when I asked to be specific, I asked what you would do if you made a balance patch! God, do I really need to put in somewhere with size 100 "balance patch"?

See, this is where I do some extra work - espionage. I make it a hell of a lot more useful to spy a barracks, spy a war factory and especially spying a battle lab. Since I completely rework the stolen technology tree, each side would need an infiltration unit to make use of that. Bear in mind, it's not just units that need tweaking... it's also other logic the game uses like... infiltration.But the problem is that human player are most of the time not getting spied simply b/c they see through it every time. It requires that the skill level, of both players, is at a decent level, yes, but when it is the player will see something like this coming, always. The logic is fine; yuri and soviet never needed spies and never will.

The T3 soldier is a support trooper like Chrono Legionnaire. I realize those aren't used but in specific situations, I also noted that the Allies and Soviets receive changes as well and the CLeg would be part of the Allies change log. Anyhow, the new soldier doesn't work as just anti-tank; it's also very good at supporting since that's what it's geared towards... SUPPORT.I can't comment on that, b/c in your vision yuri is already so much changed. Yuri has already a good support infantry, yuri prime, and never was there need for another tier3 infantry to balance out.

While this might be true, it doesn't alter the fact that Yuri can move right up to ore fields without a second thought. No money wasting required and he doesn't need to sell anything either.You don't listen to my suggestions! I would make the slave miner a bit more expensive (probably 100-200 credits more) if it would come from the building tab and a bit less expensive (100-200 credits less) if it came from the vehicle tab.

Not to mention, the time it takes to get one from the buildings tab is quicker than the Allied or Soviet refinery so it gets deployed quicker.WRONG. The slave miner already has multipliers in the original game in which it builds with a speed of 2012,5 credits from the building tab and a speed of 1400 credits from the the vehicle tab. Other factions do not have such multipliers on their refineries and miners.

Since it's there, it should have a use. You don't really want something sitting there that doesn't do anything. You may as well use remove it at that point. It's kinda hard to make this more useful, but at least having it fire the chaos gas upon death ensures it has a good chance of doing something.But then again, who am I to determine a unit it's role or what it does when that unit has no impact on the balance?

But the Mag is a little too good at what it does and the way it handles its capability is over the top, which is why I push it up in the tech tree. I make it a viable artillery since it's supposed to be that moreso than a tank killer. That's the one thing about Yuri that makes his army so obnoxious; a select few of his units have too many roles crammed onto it and they're placed in precarious tiers. It's his second tier that I start adding forces in place of units that have since moved. So you make it a little less good in what it does? And the magnetron just simply has one role (support other units), so I don't see the reason why you brought that up here.

Believe me, I played enough with friends to know this actually works well in place with the other changes. Yuri's second tier is a bit grittier and it gets the job done well.But then again, I've played so many online games against decent to good yuri players to know how the magnetron should be changed, so the above quote is not really relevant.

I already tweaked the Demo Truck and Terrorist. They're really win units at this point since Demo Trucks are faster, MC immune, a little more armored and do more damage and leave more rad. Oh, and they don't make an announcement. Terrorists receive pretty much the same bonuses except for the radiation and they don't blow each other up as often. I make it so if a Terrorist fires his weapon on his own, he doesn't chain reaction but if he fires his deathweapon OR is killed, he chain reactions. Anyway, for the MM itself, I only really make it KO itself faster since that seems to be its main issue.I forgot about the announcement of the demo truck, which indeed would be removed also in my vision. However, I would complete make the terrorist immune to it's own weapon, including when it gets killed, else it would be very easy to counter a group of terrorists: just kill the first one and the rest will automatically follow.

Only if your opponent uses Discs to attack your units and doesn't sneak them around to your base, where he can either rape your economy, steal money, drastically lower your production or just stop your production, all with near impunity. It's bad enough to have slow production but stealing money at the same time? Come on now... that's a little OTT. Hell, the armor isn't even that much. Just a few AA units and it goes down hard.If it gets in your base then you can go 2 ways: either you did not had the units/means to counter and if you had, you simply deserve to be raped like that. And no, a few AA don't do it at all! It is so fast it can completely dodge AA missiles and in lesser manner, b/c of splash damage, flak. Yeh, if the yuri player would leave it hanging somewhere you are right, but if he uses hit 'n run with it you better have alot of fast AA units to get in front of it and kill it that way.

This is where I cannot agree. Yuri's navy just isn't enough to justify leaving it at one unit. Full featured navy means you don't need to sack the Boomer's power and it remains on par with the Dreadnought and ACC.You need to sack it's power, else you'll keep having boomer rushes. Moving it to battle lab is sacking its power too (and even then yuri can just as well do his boomer rush due it is still underwater and nobody can see if it is there). I can guarantee you I can make the boomer really balanced with 2 classes and make it also a siege unit that is quantity-effective. Yes, it will not be as powerfull as a dreadnaught or an aircraft carrier, but that is b/c those 2 are pure siege units and would be in my vision more expensive then the boomer (boomer would get a cut to 1250 credits).
This will be such an other thing where we never will agree on, I think.

Alternatively, you could make more weapons just hit tanks in Bunkers.The meaning of tank bunkers is that tanks are protected from other weapons. No, cutting the strength of the bunker is the best way to go.

[Statalyzer]

I don't know if tank bunkers need a nerf though ... they might be a good balance to Yuri not having a pillbox/sentry gun.

I make it a hell of a lot more useful to spy a barracks, spy a war factory and especially spying a battle lab.

Spying a war factory was already incredibly useful. Barracks obviously less so but can be still powerful at times.

[truefeel]

I don't know if tank bunkers need a nerf though ... they might be a good balance to Yuri not having a pillbox/sentry gun.

I really think that tank bunkers need a nerf, but perhaps I should wait a bit with this and see what other people think. You are right: yuri does not have a pillbox/sentry gun, and I better change other, more important things first before looking at the tank bunker.

[Fenring]

Spying a war factory was already incredibly useful. Barracks obviously less so but can be still powerful at times.
If you were the Allies, sure. But less so if you were the Soviets or Yuri. I always changed that to make it so everyone has a spy and everyone has a use for a spy.

The brute always was a scout and it filled that role quite well. It's only problem is that it can't protect engineer just b/c of its speed. I would suggest less strength and more speed.
Then it loses what makes it unique - tank killing. That's my point. Don't diminish one aspect to beef a different one; that's the opposite of a good idea. That's why I drop scouting from his list of abilities and make the Brute a good T2 tank hunter and a great advanced fodder infantry like Tesla Troopers.

But it is not necessary and that is the whole point of a balance patch: only changing that what is necessary.
It's not necessary to you, but it might be to someone else. The whole point of a balancing is to make the units useful and ensure all sides have a fair, even chance of winning at any point of the game.

Same as above; changing the game so that infantry have a bigger role is not necessary. Infantry always played overall a smaller role in RA2 and YR. Nobody complained about that and nobody deemed it unbalanced. Change only what needs to be changed.
Nobody complained because they were too busy pumping out Rhino Tanks and Mirage Tanks. SNORE. I want to see something different in the game instead of tanks, tanks, tanks.

I said the whole frickin time I was talking about a balance patch! It was sooo obvious that when I asked to be specific, I asked what you would do if you made a balance patch! God, do I really need to put in somewhere with size 100 "balance patch"?
In short, yes. I don't do balance patches and the one time I did for a rules editing competition, I removed Yuri. :p

But the problem is that human player are most of the time not getting spied simply b/c they see through it every time. It requires that the skill level, of both players, is at a decent level, yes, but when it is the player will see something like this coming, always. The logic is fine; yuri and soviet never needed spies and never will.
This is just where you need to be creative with spying efforts. There's a huge difference between you and I when it comes to balance. You change unit stats and ignore everything else; I make everything useful, change unit stats and improve logic that exists.

I can't comment on that, b/c in your vision yuri is already so much changed. Yuri has already a good support infantry, yuri prime, and never was there need for another tier3 infantry to balance out.
YP is a decent support unit but not as effective as one pretty much because you can only ever have two at any given time. Not quite the best supportability to be honest. Hence why I add a T3 trooper for Yuri. And if you're wondering, I don't add a T3 soldier to the Soviets. Their T2 group got improved by leaps and bounds so they work really well even at the highest tier. Except in RA X, Desolators became a T3 unit since countries dissolved.

WRONG. The slave miner already has multipliers in the original game in which it builds with a speed of 2012,5 credits from the building tab and a speed of 1400 credits from the the vehicle tab. Other factions do not have such multipliers on their refineries and miners.
Only in 1.001; 1.000 did not have have the modifiers. Though, I'm not quite sure the multipliers are that bad. Each keeps Yuri's production on par with the Allies and Soviets; though with the Factory based Miner, it may not be as good of an idea.

But then again, who am I to determine a unit it's role or what it does when that unit has no impact on the balance?
I have to agree with you on this one. The Chaos Miner is a great concept - subvert enemy forces. But its practicality is questionable.

So you make it a little less good in what it does? And the magnetron just simply has one role (support other units), so I don't see the reason why you brought that up here.
Based on its secondary, it was meant to be an artillery-esque unit as well. Now, granted, you could always take that off of the Magnetron, but then Yuri has no efficient, land-based base cracking opportunity, which you also need to take into account. You're going to run up against a turtling homo and you'll need some oomph to start racking up the damage.

But then again, I've played so many online games against decent to good yuri players to know how the magnetron should be changed, so the above quote is not really relevant.
As if you have some magic oracle that gives you all the answers. If you're so goddamn above the rest when it pertains to "being the know" about Yuri's balance, get off your ass and practice what you preach. Don't be so damn arrogant; there are multiple methods to giving Yuri some semblance of balance.

However, I would complete make the terrorist immune to it's own weapon, including when it gets killed, else it would be very easy to counter a group of terrorists: just kill the first one and the rest will automatically follow.
That's sort of meant to be their weakness.

If it gets in your base then you can go 2 ways: either you did not had the units/means to counter and if you had, you simply deserve to be raped like that. And no, a few AA don't do it at all! It is so fast it can completely dodge AA missiles and in lesser manner, b/c of splash damage, flak. Yeh, if the yuri player would leave it hanging somewhere you are right, but if he uses hit 'n run with it you better have alot of fast AA units to get in front of it and kill it that way.
That doesn't account for the Yuri player who rally points all the way around your units. And, as far as I know, missiles don't really tend to miss, especially not ones from the Patriot Missile. Though, if that really is the case, just make the missiles better instead of dumbing something down.

You need to sack it's power, else you'll keep having boomer rushes. Moving it to battle lab is sacking its power too (and even then yuri can just as well do his boomer rush due it is still underwater and nobody can see if it is there). I can guarantee you I can make the boomer really balanced with 2 classes and make it also a siege unit that is quantity-effective. Yes, it will not be as powerfull as a dreadnaught or an aircraft carrier, but that is b/c those 2 are pure siege units and would be in my vision more expensive then the boomer (boomer would get a cut to 1250 credits).
You have to remember one thing about the rocket weapons that I do - all of them have a reduction in damage at rookie and elite. As it stands, they do way too much damage. The Dreadnought remains the strongest, Boomer next strongest and V3 weakest. As such, I slightly reduce the armor on missiles, make them a tiny bit faster and give them all a lazy curve so they have a far less chance of missing when firing up a cliff. I leave the Boomer with the underwater sneaking to make it unique to Yuri, but it still requires thought to use since all AA is better by this point.

The meaning of tank bunkers is that tanks are protected from other weapons. No, cutting the strength of the bunker is the best way to go.
Not if you just make weapons smack tanks in the bunker instead. The tank takes damage instead of the bunker... or both might...

[Afrikorps]

I don't think tank bunkers are OP or imbalanced. Nobody uses them; no one good uses them anyway. I've never seen it before. The best use they have is for gatt tanks or prisms if the yuri player captures an allied mcv or MCs a prism tank. In that case, you deserve the pwnage it brings.

[truefeel]

Then it loses what makes it unique - tank killing. That's my point. Don't diminish one aspect to beef a different one; that's the opposite of a good idea. That's why I drop scouting from his list of abilities and make the Brute a good T2 tank hunter and a great advanced fodder infantry like Tesla Troopers.Wow! You dropped scouting for yuri? Dude, scouting as fast you can, as much as you can is hugely important! Knowing what your opponent does makes the difference between winning and loosing. if yuri can't properly scout early on he will loose the game even with his powerfull units! I dearly hopeyou forgot to mention there that you would replace the brute with a different scouting unit b/c if else credibility b/c suddenly a relevant topic... .

And no, slight decrease in strength in exchange for a bit more speed does not make an overall weaker anti tank unit. Infact I think it would become a better armour killer! Brutes are infact not an effective tank killer b/c they lack speed to stay with most tanks, making evading brutes very easy.

It's not necessary to you, but it might be to someone else. The whole point of a balancing is to make the units useful and ensure all sides have a fair, even chance of winning at any point of the game.But for balance you don't need every unit to be usefull. Aside that I think too that chaos drones should have purpose in the game, but it is in a inner conflict with my values.

Nobody complained because they were too busy pumping out Rhino Tanks and Mirage Tanks. SNORE. I want to see something different in the game instead of tanks, tanks, tanks.You do, but someone else might not. I personally would never lay my subjective finger on the gameplay of the game except if it needs balance, when talking about balancing.

In short, yes. I don't do balance patches and the one time I did for a rules editing competition, I removed Yuri. :pSo we are discussing with in my mind a balance patch and in your mind a mod... . That's why we need a facepalm smiley in this forum.

This is just where you need to be creative with spying efforts. There's a huge difference between you and I when it comes to balance. You change unit stats and ignore everything else; I make everything useful, change unit stats and improve logic that exists.I ignore only that what does not need change. Ok, you might be right that spies could need small buffs in order to give them a bit more use, but in the end if you give every side a spy which is similar effective to the allied one, you added just 2 more units which will not be used and when they will be used, given that they are just as easy recognizable as the allied spy, they will be wasted credits.
On top of that, spies are allieds unique and should be kept that way.

YP is a decent support unit but not as effective as one pretty much because you can only ever have two at any given time. Not quite the best supportability to be honest. Hence why I add a T3 trooper for Yuri. And if you're wondering, I don't add a T3 soldier to the Soviets. Their T2 group got improved by leaps and bounds so they work really well even at the highest tier. Except in RA X, Desolators became a T3 unit since countries dissolved.Not effective?? Wow, it's one of the best infantry out there! And while not overpowered, it can in combination with other units protecting it be a powerfull tool. I've seen many players fighting yuri's army and then bam, iron curtain gone. Yuri Prime took care of that. Whereas tanya and boris are not cost effective and should receive some buffs.

Only in 1.001; 1.000 did not have have the modifiers. Though, I'm not quite sure the multipliers are that bad. Each keeps Yuri's production on par with the Allies and Soviets; though with the Factory based Miner, it may not be as good of an idea.You cannot be serious... . Either you are using 1.000 as a reference point which is simply wrong, or you are trying still to get your right out of it, which is wrong too. Sorry dude, but pointing at 1.000 is redicolous. What value has 1.000 here and how in earth can that be relevant? And no, the multipliers are not bad at all. The amount of money spent on a miner though should also be adapted in the same line.

Based on its secondary, it was meant to be an artillery-esque unit as well. Now, granted, you could always take that off of the Magnetron, but then Yuri has no efficient, land-based base cracking opportunity, which you also need to take into account. You're going to run up against a turtling homo and you'll need some oomph to start racking up the damage.I take everything in account and I am prepared for alot of testing, alot of setbacks,alot of people who will never agree while others do and so on. I fully understand the difficulty of balancing the magnetron without replacing, removing or altering it into something else and still I am willing to do the job and still I believe I can do that. I know exactly what needs to be changed, the big problem is by how much.

As if you have some magic oracle that gives you all the answers. If you're so goddamn above the rest when it pertains to "being the know" about Yuri's balance, get off your ass and practice what you preach. Don't be so damn arrogant; there are multiple methods to giving Yuri some semblance of balance.This has nothing do with arrogant. You are assuming I am boosting here, which is faulty. Do I ****ing know the answer of every problem? No ? Do I claim I can't be wrong? Hell no! am I preachy b/c I don't want to get this into a credibility fight, which was the point of that piece of post to prevent that? Absolutely not! So shut up, you had no right to act that agressive there. It was no attack on you and you should not find hidden messages that are not there. I already acknowledged back that there are several ways to balance yuri, but b/c you are so eagerly to ignore it, I'll repeat it: THERE ARE SEVERAL WAYS TO BALANCE YURI!! But in my opinion you should not balance the way it alters the game while there was no need for that in a balance patch.

However, it could just as well be that I misunderstood your message. To be fully clear: I tought that piece of message was about you trying to proof your credibility. If that was not the case, I apologies.

That's sort of meant to be their weakness.But sadly makes the terrorist at the same time underpowered and makes Cuba as a side underpowered, which is imbalance, which needs to be fixed.

That doesn't account for the Yuri player who rally points all the way around your units. And, as far as I know, missiles don't really tend to miss, especially not ones from the Patriot Missile. Though, if that really is the case, just make the missiles better instead of dumbing something down.Since when can't floating disks not be countered b/c they have rally points. And yes, AA missiles do miss if yuri retreat in the opposite direction. And I can't just change patriot missiles, that has implications on every air unit, not just the floating disk. Although patriot missiles do deserve a buff, being the lesser of the flak cannon and gattling cannon.

You have to remember one thing about the rocket weapons that I do - all of them have a reduction in damage at rookie and elite. As it stands, they do way too much damage. The Dreadnought remains the strongest, Boomer next strongest and V3 weakest. As such, I slightly reduce the armor on missiles, make them a tiny bit faster and give them all a lazy curve so they have a far less chance of missing when firing up a cliff. I leave the Boomer with the underwater sneaking to make it unique to Yuri, but it still requires thought to use since all AA is better by this point.I also made changes to the missile in the total pack of changes I had in mind for the boomer. I made for one that the missile (yes, missile, just one) stays longer on the deck, is slightly easier to take down but most importantly does way less damage. I need to play a little with it still, a bit of fine tuning, but I am pretty happy with the overall change.

Not if you just make weapons smack tanks in the bunker instead. The tank takes damage instead of the bunker... or both might...But which weapons would you make then able to smack the bunker? And how many types of units could do that then? That's making the problem even more complicated. Just reduce the strength and you are always save. Infact I am thinking about removing the ability of planes to destroy tanks inside their bunkers. That's an advantage allieds only have. The only thing that stops me from doing that is b/c it is now never used, but after the changes it could. You can ultimately make it balanced your way, but changing the strength of the bunker seems to be the better solution for me.

I don't think tank bunkers are OP or imbalanced. Nobody uses them; no one good uses them anyway. I've never seen it before. The best use they have is for gatt tanks or prisms if the yuri player captures an allied mcv or MCs a prism tank. In that case, you deserve the pwnage it brings.


I have seen yuri players using bunkers, alot actually on small maps. Whenever I tried to rush with a few tanks a yuri player promptly bunkers up. Xwis forums are full with questions about how to counter bunkering on Hidden Valley; nobody has a good answer. If the game gets long on Offense Defense and a yuri player is starting to loose he'll back up to his base and build his entrance full with bunkers. Now I am telling you that there is no getting through there without superweapons. I am not against camping, but this is just redicolous and certainly overpowered to the other sides which don't have that same potentional of camping. I am not saying I can't be wrong about this, and you can be right that they are actually not overpowered, but from my personal believe they are.

[Fenring]

Wow! You dropped scouting for yuri? Dude, scouting as fast you can, as much as you can is hugely important! Knowing what your opponent does makes the difference between winning and loosing. if yuri can't properly scout early on he will loose the game even with his powerfull units! I dearly hopeyou forgot to mention there that you would replace the brute with a different scouting unit b/c if else credibility b/c suddenly a relevant topic... .
You missed my first long post where I changed how Yuri's early game works. Rather than just make the Brute a better scout, I moved them around in the tech tree and dropped a funky Yuri attack dog in its place. Pretty much the same ****, but a little different to its Allied/Soviet counterparts, which is something I changed among all dogs anyway to make them at least slightly unique instead of clones with a new image.

And no, slight decrease in strength in exchange for a bit more speed does not make an overall weaker anti tank unit. Infact I think it would become a better armour killer! Brutes are infact not an effective tank killer b/c they lack speed to stay with most tanks, making evading brutes very easy.
There is that, but that doesn't mean I didn't make Brutes a hell of a lot better, which they are. If you don't want to use them as tank hunters, make them epic heavy fodder. Hell, when they dive into a tank battle, they'll lay some hits down and deal some serious damage.

But for balance you don't need every unit to be usefull. Aside that I think too that chaos drones should have purpose in the game, but it is in a inner conflict with my values.
uh, yeah, you kinda do. If useless units are in your tree and do nothing, what's the point in even having them? You may as well remove everything people never use. No... every unit, if it exists, should be upgraded to actually be used. You never know what type of balance a formerly useless unit may bring to the metaphorical table.

You do, but someone else might not. I personally would never lay my subjective finger on the gameplay of the game except if it needs balance, when talking about balancing.
Balance is always subjective anyway. There is no be-all, end-all balancing act. Someone, somewhere, is going to complain.

So we are discussing with in my mind a balance patch and in your mind a mod... . That's why we need a facepalm smiley in this forum.
I'm always talking about mods. **** stock YR. It's lame, boring and crappy.

I ignore only that what does not need change. Ok, you might be right that spies could need small buffs in order to give them a bit more use, but in the end if you give every side a spy which is similar effective to the allied one, you added just 2 more units which will not be used and when they will be used, given that they are just as easy recognizable as the allied spy, they will be wasted credits.
Not quite if you at least have the fortitude to make each infiltrator unique to each side. Nothing prevents each spy from being unique unless you're too lazy to put any effort into creativity. Not to mention, there are many ways to make spies that much more useful.

On top of that, spies are allieds unique and should be kept that way.
Only if you make each one a simple clone with one value different, sure. Otherwise, put some thought into it.

Not effective?? Wow, it's one of the best infantry out there! And while not overpowered, it can in combination with other units protecting it be a powerfull tool. I've seen many players fighting yuri's army and then bam, iron curtain gone. Yuri Prime took care of that. Whereas tanya and boris are not cost effective and should receive some buffs.
Not effective in a support role, like, say, backing up a battalion of tanks or a squad of infantry. No doubt YP is rather devious for sneak attacks, which I don't discount. He's exceptional for that and pretty much that alone.

You cannot be serious... . Either you are using 1.000 as a reference point which is simply wrong, or you are trying still to get your right out of it, which is wrong too. Sorry dude, but pointing at 1.000 is redicolous. What value has 1.000 here and how in earth can that be relevant? And no, the multipliers are not bad at all. The amount of money spent on a miner though should also be adapted in the same line.
I always use the 1.000 rules as my starting point. 1.001 make a number of changes I didn't really care for so I just use 1.000 and make the 1.001 changes that were necessary like the balance changes.

I take everything in account and I am prepared for alot of testing, alot of setbacks,alot of people who will never agree while others do and so on. I fully understand the difficulty of balancing the magnetron without replacing, removing or altering it into something else and still I am willing to do the job and still I believe I can do that. I know exactly what needs to be changed, the big problem is by how much.
This is where changing the tech tree is actually helpful. You can actually make drastic changes without disrupting the flow as much as you might think. And you're able to have a hell of a lot more room to experiment, still without disrupting the flow.

This has nothing do with arrogant. You are assuming I am boosting here, which is faulty. Do I ****ing know the answer of every problem? No ? Do I claim I can't be wrong? Hell no! am I preachy b/c I don't want to get this into a credibility fight, which was the point of that piece of post to prevent that? Absolutely not! So shut up, you had no right to act that agressive there. It was no attack on you and you should not find hidden messages that are not there. I already acknowledged back that there are several ways to balance yuri, but b/c you are so eagerly to ignore it, I'll repeat it: THERE ARE SEVERAL WAYS TO BALANCE YURI!! But in my opinion you should not balance the way it alters the game while there was no need for that in a balance patch.
Apparently you didn't read your own statement hard enough. Re-read it. If you don't see that your tone was a tad arrogant, then you're not thinking hard enough.

However, it could just as well be that I misunderstood your message. To be fully clear: I tought that piece of message was about you trying to proof your credibility. If that was not the case, I apologies.
I wasn't discussing "cred." I was pointing out that your statement came off as arrogant and that your way is not always the right way.

But sadly makes the terrorist at the same time underpowered and makes Cuba as a side underpowered, which is imbalance, which needs to be fixed.
I was just thinking along the lines of not diminishing Terrorbombing's damaging effects. That, right there, is what actually makes Terrorists decent units. Although... you're able to easily get around that by putting a deploy weapon that destroys them on the spot, but even that feels a little cumbersome. It is fun though.

Since when can't floating disks not be countered b/c they have rally points. And yes, AA missiles do miss if yuri retreat in the opposite direction. And I can't just change patriot missiles, that has implications on every air unit, not just the floating disk. Although patriot missiles do deserve a buff, being the lesser of the flak cannon and gattling cannon.
I think you're missing my point here. I'm talking about a player just avoiding your army with Floating Discs while it fights yours. Not everyone will just throw Discs into the fray and hope for the best. There are a few out there who will invariably use them while you're distracted with a tank battle or something.

I also made changes to the missile in the total pack of changes I had in mind for the boomer. I made for one that the missile (yes, missile, just one) stays longer on the deck, is slightly easier to take down but most importantly does way less damage. I need to play a little with it still, a bit of fine tuning, but I am pretty happy with the overall change.
That was one thing the Boomer always had against it: the time the missiles sat on the deck. I don't think you need to really make it any worse since it's already the longest between the Dreadnought, V3 and itself. I don't agree with lowering damage either if you took off one of the missiles. Makes the Boomer a tad too easy to counter. Having two missiles at least meant one would hit, and at lowered damage, that's not nearly as devastating. Though, you may want to also consider the warhead impact instead of just the damage since the warhead has a pretty good spread that's what makes the Boomer's weapon seem so strong.

But which weapons would you make then able to smack the bunker? And how many types of units could do that then? That's making the problem even more complicated. Just reduce the strength and you are always save. Infact I am thinking about removing the ability of planes to destroy tanks inside their bunkers. That's an advantage allieds only have. The only thing that stops me from doing that is b/c it is now never used, but after the changes it could. You can ultimately make it balanced your way, but changing the strength of the bunker seems to be the better solution for me.
Small arms fire (ie bullet-based weapons), artillery weapons (Prism Tanks, Mags, etc) and certain HE weapons. Then most tanks, the GGI, planes, Rocketeers and company would hit the tanks. It's not all that tough to decide which units would likely hit the tank. Though... a tank hitting it seems unlikely but they're more likely to be up close. Besides, when the tank is gone, the weapons can attack the bunker too... I think. I'll have to go confirm that but I'm about 99 percent sure they can...

[truefeel]

You missed my first long post where I changed how Yuri's early game works. Rather than just make the Brute a better scout, I moved them around in the tech tree and dropped a funky Yuri attack dog in its place. Pretty much the same ****, but a little different to its Allied/Soviet counterparts, which is something I changed among all dogs anyway to make them at least slightly unique instead of clones with a new image.

I luckily did not missed it. Hence this: "I dearly hopeyou forgot to mention there that you would replace the brute with a different scouting unit ".

There is that, but that doesn't mean I didn't make Brutes a hell of a lot better, which they are. If you don't want to use them as tank hunters, make them epic heavy fodder. Hell, when they dive into a tank battle, they'll lay some hits down and deal some serious damage.

Brutes would still be strong fodder units, but only with a little less strength. Furthermore, extra speed helps fodder (speed is exactly why dogs are overall prefered over stronger infantry, as fodder)

uh, yeah, you kinda do. If useless units are in your tree and do nothing, what's the point in even having them? You may as well remove everything people never use. No... every unit, if it exists, should be upgraded to actually be used. You never know what type of balance a formerly useless unit may bring to the metaphorical table.

Uh no, you don't have to. This has more to do with gameplay then balance. If I would ever make chaos drones usefull, it would only be for gameplay (of course you will need to integrate into the balance then).

Balance is always subjective anyway. There is no be-all, end-all balancing act. Someone, somewhere, is going to complain.Which I fully acknowledged, accepted and said myself before. However, there's one thing you missed: there's a big part of the community that has a general concensus over what is imbalanced and what not. Most people acknowledge that boomers are imbalanced, that magnetrons are overpowered and that battle fortresses deserve nerfing. Changing on this balance therefore is less subjective then changing the gameplay. That's why I am willing to lay my subjective finger on the balance.

I'm always talking about mods. **** stock YR. It's lame, boring and crappy.

Lame. I am talking the whole time about how I would change the original game for more balance, you eagerly discussed it with me and now suddenly it comes out that you were infact talking about mods. Really Fenring, how in earth can everything that you said until now be really relevant?

Not quite if you at least have the fortitude to make each infiltrator unique to each side. Nothing prevents each spy from being unique unless you're too lazy to put any effort into creativity. Not to mention, there are many ways to make spies that much more useful.

But in the end all different spies should be as easy to be countered as the original, allied spy. If that is the case ultimately spies will not be used b/c they easily be countered.

Only if you make each one a simple clone with one value different, sure. Otherwise, put some thought into it.I mean the whole concept of spying, infiltrating. That simply belongs to allieds. You can make a flying dragon as spy for yuri, still does not change the fact that it needs to be able to infiltrate and that is allieds unique.

Not effective in a support role, like, say, backing up a battalion of tanks or a squad of infantry. No doubt YP is rather devious for sneak attacks, which I don't discount. He's exceptional for that and pretty much that alone.

But why does it so necessarily be able to back up a battalion? You have to realise that what you think that Yuri should be, is not the same for somebody else.

I always use the 1.000 rules as my starting point. 1.001 make a number of changes I didn't really care for so I just use 1.000 and make the 1.001 changes that were necessary like the balance changes.

That's just wrong. Changing the game, being mod or patch, should always come from the current version. Don't you think also you could had said that a little earlier?

This is where changing the tech tree is actually helpful. You can actually make drastic changes without disrupting the flow as much as you might think. And you're able to have a hell of a lot more room to experiment, still without disrupting the flow.

The tech tree is fine. It is seperated into 3 tiers and it makes the work like that far easier. I'm also fine how the units are right now in those tiers and thus in the tech tree. if I change the tech tree I'll be set back by alot.

I was just thinking along the lines of not diminishing Terrorbombing's damaging effects. That, right there, is what actually makes Terrorists decent units. Although... you're able to easily get around that by putting a deploy weapon that destroys them on the spot, but even that feels a little cumbersome. It is fun though.

That's only looking at its advantages, not at its disadvantages. You have to take the whole picture into an account. I know removing the ability of the deathweapon to kill other, friendly terrorists in the area is rather radical, but it is either that or turning the whole terrorist upside down.

I think you're missing my point here. I'm talking about a player just avoiding your army with Floating Discs while it fights yours. Not everyone will just throw Discs into the fray and hope for the best. There are a few out there who will invariably use them while you're distracted with a tank battle or something.

Now you are talking about skill. You are going from the assumption that the yuri can multitask (and rally points are that). A player of equal skill can just do the same: he can fight yuri's main army while sending his flak tracks/IFVs around to counter the floating disks. If you are getting pounded by floating disks b/c you were distracted by his main army, it would only show that you had less skills and you simply deserved to loose that way. Something like being distracted (aka (lack of) skill) does not count for balance. You can easily compare that with seal IFV really pointed to your base while you were fighting your opponent's army: you can't blame it on the balance b/c you slipped and did not notice it.

That was one thing the Boomer always had against it: the time the missiles sat on the deck. I don't think you need to really make it any worse since it's already the longest between the Dreadnought, V3 and itself. I don't agree with lowering damage either if you took off one of the missiles. Makes the Boomer a tad too easy to counter. exactly: it makes countering ONE SINGLE boomer easy. Now imagine 10 of such boomers with weak missiles firing at your base. Will it be that easy then?

Having two missiles at least meant one would hit, and at lowered damage, that's not nearly as devastating. Though, you may want to also consider the warhead impact instead of just the damage since the warhead has a pretty good spread that's what makes the Boomer's weapon seem so strong.The spread has not really impact. If you fire on a building the spread will most likely be covered by all the cells of that building. I could take a look at it and I could change it. And again the point of the change is infact the INDIVIDUAL boomer is not much devestating.

Apparently you didn't read your own statement hard enough. Re-read it. If you don't see that your tone was a tad arrogant, then you're not thinking hard enough.Like I said before, stop reading hidden messages that are not there.

I wasn't discussing "cred." I was pointing out that your statement came off as arrogant and that your way is not always the right way.I was talking about your statement that you "would know what works and what not b/c you tested it with friends".

Small arms fire (ie bullet-based weapons), artillery weapons (Prism Tanks, Mags, etc) and certain HE weapons. Then most tanks, the GGI, planes, Rocketeers and company would hit the tanks. It's not all that tough to decide which units would likely hit the tank. Though... a tank hitting it seems unlikely but they're more likely to be up close. Besides, when the tank is gone, the weapons can attack the bunker too... I think. I'll have to go confirm that but I'm about 99 percent sure they can...Now pick out the units for every side so that it would be balanced. Now it gets alot more difficult then before. Why would you make it yourself so difficult while it can be so easy as just reducing the strength of the bunker? Yeh it can be fun and balanced that way, but like I said I personally would never do so b/c it comes down to touching unnecessarily the gameplay, which I rather stay my hands off, speaking in terms of a balance patch (a mod is a different story).

[Statalyzer]

Build time multipliers were a dumb idea. The tanks should all just build in proportion to their cost. Then, if anything seems really imbalanced or underpowered and there's not much of another option, you can make it build faster or slower instead of changing the cost and you get some more variety.

If you were the Allies, sure. But less so if you were the Soviets or Yuri. I always changed that to make it so everyone has a spy and everyone has a use for a spy.

Still don't see the point. Why the spy? Why not duplicate any of the other several dozen unique units the sides have?

Most people acknowledge that boomers are imbalanced, that magnetrons are overpowered and that battle fortresses deserve nerfing.

That is very true. Boomers are mostly only imbalanced because you can get them at Radar level though.

But sadly makes the terrorist at the same time underpowered and makes Cuba as a side underpowered, which is imbalance, which needs to be fixed.

What makes Cuba underpowered is that they don't get a Desolator and Mirage Tanks are very difficult for the Soviets to beat without Desos.

I am not saying I can't be wrong about this, and you can be right that they are actually not overpowered, but from my personal believe they are.

Remember, you can't take things in isolation. Bunkers are often very useful. However, the lack of a $500 unpowered defense to throw up is hurtful too. If the one doesn't quite make up for the other, just increase the bunker's cost by a couple of hundred so it's more of a cost sacrifice for Yuri to use these.

Not if you just make weapons smack tanks in the bunker instead.

Then what's the point of the bunker? You're paying extra despite giving up some valuable mobility.

[Afrikorps]

If you make those changes to the terrorist, then how much would you increase their cost?

[truefeel]

Build time multipliers were a dumb idea. The tanks should all just build in proportion to their cost. Then, if anything seems really imbalanced or underpowered and there's not much of another option, you can make it build faster or slower instead of changing the cost and you get some more variety.

Completely agreed. I have nothing to add here.

That is very true. Boomers are mostly only imbalanced because you can get them at Radar level though.

Of course, but the end result is that they are overpowered :p.

What makes Cuba underpowered is that they don't get a Desolator and Mirage Tanks are very difficult for the Soviets to beat without Desos.

Yes, and I want to give cuba a good counter against mirages, which I found in the country specific unit the terrorist.

Remember, you can't take things in isolation. Bunkers are often very useful. However, the lack of a $500 unpowered defense to throw up is hurtful too. If the one doesn't quite make up for the other, just increase the bunker's cost by a couple of hundred so it's more of a cost sacrifice for Yuri to use these.

Hmm, not a bad point. Ok I'll play around with that first.

If you make those changes to the terrorist, then how much would you increase their cost?


Not by too much; Terrorists would still remain infantry with not a lot of health and can be countered. It will in the end all go down to players their skills, just as intended. I understand your concern though, and for clarification they should get a small price increase. maybe something like 100 credits or so (which is infact quite alot; if I remember correctly terrorists are 300 a piece and that would be a price increase of 33%
.)

[Afrikorps]

Terrorists are 200 so a price increase is justified.

[truefeel]

Terrorists are 200 so a price increase is justified.

Yeh I agree here. 300-400 would be a fair price for all the changes.

[Afrikorps]

300 I would say. You do have to use them in groups so 400 may be too much. 400 X 5 = 2000 + 500 for the flak track is 2500. Too much.

[truefeel]

300 I would say. You do have to use them in groups so 400 may be too much. 400 X 5 = 2000 + 500 for the flak track is 2500. Too much.

We will see. It has not been tested out alot in YR. I tried it out a few years ago; the changes concerning cost effective were great: cuba terrorists raped mirage tanks, but allieds could counter with seal IFVs or anything like that. It came down to skill, as wanted.
what is even better is that although the concept has not been tested alot YR, it has been in RA2. I got the idea from piscinex his 1.007 patch and that has been tested hundreds of times already.

[Afrikorps]

It would only be cost effective if it kills 5 mirages on 2 attempts on average of players with similar skill.

[Fenring]

Based on this conversation alone, I want to give Cuba a different special. >_>

[truefeel]

It would only be cost effective if it kills 5 mirages on 2 attempts on average of players with similar skill.

I was thinking of walking terrorists which are at same time utilised yet in different groups, which would not need to be inside flak tracks anymore. To kill 5 mirages you can use then 16 terrorists (given the price is 300). I think we can savely say allieds would loose more then just 5 mirages.

Based on this conversation alone, I want to give Cuba a different special. >_>

And based on this conversation alone I can savely say Cuba can become a good country with terrorists.

[Fenring]

And based on this conversation alone I can savely say Cuba can become a good country with terrorists.
No doubt but I gut the middleman most of the time. Cuba does need a really effect radar special anyway because the terrorist seems to have more limited uses as the game wears on...

[truefeel]

No doubt but I gut the middleman most of the time. Cuba does need a really effect radar special anyway because the terrorist seems to have more limited uses as the game wears on...

Terrorists would actually be more and more usefull later in the game, b/c allieds opt for mirage tanks late game. Mirage tanks are weak against pretty much anything that does decent splash damage. I tested adapted terrorists a few years with daishi and we got nice results; we did very accurate simulations (rhino tanks+ terrorists against mirage tanks + a toned down battle fortress with a seal in it). We found out that the player who timed his moves better then the other would win the matchup. In other words: the one who shows the best microing will win.

[Afrikorps]

Sounds like its harder for the sov player because he has to get his flaks close enough with bfs with a seal inside. Even if they do, they'll wind up harming/killing some of their rhinos.

[truefeel]

Sounds like its harder for the sov player because he has to get his flaks close enough with bfs with a seal inside. Even if they do, they'll wind up harming/killing some of their rhinos.

Remember that I specifically said a toned down BF. I changed the BF so it is slower and turns slower. Also the multipliers from the BF were slightly decreased (mind that those changes was made for alot of reasons). This has the effect that if a BF is in front of the mirages the BF can just be rammed by rhinoes and the mirages can be cleaned up afterwards by terrorists. If the BF is behind the mirages the BF will not be enough in range to kill a complete group of terrorists. For the soviet counts though if the soviet players times wrong and the allied player brings up his BF the terrorists are wasted money, or if he brings in his rhinoes at the wrong time he'll also be dead meat. And you probably don't have your terrorists and rhino tanks all packed together. That would be a stupid thing to do. So the end result is that both players will constantly try to attack eachother in the flank, will try to defend their own flank and will try to dodge counters. Both players have equal chances in terms of slipping up or winning.

[Afrikorps]

Well if the allied player moves his mirages he's lost anyway. It would seem the allied player's best bet would be in how well they use the toned down bfs. I haven't seen this in action, but it almost seems as though the sov player may not even need terrorists.

[truefeel]

Well if the allied player moves his mirages he's lost anyway. It would seem the allied player's best bet would be in how well they use the toned down bfs. I haven't seen this in action, but it almost seems as though the sov player may not even need terrorists.

Euh he can move his mirages as long as the rhino tanks are not near.

[Fenring]

Terrorists would actually be more and more usefull later in the game, b/c allieds opt for mirage tanks late game. Mirage tanks are weak against pretty much anything that does decent splash damage. I tested adapted terrorists a few years with daishi and we got nice results; we did very accurate simulations (rhino tanks+ terrorists against mirage tanks + a toned down battle fortress with a seal in it). We found out that the player who timed his moves better then the other would win the matchup. In other words: the one who shows the best microing will win.
You're, no doubt, dead on, but I look at a lot more than you do like IFV combos and the like. The Terrorist just creates another Ivan-style suicide IFV bomb with less oomph... But oh well, it's not like I removed the unit entirely. Just made it global. :p

[EDIT] I also know to fix the BF! Remove the ****er. :p

[truefeel]

You're, no doubt, dead on, but I look at a lot more than you do like IFV combos and the like. The Terrorist just creates another Ivan-style suicide IFV bomb with less oomph... But oh well, it's not like I removed the unit entirely. Just made it global. :p

[EDIT] I also know to fix the BF! Remove the ****er. :p

IFV combos... . Really the last thing in my mind would be looking at that and even then. Setting priorities has meaning you know.

[Fenring]

I always look at IFV combos. You know, to make things interesting. I make them worth getting and using. See how much more awesome modding is versus just balancing? :p

[truefeel]

I always look at IFV combos. You know, to make things interesting. I make them worth getting and using. See how much more awesome modding is versus just balancing? :p

My eyepoint always was balance, not modding. I have nothing against modding, but I have no interests in that. Besides, balancing is much more difficult then modding and I actually see that as a plus; it is challenging.

[Afrikorps]

What would you do to the tank destroyer and grand cannon is anything?

[truefeel]

What would you do to the tank destroyer and grand cannon is anything?

I would make the tank destroyer a much better anti tank unit and I think a faster production speed (after the buildtime multipliers are removed from all units).
The grand cannon is something doubtfull. I kinda feel it is usefull as an offensive building and not so as a defensive building. Although it would go against my principles, I feel like a change towards more offense and less defense would be suited here. In other words: slightly less powerfull against units but better against buildings. It is just an idea so if you think you have a better one plz share.

[Afrikorps]

Idk about an offensive structure. I think the french need a unit or unit upgrade.

[Fenring]

My eyepoint always was balance, not modding. I have nothing against modding, but I have no interests in that. Besides, balancing is much more difficult then modding and I actually see that as a plus; it is challenging.
It's not a plus, it's a detriment. Modding is infinitely harder anyway. Crash debugging. I rest my case. :p

[Afrikorps]

I'm starting to see that. I made an american unit use the rhino tank image. The game crashes after I make the unit from the allied war factory.

[Fenring]

That's a missing weapon or warhead.

[truefeel]

It's not a plus, it's a detriment. Modding is infinitely harder anyway. Crash debugging. I rest my case. :p

I am talking about the ussual stuff: adding and changing units. Not modding aka cracking the exe or extra dll content :p.

I'm starting to see that. I made an american unit use the rhino tank image. The game crashes after I make the unit from the allied war factory.

Then you obviously did something wrong. I'd say remove the code, copy the one of the rhino and name it something like [RHINO2] and then play with the prerequisites.

[Afrikorps]

That's exactly what I did. I may have changed the warhead "AT" which I think the rhino uses. I also made a unit use the V3 and it crashed when I made that too.