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Strat Balance Patch

For many years, stratters have wished to make modifications to the game to address issues with some units and weapons being too strong, and others too weak. In particular, the CCA has always been perceived as too slow to compete with the NSDF. With the SBP, this issue has been addressed and now both factions are equally viable: the CCA’s scavs no longer have an animation when picking up their scrap, making them a lot quicker at gathering.

As the level of mechanical skill in gamers increased over the years, hop sniping began to dominate the meta and reveal the full, broken potential of this mechanic. With a 3 second delay on firing the sniper upon exiting a vehicle, this has also been addressed without removing the sniper’s ability to be a game changer.

The TRO Factions have been banned/disregarded from competitive strat ever since the expansion first released, primarily due to them having SP-Stabber on their main tanks with no substantial drawbacks to keep that in check. Now, they have been adjusted to the point where they can be considered balanced in comparison to the stock factions. The SP tank is now locked behind a slow build time and a higher scrap cost, preventing players from rushing to an extremely high level of potential strength. BDogs have been tweaked to have speed buffs in exchange for lower hull, and the CRA has received the inverse; less speed but more hull. This further defines the distinction between the 4 factions, provides strong incentives for each one, and clearly separates out their identities.

Summary by faction:
NSDF - Same as stock except for improved Walker and Turret
CCA - Same as stock except improved Rocket Tank, Light Tank and Turret. Golem costs more, builds slower
CRA - Slower Constructor and Tank, Tank carries Cannon + Rocket
BDog - Faster units, less hull. Tank has SP-Stabber + Minigun, Bobcat is their main tank, Grizzly, Wolverine and Sasquatch are their super units
All factions - more Recycler hull, better turrets, better Gun Towers, most weapons and units have been improved so everything can be considered a good choice

With thanks to:

Tech support (LUA, object/map editing):
Goomba
Herp McDerperson
DivisionByZero
BW
GroovySphinx
Deus Ex Ceteri
General BlackDragon
ScrapPool
Business Lawyer

Playtesting, theorycrafting:
KingFurykiller
GrizzlyOne95
VTrider
Vivify
HyperFighter
BW
GroovySphinx
Budweiser Bandit
Business Lawyer
SxxyRexy
Piercing
MontanaJax
BZ98er


Changelog:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MRMu8lyNL6xhKCyJnajh38X89PwjZarl_HaCphjJYJk/edit?usp=sharing


Most recent changes:


04/05/2023:

All factions:
1st person aiming for the NSDF, BDog and CCA Turret is now fixed thanks to Business Lawyer

CRA:
An issue with the Tug struggling to pick objects up has been fixed by Business Lawyer. He has also put a voice line back for the unit that was missing.
BL’s also fixed an issue with the new Heavy Tank sometimes firing shoots into the floor. It should be even more accurate (and deadly) now.

Maps:
Gullies somehow ended up being left out of the map list. It’s now available for ranked and casual games alike.
Added Guren’s Bio-Metal Run edit for Commander Teams.
SBP-N Mt Giver (Caleb) has been updated for terrain painting. Trying to get more of his maps into SBP but running into problems, will look into it over the weekend.

QoL:
Updated the LUA script to auto-ally all the way up to the 15th player for Commander Teams (thanks to DivisionByZero).



09/04/2023:

All factions:
Soldier hull has been increased from 125 to 209 so that 1 mortar will still kill all 5 as long as it is placed carefully, but the soldiers won’t as easily die to explosions or cannonfire

NSDF:
Walker now moves 27% faster compared to the Golem / Mongo (compared with the BD Walker which has 100% faster movement speed)

Black Dogs:
Walker hull increased from 4500 to 5000 (all others have 6000)
Walker radar increased from 200 to 250m (same as the others)
Rocket Tank has been given Thumper again

CRA:
Turret hull increased from 1500 to 2250

Weapons:
MAG Cannon:
First 2 charges do reduced damage (about 1/3rd less) for half the ammo efficiency
The 5th charge, being the hardest to time effectively, does almost the same amount of damage as the 6th charge but is 3 times more efficient with ammo - the properties of this charge make it harder to land the full damage across 2 projectiles, but it still has a range advantage (260 vs. 190m)
The price of the weapon has been increased from 2 to 4 (back to stock price)

Maps:
The adjusted version of Hills of War which was given the ‘1v1’ suffix has been merged into Standard SBP, replacing the stock version of the map. This version has only 2 spawns - the north and south bases. The north base area was also made larger by flattening some of the hilly terrain surrounding it to provide for more build space.


QoL / bugfixes - new gamemode!:
The Armory-Day Wrecker bug is now officially fixed thanks to DivisionByZero’s work which has been merged into SBP.
DBZ has also managed to implement two new pieces of logic via LUA. The first allows us to set Teams maps to auto-ally players with odd or even team numbers, so 1+3+5 allied and 2+4+6 allied.
He has also managed to introduce a function which auto-destroys recyclers for players on teams 3, 4, 5 and 6 which opens up the path for us to have a new gamemode which effectively combines Strat and DM into one (not to be confused with Strategy-DM, a mode from 1.x where you can spawn new recyclers).
For now, we’re calling it Commander Teams or C-T to distinguish it from standard Teams games where everyone spawns with a recycler. It is effectively the same as BZ2’s Commander and Thug / Wingman gamemode.
To allow for commanding players to delegate AI to their teammates, I’ve added barracks to allow for pilot / team switching. For now, we have three map variants to playtest on: Hills of War, Moon War and Channels.