NOD vs. GDI balancing

[bl4ckfel]

Hello guys, this is bl4ckfel, a "Renegade-Veteran". Greetings to all Renegade-Fighter, especially to the old gamer

I read topics in this forum for about a year. Finally I registered myself in this forum. I am happy, to be a part of the community now.

At first: sorry for my bad English, I am trying to improve it

To my topic:

Since the release of the open beta I played many games. Now I've got a lot of experience to comment some imbalances/glitches, I think.

The first and most striking point is, that in every map without base defenses (obelisk and agt) NOD has a big advantage. I think in 80 % of the fights without the defenses, NOD wins. It begins with a sbh-rush. Three SBH's go together in any building of GDI in the first 5 minutes of the game and blow it up with their timed c4. A short time later, there are enough credits to get a nuke. So every sbh get one and destroy most of the enemy buildings with it. Especially in Walls_Flying there is a crazy glitch. you can dodge the mines in the tunnel and at the entrance of GDI's base by simply jump on the left or right side of the base over the rocks. I hope this glitch will be fixed very soon.

To limit this big advantage of NOD, i wondered if it wouldn't be great to give only GDI's Hotwire the proximity mines and no more to the technician of NOD. In addition the sbh's are too cheap. i think the costs for a sbh should be at least 800 credits, to prohibit an early sbh rush and give gdi the chance to put their proximity mines to the important areas.

Please try to consider this with the next update(s).

And now i thank you for the fantastic game. I am feeling like the kid I was, when i have played vanilla renegade years before This is a great game you made despite of the glitches and so on...

See you ingame! (under my mammoth tank)

Renegade x rules!

bl4ckfel

[TigerXtrm]

If you're a "Renegade-Veteran" then you should know that the SBH issue is no different than it was in Renegade and is easily countered by 2 or 3 players actively defending the base. In a map without base defenses you HAVE to actively defend the base, it's pretty common sense really.

A single player who gets a Hotwire ASAP and starts mining doors will easily repell any SBH C4 rush. And if enough players are defending the base instead of mindlessly running out the base to attack beacons aren't a big issue either. It's the coordinated vehicle supported beacons that should be your biggest worry.

The reason Nod seems to have the upper hand is because players are still (re)learning the game and its tactics. Give it some time and set the right example. People will catch on soon enough.

[SFJake]

So far I see it as a map issue, not a SBH issue.

-Walls has broken spots for Nod to get in the base from the side, this essentially kills the entire map.

-Lakeside is too broad, -literally- impossible to defend against any remotely serious SBH force. The guard tower serves as warnings, but those towers are just WAY too weak otherwise.

Just to name a few. SBH need proper map design and entry points that can be watched & mined for them, otherwise they just rule the map.

There's also all the retarded roof spots for nukes, of course (and other broken, impossible to disarm spots)

[XD_ERROR_XD]

Guys, as funny as it sounds, but mining correctly is very difficult Any maps with NO base defences absolutely needs to have a bottleneck leading to both bases. If this is not the case, you are screwed. Lakeside has guard towers and Turrets, the obvious paths could be mined but what if you're sneaking the airstrip or barracks... mines won't stop you... And the only one that might stop you is an unlucky spawn inside their building.

And TigerXtrm, i do agree, but i don't think it's that easy to repel SBHs. It would take a lot more then a couple of mines to prevent people like me from sneaking in. You have no idea what a determined and skilled SBH is capable of. I've played 25 Vs 25 Walls matches with Orca's, APCs/Hummers scouting the base constantly, MRLS, Medium tanks and hotwires constantly leaving and entering the base, yet i was usually able to sneak in after a couple of tried. Sadly, i often was the only one that made it in their base... But yeah, guess what happened when i had a nuke with me? Ka-boom!

[goztow]

And for what part of the game were you just standing there waiting?

[HaTe]

Remember, it's Nod, not NOD.

[TigerXtrm]

Guys, as funny as it sounds, but mining correctly is very difficult Any maps with NO base defences absolutely needs to have a bottleneck leading to both bases. If this is not the case, you are screwed. Lakeside has guard towers and Turrets, the obvious paths could be mined but what if you're sneaking the airstrip or barracks... mines won't stop you... And the only one that might stop you is an unlucky spawn inside their building.

And TigerXtrm, i do agree, but i don't think it's that easy to repel SBHs. It would take a lot more then a couple of mines to prevent people like me from sneaking in. You have no idea what a determined and skilled SBH is capable of. I've played 25 Vs 25 Walls matches with Orca's, APCs/Hummers scouting the base constantly, MRLS, Medium tanks and hotwires constantly leaving and entering the base, yet i was usually able to sneak in after a couple of tried. Sadly, i often was the only one that made it in their base... But yeah, guess what happened when i had a nuke with me? Ka-boom!

I know perfectly well what an SBH is capable of because I play them a lot of the time. Nuking literally the entire base on Walls is no exception for me. That said; dealing with SBH's isn't a matter of keeping them out of the base. There's a whole load of ways for them to get in, even with a bottleneck. They can tag along in APC's, jump out from helicopters. You name it. The important thing is that you deny them access to the inside of the building. That way they can't plant C4 AND when a beacon is deployed you know you don't have to look inside.

And SBH planting a beacon on their own should not remotely be a threat at all if you have a team that is half way decent at defending. One Hotwire with a Tib Auto rifle can take the time to kill the SBH and still have enough time left over to disarm the beacon. And by that time there better be 3 or 4 more engies around to help out.

A properly mined base would limit an SBH's movement immensely. Pretty much limiting their options to placing a beacon on the outer edge of a building where it is easily found, covered and disarmed by the defending team. If it's just a single SBH without support and he takes out a building then that has nothing to do with them being overpowered, that just means your team sucks at defending/communicating.

What does need looking at is the mine limit and how that works. A 4 structure base has 8 doors to be mined with 3 mines each. That's already 24 mines right there. Add to that three ramps leading to the roofs of the WF, Ref and PP and you're already over the mine limit. On top of that regular and remote C4 add to the mine limit as well, so anyone planting C4 on the enemy building is making a proxy mine disappear in the base.

This makes it essentially impossible to properly mine a 4 structure flying base watertight against SBH's. That could be by design, but I seriously doubt it. On my own server I set the mine limit to 40 instead of 30 for that very reason, though I have yet to see how that's going to influence things.

[TigerXtrm]

Remember, it's Nod, not NOD.

Oh god, don't even start... lol.

[shandian]

If you're a "Renegade-Veteran" then you should know that the SBH issue is no different than it was in Renegade and is easily countered by 2 or 3 players actively defending the base.

That might be the case if RenegadeX was a carbon copy of the original. In this game, however:

• SBH have access to powerful anti-infantry sidearms.
  
• SBH map dominance gives them easy access to crates (the default crates in RenegadeX have significantly more goodies than the original did).
  
• The beacon 'plant' sound is significantly quieter, and the timing for beacons has been skewed to fix the nuke/ion animations.
  
• Base defenses like the AGT no longer hit instantly.

Adjusting the beacon plant sound and buffing Guard Towers a bit would definitely help. The new sidearms and crate options are less of an issue because everyone has access to those. There are also some map balance issues (Lakeside was mentioned) but I'm not sure that every map should be perfectly balanced anyways.

Despite the definitive advantage that Nod gets from using SBH, I still feel that they are underpowered as a whole:

• Flame tanks and flame troopers feel really underwhelming; the splash damage they do to infantry is almost negligible. Flame tanks are also useless against air units, which have received some significant buffs in this game.
  
• Stealth tanks have some firing issues at close range that make hit and run tactics harder.
  
• The changes to Artillery are interesting but they definitely add a skill curve that makes them less useful than an MRLS for newer players.
  
• Nod's normally strong infantry is somewhat offset by the addition of powerful sidearms (might not be an issue when sidearms are fixed so they don't carry over maps).

[TigerXtrm]

• SBH have access to powerful anti-infantry sidearms.

So do engies and Hotwires, to the point where they sometimes have more firepower than that sorry excuse for a laser rifle the SBH has.

[DrDanthrax99]

I've been told that you hit someone in the head with two bursts from the laser rifle and they'll die, but honestly, I use the sidearm almost exclusively because I agree that the new laser rifle is incredibly poor.

[TP|himselfXD]

Nod's vehicles seem very under powered the stank used to be capable of destroying a med if you are good and driving it.(stanks were faster and more maneuverable and did a little bit more damage) The light tank in the original renegade used to be a decent but weaker tank but in this it seems to be total garbage compared to the gdi vehicles.(The armor seems underpowered or something I am not sure.)

[Valor]

The new laser rifle is better against newbs who stand still when disarming a beacon and can't react fast enough when you start firing. It works bit like the pistol in the original Ren, which is good because the Ren X pistol is less effective.

[Guest Gliven]

Another problem I find, is that a lot of people who spawn as GDI, immediately switch to Nod. So whenever I play as GDI I'm stuck with newer players who weren't "smart" enough to switch to Nod. We need to promote GDI strategies more. Show noobies how to play the sides differently. I understand map balances need to be fixed like goldrush and walls flying. But otherwise, I dont see too much of a balance issue, other than veteran players switching to Nod as soon as the game starts.

[Soldieroffate]

It's the glitchy beacon spots that need to be rectified. Those are the gamebreakers; otherwise, SBHs are laughably easy to counter if the majority of GDI have half the required map awareness and brain to react to their attacks.

Most the successful nukes I've encountered so far are often the exploitation of glitches (ie. Nuke can't be disarmed because it's in an unreachable spot such as that one spot on the refinery).

[Valor]

Sbh are better at evading detection in Ren X because of sprint and the bloom effects in most maps that make them harder to see.

Bring back the footstep sounds and kicking up dust, increase visibility to counteract bloom effects, maybe extend the visible range a little.

[Letty]

Hotwire being able to carry a Tiberium Auto Rifle is a major, major buff to anti-SBH ability. The whole silo-unlocking deal is kind of silly and means the weapon isn't supposed to be available in lots of maps, but until the bug is fixed that lets you keep weapons SBH nuking is really damn hard to do solo and even as a coordinated team often fails often without armor providing a distraction.

[goztow]

We have been fighting SBH's in renegade for 12 years without a problem. The sprinting is much more an advantage for the defending team who can get to the nukes much quicker, than it is for the attacking team.

The real nerf for the defending team is that it cannot use the PT from the outside of the building anymore. But TBH, strangely enough I have not missed that a lot in RenegadeX, thanks to the sprint.

About mining: in Ren as well, the mine limit was 30. You need to make choices as to which doors you mine and how many mines at which door. At major advantage to the defending team in RenX is the mine counter that's displayed constantly! Put 1 or 2 mine at each door and 4 at the doors you cannot see. Keep track of the mine counter while defending.

If you cannot counter SBH's in Ren / RenX, then I'm afraid it's more due to the GDI gameplay than due to the SBH being "OP".

[TigerXtrm]

Case in point; I played a few matches on Walls yesterday, completely dedicated to defending the GDI base. Made regular patrols past all the doors to ensure mines were still in place and quickly responded to placed beacons.

In that one match I must have had at least 8 kills because of proxy mines. Regular SBH rushes were made on the PP where one would evidently sacrifice themselves to let the other in. I would often find one SBH inside the PP with a C4 on the MCT. Nothing my carbine couldn't handle in most cases.

Aside from that beacons were planted all over the place and by the end of the match I disarmed a good 7 of them. Only one of them succeeded and that was because they placed an airstrike on top of it (which I still think is lame and should be fixed).

So SBH overpowered? Hardly. Right now it's mostly the abuse of bugs and glitches that make their tactics unfair (beacons in unreachable spots, repeated airstrikes on a beacon making it impossible to disarm even with 20 guys there).

[goztow]

Topic can be closed.

[bl4ckfel]

okay, interesting meanings. i think it is a step in the right way to set the mine limit to 40.

Usually, 4 proximity mines per entrance are enough, to kill a sbh. but if they go in team with 4-5 sbh they easily can disarm the four mines without sacrifice any of them. Each of them should just disarm one mine, so everyone has enough health to plant their c4 to the control station. Maybe it would help to delete the way to the roofs on maps without base defense, to curtail the possible plantingspots for nukes.