Light Armour vs. Heavy Armour

[yosh56]

Well, I'm back with my usual topic of the week which I seem to have just made a thing.

I tend to play Rengade a lot, and I love it to freakin' death, but like anything I like looking at its flaws some too. Anyway, this topic STILL somehow manages to be about Engineers-OP somewhere, but thankfully this has nothing to do with sidearms this time.

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I'm now a bit more aware of the damage done by weapons to Light armour and heavy armour, and I have to say that the fact that anti-vehicle weapons do the exact same damage to light armour as they do to heavy is a bit disturbing and a source of several imbalances. We'll try to keep this short sweet and to the point, so let's just start with possibly the most annoying Nod vehicle around, the Arty.

On its own an Artillery isn't all that bad from a far-off glance. It loses to a Med head up, can beat an MRLS just due to travel time of projectiles and how they distribute their damage, and they do their job of being slow and in the back whilst pumping out heavy damage quite well. Alright, then we add a Technician behind it, and suddenly a 450 credit unit+ a 350 credit unit equals 800 credits that come out to probably the most cost-effective ranged weapon in game.

Look up old, and even current, games of OldRen on YouTube and take note of how many fights just divulge into Nod spamming Techs and Arts. There's 'a good combination', but then there's a suspiciously great combination. Why does it change the Arty so much to put a Technician on it? Look at the numbers.

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A Medium tank does about 64 damage to armour, takes about 1.5 seconds to reload between shots, and has a fairly sturdy 800 HP of heavy armour. Solid unit.

Nod's Artillery does +-92 damage to armour, takes about the same time (if not the same) as a Med to reload between shots, and has 400hp of Light armour.

Head-up, with no cover, and perfect accuracy this is how a 1v1 fight ends Med vs. Arty.

Fight lasts about 8-10 seconds.

Artillery goes down first.

Med is left alive with ~150hp

High-damage or not, the Artillery basically proved itself able to force the Med into a state that is barely even a threat to Nod anymore, and the player did it by spending 350 less credits than the guy who bought the Med. Cost-effectiveness is okay, but at least the Med wins right?

Alright, let's look at Tech-Med vs. Tech-Arty

Advanced repair-gun heals Light and Heavy armour at 40dps, meaning that in the time it takes for both the Med and Arty to reload they can heal 56 damage. See the problem already? Good.

Factoring in the repair gun and the reload time between shots, an Artillery does about 36 real damage per hit vs. a Med/Hoty. On the flip side, a Med does about 8 damage per hit against a Tech-Arty. Let's put the price into perspective before I even blow this rediculous confrontation out of the water.

Med+Hotwire = $1150

Arty+Tech= $800

Surprise surprise, the Artillery wins head-up.

At only 8 real damage per shot, the Med tank needs 50 shots to kill an Artillery with a Technician behind it.

At about 36 real damage a shot, an Arty only needs ~23 hits to kill a Med. As a bonus, the Artillery comes out with over half of its health intact.

Let's compare this to a Tech+Light Tank vs. a Hoty+Med.

Taking away the damage the repair gun heals, we come out to the following damage numbers.

Light tanks do 0 damage to Meds.

Meds still do 8 damage to Light tanks.

Just for numbers sake that's at least 75 shots for the Med to win. The Light tank literally can't win head-up. I guess they can rush down Engineers repairing, but that's about it. So, let's look at costs here.

Tech+Light= 950

Med+Hoty=1150

So for 150 more credits Nod players can...not just lose, they can literally become negligible on the damage front.

Okay, so where does this go? It goes down the road of 'breaking all the roles'. Seriously, the Light tank isn't supposed to go head to head with GDI's tanks, it's made to be fast enough to run after artillery, hit-and-run against engineer support, and have enough armour to keep its own Artillery support behind somewhat of a cushion. Unfortunately, as just pointed out, the Artillery can be its own cushion if you throw a Technician behind it.

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So what is that throws everything off? Does the Artillery need more nerfs: I'd say no. Is the Med in need of a buff: maybe, but only in one possible area. Does the Light tank need a buff : not really, it doesn't fight well head-up, but it has its own advantages.

Does there need to be a bit more effort put into making 'light armour' mean more than just 'can be damaged by sniper rifles', that's very likely. Personally, I think only one thing can be changed here to bring A LOT of problems into better balance.

The repair gun currently does not differentiate between light and heavy armour, but this leads to problems with Artillery, sometimes MRLS and even Aircraft. Let's just play with some numbers here.

Currently the advanced repair gun heals 40 damage-per-second to light and heavy vehicles. Let's say we reduce that to 40 for heavy and 30 to Light armour.

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This reduces the number of shots that a Med needs to kill a Tech'd Arty to 19...from 50. The Artillery would still need 23 shots to kill a Hotty+Med. The Medium tank is SUPPOSED to be more effective when closer however. The Artillery is a 'light' vehicle that's made to be protected, but is a massive damage dealer from afar; at no point should it be able to just become a main battle tank because of one person and a repair gun.

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Currently, with being able to heal light vehicles for 40DPS, you can literally negate the damage of the following weapons which SHOULD be hard counters to light vehicles:

PIC/Railgun (85 damage, 3+ seconds between shots. That's a 40+ damage deficit with a weapon that costs more than any light vehicle and a tech, save for aircraft)

Gunner's rocket launcher: (it does 40 damage and has a second between shots. It literally cancels it out.)

Rocket launcher: (55 damage, reload time makes the damage completely negligible to a vehicle with a tech behind it.

50 cal on Humvee/Buggy : (Tech'd buggy vs Tech'd Humvee literally doesn't move one another's bars)

Gun on APC: Same story as the APC. Light vehicles become immune to their weapons with one advanced repair gun.

The Ramjet: You come out on top by about 160 damage...then the time it takes to reload completely negates it.

The sniper rifle: 30 damage a shot. Just under a second to shoot again, but your damage is pretty negligible with only 4 shots.

The Laser-Chain-Gun: literally does 39 damage a second, so the advanced Repair gun beats it by one.

The Light-tank's gun: Already mentioned this.

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Orca/Apache surfing is more of a problem from the fact that a Hotwire/Tech is capable of making an aircraft nigh-invulnerable under the right circumstances. Many of the weapons listed above are our Anti-Aircraft answers, and that is the largest reason aircraft surfing seems so ridiculously overpowered. Reducing the repair rate on light armour makes this much less of a broken tactic while still allowing some of its tactical value to remain. In fact, aircraft deserve their own armour category with an even lower repair rate to simulate their exit from battle that would be given if they had limited ammo (Like the RTS). It would also further negate the over effectiveness of putting Hotwires on top of Orcas.

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The other option to make light vehicles (looking at you, Arty) feel like they're not main battle tanks the moment you put a tech on them would be to modify damages for anti-vehicle weapons. As far as I can see now, most of them do the same damage to light and heavy. Perhaps looking into buffing them all vs Light armour would help keep light vehicles where they belong, which is not on the front-lines. This seems like a much more time-consuming process than nerfing the repair-gun vs. light armour however.

[RoundShades]

Idk, you do good damage because of the difference in light armor and heavy armor.

Light armor takes full damage from weapons, its literally like skin with higher numbers. Anything "special" doesnt do more damage to light armor, but doesn't do reduced damage to heavy armor. Regular weapons do near-nonexistant damage to heavy armor.

Autorifles, do no damage to heavy armor, equal damage to light as infantry except light armor is 800 compared to skin. Laser and volt, do damage to infantry and equal damage to heavy and light (again, with higher numbers).

Really, snipers are the big difference. Light armor takes huge sniper damage, heavy armor takes plinks of single digit damage.

[yosh56]

You don't do 'full' damage with weapons to light armour. You just happen to do damage with all weapons to it.

Since beta 3 auto rifles DO damage heavy armour, and it's actually quite significant (not overwhelmingly so, but still significant). You can chip away a good chunk of health with a clip from an auto rifle.

Autorifles, do no damage to heavy armor, equal damage to light as infantry except light armor is 800 compared to skin. Laser and volt, do damage to infantry and equal damage to heavy and light (again, with higher numbers).

I'm sorry, but Bro, do you even math? You do nowhere near the same damage to light armour as you do to infantry. Just look at a Havoc and a Humvee. Havoc has 50 more HP than a Hummer. Now shoot him in the chest with an auto rifle, and shoot a Humvee with the same rifle, see Havoc keel over far before that Humvee.

Really, snipers are the big difference. Light armor takes huge sniper damage, heavy armor takes plinks of single digit damage.

....I know, I mention that several times. Half of this topic didn't even have to do with what could hurt light armour, it has a lot more to do with the fact that Light armour units (The Art especially) can get far more out of hand through the lack of modifiers when it comes to repairing and anti-vehicle weapons. I mean, hell, Patch is currently capable of overpowering an Advanced Repair gun where Gunner can't.

[boxes]

Ramjet support against light armor can make a huge difference. A Havoc can easily help friendly tanks take out Artys by either shooting them or killing the Techs/Engies.

The whole list you gave of damage against light vehicles with adv. repairs is interesting, but in-game it's a different story. Airstrikes, snipers, outnumbering, C4s, anything can happen against light armor+adv. repairs that can easily negate it. I don't really see this as a problem.

If anything, you should focus on the Tech first before engaging the arty. If you don't kill them in 2-3 shots, they will either run away, or ride as a passenger. Regardless, that should be your time to attack the arty, and if the Tech comes back, he should be really weak and you should finish him off real quick (Arty doesn't really give good cover for engies).

Or, you can simply charge into the Arty as a Med until you're juggling it around while under it. If you're lucky, you can crush the tech while doing so. When this happens, it can't attack you up close and it's pretty much a free kill for you. Basically, if your playstyle is unique to your advantage, numbers don't really matter.

As of right now, you are correct in the fact that flyers are nearly invincible if a tech/hottie is nearby in a safe spot, or surfing. I don't think it's because of light armor damage/repair calculations though. Orcas/Apaches just need a health nerf.

Edited November 17, 2014 by Guest

[yosh56]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm still a good 10+year vet that can think through a situation, but I'm also pointing out that the cost-effectiveness of A tech-arty is ridiculous, and why from range it is basically impossible to win that fight. Also, to just rush down an arty and kill the tech, you have to tank several shots from the artillery. This also doesn't help offset he fact that juggling sometimes requires some lucky angles. I know, I do it to kill flame tanks. Also, rushing an Artillery from anything beyond short range means you have to leave your own repairs, or have the, get in, and for the entire duration you're not being healed you're doing 8 damage to 92. Also, decent Techs can usually find spots to protect themselves from splash damage, so you're not going to be hitting them for significant damage until you're literally right on top of them.

Also, we're still looking at a ridiculous cost ratio if we factor in that a 1000 credit Havoc, 350 credit Hotwire and 800 credit Med can FINALLY take on a 450 arty and a 350 tech. That's 800 to 2150. Seriously, look up old games of Renegade, eventually people will figure out that Tech+arty in mass beats pretty much anything GDI throws at it. And if it loses, GDI has to lose far more in the process.

Also, advanced repair gun in general could use some looking at. Got poked at quite a bit in OldRen, and got extremely toned down in the mods for it.

On topic however, I'm mostly looking at the fact that light armour has a tendency to benefit far more from repairs, especially considering what vehicles classify as light. They can run faster, heal to 100 faster, and in the Art's case, become a front-line unit suddenly.

[yosh56]

Oddly enough (on the note of Arty-Tech vs. Med-Tech) once they hit a certain number (around 7-8) Meds come out on top both tactically and on pure brute force. It's almost like we should be spamming Meds. You know, the thing I've yelled in every game of Islands ever.

[Truxa]

Oddly enough (on the note of Arty-Tech vs. Med-Tech) once they hit a certain number (around 7-8) Meds come out on top both tactically and on pure brute force. It's almost like we should be spamming Meds. You know, the thing I've yelled in every game of Islands ever.

Meds combined with hotties, don't forget the repairing crew or else the artillery still owns you

[RoundShades]

Patch is currently capable of overpowering an Advanced Repair gun where Gunner can't.

This isn't a problem with the armors. This is a problem with the sheer numbers of the game. Someone didn't do math when balancing characters and some ended up with unuseable dps.

[yosh56]

Patch is currently capable of overpowering an Advanced Repair gun where Gunner can't.

This isn't a problem with the armors. This is a problem with the sheer numbers of the game. Someone didn't do math when balancing characters and some ended up with unuseable dps.

The hung is, Patch's weapon was designed with being 'kinda good at everything' in mind. It's fine for it to just barely out do a repair gun, as he costs more than a Tech anyway. Gunner's damage to heavy vehicles is alright as is, for he does at least cost less than all heavy vehicles. The issue is that Gunner hitting a buggy with a rocket vs. a Stank with a rocket doesn't make much sense to have the same damage be dealt, especially when you look at what a repair gun can do. Gunner doesn't really need to be a godly answer to higher tier armour, as Patch loses much of his extra damage when he reloads anyway. What Gunner could benefit from, is actually doing slightly more to light armour to make it seem like he's actually a tier 2 anti-vehicle solution. Goes for pretty much all anti-vehicle weapons that do the same damage to heavy and Light.