Mechanized Assault & eXploration Reloaded

Subject: Re: Units unbalanced?

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I guess thats the funny part about it everything is new and stuff

In my opinion the Human-Units are imba now. the Infantry only costs 2 Resources and you are improving him to something VERY dangerous.
I dont know why you are decreasing the costs of infiltrators so much.
The Rocket launcher gets a bit too important in my opinion.

edit: maybe decrease the cost for Trainings Hall instead. And/or Increase the Material-per-Round usage, so the infiltrator is built in 5 or 6 but costs a lot more. Infiltrators should be not so good for such a low price unit.

Subject: Re: Units unbalanced?

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Great effort so far, love it!
Doing a test game tonight!

Subject: Re: Units unbalanced?

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Sure they are cheap now… but weak vs rocket launchers… so more units with an important role… don't know it this the best idea… we'll see

Thanks - and have fun! Afterwards: feel free to give a reply - your opinion can also influence the modding process

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Subject: Re: Units unbalanced?

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Hi Guys,

I'm very concerned and do realy think these changes are even more unbalancing the game badly, making things even more complicated and more micromanagement than usefull. No testings are needed to figure that out.

By the way, any changes should be very slight and rare and then tested before further changes.

Whats all the talkin' about unbalanced M.A.X. anyways? Well, it's about multiplayer mass-rush and missile-arms-race combined with "airbourne-mobile-missilelaunchers-methods" or missile-launcher upgrade-race for example.

And I think that the game can be "balanced" more by taking a look at the ressource-ratio (cause you can influence the research&upgrade and mass-production just through that - having rare gold and rare to few oil) and maybe the research&upgrade-ability has to be looked at, talking about balancing and modding.

I wouldn't change any unit-settings! They are perfect! Every unit is different and special... the core-spirit of M.A.X. is just the point, that you can improve units through research and upgrades. The basic-unit-settigs are just perfect, balanced and if there wasn't any research and upgrade possible it would be just right to go on.

The most problems of unbalanced games come from mass-ressource-mining that leads to mass-production and mass-research&upgrade. With mass-ressource you can build up a huge research and upgrade komplex and get superunits within a few dozend turns and then the game loses its balance and tactic manouvers, as the gap of unit-abilities gets bigger in no time. It should be something very special to upgrade and get slight advantages comparing to the enemy. It should be more difficult to upgrade and research or take more time or have much less constitution. Upgrades and research go so fast, that you are not able to play off your current state of unit developement. Upgrades and Research develop faster than you can spy on the enemys development and react. And the speed influences the psychology of the players...forcing them to go the easiest, boring way to rush up...

For an example: I think it's strange, that researching "cost" up to 50% has the most units and buildings built within 1-3 rounds. There's no reason to research any further, as units and buildings are so cheap and fast built at 50% cost and until you have reached the 50% cost, you usually have a huge base and more ressources than you can handle in one turn. If you would reach the attributes of recent 50% cost earliest at 100%, it would realy make a difference!

Why not stretch the research and upgrades more? Make it something realy special to develop units. Or make upgrades twice expensive and research twice the time needed to develop. If it takes much more time to develop and upgrade, you'll think about it in a different way and may decide to develop something else instead. Its way to easy to upgrade and research. So why not focus on that aspect? You can guide the whole balancing, strategics and tacics through that research & upgrade slow down issue.

It doesnt matter on what attributes the units start at the beginning. Its all about how the units are beeing enhanced during the game !

Thats my opinion as a passionate M.A.X.-Player from the very first hour, almost 17 years by now and a strategic&tactic-games-player for even over 20years with many, many thousands of hours playing boardgames, tabletop up to computer games, modding and balancing since C&C (*.ini-files)...

By the way... working on balancing as done before destroys the unique charakter and spirit of the game.

The key to balancing is... ressouce-ratio and research&upgrade (expence and time).


There's no problem with arcade-fun-mods and stuff. But the topic is about balancing the original (slightly) first.

I suggest a button in the game-settings in the lobby that alows to double research time and to double upgrade-expence! - for a start. Test this feature and see what happens to the players ideas... .

What do you think about it?

Thanks for understanding,
~ Sandman ~

See you on the field...

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Subject: Re: Units unbalanced?

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Thanks for the reply Sandman (here, in the game and via IRC)

I get your point and some ideas are nice like disable the airlift for missile crawler and lower the ammo of it.

But I hope you understand that after all the hours that Stellar and I 'invested' we hope that the modifications we have done make the game more interesting - and to some degree more complex (you need more different units and can't overpower only one unit with gold improvement).

hm frankly speaking: I don't know if this would really fix the main prob that still exist in many games that are played by Stellar and me… but I keep your ideas in mind - and you can also show me that we are wrong on the battlefield

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Subject: Re: Units unbalanced?

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whats the fuzz about? its a mod. it won't become maxr.

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Subject: Re: Units unbalanced?

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I had some time in the past the possibility to defend against an attack just with building infantry just-in-time. But maybe that was luck idk.
I find it somewhat hard to build a specific Unit to counter a 2Resource Unit :/ The Human-Units have a very specific kind of balance, because they are so cheap. I would like to see a cheaper Training hall instead of a cheaper infiltrator. But whatever. Maybe I will test the mod in some time. I really like that everything is different and nobody knows what to do

Subject: Re: Units unbalanced?

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Hey all,
so sorry but I hadn't realized that I also have to modify a building… so ATM you won't be able to upgrade your constructors and tanks…. Furthermore (because I think it's not really a new version) I add this as a little fixpack to the first post…

Else you can change in <maxr>\buildings\depot\data.xml the line 38 from
<Capacity_Units_Type String="Ground"/>
to
<Capacity_Units_Type String="Ground+Overweight"/>

Keep in mind to read the included HTML-files or the up-to-date version on the Piratenpad

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Subject: Re: Units unbalanced?

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published an alpha version of mod version3… some small settings are changed but you shouldn't use this pack to continue old games

some more stuff we want to change? ⇒ read the pad

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Subject: Re: Units unbalanced?

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just for your information:

Stellar and I have at the moment a testgame with mod v3a1… and we really have to use all kind of military units. Furthermore we always have to think twice before we upgrade an unit… and 'just one unit or all' ?

So for us this is really funny to play… first big decision we had to do… 2nd heavy plant or habit and training hall… or start with training hall and habit and afterwards the 1st heavy ? Everything is a bit more complex…. At least Missile Crawler have still an important role… able to attack over a big distance but with less attack…

Yay! I hope we have some more hours to test all stuff and go on with the sea units

Used setting for gamestart (sure… you should be able to play with any setting…)
Resources: much | normal | normal | normal |
Clans: off
Credits: 250 (but only allowed to buy Constructors, Engineers and Surveyors (and upgrade only this units if you want) (normally we play with less gold… but we won't wast hours with setting up all eco stuff you need…)
and as usual : fight to the death!

but next time we lower all resources…

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