Ballpark Servo/Drone Balance

from Stardock Forums

So I did a test match with Thunder just now to try a bunch of experiments on servos vs turrets, servos vs drillers, etc.

Servos vs Turrets

This one is kind of important because it dictates the degree to which you can turtle in a base with turrets. Here's the results:

  • 1 turret vs 1 melee servo: Turrets stop attacking when a servo engages them in melee! It took 34 seconds to punch the turret to death.
  • 2 turrets vs 1 melee servo: Both turrets dead, it took 64 seconds. The servo was at 50% health.

I actually didn't try 3 turrets but from this data I think the servo would kill one turret and die at about 40 seconds.

This is about 1 melee servo = 3 turrets

 

  • 1 turret vs 1 ranged servo: 30 seconds to kill the turret, but the servo was left with 50% health
  • 2 turrets vs 1 ranged servo: The servo dies at 38 seconds, and was able to kill one of the turrets.

So from this, 1 ranged servo = 2 turrets

 

With a higher cap on turrets than servos, I think this might need to be tuned in favor of the servos more.

Servos vs Drillers

Drillers seemed very strong to me so I wanted to see how they matched up against servos.

  • 1 driller vs 1 ranged servo: Driller dies at 14 seconds, no noticeable damage to the servo.
  • 2 drillers vs 1 ranged servo: Drillers dead at 26 seconds. Servo at 75% health.
  • 3 drillers vs 1 ranged servo: Drillers dead at 42 seconds. Servo at 36% health.
  • 4 drillers vs 1 ranged servo: Servo dead at 43 seconds.

So from this, 1 ranged servo = 4 drillers

 

Again, 4 drillers to kill one servo seems like not much.

Servos vs Catapults

Couldn't really test this one accurately, because it turns out catapults do stun damage! They can completely kill a servo if the RNG likes you.

However, they basically die instantly to servos. So without stun, it would take around 20 or 30 catapults to kill a servo. With stun, it was about 8 catapults to proc the stun early enough that they could do enough damage to kill the servo.

Servos vs Bullets

Somewhere around the range of 150 bullet drones to kill a servo. They do tiny, tiny damage and die very quickly.

Servos vs Bloomspawn

lol

Bonus! Bullets vs Drillers

Bullet drones are supposed to kill other drones.

  • 1 bullet vs 1 driller: 16 seconds to kill the bullet drone, Driller at 50% health.
  • 2 bullets vs 2 drillers: 20 seconds to kill both bullet drones. Both drillers alive, one almost dead.

Bullet drones are doing their job!

servo
4,393 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Okay anyway, I'm not trying to nitpick the finer details of balance here. I'm getting some baseline numbers to work with.

For example, 2 turrets to kill one servo. I think this could be increased to 4 turrets to kill one servo, adjusting the turret cost, etc. Drillers could be bumped to 8 or more, etc.

I'm not sure what the performance implications are, but the servos are about double the power of the little units. And that just doesn't feel right. I'd rather have my servo killing them left and right, but there being more of them to kill. But that might be against the game design. I dunno, again, giant robots look like they should be really powerful.

And the servo vs bloomspawn thing is totally out of whack. You send a servo into 3 of those and it is DEAD.

Also, these tests seem to say that you shouldn't get anything but drillers.

Another thing I thought of is....when we're fighting with giant robots, why are drills the most effective ground unit we came up with?

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks! Always helpful to see how folks interpret the way the game plays.

What ingame techs did you have when you did these tests? What did your Servos have? There are a wide variety of the Bloomspawn; which ones are you talking about? Make sure you do the tests in PVP as CoOp changes the Bloomspawn stats.

From a goal standpoint, we want Servo to remain an RTS. Pumping the Servos up too far results in the game just being about the Servos and nothing else. We don't want to go too far down that path to where Servo turns into a 3 unit game. Drones always need to be some level of threat.

That said, the overall goal we've had for ingame balance is that Servos win early, but Drones are still pretty strong. As the game goes on, the Servos get stronger and stronger. You can buy some techs to improve the Drones, but the falloff is inevitable. By the time you get to Rank 4 and get the crazy techs up there for the Servos, the balance is *MUCH* different. The next update will have Servo weapon powers gated behind ranks, as well. This will help this curve out a lot.

I'd definitely believe that the Servo:Drone balance is off. I think I said earlier that we liked the relationship, but I realize that I said that with a Servo that had more gear than yours probably do and I was picturing the gun drone balance. The drillers probably do do too much damage.

If you have other suggestions for drones, we're all ears. The driller is a driller because the whole meta fiction for the game is that you're a group of wildcat miners out to strike it rich mining bloom. The Servos began life as big mining equipment. Etc. So, there will be some nods to that history in the story and unit makeup.

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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

This matches up pretty well with what I've seen in games though I haven't actually gone and tested it like this. Melee drones are definitely more powerful than gun drones as they have more health, do more damage to everything, and only take another second or two to get in range compared to a bullet drone. Healing drones also seem to have little benefit as it can take ages for a ball of even 10-20 of them to heal anything decently tanky. In that time it is almost always more efficient to just run the servo back to base and heal off a beacon. And in combat they don't heal enough to actually keep their target alive and die instantly if they end up targeted. Right now my drone composition is melee+catapults and it seems to work well. Catapults stun a servo, drills go in for the instagib. I've had several cases where the AI sent unsupported servos out to capture bloom and I was able to kill them off using only drones while my servos ruined their base.

As far as new drone types, I think we need a siege breaking drone that is like a rolling ball of TNT or something. Late game it is very hard to actually push a base so having a unit that simply rolls in and suicides with a damage multiplier against buildings would be very useful. Something similar to banelings from Starcraft or the petards from Age of Empires. Either that or a long ranged siege unit that could fill the same roll as trebuchets. It keeps people from being able to simply turtle behind turrets by forcing them to either focus on the suicide units which lets you get into their base, or come out to kill your long ranged units before you slowly smash apart their entire base.

Also along these lines a drone that served to boost your economy could be a good addition. Early game it would be a large risk to use because it reduced your army size. If they were required to travel between bloom mines or something it would also provide a benefit to whichever side controlled the map better and would help them amass the funds to crush the other side late game when the current turtling occurs.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Skoolbus, reply 3
As far as new drone types, I think we need a siege breaking drone that is like a rolling ball of TNT or something. Late game it is very hard to actually push a base so having a unit that simply rolls in and suicides with a damage multiplier against buildings would be very useful.
End of Skoolbus's quote

I like that idea. In Metal Fatigue there was a Nemesis unit, which was basically a suicide truck like described above, but it would disable combots like EMP does in this game. It was a squishy pure-anti-combot weapon.

It also had artillery which outranged defenses. It's impossible to outrange defenses in Servo right now.

Quoting Skoolbus, reply 3
Also along these lines a drone that served to boost your economy could be a good addition.
End of Skoolbus's quote

I like it too.

Quoting Skoolbus, reply 3
Healing drones also seem to have little benefit as it can take ages for a ball of even 10-20 of them to heal anything decently tanky.
End of Skoolbus's quote

Healing drones need a serious boost. The rate they heal is really pathetic...

 

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

A tech to increase healing would be nice.  I have found turrets to be extremely weak, making turtling useless vs bloomspawn.  I have tried 4 turrets to protect a single bloom site with no luck.  Once those pink 1000 hit point bad guys start spawning its all over.   

In addition to healing increase tech, how about being able to upgrade the turrets?  Maybe upgrade them into the bigger ones you start out with?

 

Seige weapons are necessary, but I think a long range missile strike would be better and fit in with modern warfare theme.  Imagine having the ability to strike with a massive payload just before cruising in to attack.  This would cause surprise and confusion and make the battle a little harder to predict the outcome.

 

If you are micro managing  a battle the current balance works pretty well.  You send out the drillers to your target backed by ranged servos and bullets with some healing drones behind the servos.  So you have your "siege" weapons in the drillers,  your front line ranged attack to selectively attack targets and a little medic support behind them (which is also vulnerable to a flank attack).

 

 

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

There are techs to upgrade the turrets (on the turrets).

There is a tech to increase the dropship and beacon healing. We are testing some increased drone healing, too. That said, healing is tough. We want the game to be about moving forward, not kill one thing, wait for healing, etc. 

There will be a point, as well, where the turrets won't protect you. Offense wins "in the end". 

New build should have more siege capability, too.