Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Issues dealing with gameplay balance.
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Dullahan
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Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Dullahan » Sun 12 Aug, 2018 2:04 pm

Hey guys,

Tyranids have long had a really wonky economy because they tend to bleed requisition more than many other races and they also lack "power sink" units in the mid game like Dreadnoughts or squad leaders. (Squad leaders also significantly reduce bleed.)

As a result they tend to end up with a skewed economy wherein they have extremely low requisition on hand at any given time and start to float power with no way to really spend it.

My suggestion would be to shift the ratio of requisition and power on their units. Specifically, reduce the requisition costs of most of their T2/T3 units by ~100 and increase the power cost by ~20-30.

This would make purchasing mid game units like Tguard, Genestealers, Zoanthrope etc a lot more viable and overall would prevent a lot of those scenarios where you have 300 power and cannot accumulate ~400-500 requisition to buy new units because you're spending all your requisition reinforcing.
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Asmon
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Asmon » Sun 12 Aug, 2018 3:58 pm

You could alternatively add an upgrade to hormas and termas that changes the reinforce cost to something like 5 req 4 power, instead of 15 req, available in t2. It could also be tied to endless swarm.

We cannot switch power and req cost too much on big units, otherwise you can't punish nids anymore for bleeding too much.
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Adeptus Noobus
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Adeptus Noobus » Sun 12 Aug, 2018 4:33 pm

Considering how much hard it becomes to kill gaunts and gants once synapse creatures hit the field and you get the blob rolling, why wouldn't they cost more req to reinforce?
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby oLev » Sun 12 Aug, 2018 7:51 pm

It's simple, make it so Tyranids T2 is 290/200 and T3 is 280/300.
That should get rid of your unspent power problem and leave a bit of req for you to play with as well.
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Nurland » Mon 13 Aug, 2018 12:11 am

I would rather tweak the upkeep values
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Dullahan
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Dullahan » Mon 13 Aug, 2018 2:05 pm

Asmon wrote:You could alternatively add an upgrade to hormas and termas that changes the reinforce cost to something like 5 req 4 power, instead of 15 req, available in t2. It could also be tied to endless swarm.

We cannot switch power and req cost too much on big units, otherwise you can't punish nids anymore for bleeding too much.


Some might argue that Tyranids should not be punished for bleeding too much given the lore and its necessity with their playstyle. They're already forced to retreat from fights due to their massive vulnerabilities to AoE and Synapse backlash. Having a crippled economy on top of it just means that Tyranids rarely if ever win a game that goes to T3.


20-30 power cost increase is also worth a hell of a lot more than 100 req. That's roughly an extra minute of power for around 20 seconds of requisition.
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Nurland » Mon 13 Aug, 2018 5:30 pm

The delay a 30 power cost increase causes depends a lot on your income but a full farm is +39 so you usually have +49 + capped power points or nodes.

30 power is usually around 35-30seconds unless you play with 2 gens, no extra nodes and don't have extra power points capped.

Anyhow I don't think that big power cost increases and req decreases are the way to go.

I think upkeep is the main issue for Nids.
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Cyris
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Cyris » Mon 13 Aug, 2018 6:15 pm

I like these ideas and have begun integrating some of them.

Step one is "fixing" the horma/terma upkeep. A lot starts cascading after that.
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Dullahan
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Dullahan » Mon 13 Aug, 2018 7:10 pm

Nurland wrote:The delay a 30 power cost increase causes depends a lot on your income but a full farm is +39 so you usually have +49 + capped power points or nodes.

30 power is usually around 35-30seconds unless you play with 2 gens, no extra nodes and don't have extra power points capped.

Anyhow I don't think that big power cost increases and req decreases are the way to go.

I think upkeep is the main issue for Nids.


I mistakenly thought gens were +5 power and not +10.
I was thinking 10+9+15 = 34.

That said, I've long advocated never to build a full gen farm as Nids, largely because of the economic imbalance. Same deal with putting nodes on random power points. You're so req starved that putting ~500 into extra nodes and gens over the course of the game is an entire unit late game.



Think of it like this: Tguard, genestealers and zoanthrope are all roughly 400 req and 50 power.

Compare that to Orks who have similar levels of req bleed: all their T2 units save for Weirdboy are 350 req or less. The weirdboy also functions as a power sink with multiple upgrades. Tyranids are sorely lacking any T2 upgrades aside from synapse. There's simply nothing for Tyranids to spend power on even if they stopped bleeding req completely tomorrow. And then when they do get their power sink units out like the Carnifex, it's simply not very impactful. A dreadnought comes out 5 minutes earlier and is better than a Carnifex at every stage of the game. Thornback fex has 1750 health and 100 DPS for a total cost of 750/200 versus a Dreadnought with dark age of technology sitting at 1500 health with 100 DPS for a cost of 525/170. (And an amazing inspire ability on kill for the rest of the army)


Upkeep doesn't fix the issue of nids having an imbalanced economy: they will still continue to float power because they do not have power sinks until turbo lategame. It also runs the risk of making Nid t1 oppressive with mass gaunt/gant play.
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Dark Riku
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Dark Riku » Mon 13 Aug, 2018 9:24 pm

Tyranids are fine people. Don't fuck everything up that we have right now.
You guys make it sound that having no power issues is a bad thing for Tyranids? °_O

@Dullahan. You can't compare units that way. And even if you do, you can't just hold some info back.
Having a charge and being able to spawn ripper for free is also amazing...
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Dullahan
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Dullahan » Wed 15 Aug, 2018 2:06 am

Dark Riku wrote:Tyranids are fine people. Don't fuck everything up that we have right now.
You guys make it sound that having no power issues is a bad thing for Tyranids? °_O

@Dullahan. You can't compare units that way. And even if you do, you can't just hold some info back.
Having a charge and being able to spawn ripper for free is also amazing...


Try actually playing Tyranids sometime.

The issue isn't just that you never have to worry about power: it's that you cannot buy your units. The units you do buy are extremely easy to counter (tguard, zoanthrope) or bleed money out the ass (Genestealers, Raveners)

I certainly can compare units that way. They are functionally identical in role and as I outlined, nearly identical in stats, except one of them comes out 5 minutes earlier for much less money.

Charge is a shitty ability because it is neutered by lascannon slow. The tguard has the same problem: if your charge is slow as balls it becomes detrimental rather than beneficial. The damage is okay but good luck hitting anything with it.

Rippers are easily killed by t3, only good for tying up a lascannon for a while. Lvl 3-4 melee squads eat them for breakfast.


The only good Fex are the ranged variants, which have both been nerfed repeatedly anytime they were ever actually winning games.
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Dark Riku
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Dark Riku » Wed 15 Aug, 2018 2:34 am

Those charges are best used defensively.
I certainly do not agree with anything you are saying.

Try playing Tyranids? Like I'm doing in the league you mean? And in other 1v1's? :p
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Dullahan
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Dullahan » Fri 17 Aug, 2018 1:49 am

Dark Riku wrote:Those charges are best used defensively.
I certainly do not agree with anything you are saying.

Try playing Tyranids? Like I'm doing in the league you mean? And in other 1v1's? :p



And how many of those games do you win in T3?
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Dark Riku
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Re: Nid Economy - Suggestion to Balance Things Out

Postby Dark Riku » Fri 17 Aug, 2018 11:18 am

Dullahan wrote:And how many of those games do you win in T3?
Almost non. Because most 1v1's are decided in T2.
But most of the time if I reach T3 with Tyranids, it's the nail in the coffin because they can't deal with the Nid swarm and something with vehicle armor.

Why do you ask?

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