Some thoughts and suggestions about this game

Gratuitous Tank Battles General
1

So after playing this game for some time, here are my thoughts about the game.

Overall, this game has a lot of potentials. The game mechanics allows for many possibilities. However it is currently being held back by balance issues. Here I will address some of those issues and potential ways to fix them.

Turrets

Heavy turrets has more HP, access to much more powerful weapons, and more optional bonus modules. The only downside is a longer deployment time and… maybe that 1 extra armor slot that you are forced to put something in. The turret itself cost exactly the same, And the final build only cost $82 (shield 1) more unless I choose to raise it’s cost by adding more bonus/using a more powerful weapon.

So, does deployment time matter that much? Not really. Your first sets of deployment comes out immediately, and leaking 1 or 2 fast units early on really isn’t that big of a deal. This leaves medium and light turrets without a purpose.

The medium and light turrets need to cost less to compensate for their low health and weak weapon options. I would suggest medium to cost $50 while light cost $25. I am not sure if this is enough to make them useful, but it’s a start.

Tanks and Mech

The offensive side faces the same problem as the defense, that is, if you want damage and bulk, you want heavy. A heavy tank, with it’s armor/speed properly cut, can be kept at under 600 and still have all the firepower and the bulk from the HP. Medium and light can’t act as support firepower because they cost too much for the weak weapons they hold. So the purpose of medium and light become niche to “put the cheapest gun/reload/scope on them so they quickly cross the finish line”.

To this end, the medium tank/mech fills this role nicely with the extra bulk and 1 bonus slot. Adding a speed boost 2 ($15) will offset all the weight differences between a medium and light.

So, if they are intended to provide support fire, they need to be cheaper. Like turrets I recommend medium to cost 50% (40, 50, 60) and light 25% (20, 25, 30)

Weapons

To start, this is not the opinion of number crunching or theory-crafting. I actually took every single gun out on a test map to see just how much DPS they deal.

  1. Rock, Paper, Scissor? Not really

Machine Guns, are good, perhaps too good against infantry. While a few infantry can still be deployed way in the back on defense, attacking with them is rather pointless since they will all die the first instant the reach a machine gun.

Cannon, at least the super heavy one, works as advertised. It punch through shields and eat both shield turrets and mechs alive.

Laser really felt short ever since light pulse laser got nerfed. Simply put, all lasers deals bad dps right now. Even with their 200% extra damage to armor, they can’t kill heavy tanks. Because all lasers are so bad, the job of countering tank falls on missile 5. Stuff like the plasma cannon really need a significant boost in damage if they are to work as a heavy tank killers.

Missile, in particular Missile 5, has no weaknesses, super accurate, and huge DPS. Is it too powerful? Maybe. But so far it is the only thing that can take down waves of heavy tanks/repair (and everything else). Personally I like the idea of all missiles having similar bonus/penalty as Incendiary Rockets, that way they don’t become either 1 size fits all solution to everything, or pathetic DPS do not touch ever.

Lastly flamethrower. It has no range and no damage. Why is it even in the game? It needs about 20x, roughly 280 damage a shot to compensate for it’s lack of range and 4000 cooldown. This weapon is a good opportunity to provide a high damage/short range weapon that this game lacks.

  1. The longest range weapons also deals the most damage.

Unlike GSB, the “best” weapons on GTB are clear and obvious. Because they have both the longest range and the highest DPS. Like other TD, Short range weapons need to deal more damage to compensate for their lack of coverage. While long range weapon need to deal less than they do now (okay maybe besides lasers, their damage is bad enough as is).

Other Ideas

  1. Include an option when uploading an attack to only allow scripted challenge.
  2. Introducing wall structures on defender’s side. I notice that paths can already be blocked by a defender’s deployment currently, so this can add an extra layer of depth for a map designer.
  3. Give the turrets some bonus so they aren’t exactly the same besides graphics.
  4. Tanks vs Tanks battles!!! The graphics are already there, so why not include a GSB like mode to the game? I am sure GSB fans would pay extra for something like that.
2

Howdy again, STW. I have to take a point of disagreement with you on one issue.
A lack of rock-paper-scissers is NOT a bad thing. Actually, it makes it a lot more even if you can’t just say “oh look, they’re using X, i’ll use Y!” that leads to stagnant gameplay and a lack of a really developed metagame. GSB never truly developed this to the extent some games can, as there was a short list of easily accessible counters.

What we need is to support the concept that not everything needs to be oriented around a RPS system, but instead need to be balanced in general. Don’t make “x be good v y, y be good v z, z be good v x” but rather “x has a higher fire rate and lower damage, but has a DoT effect. Y has a HUGE spread, but low fire rate and high damage. Z has a high fire rate AND damage, but terrible accuracy.” this CAN be balanced, although it’s harder to do. Ultimately though, I think it would be for the best if we went that way instead of assuming EVERYTHING HAS TO BE RPS

3

First, Cliff said he wants RPS, and wants lasers to counter armor. As of now they can’t, so heavy tanks/repair trucks are unstoppable.

Second you had GSB metagame completely backward. GSB’s metagame (SAC and NEC) die because it was too hard for most people to participate, not too easy.

Third, I am just listing the most strait forward solution, not trying to redesign the game. After the Tribe Hull bonus, I don’t want to invest too much thought into something that would never occur.

4

Thanks, this ias all very interesting and helpful feedback, there will be some more balance changes in the next patch, which will also finalise support for easy modding.

5

The GSB metagame never developed past the general RPS, even in NEC/SAC. Look through the posts in the threads, a lot of the time the fleets that win are VERY cyclical. one build beats the three ahead of it. The campaign was MUCH closer to having a true metagame, but even then my FT swarm really locked that one down from too much exploration early on

6

Umm, SAC can be cyclical, but how can NEC? You can’t have a cycle when you have to beat ALL the other challenges ahead of it. If you see another plasma beam it’s not because you seeing a cycle, it’s because plasma beam is that good. It’s all in the subtle changes that will slip by those who never participated in an NEC.

An SAC fleet takes 20 minutes for me. An NEC fleet past 10 can take 5 to 10 hours. Big difference there.