The latest round of feedback indicates that there are only very minor tweaks required still. We will roll these out to the live system directly at some point (No worries - there will be ample warning). Please find an updated list of changes in relation to the current live system below (the numbers in brackets indicate previous values):

Airdefence

Credits: 300 (400)

Attack range vs air: 1-3  (1 vs all other) 

Defence: 4(6)

Hard: 3(0)

Boat: 3(0)

Trooper: 8(0)

Air: 9(13)

Speedboat: 3(0)

Hovercraft: 3(0)

Assault Artillery

Air: 6(8)

Battleship

Attack range: 1-4(5) 

Defence: 14(16)

Hard: 14(16)

Boat: 14(16)

Soft: 10(12)

Air: 6(12)

Speedboat: 14(16)

Amphibic: 14(16)

Bomber

Credits: 900(1200)

Destroyer:

Credits: 900(1100)

Attack range vs Subs:  1-2(1) 

Air: 12(8)

Boat: 10(12)

Jet

Hard: 8(6)

Heavy Trooper

Air: 6(8)

Helicopter

Movement: 5+1 (5) 

Hard: 10(8)

Soft: 16(14)

Hovercraft

Air: 0(6)

Speedboat: 8(10)

Light Artillery

Credits: 200(400)

Hard: 4(8)

Soft: 10(8)

Boat 4(8)

Speedboat 4(8)

Amphibic 4(8)

Raider

Air: 0(4)

Speedboat

Credits: 200

Soft: 8(10)

Hovercraft: 16(14)

Berserker

Defence 14(16)

Sub

Credits 1000(1200)

Attack range:  1-2(1) 

The changes in relation to Balancing II (the latest version that was running on test.weewar.com) are:

Speedboat attack range is reduced to 1

Sub price is increased to 1000 (from 900)

Air defence range is back up to 1-3 (from 2)

Battleships can repair 2 per round again

Changes sound good. Still waiting for the update to finish.

Oh wait, are you not putting it on the test server during the time before you update the live server?

What about AA?  I see the increase of range which I like but I see nothing about damage adjustments.  I may have overlooked them.

Redwarrior

Let me copy what I wrote in the last balancing post:"Apart of that there is now an "altitude" to each unit type. Units are only blocked by enemy units if they are on the same altitude or issue ZoC over the moving units. Examples: Planes can fly over Tanks, Subs can pass underneath Hovercrafts etc. The One-unit-per-field-rule still applies."

This will go live with the updates mentioned above as well. We have shut down the test server and will not append another round for the latest (very small) changes.

Would be nice to get AA exerting ZOC on air units.  But anyway.

Can we leave the test server running for... well, testing?  :)  IMO, unless it is particularly costly, you should always have a test server running for latest developments which are rolled out on a frequent basis.  Live server can be reserved for relatively well-tested code that is shown to be stable.

Testing a certain Map Tool?

imho, this seems kinda drastic to introduce these changes to the live server so soon.  Are we sure that the new specs have been vetted out thoroughly enough?  I have not had the time to completely follow the other thread, but there have only been a handful of people giving feedback.

At the least, I would prefer to have people play the final version of the new specs before going to the live server.  It would also be nice to have some sort of vote or poll to see how many people are in favor of pushing the new specs to the live server or to continue testing.  For instance, in the "Balancing II" thread, I didn't see anyone say "yes, these new specs are awesome and we should start using them on the live server now!"

The problem without having support from the testing community is that when you update the specs to the live server and everyone starts complaining, then the only people who will be supporting the new specs are the developers.  This situation will lead to more debate and more changes which will make people upset and discontent with weewar.  It takes a long time to get truly adept and proficient at weewar and changing the specs on a frequent basis (anything less than 4-6 months) will make lots of people unhappy.  So, let's get the new specs right before we force them on everyone.

i agree with pluto on this.  once again someone said what i was thinking much more eloquently than i could have. 

Agreed, more testing is good and wouldn't hurt, esp. if you're making changes and going directly live with those changes. Who knows, maybe changing speedboat range back to 1 creates a bug that keeps them from attacking air units or something.

(Also, don't forget to update the inspector and the specifications page too. =) )

Translation: "I have gotten really good at exploiting <insert balance problem here> and now you are removing that balance problem!  Nooooos!"

j/k

I don't think the balancing changes are that drastic... bring em on!

It's great that the aa is back to range 3 and also that the Battleship repair is at 2 (it is, isn't it?).

However:

Berserker: I don't think it is fair reduce the berserker defence to 14 since one of the major advantages of the berserker is its better defense. With the better repair of the heavy tank and higher speed , same defense and will limit the use of the berserker by significance. For a fix I recommend to increase the repair rate of the berserker to 2.

Destroyer:

The battleship is made a lot more vulnerable to subs, bombers and destroyers (due to their lowered range) which means that they will be build a lot less frequently and are not as effective as an destroyer counter anymore. Especially with the lower price and the increased anti air capabilities. Bombers are also not that effective against the destroyers. Destroyers can evade dfa's at most situations and if both units are in range the destroyer deals more damage to the dfa than the dfa to the destroyer with a better repair for the destroyer. Except for the vulnerable Battleship the only other effective destroyer counter might be mass speedboats which is imo a little limite. I recommend to make the destroyer weaker therefore, preferable by reducing the range to 1-2. Increasing costs or reducing boat attack would also do.

Reduce destroyers to an attack range of 2?  Ugh, no way.  They are you main screen and naval unit in the game now in that you need several for anti-sub work and anti-air duty.  Reducing their range would basically allow aircraft to fly circles around them.

I think BBs are natural counters to destroyers in that they can outrange them.  I honestly think the only balance needed for BBs at this point is a reduction of their cost to 1500-1600 instead of 2k.  If possible to reduce the destoryers damage against BBs but not speedboats sure but I do not want to see swarming speedboats honestly being a valid tactic.

Overall, I'm not sure I agree that destoyers need a nerf.  I've enjoyed the change on the test server.  I also found plenty of times when I still needed a BB over a destroyer.  The new changes have just made the idea of mass BBs obsolete.

Redwarrior

If asked for my opinion, I do think we need at least one more round of tweaking on live before getting to something like >90% satisfaction.  Pluto: I think we can make spec changes more frequently than 4-6 months, BUT those frequent spec changes should be very minimal, such as increasing offense of a unit from 8 to 9, or movement from 12 MP to 10 MP.

I can go for a BB price drop.  Right now they are too expensive for me to think of building them in the games I was in on the test server.

bert: Yes, I'd like to be able to test and develop the Map Manager in the safe confines of the test server, but I think it'll be okay on the live as well.  :)

My unsolicited opinion is that changes to the VERY CORE OF THE GAME should be made never, or as close to never as possible.  Basically, after a few years of testing, the collective decision is that the core of the game could use some tweaking.  Fine, tweak it once and be done with it.  Don't change the basis for every strategy in play and then do it again a few months later.  If you think it needs to be changed, change it and get it right the first time.  If this takes more testing, test it some more.

I agree with techbrute - I think major changes should be made on the live server as rare as possible - perhaps once a year or two - which is why I think we need a little more testing to make sure all is well. As for destroyers, I think subs and BBs are effective counters against them. As for berserkers, I think their defense does not need to be reduced, as jeye said. They are already not very helpful unless you're in tight situations where a DFA is too vulnerable, and in my opinion, rarely are berserkers built for their attack power, unless up against other berserkers. Their defense is their strong point. Unfortunately, I have not gotten a chance to really test this out and I doubt many others have either.

Based on my experience, I think there is a bit of overapprehension going on.  I agree that drastic changes should never occur, or only very very rarely.  But I think tweaks should be ongoing; I can't see a reason they should stop.  Wesnoth has been in development for years (more than 4), with 1.0 being released 2 years ago.  They are at 1.4.x now, and they are STILL tweaking stats.  Nothing that huge, as I said, just an adjustment like 33 HP to 34 HP, etc.  But I think of it like the frog that goes halfway to its destination on each jump.  It is constantly approaching its goal, a smaller amount each time, but it never stops.

I think more in the vein of open source projects than commercial ones.  In OSS, releases are usually very frequent.

I'm not sure how subs are good against DDs when people say DDs are good anti-subs.  I know how I'd play with the three naval units in a game, but I don't want to divulge too much strategy.  :)

hi all,

I've been away from the forums cause of work but i was able to squeeze in some test games. During my test, I actually stop using BB. This might be a little drastic but they seem to be useless now. DD are much better. The only thing i found a BB useful for was hitting hovercrafts, but spending 2000 to kill one hovercraft is kinda .... well thats my rant on BBs. I would like to try the test again especially since a couple of units had major stat changes like AA guns, jet, raider, and subs.

I agree with Pluto and several other posters. I think the pending change is a bit premature.

It is really up to developers to make decisions, but I think we need more testing and more consensus/acceptance from testers. Some sort of peer review. Tangler is probably good for discussions, but not very good for getting understanding of whether a change is generally accepted by users.

I think in this sense Weewar can get some ideas from a game called Urban Dead. It is in completely different genre, but a great thing about this game is that it has a very well developed wiki. One of the sections of Urban Dead wiki is a page for user suggestions. Users make suggestions using a provided template, other users vote on suggestions following defined guidelines. A suggestion that gets 67% of Keep votes is deemed peer-reviewed. If it gets less than 50% of Keep votes is peer-rejected. There are guidelines for spaminating a suggestion if the suggestion is inappropriate/utterly ridiculous/downright stupid. (This is an example of suggestion and voting process.)

I think it a good mechanism that can be employed by Weewar community and Weewar developers to easily identify desirable and undesirable changes in the game. I think it might significantly improve current suggestion page on Weewar wiki.

(I wanted to write this in an e-mail to Alex, but then I thought that would be much better to share it with you.)

I think it has been a traditional desire of users for most of the lifetime of weewar to date that a public issue tracking and feature request system be made available.  At the moment, they only have an internal ticket system, which the devs manually add to based on feedback gathered from these forums and their 'contact' link.

If there is interest, I can easily setup a completely unofficial third-party issue tracker for Weewar, even if for no other reason than to let people vent and give them a voice in a centralized, organized location.

I think they should go a head and make the changes but perhaps make it possible to play the existing way, so that those who believe that more balancing should be made can play the new way and so those who are accustomed to the current way can play the other way. as long as it is clear which version is which, you can make both people happy.

I have a feeling that the system is not designed to easily handle multiple or selectable rulesets.  It's all or nothing.  :)

I'm against all these rapid fire changes they've been making. I'm not against change or improvement, but it should be a slow and thought out process. The units have been changed twice since I bought my pro account. Part of the challenge of any strategy game is coming up with the solution to the more powerful units. Yes, progress can be made in the interest of balance and fairness, but it can be taken too far. Just my 2cents.

Rapid fire changes? The units have not been chamged at all since you purchased you pro account. There actually haven't been any changes to the units in a very long time. I can't even recall the last...

BM5k, have you been participating/playing on the test server?  are those the changes that you might be referring to?  on the main server, the last unit related change was when they added the sea and air units.

Yeah, sorry I wasn't referring to the live server. I've pretty much stayed out of the rebalancing discussions b/c I don't see *tons* of issues to begin with, and rebalancing is (obviously) a delicate matter that quickly snowballs into completely changing every unit. I am all for tweaks, but I think (on the live server, which HAS NOT changed) any changes should be implemented slowly to give people time to adjust.

Yes, some of the units are more powerful, but in the end everyone starts with the same credits and earns the same cpb income. If you're consistently getting spanked, you need to change your strategy. (And I'm not by any means a pro or an expert strategist, my 1550ish rating isn't anything to gloat about)

What's going on with ZoC? I thought air units were supposed to be able to fly over ground units now, but I'm still getting blocked by a bunch of infantrymen.

Sorry if this has already been discussed, I've been AWOL for a while.

I think Heavy Infantry can attack air units, so they're the ones doing the blocking.  I believe light infantry cannot block, since they cannot attack.  Does this line up with your experience?