PvP & PvE Balance Tweaks

The latest patch v1.5.7 saw some significant balance changes that were partly from community feedback from GRNO and Delta Fleet.

The base game missiles are now slightly faster, do a little more damage and have a larger explosion radius. For instance, previously it required 3 IR missiles to sink a Swordfish, now it takes 2.

In the first few weeks since the patch we’ve played with and without Bob’s missile speed mod. While Bob’s changes stack on top of the new base game for speeds gameplay still feels OK with Bob’s mod. The mod might be adjusted in light of the new base game updates but it’s too early to tell what might be changed.

The MAJOR change in 1.5.7 is external fuel tanks. Before these were kind of a white elephant, they were only really something you’d put on if you had hardpoint space and had them in stock already, not a thing you’d go out of your way to obtain and use, adding 4 tanks to an Albatross would previously only gain you another 3.5 minutes of flight time. With 1.5.7 this is now MUCH more, each tank carries 10x the fuel than it did before. Where each tank was about 100 sec of ALB flight, now each is close to 1000 seconds. Keeping an AWACS up for long periods or setting up a long range recon flight are now NEW tactical options.

There isn’t anything I’d 100% want to change about the fuel capacity even if I could, but in 1.3 I did add two wingtip attachments to the ALB to allow tanks. With this an ALB can now fly for 7000+ seconds, several HOURS. So perhaps we will drop the two outer tanks from the mod or adjust it another way.

Spectator / Host Mode

Recently we’ve held a couple of very fun “Yellow vs Purple” PvP events and they have been great fun to take part in and to watch on Youtube. To help Thumble host and broadcast these I dusted off my old “Spectator mode” mod, and integrated it into revolution when the “Revolution Spectator Mode” add-on mod is added.

From the live-stream you’ll see that the hosting broadcast team are able to see all the player controlled units and some of the AI units on the map, and occasionally hop inside units to see what players can see.

1.3.10 (currently in beta) improves some of this with some more display options such as waypoints but also allows control over more of the red-team units as a kind of “Zeus/God” mode. Potentially allowing hosts to play the part of the hostile forces to make the games more spicey.

Settings

There are only a handful of “settings mods” for it (Spectator and Heavy Manta) but there are a lot of optional settings that can be tweaked on/off.

Here are some of the things that can be turned on/off or changed in lua code, that could be set as part of an addon mod.

• fog of war (on/off)
  • g_fow_range
• unit loadout options/overrides
  • g_revolution_custom_vehicle_chassis_data
  • g_revolution_attachment_defaults
  • g_revolution_override_attachment_options
• spectator mode
  • g_revolution_spectator_team
• debug mode for radar detection (draws things hidden/visible to all radars when enabled)
  • g_radar_debug

There are some older/experimental things too:

• g_revolution_enable_rcs – RADAR stealth (more/fewer hardpoints make you show up on radar earlier/later)
• g_revolution_hide_hostile_island_types– Hide hostile island types
• g_revolution_awacs_boost_above_alt – AWACS high-alt range boost (can be turned off, is on by default)
• g_revolution_hide_island_difficulty – Hide island shield counts (possibly broken when enabled if you look at other screens)
• g_revolution_hud_missile_heat_circles – IR/TV missiles show small heat circle when close to a target, enabled by default
• g_revolution_hud_missile_heat_scope – fraction of IR/TV missile heat sensor in HUD size
• get_render_missile_heat_range – range that heat circles are drawn – 1.5km by default
• g_revolution_enable_factory_damage – cancel production on islands when the command centre is bombed, enabled by default
• g_revolution_rwr_range – range that the aircraft RWR is sensitive to – 16km by default
• g_revolution_override_radar_range – optional custom func to raise/lower radar range of a specific unit – unused right now

During the course of 1.3 work I will probably remove g_revolution_enable_rcs and the stealth modelling, it wasn’t fun to play and is quite complex.

Sadly there is no way to change these settings without creating yet another mini mod that creates a potential conflict. I have _some_ ideas, but none are jumping out at me as good ideas.