White knights

[Hobbezak]

My gripe is that white knights unbalance certain routes.
All military now suddenly have access to a decent flakkiller, rpg and SO suddenly have a unit that targets INN directly, terror route now has a unit that can sweep up after terrors, effectively making it extremely hard to land with gardeners on a solo terror (tl already did that though)...

I do think that the white knight has more impact on the game than it should have. Especially the fact that it masks weaknesses of certain routes is something that affects the balance in the game.
Maybe as the round progresses, the upper boundary on white knights might solve the issue, but still...

 

[MacMikey]

Maybe as the round progresses, the upper boundary on white knights might solve the issue, but still...

I dont think so Hobbe, what you say about the terror route seems quite true. And with the ratio of the knights the upper boundary doesn't matter much. They still kill up to 45m flak per tick then

 

[timthetyrant]

i have a love/hate relationship. i'm going dragons, sure they are good, when attacking they clear the INNs so i dont need golems and my sorcerors do more damage. But when im attacking knights, i cant beat them untill i get sirens

 

[Hobbezak]

Lol I thought/hoped they'd fire after sorcs (couldn't be arsed to check)... If this is the case, it makes WK even more of a threat to unbalancing the rounds than I already thought. :|

 

[TaO]

just pump up their initiative..

WK and WW should fire after most standard units..

That's what you're saying right

 

[Hobbezak]

just pump up their initiative..

WK and WW should fire after most standard units..

That's what you're saying right

No, not at all.
That wouldn't solve the fact that in the SA branch, and in the RPG branch, nothing fires directly on INN, leaving the route vulnerable to mass NLD/SD...
White knights would take away that effect, making it impossible to just outflak them with non-inn flak.
And still the same applies for thugs who don't have TL. If you manage to kill the terrors after they fire on the first tick, you can flak your geos through the pb/jeeps with your let. White Knights prevent that.

So, white knights have completely changed certain aspects of the game, and provide a rather important complement to the weaknesses of certain routes.

 

[timtadams]

Just cause ur evil and have none

 

[TaO]

just pump up their initiative..

WK and WW should fire after most standard units..

That's what you're saying right

No, not at all.
That wouldn't solve the fact that in the SA branch, and in the RPG branch, nothing fires directly on INN, leaving the route vulnerable to mass NLD/SD...
White knights would take away that effect, making it impossible to just outflak them with non-inn flak.
And still the same applies for thugs who don't have TL. If you manage to kill the terrors after they fire on the first tick, you can flak your geos through the pb/jeeps with your let. White Knights prevent that.

So, white knights have completely changed certain aspects of the game, and provide a rather important complement to the weaknesses of certain routes.

True say..
But now imagine White Knight to fire at init 900.. all standard LET fire before the WK's..

Wouldn't that work for what you mean?..

 

[Hobbezak]

No, because I want to still be able to flak an rpg with sd, or an SO with gurus. That's how it used to be, and tbh I see no reason why an honourable rpg should receive such benefits (which is a benefit that doesn't apply for say a robo.)

 

[Dimitar]

would be quite awesome if we just make those units "cosmetical", **** ratios that don't affect anything much, because IMO not having a bounty on your head is reward enough for green-titled players

 

[Alcibiades]

So on the note of "unbalancing routes"; last night this POM attacked me (SO-SA). Now, usually, this POM would've been able to block most of my units, lose a bit of flak, and land, however my White Knights totally unbalanced the situation and made it untenable for him to land. Doesn't this seem wrong?

Defending ME
[middle] 8,946,430 hostile Political Mastermind attacked, distracting 15,662,947 allied staff.
[middle] 2,133,307 allied Secret Agent attacked, killing 4,447,935 hostile staff.
[middle] 1,836,406 allied Assassin attacked, killing 901,306 hostile staff.
[middle] 607,732 allied White Knight attacked, slaying 8,381,419 hostile staff.
[middle] 9,862,976 hostile Hippy Van attacked, distracting 4,159,554 allied staff.
[middle] 2,874,541 hostile Loudspeaker Protestor shouted in the ears of and distracted 2,247,998 allied staff.

Distracted: 22,070,499 [£838,747,720,100] friendlies distracted.
Died: 13,730,660 [£40,128,064,000] enemies dead.

You gained 72,954 effectiveness.
You gained 1.66 fame.
You gained 13.00 honour.



Defending ME
[range] 9,000,000 hostile Political Mastermind attacked, distracting 16,452,768 allied staff.
[range] 1,675,330 allied Secret Agent attacked, killing 4,562,301 hostile staff.
[range] 1,580,437 allied Assassin attacked, killing 947,345 hostile staff.
[range] 549,983 allied White Knight attacked, slaying 8,398,760 hostile staff.
[range] 9,948,983 hostile Hippy Van attacked, distracting 4,119,513 allied staff.
[range] 2,951,265 hostile Loudspeaker Protestor shouted in the ears of and distracted 2,221,973 allied staff.

Distracted: 22,794,254 [£875,842,390,700] friendlies distracted.
Died: 13,908,406 [£36,612,262,300] enemies dead.

You gained 68,774 effectiveness.
You gained 1.37 fame.
You gained 12.80 honour.

 

[willymchilybily]

couldnt WK target mainly health and target all to fix this. same affect generally on pure flak but can stil be distracted into attacking other garbage. Shouldnt hurt poms much either being health hitters

OFC thier very existance as an extra flak killer may be enough to make it an incentive to be honourable. but not so much as to affect the balance of the game. (for some routes)

making hooligans, guru,sd and any other cheap armour based unit like gold dust when flacking. As they always use to be.

ofc it still has a similar affect. its more beneficial for a sorcerer to be honourable than a robo. no matter what the unit targets.

also talk of a debuff if you will on them should make them useful but not as overpowered and therefore less effective, and less inbalacing but still nice free flak to make less lethals target your units that weren't free.

 

[Alcibiades]

I liked the idea of simply making them distract instead of kill. My gripe about WKs at lower ranks was the make flakking far more expensive than it should be, distraction would at least lower the flak death rate, although would still make buying flak expensive (since you'd need that much more) but at least you wouldn't have to keep rebuying it. I think Cheese may have suggested that in another thread. It would solve, at least, the gripe about the cost of flakking (repeatedly) the WKs, but you'd still have the route unbalancing, since you're essentially getting a sweeper for free, for a whole range of units. And I don't think raising the init would make that much better, having something to sweep for Newsies (stuns) for example would be horribly awful.

Dunno, just a random thought, but depends what Azzer's plans are for next round for "weakening" them. I would, of course, support the return of WKs to virtually pointless units, with their only purpose serving as a visual indicator of just how awesomely honourable someone is. A nice visual bonus, but without any real ingame power.

 

[willymchilybily]

hmm i know id probably not be too honourable if that was the case id stay with 5% base bounty but wouldnt strive to earn them. as there would be no real benefit but some flak which has a quite low limit on them. which isnt that worth while. I know these are my thoughts other peoples may differ. but i think there should be a bonus for having them an in game slight advantage compared to if you didnt have them. but i also agree at present it may be too much of an advantage. but without the incentive to be honourable people would only do enough to not have bounty, if that. meaning h/f isnt really doing its job. bounty still limits bashing but doesnt reward a play style that doesnt bash at all. and gives little incentive not to bash. only a slight penalisation

 

[timtadams]

I too like the idea of having them distract..now that i think about it you wouldnt have people send LETs at a pom (eg cyber/striker) just kill them

maybe have them target something like: ALL/INN
but so they dont do too much damage on non-generic units, reduce their current damage, but give them bonus armour and health damage on generic units, to bring it up to what it currently is
This, or you could just leave them targeting INN and reduce their damage...wait, isnt this going to happen next round anyway?

Anyway, still think they should distract, or fire close?

 

[Ahead]

They are ridiculously strong, they need to go one way or the other: either they need to be so weak that they die like flies and even terrors get a ratio of 1:2 or something on them, so that they are only really useful if an inc is pure flak; or reduce their damage so their ratio on flak is 1:3 max. Neither of these would make them useless, but currently, they do 1:15 on gards and get over 1:1 on geos which is just stupid for a unit that is free and is only worth £100.

Also, willy, people can still play for h/f if they want, they shouldn't need an uber unit to persuade them to play that way. It's a rank, just like eff/bh, and people don't need to be given free overpowered units to go for the eff/bh ranks so why should they need to be given them for h/f?

 

[Twigley]

The whole point of WK was to make the allies at the start not be raped over and over and over again by the top people. And you only got the white knights if you were the ones being raped or constantly having to defend (usually the lower allies).

They do seem to be overpowered mid round but start of round i think they were fine.

Boils down to editing of the calc on how much you get i think.

 

[Cheese]

Making the max you can get as 1m would be the best idea in my opinion

 

[timtadams]

Making the max you can get as 1m would be the best idea in my opinion

I think this is a good idea
maybe even a bit less

 

[Davs]

couldnt WK target mainly health and target all to fix this. same affect generally on pure flak but can stil be distracted into attacking other garbage. Shouldnt hurt poms much either being health hitters

OFC thier very existance as an extra flak killer may be enough to make it an incentive to be honourable. but not so much as to affect the balance of the game. (for some routes)

making hooligans, guru,sd and any other cheap armour based unit like gold dust when flacking. As they always use to be.

ofc it still has a similar affect. its more beneficial for a sorcerer to be honourable than a robo. no matter what the unit targets.

also talk of a debuff if you will on them should make them useful but not as overpowered and therefore less effective, and less inbalacing but still nice free flak to make less lethals target your units that weren't free.

I'd been thinking of the idea of making them target ALL or possibly LET/NLT/NLD. I see a unit which is meant to be a symbol of honour targetting solely innocents a bit on the silly side anyway - let alone the fact that it unbalances routes completely.

As regards flak attacks early in the round, making the target ALL would be the better option than making them target LETs or whatever (obviously) so that would probably be the better approach. They'll still need to be made a lot less powerful than they are atm though - as they'll still screw up the flak wars even if they target ALL rather than just INN.