Problem: orcas in small groups will sometimes get in each other's way and be stuck outside of range. The old range was 5, but this was to nerf large groups.
Orcas have been nerfed in several ways. One of the ways was to reduce their range from 5 to 4. However, when the range reduction is coupled with all the other nerfs, it seems a bit too much. Orcas are fairly vulnerable now that air defense has improved.
Increased ROF of tanks. The guns of Light & Medium Tanks are a bit weak
relative to their role as tanks. They do less damage than bike rockets,
and do less damage against light vehicles than even the hum-vee. Changing
ROF should mitigate this a bit, even though their gun is still not that
powerful (e.g. compared to stealth tank, and even flame tank matched light
tank). The fact that their rivals are often moving fasts also complicates
the slower ROF.
The same proportion of damage was kept between light & medium tanks.
Mammoth Tank was left unchanged.
APC fires more rapidly. Does same damage vs. ground units, but does much more damage vs. air units now.
APC ground damage vs. infantry changed because since the damage is low (15), strange rounding errors occur that make it do next to no damage.
Missile optimized to fire a 2-burst quickly and kill orcas, but still does same overall damage as before. Uses missiles more efficiently by having them do lower damage and firing more often.
Spread increased from 6 -> 12 since it is too weak against infantry. Damage vs. infantry still low, but at least has some effect vs. groups of infantry.
Increased RangeLimit, instead of increasing missile speed, to keep the building's flavor.
Made turret do less damage (50), and shooting more often. 50 divides well into apc/tank health (200,300,400). 80% damage is 40, which divides well into common vehicle HP (120,160).
Bullet speed increased for greater accuracy.
SAM site receives a buff to counter orca spam.
Missiles now do half as much damage (30). This divides better into Orca's hitpoints (90), to avoid wasted missiles. Missiles fire ~3x as often.
Missiles are faster. RangeLimit reduced to compensate.
Mobile SAMs are at risk of dying quickly, so it's better to have 2 missiles worth half the damage each, in the hopes you'll get more shots off.
BurstDelay was lowered for this purpose, too.
Increased speed of missile, and adjusted RangeLimit to compensate.
In big numbers, the unit with the heavy machine gun could be a bit too powerful vs. buildings for their cost, or even armor at certain times. (Armor should be extremely resistant to machine gun fire, even in large amounts). Base raiding should favor recon bikes slightly, for cost effectiveness.
Nerf slightly.
To deal with orca spam problem:
-Mobile SAM missile fires a bit faster (Burst Delay of 1 sec. instead of 1.4 sec).
-Damage spread increased slightly from 14 -> 16, to deal with large concentrations of air units.
-Damage increased 55 -> 60, which divides as 2/3rds of an orca's HP. Important because Infantry rockets and Bike Rockets do 30 damage each, so one rocket + 1 patriot == kill.
SAM turret damage also increased 55 -> 60, for same reason.
Since the APC's cost was lowered to $600 to deal with orca spam better, its damage vs. heavy armor and infantry is being correspondingly lowered, so that it is not too good against those units (in terms of dollar-value, especially).
Keep in mind that APC is still good at crushing infantry.
Also removed "High" attribute from APC gun (but not from the AA version).
Orca rockets will do 15 damage vs. heavy. Hopefully this will take some edge off orca spam. This will:
-Give anti-air APC more lasting power vs. orca, ensuring it can at least down some of them and get their money's worth.
-Mammoth tank will bet better able to survive a mass assault and return fire with its rockets to down some of them (and get better money's worth).
-Give advanced guard towers better ability to defend themselves against air assault. (ATWR has heavy armor and does good damage, but can die quickly against a large group of orcas).
-Give armored units in general more resilience vs. orcas so they aren't completely helpless and quickly annihilated. Maybe then they can reach their target better (e.g. a couple tanks charging an artillery position that is being defended by some orcas).
Damage vs. infantry also slightly reduced as as result (also 20 -> 15 dmg).
Orcas generally aren't a threat to infantry, but E3s should be able to do some credible damage, even if they are in a small group. Enough orca spam will kill a small group of infantry, unfortunately. Since Orca has no business attacking infantry anyway, this slight nerf won't hurt orcas.
(Note: The damage model was simplified a bit, so that it does 100% of 30 dmg instead of 75% of 40 damage, vs. light & wood.)
if people want to take out tanks, they should build a turret. Right now the guard tower hits as strong as a tank shell, roughly.
Reducing advanced tower's damage vs. infantry. Its focus should be more on vehicles. It still is ok vs. infantry with spread of 6, but not supposed to be infantry killer, per se.
Increasing inaccuracy slightly. (3 -> 5)
-reducing turretgun vs. infantry slightly
Nerfed sniper earlier from 7 -> 5.5. But since decimals dont mean jack in ORA, it's 5.
Since the sniper does cost 10x as much as infantry, and is a top tier unit, it should have some advantage with its sniper rifle in range to be useful on the battlefield. 5 just isn't enough.
Sniper range of 7 seems ridiculous, since it's a one-shot kill, and you can build multiple. (I support building multiple). Surprised I never noticed this issue before.
The range in C&C 95 was 5.5.
The ScanRadius is set to 5, which is probably why we haven't noticed any OP problems.
It's also a bit ridiculous since the unit's sight radius is only 5.
Orca missiles fire a bit slower, so that the unit cannot unload all its rockets in 2 seconds. Will give defenses a bit more time to respond before they die or before the orcas run away.
Increased speed of TowerMissile. At present it is very slow and not terribly effective vs. air units because they can quickly leave range before getting hit. Speed stats are same for E3 and RocketBike.
Burstdelay increased. This is to avoid wasted missiles on the same target that might get destroyed.
Rangelimit reduced from 40 to 30 to compensate for increased missile speed.
Seems like Obelisk is not used much and that it is underpowered. Could use +1 range.
Rationale: it uses tons of energy (150) and costs a lot ($1500), compared to ATWR (30 energy, $1000) which has a range of 8. (Obelisk is 7 at the moment).
Obelisk also is comparatively easily destroyed since its HP are lower. Since it's vulnerable to power outages and artillery, it seems a bit more range will help get better use out of it.
Stealth tank range seems too high. It currently exceeds obelisk range. We won't be changing obelisk range until the FireDelay issue is fixed. https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/2710
MLRS range reduced. People don't seem to like it's ultra-long range. Hopefully this is a good middle ground.
Orca range reduced -- there's some concern the orca is OP, especially against things designed to kill it (Bike, MSAM, ...). Reducing range will not nerf it but will allow vehicles to approach without getting instantly killed.
Mammoth missiles spread increased. Since mammoth is a top-tier unit, people think it shouldn't be easily killed and should be effective vs. everything. This should help a bit vs. infantry.
MLRS damage vs. wood reduced significantly, to slow down how fast they can destroy buildings.
MLRS damage vs. infantry slightly reduced. They are supposed to be good at killing incoming infantry groups, but they seem slightly too effective.
Bike rocket damage increased to 30.
This lets it kill MLRS in 4 shots instead of 5. Important for the role the bike plays.
Kills Buggy in 4 shots instead of 5 as well.
This helps to justify bike's cost of $500. Its primary job is to exploit open space with its speed to attack vulnerable units, e.g. go behind enemy lines and quickly kill artillery. 5 shots (3 volleys instead of 2) makes this far weaker in this role, and expensive to take the risk with.
