Thought about a Thief op improvement

[Sheister]

Arson used to be just homes and then ( I presume) hit some period of randomness, now you have the option of choosing. Would it be unbalancing to allow the same ability for Night Strike and propaganda? A penalty for being particular about targets, but allowing the option to choose might be better for the game. I don't particularly see a logical reason why it should be random.

I can see reasons why some might think that is making these too strong, But I think that balancing it with penalties similar to arson could solve that.

[E_Boko]

im assuming you want to make this a rogue only ability to choose who to NS since only rogues can chose what to burn down now. well NS kills everything at a certain %. somewhere between 3-5% like 5% on specs or 3% on leets but the point is there is no randomness since everything is affected at once.

as for choosing a target for propaganda i can just see that being way too abusable. what kind of limits would you impose on it to make it not so OP?

[DHaran]

It would force people to overplay rogue, there is no penalty that would be strong enough to prevent the need for targeting elites.

[Ordray]

Would it be unbalancing to allow the same ability for Night Strike and propaganda? A penalty for being particular about targets, but allowing the option to choose might be better for the game. I don't particularly see a logical reason why it should be random.

Yes, it would be unbalancing. Think of Rogue vs UD if you could target just their elites with prop. Bye bye UD attacker.

And NS already kills a portion of all troops already, so if you target just 1 and reduce it's % then you're doing less damage than with a normal NS, unless you mean to up the % in which case NS becomes OP.

[Sheister]

Well, I don't know about that Dharan. I can honestly say, I am kinda ticked when I get elites on a prop (at least so far and at my current size running 4.5 tpa raw, 12.8 mod.) In war, mostly armies are out nearly all the time prop maybe gains like 3-5 elites. Wizards yield about 2-9 each, specs vary wildly from 12-55, and soldiers are about the same as specs, thieves run about 10-33. This was on a .5 wpa/tpa (about 500 of each), 35 or less elites at home, 1500 spec, between 25 and 120 soldiers province. So, I am going to GUESS that prop gains about 1% elites, 1% wizards, 5% specs, 5% soldiers and 5% thieves (with some randomness in there.)

For me, personally, a penalty of 25% would be more than enough to make me not especially want to go for elites, unless I happened to be on when elites were home at the right time.

Thik of the SoT of that province.....

Assuming I cought all his elites at home at the same time, then that would have been 3800 (give or take). converting .75% would then be about 28 elites. Assuming we can do a stright percentage. I think, however, that prop and NS also have thieves numbers game. So I was sending 750 thieves to do my ops above. So, if I assume a rough proportionality to things, 750 was bringing the full 5% on 1500 specs so if we also applied the penalty to the "numers recoverable per thief sent" the thief would have to also risk MORE thieves to get to max by about 25 percent. I was losing between 1 and 3 thieves per "partial catch" and 10-18 per fail. Assuming proportionality in catches, my thief econ would decline at roughly +25% of that rate then.

OTOH, NS can have a much more regular and higher yield, I was averaging 37-79 troops/op depending on all the standard variables (i think my "full run" from 75% stealth to 9% stealth yielded something like 1200 kills.) So maybe it is better to figure the penalty for selecting based on that big picture. If I catch elites at home after an initial wave, and we are going to respond, bring to hostile and push button....after the initial intel and BS I have that 75-80% stealth to do runs, the prop run (as I assume above at 28 and declining) probably would yield about 462 elites. I guess one way to balance it would be for developers to set the limit like this.

Lets say, that a NORMAL untargeted NS kills 1200 on that run. You want to concentrate on ONE type. Perhaps the appropriate penalty is to set it to the proportion of elites type killed X2 cap at 50% of normal NS kills. so, lets say that out of 1200 you kill 45% soldiers 35% specs and 20% elites (in the distribution) (I don't know what the real distribution is, so I just am guessing to for purposes of discussion.) OK, that would be 240 elites killed in a random, OR 480 killed in target. Specs on the other hand, would end up at 420 in the random, 840 base in the targeted, but cap at 600 so, only 600 killed. hmmm
probably need separate caps at elites because you need to make that difference meaningful no? base was 15% less elites than specs, so elites should probably cap at 420.

Yes, I think that would do it.

So that might be balanced.

Making that rogue only would be a good idea. Sadly, no, I had not put the rogue only thought into my brain this morning while sipping my coffee.


Edit* grrrr I had not thought about undead Ord. Probably allowing this on NS would be terrible unless NS got changed to not affect troops out. So maybe just prop for now. Another thought, undead could get teh race bonus of immunity to prop (being undead and not able to think for themselves, lol.)

[Ordray]

Still OPs Rogue again.

[DHaran]

I didn't read all of that, but I did notice you mentioned 'catching elites home' several times. This is a moot point because NS also hits troops out. 25% is well worth it to target elites on attackers. 50% wouldn't even be high enough, because targeting elites is WAY too important if the option is available. It's crazy imba.

[Sheister]

OK, I need to ask then, is there a number that would not OP the rogue in your mind? remeber I am assuming (probably incorrectly) that NS kills that high a number of elites, and then there is a less than double the amount killed and to target, the total amount is half the total kills made (similar distribution with prop) which means targeting is one heck of a penalty. I do not think it is OPd at all economically or total damage to a province. Now, that is not to say that on a target with four thieves provinces this could not cripple a province, but is it any worse than it is now?

Lets say that four thieves did a run on a target province similar to what I did. That is 4800 total troops dead (assuming we all get the same good yield, which is a big assumption, having killed 960 elites, 1680 specs and (assuming you had this many around) 2160 soldiers. In reality, my hits were probably not county any soldiers so let me transform that. assuming 960+1680 represents part of a distribution with soldiers being present......perhaps that would look something more like 8725 total troops if the soldiers were taken down too. So in my theoretical world of what ifs....

960 elites, 1680 specsm 6000 soldiers (give or take). ok, so total "points" of casualties (transformed into NW as an somewhat objective indicator of value on an Orc (for illustrative purposes) 6280+8400+9000 = 23680

Under the modified scenario

1920 elites killed or 12690 NW.

So, almost 50% less damage done to the target (arguably). Now, that is under a LOT of assumptions, many of which could be wildly flagrantly wrong, but the devs (who know the real numbers) could probably balance things along those lines.

Yes, I recognize that I am completely ignoring the practical play and the strategic value of troop types and the importance of focused strategies verses diffuse ones and that those factors argue (though I am not at the moment able to articulate it well) against the ability to target these ops.

Dharan, my thinking about catching troops home was meant for prop thoughts only.

[Sheister]

OK, as I am looking at it, my numbers are farther off (to the high side for kills) than I thought.

Effect: Kills up to a maximum of 13% enemy soldiers at a rate of 0.67 soldiers per thief.
Also kills a much smaller amount of specialists and elites.

[kit]

or one rogue targets the enemy thieves for propaganda, leaves it at 0.3 tpa, and then the rest of kd can easily NS it.
Do not make propaganda choose able, it would indeed overpower it.

[Bishop]

you could target but at a reduced gain maybe
edit: not prop, that wouldnt work though - too strong regardless

[Sheister]

Well, I think there is probably a penalty that will work for all ops, the question is how stiff does it have to be. Prop would likely have to be stiffer because it has more options. Also I think to the point Ord brought up, undead would have to be immune to the affect (at least the targeting affect). so if there was a nightstrike and a greater nightstrike, undead would have to be immune to greater nightstrike. Alternatively, you might make undead immune to all nightstrike but give them a small (5%?) pop penalty to offset that.....

I think it is a nice idea, but the balancing mechanisms are getting cumbersom so I wonder if it is worth it. I think it fits the flavor well, so it is anice back burner concept I think.

[E_Boko]

+1 to giving undead more pop

[Ordray]

+1 to giving undead more pop

He said penalty = -5% pop

[E_Boko]

<_<
>_>

still a +1 for 5% more pop though. they used to have a home bonus.