[MOD] Equilibrium Version 1.0 - Balance, Bugfix & Aesthetic improvement mod

Sounds quite interesting...and a lot of changes. As such, I will hold back any opinions I have based on what I just read, until I've actually tested it:)

I'll let ya know what I think, if I find any bugs, etc. after trying it out. At the very least though, nice work on such a large scale mod. We need more of this:)

You have put a lot of work into this, that's obvious. I'm looking over the changelog and I can tell I have no idea how things will turn out until I play it several times. You have indeed suceeded in changing gameplay dramatically. So, props for the effort.

I was curious about two things: 

-Deleted # beside Raise Dead Ward Code to prevent AI errors in placement ::

    PreCastCheck = function(self, unit)

        local pos = GetWardLocation(unit)

        #if IsBadSpot(unit, pos) then

        #    MsgsFailure('<LOC error_0027>Cannot build that here')

        #end

        return (not IsBadSpot(unit, pos))

    end,

1. Have you traced this back to see if it actually works? I've noticed GPG left a lot of residual unused code in places, and it might be the case that this is a leftover that has no actual effect.
2. I believe that the first weapon the rook has is his attack versus structures. Are you sure you want that to be a attack while moving ability?
3. Since you added Sorian's TB fire while moving, have you considered adding the minion +hp fix?

@ Ptarth

Thanks for checking into that, actually if you check the lua you will see that the first attack is both the structure attack and the regular attack lumped into one, I will paste the code to illustrate what I mean and highlight in red the pertinent fields::

I think that means they got lazy and lumped them together which is unfortunate.  This renders Rook unable to attack and move at the same time which is kind of stupid if you ask me and handicaps Rook in some ways.  The second weapon entry are the autonomous arrows so the first attack is the only attack that corresponds to both main attack and structure attack. So the choice is::

Do we want a Rook that cannot attack while moving? or a Rook that can attack a structure while moving?  The second option isnt really that bad if enabled because I doubt the towers will be running away from the Rook anytime soon, although they might want to with the buffs to structural transfer that I made

Neapon = {

{

AttackAction = 'Attack',

AttackMoveAction = 'AttackMove',

AttackStructureAction = 'AttackStructure',

AttackStructureMoveAction = 'AttackStructureMove',

BallisticArc = 'RULEUBA_None',

CanDamageReturn = true,

CanFireWhileMoving = true,

CollideFriendly = false,

Damage = 0,

DamageAreaMult = 0,

DamageDelay = 0.6,

DamageRadius = 0,

DamageType = 'Hero',

DisplayName = 'Melee',

FireTargetLayerCapsTable = {

Land = 'Air|Land',

},

FiringTolerance = 180,

HeadingArcCenter = 0,

HeadingArcRange = 45,

IgnoreOpportunity = true,

IsMelee = true,

Label = 'MeleeWeapon',

MaxRadius = 5,

MetaImpactAmount = 4,

MetaImpactCategory = 'METAINFANTRY',

MetaImpactRadius = 4,

RateOfFire = 0.58,

SlavedToBody = true,

SlavedToBodyArcRange = 5,

TargetCheckInterval = 0.2,

TargetPriorities = {

'ALLUNITS',

},

TargetRestrictDisallow = 'UNTARGETABLE',

TurretBoneMuzzle = 'sk_Rook_Melee_Turret01_REF',

TurretBonePitch = 'sk_Rook_Melee_Turret01_REF',

TurretBoneYaw = 'sk_Rook_Melee_Turret01_REF',

TurretPitch = 135,

TurretPitchRange = 90,

TurretPitchSpeed = 360,

TurretYaw = 0,

TurretYawRange = 45,

TurretYawSpeed = 360,

Turreted = false,

WeaponType = 'HugeClub',

},

{

BallisticArc = 'RULEUBA_LowArc',

CanDamageReturn = false,

CanFireWhileMoving = true,

CantSetTargetUI = true,

CollideFriendly = false,

Damage = 10,

DamageType = 'Arrow',

DisplayName = 'Arrows',

DoNotUseDamageRating = true,

FireTargetLayerCapsTable = {

Land = 'Air|Land',

},

FiringRandomness = 0.1,

FiringTolerance = 2,

Label = 'Arrow01',

MaxRadius = 10,

MinRadius = 0,

MuzzleVelocity = 30,

NoWeaponBuffs = true,

NoFloatText = true,

NoItemEffect = true,

NoSplashDamage = true,

ProjectileId = '/projectiles/Arrow02/Arrow02_proj.bp',

ow, my knowledge of LUA is EXTREMELY rudimentary.  I can understand some of it when I read it because it is written in basic english, but alot of it goes over my head.  Most of my changes were somewhat simple and relied on the existing lua tables/structure.  I just changed around some numbers and possibly added some buffs or changed some buffs to add different stats.

So, some of my changes might be flawed.

About the Raise dead ward code I am not entirely sure if it actually makes any difference.  What I did notice, is that sometimes Oak AI would do some really stupid things with the ward like run past 1-2 demigods to place a ward and get killed in the process.  I mainly increased the range of the ability to lessen that effect and to compensate it for the reduction of max wards to 1 to avoid exploits etc.

The problem with raising the maximum range of the ward was that the AI would occasionally place wards outside the boundary of the playing field and I didn´t think it looked right so when I found that bit of code I enabled it by deleting the ## and I was hoping that would help.  I didn´t really test it extensively because I didnt find it that important either. 

Now that I have finished with my first version though I will look into that and see if it actually helps the AI at all with placement.

Thank you for that!

@ Ptarth or Anyone else that is knowledgable in Lua

What I would really like help with is a problem I think I have diagnosed correctly but I do not know how to correct because of my basic knowledge of lua.

Many have commented on the Rook AIs stupidness, especially while trying to flee from a demigod.  Well one of his problems, i´ve already remedied to some extent, the fact that he couldn´t attack while moving.

The problem with him stuttering while trying to flee and the indecision with him wanted to both attack and flee at the same time is caused by his autonomous weapons, the tower of light, trebuchet, and arrow towers.  It seems that somewhere in the Rooks AI, the targetting decisions of the arrow towers are causing the Rook to stop fleeing to fire arrows at the enemy.

I know this to be true because when ive tested some changes to the arrows to see if they were the cause, I was able to improve the Rooks attempts to flee (Less stuttering).  One change that helps him flee more appropriately, is disabling the arrow towers capability to fire while moving, another solution is reducing the arrow towers range, and a third solution is increasing the time between retargetting or checking for other targets of the arrow towers.  The problem is that these changes reduce the skills viability and are obviously just a band-aid solution.  The tower of light and trebuchet cause this stuttering effect as well I believe but much less frequently.

The arrow towers cause this problem moreso because of the massive rate-of-fire properties and the number of turrets firing. 6 towers firing 2 shots per second, and then 12 towers firing 2 shots per second when further upgraded.  As far as I can tell, this is what causes the Rook to be wishy-washy with his decisions to flee.

If someone could help me find the root of this problem I would be most appreciative.  As I play mostly offline versus AI for very casual play, this irks me to no end and forced me to make changes to the arrow towers that I would rather revert.

Thanks!

Hmm, well I don't have that much experience looking at the AI code. I actually don't have that much experience with .lua either, but I keep that a secret from the code. I think I can intimidate it that way. The AI code is primarily located in the dgdata.zip file @ lua\sim\AI. There are also some character specific AI function set in units\heroes\<DG>\.

Given your description if the Rook is stopping to fire arrows, then if you increase his arrow range up to trebuchet range, he shouldn't stop to shoot because he would be in range even when fleeing far away. It would be interesting to see what happens.

There was a modding effort to improve the AI. It was mostly focusing and creating better AI item choices and getting the AI to have useful builds. You might look into that thread for information and perhaps assistance.

Also, if you feel energetic, you might try exploring why the Shoulder mounted Rook weapons have target lock up issues. There is a thread in the Problem Reports forum. I've been working on it on and off, but haven't had much success with it.

Well, I've managed to play a couple of small games and am noticing something. I think you should bring ability damage back up considerably. I understand wanting to level the playing field so that people on a runaway xp trip don't become invincible....but currently AA base damage is well above skill damage on both Reg and DA ( and I would assume the same is true with the rest of the assassins, though I haven't tried them yet. ) When you add in crits from the auto-attack, it goes up even further. With DA, around level 5 I was hitting for 500s constant, with crits around 1500 ( 2x from slayers wraps, and 1.5x from precision. ) Meanwhile, spine attack was only doing 525 with a cast time, mana cost, and cool down.

Later on, AA can do less damage if the opponent armor stacks ( especially if they get ahold of bulwark of the ages. ), however: This just means that with even small healing/lifetaps you become virtually invincible as AA damage barely scratches you, and same with skill damage.

I'm thinking an across the board 50% increase in skill damage to start things off. This will probably be a bit much at the earlier levels though, so you might want to give the first levels only like a 20% increase.

As for the Rook issue...I have no idea:) Unfortunately I think we lost all of our people that really know LUA long ago, and all of us left just kinda make do. If I get some time, I might take a peak and see if I can figure out what's goin on...but no promises.

@ Zechio

I tried to reproduce your effects to no avail.  With DA I took Mards hammer favor item for +40 weapon damage, Gauntlets of Brutality for +25 weapon damage and Slayers Wraps for +20 weapon damage, and Banded Armor for some staying power. 

Took me to about end of lvl 7 or beginning of lvl 8 to get enough gold for all of that.  This was on normal settings versus 1 AI.  My skill setup was maxing precision, 1-2 points in demon speed, 1 point in elusiveness and 1 or 2 points in stat buffs which add 12 more damage per rank up for a grand total of 85(items)+12statbuff1+12statbuff2 = 99 weapon damage increase.

Testing on flimsy grunts with 100 armor (the ai bought the first grunt armor upgrade) I was able to output max damage of roughly 300ish regular hit, 450-500ish precision crit & 880-900ish slayer crits.  The numbers you posted were alot higher then I could achieve.  Were you playing on other settings or with another mod?

My DA hero with 1 point in elusiveness (which now adds 400 armor) and NO items that increase armor had approximately 1080-1100ish armor which provided approximately 30% damage reduction.  So if I was to hit myself or another demigod that had purchased atleast scale mail, the damage I would have been outputting would have been roughly 230ish regular, 350ish precision crit, 630ish slayer crit.

If you compare that to rank 3 spine attack which does 650 dmg every 10 seconds (Cooldown was adjusted in the mod) which has approximately 10% uptime compared to slayer crits which occur 10% of the time with Demon assassin attacking roughly once per second with some points in demon speed its pretty much equivalent.  The difference is, Spine attack has a 15 range reach. (In the mod) Spine attack doesn't require a large investment in items to be usable so you don't have to sacrifice armor/hp for weapon damage, and as you know, Spine attacks damage cannot be mitigated by normal means, it can only be made less proportionate by increasing your demigods hp thru items/stats.

Also, keep in mind, part of the reason I made the mod the way I made it was to emphasize the importance of other stats, such as armor and weapon damage.  Sure you can get DA to output great AA damage, but another demigod can buy 1 or 2 armor pieces and heavily reduce your primary damage source.

I´d say roughly 90% of all skills had their 1st ranks damage untouched.  Rank1 Spine attack does 400 damage in the mod just like vanilla.  The increased damage for rank2 was cut by 50% from 650 to 525 so instead of upping it by 250 per rank up, its being increased by 125 per rank up.  If I were to increase the skill damage by 50% of the total amount, some ranks might actually do more damage then even vanilla skills.  If I increased the 1st rank of each skill by 20% it would be 20% more then vanilla damage because rank1 skills were left almost completely untouched damage wise.

It is working as intended.  You can focus on AA damage and get easily countered by armor.  Skills are still very much necessary because they ignore armor.  The buff to AA damage that I did was I buffed all the assassins base AA by 25 points to give them a slight edge over the generals who have superior support skills and minions with healing capacity. I also buffed the stat buff skill to increase weapon damage from 6 to 12 for assassins.  That is all.

I would still like further input before I revert the changes, but this is the direction I wanted to go into.  As mentioned in the .doc i'm trying to reduce the gaps in power from 1 level to the next so the underdog has a better chance of making a comeback.  Also, as a means of making HP stacking less mandatory and making AA/minions more viable.

Hrm. I was posting entirely off memory, so I'll have to go back and recheck the exact numbers...I may very well and have just been a little too tired while checking that:)

Hey man this is great, you have changed quite a lot in the game and I like this mod. I just started play testing this mod so I don't have any good comments to share with you right now, but PLEASE PLEASE restore the ORIGINAL SIZE of the DGs. They look like little toys now

@ Izuz,

Of all the changes I made, I thought the resizing would be a positive change for most users lol.  I hated how Rook blotted out the sun practically.  The damn thing would hide three demigods behind its back.

I´m sorry Izuz, but unless I get alot of support for that change I am leaving it as is for now.  I like the smaller size of Rook, makes things more visible.

At first it looks alittle weird, but once you get used to it, you will realize it was for the better and it will seem normal.  Rooks immense fat ass affected the game experience and made from unnecessary camera angle changes to be able to see whats going on lol.

I am glad you are liking the mod so far apart from that issue though!

I'm unfortantly with Blackthorn on the rook thing I used to say that Rook has a passive ability

ROOK'S GIANT ASS

Make any small Demigod invisible when Rook is close by.

I used to argue that it was one of his best abilities as it made ganking easier.

I've always thought it is good that the Demigods are quite big, easier to see then.

I wont play this mod until you bring rook back. This is not an esthestic upgrade this is one bit fat ugly nerf to graphics.

@ Lifekatana

Its understandable that you feel that way, not everyone holds the same opinion as myself.  Your welcome to not try out the mod, and if it really is something alot of people feel strongly about I have no problem reverting that change in particular. 

Actually, I can make two different versions.  One with resizing, one without.  That way, people can choose which version they prefer and only try that one.

You should atleast try it though, you might find that it is better in the long run.  His massive size obviously causes at the least, a slight inconvenience for most players but I can understand having a huge gigantic castle beast being a really cool effect.  It is impressive.

I will update the post later tonight with another version reverting all the graphics tweaks.  I am at work atm otherwise I would do it now.

I think if u just delete the characters folder the DGs will have their original sizes back.

Ok I've played several games with this mod and here are my observations:

1. Skill damage definitely needs to be increased (if not even restored to previous values). Come on hammer slam lvl 4 only 850 dmg. That's like the old lvl 3 fireball. Now whenever I play rook its mard's hammer + guanlets of brutality and God strength and there 450 dmg by lvl 10. Bite level IV 500, thats nothing. Considering that you have buffed all DGs stats and base health IMHO I think skills should remain unchanged until the community agrees on a DG skill balance, most of them are just fine (expect for some few exception of OP skills (shield) or UP skill (Yetis)).

2. Cast time for skills: I think this one should NOT be changed. Where is the fun part if you can't interrupt slams, fireball, snipes, mines, ... or if you can't fake cast because everything is so fast

3. Oak needs to be able to have more than 1 ward. At least make it 1 ward for level 1,2 and 2 wards for level 3,4.

4. Acclimation treshold needs to be increased. 400 is too low, any skill at that point will trigger it. Make it 600 or 700.

Again points 2,3,4 go with number 1. I think skills are more complicated to balance than adding 1000 HP/Mana to all DGs.

- Grunt/Archers HP needs to be lowered. It makes leveling and farming exp waaaaay tooo slow.

What I really like about this mod is the buffs for base stats which nerfs HP stacking. But still, I think non HP items needs to be given some love. I also have a suggestion and this has been discussed by the community, towers don't scale well late game. They need some modifications to make them better. Maybe look at the tower HP/DMG upgrade at the citadel and give it a little buff.

edit: About the skill, look up this thread it has modifications for all DGs.

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/371153

To be honest those complaining about rook just don't zoom or rotate their cameras correctly. You should be constantly getting the best view on the battlefield and changing camera position is a good move to prevent these pesky rookfeetganks however you  should do this anyway and I dont see why you should make Rook a gnome because you were ganked once or twice.

Ok Izuz, without offending you, I want to address each of your points with an explanation of my reasoning behind the changes.  In general, your focusing on certain points and ignoring the big picture or intentions of my mod.

The mod wasn´t made to satisfy everyone because that would be impossible.  The mod isn´t for everyone.  Some people just want fast, twitchy games.  Vanilla is already fine for those people to a large extent.  Only some minor changes need to be made to satisfy them.

This mod was made to make more stats/builds/skills viable to hopefully encourage more variety in gameplay.  It was also made to give underdogs a better chance of staging comebacks, and to make things such as AA, weapon damage, armor & attack speed more important.

1. Skill damage:  The first rank of nearly all skills was left untouched, vanilla damage.  The amount each skill increased in damage as it levelled up was decreased for various reasons. One, to take the huge emphasis off of HP as the most important statl. How does this make HP stacking less important? As you know, skills do armor ignoring damage.  If the highest damage you take is from skills, obviously armor isn´t really as important as HP and becomes relegated to an almost irrelevant stat.  Why have it then?  Just stack HP.  That is a problem, it reduces variety in item builds.  Something similar is in effect with weaon damage.

 Two, to allow the underdogs to make their comebacks a bigger possibility.  The skill damage increases being reduced helps this because when you are two levels behind, your skill damage won´t be so much lower then that of your opponents.  You are still at a disadvantage obviously.  But the gap between power is reduced to a more managable level.

 Three, to make minion builds as competitive as skill damage/utility/heal builds.  If pounce is doing alot more damage then the measly Yetis, which can have their damage further reduced by armor, why bother??  There goes one skill thats irrelevant.  So now Sedna absolutely needs heal and pounce to be competitive.  Where is the variety there?

2. Cast time for skill:  Now, with hammerslam I don´t agree. 1.5 second cast time of vanilla was just too damn easy to interrupt or avoid completely.  So, rooks are forced to get boulder roll and slam after stunning an enemy with boulder roll.  More skillful, yes.  More variety in builds? no.  Does it make Rook more competitive? or less? 

With fireball, I kind of agree, but fire mode torchbearer seems to be pretty weak as a build overall.  The cast time reduction was meant to make the build more competitive.  But I think I might have reduced it too much.  I think 1.0 cast time for fireball is fine so I may raise it back up.

Snipe was reworked to make it usable in close combat, which is why I reduced the range from 90 to 30, reduced the cast time to 1.0 seconds and the cooldown from 15 to 10 seconds.  There you were taking the cast time out of context.  The mines changes were also taken out of context.  The way they worked in vanilla, you might as well call them bombs because that was how they were used.  I wanted to try something different and have them work like actual mines lol.  So I decreased the cast time, increased the cooldown and decreased the damage and mana cost.  Also, and most importantly, I increased the activation time, so you cannot just throw them like bombs and have them explode almost instantly.  Now you have to plan ahead alittle more.  I also maxed the amount of mines you can set to 8 so you can make a minefield.

3. I think I did overdue it with Oaks Wards, but the vanilla version was overdone as well with a max of 4 wards which meant keeping the spirit army up was trivial.  I think your suggested change is perfect and I will implement that.  On a side note, I think I reduced the minion count for all the generals too much.  I am planning on upping Oak and Erebus to 3,5,7,9 and Sedna, Occulus and QOT to 2,3,4,5.

4. Acclimation Threshold was lowered because damage skills were also lowered.  It was also lowered because I nerfed the damage reduction from 40% to 20%, another point I think you overlooked.  Sure it activates more often, but the benefit is also alot smaller.  I am not sure what would be a balanced change but I thought 40% was way too high.  Not sure what I should do to change it but I thought that was a more balanced version then vanilla.  40% is alot of damage reduction.  There are very few skills that give you a benefit of that much % in 1 point.

If you take the changes out of context, there will be alot of things that seem overdone in the mod.  The thing is you have to look at all the changes in conjunction with a skill and possibly even look at other skills that might have been changed for the Demigod to get a bigger picture of what the impact will be.

With Unclean Beast for example, Spit and Ooze were both nerfed in certain aspects and slightly compensated in others.  Thats a straight nerf if you just stop there but you have to also take into account that Bestial Wrath was buffed considerably.  It now lasts 15 seconds and the cooldown is 15 seconds with the damage rating slightly reduced to counterbalance the change.  Now it isn´t practical to avoid unclean beast if he goes bestial.  You have to tank the damage if you want to take a lane from him which is a buff to unclean beast and allows him to have more variety in his builds.

So I reiterate, there are alot of changes and tweaks in the mod, and alot of the changes need to be considered in conjunction with the bigger context to really appreciate whats going on.  Now I may have reduced the ability damage upgrades alittle too much.  I may have to tweak them, but I wouldn´t bring them back to vanilla because then it wouldn´t be much of a mod.

I have gone back and looked into things again. I did have the numbers a little off, but most of the discrepency came from the game itself. You were playing 1v1, while I was doing 5v5. I did not have the xp flag most of the time, and always held both the +10 percent damage and gold mine. I spent most of my time fighting off/killing DGs, so I got little xp and lots of gold. However, when looking at the numbers carefully, even then skill damage was pretty much the same as AA damage. Granted, AA is instant, aoe, no mana...but skill damage is sure to do full damage, and makes much better burst. This also requires me not getting hit much, as it is a very squishy build.

In summary: I think the AA damage is actually in just the right area. It is a viable build, but does not rule out skill based builds either...exactly what you were after. GJ.

I am going to test out my theory of an "invincible" build some time later though. ATM though, I've got too many other projects, lol. I'm pretty sure I've lost track of atleast 1 or 2 things I promised to help people with...doh!

P.S.: Upon hitting reply I got a window with the title"Forums Go Boom" and the message:

"It seems that one of our code-writing pigeons has slipped up. Something has gone awry and we couldn't show you this page. We've reported the problem to the head weeble and will be looking into it." With a link "visit the past" and "take me home" which link back to where you were, and the homepage respectively. lol. Gotta love Stardock sometimes. P.S.: I think "take me home" should be changed to "There's no place like home."

VERSION 1.1 & 1.1 LITE Now available in original post!

The following changes are included in version 1.1.  New Equilibrium LITE 1.1 which removes all the graphics modifications for the people that prefer to keep the graphics in their original form.

Change Log Version 1.1

HRook_unit.bp

-Decreased Rook Arrows TargetCheckInterval from 2.1 to 0.5

-Increased Rooks Main Attack Max Radius from 5 to 6 due to errors

-Decreased Rook Arrows Max Radius from 10 to 7

-Changed Rook Arrows CanFireWhileMoving to from true to false

MageFire_Character.lua

-Decreased Fireball Timescale from 1.5 to 1.0

HEMA01_Abilities.lua

-Increased Fireball cast time from 0.5 to 1.0

HOak_Abilities.lua

-Increased Raise Dead Ward Rank 3 & 4 Max wards from 1 to 2

-Increased Call of the Fallen Spirit count from 2,4,6,8 to 3,5,7,9

HVampire_Abilities.lua

-Increased Coven Max vampires from 2,4,6,8 to 3,5,7,9

HSedna_Abilities.lua

-Increased Horn of Yetis Yeti count from 1,2,3,4 to 2,3,4,5

-Decreased Horn of Yeti mana cost to 100 flat across the board

-Decreased Horn of Yeti summons per cast to 1 yeti across the board

HSednaYeti_unit.bp

-Decreased Yeti Damage from 40 to 30 (Back to standard Vanilla)

HQueen_Abilities.lua

-Increased Create Shambler count from 1,2,3,4 to 2,3,4,5

-Decreased Create Shambler mana cost to 100 flat across the board

-Decreased Create Shambler summons per cast to 1 shambler across the board

HOculus_Abilities.lua

-Increased Ball Lightning count from 1,2,3,4 to 2,3,4,5

-Decreased Ball Lightning mana cost to 100 flat across the board

-Decreased Ball Lightning summons per cast to 1 ball lightning across the board

HEPA01_Abilities.lua

-Increased Acclimation Damage Threshold from 400 to 600

FYI, I forgot to change the UID code for Equilibrium Lite 1.1 which will cause a conflict with Equilibrium 1.1.  The download file for Equilibrium Lite is now updated with its own UID code as of now.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

I was just looking through the code, using BeyondCompare to see the code against the stock files.

I noticed that GetAttackSpeed and GetMoveSpeed on Fire Aura I and II are referencing HEMA01FireAura03 instead of "...01" and "...02".

Cheers.

Thank you Drumstix, I will go ahead and correct that once I have amassed enough changes to justify another release, and if there is interest in the mod.

Does anybody still have this mod? I'm looking for an overhaul-type mod and I'd really like to try this out, but the two download links are dead. . -.

re upload pls i wanna try it too

I've got the 1.0 version. I apparently never got around to getting the 1.1 version. If no one posts a link to the 1.1 after a few days remind me and I'll post up a link to the 1.0.