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[Happylisk]

Spoilers ahead.

Based on a discussion in the competition thread, it looks pretty clear that late game EM weaponry is objectively the best.  (http://www.gridsagegames.com/forums/index.php?topic=261.125).  K said that there's going to be some tweaking of the damage type.  This thread is for people with combat experience to weigh in on how to tweak EM without nerfing it into the ground.  I'll consider the various different ways EM works and how it could be changed.

1.  Enemy resistances and vulnerabilities.

Currently, there are 3 major sources of enemies in the game: grunts, hunters, and programmers.  Yeah, there are other bots out there, but you're only encountering melee dudes every so often, sentries and behemoths aren't ending your runs, and swarmers ain't no thang as long as you have a launcher.   These 3 are the main opposition. 

As zxc showed (http://www.gridsagegames.com/forums/index.php?topic=259.0), grunts and hunters are vulnerable to EM, while programmers are resistant to it.  The programmer resistance is key to game balance; without it, there'd be no reason not to run all EM all the time.  The grunt and hunter vulnerability makes EM the best weapon for taking these guys on.  One could argue that you could remove the grunt vulnerability, so that hunters are weak to EM; grunts are weak to kinetic; and programmers are weak to thermal (a pending balance tweak), but that's getting kind of rock paper scissors.  I think removing anyone's EM vulnerability is not the solution (though I think the pending increase to programmer EM resistance is a good idea).

2.  EM and Security Level

Besides damaging an enemy, EM causes corruption.  Corrupt an enemy enough and it collapses into bits irrespective of its core integrity.  This is what makes EM so damn good.

It also gets you out of the AI death spiral.  As you kill more stuff, the alert level rises causing more enemies to be sent out, causing you to kill more stuff, causing the alert level to rise, causing [etc etc etc] until the AI really drops the hammer on you.  Managing alert level is one of the most important things of a run.

Enemies corrupted to death do not raise the security level.  This helps you get out of the death spiral despite going in guns blazing.  This also lets you keep the level low without having to invest in a lot of hacking.  A great perk to EM.

On the downside, corrupted enemies don't go to your score.  So currently an EM heavy run will score lower than a kinetic run.  This seems right: the game is meant to reward tougher playstyles, so EM heavy runs scoring lower fits in with this nicely.  Nevertheless, I think this is one area where EM should be changed.

Solution One: A robot corrupted to death has the same effect on the alert level as one whose core is destroyed.  I don't like this solution.  It completely removes the security level distinction, and this is a nice little feature that makes EM stand out.  If this were implemented, the EM scoring penalty should be removed. 

Solution Two: Cause all enemy meltdown/corruptions to raise the alert level, but 50% less or so than how much destroying the core would raise it.  Obviously the AI should wonder what's up if a bunch of robots start melting down or shutting off.  This makes kinetic weapons the riskiest weapons in terms of security levels, which seems right.  This would be a slight nerf to EM without rendering the weapon unpalatable.   

3. EM and Salvage. 

This, bar none, is what I think makes EM the most OP.  When you drop a micro nuke on a hunter, it'll get the job done but odds are there'll be nothing left to salvage.  If you corrupt an enemy to death, it explodes into all of its wonderful bits.  I used this in research to turn sentries into refilling stations.  Fry one down, and you got tread replacements, armor, and railguns.  It really helps keep you filled with the meat and potatoes of a combat run. 

It gets insane though once you throw hunters into the mix.  Corrupt a terminator and voila, you got an advanced targeting computer and an advanced cloaking device, two of the best utilities.  Once I switched to heavy use of EM, I began looking forward to hunters.  That right there shows something is off.

Solution One: Have any part coming off a corrupted robot have a 10-25% chance of being red (unusable).  This reflects it being rendered useless after it got fried.  I don't like this blanket solution, esp. because it doesn't make sense that EM would effect things like armor or treads in this way.  Instead...

Solution Two:  Have light parts/utilities (targeting computers, sensors, cloaking devices, etc) have a chance to be fried and unusuable if they resulted from corruption.  This makes sense; if you destroy a robot with coruscating EM energy, wouldn't you expect its delicate bits to be ruined?  With this change, EM weapons would be the king of salvaging armor, treads, and guns, but would suck for getting delicate utilities.  I imagine you could even re-use the bashing code here, where chance of frying is in inverse proportion to integrity.

So a long winded post, but I think EM should be balanced with a bit more security level consequences and frying light utilities, in addition to the already reduced score it necessarily results in. 

I'm sure there's other ways to balance it that I haven't thought of.   

E: oops, I realize this should not be in the strategy subforum.  Sorry!

[zxc]

Long post! I read this when you first posted but gave myself time to think about it. Interesting thoughts.

Although you aren't a fan of it, I still prefer solution 2.1, which is to have robots destroyed by corruption and by overheating be treated the exact same way as robots you destroy by reducing their core integrity to 0. The distinction that currently exists seems unnecessary to me and makes balancing more difficult. I'd rather something like hacking robots be a way of dealing with them without raising alert level so high.

I also don't mind solutions 3.1 and 3.2. In the interest of simplicity I would maybe prefer 3.1.

There is a fourth way to nerf EM: to nerf the actual EM guns themselves. EM doesn't seem OP early on, only later on. So you could rebalance the late-game EM weaponry. You could do this by either weakening their stats or by making EM weapons rarer. I actually kind of like the idea of OP EM weapons being rare in the late-game. Any changes made to EM weapons are going to affect Programmers too, and they are also a prime source of EM weaponry themselves.

I also want to suggest here that another incentive be given to using kinetic weapons. They are the only ones (correct me if I'm wrong) that have recoil, which means tread-users should be inclined to use them over other weapon types. I would think a small damage boost is in order. Nothing major.

[Kyzrati]

Solution One: Have any part coming off a corrupted robot have a 10-25% chance of being red (unusable).  This reflects it being rendered useless after it got fried.  I don't like this blanket solution, esp. because it doesn't make sense that EM would effect things like armor or treads in this way.  Instead...

Note: Parts like armor that cannot be activated have always been immune to being "broken" (non-functional), because yeah that wouldn't make sense

I like the idea of a stronger impact on more sensitive systems--it doesn't have to be red, per se, just simply destroy them. (Having a lot of red parts lying around is annoying, anyway.)

In the 7DRL it was just a blanket effect to keep everything simple, but it's proving a bit too simple for the late game. That was never an issue before, because no one could effectively reach the late game

My plan is to allow corruption deaths to be included in both the scoring and security level system as with normal kills, which will in itself have some significant repercussions, though perhaps not enough to offset their significant advantage. A greater chance to fry sensitive systems on robot destruction also sounds like a good idea because EM salvaging has always been too effective; that would make the results and your decision to use EM a bit more selective. In terms of specific robots, Behemoths will be getting Dynamic Insulation Systems, and Programmer EM resistance will get even higher (though they'll get a weakness to thermal).

I don't think making EM weapons rarer later would be a good enough solution. EM weapons are already a little rarer later on, but you can still get them off Programmers, and would always be able to. Making late-game EM even weaker would be too big a nerf because then they'd only really be effective when massed in huge volleys. I'd like to preserve the possibility that you can combine one or two with other weapons and that's an okay decision.

For now we'll start more slowly with the above solutions for the next release.

I also want to suggest here that another incentive be given to using kinetic weapons. They are the only ones (correct me if I'm wrong) that have recoil, which means tread-users should be inclined to use them over other weapon types. I would think a small damage boost is in order. Nothing major.

Kinetic weapons already have the highest damage potential, as well as much better critical chances for instant destruction. That and their reliance on matter which doesn't interfere with your power needs makes them good enough I think.

[Happylisk]

I agree that scarcity is not the solution - you have an infinite supply of tesla/gamma rifles from programmers, and 3-4 of those are enough to wreck grunts and hunters all day long.

With the changes you mentioned, you're still splat grunts and hunters with ease, but the latter would no longer be pinatas full of targeting computers.  Sentries would still be gift baskets for armor and treads, which feels right.  And I can't argue with Behemoths getting Dynamic insulation systems.  As is, you can kill a B-99 in 3-4 volleys with a Heavy Disruptor Cannon and a HERF cannon.  That's probably not right.  I'd hope though that corrupting them would still be a possibility - with the buff though, it'd possibly take a couple of volleys from 2 disruptor cannons and a HERF, which is perfectly doable by -1.  Also, no more looting them for advanced forcefields this way, just armor, treads, and those guns. 

The changes to security levels means the value for deep network scanners goes up, cause not Alert purging is probably not an option if you're going to be accountable for all of those kills.

This seems like a not drastic solution to a not drastic problem.  After you implement it I'll try an EM heavy run and report back.   

[Kyzrati]

I don't mind that some types of robots could still be splatted with the EM approach; the idea is that it shouldn't be something valid for all confrontations. If you run around with full EM and encounter Programmers, you will be in serious trouble (sure you can swap out your armament, which is fine).

Behemoths could still be corrupted--I would want it to still be a valid strategy--just not quite so easily.