A Careful Approach to Balancing Convoys

[Theodore Baggins]

After hitting a hard convoy last night without aggroing the tanks, I've been thinking a lot about both the hidden design of well-built convoy base designs and ways to balance the system. However, I'm concerned that there's been a lot of talk about taking turrets off the table when building a base, and I worry it overlooks a lot of nuance.

I think we can agree that the amount of loot yielded by fighting a convoy is often disproportionate to the amount of work or skill—with or without a convoy base. The amount of components from the NPC's, alone, can be recycled into enough scrap to make a level 3 (pending blueprint scrap changes) and it's quite possible to end up with multiple L9's even from a medium convoy.

@Sean_Rendo19 has developed his convoy bases incredibly quickly over the last three wipes, and when you see how quickly the NPC's go down, it's easy to miss the things that make them more so powerful. Some of the hidden features are the peeks that are precisely aligned so a player can hide from the APC's, a wall-framed second floor raising the fighting floor out of the line of fire or splash damage, and embrasures that are both ablative armor (armor that protects by being designed to fail in the process of protection) while also allowing precise shots to take out snipers and stragglers. When Sean and the team added turrets on the other side it also meant that they NPC's no longer had any cover from their vehicles (though I'd argue that they're not the brightest at finding cover in the first place. We even have a redundant protected electrical system for lighting instead of passthrough so that one light breaking doesn't cut all of them. 

The prime example, though, of the convoy driving innovation is the added chain-link fences in front of turrets: at the beginning of this wipe, we had a turret problem; while they worked well, we were chewing through them quickly enough (and didn't have the best guns for them) that computers and CCTV cameras were important to hold onto. As a measure of protection, Sean and the team put in chain-link fences to act as ablative armor for the turrets, themselves. Fences are cheap—turrets aren't. Since then, we haven't lost a single turret.

There are other critical points that I'm probably missing here. Sean and the other members of the team are the experts here: these are just the invisible innovations that I've been able to point at, myself having seen things progress. It's that sort of quick adaption that makes me worry that we're in an arms race against the convoy, and I worry that removing turrets from the equation altogether might not balance things in and of itself. Just like taking a heli without a base, a good god-rock and slowly keeping pressure by alternating damage and healing can yield similar (if more time-consuming) amounts of loot.

I think the work that @Catatonic21and @Raul have done to make more convoy paths is an excellent start towards de-escalating the arms race. And I think the increased damage of the nightmarish convoy APC's was really exciting to see when I took it without much cover. However, I think there are other ways to de-escalate further that are alternatives to removing turret targeting entirely.

Some ideas for changing the reward-to-skill/time include:

• Lower the amount of loot from the dropped NPC's makes it far less economical
• Changing the amount of crates, and/or adjusting the loot tables of them so that we don't get an overwhelming supply of M2's to feed into turrets
• Make the bags dropped by NPC's killed by turrets have a certain chance to despawn—reward players for manually taking them out.

For turret balancing, these steps could be taken:

• Lower turret health significantly
• Remove the ability to use fully automatic weapons in turrets
• Lower the amount of ammo allowed per turret
• Make turrets consume health of the gun inside
• Remove the ability for the turrets to target and shoot through chain-link fences

There are also changes to the convoy, itself that could help by adding much more pressure to their buildings:

• Put rocket or grenade launcher NPC's on the flatbeds of the modular cars; the turrets don't target them, and they can do considerable damage to buildings, players, and turrets if a player didn't prioritize them.
• Allow the APC's to target the building of any player who has hit the convoy, even without line of sight (I think it's best for this to be strictly limited to players who have hit the convoy so someone with a tommy and a garage off the road doesn't end up reviving into rubble).
• Adding to the last point, consistent covering fire directed towards the players would make peeking out with a rocket launcher much more dangerous and staying accurate with a rocket launcher while moving is tough.

Sometimes I like to think of things in terms of combat robotics. There are times when the engineering of one team far outstrips what others can do in a tournament. Most of the time, this drives other builders to adopt similar strategies the next year, such as changing armor, choosing higher density batteries, tuning driver boards, etc. In addition, the actual battlebox will undergoes changes like adding hazards to make it harder for, say, a flipper's wedge to get underneath another bot. There are times when a robot becomes too good (or too dangerous) and a rule has to be made to level the proverbial playing field, but they are rare. They are almost a badge of pride—builders who pushed the boundaries (yet were within the rules) so far that the innovation had to be limited. But that stagnates things in a way that can feel like a gut-punch to builder that spent so much time and money building a system, and being penalized for doing it too well. 

I'm not impartial to this; Sean is on my team, and I have benefitted directly from the convoys I've run in our base. However, I'm genuinely trying to think of solutions for balancing that drive further innovation. I agree that changes need to be made but I think it's best for the community to soften that gut-punch by not erasing the knowledge gained already. I'm all for upping the ante and lowering the reward; just cautious about completely changing the game.

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PS: I think it's important to keep in mind that this is also all against the backdrop of the difficulty of other events and monuments. A solo can land a mini on cargo with a tommy and a double barrel, clear it without dying, and get four locked crates plus enough lootables that it can take halfway around the map to get everything. You can also take out some of the bosses by just mowing them down with a car. As with much of RustEZ, players are often the ones ultimately in charge of setting the difficulty level for themselves.

[Catatonic21]

We’re definitely not against convoy bases and really appreciate the ones your team builds and leave open for everyone to use. We’re just trying to add a bit more risk to the reward, not destroy convoy bases.

It’d be cool to occasionally see a Nightmare or even Hard convoy do some real damage  like maybe take out a wall or two, or even a turret. Right now I’ve seen Nightmare convoys get solo’d without a single death or any base damage, and I’ve been watching every convoy that gets engaged while im on

As for your suggestions:

Lowering loot – I think this would just make people stop doing the event. Look at how often the train gets taken compared to convoys right now.

Turret changes – Gonna skip this one. Raul likes how they are, so no nerfs there.

Rockets – NPCs already have rockets and will target bases, but they just get shredded by turrets before they can do much.

APC targeting bases – I’d love to see this added,  I’ll talk to Raul and see if it’s possible.

Covering fire – NPCs technically do this, but again, instantly killed by turrets.

The main changes we’ve been pushing really only affect Nightmare convoys. We just want them to feel more like a group activity, instead of something that can be cleared easily with turrets and smart line of sight tactics.

Thanks again for the suggestions and feedback. I’m always open to more!

[Theodore Baggins]

Great! I hope the suggestions help!

I agree that the convoy needs some teeth to do some damage to a building, along the same lines as what the higher level helis used to do. It was uniquely satisfying for the build to get partially demolished and still be able to bring the heli down.

Another thought would be for the heli to work with the APC's to also fire before it gets line of sight— a volley of fire rockets to a convoy base's windows would definitely make it harder to manage.

Also, sometimes I think a bit too much about things and I can type way faster than I can talk and it can come across way more intense than I intend. You also probably saw my best attempt I've made so far at taking the convoy solo—probably primed with adrenaline by dodging the shells from that nightmarish convoy's brads while on the Intergalactic Market earlier! I got pretty lucky to even get two brads from that—I don't think I've ever tried to hit something with an HV rocket from that far before. I had no other strategy than to get the shots that I could while staying alive... admittedly, not the best plan, but I was excited to see one. It definitely helped to have Alpha1 distracting them at the other end of the convoy. 

I've been thinking about the challenge of trying to build a structure along the path of say a medium convoy and try to take it during the hour that you have from just what you build. It would definitely be a wildly different experience since you probably couldn't do any electrical during that time. Event idea perhaps?

[BigDave]

I really don't get why people bother with turret bases at all. Zero challenge for extreme loot, how do you get any sense of achievement.

If you can take a hard convoy from a zip line tower with a bit of a challenge and moderate risk of dying once or twice, that seems like the balance.

I see it as a decline in the server, which seemed the be more about the challenge. NPCs being nerfed and crazy loot for zero effort is a bit sad. It seems like a popular trend though so I guess that's the new Elysium, EZ mode.

If this is the direction the server is going, then up the loot from monuments. For example:

Taking Bradley from launch involves clearing snipers from towers, clearing the custom NPCs then taking a moving Bradley (7 HVs), with or without the standard NPCs, then clearing the custom spawned NPCs. For that you get 3 Bradley crates. Much more effort than a hard convoy and the loot isn't even remotely close.

Another alternative is to put M249s and L96s into the black market to buy with NW or add M249s and L96s to the present loot, then nerf convoys loot. The people who actually want a challenge will do the convoy anyway and every one will get the end-game loot for the same skill / effort they're currently employing.