Royal Guard weapon/armour rework

[MatthewMarinets]

After a lot of discussion, we know that Royal Guard units are fundamentally on the right track, but are too strong in certain conditions. Long-term this will probably involve a few rebalances and removing the effect of most base unit items on RG. In the next dev cycle, RG units may gain some upgrade items of their own.

The goal of this PR is to:

• Remove the effect of weapon/armour upgrades on Royal Guard units; they will only gain those stats from levels
• Refactor RG weapons
  • Consolidate damage changes on the behaviour, similar to what co-op Mengsk does. This also standardizes the UI, with benefits from levels showing up as a green modifier.
  • Get rid of old Fake weapons
  • Get rid of effect switches
  • Get rid of damage accumulators

Balance

• If the royal guard weapons are way stronger than co-op Mengsk, balance them back down to Mengsk levels (or lower)
  • RG siege tank damage sent down to Mengsk levels
  • RG BC damage sent down to Mengsk levels (no longer benefits from ATX; can attack-while-moving baseline)
  • RG Liberator AA damage reduced 13->10, AG damage reduced 125->100
  • RG goliath AG damage 27->20, AA damage 12+12a -> 11+11a
• Increase RG mineral costs to Principal Proletariat values (double mineral costs)
• Increase Aegis Guard gas cost to be remotely close to their actual power level (600)
• Sons of Korhal now cost a little gas (25) and have been tuned down a little
• Adjusted some perks
  • RG liberator L3 now uses AA attack for AA while sieged
  • RG goliath perks reworked to not just do ridiculous damage
  • RG Viking L3 shield amount reduced

Pairs with client PR #409

General

• Halved xp from infested civilians and infested marines. Outbreak was leveling RG hilariously fast.

Bugfixes

• Fixed Sky Fury L3 perk not triggering

todo

• Update RG Marine weapon
• Update RG Marauder weapon
• Update RG Ghost weapon
• Update RG Goliath weapon
  • Remove per-level weapon entries
• Update RG Tank weapon
  • Remove per-level weapon entries
• Update RG Thor weapon
  • Remove per-level weapon entries
• Update RG Viking weapon
• Update RG Banshee weapon
• Update RG Wraith weapon
  • Remove per-level weapon entries
• Update RG Liberator weapon
• Update RG Battlecruiser weapon
  • Remove per-level weapon entries

TODO for future PRs

• Check back on Aegis Guard balance
• Add an option to reduce experience gain of RG in general
• Remove base unit stat-boosting items from affecting RG, such as shaped hull and kinetic foam
• Remove base unit Resource Efficiency from affecting RG entirely
• Split Transport Hook into two non-progressives: base tanks/breakers get transport w/o attack, RG get attacking tankivacs
• (for next dev cycle) Split interesting upgrades into separate items for RG (jump jets, transport hook, etc)
• (experimental) consider increasing cost/build time of elite buildings

Battlecruiser / Pride of Augustgrad

• ATX was complicating the weapon arrangement, and co-op BCs had it baseline anyway; removed the effect (attack while moving is now baseline)
• Set ATS damage to co-op level (15 -> 12)
• Updated tooltip to clarify how anti-air damage worked (75% AG damage)
  

Tank / Shock Division

• Remove effect of ShapedBlast and make them do no friendly fire baseline
• Bring damage numbers down to co-op levels (100 -> 40 + 30 v armoured)
• Remove effect of MaelstromRounds
• Removed AP_SiegeTankMengskSiegedImprovedAoEDirected and replaced usages with AP_SiegeTankMengskSiegedDirected as they were the same effect
• Removed AP_MedivacMengskSiegeTankAirliftImprovedAoEDirected and replaced usages with AP_MedivacMengskSiegeTankAirliftDirected as they were the same effect

[MatthewMarinets]

I'm told there's a way to avoid AttributeFactor with accumulators that target particular bonuses; will experiment when I'm back in town in a couple evenings.

[MatthewMarinets]

After messing with accumulators for a few days, it seems like they don't play nice with the weapons display with attribute bonuses. Changing things over the the vanilla Mengsk behaviour of just a flat +25% damage buff per rank. This shows up differently in the display:

Siege Mode

Medivac

I've also updated the medivac transport hook display and tested it's doing the correct amount of damage

[MatthewMarinets]

Doing the same for battlecruisers. Should be able to get most of the others done later this evening.

[MatthewMarinets]

RG Marine weapon:

• Splash effect was missing all the normal missile,hidden,dead,invulnerable flags, so theoretically could be used to take out the Supernova fire wave
• Lowered splash radius at level 3 as they were splashing around buildings while testing
• Lowered their base health 100->75. They gain +25/level, and 150 feels like a rounder number while still being entirely fair at 175 minerals 2 food
• There were some complicated weapon switching behaviours going on that seemed unnecessary; I removed all the switching logic and the extra weapon and just added the +2 range to the veterancy behaviour (now displays same as Siege Tank bonus range)

[MatthewMarinets]

Marauder

• Just cleanup, no real stat changes
• Removed the weapon swapping behaviours
• The stats on RG are insane, the 300 HP shield definitely needs a nerf, the superstim needs a nerf, and their base health could also probably use a nerf
  
  
  
  

[MatthewMarinets]

Bulwark Company

Took a stab at a partial rebalance while I was here as it simplified the weapon somewhat.

• No longer benefits from Goliath Multi-Lock Weapons
• Level 1 perk changed. Used to be "anti-air attack now does full damage to all types", now gives blink
• Level 2 perk changed. Used to be anti-ground splash, now gives multi-lock weapons
• Reduced base health 250 -> 200
• Reduced health/level 70 -> 50
• Increased gas cost 325 -> 400
• Reduced AG damage 27 -> 20 (note: spartan is 24)
• Reduced AA damage 12+12a -> 11+11a (note: spartan is 11+11a)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Showing the multilock working (it took quite some fiddling, the 5 weapons visible in this picture were a debug measure that are not visible in the final commit)

[MatthewMarinets]

Sky Fury

• Fixed L3 shield effect
• Removing effect of Anti-Mechanical Munition
• Removing effect of Shredder Rounds
• Nerfed L3 shield effect life 400->300
• Nerfed L1 bonus damage to massive 50 -> 30

Fixing the L3 perk:

[MatthewMarinets]

Blackhammer

Just cleaned up the weapon and removed the old fake weapons, was a pretty smooth operation as I think this one went later.

Ground

Air

Sieged

[MatthewMarinets]

Night Hawk

Didn't touch any balance numbers or upgrades. I think it would be cool to have them not benefit from advanced lasers and instead have level 3 let them shoot ground with their AA missiles (as the missiles are way cooler than the laser), but will leave that for a future pass. I also just want to get this PR done.

AA

AG

Advanced Lasers

[MatthewMarinets]

Liberator

• Mostly left infrastructure intact, as weapon swap was necessary for perks
• Eliminated unneeded behaviours for level 3, 4 AA and level 2, 3 AG and adjusted switches to only use the distinct weapons

Balance

• changed level 3 perk from "can use AG attack vs air" to "can use AA attack while in AG mode" (which honestly is what I thought the perk was the first time I read it)
  • Note: I set the arc on the AA-while-in-AG-mode attack to 270, so they can't shoot behind themselves. Not setting it gave them a very narrow field of fire.
• Adjusted AG damage 125 -> 100
• Adjusted AA damage/missile 13 -> 10
• Adjusted Midnight Rider damage/missile 13 -> 12

AA

AG