Are poison capsules too strong?

[Shin]

The fact that they stack damage makes poison capsules very strong. Just spam them on biter nests and kill everything. You can even outrange the worms easily and they are defenseless. Plus the recipe is kinda cheap.

Just don't make the dmg stack and maybe a range reduce?

What do you guys think?

[Adil]

Have you actually managed to stack a notable number of those? Surely, two is enough to get the worms, after quite a long time, but biters tend to move around you know. Thus it is rather non-trivial make a high dps cloud, keep the swarm in it and not have your legs bitten of.

[Zeblote]

They're more like, too weak...

[Shin]

Have you actually managed to stack a notable number of those? Surely, two is enough to get the worms, after quite a long time, but biters tend to move around you know. Thus it is rather non-trivial make a high dps cloud, keep the swarm in it and not have your legs bitten of.

Yes, I mass produced them and shredding through alien bases like there is no tomorrow. Biters don't even get close if you stack some clouds on one place. They are just walking through and die and you can just finish the spawners of. It really makes clearing enemy bases way too easy.

[Shin]

They're more like, too weak...

How? Please explain.

I think they are way too powerful. They are not even hard to mass produce.

[BlakeMW]

Poison Capsules are very strong, they also scale in damage with the number of enemies (i.e. on death worlds they are very effective because so many enemies can cram into the cloud and the huge damage output of worms and spitters is unable to do anything to prevent that damage). They aren't super useful on standard enemy settings but are still worth having.

One thing though, is possibly other alternatives are too weak. For example given the choice between poison capsules and the tank cannon, I'd invest in poison capsules every time. Though if the tank cannon benefited from upgrades and could pack more of a wallop it might be worth investing in.

The other thing is laser turrets: At least at the moment poison capsules are one of the most viable alternatives to laser turret walking on death worlds. They aren't as good as laser turrets, but are a viable fairly economic approach (there are always uneconomic ways of getting things done...).

So given that there are options which are definitely stronger, like laser turrets, and options which are definitely much weaker, like the tank cannon, is the poison capsule too strong, or too weak, or in the right place?

Also in my opinion the defender capsule (when fully upgraded) and poison capsules are almost exactly as equally strong and cost effective. The main distinction is that poison capsules are viable at all stages of the game, while defender capsules become obsolete in the late big biter era.

[Adil]

Ah, so we're talking about small and medium biters here?
Really, is there anything, that's ineffective against them? Save for pistol.
That period of game has combat so simple it isn't worth bothering to balance weapons there.

Now when big ones appear, the spitters can score more than one hit before the cloud gets them and big biters can pass through 6-7 clouds and keep fighting.
Thus you can't just stand and keep stacking clouds indefinitely and when horde chases you, it might get smeared reducing the efficiency of capsules.

[BlakeMW]

Poison Capsules are even decent against Behemoth Spitters, only the Behemoth Biter truly has too much hitpoints to justify poison capsules.

The poison capsule deals 20 * 60 / 30 = 160 damage (from lua), this is consistent with 4 killing a big worm (3 x 160 = 480 damage - not enough to kill a Big Worm with 500 hitpoints, but a 4th will definitely do the trick)

So the poison capsule deals 160 damage. If you can convince a behemoth spitter to stand in one place (which isn't too hard when you're advancing into an end-game death world nest when they're all blocking each other, or shooting at you or your bots) then 13 poison stacked poison clouds will kill it - and all it's buddies - those 13 capsules would take 6.5 seconds to deploy.

A Behemoth Biter with 5000 hitpoints takes 32 poison capsules to kill which would take 16s to deploy, not only is it an awful amount of poison, they also aren't inclined to stand in it, though you can certainly knock off thousands of hitpoints as the biters try to push through the spitters.

Now here's why it works well - when you want to siege a max-evo death world nest without cheesing laser turrets, you use a heavy combat Power Armor II setup or get in a Tank (they are about equal) then advance slowly under the cover of a large swarm of destroyer capsules. When the Behemoth Biters run forward the destroyers vaporize them but you still have a huge number of behemoth spitters hanging back and plinking away at your destroyers which are busy killing the incoming biters, that's where the Poison Capsules come in, in 6-7s you can throw down enough poison capsules to kill ALL the behemoth spitters in cloud radius, it's waaaay cheaper than killing them off with destroyer/distractor capsules especially because the poison capsules don't get shot at by the huge numbers of worms and spitters behind the ones you're killing, so you spend most your time laying down poison with brief intermissions to replenish your destroyer swarm. As well as getting rid of the spitters, the poison will kill all worms and also do significant damage to biters as they try to advance through the spitters, softening them up for the destroyers.

Of course these heavily stacked poison death clouds work best with the Tank because you can advance under the dense poison without taking damage yourself.

Basically the harder the fight the more poison capsules shine, both because more enemies = more damage and immunity to being damaged means they deal consistent reliable damage.

The besieging of max-evo death world nests is only the most epic use for poison capsules, they're also great against everything weaker.

[Shin]

The other thing is laser turrets: At least at the moment poison capsules are one of the most viable alternatives to laser turret walking on death worlds. They aren't as good as laser turrets, but are a viable fairly economic approach (there are always uneconomic ways of getting things done...).

I agree. Especially in combination with laser turrets they are godlike at taking down huge enemy bases. Constructor drones are building a bunch of laser turrets before the base and all the poison clouds kill their armies and worms. There is nothing much the enemies can do about. Even on their own these weapons feels far too strong. Maybe there is something missing like laser or poison resistance that makes these weapons so good compared to the others.

Also I can confirm that they are very good against masses of enemies. It is a huge stackable AoE cloud that deals high amount of dmg even against higher evolution worms/biters and spitters. You can keep whole armies under control. This doesn't feel right compared to other weaponry.

[Adil]

So they're overpowered because they allow you to slowly creep in a tank under the cover of a hundred of destoryers on maps where enemy mobility is limited by their own multiplicity?

Even on their own these weapons feels far too strong. Maybe there is something missing like laser or poison resistance that makes these weapons so good compared to the others.

Also I can confirm that they are very good against masses of enemies. It is a huge stackable AoE cloud that deals high amount of dmg even against higher evolution worms/biters and spitters. You can keep whole armies under control. This doesn't feel right compared to other weaponry.

I don't know, I've tried them a little before my previous post, I took me a hundred of capsules to take out a decent base (maybe a dozen spawners) without drones. And I'm not sure they did more work than the shotgun.
Surely when a single position is cared enough the instant death cloud is formed there. But bitters keep coming from different angles and will eventually force you to change position from behind the cloud. Not to mention that it dissipates rather quickly (its duration is 20 seconds, but by the time you stack tenth, the first one is quite spent already.)

[Shin]

Oh, so they're overpowered because they allow you to slowly creep in a tank under the cover of a hundred of destoryers on maps where enemy mobility is limited by its own multiplicity?

They are overpowered because they are cheap to make Aoe nukes that can kill hordes of enemies and worms on their own very fast. The rest is just clearing spawners. You don't even need destroyers.

[bobucles]

Poison capsules are the earliest tech that can wipe out nests and heavy worms with ease.

[BlakeMW]

So they're overpowered because they allow you to slowly creep in a tank under the cover of a hundred of destoryers on maps where enemy mobility is limited by their own multiplicity?

You have to understand that max evo death world is a situation you almost shouldn't be able to gung-ho you're way through, it's pretty much a wall of behemoth biters and behemoth spitters, you will die almost instantly if you enter spitter range without anything to take the hits, the much vaunted combat shotgun with piercing shotgun shells is basically a peashooter against that kind of heat. Anything which lets you actually advance into that a wall of spitters and do so cheaply is probably overpowered.

On standard biter worlds I don't always bother with poison capsules just because a defender (later destroyer) capsule swarm will pretty much steamroll most nests you find on average enemies, but against any nest with a dozen or more worms poison capsules are a godsend. Trying to use anything else to destroy a cluster of worms (other than laser turrets) will use a load more resources. In that role they're basically really cheap wormicide. That they also outright destroy or heavily injure smaller spitters and biters doesn't hurt.

By the way though I have bought up some legitimately great uses for poison capsules I'm not convinced they are overpowered. I usually prefer a game to be "overbalanced" (everything is good) than "underbalanced" (everything is sh*t). I'd prefer a tank cannon shell that (when upgraded) blows stuff to smithereens rather than just taking off a third the hitpoints, the better the tools are for wiping out the biters, the sooner we can go back to tweaking the factory. Poison capsules right now are good, they're fun, and they're a bit tricky to use and master - pretty much perfect.

[Shin]

By the way though I have bought up some legitimately great uses for poison capsules I'm not convinced they are overpowered. I usually prefer a game to be "overbalanced" (everything is good) than "underbalanced" (everything is sh*t). I'd prefer a tank cannon shell that (when upgraded) blows stuff to smithereens rather than just taking off a third the hitpoints, the better the tools are for wiping out the biters, the sooner we can go back to tweaking the factory. Poison capsules right now are good, they're fun, and they're a bit tricky to use and master - pretty much perfect.

I'm still thinking that they are way to good compared to other weapons and need some work after I saw what they can do to enemy bases. And why having something over- or underbalanced if it could still be properly balanced.
At least their should be a limit on stacking or something. Or a posion resistance for higher evolution creatures. Poison capsules make worms kinda useless...just spam 3-4 capsules and you don't even have to worry about them. It makes the whole combat way to easy. (Also I agree with the laser turrets being to strong...but this is another topic)

Also if anyone knows how I could prevent or limit damage stacking from poison clouds in lua, pls send me a pm. I'm tyring something out to balance it myself but I'm still learning lua.

[BlakeMW]

I think the best solution would be to have dps capping - this is something which I saw implemented in Warcraft 3 where basically an AoE spell is defined as being allowed to damage up to say 6 units, if there are 6 or fewer units the full damage is dealt to each unit, if there are more than 6 units, a proportional fraction of the damage is dealt, i.e. if there are 12 units, then each unit only takes half the maximum damage.

Nice thing about this kind of capping is it lets you compare maximum damage. I think a fully upgraded defender capsule firing non-stop against an unarmored target deals in the ballpark of 100dps, so then a poison capsule can be given a damage cap of say 80 dps (10 units) and we can make a fair comparison of how good the two capsules can be under ideal circumstances.

[Shin]

I think the best solution would be to have dps capping - this is something which I saw implemented in Warcraft 3 where basically an AoE spell is defined as being allowed to damage up to say 6 units, if there are 6 or fewer units the full damage is dealt to each unit, if there are more than 6 units, a proportional fraction of the damage is dealt, i.e. if there are 12 units, then each unit only takes half the maximum damage.

Nice thing about this kind of capping is it lets you compare maximum damage. I think a fully upgraded defender capsule firing non-stop against an unarmored target deals in the ballpark of 100dps, so then a poison capsule can be given a damage cap of say 80 dps (10 units) and we can make a fair comparison of how good the two capsules can be under ideal circumstances.

This sounds like a good solution. So it won't be that effective against massive armies anymore. But how does this works with dmg stacking? You could still clickspam posion capsules to get high dps. Drone capsules have a limit.

[Adil]

You have to understand that max evo death world is a situation you almost shouldn't be able to gung-ho you're way through, it's pretty much a wall of behemoth biters and behemoth spitters, you will die almost instantly if you enter spitter range without anything to take the hits, the much vaunted combat shotgun with piercing shotgun shells is basically a peashooter against that kind of heat. Anything which lets you actually advance into that a wall of spitters and do so cheaply is probably overpowered.

They do not allow to do that cheaply, you still need hell a lot of firepower to take care of enemies which which only sneeze from these clouds. Now if the capsules would allow you to instanuke the whole chunk without destroyers, that would be cheap.

I think the best solution would be to have dps capping - this is something which I saw implemented in Warcraft 3 where basically an AoE spell is defined as being allowed to damage up to say 6 units, if there are 6 or fewer units the full damage is dealt to each unit, if there are more than 6 units, a proportional fraction of the damage is dealt, i.e. if there are 12 units, then each unit only takes half the maximum damage.

Well, warcraft was hellbent on becoming a cybersport discipline and sacrificed a lot for that. Graphics and reason among that.
Why on the earth a dense poison cloud would do less damage to a larger number of units? Do first six really breath in the whole poison from the area?

[BlakeMW]

Why on the earth a dense poison cloud would do less damage to a larger number of units? Do first six really breath in the whole poison from the area?

Well if you assume it's a contact poison aerosol then it's not at all unreasonable that enemies can partially shield each other from exposure.

[bobucles]

Let enemy biters have poison resistance. Or the nests. Or the giant worms. Now capsules don't kill absolutely everything.

I mean, that's what damage types and resistances are FOR.

A crazy fun option is to have poison capsules disperse into a large amount of POLLUTION. So now you have an aggro source if you spam them too much.