Skirmish Community Update

As the last community update was in July, I thought it would be good to put out a bulletin to explain some of the changes in Skirmish. In July, the focus was on tackling the Sniper problem in pub. For some reason, at some point in FI's history, the Sniper class had become way overtuned, even in USL where teams are limited to 1 Sniper, and we saw the negative league experience that had on FI Season 20 as well as pub. While the class settings for Sniper appear to now be in a good place, there are still some minimaps where, based on the characteristics of those minimaps, Sniper seems to be incompatible, and the exclusion of the class from those minimaps seems to be in the overall best interest of the community. This was first piloted on CharlieDelta where we saw that it made CharlieDelta go from being an almost unplayable minimap to one of the most favoured, just by removing the most negative aspect of CharlieDelta which was the excessive impact of Snipers. As the Sniper class also suffers from this mismatch on WhiteBlack and FireIce, it has also been removed from those minimaps, which has received more positive feedback than negative.

Turrets have been greatly strengthened in minimaps and their quantity has increased. Turrets are not placed evenly on all minimaps as this is plainly not necessary. Turrets are deployed in a calculated manner based on the actual observed base vulnerability of each particular minimap. Turrets have enabled minimaps to better control for instances of base rape while simultaneously decreasing the overreliance on bunkers which can either be abused or not utilized properly by players. Turrets have provided a consistent and reliable tool that does precisely what we need them to do for Minimaps without causing new issues.

War Machine Class - this class had been overnerfed, largely as a result of issues stemming from its outsized strength on RedBlue (formerly the default starting map). Given that WM is now disabled on RedBlue, it was worth assessing how to strengthen it cautiously to the point where it makes it more playable without becoming an imbalance problem. The doubling of rocket ammo made it so that a big aspect of the class's identity was actually more useable beyond just the first couple minutes after spawning. The WM minigun was also overly weak when compared to Ripper Gun. While the minigun is intended to be a little weaker than Ripper Gun based on overall loadout design of Ripper vs WM, it seemed excessively so and therefore it was strengthened to align it more with design intention. As a result, WM is being played more in pub in what so far appears to be a balanced configuration, although balancing especially with newer classes is always an ongoing assessment and further changes are made as required.

Assault Trooper Class - in SOE Skirmish, the AT was a non-dashing class. It had strong armor which I'm sure Yankee felt would provide the AT with enough protection as it got within a close enough range to Dual AP its opponents. With the application of both Dash and Armor, with a USL design in mind, this class became overpowered in pub. At first this was dealt with by matching the USL nerf of a very long Dash cooldown of 45 seconds, but this didn't seem to adequately balance the class in pub and also seemed to be a poor calibration given the nature of Minimaps (more frequent respawns, quicker to action) compared to USL. While my preferences are mostly traditional SK settings, I think the Dash to AT has been an interesting feature which added a lot to the enjoyment of the class and its identity. The preferred test, then, was to try a calibration of AT that leaned more on the Dash and less on the Armor for pub play. The Dash cooldown was reduced to 16 seconds and the armor removed completely with hp increased from 80 to 100 to compensate. This also had the benefit of making Assault Trooper (renamed Dash Trooper to indicate unarmored), more compatible with other weapon dynamics in pub play that rely on low hp but rapid fire design (i.e., turrets and WM minigun). So far, Dash Trooper appears to be a more balanced configuration for pub play, and the assessment is ongoing.

LMG Class - LMG received a few adjustments to align it closer with its SOE traditional settings. The added spread/recoil, reduced proximity radius, longer reload, and removal of incendiary grenades moved the class closer to traditional settings and decreased its overall strength without making other adjustments which while effective for lowering overall strength would've been detrimental to class concept/identity. This is why class balancing must always be done with both an overall objective in mind, but also a consideration for class concept design and context/environment design (i.e., how does the class function compared to other similar classes).

Ripper - Nerfs to range and accuracy were done to control for the undesirable impact of Rippers being able to shoot safely from too far away ("Ripper Sniping"). This is not an original intention for this class and yet another USL overtuning which is problematic in pub. These adjustments I'm fairly comfortable with as they actually return us closer to traditional settings for Ripper and therefore I haven't deviated from SK norm in implementing them. For reference, traditional SK Ripper had a 3 and -3 spread, and a 250 range; current SK Ripper has a 1 and -1 spread, and a 250 range.

Demolitions Class - Wall laming had become a major problem with the demo class in pub play, and so its C4 quantity was changed from unlimited (USL) to 3, which matches the traditional SK settings for the class. The change appears to have reduced C4 wall laming. Additionally, the RPG Launcher had an absurd postfire delay of 2 seconds, which almost no other weapon has (for reference, LAW has a postfire of 1 second). RPG Launcher has no traditional SK anchor to compare it to as this is an FI-only introduction for this class (formerly Sapper). Based on better alignment with other weapons alone, it seemed reasonable to reduced the postfire to 1 second, and then to address RPG spam itself with a slight reload increase from 2.5 seconds to 3 seconds. Again, in pub, unlike USL, there are multiple Demos, not just 1. So this has to always be taken into account when considering balance and overall impact of something such as a fast rate of fire for an explosive projectile that does high damage.

Elite Class - the community was not responding well to the bouncing projectiles of the Fusion Rifle. The spam was reduced by raising energy usage of the FR from 25 to 40, which synced it back with SOE. However, on SOE, the Fusion Rifle had 18 dmg vs the 17 dmg currently. As 18 seemed excessive and such a high dmg that should be reserved for the Ripper Gun which is balanced with its absolute mobility handicap, 17 seemed more fitting, again when comparing the FR in context with other SK guns. As the damage is lower than its traditional implementation, it seemed worth testing whether a compensatory adjustment would be having a better PDW with higher clip that can be switched to a little more quickly so that we're achieving the goal of less bouncing projectile spam while not excessively nerfing the overall lethality of the class.

Map Changes - significant map changes include the introduction of EchoFoxtrot (a map inspired by a minimap requested from the USL Apollo map file but with various significant changes), and changes to OrangeGray, EchoFoxtrot, and GreenYellow to make them all based on east/west bases as this is thought to balance the maps better (no south advantage). OrangeGray appears to be much more enjoyable now with its reduced size and west/east dynamic. Overall, GreenYellow seems improved. While some north parts of the map are not used as much in this configuration as they seemed to be before, it seems that the better balance is what's preferred by the community in this design tradeoff. GoldSilver was overhauled as an NML without the trenches. While NML was one of the most loved maps of traditional SK, it seems today's players have no tolerance for elements of imbalance or advantage on a map. NML had gone from being a nostalgic pleasure to almost entirely abandoned on Minimaps (causing reliable fade when switching to it). My solution was to keep what's good about the map, and swap out the trenches for buildings, thus reimagining it from a trench warfare No Man's Land to more of a colonial battlefield with no trenches at all and significantly less tree hiding. This overhaul appears to have been very successful and provides further options for larger team gameplay which can now be rotated between 3 large maps instead of just 2.

Objectives - comments from some in the community regarding varied objectives for diversity away from team deathmatch. In the current state of the game, it doesn't seem to me that this would be practical. Static flag objectives from the days of old don't seem to work without a lot more players. I made an attempt a year ago to introduce a Killing Fields style KOTH 2-team objective to Minimaps and while some players enjoyed it, the overall preference seemed to be to return to TDM. In exchange, I developed minimap variations of SUT and Sniper School as their own zones and these continue to be available for occasional variety play, but the overwhelming preference of the community for TDM in SK Minimaps is clear and that is why TDM SK Minimaps is what we've largely remained on. In the future, with the potential of next-gen bots in Infantry that play very similarly to human players, obviously this opens up more avenues, but that's not a factor right now.

Framework/Vision - overall objective with Skirmish pub play are settings that balance between traditional SK and USL. Where a USL configuration seems incompatible and excessive in the pub play context, there's a need for tailored customization and it's necessary to do that to ensure a good gaming experience in pub, using SOE settings as the anchor for most of my calibrations to make sure the game doesn't vary too much from the nostalgic game dynamic that hooked us all on Skirmish many years ago. New content and diversity is a goal as well, and I approach these conservatively to make sure new elements don't ruin the existing skirmish experience. My focus right now is optimizing calibrations of weapons/classes in pub with no planned new features/classes. We've had a lot of the new in the last couple years, and now it's time to let everything settle, and make sure the balance is as good as it possibly can be, accepting that there will always be different opinions on these things. It's also worth emphasizing here that you cannot directly put USL settings in pub, it would be and has been a disaster. USL settings have changed so much from SOE era in both an attempt to keep the league gameplay experience fresh but also to drive motivation towards various support classes, and these "incentive adjustments" are catastrophic for the pub play context which has no quantity control and is a very different dynamic.

Reasonable feedback is always appreciated and considered. Today's Infantry zone management environment is a lot more challenging than it was in the past. The reality is the game is extremely old now and only has consistent interest from a nostalgic community. The gaming industry is on afterburner with new, exciting, shiny games being released to the market regularly and this game from the late 90s is competing with that for overall attention and recreational time. Despite that, I appreciate the players who get online regularly to support the Skirmish community and the Minimaps project.

-Military Police

If you have any questions or feedback feel free to post them in either the Free Infantry discord or the official USL discord.