Balancing the Broken 5

[CO Raven]

I just happened to see this whilst forum skimming and saw an attempt at this but didn't think it was done well since it was effectively changing how they were fundamentally played. Anyway, the concepts here retain the way they're played as much as possible. They all take hits a bit but the only one who gets a real playstyle change en masse is Grit and that's just because you can't preserve a playstyle that uses just 2 units at times and keep him both balanced and fun. So his was tweaked a little to force him to diversify while keeping his strong points. The way I see it, Colin would be a bit more agressive here. Hachi would want to get space and keep the front away from his cities. Then he'd swoop in and kill with his reinforcements. Grit's game is more balanced as a spacial war of grabbing it, then slowly fortifying and coming in for the win. Sensei is still very swarmish but has to switch up his game some. Kanbei is still very Kanbei but is nerfed some and saddled with more of a chore to keep him going smoothly.

Colin

90/90 units. This is really to nerf his ability to do tank wars. The loss of the 10% will hurt it a lot, making it still doable but a lot less effective.
80% cost for units like before. Colin is Colin. To change this would change him a ton.

COP Gold rush. 3 stars, multiply money by 1.5. Colin went on money hoarding syndrome still but increasing the cost by a star will make it far less spammable. I considered adding something detrimental like not being able to build any more units that turn because Colin doesn't do that spending thing while he's off investing but that's a bit of a shrug. It'd be something that'd marginally make sense and slow him down just a tad.

SCOP Power of Money. 5 stars. Unit attack percentage increases by (2 * Funds/1000)%. Yes. I shrank his meter and dropped his number. This has 2 purposes. First, it makes it so power of money is still strong but takes a little more to charge up. In fact, it might even be doable or advised to loose a power of money before a gold rush. Saving a little to have 30k funds on hand isn't hard and that'd make him a 150/100 for a day. So it could operate like a normal scop without always being an instant kill. Second, dropping the meter helps stop bar saving. See, Sensei can do his whole charge up to 5 stars and release double cop. With Colin, he'll either cop when he hits 3 stars or scop at 5. There's no double gold rushing anymore in this. Is he still strong? You bet. Is he more balanced? Yep.

Hachi

90% cost for units. Repairs cost 120%. He does the buying but this maintenence thing doesn't sit too well with him.

COP Barter. 3 stars. Cost becomes 50% for the day. His units drop -20/-20 while he's bartering.

SCOP Merchant Union. 6 stars. Unit cost becomes 70% and he can deploy units on cities. Hachi's units on cities receive no defensive buff while Merchant Union is active and drop -20/-20

What this meant to do is to keep Hachi as Hachi while giving him some meaningful drawbacks. For starters, his repairs cost more. So don't repair, right? Well, maybe. It'll be a bit harder not to. Barter retains how it is with the massive price drop. Still nice as ever when you're buying beefy units. It still operates great. The unit drop is for an extra taste of realism and to combine with that repair cost issue and to make sense with it in its more meaningful space in the scop area. Now Merchant Union. He gets not as great a deal but still good. Guess he's the best merchant of them all. Anyway, we still retain his unit spawning on cities but not only do they cost more but doing it on the front lines... may not be so smart. See, Hachi has this strength in spawning stuff in the front lines. Say he spawns a tank up there and another vanilla CO like Andy sends a tank up there and whaps it. It'll take 6 or 7, effectively no longer being able to operate well solo and he'll be forced to pay out 120% in repairs which is 1680. That's all bad. So that means that Hachi will no longer be able to just instantly reinforce and drop fatty units on key properties. He may wish to spawn his army a little further back and then reinforce that way as much as possible to avoid that little issue which will slow him down. And yes, Merchant Union's star count was increased by 1.

Grit

120/100 indirects. Direct units are 100/90. Indirects gain +1 range if they didn't move during the last turn. Yes. Grit is that lazy.

COP Snipe Attack. 3 stars. Indirects gain + 1 range, +20/+0.

SCOP Super Snipe. 6 stars. Indirects gain + 2 range and +30/+0.

Grit has been edited since his original balancing. Here, his increased range remains in his d2d but it comes with a catch. It is conditional. Simply, he has to sit there for a day to get the bonus. This means he can't set up as fast. He can't just rush in and have that kind of control. Rather, it'll have to be at least contested. Then his arties move in and wait. The next turn, they can fire or sit and then after that, they gain the range. So he'll be more defensive except when he's for a rolling block of arties going forth. Note that his direct units are again 100/90. They're subpar but usable.

Sensei

110/110 infantry. 130/100 copters. 90/100 for everything else. Transports get +1 movement.

COP Copter Command. 3 stars. 9 hp infantry units are spawned on all open cities you own, ready to move and cost 500 G for each. If you don't have enough to pay, they'll stop spawning when you run out of cash. Copters get +20/+20.

SCOP Airborne Assault. 6 stars. 9 hp mechs are spawned on all open cities you own, ready to move and cost 1500 G for each. If you don't have enough to pay, they'll stop spawning when you run out of cash. Copters get +20/+20.

Well, nerfing the infantry some does some good. Better 110/110 than 140/100. So his are stronger than usual but not overwhelming. The copters got a little nerfed too. Helps a little. Now the bars were increased. Helps slow the cop spam. Now here, he still gets it all cheap but he actually pays some. This makes it so he gets his swarmlike unit advantage but he gets at at a price. So he can't spend all his money, then get a free army anymore. Are the abilities still strong? You bet. Are they manageable? Yes. Speaking of which, you actually have a reason that you might use his scop now. A mech flood can be pretty effective in some cases.

Kanbei

130/120 units. 130% cost. All units use +2 fuel a day, regardless of whether they move.

COP Morale Boost. 4 stars. Units get +20/+0 and use double fuel this day.

Samurai Spirit. 7 stars. Units get +10/+20 and counter for +50% damage. They use double fuel this day.

So we dropped his units a little and increased his cost some. That'll hurt a bit. So why didn't I make it plain 120/120? Well, we're not trying to murder Kanbei too hard, just balance him. I think he'd actually be outright bad if we did that. Kanbei wasn't nearly as strong in awds as he was in aw2. Both increasing his cost and dropping his units in both aspects would hurt too much in my opinion. So his units are still really strong. Deal with it. At least they take some more damage now. The rest was derived from his early profiles. They were saying stuff about needing to be maintained better. Then I remembered a comment on Kam's signature about Kanbei's troops being the difference between boys and men. Well, guess what? Men need to eat. That's why they'll be burning more fuel. Fuel issues were also tacked onto his CO powers. Men being epic need to eat even more. Now, this doesn't kill Kanbei but it means he has to use APCs liberally. Like his profile says, he'll actually need to keep up his army. His units will take stops at cities to refuel and they won't be able to march too far off to battle with just tanks as the 2 fuel a day will run them dry. If it takes 3 moves to get into the fray, he'll be burning 24 fuel just getting there instead of 18. The longer he sits, the more fuel he'll burn. With his CO powers, he'll burn fuel even faster. Long story short, Kanbei needs supply lines which means funds that he has to allocate that way to operate at full effectiveness. He'll be good on small maps and not so good as the maps get larger. The increased costs will also keep him in place.

Side note, morale boost having more power than samurai spirit was intended. The way I see it, samurai spirit is a more defensive thing while morale boost represents Kanbei's attacking.

Other side note explaining the increased fuel useage. Riding into battle and doing it gloriously are entirely different. His troops are as gung ho as he is and thus they burn more fuel making their entrance flashy.

[Kamuscha]

And some burly men they are. Now all I have to do is order a massive strike and then use SCOP at the end of the turn, just so they can have their leftovers.


I really like your suggestions on modifying the broken CO's to the point of retaining their originality, but still retaining a degree of balance. I'm not sure how well they would play out in the current metagame, but that's entirely dependent on whether or not we get AWBW V2 which allows players to modify stats on each CO.

[CO Raven]

I felt pretty satisfied with most of them but I think I may have gone a bit overboard with Grit. His limitations take away a lot of his flexibility. That's totally needed but I think I may have done a bit too much. See, I'm trying to make it so he can and will actually use tanks at some opportune times but still focus on his arties as his win condition. I'm just worried that having both the firing and moving limits might be too much. If I took away his firing limitation, he'd be able to set up faster with more flexibility but that'd allow him to create fast support like how he does now. If I took away his move limitation, he'd be able to take the vacant space he's taken a lot easier. Perhaps only one is needed but I'm still thinking on it. Right now, I'm leaning towards taking away the movement limitation and just going with the firing one, then adding the relieving of the limit to snipe attack too. I like giving the CO powers more purpose.

In any case, this is all just for fun. Even if they did custom wars it up, most of these changes are way too detailed for a free edit. These would have to be built in beforehand. On a side note, their use is also much more complicated than before which I think a lot of people would enjoy.

[Abroxas]

[...]
most of these changes are way too detailed for a free edit. These would have to be built in beforehand.

Why not? These alternative Broken five could be implemented as clone characters colored like the clones in Dual Strike.

[Glenstorm]

I always figured the correct way to balance the broken 5 was to bring everyone else up to their level, most people consider these guys to be the most fun anyways - indicates to me these might be the right level of power.

I'm not sure how well they would play out in the current metagame, but that's entirely dependent on whether or not we get AWBW V2 which allows players to modify stats on each CO.

AWBW is already version 2

Raven, the changes wouldn't be that hard, but in general AWBW tries to stick as close to the cart as possible since the userbase is made up of people looking to duplicate their cart experience online.

[Walker]

For Grit, I don't even know if I'd build any artillery with him anymore. They're basically useless... Arties are already immobile enough that tanks run circles around them on a lot of maps, and now you made them twice as slow. It doesn't really make up for the increased range except on maps that really favor arties.

I really like where your mind is at with the idea, but I think you almost have to make his other units 90/110 or 80/120 just to force him to play defensively so that he still has to build arties to have any chance of winning.

[CO Raven]

I think that toss Grit on the defense end would be a bit too convenient persay. Perhaps I just need to figure out a better fix for him in terms of actual application but he does need something to slow him down some and prevent him from running wild with just two kinds of units. I think Grit would be a lot more flavorful if he had to diversify his army some more. Perhaps that kind of limitation just isn't quite right. I'll mull it over some and try to come up with a better solution.

[Mori]

The ideas behind re-balancing Sensei and Kanbei are quite cool. The others feel a bit iffy, but I liked the spirit of those two, at least.

[Xaif]

The issue here is that it is near impossible to balance the broken COs unless you remove the thing that actually breaks them, because if you keep those aspects and try to balance them out with equally 'unbroken' stuff you end up with a CO that is worthless - and needlessly complicated. The broken aspects are:

Colin: 80% price and his self feeding COP.
Hachi: Pretty much everything about him.
Grit: +1 D2D range.
Sensei: His COP.
Kanbei: Insane stats.

Back in the day when Custom Wars was up and about, we (I feel anyway) managed to balance said COs in a way which didn't remove who they were about. This is what we did:

(Red indicates changes, grey in brackets indicates what stats used to be or indicate abilities that have been removed entirely.)

COLIN

D2D
- 90/100
- 90% costs (Instead of 80%)

**XXXX

COP:
- Current funds increased by 20% (Instead of 50%)
- 100/110

SCOP:
- +2.5 attack per 1000G (Instead of +3.3)
- 100/110

It's the 80% costs that make him broken, yet trying to make him balanced with 90/90 stats is terrible. He may have more units, but he can't do anything with them, those stats give the enemy a lot of guaranteed 1/2HKOs while robbing Colin of a lot of them. With 90% costs, he's still the cheapest in the game. Removing his ability to DCOP is also stripping him of one of main selling points, though +50% is too much. Just reduce it and you're golden. The SCOP has been pulled back slightly too.

HACHI

D2D
- 95% costs (Instead of 90%)
- 100/100

***XX

COP:
- Land units can be bought from cities
- (Removed 50% costs)
- 110/110

SCOP:
- 65% costs (Instead of 50%)
- (Removed ability for land units being bought from cities)
- 110/110

90% costs with no weakness is simply too much, so still keeping him as Hachi (i.e. bland) giving him a very slight 5% discount keeps him balanced. His powers were far too strong, and his super was simply stupid. 50% costs is akin to double income for a day, Colin was getting 50% extra for his COP, albeit for one less star, and that was still broken! So the discounts have been scrapped and his unique ability to build units from cities in its place. It's a great ability, though not broken. And for the super this is where he gets mega discounts. Can't really complain, it's strong, it cannot be spammed like Colin's self feeding COP does.

GRIT

D2D
- 120/100 indirects
- 90/100 directs
- 100/100 otherwise
- (Removed +1 range)

***XXX

COP:
- +1 range
- 140/110 indirects
- 100/110 directs
- 110/110 otherwise

SCOP:
- +2 range
- 160/110 indirects
- 100/110 directs
- 110/110 otherwise

The problem with Grit are his broken artillery. You're paying less than half for a unit that's almost equivalent to other COs' rockets. You cannot balance that unless you add a crippling weakness to said unit, and thus making it totally useless in the process. Or adding some weird clauses like not being able to attack after moving or something. Instead, just keep it simple.

SENSEI

D2D
- 120/100 copters (Instead of 150/100)
- 110/110 soldiers (Instead of 140/100)
- +1 movement transports
- 90/100 direct land units (Instead of 90/100 land and naval units)
- 100/100 other units

**XXXX

COP:
- 140/110 copters (Instead of 180/110)
- 150/110 soldiers
- 100/110 direct land units (Instead of 100/110 land and naval units)
- 110/110 other units

SCOP:
- Spawn 9HP infantry on all owned cities (Instead of mechs)
- 180/110 copters
- 140/110 soldiers (Instead of 150/100)
- 100/110 direct land units (Instead of 100/110 land and naval units)
- 110/110 other units

Sensei's paratroopers for his COP are what make him broken, 2 stars for that crap? Lol. His 150% attack Bcopters D2D didn't help either, so he's been nerfed considerably. We made his weakness less prominent (at least his indirects are normal strength), and on a normal map even without airports, his strong infantry and +1 transport movement give him an edge, though ultimately you'd pick a map with airports. (He may seem like a weaker Sami, but we removed Sami's +1 transport bonus, because she's too powerful!) His COP gives his infantry a fine boost for 2 stars and the SCOP retains his powertrooper aspect - it just can't be spammed!

KANBEI

D2D
- 120% costs
- 120/115 units (instead of 130/130)

****XXX

COP:
- 160/120 units (Instead of 150/140)

SCOP:
- 160/155 (Instead of 150/160)
- 2x counters

Not much to say, he's overpowered because of his D2D stats. Simply tone him down, less defence due to how defence is more powerful than offense regarding the damage formula.

So that's what the final version of Custom Wars had (before it died =[ ) and we did playtest all of this stuff so it seemed to work well. Best I can say is that retaining the broken aspect of a CO isn't the way to go about this because so long as it stays, the CO will still be broken (just spam artillery with Grit for example and you can't lose) and adding equally broken nerfs to the COs makes them become useless.

[Mori]

Always fun to see another Custom Wars person emerge out of the woodwork occasionally. The concept of Hachi's new COP is pretty cool, since you don't get any funds or decreased costs from it, while still getting a very solid ability. This is the kind of stuff that I'd love to playtest if CW still had a huge community.

[kryptonite]

Easy way to fix (?) Colin's COP is to remove the compound interest and give it a straight up bonus. 500 for each fund-giving property he owns at the time of activation.

For everything else, I think it's fine. I would like Grit to keep the range bonus because that's what makes him unique. He could be like AW1 Grit but with nerfed powers.

Besides, 120/100 artillery ain't doing much anyways. OHKO infantry on roads? OH BOY.

[The Loli Otaku]

I agree with Glenstorm on this one, instead of nerfing characters the others should get buffs. This would make the CO's feel far more unique.

[Super pen]

I'd say make Kanbei more like 125% cost, and make Grit 90/90 on the directs and edit him to 110/110 on the indirects. Apart from that, good ideas.

[Mr--Clean]

I say we make max's direct unit buffs count for infantry as well. They attack directly after all. Sure it would make him grossly unbalanced but at least grit wouldnt seem broken anymore.