Articulation changes impact and future directions for multi-entity chariots.

Spellbound1875#4610

This post is going to be a discussion on chariot functionality in 3.0, how it's changed over time, and what needs to change to produce viable chariots in the context of 3.0. I'll be breaking this apart into 3 sections, the first on articulation changes, the second on mass and impact damage, and the third on collision attacks. This post focuses on multi-entity chariots. Single-entity chariots, while having similar issue have a much wider range of functionalities. I suspect addressing them will require a list of individualized approaches to compensate for differences in attack animations and abilities, rather than a consistent list of changes. A follow up post focusing on them is potentially forthcoming.

TLDR
1. chariots post articulation changes are smaller, decreasing the consistency of hitting infantry on the charge, with many needing a size increase.
2. Chariot mass is often too low to allow chariots to consistently push through unbraced chaff and should be raised; 2700 is a good floor for mid tier chariots and 4000 is a good floor for high tier chariots.
3. Collision attack damage is far too low for many chariots, particularly non-ap mid tier and all high tier chariots, needing fairly significant increases. Mid tier non-ap chariots could use around a 20-30% increase in collision attack damage through any combination of WS, BvI, and CB increases. High tier chariots could use around a 50-60% increase in collision attack damage through a combination of WS, BvI, and CB increases. The specifics are detailed below but this increase roughly let's them keep pace with the damage gained from upgrading empire knights to Reiksguard over 5 seconds post charge, as currently chariots gain basically no damage from upgrading.

A mod putting these principles into effect can be found here. Specific change notes are included on the mod page. Note this is not an exact set of recommendations, it's a way to test of the general principles are sound. The changes are quite conservative in most cases and there are many chariots in the mod whose performance is probably still too weak. Price was not considered in this post but is a factor to consider for many chariots which don't seem to have a clear tier to function in (Ithilmar are still extremely pricey). I'd be happy to clarify points, provide more specific examples, and run some games with folks on the mod if they are interested and my schedule allows. I think playing with the changes is the best way to see them for yourself.

ARTICULATION

The articulation changes introduced in 3.0 were largely good for chariot performance, increasing their responsiveness and mobility while reducing the instances where chariots interfere with themselves on a charge. However the articulation changes also introduced some performance issues that were previously not present as most chariot collision profiles were reduced significantly. The result is while chariots move better many no longer consistently collide with enough infantry to take advantage of their collision attacks or mass to deal damage on the charge.

The Razorgor chariots for the beastmen is the best example of a chariot negatively impacted by this change, with the unit now dealing less damage than the Tuskgor chariot on average despite a superior statline. This is not the only chariot negatively impacted, with basically all WH1 and WH2 chariots seeing some performance loss from their profile being shrunk. For the reverse principle, where a chariot markedly improved despite minimal stat adjustments see the Hellflayer, which has only marginally better stats on paper than the Seeker chariot but deals significantly more damage on the charge. Still not enough to warrant the price increase, but the chariot model being wider translates directly to better performance.

Tuskgor vs Razorgor comparison on live

Seeker vs Hellflayer comparison on live

This issue is easily fixable by simply increasing the chariot sizes slightly while maintaining the relative size differences to preserve the chariots shape while colliding and moving around other chariots. I found between 0.2 and 0.5 was sufficient depending on the chariot, with HE's needing the largest adjustments since their chariots are very small to start out with. These changes also didn't produce any visual oddities, though if you increase the size too much you will start to see phantom hits (Gorebeasts needed their size to be increased to nearly double before this was clearly occurring so you have some wiggle room).

MASS

Mass effects chariot damage in three ways. First, directly though the impact damage calculation, second by allowing chariots to make solid contact with many entities quickly to deal both collision attack damage and impact damage, and finally by allowing chariots to stay on the move to charge again more quickly. For these purposes as best as I can tell a mass value of around 2700 seems to be the minimum for chariots to consistently pull through chaff infantry and chariots with 4 entities falling below this value massive impairs performance. For the higher tier chariots a mass value around 4000 seems appropriate to allow the chariots to pull through mid tier infantry like chaos warriors fairly consistently. Note that this does not apply to braced infantry which are generally not feasible to pull through without mass values increasing significantly. Gorebeasts moving from 2300 mass to 4100 mass early in game 3 simply to pull through chaff like blue horrors demonstrated this point admirably but also showed mass on it's own is insufficient to produce solid chariot performance.

Mass as a tool to increase chariot performance has become much less effective than it was in game 2. This is the result of compounding system changes. First, knock down changes have made chariots lose speed much more consistently as infantry units hold their ground better, impairing mobility which decreases the number of collision attacks per charge and reduces impact damage. Second, virtual mass increases from bracing have resulted in mass values changing in effectively drastically based on the targets state. To punch through braced infantry depending on tier, positioning, and abilities can require mass values comparable to Mammoths or Stonehorns which aren't tenable for multi-entity chariot units. Finally, CB is no longer used in damage calculations for impact damage making bracing and charge defense more effective in reducing chariot damage. The result is less impact damage being dealt overall and units reliant on impact damage without extreme mass values seeing major hits to their performance in game 3.

For the above reasons I do not think balancing chariots going forward sole with mass increases will be tenable. For most of game 2 impact damage was sufficient to make chariots perform well because infantry didn't meaningfully stop chariots from pushing through them and charge defense didn't meaningfully defend against chariot damage output. This also had the negative side effect of flattening chariot performance, where regardless of base stats most chariots performed at roughly the same level which forced elite chariots out of the meta (Chaos chariots and Tuskgors completely supplanting Gorebeasts and Razorgors being the two biggest examples). Rather than relying on mass to balance and differentiate chariots collision attacks will need to pick up a significant portion of the expected damage output, something which allows for a greater differentiation between both ap and non-ap chariots, as well as between mid tier and elite chariots.

COLLISION ATTACKS

The first element to note with collision attacks is they replace splash attacks on a per second basis. For most chariots this means they splash damage between 3 targets for the first second, and for each additional second they can splash their damage to 2 targets, at least for chariots with 4 entities on ultra. These values should be synchronized for all chariots so that collision attack damage will be consistent throughout a charge. As is a significant portion of damage is being squandered by this inconsistent application, and some chariots like Doom Wheels are effectively bugged making only a single collision attack for each second beyond the first in a charge. I'd recommend 3/3 as the values for 4 entity chariot units and 2/2 for multi-entity units with greater than 4 entities. SE chariots having collision attack profiles set so that about 100 WS is used per splash is a sweet spot for performance but varies based on SE statlines.

The second element to note with collision attacks is the amount of damage they provide. Assuming a chariot charges for 3 seconds, this effectively multiplies the listed WS, CB, and BvI by 3. While this may sound impressive in practice the damage numbers are rather modest and seemingly large increases to WS, CB, and BvI do not produce large damage gains. In practice most charges last at most 3 seconds translating to roughly 12 attacks per charge.

The short version is that currently the damage gains from collision attacks are so small between chariots that non-ap chariots get outdamaged by AP options with similar prices and stats at armor values under 30. Chariots over 1000 gold gain so little damage in comparison to cheaper chariots they'd need to land roughly 3 solid charges to match the damage gains of high tier cavalry over mid tier cavalry on a single charge, which tracks with cavalry making attacks with a bit more than half of their entities on the charge after the Great Stag Knight bugfix (36 attacks for chariots vs ~40 attacks for cavalry). Since chariots aren't making that many attacks, they need to hit significantly harder with the ones they do make.

Math

For Tuskgor chariots (750 cost) the max damage dealt per second through collision attacks is 130 (42+70+18) per entity, or 520 damage per second. 76% AP meaning into 30 armor we see an average of 504 damage per second total.

For Chaos chariots (750 cost) the max damage dealt per second through collision attacks is 134 (40+18+76) per entity, or 536 damage per second. 28% AP meaning into 30 armor we see an average of 486 damage per second total. The damage difference is so small armor values under 30 make AP chariots deal more damage than non-ap chariots. They need significantly more WS, CB, or BvI to be a reasonable comparison to AP chariots with at least 20 damage per entity per second being added to see consistent gains over the AP chariots in matched circumstances. I'd place that damage either in WS or BvI.

For Razorgor chariots (1150 cost) the max damage dealt per second through collision attack is 160 (48+88+24) per entity, or 640 damage per second. 71% AP meaning into 30 armor we see an average of 616 per second total. 400 gold gets you 112 max extra damage per second total.

Reiksguard gain 24 damage on their charge per entity attack while coming with 60 entities, with close to 40 of them engaging in combat. The difference is 3661 vs 2836, or 825 extra damage into 30 armor for a 300 cost hike in an average example. For chariots to match the modest gain seen between two relatively low damage cavalry on one attack cycle after a charge, the Razorgors would have to charge for ~8 seconds, which is both extremely unlikely and would allow the cavalry unit to get a second attack cycle putting the chariots hopeless behind in a real game.

This also misses the bigger issue of target health pools. Empire swordsmen have a health pool of 8280, which makes Tuskgors ~1512+impact damage (end result of around ~1900) feel price appropriate in optimal circumstances but for the more expensive chariots which cost 3+ times the price of many infantry only dealing around ~2100 damage makes them totally untenable.

Mid-tier non-AP chariots need a significant boost to their base damage to have a meaningful role in comparison to AP chariots. Adding between 20 and 30 damage to WS, BvI, and CB in some combination should be sufficient to meaningfully distinguish the units in terms of performance. If mid tier AP chariots are buffed in damage these non-AP chariots need to maintain a similar damage hike if they are to have the same price, and more expensive chariots like Ithilimar's would benefit from a larger difference in WS. Below are some curated examples to demonstrate the impact of these changes.
Mid-tier performance on live (Tuskgors are control)

Mid-tier performance on mod

Elite chariots need significantly more damage to be viable with the low end of damage gains being around 1000 and the high end being around 2000. My current approach has been to add ~70 max damage per entity per second, which brings the gain to 182 per second. This brings us to matching the Reiksguard gain in about 5 seconds which at least no longer leaves chariots hopelessly behind on damage gains but may still be overly conservative. I split the added damage between WS and BvI to reduce the risk of altering performance into cavalry or large targets (about 30 in WS and 40 in BvI). Below are some curated examples to demonstrate the impact of these changes.

Elite chariot performance on live into chaos marauders.

Elite chariot performance on mod into chaos warriors and chaos marauders.

This also has the benefit of making elite chariots effective into low tier braced infantry. While they'll still be bogged down their damage output is not longer reduced to near 0 which allows them to fulfill an anti-infantry role somewhat effectively.
Braced performance in mod

While the elite chariot doesn't push through it deals cost effective damage against a CDvL target like Longbeards. Charging into Halberds is still a very bad idea for cost effective trading (spears it depends on armor values) but you no longer have the issue where chariots become completely worthless into braced targets.

I'll note these are relatively conservative values. With how the current system works for bracing it is possible larger values are needed for both mid and high tier chariots, as units previously viewed as overbearing like the Tuskgor chariots are questionable in the current meta, at least for multiplayer. Chariots have been in a pretty terrible place for most of game three and I would suggest more drastic changes to chariot stats would be appropriate moving forward rather than trying to simply nudge mass higher in the hopes chariot functionality will be restored.

SPECIAL NOTES

Doom Flayers are negatively impacted by both extremely low mass and by the relatively small profile which cannot be easily corrected without visual jank. They probably require a price cut as their ability to serve more than a supporting role is extremely limited even with massive buffs.

Khorne Characters on Gorebeast Chariots do not have a collision attack profile at all which means they massively underperform similar chariots like the Nurgle Exalted hero. This needs to be corrected. I'd also consider adding collision attacks to the Burning Chariot, especially the character mounts which currently are a net downgrade compared to the discs.

Pump Wagons are bugged and making too many attacks, causing significant overperformance into large targets who are getting hit significantly more than would be expected from a chariot (infantry should take more attacks so the impact is harder to notice).

While Lion Chariots are missing attack animations for the riders and also significantly underperform other elite chariots even when statlines are synced. This is a notable departure from the last patch where increasing damage stats produced more reliable performance gains. Size increasing had some benefit but does not seem to be the only issue.

The Sibilant Slaughtercade (Chaos Chariot RoR) has lower mass than the base unit because of assets shared with other units. Either mass needs to be adjusted for shared assets to address this issue or the RoR needs additional damage buffs to compensate for the mass loss, since the chariots damage and mobility are notably worse than a baseline chaos chariot even when mass is buffed to 2700 (2500 for the RoR). My value was an additional 20 BvI but many approaches could work.

War Sleds for Kislev are a solid place to look for decent melee chariot performance, I'm not sure they needed the mass buff last patch. I'd avoid additional buffs for them going forward.

I am aware 3.1 launches tomorrow so the timing here is somewhat awkward.

Spellbound1875#4610

This is not supposed to be in general. Would a mod be open to moving this to the balance forum?

saweendra#3399

from what i heard from human boy the chariot changes and the knock down changes never made it live

Spellbound1875#4610

saweendra#3399 said:

from what i heard from human boy the chariot changes and the knock down changes never made it live

Human boy is wrong if that's his claim, though I've heard him say something closer to "stuff changed between pre-launch and patch day" which could be true. From what I've heard there wasn't a day one patch but CA was definitely tinkering with stuff before launch and they very well could have tweaked chariots at some point.

However, the articulation system has definitely changed, the values are different, and you can adjust the chariots profile in a more granular manner now. You can also observe different behavior, like chariots getting stuck less and actually sharing space in a way they wouldn't previously, which is largely why they don't interfere with themselves as much.

Some examples of the new overlapping behavior

Issue is not all chariots made the leap well. Razorgors last patch were performing better than Tuskgors into infantry like their stats suggest but on live they're now performing worse, and very consistently at that. My read is CA set the chariot shape to perfectly align with the chariot models, the problem is earlier chariots were made with the old system and so are a lot more compact in terms of their model, resulting in worse contact as of 3.0. Game 3 chariots, whether by accident or because CA knew they wanted to change the system have much better hitboxes for the new system and so perform better in the new system.

One thing I did notice is a lot of people were testing the Slaanesh chariots on the prerelease and those actually got a lot better in 3.0, partially because they got an unlisted mass buff of around 800 and partially because the game 3 chariot models work a lot better with the articulation system. Hellflayers in particular are much better in 3.0 than they were previously because the chariot is very wide and well shaped to push through infantry. Most of the positive commentary was around these guys, while other units like the Iron Daemon and Skullcracker looked to be performing about as bad as chariots in 2.4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2RwZ69SkjA In this video when he's talking about chariots being better you can actually see the Chaos Chariot in the middle of his test utterly failing to do anything worthwhile against clan rats, one of the softest targets in the game. I think this is just a case where Human boy saw the units most improved in a very favorable circumstance and assumed that would generalize more broadly than it actually did (as did many content creators). I don't think there needs to be a bug to explain chariot performance being bad, the existing system changes offer a compelling explanation assuming everything is working properly.

saweendra#3399

all right you make solid points i agree , may be for doom flayers give pump wagon treatment ?

Spellbound1875#4610

saweendra#3399 said:

all right you make solid points i agree , may be for doom flayers give pump wagon treatment ?

That's a solid option given the model size and unit performance.

Spellbound1875#4610

Two caveats introduced with patch 3.1. Mass values seem to be much lower for chariots than previously thought so some there is room to explore the impact of mass increases a bit more than I expected. I still think mass isn't a cure all for the reasons discussed in the main post but there is some extra room to play with unit performance there.

Second, in the notes list both Gorebeast characters and White Lion chariots had some fixes and no longer need special attention, they can be assessed as any other chariot in a similar class.

saweendra#3399

Spellbound1875#4610 said:

Two caveats introduced with patch 3.1. Mass values seem to be much lower for chariots than previously thought so some there is room to explore the impact of mass increases a bit more than I expected. I still think mass isn't a cure all for the reasons discussed in the main post but there is some extra room to play with unit performance there.

Second, in the notes list both Gorebeast characters and White Lion chariots had some fixes and no longer need special attention, they can be assessed as any other chariot in a similar class.

Don't lion chariots have missing animations?

And obviously cold one chariots...etc missing animations for mounts.

Loupi#8512

Spellbound1875#4610 said:

Second, in the notes list both Gorebeast characters and White Lion chariots had some fixes and no longer need special attention, they can be assessed as any other chariot in a similar class.

lion chariots have their animations back? i didnt see that in the patch notes?

Spellbound1875#4610

saweendra#3399 said:

Spellbound1875#4610 said:

Two caveats introduced with patch 3.1. Mass values seem to be much lower for chariots than previously thought so some there is room to explore the impact of mass increases a bit more than I expected. I still think mass isn't a cure all for the reasons discussed in the main post but there is some extra room to play with unit performance there.

Second, in the notes list both Gorebeast characters and White Lion chariots had some fixes and no longer need special attention, they can be assessed as any other chariot in a similar class.

Don't lion chariots have missing animations?

And obviously cold one chariots...etc missing animations for mounts.

Quite possibly, but that wasn't the issue depressing their performance in 3.0. They were missing the animations in 2.4 and had been a lot better. What it looks like is about half of the lion chariot wasn't acting as a hit box in 3.0 and 3.1 restored those bits of the chariot.

saweendra#3399

Spellbound1875#4610 said:

saweendra#3399 said:

Spellbound1875#4610 said:

Two caveats introduced with patch 3.1. Mass values seem to be much lower for chariots than previously thought so some there is room to explore the impact of mass increases a bit more than I expected. I still think mass isn't a cure all for the reasons discussed in the main post but there is some extra room to play with unit performance there.

Second, in the notes list both Gorebeast characters and White Lion chariots had some fixes and no longer need special attention, they can be assessed as any other chariot in a similar class.

Don't lion chariots have missing animations?

And obviously cold one chariots...etc missing animations for mounts.

Quite possibly, but that wasn't the issue depressing their performance in 3.0. They were missing the animations in 2.4 and had been a lot better. What it looks like is about half of the lion chariot wasn't acting as a hit box in 3.0 and 3.1 restored those bits of the chariot.

Fair but i personally gonna **** about missing animations since they become long term issues.

songoffire#8157

The first element to note with collision attacks is they replace splash attacks on a per second basis. For most chariots this means they splash damage between 3 targets for the first second, and for each additional second they can splash their damage to 2 targets, at least for chariots with 4 entities on ultra. These values should be synchronized for all chariots so that collision attack damage will be consistent throughout a charge. As is a significant portion of damage is being squandered by this inconsistent application, and some chariots like Doom Wheels are effectively bugged making only a single collision attack for each second beyond the first in a charge. I'd recommend 3/3 as the values for 4 entity chariot units and 2/2 for multi-entity units with greater than 4 entities.

You are talking about synchroinizing Collision Attack max target and Collision Attack max target cooldown. You could sum up a bit quicker that way by naming the parameters. I fully agree that they should be synchronized.

SE chariots having collision attack profiles set so that about 100 WS is used per splash is a sweet spot for performance but varies based on SE statlines.

So like 800 WS for Exalted seeker chariot, right ?

The second element to note with collision attacks is the amount of damage they provide. Assuming a chariot charges for 3 seconds, this effectively multiplies the listed WS, CB, and BvI by 3.

I did not understand here. What did you want to mean ? That during a 3 seconds time window a chariot makes 3 times its number of collision attacks ? There is also something to remember the CB decreases linearly so after 2 second the CB is reduced by 14%.

While this may sound impressive in practice the damage numbers are rather modest and seemingly large increases to WS, CB, and BvI do not produce large damage gains. In practice most charges last at most 3 seconds translating to roughly 12 attacks per charge.

The short version is that currently the damage gains from collision attacks are so small between chariots that non-ap chariots get outdamaged by AP options with similar prices and stats at armor values under 30. Chariots over 1000 gold gain so little damage in comparison to cheaper chariots they'd need to land roughly 3 solid charges to match the damage gains of high tier cavalry over mid tier cavalry on a single charge, which tracks with cavalry making attacks with a bit more than half of their entities on the charge after the Great Stag Knight bugfix (36 attacks for chariots vs ~40 attacks for cavalry). Since chariots aren't making that many attacks, they need to hit significantly harder with the ones they do make.

I think you forgot the impact damage mechanics. At least as long as the chariots are moving. If the chariot hits more entities than the total max collision attacks, the other entities take impact damage. Granted impact damage is not as meaningful and impactful as collision attacks. But there is a way to make it meaningful : giving another dedicated parameters for chariots impact damage : "chariot collision damage modifier" parameter in order to increase the impact damage (set at 0.8 for example)

Reiksguard gain 24 damage on their charge per entity attack while coming with 60 entities, with close to 40 of them engaging in combat. The difference is 3661 vs 2836, or 825 extra damage into 30 armor for a 300 cost hike in an average example. For chariots to match the modest gain seen between two relatively low damage cavalry on one attack cycle after a charge, the Razorgors would have to charge for ~8 seconds, which is both extremely unlikely and would allow the cavalry unit to get a second attack cycle putting the chariots hopeless behind in a real game.

I guess you were comparing reiksguards with empire knights, right ? Not very clear.

Agreed with everything on your special notes.

Spellbound1875#4610

@songoffire#8157

So like 800 WS for Exalted seeker chariot, right ?

Yep, that's where I drew the principle from. Best performance was found setting splash attack so that they'd deal about 100 damage to each entity (before armor and what not). More testing is needed since each SE chariot functions pretty uniquely but I felt it would be inappropriate to not note the collision attack max target and collision attack max target cooldown could be better optimized for most chariots currently in the game.

I did not understand here. What did you want to mean ? That during a 3 seconds time window a chariot makes 3 times its number of collision attacks ? There is also something to remember the CB decreases linearly so after 2 second the CB is reduced by 14%.

So 1 collision attack can be made each second with that splashing between 3 targets. If you charge for 3 seconds effectively you see each chariot entity make 3 attacks. From that we can deduce Since most charges last about 3ish seconds we can calculate chariot damage from collision attacks pretty accurately by assuming each chariot makes 3 attacks, which is what I base later calculations on. I'm not certain CB works the same way for chariots and collision attacks given chariot damage output is fairly consistent throughout a charge, something we wouldn't expect if CB decay was a factor. If it is that simply makes chariot collision attack damage even lower and is a solid reason to increase WS and BvI values which would be more consistent.

I think you forgot the impact damage mechanics. At least as long as the chariots are moving. If the chariot hits more entities than the total max collision attacks, the other entities take impact damage. Granted impact damage is not as meaningful and impactful as collision attacks. But there is a way to make it meaningful : giving another dedicated parameters for chariots impact damage : "chariot collision damage modifier" parameter in order to increase the impact damage (set at 0.8 for example)

I didn't forget impact damage, just excluded it because calculating it for both chariots and cavalry is quite difficult. Best snapshot is calculating average damage from attacks and then subtracting that from observed damage to estimate impact damage. Impact damage is also extremely inconsistent and affected by hard to predict variables like relative speed, slowing of charge impacting contact, variable mass do to infantry state, charge trajectory, etc.

It's not feasible to easily compare and not relevant to the attack comparison, since attacks provide a significant portion of both units damage output. Cavalry are arguably favored in impact damage at base since they apply it while also making attacks while chariots deal either collision attack damage or impact damage, meaning they don't double dip on damage so to speak. Point is when considering attack damage cavalry are massively ahead of chariots and since attacks are a significant portion of both units damage this disparity is noteworthy in explaining chariot relatively poor performance.

For these reasons I don't think trying to enhance impact damage is a viable tactic for long term chariot balance. Beyond that impact damage is already a modified and controlled value, we'd effectively have to separate chariots as a class to give them a separate impact damage calculation. It seems easier to simply balance around an existing mechanic like collision attacks which are both more predictable and more consistent.

I guess you were comparing reiksguards with empire knights, right ? Not very clear.

Yes, goal was to demonstrate the gain from upgrading cavalry is significantly higher than the gain from upgrading chariots, which often are more expensive to upgrade. Definitely should have been clearer there.

songoffire#8157

So 1 collision attack can be made each second with that splashing between 3 targets. If you charge for 3 seconds effectively you see each chariot entity make 3 attacks. From that we can deduce Since most charges last about 3ish seconds we can calculate chariot damage from collision attacks pretty accurately by assuming each chariot makes 3 attacks, which is what I base later calculations on.

Thanks for the clarification.

I'm not certain CB works the same way for chariots and collision attacks given chariot damage output is fairly consistent throughout a charge, something we wouldn't expect if CB decay was a factor.

No reasons they work differently. Once again you forgot impact damage. My guess is Impact damage compensates for the CB decay.

It's not feasible to easily compare and not relevant to the attack comparison, since attacks provide a significant portion of both units damage output.

Simple way to factor in impact damage : you just have to put 0 WS. Impact damage is currently too low for chariots.

For these reasons I don't think trying to enhance impact damage is a viable tactic for long term chariot balance. Beyond that impact damage is already a modified and controlled value, we'd effectively have to separate chariots as a class to give them a separate impact damage calculation. It seems easier to simply balance around an existing mechanic like collision attacks which are both more predictable and more consistent.

Both are possible and do not exclude themselves. One could argue that it is easier to add one parameter in a table.

Spellbound1875#4610

@songoffire#8157

No reasons they work differently. Once again you forgot impact damage. My guess is Impact damage compensates for the CB decay.

How could impact damage compensate for CB decay? If a collision attack is made with lower CB 0 impact damage is applied to the targeted entity, you just see lower damage from the collision attack. It is impossible for one to compensate for the other because they are mutually exclusive sources of damage. This is the reason why with the right statline adding collision attacks can actually lower damage in some circumstances, since if one is active the other in inactive.

Not to mention impact damage decays over the course of a charge as a chariot slows. It seems quite likely to me that chariots don't play by the normal charge rules given charge bonus has a cooldown between activation that would screw chariots if it was a factor. Mind you I'm not sure of this but the damage values suggest it to be the case, as does the unique damage application process collision attacks use.

Simple way to factor in impact damage : you just have to put 0 WS. Impact damage is currently too low for chariots.

I'm not sure setting all damage values to 0 would provide us with accurate impact damage, partially because impact damage is already variable, but also because I don't know how splash attacks interact with no damage values. If attacks don't splash that may increase the number of impacts which would inflate impact damage. Without more knowledge of the underlying system I couldn't be sure of the accuracy of such a test, whereas on live we can calculate the relative contribution in any given test and estimate from that. I do know turning collision attacks off generally lowered chariot damage by between 40% and 80% depending on circumstances, though in some raw cases it could slightly increase chariot damage (higher recorded was around 110%). These tests all however overestimate impact damage on live since chariot damage types are mutually exclusive. Turning off collision attacks increases impact damage, just as adding collision attacks decreases impact damage (though depending on statline the increase in one may outweigh the decrease in the other resulting in a damage gain).

But more to the point, the idea that chariot impact damage is too low runs into the problem of the value being extremely variable. On the high end chariots can be dealing 600 impact damage and on the low end 6. I am not confident it is possible to find a workable middle ground between the two without functionally undoing the knockdown and bracing changes which I would consider detrimental. Collision attacks, which are much easier to predict and calculate while also being unimpeded by mass differences/bracing to the same extent are also quite low, making them a safer target for changes.

Both are possible and do not exclude themselves. One could argue that it is easier to add one parameter in a table.

You also have to flag every chariot as a chariot, determine if 1 parameters works for all (which I doubt very much given chariots with more entities have very different levels of impact damage), and then you still have to deal with impact damage being extremely swingy. I don't think in practice that's easier to just raising the damage stats of chariots and making some minor mass adjustments, things which are far more predictable because they use a much simpler and more consistent formula to calculate damage.

Spellbound1875#4610

As a note, the mod linked has been updated to 3.1. Biggest shifts is the ideal mass values I'd recommend are 1500 for mid tier chariots and 2000 for high tier chariots at this time. Those may be low balling chariot performance but they allow for both to easily push through chaff without charge defense and for high tiers to push through units like chaos knights consistently when they are not well braced.

Damage numbers for mid tier chariots into chaff are between 2000-2500, with non-ap chariots getting around 1000 damage into mid tier infantry and ap chariots getting around 1200-1400 into mid tiers infantry.

Damage numbers for the high tier chariots are between 2500-3500 for chaff, with 1500-2000 for mid tier infantry.

Roughly what we were seeing in the mod last patch. I'll probably tinker with pushing the mass values up slightly, but I do like the clear use case difference for mid tier chariots as dedicated chaff clearers, with high tier chariots having a more generalist role.

One factor I'm worrying about is Dwarfs and Cathay actually seem to be fairly well equipped to resist chariots going forward and I'm not sure that's easily addressed with how bracing now works. I'd like to get some games in to see in practice how effective chariots can be there.

songoffire#8157

How could impact damage compensate for CB decay? If a collision attack is made with lower CB 0 impact damage is applied to the targeted entity, you just see lower damage from the collision attack. It is impossible for one to compensate for the other because they are mutually exclusive sources of damage. This is the reason why with the right statline adding collision attacks can actually lower damage in some circumstances, since if one is active the other in inactive.

Well my bad you are right on this one.

I'm not sure setting all damage values to 0 would provide us with accurate impact damage, partially because impact damage is already variable, but also because I don't know how splash attacks interact with no damage values. If attacks don't splash that may increase the number of impacts which would inflate impact damage. Without more knowledge of the underlying system I couldn't be sure of the accuracy of such a test, whereas on live we can calculate the relative contribution in any given test and estimate from that. I do know turning collision attacks off generally lowered chariot damage by between 40% and 80% depending on circumstances, though in some raw cases it could slightly increase chariot damage (higher recorded was around 110%). These tests all however overestimate impact damage on live since chariot damage types are mutually exclusive. Turning off collision attacks increases impact damage, just as adding collision attacks decreases impact damage (though depending on statline the increase in one may outweigh the decrease in the other resulting in a damage gain).

Principle is simple : don't turn off collision attacks. Just put 0 WS. Collision attacks trigger at 0 and then impact damage for the remaining entities hit by chariots.

But more to the point, the idea that chariot impact damage is too low runs into the problem of the value being extremely variable. On the high end chariots can be dealing 600 impact damage and on the low end 6.

Curious : which chariots does 6 impact damage ? Norsca wolf chariots ?

You also have to flag every chariot as a chariot, determine if 1 parameters works for all (which I doubt very much given chariots with more entities have very different levels of impact damage), and then you still have to deal with impact damage being extremely swingy. I don't think in practice that's easier to just raising the damage stats of chariots and making some minor mass adjustments, things which are far more predictable because they use a much simpler and more consistent formula to calculate damage.

In my opinion it is a bit easier as going through all chariots and changing their stats and testing then could be very time consuming. Some chariots still do not work after years of patch.

Spellbound1875#4610

Principle is simple : don't turn off collision attacks. Just put 0 WS. Collision attacks trigger at 0 and then impact damage for the remaining entities hit by chariots.

Could work. I may give it a try and see if it's functionally different from the mod that just turned of collision attacks entirely.

Curious : which chariots does 6 impact damage ? Norsca wolf chariots ?

Goblin wolf chariots into a braced charge defense unit with high mass. Chosen Halberds if you really want to push those numbers down but for a lot of chariots sub-100 damage is quite possible with mid tier charge defense infantry like Jade Halberds or Longbeards. Hence why I am extremely skeptical of attempts to boost impact damage at this time.

In my opinion it is a bit easier as going through all chariots and changing their stats and testing then could be very time consuming. Some chariots still do not work after years of patch.

While possible I'd argue those chariots still suck because all CA ever does with chariots is hike mass when the actually problem is collision attacks suck. I struggle to recall any instance of a chariot having a WS, CB, or BvI change since I started the game around the vampire coast DLC but I can recall dozens of mass adjustments. I think a new approach is more likely to succeed with less effort overall expended, rather than continuing to try and make a poor approach work.

Bastilean#7242

If you are open to testing stuff. Give the doom flayers the pump wagon treatment and increase their entity count to double and see how much easier it is to get decent results.

Saweendra already hit this

I think you should steer away from BvI greater than +50, which should be reserved for the biggest and best. Anything greater makes CB hardly meaningful.

In cases where you think you need more, increase the Weapon Strength and/or CB. Charging should be meaningful, and giving MA+BvI too high reduces the value too much. Weapon Strength tends to be very weak on Chariots in my experience which is not good for a 4 entity melee unit even if it does do a lot of collision damage.

Keep tinkering.

Maybe the largest chariots should have Ogre Charge. Call it Chariot Charge, and you got'em

Spellbound1875#4610

Bastilean#7242 said:

If you are open to testing stuff. Give the doom flayers the pump wagon treatment and increase their entity count to double and see how much easier it is to get decent results.

Saweendra already hit this

I think you should steer away from BvI greater than +50, which should be reserved for the biggest and best. Anything greater makes CB hardly meaningful.

In cases where you think you need more, increase the Weapon Strength and/or CB. Charging should be meaningful, and giving MA+BvI too high reduces the value too much. Weapon Strength tends to be very weak on Chariots in my experience which is not good for a 4 entity melee unit even if it does do a lot of collision damage.

Keep tinkering.

Maybe the largest chariots should have Ogre Charge. Call it Chariot Charge, and you got'em

The Ogre Charge feature is an interesting idea. One of the reasons I used high BvI (though only on the high tier chariots) is because it allowed them to still function when CB was denied by charge defense. Ogre charge serves the same purpose but encourages a more active use of the units. I'll iterate with that at some point.

Adding entities to the doom flayers should also be pretty simple so I'll get some tests with that sometime this weekend.

songoffire#8157

Maybe the largest chariots should have Ogre Charge. Call it Chariot Charge, and you got'em

That's a good idea.
@Bastilean#7242
@Spellbound1875#4610

I think by mixing our ideas : adding ogre charges, synchronizing Collision Attack max target and Collision Attack max target cooldown, increasing size and WS (especially for SE) chariots and increasing impact damage with a dedicated parameter, we could get at last good and rewarding chariots.

songoffire#8157

Actually, the Grail knights/guardians issue put emphasis on other parameters that could be adjusted for chariots :

• acceleration
  
• deceleration
  
• charge distance commence run
  

So some changes that could be beneficial for all chariots could be :

1. synchronizing Collision Attack max target and Collision Attack max target cooldown
   
2. increasing acceleration and deceleration +1
   
3. increasing charge distance commence run +10
   

For elite chariots we could further add ogre charges.

For SE chariots we also need to increase significantly WS.

Then we could try them to see if case by case some chariots need WS increase.

While Lion Chariots are missing attack animations for the riders and also significantly underperform other elite chariots even when statlines are synced. This is a notable departure from the last patch where increasing damage stats produced more reliable performance gains. Size increasing had some benefit but does not seem to be the only issue.

I just noticed something strange in the entities table for white lions chariots :


There are some inconsistencies between the mounts and articulation regarding : run speed, acceleration, charge speed, charge distance commence run, charge distance pick target and charge distance adopt charge pose.
For other chariots theses values are the same between the articulation and mounts.

Spellbound1875#4610

@songoffire#8157 White Lions got a stealth fix, looks like part of the chariot model had been missing last patch. As for the inconsistencies my understanding is only one of those values is used by the game, the others are place holders or display values.

The draught value is what shows up on the unit card, you could determine if it's the correct speed value used in game by seeing if it's faster than units with a similarly listed speed.

As for using those other parameters to impact chariot performance I'm skeptical. Chariots slow down when they collide with targets, that's how they do damage. Acceleration can help them pull through a bit better from a stop (though I don't find this to be too hard to manage on live) but for chariots to work as currently designed they need to hit lots of infantry and therefore lost lots of speed against braced or heavy targets.

I'd rather move to something like examining vigor penalties which hit chariots extremely hard given all they do is charge rather than experiment with acceleration and deceleration.

songoffire#8157

@Spellbound1875#4610

I tried to increase acceleration/deceleration (and charge distance+10) +1 for razorgor chariots and they don't seem to lose damage output like you thought as they did around 1300 damage against regular Chosen (pretty much the same without the changes). However they did seem to pull through infantry a bit better.
Vigor penalties are indeed too hard on chariots. That's why perfect vigor chariots are much better in theory.

Edit : in big infantry blobs it does make a real difference

Spellbound1875#4610

songoffire#8157 said:

@Spellbound1875#4610

I tried to increase acceleration/deceleration (and charge distance+10) +1 for razorgor chariots and they don't seem to lose damage output like you thought as they did around 1300 damage against regular Chosen (pretty much the same without the changes). However they did seem to pull through infantry a bit better.
Vigor penalties are indeed too hard on chariots. That's why perfect vigor chariots are much better in theory.

Edit : in big infantry blobs it does make a real difference

Damage output loss was in reference to making chariots less bulky, which is why the Knights pull through everything so easily. If we're just talking acceleration adjustments I think it'll make the chariots more responsive, I'm just not sure that'll matter all that much with current performance. I think a lot of focus has been put on the idea that if chariot just pulled through better they'll suddenly be good when this doesn't address the bigger issue of micro to gain being poor.

songoffire#8157

@songoffire#8157 White Lions got a stealth fix, looks like part of the chariot model had been missing last patch. As for the inconsistencies my understanding is only one of those values is used by the game, the others are place holders or display values.

The draught value is what shows up on the unit card, you could determine if it's the correct speed value used in game by seeing if it's faster than units with a similarly listed speed.

I was talking about the discrepancies between line 184 and 185 for white lions chariots which encompass mounts and vehicle.
Another example is for razorgor chariot :


You can clearly see that there are no discrepancies for razorgor and from what I saw white lions chariots was the only one with this kind of differences. But I don't know how it affects white lions chariots.

On the topic of SE chariots, I think Skullcracker is performing good enough.

Spellbound1875#4610

songoffire#8157 said:

@songoffire#8157 White Lions got a stealth fix, looks like part of the chariot model had been missing last patch. As for the inconsistencies my understanding is only one of those values is used by the game, the others are place holders or display values.

The draught value is what shows up on the unit card, you could determine if it's the correct speed value used in game by seeing if it's faster than units with a similarly listed speed.

I was talking about the discrepancies between line 184 and 185 for white lions chariots which encompass mounts and vehicle.
Another example is for razorgor chariot :


You can clearly see that there are no discrepancies for razorgor and from what I saw white lions chariots was the only one with this kind of differences. But I don't know how it affects white lions chariots.

On the topic of SE chariots, I think Skullcracker is performing good enough.

The discrepancy is because each slot needs a value, only one is used is game. They should all be standardized so we don't have issues like the war wagon bug where the display said 66 but the unit was speed 50. It's a matter of CA cleaning up the tables but in most cases the different values have no clear impact. As long as CA intends the values that are being used it's fine.