I feel the scaling of difficulty is going the wrong route. Difficulty scales poorly through the game and scales the wrong way as you increase difficulty.
Increasing the health of hostiles is the wrong way to scale between difficulty settings. I think there should be a combination of more enemies with some emphasis on stronger enemies pr pod.
I`ll try to make this short.
Lets say a standard (as in difficulty) pod in the early game has a weight of 5, in the mid game 10 and in the late game 20. Now lets say a standard plague marine has a weight of 5 a champion 8 and a plague dreadnought 10.
Now rather than increasing the health of each unit in a pod by 25 and 50 percent, the weight of each pod should be increased by 50% in the next highest difficulty and 100% in the highest difficulty.
How would this play out then?
In the late game each pod would be weighted 40 points, meaning you could see a 1x dreadnought, 2x champions plus 3x plague marines from a single pod. Given you can face up to 3-4 pods at the same time depending on how clumsy you are or how badly you position against reinforcements at patroils, you could be seriously swarmed.
Why do as i suggest?
Increasing the amounts of hostiles according to weight points brings even greater emphasis on correct positioning, timing and planning. It would also ramp up the intensity and feeling of facing insurmountable odds- which technically is what the space marines are made for.
Simply increasing the health of hostiles devalue the nature of the space marines.
Increasing the weight pr pod maintains the tactical elemement slightly better and is easier to scale at the each act and re-balance after the fact.
25% or 50% more health isnt that much of a hassle if you`re only facing 2-3 enemies. Upping the weight and thus the number and composition of enemies really brings out that space marine feeling..
If you read from top to here, then I thank you for reading.
Increasing the health of hostiles is the wrong way to scale between difficulty settings. I think there should be a combination of more enemies with some emphasis on stronger enemies pr pod.
I`ll try to make this short.
Lets say a standard (as in difficulty) pod in the early game has a weight of 5, in the mid game 10 and in the late game 20. Now lets say a standard plague marine has a weight of 5 a champion 8 and a plague dreadnought 10.
Now rather than increasing the health of each unit in a pod by 25 and 50 percent, the weight of each pod should be increased by 50% in the next highest difficulty and 100% in the highest difficulty.
How would this play out then?
In the late game each pod would be weighted 40 points, meaning you could see a 1x dreadnought, 2x champions plus 3x plague marines from a single pod. Given you can face up to 3-4 pods at the same time depending on how clumsy you are or how badly you position against reinforcements at patroils, you could be seriously swarmed.
Why do as i suggest?
Increasing the amounts of hostiles according to weight points brings even greater emphasis on correct positioning, timing and planning. It would also ramp up the intensity and feeling of facing insurmountable odds- which technically is what the space marines are made for.
Simply increasing the health of hostiles devalue the nature of the space marines.
Increasing the weight pr pod maintains the tactical elemement slightly better and is easier to scale at the each act and re-balance after the fact.
25% or 50% more health isnt that much of a hassle if you`re only facing 2-3 enemies. Upping the weight and thus the number and composition of enemies really brings out that space marine feeling..
If you read from top to here, then I thank you for reading.
