Change: Increase bonus firepower of China Frenzy to 30% flat, increase max duration from 30 to 40 s, decrease recharge from 240 to 180 s

[commy2]

• close China Frenzy Generals Power is very rarely used #709

This change buffs the Frenzy ability at all levels.

The bonus is now always +30% firepower.

• 10% and even 20% are not meaningful enough bonuses, especially for a temporary ability.
• It is now immediately obvious what bonus applies: Glows red = +30% firepower.
• Frenzy is now useful right from the start. Upgraded levels only increase bonus duration.

Duration of the bonus doubles with every level of Frenzy

• To make level 3 Frenzy somewhat appealing, the duration is now 40 seconds.
• The progression is now 10, 20 and 40 seconds. This follows to rule of many abilities to double in effectiveness on each level (Rebel Ambush 3 spawns 4 times as many Rebels as Ambush 1; Paradrop 3 spawns 4 times as many Rangers as Paradrop 1; Cash Hack: $1000, $2000, $4000, Cash Bounty: 5%, 10%, 20% etc.)

The recharge time is now 3 minutes

• Unlike Artillery Barrage or Carpet Bombing, which are useful immediately after they recharged, Frenzy is situational (only useful if combat happens), so this inherent disadvantage is priced in into the recharge time now.

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The Frenzy scan bug was previously removed: #593

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Things left to consider:

• Infantry General is the only sub-faction that starts out with Rank 1 Frenzy 1. Infantry General is also considered to be the strongest China sub-faction over all. It may be necessary to move Frenzy 1 to rank 3 for all factions if the buffed Frenzy 1 is deemed too effective to be available from the very beginning.
• This can be done in a follow-up change

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Side effects:

• This change fixes a bug where different levels of Frenzy can be stacked on top of each other in team games for increased bonuses.

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Original

Stat	Frenzy 1	Frenzy 2	Frenzy 3
Damage Bonus	+10%	+20%	+30%
Bonus Duration (s)	10	20	30
Recharge Time (s)	240	240	240

Patched

Stat	Frenzy 1	Frenzy 2	Frenzy 3
Damage Bonus	+30%	+30%	+30%
Bonus Duration (s)	10	20	40
Recharge Time (s)	180	180	180
Overall Buff %	+275%	+87%	+67%

Rationale

The original Frenzy Power is rarely used. China Players typically prefer the Artillery Powers (3), Carpet Bomber (1), Mines (1) and EMP Pulse Bomb (1). Infantry General uses Frenzy (1) sometimes to scan at the start of the match, even though the Frenzy Power is not designed or advertised as a scan ability.

The new patched Frenzy Power makes it considerably more attractive to use due its favorable progression with higher bonus damages in the lower Frenzy levels, its longer bonus duration at the last level and the overall reduced recharge time.

[xezon]

Changes look good to me. Reasonable improvements for a currently unused ability. This is a controversial change, so this pull request requires a rationale text to explain why this is done.

[xezon]

I added tables and rationale text to the opening post.

[commy2]

For anyone that's bad with numbers:

frenzy-vs-training.mp4

With this buffed version of Frenzy, a Frenzy 1 Minigunner (vet 1) is now equally as strong as an Elite Training Minigunner (vet2).

[kABUSE1]

Different levels of Frenzy can be stacked on top of each other in team games for increased bonuses.

Did I read that right?
In 1.04 frenzy would stack for team members but in 1.04p you desire to remove this behaviour?

Do you by chance know how the math works when stacking?

[xezon]

He wrote only different levels would stack. So it is inconsistently stacking, which is not good. It should either stack uniformly or not at all.

[commy2]

In 1.04 frenzy would stack for team members but in 1.04p you desire to remove this behaviour?

Frenzy only stacks if different levels are used at once on the same units. This is only possible in team games, where one player picks Frenzy X, the other Frenzy Y, where X != Y.

Do you by chance know how the math works when stacking?

Multiplicative as they are completely different bonuses.

Frenzy 1 + Frenzy 2 = +32% damage
Frenzy 1 + Frenzy 3 = +43% damage
Frenzy 2 + Frenzy 3 = +56% damage
Frenzy 1 + Frenzy 2 + Frenzy 3 = +72% damage (3 players)

It's very illogical, but if you want to create the highest dps unit in the game, you need to stack all three levels of Frenzy lol

[MTKing4]

I like the change, though i do feel that 10 and 20 seconds duration is too little that can be buffed higher, or just reduce the timer to 2 minutes is better, since as you mentioned, it's too situational, so there will be a lot of idle time where it's ready but not used, I'd really like that to be 2 minutes

[xezon]

2 minutes might be a bit too little. With Level 3 Frenzy this would mean that it could be used for max 33% of play time. Originally max 12.5%. And in current proposal max 22.2%.

[commy2]

Big duration disincentivises upgrading it to level 2 or 3. From player acceptance perspective, it's probably better to underbuff something initially than to overbuff it. It can always be tweaked further after people actually play with it.

[MTKing4]

Yeah forget about the duration, i think reducing cooldown is the better approach, and actually incentivises level 2 and 3, maybe 2:30 if not 2 minutes

But yeah i get it that we shouldn't overbuff, I'm interested into what others think though

[ImTimK]

I approve big buffs to make it a good alternative to meta genpowers.

Although I have to say level 2 or 3 aren't that attractive, since level 1 is already so good now.

Remember that currently level 1 is already picked sometimes (mostly for the scan ability ironically), however even with the big % increase level 2 and 3 were never picked and the incentive only becomes smaller with this change?

[xezon]

The Level 2 Frenzy is +100% better than Level 1 Frenzy.
The Level 3 Frenzy is +300% better than Level 1 Frenzy.

If Level 2 and 3 Frenzy were considered to be of no use, then this would imply that the increased duration makes no practical difference. Is that true?

[ImTimK]

Originally higher levels increased both damage and duration, but this wasn't enough for players to sacrifice meta powers. Now it only increases duration, that doesn't improve the situation (for level 2 and 3).

[xezon]

Well, on paper the Level 3 Frenzy still much better than Original. How high would this need to go and how can you determine this?

[ImTimK]

Honestly it's tough to determine this evidence based. I know for myself I would definitely pick level 1 more often with this change, but the extra duration alone wouldn't make the cut for me to spent more genpoints. 2-3 genpoints is a huge investment/sacrifice.

[xezon]

Another way to scale this would be with fixed time and increasing damage boost.

[xezon]

I fixed the improvement percentages in opening post. Here is model with same improvement percentages, but instead of longer times they give bigger damages.

Stat	Frenzy 1	Frenzy 2	Frenzy 3
Damage Bonus	+15%	+30%	+60%
Bonus Duration (s)	20	20	20
Recharge Time (s)	180	180	180
Overall Buff %	+275%	+87%	+67%

[commy2]

I feel like making people chose Frenzy 1 and using it for the intended purpose already is a victory.

Truth though is the way Frenzy behaves, it is not really suited to be an upgradable power. Making Frenzy 1 any worse than OP suggests (< 30% boost) means it's not worth it, which in turn means it will never be chosen except to reach Frenzy 2 or 3.

If you make 2 points of Frenzy necessary to have any tangible benefit (30%), then that comes at the cost of people skipping Cluster Mines, Cash Hack, Emergency Repair or maybe EMP instead. I'd rather they chose 1 level of Frenzy and the other powers, skipping maybe one point in Artillery Barrage, than have them sink it all into some overpowered form of Frenzy 2 or 3.

[xezon]

The disadvantage of the increasing damages model would be that other players would not recognize the Frenzy level and therefore would not be able to anticipate the damage level early. This is already a problem in Original. The way to mitigate that would be to add different shades of red for each level, but it appears that Frenzy color is hard coded. I could not find it in INI.

Another thing we can do to Buff Frenzy is raising these in Gattling Attachments:

  ; Patch104p @bugfix hanfield 01/09/2021 Added WeaponBonus parameters for Frenzy that nullify the bonus but allow it to color the Gattling Cannon.
  WeaponBonus           = FRENZY_ONE DAMAGE 90%
  WeaponBonus           = FRENZY_TWO DAMAGE 80%
  WeaponBonus           = FRENZY_THREE DAMAGE 70%

On that note, it needs to be adapted for this change anyway. All to 70%.

[commy2]

On that note, it needs to be adapted for this change anyway. All to 70%.

The implementation in the OP does not use FRENZY_ONE or FRENZY_TWO bonuses. Instead, FRENZY_THREE is granted on all levels, which, while confusing, at least leaves two hard-coded and limited buffs for other use, be it in this project in some other feature / fix (speculative), or a custom map or mod based on the patch.

The red glow of Frenzy is indeed hard-coded as far as I can tell.

[xezon]

Ah right. Then we can just think about changing them to 100%.

[commy2]

Or removing them if you want Gattling towers on Overlords to benefit from Frenzy.
Why doesn't it work on base defenses anyway? I know it's rather small, and it will never work on Bunkers, but it could at least buff Gatlings to make it ever so slightly more versatile.

[MTKing4]

I think we need to have much bigger upgrades from level 1 to 2 and from 2 to 3 for people to consider them over other genpowers, i think it would be beneficial to give the player more options and they decide how to play it