Halo Wars balancing patch soon

By Tom Bramwell Published 10 July, 2009

Title Update 3 "in a few weeks".

Microsoft, Robot Entertainment or whoever has updated the Halo Wars website with news of an upcoming Title Update that re-balances units and fixes a few bugs.

The update should be released "in a few weeks" and follows on from May's Strategic Options DLC, which introduced three new game modes.

Check out the changelog below for the full list of changes. Do you like the word changelog? Bit tinny.

Balance Changes:

  • UNSC Warthogs Gauss cannon damage against tanks and other heavily armored vehicles reduced by 25%
  • UNSC Warthogs build time increased by 3 seconds to 25 seconds
  • Anders research time bonus decreased to 25% from 50%. Her Research cost bonus remains unchanged at 50%
  • Covenant and UNSC turrets have 5% increased health and 5% increased damage
  • UNSC Elephants have a 20% more health
  • Grenade damage type now has 25% additonal damage against Warthogs and other medium armor ground vehicles.
  • Recycle basic cost return fixed to be 50% for constructed buildings.
  • Locked down bases when unlocked will now release units inside very quickly, which means that when under attack a player can now build a fighting force while locked down and then release them much more quickly than before
  • UNSC Leader powers disabled at the start of Reinforcement Matches
  • Players no longer receive points for team killing.
  • Self Destructing/Recycling buildings now gives points to opponents

Bug Fixes:

  • Players should now find it much easier to play System Link games
  • Fixed Covenant Shield Generator Exploit
  • Invisible Units should now have invisible health bars
  • Players will no longer be able to scout opposing bases by using the area-select tool
Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (15) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • glo #1 3 years ago

    seems that they are nerfing UNSC but not Convenant? Seems strange considering the rather overpowered nature of the convenant leaders and especially the arbiter.. If they had toned down the arbiter, I would have been happy to try some online games again

  • asphaltcowboy #2 3 years ago

    "Players no longer receive points for team killing."

    lol?

  • DFawkes #3 3 years ago

    From what I've seen people taking issue with, they don't seem to have rebalanced it the way I'd have thought. But I'll have to wait and see myself if these updates feel right. I agree with glo about the Arbiter, he needs a slight tweak at least.

  • Xerx3s #4 3 years ago

    Ridiculous. Instead of toning down the extremely overpowered covenant, they nerv the UNSC. Arbiter players can easily take on 3 USNC enemies without a sweat, no matter what their skill. The game is awesome but the complete imbalance made it unplayable.

  • DFawkes #5 3 years ago

    I thought it was just me that thought they'd nerfed the wrong side! I'd always thought balance issues were a bit pro-Covenant. I always thought, for instance, slightly reducing the build time of your first couple of Warthogs would help stem an Arbiter rush. Obviously I'm wrong (probably not powerful enough), as they've increased it instead.

    But I'm sure it's not as bad as I'm envisioning, I've not played it with these tweaks yet. I really can't see them help against a Covenant leader rush though.

  • altitude2k #6 3 years ago

    Boo. The Gauss-researched Warthog rush was my method of choice.

  • gingerlink #7 3 years ago

    I never used warthogs as it is...

    Well, except for the occasional army of 50 of them when I was bored and then trying to ram them all into a scarab

  • RedSparrows #8 3 years ago

    The change to lockdown should make repelling a covie assault much easier, however.

  • Lutz #9 3 years ago

    Idiots. Do they play their own game?

    Yeah, Warthog rushes are shit, but not as bad as ALL covenant leader rushes!

    Muppets.

  • miiiguel #10 3 years ago

    99% of these changes are aimed at downgrading the power of rush tactics. Good job, game might become interesting to play online again.
    Edited by 1 at 10/07/09 @ 11:47

  • Kerome #11 3 years ago

    To be honest all those halvings sound like a quick-fire fix to me... yes, when you're balancing you often start with halving factors which are too dominant, but that's rarely where you finally end up if you give it a decent number of balancing passes. Anyway - my copy of Halo Wars is still sitting unplayed on my games shelf at home, too little time, too much to do...
    Edited by 1 at 10/07/09 @ 13:47

  • Xerx3s #12 3 years ago

    DFawkes: Not at all. We stopped playing when our well oiled team lost from an arbiter that had spend next to nothing on anything at all and only had one base while we have entire armies and full bases that pretty much shielded anything. He just walked in with cloak (even though I could see him, I couldn't attack him), telleported a shitload of suicide grunts onto my base and raped the shit out of my entire army and base, then just walked back out as if nothing had happened. Even though we could rebuild anything within a matter of seconds, there just was no point as he would do the same trick over and over again and nothing stopped him.

    The only thing that the UNSC has that can stop the arbiter is the disruption bomb but it takes about half an hour to reload, has net to no range and they just walk away as if nothing happened. The is simply no counter for that unit. Even if you destroy him, he will be back in a couple of minutes and your resources to counter him will be depleted, giving him free reign.

  • Xerx3s #13 3 years ago

    "99% of these changes are aimed at downgrading the power of rush tactics. Good job, game might become interesting to play online again. "

    No, they removed the UNSC rush capacity while increasing the already overpowered cov rush capacity. The only chance a UNSC player stands against an arbiter player is by rushing him before he gets his arbiter out. The moment he does that, the game is as good as lost anyway.

  • wellzy4eva #14 3 years ago

    There has never been a 'balancing' patch that makes everyone happy, at least this isn't like Diablo 2/WoW where people have spent weeks making characters around abilities that are suddenly nerfed

  • Xerx3s #15 3 years ago

    -1 to all posts. I see that we have some arbiter n00bs here. ^_^