I posted on this forum yesterday that the Elemental Bear should get collision attacks and reduced max splash attacks like the Dread Saurian just got. The following is a copy of a post to the Reddit I just made. Essentially I'm saying that all colossal monsters should get the Dread Saurian treatment: collision attacks and lower max entities hit per splash attack. 

​In the 5.1 patch notes, CA said that they added collision attacks to several large monsters, and reduced the max splash attacks of most monsters. Looking at the patch notes, many monsters had their max splash attacks reduced, which is good. But from what I can tell, the only monsters that got collision attacks (besides the ones that had it before, but it is hard to tell which ones have it) are the Khemrian Warsphinx and the Dread Saurian. I just tested the Dread Saurian and compared it to the Elemental Bear in controlled conditions.

For the LM, I had three saurus warriors with spears and the Dread Saurian against 6 empire swordsmen. For Kislev I had 3 armoured kossars with their ranged weapons turned off against the same. Both monsters won the battle, but they performed very differently.

Let me tell you guys now: the Dread Saurian is legit. 260 kills, in a pretty short amount of time. There were a few charges where he got 25 kills in a single charge. He was trampling people. The collision attacks do wonders to help him push through infantry and make his charges devastating. A small youtuber did a test against a ton of clanrats, and he pushed the Dread Saurian to over 900 kills.

The Elemental Bear still has a max splash attack of 12, and no collision attacks from what I can tell. The bear still won the battle, but he only managed 120 kills in a much longer period of time. This is partly because the Elemental Bear has lower weapon strength and slightly less attack. But I think the more important limitation on the bear and all colossal monsters is the lack of collision attacks.

Even without changing stats, this simple change would turn colossal monsters into the army killing machines that they deserve to be.

Elemental Bear and K'daai Destroyer could both use collision attacks. Relatively easy fix to make them effective.

I read up and now understand that Collision Attack is a new phase activated before Collision Impact Damage.  How is it superior to just CID?  Is it because the Big Bear is kinda slow (so CID is not so high) but has high WS (so CA would be consistently high)?

I'm not sure why Creative Assembly capped CID at 70 damage.  I guess it's because if we're talking about a cavalry unit, 70 dmg by each charging horse is quite hefty.  But if we're talking about a poor lonesome SEM charging, it's paltry dmg.

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Sandboxhead#8494 wrote:

I'm not sure why Creative Assembly capped CID at 70 damage.  I guess it's because if we're talking about a cavalry unit, 70 dmg by each charging horse is quite hefty.  But if we're talking about a poor lonesome SEM charging, it's paltry dmg.

It's actually quite difficult to get to the 70 damage cap, being literally impossible for many units. Collision attacks are generally superior to impact damage which they replace because they hit significantly harder in addition to numerous other advantages when looking at balancing a mechanic such as sensitivity to armor and MD, being less impacted by terrain, and having a significant damage floor.

Collision damage is just underperforming due to the calculation variables that are set in _kv_rules. Add on top of that how inflated a lot of the entity mass values are, and you get these soft charges. They should increase the modifier and/or decrease the normalizer values as this would allow charges to be more impactful. I have mixed feelings about how high mass is for many entities, CA simply have not managed balancing it very well.

Do you mean CA has given too high mass to many man-sized entities?

That's a legacy from letting foot lords and infantry resist movement by larger entities without falling over, isn't it?

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Sandboxhead#8494 wrote:

Do you mean CA has given too high mass to many man-sized entities?

That's a legacy from letting foot lords and infantry resist movement by larger entities without falling over, isn't it?

No infantry mass if fine, if collision damage is too low (a big if) you'd address it with tweaks to the kv_rules which modifies the factors which determine collision damage. While the changes came at a similar time to adjustments to knock down the relationship is not directly causal.

Collision damage was lowered by removing CB values from he calculation which could in some cases near double the collision damage a unit dealt. This was done because with the charge bugfix in the Rakarth patch damage dealt from attacks significantly increased and it encourages less toxic playstyles. Prior to those two changes it was often better to immediately cancel charges after impact because collision damage was so high and by doing this you could deny infantry entities attacks making large targets deal damage with extremely little risk of taking return damage. The new system encourages staying in combat for 5 to 10 seconds to take advantage of your charge bonus, or just remaining in combat until a target routs depending on your stats. Quite often when folks complain about cav underperforming you can see they're actually cancelling attack animations within that 5 second window where the majority of damage is dealt.

I generally see the new system as positive, though there's a solid argument that many large units could use a damage boost through increases to their CB values.