Economy management

It isn't that it's a bad thing. It's just boring like Kiwi said. There isn't much variety. All I ever see are dox, then bolos backed up lightly by air. It's the same thing every time. (in competitive of course)

They are your main combat units, infernos and grenadiers are siege, combat fabbers are kinda meh with current unit hp, booms are apparently undervalued by you are I know they are fantastic, spinners are your aa, and....yeah that's like all of the ground units.

Dox and Bolos do not counter bombers, so there is that, and towers slaughter them, especially with walls.

Mines can currently only be reclaimed, and so are really good at murdering huge amounts of forces.


So I dunno about you, but if feels like you aren't playing particularly adaptive opponents.

Well ther isn't much incentive to build most others, because most people prefer the same kind of mobile army, fighters to counter bombers, dox to raid, tanks to assault.

Turrets murder all these fools and are only really countered by grenadiers and infernos, mines are essentially immortal except to reclaiming currently, and even with fighters, bombers can still be used to wreck a dox blob.

And booms are great at base harassment, they are sooooo fast.


But yeah, what size maps are you playing on?

I have played some of the best players on pa stats and have never found a practical use for grenadiers or infernos. I have not tried mines, but i doubt they are worth my time since combat fabbers cost so much.

Dox do slightly counter bombers.

And, with a properly micro'd dox mob, they can (mostly) dodge bomber attacks.

Booms are terrible at harassment when there's dox spam around every corner.

This game is getting flat and more eco is the way i see solving this problem.

Basically, there's 4 useful units: bombers, dox, bolos, and fighters.

I usually play on 500r maps. I do play games where these things are common, counters countering counters and what not it's just most of the time it's just a back and forth tug of war between bolos or dox/bomber raiding.
I have to say though, there have been times when I've boombot sniped people or done something a little more interesting and it is super fun but it's rare in a competitive match, very rare.

Edit: the games where I was able to pull of something "interesting" was in a casual ffa not a 1v1. I've rarely found an instance in a 1v1 where it was useful to build boom bots or something. It just gets you behind on unit production and then gives your opponent the upper hand. Infernos are the same, you can build them but then you're down on bolos and the enemy can outrange your infernos pretty easily. Also, grenadiers? What? Are those even good for something?

I have tried the boom bot snipe only when i know exactly where the commander is (and it has to be unprotected), hell i actually beat foerest one time with them. That's the only use for them.

Yeah it really is. Only time I've ever used them was when I was losing the battle in unit production and I knew my opponent wasn't protecting his flank or ACU.

I honestly don't think this game will ever have anything "interesting" to it. Considering there are no factions strategies will get standardized and we'll continue to see the same cookie cutter strats. I've seen some interesting strategies and I've pulled off some of my own but they rarely work. This game is definitely in need of something, I just don't know what.

That's just 1v1.

Team games and FFA are pretty spicy with variation. (not saying it doesn't have it's flaws)

For 1v1's the economy needs to be more efficient. Not sure how this could be executed but it should be.

I'm sure there has to be something other than the economy that needs adjusting.

Grenadiers and infernos are siege units more or less, although infernos can be good meat-shields against enemy fire.

And dox can counter bombers occasionally, but usually only in numbers that cannot effectively dodge a bomb strike.

And yes dox can be easily massed into a large army, and spread out to counter booms, but PA will always bee a intelligence war, so booms are best applied at areas of minimal resistance.

However from the looks of it, you have added bombers to your list of useful early game units, that don't include siege or support unit types.

So essentially, the only main combat units T1 land actually has?

Yeah, umm, for toe to toe combat these units will serve you the best, obviously the rush to build a mobile force makes supporting static elements less effective.

And in a mobile warfair environment, anything without AA becomes bomber fodder.

But I will suggest, using fabbers when possible to build temporary walls on the battlefield, as having cover for your units while killing enemy units can be insanely useful, ditching the walls when bombers show up because really who cares about the welfare of a wall right?

Not like the enemy can use it, and they'll waste time removing it.

So even in that instance the use of on-battlefield turrets and walls should really multi-ply the effect of your bolo/dox blobs as well as making yourself new terrain that directly helps you.


At least, that all I can suggest.

grenadiers have shells that ark over walls, making them useful for cost efficiently sniping turrets out of a enemy's base.

Also they have aoe damage, and so can kill many dox in a single shot.

But yeah 500 radii for a one planet game sounds like a really small map, and so of course the meta for a 1v1 500 radii planet game will differ immensely from a 1v1 6 planet game.

a 6 planet 1v1 sounds retarded.

how so?

It elevates the scale to one of the largest in the game, allowing players to wield just about every unit type in possibly every biome type.

It would be the true test of skill in a macro rts.

I think there needs to be more options for orbital invasions for a scene of competitive multi-planet games. But yes i agree, many planets would be the most interesting.

I just don't think it's ready for that kind of gameplay.

I am at least partially, inclined to agree.

Not that I don't like the idea that asteroid/lasering would be the victory point in PA, rather then invading, but having the choice would be preferential.

Asteroid bombardment and unit cannon harassment would be quite an awesome sight to see in 1v1 games.

That's the kind of RTS I would watch.

No it's not. Really. It'd be boring as hell, because you'd each armor up your own planet (zero ground combat) then go fight over the asteroids / laser / whatever. No exciting battles, whoever gets there first and locks the other player out wins. Oh, plus a 5-10 minute buildup period of zero combat to start with.

Interplanetary combat is *boring*. It goes from a ground battle of at least some terrain considerations and different units with forces maneuvering to zero terrain (orbital) and slow, massed units with few to no options to crack open a planet.

1v1 on 6 planets is as dumb as a 1v1 on an 81x81 map in Supcom. Will some people want to play sandbox SimCity until their com gets sniped? Sure. Will anyone else want to watch? No.

I must be playing this game wrong, cause I've quite enjoyed fighting a 1v1 across 4 different planets at a time. I dunno, I tend to play against the AI, but it seems pretty good at not letting you get a foothold on other planets without a bunch of resistance. I've found in my games that if you ignore orbital and aren't careful to jump to advanced at the right time, you're gonna have a real bad time.

Of course I usually roll with at least the starting planet being 1300 (I hope they increase the size limit soon, Before the release build I was quite enjoying 2000 radius planets while still hoping for larger sizes.) in my systems. Anything below 800 feels teeny-tiny ImO. 500 feels pretty much like a fistfight to me. It doesn't surprise me at all that you'll only use limited units on such tiny maps.

Stop playing on mini planets or adjust the eco modifier prior to a match. Don't hassle uber because your struggling to figure out how to improve your own experience within the current game's constraints.

You have the tools, learn to wield them.

I think we both agree on what the problem is, a lack of meaningful unit choice. Only a small selection of units get to see any action.

Now the bit that surprises me is the way you suggest solving the issue. By making the economy even less restrictive. In the past, before Uber changed the economy, these problems were still around, but they got significantly worse when the economy was ramped up.

I would suggest making the economy even more restrictive. The focus would start shifting from trying to pump out as many units as possible to how can I get the most efficient use out of my units. Trying to get efficient use out of units means striving for the ideal unit composition for a specific action.

Now the other issue that you seem to have glanced is the fact that there aren't a huge selection of units, and out of that pool, there are units that are just superior. An good player would very rarely choose to get Grenadiers over Dox. To me, this is by far the biggest issue.