Seriously, this structure sucks balls. Costs 9600 metal, fires only once every 20 seconds, and has only decent range and splash. For reference: Range: 600; by comparison, a light tank's is 100, and a radar's detection radius is also 600 Splash: 20m, about a factory's width. Also it's immobile and really fragile - only 1.5x the health of an inferno. For further comparison, it has 1/4 the health of a factory. Balls. This structure sucks balls. Boo Holkins. If you know of a redeeming quality for this seemingly worthless structure (other than its 5,000 damage/attack, which is admittedly impressive), post away. Btw I have no suggestions for how to fix it in a way that doesn't make it problematic for one reason or another. That's the discussion I'm trying to start here.
I think it's fine just the way it is. Kills blob armys, out-ranges most weapons in the game and deals a butt load of damage. If anything, the balance is spot on, if a little pricey.
Don't know about balls but it sure does like to suck power. The Holkins is not a stand alone weapon and needs the support of a few T2 PGens to operate without killing your eco. I can remember nuking a guys T2 PGens before I attacked him. He had like 5 Holkins near his wall and only managed to get off a single shot each. After the game I watched the replay and his recharging Holkins sucked up everything in his power storage and sent his power % into the single digits. Took him awhile to figure out the Holkins were starving him.
It breaks close proximity stalemates. It has no counter except for a straight on attack. It is ideal for taking out strategic assets like anti nuke launchers (both get oneshot by holkins).
I like it. Got a huge buff recently as well, before that it was more or less useless. Now I think it's an excellent tool in certain situations.
Alright, fair enough. I haven't come across a stalemate... ever, frankly, but I can see that others find some value in this thing.
the low hp and high metal price makes it a pretty good target for bomber snipes. A few bombs: BAM close to 10k metal gone.
I dont feel like it needs to be changed. Putting down Artillery should be expensive, especially if it has such a large range. Else it would be too easy to post a bunch remotely off from the base, put a bunch of walls and units and bam, EZ Win.
For its cost, the holkins really is fairly useless. I rarely use it in a standard game. It doesn't have enough range, and its fire rate is really bad. For the amount of metal it kills, it isn't worth the cost. I'd rather build eight shellers or eight sniper bots.
This its not like you build this thing fast. So building it on some key points isn't an option or you need to put it on hold and build some flak around it and an umbrella and after that you can start shooting. The other problem i noticed is targeting. Played on a 1000 radius planet and it could shoot some buildings. I didn't wanted that. I want that thing to destroy the army that was coming in from an other side. That would have been way more useful. So my experience: You need to plan where you going to place it. Or else it'll target enemy's buildings instead of incoming army's You need to build some aa and even an umbrella with it since its made out of glass. It takes some time building this glass cannon even with t2. Sometimes it does work though. I've seen that playing against @b8factor . I think the HP should be buffed. Its too easy to snipe down which makes it only good for defense in your base for now.
Just to clarify, I've never used it in most 'normal' game scenarios. But in huge eco late games you can spam them up fairly quickly, and they really make mincemeat of incoming armies (especially satisfying if it's high value T2 units). They could use a tweak to see more use in earlier game though, don't think I've ever built one without at least 600+ metal in a team game or something like that.
We had a big game with Holkins in today, on fields of Isis, where the enemy had massive stationary blobs of units. The perfect combination for long range artille... They still suck. Part of the problem is that the majority of the units being used in the game are still T1. If it was more viable to have a mostly (not all, that might be a bit boring) T2 army, the Holkins would probably pay for itself slightly quicker when it wrecks a group of 8 Levellers or whatever.
Enhancing every defense structure in general and giving every defense structure energy consumption in return will out-balance the Holkins. It´s current weaknesses right now are: 1. It´s silly at targeting! (could be changed with a new option in the command bar "prefer units over buildings ") 2. Overkilling most enemies. (will be changed with the current way rebalancing is headed, as Tier II-units are becoming more important) 3. It´s the only defense structure that draws a significant amount of energy. All three points can be changed!
Pretty much that. It is like a (classic) SSX that can't be "defended" and has to be "attacked" to prevent. You build it, scout for enemy commander, and if they are in range of holkins, you can kill it before it can react. If you can't get commander, you can easily get any other important structure, including metal and energy in a minute or two. It is basically like a "mininuke repeater". The important thing basically is heavily defending with flak and army and junk, while it fires until it pays for itself. It can easily pay for itself and then some, but it takes keeping it alive long enough. However, sadly, I would honestly prefer a t2 artillery piece that was basically a t1 artillery, that costed more but had "safer" range. That way, t1 artillery has to be within proxy distance but is cheap to establish and is t1, but t2 artillery is basically just a t1 piece that fires t1 shots at t1 damage and fire rate and energy cost, across the entire map. You can still kill plenty of things with pelter-like damage, plenty of game changing targets like metal and energy and enemy towers. Thus, my suggestion, would be pelters be given 350 range and keep their current damage and rate, and holkins keep their current metal cost but be given 700 range and do a pelter's damage and energy cost and rate. The existance of a holkins then, would be threatening, because it could be buried deep in an enemy base and still harass the entire map's worth of metal and soft targets, even an enemy commander, and force constant rebuild or repair.
I would say the holkins is a little expensive and the swivel speed is slow. and I have also noticed that it has good splash damage but it will auto shoot the closed unit instead of shooting in the middle of the army were it would kill a lot more units. so if it would shoot behind the font two rows of enemy units it would be much more effective And the sheller could use that feature as well.
I've found that Holkins, as-is, are devastating against navy - they give a degree of equality between T2 land and T2 naval, with whoever reaches theirs first being able to threaten the other with super-long-range artillery (either in the form of Holkins on the water or, more threateningly, battleships).
